Food for psycholinguistic thought on gender in Dutch and German:A literature review on L1 and L2 production and processing

The aim of this paper is to explore how variation in the expression of gender has been and can be exploited to study gender perception in speakers of Dutch and German. We provide an up-to-date literature review on descriptive and psycholinguistic research on gender for these languages, considering empirical studies on both native (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. This paper contributes to placing existing literature on gender in Dutch and German in a comparative mode and to offering a concrete rationale (e.g., three lines of enquiry) to move the psycholinguistic study of language, cognition and gender forward.</p

Double subtitles as an effective tool for vocabulary learning

The present study aimed to investigate if and how the mere minimal exposureto subtitled audio-visual input in an unknown language can enhance incidentalvocabulary learning. Three experimental conditions were compared inwhich native Dutch participants with no prior knowledge of the target language(Russian) viewed an eight-minute Russian cartoon with: (a) standard(Dutch) subtitles or (b) double (Russian and Dutch) subtitles. A control groupwatched the cartoon: (c) without subtitles. All participants were tested on vocabulary gains and visual information processing after having watched the cartoon three times. Results revealed that vocabulary acquisition did occur afterwatching the cartoon. Interestingly, participants who were exposed to thedouble subtitles condition significantly outperformed those who watched thecartoon with standard subtitles on a written word recognition test. Moreover,participants who were exposed to the subtitle conditions were better at remembering the sequence of scenes from the cartoon they had seen. The results thus provide evidence for increased processing of the visual scene as wellas incidental vocabulary learning after the exposure to subtitled audio-visualinput with no pre-existing knowledge of the target language and, more specifically, evidence for the particularly beneficial effects of the double subtitles

The impact of second- and third-language learning on language aptitude and working memory

An increasing number of adults learn more than one foreign language simultaneously. While the cognitive benefits of using multiple languages from birth have been studied extensively, little is known about possible cognitive benefits of learning multiple languages simultaneously in adulthood. Among the cognitive abilities which play a role in language learning, language aptitude (LA) and working memory (WM) are argued to be crucial. Traditionally considered relatively stable, recently they are advocated to be changeable. For example, one could imagine that learning new sounds, words, and structures in a language might both enhance the ability to temporarily hold and manage information (WM) and improve the ease with which subsequent languages are learnt (LA). Therefore, this study investigates whether LA and WM change while learning languages, and whether language learning intensity, i.e. learning one versus two foreign languages simultaneously, modulates this effect. Participants consisted of first-year and second-year Chinese university students majoring in English or English & Japanese/Russian. Data were collected twice with an interval of one academic year. The results show that all learners improved in certain aspects of LA and WM, and that among the first-year students, the two-foreign-languages learners outperformed their counterparts in WM improvement. The implications are discussed

‘Who really speaks like that?’– Children’s implicit and explicit attitudes towards multilingual speakers of Dutch

This study investigates children’sexplicitand implicit language attitudes in a highly diverse primary education. Set in the bilingual province of Fryslân, the Netherlands, the current research was carried out in the scope of the 3M-project (‘More opportunities with multilingualism’: Duarte & Günther-van der Meij, 2018a. A holistic model for multilingualism in education. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 5(2), 24–43. https://doi.org/ 10.21283/2376905X.9.153), wherein pupils’ home languages are used as a resource to promote multilingualism and thereby facilitate learning. We examined socially significant language attitudes and children’s stereotypes towards prevalent minority and migrant languages. Participants consisted of 93 pupils (aged 7–12). They completed questionnaires to assess their explicit attitudes towards majority, migrant and minority languages. Additionally, 137 pupils performed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure the relative attitudes of standard Dutch versus (1) the regional minority language (Frisian) and versus (2) a salient migrant language (Moroccan Arabic). Questionnaire results show significantly lower ratings for Moroccan Arabic and ‘other languages’ compared to Dutch, English and Frisian. Implicit results revealed a larger and significant preference for Dutch over Moroccan-Dutch accents and a smaller, non-significant, preference for Dutch over Frisian accents. Our results suggest a need for primary schools to explicitly address issues related to children’s attitudes towards different languages and accents