The present study explored the effects of musical experience on the L2-pronunciation of English vowels by Dutch native speakers. It was expected that a higher degree of musical experience would...Show moreThe present study explored the effects of musical experience on the L2-pronunciation of English vowels by Dutch native speakers. It was expected that a higher degree of musical experience would produce a more native-like pronunciation. Native Dutch speakers (n=100) produced the North Wind and the Sun passage three times. From these recordings two selected vowels, /u:/ and /ʊ/ were compared to native English productions (n=6). Statistical analyses revealed no significant effects of musical experience, vowel type and the interaction between the two on the distance between the formant values produced by the L2 English production of Dutch natives and the production of English native speakers. The lack of significant effects can be attributed to the lack of participants with a high amount of musical experience. Further research is necessary to fully understand the effect of musical experience on the accuracy of vowel production in a second language.Show less
This thesis identifies the social and phonetic variables that affect the learning process of Dutch L2 learners (second language acquisition). The native and non-native speakers who were asked to...Show moreThis thesis identifies the social and phonetic variables that affect the learning process of Dutch L2 learners (second language acquisition). The native and non-native speakers who were asked to participate in this research provided authentic audio recordings, which were added to the two online surveys that were used. The survey respondents that participated in this empirical study were asked to share their thoughts, via an online survey, on the individual speakers, with its primarily focus on the phonetic and social variables. By analysing the results of this research and examining the correlation between these results and the literature discussed, it was possible to draw a conclusion on which social and phonetic variables obstruct the learning process of Dutch L2 learners. This thesis concludes that the social variables (the division between a younger and older group of participants) and the phonetic variables (sounds that were identified as unintelligible and/or intolerable) that were recognized in this empirical research are collectively responsible for disrupting the comprehension and production of sounds for second language learners. Keywords: phonetic variables, sociolinguistic choices, sound systems, IPA, L1, L2Show less
In this thesis, I will be examining rendaku in the context of second language acquisition. Specifically, I will focus on students attending Japanese language classes at Leiden University and...Show moreIn this thesis, I will be examining rendaku in the context of second language acquisition. Specifically, I will focus on students attending Japanese language classes at Leiden University and examine how they acquire rendaku proficiency. Earlier research has been done on rendaku acquisition in second language speakers of Japanese, but it is limited and mostly restricted to areas that are either in or close to Japan. For instance, the projects that this thesis draws inspiration from have focused on students whose first language was Chinese or Korean. The present study uses questionnaires targeted at participants with a very different first language: Dutch, which has different etymological roots and shares fewer typological features with Japanese. Not only should this add some more data to the relatively sparse existing pool, but it should also provide a different angle to which existing research can be compared. It is my hope that this will help give a clearer picture of rendaku acquisition in second language speakers as a whole.Show less
Within the linguistic field, structural or syntactic priming has been investigated for L1 and L2 speakers. Studies show mixed results for the role of the mother language and the duration of the...Show moreWithin the linguistic field, structural or syntactic priming has been investigated for L1 and L2 speakers. Studies show mixed results for the role of the mother language and the duration of the priming effect. This thesis carried out an experiment with English and German L2 speakers of Dutch in comparison to native speakers of Dutch in a two-day structural priming task for relative clauses and prepositional phrases. The results show that priming works among English L2 speak-ers of Dutch, but not among the other two language groups. The priming effects for the English participants lasted at least one day, which indicates implicit learning as a result of long-term priming. A time-pressure component did not impact the effect of priming among the native speakers. The study adds to the existing body of knowledge of structural priming and confirms the existence of a difference in priming effects for familiar or unfamiliar syntactic structures in the L1 of the participant.Show less
This study investigates the acquisition of gender agreement between determiner- noun-adjective by Spanish L2 speakers whose L1 is Dutch, and tests the effect of language proficiency by comparing...Show moreThis study investigates the acquisition of gender agreement between determiner- noun-adjective by Spanish L2 speakers whose L1 is Dutch, and tests the effect of language proficiency by comparing beginner- intermediate- advanced Dutch speakers of Spanish. Earlier research on second language acquisition, like research on the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Hwang and Lardiere 2013; Lardiere 2009) that states that acquisition of uninterpretable features like grammatical gender pose difficulty, together with the differences between languages when it comes to their gender systems, have led to this study. Both Dutch and Spanish have grammatical gender with a binary system. This system is particularly transparent in Spanish gender, since nouns ending in –o tend to be masculine and nouns ending in –a feminine. Whereas in Dutch the gender system is less transparent, based on common gender (de) or neuter gender (het). Given this background, how is the acquisition of gender agreement between determiner- noun- adjective by Spanish L2 speakers whose L1 is Dutch? Comparing beginner, intermediate and advanced Dutch L2 learners of Spanish, which has been done in earlier investigations on English L2 learners of Spanish (Sagarra and Herschensohn 2011), gives us an insight on the effect of proficiency. I used the Leiden Learner Corpus (LLC), a collection of data from Dutch learners of Romance languages to extract determiner- noun-adjective combinations, produced by Dutch speaking participants who are studying Spanish as their L2 or L3 at Leiden University (n= 27; 10 beginners, 6 intermediate and 11 advanced). An overall better performance on gender agreement by higher proficiency levels was found. The performance on gender agreement between determiner- noun was better than the performance on gender agreement between determiner- noun- adjective. This research creates a new angle on the acquisition of gender agreement between the determiner- noun- adjective structure because it is the first study on a new language pair: Dutch- Spanish.Show less
Topic: In this thesis we will examine the oral production in Italian of Dutch students, in their second year of bachelor in Italian Language and Culture at Leiden University. According to the...Show moreTopic: In this thesis we will examine the oral production in Italian of Dutch students, in their second year of bachelor in Italian Language and Culture at Leiden University. According to the Common European Framework for Languages, the language proficiency of these students ranges between the B1 and B2 level and what will be analyzed is their linguistic accuracy, by spotting the presence of grammatical errors, in order to demonstrate that the peer review method can be efficiently used to contrast the risk of fossilization. Hypothesis: we would like to demonstrate that with the use of the peer review method in a second language learning environment, students will show improvements at a morph- syntactic level after having received feedback from their classmates and teacher. Therefore, it will also be possible to refute the theory according to which fossilization is an irreversible process. Methodology: The investigation will be done by listening to all the oral presentations of the students but also by reading the transcriptions, to make sure all the elements of interest will be included. The analysis will be realized into two discerned parts: first of all, because the field of morph-syntax is too wide to be analyzed in this context, a selected number of markers will be chosen according to their problematic nature for learners of Italian: prepositions and syntactic agreement. The second part of the analysis will focus on the comparison of the students’ performances before and after they received their feedback. This will be done with the help of a software, Wordsmith Tools, which will define the frequency of each marker before and after the feedback to determine if there has been an improvement or not.Show less
Chinese students studying in UK Universities contribute significantly to the UK economy (Leedham, 2011). There are other non-economic potential benefits to both UK universities and Chinese students...Show moreChinese students studying in UK Universities contribute significantly to the UK economy (Leedham, 2011). There are other non-economic potential benefits to both UK universities and Chinese students which are not currently efficiently utilised. These include academic skills, cultural competency and the knowledge base of domestic students (Arthur, 2015). Students’ success at university depends on their ability to write academic English however, some UK academics report that Chinese students’ writing is not at a sufficient level for academic success. Previous studies have examined Chinese students written errors in their home countries or during their pre-sessional course, but have not examined the main grammatical errors affecting students’ in-course writing. A corpus of Chinese students academic writing in UK universities was accessed and examined to identify the main grammatical writing errors following the procedure for Error Analysis proposed by Corder (1967). The main errors were examined using Lado’s 1957 Contrastive Analysis procedures to determine the difficulty of the grammatical forms for Chinese students. Previous strategies for redressing Chinese students’ grammatical errors are reviewed and the importance of the link between academic success and cross cultural communication competence in the efficient utilization of the non-economic benefits of Chinese students studying in the UK is highlighted.Show less
Signed languages are used by deaf communities globally and are considered the languages of deaf people. Late deafened people are also deaf in an audiological sense, although they lost their hearing...Show moreSigned languages are used by deaf communities globally and are considered the languages of deaf people. Late deafened people are also deaf in an audiological sense, although they lost their hearing after acquiring speech, yet are commonly assumed not to learn signed languages. The aim of this thesis was to test this assumption by exploring 1) how frequently late deafened people choose to learn a signed language and 2) the factors which motivate this choice, focusing on native English speakers. Two separate studies were performed using both quantitative and qualitative methods in order to gather data for these two research questions. In the first study 25 adults with hearing loss completed an anonymous online survey comprised of both multiple choice and open questions. The second study analysed five blog posts written by late deafened adults in order to gain insight into their attitudes towards signed languages and their identities in relation to their hearing loss. The survey results showed that over half (59%) of the late deafened participants had learned a signed language, although they did not frequently use it and mostly communicated through speech. The factors which appeared to influence the choice to learn or not were found to be: the participants’ level of satisfaction with their ability to communicate without knowledge of a signed language; the support of their family and friends; and a positive attitude towards both signed languages and the Deaf community. Overall, my research found that late deafened people face a struggle in terms of their attitudes and identity when they become deaf and, although the majority of them continue to use English, many also choose to learn a signed language.Show less
Throughout the decades, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories change. However, this does not mean that discarded theories vanish from the field. This thesis analyses two discarded theories of...Show moreThroughout the decades, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories change. However, this does not mean that discarded theories vanish from the field. This thesis analyses two discarded theories of SLA, Contrastive Analysis (CA) and Error Analysis (EA), and then compares and contrasts them to five other SLA theories. The main questions are: where and how CA and EA resurface in other theories, and whether their continuing presence is of a sufficient nature to claim they are still relevant.Show less
