The role of scaffolding in children’s questions: Implications for (preschool) language assessment from a usage-based perspective

AbstractThis article outlines a range of theoretical, empirical, and practical desiderata for the design of (preschool) language assessments that follow from recent insights into language development from a cognitive-linguistic and usage-based perspective. To assess children’s productive communicative abilities rather than their ability to judge the acceptability of complex sentences in isolation is a new perspective in language testing that requires theoretical motivation as well as operationalizable criteria for judging the appropriateness of children’s language productions, and for characterizing the properties of their language command. After a brief review of the basic rationale of current strands of preschool assessment in Germany (Section 2), the fundamental usage-based assumptions regarding children’s developing linguistic competence and their implications for the design of preschool language diagnostics are characterized (Section 3). In order to assess children’s language production, in particular its flexibility and productivity in context, a test environment needs to be created in which children are allowed to use a certain range of language in meaningful contexts. Section 4 thus zooms in on the central question of scaffolding. Section 5 presents corresponding corpus evidence for adult strategies of prompting children to elaborate their answers and for typical child responses. Sections 6 and 7 discuss the corpus-based findings with respect to their implications for the design of ( preschool) language assessment and point to further challenges.</jats:p

Gradual development of constructional complexity in German spatial language

In this paper, we assess the developmental trajectories by which children approach adult levels of complexity and informativeness in the linguistically and conceptually challenging domain of spatial language. To this end, we look at three types of spatial relations (localization, spontaneous and caused motion) in spontaneous German child speech (age 2;6 to 2;11 and 4;6 to 4;11), and in elicited Frog Story narratives from German child and adult speakers (3-, 5-, 9-year-olds, and adults. Children are generally sensitive to typological preferences. From early on, their productions reflect target-language-specific lexicalization patterns. Our analyses show that they still approach adult-like levels of information complexity and density only gradually. This concerns the local complexity (structural repertoire for the conceptual slots figure, verb, path/ground), as also established in previous research, but in particular the global complexity, as investigated in this study. Global complexity measures the structural integration of information, or the combinatorial complexity that surfaces at the utterance level. As predicted by usage-based theories, adult-like degrees of informativeness and information density are only reached gradually, although the component parts at the local level are available earlier in development

Rezension: Roche, Jörg (2013), Mehrsprachigkeitstheorie. Erwerb - Kognition - Transkulturation - Ökologie.

Das Thema Mehrsprachigkeit trifft einen Nerv des aktuellen wissenschaftlichen und (bildungs-)politischen Diskurses, und zwar nicht nur in Deutschland (siehe Berthoud, Grin & Lüdi 2013). Dabei treten Ansätze, die Mehrsprachigkeit in erster Linie als Problem und potentielles Defizit ansehen (Stichwort: mehrfache Halbsprachigkeit), immer mehr in den Hintergrund gegenüber einer positiven Perspektive, die in Mehrsprachigkeit ein Potential und einen (ob persönlichen, kulturellen oder wirtschaftlichen) Mehrwert sieht bzw. nach den konkreten Bedingungen des Erreichens eines solchen Mehrwerts fragt. Entsprechend wird eine systematische Förderung und Wertschätzung der individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Mehrsprachigkeit gefordert (vgl. z.B. Gogolin & Lange 2010; Gogolin & Michel 2010). Von hoher Relevanz ist dabei weiterhin u.a. die Frage, welcher Stellenwert, neben spezifischen (Früh-) Förderkonzepten nationaler Bildungssprachen (als Zweitsprachen) und dem Fremdsprachenunterricht in Schule und Erwachsenenbildung (zur Förderung internationaler Verkehrs- und Bildungsfremdsprachen), auf die Familien- und Herkunftssprachen und ihre Förderung entfallen soll. Doch die drängendste Frage bleibt die nach den konkreten Umsetzungsmöglichkeiten entsprechender Forderungen in die Praxis: Wie genau soll eine sowohl sprachlehr- und -lerntheoretisch als auch empirisch begründete, wertschätzende und dabei effektive Förderung und Vermittlung von Mehrsprachigkeit in den verschiedenen Kontexten aussehen? Unter welchen Bedingungen kann sie glücken

Wie es um die Schreibkompetenzen Berufslernender steht

Lese- und Schreibkompetenzen ermöglichen die Teilhabe am kulturellen, wirtschaftlichen und politischen Leben. Sie öffnen die Türen zu Bildung und Weiterbildung und sind – gerade auch mit Blick auf die Digitalisierung – grundlegende Voraussetzung für den beruflichen Erfolg. Eine trinationale Studie zeigt, wie es um die Schreibkompetenzen Berufslernender steht. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen nicht nur den Handlungsbedarf in Bezug auf die Förderung literaler Kompetenzen in der beruflichen Bildung, sondern bieten erstmals eine wissenschaftlich gesicherte Grundlage für eine bedarfsgerechte Schreibförderung

Path under construction : challenges beyond s-framed motion event construal in L2 German

The CC BY 4.0 license statement can be found here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2022.859714/fullThe encoding of motion events is known to be challenging for second language (L2) users, particularly if the lexicalization patterns of their first language (L1) diverge from those of the L2. This paper analyzes oral and written motion event descriptions produced by advanced L2 users of German, an information-dense satellite-framed language. Based on L2 usage and error patterns, we discuss six major challenges with respect to motion event encoding and, more specifically, path encoding. These challenges clearly go beyond event construal and the acquisition of the basic satellite-framed lexicalization pattern (e.g., verb semantics) as well as beyond expected challenges related to the use of prepositional phrases (e.g., prepositional semantics, case marking). Advanced L2 users actually particularly struggle with “smaller” path encoding devices such as particles, locative and directional adverbs, their formal and functional differentiation, their usage patterns and combinatorial potential. These aspects seem to be challenging for advanced L2 users of German with either verb-framed L1s (French, Spanish) or satelliteframed L1s (Danish, English). We therefore discuss characteristics of the target language input that might explain why L2 users struggle with identifying and differentiating these path encoding devices, their usage, and combinatorial patterns. We sketch potential implications for L2 teaching

Tüen Sie au gern apéröle, käffele oder kungfule? Die Produktivität des denominalen Wortbildungsmusters der -(e)le-Verben zwischen Morphologie und Syntax

How can we measure dialectal constructional productivity? Which factors determine degrees of productivity and the acceptability of creative ad hoc coinages in the domain of derivational processes? Based on data from a pilot survey (n=80), we discuss a range of factors influencing degrees of productivity/creativity for the denominal -(e)le-verb pattern (e.&nbsp;g., käffele, apéröle, ipödle, kungfule) in Swiss German dialects. This morphological pattern is currently highly productive, as indicated by substantial numbers of creative ad hoc coinages (oral and written evidence) as well as our participants’ acceptability judgements (for both isolated verbs and verbs in sentences) and their elicited productions (meaning paraphrases and sentence contexts for ad hoc coinages). We discuss different types of evidence for constructional productivity, based on quantitative and qualitative data. Our data indicates that schema-based frequency/familiarity effects and analogy-based pattern extension contribute to the pattern’s productivity. The fact that the verbs’ constructional contexts partly influence their acceptability indicates that the derivational pattern stretches beyond the traditional domain of morphology such that morphological, semantic, and syntactic patterns jointly determine degrees of constructional productivity

Literacy in vocational education and training : scenario-based reading and writing education

Erworben im Rahmen der Schweizer Nationallizenzen (http://www.nationallizenzen.ch)Many students in vocational education and training (VET) have difficulties with reading and writing. To date, there is little research on whether and how the development of VET students’ writing skills may benefit from teaching approaches that integrate reading and writing. This study reports results from a semester-long intervention study conducted in Switzerland in 2018/19 (N = 285) in which we investigated the impact of a scenario-based integration of reading-to-write-tasks on the development of VET students’ text quality. In the approach, problem-solving processes are set in motion by scenarios representing real- or work-life situations. Reading-to-write tasks form part of the student-initiated problem-solving process, and result in situated argumentative writing. A small experimental intervention effect was found where text quality developed significantly better in the experimental group than in a matched control group (F1,178 = 7.40, p < .01, Cohen’s f = 0.20), as measured in a writing test before and after exposure to the teaching method. Outcomes suggest tangible benefits may result when applying this approach to literacy education in VET, particularly for academically weaker students. We discuss the consequences and implications of these findings, as well as open questions to be addressed by further research