Search results for "Acquisition"

Lexical cross-linguistic influence in the written English production of Finnish 6th grade pupils

2014

Kielten väliset vaikutteet (transfer) ovat monitahoinen ilmiö, jota on tutkittu kielen oppimisen viitekehyksessä aktiivisesti 1900-luvun puolivälistä lähtien. Transfer-tutkimuksessa on kuitenkin perinteisesti keskitytty tutkimaan lähinnä äidinkielen vaikutuksia opittavaan vieraaseen kieleen. Useamman vieraan kielen vaikutukset toisiinsa ovat tuoreempi ja etenkin suomalaisessa kontekstissa/tutkimusympäristössä vielä niukasti tutkittu tutkimuskohde. Tässä tutkielmassa tarkasteluun on sen vuoksi valittu äidinkielen tuomien vaikutusten lisäksi myös vieraan kielen vaikutukset englannin kielen sanaston oppimiseen ja käyttöön. Tarkasteltavina lähdekielinä ovat suomi ja ensimmäisenä tai toisena vie…

John H. McWhorter, Linguistic simplicity and complexity: Why do languages undress? Language contact and bilingualism, Vol. 1. Berlin: De Gruyter Mout…

2013

Audiovisual processing of Chinese characters elicits suppression and congruency effects in MEG

2019

Learning to associate written letters/characters with speech sounds is crucial for reading acquisition. Most previous studies have focused on audiovisual integration in alphabetic languages. Less is known about logographic languages such as Chinese characters, which map onto mostly syllable-based morphemes in the spoken language. Here we investigated how long-term exposure to native language affects the underlying neural mechanisms of audiovisual integration in a logographic language using magnetoencephalography (MEG). MEG sensor and source data from 12 adult native Chinese speakers and a control group of 13 adult Finnish speakers were analyzed for audiovisual suppression (bimodal responses…

Dynamics of morphological processing in pre-school children with and without familial risk for dyslexia

2020

Difficulties in phonological processing and speech perception are associated with developmental dyslexia, but there is considerable diversity across people with developmental dyslexia (e.g., dyslexics with and without phonological difficulties). Phonological and morphological awareness are both known to play an important role in reading acquisition. Problems in morpho-phonological information processing could arguably be associated with developmental dyslexia, especially for Finnish, which is a rich morphologically language. We used MEG to study the connection between morpho-phonology in the Finnish language and familial risk for developmental dyslexia. We measured event-related fields (ERF…

Toddlers’ understanding of basic emotions: identification, labeling and causality / La comprensión temprana de las emociones básicas: identificación,…

2014

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to explore the early acquisition pattern of the understanding of basic emotions. Many studies indicate that three-year-old children identify emotions such as joy or sadness, but it is not known how this knowledge arises. Fifty-seven boys and girls between 21 and 32 months were assessed using the Brunet-Lezine-R developmental scale (BL-R) (Josse, 1997) and the Affective knowledge Test (AKT) (Denham, 1986). Through this test we evaluated the children’s knowledge of four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) in three of its components (identification, causality and linguistic labeling). In order to track knowledge acquisition longitudinally, a sma…

Studying Second Language Acquisition from a Qualitative Perspective

2014

Part I Introducing Qualitative Research.- Sociological and Educational Roots of Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics.- Are the Only Things That Count the Things That Can Be Counted? On Modeling as a Cognitive Tool in the Field of Foreign Language Learning and Teaching.- Part II Qualitative Methods in Studying Second Language Acquisition.- Pronunciation Learning Strategy Chains: A Qualitative Approach.- Fostering Strategy Use in a Reading-Based Course in EFL Academic Context: Students' Perspectives.- Reflective Teaching in an English Primary Classroom.- Junior High School Learners' Ability to Reflect in the Process of Keeping a Diary in a Foreign Language.- Qualitative Evaluation of E…

Principled animation design improves comprehension of complex dynamics

2016

International audience; Learners can have difficulty in decomposing conventionally designed animations to obtain raw material suitable for building high quality mental models. A composition approach to designing animations based on the Animation Processing Model was developed as a principled alternative to prevailing approaches. Outcomes from studying novel and conventional animation designs (independent variable) were compared with respect to mental model quality, knowledge of local kinematics, and capacity to transfer (dependent variables). Study of a compositional animation that presented material in a contiguous fashion resulted in higher quality mental models of a piano mechanism than …

Young People’s Emerging Multilingual Practices: Learning Language or Literacy, or Both?

2019

Research on language learning and research on literacy are typically seen as two separate strands of enquiry and thus the concepts of language and literacy have traditionally been kept apart. This is partly due to epistemological questions related to language and literacy. In this chapter, I will discuss these concepts in the context of multilingualism. Approaching multilingual language use from the perspective of literacy practices enables us to look beyond language to social practices and to examine the relationship between the concepts of language and literacy, literacy practices and language learning. Two data sets are used to illustrate how language, literacy, and language learning are…

On the Impact of (Il)literacy on L2 Italian Acquisition of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors

2019

The aim of the paper is to analyse the interlanguage of L2 Italian learners with the same L1 but different levels of education. The learners belong to the “unaccompanied foreign minorsˮ category, whose linguistic profile is characterised by the frequent coexistence of a multilingual ability and a very low, or zero, level of education. Focusing on the acquisition of verb inflectional morphology and on phraseological units as well, the comparison of learners’ varieties aims to show that several differences depend on the only parameter that differentiates them, namely literacy vs. illiteracy in L1.

GraphoGame – a catalyst for multi-level promotion of literacy in diverse contexts

2015

GraphoGame (GG) is originally a technology-based intervention method for supporting children with reading difficulties. It is now known that children who face problems in reading acquisition have difficulties in learning to differentiate and manipulate speech sounds and consequently, in connecting these sounds to corresponding letters. GG was developed to provide intensive training in matching speech sounds and larger units of speech to their written counterparts. GG has been shown to benefit children with reading difficulties and the game is now available for all Finnish school children for literacy support. Presently millions of children in Africa fail to learn to read despite years of pr…