Acquiring L2 sentence comprehension: A longitudinal study of word monitoring in noise

This study investigated the development of second language online auditory processing with ab initio German learners of Dutch. We assessed the influence of different levels of background noise and different levels of semantic and syntactic target word predictability on word monitoring latencies. There was evidence of syntactic, but not semantic, transfer from the L1 to the L2 from the onset of L2 learning. An initial stronger adverse effect of noise on syntactic compared to phonological processing disappeared after two weeks of learning Dutch suggesting a change towards more automatic syntactic processing. At the same time the L2 learners started to exploit semantic constraints predicting upcoming target words. The use of semantic predictability remained less efficient compared to native speakers until the end of the observation period.