Type of Document	Thesis
Author	Tabulda, Galiya
URN	etd-05242010-225007
Title	The Role of Explicit Information and Individual Differences in Processing Russian Sentences
Degree	Master of Arts
Department	Modern Languages, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Michael Leeser Committee Member
Keywords	Sentence Processing Processing Instruction Russian
Date of Defense	2010-04-02
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract An on-going debate in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) concerns the role of explicit information (EI) about language in language acquisition. This study explores the role of EI in how instructed second language learners of Russian interpret case morphology. Russian language has free word order, and learners have to rely on grammatical case markings instead of defaulting to the non-optimal strategy of tagging the first noun in the sentence as subject. The study examined how 59 learners of Russian process 30 Russian sentences with canonical (SVO) and inverted (OVS) word order. In order to interpret these sentences correctly the participants had to make use of case morphology and adopt a new processing strategy. The learners were divided into two groups by the type of treatment: (1) full PI treatment group; (2) Structured Input (SI) only group. The PI group received explanation about the importance of case morphology in interpreting Russian sentences, the SI group did not. The reaction times, trials to criterion and accuracy on OVS sentences were measured. The results of the experiment revealed a significant beneficial effect of EI for processing Russian OVS sentences: the PI group processed them more accurately and started doing so sooner than the SI group. There were also two individual differences tasks used in this study: the Simon task, which measured inhibitory control, and the Operation span task, which was used to measure the participants‟ working memory capacity (WMC). The results revealed that greater internal resources were related to superior performance: high WMC individuals more accurately processed OVS sentences, and weaker inhibitory control was correlated with slower reaction times.
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