TESL 5612: Applied Language Study II Gianna Felice

June 17th, 2022

Discussion Handout
Akira Murakami, Theodora Alexopoulou
L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION ORDER OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL
MORPHEMES (2016)

I. Summary
Murakami and Alexopoulou investigate second language learners’ acquisition
order when it comes to six English grammatical morphemes. The learners’ chosen for this
case study are from seven L1 groups across five proficiency levels. The data that
Murakami and Alexopoulou had drawn were from approximately 10,000 written exam
scripts. The case study at hand discusses the clear L1 influence on the accuracy in of
morphemes as well as their acquisition order. They want to try and understand whether or
not learners’ show a universal pattern regarding to the acquisition order.
The research questions they came up with are the following:
1.Does L1 affect the accuracy order of L2 English grammatical morphemes?
a. Is the accuracy order consistent within each L1 group?
b. Is the accuracy order different among L1 groups?
c. Can we attribute differences in accuracy order among L1s to specific
properties of the L1?
2. How strong is L1 influence in determining the accuracy of English grammatical
morphemes compared to other factors such as general proficiency?
3. Are grammatical morphemes equally or differentially affected by the L1?
4. Can we link L1 influence to the absence or presence of congruent morphemes
in the L1 in a systematic way?
a.) Case Study
They began the case study by targeting the six most frequently studied
morphemes (which also happened to be included in the meta-analysis by
Goldschneider and DeKeyser in 2001). The L1’s they chose were partially
determined by the structure of the corpus, as well as L1’s with sufficient
amounts of data across the proficiency system. Therefore including
TESL 5612: Applied Language Study II Gianna Felice

June 17th, 2022

participants with L1 Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, German,
and French learners of English.
For the study they used exam scripts from the Main Suite Examinations
consisting of five different proficiency levels as well as the length and time
limit of the scrips varying across the exam levels. They then used corrected
versions of CLC to identify the obligatory contexts, adding up all the
instances of a morpheme in the corrected text. Using the accuracy scores and
replicating the earlier correlation analysis, they were able to identify the clear
L1 effects. Regardless, the numerous claims for the “natural” order of L2
acquisition of English grammatical morphemes, the present study has
demonstrated that they are not an exception to L1 influence. They found that
the morphemes encoding-language in specific notions are more seriously
affected from the L1 than morpheme encoding more universal concepts.
II. Comments
I appreciate the wide variety that occurred during this case study, as I feel like
with a wider amount of participants, its easy to compare one to another. It was also
interesting to note that in the absence of the equivalent form in the L1, it almost always
nearly led to 90% below in all of the morphemes. That is quite a dramatic percent
amount.
III. Pedagogical Implications
I think based off of all of the research that was done in this case study, it was well
put together. It’s interesting to see with the research to go against the theory that there is a
universal order when acquiring L2 morphemes.
IV. Discussion Questions
1.) Based off of your own experience, do you think your L1 (your overall understanding
of it) affects your L2?
2.) Do you think grammatical morphemes are equally or differentially affected by the
L1? Why or why not