| This current study replicated Leow and Morgan-Short (2004) with thirty (fifteen in the experimental/think-aloud group and fifteen in the control/nonthink-aloud group) native Chinese students with higher proficiency in a second language (English), using a reading passage and the same three types of assessment tasks, which included a multiple-choice comprehension task, a recognition task to determine the learners' intake of phrasal verbs, and a controlled written production task. The nonthink-aloud group in this study outperformed the think-aloud group in the reading comprehension task and the target language recognition task, indicating that thinking aloud while performing a reading task seemed to have detrimental effects on learners' comprehension and intake, but did not seem to affect controlled written production. This study also qualitatively examined the think-aloud protocols as a possible influence on the presence or absence of reactivity. The conclusion is that, the think-aloud protocol is not simply reactive or nonreactive. It is the result of dynamic interactions between several factors with L2 learners' translation strategy as only one of them. It is suggested that more systematic research (including replication) is necessary to have a clearer and more comprehensive picture of the whole reactivity issue regarding think-aloud protocols. |
