Page 11 - ELG1807 July Issue 459

NEWS
THE BRITISH ARE WORLD-LEADERS THE EYES

IN THANKS HAVE IT

By Federica Tedeschi Christian Lendl By Federica Tedeschi
Looking at English learners’ eye
British English speakers may well movements while reading English
be world leaders in saying ‘thank text tells us how well they are
you’, an international study learning, a recent American study
suggests. has suggested.
The sample included eight Researchers at the Massachusetts
languages over five continents: Institute of Technology were able
English, Italian, Russian and to predict the learners’ scores on
Polish as well as four small- standardised proficiency tests
community languages, including (MET and Toefl) by tracking
Murrinhpatha (Northern how long they spent looking at
Australia), Lao (Laos), Siwu individual words.
(Ghana) and Cha’palaa (Ecuador). They compared their predictions
Overall findings show that to participants’ actual results and
the British offer thanks in 14.5 found they were reliable.
per cent of instances where it is They examined 145 ESL
possible to do so, shortly followed speakers, almost evenly divided
by the Italians (13.5 per cent). among native Chinese, Japanese,
The frequency of saying ‘thank Portuguese and Spanish.
you’ after a successful request in Cheers, Your Each participant read 156
any of the other six languages was Majesty English sentences drawn from a
only 4.5 per cent or below. Wall Street Journal archive.
Researchers also took into Researchers filmed the
account alternative forms of contexts where participants same time, in their conversational participants’ eye movements,
expressing gratefulness, such as interacted with family members data, the British use ‘sorry’ four allowing them to track the length
‘good job’ and ‘sweet’, or non- as well as members of their times more than Americans. of time readers were fixated on
verbal acknowledgement, such community on a daily basis. Dr Murphy, who also teaches specific words.
as nodding one’s head. Overall, Each language’s footage ranged at Sussex University, told the EL They used a set of metrics called
participants expressed gratitude in in length from ten to over ninety Gazette: ‘Americans use “excuse Eyescore, which shows to what
some way in 88 per cent of cases. hours over a two-year period. me” for more things than Brits extent the pattern of a learner’s
All the samples, collected Sequences were analysed by do, and “sorry” can be used in the eye movements resemble those
through video recording everyday an expert in each language, with same kinds of context as “thank of native speakers when reading
social interactions, provided a focus on both quantitative and you” sometimes. So, it’s a word English.
‘evidence of a high degree of qualitative analysis. that’s used more in one country The sample included 37 native
prosociality across cultures’, the Findings suggest that ‘the than another, but that doesn’t English speakers for comparison
study said. maintenance of social reciprocity mean it’s a sentiment that’s used purposes.
A peculiar example of gratitude does not depend on the at four times the rate.’ ‘This outcome confirms the
comes from the Australian verbalisation of gratitude’ as effectiveness of reading time
language Murrinhpatha, where gratefulness can be expressed n Universals and cultural diversity comparisons when the presented
it is common practice to thank in a variety of ways. American in the expression of gratitude, Simeon sentences are shared across
someone with ‘that’s right, you’re linguistic Lynne Murphy pointed Floyd et al (various universities). participants’, the study said.
beautiful’. Cameras were placed out that Americans say ‘thank you’ Royal Society Open Science tinyurl. In future, the researchers say
in household and community twice as much as Britons. At the com/ycu7v9yp they want to look at how to
combine real-time eye tracking
Finns flock to Facebook research quiz with traditional task-based tests to
come up with a more accurate and
fair assessment of learners’ English
By Federica Tedeschi learning. The most common native began studying English from birth, proficiency.
Some seven per cent of the languages other than English were the best-performing language
population of Finland took part in Finnish at 13 per cent, followed by group was Romance. n Assessing language proficiency from
the recent critical-age study from Turkish (12 per cent) and German, The best learners who began eye movement in reading, Yevgeni Berzak,
Boris Katz, Roger Levy, MIT. tinyurl.
the Massachusetts Institute of (8 per cent). when they were between six and
Technology, a new analysis by the To establish whether first 10 years old were the Chinese. com/ybxu6smz
Gazette reveals. language had an effect on learning In other demographic findings,
Almost 40,000 Finns were outcomes, the researchers female participants from any
among the 700,000 people to take allocated the individual L1s into sample group and participants with
the syntax quiz which formed language families. post-secondary education achieved
the basis of the American study Overall, they found no higher accuracy in English language
reported last month. significant difference in acquisition.
The sample included 400,000 grammatical attainment between
non-native speakers, representing the language families, but n A critical period for second
6,000 mother tongues – the differences were noticed based on language acquisition: J.K. Hartshorne,
largest dataset that anyone has the age of first exposure. J. B Tenenbaum, S. Pinker, MIT.
prepared for a study of language- For example, among those who tinyurl.com/yctdpa6k
editorial@elgazette.com

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