The Lexical Development of Canadian-Born Romanian L1 Bilingual Kindergarteners

This study charts the lexical development of three sequential bilingual kindergarteners whose first language, Romanian, was acquired naturalistically at home, and whose second language, English, was acquired in kindergarten. The children’s lexical development in English and Romanian was assessed at five different points over a two-year period via the PPVT-4 (peabody picture vocabulary test 4) and a specially adapted PPVT-4 for Romanian. The children’s lexical repertoires were further analyzed to uncover home versus school and cognate versus non-cognate acquisitional differences. In addition, because there is no database of lexical items acquired by monolingual Romanian children, the PPVT-4 adapted for Romanian was administered to 22 monolingual six-year-old Romanian children in Sibiu, Romania. The findings indicate the following: (i) the three bilinguals’ receptive vocabulary in English was below average when they joined kindergarten, and at or above average two years later; (ii) their lexical growth in Romanian was steady; (iii) the bilinguals’ scores for words belonging to a home register reflected ceiling effects in English and Romanian (i.e., were very well known); (iv) academic words were known to an equal extent in English and Romanian, but scores were lower than for the home register; and (v) there was no definitive evidence of cognate facilitation. A comparison of the monolingual and bilingual Romanian repertoires reflects the following: (i) equally high scores for home items; (ii) differences in scores in the academic register in favour of the Romanian monolinguals; and (iii) important lifestyle and cultural differences between the groups. The Romanian children, for example, were more familiar than their Canadian counterparts with items related to home maintenance, such as șmirghăluiește (‘sanding’) and mistrie (‘trowel’), or items probably learned in school, such as foca (‘walrus’) and broască țestoasă (‘tortoise’).

The Lexical Development of Canadian-Born Romanian L1 Bilingual Kindergarteners

This study charts the lexical development of three sequential bilingual kindergarteners whose first language, Romanian, was acquired naturalistically at home, and whose second language, English, was acquired in kindergarten. The children’s lexical development in English and Romanian was assessed at five different points over a two-year period via the PPVT-4 (peabody picture vocabulary test 4) and a specially adapted PPVT-4 for Romanian. The children’s lexical repertoires were further analyzed to uncover home versus school and cognate versus non-cognate acquisitional differences. In addition, because there is no database of lexical items acquired by monolingual Romanian children, the PPVT-4 adapted for Romanian was administered to 22 monolingual six-year-old Romanian children in Sibiu, Romania. The findings indicate the following: (i) the three bilinguals’ receptive vocabulary in English was below average when they joined kindergarten, and at or above average two years later; (ii) their lexical growth in Romanian was steady; (iii) the bilinguals’ scores for words belonging to a home register reflected ceiling effects in English and Romanian (i.e., were very well known); (iv) academic words were known to an equal extent in English and Romanian, but scores were lower than for the home register; and (v) there was no definitive evidence of cognate facilitation. A comparison of the monolingual and bilingual Romanian repertoires reflects the following: (i) equally high scores for home items; (ii) differences in scores in the academic register in favour of the Romanian monolinguals; and (iii) important lifestyle and cultural differences between the groups. The Romanian children, for example, were more familiar than their Canadian counterparts with items related to home maintenance, such as șmirghăluiește (‘sanding’) and mistrie (‘trowel’), or items probably learned in school, such as foca (‘walrus’) and broască țestoasă (‘tortoise’).

Intellectual History as History of Engagement? The French Scholarship

Few intellectual histories of France by non-French authors in recent years have produced the bitter polemic that Tony Judt's Past Imperfect: French intellectuals (1944–1956) elicited. Published in French at the same time as the English edition in 1992, the book was held to account for its questionable historiographical legitimacy, alleged inaccuracy in the treatment of sources, and not-so-hidden partisanship, even if it also received some positive reviews from authoritative specialists in the field in important national newspapers. Nevertheless, the general tone and content of the French academic reviews were largely negative, and in many ways this response was unsurprising: how could a study arguing that a certain dominant (and still alive) Jacobin philosophical tradition was characterized by a “marked absence of a concern with public ethics or political morality” be read otherwise? Further, in an often caustic style, Judt accused the postwar French intellectuals of being seduced by totalitarian tendencies. Such charge, not surprisingly, provoked a pointed defence of the intellectual and historiographical national sensibility, which was not above resorting to Continental stereotypes against the “Anglo-Saxon” cultural model. Nor was the negative reception surprising to Judt, who positioned himself explicitly in the text as an outsider, belonging to a different intellectual tradition. It is useful to remember this uproar today as one considers new books by Gisèle Sapiro and François Dosse, as it illustrates three important issues in a lively academic register: the continuity of a French approach to intellectual history, its difference from Anglo-American traditions, and a possible—although mediated—angle for understanding the nature of this French particularism, through the discussion of the historiographic projection of the idea of intellectual status.

Informing Academic Writing Pedagogy through the Study of Phrase-frames

Second Language Development (SLD) research has investigated aspects of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) to understand how English language learners (ELLs) develop linguistic faculties related to language production, especially in academic writing (Biber & Gray, 2010; Biber, Gray & Ponpoon, 2011; Kyle & Crossley, 2018; Lu & Ai, 2015). Contributing to the current body of SLD research, this study addresses complexity in expert academic argumentative essays by investigating language at the phrasal level through phrase-frames (PFs). Phrase-frames are fixed or semi-fixed syntactic structures with a variable slot that might be considered another measure of syntactic complexity. This study aimed to identify if native and non-native expert writers in the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP) displayed significant differences in their use of these frames concerning their predictability, variability, and function. Results of the study indicated expert academic writers in this corpus use highly variable, highly unpredictable structures which confirm the complexity, elaboration, and explicitness unique to the academic register. Understanding of these register features through the identified PFs was used to develop sample pedagogical materials to promote more complex writing in academic genres.

Academic language in Catalan students’ research reports across levels of study

When students engage in a research community of practice they not only have to master academic register but also discourse features embodied in the research genre. This corpus-based study examines lexico-grammatical features and stance and engagement markers in 54 Catalan (Romance language) research reports in biology, from high school twelfth-graders and university master theses’ writers. These texts belong to the TARBUC corpus (Treballs Acadèmics de Recerca de Batxillerat i Universitat en Català) – Baccalaureate and University Academic Research Reports written in Catalan. Analyses reveal a statistically significant increase in syntactic complexity and lexical density in university writers. Furthermore, findings on interactional function indicate that marking of stance (i.e., hedges) correlates with a specific type of engagement marker (i.e., directive to argument) in university students’ texts. Self-mention is the most salient rhetorical strategy used by students, in line with the requirements of the research article published in this discipline. Finally, overall data on the distribution of interactional markers suggest that the conventions of the research article genre constrain interactional strategies from high school onwards. Results suggest that linguistic literacy, cognitive maturity and the genre’s social convention interact in a linked process in the development of a skilled writer.

Walking Methodologies with/in Teacher Education

This essay begins with the limitations of reflection in teacher education practitioner research. We wonder about the confines of a reflective practice that is solitary, ahistorical, and written in a particular academic register with an audience of one in mind. Instead, we explore the potential of walking methodologies as critical praxes with a group of pre-service educators. To do so we take a walk that is collective and focused on the way history is entangled with the students’ multimodal responses to this experience. We argue that walking as reflective praxis produces different possibilities in the space of teacher education. Pre-service educators participated in a mode of public pedagogy that challenges the treatment of teaching and learning as ahistorical and universal processes that can be neatly represented by the written word.

The Lexical Development of Canadian-Born Romanian L1 Bilingual Kindergarteners

This study charts the lexical development of three sequential bilingual kindergarteners whose first language, Romanian, was acquired naturalistically at home, and whose second language, English, was acquired in kindergarten. The children’s lexical development in English and Romanian was assessed at five different points over a two-year period via the PPVT-4 (peabody picture vocabulary test 4) and a specially adapted PPVT-4 for Romanian. The children’s lexical repertoires were further analyzed to uncover home versus school and cognate versus non-cognate acquisitional differences. In addition, because there is no database of lexical items acquired by monolingual Romanian children, the PPVT-4 adapted for Romanian was administered to 22 monolingual six-year-old Romanian children in Sibiu, Romania. The findings indicate the following: (i) the three bilinguals’ receptive vocabulary in English was below average when they joined kindergarten, and at or above average two years later; (ii) their lexical growth in Romanian was steady; (iii) the bilinguals’ scores for words belonging to a home register reflected ceiling effects in English and Romanian (i.e., were very well known); (iv) academic words were known to an equal extent in English and Romanian, but scores were lower than for the home register; and (v) there was no definitive evidence of cognate facilitation. A comparison of the monolingual and bilingual Romanian repertoires reflects the following: (i) equally high scores for home items; (ii) differences in scores in the academic register in favour of the Romanian monolinguals; and (iii) important lifestyle and cultural differences between the groups. The Romanian children, for example, were more familiar than their Canadian counterparts with items related to home maintenance, such as șmirghăluiește (‘sanding’) and mistrie (‘trowel’), or items probably learned in school, such as foca (‘walrus’) and broască țestoasă (‘tortoise’).

Examining the Application of Grammatical Metaphors in Academic Writing

English academic writing is a challenging task for Chinese EFL learners. For graduate students, they need systematic and explicit guidance to improve their academic writing competence. Grammatical metaphors are important resources for constructing academic discourse, and nominalization in ideational metaphors is regarded as the most powerful tool for achieving formality, objectivity, lexical density and text cohesion typical of academic papers. This article focuses on the role of grammatical metaphors in the production of quality academic written texts. It analyzes the function of grammatical metaphors in academic register and the application of these grammatical metaphors in creating academic meanings. The paper also provides some pedagogical implications for academic writing instruction for advanced EFL learners.