Cognate awareness -raising in late childhood: teachable and useful

Abstract

This study is part of a larger investigation of the usefulness of instruction designed to raise cross-linguistic awareness in young Francophone learners of English in Quebec. In the research reported here, the focus is on cognates. Since previous research shows that learners typically fail to recognise many helpful similarities between words in a new language (in this case, English) and languages they already know, the instructional activities we designed emphasised strategies for identifying ‘good friend’ resemblances, though false friends were also discussed. The impact of the activities was assessed in three ways: learners’ performance on a measure of French–English cognate recognition ability; their written responses to a question that probed developing cognate awareness; and interviews that explored teachers’ experiences after using the activities in their classes. Findings suggested that learners benefited from the activities. Gains on the recognition test pointed to an advantage for ‘pattern’ instruction that addresses resemblances that are not readily detected (e.g. English screen = French écran). Learners who received the experimental instruction outperformed control groups on the cognate awareness measure. Furthermore, teachers were positive about the cross-linguistic comparisons. We conclude that the activities were effective and even enjoyable.

Keywords:

• cognate awareness -raising
• cross-linguistic contrasts
• ESL
• explicit instruction
• teacher perceptions
• metalinguistic awareness

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on a presentation the authors made at the 10th International Conference of the Association for Language Awareness, held at the University of Kassel in July, 2010. The research was supported through a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We would like to thank our project manager, Philippa Bell, our statistical advisor, Randall Halter, the graduate students who helped with data collection and analysis and, of course, the teachers and ESL learners who participated in this study. We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes

1. In addition to subject-specific competencies, nine cross-curricular competencies grouped in four categories (intellectual, methodological, personal and social, and communication) aim to promote integrated learning. A competency is defined as ‘a set of behaviours based on the effective mobilisation and use of a range of resources’ (QEP, 2001, p. 4).

2. While this is the case for most teachers, our paper will be about another context.

3. It was necessary to convert mean scores to percentages as the number of general and pattern cognate items differs (8 and 12, respectively).

4. Each intensive teacher has two groups of students in one year; she teaches the first group from September through January and the second group from February through June. At the time this interview was conducted, T5E had just finished implementing the experimental materials with her first group and was starting to teach her second intensive group of the year.

5. In the regular program, students have one hour a week of English in grades 1–6 and 2.5 hours a week in secondary school. By the time they reach Secondary 3 (Grade 9), they have had approximately 400 hours of instruction, distributed over eight years. Students in an intensive ESL program have almost 400 hours in five months.