SLS Student Ayşen Tuzcu wins prize at 2021 BAAL Conference

Current Second Language Studies PhD student Ayşen Tuzcu was recently awarded the Richard Pemberton postgraduate presentation prize for her presentation on her research, Effects of Modality on the Learning of L2 Collocations. The Richard Pemberton prize is awarded for the best paper presented by postgraduate students at the annual British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) conference.

Ayşen’s paper investigated the effects of input modality (written, aural, and bimodal) on the learning of explicit and implicit knowledge of L2 collocations in English using different explicit and implicit knowledge measures. In a within-subject design, participants read/listened to nine texts/recordings containing a total of 15 L2 medical collocations encountered nine times in three learning conditions (reading only, listening only, and reading while listening). Participants then completed one form recall, one form recognition, and one meaning recall posttest measuring their explicit knowledge and one collocational priming task measuring their implicit knowledge of the target collocations. Results from mixed-effect models showed the development of explicit knowledge of the target collocations in all three conditions. However, participants recalled the form and meaning of the collocations more when they read or read and listened to the texts than when they only listened to the texts. They had similar scores in all three conditions in recognizing the form of the target collocations. Participants did not acquire implicit knowledge of the target collocations in any of the conditions. Ayşen hopes that the results will highlight the importance of written input in the learning of L2 collocations.

Students or faculty interested in the annual BAAL conference can find information on the BAAL webpage, or information about the now-finished 2021 conference on the Northumbria University website for the event.

“I feel honored to have been the recipient of this award which is aimed to recognize and promote high quality contributions to applied linguistics research.”

Ayşen Tuzcu, Richard Pemberton prize recipient

The BAAL 2021 Conference was hosted by English Language and Linguistics in the Department of Humanities of Northumbria University and occurred September 9th and 10th. In light of the uncertainties regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was hosted online. The 2021 conference included a lineup of plenary and invited speakers in addition to student presentations of their research projects and papers. The theme of the 2021 conference was “Challenges and Opportunities in Applied Linguistics”, which aimed to provide a space to discuss the field of linguistics and its contribution to the world around it.

The Richard Pemberton postgraduate presentation prize honors the life and work of Richard Pemberton who was an Associate Professor in TESOL in the School of Education, University of Nottingham. He also spent nearly 15 years at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he was responsible for setting up and coordinating the Self-Access Centre.