2,518 research outputs found
Individual variations in learners’ ability to use connectives in a foreign language
No full textConnectives are linguistic items that indicate discourse relations like cause and condition between discourse segments and thus represent crucial elements for coherence (Halliday and Hasan, 1976; Sanders, Spooren, & Noordman, 1992). Despite their high frequency in most discourse genres, the ability to handle connectives typical of the written mode has been found to be quite variable even among adult native speakers (Zufferey & Gygax, 2020), and this variability has been linked to the degree of exposure to print that people have.
In this presentation, we investigate the ability of German-speaking learners of French to use 12 French connectives typical of the written mode. We also investigate the role of three variables that could account for the variability between learners: language proficiency; exposure to print in the second language (French) and exposure to print in the first language (German). In a sentence completion task performed online, we tested 151 German-speaking learners of French as well as a control group of 63 French native speakers. In order to assess learners’ proficiency level in written French, we gave them a written language competence task (Zufferey and Gygax, 2020) and a vocabulary knowledge-test (Lextale, Brysbaert, 2013). In addition, we tested the exposition to print in both their L1 (Art-Ger, Grolig, Tiffin-Richards & Schroeder, 2020) and L2 (Art-F, Zufferey and Gygax, 2020). Finally, in a self-assessment task, we measured learners’ perceived importance of 10 given factors (e.g. school, friends, reading, Internet) for their acquisition of French.
Results indicate that for the non-native speakers, a higher vocabulary knowledge and a better grammar mastery predicted a better score in the main task. More intriguingly, a higher exposition to print in L1, but not in L2, also predicted a better mastery of connectives in L2. These results thus tend to indicate that L2 acquisition research should focus more on the first language competence of the participants as predictors of their ability to use connectives, as results show that there are several factors that facilitate or hinder learners’ mastery that are linked to their native language. These factors raise important questions about a possible interaction between the native and foreign languages (see also Sparks, Patton, Ganschow, Humbach, & Javorsky, 2006; Sparks, Patton, Ganschow, & Humbach, 2012). Finally, participants that assigned a higher importance to the factor reading for their acquisition of French were more likely to score higher at the main task. Beside supporting our finding of the link between connective mastery and the exposition to print, this finding shows that subjective impressions of participants are reliable predictors of their level of competence
Samuel Beckett and the Writers of Port-Royal
Get PDFIt has been observed that ‘the literary influences on Beckett have been far more important than has been acknowledged, and more important indeed, than the philosophical influences’ (Smith 2002: 3). The truth of this statement is evidenced by the description that scholars have given of Samuel Beckett’s relationship to seventeenth century French classicism. To date, critical interest has been limited for the most part to the figure of the philosopher René Descartes on the (fragile) grounds that Beckett was exclusively concerned with the Cartesian imperative of clarity and order, the fundamental dualism between body and mind, and Nominalism.
Together with the assumption that Beckett’s vision was essentially Cartesian, his literary filiation with Pascal was suggested by critics, but only in terms of Beckett’s formal approach to the theatre. In his short article on En attendant Godot in 1953, the playwright Jean Anouilh was among the first reviewers to suggest that Beckett’s drama synthesizes the encounter between ‘classicism’ and a ‘modern’ form of art. It is well known that Beckett retained a lifelong admiration for Pascal – indeed, Pascal was one of his ‘old chestnuts’ (Knowlson 1997: 653). Little attention has been paid, however, to the originality of Pascal’s thought, the specific nature of his prose, and the impact these might have had upon Beckett’s mature work, especially the trilogy and the subsequent short prose. Yet, in the literary and philosophical context of post-war France, Beckett’s filiation with Pascal, their corresponding preoccupations, were evident to his contemporaries, who identified Pascal as an underlying presence in his works
"Roger broke his tooth. However, he went to the dentist": why some readers struggle to evaluate wrong (and right) uses of connectives
No full textSabil and Wikala of Dhul Fiqar Oda Bashi
No full textinterior, courtyard, "Vue de l'Okel Zoulfiqar," color plate XLIV of Pascal Coste's "Architecture arabe; ou, Monuments du Kaire, mesurés et dessinés, de 1818 à 1826", 1818-182
First person - Aude Pascal
No full textInternational audienceFirst Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Aude Pascal is first author on `Annexin A2 and Ahnak control cortical NuMA-dynein localization and mitotic spindle orientation', published in JCS. Aude is a research assistant in the lab of Re ' gis Giet at University of Rennes, France, who is particularly interested in developmental biology. She has always been struck by the fact that a whole organism displaying multiple functions arises from a single cell. For this reason, she has oriented her research on mitosis and meiosis to study the different steps, components and structures involved in these processes
- …
