Studying texts in a non-native language: A further investigation of factors involved in the L2 recall cost.

With academic internationalisation at full speed, English is increasingly used as a medium of instruction in higher education. The question arises of whether unbalanced bilinguals remember study materials in a non-native language (L2) as well as in a first language (L1). In previous studies, we found a disadvantage for students recalling short, expository texts in L2 compared with L1, but no such disadvantage for a true/false recognition test, not even on delayed tests after a month. As no additional forgetting occurs, the quality of the memory trace seems to be equally strong in both languages and the recall cost might be caused by a lack of production skill in L2. To test this hypothesis, we ran experiments in L1-L1, L2-L1, and L2-L2 conditions with free and cued recall (short open questions). We replicate the L2 free recall cost reported earlier and show that it is due to the encoding in L2 rather than to an L2 production cost. In contrast, we found no significant difference in a new pair of texts with short, cued recall questions, though there was a trend in the expected direction. A summary of the effect sizes obtained so far shows a considerable variety in magnitudes (with rather big confidence intervals), suggesting that the cost of studying in L2 depends on several factors such as study time, test requirement, and language proficiency level.

Is there adaptation of speech production after speech perception in bilingual interaction?

In dialogue, speakers tend to adapt their speech to the speech of their interlocutor. Adapting speech production to preceding speech input may be particularly relevant for second language (L2) speakers interacting with native (L1) speakers, as adaptation may facilitate L2 learning. Here we asked whether Dutch-English bilinguals adapt pronunciation of the English phonemes /æ/ and coda /b/ when reading aloud sentences after exposure to native English speech. Additionally, we tested whether social context (presence or absence of a native English confederate) and time lag between perception and production of the phoneme affected adaptation. Participants produced more English-like target words that ended in word-final /b/ after exposure to target phonemes produced by a native speaker, but the participants did not change their production of the phoneme /æ/ after exposure to native /æ/. The native English speaking confederate did not show consistent changes in speech production after exposure to target phonemes produced by L2 speakers. These findings are in line with Gambi and Pickering's simulation theory of phonetic imitation (Gambi & Pickering, 2013). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).