The Impact of Literacy on Question-Oriented Usage Events in the ESL Classroom: A Case Study

Abstract

Research on English question development in second language acquisition has primarily been conducted in laboratory settings using oral tasks designed to elicit question forms, with findings often associated with the effects of corrective feedback and focus on form (Mackey, 1999; Spada & Lightbown, 1999), task complexity (Kim, 2012), and syntactic priming (McDonough & De Vleeschauwer, 2012). Findings from these studies are limited by the separation of the learners’ question production from authentic experiences in an L2 classroom context where written input, teacher talk, and peer interactions all play various roles, and by a participant population that is largely skewed toward more educated and literate learners. To address these limitations, this longitudinal case study utilized a usage-based linguistics (UBL) framework to portray the complexity of experiences that one low-literate adult ESL learner encountered during question-based usage events. UBL focuses on the emergence of language within a locally situated experiential learning environment where learners integrate linguistic patterns into a growing mental inventory through contextualized use (Robinson & Ellis, 2008). Analyses of the focal participant’s question-oriented usage events demonstrated the impact that low literacy skills and interlocutor relationships have on opportunities for English question production and practice.