Strategy clusters and sources of knowledge in French L2 listening comprehension

This article reports on an exploratory investigation into the listening strategies of lower-intermediate learners of French as an L2, including the sources of knowledge they employed in order to comprehend spoken French. Data from 14 learners were analysed to investigate whether employment of strategies in general and sources of knowledge in particular varied according to the underlying linguistic knowledge of the student. While low linguistic knowledge learners were less likely to deploy effectively certain strategies or strategy clusters, high linguistic knowledge levels were not always associated with effective strategy use. Similarly, while there was an association between linguistic knowledge and learners’ ability to draw on more than one source of knowledge in a facilitative manner, there was also evidence that learners tended to over-rely on linguistic knowledge where other sources, such as world knowledge, would have proved facilitative. We conclude by arguing for a fresh approach to listening pedagogy and research, including strategy instruction, bottom-up skill development and a consideration of the role of linguistic knowledge in strategy use.

Ken Thompson's 6-man Tables

Ken Thompson recently communicated some results mined from his set of 64 6-man endgame tables. These list some positions of interest, namely, mutual zugzwangs and those of maximum depth. The results have been analysed by the authors and found to be identical or compatible with the available or published findings of Karrer, Nalimov, Stiller and Wirth.

Space-efficient Indexing of Chess Endgame Tables

Chess endgame tables should provide efficiently the value and depth of any required position during play. The indexing of an endgame’s positions is crucial to meeting this objective. This paper updates Heinz’ previous review of approaches to indexing and describes the latest approach by the first and third authors. Heinz’ and Nalimov’s endgame tables (EGTs) encompass the en passant rule and have the most compact index schemes to date. Nalimov’s EGTs, to the Distance-to-Mate (DTM) metric, require only 30.6 × 10^9 elements in total for all the 3-to-5-man endgames and are individually more compact than previous tables. His new index scheme has proved itself while generating the tables and in the 1999 World Computer Chess Championship where many of the top programs used the new suite of EGTs.

Space-efficient indexing of endgame tables for chess

Chess endgame tables should provide efficiently the value and depth of any required position during play. The indexing of an endgame’s positions is crucial to meeting this objective. This paper updates Heinz’ previous review of approaches to indexing and describes the latest approach by the first and third authors. Heinz’ and Nalimov’s endgame tables (EGTs) encompass the en passant rule and have the most compact index schemes to date. Nalimov’s EGTs, to the Distance-to-Mate (DTM) metric, require only 30.6 × 109 elements in total for all the 3-to-5-man endgames and are individually more compact than previous tables. His new index scheme has proved itself while generating the tables and in the 1999 World Computer Chess Championship where many of the top programs used the new suite of EGTs.

Idiom comprehension in French-speaking children and adolescents with Williams syndrome

This study looks at idiom comprehension by French-speaking people with Williams’ syndrome (WS) and metapragmatic knowledge is examined. Idiomatic expressions are a nonliteral form of language where there is a considerable difference between what is said (literal interpretation) and what is meant (idiomatic interpretation). WS is characterized by a relatively preserved formal language, social interest and poor conversational skills. Using this framework, the present study aims to explore the comprehension of idiomatic expressions by 20 participants with WS. Participants performed a story completion task (comprehension task), and a task of metapragmatic knowledge to justify their chosen answers. WS performances were compared to typically developing children with the same verbal mental age. The main results can be summarized as follows: (1) People with WS have difficulties to understand idioms; (3) WS group seems to perform partly as typically developing children for the acquisition of metapragmatic knowledge of linguistic convention: there is a progressive increase in metapragmatic knowledge of linguistic convention as age increased. Our results indicate a delay of acquisition in idiom comprehension in Williams’ syndrome.

Strategy instruction in listening for lower-intermediate learners of French

Second language listening has historically proved to be a difficult skill. Strategy instruction studies have sought to bring about improvements in subjects’ listening but with mixed results. This lack of success might be due to the nature of listening strategy theory and its influence on conceptualizations of listening strategy instruction. The current study, based on an initial descriptive investigation of a specific population of learners, measured the effects of strategy instruction on both the listening performance and self-efficacy of 68 lower-intermediate learners of French in England, against a comparison group. Moreover, the effects of high- and low-scaffolded interventions were compared. Results suggest that the program improved listening proficiency and learners’ confidence about listening. Implications for pedagogy and strategy theory are discussed.