The learnability of English intensifying constructions in French-speaking learners: receptive versus productive competence

Languages vary significantly in their preferences for morphological or syntactic intensifying constructions (Ito and Tagliamonte 2003; Rainer 2015). For example, although intensifying adjectival compounds (e.g. brand-new, paper-thin and razor-sharp) are a productive means to express intensification in English, in French this construction is hardly productive. As a result, French-speaking learners may encounter difficulties acquiring intensifying compounds in Eng- lish.
The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, this contribution focuses on the effects of cross- linguistic differences – between the learners’ first language (French) and their target language (English) – on the acquisition of English intensifying constructions. Secondly, it assesses whether the educational approach of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has a positive effect on the acquisition of English intensifying constructions. Thirdly, the study com- pares the learners’ productive use and receptive knowledge of English intensifying construc- tions – through means of a cloze test and a multiple-choice test respectively.
Overall, the results corroborate the existence of cross-linguistic differences between English and French: although the default intensifying constructions in French and in English are formed syntactically, the L1 English data contains slightly more morphological constructions than the L1 French data. Moreover, these cross-linguistic differences appear to have the predicted effect on the French-speaking learners’ acquisition of English intensifiers: the learners use fewer morphological constructions in L2 English than the L1 English speakers. However, the infre- quent use of morphological intensifiers in the learners’ L2 should not be understood as an absence of these constructions in their linguistic repertoire. The results of the multiple-choice test on intensifying compounds show that the learners’ receptive knowledge exceeds their pro- ductive use. As predicted, the CLIL students scored significantly better on the test than the non-CLIL learners.
In sum, considering the results of both tests, CLIL students outperform their peers who are enrolled in traditional foreign language instruction in terms of both productive use and recep- tive knowledge of intensifying constructions.