Kivaa ja hyödyllistä, mutta jo se riittää : Yläasteen kielikylpyoppilaiden käsityksiä ruotsinkielisestä kielikylpyopetuksesta Helsingissä

The aim of this study was to find out how immersion students experience immersion education, how they feel about the implementation of immersion education methods and what role immersion plays in immersion students’ lives outside the school context. In addition, the influence of sex, grade level, school and type of immersion education on students’ perceptions was studied. The population included all students at the lower secondary level in Helsinki who participated in Swedish immersion education during 2002–2003. The sample consisted of 128 students who represented two different forms of immersion: 47% of the students had previously participated in early total immersion while 53 % of the students had taken part in early partial immersion. The data were gathered through a questionnaire and interviews. All 128 students answered the questionnaire, and 10 students were chosen to focus interviews through purposive sampling. In addition, students’ parents were invited to fill in a questionnaire where students’ background information was requested. The data were collected during the spring of 2003. Principal Component Analysis and one-way variance analysis were used as statistical analysis methods. Also frequencies, average, correlations and cross tabs were studied. In the PCA a right-angled varimax-rotation was performed separately to every thematic entity that arose from the theoretical background. Sum variables were formed from the Principal Components by summing up all the items that received over .400 charges for the specific Principal Component. Significance testing of the mean was performed with F and t-tests. Results indicate that immersion students in lower secondary school experience immersion quite diversely as a whole. Students are satisfied with the fact that they are in the immersion class but not with the amount of teaching in Swedish. Students feel it is very important and useful to learn Swedish bearing in mind their future studies and working life. The students estimate their language skills to be very high. Yet they prefer using Finnish during classes. The fact that teachers use Swedish does not considerably affect how well the students learn the factual content in various subjects, especially if the student knows Swedish well. Theoretical subjects seemed to cause most problems. Swedish played only a very small part in students’ lives outside the school context and it was used merely when travelling abroad and in different kinds of guiding situations. Unless the students were talked to in Swedish, they kept on speaking Finnish. When asked about students’ experiences no statistically significant differences between sexes were found in this study. On the contrary, in some cases their grade level but especially their school and form of immersion had clear statistically significant differences on students’ perceptions.

"Sitte se menee koulus" : Eri kieli- ja kulttuuritaustaisen lapsen suomen kielen taito esiopetuksen päättövaiheessa

A child learns new things, creates social relationships and participates in play with the help of language. How can a child overcome these challenges if the surrounding language is not his mother tongue? The objective of learning a new language in the Pre-school education is an active bilingualism in all fields of the language. Theoretical context of the research rises from bilingualism, learning a language, language skills and evaluating them. Object of the research was to understand language skills of a child from a different linguistic and cultural background in the final stage of Pre-school education and to clarify how learning Finnish was supported during the Pre-school year. Answers to the research issues will be searched with the following questions: 1) What kind of language skills does a child from a different linguistic and cultural backgrounds have at the final stage of Pre-school education?, 1.1) What kind of listening comprehension skills?, 1.2) What kind of speech and vocabulary skills?, 1.3) What kind of structural skills?, 2) What kind of individual differences are there in language skills of children from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds?, and 3) How has a child from a different linguistic and cultural background been supported in learning Finnish during the Pre-school education? The view of language skills in this research is holistic even though it will be analysed in separate fields. The aim of this research is to form an overall impression of Finnish skills of the children participating in the research. Eight Pre-school-aged children with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and their kindergarten teachers participated in this research. The children had taken part in Finnish activities for about three years. The research material consists of the test series (KITA), which evaluate children’s language skills – and of the questionnaire to the kindergarten teachers. The purpose of the questionnaire was to provide additional information on children’s language skills in Pre-school teaching situations and on supporting Finnish in Pre-school education. This research is qualitative and processing of the material is based on content analysis. According to the kindergarten teachers, the children’s social language skills were sufficient to cope in everyday life but children needed assistance with longer instructions. The same phenomenon could also be seen with the KITA tests – in which long and abstract instructions turned out to be difficult. Individual differences of the children were perceived in productivity skills, which were realised in fluent or influent speech. The children were supported in learning Finnish individually, in small-groups and in the activities of a whole group. ‘Finnish as the second language’ small-groups were the most common form of support in learning the language. The support at understanding activities was emphasized in whole group situations as well as in individual situations while assisting the child’s language skills. Generally, the children’s language skills were in the same level with developing basic language skills. The data of this research help to understand children’s language skills after three years of adopting Finnish. The results can be utilised in planning and evaluation of teaching another language.

Transitioning from university to the workplace: Stakeholder perceptions of academic and professional writing demands

This study provides a detailed insight into the changing writing demands from the last year of university study to the first year in the workforce of engineering and accounting professionals. The study relates these to the demands of the writing component of IELTS, which is increasingly used for exit testing. The number of international and local students whose first language is not English and who are studying in English-medium universities has increased significantly in the past decade. Many of these students aim to start working in the country they studied in; however, some employers have suggested that graduates seeking employment have insufficient language skills. This study provides a detailed insight into the changing writing demands from the last year of university study to the first year in the workforce of engineering and accounting professionals (our two case study professions). It relates these to the demands of the writing component of IELTS, which is increasingly used for exit or professional entry testing, although not expressly designed for this purpose. Data include interviews with final year students, lecturers, employers and new graduates in their first few years in the workforce, as well as professional board members. Employers also reviewed both final year assignments, as well as IELTS writing samples at different levels. Most stakeholders agreed that graduates entering the workforce are underprepared for the writing demands in their professions. When compared with the university writing tasks, the workplace writing expected of new graduates was perceived as different in terms of genre, the tailoring of a text for a specific audience, and processes of review and editing involved. Stakeholders expressed a range of views on the suitability of the use of academic proficiency tests (such as IELTS) as university exit tests and for entry into the professions. With regard to IELTS, while some saw the relevance of the two writing tasks, particularly in relation to academic writing, others questioned the extent to which two timed tasks representing limited genres could elicit a representative sample of the professional writing required, particularly in the context of engineering. The findings are discussed in relation to different test purposes, the intersection between academic and specific purpose testing and the role of domain experts in test validation.

Oppilaan interkulttuurisuus ja asennoituminen englannin kielen opiskeluun kaksikielisellä luokalla

The purpose of this research was to study the bilingual class students attitudes toward schoolwork, studying in English and their attitudes toward ethnic diversity. Bilingualism has been shown to promote a person s cultural knowledge and to increase one s cultural tolerance. Also, it has been proven that young people are among the most receptive toward ethnic diversity. Students in bilingual classes have often lived abroad, travelled extensively, or have had contacts with different cultures through their parents work. This thesis seeks to clarify whether bilingualism has an effect on lower and upper graders intercultural competence. Also, it seeks to determine what the students think about their English language skills and what their abilities are to tolerate cultural differences. The research was carried out in one of Espoo Finland schools grades 4 to 9 in December 2008. One hundred fourteen (114) students participated in the research. Students answered the questions on a form where they were asked to submit their background information and answer which language they prefer in studying the school subjects. Students were also asked to choose from 18 pictures with ethnically different persons, telling which ones could be their friends and which ones they wished not to meet, as well as stating the reasons why. Also, the students answered to Likert-scale questions concerning their English studies and interculturalism. The data has been processed with qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show that the study language is not significant. Most of the students experienced studying in a bilingual class as a positive thing, and thought highly about their English skills. The students positive attitudes toward ethnic diversity and intercultural sensitivity were present in their answers. Tolerance and intercultural competence was especially noticeable in the written explanations by the older students.

Knowledge Sharing in Multinational Corporations - A Social Captal Perspective (summary section only)

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are commonly perceived as networks of differentiated units, dependent for their competitive edge on the sharing of different kinds of internal resources. This ‘differentiated network’ view of the MNC strongly emphasizes the crucial role of interunit knowledge sharing, the topic of this thesis. The five essays presented here contribute to the research on interunit knowledge sharing in MNCs by focusing on the roles played by language, identity, and feedback seeking in the knowledge sharing process. While these factors have occasionally been brought up in previous research as potentially relevant for interunit knowledge sharing, they have so far been subject to limited empirical examination – an important omission which this thesis is an effort to redress. Furthermore, the treatment of the topic is anchored in a theoretical framework based on social capital. This perspective contributes to MNC research by providing a comprehensive framework for examining the significance of social relationships in interunit interaction. The findings can be summarized in two main points. Firstly, language skills and shared identity appear to promote the accumulation of interunit social capital. Secondly, high levels of interunit social capital seem to promote interunit knowledge sharing and feedback seeking. These observations raise a number of both theoretical and practical issues of considerable relevance for MNC management.

Subject Teacher Training and Teaching in English

The purpose of this Master s thesis is on one hand to find out how CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) teachers and English teachers perceive English and its use in teaching, and on the other hand, what they consider important in subject teacher education in English that is being planned and piloted in STEP Project at the University of Helsinki Department of Teacher Education. One research question is also what kind of language requirements teachers think CLIL teachers should have. The research results are viewed in light of previous research and literature on CLIL education. Six teachers participate in this study. Two of them are English teachers in the comprehensive school, two are class teachers in bilingual elementary education, and two are subject teachers in bilingual education, one of whom teaches in a lower secondary school and the other in an upper secondary school. One English teacher and one bilingual class teacher have graduated from a pilot class teacher program in English that started at the University of Helsinki in the middle of the 1990 s. The bilingual subject teachers are not trained in English but they have learned English elsewhere, which is a particular focus of interest in this study because it is expected that a great number of CLIL teachers in Finland do not have actual studies in English philology. The research method is interview and this is a qualitative case study. The interviews are recorded and transcribed for the ease of analysis. The English teachers do not always use English in their lessons and they would not feel confident in teaching another subject completely in English. All of the CLIL teachers trust their English skills in teaching, but the bilingual class teachers also use Finnish during lessons either because some teaching material is in Finnish, or they feel that rules and instructions are understood better in mother tongue or students English skills are not strong enough. One of the bilingual subject teachers is the only one who consciously uses only English in teaching and in discussions with students. Although teachers good English skills are generally considered important, only the teachers who have graduated from the class teacher education in English consider it important that CLIL teachers would have studies in English philology. Regarding the subject teacher education program in English, the respondents hope that its teachers will have strong enough English skills and that it will deliver what it promises. Having student teachers of different subjects studying together is considered beneficial. The results of the study show that acquiring teaching material in English continues to be the teachers own responsibility and a huge burden for the teachers, and there has, in fact, not been much progress in the matter since the beginning of CLIL education. The bilingual subject teachers think, however, that using one s own material can give new inspiration to teaching and enable the use of various pedagogical methods. Although it is questionable if the language competence requirements set for CLIL teachers by the Finnish Ministry of Education are not adhered to, it becomes apparent in the study that studies in English philology do not necessarily guarantee strong enough language skills for CLIL teaching, but teachers own personality and self-confidence have significance. Keywords: CLIL, bilingual education, English, subject teacher training, subject teacher education in English, STEP

Kohti määrittämätöntä : Maahanmuuttajien vertaisryhmiin osallistuneiden naisten toimijuus

In this research, I examine the agency of women who has taken part in peer groups for immigrants organized by Finnish refugee council. My thesis is connected with post-colonial feminist research where difference and power have been studied especially from the view of those inferior positions. Agency is the main tool that I use in this thesis. I examine how peer groups are significant in the speech of women and how women s agency shows in their lives. My goal was to examine how women build their lives in a new environment. I also want to show an alternative view in the discussion about integration by telling about the lives of the women. My data is from single and group interviews, from one peer group meeting that I observed and conversations with the peer mentors. Altogether I interviewed 29 women from the age of 18 to elderly people. Women had emigrated from eight different countries. I also used educational material made for peer group mentors as my data. According to my study, the peer groups were significant for women especially because of the social relations made in the groups and the knowledge achieved about Finnish society. Also the language skills achieved in the peer groups were important. In the peer groups women realized to fill the competences acquired to make their space of agency wider. Women s agency was sometimes quiet and it aimed to maintain. This kind of agency made the foundation to everyday life in Finland. It was also used to create relation to the country of emigration. Agency occurred also as toleration. Especially when confronting racism or when women had to give up customs that were important to them. The sense of agency grew in peer groups. This and through perceiving their competences women pondered the paths in their future. Women spoke of themselves as foreigners and made distinction with the majority of population. In the educational material and in the speech of the mentors, the image of Finnishness was unlimited. Women did not find space for them in the concept of Finnish. The intercommunication between women and the majority of population was narrow and those were formed mainly in context of the work of the majority of population. In my research, I noticed that women have enough knowledge, skills and competences for agency, only the space for it is narrow. When speaking about integration, immigrants are seen as objects to be activated. I suggest that from this way of speaking focus should be changed from activation to deconstruction of the positions shown to women.

Kansalaisuus työyhteisön arjessa : Maahanmuuttajien kertomuksia työelämästä

Citizenship in the everyday of a work community. Immigrants narratives of working life. Through globalisation and the mobility of workforce, citizenship has gained new forms, and the mere legal definition of citizenship no longer gives a comprehensive view of the citizenship of an individual. Also the social, cultural and financial dimensions of it are related to the concept of citizenship. In Finland, full citizenship is promoted, according to the Integration Act and social security system, by the requirement that immigrants should mainly get their livelihood through work. In my study I approach citizenship on four levels: the global, national, work community and private levels. In the study, the global has constituted the largest possible context, which refers to the local affects of global processes. The local and the global come together in the research in that globalisation is realised on the local level, i.e. in small communities such as work communities. The objective of the study is to examine how the citizenship of immigrants who live and work in Finland is constructed in the everyday life of a work community. The most central concept of the study is cultural script, which is based on prevailing forms of knowing, and which are constructed in different ways in different times and cultures. Conflicts of scripts in the working life and difficulties in understanding and applying them are in the centre of the study. In the study, the working life experiences of immigrants are approached through narrative research. The research material consists of the working life narratives of nine immigrants who live and work in Finland permanently. Each interviewee has been interviewed 2 4 times so the research material consists of 26 interviews. The material has been analysed from the points of view of perception, feeling and action. Deborah Tannen s and William Labov s as well as Matti Hyvärinen s method of expectancy analysis to locate cultural scripts has been utilised to organise the research material. In addition, David Herman s concepts of participatory roles and event types formed in narratives have been used in the analysis of the material. The basis in the analysis is that the world, events and experiences do not define the available processes; they are always culturally and individually anchored choices of the speaker and narrator. The most important results of the study are related to the gap between globalisation and everyday life. The discussion about the future need for workforce due to the changing population structure as well as about the benefits for national economy brought by internationalisation has continued in Finland for years. However, the working life narratives of the immigrants interviewed for the study show that an average citizen and member of a work community does not immediately encounter the macro level benefits in, for example, the mobility of workforce. In most of the working life narratives there was a point in speaking and saying, in which the immigrant worker either dares to speak or falls silent. Sometimes the courage to speak was related to language skills but more to the courage to be seen and to be part of a Finnish work community. Other workers that either speak their colleague with an immigrant background into a part of their work community or marginalise the colleague with their silence have an important role in a Finnish work community. In several working life narratives, the script of the Finnish working life and work community, the way to work, was opened to the immigrant and the so-called script exchange did not take place. The study shows that working life experiences and inclusion and exclusion built on the working life have an important role in the construction of active citizenship. The detailed analysis of the working life experience narratives gives new, relevant research data about citizenship as inclusion.

Young Actors in Transnational Agoras : Multi-sited Ethnography of Cosmopolitan Micropolitical Orientations

This study examines young people s political participation in transnational meetings. Methodologically the study aims to shed light on multi-sited global ethnography. Young people are viewed here as a social age group sensitive to critical, alternative and even radical political participation. The diversity of the young actors and their actions is captured by using several different methods. What is more, the study spurs us coming from the Global North to develop social science research towards methodological cosmopolitanism and to consider our research practices from a moral cosmopolitan perspective. The research sites are the EU Presidency Youth Event (2006 Hyvinkää, Finland), the Global Young Greens Founding Conference (2007 Nairobi, Kenya), the European Social Forum (2008 Malmö, Sweden) and three World Social Forums (2006 Bamako, Mali; 2007 Nairobi Kenya and 2009 Belém, Brazil). The data consists of participant observation, documents and media articles of the meetings, interviews, photos, video, and internet data. This multidisciplinary study combines youth research, development studies, performative social science and political sociology. In this research the diverse field of youth political participation in transnational agoras is studied by using a cross-table of cosmopolitan resources (or the lack of them) and everydaymakers expert citizen dichotomy. First, the young participants of the EU Presidency youth event are studied as an example of expert citizens with cosmopolitan resources (these resources include, for example, language skills, higher education and international social network). Second, the study analyses those everyday-makers who use performative politics to demonstrate their political missions here and now. But in order to make the social movement global they need cosmopolitan resources to be able to use the social media tools and work globally. Third, the study reflects upon the difficulties of reaching those actors who lack cosmopolitan resources, either everyday-makers or expert citizens. The go-along method and the use of the interpreters are shown as ways to reach these young people s political missions. Fourth, the research underlines the importance of contact zones (i.e. spaces or situations where the aforementioned orientations and their differences temporarily disappear or weaken) for deeper democracy and for boosted dialogue between different kinds of participants. Keywords: political participation, young people, multi-sited ethnography, youth research, political sociology, development studies, performative social science

Linguistic and perceptual processing of communicative cues in Asperger Syndrome

Asperger Syndrome (AS) belongs to autism spectrum disorders where both verbal and non-verbal communication difficulties are at the core of the impairment. Social communication requires a complex use of affective, linguistic-cognitive and perceptual processes. In the four studies included in the current thesis, some of the linguistic and perceptual factors that are important for face-to-face communication were studied using behavioural methods. In all four studies the results obtained from individuals with AS were compared with typically developed age, gender and IQ matched controls. First, the language skills of school-aged children were characterized in detail with standardized tests that measured different aspects of receptive and expressive language (Study I). The children with AS were found to be worse than the controls in following complex verbal instructions. Next, the visual perception of facial expressions of emotion with varying degrees of visual detail was examined (Study II). Adults with AS were found to have impaired recognition of facial expressions on the basis of very low spatial frequencies which are important for processing global information. Following that, multisensory perception was investigated by looking at audiovisual speech perception (Studies III and IV). Adults with AS were found to perceive audiovisual speech qualitatively differently from typically developed adults, although both groups were equally accurate in recognizing auditory and visual speech presented alone. Finally, the effect of attention on audiovisual speech perception was studied by registering eye gaze behaviour (Study III) and by studying the voluntary control of visual attention (Study IV). The groups did not differ in eye gaze behaviour or in the voluntary control of visual attention. The results of the study series demonstrate that many factors underpinning face-to-face social communication are atypical in AS. In contrast with previous assumptions about intact language abilities, the current results show that children with AS have difficulties in understanding complex verbal instructions. Furthermore, the study makes clear that deviations in the perception of global features in faces expressing emotions as well as in the multisensory perception of speech are likely to harm face-to-face social communication.

Awakening a sleeping giant: The riddle of Latino political participation

For some time now, the Latino voice has been gradually gaining strength in American politics, particularly in such states as California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas, where large numbers of Latino immigrants have settled and large numbers of electoral votes are at stake. Yet the issues public officials in these states espouse and the laws they enact often do not coincide with the interests and preferences of Latinos. The fact that Latinos in California and elsewhere have not been able to influence the political agenda in a way that is commensurate with their numbers may reflect their failure to participate fully in the political process by first registering to vote and then consistently turning out on election day to cast their ballots.

To understand Latino voting behavior, I first examine Latino political participation in California during the ten general elections of the 1980s and 1990s, seeking to understand what percentage of the eligible Latino population registers to vote, with what political party they register, how many registered Latinos to go the polls on election day, and what factors might increase their participation in politics. To ensure that my findings are not unique to California, I also consider Latino voter registration and turnout in Texas for the five general elections of the 1990s and compare these results with my California findings.

I offer a new approach to studying Latino political participation in which I rely on county-level aggregate data, rather than on individual survey data, and employ the ecological inference method of generalized bounds. I calculate and compare Latino and white voting-age populations, registration rates, turnout rates, and party affiliation rates for California's fifty-eight counties. Then, in a secondary grouped logit analysis, I consider the factors that influence these Latino and white registration, turnout, and party affiliation rates.

I find that California Latinos register and turn out at substantially lower rates than do whites and that these rates are more volatile than those of whites. I find that Latino registration is motivated predominantly by age and education, with older and more educated Latinos being more likely to register. Motor voter legislation, which was passed to ease and simplify the registration process, has not encouraged Latino registration . I find that turnout among California's Latino voters is influenced primarily by issues, income, educational attainment, and the size of the Spanish-speaking communities in which they reside. Although language skills may be an obstacle to political participation for an individual, the number of Spanish-speaking households in a community does not encourage or discourage registration but may encourage turnout, suggesting that cultural and linguistic assimilation may not be the entire answer.

With regard to party identification, I find that Democrats can expect a steady Latino political identification rate between 50 and 60 percent, while Republicans attract 20 to 30 percent of Latino registrants. I find that education and income are the dominant factors in determining Latino political party identification, which appears to be no more volatile than that of the larger electorate.

Next, when I consider registration and turnout in Texas, I find that Latino registration rates are nearly equal to those of whites but that Texas Latino turnout rates are volatile and substantially lower than those of whites.

Low turnout rates among Latinos and the volatility of these rates may explain why Latinos in California and Texas have had little influence on the political agenda even though their numbers are large and increasing. Simply put, the voices of Latinos are little heard in the halls of government because they do not turn out consistently to cast their votes on election day.

While these findings suggest that there may not be any short-term or quick fixes to Latino participation, they also suggest that Latinos should be encouraged to participate more fully in the political process and that additional education may be one means of achieving this goal. Candidates should speak more directly to the issues that concern Latinos. Political parties should view Latinos as crossover voters rather than as potential converts. In other words, if Latinos were "a sleeping giant," they may now be a still-drowsy leviathan waiting to be wooed by either party's persuasive political messages and relevant issues.

A influência da linguagem para o raciocínio de crenças falsas em Teoria da Mente: uma análise em pacientes afásicos agramáticos

O termo Teoria da Mente diz respeito à habilidade que os seres humanos adquirem de compreender seus próprios estados mentais e os dos outros e predizer ações e comportamentos dentro de uma interação social. As principais questões da pesquisa em Teoria da Mente são: determinar qual o tipo de conhecimento que sustenta essa habilidade, qual sua origem e desenvolvimento e em que momento se manifesta. (Astington e Gopnik, 1991). Ao levar em consideração que a língua pode ser vista como instrumento da cognição (Spelke, 2003), através da qual o falante adquire suporte para o planejamento de ações, contribuindo para o desempenho de tarefas cognitivas complexas (Corrêa, 2006), de Villiers (2004, 2005, 2007 e subsequentes), no que diz respeito à Teoria da Mente, argumenta que o seu desenvolvimento depende do desenvolvimento linguístico, estando diretamente ligado à aquisição de verbos de estado mental, como pensar, por exemplo, pelo fato de que esses verbos subcategorizam uma sentença encaixada. Para ela, o domínio dessa estrutura possibilita que o raciocínio de crenças falsas da Teoria da Mente seja efetivamente realizado. A presente dissertação tem como objetivo verificar em que medida há uma influência direta e necessária da linguagem para a condução de tarefas de Teoria da Mente. Para tanto, focamos nossa atenção em pessoas que estão, por algum motivo, destituídas parcialmente da capacidade linguística, mas que mantêm intacta a capacidade cognitiva, os afásicos. Por meio de uma pesquisa realizada com dois pacientes afásicos de Broca, selecionados pelos critérios clássicos, procuramos entender se a habilidade de predizer ações está intacta nestes pacientes ou se tal habilidade foi perdida, assim como a linguagem. Para tanto, aplicamos dois testes de crença falsa em Teoria da Mente. O primeiro utilizou-se de suporte verbal, uma narração de eventos e expectativas dos personagens envolvidos. A pergunta-teste foi manipulada em função do grau de complexidade por meio do cruzamento de dois fatores: sentenças simples ou complexas e QU-in situ ou movido. O segundo teste seguiu o padrão não-verbal, sendo constituído de uma sequência de imagens, sendo que o sujeito deveria decidir entre duas últimas imagens apresentadas, aquela que coerentemente finalizava a história. Uma vez que houvesse influência direta da linguagem na condução de tarefas de Teoria da Mente, esperar-se-ia que a dificuldade no teste verbal refletisse o grau de complexidade das questões apresentadas. Adicionalmente, o desempenho no teste não-verbal também deveria ser insatisfatório, dado o comprometimento linguístico apresentado pelos sujeitos testados. Para o primeiro teste, o desempenho dos pacientes foi aleatório e inferior ao do grupo controle, já para o segundo teste, o aproveitamento foi de 100%. Em geral, os resultados sugerem que o raciocínio de crenças falsas em Teoria da Mente é alcançado por esses sujeitos, haja vista o desempenho plenamente satisfatório no teste não-verbal. Os resultados do teste verbal, por outro lado, atestam tão somente a dificuldade linguística característica dessa população. Desse modo, conclui-se que uma vez desenvolvida a habilidade em Teoria da Mente, esta permanece intacta na mente destes pacientes, mesmo que destituídos parcialmente da capacidade linguística

Refletindo criticamente sobre as necessidades do aluno de inglês instrumental à luz da condição pós-método

O Inglês para Fins Específicos é a abordagem de ensino que ancora o trabalho feito no instituto federal no qual trabalho. Ele tem como premissa básica o ensino focado em uma análise de necessidades, ou seja, tudo o que é ensinado/aprendido está em alinhamento com o que os aprendizes necessitam em seu ambiente acadêmico e profissional. Por causa de mitos e dogmas enraizados ao longo das décadas, porém, a abordagem transformou-se exclusivamente no ensino de leitura e originou distorções na proposta original. O estudo parte da pergunta de pesquisa: O que o aluno participante desta pesquisa vê como prioridade em sua aprendizagem de inglês na escola? Outras perguntas surgiram após conversar com os dados coletados: Por que os alunos participantes querem um ensino e a escola propicia outro?; O que falta na sala de aula para amenizar essa lacuna entre o desejo dos alunos-participantes e a oferta da escola?; e, O que nós, professores, podemos fazer em relação às propostas pedagógicas para preencher esse espaço, à luz dos dados coletados e da revisão de literatura? Investigo então o posionamento de 65 aprendizes do 3 ano do ensino médio da escola na qual trabalho, através de questionários e entrevista nos moldes de um grupo focal com 5 participantes, sobre o que eles veem como prioridade na aprendizagem de inglês na escola e reflito sobre práticas pedagógicas que poderiam atender às necessidades apontadas pelos participantes. Dentro do espírito (in)disciplinar da Linguística Aplicada e dentro de um paradigma qualitativo, a análise das respostas pautou-se na recorrência de temas nas respostas às perguntas do questionário e participação no grupo focal. Temas que recorreram com frequência alta formaram categorias que serviram de base para a discussão. Selecionei duas perguntas do questionário para a análise: a pergunta (9) como você espera que seja o ensino de inglês no Ensino Médio? e a (10) quais habilidades vocês gostariam de desenvolver?, por sua relação direta com o objetivo da pesquisa. A categoria que emergiu das menções mais recorrentes nos proferimentos dos alunos foi comunicação oral, em um total de 62 menções. Outras oito categorias emergiram do corpus. Considerei frequência alta, e por isso categórica, a quantidade de 17 menções. A partir desses resultados, defendo neste trabalho que a voz do aluno (que grita urgência ao aprendizado da comunicação oral) seja ouvida nesse processo, e que uma nova pedagogia pós-metodológica seja implantada no ensino-aprendizagem de línguas no ensino médio e técnico

Escrever é preciso, falar não é preciso: o lugar da oralidade nos livros didáticos recomendados pelo PNLD

Diante de uma educação escolar marcada predominantemente por práticas que objetivam desenvolver a linguagem escrita, questiona-se o lugar e o papel da linguagem oral nas relações de ensino-aprendizagem da língua. Tendo como objeto de estudo as relações entre oralidade e escrita, investiga-se se as proposições didáticas em materiais selecionados pelo PNLD exploram e sistematizam a proficiência das habilidades relacionadas à linguagem oral do mesmo modo que o fazem com a leitura e a escrita. O presente estudo, utilizando-se de pesquisa descritiva-documental, analisa como as atividades de escuta, fala, leitura e escrita se apresentam nos livros didáticos, verificando se elas aludem ou não às indicações dos PCN. Investiga-se ainda como as articulações entre as habilidades linguísticas se apresentam. A análise dos materiais didáticos revela o predomínio das atividades relacionadas as habilidades de leitura e escrita e o esvaziamento da habilidade da escuta. Também revela que as atividades relacionadas à Linguagem oral, quando contempladas, estão associadas, principalmente, à leitura e à escrita.

影响汉语阅读能力发展的相关认知因素及其作用的发展变化

The present cross-sectional study paid attention to Chinese reading acquisition of 391 children from preschool to grade 3 in two elementary schools, and investigated the relationship between orthographic processing skills, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, naming, phonological memory, visual processing skill and reading skills, after controlling the variance of age, nonverbal intelligence and pinyin knowledge. The main results are as follows: Firstly, there are many different language skills as the predictors of Chinese reading success. Orthographic processing skills, morphological awareness, phonological awareness and naming are important in single-character recognition and comprehension. Beside them, the effect of visual processing skill and phonological memory for comprehension are also significant. Among them, the role of orthographic processing skills is the most important, whatever in single-character recognition or in comprehension. Secondly, orthographic processing skills are the most important factors in reading acquisition at low grade and its effect drops obviously after grade 2. Thirdly, morphological awareness is also the factor that cannot be ignored whatever for single-character recognition or for comprehension. Its influence appears in preschool and becomes the only significant predictor of character recognition in grade 3. Furthermore, morphological awareness is more relevant with the development of comprehension. Fourthly, phonological awareness plays the secondary role in Chinese reading acquisition except in grade 2 when its contribution is most of all. And compare with morphological awareness, the effect of phonological awareness is relative low. Fifthly, naming is important through preschool to grade 2. The contribution of phonological memory increases from preschool to grade 3 in comprehension.