Search results for "Language acquisition"
showing 10 items of 219 documents
Sandwich EPP hypothesis: Evidence from child Finnish
2010
It is well-known that grammatical movement is somehow linked to functional heads. There is less agreement on the excact nature of this correlation. According to one view, phrases are moved to the specifier positions of functional heads because functional heads attract them. According to another view, movement is not triggered by functional heads alone, but depends on the larger grammatical context. For instance, one such proposal says that T (tense) becomes attractive only when selected by finite C (complementizer), while V becomes attractive when selected byv* (transitivizer). What attracts phrases are therefore the C–T system and thev*–V system as a whole, not the individual functional he…
Collaborative Game‐play as a Site for Participation and Situated Learning of a Second Language
2009
This paper addresses additional language learning as rooted in participation in the social activity of collaborative game‐play. Building on a social‐interactional view of learning, it analyses some of the detailed practices through which players attend to a video game as the material and semiotic structure that shapes play and creates affordances for additional language learning. We describe how players engage with the language resources offered by the game, drawing on the vocabulary, constructions, prosodic features and utterances modelled on game dialogue, in building their own actions during collaborative play. With these resources, the players display their ongoing engagement with the g…
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOREIGN LANGUAGE ENJOYMENT AND GENDER AMONG SECONDARY GRAMMAR SCHOOL STUDENTS
2018
In the context of second language acquisition, foreign language enjoyment (FLE) is a relatively new concept. For that reason, none of the few research carried out in the field thus far has been focused on whether gender might be an important determinant of either a high or a low level of FLE. Thus, the purpose of the present paper was to examine the influence of FLE on learning English as a foreign language, as well as to investigate this relationship from the perspective of gender. The results of this study revealed that there are no statistically significant differences between males and females in FLE, while such differences are found in terms of the sources of FLE each gender perceives …
Polish Adolescents’ Perceptions of English and Their Desire to Learn It
2016
In the process of foreign language learning the way in which students perceive the language may have a strong facilitative impact on their language acquisition process, especially when this perception is positive (Despagne, 2010). Unfortunately, it has not yet been clearly established whether the relationship between perceptions and foreign language achievement can be explained by the moderating power of the student’s desire to learn the foreign language. For the purpose of this paper it is hypothesized that the learner’s perception of the foreign language is strongly related to the desire to learn it, leading to higher achievement in cases of positive perception. In order to corroborate th…
Strategic Processing of Chinese Young English Language Learners in an International Standardized English Language Test
2018
Strategic competence is acknowledged to be able to explain variations in language test performance. Research with adult language test-takers has shown that strategic competence has dual components: strategic knowledge and strategic processing. Of the two components, strategic processing, which is state-like, unstable, and tends to fluctuate from contexts to contexts, is more closely related to language test performance. To date, none of the existing studies investigates strategic processing with children English language learners (ELLs) and explores the relationship between strategic processing in all the four skills of language learning and the test performance. Addressing these gaps, the …
Telecollaboration in a secondary school context: Negotiation of meaning in English as a lingua franca/Spanish tandem interactions
2015
En este artículo presentamos nuestra investigación sobre la negociación de significado en dos interacciones con los mismos estudiantes españoles y alemanes de 16 años de edad en colegios de España y Alemania respectivamente. Las interacciones incluyen dos constelaciones de idioma, es decir, inglés como lengua franca y un tándem español. Nuestra investigación se llevó a cabo dentro del proyecto Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition project (TILA). Nuestro análisis cualitativo de la interacción demuestra que la telecolaboración ofrece muchas oportunidades para la comprensión y el aprendizaje. No hemos encontrado pruebas concluyentes para apoyar la hipótesis de que la negoci…
The development of L2 Italian morphosyntax in adult learners with limited literacy
2020
Low literacy and schooling rates are a significant factor among adults in the recent migration towards Europe, including Italy. However, in Italy linguistic research has paid very little attention to the relationship between newcomers’ language learning processes and (low) schooling and literacy. This lack of attention to the role of home language(s) literacy – and, more in general, to the sociolinguistic variables characterising the condition of migration – is problematic at a theoretical level. As it assumes the role of literacy as the main research question, the investigation on the acquisition of morphosyntax by adult learners with limited literacy, which is described in the volume, rep…
Infant information processing and family history of specific language impairment: converging evidence for RAP deficits from two paradigms
2007
An infant's ability to process auditory signals presented in rapid succession (i.e. rapid auditory processing abilities [RAP]) has been shown to predict differences in language outcomes in toddlers and preschool children. Early deficits in RAP abilities may serve as a behavioral marker for language-based learning disabilities. The purpose of this study is to determine if performance on infant information processing measures designed to tap RAP and global processing skills differ as a function of family history of specific language impairment (SLI) and/or the particular demand characteristics of the paradigm used. Seventeen 6- to 9-month-old infants from families with a history of specific l…
Information structure in language acquisition. Production and comprehension of (in)definite articles by German-speaking children.
2020
AbstractThe present study investigates the production and comprehension of indefinite and definite articles as markers of givenness by typically-developing German-speaking children, from the perspective of information structure theory. The study involves 93 typically-developing children aged four to seven years old with normal language-skills and 20 adults. The results of a story-narration task and a truth-value judgment task reveal that children have more problems with new than with given referents in production as well as comprehension suggesting a “given better than new”-pattern. These findings are explained in the context of perspective-taking capacities and cue weighting theory.
Early language and behavioral regulation skills as predictors of social outcomes.
2012
Purpose In the present study, the authors examined the prospective associations among early language skills, behavioral regulation skills, and 2 aspects of school-age social functioning (adaptability and social skills). Method The study sample consisted of children with and without a familial risk for dyslexia. The authors analyzed the relations among children’s language (at age 2;6 [years;months] and age 5;0), behavioral regulation skills (at age 5;0), and social functioning (at age 8;0) using structural equation modeling. Subgroups of children with respect to language and behavioral regulation skills (at age 5;0) were identified through the use of mixture modeling. Results Among at-risk …