Hasil untuk "Language acquisition"

Keith N. Langston, Anita Peti-StantiÄ

W. S. Condon, L. Sander

Shimpei Okamoto, Masanori Kataoka, Makoto Itano et al.

Abstract Background With artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly revolutionising medicine, this study critically evaluates the integration of large language models (LLMs), known for advanced text processing and generation capabilities, in medical ethics education, focusing on promoting virtue. Positing LLMs as central to mimicking nuanced human communication, it examines their use in medical education and the ethicality of embedding AI in such contexts. Method Using a hybrid approach that combines principlist and non-principlist methodologies, we position LLMs as exemplars and advisors. Results We discuss the imperative for including AI ethics in medical curricula and its utility as an educational tool, identify the lack of educational resources in medical ethics education, and advocate for future LLMs to mitigate this problem as a “second-best” tool. We also emphasise the critical importance of instilling virtue in medical ethics education and illustrate how LLMs can effectively impart moral knowledge and model virtue cultivation. We address expected counter-arguments to using LLMs in this area and explain their profound potential to enrich medical ethics education, including facilitating the acquisition of moral knowledge and developing ethically grounded practitioners. Conclusions The study involved a comprehensive exploration of the function of LLMs in medical ethics education, positing that tools such as ChatGPT can profoundly enhance the learning experience in the future. This is achieved through tailored, interactive educational encounters while addressing the ethical nuances of their use in educational settings.

Israel Barrutia Barreto, Juan José Danielli Rocca, Ynes Eliana Solano Guilen et al.

Given the current trend, English as a second language has become increasingly essential due to globalization. In this context, self-questioning has emerged as a contemporary approach to its teaching. This study aimed to determine the influence of self-questioning as a learning strategy for literary texts in English. Methodologically, the research employed a quantitative, pre-experimental, cross-sectional, and descriptive design with intentional non-probabilistic sampling. The sample consisted of 34 students from the third cycle of the language program (translation and interpretation) during the first semester of 2019 at César Vallejo University, Lima, Peru. The students were randomly divided into three groups. The interventions included a self-questioning strategy through group discussion, student-led questioning based on prompts from the teacher, and a control group, which involved individual reading and free analysis of the text. A pre and post-test opinion questionnaire with Likert-scale response options was administered to collect data, validated by expert judgment. Results showed statistically significant differences across all groups. Conclusion: Self-questioning as a learning strategy significantly impacts the acquisition of English as a second language.

Ramiro David Glauer, Elena Sixtus, Gregor Kachel et al.

Demonstratives (“this”/“that”) express a speaker-relative distance contrast and need to be substituted for each other systematically: depending on their relative position, what one speaker refers to by saying “this” another speaker has to refer to by saying “that.” This substitution aspect of demonstratives poses additional difficulties for learning demonstratives, because it requires recognizing that two speakers have to refer to the same thing with different words, and might be one reason for the reportedly protracted acquisition of demonstratives. In an online study conducted in German, it was investigated whether children in the estimated upper age range of demonstrative acquisition (5 to 7 years) understand demonstratives' substitution aspect with familiar (“dies”/“das”) and novel (“schmi”/“schmu”) demonstratives, and whether they understand novel words (“schmi”/“schmu”) when used non-demonstratively as labels (N = 73; between-subject). Children's accuracy was compared with adult performance (N = 74). The study shows that children between 5 and 7 years of age perform less accurately than adults in all conditions. While adults' performance was highly accurate in all conditions (between 75% and 92% correct), children performed below chance in both demonstrative conditions and above chance in the labeling condition. This suggests that children do not understand demonstratives in the presented setup. More detailed analyses of children's response patterns indicate that they instead treat words as mutually exclusive labels in any condition.

Mirjam Gebauer , Aase Voldgaard Larsen, Anne Grethe Julius Pedersen et al.

This study explores how L2 learners of German as an Additional Competence (GAC) reflect on motivation, needs, expectations, experiences, and persistence. GAC is a new initiative that was launched in 2022 at Aalborg University, supported by a special budget from the Danish Ministry of Education and Research for boosting German and French language skills in higher education in Denmark. At Aalborg University, GAC is offered as courses outside of the academic curricula and ECTS system. To evaluate and further develop this new initiative, we have conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with course participants to inquire about their motivation, needs, expectations, and experiences. Theoretically and methodologically, the study is based on Dörnyei’s (2005) model of Motivational Self System in second language (L2) acquisition, the concept of target needs by Hutchinson and Waters (1987), Unger’s (2022) study of narrative constructions of needs in foreign language teaching, and Tinto’s (2020) concept of persistence, involving self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and perception of curriculum. The study provides insights into a broad variety of motivational factors, needs, persistence, and experiences from both previous German language learning and the GAC-courses. The findings of the study point towards both career-strategic and personal goals as key factors for the motivation of the participants. Moreover, their perceived needs focus on the enhancement of practical language skills. Accordingly, most participants expect the courses to allow for extensive training and practical exercises. Also, an informal and safe atmosphere to overcome a fear of speaking and making mistakes are desirable and form a contrast to the participants’ prior learning experiences, and it seems that participants need both academical and social support in their learning.

Silvina Montrul, Sara Ann Mason, Andrew Armstrong

Why is learning the gender of nouns so difficult for some bilinguals? We test the hypothesis that different language learning backgrounds or life experience with Spanish determine how learners follow different morphosyntactic cues for gender assignment in Spanish by testing learners with early and late language experience in an experiment with invented nouns. A total of 44 monolingually raised native speakers, 44 heritage speakers, and 44 L2 learners of Spanish were trained to learn 24 nonce words in Spanish presented in four input conditions that manipulated the number and type of cues to gender marking (determiner, word marker, adjective). After the learning sessions, the participants completed a word naming task, an elicited production task, and a debriefing questionnaire. The L2 learners were different than native speakers and heritage speakers in learning nonce nouns. They used morphosyntactic cues differently, relying on adjectives as their most-used strategy to assign gender, unlike native speakers and heritage speakers who used all cues. Our findings confirm processing differences between L2 learners and heritage speakers and suggest language learning background determines how learners discover reliable morphosyntactic cues to the gender of nouns in the input.

Chunxiao Zhang, Zhiyan Liu, Aravind B.R. et al.

Background As Industry 4.0 debuted roughly a decade ago, it is now necessary to examine how it affects various aspects of the discipline. It is the responsibility of the education sector to guarantee that the next generation is equipped mentally, physically, and cognitively to face unforeseen challenges. Numerous educational institutions are outfitted with Industry 4.0 technology-based learning. Industry 4.0 fosters advancements in learning methodologies, especially for language enhancements. Learners may gain knowledge at their base, providing them an opportunity for independent study. The majority of subjects have been acquired through Industry 4.0. This research chapter explores the intersection of Industry 4.0 and education, specifically focusing on the SmallTalk AI tool. It investigates how technological and digital innovations within the context of Industry 4.0 can serve as powerful tools to enhance language learning outcomes. Methods This article presents a comprehensive analysis of statistical data and empirical evidence to support the positive impact of Industry 4.0 technology of SmallTalk on language acquisition particularly speaking. The study also determines the relationship among participants’ usage through the technology acceptance model (TAM). Furthermore, it examines the challenges and opportunities associated with integrating these innovations into language learning pedagogies, offering insights for educators and policymakers to harness the potential of Industry 4.0 in fostering language proficiency. The research employs quantitative analysis. The data obtained from educational institutions has been analyzed using the SPSS and AMOS software. Results The results indicate that Industry 4.0 has had an important effect on English language acquisition. This self-supported adaptable system of education facilitates effective student learning. This study also suggests that future research into the utility of Industry 4.0 be conducted elsewhere internationally.

Franziska Walter, Monika Daseking, Franz Pauls

Background: The present study investigated the possible effects of language background (monolinguals, simultaneous bilinguals, and sequential bilinguals) and parental education (no/low, medium, high, and highest parental education) on measures of cognitive ability provided by the Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale—Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV). Methods: Statistical analyses were based on a sample of 290 children (130 females, 160 males). Three multivariate variance analyses were conducted to identify possible effects. In cases of statistically significant main effects, post hoc analyses were additionally performed to identify group differences. Results: The results indicated that simultaneous bilinguals performed more similarly to monolinguals than sequential bilinguals. On average, sequential bilinguals achieved significantly lower scores on the <i>Verbal Comprehension Index</i> (VCI), the <i>Vocabulary Acquisition Index</i> (VAI), and the associated subtests than monolinguals and simultaneous bilinguals. Significantly lower average scores on VAI and the associated subtests were found for simultaneous bilinguals compared to monolinguals. Children with parents having no, a lower, or a medium educational level achieved significantly lower scores on VCI, VAI, and the FSIQ than children with parents having a high or highest educational level on average. Conclusions: The present findings suggest that the WPPSI-IV represents a suitable and reliable test battery for the assessment of cognitive skills in children with different language backgrounds and parental educational levels.

Sukirman Sukirman

This study aims to assess how Indonesian Islamic higher education, specifically English language teachers, have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews to investigate the impacts of Covid-19 on English language teachers. Data were collected from ten participants, and thematic analysis techniques were used to analyze the data, including data familiarization, generating codes, grouping codes, generating themes, and finalizing findings. The study reveals that the pandemic has significantly impacted education, particularly English language teaching. It has led to a loss of interactive classroom experiences and obstacles to language acquisition. However, participants have benefited from increased accessibility to international seminars, workshops, and conferences. It has removed geographical and financial barriers, allowing participants to attend events at no cost and providing valuable educational advantages. Future research could benefit from larger-scale participation. In that case, a better understanding of the impact of valuable educational advantages gained from international events amidst Covid-19 on teachers’ teaching performances in the post-pandemic needs to be developed.

Kirsten Hempkin

The importance of understanding language teacher identity is well-established in the existent literature. It has been shown to impact upon many aspects of teachers’ lives both inside and outside the classroom, such as wellbeing (Day & Kington, 2008) and self-efficacy (Canrinus, Helms-Lorenz, Beijaard, Buitink, & Hofman, 2012). The nature of language teacher identity is broadly categorised from a socio-cultural perspective, as dynamic rather than static, as negotiated in social interaction and (potentially) a source of struggle (Barkhuizen, 2017) or friction (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). As this struggle with identity comes to the fore during periods of transition, when identity is seen to be challenged, the focus of research has largely been trained on pre-service or early-service teachers (Mercer & Kostoulas, 2018). The research in this paper addresses a teaching population who have thus far escaped the research gaze, but aspects of whose identity could be problematic and possible sites of struggle. Drawing upon a narrative approach, in case-study form, I examine how two established teachers (with four years or more service) who have been trained to work in the state-school context and who, for a variety of reasons are now working outside it, construct their language teacher identities. The findings point to the importance of the teachers’ own experiences as learners in their identity formation, and how emotion accompanies and acts as a driver of identity change as they seek stability and status on an uncertain professional path.

S. Krashen

Seva IMANOVA

The paper deals with the issues of forming and developing students’ intercultural competence (IC) level and the demands for culture-based, appropriate teaching materials including social websites in Azerbaijan. In order to succeed in fostering students’ intercultural competence, the content and teaching strategies of foreign languages, all educational documents, programs, syllabi, and teaching materials must be thoroughly designed based on culture. The swift development of global economy, transportation, and communication necessitates the tendencies relating to intercultural competence meaning that people from multicultural backgrounds has made intercultural competence very relevant. In this context, social media play a key role in increasing the Internet users’ culture awareness and improving intercultural competence. In this study, the questionnaire was designed in order to gain the influence of social media in the development of intercultural competence and the impacts of learning foreign languages among the students who study at Azerbaijan University of Languages. Using social media in the classroom environment contributes to understanding of foreign cultures which facilitates the language acquisition.

Meagane Maurice-Ventouris, BSc, Hellmuth R. Muller Moran, MD, Mohammed Alharbi, MD et al.

Background: Visuospatial abilities are an important component of technical skill acquisition. Targeted visuospatial ability training may have positive implications for training programs. The development of such interventions requires an adequate understanding of the visuospatial ability processes necessary for surgical and nonsurgical tasks. This scoping review aims to identify the components of visuospatial ability that have been reported in surgical and nonsurgical trainees and determine if there is consensus regarding the language and psychometric measures used, clarifying the elements that may be required to develop interventions that enhance visuospatial ability. Methods: A scoping review was designed to identify relevant records from EMBASE and Medline until January 13, 2020. Data were extracted on visuospatial ability terminology, dimensions, instruments, and interventions with results stratified by specialty (surgical, nonsurgical, or mixed). Conference abstracts, opinion pieces, and review studies were excluded. Results: Out of 882 total records, 26 were identified that met criteria for inclusion. Surgical specialities were represented in >90% of results. A total of 16 unique terms were used to describe visuospatial ability and were measured using 34 instruments, of which eight were used more than once. Eighteen different dimensions were identified. A single study explored the effects of a targeted visuospatial ability intervention. Conclusion: A wide range of visuospatial ability terms, instruments, and dimensions were identified, suggesting an incomplete understanding of the components most relevant to surgical and nonsurgical tasks. This confusion may be hindering the development of visuospatial ability targeted interventions during residency training. A rigorous methodological model is proposed to help unify the field and guide future research.

Simin Meykadeh, Simin Meykadeh, Arsalan Golfam et al.

While most studies on neural signals of online language processing have focused on a few—usually western—subject-verb-object (SVO) languages, corresponding knowledge on subject-object-verb (SOV) languages is scarce. Here we studied Farsi, a language with canonical SOV word order. Because we were interested in the consequences of second-language acquisition, we compared monolingual native Farsi speakers and equally proficient bilinguals who had learned Farsi only after entering primary school. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to correct and morphosyntactically incorrect sentence-final syllables in a sentence correctness judgment task. Incorrect syllables elicited a late posterior positivity at 500–700 ms after the final syllable, resembling the P600 component, as previously observed for syntactic violations at sentence-middle positions in SVO languages. There was no sign of a left anterior negativity (LAN) preceding the P600. Additionally, we provide evidence for a real-time discrimination of phonological categories associated with morphosyntactic manipulations (between 35 and 135 ms), manifesting the instantaneous neural response to unexpected perturbations. The L2 Farsi speakers were indistinguishable from L1 speakers in terms of performance and neural signals of syntactic violations, indicating that exposure to a second language at school entry may results in native-like performance and neural correlates. In nonnative (but not native) speakers verbal working memory capacity correlated with the late posterior positivity and performance accuracy. Hence, this first ERP study of morphosyntactic violations in a spoken SOV nominative-accusative language demonstrates ERP effects in response to morphosyntactic violations and the involvement of executive functions in non-native speakers in computations of subject-verb agreement.

L. William, Noble Harter

Elaine Grolla, Adam Liter, Jeffrey Lidz

Preschool children acquiring English and Brazilian Portuguese display a peculiar behavior when prompted to produce multi-clause wh-questions. In elicited production tasks, structures with an extra wh-element in medial position are sometimes produced. Such medial questions are impossible in the adult languages being acquired. Following a hypothesis put forth by Grolla & Lidz (2018), we propose that children’s productions are not generated by children’s grammar, but reflect difficulties of their developing cognitive system. More specifically, we propose that children’s more limited inhibition control capacity leads them to pronounce elements with high activation levels in wrong places of the structure. Experimental data on both languages are provided which corroborate this claim. These data show that children with more limited inhibition control capacity are more likely to produce medial wh-questions.

J. Lantolf, A. Pavlenko

Joshua K. Hartshorne, Lauren Skorb, Sven L. Dietz et al.

We report the first set of results in a multi-year project to assess the robustness – and the factors promoting robustness – of the adult statistical word segmentation literature. This includes eight total experiments replicating six different experiments. The purpose of these replications is to assess the reproducibility of reported experiments, examine the replicability of their results, and provide more accurate effect size estimates. Reproducibility was mixed, with several papers either lacking crucial details or containing errors in the description of method, making it difficult to ascertain what was done. Replicability was also mixed: although in every instance we confirmed above-chance statistical word segmentation, many theoretically important moderations of that learning failed to replicate. Moreover, learning success was generally much lower than in the original studies. In the General Discussion, we consider whether these differences are due to differences in subject populations, low power in the original studies, or some combination of these and other factors. We also consider whether these findings are likely to generalize to the broader statistical word segmentation literature.

Daniel O. Jackson, David Birdsong