Evaluation of McDonough (2006) by Sorin

McDonough, K. (2006). Interaction and syntactic priming. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 28, 179-207.

Syntactic priming, which has been vigorously investigated in 1st language acquisition and psycholinguistics research, is a “phenomenon that is characterized by a speaker’s repeated production of a previously spoken or heard structure across successive utterances” (p. 181). This study, as the first research to adopt syntactic priming in second language interaction research, explores whether syntactic priming plays a role in L2 development through interaction. Two research questions were posed: (1) Does syntactic priming occur during interaction between L2 English speakers?; and (2) Do English L2 speakers show increased use of the target structure following exposure to syntactic priming? English dative construction, which has two interchangeable forms (prepositional datives-PD, and double-object datives-DOD) was the target structure of this study, and two experiments were conducted with advanced English learners. The first experiment showed that syntactic priming occurred only with PD even though the participants were exposed to both PD and DOD priming, and the number of PD production increased over time (through baseline, priming, and post-priming). The second experiment, which then investigated DOD construction only, again failed to show the evidence of syntactic priming, indicating that most of the participants might not have been ready for the DOD construction as shown in the ad-hoc analysis. In the ad-hoc analysis of production data, those participants who produced DOD construction in the baseline data, showed increased production of DOD in priming session. The current study did not directly investigate the issue of error correction (only positive evidence provided in the form of syntactic priming by the interlocutor was examined in this study), however, it showed the potential role of syntactic priming in error correction research by demonstrating L2 learner’s more frequent production of target forms due to syntactic priming.

Here are some implications of this study. First and foremost, this study showed that syntactic priming did occur in L2 interaction, and L2 learners produced target structure more as a result of syntactic priming provided by the interlocutor. Since syntactic priming can occur across several turns, although this study was limited to learner’s subsequent production following syntactic priming, the findings can offer an invaluable insight to error correction research, particularly on the effectiveness of implicit error correction such as recasts, as shown in McDonough and Mackey (2006). Second, this research suggested that positive evidence provided through syntactic priming not only offered models but also triggered target language output leading to L2 learning. Third, the findings demonstrated the crucial role of development sequence on syntactic priming. In order to ensure the effect of syntactic priming on learner’s subsequent production and eventually acquisition, it seemed that learners should be at the right development sequence (in this study, learners produced more PD but not DOD, which is considered to be more difficult).

With regard to usefulness, comprehensive review of syntactic priming research (including definition and different types of syntactic priming, empirical studies conducted on syntactic priming-although most of them were on L1 acquisition and only a few on L2-, and the elicitation techniques used in those studies) will be very useful resources to those who are interested in this line of research. In addition, this research newly adopted confederate scripting technique, in which a participant carries out tasks with a confederate of the researcher instead of another participant. This technique allowed the researcher to control more carefully participants’ exposure to and production of target structure. Thus, those students who are seeking ways to hold more control over input and interaction of the participants, will find this technique useful.

Overall, the idea of adopting syntactic priming in L2 acquisition research was very interesting to me. Also I enjoyed following the logical development of research questions building on the findings of previously studies, as shown in the current study (from previous research to current study and from experiment 1 to experiment 2) as well as in her next study which was based on the current study (McDonough & Mackey, 2006). However, while development of arguments was logical and easy to follow, there were some details and terms that were not so clearly written and confusing; it made me stop and ponder what the researcher meant. Thus, this article may not be so easy to read for those who are not familiar with this line of research.

As for course reading, I do not want to recommend this article. It is not because this article is not worth reading, but because the follow-up article, McDonough & Mackey (2006), showed the role of syntactic priming in L2 interaction and development in a more comprehensive and convincing way, with relation to error correction (in their study, recasts), learner’s different responses (repetition and primed production), and L2 development. Thus, I would recommend including McDonough & Mackey’s article in our reading packet, and leave this article as “highly recommendable” for those who are interested in syntactic priming.