The Effect of Teaching and Learning Vocabulary in Lexical Chunks on the Listening Comprehension of Adult Learners of Arabic

This study aimed to investigate how teaching and learning Arabic vocabulary items in multiword form (i.e., chunks and phrases), rather than in single form (i.e., one word at a time), affects learners’ ability to comprehend Arabic listening passages and to examine the relationship between students’ auditory knowledge of words, and that of phrases and listening comprehension. Data sources included three types of tests: the Arabic listening comprehension test, the single-word auditory knowledge test, and the multiword auditory knowledge test. The sample consists of 39 students (experimental group=20, control group=19). The study was separated into a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest portion (Phase 1) and a quantitative non-experimental portion (Phases 2 and 3). The first purpose was to assess the effect of learning Arabic vocabulary in multiword form (experimental group), rather than in single form (control group), on the listening comprehension, while the second two purposes were used to examine the relationship between auditory knowledge and listening comprehension and how much of the listening comprehension is explained by auditory knowledge. The results showed that post-intervention listening comprehension was significantly higher in the experimental group (F(1,36)=6.80, p=.013). The results also showed that the correlation was significant and high between single-word score and listening comprehension at both pre- (r=.79, p\u3c.001) and post-intervention (r=.80, p\u3c.001), as well as between the post-intervention multi-word score and listening comprehension score (r=.84, p\u3c.001). The regression analysis showed that the multi-word auditory knowledge scores positively predicted listening comprehension (β=.640, p=.002), but the single-word auditory knowledge score was not a significant predictor. The whole model was statistically significant (F(2,36)=46.74, R2=.72, p\u3c.001). This study has implications for the fields of second language acquisition, listening comprehension, language research, and teaching methods. More research on learning vocabulary in lexical chunks would further expand the current understanding of this approach and its effect on listening comprehension

ELL vocabulary acquisition: How improvement measurements are affected by text type, English reading ability, and assessment methods

Vocabulary acquisition is a crucial part of language learning. This study seeks to determine what textual and student factors affect vocabulary acquisition rates from reading English texts for high school students for whom English is a second language, as well as how assessment factors affect the measurement of vocabulary acquisition. In this study, vocabulary acquisition was measured by comparing the differences between pre-test and post-test scores from before and after reading different texts. Text type did not affect student outcomes, but the improvement rates were affected by students\u27 pre-test scores, students\u27 English reading ability, and the types of assessment questions. This study indicates that targeted reading can be a great tool to help students acquire specific vocabulary, and that targeted reading is beneficial for students with different English reading abilities. The results also indicate that teachers who serve English language learners should pay close attention to the assessment methods they use and be aware that different assessment methods measure learning differently

Children’s development of Quantity, Relevance and Manner implicature understanding and the role of the speaker’s epistemic state

In learning language, children have to acquire not only words and constructions, but also the ability to make inferences about a speaker’s intended meaning. For instance, if in answer to the question, ‘what did you put in the bag?’, the speaker says, ‘I put in a book’, then the hearer infers that the speaker put in only a book, by assuming that the speaker is informative. On a Gricean approach to pragmatics, this implicated meaning – a quantity implicature – involves reasoning about the speaker’s epistemic state. This thesis examines children’s development of implicature understanding. It seeks to address the question of what the relationship is in development between quantity, relevance and manner implicatures; whether word learning by exclusion is a pragmatic forerunner to implicature, or based on a lexical heuristic; and whether reasoning about the speaker’s epistemic state is part of children’s pragmatic competence. This thesis contributes to research in experimental and developmental pragmatics by broadening the focus of investigation to include different types of implicatures, the relationship between them, and the contribution of other aspects of children’s development, including structural language knowledge. It makes the novel comparison of word learning by exclusion with a clearly pragmatic skill – implicatures – and opens an investigation of manner implicatures in development. It also presents new findings suggesting that children’s early competence with quantity implicatures in simple communicative situations belies their ongoing development in more complex ones, particularly where the speaker’s epistemic state is at stake. I present a series of experiments based on a sentence-to-picture-matching task, with children aged 3 to 7 years. In the first study, I identify a developmental trajectory whereby word learning by exclusion inferences emerge first, followed by ad hoc quantity and relevance, and finally scalar quantity inferences, which reflects their increasing complexity in a Gricean model. Then, I explore cognitive and environmental factors that might be associated with children’s pragmatic skills, and show that structural language knowledge – and, associated with it, socioeconomic status – is a main predictor of their implicature understanding. In the second study, I lay out some predictions for the development of manner implicatures, find similar patterns of understanding in children and adults, and highlight the particular challenges of studying manner implicatures experimentally. Finally, I focus on children’s ability to take into account the speaker’s epistemic state in pragmatic inferencing. While adults do not derive a quantity implicature appropriately when the speaker is ignorant, children tend to persist in deriving implicatures regardless of speaker ignorance, suggesting a continuing challenge of integrating contextual with linguistic information in utterance interpretation.ESRC studentshi

Terminy wyrażające stany wewnętrzne u dwujęzycznych i jednojęzycznych dzieci w wieku przedszkolnym i wczesnoszkolnym

Our lexicon includes terms that demonstrate our understanding of the fact that people’s actions are governed by internal states such as beliefs, desires, and emotions. These words are internal state terms (IST) and their examples include “think”, “want”, “notice”, “surprised”, “scared”. Altogether, they constitute the Internal State Lexicon (ISL). The ISL might be placed at the intersection of language and theory of mind (ToM) development: IST need to be learned as any other words in the lexicon, and their use is an indicator of children’s mentalizing abilities. The present thesis set out to investigate the use of IST in Polish-English bilingual children at pre- and early school age (4.5-7 years old). Bilingual upbringing may uniquely shape the use of IST. On one hand, bilingual children hear less of each language and have to exert constant control over the two languages. This may translate to lower language performance (e.g. Haman, et al., 2017). On the other hand, bilinguals often outperform monolinguals in their cognitive ability, including theory of mind (Farhadian, et al., 2010; Goetz, 2003; Kovács, 2009). The primary aims of the present analysis were to investigate whether language status (bilingual vs. monolingual) influences the use of IST, and whether IST develop comparably in both languages of the bilingual child. The participants included 75 Polish-English bilingual children aged 4.5-7 years old and living in the UK, and matched 75 Polish monolingual children living in Poland. The internal state terms were elicited via child-made narratives based on a set of pictures. Three subclasses of IST were coded: emotional, mental, and perceptual terms. Children were also asked to retell the story immediately after listening to a model story, and to answer comprehension questions about the story protagonists’ internal states. This was done to explore the effect of modelling on the IST production and to compare the IST production in storytelling and a relatively more interactive context of explicit conversation about internal states. Additionally, the children’s vocabulary and grammar knowledge was assessed in their respective languages, and their theory of mind performance was measured with a test of reflection on thinking. The results showed that while bilinguals exhibited relatively poorer language abilities than monolinguals, the children did not differ in the amount of internal state terms produced when telling a story. However, bilinguals outperformed monolingual peers on the theory of mind task. Thus, these two differences might have evened each other out, leading to no overall difference in the use of IST between the groups. Also, bilinguals used IST similarly in their two languages. It was also found that giving children a model story and explicitly asking them about the internal states of story protagonists sensitized them to their knowledge, desires, and beliefs which resulted in more internal state references in the retellings and answers to the questions than in the narratives told by children on the basis of pictures alone.Nasz słownik zawiera pojęcia, które wskazują na to, że rozumiemy iż ludzkim zachowaniem kierują stany wewnętrzne takie jak przekonania, pragnienia i wiedza. Są to terminy wyrażające stany wewnętrzne (ang. internal state terms, IST) i należą do nich np. „myśleć”, „chcieć”, „zauważyć”, „zaskoczony”, „przestraszony”. Razem terminy te tworzą leksykon terminów wewnętrznych (ang. Internal State Lexicon, ISL). ISL można umiejscowić na styku języka i teorii umysłu: IST muszą zostać przyswojone jak każde inne słowo, a ich użycie jest jednym z wyznaczników zdolności do mentalizacji. Niniejsza praca doktorska bada użycie IST u polsko-angielskich dzieci dwujęzycznych w wieku przed- i wczesnoszkolnym (4,5 – 7 lat). Dwujęzyczność może w sposób unikalny wpływać na użycie IST. Z jednej strony, dzieci dwujęzyczne mają mniej kontaktu z każdym ze swoich języków, w porównaniu z jednojęzycznymi rówieśnikami i muszą monitorować aktywację obu języków. To może skutkować niższymi umiejętnościami językowymi w porównaniu z dziećmi jednojęzycznymi (np. Haman i in., 2017). Z drugiej strony, dzieci dwujęzyczne prześcigają swoich jednojęzycznych rówieśników w zdolnościach poznawczych, w tym teorii umysłu (Farhadian i in., 2010; Goetz, 2003; Kovács, 2009). Głównym celem pracy było zbadanie czy status językowy (jedno- lub dwujęzyczność) wpływa na użycie IST i czy dzieci dwujęzyczne używają IST w podobny sposób w obu swoich językach. Uczestnikami badania było 75 polsko-angielskich dzieci dwujęzycznych w wieku 4,5 – 7 lat mieszkających w Wielkiej Brytanii i grupa dobranych 75 polskich dzieci jednojęzycznych mieszkających w Polsce. Badano użycie terminów wyrażających stany wewnętrzne w dziecięcych opowiadaniach tworzonych na podstawie zestawu obrazków. Kodowano trzy rodzaje terminów: emocjonalne, mentalne i percepcyjne. Dzieci proszone były również o ponowne opowiedzenie historyjki od razu po wysłuchaniu wersji modelowej i o odpowiedzenie na pytania dotyczące rozumienia historyjki, które skupiały się na stanach wewnętrznych postaci. Tym sposobem badano efekt modelowania na użycie IST i porównano produkcję IST podczas opowiadania historyjki i w stosunkowo bardziej interakcyjnym kontekście rozmowy o stanach wewnętrznych. Dodatkowo mierzono zasób słownictwa dzieci, ich zdolności rozumienia struktur gramatycznych w obu językach, oraz refleksję nad myśleniem. Wyniki wskazały, że choć dzieci dwujęzyczne osiągają niższe wyniki w testach językowych od jednojęzycznych rówieśników, to obie grupy nie różnią się ilością IST użytych podczas opowiadania historyjki. Jednakże dzieci dwujęzyczne osiągnęły wyższe – niż dzieci jednojęzyczne – wyniki w teście teorii umysłu. Te dwie różnice w rozwoju dzieci mogły się zniwelować, prowadząc do braku różnic między grupami w ilości użytych IST. Ponadto, dzieci dwujęzyczne używały IST podobnie w obu swoich językach. Wyniki pokazały również, że prezentowanie dziecku historyjki modelowej i pytanie o stany wewnętrzne bohaterów uczula dzieci na wiedzę, przekonania i pragnienia postaci, co prowadzi do zwiększenia – względem opowiedzianych historyjek – użycia IST w ich ponownie opowiedzianych historyjkach oraz w odpowiedziach na pytania dot. rozumienia historyjki

Steering the Cultural Dynamics

A peer-revieved book based on presentations at the XX Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2010, Melbourne, Australia. Edited by Yoshihisa Kashima, Emiko Kashima, and Ruth Beatson. (c) 2013, International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychologyhttps://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/iaccp_proceedings/1002/thumbnail.jp

Learning Disabilities

Learning disabilities are a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by failure to acquire, retrieve, or use information competently. They are the most severe and chronic form of learning difficulty in children. They can be present at birth or acquired as a result of illness, exposure to toxins, poor nutrition, medical treatment, sociocultural deprivation, or injury. Learning problems typically consist in failure to acquire reading, writing, or math skills, which are traditionally considered core domains. This book explores the epidemiology, neurobiological bases, and diagnostic tools necessary for a comprehensive assessment of children with learning disabilities. It also presents examples of children with specific learning disabilities and explains possible intervention strategies

Music Education and Its Impact on L2 Learning

English Language Learners are disproportionately underrepresented in secondary music classes in the United States. They are systematically excluded due to overly restrictive schedules, high emphasis on test scores and academic remediation, real and perceived cost of participation, and the types of courses that are offered at most secondary schools. At the same time, musical intervention research has revealed that musical ability is linked to literacy, pronunciation, and vocabulary retention, all aspects of second language acquisition. By excluding English Language Learners from music education, we could be denying them a tool that could positively impact their language acquisition. However, most of the stakeholders who determine whether English Language Learners enroll in music are unaware of the connections between music and language. The purpose of this project is to recruit English Language Learners to music programs by providing music teachers with a toolkit to educate students, parents, school administration, school counselors, and school board members on the benefits of music for language learning. By empowering educators and families with this knowledge, music teachers might find more English Language Learners in their classrooms and English Language Learners might find that the process of producing music improves their English language acquisition

Bilingual preschool education: a comparative study between Hong Kong and Shanghai

Global and local factors have recently pushed English-Chinese bilingualism to the forefront of early childhood education in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Signaling new sociolinguístic alignments, each city is pursuing language policies according to its own political and economic imperatives. Using Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecological system's theory as a framework for analysis, this research study examines the contextual layers that shape the linguistic environments of the two cities, focusing on the macrosystem’s forces of globalization, the exosystem’s social networks, the mesosystem's institutions and human players, the microsystem's schools and homes, and the chronosystem’s biology, acknowledging all factors that affect child development. In the hope of providing better strategies and interventions for developing second language learning, it looks at the stakeholders' attitudes towards, beliefs about, and expectations of English, as well as at parental involvement in children’s English education, perceptions about NETs (native English-speaking teachers), and curriculum implementation. Quantitative and qualitative data collected (from four schools in each city and a total of 438 respondents) through questionnaires, interviews and archival documents are then triangulated to identify differences and similarities between the two cities. The results show that English is universally promoted for its economic benefits, both to individuals and society. The form of preschool bilingualism advocated by the governments of Hong Kong and Shanghai, however, is unduly influenced by political and nationalist considerations. This has lead in Shanghai to conceptualizations of bilingualism that allow only for the acquisition of English without its attendant cultural and philosophical dimensions. In Hong Kong, the government's attempt to arbitrarily reduce the size of English-medium education, has lead, due to blowback, to extremely high English literacy expectations for preschoolers, delivered through overly ambitious programmes. In both cities, attempts to safeguard the use of the mother tongue as the primary medium of Instruction stand in the way of early bilingual development through immersion or partial immersion. In addition, the stakeholders' disparate expectations about when, how and why English at preschool is important have given rise to conflicts and dilemmas that distort the two cities' cultures of learning and the extent and form of their education reforms. The recommendations made seek to create for bilingual preschool education, sufficient space, given the current political, social, and economic conditions in both cities, to allow educators to pursue it with the most effective pedagogies

Problem space of modern society: philosophical-communicative and pedagogical interpretations. Part II

This collective monograph offers the description of philosophical bases of definition of communicative competence and pedagogical conditions for the formation of communication skills. The authors of individual chapters have chosen such point of view for the topic which they considered as the most important and specific for their field of study using the methods of logical and semantic analysis of concepts, the method of reflection, textual reconstruction and comparative analysis. The theoretical and applied problems of modern society are investigated in the context of philosophical, communicative and pedagogical interpretations