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.

A game theoretical approach to the evolution of structured communication codes

Structured meaning-signal mappings, i.e., mappings that preserve neighborhood relationships by associating similar signals with similar meanings, are advantageous in an environment where signals are corrupted by noise and sub-optimal meaning inferences are rewarded as well. The evolution of these mappings, however, cannot be explained within a traditional language evolutionary game scenario in which individuals meet randomly because the evolutionary dynamics is trapped in local maxima that do not reflect the structure of the meaning and signal spaces. Here we use a simple game theoretical model to show analytically that when individuals adopting the same communication code meet more frequently than individuals using different codes-a result of the spatial organization of the population-then advantageous linguistic innovations can spread and take over the population. In addition, we report results of simulations in which an individual can communicate only with its K nearest neighbors and show that the probability that the lineage of a mutant that uses a more efficient communication code becomes fixed decreases exponentially with increasing K. These findings support the mother tongue hypothesis that human language evolved as a communication system used among kin, especially between mothers and offspring.

Alternative Identities and Foreign Language Learning

My D-essay has the working title “Alternative Identities and Foreign Language Learning”. I have chosen this area because I have noticed a certain reluctance among Swedish students to use the foreign language English in English classes. They often seem embarrassed to express themselves in a language which is not their mother tongue, but they seem less embarrassed when they are allowed to act somebody else. These two observations converge into a focus of discussion on the matter, which will be supported by a minor study of my own, by extracts from other people’s essays on the matter, and by an overview of current litterature on language, identity and drama.The aim of my essay is to compare Swedish students’ willingness to use the foreign language English when acting minor plays in school, as themselves and as a chosen character, and to investigate the possibility of improving students’ willingness to use a foreign language, when given the opportunity to do so through acting somebody else.

Un estudio sociolingüístico sobre el catalán : Los efectos de la inmersión lingüística

This thesis analyzes the current state of the language immersion program in Catalonia after its implementation 30 years ago, and after the immigration wave of the last decade. The language immersion is a method of teaching a second language using a language of instruction different than the students’ mother tongue. The Catalan authorities use this as a method for preserving Catalan in the society.The aim of this study is to examine the use of Catalan at school and outside of school by students who have followed the language immersion program. Language attitudes play an important role for the maintenance of a minority language, as Catalan. Therefore, in this study, the informants’ attitudes towards Catalan have also been measured. The method applied is a quantitative method where the informants have answered a written questionnaire. The results show a high level of knowledge of Catalan and its frequent use in the classroom. In contrast, outside of school the Castilian language is more often used. The informants seem to have a positive attitude towards Catalan.The conclusion is that the language immersion works satisfactory in a school context but often fails outside of school.

Difficulties for Vietnamese when pronouncing English : Final Consonants

Vietnamese people have many difficulties when pronouncing English. Among those, this paper will firstly deal with the hypothesis “English word-final consonants are not pronounced in a native-like way by Vietnamese speakers”. Theoretical phonological research about final consonants in the Vietnamese language and English has been carried out to characterize the difficulties. Data from Vietnamese informants were collected and analyzed, then synthesized to the most significant problems. Vietnamese effort to pronounce English word-final consonants will be towards omitting, adding schwa or replacing by sounds closer to those existing in their mother-tongue. Results of native speakers’ evaluation of Vietnamese-accented final consonants are also concluded to clarify how comprehensible informants’ pronunciation is. These findings will hopefully be useful for those who are interested in the topic and for further research.

Literacy Practices in and out of School in Karagwe : The case of primary school literacy education in rural Tanzania

This study has investigated the question of relation between literacy practices in and out of school in rural Tanzania. By using the perspective of linguistic anthropology, literacy practices in five villages in Karagwe district in the northwest of Tanzania have been analysed. The outcome may be used as a basis for educational planning and literacy programs. The analysis has revealed an intimate relation between language, literacy and power. In Karagwe, traditional élites have drawn on literacy to construct and reconstruct their authority, while new élites, such as individual women and some young people have been able to use literacy as one tool to get access to power. The study has also revealed a high level of bilingualism and a high emphasis on education in the area, which prove a potential for future education in the area. At the same time discontinuity in language use, mainly caused by stigmatisation of what is perceived as local and traditional, such as the mother-tongue of the majority of the children, and the high status accrued to all that is perceived as Western, has turned out to constitute a great obstacle for pupils’ learning. The use of ethnographic perspectives has enabled comparisons between interactional patterns in schools and outside school. This has revealed communicative patterns in school that hinder pupils’ learning, while the same patterns in other discourses reinforce learning. By using ethnography, relations between explicit and implicit language ideologies and their impact in educational contexts may be revealed. This knowledge may then be used to make educational plans and literacy programmes more relevant and efficient, not only in poor post-colonial settings such as Tanzania, but also elsewhere, such as in Western settings.

A modalização como estratégia argumentativa em textos de vestibulandos

In this work, the argumentative strategies construction in university entrance examinations texts is analyzed. The study intended to present, through the analyzed occurrences in the corpus, the discursive strategies use for the argumentation construction, observing the different lexicalization forms and the effects that these strategies produced for the intended meaning construction. Aiming to analyze the modalization via texts written by candidates for the UFRN entrance examination, the relations between this category and the resources used for the argumentative guidance of the text were highlighted. Conceived as a speaker argumentative strategy to express his/her relationship with the proposition content which enunciates, the modalization is, thus, one of the linguistic expression form used for the attainment of intended meaning effects in the argumentation construction. In order to substantiate the research, the theoretical assumptions adopted were the propositions which deal with this linguistic category, guiding it to a pragmatic-semantic perspective as well as a discursive-semantic one. Hence, Neves ( 1996, 2006), Koch ( 2000, 2002), Cervoni ( 1989), Bronkart (1999) and Castilho; Morais de Castilho (1996) studies, among others founded this work. Afterwards, a contextualized analysis of the modalized statements, taking into account all the set of elements implied on the argumentation construction, was carried out. The research, which had a strict qualitative character, revealed that the candidates make use of modalization to express commitment or dissociation as regards the statement which they produce; to obtain credibility and provide more authority to their arguments, thus avoiding them of being contested; to impose their arguments as real ones and acquire acceptance of the interlocutor; to lessen the proposition content and disguise the knowledge source; to comment the enunciation and attribute the discourse to another sender; to establish a dialogic relation with the interlocutor. In addition to offering support for new investigations, the research also aims to contribute for the mother tongue teaching, emphasizing the need of a focus which provides special attention to the written language functioning and its application diversity. In this work, the argumentative strategies construction in university entrance examinations texts is analyzed. The study intended to present, through the analyzed occurrences in the corpus, the discursive strategies use for the argumentation construction, observing the different lexicalization forms and the effects that these strategies produced for the intended meaning construction. Aiming to analyze the modalization via texts written by candidates for the UFRN entrance examination, the relations between this category and the resources used for the argumentative guidance of the text were highlighted. Conceived as a speaker argumentative strategy to express his/her relationship with the proposition content which enunciates, the modalization is, thus, one of the linguistic expression form used for the attainment of intended meaning effects in the argumentation construction. In order to substantiate the research, the theoretical assumptions adopted were the propositions which deal with this linguistic category, guiding it to a pragmatic-semantic perspective as well as a discursive-semantic one. Hence, Neves ( 1996, 2006), Koch ( 2000, 2002), Cervoni ( 1989), Bronkart (1999) and Castilho; Morais de Castilho (1996) studies, among others founded this work. Afterwards, a contextualized analysis of the modalized statements, taking into account all the set of elements implied on the argumentation construction, was carried out. The research, which had a strict qualitative character, revealed that the candidates make use of modalization to express commitment or dissociation as regards the statement which they produce; to obtain credibility and provide more authority to their arguments, thus avoiding them of being contested; to impose their arguments as real ones and acquire acceptance of the interlocutor; to lessen the proposition content and disguise the knowledge source; to comment the enunciation and attribute the discourse to another sender; to establish a dialogic relation with the interlocutor. In addition to offering support for new investigations, the research also aims to contribute for the mother tongue teaching, emphasizing the need of a focus which provides special attention to the written language functioning and its application diversity

A interpretação dos sintagmas nominais com adjetivos atributivos por alunos de inglês instrumental

This present work has as objective to analyze the interpretation of the syntactic and semantic meaning performed by third graders in the nominal groups (NGs) with attributive adjectives in the English language in a text of the final exam in the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) discipline. The corpus is made up of 30 exams of two classes from a third grade institution of the biomedical area, corresponding to the basic and advanced levels of the second term in 2006. The text has 24 NGs of different lexical content, a total of 27 NGs in the whole text summing up to 810 analyzed occurrences. The analysis is carried out at the morphologic, syntactic and semantic levels using as theoretical background the traditional and functional grammars (QUIRK et al, 1985; CELSE-MURCIA et al, 1998; TUCKER, 1998), in their semantic aspects, the Semantics (FRAWLEY, 1992) and the Cognitive Linguistics (TAYLOR, 2002). We concluded that the main difficulties were due to the lack of vocabulary and to the use of mother tongue strategies instead of using the top-down strategies for reading a text in English to compensate this gap. We also observed that even when the vocabulary was known, there were difficulties in establishing the semantic and syntactic relations between modifier and noun head. We suggested improvements for the teaching of reading English texts at the third grade grounded in the obtained results such as a more comprehensive study of the several different morphologic and syntactic structures of the NGs with premodifiers and their semantic consequences, an approach of the morphologic, syntactic and semantic aspects of the NGs and the use of both top-down and bottom-up strategies when reading a NG in the English language

Análise de necessidades de inglês para fins específicos em um curso de graduação em turismo

This study presents the results of a survey conducted in the area of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in order to identify (1) the learning needs of students in a course in Tourism, their desires and lacks, at a federal university, with respect to use of English; (2) the needs of the present situation of teachers and the coordinator of that course as to the language; (3) the needs of the target situation of professionals (graduates) and companies with respect to this language. This research is a case study (STAKE, 1998; YIN, 2009) and was used for data collection, instruments such as questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and document on the Tourism Course. To this end, it was adopted the theoretical basis for the constructs of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Inglês para Fins Específicos (IFE) in Brazil, also known as Inglês Instrumental, whose foundation is based on the work by Hutchinson and Waters (1987), Robinson (1991), Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998), Celani, Deyes, Holmes, Scott (2006), among others, since this work is devoted to a specific area, Tourism. Results show that students opined the ability to prioritize reading and speaking into the classroom. Professionals reported that the latter is an indispensable tool for entering the labor market, yet they feel unprepared and need to attend English language courses in private language schools. The testimony of company executives also point to this deficiency. Finally, the present situation of teachers reveals that, while advocating the use of English in the classroom, this is not because students prefer their mother tongue. There is also an evident lack of needs analysis. Eventually, the coordinator said that there is some uncertainty as to the methodology, content and language skills worked, and the lack of interaction among teachers of English. It was concluded, therefore, it is important to conduct a needs analysis so that one can redesign a course that meets the different contextual needs: students, teachers, coordination, represented by the institutional needs, and the labor market

Práticas de leitura e escrita na formação em ciências e tecnologia

The discussion about the need of improving the reading and the writing practices of professionals from the most different knowledge areas has caused, in Brazilian and foreign institutions of higher education, a movement of insertion of curricula components whose focus is the reading and the writing in academic formation. To contributing with the reflection about that discussion, this master s degree dissertation has as object of study the situated linguistic formation. Our general objective is to analyze a linguistic formation proposal to graduating students from the Bachelor s degree in Science and Technology (BCT) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). To constructing that analysis, we have established four specific objectives: a) verifying if the ten brazilian Institutions of Higher Education which offer the BCT have curricula components of reading and writing directed to that formation; b) describing how these Bachelor s degree reading and writing curricula components are presented; c) examining differences and similarities which, in general, exist among curricula components related to reading and writing in each one of the researched institutions; d) revealing which categories delineate the linguistic formation developed in the BCT of the UFRN. In order to reaching our goals, this work has been based on the dialogical conception of the language (BAKHTIN [1952-1953] 2010), on the literacy studies (KLEIMAN [1995] 2008; TINOCO, 2008) and on the critical pedagogy (FREIRE, 1980; 2007). Methodologically, this qualitative research of ethnographic direction (ANDRÉ, 1995) is grounded in Applied Linguistics (PEREIRA; ROCA, 2009; PASCHOAL; CELANI (Orgs.), 1992). This research has the contribution of professors, scholars and monitors of the field of Reading and Writing Practices (PLE) and also graduating students from the UFRN BCT which had already studied PLE-I and/or PLE-II. The tools used for data collection/generation were: curricula components programs related to reading and writing in the BCT in the researched higher education institutions (IES), questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and profiles. The generated data allowed us to establish the following analysis categories: situationality (real situation, thematic contemporaneity and thematic focalization) and literacy projects (learning community and protagonism). The results achieved show that most IES which offer BCT worry about improving the reading and writing competences of their graduating students; however, there is still a lot to be done (increase of the number of class hours, contents and methodological aspects review, theoretical referential sophistication) so that the curricula components can be configured as a situated and significant linguistic formation. Finally, we make some suggestions for improving the work which has been made in the BCT of the UFRN, making then the mother tongue teaching in courses of the area of exact and technological sciences stronger

Marcadores da organização do padrão discursivo narrativo: uma abordagem funcional centrada no uso

This thesis has as its object the Markers Organization Standard Narrative Discourse (MON), from its occurrence in oral and written corpora of different realizations of narrative discourse, considering its locus of occurrence in the narrative and discursive functioning. The research is guided by the Functional Linguistic Usage-Based, approach to which the organization of language is directly linked to the user experience, so that grammar is shaped by discourse. We examined only the narrative portions of Experience Reports, Tales and Legends in the oral and written, as follows: 3 inquiries Corpus Reports Remaining Quilombo (RN); 11 Corpus Legends legends of the Amazon, 14 Tales of Corpus Tales Brazilians and 21 Reports of experiences of Corpus and Discourse Grammar, with about 10,000 words in each corpus. A total of 22 markers were identified, which were: (1) classified according to the locus of occurrence in the narrative structure, as Labov (1972), (2) associated, according to the type of pattern that occur in narrative discourse, (3) described from the discursive function they perform. The research has relevance to the extent it is based speech analysis and offers proposals for productive teaching of mother tongue in which students and teachers can, grounded in language studies, consider living language, as an object of study, based on the National Curriculum Guidelines (OCN) and making use of New Technologies of Information and Communication (NTIC)

Estratégias de comunicação na aprendizagem de português / espanhol por teletandem

O contexto de interação de protótipo teletandem, por meio do aplicativo MSN Messenger, permite o intercâmbio de informação de linguagem em tempo real, pelo uso de voz, texto e imagens (webcam). Foi observado que, por se tratar de um ambiente de troca entre línguas próximas, alguns dos processos de aquisição demonstrados pelos aprendizes se assemelham. No entanto, a língua materna foi o fator de influência para particularidades em relação ao uso de estratégias de comunicação.