Development of speech fluency over a short period of time: effects of pedagogic intervention

This study investigates the effects of a short-term pedagogic intervention on the development of L2 fluency among learners studying English for Academic purposes (EAP) at a university in the UK. It also examines the interaction between the development of fluency, and complexity and accuracy. Through a pre-test, post-test design, data were collected over a period of four weeks from learners performing monologic tasks. While the Control Group (CG) focused on developing general speaking and listening skills, the Experimental Group (EG) received awareness-raising activities and fluency strategy training in addition to general speaking and listening practice i.e following the syllabus. The data, coded in terms of a range of measures of fluency, accuracy and complexity, were subjected to repeated measures MANOVA, t-tests and correlations. The results indicate that after the intervention, while some fluency gains were achieved by the CG, the EG produced statistically more fluent language demonstrating a faster speech and articulation rate, longer runs and higher phonation time ratios. The significant correlations obtained between measures of accuracy and learners’ pauses in the CG suggest that pausing opportunities may have been linked to accuracy. The findings of the study have significant implications for L2 pedagogy, highlighting the effective impact of instruction on the development of fluency.

Assessment for Learning in teaching English to Young Learners: teachers’ understanding, classroom practice and impact on interactions

It has been suggested that Assessment for Learning (AfL) plays a significant role in enhancing teaching and learning in mainstream educational contexts. However, little empirical evidence can support these claims. As AfL has been shown to be enacted predominantly through interactions in primary classes, there is a need to understand if it is appropriate, whether it can be efficiently used in teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) and how it can facilitate learning in such a context. This emerging research focus gains currency especially in the light of SLA research, which suggests the important role of interactions in foreign language learning. This mixed-method, descriptive and exploratory study aims to investigate how teachers of learners aged 7-11 understand AfL; how they implement it; and the impact that such implementation could have on interactions which occur during lessons. The data were collected through lesson observations, scrutiny of school documents, semi-structured interviews and a focus group interview with teachers. The findings indicate that fitness for purpose guides the implementation of AfL in TEYL classrooms. Significantly, the study has revealed differences in the implementation of AfL between classes of 7-9 and 10-11 year olds within each of the three purposes (setting objectives and expectations; monitoring performance; and checking achievement) identified through the data. Another important finding of this study is the empirical evidence suggesting that the use of AfL could facilitate creating conditions conducive to learning in TEYL classes during collaborative and expert/novice interactions. The findings suggest that teachers’ understanding of AfL is largely aligned with the theoretical frameworks (Black & Wiliam, 2009; Swaffield, 2011) already available. However, they also demonstrate that there are TEYL specific characteristics. This research has important pedagogical implications and indicates a number of areas for further research.

English-Spanish bilingual learners of Portuguese as a third language: non-redundant acquisition and its typological nature

This chapter has two goals: (a) to discuss the Spanish-Portuguese interface in current formal language acquisition research and (b) to highlight the contributions of this language pairing in the emerging field of formal third language acquisition. The authors discuss two L3 acquisition studies (Montrul, Dias, & Santos, 2011; Giancaspro, Halloran, & Iverson, in press) examining Differential Object Marking, a morphological case marker present in Spanish but not in Portuguese, arguing that the results show how data from Spanish-English bilinguals learning Brazilian Portuguese as an L3 illuminate the deterministic role of structural and typological similarity in linguistic transfer. The data provide supportive evidence for only one of three existing L3 transfer models: the Typological Proximity Model (Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013).

Teachers' habitus for teaching English

In this examination of monolingual and multilingual pedagogies I draw on literature that explores the position of English globally and in the curriculum for English. I amplify the discussion with data from a project exploring how teachers responded to the arrival of Polish children in their English classrooms following Poland’s entry to the European Union in 2004. While both Poland and England are a long way from Australia, the sudden arrival of non-native speaking children from families who have the right to work and settle in the UK is interesting of itself as a development in the migration agenda affecting many nations of teachers in the 21st century. Indeed, this view of migration adds to the overview of migration in an Australian context and recent Australian immigration settlement policies often mirror this with new arrivals moving to rural areas resulting in an EAL presence in schools which may be new. Until recently it was most commonly the case that teachers in schools in inner city and other urban parts of the UK might expect to teach in multilingual classrooms, but teachers in smaller towns and in areas identified as rural were unlikely to confront either linguistic or ethnic differences in their pupils. I use the theories of Bourdieu to analyse the status of the curriculum for English expressed in research literature, and the teachers’ interview data. This supports a level of interpretation that allows us to see how teachers’ practice and the teaching of English are formed by schools’ and teachers’ histories and beliefs as much as they are by the wishes of politicians in creating educational policy. It adds to the view presented in the first article in this issue that provision for EAL/D learners sits within a monolingual assessment structure which may militate against the attainment of non-native English speakers. I present a wide-ranging discussion intentionally, in order that the many complexities of policy impact and teacher habitus on teachers’ practice are made apparent.

Production of definite and indefinite articles in typically developing English-speaking children and children with SLI

The present paper examines the production of definite and indefinite articles in English-speaking typically developing (TD) children and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Twenty four English-speaking children with SLI (mean age: 7;5), twenty nine TD age-matched (TD-AM) children (mean age: 7;5) and eleven younger (mean age: 5;5) TD vocabulary-matched (TD-VM) children participated in a production task involving short stories without picture props based on Schafer and de Villiers (2000). Article production was examined in two different semantic contexts for the definite article, namely in the anaphoric and the bridging context. In the anaphoric condition, definiteness is established via linguistic means, whereas in the bridging condition via shared world knowledge. Indefinite article production was examined in the referential specific, non-referential predicational, and non-referential instrumental contexts. The referential specific context involves [+speaker, −hearer] knowledge and the non-referential predicational and instrumental [−speaker, −hearer] knowledge. Results showed that in the definite article contexts, all three groups performed better on the bridging compared with the anaphoric condition; in the indefinite article contexts, they had better performance on the non-referential predicational vs. the referential specific and the non-referential instrumental conditions. In terms of errors, the TD-VM children and the children with SLI produced significantly more substitutions than the TD-AM children in the definite article contexts. In the indefinite article contexts, the three groups did not differ in terms of accuracy or error patterns. The present results point towards problems in the discourse integration of entities that are part of the speaker's and hearer's knowledge in children with SLI and TD-VM controls, especially in definite articles. These problems are accentuated in the children with SLI due to their grammatical impairment and suggest that children with SLI exhibit a delayed acquisition profile.

Incremental processing in head-final child language: online comprehension of relative clauses in Turkish-speaking children and adults

The present study investigates the parsing of pre-nominal relative clauses (RCs) in children for the first time with a realtime methodology that reveals moment-to-moment processing patterns as the sentence unfolds. A self-paced listening experiment with Turkish-speaking children (aged 5–8) and adults showed that both groups display a sign of processing cost both in subject and object RCs at different points through the flow of the utterance when integrating the cues that are uninformative (i.e., ambiguous in function) and that are structurally and probabilistically unexpected. Both groups show a processing facilitation as soon as the morphosyntactic dependencies are completed and parse the unbounded dependencies rapidly using the morphosyntactic cues rather than waiting for the clause-final filler. These findings show that five-year-old children show similar patterns to adults in processing the morphosyntactic cues incrementally and in forming expectations about the rest of the utterance on the basis of the probabilistic model of their language.

Production and on-line comprehension of definiteness in English and Dutch by monolingual and sequential bilingual children

The present article examines production and on-line processing of definite articles in Turkish-speaking sequential bilingual children acquiring English and Dutch as second languages (L2) in the UK and in the Netherlands, respectively. Thirty-nine 6–8-year-old L2 children and 48 monolingual (L1) age-matched children participated in two separate studies examining the production of definite articles in English and Dutch in conditions manipulating semantic context, that is, the anaphoric and the bridging contexts. Sensitivity to article omission was examined in the same groups of children using an on-line processing task involving article use in the same semantic contexts as in the production task. The results indicate that both L2 children and L1 controls are less accurate when definiteness is established by keeping track of the discourse referents (anaphoric) than when it is established via world knowledge (bridging). Moreover, despite variable production, all groups of children were sensitive to the omission of definite articles in the on-line comprehension task. This suggests that the errors of omission are not due to the lack of abstract syntactic representations, but could result from processes implicated in the spell-out of definite articles. The findings are in line with the idea that variable production in child L2 learners does not necessarily indicate lack of abstract representations (Haznedar and Schwartz, 1997).

Individual differences in early language learning: a study of English learners of French

The present longitudinal study examines the interaction of learner variables (gender, motivation, self-efficacy and first language literacy) and their influence on second language learning outcomes. The study follows English learners of French from Year 5 in primary school (aged 9-10) to the first year in secondary school (Year 7 aged 11-12). Language outcomes were measured by two oral production tasks; a sentence repetition task and a photo description task both of which were administered at three time points. Longitudinal data on learner attitudes and motivation were collected via questionnaires. Teacher assessment data for general first language literacy attainment were also provided. The results show a great deal of variation in learner attitudes and outcomes and that there is a complex relationship between first language literacy, self-efficacy, gender and attainment. For example, in general, girls held more positive attitudes to boys and were more successful. However, the inclusion of first language ability, which explained 30-40% of variation, shows that gender differences in attitudes and outcomes are likely mediated by first language literacy and prior learning experience.

Pragmatic abilities of high-functioning Greek-speaking children with autism

This paper reports on the findings of the pragmatic abilities of Greek-speaking children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Twenty high functioning children with ASD and their typically developing age and vocabulary controls were administered a pragmatics task. The task was based on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV) in the context of a larger study targeting the grammar of Greek-speaking children with autism, and assessed the children’s abilities in communicative role taking, narrative, and question asking. The children with ASD showed an uneven profile in their pragmatic abilities. The two groups did not differ in communicative role taking and question asking. However, the children with ASD had difficulties on the narrative task, and more specifically, on the items assessing reference contrast and temporal links. Yet, they performed similarly on the mental state representations and the false beliefs items. Despite their good performance on mental states and false beliefs, the ASD children’s lower performance on reference contrast can be interpreted via Theory of Mind deficits if we assume that the former involve an additional level of complexity; namely, quantifying the amount of information available to the listener. Lower performance on temporal links is in line with the ASD children’s attested difficulties in organizing events into a coherent gist. Their overall profile, and, in particular, the dissociation between the different sections of the task, does not support single deficit accounts. It rather indicates that the deficits of individuals with ASD stem from distinct deficits in core cognitive processes (Happé & Frith, 2006).

Elderly learners and Massive Open Online Courses: a review

Background: Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become commonplace in the e-learning landscape. Thousands of elderly learners are participating in courses offered by various institutions on a multitude of platforms in many different languages. However, there is very little research into understanding elderly learners in MOOCs. Objective: We aim to show that a considerable proportion of elderly learners are participating in MOOCs and that there is a lack of research in this area. We hope this assertion of the wide gap in research on elderly learners in MOOCs will pave the way for more research in this area. Methods: Pre-course survey data for 10 University of Reading courses on the FutureLearn platform were analyzed to show the level of participation of elderly learners in MOOCs. Two MOOC aggregator sites (Class Central and MOOC List) were consulted to gather data on MOOC offerings that include topics relating to aging. In parallel, a selected set of MOOC platform catalogues, along with a recently published review on health and medicine-related MOOCs, were searched to find courses relating to aging. A systematic literature search was then employed to identify research articles on elderly learners in MOOCs. Results: The 10 courses reviewed had a considerable proportion of elderly learners participating in them. For the over-66 age group, this varied from 0.5% (on the course “Managing people”) to 16.3% (on the course “Our changing climate”), while for the over-56 age group it ranged from 3.0% (on “A beginners guide to writing in English”) to 39.5% (on “Heart health”). Only six MOOCs were found to include topics related to aging: three were on the Coursera platform, two on the FutureLearn platform, and one on the Open2Study platform. Just three scholarly articles relating to MOOCs and elderly learners were retrieved from the literature search. Conclusions: This review presents evidence to suggest that elderly learners are already participating in MOOCs. Despite this, there has been very little research into their engagement with MOOCs. Similarly, there has been little research into exploiting the scope of MOOCs for delivering topics that would be of interest to elderly learners. We believe there is potential to use MOOCs as a way of tackling the issue of loneliness among older adults by engaging them as either resource personnel or learners.

An ethnomedicinal survey of a Tashelhit-speaking community in the High Atlas, Morocco

Traditional knowledge about medicinal plants from a poorly studied region, the High Atlas in Morocco, is reported here for the first time; this permits consideration of efficacy and safety of current practices whilst highlighting species previously not known to have traditional medicinal use. Our study aims to document local medicinal plant knowledge among Tashelhit speaking communities through ethnobotanical survey, identifying preferred species and new medicinal plant citations and illuminating the relationship between emic and etic ailment classifications. Ethnobotanical data were collected using standard methods and with prior informed consent obtained before all interactions, data were characterized using descriptive indices and medicinal plants and healing strategies relevant to local livelihoods were identified. 151 vernacular names corresponding to 159 botanical species were found to be used to treat 36 folk ailments grouped in 14 biomedical use categories. Thirty-five (22%) are new medicinal plant records in Morocco, and 26 described as used for the first time anywhere. Fidelity levels (FL) revealed low specificity in plant use, particularly for the most commonly reported plants. Most plants are used in mixtures. Plant use is driven by local concepts of disease, including “hot” and “cold” classification and beliefs in supernatural forces. Local medicinal plant knowledge is rich in the High Atlas, where local populations still rely on medicinal plants for healthcare. We found experimental evidence of safe and effective use of medicinal plants in the High Atlas; but we highlight the use of eight poisonous species.

Nurturing bilingual learners: challenges and concerns in Singapore

Singapore’s bilingual policy legitimises English not only as the language of governmental administration and interethnic communication, but also as the medium of instruction in all schools on all levels and across all subjects except mother tongues (MTs). As a result of these politics of language recognition, a visible shift has occurred in all ethnic groups away from MTs towards English. To rectify the language shift situation, the government has emphasised that developing bilingualism and raising bilingual children should begin in preschools. In this paper, we examine two top-down official documents: Review of Mother Tongue Languages Report, issued in 2011, and Nurturing Early Learners Framework for Mother Tongue Languages, developed in 2013. Attempting to identify some of the complex factors that influence language shift, we present an intertextual analysis of the Report and the curriculum Framework. In doing so, we compare the consistencies and locate the implicit inconsistencies in the policy position on bilingual education in preschools. We conclude the article by outlining the implications for changing the current bilingual educational models and providing teacher training programmes that maximise the learning opportunities of young bilingual learners.