Search results for "Language Acquisition"
showing 10 items of 219 documents
Learning English from digital games : Finnish upper secondary school students' perspective on game-enhanced language learning
2017
Tietokoneilla, konsoleilla ja muilla laitteilla pelattavat digitaaliset pelit ovat nousseet niin Suomessa kuin maailmallakin yhdeksi suosituimmista lasten, nuorten ja aikuisten vapaa-ajanviettotavoista. Suurin osa suomalaisista nuorista pelaa tai on joskus pelannut tietokone- tai videopelejä englanniksi (esim. tämä tutkimus), ja on samalla saanut mahdollisuuden kehittää englannin kielen taitoaan motivoivalla, merkityskeskeisellä tavalla. Vaikka aiempien tutkimusten valossa näyttää selvältä, että videopeleillä on kiistaton positiivinen vaikutus kielen oppimiseen (esim. Chik 2012, Mayer 2014), se, millaisena pelaajat itse kokevat pelien parissa tapahtuvan kielenoppimisen, on toistaiseksi jään…
Återbesök till feedback : en fallstudie av fokus och form på webbkursen Hjälpis
2017
Tämän maisterintutkielman tutkimuskohteena on palaute Jyväskylän yliopiston Kielikeskuksen valinnaisella ruotsin Hjälpis-verkkokurssilla. Tutkintovaatimuksiin pakollisena kuuluvan toisen kotimaisen kielen, ruotsin taitojen osoittamisen KORU-arviointikriteerien B1-tasolla on aikaisemmissa tutkimuksissa arvioitu olevan haaste riittämättömien taitojen takia jopa puolelle yliopisto-opiskelijoista. Koulutusasteelta toiselle siirryttäessä minimivaatimustaso on korkeampi eikä nivelly, jos opiskelijat ovat selvinneet kursseista lukiossa vain oppimäärän vähimmäistavoitteet saavuttaen. Hjälpis-kurssilla tätä puutteellisen osaamistason ja vaatimusten välistä eroa pyritään kaventamaan itseohjautuvuudel…
Chinese university students' beliefs about second language acquisition
2015
Xitian, Fu. 2015. Beliefs about Second Language Acquisition from Chinese University Students. Master's Thesis in Education. University of Jyväskylä. Department of Education. Beliefs about second language acquisition (SLA) have intrigued pioneer investigators for more than 30 years. However, until quite recently, most studies have been conduced in the Western school context. This study aims to investigate Chinese university students’ beliefs about second language acquisition (SLA) originating from a completely different social context. This study attempts to obtain new insights of English language learning as experienced by Chinese university students within a specific social cultural contex…
Foreign Language Pre-Service Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Integrated Technology
2020
The COVID-19 pandemic worldwide evidenced the need to revise and strengthen the current perspective of the role of technology in non-technology-based classes. The current situation requires the revision of practices and basic knowledge of computer literacy and use. Traditionally, technology in the process of language learning has been considered anecdotical. As a result, many teachers do not have the necessary skills to implement proper technology-supported classes. Being that the case at Universidad de Alcalá (Spain), we looked at the students’ needs in integrating a number of different applications in the classroom in order to provide them with additional technological skills. Twenty-two …
Prior Experience and Student Satisfaction with E-Tandem Language Learning of Spanish and English
2018
Recent literature in the field of foreign language learning has indicated that classroom learning is not necessarily enough for students to acquire proficiency in a foreign language. Learners who achieve a high level in the target language often combine work in the classroom with activities outside it. At the same time, a number of studies indicate that, when foreign language learners do work with their target language beyond the classroom, it is often to practice the receptive skills of reading and listening as opposed to the productive ones of speaking and writing. For this reason, students at The College of New Jersey in the United States and Universidad de Alcalá in Spain were paired up…
Work-related language learning trajectories of migrant cleaners in Finland
2017
Cleaning is often the survival employment that migrants can get in their new home country. Ideally, the workplace can be a site for integration and language learning. This article explores how two migrants working as cleaners in Finland narrate their work-related Finnish language learning trajectories. The research is designed by applying nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), which focuses on social action in the intersection of interaction order, participants’ life experiences, and discourses in place. The social action in focus here is investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), which means a commitment to developing language skills to achieve one’s aspirations. The article also analy…
Parents' willingness and thoughts of English immersion
2009
Tämän kvantitatiivisen proseminaarityön tarkoituksena oli tutkia vanhempien tietämystä kielikylpyopetuksesta sekä heidän halukkuuttaan tarjota sitä englanninkielisenä lapsilleen. Tarkoitus oli selvittää, tietävätkö vanhemmat kielikylvystä entuudestaan ja olisivatko he kiinnostuneita laittamaan lapsensa kielikylpyopetukseen. Tutkielmassa tarkasteltiin myös vanhempien käsityksiä siitä, miten kielikylpy vaikuttaa esim. kielelliseen kehitykseen tai muiden aineiden oppimiseen. Tutkielma tarjosi vanhemmille kahta kielikylpymallia, osittaisen ja totaalisen, joista vanhemmat saivat valita mieluisemman. Tutkimukseen vastasi noin 60 ensimmäisen ja toisen luokan vanhempaa kahdesta Jyväskylän alakoulu…
Connecting the Language Classroom and the Wild : Re-enactments of Language Use Experiences
2018
AbstractUsing multimodal conversation analysis, this article analyses language learning as an in situ process during a teacher-assigned, experientially based pedagogical activity. The activity involved a three-part pedagogical structure, where learners first prepared for and then participated in real-life service encounters, and later reflected on their experiences back in the classroom. The analysis details how the co-constructed telling sequences through which novice second language users re-enact their experiences create an occasion for language-focused activity. We argue that the actions through which the participants display and sustain an orientation to an interactional practice as an…
Words, clauses, sentences, and T-units in learner language: Precise and objective units of measure?
2020
In research on learner language complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF), syntactic complexity is often studied with quantitative measures based on words, clauses, sentences, and T-units. The findings have been mixed, but segmenting learner language into these units of measure has seldom been problematised, even if the need for accurate coding is well known. The present study explores words, clauses, sentences, and T-units as production units in written learner language using a corpus of 352 L2 Finnish texts (28,813 words). The results illustrate how written learner language can be hard to fit into the production unit categories, which are essential for the most frequently used quantitative m…
From conceptualization to constructions in Finnish as an L2 : a case study
2017
AbstractThis study traces the individual learning trajectories of an adult beginner L2 Finnish learner in expressing the extralinguistic concept of evaluation from a dynamic usage-based perspective. Our results provide support for the view of learner language as a dynamic system in which patterns wax and wane and in which a change in one component has the potential to affect the whole system. In the early stages of learning there was a strong preference to use lexical verbs first, and then adjectives. The study also shows that variability plays a role. Finally, the study confirms that the learning of L2 constructions is in some cases item based. However, another highly frequent and superfic…