Analytic language knowledge has often been highlighted among experts in the field, and its potential effects on metalinguistic awareness have been of great interest to researchers. This study aims to ...find the relationship between analytic language knowledge and its potential effect on metalinguistic awareness. A total of 210 tertiary level students from three different public universities in Turkey participated the study. The subjects were studying in three different departments: History and Philosophy (i.e., with no analytic language abilities and monolinguals), Turkish Language and Literature (i.e., studying Turkish, their mother tongue, analytically and monolinguals), and English Language Teaching and English Language and Literature (i.e., studying English, their second language, analytically and sequential bilinguals). The participants were asked to complete a demographic questionnaire and a test (adapted from Ter Kuile et al., 2011) written in Indonesian in order to evaluate their metalinguistic awareness, and the results were compared among the departments. The data gathered through the questionnaires were analysed using IBM SPSS 22. The results show that the participants from English Language Teaching and English Language and Literature performed significantly better than the other two groups. No significant difference was found between the History, Philosophy and Turkish Language and Literature departments. The present findings empirically revealed that sequential bilinguals have a greater degree of metalinguistic awareness, and thus alternative curricula for different departments may be adopted in terms of supplementary language courses, and this is one of the implications of this study for future research. Students who have a background in multiple languages, for instance, may be able to enrol in additional language lessons under a plan that is developed by taking metalinguistic abilities into account.
Recent studies showed that language knowledge has, increasingly, become a value-add attribute that helps businesses to implement and satisfy their corporate goals in the globalized world as its ...services are highly demanded by employers in parallel to so-called hard skills in job advertisements. The paper presents a quantitative content-based analysis of foreign language knowledge requirements listed in job advertisements. The study results are based on data assessment from online job websites. The scope of the study was five industries-information technology, finance and accounting, organization and management, technical engineering, and customer service in three Baltic States - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The dataset consists of one thousand four hundred forty-two (N=1442) job advertisements written in English, published on the job portal, and examined from September 2021 to September 2022. The study results revealed that foreign language communication has become an obligatory attribute of the examined industries in the Baltic States and an indispensable characteristic of any working position. Labour market in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia seeks a candidate with highly fluent foreign language skills, advanced expression of thoughts and communication, able efficiently to present thoughts, ideas or comments and communicate correctly.
Abstract Previous studies have shown that bilingual children typically score more poorly on nonword repetition (NWR) tasks than monolingual peers, which has been attributed to bilinguals’ lower ...proficiency in the language that the NWR task is based on. To enable fairer assessments of bilingual children, Cross-Linguistic NWR tasks (CL-NWR tasks) have been developed that are based on the linguistic properties of many languages. The aim of this study is to investigate whether young children’s performance on a CL-NWR is less dependent on existing knowledge of a specific language than performance on a Language-Specific (Dutch-based) NWR (LS-NWR). Bilingual and multilingual two- and three-year-olds ( N = 216) completed a CL-NWR and LS-NWR, as well as a Dutch receptive vocabulary task. Parents reported the number of languages children spoke other than Dutch. Results of linear mixed-effect regressions showed that Dutch vocabulary scores related to performance on the CL-NWR task less strongly than to performance on the LS-NWR task. The number of non-Dutch languages spoken did not differentially relate to performance on the two tasks. These findings indicate that CL-NWR tasks – at least as used here – allow for more language-neutral NWR assessments within linguistically diverse samples, already at toddler age.
How linguistic distance affects second language acquisition is a major concern in cross-language transfer research. However, no study has explored how systematic differences between Chinese and ...learners' native language (L1) influences Chinese character, vocabulary, and grammar acquisition, or how these influences change as Chinese proficiency improves. To address this, we employed the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) index method to multidimensionally quantify the linguistic distance between Chinese and L1, and examined the effect of systematic linguistic distance on acquisition of Chinese character (Quasi-Experiment 1), vocabulary (Quasi-Experiment 2), and grammatical knowledge (Quasi-Experiment 3) in Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners with elementary, intermediate, and advanced Chinese proficiency levels. We examined a random sample of 58,240 CSL learners' test scores from 24 different L1 backgrounds, and analyzed 2,250 CSL learners' Chinese character, vocabulary, and grammar scores in each of the three quasi-experiments. We found that closer linguistic distance facilitated more favorable Chinese character and vocabulary acquisition at elementary, intermediate, and advanced Chinese proficiency levels, and that the influence of linguistic distance on CSL learners' vocabulary acquisition tended to decrease as Chinese proficiency increased. Finally, linguistic difference did not significantly affect CSL learners' grammar acquisition at elementary proficiency, but as Chinese proficiency improved, an L1 interference effect occurred among CSL learners with a short linguistic distance from Chinese, which hindered grammar acquisition. These results suggest that linguistic distance has differential proficiency-dependent effects on Chinese character, vocabulary, and grammar acquisition.
In this paper we report a qualitative case study of a teaching intervention in which a pre-service subject teacher pair planned and conducted a course integrating Finnish language and ethics in a ...multilingual setting. Audio-recorded planning sessions and interviews including learning diaries were analysed using qualitative content analysis to identify the dynamics of collaborative cross-curricular pedagogical practice development and pedagogical language knowledge. The analysis revealed tensions in crossing the boundary between language and content knowledge. The study suggests that when creating cross-curricular practices, student teachers benefit from longer-term processes and theory-based supervision and modelling for reflecting on the development process.
•Student teachers of ethics and language collaborated to develop a shared pedagogical practice across disciplines.•Pedagogical practice development was governed by L2 learners' limited language skills.•Student teachers emphasized vocabulary over discursive and textual aspects of the subject.•Student teachers justified the oversimplification of tasks and materials by learners' deficient language skills.•Change in pedagogical approach requires reflective supervision and a long-term process.
Warren and Dresang comment on the contributions from a psycholinguistic perspective, highlighting close relations between the respective research on events and proposing that, for example, verbs may ...indeed directly pre‐activate templates of the typically involved event participants.
The analysis of this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of reading skills manifested by L2 learners of Japanese. In order to analyze the reading process of L2 learners of Japanese, we ...analyzed the data of 24 non-kanji learners of Japanese that were obtained from the “Reading corpus of non-native speakers of Japanese.” Using Yang's (2006) categorization, we analyzed learners’ understanding of words in the text through two different situations, (1) when they lack the relevant language skills, and (2) when they encounter unknown words while reading a text. The results show that learners use various tools, depending on the purpose, to find appropriate meanings of individual words and to understand the meanings of whole sentences and texts. Also, the results suggest that appropriate language knowledge prevents incorrect assumptions in comprehension and supports successful comprehension of whole texts.
Culture of Encountersdocuments the fascinating exchange between the Persian-speaking Islamic elite of the Mughal Empire and traditional Sanskrit scholars, which engendered a dynamic idea of Mughal ...rule essential to the empire's survival. This history begins with the invitation of Brahman and Jain intellectuals to King Akbar's court in the 1560s, then details the numerous Mughal-backed texts they and their Mughal interlocutors produced under emperors Akbar, Jahangir (1605-1627), and Shah Jahan (1628-1658). Many works, including Sanskrit epics and historical texts, were translated into Persian, elevating the political position of Brahmans and Jains and cultivating a voracious appetite for Indian writings throughout the Mughal world.
The first book to read these Sanskrit and Persian works in tandem,Culture of Encountersrecasts the Mughal Empire as a polyglot polity that collaborated with its Indian subjects to envision its sovereignty. The work also reframes the development of Brahman and Jain communities under Mughal rule, which coalesced around carefully selected, politically salient memories of imperial interaction. Along with its groundbreaking findings,Culture of Encounterscertifies the critical role of the sociology of empire in building the Mughal polity, which came to irrevocably shape the literary and ruling cultures of early modern India.
Nowadays we can observe changes in the use of literary Slovak, or, to be more precise, in the orthographic standard. These changes result from the language practice associated with promoting natural ...Slovak language. Natural Slovak language develops in oral and written form. The current codification of the literary language must deal with the emergence of different language usages in different spheres of communication.
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