R2.1 - recommendations: discuss proficiency and vocab size correlation

[jvcasillas]

I would like to see more discussion about proficiency which as I understand was really about vocabulary. What do the authors think the relationship between vocabulary size and prosodic comprehension is? It would be interesting to see more discussion of this in the paper, since the authors made a decision to measure “proficiency” in this way. Is it that learners might be acquiring more “things” overall? More words but also more tunes? This could be explored further.

Action: Discuss lextale, refer to vocab size/prof correlation, cite other studies using it

[kparrish92]

The LexTALE measures vocabulary size as a proxy for general proficiency. This assumption is based on evidence reported in Lemhöfer & Broersma (2012), who found that L2 English speakers performance on the LexTALE was correlated to their English vocabulary size and general proficiency, and was overall a better predictor of language proficiency that self-ratings.

We would expect there to be an association between higher general proficiency and prosodic development (an increase in LexTALE score was be associated in general with a higher probability of a correct response).

[juanjgarridop]

@jvcasillas, If we need further support for this specific comment, I have plots from my dissertation showing how the LexTALE in Spanish correlates with the DELE. I used these to respond to a reviewer who was not very supportive of using only the LexTALE to measure proficiency and wanted a grammar test. We would not be able to cite the study in the manuscript because this study is not published yet, but we'd be able to use it in a response to a reviewer to say that we have data that shows a correlation. It might not be necessary, but if it is, I can share.

[jvcasillas]

We could cite your dissertation here.

[jvcasillas]

Included via https://github.com/RAP-group/empathy_intonation_perc/pull/69

We thank the reviewer for this comment. The LexTALE measures vocabulary size as a proxy for general proficiency. This assumption is based on evidence reported in @lemhofer2012introducing, who found that L2 English speakers performance on the LexTALE was correlated with their English vocabulary size and general proficiency, and was overall a better predictor of language proficiency than self-ratings. In our case, we expected (and found) an association between higher general proficiency and prosodic development (an increase in LexTALE score was be associated in general with a higher probability of a correct response), and this general finding is consistent with @bustin_2020 using an experimental paradigm similar to the one we use. There are also many studies in the SLA/Bilingualism literature that use the LexTALE in a similar way [see @casillas_dpbe_l2_2020; @garrido2022super for recent examples]. While we completely agree that it would be interesting to explore the relationship between growing vocabulary size and specific tunes, we believe this is beyond the scope of this paper. We are primarily concerned with using vocabulary size as a proxy for general proficiency, which allows us to control this variable and explore how it interacts with empathy.