Reading ¿Qué Tal? Magazine and the occurrence of incidental learning of formulaic expressions in Spanish. September 2008 Cary Jo Hartley De La Salle College

Rational  ¿Qué Tal? Magazine was incorporated into classroom curriculum based on Ellis (2006) principals # 6 &7.  After repeated reading & writing activities from ¿Qué Tal? students in my class were using formulaic expressions from the reading which had not been taught.

Rational  I became interested in seeing what affect this regular exposure to reading ¿Qué Tal? Magazine had on the incidental learning of vocabulary or formulaic expressions being observed in class

Resources  Two interview sections of ¿Qué Tal? Magazine were used. ENTREVISTA AL LECTOR DEL MES! and ¿QUIEN ES…?  Selected to reinforce formulaic expressions being taught in the course.  Interviews are of students their age and popular celebrities in both sport or entertainment.  ¿Qué Tal? is motivating, forces students to determine meaning of new vocabulary and negotiate meaning of unfamiliar text.

Resources  These are higher level thinking processes (Joe, 1998) & key characteristics identified in the Involvement Load Hypothesis. Found to be associated to retention in second language acquisition and incidental vocabulary learning (Keeting, 2008; Laufer & Hulstin 2001).

Subjects  21 Year 9 boys in term two Spanish class. This is a 10 week option class at De La Salle College.

Method  Aim: reinforce the acquisition of a new formulaic expressions from instruction.  Task: Students read the interview sections of ¿Qué Tal?  They were asked to: –Read the interviews silently (Ellis, 2006) –Choose a character, read out loud in partners, switch roles (Ellis & He, 1999; Ellis 2006) –Answer comprehension questions in L2 about the reading as a whole, not just on the information taught in class. (Laufer & Hulstin. 2001; Keating, 2008) This activity was given once a week for six weeks. (Huckin & Cody. 1999; Lee 2002)

Data Collection  At end of six weeks students were asked to write an interview style dialogue mirroring the style of the ¿Qué Tal? interviews as a homework assignment.  They were instructed to include formulaic expression from class  They were challenged “to make it their own”, “customize it”

Results  18 out of 21 students turned in their homework assignment.  6 out of the 18 students included formulaic expressions within their dialogue that had not been taught in class.

Scoring  For the purpose of analyzing the data formulaic expression questions and formulaic expression responses were scored separately because the response to the formulaic question can occur in the dialogue without its formulaic question being asked as in the following example: ¿ Dónde Vive? Vivo en Papatoetoe. ¿ Y tu? Vivo en Mangere.

Data

Incidental Formulaic Expressions Found

Conclusion  The use of ¿Qué Tal? Magazine regularly, contributed to incidental learning of new formulaic expressions in SLA. The multi-layer task was beneficial for 25% of the students.  Text selection was important by supporting the formulaic expressions being taught in class.  The incidental learning of formulaic expressions was represented in the students independent writing of 25% of the students.

Constraints  This was a homework assignment,therefore only those who were motivated completed the assignment.  Students could have used the internet or other translating methods.

Next Steps  Make assessment task an in class assignment  Use different text with same task to see if result can be duplicated.  Use information found in empirical research to construct tasks and assignments with the various components that have been linked with SLA acquisition and retention (repetition, higher level thinking processes and TL2 input and output).

References