In the psycholinguistic part of the project, we are investigating how L2 learners of English with Dutch or German as native language process Romance loanwords that also exist in Dutch and German but which differ in their pronunciation (i.e., differing stress patterns and syllable structure).
Our aim is to untangle whether words which are pronounced differently in English compared to a learner's native language require greater effort in processing than those where the pronunciation patterns are largely similar. If this is the case, focusing on these forms in teaching and providing systematic rules (where they exist) to explain the differences may facilitate learning and processing.
To answer our research questions, we are conducting experiments using both EEG and behavioural methods. Due to the COVID-19 situation, we are currently running all our experiments online.
One of our online experiments employs a so-called Lexical Decision Task where the participant is presented with words (either written words or spoken words) and then has to decide whether the word is a real word of the English language or a made up one.
If you are curious to see how such an experiment looks like, the link below directs you to one of ourLexical Decision Tasks
