This research is a replication and expansion of Lightbown and Spada (2000) which investigated the metalinguistic awareness of 11--12 year-old francophone learners of English as second language (ESL). Their research examined whether young L2 learners were able to make explicit L1 rules influencing their L2 performance. The present research builds on Lightbown and Spada (2000) by comparing their findings to those of older and more proficient francophone ESL learners (12--16 years old) in secondary school. As observed with the younger learners in Lightbown and Spada (2000), the interlanguage of the older learners revealed a clear influence of transfer of French even though they were more accurate in their overall performance. The results also indicated that the older learners were capable of considerable metalinguistic awareness regarding the target features (question formation and adverb placement). This contrasts sharply with Lightbown and Spada's (2000) in which there was no evidence of metalinguistic awareness on the part of the younger learners.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.33912 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Lepine, Christine. |
| Contributors | Spada, Nina (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Second Language Education.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001871926, proquestno: MQ79019, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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