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Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education
Vol. 3:1 (2018) ► pp.58–83

Gender marking in written L2 French

Before, during, and after residence abroad

 | Université Paul Valéry Montpellier
 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
The aim of this study was to examine how a group of 20 learners of second-language French express gender marking in three written tasks administered over the course of 21 months, including an academic year abroad. All full nouns modified by either a determiner or an adjective overtly marked for gender were analyzed (n = 1,601), and each token was coded for a set of extralinguistic and linguistic features identified in previous literature as playing a role in gender marking. The analysis reveals that targetlike rates of use increased between pre-stay testing and in-stay testing, and that levels were maintained at post-stay. In addition, three factors – time, noun gender, and syllable distance – were found to significantly characterize behavior with respect to gender marking.
Keywords: grammatical gender, L2 French, residence abroad, written production, L2 development
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Residence abroad and L2 development
    • 2.2Grammatical gender in French
      • 2.2.1Grammatical gender in L1 French
      • 2.2.2Grammatical gender in L2 French
    • 2.3Overview and research questions
  • 3.The current study
    • 3.1Method section
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Data collection
      • 3.1.3Data coding
      • 3.1.4Data analysis
    • 3.2Results
      • 3.2.1Targetlike rates of use
      • 3.2.2Factors influencing gender marking
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 March 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sar.16018.edm
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