Rapid automatic naming predicts more than sublexical fluency: Evidence from English-French bilinguals

Rapid Automatized Naming is an important predictor of reading fluency. Whether Rapid Automatized Naming measures abstract sublexical correspondence fluency (Theory A) or word-specific fluency (Theory B) is unresolved. English, and to a lesser extent, French orthographies are opaque for reading. Thus, if Rapid Automatized Naming predicts word reading fluency after controlling for within-language pseudoword decoding fluency, in typical English-French bilingual students, theory B is supported over theory A. Hierarchical regression analyses with 76 typical English-French bilingual students revealed that kindergarten Rapid Automatized Naming predicted English word and French word reading fluency in Grade 6 and sometimes in Grade 3 after within-language pseudoword reading fluency was controlled, supporting theory B. However, Rapid Automatized Naming consistently predicted French word and pseudoword reading, supporting theory A. We argue that Rapid Automatized Naming indexes resources for learning both the lexical features of written words and orthography-to-phonology correspondences in opaque orthographies among bilingual students

Attitudes towards code-switching among adult mono- and multilingual language users

The present study investigates inter-individual variation (linked to personality traits, multilingualism and sociobiographical variables) in attitudes towards code-switching (CS) among 2070 multilinguals. Data were collected through an on-line questionnaire. We found that high levels of Tolerance of Ambiguity and Cognitive Empathy, and low levels of Neuroticism are linked with significantly more positive attitudes towards CS. Knowing many languages had a marginally positive effect. A more fine-grained analysis revealed that participants with mid-range global proficiency values were less positive towards CS than those at the lower and higher end of the scale. Participants who grew up in a bilingual family and in an ethnically diverse environment, and currently worked in an ethnically diverse environment had significantly more positive attitudes towards CS. Female participants and those with the lowest and highest levels of education appreciated CS most, and participants in their teens and twenties appreciated CS less than older participants. The findings thus show that the attitudes towards CS are linked to personality, language learning history and current linguistic practices, as well as some sociobiographical variables

Bad influence? – an investigation into the purported negative influence of foreign domestic helpers on children's second language English acquisition

This paper explores the purported negative influence of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) on child second language acquisition (SLA) by studying Hong Kong Cantonese children's listening ability in second language (L2) English. 31 kindergarten third graders aged 4;6 to 6, and 29 first year secondary students aged 11-14 who have had a Filipino domestic helper at home took part in the study. In addition, 34 youngsters (20 in kindergarten, 14 in secondary) who did not have a Filipino helper participated as controls. Results from two listening tasks (picture choosing task, sound discrimination task) suggest that informants do not differ from the control in their abilities to listen to American-, British-, and Hong Kong English, and that they are better at listening to Filipino-accented English than the control. These findings cast doubts on the anecdotal belief of the harmful effect FDHs have on children's language acquisition including an L2. Moreover, the additional effect of being familiar with another variety of English is arguably a desirable outcome given that English is used as a lingua franca among non-native speakers on a daily basis in this highly globalised world

Linguistic foundations of heritage language development from the perspective of romance languages in Germany

This paper discusses the role of different factors determining the linguistic competence of heritage speakers (HSs) based on examples from speakers who speak a Romance language (French, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish) as heritage language (HL) and German as the environmental language. Since the relative amount of contact with the HL and the environmental language may vary during the acquisition process, the role of language dominance (in terms of relative language proficiency) is of particular interest for HL development. In addition to dominance (and related to it), cross-linguistic influence (CLI) may have an influence on the outcome of HL acquisition. Finally, quality and quantity of input also determine HL acquisition and will be discussed in connection with heritage language education.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sentence Repetition in Deaf Children with Specific Language Impairment in British Sign Language

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) perform poorly on sentence repetition tasks across different spoken languages, but until now, this methodology has not been investigated in children who have SLI in a signed language. Users of a natural sign language encode different sentence meanings through their choice of signs and by altering the sequence and inflections of these signs. Grammatical information is expressed through movement and configurational changes of the hands and face. The visual modality thus influences how grammatical morphology and syntax are instantiated. How would language impairment impact on the acquisition of these types of linguistic devices in child signers? We investigated sentence repetition skills in a group of 11 deaf children who display SLI in British Sign Language (BSL) and 11 deaf controls with no language impairment who were matched for age and years of BSL exposure. The SLI group was significantly less accurate on an overall accuracy score, and they repeated lexical items, overall sentence meaning, sign order, facial expressions, and verb morphological structures significantly less accurately than controls. This pattern of language deficits is consistent with the characterization of SLI in spoken languages even though expression is in a different modality. We conclude that explanations of SLI, and of poor sentence repetition by children with this disorder, must be able to account for both the spoken and signed modalities

A bilingual emotional advantage? An investigation into the effects of psychological factors in emotion perception in Arabic and in English of Arabic-English bilinguals and Arabic /English monolinguals

Aims and objectives: While the debate on the cognitive bilingual advantage is ongoing, much less attention has been paid to a potential emotional advantage of bilinguals. The present study compared the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals in emotion perception (EP) in Arabic and in English and the differences in trait emotional intelligence (Trait EI). It also considered the relationship between Trait EI and EP scores. Methodology: 205 Arabic-English bilinguals, 71 Arabic monolinguals and 333 English monolinguals had to recognise anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise and happiness in twelve short audio-visual video clips (six in English and six in Arabic) embedded in an online questionnaire. The clips contained short conversations about day-to-day situations. Data and analysis: Nonparametric statistical analyses were used to explore the differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in EP in English and Arabic and to explore the relationship between Trait EI and EP. Findings: Bilinguals outperformed English monolinguals in the EP task in English but did not perform better than Arabic monolinguals in Arabic. Bilinguals scored higher on Trait EI than monolinguals, and Trait EI scores were significantly and positively correlated with EP scores. Originality: This study suggests that there is a small bilingual advantage for emotional and psychological domains. Significance: Bilingualism seems to have an effect on some personality dimensions and emotional skills

What is behind a summary-evaluation decision?

Research in psychology has reported that, among the variety of possibilities for assessment methodologies, summary evaluation offers a particularly adequate context for inferring text comprehension and topic understanding. However, grades obtained in this methodology are hard to quantify objectively. Therefore, we carried out an empirical study to analyze the decisions underlying human summary-grading behavior. The task consisted of expert evaluation of summaries produced in critically relevant contexts of summarization development, and the resulting data were modeled by means of Bayesian networks using an application called Elvira, which allows for graphically observing the predictive power (if any) of the resultant variables. Thus, in this article, we analyzed summary-evaluation decision making in a computational framewor

Predictors of reading literacy for first and second language learners

In this study an attempt was made to construct a multi-factor model predicting the development of reading literacy in the upper grades of primary school in the Netherlands for subgroups of 729 first language (L1) learners and 93 second language (L2) learners. Following a longitudinal design, it was explored to what extent the variation in reading literacy development in L1 and L2 from grade 4 to grade 6 can be explained from children’s word decoding, language, mathematics and nonverbal reasoning skills, reading motivation and self confidence as well as their home reading resources. The results showed that L1 and L2 learners differed in reading literacy skills, language, mathematics, and reasoning skills. Structural equation modelling showed that the reading literacy development in both L1 and L2 learners could be explained from decoding, language, mathematics and reasoning skills, as well as their motivation and self-confidence. A striking difference was the fact that home reading resources had an impact on reading literacy in L1 learners but not in L2 learners