فاطمه نعمتی

Constrained-based models claim that besides syntactic information, multiple sources of information influence sentence processing. One of the possibly facilitating cues in sentence processing, based on the embodied semantics theory, could be the sensorimotor experiences that learners are represented with in the mind which has not been much investigated in young learners yet. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the effect of “acting out” sentences on their processing by young learners of English in comparison to the commonly used visual cues. We employed a quasi-experimental design with two groups of students (N=20, 8 to 13 years) from two intact classes in a language institute. The participants were at level A1, and they had studied English for nearly 1 year. We taught 30 sentences to each group using two different teaching methods, namely “acting out” (A) and visualization (V). We measured their reading comprehension with multiple choice and true/false questions. The result of the t-test (t=.187, p<.05) confirmed the null hypothesis that “acting out” did not lead to a significantly different performance compared to visual cuing. A close look at the mean scores of both groups (A= 12.50, V=12.30) indicated that these sources of information slightly influenced sentence processing. Overall, the extent to which embodied experience is relevant to language processing in young learners is not very inspiring. However, we believe that our findings could have a facilitating impact on the way English is taught as a foreign language.