The Acquisition of Free Morpheme by a Two-year Old Indonesian Child

The aim of this study was to describe types and how of the free morpheme uttered by a two-year-old Indonesian Child. It was a qualitative research design which was observed with a single case study. The instruments used were observation and interview. The researcher observed the subject for two months where conversation in diffrent contexts in daily activities took place.The data collected were the utterances produced by the subject in diffrent context and interview. The data were analyzed by using the theory of language acquisition and free morpheme. The results of this study were: (1) the two types of free morpheme namely lexical and function word were uttered by the subject in his daily activities in diffrent context. (2) the using of free morpheme occured analysis were: saying statement, refusing advise, saying dislike, asking gift, refusing comment, asking question, and the last is avoiding quarrel. The using of free morpheme based on the speaker\u27s backgruond analysis was internded to be used for the interaction in community

Selecting ELL Textbooks: A Content Analysis of Language-Teaching Models

Many middle school teachers lack adequate criteria to critically select materials that represent a variety of L2 teaching models. This study analyzes the illustrated and written content of 33 ELL textbooks to determine the range of L2 teaching models represented. The researchers asked to what extent do middle school ELL texts depict frequency and variation of language-teaching models in illustrations and written texts. Using content analysis, they measured the range of depiction of the 4 language-teaching models and concluded that 4 of the 33 textbooks had considerable to extensive frequency and variation of L2 teaching model

Selecting ELL Textbooks: A Content Analysis of Language-Teaching Models

Many middle school teachers lack adequate criteria to critically select materials that represent a variety of L2 teaching models. This study analyzes the illustrated and written content of 33 ELL textbooks to determine the range of L2 teaching models represented. The researchers asked to what extent do middle school ELL texts depict frequency and variation of language-teaching models in illustrations and written texts. Using content analysis, they measured the range of depiction of the 4 language-teaching models and concluded that 4 of the 33 textbooks had considerable to extensive frequency and variation of L2 teaching model

Language Acquisition in Computers

This project explores the nature of language acquisition in computers, guided by techniques similar to those used in children. While existing natural language processing methods are limited in scope and understanding, our system aims to gain an understanding of language from first principles and hence minimal initial input. The first portion of our system was implemented in Java and is focused on understanding the morphology of language using bigrams. We use frequency distributions and differences between them to define and distinguish languages. English and French texts were analyzed to determine a difference threshold of 55 before the texts are considered to be in different languages, and this threshold was verified using Spanish texts. The second portion of our system focuses on gaining an understanding of the syntax of a language using a recursive method. The program uses one of two possible methods to analyze given sentences based on either sentence patterns or surrounding words. Both methods have been implemented in C++. The program is able to understand the structure of simple sentences and learn new words. In addition, we have provided some suggestions regarding future work and potential extensions of the existing program.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figures and 6 table

Extracting finite structure from infinite language

This paper presents a novel connectionist memory-rule based model capable of learning the finite-state properties of an input language from a set of positive examples. The model is based upon an unsupervised recurrent self-organizing map [T. McQueen, A. Hopgood, J. Tepper, T. Allen, A recurrent self-organizing map for temporal sequence processing, in: Proceedings of Fourth International Conference in Recent Advances in Soft Computing (RASC2002), Nottingham, 2002] with laterally interconnected neurons. A derivation of functionalequivalence theory [J. Hopcroft, J. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation, vol. 1, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1979] is used that allows the model to exploit similarities between the future context of previously memorized sequences and the future context of the current input sequence. This bottom-up learning algorithm binds functionally related neurons together to form states. Results show that the model is able to learn the Reber grammar [A. Cleeremans, D. Schreiber, J. McClelland, Finite state automata and simple recurrent networks, Neural Computation, 1 (1989) 372–381] perfectly from a randomly generated training set and to generalize to sequences beyond the length of those found in the training set

Focus on form approach in learning and teaching portuguese as an L2: a study in Cape Verde

El objetivo principal de este artículo es presentar una parte de un estudio de caso realizado en tres escuelas secundarias de Praia (Cabo Verde) que tiene como objetivo observar y describir la realidad del aprendizaje y de la enseñanza del portugués como segunda lengua (PL2), en general, y de la gramática en particular, y, en consecuencia, verificar si los profesores pueden utilizar las estrategias didácticas actuales para la enseñanza de la gramática, como el enfoque en la forma. En este sentido, por un lado, vamos a dar cuenta de la práctica pedagógica de los tres profesores participantes y de sus percepciones con respecto a la experiencia con el enfoque en la forma, realizada durante el mes en que tuvo lugar la aplicación de nuevas estrategias que se prepararon específicamente para el estudio. Y, por otro lado, demostrar cómo los alumnos evalúan el impacto que este enfoque tiene en su aprendizaje.The main purpose of this article is to present a part of a case study carried out in three high schools of Praia (Cape Verde) so as to observe and describe the reality of the learning and teaching of Portuguese as a second language (PL2), in general, and of the grammar, in particular, and, consequently, to verify if teachers are able to use up-to-date didactic strategies for grammar teaching, such as the focus on form. In this sense, we will give an account of the observed pedagogical practice of the three participating teachers and their perceptions regarding the experience with the focus on form during the month in which the implementation of new strategies planned specifically for the study took place. Moreover, we will also focus on how students evaluate the impact this approach has on their learning