Chen Zhengrong, Caldwell-Harris Catherine
School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, 2# Southeast University Road, Jiangning District, Nanjing, 211189, Jiangsu Province, China.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
J Psycholinguist Res. 2019 Oct;48(5):1025-1049. doi: 10.1007/s10936-019-09645-y.
It is common to have good declarative but poor procedural knowledge of a foreign language, especially for classroom learners. To study this gap in a constrained manner, we asked Chinese learners of English to repeat, correct and produce indirect speech. The indirect speech construction was selected in the present study because it is known to be a particularly complex construction. Chinese university students who all had good declarative knowledge of the rules governing indirect speech were selected to have overall low or high oral proficiency when assessed in a free speech situation. High proficiency participants pursued strategies that increased their speech rate while reducing errors. They used more idiomatic English, more chunked expressions, and showed less negative transfer from Mandarin, compared to low proficiency participants. Indeed use of chunks was the primary means by which both groups of participants were able to increase their accuracy, complexity, and speaking rate. Low proficiency but not high participants showed evidence of a speed-accuracy trade-off. They either kept errors low at the cost of high pausing, or produced many errors with the benefit of rapid speech. Identifying preferences for speed versus accuracy could facilitate methods for encouraging learners to move out of their comfort zones.
对于一门外语，尤其是课堂学习者，拥有良好的陈述性知识但程序性知识却很差是很常见的。为了以一种受限的方式研究这种差距，我们让中国的英语学习者重复、纠正并产出间接引语。在本研究中选择间接引语结构是因为它已知是一种特别复杂的结构。在自由发言情境中接受评估时，所有对间接引语规则拥有良好陈述性知识的中国大学生被挑选出来，他们的口语水平总体较低或较高。与低水平参与者相比，高水平参与者采用了提高语速同时减少错误的策略。他们使用了更多地道的英语、更多的组块表达，并且汉语的负迁移更少。事实上，使用组块是两组参与者提高准确性、复杂性和语速的主要方式。低水平参与者而非高水平参与者表现出速度与准确性权衡的证据。他们要么以高停顿为代价保持低错误率，要么以语速快为优势产生许多错误。确定对速度与准确性的偏好可以促进鼓励学习者走出舒适区的方法。
