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Since another aim of the present study is to find out the extent to which L1and L2 users of English are similar or different in their on-line processing of the target constructions in English, it was necessary to conduct the pilot study with both native speakers and advanced L2 users of English. As in the off-line task, the native speakers group were the control group that created a native-like base line. The pilot study for the on- line task was carried out at Lancaster University.

3.4.2.2 Participants

The pilot study sample consisted of two female native speakers of English and two Saudi female advanced learners of English. One of the L1 speakers was an undergraduate student from the law school at the time of the study and the other one was a postgraduate student in physics. As for the advanced learners, they were postgraduate students who had just started their doctoral programme and were also majoring in linguistics at Lancaster University. One of the native speakers was 20 years of age and the other one was 29. None of the native speakers had knowledge of other languages. The advanced L2 users were 32 and 35 years of age. Their IELTS scores were 7.0 and 7.5 out of possible 9 (i.e. they were at an advanced level of English language proficiency, C1 and C2 according to CEFR). Both

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advanced L2 users had more than 10 years’ experience with English, and they did not have knowledge of other foreign languages apart from English. At the time they took part in the data collection, they had been living in the UK for 2 months.

3.4.2.3 Instrument used in the pilot study

The on-line experiment, as pointed out earlier in this chapter, is a self-paced reading (SPR) task. It is a computerised technique that requires special software to be installed on a computer. The present study used a software package called SuperLab version 5. The technique has become increasingly popular in the field of psycholinguistics (see Jegerski, 2014; Keating & Jegerski, 2014). It has been used to assess learners' sensitivity to grammatical violations during L2 processing, thus giving insight into the current levels of learners' grammatical competence (Hopp, 2010; Jiang, 2004, 2007; Karuza et al., 2014).

The SPR task is commonly referred to as a “moving windows” technique (Jegerski, 2014). In this experiment, the participants were given written instructions that appeared on a computer screen. The instructions were usually followed by some examples of how to perform the task in order to familiarise the participants with the nature of the task. The participants read individual sentences in segments, either word-by-word or phrase-by- phrase, that appeared on a computer screen. To proceed with reading the whole sentence, the participants needed to press a button either on the keyboard or on the response pad. The software recorded the time between the press for each segment. This is often referred to as the reaction time. A long reaction time is commonly taken to signal some sort of difficulty or processing load (Jegerski, 2014).

In the present study, each sentence in the stimuli was broken down into regions (words) of interest, which the participants read on a word-by-word basis. Each word corresponded to a separate data point taking the form of a reaction time in milliseconds. A word-by-word mode was selected in this study in order to avoid the processing behaviour

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being influenced by the grouping of words into phrases, as is the case with the phrase-by- phrase mode (Gilboy & Sopena, 1996). Moreover, the data collected in word-by-word segmentation can be easily converted in to the phrase-by-phrase mode by summing up the reaction times across multiple words (Jegerski, 2014).

The four focus constructions under investigation (it-cleft, wh-cleft, rwh-cleft and preposing) have different sentence structures and hence different numbers of regions (see Table 3.1). The regions of interest in each construction are the Object region and the Verb region. This is due to the fact that in the construction under investigation the Object region carries the focused information while the Verb region carries the presupposition. The longer processing span recorded for these regions of interest was anticipated to occur when reading in the infelicitous context compared to in the felicitous context.

Table 3.1. Experimental Sentence Structure

__________________________________________________________ Focus constructions Sentence Structure

__________________________________________________________ it-cleft It + was+ direct object+ that+ I+ verb

wh-cleft What+ I + verb+ was+ direct object

reversed wh-cleft direct object+ was+ what+ I+ verb

preposing direct object+ I+ verb

__________________________________________________________

The stimuli for the self-paced reading was similar, but not identical, to the off-line task. The contexts used in the present task were designed following the same procedure as in the off-line task (section 3.3.5.2). The number of the target contexts was 16 (Appendix D); eight of these contexts elicited a felicitous use of the focus constructions (Figure 3.3) and the other eight elicited an infelicitous use (Figure 3.4). The context included a statement followed by a question presented as a whole on one slide.

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Figure 3.3 Example slide of a felicitous context used in SPR task

Figure 3.4 Example slide of an infelicitous context used in SPR task

The response to that question in the context was presented as SPR word by word. The number of sentences was 8 for each target construction (8×4) resulting in total of 32 sentences (see Appendix E). Each of the four focus constructions appeared twice; once in a felicitous context and another in an infelicitous context (see Table 3.2). The total number of target sentences that were read in the two types of context was 64.

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Table 3.2 The target constructions in the self-paced reading task

_____________________________________________________________________

Type of Focus Construction Contextual Appropriateness Sentences Total

_____________________________________________________________________ (+) Felicitous (8 sentences)

it-cleft 16

(e.g. It was a book that I read) (-) Infelicitous (8 sentences) (+) Felicitous (8 sentences) wh-cleft

16 (e.g. What I read was a book) (-) Infelicitous (8 sentences)

(+) Felicitous (8 sentences)

rwh-cleft 16

(e.g. A book was what I read) (-) Infelicitous (8 sentences)

(+) Felicitous (8 sentences) Preposing

16 (e.g. A book I read) (-) Infelicitous (8 sentences)

Total Sentences 64

In addition, filler items (16 filler contexts and 64 filler sentences) were included in the experiment, which rounded up to a total of 128 of both target and filler items. Worthy of note here is that there is no consensus in the literature on an ideal ratio of target versus total filler stimuli for an SLA experiment (Jegerski, 2014). However, some evidence suggests that having 50% filler items is the minimum acceptable amount as a very low number of these items might affect reading behaviour during SPR (Havik et al., 2009). The filler items serve to disguise the target sentences so that the participants cannot easily identify the target items (Jegerski, 2013). Like the case with the target items, the filler items

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also consist of a context followed by a response (see Appendix F). Participants read the response (filler sentence) in segments, which is word by word that appear on the computer screen each time the space bar key on the keyboard was pressed. These sentences differ with regards to the use of the appropriate tense in the given context (e.g., I cooked dinner, I had cooked dinner, and I have been cooking dinner).

The SPR task also included distractor questions in the form of acceptability judgements. The questions were presented in a randomised pattern after both the experimental sentences and the filler sentences. The reason for including the questions after filler items was to avoid the possibility of the participants identifying the target constructions. These questions were in the form of Yes/No questions that asked the participants whether the preceding response that they had just read was acceptable or not (see Figure 3.5). This was intended to examine whether or not the participants were attentive to the stimuli (Jegerski, 2014). To answer the questions, the participants were instructed to select one of the alternative answers ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ by pressing the corresponding keys that were highlighted on the computer key board. They were instructed to press key (A) if they thought the answer was ‘Yes’, and to press (L) if they believed the answer to be ‘No’. These choice items were counterbalanced with regard to the number of correct ‘yes’ versus ‘no’ responses. It is worth mentioning here that these keys were highlighted with two different colours by placing a yellow dot on the key marked (A) and a green one on the key marked (L), making sure that the two letters were apparent to the participants.

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Figure 3.5 Example slide for a distractor question in SPR task in the pilot study

The instructions for the task were presented in the first window followed by six examples, which served to familiarise the participants with the self-paced reading procedure before starting with the actual experiment. The instructions asked the participants to read a context that ended with a question and to press the Space bar key to proceed to read the response to the question (see Appendix G). Before the response appears, a cue in the form of an (+) symbol was displayed in the same screen location where the first letter of the first word in the sentence appeared. The purpose of the cue was to direct the gaze of participants to the location of the word prior to its appearance. This meant that the reaction times for the first region were less affected by time spent gazing at another screen location (Jegerski, 2014). The response appeared one word at a time by pressing the Space bar key. After reading the whole response, the participants proceeded by pressing the Space bar key to the next slide, which presented either a new context (for a target or filler item) or a distractor question. The purpose for not including a distractor question after every item was to avoid any effect that could cause fatigue for the participants.

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Thirty-two blocks were created for the self-paced reading task. Each block consisted of four trials, each of which consisted of two target items, two filler items and one comprehension question. The target items, which included the focus constructions in this study, were different in each trial.

3.4.2.4 Procedure

The participants were asked to sign the consent form before they started the test. The participants received oral instructions and were asked to read the written instructions on the computer screen. The instructions were followed by six examples, which were provided at the beginning of the self-paced reading task to familiarise the participants with the nature of the task. The researcher had also told the participants that after reading the example a statement would appear on the screen to signal when the actual task had started. This step allowed the participants to ask questions if they had any and to be prepared and focused before the start of the actual task. After the participants had completed the task, the researcher asked the participants about the clarity of the instructions and whether they had faced any difficulties when performing the task. Participants stated that the instructions were clear and that no issues were encountered.

3.4.2.5 Data analysis and results

In this study, the aim of the on-line experiment was two-fold. First, the self-paced reading experiment investigated whether L2 users of English with L1 Arabic showed sensitivity to the appropriate contextual use of the four types of focus constructions. Also, the on-line experiment aimed to compare L2 users’ and native speakers’ processing of the four focus constructions, in order to provide further evidence for any possible differences between the groups that might be observed in the off-line task. The self-paced reading task is based on the assumption that the amount of time spent reading a word reflects the amount of time needed to process it. It was assumed that longer reading times for the experimental

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sentences indicated a processing load caused by cognitive processes such as reanalysis and difficulties in comprehending grammatical information (Jegerski, 2014). Accordingly, longer reaction times were more likely to be recorded when the participants read the focus constructions in an infelicitous condition. The longer reading times were taken as an indication that the participants were sensitive to the infelicitous use of the focus constructions. Therefore, the statistical analysis concentrated on the question of how this sensitivity differs according to the participants’ English proficiency level and to the type of focus constructions.

There were two types of variables in this experiment: independent and dependent variables. One of the independent variables was a ‘between subjects’ variable, namely their proficiency level in English (advanced L2 users, native speakers). Two other independent variables were tested within the subjects. These variables were the type of focus constructions (it-cleft, wh-cleft, reversed wh-cleft, and preposing), and the contextual appropriateness (felicitous vs infelicitous contexts). As for the dependent variable, the main dependent variable in this experiment was reaction times for each region with a specific focus on the Object and Verb region. In the self-paced reading task, the reaction times were measured in milliseconds for each participant as she read the sentences word by word from a computer screen by pressing the Space bar. The experimental reading times were operationalised as the time (in milliseconds) between subsequent button presses when reading the four constructions’ regions that appeared on the screen. Each word in the target sentences represents a pressing of a button.