Does Ambient Language Input Matter?

MA Linguistics Dissertation

First Exposure to Mandarin in Newcastle: Does Ambient Language Input Matter?

Supervisor: Professor Martha Young-Scholten Word Count: 16,666 Date: 26 August 2016

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the MA in Linguistics at Newcastle University. I declare that this work is entirely my own and that in all cases where I have drawn on the work of any other author, either directly or indirectly, this is fully and specifically acknowledged in the text of my dissertation and the work cited in the bibliographical references listed at the end of the Dissertation.

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ABSTRACT

Remarkably little is known on how adults identify sound strings as words and map meaning to these strings when they encounter naturalistic input for the first time, despite emerging interest in the adult learners’ L2 initial state and input-processing capacities. Results of studies employing natural language in implicit learning environments do not always concur, suggesting the influence of other unexamined factors on successful acquisition of language after minimal exposure.

This study presents the results of a probe into the role of ambient language input as a possible influence on the adult learners’ L2 initial state and input-processing capacities. Based largely on the Max Planck Institute experiment, English-speaking adults in Newcastle upon Tyne were exposed to less than five minutes of controlled, natural audio-visual input in Mandarin, and assessed their abilities to identify sound regularities after less than five minutes’ exposure. The findings indicate that adult learners, even without prior exposure to Mandarin input, were able to display evident knowledge of Mandarin phonotactics. Detailed analysis hinted at possible correlation of adult learners’ age on their amount of knowledge of Mandarin phonotactics with only ambient exposure to the language in their daily undertakings. In addition, adult learners were found to be able to process input and acquire phonotactic information after mere minutes of exposure, corroborating the robustness of the adult learning mechanism. Finally, evidence of crosslinguistic influence was also found to impede successful segmentation of lexically-transparent words, highlighting possible directions for future developments.

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Contents Abstract ...........................................................................................................................................1 Contents Page .................................................................................................................................2 Chapter 1

The Role of First Exposure in Second Language Acquisition ..............................3 1.1 First exposure: An overview .................................................................................3 1.2 Word learning: From hearing noise to successful decoding ................................6 1.3 First exposure: Three broad categories ...............................................................7 1.4 First exposure to Mandarin ................................................................................10 1.5 Interesting observations: Motivation for this study ............................................13 1.6 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................15

Chapter 2

The Study.................................................................................................................16 2.1 Mandarin as a target language...........................................................................16 2.2 Phonotactics: The syllable structure ..................................................................19 2.3 The stimuli...........................................................................................................24 2.4 The participants ..................................................................................................26 2.5 The perception tasks ...........................................................................................27 2.6 Measures .............................................................................................................31 2.7 Hypotheses ..........................................................................................................32 2.8 The procedure .....................................................................................................33

Chapter 3

The Results ..............................................................................................................35 3.1 Overall results .....................................................................................................35 3.2 Word effects ........................................................................................................39 3.3 Language perception effects ...............................................................................44 3.4 Summary .............................................................................................................47

Chapter 4

Discussion ................................................................................................................48

Chapter 5

Conclusion ...............................................................................................................57

References .....................................................................................................................................61 Appendix .......................................................................................................................................63

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CHAPTER 1 The Role of First Exposure in Second Language Acquisition

First exposure is a fairly recent research area emerging from within the field of second language acquisition (SLA), which seeks to assess and define the parameters of the adult second language (L2) initial state through the use of controlled input (Carroll 2014: 107). Different focusses in existing research on input processing, such as learners en route (VanPatten 2004) and representation (Schwartz and Sprouse 1996) have yet to provide detailed insight into input processing at the L2 initial state. As he astutely observed, ‘Far too little empirical attention has been paid to the very beginnings of the acquisition process’ (Perdue 1996: 138).

This aim of this study is to attempt to address two possible gaps in existing literature in first exposure research, building on existing paradigms. Due to the relative infancy of first exposure research, this chapter will first outline the emergence of SLA studies employing controlled input, eventually giving rise to the term ‘first exposure’. An overview of current first exposure studies as well as their contributions to SLA research will follow. The chapter will continue with a more detailed look at first exposure studies using Mandarin as target language. Finally, the identification and description of some potential gaps in first exposure literature will conclude the chapter.

1.1

First exposure: an overview

1.1.1 Background to first exposure research It has been observed that ‘at the earliest stages of L2 acquisition […] the adult learning mechanism can deal efficiently with very little input and very complex input’ (Gullberg et al. 2012: 239). On the other hand, it is also widely believed that adults cannot segment a sustained speech stream independently. Making sense of the speech stream is a challenge for language learners confronted with a new and unknown language for the first time. The first crucial steps include segmentation, with the successful identification of relevant sound strings as ‘words’. This is made demanding by the lack of clearly-defined breaks in acoustic signals that cue the learner to word boundaries. Next is meaning-mapping, where the learner assigns relevant meanings onto those ‘words’ from the context. Finally, the learner is required to progress beyond this and form generalisations about the 3

language itself. These essential first steps in learning any language constitute the complex ‘learner’s problem of analysis’ (Klein 1986: 59), yet surprisingly little is known about them. A comprehensive understanding of the L2 initial state, which was defined by Schwartz and Sprouse (1996) as ‘the starting point of non-native grammatical knowledge’, is therefore imperative for the development of an empirically viable theory in SLA (Epstein et al. 1996, Vainikka & YoungScholten 1996).

That said, remarkably little research has been conducted in SLA to investigate how L2 learners overcome segmentation and meaning-mapping challenges during the very initial contact with naturalistic input in the form of complex and coherent speech for the first time. Various hypotheses had been put forward in attempts to account for the initial stages of L2 acquisition. Researchers also differed in their views of the L2 initial state, namely whether Universal Grammar (UG) or the learner’s first language (L1) constituted the L2 initial state.

The widely-cited Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse 1994, 1996) proposed that the final stages of L1 acquisition represent the initial stages of L2 acquisition, although UG is fully available. In contrast, Klein and Perdue’s account of the L2 initial state (Klein & Perdue 1992, 1997) characterises the L2 initial state as a result of organisational principles, independent of both L1 and L2 grammars (Klein & Perdue 1997: 1-3). However, these were constructed based on the quality of learners’ productions rather than the amount of time exposed to the novel (target) language. Most, if not all SLA studies, do not include the very earliest stages of language learning, ‘the initial encounters with a novel language’ (Rast 2010). As observed by Shoemaker and Rast (2013: 167), the limitations of L2 speech processing at intermediate and advanced proficiency level have been extensively studied, yet very little research has focused on ‘how learners initially break into the sound stream’.

The failure of SLA models to accommodate the earliest stages of L2 acquisition, coupled with the scarcity of relevant research in the L2 initial state, led to a number of SLA researchers (Carroll 2008, 2012, 2014; Gullberg et al. 2010, 2012; Rast 2008, 2010; Ristin-Kaufmann & Gullberg 2014, Park & Han 2008) manipulating the input (also termed exposure or stimuli in such studies) in studies with new learners. These studies controlled and assessed the learners’ input-processing 4

capacities to attempt to capture the initial stages of SLA, forming the basis of first exposure research.

1.1.2 Terminology The initial stages of SLA have recently begun to attract researchers’ attention, particularly with regard to first language (L1) effect and L2 input processing and constraints (Carroll & Windsor 2015: 58). Studies done by SLA researchers on the initial stages of acquisition have been termed differently based on individual researchers, largely due to the relative infancy of such studies. Terms include ab initio (Hand & Liu 2013), minimal exposure/input (Gullberg et al. 2010, 2012), brief experience (Chambers et al. 2012) and first exposure (Rast 2010, Carroll 2013, Carroll et al. 2014, Shoemaker and Rast 2013).

The need for commonality stems from the large variety of terms used by various researchers in first exposure studies. Due to the discrepancy in titles of studies and the need for a common term to refer to studies investigating the earliest stages of SLA, the term first exposure has been adopted, to reflect SLA studies that investigate input processing of L2 at the very initial state, examining how adults break into a foreign language system at first contact when they have no pre-existing knowledge of the new language to draw on, and what they can learn (Ristin-Kaufmann & Gullberg 2014).

In this paper, the term input is used interchangeably with the term stimuli, following standard practice in SLA literature, to ‘refer to the language a learner hears’ (Piske & Young-Scholten 2009: 263). As Carroll (2001: 8) highlighted, ‘most writers, however, do not bother to define what they mean by the term’. Flege (2009: 175) makes a similar point, further defining L2 speech input as ‘all L2 vocal utterances the learner has heard and comprehended, including his own’. Following Rast (2010), the terms learning and acquisition are understood to refer to the same event, and are also used interchangeably. Finally, the terms adult learners and participants may also be taken to mean the same.

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1.2

Word learning: From hearing noise to successful decoding

Words are not primitives of language. They are complex objects, consisting of three kinds of representations: phonological, morphosyntactic and sematic (Carroll 2013: 132). A learner needs to be able to represent all three types meaningfully in order to fully know a word. However, these representations may not necessarily develop in unison, due to the different processing mechanisms utilised by the language faculty. They may also be stored using different memory formats (Jackendoff 2002).

The task of word recognition entails segmentation of a continuous speech stream into distinct, individual words; in short, ‘hearing’ a word. Yet, speakers do not mark boundaries between every word uttered, resulting in a string of words blended into a continuous speech signal. Some languages allow for some word boundary-marking in speech, such as English. Word-initial stops are aspirated (Peterson & Lehiste 1960), word-final syllables are lengthened (Beckman & Edwards 1990) and word-initial syllables may also be lengthened (Gow & Gordon 1995). However, not all word boundaries are marked with clear acoustic cues. Although the listener can (and very likely will) use such cues when they are available, a more general solution is required to allow individual words to be recognised even without the presence of acoustic cues (McQueen 1998).

Differing views of segmentation include that to be the first of a two-stage process. The first stage, lexical activation, draws on generalisations derived from knowledge of the abstract regularities in the sound system (Cutler 1992, 2008). Regularities may include tone, stress, pitch accents and other phonological properties. The second stage, word recognition, may involve top-down processes such as semantic information or knowledge of the presence of a word of a given form (Mattys & Melhorn 2007).

Although segmentation is merely the first step of many whereby the speech signal (input) results in an interpretation, researchers do not agree whether it is independent of grammatical constraints, or the result of grammar acquisition (Carroll 2004: 228). The many discussions surrounding the single topic of segmentation only serve to highlight the lack of consensus in what kind of information a learner needs in order to successfully decode and learn a word. Studies do not always 6

examine the effects of similar factors, such as the frequency or type of input, phonotactics and semantic cues (Kreiner & Degani 2015, Onishi, Chambers & Fisher 2002, Ortega & Morgan 2015, Gullberg et al. 2010). Controlling both quality and quantity of input may allow for a more objective investigation of factors in first exposure research, resulting eventually in progress towards producing an empirically rich account of word learning processes.

1.3

First exposure: Three broad categories

Recurrent themes in first exposure research focus on learning processes and mechanisms, constraints on learning, input and memory. Although few in number, conducted studies have already demonstrated a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, with the only constant being the definition of a first exposure study as ‘one where learners have had no prior systematic exposure to the TL’, with TL referring to the target/input language (Carroll 2013: 132). In a later publication, Carroll categorised first exposure studies into three broad categories in her discussions: artificial language studies, instructed natural language studies and uninstructed natural language studies (Carroll 2014).

1.3.1 Artificial Language Studies Artificial language research, typically utilised by psycholinguists (Folia et al. 2010), eventually formed the basis of first exposure research due to the adaptability of their methodologies to SLA research. Artificial language research in the realm of SLA typically investigate grammar learning, focussing on specific aspects of grammatical acquisition in adults through the employment of specially-constructed grammar. Such studies have found strong capacities in adult learners to acquire novel input under implicit learning conditions and successfully process them during differentiation tasks (Folia et al. 2010, Forkstam et al. 2008, Petersson 2004).

Artificial language research has provided greater insight into the acquisition of novel phonologies. For instance, adult learners were found to be able to acquire novel phonotactic regularities through listening (Onishi, Chambers & Fisher 2002). In that study, participants were assigned a word list containing artificial words and were instructed in the learning of those words. They were then subjected to a Mathematics distractor task before listening to and repeating the test items into a 7

voice-activated response key. The study found that legal syllables were repeated more quickly than illegal syllables regardless of whether or not they had appeared in the participants study lists. In addition, studied syllables were repeated more quickly than unstudied syllables, regardless of the syllable’s legality.

Despite the insights provided into initial L2 state and word-learning, artificial language research ultimately employ the use of manufactured input and thus, little is understood of learners’ strategies for processing natural input, which involves much more complexity. Furthermore, given that constructed languages have no use beyond their experimental environment, there is no further opportunity to apply the acquired knowledge. This gap led to the emergence of studies in natural languages in attempts to provide more insight into adult learners’ input-processing abilities (Han & Peverly 2007, Park 2011, Park & Han 2008, Han & Liu 2013). Even then, natural language studies made up a relatively small portion of first exposure studies.

1.3.2 Instructed Natural Language Studies First exposure studies utilising natural language (also termed ‘naturalistic’) can be broadly divided into implicit and explicit approaches. The explicit approach is also known as the taught language approach (Rast 2010, Rast & Dommergues 2003, Shoemaker & Rast 2013). In those studies, French L1 participants were explicitly taught a novel language (Polish) over six weeks, with the agreement that the participants would only make use of the provided resources to learn the language (Rast 2010: 69). Apart from learners’ production at the end of learning, the study also examined participants’ segmentation abilities. Results in Rast (2010) and Shoemaker and Rast (2013) both suggested robust ability in adult learners to extract words from speech stream, supporting similar findings in artificial language studies which found that adults are capable of segmenting speech stream in early stages of SLA.

It is generally agreed that both explicit and implicit learning affect learner outcomes (Krashen 1992, Ellis et al. 2013). Although these studies provided insight into the L2 initial state with significant implications for the initial state in L2 acquisition, their contributions are limited. The studies span weeks rather than minutes and the input is explicitly taught rather than implicitly acquired. 8

1.3.3 Uninstructed Natural Language Studies Uninstructed natural language studies are also known as implicit learning, ‘incidental’ learning (Bisson et al. 2013) or learning ‘in the wild’ (Gullberg et al. 2010). The two most prevalent bodies of research are the Calgary studies (Carroll 2012, 2014) and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) experiment (Gullberg et al. 2010, 2012). Both focus on investigating the L2 initial state as the absolute initial stages of SLA. In particular, the MPI experiment forms the basic framework for this study’s research and its background and methodology will be discussed in detail in the following chapter.

The Calgary studies (Carroll 2012, 2014) used native English speakers as participants, with German as the target language. Input consisted of audio-visual stimuli presented as a namelearning task (as opposed to word recognition tasks in other first exposure studies), a linguisticallynatural action of associating names to faces. At the end of the two-stage learning phase, participants were tested for their ability to acquire the names presented in the input. They were retested two weeks after the first test to assess retention and memory. Results from these studies established that learners can successfully segment speech stream and map names to referents with minimal exposure. However, participants generally performed exceedingly well during testing, reaching up to 90% accuracy (Carroll 2012, 2014). This raised questions about how a study employing a typologically-close language can adequately reflect the L2 initial state.

The MPI experiment, in contrast, examined a typologically-distant target language. Dutch L1 participants were exposed to Mandarin Chinese1, the input and testing language. Exposure to the input was limited to 14 minutes in all, and effects of properties of input such as word frequency and length were considered in assessing participants’ abilities in lexical mapping and extraction of Mandarin phonotactics. The study identified positive effect of word frequency and length on segmentation and meaning-mapping. Findings suggested that adult learners are able to engage in fast-mapping after just fourteen minutes of exposure as well as perceive phonotactic regularities, evident through rejection of phonotactic violations, presenting an extremely positive view of the adult L2 initial state and suggested robust adult learning mechanisms (Gullberg et al. 2010, 2012).

1

For the rest of the paper, Mandarin Chinese will be referred to as ‘Mandarin’ for convenience of reference.

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It was, however, noted by Carroll (2014) that the findings of MPI experiment may be too optimistic. Given the simple sentence structures and relatively straightforward form of input (a weather report), participants are assumed to experience easier interpretation and hence, attain better results. These findings also contradict other studies (Han & Liu 2013), which found that learners were unable to display success in a range of input-processing tasks. The following section will examine some first exposure studies investigating Mandarin as target language in closer detail.

1.4

First Exposure to Mandarin

This section examines first exposure research conducted with Mandarin as the target language, which is also the target language in this study. Mandarin is typically not utilised in first exposure studies as nearly 16% of the world’s population speak a form of Chinese as their first language. With approximately 40 million overseas Chinese, Chinese (and Mandarin) is one of the most widely spoken Asian languages globally. With the pervasiveness of the language, it is highly likely that participants would have had contact with it. With that in mind, some implicit-learning first exposure studies utilising Mandarin as target language will be discussed in this section (Han & Liu 2013, Gullberg et al. 2010, 2012).

1.4.1 Ab initio learners Han and Liu (2013: 145) defined ab initio learners as genuine beginners with ‘zero to little experience with the target language’. The study conformed to the VanPatten framework in investigating input processing by ab initio learners. In the study, 20 participants were subject to input, which consisted of two sets of video clips based on ordering food in a restaurant and bargaining in a shop, with each set differing slightly in content. The clips were between two and three minutes long and participants watched the entire footage of both sets of videos. For each episode, participants completed free recall and comprehension tasks after the first viewing. During the second viewing, participants completed a note-taking task, followed by an elicited imitation task after the viewing. After the viewings and tasks were completed for all the episodes, participants were subject to a working memory test, where they were asked to judge if given sentences (in increasing length) were logical or not.

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The results suggested that participants were able to process input only minimally in tasks requiring less effort, for instance, when segmentation was provided externally (such as elicited imitation), indicating a form-oriented approach to input processing, and little evidence of form-meaning mapping. This is inconsistent with other studies suggesting that segmentation is easy and rapid, as in the case of the MPI experiment.

1.4.2 MPI Experiments The Max Planck experiment (Gullberg et al. 2010, 2012) forms the basis for this study’s research and the employed methodologies and stimuli will be detailed here. In both studies, native Dutch learners were exposed to seven minutes of controlled but naturalistic input in the form of an audiovisual weather report in Mandarin, a typologically-distant language from Dutch. The target words were spread over the 120 clauses in the weather report, with one target word per clause. In addition, the target words were distributed across the clauses (clause-initial/medial/final) to avoid position effects. The target words were either frequent (F=8) or infrequent (F=2), and half of the target words were also visually highlighted with gestures. Six weather charts depicting the various weather conditions reported in the text acted as visual support. The weather report was presented audio-visually by a native Chinese female speaker of Mandarin, and all participants completed an extensive language background questionnaire after completing the post-test to verify that they had no knowledge of Mandarin.

Word-Recognition Task In both studies, two groups of participants were tested individually. They were only asked to sit in the booth and ‘watch the film’ (Gullberg et al. 2012), with no further instructions or indication of testing after watching the stimuli. One group watched the stimuli once (single exposure group) and the other group watched it twice (double exposure group). Immediately after watching the film, participants completed a word recognition task, where they had to decide if an item they heard in the test was present in the weather report or not. This task investigated participants’ ability to segment continuous speech stream. Both studies found that participants were able to segment successfully, especially frequent and disyllabic words. Participants were found to display no-bias and consistently reject monosyllabic words. Gestural highlighting had no effect on segmentation, and there was no difference in performance between the single and double exposure groups. 11

Sound-to-meaning mapping task In both studies, another two groups of participants were engaged (One single-exposure group and one double-exposure group) in a meaning-mapping task. Participants were shown an icon used in the weather chart and asked to determine if the icon shown corresponded with an auditory stimulus heard. Again, participants were found to display the ability to map meanings to new word forms successfully, with more success evident in disyllabic words and frequent words accompanied by gestural highlighting.

Extracting phonotactic information Gullberg et al. (2010) also examined participants’ ability to extract sound regularities (phonotactic information) in Mandarin. Another two groups of participants were tested for their ability to detect syllable structure violations after viewing the weather report once (single-exposure group) or twice (double-exposure group), depending on their assigned group. The testing items consisted of monosyllabic words conforming to CVC syllables, with half the total items consisting of real words appearing in the weather report and the other half comprising filler items; new words that participants had not encountered in the treatment. The filler items contained phonotactic violations consisting of consonant clusters either word-initially or word-finally. For this task, yet another two groups of participants who had not watched the weather report at all were included as control group.

All three groups of participants, including the group without exposure to the weather report, corrected rejected all of the filler items as not being Mandarin. Participants were able to reject illegal CVC syllables in Mandarin even when the syllables are legal in their L1 (Dutch), providing evidence of adult learners’ ability to generalise phonotactic knowledge to new items after minimal exposure of as little as seven minutes. The MPI experiment found that adult learners were able to ‘extract segmental, word-form-related information, and lexical meaning from the context and map in onto word forms identified, and finally, to extract abstract, phonotactic information and generalise it to novel items not encountered in the input after as little as 7 min of contact with an unknown language’ (Gullberg et al. 2010: 16). 12

1.5

Interesting observations: Motivation for this study

1.5.1 Ability to generalise phonotactic knowledge with zero knowledge of the language Many first exposure studies reported wide learner variability. Rast (2010: 79-80) reflected that the wide learner variability observed supports the notion that learners’ L1, as well as the target language input, are not sufficient to explain the input processing. Particularly in the case of nonmonolingual learners, knowledge of other languages may play prominent roles in the acquisition of a new target language. With conflicting results in the described studies examining the same target language, where Han and Liu (2013) found that adult learners were unsuccessful in processing input while Gullberg et al. (2010, 2012) found otherwise, there appears to be other factors influencing the outcome of studies.

More significant is the observation of the control group in Gullberg et al. (2010) displaying knowledge of Mandarin phonotactics even without exposure to any input. No further mention of the control group was made in the study, and email correspondence with Professor Gullberg confirmed that all the participants were linguistic-naïve working adults and had reported zero knowledge of Mandarin in their language background questionnaire (See Appendix 1). Mandarin is the official language in Chinese-speaking countries such as China, Singapore and Taiwan2. It is also spoken widely in Malaysia and Thailand. A pervasive language globally, nearly 16% of the world’s population speak a form of Chinese as their first language. Geographically, with approximately 40 million Chinese overseas, Mandarin may just be one of the most common Asian languages globally.

Mandarin is typically not studied in first exposure studies due to its pervasiveness, but this feature makes it an ideal language for this study; to investigate its effects (if any) as ambient language input. This holds potentially significant implications in accounting for the wide variability in first exposure findings. This is especially true in this modern day, where globalised economies and technological advances mean that many languages are exchanged through travel, media and other social interactions rendering it virtually impossible for any average person not to have ambient

2

Information source: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/countries_by_languages.htm#Chinese (Last accessed: 17 August 2016).

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exposure to them. This raised the question of whether or not the participants in Gullberg et al. (2010) could have had ambient exposure to Mandarin via their surroundings or social interactions without them being aware of it, since they were able to display sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics by correctly rejecting words that did not sound like Mandarin due to phonotactic violations. In short, could it be possible that participants had had exposure to Mandarin via ambient language input in those studies, resulting in their ability to identify phonotactic violations in the MPI experiment even without receiving any input?

Although no literature to date exists on ambient language input in adult SLA, the possibility that ambient exposure could have influenced first exposure findings was reinforced by a study looking into the effects of songs as ambient language input in phonology acquisition (Au 2013). In that study, native Cantonese children in a Hong Kong school were exposed to either Mandarin (termed Putonghua in that study) or English, languages they were beginning to learn, via songs aired during lunch at school for 18 weeks. It is important to note that the children were not made aware of the study and no attention was drawn to the songs aired during lunch. At the end of the exposure period, the children were asked to read a simple story aloud in the language they had been exposed to. Independent raters were then asked to rate the accent present in each reading.

The results of the study suggested that occasional ambient input through songs could enable young children acquire better Mandarin phonology. The findings supported previous research documenting a correlation between overhearing conservations in the target language during childhood and later learning to speak it with a more native-like accent. They are also in line with longitudinal studies examining the effects of music training on children’s language processing, such as speech segmentation of an artificial language (François et al. 2012).

The possibility of ambient language input (exposure) influencing input-processing at L2 initial state thus forms the first motivation for this study.

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1.5.2 Scarcity of first exposure studies utilising control groups One effective method to identify the amount of linguistic information that learners actually process is to compare the received input with the performance in the target language during testing. To achieve this, the input that learners receive has to first be measured at the initial stage of language learning (Rast 2010: 102). An alternative might be to compare performances in two groups of participants, where one group is given input and the other is not. Within the group of participants given input, comparing performances before and after receiving input (pre-test and post-test respectively) would also provide more insight about participants’ L2 initial state and inputprocessing abilities.

Among the few studies in SLA that utilised a control group (Brown 1993, Gullberg et al. 2010, Kreiner & Degani 2015, Jarad et al. 2014), Gullberg et al. (2010) was the only identified study employed extremely limited exposure to naturalistic input in an implicit learning environment. Even then, the participants receiving input were not subject to any pre-input testing, likely to minimize task-priming due to the nature of the study. Generally, the use of control groups in SLA is uncommon; yet to have one would provide more insight into input processing by allowing for the comparison of received and processed input. This forms the second motivation for this study; to compare language acquisition in two groups of participants, one with and one without input.

1.5

Conclusion

Although not comprehensive, this chapter has attempted to provide an extensive view into the growing first exposure paradigm and the contributions of first exposure studies towards greater understanding of the L2 initial state as well as learners’ input-processing capacities in natural and artificial languages, implicit and explicit learning environments. The chapter has also detailed first exposure studies utilising controlled yet natural input in Mandarin, and identified the motivations and methodologies forming the basis for this study’s research. Although insightful, inadequate literature in studies targeting the use of extremely limited exposure to controlled yet natural input in implicit learning environments suggests the need for further research. This study aims to further contribute to this area of research. The following chapter will provide an overview of the adopted framework and methodologies employed for this study, and also detail the rationale for doing so. 15

CHAPTER 2 The Study

As mentioned in Chapter 1, this study is an attempt to investigate the effects of ambient language input in a first exposure study, based on the model in Max Planck Institute experiment (detailed in Section 1.4.2). The MPI experiment makes up the small number of first exposure studies that incorporate naturalistic input with extremely limited exposure in an incidental learning environment.

The motivation for this study stems from the possibility of ambient exposure influencing results in first exposure studies. This was demonstrated in the similar performance of the control group compared to the treatment group in detecting Mandarin phonotactic violations in Gullberg et al. (2010). In addition, the lack of studies having control groups in first exposure research using extremely limited exposure to naturalistic input in an implicit learning environment renders it difficult to investigate the effects of input and also compare adult learners’ language processing capabilities with and without input.

This study aims to address the following research questions: RQ1: Are adult learners able to gain sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics with only assumed ambient exposure to Mandarin? RQ2: Are adult learners able to segment continuous speech stream and distinguish sound regularities in Mandarin with minimal exposure? RQ3: Do sentence position, length and transparency of words have an effect on adult learners’ ability to segment continuous speech stream and distinguish sound regularities in Mandarin? RQ4: Do adult learners’ perception of language-learning and amount of ambient exposure influence their L2 initial state and input-processing capabilities?

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2.1

Mandarin as a target language

As mentioned earlier, Mandarin is a globally-pervasive language, making it an ideal target language for an ambient exposure study. Based on figures released by the United Kingdom Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA), the number of Chinese students undertaking tertiary education in UK universities far exceeds other nationalities, forming the largest group of international students. The table below lists the ten largest non-EU countries with students pursuing tertiary education in a UK university3:

Country

2014-15

2013-14

2012-13

China (PRC)

89,540

87,895

83,790

India

18,320

19,750

22,385

Nigeria

17,920

18,020

17,395

Malaysia

17,060

16,635

15,015

United States of America

16,865

16,485

16,235

Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region)

16,215

14,725

13,065

Saudi Arabia

8,595

9,060

9,440

Singapore

7,295

6,790

6,020

Thailand*

6,240

6,340

6,180

Pakistan

7,295

6,665

7,185

*Note that Thailand entered the top ten countries in 2014-15 and Canada fell to 11th place.

Table 2.1: List of ten largest non-EU sending countries

Newcastle University, with its geographical proximity to the city centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, forms the central location for recruitment of participants. Correspondence with the University confirmed a total enrollment of 7882 and 7554 international students in the 2014 and 2015 academic years respectively, with the extracted figures of international students from Chinesespeaking countries provided in the table in the following page:

3

Information source: http://institutions.ukcisa.org.uk/Info-for-universities-colleges--schools/Policy-research-statistics/Research--statistics/International -students-in-UK-HE/ (Last accessed: 18 August 2016)

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Country

2014-15

%

2015-16

%

2,465

9.59

2,388

8.92

Malaysia

739

2.88

949

3.54

Singapore

846

3.29

873

3.26

Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region)

258

1.00

273

1.02

Indonesia

162

0.63

157

0.59

Taiwan

97

0.38

82

0.31

China (PRC)

Total International Students

25,701

26,783

Table 2.2: Extracted figures of international students at Newcastle University (2014 and 2015)4

As seen in Table 2.2, Chinese students alone make up about 9% of the total population of international students in Newcastle University in each academic year. Together with Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Taiwan, also Chinese-speaking countries, the number of potential Mandarin speakers total 4,567 (17.77%) in 2014 and 4,722 (17.63%) in 2015 across the international student population in Newcastle University. In addition, the Chinatown in Newcastle upon Tyne is located within a 5-minute walk from the university campus.

With these factors in mind, Mandarin could be one of the more common languages spoken in and around Newcastle University apart from English, even though these two language are typologically distant. It can then be assumed that adults residing and/or working in or near Newcastle University would expected to have heard Mandarin relatively regularly in their daily undertakings, and been exposed to Mandarin via ambient language input (or exposure).

4

Full details of the international student population in Newcastle University are classified and may be provided by the University upon request.

18

2.2

Phonotactics: The syllable structure

Phonotactics involves the configuration of speech sounds within syllables and words. It is an important phonological rule that is language-specific, defining sound combinations in each language. It is important to note that phonotactics not just account for legality of sound combinations in a language, but also involves probability, referring to the likelihood and frequency of legal segments/sequences of segments in a given language (Vitevitch & Luce 2004).

Phonotactic constraint has been shown to play a role in both L1 and L2 acquisition. Infants as young as nine months old have been known to display sensitivity of the regularities of sound combinations in L1 (Juscyzk et al. 1994, Chambers et al. 2002), while phonotactic constraints are found to play significant roles in the perception and production of stimuli in SLA (Archibald 1998, Altenberg 2005).

This section will provide a brief overview of the universal CV syllable as well as phonotactic information of the languages involved in the study.

2.2.1 The universal CV syllable Prominence plays an important part in identifying the number of syllables in an utterance. As vowels are ‘the most sonorous sounds human beings produce’ (McCully, 2009), their presence will then be obligatory in a syllable, forming its core. The sounds either before or after the vowel are less sonorous, forming the optional elements of a syllable. Syllable structure universals influence the structure of interlanguage phonology and assume that a syllable contains an onset, a nucleus and a coda.

Descriptive and theoretical studies recognize the CV syllable as an absolute universal in all the languages of the world (Battistella 1990; Blevins 1995; Cairns & Feinstein 1982; Clements 1990; Kaye & Lowenstamm 1981; Hulst & Ritter 1999; Vennemann 1988). Syllable structure acquisition of language learners’ L2 refers to the ability or non-ability to produce an individual segment resulting in L2 accent and also the ability to combine the segments in the sequences demanded by the target language (Young-Scholten & Archibald 2000). 19

2.2.2 Mandarin Syllable Structure There are two major models for the Mandarin syllable. The traditional model is the Initial-Final model (Třisková 2011: 103), on which the Chinese spelling system (pīnyīn) is based on. This model is typically portrayed as shown in Figure 1 below, with the medial glide as a pre-nuclear vowel, and the ending taking on either a vowel or consonant:

Figure 1: Initial-Final model (Mandarin syllable structure) The second, more recent model is the Onset-Rime model (Třisková 2011: 106), portrayed in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2: Onset-Rime model (Mandarin syllable structure)

20

Two main differences between the Initial-Final and Onset-Rime models are the glides and coda. The Initial-Final model labels the glide as part of a final, while the Onset-Rime model classifies it within the onset. It is to be noted though, that the branching in onset for the Mandarin syllable is not to be confused with complex consonants (or consonant clusters) in the onset for the English syllable. The ending in the Initial-Final model allows for either a vowel or nasal consonant, whereas the onset-rime model labels it coda, generally understood as post-nuclear consonant in traditional western onset-rime syllable structures.

The structure of the Mandarin syllable may not be unanimous as yet, with both models found to have been adopted in literature. In this study, the Onset-Rime model will be adopted to enable a clearer comparison of syllable structures of the languages involved. The structure may be portrayed as shown in Table 2.3:

Syllable Rime Onset (C)

Nucleus (V)

Coda (C)

Table 2.3: Syllable Structure (Mandarin)

Mandarin phonotactics The maximal number of segments (also termed branches in SLA literature) in the onset is limited to two, with the second segment being a glide. It is important to note that Mandarin does not allow any complex consonants (or consonant clusters) in both onset and coda positions. Only the nasal consonant [n] or [N] is allowed in coda consonant. Syllables allowed in Mandarin are summaried in Table 2.4 on the following page:

21

Example Syllable

pīnyīn

IPA

Meaning

Without onset

àn

[Vn]

dark

With a single consonant or glide

làn

[lVn]

rotten

without a coda

lā

[lV]

pull

Without both onset and coda

è

[G]

hungry

Table 2.4: Allowed syllables in Mandarin

2.2.3 English Syllable Structure The structure of English syllables follows the universal (C)V(C) illustrated in Table 2.5 below:

Syllable Rime (R) Onset (C)

Nucleus (V)

Coda (C)

Table 2.5: Syllable Structure (English)

In the English syllable, branching is permissible in onset, nucleus and coda positions, allowing diphthongs in the nucleus and complex consonants (clusters) in both the onset and coda, such as strong [stRON], plant [plVnt] and stink [stINk].

English phonotactics The nasal consonant [N] is not allowed in the onset. Glides and [h] are not allowed in the coda position. In complex coda position, the second segment must not be [N], [Z] or [D]. The maximal number of onset segments is limited to three, with [s] + stop + approximant combination: -

/s/ + /m/ + /j/

-

/s/ + /t/ + /R/

-

/s/ + /t/ + /j/

-

/s/ + /p/ + /j/, /R/ or /l/

-

/s/ + /k/ + / j/, /R/, /l/ or /w/ 22

2.2.4 Syllable Structure of filler items Though they form the minority of Asian languages spoken or heard in Newcastle upon Tyne, Thai, Japanese and Chinese (Cantonese) words were adopted for inclusion as filler items in addition to non-words in the perception tasks. Thai and Cantonese are syllable-timed, tonal languages while Japanese is moraic, none of which are stress-timed like English. The phonotactic information of these languages is summarised in Table 2.6 below:

Language

Consonants Onset

Thai

p, pʰ, b, t, tʰ, d, kʰ, k, ʔ*, m, n, ŋ, f, s, h, tɕ, tɕʰ, l, r, w, j

Japanese

Cantonese

Vowels Coda

p, t, k, ʔ, m, n, ŋ,

Coda

All except ŋ

Vowels

Onset All

Yes 9

pr, pl, pʰr, pʰl, tr, tʰr, kr, kl, kʰr, kʰl, kw, kʰw

j, w

Onset

Consonant clusters

5

No (allows geminates)

Coda Vowels, m, n, ŋ,

11

No

p, t, k, w, j

Table 2.6: Summary of Thai, Japanese and Cantonese phonotactic information

Thai allows consonant clusters while Japanese and Cantonese do not allow any. English allows for clusters of bi-, tri- and multi consonant clusters. Japanese and Cantonese only have one liquid in the phonemic inventories and do not allow obstruent + liquid clusters. Given the different phonotactics in Mandarin and these non-Mandarin Asian languages, participants’ ability to reject them as non-Mandarin words would act to provide more evidence of their knowledge of Mandarin phonotactics.

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2.3

The stimuli

One of the limitations discussed in the MPI experiments is the nature of speech presented in the stimuli. In the stimuli for both studies (Gullberg et al. 2010, 2012), the treatment video only featured one person in speech production, reporting the weather forecast. This does not entirely reflect the natural speech stream of a conversation between two or more people, rendering the input less “naturalistic”. The shortcoming has been considered and factored into this study. The stimuli used in this study will be described in the following subsections.

2.3.1 The actors and logistics The stimuli consists of a treatment video depicting a two-way conversation between one male and one female native Chinese speaker of standard Mandarin. The actors are also friends in real life, with the resulting treatment video portraying spontaneous naturalistic conversation though it was scripted. The two speakers voluntarily agreed to participate in the production of the audio-visual treatment video. The conversation between the two actors was scripted with the target words spread over the duration of the conversation. The script (See Appendix 2) was then typed out in Chinese, pīnyīn and Romanised scripts, with tones indicated by numerals. The numerals ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ and ‘4’ in the script correspond with the high, rising, low and falling tones respectively in Mandarin, which would typically be indicated by tone marks in pīnyīn. For instance, the character 好 (good), ‘hǎo’ in pīnyīn, would typically be represented by ‘hao3’ in Romanised script.

The actors were provided with the scripted conversation a week before filming for rehearsal. Prior to filming, the actors were also involved in reviewing the script to ensure the resulting speech sounded as natural as possible. The target words were highlighted in the script to ensure that revisions did not affect them. The actual filming was divided into four segments, with short breaks between each segment. This allowed the actors to rest and rehearse their parts for the next segment, minimising the occurrence of unnatural expressions, verbally or otherwise, and ensured natural speech production in the treatment video. The actors did not receive any monetary compensation for their participation, and all names were omitted from the treatment video to avoid any unintentional cueing.

24

All the audio-visual clips for the treatment video were filmed on a Samsung Galaxy S5 mobile phone. The clips were transferred to a personal computer running Windows 10 Home edition, where they were edited and consolidated into the final treatment video using Windows Movie Maker.

The audio clips for the perception tasks were recorded by the researcher in a quiet room, on a personal computer running Windows 10 Home edition using Windows Voice Recorder. They were then edited to minimise background noise and ensure clarity, then consolidated into the final audio test track using Audacity®5, a free, open source, cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing.

2.3.2 The Treatment The treatment video is a controlled, continuous conversation between two native Chinese speakers. The first half of the video features spontaneous conversation between the speakers while the second half presents an instructional scene, where one actor attempts to guide the other actor in completing a piece of handicraft. The video lasts 4 minutes and 30 seconds and consists of 89 sentences and 20 target words, which the participants were later tested on. The target words are highlighted in the script, with Chinese characters in yellow and Romanised script in bold. For instance, the target word ‘niu2 ka3 si1 er3’ (Newcastle) in Sentence 6 is highlighted in the script as per Example 1 below:

(1)

纽

卡 斯 额 这

地

方

说

大 不

大，说

小

不

小。

Niu2 ka3 si1 er3 zhe4 di4 fang1 shuo1 da4 bu4 da4, shuo1 xiao3 bu4 xiao3 Newcastle

this

place

say big not big,

say small not small

‘Newcastle is not as small as it seems to be.’

5

The freeware was downloaded from: http://www.audacityteam.org (Last accessed: 10 June 2016).

25

Target words were controlled for frequency, sentence position and transparency. The input had also been scripted to avoid having two or more target words occurring consecutively in the same sentence. Although care had been taken to ensure that the target words do not appear consecutively in the scripted text, the free-flowing conversation and camaraderie between the actors inevitably resulted in three instances of two target words occurring consecutively, in Sentence 8 (hao3 and ba1 shi4), Sentence 65 (ran2 hou4 and dui4) and Sentence 72 (ran2 hou4 and zuo3 you4). This treatment video was broadcast only to the Treatment group.

2.4

The participants

Two groups of participants were recruited for this study. Details of each group follow in the subsections below and full details of the participants are provided in the tabulated list of participant demographics (See Appendix 3).

2.4.1 Treatment Group (n=16) 17 students (4 males, 13 females, M age=18, SD=0.35) from summer school were recruited to form the Treatment group. The participants were aged 17 to 19 and are all native speakers of English (L1=English). Education-wise, all have completed their A level examinations and were awaiting entry to the University at the point of research. The participants are all linguisticallynaïve and had never taken part in language-acquisition research studies. 14 participants reported having knowledge of more than one language (ten with one L2 and four with more than one L2), while three reported themselves as monolinguals. All the participants reported zero knowledge of Mandarin.

The participants in the Treatment group completed the treatment and two perception tasks. Prior to watching the treatment video, the participants completed a 40-item perception task as pre-test. After watching the treatment video, the participants completed a 70-item perception task as posttest. The data of one participant was omitted from analysis as the reported age in the language background questionnaire was below 18, the legal age of consent for participation. The total number of participants was hence reduced to 16.

26

2.4.2 Ambient Exposure Group (n=16) The Ambient Exposure group consists of 16 adults (6 males, 10 females, M age=38.3, SD=12.6) residing and/or working in Newcastle upon Tyne. The participants’ age ranges from 23 to 69 and consisted of two students, 13 working professionals and 1 retiree. 12 of the participants are native English speakers. Although 4 participants reported a non-English L1, all reported English as their main language of communication. All the participants reported having knowledge of at least one L2 (4 with one L2 and 12 with more than one L2). All the participants reported zero knowledge of Mandarin. The participants in the Ambient Exposure group underwent the post-test6, acting as control for comparison of participants’ sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics.

2.5

The Perception Tasks

Both the 40-item task (pre-test) and 70-item task (post-test) are essentially similar syllable perception tasks to investigate whether participants could correctly accept Mandarin words as sounding Chinese or reject non-Mandarin words as not sounding Chinese, with the difference being the number of questions. In both tasks, participants were asked to listen to an audio word and determine if it sounded Chinese by checking the response box labelled ‘Yes’ if they felt the word sounded Chinese or ‘No’ if they felt it did not sound Chinese. Example 2 below shows an example of the response sheet (See Appendix 4):

(2)

Yes

No

Prior to each testing session, participants received clear instructions regarding the completion of the task. Participants were informed that they would hear the question number, followed by a word. Once they have heard the word, they would have only two seconds to respond by ticking the ‘Yes’ box if they felt the word they heard sounded like a Chinese word, and ‘No’ if they felt otherwise. For the rest of the study, the 40-item perception task will be labelled ‘pre-test’ and the 70-item perception task as ‘post-test’. This is to avoid confusion in discussions of the Ambient Exposure group as participants there also completed the exact same 70-item perception task (post-test) even though they did not receive any input prior to taking that test. 6

27

It was emphasized to all the participants that they would only be have only two seconds between each question to respond, and to follow their instinct. The time-limit was set in place to ensure instantaneous response and avoid activation of metacognition. Time was given for participants to clarify any doubt before the task began. A score of one was awarded for each correctly-identified word (i.e. if the participant ticked ‘Yes’ for a Mandarin word or ‘No’ for a non-Mandarin word). No score was awarded for wrongly-identified words.

2.5.1 The Pre-test The pre-test was completed by only the Treatment group at the start of the study, prior to exposure to Mandarin input. The pre-test consists of 40 monosyllabic words. Being a tonal language, it was possible that presence of tones in Mandarin words and lack of in non-Mandarin words could lead to biased responses and result in inaccurate portrayals of the participants’ existing knowledge of Mandarin phonotactics. To avoid this, the test was designed such that all the items were deliberately read in the same tone (high tone in Mandarin). The list of pre-test items is shown in Table 2.7 below:

Mandarin ji shou shu nian pi jia dan bian fan chuan ding zhu chao guo diao huan

Cantonese loi ngau sum sik mok lat

Japanese kya kyu byo rya gyo gi

Thai phom glai leik krung nooi khru

Table 2.7: List of pre-test words

28

Non-words pal stou fran nop bings kiat

As mentioned earlier, the filler words include non-words as well as non-Mandarin Asian words including Japanese, Thai and Cantonese. Following Gullberg et al. (2010), the filler words were selected on the basis of them violating Mandarin phonotactics by containing illegal phonemes in either the onset or coda. The phonotactic violations in each non-Mandarin word are highlighted in bold and grouped in Table 2.8 below:

Violates English/Mandarin phonotactics

Violates Mandarin phonotactics only

ngau

loi

rya

gya

sum

krung

byo

sik

gi

gyo

mok

khru

kya

lat

kyu

byo

leik

stou

nooi

fran

pal

glai

phom

bings

Nop

kiat

Table 2.8: Pre-test words categorised by phonotactic violations

Six of the filler words violate both English and Mandarin phonotactics, suggesting they would be more easily distinguished. It is to be noted that all the filler words contain a violation of Mandarin phonotactics with the aim of examining participants’ sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics, evident in their ability to distinguish a Mandarin word from a non-Mandarin word. It is not the aim of the study to investigate participants’ abilities to differentiate the various non-Mandarin Asian words.

2.5.2 The Post-test The Treatment group completed this task post-input (labelled post-test) while the Ambient Exposure group completed the same task as their only task in the study (labelled Response). The task contains 70 words, including the 40-item pre-test, 20 target words and 10 new filler words (two Mandarin, three Cantonese, three Japanese and two Thai). No new non-words were included in the post-test. 29

The target words The target words consists 5 monosyllabic, 13 disyllabic and 2 multisyllabic words presented in the treatment video, totalling 20 words. They are spread out throughout the scripted dialogue in the treatment video, with 6 sentence-initial, 9 sentence-medial and 5 sentence-final words, as seen in Table 2.9 below:

sentence-initial

sentence-medial

sentence-final

jian3 dao1

zhi3

hao3

ran2 hou4

xin1

ka1 fei1

bu4 ding1

kan4

bu4 cuo4

zuo3 you4

dui4

ka3 pian4

shang4 mian4

ma1 ma

san1 jiao3 xing2

niu2 ka3 si1 er3

ba1 shi4 yi4 zhang1 wang3 hou4 liang3 bian1 Table 2.9: List of target items

The 10 additional filler words in the post-test are listed in Table 2.10 below. The two Mandarin filler words are highlighted in bold. These filler words were read with their original intonations as dictated in their source language, as opposed to the 40 pre-test items, which were all read in the same high tone.

Chinese-Mandarin

cha1 shao1 fan4

dian4 nao3

Chinese-Cantonese

Japanese

Thai

nei hou

inu

rth si fa

ham aap dan Seik fan

kitta

Table 2.10: List of post-test filler items

30

mam wang rong re iyn

2.6

Measures

The pre-test results served as indicator of participants’ existing phonotactic knowledge of Mandarin prior to input. After the treatment video exposed participants in the Treatment group to Chinese Mandarin, the post-test examined the effects of received input; whether or not participants had gained more sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics. This would be evident through displaying better ability to correctly identify Mandarin words as sounding Mandarin, and rejecting nonMandarin words as not sounding Mandarin. The post-test results from the Ambient Exposure group would be compared against the Treatment group’s to assess the Treatment group’s inputprocessing abilities.

All responses from the pre- and post-tests were coded and tabulated. The number and percentage of correct responses were calculated, along with the hit and false-alarm rates. Hit and false-alarm rates reflect the degree of overlap between the signal and noise distributions to reflect sensitivity to signal (dˈ) as well as response bias (ß), the general tendency to respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’, as determined by the location of the criterion (Stanislaw & Todorov 1999: 139).

The effect and dependence of variables in the study such as sentence position/ frequency/ length/ transparency of target words, participants’ self-assessed perception of language learning and amount of ambient exposure on the participants’ sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics were also determined using Pearson’s chi-squared test and analysis of variance (ANOVA). All statistical analysis was done using Microsoft Excel’s Data Analysis Toolpak add-in program, available freely in all versions of Microsoft Excel software.

The measured variables and analyses performed are summarised in Table 2.11 on the following page, and will be presented and discussed in the following chapters by their general categories: Overall performance, word effects and language-perception effects.

31

Overall

Word Effects

Language-Perception Effects - Score by “find it easy to learn new

- Score by groups

- Score (overall)

- TG vs AEG

- Score of sentence position

- Post-test scores

- Score by length of item

- 40 pre-test items

- Score

by

languages” - Score by “enjoy learning new languages”

transparency

(items

derived from English)

- Score by amount of ambient exposure to target language

Statistical Analyses -

d'

-

chi-square

-

ß

-

ANOVA

Table 2.11: Summary of measured variables

2.7

Hypotheses

Based on first exposure literature and the study’s research questions, the following hypotheses are proposed:

Hypothesis 1: Participants will already display sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics without any prior input, but only assumed ambient exposure. Hypothesis 2: Participants in the Treatment group are likely to be better able to segment and distinguish sound regularities in Mandarin after minimal exposure to Mandarin input, and are predicted to outperform the Ambient Exposure Group in the 70-item perception task (post-test). Hypothesis 3: All participants are predicted to display greater success in segmenting and correctly identifying sentence-initial and final words, disyllabic words and transparent words. Hypothesis 4: Participants who had self-assessed themselves to possess more positive perceptions of language-learning and higher levels of ambient exposure via interactions with the environment (as indicated in their language background questionnaires) will display more success in segmenting and distinguishing sound regularities in Mandarin.

32

2.8

The procedure

2.8.1 Treatment Group PARTNERS assessed summer school organisers were approached for the engagement of Treatment group participants. PARTNERS is an annual programme whereby accepted college and sixth form students complete a series of lectures and seminars at Newcastle University before commencing their degree. Participants would therefore be undertaking lessons at Newcastle University, fitting the geographical location of the study.

Permission was sought from the organisers to allow the researcher to conduct the study within a single day, during the allocated time segments between their lessons. Interaction with the Treatment group was limited to three segments of up to seven minutes each. In the first section, the participants were briefly informed of the researcher’s intent. Participants’ queries about the nature of the study were answered, without revealing the language of interest. Participants were then given the participant information sheet and consent form (See Appendix 5) to complete, indicating voluntary participation.

The participants completed the pre-test in the second segment. Care was taken to ensure all participants understood how to complete the response sheet, and all queries were clarified prior to the start of the task.

In the third (and final) segment, participants watched the treatment video. As per the MPI experiment, the only instruction given to the participants was “Watch this video”. The video was screened in the classroom projector, and the volume was clearly audible. Immediately after the video ended, participants attempted the post-test. Finally, they filled in the language background questionnaire (See Appendix 6) to provide detailed information about their language knowledge and use. Participants did not receive any monetary compensation for their participation.

33

2.8.2 Ambient Exposure Group Due to the wide age-bracket of this group, the researcher approached participants individually to request their participation in public spaces including but not limited to: Intu shopping mall (Eldon Square), staff and student accommodation offices within Newcastle University, and other nonregulated open areas.

Participants who declined were thanked for their time while participants who agreed and were available on the spot completed the perception task in a quieter area. Participants who were willing but unavailable when approached made separate appointments with the researcher to complete the task at their convenience.

The audio track for the task was played on a personal computer using Windows Media Player with a pair of Numark HF noise-isolating headphones7 (provided by the researcher). Care was taken to ensure the volume of the track was appropriately audible and that participants were seated comfortably with access to appropriate writing surfaces. A clipboard and pen were also provided.

As per the Treatment group, participants were first given the Participant Information Sheet and consent form. All queries were answered and instructions for completing the task were provided prior to the start of the task. Participants completed the language background questionnaire at the end of the task. Participants did not receive any monetary compensation for their participation.

7

Technical specifications of the noise-isolating headphones may be found at: https://www.numark.com/news/numarkcuts-the-cord-at-namm-with-hf-wireless-dj-headphones

34

CHAPTER 3 The Results

As outlined in Chapter 2 (Table 2.11), the results of the pre-test (40 items) and post-test (70 items) will be presented in this chapter and discussed the Chapter 4 following three broad categories: overall performance, word effects and language-perception effects.

3.1

Overall results

Overall, both groups of participants displayed similar levels of sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics in both the 40-item and 70-item perceptual tasks, scoring about 60% on average. The Treatment group was able to correctly accept Mandarin words and reject non-Mandarin words 61.09% of the time prior to input, and 60.63% after receiving 4 minutes 30 seconds’ exposure to Mandarin. The scores are summarised in Table 3.1 below (See Appendix 7 for raw scores):

Treatment Group (Pre)

Treatment Group (Post)

Ambient Exposure Group

Overall

61.09

60.63

60.45

Min

45.00

47.14

45.71

Max

75.00

74.29

80.00

SD

8.99

7.93

8.36

Table 3.1: Overall scores of perception tasks (%)

At first glance, the overall decline in mean scores by the Treatment group (-0.46%) may suggest that participants in the Treatment group did not benefit from input, but instead, decreased their sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics. The overall percentages, however, do not stand alone and it is imperative to also consider the various factors and effects of other influences in order to form a more objective interpretation of the overall scores. This will be discussed in later subsections.

The Treatment group showed higher individual variation in their scores in the pre-test (SD=8.99) as compared to the post-test (SD=7.93), indicating a wider range of sensitivity to Mandarin words among participants at pre-test than post-test. Although the highest scores did not differ much in the Treatment group, the minimum score increased (by 2.14%), possibly indicating higher 35

competence in correctly identifying Mandarin words and/or rejecting non-Mandarin words. Although the Ambient Exposure group obtained similar mean performance compared to the Treatment group in both tests, the higher SD value (8.36) implies a wider range of participants’ sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics. It may not always be clear whether participants’ responses in yes-no tasks reflect their true abilities of what is measured or are just a result of random guesses. In this study, it is not impossible that the short time limit of two seconds between each item resulted in some participants guessing and/or giving biased responses. To rule those possibilities out, participants’ responses were further analysed following Signal Detection theory, which attributes task responses to a combination of sensitivity and bias.

Sensitivity to signal (Mandarin words in this study) is evident from accurate detection of signal from noise. It is denoted by d', and is measured by calculating the ratio of hit-rates (correct identification of Mandarin words as sounding Chinese) to false-alarm rates (wrongly identifying non-Mandarin words as sounding Chinese). The obtained value of d' would be evident indication of participants’ sensitivity to data. A d' value of 0 indicates chance responses while positive values indicate presence of sensitivity to signal, with a higher value corresponding to greater sensitivity.

The ratio of hit and false-alarm rates are also used to measure response bias (the general tendency to respond yes or no. A value of ‘1’ implies no bias. Values below ‘1’ indicates yes-bias, where participants tend to give ‘yes’ responses. Values above 1 indicate no-bias. Participants’ sensitivity and response bias are summarised in Table 3.2 below, with detailed calculations in Appendix 8:

Treatment Group (Pre)

Treatment Group (Post)

Ambient Exposure Group

d' = 0.625342763

d' = 0.537227011

d' = 0.524888775

ß = 1.026316635

ß = 1.000145342

ß = 1.00101059

Table 3.2: d' and ß values (Overall)

From the table, it is clear that participants display some extent of sensitivity to Mandarin words in both pre-test and post-test (d' > 0). Though slight, the Treatment group participants displayed 36

higher sensitivity to Mandarin words during pre-test. This observation will be discussed further in the following chapter. The ß value (ß ≈1.000) in the post-test also signifies no response bias.

3.1.1 Results by language In the analysis of the data, the total percentage scores by language were collated and compared, as shown in Table 3.3 below: Treatment Group (Pre)

Treatment Group (Post)

Ambient Exposure Group

Mandarin

66.80%

63.07% (-3.73%)

67.05%

Cantonese

56.25%

47.92% (-8.33%)

57.64%

Japanese

44.79%

56.25% (+11.46%)

55.56%

Thai

55.21%

63.28% (+8.07%)

53.91%

Non-words

72.92%

80.21% (+7.29%)

73.96%

Table 3.3: Results by language group (Overall)

Treatment Group Participants in the Treatment group already displayed relatively high sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics compared to other Asian during the pre-test, with 66.80% correct identification. Correct rejection of non-words as non-Mandarin words was highest, with 72.92% correctly identified.

After receiving Mandarin input, participants appeared to be confused between Mandarin and Cantonese, as seen in the drop in successful identification of Mandarin words (-3.73%) and correct rejection of Cantonese words (-8.33%). Cantonese and Mandarin are both tonal languages, and it is possible for participants to be confused since they would not be expected to be able to differentiate Cantonese from Mandarin.

This will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter. After receiving input, participants displayed higher levels of sensitivity to Mandarin by correctly rejecting Japanese (+11.46%), Thai (+8.07%) and non-words (+7.29%).

37

Ambient Exposure group Participants displayed most accuracy (and sensitivity) to Mandarin (67.05%) and non-words (73.96%). Compared to the Treatment group, the Ambient Exposure group appeared more sensitive to differences between Cantonese and Mandarin words, and correctly rejected Cantonese words more than the Treatment group. Overall, participants displayed sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics by correctly identifying Mandarin words and rejecting non-Mandarin words regardless of whether they have received input. Non-words were the most easily identified group, with the highest percentages of correct rejections across participants. This observation will be discussed further in the following chapter.

3.1.3 Comparing results of 40-item task before/after input As outlined in the previous chapter, the scores of the 40 items tested during pre-test were extracted from the post-tests for comparison (See Appendix 9 for the tables). For the Treatment group, this will be indication of the effects of treatment on participants’ sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics. Since the Ambient Exposure group did not undergo any treatment, their results for the same 40 items would serve as direct comparison of the Treatment group’s pre-test performance. This would allow us to examine if both groups of participants have similar prior knowledge of Mandarin phonotactics without exposure to Mandarin input. The summary is shown in Table 3.4 below:

Treatment (pre-test) Treatment (post-test) Ambient Exposure

Mandarin

Cantonese

Japanese

Thai

Non-words

Total

%

171

54

2

3

70

391

61.09%

149

48

59

62

77

395

61.72%

138

61

51

51

71

372

58.13%

Table 3.4: Performance of the 40 items

Treatment group (Before and after treatment) Participants displayed salient increase in sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics by increasing the tokens of correct rejection of Japanese and Thai words. However, correct identification of Mandarin words declined even though the same words were encountered during pre-test. Overall performance for the 40 items are relatively similar (pre-test: 61.09%, post-test: 61.72%). 38

Ambient Exposure group (compared to Treatment group) As the participants had not received any form of Mandarin input prior to completing the task, these scores may be directly compared to the pre-test scores of the Treatment group as assessment of their pre-existing phonotactic knowledge. From Table 3.4 above, it is clear that the Treatment group displayed higher sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics at pre-test than the Ambient Exposure group by correctly identifying more Mandarin words as Mandarin. However, the Ambient Exposure group displayed more sensitivity to what did not sound Chinese, with higher number of correct rejections of non-Mandarin words, particularly Japanese (49 more) and Thai (48 more).

Although the Treatment group outperformed the Ambient Exposure group after exposure to Mandarin input, this clearly shows that the Ambient Exposure group, though showing only fair ability to identify Mandarin words as sounding Chinese, were strongly able to reject Japanese and Thai words as non-Mandarin words. This gives clear indications of pre-existing knowledge in the participants about Mandarin phonotactics and illegal phonemes in Mandarin.

3.2

Word effects

In the treatment video, a total of 20 words were included in the post-test to examine the effects of input on participants’ ability to identify them as Mandarin words. In addition, two Mandarin words, ‘cha1 shao1 fan4’ and ‘dian4 nao3’, not in the treatment video, were also included in the post-test to assess participants’ ability to generalise regularities and patterns in Mandarin. Here, ‘target words’ is taken to refer to the 20 target words that appeared in the treatment video as well as the two extra Mandarin words in the post-test. Where they are tabulated separately, the tables will reflect MT (Mandarin Target) and MF (Mandarin Filler) to distinguish them accordingly.

As listed in Appendix 10, most of the target words have a fixed frequency of 3; meaning that the word appears thrice in the entire treatment video. Of the target words, two words’ frequency are extremely high, with ran2 hou4 (after that) and hao3 (good) appearing 11 and 10 times respectively, due to their part of speech and the unconscious inclusion of these words by the actors in the course of conversation while filming.

39

One of the hypotheses was that the Treatment group would be better able to correctly identify the target words as Mandarin as they had been exposed to those words, used in context in the treatment video. From Table 3.5 below, the Ambient Exposure group outperformed the Treatment Group in the mean, minimum and maximum scores, even though the participants had not received any input at all. Both groups displayed similar levels of individual variation (SD= 16.67/16.89).

Treatment Group (Post)

Ambient Exposure Group

Overall

63.07

67.05

Min

18.18

36.36

Max

81.82

90.91

SD

16.67

16.89

Table 3.5: Performance on target words

Although both groups scored similarly overall, a closer look at the performance on individual test items (See Appendix 11) showed some interesting observations. The Ambient Exposure group performed similarly to/better than the Treatment group in 15 out of the 22 total Mandarin target items. 13 of the 15 items appeared in the treatment video, and the Treatment group had been predicted to display more sensitivity to these words since they would have heard these words used in context before. As shown in Table 3.6 on the following page, words such as words such as ‘cha1 shao1 fan4’, ‘hao3’, ‘kan4’ and ‘ran2 hou4’, all commonly and frequently used words generally, were correctly identified at least 25% more of the time by the Ambient Exposure group, with 100% accuracy in identifying ‘zuo3 you4’ as Mandarin.

40

Word

treatment group

ambient exposure group

yi4 zhang

a piece

87.50%

87.50%

bu4 cuo4

not bad

81.25%

81.25%

ka3 pian4

card

62.50%

62.50%

ka1 fei1

coffee

12.50%

12.50%

dian4 nao3

computer

81.25%

93.75%

cha1 shao1 fan4

roast pork rice

50.00%

75.00%

hao3

good

56.25%

87.50%

bu4 ding1

pudding

68.75%

75.00%

zhi3

paper

31.25%

50.00%

shang4 mian4

above

56.25%

75.00%

kan4

look

37.50%

62.50%

jian3 dao1

scissors

75.00%

87.50%

zuo3 you4

left and right

81.25%

100.00%

ran2 hou4

after that

68.75%

93.75%

Table 3.6: Extracted scores of target words Both groups were unable to identify ‘ma1 ma’ (mother) as Mandarin (TG: 18.75%; AEG: 6.25%) even though it is highly transparent. The Ambient Exposure group was also less able to identify ‘niu2 ka3 si1 er3’ (Newcastle), a relatively transparent word.

3.2.1 Word effects: Sentence position SUMMARY (BY POSITION) INITIAL

MEDIAL FINAL

TREATMENT GROUP

69.79%

59.72%

62.50%

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP

61.25%

59.03%

81.25%

Table 3.7: Scores by sentence position

As hypothesized, participants in both groups were better able to segment and displayed more sensitivity to sentence-initial and sentence-final target words (See Appendix 12). Ambient Exposure group participants displayed more sensitivity to sentence-initial words than the 41

Treatment group. This could be due to other factors, however, as the Ambient Exposure group had not undergone treatment and would not have benefitted (or otherwise) from the sentence position of the words. Conducting the Pearson's Chi-square Test for Independence revealed no statistically significant association between the sentence position of target words and participants’ sensitivity to them (p ≈ 0.7205).

3.2.2 Word effects: Word length SUMMARY (BY LENGTH) MONO

DI

MULTI

TREATMENT GROUP

52.50%

64.90%

81.25%

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP

60.00%

69.71%

59.38%

Table 3.8: Scores by word length

The Treatment group displayed increasing sensitivity to increasing length of word as hypothesised. There is wide individual variability within the group (See Appendix 13), however, ranging from 93.75% correct identification for ‘wang3 hou4’ (往后, towards the rear) to only 12.50% for ‘ka1 fei1’ (咖啡, coffee).

In contrast, the Ambient Exposure group displayed most sensitivity to disyllabic words, and less for mono and multisyllabic words. Again, there is wide individual variability, with 100% correction identification for ‘zuo3 you4’ (左右, left and right) and 12.50% for ‘ka1 fei1’ (咖啡, coffee).

The Ambient Exposure group appeared to be more sensitive to disyllabic words than the Treatment group. Chi-square testing suggested no statistically significant association between word length and participants’ sensitivity to it (p ≈ 0.4379).

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3.3.3 Word effect: Transparency SUMMARY (BY TRANSPARENCY) HIGH

LOW

TREATMENT GROUP

50.00%

69.20%

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP

44.79%

75.45%

Table 3.9: Scores by transparency of words

Six transparent words were included in the treatment. They include direct derivations from English: ‘ba1 shi4’ (巴士, bus), ‘ka3 pian4’ (卡片, card) and ‘bu4 ding1’ (布丁, pudding), as well as loanwords such as ‘ka1 fei1’ (咖啡, coffee), ‘niu2 ka3 si1 er3’ (纽卡斯尔, Newcastle) and generically common ‘ma1 ma’ (妈妈, mother).

Contrary to predictions, participants in both groups were less sensitive to transparent words, with only 50% and 44.79% correct identification in the Treatment and Ambient Exposure groups respectively (See Appendix 14) compared to non-transparent words. Participants were least sensitive to two of the more transparent words, ‘ka1 fei1’ (both groups: 12.5%) and ‘ma1 ma’ (Treatment group: 12.5%, Ambient Exposure group: 18.75%). Chi-square testing again showed no statistical significance in association between transparency of a word and participants’ sensitivity to it (p ≈ 0.9542).

3.3.4 Word effect: Frequency Participants’ performance based on the 20 target words were collated by the frequency of the words’ use in the treatment video (See Appendix 15). In contrast to the MPI experiments, where frequency of the target words was absolute (high: 8, low: 2), the frequency of the target words here vary from 2 (low) to 11 (high). The scores of target words by frequency are summarised in Table 3.10 below:

SUMMARY (BY FREQUENCY) F=2

F=3

F=4

F=10/11

TREATMENT GROUP

75.00%

59.82%

68.75%

75.00%

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP

62.50%

67.86%

68.75%

53.13%

Table 3.10: Scores by frequency 43

The Treatment group appears to display increasing sensitivity to the target words with higher frequency, though they also correctly identified ‘dui4’, a low-frequency word (F=2), 75% of the time. The Ambient Exposure group, on the other hand, displayed increasing sensitivity to the target words, but were least able to correctly identify ‘san1 jiao3 xing2’ and ‘xin1’, both highestfrequency words. It is to be noted though, that the Ambient Exposure group’s scores were not considered for this section as they had not undergone treatment and hence, would not have benefitted (or otherwise) from the target words’ frequency effects. Chi-square testing again showed no statistical significance in association between the frequency of a word and participants’ sensitivity to it (p ≈ 0.5095).

3.3

Language perception effects

In the language history questionnaire completed at the end of the study, participants were asked to rate themselves on whether they liked to learn new languages and how easy they felt learning a new language was. In addition, they were asked to indicate the possible amount of ambient exposure to Mandarin they might have had in their daily undertakings by ticking the box(es) listing possible places and environments where they may have heard Mandarin in use.

3.3.1 Interest in languages and sensitivity to languages Like to learn new languages (1: Disagree; 5: Agree) 1

2

3

4

5

Total

TREATMENT GROUP

3

2

3

5

3

16

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP

1

1

7

5

2

16

TOTAL PARTICIPANTS

4

3

10

10

5

32

56.79

58.57

62.14

59.43

64.00

60.58

MEAN SCORE (%)

Table 3.11: Participants’ perception of language-learning Table 3.11 above summarises and sorts participants’ average test scores by their perceived levels of interest in learning new languages. Based on the table, higher levels of interest in learning a new language did not translate to higher sensitivity to Mandarin. ANOVA was conducted to verify 44

the observation. As observed in Table 3.12 below, there is no statistically significant correlation between participants’ perception of learning a new language and their sensitivity to Mandarin words (p ≈ 0.6392).

SS

df

81.26875

4

Source of Variation Between Groups

MS

F

P-value

F crit

20.31719 0.639017 0.639207 2.727765

Table 3.12: ANOVA (Perception of language-learning and sensitivity)

3.3.2 Perceived ease of learning languages and sensitivity to languages Easy to learn new language (1: Disagree; 5: Agree) 1

2

3

4

5

Total

TREATMENT GROUP

3

8

4

1

0

16

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP

3

4

6

3

0

16

TOTAL PARTICIPANTS

6

12

10

4

0

32

55.95

60.12

64.14

60.00

0.00

60.58

MEAN SCORE (%)

Table 3.13: Participants’ perceived ease of language-learning Table 3.13 above summarises and sorts participants’ average test scores by their perceived ease of learning new languages. None of the participants indicated that learning languages was very easy, with the majority ranking the ease of learning a new language ‘2’ or ‘3’, implying some perceived difficulties in language-learning. From the table, there does not appear to be any trend, and ANOVA was conducted to verify the observation. Source of Variation Between Groups

SS

df

127.0688

4

MS

F

P-value

F crit

31.76719 1.055453 0.397481 2.727765

Table 3.14: ANOVA (Perceived ease of language-learning and sensitivity) As seen in Table 3.14, there is no statistically significant correlation between participants’ perceived ease of learning a new language and their sensitivity to Mandarin words (p ≈ 0.3975).

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Number of places where Mandarin is heard 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Total

TREATMENT GROUP

3

5

0

4

3

1

0

16

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP

3

3

2

2

3

1

2

16

TOTAL PARTICIPANTS

6

8

2

6

6

2

2

32

62.38

59.29

62.14

70.71

60.58

57.62 61.07 54.29

MEAN SCORE (%)

Table 3.15: Participants’ amount of ambient exposure Table 3.15 above summarises and sorts participants’ mean scores with the number of places they have heard Mandarin in use within their surroundings. This data was extracted from the post-test survey. With the wide range of responses (and estimated amount of ambient exposure), this could possibly account for the wide individual variation in responses.

Although there was no clear trend of higher mean scores with increasing amounts of estimated ambient exposure, two participants listing seven places they have heard Mandarin in did score the highest. ANOVA was carried out to verify the presence of any correlation between the amount of ambient exposure and sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics. The results are shown in Table 3.16 below: Source of Variation Between Groups

SS

df

183.0521

6

MS

F

P-value

F crit

30.50868 1.007996 0.442359 2.49041

Table 3.16: ANOVA (Amount of ambient exposure and sensitivity) As observed from the table, there is no statistically significant correlation between participants’ estimated amount of ambient exposure and their sensitivity to Mandarin words (p ≈ 0.4424).

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3.4

Summary

The main findings of the experiment may be summarised as follows:

Adult English speakers in Newcastle were able to segment Mandarin sound stream and display sensitivity to sound-regularities in Mandarin without prior exposure to Mandarin. In addition, exposure to Mandarin input as short as 4 minutes and 30 seconds enabled participants to gain more sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics, evident by the increase of tokens in correct rejections of nonMandarin words.

Frequent words were not necessarily recognised more than infrequent words. Disyllabic words were recognised more than monosyllabic and multisyllabic words, but statistical investigation did not reveal any correlation between these word effects and sensitivity to segmentation and/or Mandarin phonotactics.

Sentence-initial and sentence-final words were correctly identified more than sentence-medial word as hypothesised, but statistical investigation again yielded no correlation between sentenceposition of a word and its successful segmentation. Against hypothesis, transparent words were recognised less than non-transparent words across both groups of participants. Finally, no statistical trends were observed in participants’ interest in learning new languages, perceived ease of learning new languages and the amount of ambient exposure with their sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics and/or ability to segment Mandarin words.

This data presented in this chapter will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter.

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CHAPTER 4 Discussion

This study was motivated by and based on the methodologies employed in the MPI experiment in conducting a small study on adults residing in Newcastle upon Tyne with the aim of investigating the effects of ambient language-input, as well as adult learners’ ability to gain sensitivity to Mandarin with minimal exposure of 4 minutes and 30 seconds to a controlled, natural input in Mandarin. The discussion will follow the order of the four research questions and four hypotheses formulated in Chapter 2.

RQ 1: Are adult learners able to gain sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics with only assumed ambient exposure to Mandarin?

The first aim of the study was to examine if adult learners were able to gain sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics with only assumed ambient exposure to Mandarin. It was hypothesised that they would be able to, given the fact that Mandarin is one of the most commonly-used languages in Newcastle upon Tyne apart from the participants’ L1 (English), and that exposure to Mandarin would provide learners with knowledge of sound regularities in Mandarin. To address this aim, participants’ test scores for both pre- and post-tests were considered and compared.

The results of the pre-test taken by the Treatment group (M = 61.09%) , as well as the post-test taken by the Ambient Exposure group (M = 60.45%), suggest that adult learners are capable of gaining sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics with only ambient exposure as their sole source of input in Mandarin. In particular, participants in both groups displayed most sensitivity to nonwords and Mandarin words and were able to correctly identify them more than 65% of the time. This was further verified by the positive d' and near-zero ß values, confirming that participants indeed display fair sensitivity to Mandarin words, with no evidence of bias towards ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answers during testing.

The simple answer to the first research question is therefore, yes, supporting Hypothesis 1. These findings are in line with Au (2013), where it was found that ambient input could enable young 48

children acquire better Mandarin phonology. However, with insufficient literature examining the effects of ambient exposure in adults, the findings can only hint at an unanswered, albeit potentially significant area of research, particularly in first-exposure studies.

Given that all the participants displayed sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics, do the older ages of participants in the Ambient Exposure group possibly also reflect higher amounts of ambient language input over time? This becomes an area of interest after examining the results of correct identification of target words by the Ambient Exposure group in the post-test. There, they displayed relatively strong ability to reject non-Mandarin words as such without prior Mandarin language-input. In addition, the Ambient Exposure group displayed almost twice the ability of the Treatment group (pre-input) in rejecting non-Mandarin words, with a total of 234 tokens of correct rejection compared to the Treatment group’s 129 tokens of correct rejection.

Results suggested that the Treatment group was able to acquire enough knowledge of phonotactic constraints on Mandarin syllables to distinguish between their L1 (English) and Mandarin. This is striking in the high accuracy of correct rejection of non-words as non-Mandarin (more than 70%) compared to the other non-Mandarin Asian languages. The participants’ general ability to correctly reject the non-Mandarin words, including L1-sounding two/three-consonant clusters, as being Chinese points to strong indications of pre-existing knowledge of Mandarin phonotactic knowledge in participants, particularly to what Mandarin does not sound like. This is in line with existing literature, which suggest that phonotactic regularities influence phoneme identification, speech errors, syllabification, word segmentation and novel word perception (Onishi et al. 2002).

These findings also concur with that of Au (2013), who found that participants improved their Putonghua (Mandarin) accent after only ambient exposure to audio input, suggesting that occasional, indirect language input, even if only from song audios rather than live speakers, can and do help participants acquire better phonology. Though Au (2013) focussed on production rather than perception, and accent rather than sound regularities, similar findings of the effect of ambient language input in this study signify potential implications in SLA research, particularly first exposure studies. That adult learners are able to acquire sensitivity to sound regularities of a language with only ambient exposure to it could also potentially account for conflicting findings 49

in studies such as Han and Liu (2013), who found learners unable to segment input, and Gullberg et al. (2012), who suggested that learners could extract both form and meaning-related information from sustained speech even in the absence of conscious learning efforts.

RQ2: Are adult learners able to segment continuous speech stream and distinguish sound regularities in Mandarin with minimal exposure? The second aim of this study was to examine adult learners’ ability to segment complex, continuous speech in Mandarin after minimal exposure of less than five minutes. The scores of the pre- and post-tests undertaken by the Treatment group were compared in order to answer this question.

After the participants in the Treatment group received input via the treatment video, they did not exhibit a huge increase in the correct identification of Mandarin words. However, there was an overall spike in the total tokens of correct rejection of non-Mandarin words, in particular Japanese and Thai words. The total correct rejections of non-Mandarin words almost doubled from 129 tokens at pre-test to 246 tokens at post-test. This points strongly to the possibility that the audiovisual input in Mandarin had enabled adult learners to segment speech stream and extract phonotactic information about illegal phonemes in Mandarin, resulting in them displaying greater sensitivity to illegal phonemes in Mandarin and generalise it to novel items after just 4 minutes and 30 seconds of exposure to Mandarin.

This observation is not novel, however, as a study done on first-year linguistics undergraduates found that although they complained about the difficulty in explicitly analysing the phonology of one’s native language, they were very good at judging whether nonwords were nativelike or not, and even young children displayed sensitivity to these regularities when trying to repeat nonwords (Treiman & Danis 1988). In addition, Chistiansen, Allen and Seidenberg (1998) also showed that phonotactic information alone was enough to produce 47% accuracy in word segmentation, but successful segmentation increased to more than 70% when combined with other sources of cues such as utterance-boundary information and relative stress information.

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In contrast, the percentage of correct rejection of Cantonese words dropped in the post-test. In fact, the number of correct responses for identification of Mandarin and Cantonese words both declined after participants received exposure to Mandarin input, from 225 to 197 total correct responses.

Many would consider Cantonese and Mandarin two dialects of the same language, rather than two different languages. However, these two dialects are not mutually intelligible (Mair 1991) and are considered by some linguists to be two different languages (Ramsey 1987). The relationship between Cantonese and Mandarin are also thought to be ‘no more similar than two closely related languages such as Spanish and Portuguese’ (Chiswick & Miller 2004). Given the similarities in Cantonese and Mandarin, both tonal languages with extremely similar phonotactics, this observation is within expectation, though more insight might be gained with the inclusion of a third group of participants, exposed to Cantonese.

Notwithstanding word effects, the answer to the second research question is again, yes. Adults are able to segment continuous speech stream and distinguish sound regularities in Mandarin with minimal exposure, supporting Hypothesis 2. This supports similar findings in Gullberg et al. (2010, 2012) and Carroll (2012, 2014), suggesting that the novelty of input does not prevent rapid learning, and point to the powerful learning mechanisms in adult learners to extract linguistic knowledge from complex, continuous input in a natural but unknown language independently. It is also in line with findings by Onishi et al. (2002) that new phonotactic information can be acquired through listening to CVC syllables, and sensitivity to novel phonotactic regularities are gained within minutes. Here, the Treatment group’s ability increase accurate rejection of nonMandarin words in the post-test is evident of acquisition of Mandarin phonotactic information after receiving input.

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RQ3: Do sentence position, length, transparency and frequency of words have an effect on adult learners’ ability to segment continuous speech stream and distinguish sound regularities in Mandarin?

In examining the third research question, effects of sentence position, word length, transparency and frequency on adult learners’ ability to segment continuous speech stream and distinguish sound regularities in Mandarin were measured. It was hypothesised that sentence-initial and –final words would be segmented and correctly accepted more than sentence-medial words. The same hypotheses were made for disyllabic, transparent and frequent words, which were predicted to be segmented and recognised more successfully.

The results in this study suggest that words in sentence-initial and -final positions are segmented and accepted in the task more accurately than sentence-medial words. This concurs with findings by Shoemaker and Rast (2013:175), which suggest that learners rely ‘on the edges of prosodic domains in the recognition of TL lexical items, providing evidence that prosodic boundaries are highly salient for first exposure learners’. Similar results were found for effects of word length.

The MPI experiment found that participants showed no-bias towards monosyllabic words, consistently rejecting them. Although participants did not display any response bias in this study, similar observations where found, where participants identified monosyllabic words least successfully. Disyllabic words were successfully segmented and correctly accepted as Mandarin words more than monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. However, statistical analysis could not verify whether these effects had influenced participants’ ability to segment and correctly identify the target words as Mandarin words.

It was also found that participants struggled to identify monosyllabic words. Many participants in the Ambient Exposure group gave verbal feedback after the testing that while they knew Mandarin as a tonal language, they had found it ‘impossible to decide based on a single sound if that word is Mandarin’. This was a possible sign of cross-linguistic influence. Indeed, it is not only the adult learners’ L1, but also other L2s that play a prominent role in the acquisition of an additional languages. While SLA studies often assume that participants are monolingual, or have absolute 52

knowledge of languages, the fact that adult language learners have some knowledge of several languages needs to be considered in SLA research, particularly in first exposure studies.

Interestingly, although the Treatment group had been hypothesised to correctly identify the target words more on the basis that they would have been exposed to Mandarin phonotactics (and the target words) via the treatment video, the Ambient Exposure group displayed more success in segmenting the target words. This again emphasises that adult learners display stronger abilities to segment and identify non-monosyllables, possibly using more than just the number of syllables to aid their segmentation.

Gullberg et al. (2010: 256) also stated similar observations in the MPI experiment that participants ‘consistently rejected words that were monosyllabic’. One possible reason listed was the possibility that participants were unable to estimate the number of words presented when they are monosyllabic. In addition, polysyllabic words ‘have much smaller neighbourhoods so there is less chance of a longer word being confused with something else in the listener’s lexicon’ (Carroll 2004). From the results of this study and feedback from participants, it appears that more might be at work in facilitating or inhibiting adult learners’ abilities to successfully segment and identify words belonging to specific languages.

Similar to Shoemaker and Rast (2013), Bisson et al. (2014) and Pawlett (2014), frequency did not appear to play a role in facilitating participants’ segmentation and identification of the target words as Mandarin words, with both the least- (F=2) and most-occurring (F=10) words being correctly identified by the Treatment group 75% of the time. This contradicts findings in Gullberg et al. (2010, 2012), which had suggested strong effects of frequency in enabling participants to accurately recognise target words. Though there appeared to be a general trend in frequency effects, statistical analysis verified the lack of correlation between frequency of a word and its successful identification.

What was most striking and unexpected were the results of transparency effects. Generally, it has been found that high-transparency words are extracted more easily from the speech stream than low-transparency words, hinting that ‘learners may be highly dependent on phonetic and lexical 53

forms already established in the L1’ (Shoemaker & Rast 2013). In this study, however, it was found in both groups that low-transparency words were correctly identified more than the hightransparency words. Participants’ performance in correctly accepting the highly-transparent words as Mandarin was poorest, with words such as ‘ka1 fei1’ and ‘ma1 ma’ being wrongly rejected the most.

Many participants were acutely aware of these transparent words, but had assumed they were in other languages. For instance, participants thought ‘ka1 fei1’ sounded like caffè (Italian) or café (French, Portuguese, Spanish, etc.). With extremely similar-sounding counterparts in other languages, participants did not think it sounded like a Mandarin word. Similar feedback was given for ‘ma1 ma’.

It appears then, that transparency may boost, but also hinder successful

segmentation, pointing to the fact that knowledge of both L1 and L2 matter in first exposure studies. Rast (2010: 80) emphasised that not only the learners’ native languages, but also other languages play an important role in the acquisition of an additional L2. Carroll and Windsor (2015: 55) claim that ‘familiarity with other L2s can offer learners phonetic variants as possible targets for segments recognised as functionally equivalent’. Finally, Carroll (2004: 235) proposed that bilinguals use a segmentation strategy that is ‘based on exposure to the prosodic properties of their dominant language, and transfer it to their weaker one’. In this study, the results could possibly imply that the learners’ L1 have indeed, transferred the prosodic properties of their L1 (dominant) to the L2 (Mandarin, weaker) and wrongly rejected the L1-similar-sounding L2 words. To sum up, although overall results suggest that participants’ correct identification of Mandarin target words may be facilitated by sentence-position, length and frequency, statistical analysis was unable to verify the correlation. Transparency, on the other hand, hindered successful identification in this study. Hypothesis 3 therefore, cannot be supported by the results of this study.

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RQ4: Do adult learners’ perception of language-learning and amount of ambient exposure influence their L2 initial state and input-processing capabilities?

The final aim of this study was to examine the possibility of affect and amount of ambient exposure to Mandarin influencing adult learners’ acquisition of Mandarin phonotactics. Although affect in language-learning is typically studied more in sociolinguistics, there might be some influence in adult learners’ interest and sensitivity to ambient language input around them, and was thus included in this study. Overall, the results do not show any statistically-observable trends in participants’ self-assessed interest in and ease of learning new languages. There was also no corresponding statistical correlation between participants’ affect and sensitivity in Mandarin phonotactics in this study.

Finally, participants indicated places where they might have heard Mandarin in use. This information was requested to examine possible correlations between the amount of ambient exposure adult learners had at the point of testing and their sensitivity to phonotactics in novel languages.

It is important to note that here, the amount of ambient exposure is not to be confused with the frequency of exposure to target items, as researched in the MPI experiment. Frequency of input may be broken into token frequency (how often a word or phrase appears in input) and type frequency (how many different lexical items can be applied to a certain structure).

It is believed that token frequency impacts word recognition (as has been studied in many first exposure studies), but type frequency is believed to result in rule formation, ‘strengthening its representational schema and making it more accessible for further use with new items’. (Bybee & Thompson 2000).

Here, it was hypothesised that learners with higher amounts of ambient exposure to Mandarin would, by correlation, result in stronger rule formations of Mandarin sound regularities and thus, in more accurate identification of target words as Mandarin words. However, both the raw data 55

and corresponding statistical analysis showed a lack of correlation between affect, amount of ambient exposure and sensitivity to Mandarin phonotactics. That said, the wide individual variation in responses found in this section point do not rule out the possibility of influence by other factors, which were not probed in this study. That said, there is not enough evidence to determine whether adult learners’ affect (in particular, perception of interest in and ease of language-learning) and amount of ambient exposure influence their L2 initial state and input-processing capabilities Hence, Hypothesis 4 is, again, not supported by the results of this study.

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CHAPTER 5 Conclusion This study has attempted to examine the role of ambient language input on adult learners’ inputprocessing ability, particularly focussing on the acquisition of Mandarin phonotactics. In addition, adult learners’ affect towards language-learning as well as the amount of ambient language-input were examined for possible correlations to their input-processing abilities. In summary, the findings of this study corroborate that of the MPI experiment, and also of first exposure research in general.

Adult learners were found to display capacity to process input and acquire phonotactic information after mere minutes of exposure to the target language. More strikingly, findings hint strongly at learners’ pre-existing phonotactic awareness and knowledge of the target language even without exposure to any input in that language.

Investigations into factors influencing phonotactic acquisition suggested the possibility of multiple factors at play, such as existing L1, as in the case of this study, where learners’ L1 impeded successful identification of transparent words in L2. Other factors such as frequency, word length and sentence-position appear to effect successful identification of target words, but the results do not appear statistically significant nor correlated.

Shoemaker and Rast (2013: 180) propose that generalisations from studies involving experienced language learners to ‘less experienced learners should be made with caution’. This could also be applied to generalisations from less linguistically-experienced (monolingual) learners to multilingual learners. Generalisations from the results of this study may not necessarily apply to another group of participants as ambient language-input itself is difficult to quantify. It might, however, provide insight into learners moving to a different geographical location where they do not speak the language. An extension of this study might then to examine the role of ambient language input on the adult learners’ L2 initial state and input-processing capacities in first exposure to the novel language in their new environment based on their AOA (Age of Arrival) and the duration of stay there. 57

As discussed earlier, participants’ confusion between Cantonese and Mandarin may potentially signify powerful learning mechanisms which formed erroneous generalisations about Mandarin phonotactics based on their similar phonotactics and tones, resulting in low rejections of Cantonese words as sounding like Mandarin. A second possible extension to this study, should this study be repeated, might be to include a second Treatment group receiving input to Cantonese. Comparing the two Treatment groups’ abilities to successfully recognise Mandarin and Cantonese words might then provide further insight into the adult learners’ input-processing abilities, and whether these abilities are language-specific. All in all, does ambient language input matter in adult learners’ first exposure to a new target language? The answer is a vague ‘probably’. Until further, more extensive research is done to provide more insights into the influences of ambient exposure in SLA, one can only speculate.

First exposure studies have generally concurred in findings using artificial language studies and instructed natural language studies, yet complications arise when examining natural language in implicit learning environments. Why is that the case? The complexity of an implicit learning environment, no matter how controlled, does appear to be more volatile than a fully-controlled instructional learning environment. Han and Liu (2013) found that learners were barely able to scratch the surface of the language they were exposed to, yet findings in first exposure studies have strongly suggested that that adult learners can and do enjoy various extents of success in segmenting form in the target language, be it artificial or natural. Another question is then, when do learners transit from form-mapping to meaning-mapping in first exposure? There remains a lot to be discovered about the implicit learning mechanisms of adults, and first exposure studies are just the tip of the iceberg.

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REFERENCES Archiblad, J. 1998. ‘Second language, phonology, phonetics and typology’. SSLA 20: 189211.Altenberg, E. 2005. ‘The judgement, perception and production of consonant clusters in a second language’. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 43: 53-80. Beckman, E. and Edwards, J. 1990. ‘Lengthenings and shortenings and the nature of prosodic constituency’. In Kingston, J. and Beckman, E. (eds) Papers in Phonology I: Between the Grammar and the Physics of Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 152-178. Bisson, M., Heuven, W., Conklin, K. and Tunney, R. 2013. ‘Incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary through brief multi-modal exposure’. PLoS ONE 8(4): e60912. Bisson, M., Heuven, W., Conklin, K. and Tunney, R. 2014. ‘The role of repeated exposure to multimodal input in incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary’. Language Learning 64(4): 855-877. Brown, C. 1993. ‘The role of the L1 grammar in the L2 acquisition of segmental structure’. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics 9: 180-210. Bybee, J. and Thompson, S. 2000. ‘Three frequency effects in syntax’. Berkeley Linguistic Society 23: 65-85. Carroll, S. 2004. ‘Segmentation: Learning how to ‘hear words’ in the L2 speech stream’. Transactions of the Philological Society 102(2): 227-254. Carroll, S. 2012. ‘Segmentation on first exposure to an L2: evidence for knowledge-driven, topdown processing’. In K. Braunmüller, C. Gabriel and B. Hänel-Faulhaber (eds.) Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 23-45. Carroll, S. 2013. ‘Introduction to the special issue: aspects of word learning on first exposure to a second language’. Second Language Research 29(2): 131-144. Carroll, S. and Meisel, J. 2013. ‘Input, learner populations, and the human language-making capacity’. In Hamann, C. and Ruigendijk, E. (eds) Language Acquisition and Development: Proceedings of GALA 2013. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 116. Carroll, S. 2014. ‘Processing 'words' in early-stage SLA: a comparison of first exposure and low proficiency learners’. In Han, Z. and Rast, R (eds) First Exposure to a Second Language: Learners' Initial Input Processing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 107-138. 59

Chiswick, B. and Miller, P. 2004. ‘Linguistic distance: A quantitative measure of the distance between English and other languages’. IZA Discussion Paper 1246. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10419/20510 on 23 August 2016. Cutler, A. 1992. ‘The production and perception of word boundaries’. In Tohkura, Y., VatikiotisBateson, E. and Sagisaka, Y. (eds) Speech Perception, Production and Linguistic Structure. Amsterdam: IOS Press. 418-425. Cutler, A. 2008. ‘The abstract representations in speech processing’. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 61: 1601-1609. Epstein, S., Flynn, S. and Martohardjono, G. 1996. ‘Working memory in the acquisition of vocabulary and syntax: putting language in good order’. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 49 A(1): 234-250. Flege, J. 2009. ‘Give input a chance!’. In Piske, T. and Young-Scholten, M. (eds) Input Matters in SLA. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 175-190. Folia, V., Udden, J., Forkstam, C. Ingvar, M., Hagoort, P. and Petersson, M. 2010. ‘Artificial language learning in adults and children’. Language Learning 60: 188-220. Forkstam, C., Elwer, A., Ingvar, M. and Petersson, M. 2008. ‘Instruction effects in implicit artificial grammar learning: a preference for grammaticality’. Brain Research 1221: 8092.Gow, D. and Gordon, P. 1995. ‘Lexical and prelexical influences on word segmentation: evidence from priming’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 21(2): 344-359. Gass, S. 1997. ‘Universals, SLA, and language pedagogy: 1984 revisited’. In Eubank, L., Selinker, L. and Smith, M. (eds) The Current State of Interlanguage. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 31-42. Gullberg, M., Roberts, L., Dimroth, C., Veroude, K. and Indefrey, P. 2010. ‘Adult language learning after minimal exposure to an unknown natural language’. Language Learning 60(2): 5-24. Gullberg, M., Roberts, L. and Dimroth, C. 2012. ‘What word-level knowledge can adult learners acquire after minimal exposure to a new language?’ International Review of Applied Linguistics 50: 239-276. Han, Z. and Liu, Z. 2013. ‘Input processing of Chinese by ab initio learners’. Second Language Research 29: 145-164. 60

Jackendoff, R. 2002. ‘What’s in the lexicon?’ In Nooteboom, S., Weerman, F. and Wijnen, F. (eds) Storage and Computation in the Language Faculty. Dordreht: Kluwer. 25-58. Jarad, S., Leung, A., Pavlovskaya, N. and Young-Scholten, M. 2014. ‘What do adult L2 learners know about phonology after minimal exposure?’. In O’Rourke, B., Bermingham, N. and Brennan, S. (eds) Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics. London: Scitsiugnil Press. 393-408. Juscyk, P., Luce, P. and Charles-Luce, J. 1994. ‘Infants’ sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native language’. Journal of Memory and Language 33: 630-645. Klein, W. 1986. Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klein, W. and Perdue, C. 1997. ‘The basic variety (or: couldn’t natural languages be much simpler?)’. Second Language Research 13: 301-347. Kreiner, H. and Degani, T. 2015. ‘Tip-of-the-tongue in a second language: the effects of brief firstlanguage exposure and long-term use’. Cognition 137(2015): 106-114. Mattys, L. and Melhorn, F. 2007. ‘Sentential, lexical, and acoustic effects on the perception of word boundaries’. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 122: 554-567. McQueen, J. 1998. ‘Segmentation of continuous speech using phonotactics’. Journal of Memory and Language 39: 21-46. Onishi, K., Chambers, K. and Fisher, C. 2002. ‘Learning phonotactic constraints from brief auditory experience’. Cognition 83(2002): B13-B23. Ortega, G. and Morgan, G. 2015. ‘Input processing at first exposure to a sign language’. Second Language Research 31(4): 443-463. Park, S. and Han, Z. 2008. ‘Learner spontaneous attention in L2 input processing: An exploratory study’. In Han, Z. (eds) Understanding Second Language Process. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pawlett, G. 2014. ‘Early word processors: Insights into implicit word learning in a natural language from first exposure research’. Unpublished MA Dissertation, Newcastle University. Peterson, G. and Lehiste, I. 1960. ‘Duration of syllable nuclei in English’. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 32(6): 693-703. Petersson, M., Forkstam, C. and Ingvar, M. 2004. ‘Artificial syntactic violations activate Broca’s region’. Cognitive Science 28: 383-407.

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Ristin-Kaufmann, N. and Gullberg, M. 2014. ‘The effects of first exposure to an unknown language at different ages’. Bulletin VALS-ASLA 99: 17-29. Rast, R. 2008. Foreign Language Input: Initial Processing. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rast, R. 2010. ‘The role of linguistic input in the first hours of adult language learning’. Language Learning 60(2): 64-84. Schwartz, B. and Sprouse, R. 1994. ‘Word order and nominative case in non-native language acquisition: a longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage’. In Hoekstra, T. and Schwartz, B. (eds) Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar: Papers in Honour of Kenneth Wexler from the 1991 GLOW Workshops. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. 317-368. Schwartz, B. and Sprouse, R. 1996. ‘L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access model’. Second Language Research 12: 40-72. Shoemaker, E. and Rast, R. 2013. ‘Extracting words from the speech stream at first exposure’. Second Language Research 29(2): 165-183. Stanislaw, H. and Todorov, N. 1999. ‘Calculation of signal detection theory measures’. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 31(1): 137-149. Treiman, R. and Danis, C. 1988. ‘Short-term memory errors for spoken syllables are affected by the linguistic structure of the syllables’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 14: 145-152. Třisková, H. 2011. ‘The structure of the Mandarin syllable: Why, when and how to teach it’. Oriental Archive 79(1): 99-134. Vainikka, A. and Young-Scholten, M. 1996. ‘Gradual development of L2 phrase structure’. Second Language Research 12: 7-39. VanPatten, B. 2004. Processing Instruction: Theory, Research and Commentary. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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APPENDIX 1: EMAIL EXCHANGE WITH DR. GULLBERG Re: Request for more information from your published article Marianne Gullberg Wed 24/02/2016 21:10 Inbox To: Rebecca Lim ﴾PGT﴿ ; Dear Rebecca, Thank you for your interest in our studies. We never use linguistics students in our language acquisition/learning studies ﴾unless it is a deliberate variable, i.e.. a comparison of linguistics students vs. other kinds of backgrunds﴿. In the case of the first exposure studies, no participant had a background studying linguistics or languages. Instead, they had backgrounds in engineering, general/clinical psychology, archeology, etc. That is, they all had a university education but not in anything to do with language. I hopa that helps. I'd be interested to learn what you're planning to do in this domain. Please keep in touch if you decide to pursue this line of work! best wishes, Marianne On 24 feb 2016, at 20.06, Rebecca Lim ﴾PGT﴿ wrote: Dear Prof. Dr. Gullberg, I am Rebecca, a postgraduate student reading Linguistics at Newcastle University. I am considering using your article as the basis for my dissertation research. (Adult language learning after minimal exposure to an unknown natural language, 2010). I would like to find out more about the language background of the Dutch participants ‐ Were they linguistics students? If not, what were their backgrounds at the time of research? I look forward to your reply. Thank you and sorry to trouble you. Sincerely, Rebecca -----------------------------------------------------------Marianne Gullberg, PhD Professor of Psycholinguistics & Director of the Humanities Lab Centre for Languages and Literature Lund University PO Box 201 221 00 Lund Sweden email: [email protected] http://www.sol.lu.se/person/MarianneGullberg Tel. +46-46-222 0389, Fax: +46-46-222 3211 ------------------------------------------------------------

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APPENDIX 2: TRANSCRIPT FOR TREATMENT VIDEO Treatment Video Transcript [length of video: 4 minutes 30 seconds] Target words are highlighted in yellow in Chinese script and bold in Romanised script. Sentence

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嘿， 好 久 不 见! Hai4, hao3 jiu3 bu4 jian4 Hi, good long no meet ‘Hi, it’s been a while.’ 嘿， 好 久 不 见！ Hai4, hao3 jiu3 bu4 jian4 Hi, good long no meet ‘Hi, it’s been a while.’ 想 死 你 啦！ Xiang3 si3 ni3 la Miss die you ‘I miss you.’ 请 进， 请 进。 Qing3 jin4, qing3 jin Please enter, please enter ‘Please come in.’ 哎， 累 死 我 了。 Ai, lei4 si3 wo3 le Sigh, tired die me ‘Sigh, I am so tired.’ 纽 卡 斯 额 这 地 方 说 大 不 大，说 小 不 小。 Niu2 ka3 si1 er3 zhe4 di4 fang1 shuo1 da4 bu4 da4, shuo1 xiao3 bu4 xiao3 Newcastle this place say big not big, say small not small ‘Newcastle is not as small as it seems to be.’ 才 刚 从 火 车 站 搭 个 巴 士， 没 有 想 到， Cai2 gang1 cong2 huo3 che1 zhan4 da1 ge4 ba1 shi4, mei2 you3 xiang3 dao4, Only just from train station took a bus, no have think,

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一 没 注 意 就 坐 过 站 了！ Yi1 mei2 zhu4 yi4 jiu4 zuo4 guo4 zhan4 le one no notice already sit over station ‘I took the bus from the train station and missed my stop without realizing it.’ 幸 好 巴 士 司 机 帮 了 我，才 能 找 到 你 的 地 址。 Xing4 hao3 ba1 shi4 si1 ji1 bang1 le wo3, cai2 neng2 zhao3 dao4 ni3 de di4 zhi3 Lucky bus driver helped me, enable find your address ‘Fortunately, I was able to find your address with the help of the bus driver.’

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这 样 啊。 Zhe4 yang4 ah This situation ‘I see.’ 那 真 是 不 好 意 思。 Na4 zhen1 shi4 bu4 hao3 yi4 si That real is no good feelings ‘I am so sorry.’ 因 为 我 临 时 有 事，没 去 火 车 站 接 你。 Yin1 wei4 wo3 lin2 shi2 you3 shi4, mei3 qu4 huo3 che1 zhan4 jie1 ni3 Because I last minute have thing, no go train station pick you ‘I did not pick you up from the train station because something last minute cropped up.’ 先 给 你 来 杯 咖 啡 吧。 Xian1 gei3 ni3 lai2 bei1 ka1 fei1 ba First give you come cup coffee ‘Let me make you a coffee first.’ 哦，不 了，最 近 睡 得 不 好， 就 不 喝 咖 啡 了。 O, bu4 le, zui4 jin4 shui4 de2 bu4 hao3, jiu3 bu4 he1 ka1 fei1 le Oh, no, recently sleep no good, so no drink coffee ‘Oh, no thanks, I don’t drink coffee now as I have not been sleeping well.’

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你 搬 来 这 儿有 两 个 星 期 了，一 切 还 好 吧？ Ni3 ban1 lai2 zhe4 er you3 liang3 ge4 xing1 qi1 le, yi2 qie4 hai2 hao3 ba You moved here have two weeks, one all still good ‘It has been two weeks since you moved here, is everything going well?’

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纽 卡 斯 额 的 饮 食 和 气 候， 还 习 惯 吗？ Niu2 ka3 si1 er3 de yin3 shi2 he2 qi4 hou4, hai2 xi2 guan4 ma1 Newcastle diet and climate, still used ‘Are you getting used to the food and climate in Newcastle’

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嗯。 En [utterance of acknowledgement] ‘Yes.’

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就 是 起 初 没 搞 清 楚 巴 士 的 时 间 表。 Jiu4 shi4 qi3 chu1 mei2 gao3 qing1 chu3 ba1 shi4 de shi2 jian1 biao3 That is initially no make clear bus timetable ‘Initially, I was not clear about the bus schedule.’

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不 是 搭 错 车 呢，就 是 走 错 了 车 站， 还 真 是 狼 狈。 Bu4 shi4 da1 cuo4 che1 ne, jiu4 shi4 zou3 cuo4 le che1 zhan4, hai2 zhen1 shi4 lang2 bei4 Not board wrong bus, or is walk wrong bus stop, still really pathetic ‘I either boarded the wrong bus or went to the wrong bus-stops, it was really pathetic.’

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现 在 食 物 啊，气 候，交 通 那 些 都 习 惯 了，过 得 还 好。 Xian4 zai4 shi2 wu4 a, qi4 hou4, jiao1 tong1 na4 xie1 dou1 xi2 guan4 le, guo4 de hai2 hao3 Now food, weather, traffic those all used, pass still good ‘Now, I have gotten used to the diet, climate and traffic here.’ 最 大 的 变 化 就 是 先 学 会 了 喝 苦 咖 啡。 Zui4 da4 de bian4 hua4 jiu4 shi4 xian1 xue2 hui4 le he1 ku3 ka1 fei1 Most big change is first learn drink bitter coffee ‘The biggest change is learning how to appreciate black coffee.’ 哇， 也 太 恐 怖 了吧。 Wa4, ye3 tai4 kong3 bu4 le ba Wow, also too horrible ‘Wow, that sounds extreme.’ 突 然 好 想 吃 些 甜 点 呀。 Tu1 ran2 hao3 xiang3 chi1 xie1 tian2 dian3 ya Suddenly good think eat some sweets ‘I suddenly have a craving for dessert.’

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布 丁， 你 有 吗？ Bu4 ding1, ni3 you3 ma1 Pudding, you have ‘Do you have pudding?’

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布 丁 吗？ Bu4 ding1 ma1 Pudding ‘Pudding?’

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嗯。 En [acknowledgement] ‘Yes.’ 什 么 口 味 的 都 可 以。 Shen3 mo4 kou3 wei4 de dou1 ke3 yi3 What mouth taste also can ‘I am fine with any flavour.’ 布 丁 没 了。 Bu4 ding1 mei2 le Pudding no ‘I am out of pudding.’ 不 好 意 思。 Bu4 hao3 yi4 si1 No good meaning ‘I’m sorry.’ 66

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来 些 草 莓 吧? Lai2 xie1 cao3 mei2 ba Come few grass berries ‘How about some strawberries?’ 算 了，不 用 了。 Suan4 le, bu4 yong4 le Count, no need ‘It’s alright, forget it.’ 你 过 来 这 边 吧。 Ni3 guo4 lai2 zhe4 bian1 ba You come this side ‘Come here.’ 我 们 好 久 没 聊 天 了。 Wo3 men2 hao3 jiu3 mei2 liao2 tian1 le We good long no chat ‘It’s been a while since we had a chat.’ 你 最 近 都 在 忙 些 什 么 啊？ Ni3 zui4 jin4 dou1 zai4 mang2 xie1 shen3 mo4 a You recently all busy some what ‘What have you been busy with?’

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纽 卡 斯 额 大 学 里 念 书， 还 忙 得 过 来 吗？ Niu2 ka3 si1 er3 da4 xue2 li3 nian4 shu1, hai2 mang2 de2 guo4 lai2 ma1 Newcastle big school inside study, still busy cross come ‘How are you coping with studies in Newcastle University?’

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哎，整 天 忙 着 上 课，做 作 业。 Ai, zheng3 tian1 mang2 zhe4 shang4 ke4, zuo4 zuo4 ye4 Sigh, whole day busy go lesson, do work assignment ‘Sigh, I’m busy all day with lessons and completing assignments.’

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下 个 星 期 就 是 妈 妈 的 生 日了。 Xia4 ge4 xing1 qi1 jiu4 shi4 ma1 ma1 de sheng1 ri4 le Next one week is Mother’s birth day ‘Next week is Mother’s birthday.’

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我 连 一 张 卡 都 还 没 时 间 买 呢。 Wo3 lian2 yi4 zhang1 ka3 dou1 hai2 mei2 shi2 jian1 mai1 ne I even one piece card also no time buy ‘I haven’t even had the time to buy a card.’

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我 看 呀，你 要 到 商 店 里 买，还 不 如 自 己 做 呢？ Wo3 kan4 ya, ni3 yao4 dao4 shang1 dian4 li3 mai3, hai2 bu4 ru2 zi4 ji3 zuo4 ne I see, you want go shop inside buy, no compare yourself make ‘In my opinion, you might as well make your own instead of buying one.’

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相 信 你妈 妈 收 到 亲 手 做 的 生 日 卡， Xiang1 xin4 ni3 ma1 ma1 shou1 dao4 qin1 shou3 zuo4 de sheng1 ri4 ka3, Believe your mother receive hand made birthday card, 一 定 会 很 感 动 的。 yi4 ding4 hui4 hen3 gan3 dong4 de confirm will very touched ‘I believe your mother will be very touched if she receives a handmade card.’

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你 有 什 么 好 主 意 吗？ Ni3 you3 shen3 mo4 hao3 zhu3 yi4 ma1 You have what good idea ‘What do you have in mind?’ 你 可 走 运 啦。 Ni3 ke3 zou3 yun4 la You walk luck ‘You are in luck.’ 我 最 近 刚 刚 参 加 一 个 折 纸 活 动， Wo3 zui4 jin4 gang1 gang1 can1 jia1 yi4 ge4 zhe2 zhi3 huo2 dong4, I recently just join one fold paper activity, 碰 巧 有 简 单 的 说 明 书。 peng4 qiao3 you3 jian3 dan1 de shuo1 ming2 shu1 coincident have simple speak clear book ‘I attended an origami activity recently and happen to have some simple instructions.’

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想 一 想， 简 单 的 卡 片。 Xiang3 yi4 xiang3, jian3 dan1 de ka3 pian4 Think one think, simple card ‘Let me think, a simple card.’

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上 面 贴 着 一 颗 心。 Shang4 mian4 tie1 zhe4 yi4 ke1 xin1 Up surface stick one heart ‘With a heart pasted on the front.’

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效 果 应 该 很 好。 Xiao4 guo3 ying1 gai1 hen3 hao3 Effect should very good ‘The result should be good.’

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点 子 不 错！ Dian3 zi bu4 cuo4 Dot no wrong ‘Good idea!’ 68

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那 我 现 在 就 去 拿 材 料。 Na4 wo3 xian4 zai4 jiu4 qu4 na2 cai2 liao4 That I now go take materials ‘I’ll get the materials now then.’

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剪 刀， 需 要 吗？ Jian3 dao1, xu1 yao4 ma1 Scissors, need ‘Do you need scissors?’

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剪 刀， 应 该 不 需 要 吧。 Jian3 dao1, ying1 gai1 bu4 xu1 yao4 ba Scissors, should no need ‘I don’t think you need scissors.’

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你 的 纸 如 果 是 四 方 形 的 话 就 可 以 了。 Ni3 de zhi3 ru2 guo3 shi4 si4 fang1 xing2 de hua4 jiu4 ke3 yi3 le Your paper if is four right shape can ‘Your paper just needs to square-shaped.’ 哦，那 好。 O, na4 hao3 Oh, then good ‘Oh, alright then.’

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你 等 等， 我 这 就 去 拿。 Ni3 deng3 deng3, wo3 zhe4 jiu4 qu4 na2 You wait wait, I now go take ‘Hold on, I’ll get the materials now.’ 剪 刀 在 哪？ Jian3 dao1 zai4 na3 Scissors at where ‘Where are the scissors?’

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张 三 啊，一 张 四 方 形 的 纸 就 可 以了。 Zhang1 san1 a, yi4 zhang1 si4 fang1 xing2 de zhi3 jiu4 ke3 yi3 le Zhangsan [name], one piece four-square shape paper already can ‘Zhangsan, a piece of square paper will do.’

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过 来 吧。 Guo4 lai2 ba Cross here ‘Come here.’ 欸，来 了来 了! Ei, lai2 le lai2 le Oh, come already come already ‘Alright I’m coming!’

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你 先 教 我 折 心 吧。 Ni3 xian1 jiao1 wo3 zhe2 xin1 ba You first teach me fold heart ‘Teach me how to fold the heart first.’

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嗯，来。 En, lai2 Alright, come ‘Sure.’ 你 看 清 楚 了啊。 Ni3 kan4 qing1 chu3 le a You look clearly ‘Observe.’ 首 先， 是 把 它 折 成 三 等 份， Shou3 xian1, shi4 ba3 ta1 zhe2 cheng2 san1 deng3 fen4, First, is make it fold become three equal parts,

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然 后 折 出 两 条 折 痕 来。 ran2 hou4 zhe2 chu1 liang3 tiao2 zhe2 heng2 lai2 after that fold out two line folds ‘First, fold it into three equal parts, so that you have two clear folds in the paper.’ 61

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然 后 下 面 的 这 个 角 是 A 点。 Ran2 hou4 xia4 mian4 de zhe4 ge4 jiao3 shi4 A dian3 After that, down here this corner is A point ‘Then, the bottom corner here is Point A.’ 然 后 把A 点 向 内 折 成 一 个 三 角 形， Ran2 hou4 ba3 A dian3 xiang4 nei4 zhe2 cheng2 yi4 ge4 san1 jiao3 xing2, After that make A point towards inside fold become one three-corner shape, 就 像 这 样。 jiu4 xiang4 zhe4 yang4 just like this ‘After that, fold Point A inwards to form a triangle, just like this.’

63

没 错 吧，这 样 的三 角 形？ Mei2 cuo4 ba, zhe4 yang4 de san1 jiao3 xing2 No wrong, this kind of three-corner shape ‘Is this triangle right?’

64

嗯，对。 En, dui4 Yes, right ‘Yes’ 70

Sentence

Transcript

65

然 后 是 将 左 右 这 两 边 的 角 向 内 折， Ran2 hou4 shi4 jiang1 zuo3 you4 zhe4 liang3 bian1 de jiao3 xiang4 nei4 zhe2, After that is make left right these two sides’ corners towards inside fold, 然 后 对 齐 到 A 点。 ran2 hou4 dui4 qi2 dao4 A dian3 after that match to A point ‘Then, fold the left and right corners inwards towards Point A’

66

这 两 边 是 吗? Zhe4 liang3 bian1 shi4 ma1 These two sides is it ‘These two sides?’

67

对。 很 好！ Dui4. Hen3 hao3 Correct. Very good. ‘Yes, well done.’

68

这 样 就 对 了。 Zhe4 yang4 jiu4 dui4 le This is correct ‘It’s correct.’

69

然 后 是 把 上 面 的 角 往 后 这 样 对 折。 Ran2 hou4 shi4 ba3 shang4 mian4 de jiao3 wang3 hou4 zhe4 yang4 dui4 zhe2 After that is make up side corner face back this match fold ‘Then, fold the upper corner backwards like this.’

70

这 个 时 侯 的 心 形 大 概 就 已 经 显 现 出 来 了。 Zhe4 ge4 shi2 hou4 de xin1 xing2 da4 gai4 jiu4 yi3 jing1 xian3 xian4 chu1 lai2 le This time heart shape general already appear out ‘The heart shape should be apparent by now.’

71

你 仔 细 看。 Ni3 zi3 xi4 kan4 You carefully look ‘Look closely.’

72

然 后 左 右 这 两 边 的 角 往 后 折。 Ran2 hou4 zuo3 you4 zhe4 liang3 bian1 de jiao3 wang3 hou4 zhe2 After that left right these two sides corners towards back fold ‘Then, fold the two corners backwards.’

71

Sentence

Transcript

73

然 后 再 这 样。 Ran2 hou4 zai4 zhe4 yang4 After that again like this ‘Then, do this.’ 那 上 面 的 角 往 后 面 折 就 可 以 啦。 Na4 shang4 mian4 de jiao3 wang3 hou4 mian4 zhe2 jiu4 ke3 yi3 la That up side corner towards back side fold alright ‘Finally, fold the upper corner towards the back.’

74

75

左 右 角 弄 了，然 后 怎 样? Zuo3 you4 jiao3 nong4 le, ran2 hou4 zen3 yang4 Left right corner make, after that how ‘What do I do after folding the two corners?’

76

然 后 就 像 这 样。 Ran2 hou4 jiu4 xiang4 zhe4 yang4 After that like this ‘Then do this.’

77

【这 个 折 下 去。这 个 角。 然 后 再 这 样。】 Zhe4 ge4 zhe2 xia4 qu4. Zhe4 ge4 jiao4. Ran2 hou4 zai4 zhe4 yang4 [mumbling] This fold down. This corner. After that again like this. ‘Fold this down. Then that corner. Then this.’

78

翻 过 来。 Fan1 guo4 lai2 Flip over here ‘Turn it over.’

79

最 后 把 它 贴 在 完 成 的卡 片 上。 Zui4 hou4 ba3 ta1 tie1 zai4 wan2 cheng2 de ka3 pian4 shang4 Finally make it stick on finished card top ‘Finally, stick it on your completed card.’

80

这 样 就 可 以了！ Zhe4 yang4 jiu4 ke3 yi3 le This already alright ‘That’s it.’

81

效 果 不 错！ Xiao4 guo3 bu4 cuo4 Effect no wrong ‘The result is not bad!’

82

没 想 到，一 张 简 单 的 纸， Mei2 xiang3 dao4, yi4 zhang1 jian3 dan1 de zhi3, No think, one piece simple paper, 72

Sentence

Transcript

居 然 能 弄 出 精 致 的 手 工！ ju1 ran2 neng2 nong4 chu1 jing1 zhi4 de shou3 gong1 actually can make intricate hand work ‘I did not realise that a simple piece of paper can be made into a masterpiece!’ 83

只 是 不 错？ Zhi3 shi4 bu4 cuo4 Only is no wrong ‘Only not bad?’

84

完 成 的 卡 片 呀，简 直 是 无 价 之 宝！ Wan2 cheng2 de ka3 pian4 ya, jian3 zhi2 shi4 wu2 jia4 zhi1 bao3 Finished card, simply is no value treasure ‘The finished card is priceless!’ 真 开 心。 Zhen1 kai1 xin1 Really open heart ‘I’m really happy.’

85

86

87

88

89

想 到 你 妈 妈 打 开 信 封，看 见 你 独 一 无 二 的 卡 片。 Xiang3 dao4 ni3 ma1 ma1 da3 kai1 xin4 feng1, kan4 jian4 ni3 du2 yi1 wu2 er4 de ka3 pian4. Think your mother open letter seal, see your only one no two card ‘Imagine your mother opening the envelope and seeing your unique card.’ 好 感 人 啊！ Hao3 gan3 ren2 a Good touch man ‘So touching!’ 哈哈，谢 啦。 Ha ha, xie4 la Haha, thanks ‘Haha, thanks.’ 不 客 气。 Bu4 ke4 qi No guest gas ‘You’re welcome.’

73

APPENDIX 3: PARTICIPANT DEMOGRAPHICS (TREATMENT GROUP)

Lg used (Home)

Lg used Like to learn new lg find learning lg easy Main comm Lg (work) (1: Disagree; 5: Agree) (1: Difficult; 5: Easy)

German French

English

English

English

3

1

French French French

English English English

English English English

English English English

4 5 5

3 3 4

English

English

English

4

3

English

English

English

4

2

English

English

English

4

2

2

English

English

English

1

2

4

English

English

English

1

1

5

English

English

English

2

2

5

English

English

English

3

2

2

Spanish

English

English

English

1

1

4

2

French

English

English

5

3

2

English

2

French

English

English

3

2

4

Student

English

2

French

English English French English

English

English

2

2

1

A level

Student

English

4

Spanish German Latin

English

English

English

4

2

5

17

A level

Student

English

1

English

English

English

2

2

5

31

Masters

Student

Russian

3

Russian English

English

English

5

5

8

No.

Code

Gender Age Education Occupation Native Lg Total Lgs Other Lgs Spoken

1

TG-1

F

18

A level

Student

English

3

2 3 4

TG-2 TG-3 TG-4

F F F

18 18 18

A level A level A level

Student Student Student

English English English

2 2 2

5

TG-5

F

18

A level

Student

English

1

6

TG-6

F

18

A level

Student

English

2

7

TG-7

F

18

A level

Student

English

3

8

TG-8

F

18

A level

Student

English

2

9

TG-9

M

18

A level

Student

English

1

10

TG-10

F

18

A level

Student

English

2

11

TG-11

M

18

A level

Student

English

1

12

TG-12

F

18

A level

Student

English

2

13

TG-13

F

19

A level

Student

English

14

TG-14

M

18

A level

Student

15

TG-15

F

18

A level

16

TG-16

F

18

17

M.A

M

18

N.P

F

Spanish French German German Arabic

Spanish

English Mandarin

*Data of Participant 17 was excluded due to age-constraints while Participant 18 was excluded due to working knowledge of Mandarin

74

Places hearing Mandarin in use Eateries, Travel, 6 Shopping, Media, Transport, Work 2 eateries, media 1 eateries 2 travel, transport eateries, travel, 4 shopping, media 1 eateries eateries, shopping eateries, travel, shopping, transport eateries, travel, shopping, media, transport eateries, shopping, media, transport, work eateries, media eateries, shopping, media, work eateries, transport eateries, shopping, media, transport transport eateries, travel, shopping, media, transport eateries, travel, shopping, media, transport eateries, travel, shopping, media, transport, family, work, friends

APPENDIX 3: PARTICIPANT DEMOGRAPHICS (AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP)

Lg used (Home)

Lg used Like to learn new lg find learning lg easy Places hearing Mandarin in use Main comm Lg (work) (1: Disagree; 5: Agree) (1: Difficult; 5: Easy)

English

English

English

4

2

1

eateries

English

English

English

3

3

6

eateries, travel, shopping, media, transport, work

English

Arabic English

Arabic English

English

4

4

7

eateries, travel, shopping, media, transport, work, friends

3

English French

Arabic English

Arabic English

English

3

2

2

shopping, work

English Hausa

Tera English Hausa

English

English

3

3

7

eateries, travel, shopping, media, transport, work, friends

English

English

English

3

3

1

neighbours

English English

English English

English English

3 5

1 3

3 2

travel, media, friends eateries, media

English

English

English

3

1

3

eateries, travel, shopping

English

English

English

3

3

1

No.

Code

Gender

Age

Education

Occupation

Native Lg Total Lgs Other Lgs Spoken

1

AEG-1

F

58

High School

Finance Assistant

English

3

2

AEG-2

M

49

Tertiary

IT Professional

English

6

3

AEG-3

F

31

Masters

PhD student

Arabic

2

4

AEG-4

F

32

Degree

Lecturer

Arabic

5

AEG-5

F

38

Masters

PhD student

Tera

3

6

AEG-6

F

32

Degree

Logistics

English

4

7 8

AEG-7 AEG-8

M M

31 25

Degree A level

Medical Student, trainer English Engineer English

2 2

9

AEG-9

F

37

Degree

Doctor

English

4

10 AEG-10

F

33

Degree

Nurse

English

3

German Spanish German Spanish French Hungarian Japanese

French German Thai French Japanese French Italian Hindi Spanish French

11 AEG-11

M

23

Masters

RAF Engineer

English

3

French German

English

English

English

4

1

5

12 AEG-12

M

33

Degree

Manager of Finance

Spanish

3

English French

Spanish English

English

English

2

2

5

13 AEG-13

F

69

High School

Retiree

English

2

1

3

2

52

Degree

Engineer

Arabic

3

English

English

5

4

5

15 AEG-15

F

29

Masters

Library Aide

English

3

English Arabic English English German

English

M

English

English

4

2

4

16 AEG-16

F

41

Masters

Library Assistant

English

3

French English French German Spanish French Russian

English

14 AEG-14

English

English

English

4

4

4

75

work eateries, media, transport, work, friends eateries, travel, shopping, media, transport eateries, media eateries, travel, media, work, friends eateries, media, work, family eateries, media, work, family

APPENDIX 4: TEMPLATE (PRE-TEST) Date: __________________ School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Percy Building Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RY, United Kingdom

RESPONSE SHEET [PRE-TEST] First name + initial of family name: ________________________________________ Instructions Listen to the following 40 audio items. For each item, tick yes if you think the word is Chinese, and no if you think the word is not Chinese. Each item will be played once only. 1. Yes

No

2. Yes

No

3. Yes

No

4. Yes

No

5. Yes

No

6. Yes

No

7. Yes

No

8. Yes

No

9. Yes

No

10. Yes

No 76

11. Yes

No

12. Yes

No

13. Yes

No

14. Yes

No

15. Yes

No

16. Yes

No

17. Yes

No

18. Yes

No

19. Yes

No

20. Yes

No

21. Yes

No

22. Yes

No

23. Yes

No

24. Yes

No

25. Yes

No

26. Yes

No 77

27. Yes

No

28. Yes

No

29. Yes

No

30. Yes

No

31. Yes

No

32. Yes

No

33. Yes

No

34. Yes

No

35. Yes

No

36. Yes

No

37. Yes

No

38. Yes

No

39. Yes

No

40. Yes

No

78

APPENDIX 4: TEMPLATE (POST-TEST)

Date: __________________ School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Percy Building Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RY, United Kingdom

RESPONSE SHEET [POST-TEST] First name + initial of family name: ________________________________________ Instructions Listen to the following 70 audio items. For each item, tick yes if you think the item is Chinese, and no if you think the item is not Chinese. Each item will be played once only. 1.

Yes

No

2.

Yes

No

3.

Yes

No

4.

Yes

No

5.

Yes

No

6.

Yes

No

7.

Yes

No

8.

Yes

No

9.

Yes

No

79

10.

Yes

No

11.

Yes

No

12.

Yes

No

13.

Yes

No

14.

Yes

No

15.

Yes

No

16.

Yes

No

17.

Yes

No

18.

Yes

No

19.

Yes

No

20.

Yes

No

21.

Yes

No

22.

Yes

No

23.

Yes

No

24.

Yes

No

25.

Yes

No 80

26.

Yes

No

27.

Yes

No

28.

Yes

No

29.

Yes

No

30.

Yes

No

31.

Yes

No

32.

Yes

No

33.

Yes

No

34.

Yes

No

35.

Yes

No

36.

Yes

No

37.

Yes

No

38.

Yes

No

39.

Yes

No

40.

Yes

No

41.

Yes

No 81

42.

Yes

No

43.

Yes

No

44.

Yes

No

45.

Yes

No

46.

Yes

No

47.

Yes

No

48.

Yes

No

49.

Yes

No

50.

Yes

No

51.

Yes

No

52.

Yes

No

53.

Yes

No

54.

Yes

No

55.

Yes

No

56.

Yes

No

57.

Yes

No 82

58.

Yes

No

59.

Yes

No

60.

Yes

No

61.

Yes

No

62.

Yes

No

63.

Yes

No

64.

Yes

No

65.

Yes

No

66.

Yes

No

67.

Yes

No

68.

Yes

No

69.

Yes

No

70.

Yes

No

Post-Test Survey: Please tick the following box(es) to indicate where you may have heard Mandarin Chinese in use. Cafes Restaurants Shopping Media (Movies, songs, Internet) Colleagues/ School mates Travel

Friends

Family

Transport (E.g. bus, metro) Others (Please specify): ________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________  This is the end of the post-test. Thank you.  Neighbours

83

APPENDIX 5: PARTICIPANT INFORMATION SHEET & CONSENT FORM

PARTICIPANT INFORMATION SHEET Researcher details: Supervisor:

Rebecca Lim ([email protected]) Professor Martha Young-Scholten

School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Newcastle University, Percy Building Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom You have been invited to participate in this research project. Before you agree to take part in it, here are some details about it. Take your time to read the information here before deciding to participate in the project. Participant rights: Your participation in this project is entirely voluntary and you will show your agreement to participate by signing a consent form. You have the right to withdraw your consent and participation at any time by notifying the researcher. If you withdraw, your data will be used only with your permission. Otherwise, it will be destroyed. What is involved: If you agree to participate, you will be asked to complete a short survey about yourself and your language learning history. Your participation will consist of answering questions in writing over two sessions. You may also be required to watch a short video clip. Each session will not take longer than 30 minutes, and there will not be any photography, audio or video recording involved. There will be no financial reward for participating in the study. Benefits and risks: Participation involves no known or anticipated risks, apart from the inconvenience caused in taking up around an hour of your time for the entire project. Your participation will contribute to what researchers know about how adult learners develop their knowledge in a new language, and enrich the field of second language acquisition. Anonymity and confidentiality: You will be asked to provide your first name and just your surname initial, your age, your country of origin and language(s) that you speak and/or read in. Your name will not be used to identify your data with. Instead, initials or a pseudonym will be used instead. All data collected for this project is confidential, and your data will be coded as mentioned above to ensure that your identity is not compromised. Dissemination of results: The results of the study will be shared by the researcher in publications and presentations.

84

PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM Researcher details: Supervisor:

Rebecca Lim ([email protected]) Professor Martha Young-Scholten

School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Newcastle University, Percy Building Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom

I, the undersigned participant, confirm that (please tick/check the boxes appropriately):

1 2

I have read and understood the information about the project in the information sheet. I have been given the chance to ask questions about the project and my participation.

3

I agree to voluntarily take part in the project.

4

I understand that I can withdraw at any time without giving reasons, or being penalised/questioned for withdrawing.

5

The procedures on confidentiality and anonymity have been explained clearly to me.

6

I understand that anonymised parts of my data may be used in research, presentations and written report/publications.

7

Storage and usage of collected data has been explained to me.

8

I understand that I will receive no payment as incentive for my participation in this project.

Participant: ______________________ Name of Participant

______________________ Signature

_______________ Date

______________________ Signature

_______________ Date

Researcher: ______________________ Name of Researcher

85

APPENDIX 6: LANGUAGE BACKGROUND QUESTIONNAIRE Date: __________________ School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Percy Building Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RY, United Kingdom

Language History Questionnaire Below are some questions about your education, profession and language use. Please answer these questions as completely as possible. First name + Surname initial: _____________________________________________ Age: _________ Sex: _________ Level of education (e.g. high school, university degree): _______________________ Profession (e.g. student, lawyer): __________________________________________ Language History What is your native language? ____________________________________________ Please list any other languages that you know below. For each language listed (including your native language), rate how well you can use the language on the following scale: Not Well Language

1 Speaking

2

3 Listening

4 Writing

5 Reading

Very Well Grammar

Pronunciation

1 2 3 4 5 6 For the languages you listed, indicate which you usually use with the following people and in which place (e.g. home, work): Person

Language(s)

Mother Father Older brother/sister Younger brother/sister Children Other family members Housemates Partner Friends Colleagues

86

Place

For the languages you listed, which do you use for the following activities and for how many hours (estimated) per day? Activity

Hours per day (estimated)

Language(s)

Reading Watching TV/movies Listening to the radio Internet communication (e.g. email, twitter, snapchat)

Internet entertainment (e.g. YouTube)

In general, how well do you like to learn new languages? Circle the number that represents your answer. Disagree

1

2

3

4

5

Agree

In general, how easy do you find learning new languages? Circle the number that represents your answer. Difficult

1

2

3

4

5

Easy

If you have any other remarks about your language history that you think may be important for your ability to use these languages, please feel free to write them here:

____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________  This is the end of the language history questionnaire. Thank you. 

This questionnaire is adapted from Gullberg, M. and Indefrey, P. (2003). Language Background Questionnaire. Developed in The Dynamics of Multilingual Processing, Nijmegen, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

87

APPENDIX 7: RAW SCORES (TREATMENT GROUP: PRE-TEST) No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

n=16

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16

M1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0

N2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1

T3 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0

C4 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0

M5 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

N6 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1

J7 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

M8 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0

M9 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1

N10 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0

C11 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0

M12 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0

J13 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1

M14 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1

C15 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

J16 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0

N17 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1

T18 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

J19 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0

J20 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1

M21 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1

Correct by 10 13 6 10 10 9 6 11 6 9 9 9 5 14 4 6 14 14 5 9 Qn % 62.50% 81.25% 37.50% 62.50% 62.50% 56.25% 37.50% 68.75% 37.50% 56.25% 56.25% 56.25% 31.25% 87.50% 25.00% 37.50% 87.50% 87.50% 31.25% 56.25%

No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16

n=16

Correct by Qn %

12 75.00%

N22 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

T23 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1

12

12

75.00% 75.00%

M24 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1

M25 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0

C26 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1

M27 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1

C28 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

T29 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0

T30 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1

M31 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0

M32 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1

J33 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

M34 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0

T35 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

C36 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0

M37 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0

N38 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

M39 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

M40 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0

TOTAL 28 25 30 20 25 18 19 28 24 27 25 23 29 27 20 23

% 70.00% 62.50% 75.00% 50.00% 62.50% 45.00% 47.50% 70.00% 60.00% 67.50% 62.50% 57.50% 72.50% 67.50% 50.00% 57.50%

11

10

10

9

15

10

7

11

12

12

9

4

6

10

13

15

12

391

61.09%

68.75%

62.50% 62.50% 56.25% 93.75% 62.50% 43.75% 68.75% 75.00% 75.00% 56.25% 25.00% 37.50% 62.50% 81.25% 93.75% 75.00%

88

APPENDIX 7: RAW SCORES (TREATMENT GROUP: POST-TEST) No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

n=16

No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

n=16

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16

T1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1

T2 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1

MT3 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1

M4 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

MT5 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0

M6 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1

CF7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1

N8 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1

MT9 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

M10 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1

J11 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0

M12 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1

MT13 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

C14 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1

Correct by 8 11 11 12 9 10 3 12 11 11 7 10 14 13 Qn % 50.00% 68.75% 68.75% 75.00% 56.25% 62.50% 18.75% 75.00% 68.75% 68.75% 43.75% 62.50% 87.50% 81.25% Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16

M24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

T25 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

MT26 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0

M27 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1

C28 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0

MT29 MT30 MT31 MT32 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

J33 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0

MT34 MT35 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

N36 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

TF37 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0

C38 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1

M39 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1

C15 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 6.25% T40 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0

J41 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1

C16 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1

J17 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1

M18 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

CF19 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

M20 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1

MT21 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0

N22 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

JF23 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1

6

10

12

6

11

10

12

4

37.50% 62.50% 75.00% 37.50% 68.75% 62.50% 75.00% 25.00% MT42 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0

M43 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

M44 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1

J45 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1

T46 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0

M47 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1

MT48 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

M49 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0

M50 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0

Correct by 4 15 9 10 7 13 11 10 15 10 3 5 15 6 13 10 9 9 12 6 11 11 7 10 2 11 7 Qn % 25.00% 93.75% 56.25% 62.50% 43.75% 81.25% 68.75% 62.50% 93.75% 62.50% 18.75% 31.25% 93.75% 37.50% 81.25% 62.50% 56.25% 56.25% 75.00% 37.50% 68.75% 68.75% 43.75% 62.50% 12.50% 68.75% 43.75%

89

APPENDIX 7: RAW SCORES (TREATMENT GROUP POST-TEST) - Continued No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

n=16

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16

JF51 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1

M52 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1

CF53 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1

MT54 MT55 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0

M56 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1

T57 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1

N58 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0

N59 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

C60 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

N61 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

MT62 MT63 MT64 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0

JF65 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1

MF66 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0

MF67 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

J68 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0

MT69 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0

TF70 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1

Correct by 9 7 12 15 6 7 12 7 15 8 16 11 9 12 9 13 8 12 13 13 Qn % 56.25% 43.75% 75.00% 93.75% 37.50% 43.75% 75.00% 43.75% 93.75% 50.00% 100.00% 68.75% 56.25% 75.00% 56.25% 81.25% 50.00% 75.00% 81.25% 81.25%

90

TOTAL 38 46 50 40 47 42 33 40 42 39 47 38 50 52 37 38

% 54.29% 65.71% 71.43% 57.14% 67.14% 60.00% 47.14% 57.14% 60.00% 55.71% 67.14% 54.29% 71.43% 74.29% 52.86% 54.29%

679

60.63%

APPENDIX 7: RAW SCORES (AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP) No.

Code

T1

T2

MT3

M4

MT5

M6

CF7

N8

MT9

M10

J11

M12

MT13

C14

C15

C16

J17

M18

CF19

M20

MT21

N22

JF23

M24

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

AEG-1 AEG-2 AEG-3 AEG-4 AEG-5 AEG-6 AEG-7 AEG-8 AEG-9 AEG-10 AEG-11 AEG-12 AEG-13 AEG-14 AEG-15 AEG-16

1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1

0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1

0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1

1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0

1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0

1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0

0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0

1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1

0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0

1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1

0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1

1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0

1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1

0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0

n=16

Correct by 4 12 8 11 12 11 4 14 15 10 7 12 14 15 8 7 7 13 4 9 6 9 10 6 Qn % 25.00% 75.00% 50.00% 68.75% 75.00% 68.75% 25.00% 87.50% 93.75% 62.50% 43.75% 75.00% 87.50% 93.75% 50.00% 43.75% 43.75% 81.25% 25.00% 56.25% 37.50% 56.25% 62.50% 37.50%

No.

Code

T25

MT26

M27

C28

MT29

MT30

MT31

MT32

J33

MT34

MT35

N36

TF37

C38

M39

T40

J41

MT42

M43

M44

J45

T46

M47

MT48

M49

M50

JF51

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

AEG-1 AEG-2 AEG-3 AEG-4 AEG-5 AEG-6 AEG-7 AEG-8 AEG-9 AEG-10 AEG-11 AEG-12 AEG-13 AEG-14 AEG-15 AEG-16

1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0

0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0

1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1

1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1

1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1

1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1

1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1

1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1

0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0

1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1

0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0

1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0

0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1

0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0

0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0

0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

n=16

Correct by 11 14 10 7 13 12 10 10 8 1 8 12 6 13 7 6 9 10 4 8 10 9 7 2 7 8 7 Qn % 68.75% 87.50% 62.50% 43.75% 81.25% 75.00% 62.50% 62.50% 50.00% 6.25% 50.00% 75.00% 37.50% 81.25% 43.75% 37.50% 56.25% 62.50% 25.00% 50.00% 62.50% 56.25% 43.75% 12.50% 43.75% 50.00% 43.75%

91

APPENDIX 7: RAW SCORES (AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP) - Continued No.

Code

M52

CF53

MT54

MT55

M56

T57

N58

N59

C60

N61

MT62

MT63

MT64

JF65

MF66

MF67

J68

MT69

TF70

TOTAL

%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

AEG-1 AEG-2 AEG-3 AEG-4 AEG-5 AEG-6 AEG-7 AEG-8 AEG-9 AEG-10 AEG-11 AEG-12 AEG-13 AEG-14 AEG-15 AEG-16

0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1

0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1

0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1

0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1

1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1

0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1

42 50 43 47 56 38 34 41 41 32 40 47 38 42 43 43

60.00% 71.43% 61.43% 67.14% 80.00% 54.29% 48.57% 58.57% 58.57% 45.71% 57.14% 67.14% 54.29% 60.00% 61.43% 61.43%

677

60.45%

n=16

Correct by 6 14 14 10 9 9 7 15 11 14 13 7 14 12 15 12 10 16 12 Qn % 37.50% 87.50% 87.50% 62.50% 56.25% 56.25% 43.75% 93.75% 68.75% 87.50% 81.25% 43.75% 87.50% 75.00% 93.75% 75.00% 62.50% 100.00% 75.00%

92

APPENDIX 8: SENSITIVITY AND RESPONSE BIAS (CALCULATIONS) TREATMENT GROUP (PRE-TEST) HIT

No. 1 2 3 4 5

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5

6

TG-6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

MISS

Y Correct Y wrong Total Y 12 4 16 10 6 16 15 1 16 13 3 16 10 6 16

TREATMENT GROUP PRE TEST (N=16)

FALSE ALARM

CORRECT REJECT

N wrong 8 9 9 17 9

N correct 16 15 15 7 15

Total N 24 24 24 24 24

Total correct % correct 28 70.00% 25 62.50% 30 75.00% 20 50.00% 25 62.50%

9

7

16

15

9

24

18

45.00%

TG-7

9

7

16

14

10

24

19

47.50%

TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16 TOTAL

11 10 10 11 12 12 13 6 8 171

5 6 6 5 4 4 3 10 8 85

16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 256

7 10 7 10 13 7 10 10 9 164

17 14 17 14 11 17 14 14 15 220

24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 384

28 24 27 25 23 29 27 20 23 391

70.00% 60.00% 67.50% 62.50% 57.50% 72.50% 67.50% 50.00% 57.50% 61.09%

FALSE ALARM

CORRECT REJECT

N wrong

N correct

Total N

SIGNAL Yes No Total hit rate (Y to Y qn) false alarm rate (Y to N qn) d' ß

Present 171 84 255

Absent 164 220 384

Total 335 304 639

0.670588235 0.427083333 0.625342763 1.026316635

TREATMENT GROUP (POST TEST) HIT

MISS

Y Correct Y wrong Total Y

TREATMENT GROUP POST TEST(N=16)

No.

Code

1 2 3 4 5

TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5

22 28 32 13 22

16 10 6 25 16

38 38 38 38 38

16 14 14 5 7

16 18 18 27 25

32 32 32 32 32

38 46 50 40 47

54.29% 65.71% 71.43% 57.14% 67.14%

6

TG-6

27

11

38

17

15

32

42

60.00%

7

TG-7

21

17

38

20

12

32

33

47.14%

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16 TOTAL

21 25 24 22 25 26 31 15 17 371

17 13 14 16 13 12 7 23 21 237

38 38 38 38 38 38 38 38 38 608

13 15 17 7 19 8 11 10 11 204

19 17 15 25 13 24 21 22 21 308

32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 512

40 42 39 47 38 50 52 37 38 679

57.14% 60.00% 55.71% 67.14% 54.29% 71.43% 74.29% 52.86% 54.29% 60.63%

FALSE ALARM

CORRECT REJECT

N wrong

N correct

Total N

SIGNAL

Total correct % correct Yes No Total hit rate (Y to Y qn) false alarm rate (Y to N qn) d' ß

Present 371 237 608

Absent 204 308 512

Total 575 545 1120

0.610197368 0.3984375 0.537227011 1.000145342

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP HIT

MISS

Y Correct Y wrong Total Y

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP (N=16)

No.

Code

1 2 3 4 5

AEG-1 AEG-2 AEG-3 AEG-4 AEG-5

21 29 27 31 34

17 9 11 7 4

38 38 38 38 38

11 11 16 16 10

21 21 16 16 22

32 32 32 32 32

42 50 43 47 56

60.00% 71.43% 61.43% 67.14% 80.00%

6

AEG-6

14

24

38

8

24

32

38

54.29%

7

AEG-7

22

16

38

20

12

32

34

48.57%

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

AEG-8 AEG-9 AEG-10 AEG-11 AEG-12 AEG-13 AEG-14 AEG-15 AEG-16 TOTAL

24 17 19 22 24 20 22 22 26 374

14 21 19 16 14 18 16 16 12 234

38 38 38 38 38 38 38 38 38 608

15 8 19 14 9 14 12 11 15 209

17 24 13 18 23 18 20 21 17 303

32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 512

41 41 32 40 47 38 42 43 43 677

58.57% 58.57% 45.71% 57.14% 67.14% 54.29% 60.00% 61.43% 61.43% 60.45%

93

SIGNAL

Total correct % correct Yes No Total hit rate (Y to Y qn) false alarm rate (Y to N qn) d' ß

Present 374 234 608 0.615131579 0.408203125 0.524888775 1.00101059

Absent 209 303 512

Total 583 537 1120

APPENDIX 9: SCORES OF 40 ITEMS (PRE AND POST) No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

TOTAL

TREATMENT GROUP PRE TEST C J T 12 4 3 3 10 3 4 4 15 4 3 5 13 2 1 1 10 3 2 4 9 5 0 1 9 2 3 2 11 4 3 5 10 2 4 2 10 4 3 5 11 3 3 5 12 4 1 2 12 4 4 4 13 3 2 4 6 4 3 3 8 3 4 3 3 4 171 54 2 3

Code AEG-1 AEG-2 AEG-3 AEG-4 AEG-5 AEG-6 AEG-7 AEG-8 AEG-9 AEG-10 AEG-11 AEG-12 AEG-13 AEG-14 AEG-15 AEG-16

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP 40 ITEMS M C J T N 6 4 5 4 5 11 3 4 4 5 12 3 0 3 5 11 3 3 3 4 15 5 4 3 5 6 5 4 5 5 9 2 3 0 4 6 6 3 3 2 9 4 5 4 5 5 3 1 3 2 7 5 3 2 4 10 4 5 3 6 9 2 4 2 4 5 5 3 4 5 10 5 4 3 5 7 2 0 5 5

TOTAL

138

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16

M

61

51

51

N 6 4 3 3 6 3 3 5 6 5 3 4 5 5 4 5

TOTAL 28 25 30 20 25 18 19 28 24 27 25 23 29 27 20 23

% 70.00% 62.50% 75.00% 50.00% 62.50% 45.00% 47.50% 70.00% 60.00% 67.50% 62.50% 57.50% 72.50% 67.50% 50.00% 57.50%

70

391

61.09%

TOTAL 24 27 23 24 32 25 18 20 27 14 21 28 21 22 27 19

% 60.00% 67.50% 57.50% 60.00% 80.00% 62.50% 45.00% 50.00% 67.50% 35.00% 52.50% 70.00% 52.50% 55.00% 67.50% 47.50%

372

58.13%

71

No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16 TOTAL

94

TREATMENT GROUP 40 ITEMS (POST TEST) M C J T N TOTAL 10 2 3 3 5 23 11 2 4 4 4 25 14 3 3 3 5 28 2 4 6 6 6 24 5 4 6 6 6 27 10 5 1 2 4 22 7 2 0 2 4 15 11 2 5 3 5 26 11 3 4 3 3 24 10 2 3 3 5 23 9 4 5 6 5 29 8 3 2 2 5 20 12 4 4 6 5 31 13 2 5 5 5 30 3 3 5 4 6 21 13 3 3 4 4 27 149

48

59

62

77

395

% 57.50% 62.50% 70.00% 60.00% 67.50% 55.00% 37.50% 65.00% 60.00% 57.50% 72.50% 50.00% 77.50% 75.00% 52.50% 67.50% 61.72%

APPENDIX 10: LIST OF TARGET WORDS

No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Item zhi3 xin1 wang3 hou4 dui4 jian3 dao1 yi4 zhang1 shang4 mian4 ran2 hou4 liang3 bian1 san1 jiao3 xing2 ka1 fei1 niu2 ka3 si1 er3 ba1 shi4 bu4 ding1 kan4 hao3 ma1 ma bu4 cuo4 zuo3 you4 ka3 pian4

IPA tɕG sIn wVN hoU dweI jIen . dAu; yi; . tɕVN SVN . mIen rVn . hoU lIA;N . bIen sVn . zIAU . sIN kV . feI njo . kV . sG . E. bV . SG bu; . dIN kVn hAU mVmV bu; . tsUo tsUo . ju; kV pIen

Character 纸 心 往后 对 剪刀 一张 上面 然后 两边 三角形 咖啡 纽卡斯额 巴士 布丁 看 好 妈妈 不错 左右 卡片

95

Comment

transparent transparent transparent transparent

transparent

transparent

FREQ 4 3 3 4 3 3 3 11 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 10 3 3 3 4

Item length mono bi multi Total

5 13 2 20

Item position sentence-initial sentence-medial sentence-final Total

6 9 5 20

APPENDIX 11: SCORES FOR TARGET ITEMS TREATMENT GROUP No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16

MF66 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0

MF67 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

MT13 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

MT21 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0

MT26 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0

MT29 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0

MT3 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1

MT30 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0

MT31 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0

MT32 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

MT34 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0

MT35 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0

MT42 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0

MT48 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

MT5 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0

MT54 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

MT55 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

MT62 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1

MT63 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1

MT64 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0

MT69 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0

MT9 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

SUM %

13 81.25%

8 50.00%

14 87.50%

10 62.50%

9 56.25%

13 81.25%

11 68.75%

11 68.75%

10 62.50%

15 93.75%

3 18.75%

5 31.25%

12 75.00%

2 12.50%

9 56.25%

15 93.75%

6 37.50%

11 68.75%

9 56.25%

12 75.00%

13 81.25%

11 68.75%

MT64

MT69

MT9

TOTAL 12 17 18 11 17 17 14 10 14 14 13 17 14 18 12 4 222

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP No.

Code

MF66

MF67

MT13

MT21

MT26

MT29

MT3

MT30

MT31

MT32

MT34

MT35

MT42

MT48

MT5

MT54

MT55

MT62

MT63

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

AEG-1 AEG-2 AEG-3 AEG-4 AEG-5 AEG-6 AEG-7 AEG-8 AEG-9 AEG-10 AEG-11 AEG-12 AEG-13 AEG-14 AEG-15 AEG-16 SUM %

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 15 93.75%

1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 12 75.00%

1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 14 87.50%

0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 6 37.50%

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 14 87.50%

1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 13 81.25%

0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 8 50.00%

1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 12 75.00%

1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 10 62.50%

1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 10 62.50%

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 6.25%

0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 8 50.00%

1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 10 62.50%

0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 12.50%

1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 12 75.00%

1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 14 87.50%

0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 10 62.50%

1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 13 81.25%

0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 7 43.75%

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 14 16 15 87.50% 100.00% 93.75%

TOTAL 28 % 87.50%

20 62.50%

28 87.50%

16 50.00%

23 71.88%

26 81.25%

19 59.38%

23 71.88%

20 62.50%

25 78.13%

4 12.50%

13 40.63%

22 68.75%

4 12.50%

21 65.63%

29 90.63%

16 50.00%

24 75.00%

16 50.00%

26 81.25%

DIFF (AEGTG)

12.50%

25.00%

0.00% -25.00%

31.25%

0.00% -18.75%

6.25%

0.00%

-31.25% -12.50%

96

18.75% -12.50%

0.00%

18.75%

-6.25%

25.00%

12.50% -12.50%

12.50%

29 90.63%

18.75%

26 81.25%

25.00%

TOTAL 15 18 15 20 19 8 13 18 8 14 15 14 11 17 12 19 236

APPENDIX 11: SCORES FOR TARGET ITEMS (CONTINUED)

No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Code TG-1 TG-2 TG-3 TG-4 TG-5 TG-6 TG-7 TG-8 TG-9 TG-10 TG-11 TG-12 TG-13 TG-14 TG-15 TG-16

TREATMENT GROUP MT MF Total 11 1 12 15 2 17 17 1 18 9 2 11 15 2 17 15 2 17 13 1 14 9 1 10 12 2 14 12 2 14 13 0 13 15 2 17 13 1 14 17 1 18 11 1 12 4 0 4 222

% 54.55% 77.27% 81.82% 50.00% 77.27% 77.27% 63.64% 45.45% 63.64% 63.64% 59.09% 77.27% 63.64% 81.82% 54.55% 18.18% 63.07%

No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

*MT refers to Mandarin Target words (n=20, shown in treatment video) *MF refers to Mandarin Filler words (n=2, not shown in treatment video)

97

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP Code MT MF Total (/22) % AEG-1 13 2 15 68.18% AEG-2 16 2 18 81.82% AEG-3 14 1 15 68.18% AEG-4 18 2 20 90.91% AEG-5 17 2 19 86.36% AEG-6 7 1 8 36.36% AEG-7 12 1 13 59.09% AEG-8 16 2 18 81.82% AEG-9 8 0 8 36.36% AEG-10 12 2 14 63.64% AEG-11 13 2 15 68.18% AEG-12 12 2 14 63.64% AEG-13 9 2 11 50.00% AEG-14 15 2 17 77.27% AEG-15 10 2 12 54.55% AEG-16 17 2 19 86.36% 236 67.05%

APPENDIX 12: SCORES BY SENTENCE POSITION Treatment Group Q NO 48 26 31 29 32

ITEM ka (1) fei (1) hao (3) ka(3) pian(4) bu(4) cuo(4) san (1) jiao (3) xing (2)

FREQUENCY 3 3 4 3 10

POSITION FINAL FINAL FINAL FINAL FINAL

TREATMENT GROUP 2 12.50% 10 62.50% 10 62.50% 13 81.25% 15 93.75%

TOTAL

%

50

62.50%

5 9 21 30 64 69

shang (4) mian (4) ran (2) hou (4) niu (2) ka (3) si (1) er (3) bu (4) ding (1) jian (3) dao (1) zuo(3) you(4)

3 3 4 3 4 3

INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL

9 11 11 11 12 13

56.25% 68.75% 68.75% 68.75% 75.00% 81.25%

67

69.79%

34 35 55 63 3 62 42 13 54

ma(1) ma zhi (3) kan (4) xin (1) ba (1) shi (4) liang (3) bian (1) dui (4) yi(4) zhang (1) wang(3) hou(4)

3 3 3 11 3 3 2 3 3

MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL

3 5 6 9 11 11 12 14 15

18.75% 31.25% 37.50% 56.25% 68.75% 68.75% 75.00% 87.50% 93.75%

86

59.72%

203

63.44%

Ambient Exposure Group Q NO 48 31 32 29 26

ITEM ka (1) fei (1) ka(3) pian(4) san (1) jiao (3) xing (2) bu(4) cuo(4) hao (3)

FREQUENCY 3 4 10 3 3

POSITION AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP TOTAL % FINAL 2 12.50% FINAL 10 62.50% 49 61.25% FINAL 10 62.50% FINAL 13 81.25% FINAL 14 87.50%

21 5 30 64 9 69

niu (2) ka (3) si (1) er (3) shang (4) mian (4) bu (4) ding (1) jian (3) dao (1) ran (2) hou (4) zuo(3) you(4)

4 3 3 4 3 3

INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL

9 12 12 14 15 16

56.25% 75.00% 75.00% 87.50% 93.75% 100.00%

78

81.25%

34 35 63 3 42 55 62 13 54

ma(1) ma zhi (3) xin (1) ba (1) shi (4) dui (4) kan (4) liang (3) bian (1) yi(4) zhang (1) wang(3) hou(4)

3 3 11 3 2 3 3 3 3

MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL

2 7 7 8 10 10 13 14 14

12.50% 43.75% 43.75% 50.00% 62.50% 62.50% 81.25% 87.50% 87.50%

85

59.03%

212

66.25%

98

APPENDIX 13: SCORES BY WORD LENGTH TREATMENT GROUP NUMBER OF SYLLABLES 1 1 1 1 1

Q NO 26 35 42 55 63

ITEM hao (3) zhi (3) dui (4) kan (4) xin (1)

3 5 9 13 29 30 31 34 48 54 62 64 69

ba (1) shi (4) shang (4) mian (4) ran (2) hou (4) yi(4) zhang (1) bu(4) cuo(4) bu (4) ding (1) ka(3) pian(4) ma(1) ma ka (1) fei (1) wang(3) hou(4) liang (3) bian (1) jian (3) dao (1) zuo(3) you(4)

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

11 9 11 14 13 11 10 3 2 15 11 12 13

68.75% 56.25% 68.75% 87.50% 81.25% 68.75% 62.50% 18.75% 12.50% 93.75% 68.75% 75.00% 81.25%

135

64.90%

32 21

san (1) jiao (3) xing (2) niu (2) ka (3) si (1) er (3)

3 4

15 11

93.75% 68.75%

26

81.25%

Q NO 26 35 63 42 55

ITEM hao (3)

48 31 29 5 30 64 9 69 34 3 62 13 54 32 21

AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP NUMBER OF SYLLABLES 1

zhi (3) xin (1) dui (4) kan (4)

1 1 1 1

ka (1) fei (1) ka(3) pian(4) bu(4) cuo(4)

2 2 2

shang (4) mian (4) bu (4) ding (1) jian (3) dao (1) ran (2) hou (4) zuo(3) you(4) ma(1) ma ba (1) shi (4) liang (3) bian (1) yi(4) zhang (1) wang(3) hou(4)

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

san (1) jiao (3) xing (2)

3

niu (2) ka (3) si (1) er (3)

4

99

SCORE 10 5 12 6 9

SCORE 14 7 7 10 10

% TOTAL 62.50% 31.25% 75.00% 42 37.50% 56.25%

% TOTAL 87.50% 43.75% 43.75% 48 62.50% 62.50%

%

52.50%

%

60.00%

2 10 13 12 12 14 15 16 2 8 13 14 14

12.50% 62.50% 81.25% 75.00% 75.00% 87.50% 93.75% 100.00% 12.50% 50.00% 81.25% 87.50% 87.50%

145

69.71%

10 9

62.50% 56.25%

19

59.38%

APPENDIX 14: SCORES BY TRANSPARENCY Treatment Group Q NO 31 48 21 30 3 34 26 29 32 5 9 64 69 13 35 42 54 55 62 63

ITEM ka(3) pian(4) ka (1) fei (1)

TRANSPARENCY POSITION H FINAL H FINAL

niu (2) ka (3) si (1) er (3) bu (4) ding (1) ba (1) shi (4) ma(1) ma

H H H H

INITIAL INITIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL

hao (3) bu(4) cuo(4) san (1) jiao (3) xing (2)

L L L

FINAL FINAL FINAL

shang (4) mian (4) ran (2) hou (4) jian (3) dao (1) zuo(3) you(4) yi(4) zhang (1) zhi (3) dui (4) wang(3) hou(4) kan (4) liang (3) bian (1) xin (1)

L L L L L L L L L L L

INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL

TREATMENT GROUP 10 62.50% 2 12.50% 11 68.75% 11 68.75% 11 68.75% 3 18.75% 10 13 15 9 11 12 13 14 5 12 15 6 11 9

62.50% 81.25% 93.75% 56.25% 68.75% 75.00% 81.25% 87.50% 31.25% 75.00% 93.75% 37.50% 68.75% 56.25%

TOTAL

%

48

50.00%

155

69.20%

203

63.44%

Ambient Exposure group Q NO 31 48 21 30 3 34 26 29 32 5 9 64 69 13 35 42 54 55 62 63

ITEM ka(3) pian(4) ka (1) fei (1)

TRANSPARENCY POSITION AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP TOTAL % H FINAL 10 62.50% H FINAL 2 12.50% 9 56.25% niu (2) ka (3) si (1) er (3) H INITIAL 43 44.79% 12 75.00% bu (4) ding (1) H INITIAL 8 50.00% ba (1) shi (4) H MEDIAL 2 12.50% ma(1) ma H MEDIAL hao (3) bu(4) cuo(4) san (1) jiao (3) xing (2)

L L L

FINAL FINAL FINAL

shang (4) mian (4) ran (2) hou (4) jian (3) dao (1) zuo(3) you(4) yi(4) zhang (1) zhi (3) dui (4) wang(3) hou(4) kan (4) liang (3) bian (1) xin (1)

L L L L L L L L L L L

INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL

100

14 13 10 12 15 14 16 14 7 10 14 10 13 7

87.50% 81.25% 62.50% 75.00% 93.75% 87.50% 100.00% 87.50% 43.75% 62.50% 87.50% 62.50% 81.25% 43.75%

169

75.45%

212

66.25%

APPENDIX 15: SCORES BY FREQUENCY Treatment Group Q NO 42

ITEM

FREQUENCY

POSITION

dui (4)

2

MEDIAL

48 26 29 5 9 30 69 34 35 55 3 62 13 54

ka (1) fei (1) hao (3) bu(4) cuo(4)

3 3 3

FINAL FINAL FINAL

shang (4) mian (4) ran (2) hou (4) bu (4) ding (1) zuo(3) you(4) ma(1) ma zhi (3) kan (4) ba (1) shi (4) liang (3) bian (1) yi(4) zhang (1) wang(3) hou(4)

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL

31 21 64

ka(3) pian(4)

4

FINAL

niu (2) ka (3) si (1) er (3) jian (3) dao (1)

4 4

INITIAL INITIAL

32 63

san (1) jiao (3) xing (2)

10

FINAL

xin (1)

11

MEDIAL

TREATMENT GROUP 12 75.00%

TOTAL % 12 75.00%

2 10 13 9 11 11 13 3 5 6 11 11 14 15

12.50% 62.50% 81.25% 56.25% 68.75% 68.75% 81.25% 18.75% 31.25% 37.50% 68.75% 68.75% 87.50% 93.75%

134

59.82%

10 11 12

62.50% 68.75% 75.00%

33

68.75%

15 9

93.75% 56.25%

24

75.00%

203

63.44%

Ambient Exposure Group Q NO 42

ITEM

FREQUENCY

dui (4)

2

POSITION AMBIENT EXPOSURE GROUP TOTAL % 10 62.50% 10 62.50% MEDIAL

48 29 26 5 30 9 69 34 35 3 55 62 13 54

ka (1) fei (1) bu(4) cuo(4) hao (3)

3 3 3

FINAL FINAL FINAL

shang (4) mian (4) bu (4) ding (1) ran (2) hou (4) zuo(3) you(4) ma(1) ma zhi (3) ba (1) shi (4) kan (4) liang (3) bian (1) yi(4) zhang (1) wang(3) hou(4)

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL INITIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL MEDIAL

31 21 64

ka(3) pian(4)

4

FINAL

niu (2) ka (3) si (1) er (3) jian (3) dao (1)

4 4

INITIAL INITIAL

32 63

san (1) jiao (3) xing (2)

10

FINAL

xin (1)

11

MEDIAL

101

2 13 14 12 12 15 16 2 7 8 10 13 14 14

12.50% 81.25% 87.50% 75.00% 75.00% 93.75% 100.00% 12.50% 43.75% 50.00% 62.50% 81.25% 87.50% 87.50%

152

67.86%

10 9 14

62.50% 56.25% 87.50%

33

68.75%

10 7

62.50% 43.75%

17

53.13%

212

66.25%