Search results for "second"

Student teachers and their identity construction and awareness of multilingualism: re-visiting three studies

2019

[EN] This article re-visits three studies that originally focused on beliefs about second language (L2) learning and teaching held by student teachers. The studies have been conducted in the same educational context (that is, at a Finnish university). The participants in the studies are majors or minors in English, Swedish, German, etc., and they range from first-year students to fifth-year students about to graduate as qualified L2 teachers. Data have been collected by a variety of means over the past few years (questionnaires, sentence-completion tasks, drawings), and partly longitudinally. The pools of data (verbal and visual) will be re-analysed from the perspective of identity construc…

Second language comprehensibility and accentedness across oral proficiency levels : A comparison of two L1s

2021

Second language comprehensibility and accentedness are highly complex phenomena, and numerous studies have been conducted to better understand these constructs. However, research has seldom addressed L2 comprehensibility and accentedness in relation to speakers' proficiency in the target language. This study explores L2 English comprehensibility and accentedness across three proficiency levels. The speakers were 60 teenaged Finns, half of them speaking Finnish as their L1 and half speaking Finland-Swedish as their L1. Using 20-s speech samples, the comprehensibility and accentedness of the speakers were rated by 34 English-speaking teenagers on a 9-point scale. Comparisons were made regardi…

Kazoo training for L2 pronunciation practice and reduced foreign accentedness?

2019

This paper presents a controlled pretest–training–posttest study on using a small membraphone instrument called kazoo for L2 pronunciation practice and reducing foreign accentedness. Learners were recorded for free speech before and after a six-week pronunciation and oral skills course including L2 prosody training with personal kazoos. A control group did not receive any kazoo training but did similar tasks in regular speech. Samples of all learners’ free speech before and after the course were rated for foreign accentedness by L1 speakers. In addition, learners taking part in the kazoo group were interviewed in focus groups to ascertain their views on kazoo training. The results imply tha…

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…

The role of motor system in action-related language comprehension in L1 and L2: An fMRI study

2018

The framework of embodied cognition has challenged the modular view of a language-cognition divide by suggesting that meaning-retrieval critically involves the sensory-motor system. Despite extensive research into the neural mechanisms underlying language-motor coupling, it remains unclear how the motor system might be differentially engaged by different levels of linguistic abstraction and language proficiency. To address this issue, we used fMRI to quantify neural activations in brain regions underlying motor and language processing in Chinese-English speakers’ processing of literal, metaphorical, and abstract language in their L1 and L2. Results overall revealed a response in motor ROIs …

"We really had a great week together, didn't we?" : the development of questions in texts written by adult learners of English as a second language

2011

Toisen kielen kehityksen tasoja on tutkittu jo vuosikymmenien ajan ja kysymyslauseet ovat olleet yksi alan keskeisimpiä tutkimuskohteita. Pienemannin, Johnstonin ja Brindleyn vuonna 1988 esittelemä kysymyslauseiden kuusiportainen kategorisointi niiden kehitystason mukaisesti on vaikuttanut todella suuresti alalla tehtyyn tutkimukseen aina tähän päivään saakka. Myöhemmissä tutkimuksissa, esimerkiksi Lightbown ja Spada (1993), on selvitetty että uusien tasojen oppiminen tapahtuu järjestelmällisesti ja että kielen oppija ei voi hypätä minkään kehitystason yli. Uusi kehitystaso ei myöskään korvaa aiempia tasoja vaan liittyy niiden jatkeeksi. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli jatkaa kysymyslau…

Lärarnas uppfattningar av att inleda undervisningen i A1-språk i årskurs 1

2022

Since 2020, the teaching of the A1 language starts in grade 1. In order to study the shift to an earlier start to the teaching of the A1 language, a survey of the teaching of A1 languages in grade 1 was carried out with the focus on the most common A1 languages: Finnish in the Swedish-medium schools and English in the Finnish-medium schools. The article examines the teachers’ perceptions of starting the teaching of A1 languages in grade 1. The data consists of 644 answers to an online questionnaire, of which 94 apply to A1 Finnish and 550 to A1 English. The results show that the teachers generally have a positive perception of early language teaching and consider starting the language in gr…

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…

Learning Grammar for Social Action : Implications for Research and Language Teaching

2022

Foneettisten piirteiden ja vieraan aksentin yhteydestä suomen kielessä

2018

Tapaustutkimuksemme tarkoituksena on selvittaa muutaman foneettisen piirteen ja vieraan aksentin yhteytta suomen kielessa. Analysoimme ilmiota kuulijatestilla, akustisin mittauksin ja kirjoittajien tekemin kuulonvaraisin havainnoin. Puhujina ovat varsin edistyneet suomenpuhujat, jotka puhuvat suomea toisena tai vieraana kielenaan. Tuloksemme antavat uutta tietoa vieraan aksentin ja foneettisten piirteiden yhteyksista seka tarjoavat avauksia jatkotutkimukselle. Tutkitut piirteet ovat pitkien vokaalien etaisyydet, aannekestot, perustaajuuden (f0) vaihteluvali, f0:n vaihtelun jyrkkyys ja keskihajonta seka artikulaationopeus. Tuloksemme osoittavat, etta kaikilla piirteilla on yhteys vieraaseen …