Second Language Teaching Research: The Priming Methods Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the use of priming method in second language (L₂) research. The study adopts a descriptive approach for analysis of data. Our intention is to subject this method (priming) of L₂ research to analysis, and see how it is applied. Our data-base is drawn from a lot of illustrative texts. Priming method of L₂ research strengthens learners’ abilities to understand particular linguistic activities with ease. People are more likely to describe an agentive than non-agentive events when explaining a particular causal event, especially the one they have recently encountered. That is to say agentive events are more accurately described by people than non-agentive ones. In everyday conversation, priming clearly influences our linguistic choices through the use of agentive and non-agentive event descriptions respectively. We discover that priming involves visual linguistic activities, and also involves diversifying of utterances for clarity purpose. It is further discovered that agentive and non-agentive causal event descriptions can be primed linguistically.