Once upon a time, there was a pulchritudinous princess…: the role of word definitions and multiple story contexts in children’s learning of difficult vocabulary

The close relationship between children’s vocabulary size and their later academic success has led researchers to explore how vocabulary development might be promoted during the early school years. We describe a study that explored the effectiveness of naturalistic classroom storytelling as an instrument for teaching new vocabulary to six- to nine-year-old children. We examined whether learning was facilitated by encountering new words in single versus multiple story contexts, or by the provision of age-appropriate definitions of words as they were encountered. Results showed that encountering words in stories on three occasions led to significant gains in word knowledge in children of all ages and abilities, and that learning was further enhanced across the board when teachers elaborated on the new words’ meanings by providing dictionary definitions. Our findings clarify how classroom storytelling activities can be a highly effective means of promoting vocabulary development.

Simulated annealing technique for fast learning of SOM networks

The Self-Organizing Map (SOM) is a popular unsupervised neural network able to provide effective clustering and data visualization for multidimensional input datasets. In this paper, we present an application of the simulated annealing procedure to the SOM learning algorithm with the aim to obtain a fast learning and better performances in terms of quantization error. The proposed learning algorithm is called Fast Learning Self-Organized Map, and it does not affect the easiness of the basic learning algorithm of the standard SOM. The proposed learning algorithm also improves the quality of resulting maps by providing better clustering quality and topology preservation of input multi-dimensional data. Several experiments are used to compare the proposed approach with the original algorithm and some of its modification and speed-up techniques.

Language capital and development: the case of African language publishing for children in South Africa

In recognizing 11 official languages, the 1996 South African Constitution provides a context for the management of diversity with important implications for the redistribution of wealth and power. The development and implementation of the language-in-education policies which might be expected to flow from the Constitution, however, have been slow and ineffective. One of the casualties of government procrastination has been African language publishing. In the absence of well-resourced bilingual education, most learners continue to be taught through the medium of English as a second language. Teachers are reluctant to use more innovative pedagogies without the support of adequate African language materials and publishers are cautious about producing such materials. Nonetheless, activity in this sector offers many opportunities for African language speakers. This paper explores the challenges and constraints for African language publishing for children and argues that market forces and language policy need to work in mutually reinforcing ways. Further progress is necessarily dependent on the political will to implement language-in-education policies that promote additive bilingualism and, in the process, guarantee sales for risk-averse publishers.

Reading comprehension in autism spectrum disorders: The role of oral language and social functioning

Reading comprehension is an area of difficulty for many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). According to the Simple View of Reading, word recognition and oral language are both important determinants of reading comprehension ability. We provide a novel test of this model in 100 adolescents with ASD of varying intellectual ability. Further, we explore whether reading comprehension is additionally influenced by individual differences in social behaviour and social cognition in ASD. Adolescents with ASD aged 14-16 years completed assessments indexing word recognition, oral language, reading comprehension, social behaviour and social cognition. Regression analyses show that both word recognition and oral language explain unique variance in reading comprehension. Further, measures of social behaviour and social cognition predict reading comprehension after controlling for the variance explained by word recognition and oral language. This indicates that word recognition, oral language and social impairments may constrain reading comprehension in ASD.

The legitimacy of foreign investors: individual attitudes toward the impact of multinational enterprises

Purpose – This article aims to analyze individual attitudes toward the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on local businesses. These individual attitudes are important in understanding voters' preferences, which studies show to affect governmental policies. MNEs' market entry location decisions are conditioned by the host's political environment. Moreover, MNEs' attempts to attain legitimacy in their host contexts ultimately affect their bottom line, so how the public perceive MNEs matters. Design/methodology/approach – Using a large-scale data set, the paper carefully delineates between a set of potential mechanisms influencing individual attitudes to globalization in the context of individuals' attitudes toward the impact of MNEs on local businesses. Findings – The article demonstrates that there is remarkable heterogeneity and complexity in individual attitudes toward the impact of MNEs on local businesses and that these attitudes differ across regions and across countries. It is found that better educated individuals, those employed in the private sector, and those who do not have nationalistic tendencies are more likely to consider that MNEs are not harming local firms, while the opposite holds for those who are employed in “less skilled” occupations, such as those working in plants or in elementary occupations. The article also provides evidence that individuals' attitudes are determined by more than the labor market calculations these individuals might have. In fact, the socializing influence of education and the socializing impact of the individuals' type/sector of occupation also significantly determine the individual attitudes under study. Originality/value – This area of research remains substantially under-developed in the literature that analyzes individual attitudes toward globalization, which focuses on individual attitudes toward trade and immigration. Thus, the article not only aims to broaden the work on individual attitudes toward globalization, but it also aims to facilitate further discussion on the specific topic of individual attitudes toward MNEs.

Boundaries and Bridges: the influence of James Cooksey Culwick on the development of the teaching and learning of music in nineteenth century Ireland

James Cooksey Culwick (1845-1907) was born in England. Trained as chorister and organist in Lichfield Cathedral, he moved to Ireland at twenty- one and remained until his death in 1907. Although his reputation as scholar, musician and teacher was acknowledged widely during his lifetime - he received an honorary doctorate from University of Dublin (1893) - little is known about the contribution he made to music education. This paper addresses this gap in the literature and argues that it was Culwick's singular achievement to pay attention to music pedagogy at secondary level, by recognizing that music could be seen as a serious career option for girls, and by providing resources for teachers which emphasised the development of an 'art-feeling' in pupils of all abilities. In addition, he considered Irish music as an art which had significance as music first, and Irish music second, and advocated a 'laudable tolerance' for opposing views on matters of cultural identity to Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century.

Variation, asymmetry and working memory in the process of second language acquisition

Calls for understanding the interface between L2 linguistic knowledge and development (Gregg 1996; Carroll 2001; Towell 2003) provide a context for analysing the role of memory (Paradis 2004), specifically working memory (Baddeley 1986, 2003) in L2 development. Miyake and Friedman (1998) have claimed that Working Memory (WM) may be the key to L2 acquisition, especially in explaining individual variation in L2 acquisition. Recent findings found a robust connection between greater working memory (WM) capacity and rapid, successful acquisition of L2 vocabulary, reading and oral fluency (Service 1992; Harrington and Sawyer 1992; Fortkamp 1999). This study adds to the growing body of research by investigating correlations between WM and variation in grammatical development, focusing on asymmetries in processing L2 English wh-constructions in an immersion setting.

Linguistic and cognitive motivations for the typological primacy model of third language (L3) transfer: considering the role of timing of acquisition and proficiency in the previous languages

This article elucidates the Typological Primacy Model (TPM; Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013) for the initial stages of adult third language (L3) morphosyntactic transfer, addressing questions that stem from the model and its application. The TPM maintains that structural proximity between the L3 and the L1 and/or the L2 determines L3 transfer. In addition to demonstrating empirical support for the TPM, this article articulates a proposal for how the mind unconsciously determines typological (structural) proximity based on linguistic cues from the L3 input stream used by the parser early on to determine holistic transfer of one previous (the L1 or the L2) system. This articulated version of the TPM is motivated by argumentation appealing to cognitive and linguistic factors. Finally, in line with the general tenets of the TPM, I ponder if and why L3 transfer might obtain differently depending on the type of bilingual (e.g. early vs. late) and proficiency level of bilingualism involved in the L3 process.