1,720,973 research outputs found
Kleine kinderen, grote oren? Het succes waarmee kleuters van Vlaamse en Marokkaanse afkomst nieuwe woorden leren via rechtstreekse communicatie en luistervinken
No full textLittle Pitchers, Big Ears? The Success of Learning New Vocabulary through Addressed and Overheard Speech in Flemish- and Moroccan-heritage Preschool Children
Language acquisition research has long focused nearly exclusively on the way in which young children learn language in direct interactions (Akhtar, Jipson, & Callanan, 2001). However, children also learn much language in indirect situations: by keenly observing others and overhearing conversations. This dissertation aims to provide more insight into the way in which older (six-year-old) children learn language in both direct and indirect contexts. We conducted two studies in children in the final year of kindergarten.
The first study was conducted in Flemish-heritage children (N = 53) in ten different kindergartens in Antwerp. The children were exposed to a story with twelve novel words in three different interaction situations. The study revealed that six-year-old children learned equally well in direct interaction with an adult experimenter, who introduced herself as a ‘new teacher’ at school, as through overhearing conversations among two adults. The children learned, however, significantly fewer novel words when they had the opportunity to overhear classroom interactions. The fact that children learn equally well in direct interaction as through overhearing conversations among adults is in line with previous research in infants from European background.
Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain why children learn less through overhearing classroom interactions. One explanation is that children are susceptible to effects of classroom socialization. Classroom socialization means that children, by repeatedly participating in the same classroom activities, gradually know how to behave to be considered as competent members of the classroom community (Mehan, 1979). The school system implies, amongst others, that children are generally not expected to learn from other activities simultaneously occurring in the classroom. Therefore, the children may have been less attentive to the conversations that were intended for their peers, and they learned fewer words in this condition. Another explanation is that children may find it more interesting to overhear conversations that are intended for an adult, than conversations meant for their peers. In order to verify this hypothesis, the experiment should be replicated in a context that is less schoolish (such as a birthday party).
The second study was conducted in Flemish-heritage (N = 53) and Moroccan-heritage (N = 79) children in fourteen kindergartens in Antwerp. The children were exposed to the story in the same interaction situations as in the first study. The results showed that Flemish-and Moroccan-heritage children learned equally well through addressed speech. In the overhearing of classroom interactions Moroccan-heritage children learned fewer new words than Flemish-heritage children, but the difference was not significant. The largest and most remarkable difference appeared in the overhearing of conversations among adults: Moroccan-heritage children learned significantly fewer words than Flemish-heritage children in this condition.
It is remarkable that Moroccan-heritage children had lower word acquisition results than Flemish-heritage children in the indirect interaction situation among adults, since ethnographic research has shown that Moroccan-heritage children may be more used to learn through observation than children from a Western-European background (Pels & de Haan, 2004). Therefore, we had expected that Moroccan-heritage children might be better in learning language through indirect interaction situations, or that they might be at least equally good at it as Flemish-heritage children.
We considered different explanations for the word acquisition differences between children from both cultural backgrounds in the indirect interaction situation among adults. In our view, the most plausible explanation is related to processes of social identification. Similar to the most prototypical educational situation all experiments were conducted by a (female) experimenter of Flemish origin. The addressed adult was also of Flemish origin. We suspect that Flemish-heritage children, by sharing the same ethnic background as the storytellers, were better able to socially identify with them. Therefore, they may have been more inclined to overhear their conversations and they learned more novel words than Morooccan-heritage children.
A quantitative analysis of children’s attention management indicates that Flemish-heritage children demonstrated indeed significantly more sustained attention for the storytelling event than Moroccan-heritage children. This was the case for both the exposure to classroom interaction as in the overhearing of two adults. The research finding that Moroccan-heritage children show less sustained attention to the conversations around them in a (Flemish) educational context is especially important. Language acquisition works cumulatively: children who attend to both indirect and direct interaction situations and learn language from that, make potentially more progress with respect to language learning than children who exclusively attend when they are involved in direct interactions. It has been frequently demonstrated in previous research that Moroccan- (and Turkish-) heritage children experience more language learning difficulties at school than Flemish-heritage children and children from other ethnic backgrounds (see, amongst others, OECD, 2010; Verhaeghe & Van Damme, 2007). The fact that Moroccan-heritage children make fewer use of overhearing opportunities, might thus partly provide an explanation why they make less progress with respect to language acquisition.status: Publishe
Woordenschatverwerving en taalleerstrategieën met behulp van CLIL in een Tsjechisch perspectief
No full textThis research focuses on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) being one important approach in modern education. More specifically, during the study, CLIL was examined in connection with vocabulary development and language learning strategies.
The research took place in the Czech Republic and comprised a sample of 286 pupils ranging from 11 to 14 years of age; a total of 12 classes spread over three schools. Ten of the classes served as experimental classes and two as control classes. Half of the experimental group started with CLIL at the time of the study. The other half had already had one year of experience with CLIL prior to the study. The content subjects in the experimental classes were History and Civics and the language of instruction was English. The time frame of the study corresponded to one school year. The goal of the research was twofold, which led to two main research questions: (1) Does general vocabulary size increase over a year in CLIL? and (2) What is the connection between language learning strategies and vocabulary acquisition in CLIL classes?
English vocabulary knowledge tests to measure productive vocabulary and the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (a version of a questionnaire for speakers of other languages learning English) were used for data collection.
When analysing the data, different variables were taken into consideration such as CLIL experience, gender, content subject and teacher. Gender and content subject turned out to be not significant, whereas a previous year of CLIL and the teacher were significant. With regard to the questionnaires, five strategies showed a positive influence on the growth of productive vocabulary and vocabulary development appears to be enhanced by dropping five of the strategies. Those strategies which enhanced productive vocabulary acquisition were strategies dealing with task-based rather than purely vocabulary-based activities.status: Publishe
Six-year-olds' learning of novel words through addressed and overheard speech
No full textRecent research indicates that infants can learn novel words equally well through addressed speech as through overhearing two adult experimenters. The current study examined to which extent six-year-old children learn from overhearing opportunities in regular kindergarten classroom practices. Fifty-three children (M age = 5;6) were exposed to a story with twelve novel words in three different conditions. In the Addressed condition, children were directly addressed to listen to the story. In the Overhearing Classroom, the children were assigned to a task within earshot of the children of the Addressed condition. In the Overhearing Two Adults condition, the experimenter told the story to another adult. The results showed that the Addressees learned equally well as the Overhearers of Two Adults. However, in the Overhearing Classroom condition children learned significantly fewer words compared to the two other conditions. Different hypotheses are offered to explain the relative success of overhearing two adults compared to overhearing classroom interactions.sponsorship: The authors would like to thank all the school directors, teachers, parents, and children who participated in this study. Special thanks go to An Carbonez and Eline Zenner for their additional feedback on design and statistical analysis, and Ditte Kimps, Eline Zenner, Freek Van de Velde, Goedele Vandommele, Lies Strobbe, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. This research was supported by a grant from Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) awarded to the first author. (Research Foundation Flanders (FWO))status: Publishe
Creating quarter for doing things with language
No full textIn this article I deal with language policy as it is aimed at changing the language practice of certain people within a group (Spolsky 2004). I will especially focus on instances of language policy that are meant to have an emancipatory function: policy is aimed at changing the language practice of some people in order for them to function in situations that are considered socially important. I start my account of successes and failures in language policy with an exploration of the concept of language. I will try to make clear that there are two concepts of language which are commonly used, and that these concepts differ from one another in the way the relation between variation and uniformity in language is seen. I will situate these concepts in Realist Social Theory (RST), and will go into the consequences of interpreting language from one of these angles for the
effectiveness of language policy.status: Publishe
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
If we would ask the children. The potential of productive interaction for second language acquisition from the early beginning
No full textIn Flemish schools, a high proportion of children with an ethnic minority background underachieves. It is commonly accepted that underachievement is closely related to limited academic language proficiency. The nature of early second language learning is perceived as an implicit and automatic process driven by affiliation with significant others. Powerful modes of teacher-child interaction, like productive classroom talk, are therefore essential in terms of second language learning success.
Most studies in primary and secondary school settings, however, have approached productive talk qualitatively. Little is known about the potential of productive talk for pre-schoolers in terms of its relation with second language acquisition (SLA), especially for learners-at-risk such as ethnic minority children. Furthermore, studies on affective priming show that reference to significant others, like participants’ mothers, leads to higher scores for linguistic tasks. Most affective priming studies, however, are conducted in laboratory settings rather than in authentic classroom situations. In this dissertation, we will examine whether the affective priming paradigm and the productive interaction approach can be used as affiliative language learning boosts for pre-schoolers with a Turkish background acquiring Dutch as a second language in Flanders. Participants were aged 5/6 and were in the third year of kindergarten during data collection.
The data collection consists of two main parts: a field experiment and a longitudinal study. In the field experiment (N = 98), we examined whether reference to ethnic minority children’s parents in productively addressed and non-addressed classroom interaction had a positive effect on early second language acquisition. A 3 by 2 field experiment was set up: participants were exposed to a task-based neologism story in differently manipulated learning situations. The story was told in three different conditions: a parent condition, a stranger condition and a control condition. In the parent condition, the story was told against the background of pictures of participants’ parents. In the stranger condition, the same was done, but against the background of pictures of unknown adults. In the control condition, the story was told against a traditional classroom background with no pictures in it. In each condition, two subconditions were implemented: a productively addressed and a non-addressed group (overhearing). Language tests measured the effects of the treatment on participants’ receptive and productive SLA, while controlling for initial language proficiency and school liking.
Analyses revealed no significant effects for affective priming. However, significantly stronger novel word learning was found for learners with a higher initial language proficiency and for learners who were addressed productively. Furthermore, non-addressed school dislikers outperformed non-addressed school likers, suggesting that the possibility to overhear productive classroom talk – alternated with participating in this type of talk – constitutes a powerful language learning situation for pre-schoolers who dislike school.
In the longitudinal study (N = 104), we further explored different modes of teacher talk (active-productive, passive-productive and non-productive) and examined how the use of these different modes was related to participants’ second language development during the school year. Analyses revealed significantly stronger second language development for participants who were mainly addressed active-productively as compared to those who were addressed non-productively. Furthermore, interview data concerning teachers’ beliefs suggest the active-productive mode is associated with high expectations towards pre-schoolers and an autonomy-supportive conceptualisation of kindergarten education while the non-productive mode seems to be associated with low expectations and a control-focused conceptualisation of kindergarten. Overall, the research findings suggest that productive classroom talk has the power to boost second language development and to contribute to more equal education opportunities from the early start.status: Publishe
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