Priming

Finding out which lexico-semantic features of cognates are critical in cross-language studies and comparing these features with noncognates helps researchers to decide which features to control in studies with cognates. Normative databases provide necessary information for this purpose. Such resources are lacking in the Persian language. We created a dataset and determined norms for the essential lexico-semantic features of 288 cognates and noncognates and matched them across conditions. Furthermore, we examined the relationship between these features and the response time (RT) and accuracy of responses in a masked-priming lexical decision task. This task was performed in English by Persian-English speakers in conditions where the prime and target words were related or unrelated in terms of meaning and/or form. Overall, familiarity with English words and English frequency were the best predictors of RT in related and unrelated priming conditions. Pronunciation similarity also predicted RT in the related condition for cognates, while the number of phonemes in the prime predicted RT for the unrelated condition. For both related and unrelated conditions, English frequency was the best predictor for noncognates. This bilingual dataset can be used in bilingual word processing and recognition studies of cognates and noncognates.

This study focused on the pedagogical application of priming in an EFL context. Structural priming refers to the speakers’ tendency to produce the structure they encountered in recent discourse in subsequent production compared to an alternative form. Given the limited number of studies in the literature with a focus on the application of priming in L2 teaching and the problems that L2 learners face during speech production, the present study aimed at investigating whether the implication of priming leads to a more frequent oral and written production of the relative clause (RC) structure compared to adjectival modification of nouns (AN) in long- and short-terms as an instance of implicit learning. Participants consisted of 60 EFL female L2 learners, aged between 18-25 years old. Two experimental and 1 control groups were defined and 20 participants were allocated to each group. By applying a pretest, a treatment, an immediate posttest, a delayed posttest design, a picture description task, and a grammaticality judgment test (GJT), the data were gathered. Results of the descriptive and inferential analyses revealed that the implication of priming led to an improvement in the rate of the RC construction when the participants were involved in the written production of the L2, as compared to oral modality. Results are discussed based on structural complexity and procedures involved in L2 production. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are considered, too.

While second language acquisition can be a complex and time-consuming process, developing efficient approaches that are less demanding on the part of the learner can greatly enhance the learning outcomes. The present study was an attempt to explore the potential application of priming as an approach to enhance the production of motion phrasal verbs. Ninety students were divided into intermediate and upper-intermediate groups based on their proficiency levels. The participants were required to narrate a silent movie as a baseline written production task. In the next stage, for the purpose of priming, they were required to read a storybook containing instances of motion events expressed in phrasal verbs. Immediately afterward, the participants were asked to narrate a second silent movie. The researchers also administered a working memory test to investigate its potential impact on the learning outcomes. The results indicated that only the upper-intermediate group benefited from the priming mechanism. Additionally, the results suggested that working memory did not show a significant predictive role in implicit learning within the specific context of motion phrasal verbs. These findings are in line with the processability hypothesis, which posits that developmental readiness plays a significant role in language learning.