Hasil untuk "Language acquisition"

R. Ellis

S. Krashen

Z. Dörnyei

S. Krashen

R. Ellis

Michael H. Long

Alan Juffs

J. M. O'malley, A. U. Chamot

Series editors' preface Preface 1. Introduction 2. A cognitive theory of learning 3. How cognitive theory applies to second language acquisition 4. Learning strategies: methods and research 5. Strategies used by second language learners 6. Instruction in learning strategies 7. Learning strategies: models and materials 8. Summary and conclusions Glossary References Author index Subject index.

J. Pine

Ezat Amirbakzadeh Kalati

Joshua K. Hartshorne, J. Tenenbaum, S. Pinker

Children learn language more easily than adults, though when and why this ability declines have been obscure for both empirical reasons (underpowered studies) and conceptual reasons (measuring the ultimate attainment of learners who started at different ages cannot by itself reveal changes in underlying learning ability). We address both limitations with a dataset of unprecedented size (669,498 native and non-native English speakers) and a computational model that estimates the trajectory of underlying learning ability by disentangling current age, age at first exposure, and years of experience. This allows us to provide the first direct estimate of how grammar-learning ability changes with age, finding that it is preserved almost to the crux of adulthood (17.4 years old) and then declines steadily. This finding held not only for "difficult" syntactic phenomena but also for "easy" syntactic phenomena that are normally mastered early in acquisition. The results support the existence of a sharply-defined critical period for language acquisition, but the age of offset is much later than previously speculated. The size of the dataset also provides novel insight into several other outstanding questions in language acquisition.

E. Kidd, Seamus Donnelly, Morten H. Christiansen

Humans differ in innumerable ways, with considerable variation observable at every level of description, from the molecular to the social. Traditionally, linguistic and psycholinguistic theory has downplayed the possibility of meaningful differences in language across individuals. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is significant variation among speakers at any age as well as across the lifespan. Here, we review recent research in psycholinguistics, and argue that a focus on individual differences (IDs) provides a crucial source of evidence that bears strongly upon core issues in theories of the acquisition and processing of language; specifically, the role of experience in language acquisition, processing, and attainment, and the architecture of the language system.

E. Kidd, Rowena Garcia

A comprehensive theory of child language acquisition requires an evidential base that is representative of the typological diversity present in the world’s 7000 or so languages. However, languages are dying at an alarming rate, and the next 50 years represents the last chance we have to document acquisition in many of them. Here, we take stock of the last 45 years of research published in the four main child language acquisition journals: Journal of Child Language, First Language, Language Acquisition and Language Learning and Development. We coded each article for several variables, including (1) participant group (mono vs multilingual), (2) language(s), (3) topic(s) and (4) country of author affiliation, from each journal’s inception until the end of 2020. We found that we have at least one article published on around 103 languages, representing approximately 1.5% of the world’s languages. The distribution of articles was highly skewed towards English and other well-studied Indo-European languages, with the majority of non-Indo-European languages having just one paper. A majority of the papers focused on studies of monolingual children, although papers did not always explicitly report participant group status. The distribution of topics across language categories was more even. The number of articles published on non-Indo-European languages from countries outside of North America and Europe is increasing; however, this increase is driven by research conducted in relatively wealthy countries. Overall, the vast majority of the research was produced in the Global North. We conclude that, despite a proud history of crosslinguistic research, the goals of the discipline need to be recalibrated before we can lay claim to truly a representative account of child language acquisition.

Rahul R. Divekar, Jaimie Drozdal, Samuel Chabot et al.

Abstract Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR) have been employed in several foreign language education applications to increase the availability of experiential learning methods akin to international immersion programs. However, research in multi-modal spoken dialogue in L2 combined with immersive technologies and collaborative learning is thin, limiting students’ experiences to solo interactions focused mostly on vocabulary and grammar in such settings. We intend to fill this gap as we present the Cognitive Immersive Language Learning Environment (CILLE). The AI in CILLE can hear, see, and understand its users and can engage with them in non-dyadic multimodal conversations. The XR offers students a feeling of being somewhere else without the use of intrusive devices and supports multi-party, multi-modal interactions. Together, AI and XR create naturalistic conversational interactions targeted towards comprehensive foreign language acquisition. We evaluate CILLE as a Chinese-as-a-foreign-language (CFL) education tool through a seven-week, mixed-methods study with university students (N = 10). Results display statistical significance and retained improvement in CFL vocabulary, comprehension, and conversation skills. Coupled with an analysis of student feedback and researcher observations, we show how CILLE is designed and experienced by students to learn CFL.

Guillaume Barbalat, Ariane Guilbert, Lucie Adelaïde et al.

Abstract Background A number of negative developmental outcomes in response to extreme temperature have been documented. Yet, to our knowledge, environmental research has left the question of the effect of temperature on human neurodevelopment largely unexplored. Here, we aimed to investigate the effect of ambient temperature on linguistic development at the age of 2 years-old. Methods We used data from the prospective national French birth cohort ELFE (N = 12,163) and highly-resolved exposure models with daily temporal resolution and 200 m to 1 km spatial resolution. We investigated the effect of weekly averages of overall, daytime and night-time temperature in the prenatal (first 30 weeks of gestation) and postnatal (91 weeks after birth) period on vocabulary production scores from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI) at 2 years-old. Exposure-response and lag-response relationships were modeled with confounder-adjusted distributed lag non-linear models. Results Scores at the MB-CDI decreased by 3.2% (relative risk (RR) 0.968, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.939–0.998) following exposure to severe night-time heat of 15.6 °C (95th percentile) vs. 8.3 °C (median) throughout gestational weeks 14 to 19. In the postnatal period, scores at the MB-CDI decreased by 14.8% (RR 0.852; 95% CI: [0.756–0.96]) for severe overall heat of 21.9 °C (95th percentile) vs. 11.5 °C (median) throughout weeks 1 to 28. Consistent results were found for daytime and night-time heat. We observed positive effects of overall and night-time heat in the first few weeks of pregnancy. Night-time cold in the pre-natal period also resulted in improved scores at the MB-CDI. Adjusting our models for air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10 and NO2) tended to confirm these observations. Finally, there were no significant differences in temperature effects between boys and girls. Conclusion In this large cohort study, we showed a negative impact of hot temperatures during pregnancy and after birth on language acquisition. Positive associations observed in the first few weeks of pregnancy are likely the results of methodological artifacts. Positive associations with night-time cold during the prenatal period are likely truly protective, as colder temperatures may encourage staying indoors at a comfortable temperature. Policymakers should consider neurodevelopment impairments as a deleterious effect of climate change.

Dino Dumančić

The study employed a mixed-methods approach to investigate the relationship between English language teachers’ teaching efficacy, emotional experiences, and situation and task-related procrastination. It aimed to explore both self-reported teaching self-efficacy beliefs and the factors influencing language teachers’ procrastination behaviors and emotions during task delay. A total of 305 Croatian EFL teachers participated in this study. Descriptive, correlation, and directed content analyses were carried out. According to the findings, the Croatian language teachers viewed themselves as highly effective in the classroom and they also reported engaging in procrastination infrequently. When inquired about language proficiency-related anxiety, they admitted having experienced it sporadically. Those confident in utilizing instructional strategies and implementing classroom management strategies procrastinated less and reported lower anxiety levels. Qualitative analysis revealed that demotivating or fatiguing tasks, especially administrative and testing-related ones, instigated procrastination, among others. When procrastinating, the teachers reported primarily unpleasant emotions, such as anxiety, nervousness, frustration, and guilt.

Adam Dabrowski, Ayako Yokogawa

Flow is described as a state in which people become so involved or engrossed in an activity that nothing else seems to matter (Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). This state of consciousness seems to occur when a person is involved in a task and seemingly unable to stop. Flow states are marked by (a) a perceived balance of skills and challenge, (b) opportunities for intense concentration, (c) clear task goals, (d) feedback that one is succeeding at the task, (e) a sense of control, (f) a lack of self-consciousness, and (g) the perception that time passes more quickly (Egbert, 2003). The Japanese Flow State Scale (JFSS) is an instrument which was created specifically to measure flow states experienced during deliberate vocabulary study and is a working component of the first author's Doctor of Philosophy research project, which focuses on the deliberate study of vocabulary with augmented reality (AR) and physical word cards. Analyses with mixed effects models indicated that statistically significant differences in markers of states of flow elicited with the JFSS of 179 L1 Japanese participants on the basis of four deliberate vocabulary study activities (AR, word card study, Quizlet live, and intensive reading) appear to exist.

Nicolas Zucchet, Jörg Bornschein, Stephanie Chan et al.

Large language models accumulate vast knowledge during pre-training, yet the dynamics governing this acquisition remain poorly understood. This work investigates the learning dynamics of language models on a synthetic factual recall task, uncovering three key findings: First, language models learn in three phases, exhibiting a performance plateau before acquiring precise factual knowledge. Mechanistically, this plateau coincides with the formation of attention-based circuits that support recall. Second, the training data distribution significantly impacts learning dynamics, as imbalanced distributions lead to shorter plateaus. Finally, hallucinations emerge simultaneously with knowledge, and integrating new knowledge into the model through fine-tuning is challenging, as it quickly corrupts its existing parametric memories. Our results emphasize the importance of data distribution in knowledge acquisition and suggest novel data scheduling strategies to accelerate neural network training.

Ju-Young Kim, Ji-Hong Park, Se-Yeon Lee et al.

Recent incidents in certain online games and communities, where anonymity is guaranteed, show that unchecked inappropriate remarks frequently escalate into verbal abuse and even criminal behavior, raising significant social concerns. Consequently, there is a growing need for research on techniques that can detect inappropriate utterances within conversational texts to help build a safer communication environment. Although large-scale language models trained on Korean corpora and chain-of-thought reasoning have recently gained attention, research applying these approaches to inappropriate utterance detection remains limited. In this study, we propose a soft inductive bias approach that explicitly defines reasoning perspectives to guide the inference process, thereby promoting rational decision-making and preventing errors that may arise during reasoning. We fine-tune a Korean large language model using the proposed method and conduct both quantitative performance comparisons and qualitative evaluations across different training strategies. Experimental results show that the Kanana-1.5 model achieves an average accuracy of 87.0046, improving by approximately 3.89 percent over standard supervised learning. These findings indicate that the proposed method goes beyond simple knowledge imitation by large language models and enables more precise and consistent judgments through constrained reasoning perspectives, demonstrating its effectiveness for inappropriate utterance detection.

Rosa Alonso

Preface1. Terence Odlin: Was There Really Ever a Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis?2. Vivian Cook: Transfer and the Relationship Between the Languages of Multi-competence3. Hakan Ringbom: Comprehension, Learning and Production of Foreign Languages: The Role of Transfer4. John A. Lucy: The Implications of Linguistic Relativity for Language Learning5. Rena Helms-Park and Vedran Dronjic: Cross-linguistic Lexical Influence: Cognate Facilitation6. Rosa Alonso Alonso, Teresa Cadierno and Scott Jarvis: Cross-linguistic Influence in the Acquisition of Spatial Prepositions in English as a Foreign Language7. Jeanine Treffers-Daller and Xu Ziyan: Can Classroom Learners use Statistical Learning? A New Perspective on Motion Event Construal in a Second Language8. Monika Ekiert and Zhaohong Han: L1-fraught Difficulty: The Case of L2 Acquisition of English Articles by Slavic Speakers9. Panos Athanasopoulos and Bastien Boutonnet: Learning Grammatical Gender in a Second Language Changes Categorization of Inanimate Objects: Replications and New Evidence from English Learners of L2 French10. Ulrike Jessner, Manon Megens and Stefanie Graus: Crosslinguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition11. Janusz Arabski and Adam Wojtaszek: Contemporary Perspectives in Cross-linguistic Influence