We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The article examines the diversity of scientific approaches to second language acquisition (SLA). Success in language attainment depends on a variety of factors that are determined by the human mind. The most important factors are multiple intelligences, learner aptitude to languages, learner personality and motivation, as well as some individual differences such as anxiety, self-esteem and willingness to learn. Appropriate learning strategies and styles are also beneficial for success in learning. The article looks over research data on theoretical and experimental aspects of second language acquisition. They include: Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, fluid and crystallized intelligence, practical and emotional intelligence, information-processing approaches; phenomenology which deals with classical and operant conditioning; various approaches to personality; SLA stages and aptitude constructs; language learning styles and strategies; motivation, and important individual learner characteristics that are relevant to successful outcome in learning.
More...
Introduction. The authors describe and analyse practices of national identity in the medium created in live blogging, a new form of online news now employed by the world’s leading news editions. The purpose of the article is to explain the linguistic aspect of the narratives constructed in this genre. Materials and methods. Materials and methods include exploratory case study and content analysis of a sample of forty randomly selected live blogs, their readers’ feedback and their audience measurement. The interdisciplinary approach allows the authors to pinpoint the stylistic peculiarities of the new genre and interpret the effect in terms of social philosophy. Results. The study has shown that live blogging as a digital article covers a developing situation live by arranging small pieces of text or visual content in reverse chronological order. The authors suggest that live blogging brings forward group identities and actualizes them through a set of perception effects determined by the stylistic features of the form. Conclusion. The authors state that the possible effects of such texts on the practices of national identity include four aspects: shared group solidarity, unfolding simultaneousness of the event, identification with opinion leaders, accentuated importance of the event for group existence. The consistent characteristics of live blogging include division into lead parts in reverse chronological order with separate headlines and bylines, employing both reader-produced and professional graphic content, short paragraphs, emotional neutrality of the editor’s contribution and a set of linguistic features characteristic of publicist style in its newspaper variety.
More...
The article presents the influence of dyslexia on the process of the Polish language acquisition as well as a student’s psychical attitude during the process of learning. The author offers some helpful exercises and also attempts to answer to the question about the teacher’s input in supporting students and helping them to succeed despite helping their specific disorders.
More...
The article outlines the purpose of the European LiMe Project as well as its current stage of development and intended aims. The project’s purpose is to create a Moodle platform that will support native language teaching and learning processes in the learner’s country of choice. This would be achieved through the skilled use of authentic media content. The authors of the project propose that such content may have great potential in the provision of cultural adaptation for migrants. The project is to result in a creation of ready-to-use lesson plans, incorporating existing media content, for levels A2–B2 in 5 European languages. Aset of exercises will also be created with the aim of supporting the migrants in better understanding and fuller access to the media content.
More...
Tomasz Olbratowski uses a variety of lexical phenomena: polysemy, homonymy, sociolects, archaisms, neologisms, acronyms. He uses linguistic humor not only to entertain the listeners, but also as a means of evaluation. The use of linguistic humor is one of the typical features of radio segments. The interpretation of a radio segment requires well developed communicative competence of the listener, but at the same time, reading these texts can improve the communicative competence in both native speakers and language learners.
More...
The article presents the results of a pilot study conducted in Polish Saturday Schools in London among children at the age of 13 to 15. The author concentrates on the analysis of the syntax in children’s papers. She examines whether the language competence in Polish is higher among the children who have recently come to England than among the children born in England.
More...
The article presents a review of different attitudes towards the application of pedagogic translation in teaching Polish to foreigners. The moderate attitude towards pedagogic translation, which is based on the assumption that we should adopt all techniques that prove effective in foreign language acquisition, seems to be prevailing in language pedagogy nowadays. Contrastive studies are helpful while creating translation exercises. The article presents principles of the translation techniques, exemplary types of translation exercises and a list of elements of the language system that can be taught by means of translation.
More...
Pięćdziesiąt lat istnienia szkoły wyższej z pewnością zasługuje na podsumowanie jej dorobku. Tak jest właśnie w przypadku Studium Języka Polskiego dla Cudzoziemców w Łodzi. Jeśliby za poprzednika tej placówki uznać Studium Przygotowawcze przy UŁ, do którego pierwsi cudzoziemcy przyjechali w roku 1952, to okres ten byłby jeszcze dłuższy. Łódzkie Studium jest najstarszą placówką kształcącą cudzoziemców. Przed wojną istniały takie placówki w Krakowie i Warszawie, ale po wojnie najdłuższą tradycję nauczania cudzoziemców języka polskiego ma UŁ.
More...
Tekst stał się niesłychanie poręcznym i częstym w użyciu terminem w polskim dyskursie glottodydaktycznym, używanym w nauczaniu kultury polskiej i języka polskiego jako obcego. Posługujemy się nim na oznaczenie narzędzi dydaktycznych, stosowanych w procesie nauczania (por. podręcznikowe polecenia: „napisz tekst”, „przeczytaj poniższy tekst”, „wysłuchaj tekstu”), oznaczamy nim również fenomeny języka i kultury, stanowiące przedmiotowy obszar nauczania (tekst językowy, tekst literacki, tekst kultury). Prowokuje to oczywiście pytanie, jak rozumiemy w tych sytuacjach pojęcie tekstu.
More...
Nauczanie języków obcych powinno odbywać się zarazem efektywnie i atrakcyjnie. Zajęcia prowadzone różnymi metodami i technikami nauczania, coraz bardziej rozbudowującymi się w połączenia lingwistyczno-kulturowe, służą nauczaniu interdyscyplinarnemu, które zmniejsza czas akwizycji języka i intensyfikuje poznanie tradycji danego kraju. Interdyscyplinarne podejście do nauczania fonetyki zakłada jednoczesne korzystanie z pomocy dydaktycznych pod kątem ćwiczenia wielu umiejętności językowych, nie tylko percepcji czy artykulacji. Głównym zadaniem nauczania fonetyki cudzoziemców jest eliminacja zakłóceń komunikacyjnych, do których dojść może na skutek błędów w wymowie bądź akcentuacji. Wysiłek wkładany w naukę poprawnej wymowy procentuje więc sprawniejszą komunikacją czy udoskonaleniem innych sprawności, choćby poprzez rozwinięcie antycypacji (Dźwierzyńska 2001).
More...
Nieznajomość lub niedostateczna znajomość słownictwa często bywa główną przyczyną zaburzeń aktu komunikacji. Jest jednak mniej dotkliwa w czasie rozmowy twarzą w twarz. Jak bowiem wynika z badań, zaledwie 7–35% znaczenia przeciętnej wiadomości zawiera się w słowach, pozostała część przekazywana jest za pomocą środków paralingwalnych oraz niewerbalnych (zob. Korosadowicz 1987; Lipińska 2004). W czytaniu nieporadność leksykalna bywa dużo bardziej uciążliwa, w komunikacji manualno-wzrokowej treści przekazywane są bowiem głównie za pomocą środków językowych.
More...
Fossilization as a unique feature of interlanguage systems manifests itself in the cessation of the development of certain linguistic phenomena that remain unchanged in relation to the target language. Although the vast majority of students’ errors evolve towards normal structures and then disappear, some of them stabilize permanently. The purpose of this paper is to try to find the answer to the question: are there any features of persistent fossilization of lexical-grammatical structures in the interlanguage of Polish students learning English? The research material was provided by a study conducted on a group of 15 secondary school students in the years 2013–2016. The four-year study consisted of a systematic analysis of language errors that kept appearing in the students’ written tasks, regardless of the type and quantity of teaching material provided, the length of the study period, the age of the students and the exposure to a variety of teaching techniques. The author attempts to present the phenomenon of fossilization and its main psycholinguistic factors.
More...Differences among learners
Due to globalization the English language has become the world's lingua franca and this has affected language policies. According to Graddol (2006), as an increasing number of countries have been implementing English as a mandatory subject in primary schools, English has come to be viewed as a basic educational skill. One of the areas of language research which has been influenced by these changes is second language (L2) motivation. Dörnyei (2005) has argued that research with regard to L2 motivation needs to adopt a two-tier approach, one for the study of English and another for the study of other languages. Dörnyei (2005, 2009) has suggested a new L2 motivation framework that takes into consideration the role of English as a world language, namely, the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS). The L2MSS includes the concepts of possible selves and future self-guides, and is comprised of the ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self, as well as aspects of instrumentality. The present study examined English language learning motivation among Croatian university students using this new framework (L2MSS) by taking into consideration various learner differences. The results indicated that length of studying English did not significantly affect the motivational disposition of students; however, higher levels of L2 motivation, a stronger ideal L2 self, and pragmatic motives related to career success were found among students with higher grade levels. Differences were also found among fields of study with biotechnical students showing the lowest levels of L2 motivation. While controlling for grade levels, gender differences were found on various motivation variables, including higher levels of intended effort and pragmatic motives related to avoidance of negative outcomes among females, while males showed higher levels on the ideal L2 self scale.
More...
Acquisition of derivation is not a well-studied area in first language research and a comparative approach to the acquisition of derivation in different languages doesn’t exist. There is no information on how a child acquires derivation in a language with a rich and regular system of derivational patterns, or in a language where derivation is productive, but the system of derivational patterns is opaque. According to general ideas of complexity in a language, the child should start to use simplex stems first and, only after that, complex ones, that is, complexity should increase in the course of acquisition. Our paper is intended to address these issues, based on longitudinal child data from typologically different languages, Estonian and Russian. The results revealed significant differences in the acquisition of noun derivation in the two languages under observation. The system of noun derivation is acquired at a faster pace in Russian, while Estonian children have far fewer noun derivatives in their speech and they use different derivation suffixes with less regularity. Even so, the so-called building block model may be applied for both languages only partially.
More...
In the Estonian language context, the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) has not been used for research purposes. A total of 18 children (9 boys and 9 girls) between the ages of 4 and 8 took part in trial tests: 15 Estonian mother-tongue and 3 Estonian-Russian bilingual mother-tongue children. The article was an analysis of the suitability of the test and an analysis of the test’s preliminary results in assessing Estonian children’s narrative skills. The preliminary test showed that storytelling is difficult for children. It emerged that when producing a narrative, it was not natural for children to indicate a starting point (giving time or place), but rather storytelling began immediately with a conflict and goal as internal components. Challenges and goals also turned out to be the most common and therefore the simplest content in the children’s narratives. There was little complexity in the children’s narratives, and most presented individual goals without conflicts or outcomes. Least common was all three macrostructural components (goal-conflict-outcome) in succession in the children’s stories. Stories that achieved higher scores in production were also more complex and these displayed components and sequencing of components that show the cohesion and completeness of the work. Stories that achieved lower scores rather contain individual goals of narrative production, but with conflicts and outcomes to a lesser extent. In the Estonian children’s narratives, there were few words referring to a person’s inner feelings or reactions. The results showed that Estonian children find it difficult to use emotion words, which is evidenced by their limited use of IST words (including emotion words) as well as their null-rated understanding of the internal reactions and states of individuals. No connection emerged showing that those that narrate better also understand better. A high comprehension test result shows that the test stimulus, a series of pictures, was understood and the test turned out to be appropriate for the children. Better narrators generally have a richer vocabulary and children with a richer vocabulary express more internal reactions and conditions of individuals in their stories. By analysing the density of the vocabulary used by the children in their narratives and its relationship with points in the narrative, it became clear that a child’s more varied vocabulary is not connected to better narrative skills. For further research purposes, this test has significant added value and research focus which provides an opportunity to link narrative production skills with studies of the developmental environment.
More...
At one Estonian university, we have designed a course to support the writing skills of doctorate students who need to write scientific articles for publication in their L2 English. We provide this support by placing these students into small discipline-specific writing groups where they periodically give and receive written feedback on their draft articles. Knowing what may constitute an effective feedback comment will enable us to improve upon current pedagogical practices. In this study, we develop a coding scheme to measure the impact of both affective and non-affective feedback comments on the peer feedback process. We use this scheme in tandem with questionnaires to assess the effectiveness of postgraduate peer feedback comments as perceived by both L1 Estonian doctoral students and expert writing assessors. Within this context, the results suggest that cover letters and the tone of feedback comments have a noticeable impact on the peer feedback process.
More...
With the globalization of the world and the ease to travel to different parts of the globe, the popularity of exchange programs for students has increased. Many students around the world apply such programs in order to have international learning experiences in which they can, besides educational purposes, meet new social and cultural values while introducing their native cultures. As study-abroad experiences have attracted attention regarding their various effects on the participants, research focusing on students participating in such programs may provide useful insight on their contributions to pre-service teachers’ teaching philosophies. Therefore, this study is intended to investigate the effects of a study-abroad experience on the way three pre-service teachers perceived the teaching profession and whether it modified their teaching philosophy. The data were collected through reflection reports and semi-structured interviews with three Turkish pre-service teachers who spent a semester in Hungary on a study-abroad experience. Content analysis was adopted for data analysis. The results revealed that the participants developed in terms of their linguistic, personal, social, cultural and educational understanding, which in turn contributed to their perceptions and conceptions of the teaching profession and caused them to adjust their teaching philosophies. In the light of these results, some suggestions are provided.
More...
The aim of this study is to examine the interest, attitudes and learning of refugee students living in Turkey towards social sciences lessons from the perspectives of both teachers and students. This phenomenological study was carried out with 20 refugee students in 10 different public schools in Trabzon province, in the 2016–2017 spring term. In addition, 13 social sciences teachers working in these schools participated in the study. The participants were chosen via the purposeful sampling method of criterion sampling. An open-ended interview form was applied in the data collection phase, and the data were analysed through content analysis. The findings revealed that the social sciences teachers had problems in communicating with refugee students due to language barriers, and they were unable to apply individualized instruction with these students due to the limitations of the curriculum. It was further established that the refugee students had a particular difficulty in learning Turkish history and culture-related topics, because they were exposed to these subjects for the first time. On the other hand, it came to light that the students performed better when social sciences teachers taught their lessons using simpler terminology, assisted with visuals. As the results of the study highlight the fact that the social sciences curriculum is too intensive to allow for individualized instruction, it is suggested that additional studies should be carried out with refugee students; moreover, refugee students may be peer-educated with the help of other refugee students who can speak Turkish.
More...
This paper examines some out-of-class Portuguese language teaching activities for foreign students learning Portuguese at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon and their results in the learners’ output. Even in contexts of immersion, students tend to focus only on class activities and not on community activities that involve face-to-face contact with native speakers. To change this situation, we have created a new subject, built on task-based language teaching, called Immersion Activities for the Portuguese Foreign Language Annual Course. We present the preliminary results of a study carried out with eighty students and twelve teachers, whose objective is to verify up to what extent this subject translates into a more effective learning of the language and if students’ perceptions, at the end of the semester, regarding the learning outcomes, coincide or not with those of the teachers. From the results, it is possible to observe that the students’ and teachers’ opinions converge in the same sense: immersion activities provide a better development of students’ communicative competence in Portuguese.
More...