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AN EXPERIMENT IN THE PRESENTATION OF PARALLEL AND CONTRASTING STRUCTURES
Author(s) -
Politzer Robert L.
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00388.x
Subject(s) - psychology , sequence (biology) , presentation (obstetrics) , linguistics , word order , sequence learning , natural language processing , cognitive psychology , computer science , chemistry , philosophy , medicine , biochemistry , radiology
Five learning experiments (three in French, two In Spanish) were conducted. The main independent treatment variable in each experiment was the sequence of presentation of a contrasting structure and a parallel structure closely related to it (e.g., the French and English patterns used in Donne‐moi/ Give me are parallel structures while those used in Ne me donne pas/Don't give me are contrasting). The following research hypotheses were investigated: (1) The sequence Contrasting Structure before Parallel Structure will result in better learning than the reverse sequence. (2) Each of the two treatments will exert a recency effect in favor of the structure taught last. (3) Contrasting structures are more difficult to learn than parallel structures. Hypothesis 1 was only partly confirmed, though the experiments showed a trend toward the superiority of treatment Contrasting before Parallel Structure. Hypothesis 2 was clearly confirmed and hypothesis 3 was confirmed in those of the five experiments in which “parallel” and “contrasting” referred to syntactical arrangements involving word order.