The influence of prosodic input in the second language classroom: does it stimulate child acquisition of word order and function words?

Abstract

This paper reports on an intervention study with young Polish beginners (mean age: 8 years, 3 months) learning English at school. It seeks to identify whether exposure to rhythmic input improves knowledge of word order and function words. The ‘prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis’, relevant in developmental psycholinguistics, provided the theoretical framework for the study. Eighty-seven children were randomly assigned to a treatment group exposed to rhythm-salient input in the form of nursery rhymes, a comparison group exposed to prose input, or a control group with no extra input. Results established that prosody can be an important factor in second language acquisition, as in first language acquisition. Children in the treatment group showed improvement in metalinguistic knowledge of English word order but not of function words. This has implications for teaching methods and classroom materials.

Notes

1. Doughty (2005: 298) claims that even adult learners may retain perceptual acuity to enable them to hear ‘those elements of surface structure that are so critical to language acquisition’.

2. The Cambridge Young Learners English Starters Test (Cambridge ESOL 2007) was piloted and rejected because no meaningful data could be obtained since the children found the test too difficult. While the British Picture Vocabulary Scale is not intended as a test of receptive English vocabulary for children with English as a foreign language, using this measure did allow for ensuring no differences between the three groups on this important aspect of L2 knowledge.

3. The full list of stimuli sentences is available on request from the authors.

4. One child in the rhythm-salient group moved school during the intervention. In the prose group, the post-intervention test was not administered to one child due to insufficient attendance during intervention and data of another child were lost due to tester error. In the control group, the post-intervention test was not administered to one child due to sickness and the data of two children were lost due to tester error.

5. Univariate analysis of covariance with pre-intervention responses as a covariate was employed to assess the effect of the intervention on children's performance. The covariate was significantly related to post-intervention scores (F(1, 77) = 21.63, p < .01, r = .47).

6. Analysis by item revealed a significant effect of the intervention on post-intervention scores after controlling for the effect of pre-intervention scores (F(2, 5666) = 8.83, p < .05, partial η² = .003). Planned contrasts revealed that being in the rhythm group significantly increased the number of correct judgements of grammaticality, after the intervention, in comparison with being in the control group (t(5664) = 4.05, r = .06).

7. Multivariate analysis of covariance with pre-intervention scores in each phrase set as covariates.

8. When presented with the ungrammatical sentences in the grammatical/ungrammatical pairs with the verb in the final position (M = 6.71, SE = 0.35), children made more correct grammaticality judgements than when presented with the verb first (M = 5.87, SE = 0.27), z = –2.067, p < 0.05, r = –0.26).

9. In the rhythm group, one child moved school during the intervention and one was not available for post-testing due to sickness. In the prose group, the post-intervention test was not administered to one child due to insufficient attendance during intervention. In the control group, the post-intervention test was not administered to eight children due to tester sickness on the final two days assigned for testing before the school Christmas break.

10. Univariate analysis of covariance with correct pre-intervention judgements as a covariate.

11. Univariate analysis of covariance with pre-intervention scores in the preposition and the article sets as covariates.