Page 11 - ELG2005 May Issue 470

RESEARCH NEWS . NEWS

Making the most of morphemes Drawing out the meanings of collocations

Morphemic regularity may help babies acquire concepts like number and gender By Gillian Ragsdale for the Chinese speakers in this suggests performing an action simple drawings (image schemas)
study. continuously, without an to show their understanding of
Students learn verb-noun Traditionally, collocations are endpoint. This is concept-based collocations such as ‘make a
By Melanie Butler however, the advantage is far from collocations better by exploring either learned incidentally, as they instruction (CBI) rather than comment’ or ‘do research’. They
clear. Italian uses fewer lemmas the meaning of verbs and come along – or explicitly, by form-focussed. then explained their drawings in
Research has long shown that, but more morphemic patterns. prepositions via drawings they drawing attention to their forms. Three groups of Chinese- pairs – and some to the whole
whatever their L1, infants learn In addition, the definite article RIDO / SHUTTERSTOCK then explain to their peers, This kind of form-focussed speaking, intermediate-level class. This helps students
words at much the same rate and is more complex in Italian. It is according to a study by Mei-Hsing instruction (FFI) practices English, first-year university internalise the way that the key
in much the same order. The same also always marked for gender and Tsai at the National Taiwan recognising and recalling students took part in Mei-Hsing’s words contribute to the meaning
may not be true, however, for the number and the feminine form University of Science and collocations repetitively. study. One control class had no of the collocation.
smallest unit of meaning: the follows the most common noun Technology. An alternative kind of explicit explicit teaching of collocations, For example, metaphor is
morpheme. A study from pattern: the singular form la ends Collocations such as ‘make a teaching examines the meaning of one had FFI and one had CBI, common in collocations, such as
Manchester University suggests in -a (though changes to l’ before decision’ vs ‘do the cooking’ are verbs in order to understand how each for 70 minutes. Their ‘make a comment,’ as though the
that speaking a highly inflected a vowel, as in l’amica), the plural challenging for students, who meaning influences which verbs recognition and recall of comment were an object being
language may offer an advantage. form ends in -e, le, and is also used often learn the forms without any are used with a particular noun. collocations was tested before created, which in that sense,
The study, led by Alissa Ferry, in front of vowels. The masculine sense of why one verb is used For example, ‘make’ implies teaching, just after teaching and makes ‘make’ the logical choice
found that Italian infants as young is less regular. rather than another. For example, producing something or later. rather than ‘do’.
as 12 months can understand Generally, the singular il It is not easy to do controlled studies with infants. While most make and do are equivalent in accomplishing the verb in the During the CBI instruction, Both FFI and CBI were clearly
grammatical gender and some becomes I in the plural. However, sat patiently on their mother’s lap during the trials, some had Chinese, adding to the confusion collocation in some way, while ‘do’ students were asked to make successful in teaching collocations
elements of number. By contrast, l’ is used before vowels and lo in to be eliminated due to ‘crying during the entire study’ to the students, but CBI was more
children who speak English, a front of certain consonant clusters, successful – especially in the later
language with few inflections and and the plural of both is gli. or ‘Do you see the bambine (baby irregularities in the masculine testing, showing that retention of
no grammatical gender, don’t This irregularity was one factor girls)?’ The eye movements were article, which supports the the collocations was better using
understand plural morphology behind the decision to use Italian tracked throughout, so if the child morphemic regularity hypothesis. the CBI method.
until they are twenty months old, speakers for the study: if understood which picture matched The authors suggested the study Sadly, no method can make
according to previous studies. morphemic regularity is key in the spoken language, they should should be rerun in Spanish, which complete sense of English
Ferry’s team focused on acquisition, then infants should look longer at that picture. does not show such irregularity in collocations, but this concept-
morphemic regularities where the acquire the regular female forms Ferry was surprised to find that the masculine form. based style of instruction may
same morpheme or group of earlier than the irregular even the 12-month-old infants An alternative explanation help, and it certainly looks more
morphemes mark particular masculine ones. could distinguish gender and could be that the infants were fun.
grammatical concepts such as The study recruited 85 Italian number – with one exception – confused because, as in all Latin
number or gender. They wanted infants age 12, 18 and 24 months and there was no discernible languages, the masculine plural is REFERENCE
to examine whether infants could to see when they could use difference across the age groups. used not only for all male groups n Tsai, M-H. 2020. The effects of
link these regularities to the morphemes to differentiate The exception related to the less like older men, but for mixed sex explicit instruction on L2 learners’
grammatical concepts they number and gender. consistent male case. Infants in all groups, too. acquisition of verb-noun
convey, and because they The Italian infants were shown age groups could easily distinguish collocations. Language Teaching
suspected morpheme acquisition pairs of pictures of males, females linguistically between men and REFERENCE Research 24(2): 138-162
might be language led, they chose or both, using word roots like women and between one or more n Ferry, A., Nespor, M. and
infants whose L1, Italian, had a ‘bambin’ where number and gender women – but not between one or Mehler, J. 2020. Twelve to 24-
rich inflectional morphology. are formed by changes in one more men. Month-Olds Can Understand the Correcting teachers’ preconceptions of
In Italian regular nouns, the morpheme, the final vowel. At the Re-tested a year later, the Meaning of Morphological
plural is formed by changing one same time, they were given infants still couldn’t distinguish Regularities in Their Language.
morpheme: the final vowel. instructions in Italian: for example, the male plural. The researchers Developmental Psychology, 56 (1): corrective feedback
Regular nouns fall into a number ‘Look at the bambina (baby girl)!’ ascribe this to morpheme 40-52.
of groups, but one predominates,
and is used in over 70 per cent of Most common class of Italian nouns By Gillian Ragsdale whether they would correct the type actually used – which was to Teacher training can bridge this
cases, according to this paper. error and why. They also listened recast the language item to model gap between the experience of the
They follow a simple pattern: meaning feminine feminine masculine masculine mixed Inexperienced teachers hesitate to to examples of correction (such as the correct form. For example, ‘I learner and the teacher, so that
singular plural singular plural gender
feminine nouns end in -a in the correct, especially explicitly, recasting correctly or providing a have one children,’ can be recast trainees gain confidence by
singular and change to -e in baby/ la bambina le bambine il bambino i bambini i bambini despite believing that students prompt for self-correction) and as ‘Oh, you have only one child’. understanding types of errors and
plural, masculine nouns change young child need corrective feedback, commented on how effective they Teachers, especially those with when and how to correct them
(in study)
from -o to -i. according to a Canadian study. thought it would be. less experience, tend to prefer using a wider range of corrective
This group of nouns includes a the baby girl the baby girls the baby boy the baby boys the babies Ninety-nine pre-service ESL The researchers wanted to see recasting errors to more direct, feedback techniques, not just in
number of terms for different types boys and girls la ragazza le ragazze il ragazzo i ragazzi i ragazzi teachers were asked to rate their how well trainees’ beliefs matched explicit correction (‘We don’t say theory, but applied in practice
of people, and each one uses the (in study) agreement with statements about their teaching practice. Overall, one children, we say one child’) as teaching.
same word root, or lemma, for the girl the girls the boy the boys the boys error correction, such as: ‘Error the trainees corrected less than it feels less intrusive – and less
example ‘bambin’ is the word root and girls correction is essential in they claimed they would. This is humiliating. REFERENCE
for baby and this lemma is then strangers la straniera le straniere lo straniero gli stranieri gli stranieri promoting L2/FL learning.’ Ten of unsurprising, as in these first All the trainees in this study n Kartchava, E., Gatbonton, E.,
marked with a morpheme showing the trainees were then asked to lessons teachers are still in the spoke at least two languages. Ammar, A. and Trofimovich, P.
gender and number: bambina (baby the stranger the strangers the stranger the strangers the strangers teach a one hour class to a real ‘survival stage’ in the process of Teachers’ beliefs often draw on 2020. Oral corrective feedback:
girl), bambino (baby boy), etc. friends l’ amica le amiche* l’amico gli amici gli amici group of learners. becoming a teacher, where their own experience as language Pre-service English as a second
It is tempting to conclude that After their practice lesson, the pedagogy may come second to learners. Although students tend language teachers’ beliefs and
Italian babies understand plurals the friend the friends the friend the friends the friends teachers’ beliefs about corrective classroom management. to want more correction – on practices, Language Teaching
earlier than English-speaking ones KEY feedback were further assessed. Trainees were consistent, becoming teachers, they are all Research 24(2): 220-249
simply because the system is (in study) This word family was used with infants in the research * Regular orthographic form They watched videos of common however, in the kind of correction too aware of how correction can
simpler. As the table here shows, Letters in red Morpheme used marking gender and/or number errors and commented on they said they preferred and the affect self-esteem.

10 May 2020 editorial@elgazette.com 11