Search results for "acquisition"
showing 10 items of 822 documents
The emotional journey of being and becoming bilingual
2017
This article examines the foreign language learning biographies of six Finnish English speakers who reflect on their journey towards a bilingual identity. In this article language learning is examined as a process that is intrinsically emotional as emotion connects individuals with the world as well as being a movement within oneself. The data analysis is based on dialogical and narrative approaches. Through the analysis two key story types were named: Bilingualism as striving and Bilingualism as a gift. In the striving stories English was held up as an ideal, as a way of engaging with the wider world but moreover as a way of finding a better ‘me’. In the gift stories, English was experienc…
Migrant women, work, and investment in language learning : Two success stories
2019
Abstract In the media, migrant mothers are often portrayed as uneducated, having trouble learning a new language, and preferring to stay at home rather than entering paid employment. This article offers a contrasting point of view as a result of examining how two migrant women narrativize their experiences of language learning and working-life-related integration during a three-year period. Specific attention is paid to how the women make sense of their language use over time, and how this may have contributed to their integration into working life and the wellbeing of their families. Interview data was analyzed using the short story analytical approach, focusing on both the content and the…
Children's Learning of Unfamiliar Phonological Sequences
1971
4 groups of 15 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-yr.-old children learned nonsense phonological sequences that varied in grammaticality by violating 0, 1, or 2 phonological rules of Ss' native language. The youngest age group made fewer errors in learning the most nongrammatical phonological sequences than in learning grammatical ones. With the 10- and 8-yr.-olds an opposite trend was found. The differences were not statistically significant. Implications for second language learning were discussed.
Visual Methods in Researching Language Practices and Language Learning: Looking at, Seeing, and Designing Language
2016
The changing ways of using language and various understandings of what language is have consequences for the way we research language practices and language learning. When engaging in social contact, people use diverse and complex forms, modes, and varieties of language to communicate, and moreover, these resources often include icons, images, and other semiotic ways of meaning making. Visuality thus has a natural position in people’s language practices. In this chapter, we discuss how visual methods have been adopted and used as a methodological tool in researching language practices and language learning. With this focus, attention is geared to the materiality of language, on the one hand…
Figurative language and multicultural education: metaphors of language acquisition and retention
2015
Linguistics has long recognised that figurative language in the form of metaphorical expressions structures and communicates attitudes towards the ideas and concepts being expressed and that multilingual students also employ linguistic figures frequently in their writing. In this study, multilingual students use figurative language to both critique and describe experiences related to language acquisition and retention. Faced with the task of using three or more languages, the L3 English language students studied often turn to metaphor to describe the relationships between their languages and the different contexts in which they use the linguistic resources available to them. The following a…
L'apprentissage/enseignement de la morphologie écrite du nombre en français
1999
In written French forms play an essential role. Numerous morphological marks have no correspondence in oral French. This is the case of plural flexions : -s for the plural of nouns and adjectives and -nt for verbs at the third person of indicative present. Earlier research showed that on the one hand the interpretation of these marks precedes their production and that this nominal flexion proceeding appears earlier and more correctly than adjectival flexion proceeding and verbal flexion (-nt). On the other hand, overgeneralizations were tracked down thanks to this research work : faultly use of flexions especially nominal flexions attributed to verbs (ils timbres). But in these investigatio…
Other-Repetition as a Resource for Participation in the Activity of Playing a Video Game
2009
This article offers an empirically based contribution to the growing body of studies using Conversation Analysis (CA) as a tool for analyzing second/foreign language learning in and through interaction. Building on a sociointeractional view of learning as grounded in the structures of participation in social activities, we apply CA methods to examine the affordances offered by interaction during the activity of playing a video game for additional language learning. We focus on one type of interactional practice, lexical and prosodic repetition, as a recurring resource through which players attend to the game and collaboratively build their understanding and experience of game events. We arg…
Spracherwerb und Kinderliteratur
2011
This paper argues for a close relationship of research into language acquisition and research into children’s literature. Because children’s literature is a specific input for many children, and because children’s literature basically is literature accommodated to the child’s needs and cognitive abilities, an interdisciplinary field of research emerges. The paper sketches several aspects of this field and points to already existing results as well as to future research.
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…
Use of contrastive syllabic information in L1-L2map for Spanish pronunciation teaching
2018
En la adquisición del sistema fónico de una segunda lengua (L2) al aprendiz no le basta con familiarizarse con los nuevos sonidos nuevos de la L2, sino que debe interiorizar las pautas distribucionales de los segmentos y las restricciones silábicas propias de la L2. El objetivo de este trabajo es, por un lado, reflexionar sobre los factores lingüísticos y contrastivos que pueden influir en la adquisición de las restricciones silábicas del español como lengua extranjera y, por otro lado, presentar las nuevas funciones de la base de datos multilingüe L1-L2map que permiten, precisamente, realizar análisis contrastivos de la estructura silábica de una lengua nativa (L1) y una L2. A lo largo del…