Browsing by Author "Pfenninger, Simone E."
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Item Age effects on the acquisition of nominal and verbal inflections in an instructed setting(Zakład Filologii Angielskiej: Wydział Pedagogiczno-Artystyczny Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Kaliszu, 2011-10) Pfenninger, Simone E.This study examines evidence for the hypothesis (e.g., Muñoz, 2006) that an early starting age is not necessarily more beneficial to the successful learning of L2 inflectional morphology in strictly formal instructional settings. The present author investigated the quantitative and qualitative differences in the production and reception of 5 selected inflectional morphemes in English written performance and competence tasks by 100 early classroom learners and 100 late classroom learners of the same age. While an earlier age of first exposure and a longer instructional period was not associated with higher accuracy scores, the findings suggest distinct patterns in the productive and receptive knowledge abilities of inflectional morphology; the late classroom learners’ superiority seems to be rooted in their greater reliance upon memory-based item-by-item associative learning, as they are significantly stronger on tasks that might cause semantic difficulties, whereas the early classroom learners are marginally better on pattern-based processes for certain morphemes. This finding possibly supports Ullman’s (2005) proposal that, as procedural memory declines with age, older starters have difficulty in discovering regularities in the input and thus over-rely on the declarative memory system in L2 learning.Item MSL in the digital ages: Effects and effectiveness of computer-mediated intervention for FL learners with dyslexia(Zakład Filologii Angielskiej Wydział Pedagogiczno-Artystyczny Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Kaliszu, 2015-03) Pfenninger, Simone E.The longitudinal intervention study reported here is the first to investigate the efficiency of computer learning software specifically designed for dyslexic Swiss German learners of Standard German as a second language (L2) and English as a third language (L3). A total of 40 subjects (20 of them dyslexics and 20 of them nondyslexics; 10 students from each group participated in in- terventions and the other 10 from each group served as control groups) were assessed with a battery of verbal and written pre- and posttests involving pho- nological/orthographic and semantic measures of their L2 and L3 before and after three months of daily intervention with the software. The results show that computer-based training in the L3 is potentially an important tool of intervention for dyslexic students as it has a positive effect on the components of L3 as well as L2 learning. As a consequence of their progress in acquiring the relationships between L3 graphemes and phonemes, the experimental groups, but not the control groups, made significant gains on L2 naming accuracy and speed, L2 and L3 word reading, L2 and L3 phonological awareness, and L2 and L3 receptive and productive vocabulary and comprehension tasks.Item The misunderstood variable: Age effects as a function of type of instruction(Zakład Filologii Angielskiej Wydział Pedagogiczno-Artystyczny Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Kaliszu, 2014-10) Pfenninger, Simone E.This study was designed to investigate the effects of age of onset and type of instruction on ultimate EFL attainment at the end of the period of normal schooling in Switzerland, measured in terms of written fluency, complexity, morphosyntactic accuracy, vocabulary size, and listening skills. Data were gathered from four groups of 18-year-old Swiss German learners of English: 50 were early starters who had attended an immersion (CLIL) program in elementary school and who continued CLIL in secondary school (EARLY CLIL), 50 had followed the same elementary school program but then received traditional EFL instruction after elementary school (EARLY MIX), 50 were late starters who began learning English immersively in secondary school, (LATE CLIL), while the other 50 attended a traditional EFL program in secondary school (LATE NON-CLIL). Results show that age of onset alone does not seem to be the distinguishing variable since early introduction of English in elementary school did not result in a higher level of proficiency when exposure to the language was limited to a few hours of class per week. The performance of the EARLY MIX participants was equaled and in certain areas significantly surpassed by the other groups, despite the additional five years of English study they had had in elementary school. The best results were found when early CLIL instruction was followed up by the use of English as an additional language of instruction in secondary school (EARLY CLIL group), which confirms the link between young starting age, implicit learning and long and massive exposure