Complexity Activity 1:
Lexical complexity – Variety in predicates
Please read the information about complexity before working through these activities.
- Watch the video clips of the Jigsaw and Comparison tasks and take a look at the transcripts of both tasks.
(1) Which learner sounds more fluent? Why?
(2) Which learner sounds more accurate? Why?
(3) Which learner sounds like she has more variety in her language? Why?
- Choice of verb affects sentence structure. For instance, a transitive verb requires an object whereas an intransitive verb does not. A wider range of variety in predicates can be one measure of complexity in learner language. Look at the following table where we have counted the variety of predicates each learner uses in each task. Which learner uses more various predicates overall? Does this information accord with your conjecture in (3) above? Does it change your impression of each learner’s proficiency? Comment.
| Predicates | Sophia | Anna B | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jigsaw | Comparison | Jigsaw | Comparison | |
명사 + 이다 to be |
10 |
2 |
6 |
|
있다 to exist |
27 |
2 |
10 |
2 |
많다 to be many |
|
|
2 |
|
작다 to be small |
1 |
1 |
|
1 |
좋다 to be good |
2 |
|
1 |
|
보다 to see |
3 |
|
3 |
|
모르다 to do not know |
1 |
|
|
|
이상하다 to be strange |
1 |
|
|
|
살다 to live |
|
1 |
|
2 |
비싸다 to be expensive |
|
|
|
1 |
멀다 to be far |
|
|
|
1 |
생각하다 to think |
|
|
|
1 |
만나다 to meet |
|
1 |
|
1 |
다르다 to be different |
|
|
|
1 |
무섭다 to be scared |
|
1 |
|
|
맞다 to be correct |
|
1 |
|
|
싶다 to want |
|
|
|
1 |
Jigsaw
Transcript (PDF)
Comparison
Transcript (PDF)
Please type your answers to the questions in the box below.
When you have finished typing your answer, click to compare your response with the Learner Language staff response.
- (1) Sophia seems more fluent and confident than Anna B in the Jigsaw task in the given video clip. But in the Comparison task video clip, Anna B seems slightly more fluent than Sophia. Our judgment of a learner’s fluency relies on the frequency of pauses, false starts, etc.
(2) It is hard to tell which one’s language is more accurate than the other’s based on such short video clips. Anna B seems less accurate in the Jigsaw task because she makes an error in the use of a locative particle, and in the Comparison task, she also uses a past tense, ‘안 만났어요 (did not meet)’ instead of ‘만난 적이 없어요 (have not met ever)’ in conjecturing about other people’s experience. In the very next turn in the Comparison task, Sophia accurately uses a prospective tense, ‘안 만날 거예요 (will not meet)’ to express her inference. Considering the situation, that the two learners are making inferences based on given photos, Sophia’s utterances may be more accurate than Anna B’s. But we do not have enough data to be sure.
(3) In the Jigsaw task, Sophia seems to have more complexity in her language than Anna B. In this task, Sophia’s utterances are longer than Anna B’s, and she seems to produce more complex sentences than Anna B. In the Comparison task, the learners sound like they have the same amount of variety in their speech. Both use relative clauses: Anna B says ‘집에 사는 사람들은 (people who live in [the] house)’, and Sophia says ‘돈이 없는 사람 (a person who does not have money)’.
-
Complexity is related to task for the two learners. Sophia uses more various predicates in the Jigsaw task than Anna B, and Anna B uses more various predicates in the Comparison task than Sophia.
In the Jigsaw task as shown in the table, Sophia and Anna B both use ‘있다 (to exist)’ and ‘이다 (to be)’ most frequently. Although Sophia shows more variety than Ann B in using predicates in the Jigsaw task, she also uses ‘있다 (to exist)’ considerably more than other predicates. On the other hand, while Anna B also uses ‘있다 (to exist)’ frequently in the Jigsaw task, her total use of other predicates approximates her use of ‘있다’. In the Comparison Task, Anna B shows a much wider variety in predicates than Sophia, suggesting more complex sentence structures.
The fact that Anna B has more syntactic variety than Sophia is surprising when we recall our first impression of the two learners’ proficiency. At first, Sophia sounded more fluent, accurate as well as confident than Anna B. However, the analysis of the variety of predicates the two learners use indicates that Sophia’s apparent fluency and accuracy may result from her repetition of simple sentence structures like the existential expression, ‘있다’. Although Anna B sometimes has longer pauses and hesitations in her speech, she also uses more various predicates than Sophia. Thus, teachers need to be cautious about judging a learner’s proficiency based on their first impressions.
