Search results for "Language acquisition"

2018

Despite increasing interest in the development of audiovisual speech perception in infancy, the underlying mechanisms and neural processes are still only poorly understood. In addition to regions in temporal cortex associated with speech processing and multimodal integration, such as superior temporal sulcus, left inferior frontal cortex (IFC) has been suggested to be critically involved in mapping information from different modalities during speech perception. To further illuminate the role of IFC during infant language learning and speech perception, the current study examined the processing of auditory, visual and audiovisual speech in 6-month-old infants using functional near-infrared s…

Accommodating Teachers Attitudes Towards New Educational Testing Paradigms Through the OPENPAU Project

2015

Abstract Testing is an issue of increasing importance. While for many teachers language learning should be communicative; in fact, they expect their students to provide evidence of their knowledge. Thus, there is a clear mismatch on the approach to language teaching and language testing. As a consequence, there is an evident need change the testing paradigms. Purpose of the paper: This paper suggests guidelines that are currently researched in the OPENPAU project to change the teachers’ perspective towards oral testing. Sources of Evidence: Evidence was obtained through the interaction of four expert teachers with experience in oral testing. Analysis and results: The study indicates that te…

Computational evidence that frequency trajectory theory does not oppose but emerges from age-of-acquisition theory.

2012

International audience; According to the age-of-acquisition hypothesis, words acquired early in life are processed faster and more accurately than words acquired later. Connectionist models have begun to explore the influence of the age/order of acquisition of items (and also their frequency of encounter). This study attempts to reconcile two different methodological and theoretical approaches (proposed by Lambon Ralph & Ehsan, 2006 and Zevin & Seidenberg, 2002) to age-limited learning effects. The current simulations extend the findings reported by Zevin and Seidenberg (2002) that have shown that frequency trajectories (FTs) have limited and specific effects on word-reading tasks. Using th…

Introduction: On the Complex Ecology of Language Learning ‘in the Wild’

2019

This introduction explicates the central issues informing the chapters in the volume. We outline the epistemological development of Second Language Acquisition research as it has evolved from being predominantly individual-cognitive to a more pluralistic endeavor in which social approaches to cognition and learning are becoming central. Social interaction has been recognized as key to language learning since the 1970’s but the field is still lacking in research that studies the everyday social-interactional ecology in which the L2 speaker acts. We argue that it is time to broaden contexts for empirical investigations to study language learning in the full ecology of ‘the wild’, that is, in …

Correlations between Reading Disabilities and Learning Disabilities

2015

The article is devoted to reveal correlations between reading disabilities and learning disabilities. These problems need to be explained and teachers need to have reasonable solutions. Number of school-children with learning disabilities is increasing and teacher is not able to find the best and most precise ways of diagnostics and treatment/intervention. Causes of learning disabilities are different: brain damage or distorted functioning of it; auditory or visual perception and operating problems; language acquisition or processing problems etc. Symptoms are mostly noticed in the main areas – reading, writing and mathematics. Reading disabilities are one of the most obvious and serious pr…

Vocabulary Gains of Mono- and Multilingual Learners in a Linguistically Diverse Setting: Results From a German-English Intervention With Inclusion of…

2018

Today, group settings (e.g., in kindergarten) are more linguistically-diverse than ever. However, concepts in language acquisition only rarely include this fact. This paper reports on the effects of a language intervention which is based on a concept specifically designed for linguistically-diverse settings („PROgramme for BI- and MUltilingual Children“; Festman and Rinker, 2014). The implementation of the programme and its outcomes are described with the example of a German-English-immersion kindergarten, which was in fact plurilingual. We aimed at supporting children’s acquisition of the two languages in parallel with inclusion of their home languages. Overall, 52 (mono-, bi-, and triling…

Shared reading interaction in families with and without genetic risk for dyslexia: implications for toddlers’ language development

1999

Shared reading represents a unique context for language learning. Little is known, however, about the quality of shared reading and its developmental implications in families with reading disabilities. In the present study, these questions were addressed in the context of a longitudinal follow-up. Maternal interactional behaviors and children's participation in a book reading situation were analyzed at 14 months of age in a subsample involving 39 mothers who were diagnosed as reading disabled and had a familial background of reading difficulties (the RD group) and 89 normally reading mothers (the NR group) and their children. Information on the children's concurrent and subsequent vocabular…

Spoken Language Development and the Challenge of Skill Integration

2019

The development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of the structural combinatoriality of a language, has been widely investigated in relation to reading (dis)ability across languages. However, the extent to which knowledge of phonemic units may interact with spoken language organization in (transparent) alphabetical languages has hardly been investigated. The present study examined whether phonemic awareness correlates with coarticulation degree, commonly used as a metric for estimating the size of children's production units. A speech production task was designed to test for developmental differences in intra-syllabic coarticulation degree in 41 German children from 4 to 7 years of a…

THE IMPACT OF ANXIETY ON SPEAKING IN ADOLESCENT AND ADULT GROUPS OF ENGLISH LEARNERS

2018

Aim: The aim of this article is to investigate the interdependence between adolescent and adult students’ anxiety and their foreign language speaking achievements. It has been proved that there is no correlation between adolescent learners’ anxiety and their speaking attainments in a foreign language as well as that there is a weak correlation between adult students’ anxiety and their speaking achievements.
 Method: The author of the study employed quantitative research. Data was collected from anxiety questionnaires completed by the students and from achievement sheets filled in by the English teacher based on five-minute speeches performed by adolescent and adult students.
 Conc…

Spēļu izmantošana komunikatīvās kompetences veicināšanai angļu valodas apguvē sākumskolā (3.klasē)

2017

Bakalaura darba tēma- „spēļu izmantošana komunikatīvās kompetences veicināšanai angļu valodas apguvē sākumskolā (3.klasē) ”. Pētījuma mērķis- teorētiski pamatot un praktiski pārbaudīt komunikatīvās kompetences veicināšanu svešvalodas apguves procesā. Darbs sastāv no 2 nodaļām, kurām ir vairākas apakšnodaļas. Pirmajā nodaļā- raksturota komunikatīvās kompetences būtība un to veicinošu spēļu izmantošana svešvalodas apguvē, kā arī noteikti kritēriji un rādītāji komunikatīvajai kompetencei 3. klasē.Raksturotas spēļu izmantošanas iespējas un to nozīme komunikatīvās kompetences veicināšanai. Otrajā daļā- izvēlētas un aprobētas komunikatīvo kompetenci veicinošas spēles svešvalodas apguvē 3. klasē, …