Web-based elicitation tasks in SLA research

This paper presents an experimental study in second language acquisition (SLA) designed with web-based elicitation tasks to obtain greater internal and external validity. The background information questionnaire and three experimental tasks-a scaled grammaticality judgment task, a preference/grammaticality task and a production task-were created with a web-based software, Claris Homepage®, while a fourth experimental task-a magnitude estimation acceptability judgment task-was designed with a multimedia software, Director®. The present study tested the acquisition of the properties subsumed under the verb movement parameter and the null subject parameter by English native speakers enrolled in French college classes. The results for the former parameter but not the latter support the hypothesis of progressive parametric manifestation in L2 learners' grammar. The preference/grammaticality and production tasks proved particularly informative.