Search results for "Language acquisition"
showing 10 items of 219 documents
Expeditions among the Lutsi Estonians and the design of Language Learning Materials
2019
The Lutsi Estonians (Lutsis) are a historically South Estonian-speaking minority that has inhabited a network of more than 50 villages in the historical rural parishes of Pilda, Nirza, Brigi, and Mērdzene surrounding the city of Ludza, in the Latgale region of eastern Latvia, for at least three to four centuries. Between 2013 and 2016, I received funding from the Kone Foundation to document the present state of the Lutsis and to write a Lutsi language primer for Latvian speakers. The first part of this paper gives an overview of previous work on Lutsi followed by a description of the present state of the population of Lutsi descendants as I found it during the period of my Kone-funded resea…
Item transformation for computer asisted language testing: The adaptation of the Spanish University entrance examination
2010
Since the Spanish Educational system is changing and promoting the use of online tests, it was necessary to study the transformation of test items in the 'Spanish University Entrance Examination' (IB P.A.U.) to diminish the effect of test delivery changes (through its computerization) in order to affect the least the current model. The purpose of this study was to describe and suggest the properties of a new test item taxonomy for the Spanish University Entrance Examination. After a convenient study and piloting by using previous research in computer-based language testing, the researchers created a taxonomy of test items for the I.B. PAU Keywords: Language test; item design; computers; edu…
Proactive and reactive dimensions of life-course agency: mapping student teachers’ language learning experiences
2014
Although the concept of agency has received a lot of interest in recent educational research, its significance in language learning biographies as well as contextual and relational aspects of learner agency are still little studied. This paper aims at a more thorough understanding of agency by studying student teachers’ previous language learning experiences. This paper is based on a dialogical analysis of 12 student teachers’ biographical essays describing their relationship with English as a foreign language. The participants are students in a Finnish class teacher and language teacher education programme that uses English as the primary medium of instruction. The study proposes a tripart…
Neurodidattica e gli stili e le strategie d’apprendimento
2013
This article focuses on the relationship between Neurodidactics, Learning styles and Teaching of languages and demonstrates the fundamental importance of a synergy of learning and knowledge in order to acquire a linguistic competence
Effects of video games : English language learning of girls
2014
Erilaiset kannettavat laitteet ovat lisääntyneet viimeisen muutaman vuoden aikana ja levinneet yleiseen käyttöön. Tämä levinneisyys on johtanut myös siihen, että videopelejä on saatavilla enemmän ja pelaaminen on yleistynyt. Samalla pelaamisen tutkimus on lisääntynyt ja videopelit on havaittu hyödyllisiksi. Toisaalta globaalisaatio ja teknologian kehitys on johtanut siihen, että englanti on tullut osaksi arkea entistä enemmän. Videopelit tarjoavat hauskan ja laajan oppimisympäristön, mutta videopelien vaikutuksia kielenoppimiseen ei kuitenkaan ole tutkittu vielä kovinkaan paljoa. Etenkin tyttöjen pelaamisen tutkiminen on vielä vähäistä, koska perinteisesti ajatellaan, että vain pojat pelaav…
“No, I’m Not Reading”: How Two Language Learners Enact Their Investments by Crossing and Blurring the Boundaries of Literacy and Orality
2019
This chapter makes an argument for bridging the gap between Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Literacy Studies from the perspective of so-called transmodalities, i.e. ways of using language that merge and blur the modalities of writing, speaking, listening, and reading. This argument is based on data from a qualitative case study that describes the transmodal practices of two trilingual high school students in a German classroom in the Midwestern US. More precisely, the study investigated how the high school students Jana and Karina (both pseudonyms), users of English, Latvian, and German, engaged in activities that mixed and blurred oral and literacy modalities in their German classroo…
Developing Phonological Awareness in Blended-learning Language Courses
2013
This study is based on Second Language Acquisition through blended learning and explores the application of new educational technologies in the development of distance education. In particular, the paper focuses on ways to enhance oral, aural, and intercultural skills through learners' engagement, develop authentic social interaction and intercultural awareness in virtual environments and at the same time actively engage the students' powers of perception, communication DQGUHDVRQLQJ��$ �VSHHFKYLVXDOL) DWLRQWHFKQRORJ\ �LVLQWURGXFHG�� VSHFL?FDOO\�WDLO RUHGWR� pronunciation training. It provides relevant and comprehensible visual feedback of all three components of speech: prosody-intonation, …
Early perception of phrasal prosody and its role in syntactic and lexical acquisition
2018
Chapter: 2, pp. 17-35; International audience; This chapter will review empirical findings on the perception of phrasal prosody in very young infants, and how it develops in first language acquisition. The ability to process phrasal prosody impacts learning of important aspects of language, specifically word segmentation and syntactic parsing. We will see that infants are able to perceive crucial aspects of phrasal prosody before the end of their first year of life, and that a few months later they are able to exploit the prosodic structure of an utterance to constrain its syntactic analysis, and therefore, to infer the meaning of unknown words.
On the Conceptual History of the Term Lingua Franca
2015
This paper aims to give an outline of the development of the term “Lingua Franca”. Initially the proper name of an extinct pidgin, to “Lingua Franca”, the term has become a common noun, used with regard to language contact phenomena in general – at first specifically for pidgins and trade languages, but now for all vehicular languages. This broader usage is especially prominent in the field of research known as “English as a lingua franca” (ELF). Using ELF as an example, it is shown that the modern usage is partly inconsistent and can be misleading, as it connects a positive feature of the original Lingua Franca, viz linguistic equality, with a language with native speakers like English, wh…
Bilingvālā izglītība pirmsskolā 3-4gadīgu bērnu latviešu kā otrās valodas apguves veicināšanai
2022
Darba autore Iluta Pudule. Darba tēma “Bilingvālā izglītība pirmsskolā 3-4 gadīgu bērnu latviešu kā otrās valodas apguves veicināšanai”. Pētījuma mērķis - izpētīt bilingvālās izglītības pirmsskolās 3-4 gadīgu bērnu latviešu kā otrās valodas apguves veicināšanu. Kvalifikācijas darba uzdevumi: 1.analizēt zinātnisko literatūru par valodas apgūšanu un divvalodību; 2.izpētīt un raksturot 3-4 gadīgu bērnu attīstību un otrās valodas apguves īpatnības; 3.veikt anketēšanu un analizēt datus par latviešu valodas apguvi bilingvālā mācību procesā pirmsskolā. Pētījuma gaitā gūtie rezultāti ļauj secināt, ka divvalodība bērna pašizgaugsmei, pilnvērtīgai, un vispusīgai attīstībai netraucē. Pētījuma daļā tik…