Processing Instruction and the Age Factor: Can Adults and School- age Native Speakers of German Process English Simple Past Tense Correctly?

This Leverhulme Trust funded project aims at measuring the effects of Processing Instruction on the acquisition of English simple past tense among school age and adult native speakers of German.

Dr. Tanja Angelovska & Prof. Dr. Alessandro Benati (University of Greenwich, UK)

Duration: 2012-2013 (completed).

The project was conducted at the University of Greenwich, UK.

This project addressed the question of whether age plays a significant role in the effectiveness of a type of grammar instruction called ‘processing instruction’ (VanPatten, 1996, 2004, 2007). VanPatten’s model of input processing (1996) is the theoretical base that directly informs the practices of processing instruction (PI). Input processing refers to ‘the initial process by which learners connect grammatical forms with their meanings as well as how they interpret the roles of nouns in relationship to verbs’ (VanPatten, 2004: 5). The main purpose of processing instruction is ‘to help learners circumvent ineffective processing strategies or to instill appropriate processing strategies, so that they derive better intake from the input’ (Lee and Benati, 2007: 16). The present study aims at more systematically measuring the effects of PI on the acquisition of English simple past tense among school-age and adult native speakers of German.

Angelovska, T. & Benati, A. (2013). “Can Adults and School-Age native speakers of German process English Simple Past Tense Correctly? Processing Instruction and the Age Factor”. In Benati, A, & Lee, J. (Ed.) Individual differences and processing instruction. London: Equinox. ISBN 9781845533434.