Cox, J. & Sanz, C. (2015). Deconstructing PI for the ages: Explicit instruction vs. practice in...

IRAL 2015; 53(2): 225 – 248

Jessica G. Cox and Cristina Sanz*Deconstructing PI for the ages: Explicit instruction vs. practice in young and older adult bilinguals

Abstract: The current study considered effects of PI (explicit information and practice) in two populations: older (age 60+) and young adults (age 19–27), all of whom were late English/Spanish bilinguals. Twenty-one participants completed a computer-based lesson on Latin morphosyntax, namely the assignment of the thematic roles agent and patient. Treatment consisted of a vocabulary lesson, an interactive pre-practice grammar explanation, and input-based task-essential practice (Loschky and Bley-Vroman 1993: 123–163) that followed PI principles (VanPatten 2004). Interpretation, production, and grammaticality judgment tests were used as pre, immediate post, and delayed posttests. Additionally, a gram-mar test was administered immediately following the grammar lesson (but be-fore practice). Results show that young adults benefit more than older adults from explicit instruction alone and maintain this advantage in interpretation tasks after practice. Crucially, though, practice eliminated some age effects, as the young adults’ original advantage was not present on immediate posttests of grammaticality judgment or production, nor was it maintained on any delayed posttest, largely due to a decrease in young adults’ accuracy from immediate to delayed posttest. Results are discussed in terms of pedagogical implications of PI practice for different populations and the idea of the flipped classroom.

Keywords: explicit instruction, bilingualism, aging, Processing Instruction

DOI 10.1515/iral-2015-0011

1 Introduction Arguably, the most important contribution that Processing Instruction (PI) studies have made to the field of second language acquisition (SLA) relates to the

*Corresponding author: Cristina Sanz: Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Georgetown University, Box 571039, 37th and O Streets N.W., Washington D.C. 20057-1039, USA. E-mail: [email protected] G. Cox: Department of Spanish, Franklin and Marshall College, Box 3003, Lancaster, PA 17604, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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226 Jessica G. Cox and Cristina Sanz

enduring question of the relative role of explicit grammar presentation versus practice in promoting language development, a question of both theoretical and practical importance. A recurring finding across PI studies is the lack of addi-tional advantages for explicit instruction when combined with PI practice (e.g., Sanz and Morgan-Short 2004: 35–78). PI practice is characterized as being input- based, meaningful and task-essential, and including yes/no feedback. The input is structured; i.e., it has been manipulated to push a change in processing strate-gies by increasing salience and to lead the learner to commit errors. In evaluat-ing the role of explicit information (EI), PI research has compared groups who received explicit information only (EI-only), structured input only (SI-only), or ‘full’ PI (EI+SI) (Benati 2004: 207–226; Culman et al. 2009: 19–31; Farley 2004: 227–240; Fernandez 2008: 277–305; Henry et al. 2009: 559–575; Marsden 2006: 507–566; Sanz and Morgan-Short 2004: 35–78; Sanz 2004: 241–256; VanPatten and Oikkenon 1996: 495–510; VanPatten et al. 2013: 506–527; Wong 2004: 183–186). In studies that show no differences between SI-only and EI+SI groups, the inter-pretation is that EI yields no additional advantages to learners. However, in EI+SI groups, it is still unknown how much of learners’ development is due to the EI as compared to the SI practice. Investigating the question of the role of EI from a within-subjects design, comparing performance immediately after presenta-tion of EI to after presentation of EI and completion of PI practice, can add to our understanding of the role of EI in adult language learning. This design avoids the pitfalls of comparing performance across conditions, and especially the problem of comparing EI-only groups to EI+SI groups, who by definition have more time on task (Benati 2004: 207–226; VanPatten and Oikkenon 1996: 495–510; Wong 2004: 183–186).

In addition, SLA scholars, including those conducting PI research, have re-cently begun to consider how provision of explicit information affects L2 develop-ment in various populations (e.g., studies in Lee and Benati 2013). The present study looks at how instruction interacts with cognitive aging, an under-studied variable in SLA, focusing specifically on the differential effects of explicit instruc-tion and practice on college-age compared to older adult learners (age 60+). Pre-vious studies show that in more explicit conditions, older adults are disadvan-taged compared to young adults1 (Lenet et al. 2011: 73–84; Midford and Kirsner 2005: 359–387). However, on the one hand, in Lenet et al., the explicit condition consisted of metalinguistic information in feedback, thereby entangling practice with explicit instruction. On the other, Midford and Kirsner, like us, used a pre-

1 We use “college-age” and “young adult” as interchangeable terms to denote the age range 18–30 in contrast to “older adult”, age 60+.


Deconstructing PI for the ages 227

practice grammar explanation as the explicit condition, but their study was nat-urally limited by its use of an artificial grammar. Since there was no meaning as-sociated with the forms presented, it was impossible for their treatment to follow PI guidelines. For the same reason, their study has limited implications for the classroom.

2 Previous researchLee’s (2013: 19–46) chapter in Lee and Benati (2013) provides a most helpful crit-ical review of the research on Processing Instruction (PI). He organizes more than forty published studies around seven research foci, showing an unusual breadth and depth for a single strand of research, considering it focuses on one pedagog-ical technique. The review also points out lacunae calling for the scholars’ atten-tion, one of which is investigating the interaction between PI and a number of individual differences, including age. In fact, answering the question ‘who bene-fits most and least from PI’ is possibly the most urgent move, as some among the forty empirical studies have observed quantitative and qualitative differences in how learners respond to PI. Our study contributes to answering this question by looking into the effects of PI in language development amongst older adult learn-ers; i.e., learners over 60 years old. Furthermore, we extend PI research to bilin-gual populations, as both our younger and older learners are advanced formally- instructed bilinguals; i.e., native speakers of English who have acquired Spanish in the classroom to an advanced level. We also advance research on Lee’s sec-ond research focus: ‘Identifying the key variable – explicit instruction, structured input or a combination of both – that leads to language development’, as well as the sixth, ‘Evaluating retention of effects of Processing Instruction’. Finally, as the lesson is delivered to older and younger bilinguals entirely via computer, the present study also adds to what we know about computer-delivered PI instruction (research focus #4). In the following sections, we first review literature from PI and instructed SLA that has explored age effects and then review the same with effects of bilingualism. In each case, we focus on investigations of interactions between internal variables and provision of explicit information where they exist.

2.1 Age and aging in PI and in SLA

A number of recent studies have looked into the effects of PI in different pop-ulations beyond traditional monolingual college-age learners to include ado-lescents, children, and bilinguals, several of them appearing in Lee and Benati



(2013). In this publication, Benati (2013: 83–104) compared school-age and college-age learners who received PI on the English passive and concluded that PI is equally beneficial for both age groups, at least for this target structure and language, as both groups showed equal retention of the knowledge gained. Laval (2013: 105–130) indirectly compared her study of 9–10 year-olds with a previous study of college-age adults, focusing on transfer of training effects, namely the ability to improve in French subjunctive as a result of PI training on French past imperfect. Like her college-age learners, the children improved at both producing and interpreting the forms in comparison to the control group. Angelovska and Benati (2013: 131–152) contrasted with the previous study in that they directly compared children and young adults who received PI. Participants were native speakers of German learning English as a second language. Results also showed that both children and young adults learned and retained the target significantly and equivalently. Interestingly, however, a second interpretation task proved cognitively, not linguistically, challenging for children, in that children reacted to the items based on logic and knowledge of the world. Finally, Mavrantoni and Benati (2013: 185–210) examined performance of pre- and post-pubertal children who received PI on the English simple past tense and found no effect for puberty. Based on these and previous studies, Lee (2013: 19–46) proposes a reiteration of The Age Hypothesis that maintains comparable effectiveness of PI for children and adults for structures and concepts within children’s cognitive maturational level. To add to this line of research and extend the Age Hypothesis to learners whose cognitive functioning has already peaked, our study includes a new popu-lation, older adults. Furthermore, our design is more complex, going beyond age comparisons to also include a second variable, namely, provision of grammar ex-planation, to uncover any interactions between age and provision of EI, which has not yet been considered in PI research, or SLA research, for that matter.

PI research is not alone in focusing on age effects in terms of maturation (e.g., DeKeyser 2000; Johnson and Newport 1989: 60–99) to the exclusion of cog-nitive aging and its potential role in language learning as an older adult. Never-theless, an increasing number of retirees in the developed world are healthier and more active than ever, expressing an interest in learning in general and in learning languages in particular (Singleton and Ryan 2004), perhaps because learning a second language is increasingly touted in the press, together with ex-ercise and a healthy diet, as crucial for developing cognitive reserve and delay-ing the onset of dementia (Alexander 2014; Bialystok and Craik, forthcoming; Schweizer et al. 2013: 1442–1443; Bak et al. 2014: 959–963). We know that older adults are cognitively different from their younger counterparts; namely, in sen-sory function, working memory, inhibition, and processing speed (Park 2000: 3–21). All of these aspects of cognition are implicated in a cognitive approach to



SLA: sensory function for the perception of auditory and visual input, working memory for simultaneous storage and processing of input, inhibition for focus-ing on the most relevant information in the incoming input, and processing speed for the efficiency of input processing (Cox 2013: 90–107). Therefore, older adults’ language learning may be reduced in rate or ultimate attainment compared to that of young adults; however, this question has only recently begun to be inves-tigated empirically. Additionally, for the same reasons, type of pedagogy may en-hance or hinder language development in older adults differently than in younger adults.

Recently, Mackey and Sachs (2012) looked at L2 question formation in a group of older Spanish-speaking immigrants learning English. Only the learners with the highest working memory span showed significant development as a result of face-to-face interaction targeting this structure. Although they did not have a young adult comparison group, this finding suggests that older adults’ limited cognitive capacity, and the variation in cognitive capacity within an older adult cohort, does affect language-learning outcomes.

Two laboratory studies have investigated interactions between aging and type of instruction. Midford and Kirsner (2005: 359–387) investigated the effects of rule explanation, complexity of structure, and aging in artificial grammar learning (AGL). When learners had no rule explanation and the structure was complex, there were no age effects in accuracy. In contrast, when the structure was not complex, young adults outperformed older adults, with a larger age effect when rule explanation was provided than when it was not. Lastly, when rule ex-planations were given for complex structures, neither age group showed signifi-cant learning. This suggests that provision of explicit information (rules) has neg-ative effects for older adult learners.

Lenet et al. (2011: 73–84) also investigated the presence of age effects in mor-phosyntactic development. Like the present study, Lenet et al. was conducted within The Latin Project, and so had Latin, a natural language, as the target lan-guage. In Lenet et al., explicit information on how the language works was de-livered during practice as part of feedback. On a grammaticality judgment test (GJT), they found that older adults in the less explicit group outperformed older adults in the more explicit group. On a composite score of the four tests, the older, less explicit group was the only older group to show significant development; in young adults, the explicit group showed greater learning than the less explicit group. Therefore, they replicated Midford and Kirsner’s finding of an Age × Instructional Condition interaction in the development of natural morphosyntax and extended it to explicit information given in feedback rather than prior to practice. However, given that Midford and Kirsner’s study fell within the AGL paradigm, their rule explanation naturally differed qualitatively from both typical



classroom approaches and theoretically-informed approaches such as PI. We aimed to bridge these two studies by investigating the effects of pre-practice grammar explanation in young and older adults learning a natural language fol-lowing a PI approach. Additionally, to further broaden the scope of SLA research in general and PI in particular, we decided to focus on bilinguals.

2.2 Bilinguals’ L3 learning in PI and in SLA

A number of studies, like this one, inspired by PI principles and conducted with-in the Latin Project paradigm, have considered the effects of PI in experienced language learners of different L1 and L2 combinations, showing that bilinguals benefit from PI even more than monolinguals do. This is in line with research on expertise, where bilinguals are ‘expert’ language learners and process incoming information differently than ‘novice’ language learners, much in the same way that experienced chess-players’ or computer programmers’ processing differs from that of their novice counterparts (McLaughlin 1995: 370–387; McLaughlin and Nayak 1989: 5–16). However, and in agreement with evidence produced by cognitive psychology research (e.g., work by McLaughlin and colleagues), these differences depend on the degree of explicitness of the learning condition; i.e., whether PI includes EI or not.

One such study, Stafford, Sanz, & Bowden (2010: 162–183), compared L1 Spanish/L2 English bilinguals learning Latin as an L3 through exposure to a highly explicit condition, consisting of a grammar lesson and task-essential prac-tice with metalinguistic feedback. The groups differed in age of arrival to the US, among other variables. They performed similarly on immediate posttests measuring morphosyntactic development at the initial stages of L3 learning, an unexpected result, as the researchers had hypothesized that the key vari-able in predicting L3 success would be early bilingualism, since lengthier ex-perience with an L2 should yield a greater degree of expertise, and thus a greater advantage at learning an L3. The authors concluded that extensive explicit infor-mation benefitted late bilinguals, as they had more classroom experience with the L2.

Outside of PI research, McLaughlin and colleagues were also interested in interactions between bilingualism and task conditions, so they had participants at different levels of language experience learn a miniature language under ex-plicit (rule search) or implicit (memorization) conditions (Nation and McLaughlin 1986; Nayak et al. 1990). Results indicated that multilinguals were better able than monolinguals to learn the rules in the memory condition, but not in the rule-search condition; moreover, in the memory condition multilinguals were better



than monolinguals at adjusting their strategies to task requirements, and they used a wider variety of strategies.

When taking Stafford et al.’s findings in conjunction with those of Mc-Laughlin and colleagues, a pattern emerges: that the effects of language experi-ence are less apparent under more explicit conditions. In other words, the very explicit nature of Stafford et al.’s treatment likely leveled the playing field for all participants, reducing the effects of language experience.

However, none of these studies used an explicit condition precisely following PI guidelines. Consider the interference that metalinguistic feedback produces – the constant switch between, on the one hand, interpreting the meaning of a sentence during practice and, on the other, reading the grammar rule that follows in the form of feedback. Rule-search conditions also present interference; in this case, recalling prior sentences to formulate hypotheses is the secondary task. A PI-style explicit condition, which includes a grammar lesson and simple yes/no feedback, would be more comprehensive and less disruptive; therefore, it may or may not level out effects of bilingualism as other operationalizations of explicit-ness have done. Albeit our study does not proceed with a comparison between monolinguals and bilinguals, both age groups were formally instructed bilin-guals; i.e., native speakers of English who had achieved a high level of proficiency in Spanish, and thus can contribute to understanding this issue. It is also possi-ble that if explicit conditions, including PI-style grammar explanations, level out individual differences due to bilingualism, then including the EI element in our design may also level out age differences.

3 The current studyOur motivation was that explicit information in the form of grammar lessons, when following PI guidelines, would be less disruptive, more comprehensive, and more interactive than explicit information delivered during practice, as feed-back. In combination with the more authentic task of learning a natural lan-guage (as compared to AGL), this might be an effective approach for experienced learners of both ages. PI has been identified as a potentially suitable approach for older adult language learning, precisely because it emphasizes practice over ped-agogical grammar rules and suggests effective processing strategies, something older adults are less likely to develop on their own (Cox 2013: 90–107).

In addition, we devised a test to measure learning from the three main components of PI grammar lessons. By incorporating this test, a novel addition to Latin Project studies as well as to PI studies, we are able to disentangle (1) learning from the grammar lesson and (2) learning from the combined effects



of the grammar lesson and practice in a within-subjects design, an approach to evaluating the relative efficacy of grammar explanation versus practice that differs from previous between-subjects designs in PI studies (Benati 2004: 207–226; Culman et al. 2009: 19–31; Farley 2004: 227–240; Fernandez 2008: 277–305; Henry et al. 2009: 559–575; Marsden 2006: 507–566; Sanz and Morgan-Short 2004: 35–78; Sanz 2004: 241–256; VanPatten and Oikkenon 1996: 495–510; Van-Patten et al. 2013: 506–527; Wong 2004: 183–186) with the same scientific interest as ours. Such a test is also a more appropriate measurement of what learners are likely to get out of a grammar lesson, since it tests the information pre-sented in the explanation rather than the application of such information to language use.

3.1 Research question

The following serves as the primary research question in the current study:– In an instructional setting with experienced language learners, do older

adults gain less than young adults: (a) from explicit information presented in a grammar lesson and (b) from the combination of explicit information (grammar lesson) and PI practice?

4 Methodology

4.1 Participants

The participants in this study were thirty-one L1 English/L2 Spanish bilinguals who were compensated for their participation with gift cards. Young adults were current or recent graduates of a mid-Atlantic university. Older adults were re-cruited from Spanish-language groups in the metropolitan Washington, DC area, such as retiree associations of international organizations and Spanish-language book clubs. Seven participants were removed from analyses for scoring over 67% on the written interpretation pretest2, two failed to complete all sessions of the study, and data from one participant was lost due to technical difficulties. Thus, the final sample was twenty-one participants, ten young adults and eleven older

2 This seemingly high cut-off is necessary since about half of the sentences in training and test-ing are presented in SVO word order, and therefore can be answered correctly using L1 English processing strategies.



adults3. All participants had learned Spanish in formal settings and were profi-cient in both English and Spanish4, reporting regular use of both languages. In addition, all participants reported normal or corrected-to-normal vision and hearing. Since the target language of the study was Latin, participants also re-ported any years of study of Latin or other case-marking languages and any atten-dance of religious services held in Latin. Participants were included in the study only if their exposure to case-marking languages (including Latin) had taken place more than twenty years ago and was limited to less than three years. As a result, no young adults had such exposure. By limiting previous exposure to the target language and imposing a pretest cut-off score for inclusion in the study, we ensured participants were as close to naïve learners as possible and thus did not include any additional measurements of Latin proficiency.

To ensure homogeneity within the older adult sample and facilitate compari-sons with young adults, all participants completed a measure of processing speed (Digit-Symbol Coding test, see [Joy et al. 2004: 759–767] for reliability). Not sur-prisingly, older adults had significantly lower processing speed scores than young adults, F(1, 19) = 19.68, p < .000. Additionally, older adults had significantly more education than young adults, F(1, 19) = 23.52, p < .000. These background vari-ables were considered potential covariates in later analyses. Descriptive statistics of participant characteristics are reported in Table 1.

4.2 Target structure

The target structure of the study was the assignment of the thematic roles agent and patient to nouns in simple transitive Latin sentences. This structure was chosen for its dissimilarity to both English and Spanish, the languages of the par-ticipants. In English, word order is used to assign thematic roles, such that the first noun in a sentence is interpreted as the subject. In Spanish, subject-verb agreement is the primary cue by which thematic roles are assigned. In contrast, the most reliable cue for assigning thematic roles in Latin is nominal case

3 Due to technical difficulties at some testing times, the older adult group was further reduced to ten participants with complete datasets for the GJT and eight for Production. Repeated-measures ANOVAs use this reduced sample; follow-up one-way ANOVAs at each testing time use the full sample available for that time.4 Proficiency in L1 and L2 is not reported here since level of bilingualism was not an indepen-dent variable in the study. However, all participants lived in the US and conducted their lives in English, their L1, which means attrition is not an issue. As for the L2, all participants’ proficiency was rated advanced; participants used Spanish on a daily basis either to study or to work.



morphology, thereby yielding a variety of possible word orders. According to Van-Patten’s (2004: 5–32) First Noun Principle, ‘Learners tend to process the first noun or pronoun they encounter in a sentence as the subject or agent’, and so learners would have to adjust their processing strategies to process noun endings rather than word order to correctly interpret and produce Latin sentences.

4.3 Materials

4.3.1 Language background questionnaire

All participants completed a questionnaire to elicit information regarding their prior language experience and proficiency in English and Spanish as well as any other foreign languages they had studied, to ensure little to no knowledge of case-marking languages. In addition, the questionnaire asked about their general background, including educational level and country where schooling had been completed.

4.3.2 Latin vocabulary lesson and quiz

This study used the computer-based materials of the Latin Project, which have been reported in greater detail in previous publications (e.g., Lado el at. 2013:

Table 1: Participant characteristics.

N Age Sex Years of ed.

Average health

Digit- symbol

Spanish AoA

Latin class (years)

Latin religious services (years)

Young adultsMean 10 21.60* 8 15.10* 4.80 88.40* 12.80 .00 .00SD 2.80 1.20 .63 16.69 1.81 – –Range 19–27 13–17 3–5 48–102 8–14 0 0

Older adultsMean 11 70.00 8 18.45 4.55 60.91 20.48 .36 4.36SD 5.71 1.86 .52 11.47 14.57 .81 9.07Range 60–82 16–22 4–5 32–74 7–62 0–2 0–30

Notes: * = significant difference between age groups, p < .05. Sex = number of women, ed. = education, AoA = age of acquisition. Average health self-reported on a scale of 1–5.



320–344). In brief, participants learned the vocabulary they would need for the study through an online presentation. Presentation consisted of photos accom-panied by the corresponding printed words and aural words (heard over head-phones). The printed and aural words included all forms that would appear later on: For the nouns, nominative and accusative case in singular and plural; for the verbs, singular and plural third-person conjugations. Immediately following the presentation, participants completed a multiple-choice quiz testing their vocabu-lary knowledge. Participants who scored less than 60% on the quiz repeated the presentation before retaking the quiz, while others repeated only the items they had missed. All together, the lexicon that participants learned included 35 nouns and eleven verbs. The nouns were all human and followed regular declensions; the verbs all followed regular conjugations.

4.3.3 Latin grammar lesson and test

The computer-based grammar lesson followed PI guidelines and included an ex-planation of the roles of subject and object in participants’ L1 and how these roles were encoded in nominal morphology in Latin, the target language. Only one form was presented at a time and periodic questions asked participants to recall information, thereby ensuring their involvement. In addition, the lesson advised participants on more and less effective processing strategies; for example, that noun endings will always convey subject and object roles but word order, the preferred L1 strategy, will not always do so. Figure 1 shows an example of what the participants saw.

Our design differs from previous PI studies in that participants took a pen-and-paper test that measured learning from the grammar lesson alone. It in-cluded identification of the definition of a subject and object in English, matching Latin endings to their grammatical function5, and labeling each word in Latin sentences as subject, object, or verb.

4.3.4 Latin PI practice

The same online program that delivered the vocabulary and grammar lessons also delivered the PI practice. Due to time constraints and previous research

5 Although grammatical gender is a feature of Latin and both masculine and feminine nouns were included in the study, gender was not presented as a contrastive feature in the treatment. Thus, noun endings were matched to descriptions of number and case, not to gender. For the same reason, in the Production assessment, errors of gender did not affect coding.



findings that affective activities do not add to learning, especially when combined with explicit instruction (Henshaw 2012: 393–414; Marsden and Chen 2011: 1058–1098), all practice was referential in nature. In all cases, participants chose be-tween two options, making their selection via keypress, and received automatic

Fig. 1: Examples of the computer-based Latin lesson: (a) Selection from pre-practice grammar lesson, (b) Task-essential practice item in written modality.



feedback on the computer screen that informed them if their selection was correct or not, but did not explain why. Practice was task-essential (Loschky and Bley- Vroman 1993: 123–163) in that the two options in all activities differed only in the assignment of agent and patient, e.g., ‘The kings help the magician’ or ‘The magi-cian helps the kings’ (See Figure 1 for sample item). Practice tasks consisted of choosing the correct English translation for a Latin sentence (written or aural), choosing the correct photo to illustrate a Latin sentence (written or aural), choos-ing the correct written sentence to describe a given photo, and deciding whether an aurally presented sentence described a given photo.

4.3.5 Latin assessments

Four assessments measured development of the target structure over time. The written interpretation test (WI) was similar to practice, in that participants se-lected between two photos to illustrate a given written sentence in Latin. The aural interpretation test (AI) was its auditory equivalent. Additionally, partici-pants completed a written grammaticality judgment test (GJT) and written pro-duction test. In the Production test, participants saw a photo, the correct stems (presented in a random order), and all possible noun and verb endings. Partici-pants used their mouse to drag-and-drop stems and endings to create a sentence to describe the photo. All tests other than Production had a third choice of ‘I don’t know’ to avoid a 50/50 chance of guessing correctly.

WI, AI, and GJT each consisted of 20 items, 12 critical and 8 distractors. The Production test consisted of 15 items, 10 of which were critical and 5 were distrac-tors. On the WI and AI, distractors could be answered using lexical knowledge rather than the target structure, whereas on the GJT and Production, distractors were sentences with only one noun and a verb instead of two nouns and a verb. There were three versions of each test, which were counterbalanced across partic-ipants and testing times. The order of presentation was randomized, except Pro-duction was always the last test in the battery.

4.3.6 Digit-Symbol Coding

This task is taken from the WAIS-III Adult Intelligence test and measures process-ing speed under low cognitive demands. Participants are given a sheet of paper that lists the numbers 1–9 and assigns a symbol to each number. Below, there is a series of 140 numbers paired with empty boxes. Participants are instructed to fill in as many boxes as possible with the corresponding symbol. They complete



six items as practice and then are given two minutes to do the rest. Since the number-symbol mapping is given at the top of the page, demands on memory are minimal.

4.3.7 Coding

As is standard with the Latin Project, WI, AI, and GJT, participants received one point for each correct response to a critical item, for a total of 12 possible points on each test. On the Production assessment, one point was awarded for (1) correct number in both nouns, (2) correct case in both nouns, (3) correct number in the verb, for a total of three possible points per item and 30 possible points in the test. The Latin grammar test, novel to this study, was also graded with one point per correct answer, for a total of 12 possible points. The Digit-Symbol Coding task is scored with one point per correct answer, as is standard in the psychological literature.

4.4 Procedure

This study followed a pre/post/delayed experimental design. Participants com-pleted three sessions over the course of four weeks. In the first session (Week 1), all participants signed an informed consent form and completed the language background questionnaire. They then completed the Latin vocabulary lesson, vocabulary quiz, and the four Latin pretests (WI, AI, GJT, Production). In the sec-ond session (Week 2), participants completed the pre-practice grammar explana-tion, grammar test, PI practice, and four Latin immediate posttests. Two weeks later, in the third session (Week 4), participants completed the four Latin delayed posttests. The computer program included a review of key vocabulary before each assessment to ensure participants recalled the necessary lexical items.

5 ResultsData were analyzed using SPSS (version 22.0, IBM Corp.). Test reliability was analyzed on the full dataset from which the data reported here was selected. Reliability in the full study ranged from acceptable to high (Cronbach’s alpha = .57–.91). An a priori power analysis, using the effect sizes from pilot data, deter-mined the sample size needed to have a power of .80. Data collection continued until the full sample size was met.



All inferential analyses were run with alpha set at .05. First, Pearson’s correla-tions were run between Latin gains scores (pre to immediate posttest) and back-ground variables that were significantly different between the two age groups; namely, years of education and processing speed. No significant correlations ob-tained (all ps > .10). For this reason, these variables were not entered into analy-ses as covariates.

Scores on the grammar test were analyzed using a one-way ANOVA with the between-subjects factor of Age (Young v. Older Adults). Scores on each Latin assessment were analyzed using separate repeated-measures ANOVAs with the between-subjects factor of Age (Young v. Older Adults) and the within-subjects factor of Time (Pre v. Immediate Post v. Delayed Post). In the case of significant Time × Age interactions, follow-up one-way ANOVAs were conducted to deter-mine at which testing time the groups differed significantly, with a Bonferroni- corrected alpha of .017.

5.1 Latin grammar test

All young adults had perfect scores on the Latin grammar test (M = 12.00, SD = .00). More variation was present in older adults’ scores, which averaged 10.00 out of 12 points (SD = 1.67). Inferential analyses revealed that the age differ-ence was significant and of a large effect size: F(1, 19) = 14.22, p = .001, ƞp

2 = .43.

5.2 Latin assessments

Descriptive statistics for Latin assessments are reported in Table 2 and visual rep-resentations are presented in Figure 2. All Latin assessments showed significant effects for Time, suggesting general learning as a result of the grammar lesson and practice: For WI, F(2, 36) = 71.19, p < .000, ƞp

2 = .80; for AI, F(2, 36) = 38.29, p < .000, ƞp

2 = .68; for GJT, F(2, 34) = 12.90, p < .000, ƞp2 = .43; for Prod, F(2, 32) =

37.79, p < .000, ƞp2 = .70.

Additionally, the two interpretation assessments showed significant interac-tions for Time × Age: F(1, 26) = 3.32, p = .048, ƞp

2 = .16 on the WI and F(2, 36) = 4.92, p = .013, ƞp

2 = .77. Planned posthoc comparisons showed that on WI, young adults significantly outperformed older adults only at immediate posttest: F(1, 18) = 1.55, 29.69, p < .000, ƞp

2 = .62. Similarly, on AI, young adults significantly outperformed older adults, again only at immediate posttest: F(1, 18) = 22.43, p < .000, ƞp

2 = .56.The GJT and Production assessments did not show significant Time × Age in-

teractions: for GJT, F(2, 34) = 1.33, p = .28, ƞp2 = .07; for Production, F(2, 32) = 1.51,



p = .24, ƞp2 = .09. Therefore, no additional analyses were conducted on data from

these two assessments.

6 DiscussionThe aim of this study was to disentangle the effects of exposure to explicit infor-mation about how the target language works from the effects of combined expo-sure to explicit information and practice with manipulated input. To this end, learning was measured at two different points: (1) after the EI section of Process-ing Instruction, consisting of a lesson that presented all morphemes and the most and least productive strategies for processing these morphemes to assign thematic roles in a sentence, and (2), after completion of the PI practice that fol-lowed, which was meaningful, task-essential practice with structured input and yes/no feedback. Specifically, we were interested in the potential age differences at either timepoint, given that older adults have shown to be at a disadvantage

Table 2: Descriptive statistics of Latin assessments. Means (and standard deviations in parentheses).

Assessment Age group

n Pretest n Immediate posttest

n Delayed posttest

WI Young 10 6.40(1.78)

10 11.50*(.53)

10 9.40(1.58)

Older 11 5.09(1.45)

10 8.80(1.48)

11 8.36(2.16)

AI Young 10 6.30(2.11)

10 11.20*(.92)

10 9.60(1.90)

Older 11 5.55(2.91)

10 7.60(2.22)

11 8.64(1.50)

GJT Young 10 5.30(2.95)

10 10.30(1.57)

10 7.60(2.99)

Older 11 6.00(2.61)

10 8.60(1.65)

11 6.55(2.21)

Prod Young 10 17.50(4.09)

10 28.90(1.29)

10 25.40(4.30)

Older 11 15.82(4.79)

9 23.33(4.61)

10 22.90(5.17)

Notes: * = significant difference between age groups, p < .05. WI = written interpretation, AI = aural interpretation, GJT = grammaticality judgment test, Prod = written production.



when dealing with explicit learning conditions (Lenet et al. 2011: 73–84; Midford and Kirsner 2005: 359–387). In terms of the first timepoint, learning from the explicit grammar lesson alone, there was a significant difference between age groups such that young adults scored higher on a grammar test than older adults. This may be surprising, given that both young and older adults had learned their L2 in an instructed setting, and thus likely had been exposed to explicit types of instruction (although notably regarding Spanish, rather than Latin, and probably of the traditional kind, not following the PI model). From this we conclude that aging plays a role in learning from explicit instruction without practice, a result that may be explained by the task’s memory demands for older adults, whose

Fig. 2: Performance on each Latin assessment by Age Group: (a) Written interpretation, (b) Aural interpretation, (c) Grammaticality judgment, (d) Written production. Time 1 = pretest, Time 2 = immediate posttest, Time 3 = delayed posttest.



cognitive capacity is limited. Even though all morphemes appeared repeatedly throughout the grammar lesson, rather than limiting exposure to one instance, participants were not allowed to write notes as they went through it, and thus were relying on memory when completing the test. Additionally, classroom L2 experience was more recent for young adults, which may have helped them to retain more of the explicit instruction.

At the same time, it is important to note that older adults’ scores on the gram-mar test were still high. Their mean score of ten points (out of 12 possible) corre-sponds to 83% accuracy. Thus, despite their limited cognitive capacity relative to young adults, older adult learners did demonstrate a non-trivial amount of learn-ing from the explicit grammar lesson. This suggests that disadvantages due to aging, when present, are not debilitating.

The second part of the research question asked whether there would be age differences in performance after completing both the grammar lesson and PI practice. Significant effects of Time on all tests suggest that participants improved across the board as a result of the combined effects of instruction and practice. Taking a long-term perspective, this development was uniform across groups: Two weeks after completing the grammar lesson and practice, age groups did not significantly differ in accuracy on any test. On a short-term perspective, there were statistically significant age group differences on the two interpretation tests, such that young adults outperformed older adults on the immediate posttest only. These differences suggest that older adults’ language development operated over a longer time course than that of young adults. Thus, two weeks after treatment, older adults’ scores were constant (WI) or even slightly higher (AI) than they had been immediately following practice. In contrast, young adults seemed to adjust their processing strategies quickly on these two tests, resulting in high immediate posttest scores, but not in a manner robust enough to be retained two weeks later, leading to decline in young adults’ accuracy at the delayed posttest.

Besides the limited advantage for young adults over time (that is, only on immediate posttests), it is also important to note that they only had an advantage on the two interpretation tests, both of which mirrored practice activities. In con-trast, the GJT and Production test required transfer of skill from the input-based activities of PI practice. The GJT additionally differs from both interpretation and production assessments in that it prompts use of an explicit rule and, in both age groups, shows the least retention at delayed posttest (see Figure 2). Therefore, we do not claim that the combination of explicit instruction and practice yielded a lasting ability to judge grammaticality for either age group. In the case of produc-tion, though, young and older adults were equivalently able to transfer skills they developed from the treatment to produce short sentences in Latin. Since there had been an age difference on the grammar test, their successful transfer of skills



is attributed primarily to the richness of PI practice. In sum, then, the grammar test showed an advantage for young adults following EI, before practice. WI and AI showed an advantage for the same group immediately following EI+practice, whereas all four assessments showed no effect of age on accuracy two weeks fol-lowing EI+practice.

Looking at the two parts of the research question together, then, the tool driv-ing development of a novel morphosyntactic feature for the expert language learners in this study was that of the PI practice. While older adults were dis-advantaged immediately following explicit instruction, a parallel disadvantage only appeared on two of the four Latin assessments and on none of the delayed posttests. Thus, PI practice leveled out some of the age differences that were pres-ent right after the explicit section of the treatment, a more precise finding than that of studies showing that overall, explicit conditions level out individual dif-ferences (e.g., Stafford et al. 2010: 162–183). This is also in line with the major ity of PI research, which has found that practice is more important than explicit in-formation (Benati 2004: 207–226; Culman et al. 2009: 19–31; Farley 2004: 227–240; Fernandez 2008: 277–305; Henry et al. 2009: 559–575; Marsden 2006: 507–566; Sanz and Morgan-Short 2004: 35–78; Sanz 2004: 241–256; VanPatten and Oikkenon 1996: 495–510; VanPatten et al. 2013: 506–527; Wong 2004: 183–186). Likewise, it adds to PI studies that find that PI is useful for ages ranging from 9–10 (Ange-lovska and Benati 2013: 131–152; Benati 2013: 83–104; Laval 2013: 105–130; Mavrantoni and Benati 2013: 185–210) to 15–17 (Benati 2013: 83–104), to the tradi-tional university students often included in SLA studies, and now, to older adults.

This finding also relates to the question of timing of EI and type of feedback. While older adults were at a disadvantage when explicit information was incor-porated in feedback (Lenet et al. 2011: 73–84), that finding was not replicated for EI presented in a pre-practice grammar lesson with form-meaning mappings (of a natural language, as opposed to AGL in [Midford & Kirsner 2005: 359–387]). Thus, if explicit information is to be included in instructed SLA, especially for an older population, our results suggest it should be in a lesson offered prior to practice. This would align with practice of the flipped classroom, where students watch lectures or other presentations of factual information at home to be able to dedi-cate their class time to practice – whether the subject matter is language or any other. Thus, the overall focus pedagogically is the meaningful practice. In our study, practice was completed on the computer, but appropriate PI classroom ac-tivities could provide similar learning opportunities.

Our contributions to PI research, therefore, are several. First of all, we show that gains from EI can vary according to individual differences (in this case, aging) more so than gains from practice combined with EI, thus adding to the evidence that EI is less crucial for L2 development than practice is. Importantly,



we compare EI-only to EI+practice within subjects, thus controlling for confound-ing variables. We also made the innovation of evaluating gains from EI using a test that matched the information presented in EI, rather than expecting learners to transition from EI to using the language in tests without any intermediary steps. This increases the validity of our evaluation of gains from EI prior to prac-tice. Secondly, the fact that our patterns of results were different for assessments that mirrored practice (i.e., written and aural interpretation) and those that did not (GJT and production), contributes to the expansion of how PI is tested (e.g., trials-to-criterion in [Fernandez 2008: 277–305; VanPatten et al. 2013: 506–527]), compared to the original interpretation tests and suggests that including at least one assessment that requires skill transfer can add valuable insight to the mea-surement of language development (Sanz 1997: 41–56). Thirdly, the difference in results at immediate versus delayed posttest shows the importance of including a retention measure, even if it is only two weeks later. We go even a step farther and suggest that the delayed posttest is more important and informative than the im-mediate posttest, since both language practitioners and students are interested in the retention of new form-meaning mappings, not only being able to use them on the first day of exposure. Moreover, retention is of interest in relating cogni-tive psychology’s consolidation, or the integration of new knowledge into the old knowledge network, to SLA. Consolidation is a process that takes place in the absence of awareness, often during sleep, and involves transfer of reorganized knowledge from short to long-term memory (Diekelmann and Born 2010: 114–126). It is in this process that older learners seem to be unimpaired, especially in the aural interpretation test, as shown by their superior gains from immediate to delayed posttests. Finally, we show that PI is an appropriate and helpful approach for bilinguals in two age groups, delivered via computer, thereby expanding the rising research on PI in different populations and adding to what we know about delivery mode.

6.1 Limitations

Our findings can be extended to the greater populations this sample was taken from: healthy, educated college-age and older adults with previous language- learning experience. Results may differ with other populations, such as less edu-cated adults (often typical of the immigrant experience) or a monolingual popu-lation. In the future, researchers should continue to broaden the populations they work with to be able to better inform non-traditional classrooms, such as ESL for adults, which are under-represented in research despite growing in num-ber. We have begun this work by introducing one understudied variable, that of



cognitive aging. Although our sample size was small, it was determined by an a priori power analysis to be sufficient for finding differences if they exist in the population. Additionally, several safeguards were in place (pre-test cut-off score, health at testing, prior exposure to the target language) to ensure as much homo-geneity in the sample as possible, thus adding to the internal validity of the study. Finally, although results might be different with a monolingual population, we do not consider our bilingual population to be a limitation to the study; rather, this study has attempted to bring together the fields of Bilingualism and SLA and in this way contribute to the bilingual turn in SLA (Ortega 2013: 1–24).

6.2 Conclusion

Our study is innovative in its inclusion of older adult bilinguals, as well as in its disassociation between learning from explicit information alone versus learning from explicit information and practice combined. Overall, we conclude that at least amongst expert language learners, older adults are as successful as young adults at changing their processing strategies in a novel language, from NVN = SVO to one that approximates the target language and relies on case morphology. Our deconstruction of PI = EI + practice shows once again the power of meaning-ful, task-based practice with structured input and yes/no feedback, as it elimi-nates the effects of age immediately after explicit instruction, before practice. Additionally, we show that changing the timing of explicit information from during practice (Lenet et al. 2011: 73–84) to before practice reduces previously identified negative aging effects. Therefore, it seems that for aging learners, ex-plicit information presented prior to practice is less disruptive than explicit feed-back, as it creates less interference during encoding, facilitating memory consol-idation, especially evident two weeks after instruction. In sum, practice following PI guidelines foments language development in both young and older adult bilin-guals learning a new language.

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