Search results for " Language"
showing 10 items of 7270 documents
“I want to speak like the other people” : Second language learning as a virtuous spiral for migrant women?
2017
This article contributes to scholarship on migrant women’s second language (L2) education in North America and Europe. Questioning reductionist understandings of the relationship between female migrants, their receiving communities and L2 education, the authors consider existing literature as well as their own qualitative work to investigate the challenges, opportunities and agency of migrant women. Weaving together and thematically presenting previous scholarship and qualitative data from interviews, participant observations and classroom recordings from a mixed-gender L2 adult migrant classroom in Austria and an all-women L2 migrant classroom in the United States, they trouble conceptuali…
What comes first: Combining motion capture and eye tracking data to study the order of articulators in constructed action in sign language narratives
2020
We use synchronized 120 fps motion capture and 50 fps eye tracking data from two native signers to investigate the temporal order in which the dominant hand, the head, the chest and the eyes start producing overt constructed action from regular narration in seven short Finnish Sign Language stories. From the material, we derive a sample of ten instances of regular narration to overt constructed action transfers in ELAN which we then further process and analyze in Matlab. The results indicate that the temporal order of articulators shows both contextual and individual variation but that there are also repeated patterns which are similar across all the analyzed sequences and signers. Most not…
Building self through foreign language learning : a case study of four adult language learners' emerging identities
2015
Oppiminen on vahvasti sidoksissa identiteettiin, sillä se voi saada aikaan muutoksen ihmisessä niin ajatuksen, toiminnan kuin tekojenkin tasolla. Vieraan kielen oppimista onkin verrattu uuden identiteetin omaksumiseen, sillä sen myötä oppijan käsitys itsestään muuttuu. Tarkempaa tietoa siitä, miten oppijat kokevat muuttuvansa ja millaisia identiteettejä heillä on kielen oppimisen myötä, löytyy kuitenkin hyvin vähän. Tämän lisäksi suurin osa kielen oppimisen ja identiteetin yhdistävistä tutkimuksista on tehty toisen kielen kontekstissa, jolloin kohderyhmänä ovat pääsääntöisesti olleet maahanmuuttajat, joiden vieraan kielen identiteetin muodostamiseen liittyy kuitenkin hyvin erilaisia prosess…
Narratives of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analysis
2016
Abstract Background The aim of this meta-analysis was to analyze the narrative performance of children and adolescents with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in terms of microstructure, macrostructure and internal state language. Method A systematic literature search yielded 24 studies that met the predetermined inclusion criteria. Effect sizes for each study were calculated for eight variables and analyzed using a random effects model. Intellectual ability, age and type of narrative were considered as potential moderators. Results Results revealed that the children with ASD performed significantly worse than their peers on all the variables considered. Conclusions Findings a…
Koulun kahlitsemat - arjen selviytyjät : näkökulmia kielen oppimiseen
2003
This article discusses written narratives about foreign language learning. The stories were collected in a contest organised by KVS Foundation (Kansanvalistusseura), a Finnish organisation for adult education. Over 500 texts were sent for the contest, representing writers of both sexes, various language backgrounds and many professions. The age of writers varied from 8 to 80. In this article we discuss the nature of the data and the creation of a data base. Some preliminary observations are reported and a case study discussed. The relation between the academic and everyday views of language learning is also dealt with. peerReviewed
Becoming a Language Teacher: A dream come true or a source of anxiety?
2015
In this qualitative study the author examined personal narratives written by 14 Finnish speaking student teachers of Swedish, in order to find out what they tell about their thoughts and feelings concerning their future work as language teachers. The following three themes were in focus: firstly, what university students tell about their reasons for wanting to become teachers in the first place; secondly, what kinds of worries concerning their future work they mention in their narratives; and thirdly, how student teachers could be supported during transition from teacher education to teaching. According to the study, students choose teaching for reasons that are related to: (a) teacher iden…
Tensions on Finnish Constitutional Bilingualism in Neo-nationalist Times : Constructions of Swedish in Monolingual and Bilingual Contexts
2020
This chapter analyses the tensions on the status of Finnish constitutional bilingualism from the perspective of higher education, more precisely from the position of Swedish in one monolingually Swedish university (Åbo Akademi University [ÅAU]) and one bilingual university (University of Helsinki [UH]). It contributes to an understanding of the position of minority languages in universities in times when the use of English has increased on one hand and neo-nationalist tendencies stressing the importance of national language(s) are on the rise on the other. Apparently, the new bilingual programmes at UH challenge the tradition of institutional separation of national languages. At ÅAU, in tur…
Machine Learning Models for Measuring Syntax Complexity of English Text
2019
In this paper we propose a methodology to assess the syntax complexity of a sentence representing it as sequence of parts-of-speech and comparing Recurrent Neural Networks and Support Vector Machine. We have carried out experiments in English language which are compared with previous results obtained for the Italian one.
La natura della lingua, la lingua della natura
2020
For some years now, an idea has been imposed: the nature/culture opposition needs to be rethought deeply. Both the notion of culture and that of nature have nothing universal and necessary, least of all their relationship. Philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists of science have thus begun to deconstruct the evidence that covers the concept of nature. Examining from a semiotic point of view some dictionary entries, this article tries to go in the same direction. It turns out that nature is cultural construction, and every culture forges it differently.
Współczesne polsko-chińskie kontakty językowe
2016
The aim of the article is an analysis of the contemporary Polish-Chinese language contacts, evaluated on the basis of the presence of the course books for teaching Chinese to Poles, phrase books and bilingual dictionaries in the Polish market. The recent growth o f interest in learning Chinese translates not only into the availability of the international teaching materials, but also into the creation of new publications with Polish as the language of instruction. The Chinese culture is promoted intensively, inter alia, by the Confucius Institute, by the sinology institutes appearing at more and more universities and by the Chinese as a foreign language courses. The Polish-Chinese contacts …