An Investigation Of The Contextual Priming Effect As Reflected In L2 Use Of English Simple Past

The field of second language acquisition is witnessing increased interest in research investigating tense-aspect acquisition. A plenty of factors, including linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors, have been found to play vital roles in L2 learners’ use of tense-aspect in interlanguage. However, although the effect of some contextual factors such as temporal adverbials and narrative structure has been examined and discussed, the effect of context, which is supposed to be an inevitable determinant of the use and interpretation of tense-aspect, has been given inadequate weight in this line of research.The present study is therefore aimed at investigating L2 learners’ use of English simple past from a contextual point of view, named contextual priming. Contextual priming refers to the phenomenon that the use of a functional morpheme is facilitated by a certain feature in a context. Based on the contextual priming point of view, it is assumed that L2 learners’ use of English simple past tends to be facilitated by some linguistic factors, which is taken as external linguistic contexts and might work as triggers of the activation of L2 learners’ internal context concerning the use of English simple past. Given that the external contexts presented before or in the process of language production might have different effects on learners’ internal context, contextual priming in L2 learners’ use of English simple past is investigated in two conditions: the condition without any prior texts that may change learners’ internal context, and the condition with a prior text which may reinforce or reshape learners’ internal context.An empirical study containing two tasks was conducted to investigate the effect of contextual priming on L2 learners’ use of English simple past. In the film retell task, 39 sophomore English majors were required to retell the story by writing a composition after they had watched a silent film. In the continuation task, the same subjects were asked to read a story with its end removed and then write as much as they could to continue this story. After the two tasks, 6 participants were randomly selected for a retrospective interview. Chi-square tests and the special Z-test were conducted to examine the association between learners’ use of English simple past and different kinds of linguistic contexts.The major findings of the present study are as follows:First, contextual priming does occur in L2 learners’ use of English simple past in the –PT condition. For L2 learners’ use of English simple past is found to be facilitated by the +TA contexts, especially by the TAP contexts, the TAS contexts and the TAC contexts comparing with the –TA contexts, the TAD contexts and the TAQ contexts at the sentence level, and be facilitated by the FG contexts comparing with the BG contexts at the discourse level.Second, contextual priming occurs in L2 learners’ use of English simple past in the +PT condition as well. First, the overall use of English simple past is found to be significantly facilitated in the +PT condition comparing to the –PT condition. Second, at the sentence level, L2 learners’ use of English simple past in the more salient +TA contexts(especially the TAP contexts, the TAS contexts and the TAC contexts) and the less salient –TA contexts, the TAD contexts as well as the TAQ contexts is significantly facilitated in the +PT condition. Third, at the discourse level, L2 learners’ use of English simple past in both the BG contexts and the FG contexts is significantly facilitated in the +PT condition as well.The findings of the present study have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. Theoretically, this study provides new empirical evidence for the effect of contextual priming on language use and expands the explanatory scope of contextual priming to the matching between the external contexts with the learners’ internal context. Pedagogically, the present study highlights the importance of learning simple past in context and confirms the effectiveness of the continuation task in facilitating second language learning and use.