Syntactic disambiguation in L2 reading: A systematic review of experimental studies

Research output: Contribution to conferencePoster

Abstract

There is an unending discussion at the interface between psycholinguistics and language pedagogy: Does L2 processing profoundly differ from L1 processing, or does it function by utilizing the L1 network? It has been a task to decide on the exact principles explaining the L2 processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences and elaborate on respective reading strategies. To delve into the phenomenon empirically, it is crucial to choose the research procedure.

In this regard, the present study addresses the following questions: (1) What are the most common procedures to investigate syntactic disambiguation in L2 reading, according to the literature of the past 5 years? (2) What are the contexts of the retrieved empirical studies, i.e., L1 and L2 of their samples? (3) What are the science database contexts and indexation of the studies? To answer the questions, I use a systematic approach to conducting a review (Xiao and Watson, 2019). On the stage of data collection, secondary sources such as existing peer-reviewed research articles are identified in Google Scholar. The received items are further screened for relevance manually and automatically within the purposive sampling technique and relevance sorting. To ensure the eligibility of items, they are skimmed through to check whether the procedure is indeed experimental, and the study is published within the past 5-year period.

It was found that most empirical studies commonly use the SPR paradigm, sometimes together with eye-tracking to elucidate on real-time processing. The study recommends future research to focus on languages other than L2 English/Mandarin to better understand L2 syntactic ambiguity processing. Largely, the study can serve as a guide for choosing the appropriate experimental procedure while researching cross-linguistic differences in syntactic ambiguity resolution. Copyright © 2021 AAAL.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2021
Event2021 Virtual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics -
Duration: 20 Mar 202123 Mar 2021
https://www.aaal.org/history-and-future-dates##

Conference

Conference2021 Virtual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics
Abbreviated titleAAAL 2021
Period20/03/2123/03/21
Internet address

Citation

Darzhinova, L. (2021, March). Syntactic disambiguation in L2 reading: A systematic review of experimental studies. Poster presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics 2021 Conference (AAAL 2021), Virtual.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Syntactic disambiguation in L2 reading: A systematic review of experimental studies'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.