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Gabrielle Klassen, Aline Ferreira and John W. Schwieter*
The role of immersion learning in the
acquisition and processing of L2 gender
agreement
https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2020-0038
Received May 17, 2020; accepted December 4, 2020;
published online February 15, 2021
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the effects of learning environment on second
language (L2) gender agreement. English speakers learning L2 Spanish partici-
pated in a self-paced reading task and a picture selection task prior to and after a
short-term study abroad experience. The results from the self-paced reading task
showed that their reliance on the masculine article as the default (e.g., McCarthy,
Corrine. 2008. Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: An
argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research 24(4).
459–486) was reduced over time abroad. Findings from the picture selection task
showed that the learners did not attend to the gender of articles unless it was their
only cue, but that after the study abroad experience they began to use gender as an
anticipatory cue for lexical selection. We interpret these results as support for an
adapted version of the Shallow Structures Hypothesis (Clahsen, Harald & Claudia
Felser. 2006a. Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholin-
guistics 27(1). 3–42; Clahsen, Harald & Claudia Felser. 2006b. How native-like is
non-native language processing? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(12). 564–570) and
the notion that in immersion contexts L2 learners shift their parsing strategy to be
more communicatively focused (Schwieter, John W. & Gabrielle Klassen. 2016.
Linguistic advances and learning strategies in a short-term study abroad experi-
ence. Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International
Education 1(2). 217–247).
Keywords: grammatical gender agreement; L2 acquisition; study abroad;
U-shaped learning
*Corresponding author: John W. Schwieter, Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, and Cognition
Lab / Bilingualism Matters at Laurier, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada,
E-mail: jschwieter@wlu.ca
Gabrielle Klassen, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada,
E-mail: gabrielle.klassen@mail.utoronto.ca
Aline Ferreira, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA,
E-mail: aferreira@spanport.ucsb.edu
Applied Linguistics Review 2023; 14(2): 391–413
1 Introduction
Study abroad (SA) is an extraordinary experience for learners of a second language
(L2) (see Sanz and Morales-Front 2018 for recent developments). It is increasingly
common for L2 learners to embark on even the shortest of immersion experiences
during their post-secondary studies in order to develop their L2 proficiency (Allen
and Herron 2003; Chieffo and Griffiths 2004; Jackson et al. forthcoming; Schwieter
2013). Research on L2 processing and L2 acquisition more generally, however,
oftentimes largely conflate SA experience with proficiency (e.g., Bañón et al. 2014;
Sabourin et al. 2006). While there is evidence suggesting that L2 proficiency
increases with time spent abroad from standardized testing (e.g., Davidson 2010),
research on SA in general suggest that lexical and vocabulary gains are common
(e.g., Briggs 2015; Fitzpatrick 2012), but grammatical development is not guaran-
teed (for a recent review, see Howard and Schwieter 2018). Since many studies
include time spent abroad as a secondary measure of proficiency, this makes it
difficult to know precisely what the role of learning environment is in the acqui-
sition process and how the learning environment shapes L2 processing strategies.
In order to fully understand not only what L2 learners have acquired in a SA
context but also how it is acquired and how the acquisition context may shape L2
processing, it is important to investigate both online and offline responses before
and after a SA experience. This paper seeks to disentangle the role of context from
proficiency by investigating novice learners and their L2 learning and parsing
strategies before and after a short-term SA experience with respect to one often-
studied phenomenon: nominal gender agreement.
2 Background
2.1 Acquisition and processing of grammatical gender in
beginning L2 learners
A wealth of L2 acquisition research has shown that acquiring nominal gender
agreement is challenging for L2 learners regardless of whether or not their first
language (L1) has nominal gender (Alarcón 2011; Bruhn de Garavito and White
2002; Franceschina 2005; Grüter et al. 2012; Montrul et al. 2008). A common finding
is that L2 learners seem to quickly comprehend gender agreement to a high level of
accuracy but continue to differ from native speakers in production and in online
tasks, including sensitivity to gender agreement mismatches (e.g., Gillon Dowens
et al. 2010; Sabourin and Stowe 2008) and the use of gender as a facilitative cue for
392 Klassen et al.
lexical selection (e.g., Grüter et al.). More specifically, they over-use the masculine
gender morphology on articles with feminine nouns (e.g., McCarthy 2008; White
et al. 2004). However, studies which include very beginning learners find that L2
processing is native-like in some respects even at early stages of acquisition
(e.g., Dekydspotter and Renaud 2009; Renaud 2011). Together, these studies
suggest that the L2 acquisition and processing path may be U-shaped, and the
turning point appears to occur around the time that L2 learners typically partici-
pate in SA experiences.
In terms of offline studies, there are often clear and linear developmental
patterns. Initially, beginning L2 learners are tasked with the challenge of adding
new nouns to their L2 lexicon while assigning the correct gender to them, if the
language in question overtly marks grammatical gender. Above and beyond
gender assignment, they must acquire the syntactic process of gender agreement
which results in the corresponding gender agreement morphology on articles and
adjectives. L2 development with respect to this has been well-documented in the
field. Typically, only novice learners, but not intermediate nor advanced learners,
perform at chance in offline tasks. This results in a ceiling effect for intermediate
and advanced learners, whereas novice learners show around 50% accuracy in
tasks involving the selection of correct gender agreement morphology (Hawkins
and Franceschina 2004; Iverson 2010; Liceras et al. 2000; White et al. 2004) or the
identification of gender agreement mismatches (e.g., Dekydspotter and Renaud
2009; Keating 2009; Montrul et al. 2008; Renaud 2011; Sagarra and Herschensohn
2011). As L2 proficiency increases, learners’accuracy in offline comprehension
tasks also improves. For example, Renaud (2011) and Dekydspotter and Renaud
(2009) found that beginning learners perform at chance in identifying gender
agreement mismatches, but they soon pass into an intermediate stage where they
both comprehend and produce gender agreement above chance, albeit without
native-like accuracy (see Franceschina 2005 for similar results in production
among advanced learners). In this case, the path of L2 acquisition appears to be
linear: learn the components of the language and improve in accuracy using those
components.
When looking at trends in L2 processing research, however, the pattern is less
clear. Studies which test very novice learners provide insight into the initial
learning stages and processes of L2 acquisition. Given that higher proficiency is
generally understood to correlate with more native-like processing (e.g., van Hell
and Tokowicz 2010), it is surprising to see that some studies have found native-like
processing for very novice learners, even among those who perform at chance in
offline comprehension tasks (e.g., Dekydspotter and Renaud 2009; Renaud 2011).
For example, Renaud (2011) investigated the performance of native English
speakers who were beginning, intermediate, and advanced learners of L2 French
The role of immersion learning 393
using a self-paced reading task. The authors found that even leaners with only two
semesters of exposure to French were slower to respond when presented with mis-
matched gender agreement between nouns and articles. These participants,
however, failed to reject mismatched items in a grammaticality judgement task but
instead performed at chance.
Other processing studies which include intermediate and advanced L2
learners show that even though L2 learners perform like monolinguals in offline
tasks, they do not necessarily show the same online responses. For example,
Scherag et al. (2004) measured reaction times (RTs) in a lexical decision task
including gender agreement mismatches by native English speakers learning L2
German. The authors found that the learners, unlike native speakers, did not have
slower RTs when presented with a gender agreement mismatch (see also Sabourin
and Stowe 2008; Gillon Dowens et al. 2010 for similar results). These results
suggest that L2 learners do not necessarily show sensitivity to gender agreement
violations even after showing high accuracy in offline tasks. Rather, the authors
conclude that L2 learners must have a high enough level of L2 proficiency to show
sensitivity to agreement errors. Since the group did not show sensitivity to the
errors, they likely did not hold a sufficiently high level of proficiency.
Above and beyond prompting online responses to gender agreement errors,
gender agreement can be measured using gender as a facilitative cue for lexical
selection. For example, Dussias et al. (2013) used eyetracking to investigate the
reliance on gender as a facilitative cue among highly-proficient English learners of
L2 Spanish. The participants were presented with two images which either had the
same or different gender and were asked to select the image that was audibly
played to them. These oral stimuli consisted of article and a noun. The participants
looked to the target noun more quickly when the two images had a gender
mismatch than when the images had the same gender. In other words, like native
speakers, the L2 learners used the article’s grammatical gender to shift their gaze
to the target noun even before the onset of the noun. This study among others
(e.g., Hopp 2013) shows that L2 learners may eventually use gender cues to process
efficiently, similar to results found for native speakers, but this is not always the
case (cf., Grüter et al. 2012; Guillelmon and Grosjean 2001; Lew-Williams and
Fernald 2010).
Taken together, these studies suggest that the development of a L2 processing
strategy may not be strictly linear. Instead, there appears to be a complex U-shaped
developmental pattern in which L2 learners appear to be sensitive to gender
agreement before they are able to consciously identify gender agreement mis-
matches. Then, at later stages of development, they consciously acquire the syn-
tactic process of gender agreement, and they are able to identify gender agreement
mismatches but they lose their online sensitivity to gender agreement mismatches.
394 Klassen et al.
At higher levels of L2 proficiency, learners may show sensitivity to gender agree-
ment mismatches in online tasks and also begin to use gender as a facilitative cue
for lexical selection.
Although these studies highlight an intriguing L2 processing pattern, very
little is known about the early stages in which learners improve their offline
knowledge of their L2 while their processing appears to become less native-like.
Since proficiency and SA experience are often correlated, it is not clear how the
learning context affects the acquisition and processing strategies of L2 learners.
This shift in processing strategy occurs sometime around when L2 learners typi-
cally choose to study abroad (i.e., at early and intermediate levels). For L2 learners
who choose to participate in an immersion experience, this learning context may
be at least partially responsible for the U-shaped pattern observed in L2 processing
and acquisition (Schwieter and Klassen 2016).
2.2 Effects of context on L2 processing and acquisition of
gender agreement
In the previous section, we identified a potential U-shaped pattern in L2 acquisi-
tion and processing. There appears to be an intermediate stage where L2 learners
gain accuracy in offline gender agreement tasks but where their online responses
to gender agreement mismatches and possibly facilitative gender cues become less
native-like. A common point brought up when considering why L2 learners seem to
linger on their non-native representations or processes is that L2 learners, often
classroom-based learners, are exposed to a different quantity and quality of input
(e.g., Gruter et al. 2012; Phillips and Ehrenhoeffer 2015), which yields a different
learning process than children learning their L1. As such, it is not surprising that
the different learning context yields a distinct learning result.
Although SA contexts have indeed been shown to yield gains in speaking,
reading, and listening skills (Brown et al. 2009; Dewey 2004, 2008; Segalowitz and
Freed 2004; Segalowitz et al. 2004; Tschirner 2007; see Davidson 2010; Freed 1995a
for reviews), lexical development (Collentine 2004; Laufer and Paribakht 1998;
Schwieter 2013), communicative competence (Freed 1995b; Lafford 1995; Rothman
and Iverson 2007), identification and socialization skills (Pellegrino 2005;
Schwieter and Ferreira 2014; Wang 2010), L2 learners abroad do not necessarily
make significant gains in (morpho)syntactic domains (Collentine 2004, 2009;
Howard 2001; Isabelli and Nishida 2005; Llanes and Muñoz 2009). Given that some
research has shown that learning context can affect changes in processing even
when accuracy does not improve (e.g., Morgan-Short et al. 2012; Sanz et al. 2009),
and the pattern previously observed in L2 processing appears to interact with
The role of immersion learning 395
changes occurring roughly during this time, it is necessary to investigate the role of
context in L2 processing and how this affects trajectories of L2 acquisition at early
stages.
Previous work in SA contexts has almost entirely relied on offline responses,
but some clear trends can be observed for morpho-syntactic development. Many
studies report no gains in these grammatical domains (Collentine 2004, 2009;
Howard 2001), while others have found that learners perform worse after a short
stay abroad (e.g., Cubillos et al. 2008; Isabelli-García 2010; Schwieter and Klassen
2016). These results have been explained as the consequence of a learning context
which entails a shift in task demand. As opposed to traditional classroom settings,
immersion learning highly prioritizes communication. Under these conditions,
gender agreement becomes much less important since the speaker can be un-
derstood even if there is a gender agreement mismatch.
This shift in strategy offers a testable explanation for the U-shape trend
observed above in L2 processing and acquisition: while studying abroad, L2
learners quickly adjust their processing strategy to ignore grammatical compo-
nents that do not have immediate or dire consequences for communication. This
may be why they appear to lose sensitivity to grammatical errors even though their
offline accuracy improves, and why in production, L2 learners overuse the default
form instead of making errors with both genders. This explanation has yet to be
explicitly tested, however, and may be compatible with current accounts of L2
processing.
2.3 L2 processing models relevant to immersion contexts
While many agree that proficiency is an important factor in characterizing
whether L2 processing strategies will be native-like, no theory to date, however,
clearly defines the complex relationship between interlanguage processing
strategies, acquisition stages, and learning context. Two influential approaches
include the Reduced Ability to Generate Expectations (RAGE) Hypothesis (Grüter
and Rohde 2013; Grüter et al. 2014, 2017; see also Kaan et al. 2010) and the
Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH; Clahsen and Felser 2006a, 2006b). Although
originally developed in response to results from highly proficient learners, both
of these frameworks will be considered in this paper in terms of their predictions
for interlanguage processing in different learning contexts.
The RAGE Hypothesis (Grüter and Rohde 2013; Grüter et al. 2014, 2017) pro-
poses that non-native processing occurs specifically in the domain of predictive
processing. The difference between integrative and predictive processes is rela-
tively new to L2 processing discussions (see Phillips and Erenhoeffer 2015;
396 Klassen et al.
and Kaan 2014, to read recent calls for research). Grüter and colleagues have
proposed that integrative processing is necessarily prioritized in L2 processing and
that predictive strategies are less reliable. In this case, L2 learners will focus their
cognitive resources on integrating information and will demonstrate a reduced
ability to generate predictions.
Although not mutually exclusive, Clahsen and Felser (2006a, 2006b, 2018)
have suggested that the difference between L2 and native processing is that L2
learners employ a more simplistic or shallow processing strategy in their L2.
According to Clahsen and Felser, due to increased processing load, L2 learners
may ignore syntactic details and rely on pragmatic/lexical cues for interpretation.
However, since gender agreement between articles and nouns is usually local in
nature, given high enough proficiency, L2 learners will demonstrate native-like
processing strategies in both the sensitivity to gender agreement violations and the
use of gender agreement morphology to predictively guide lexical processing.
What these two models have in common is that the motivation for differing
results in L2 and native processing stems largely from the (well-motivated)
assumption that L2 learners must compensate for having fewer processing
resources in their L2. For the RAGE Hypothesis, this means focusing on integrative
processes as integration requires fewer cognitive resources compared to predictive
processes, which presuppose highly efficient integration. For the SSH, it means
ignoring higher-order processes and relying on shallower interpretations. Both
models agree that at high levels of L2 proficiency, learners can attain some level of
native-likeness (although they differ as to what this may look like in experimental
settings). However, neither model makes explicit predictions for how the context of
acquisition will affect their parsing strategies.
3 Present study
3.1 Research questions and hypotheses
In the previous sections, we have identified a U-shaped pattern in L2 sentence
processing and have proposed that the apparent regression from native-like
parsing strategies may coincide with the time in which L2 learners tend to study
abroad. In a series of experiments, we tease apart the representation and online
integration of gender agreement as well as the use of gender agreement as a
facilitative cue for lexical selection.
Since it is precisely in SA settings that language use becomes more involved
and holds more real-time, real-life consequences and since very few studies have
considered learners prior to this kind of experience, it is possible that the SSH
The role of immersion learning 397
and/or RAGE Hypotheses hold true only after L2 learners study abroad. In other
words, it may be that L2 learners diverge from native speaker populations in non-
local syntactic domains (SSH) or in high-level/involved processing domains
(RAGE) only in intermediate to advanced stages of development as a direct result
of the increased processing cost of using their L2 in an immersion context. In other
words, L2 learners may adapt their parsing strategies to cope with increased
processing demands in SA contexts either by reducing the syntactic information
added to the parse (SSH) or by focusing on integrative processes and forgoing the
costly predictive processes (RAGE).
In the case of the SSH, a shift towards a communication-based strategy may
cause learners to rely more on lexical-pragmatic cues, supporting the U-shaped
processing pattern previously observed in offline studies (e.g., Schwieter and
Klassen 2016). In other words, if the adapted version of the SSH holds true, L2
learners may showeven less native-like sensitivity in both integrative and predictive
tasks after SA. This hypothesis does not predict a difference between tasks, however.
The RAGE Hypothesis, on the other hand, exploits the difference between more-
and less-difficult processing tasks. This may be a direct result of the shift towards a
communication-based strategy found previously in offline tasks (e.g., Isabelli-Garcia
2010; Schwieter and Klassen 2016). If this is the case, L2 learners may integrate the
gender agreement cues more efficiently post-SA, but they will not show greater use of
gender agreement morphology as a predictive cue in post-SA sessions. Instead, they
will underperform in this task after their SA experience.
3.2 Participants
Twenty-four English learners of L2 Spanish participated in this study. All learners
were university students in a predominantly English-speaking region of Canada
and participated in a short-term SA experience. The learners ranged in age from
18–22 at the time of testing and had just completed their fourth semester
(i.e., intermediate level) of university-level Spanish (L2). Based on the university’s
12-week term structure, the amount of L2 classroom instruction totaled 48 weeks
(144 h). The participants also reported taking French (L2) prior to university during
which time they obtained a low to intermediate level of proficiency.
1
Descriptive
statistics can be seen in Table 1.
1Although French is also a language with grammatical gender, Bruhn de Garavito and White
(2002) have shown that there is no transfer of grammatical gender from French to Spanish. Even
though we do not consider it to be an influence here either, future work may benefit from testing
whether or not there is indeed transfer.
398 Klassen et al.
The learners participated in a 25-day immersion experience in Salamanca,
Spain, where they attended intensive grammar and conversation classes in
Spanish. These instructional hours totaled 75 h (25 h ×3 weeks). In addition, the
participants lived with Spanish-speaking host families and went on several
excursions led by Spanish-speaking guides.
Although it is not part of the experimental analyses, we asked participants to
rate their own L2 abilities in a language history questionnaire in the pre-SA and
post-SA testing sessions. On the ten-point scale, prior to the SA experience, par-
ticipants’mean self-rating in their L2 was 4.5 (SD = 1.97) while in the post-SA
session, participants’mean self-rating was 5.8 (SD = 2.03). It is not surprising that
the learners felt that their L2 improved by the end of the SA experience, although
we caution that this improvement is not supported by a standardized assessment
as this was outside the scope of the present study.
3.3 Design and procedure
The participants completed the experimental tasks in the following order: language
history questionnaire, picture selection task, and a non-cumulative self-paced
reading task. They completed all tasks individually in a quiet room in two sessions:
pre- and post-SA (Day 2 and 25 abroad, respectively). In the self-paced reading task,
participants were presented with sentences containing either matched (20 = mascu-
line, 20 = feminine) or mismatched article–noun pairs (20 = masculine nouns with
feminine articles, 20 = feminine nouns with masculine articles), half used inthe pre-
SA testing session, half in the post-SA testing session (40 experimental items, 32
filler items). Following Sagarra and Herschensohn (2011), the sentences were
divided into subject,verb, object, and post-object sections, as in (1) below. All tokens
use definite subjects and definite objects of transitive verbs in the present tense.
(1) El criado / limpia / el armario / sucio / por 20 minutos.
‘The servant cleans the dirty closet for 20 minutes.’
Q: El criado limpia el armario. CIERTO
‘The servant cleans the closet. TRUE’
Table :Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) of participant characteristics pre-SA.
MSD
Age . .
L(English) Age of Acquisition
L(French) Age of Acquisition . .
L(Spanish) Age of Acquisition . .
The role of immersion learning 399
Participants were instructed to read the sentences as quickly and accurately as
possible by pressing the space bar on the computer to move on to the next word/set
of words. A comprehension question was presented after all experimental ques-
tions and half of the 32 distractor items. Distractor items were all grammatical and
included nouns with prepositional phrase modifiers. A sample list of experimental
items can be seen in the Appendix.
The picture selection task included 92 images from Snodgrass and Vanderwart
(1980). Images were presented two at a time along with a computer-generated
production of an article and adjective. Items were selected based on frequency,
determined by the Corpus del Español (Davies 2016). We used computer-generated
speech to ensure that articles were unstressed, nouns had neutral stress, and
that the duration of each article was identical across the items. We inserted a
pause of 50 ms between the article and noun for each item. The oral prompt began
500 ms after the onset of the image to allow participants enough time to identify the
images on the screen. A blank screen was presented for 1500 ms in between trials.
The items were counter-balanced across two lists such that participantsonly saw
each image once, either in the pre- or post-SA session. The items occurred in two
conditions. In the “same gender”condition (Figure 1), the two nouns have the same
gender. In the “different gender”condition (Figure 2), the two nouns have different
genders. And in the control condition (Figure 3), the two nouns have different genders
but the same colour (10 with a feminine noun target, 10 with a masculine noun target).
The use of articles and colour adjectives without the noun as in (2), a possible
form in Spanish, serves to draw the learners’attention to the importance of the
gender morphology and therefore encourage them to attend to this cue in exper-
imental items.
(2) Elige la amarilla
Choose the.fem yellow.fem,
‘Choose the yellow one.’
Figure 1: Example of “same gender”condition (la zanahoria, la lechuga).
400 Klassen et al.
Participants needed to know the gender morphology to be able to select the target
image in experimental items. The colour adjectives used were: rojo/a “red”,
morado/a “purple”,anaranjado/a “orange”,amarillo/a “yellow”,negro/a
“black”,andblanco/a “white”. Half of the target items were on the left side of the
screen, half on the right. Natural colour pairs were avoided (e.g., red apple).
4 Results
4.1 Self-paced reading task
Data were identified as outliers and were removed in the reading time of the target
region and spill-over region (the noun and article region and the adjective region,
respectively) if they exceeded two SDs from the participant’s mean reading time for
a reading section, excluding the final portion. The final portion was not needed for
analysis, but it was excluded in the calculation of outliers because of possible
wrap-up effects.
Figure 2: Example of “different gender”condition (la mesa, el tel´
efono).
Figure 3: Example of control condition (la cuchara, el cepillo).
The role of immersion learning 401
The main question investigated in this experiment is whether beginning L2
learners show sensitivity to gender agreement errors in real time, indicating real-
time integration of gender agreement morphology. For each item, a follow-up
comprehension question was asked. Items for which the participant responded
incorrectly were excluded from the analysis. A linear mixed effects model was run
in R (R Core Team 2013) on the RTs for the target section (noun plus article) and the
spillover section (adjective) separately. For both sections, ‘RT’was the dependent
variable and ‘participant’and ‘item’were random variables. Main effects and
interactions were examined for the independent variables ‘SA session’(pre vs. post
SA), ‘gender agreement’(matched vs. mismatched), and ‘gender of the noun’
(masc. vs. fem. nouns).
In the target section of the sentence (article+noun), a mean difference of
164.04 ms reading time was found between the pre- and post-SA sessions
(see Table 2). This main effect was significant (β= 196.24, SE = 34.85, t=5.632,
p= 2.16e-08). No other main effects nor interactions were significant. All planned
post-hoc pairwise comparisons were run using the R package emmeans.Degrees
of freedom were calculated using the Satterthwaite approximation. pvalues were
adjusted automatically using the Tukey method, and so significance is reported
at p< 0.05. Each condition was compared to determine if the participants read the
matched condition faster than the mismatched condition. The only significant
difference was found for the pre-SA condition, when the noun was masculine
(β=−100.1, SE = 45.1, tratio = −2.217, p= 0.0297).
Turning now to the spillover section (adjective), the mean reading time is
summarized in Table 3. Again, it is clear from a significant main effect, participants
read this section 195.63 ms faster in the post-SA session compared to the pre-SA
session (β= 188.30, SE = 33.73, t= 5.583, p= 2.84e-08). A main effect of gender was
marginally significant (β= 64.90, SE = 33.730, t= 1.70, p= 0.09). No other main
Table :Mean reading times, SDs (in parentheses), and differences for matched (Fem.Art.-
Fem.Noun, Masc.Art.-Masc.Noun) and mismatched (Masc.Art.-Fem.Noun, Fem.Art.-Masc.Noun)
gender agreement for feminine and masculine nouns +articles in pre- and post-SA sessions.
Feminine nouns Masculine nouns
Fem.Art-
Fem.Noun
[matched]
Masc.Art.-
Fem.Noun
[mismatched]
Difference Masc.Art.-
Masc.Noun
[matched]
Fem.Art.-
Masc.Noun
[mismatched]
Difference
Pre-SA .
(.)
.
(.)
. .
(.)
.
(.)
−.
Post-SA .
(.)
.
(.)
−. .
(.)
.
(.)
−.
402 Klassen et al.
effects or interactions were significant. Planned post-hoc pairwise comparisons
were run for each condition. No comparison was significant except for the pre-SA
condition, when the noun was masculine, a marginally significant result was
found comparing congruent and incongruent conditions (β=−63.2, SE = 37.9,
tratio = −1.665, p= 0.099).
In sum, participants’reading time was only hampered when presented with a
feminine article with a masculine noun, and only in the pre-SA session. The
findings are consistent with previous reports that the masculine article is the
default form (e.g., McCarthy 2008) and that sensitivity to gender agreement errors
may decrease in an immersion context (e.g., Schwieter and Klassen 2016).
4.2 Picture selection task
As in the self-paced reading task, we excluded data from the picture selection task
if they were outside of two SDs from the overall mean for each participant. In this
experiment, we explored whether beginner L2 learners use gender agreement
morphology on articles to predictively select between two images and whether
their parsing strategies change over time spent abroad. A linear mixed effects
model was run in R (R Core Team, 2013) on the RTs for picture selection (tokens
where the wrong image was selected were excluded). The model included ‘subject’
and ‘item’as random factors, and ‘item type’(same gender vs. different gender vs.
control) and ‘SA time’(pre-SA vs. post-SA) as main effects as well as an interaction.
The mean RTs for items which had the same gender and items which had
different genders is presented in Table 4. The results showed a main effect for SA
session (β= 477.47, SE = 89.54, t= 5.333, p= 1.14e-07). The same and different
gender items were not different from each other, but the control items were read
Table :Mean reading times, SDs (in parentheses), and differences for matched (Fem.Art.-
Fem.Noun, Masc.Art.-Masc.Noun) and mismatched (Masc.Art.-Fem.Noun, Fem.Art.-Masc.Noun)
gender agreement for adjectives in pre- and post-SA sessions.
Feminine nouns Masculine nouns
Fem.Art-
Fem.Noun
[matched]
Masc.Art.-
Fem.Noun
[mismatched]
Difference Masc.Art.-
Masc.Noun
[matched]
Fem.Art.-
Masc.Noun
[mismatched]
Difference
Pre-SA .
(.)
.
(.)
−. .
(.)
.
(.)
.
Post-SA .
(.)
.
(.)
−. .
(.)
.
(.)
.
The role of immersion learning 403
significantly slower than the same gender and different gender items (β= 344.72,
SE = 93.66, t= 3.68, p= 0.000272). There was only one significant interaction
between item type and SA time which was with the control items (β= 300.33,
SE = 125.81, t= 2.39, p= 0.017097), showing that the control items were read slower
than the same and different gender items, but this difference was smaller in the
post-SA session.
The comparisons of control items to same and different gender items are
displayed in Table 5. Planned post hoc pairwise comparisons were run for each
contrast in the pre- and post-SA sessions. The control condition was significantly
different from the same and different gender conditions in both the pre- and post-
SA session (Pre-SA: β= 629.8, SE = 70.0, tratio = 8.993, p< 0.0001; β= 616.7,
SE = 68.2, tratio = 9.048, p< 0.0001; Post-SA: β= 319.8, SE = 68.0, tratio = 4.701,
p< 0.0001; β= 387.4, SE = 66.9, tratio = 5.792, p< 0.0001). Comparing the same and
different gender conditions, there was no difference in either the pre-SA or post-SA
session (p> 0.05).
These results showed that L2 learners chose the images more quickly in the
post-SA session compared to the pre-SA session. However, they did not make use
of the gender agreement morphology to predictively select the target noun in either
the pre-SA or post-SA sessions. The participants selected the target image faster
after the SA experience, indicating faster lexical selection after a short-term L2
immersion experience. They also selected target images slower in the control
condition, where there was no colour adjective to rely on but rather they needed to
use the gender agreement to accurately select the target image. This suggests that
these learners may be ignoring the gender agreement morphology unless required
to attend to it in both pre- and post-SA sessions.
Table :Mean reaction times and SD (in parentheses) for items with the same gender and
different gender in pre-SA and post-SA sessions.
Same gender Different gender Difference
Pre-SA . (.). (.)−.
Post-SA . (.). (.).
Table :Mean reaction times and SD (in parentheses) for control items compared to same
gender and different gender items in pre-SA and post-SA sessions.
Control Same-Control Diff-Control
Pre . −. −.
Post . −. −.
404 Klassen et al.
5 Discussion
The findings of the self-paced reading task showed an effect for time spent abroad.
There was also a marginal effect for grammatical gender in the target context.
Follow-up analyses revealed that this effect was fueled by a difference in reading
times for matched and mismatched articles and nouns in the pre-SA session. When
the noun was masculine, participants read slower when the article was feminine
(mismatched) than when the article was masculine (matched), but only in the pre-
SA session. This was not true when the noun was feminine. This difference
between masculine and feminine nouns is consistent with the acquisition trend
usually reported for L2 learners (e.g., McCarthy 2008), that the masculine article is
used as the default form. If this is true, the masculine article should elicit smaller
effects when paired with a feminine noun than when a feminine article is paired
with a masculine noun, which is what was observed here. Moreover, the difference
between feminine and masculine nouns is eliminated after the SA experience. This
indicates a shift away from integrating the syntactic details of gender agreement
morphology, resulting in the elimination of the effects of gender in the post-SA
session.
Turning to the results of the picture selection task, the participants selected
the target image faster after the SA experience, indicating faster lexical selection
as a consequence of the immersion context. Participants also showed slower RTs
in the control condition, where images were the same colour and where they were
forced to use the gender agreement cues to select the correct target image. This
difference was smaller in the post-SA session than in the pre-SA session. The
results indicate that the participants may be ignoring the gender agreement
morphology unless forced to attend to it in an experimental setting. The trend in
the results suggests that these effects are somewhat mitigated by the post-SA
session.
Collectively, the results fail to support the adapted interpretation of the RAGE
Hypothesis, which would predict more reliance on integrative processing, but not
more native-like results in the predictive task (i.e., the picture selection task).
Instead, the results show some support for the SSH with a few caveats. L2 learners
integrate less information in their ongoing interpretation after spending time
abroad, as indicated by both tasks. In post-SA sessions the participants were able
to manage their shallow processing strategies. In the picture selection task, they
ignored gender morphology cues unless they were forced to do so (control con-
dition), but even when required, they integrated and used the gender cues more
efficiently in the post-SA session than in the pre-SA session. In the self-paced
reading task, participants showed the use of the masculine article as the default
The role of immersion learning 405
only in the pre-SA session. This suggests that in post-SA, participants were not
affected by gender agreement mismatches, but rather were processing in a shallow
manner. Together, the results of the two tasks suggest that time spent abroad
allows L2 leaners to begin to maximize processing efficiency in their L2 by pro-
cessing in accordance with the predictions of the SSH. These results are consistent
with previous findings in offline studies that L2 learners perform worse on morpho-
syntactic tasks after time spent abroad during which they needed to rely on
communicatively-important elements and not so much grammatical gender. We
interpret our results as support for a reallocation of processing resources to
information that is essential for communication.
These results are particularly relevant for how L2 processing theories might be
interpreted for early learners. L2 processing has focused primarily on advanced/
end-state learners in order to answer the question of whether L2 learners can or do
process like native speakers, and if not, why? Studying end-state learners may be
important for determining if L2 learners continue to diverge from native speakers
and when this is the case. This leads to fundamental differences between L2 and
native processing strategies. The divergence from native speaker processing
strategies observed in end-state learners has lead to the development of influential
theories about how an L2 is processed. However, early and intermediate learners
are key to answering an alternative and equally important question: how does the
learning process itself affect L2 processing? The connection between language
processing and learning context or experience is an important, emerging area of
research, with burgeoning studies showing evidence that how a language is
learned has a direct impact on how it is processed (Hopp, 2016, 2020; Morgan-Short
et al. 2012). It is crucial to understand how the learning process affects L2 pro-
cessing, as this link holds the key to both understanding how L2 processing stra-
tegies emerge and develop. This study provides preliminary evidence that the
strategies proposed to account for divergence observed in end-state learners may
not stem from general L2 processing difficulties but rather from the L2 learning
experience.
The SSH proposes that under high processing costs, like processing in a L2,
readers/listeners will rely on nongrammatical information. This assumes that L2
processing is at a disadvantage. This is well-motivated by previous results; for
example the result that L2 learners read slower than native speakers overall (see
Papadopoulou, 2005, for a review). However, it is not always the case that L2
learners process in a deficient manner. For example, bilinguals have better
executive functions, as evidenced in the Simon task, Stroop task, Flanker task,
and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (e.g., Bialystok, Craik, Klein, and Viswa-
nathan, 2004; Bialystok, Craik, and Luk, 2008; Costa, Hernández, and Sebastián
406 Klassen et al.
Gall´
es, 2008; Vega-Mendoza, West, Sorace, and Bak, 2015; Xie, 2018; cf Hilchey
and Klein, 2011; Paap and Greenberg, 2013). This research shows that L2 and
bilingual processing is not necessarily deficient.
Instead the current study suggests that the SSH may be motivated not only by
the relative difficulty of processing in an L2 but by the learning experience itself. If
the learning context demands or rewards shallow processing, L2 learners may
develop a greater reliance on these cues for processing. This overreliance on
nongrammatical (lexical/contextual) cues may persist into late stages of devel-
opment. This study suggests that L2 learners may shift to a shallow strategy as a
result of the learning context.
6 Limitations and future directions
This study sought to determine the influence of a SA experience on L2 learners’
online processing of gender agreement morphology. We focused on the develop-
ment of a single group that showed clear trends after only three weeks abroad. One
limitation of this study is the lack of native speaker control group. While this would
make the conclusions stronger, we argue that the L2 results are compelling without
a direct comparison. In part, this is because processing literature on gender
agreement in both integrative and predictive tasks is robust. As a result, it is
unlikely that a native speaker control group would fare differently than in highly
replicated previous studies. Additionally, we do not feel that a direct statistical
comparison of native speakers and L2 learners is needed. Our research question is
not whether L2 learners process like native speakers. Instead, we are interested in
their developmental pattern. We can qualitatively compare those patterns to the
previous results reported for native Spanish speakers.
A second limitation is that we did not include an at-home L2 group. While this
may have strengthened the study, we feel that it is not necessary for the inter-
pretation of the development of the learners reported in this study. Firstly, as
mentioned above, the linguistic domain is well-documented in many levels of L2
learners, the majority of whom are tested in an at home setting. Secondly, the
participants act as their own at-home group in a sense. They are at-home learners
prior to the SA experience, and so this comparison is valuable. It was not the goal of
this paper to determine whether studying abroad is more beneficial than the
traditional classroom learning. Instead, we asked how L2 processing might change
given an influx of L2 input in a naturalistic environment. This can be answered by
comparing a short-term group given that this short period of time is unlikely to
The role of immersion learning 407
have significant processing changes in at home learners. We acknowledge that
future studies would benefit from including a native control group as well as an at-
home comparison group, specifically when the linguistic domain is less docu-
mented than gender agreement.
Since the group of learners was only abroad for a short period and gains in
lexical access were observed, consistent with SA research, it is possible that the
shift in processing strategy is not solely explained by increased proficiency but by
factors such as the environment in which the learners were receiving input and
using the language: they may not necessarily fare better on standardized tests, but
they are showing efficient processing strategies for integrating and predicting
gender morphology agreement. Future work should also test these claims on L2
learners who have participated in longer (semester- or year-long) SA programs.
7 Conclusion
In this study, we have investigated the potential change in how L2 learners process
nominal gender agreement in their L2 during a short-term immersion experience.
Participants showed a reduced reliance on the masculine article as a default over
time spent abroad. However, it was only with masculine nouns in the pre-SA
session that we found a significant difference between matched and mismatched
article+noun pairs. This indicates that only in this condition were learners inte-
grating the gender agreement morphology, consistent with the use of the
masculine article as the default form. In the picture selection task, in both pre- and
post-SA, learners responded slower to the condition wher ethe gender of the article
was the only cue for selection of the picture, showing a processing cost of inte-
grating gender cues. These results suggest that L2 learners attend less to gram-
matical gender over time spent abroad, but when forced to attend to these cues for
communicative purposes, they are more efficient in a post-SA experience. The
results are also consistent with previous observations about gender agreement in
SA settings that learners attend less to grammatical gender when it is not essential
for communication (Isabelli-García 2010; Schwieter and Klassen 2016). The find-
ings are in line with an adapted version of the SSH which we described above
suggesting that the shift towards more communicative strategies drives learners to
parse in a less grammatically-detailed manner.
408 Klassen et al.
Appendix
Sample of items in self-paced reading task
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