The effect of bilingualism on the use of manual gestures

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELENA NICOLADIS
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
The Other ◽  
Clear Pattern ◽  
Second Language Teaching ◽  
Verbal Message ◽  
Linguistic Transfer ◽  
Linguistic Units

Gestures are often used while speaking to aid in the speaker's packaging of the verbal message and/or to aid the listener in decoding the message. The ways in which bilinguals use gestures are reviewed in this article. Researchers have predicted that bilinguals' gesture use is related to bilinguals' language proficiency. However, no clear pattern of a link between proficiency and gesture use has been observed across studies, probably because gestures rarely compensate for weak language proficiency, functioning instead to facilitate speech production in both first and second language use. Researchers have reported bilinguals using language-specific gestures in the other language. In addition, bilinguals have been shown to use gestures at a higher rate than monolinguals. These results suggest that cross-linguistic transfer can apply to gestures, as well as to other linguistic units. In conclusion, gestures play an important role in accessing language in the process of speech production. This conclusion has implications for second-language teaching; teaching through gestures and speech might be more effective than teaching the spoken component alone.

scholarly journals Factors Affecting Language Proficiency in Heritage Language: The Case of Young Russian Heritage Speakers in Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-329
Author(s):  
Tamara Vorobyeva ◽  
Aurora Bel
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Significant Relationship ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Age Of Onset ◽  
The Other ◽  
Significant Variable ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Family Language

Abstract This study focuses on the issue of language proficiency attainment among young heritage speakers of Russian living in Spain and examines factors that have been claimed to promote heritage language proficiency, namely, age, gender, age of onset to L2, quantity of exposure and family language use. A group of 30 Russian-Spanish-Catalan trilingual children aged 7–11 participated in the study. In order to measure heritage language proficiency (L1 Russian), oral narratives were elicited. The results demonstrated a significant relationship between L1 proficiency and three sociolinguistic variables (age of onset to L2, quantity of exposure and family language use). Additionally, the multiply regression model demonstrated that the only significant variable affecting language proficiency was family language use and it accounted only for 33% of the variation of children’s language proficiency. The study raises the question about what are the other, yet unknown factors, which can affect heritage language proficiency.

scholarly journals Language control abilities of late bilinguals

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIA FESTMAN
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Picture Naming ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Language Control ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Late Bilinguals

Although all bilinguals encounter cross-language interference (CLI), some bilinguals are more susceptible to interference than others. Here, we report on language performance of late bilinguals (Russian/German) on two bilingual tasks (interview, verbal fluency), their language use and switching habits. The only between-group difference was CLI: one group consistently produced significantly more errors of CLI on both tasks than the other (thereby replicating our findings from a bilingual picture naming task). This striking group difference in language control ability can only be explained by differences in cognitive control, not in language proficiency or language mode.

Second language proficiency differences in the learning of semantically-equivalent bilingual sentences

1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Y. Opoku
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Transfer Of Learning ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Transfer Task ◽  
The Other ◽  
Second Language Proficiency ◽  
Different Levels

ABSTRACTThree groups of subjects who used English as a second language and who were considered to be at different levels of proficiency in English participated in a study of transfer of learning from English to Yoruba, their native language, and from Yoruba to English. It was predicted that total transfer from one language to the other would decrease with increasing proficiency in English and that transfer from Yoruba to English would be higher than from English to Yoruba at lower levels of proficiency in English. Findings showed rather that total transfer increased with increasing proficiency in English and that transfer from English to Yoruba was higher than from Yoruba to English for all groups. It is concluded that on a verbal transfer task, bilinguals show development from independent to interdependent language systems with increasing proficiency in a second language.

Cross-linguistic transfer in second language reading

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiko Koda ◽  
Pooja Reddy
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Reading Skills ◽  
First Language ◽  
Second Language Reading ◽  
Academic Learning ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Skills Transfer ◽  
Linguistic Transfer ◽  
Cognitively Demanding Tasks

Research on reading skills transfer has taken shape in two major disciplines: second language (L2) acquisition and reading. Inevitably, its evolution reflects major conceptual shifts in their respective research sub-fields. In L2 research, as a case in point, transfer was initially viewed as interference stemming from first language (L1) structural properties. This view, however, was significantly altered by the subsequent postulation that the language proficiency underlying cognitively demanding tasks, such as literacy and academic learning, is largely shared across languages, and therefore, once acquired in one language, it promotes literacy development in another (Cummins 1979). Reflecting the latter view, the current conceptualizations of transfer uniformly underscore the facilitative nature of previously learned competencies as resources available to L2 learners (e.g. Genesee et al. 2007; Koda 2008).

scholarly journals Perceptual restoration of locally time-reversed speech: Non-native listeners’ performance in their L2 vs. L1

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mako Ishida
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Speech Signal ◽  
The Other ◽  
Unique Characteristic ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Native Japanese Speakers ◽  
Degraded Speech ◽  
Nonnative Listeners ◽  
Linguistic Units ◽  
L1 English

AbstractNonnative listeners are generally not as good as native listeners in perceptually restoring degraded speech and understand what was being said. The current study investigates how nonnative listeners of English (namely, native Japanese speakers who learned English as a second language) perceptually restore temporally distorted speech in their L2 English as compared with native English listeners (L1 English) reported in Ishida et al. (Cognition, 151, 68–75, 2016), and as compared with the listeners’ native tongue (L1 Japanese). In the experiment, listeners listened to locally time-reversed words and pseudowords in their L2 English and L1 Japanese where every 10, 30, 50, 70, 90, or 110 ms of speech signal was flipped in time—these stimuli contained either many fricatives or stops. The results suggested that the intelligibility of locally time-reversed words and pseudowords deteriorated as the length of reversed segments increased in both listeners’ L2 English and L1 Japanese, while listeners understood locally time-reversed speech more in their L1 Japanese. In addition, lexical context supported perceptual restoration in both listeners’ L1 Japanese and L2 English, while phonemic constituents affected perceptual restoration significantly only in listeners’ L1. On the other hand, locally time-reversed words and pseudowords in L1 Japanese were much more intelligible than those in L1 English reported in Ishida et al. It is possible that the intelligibility of temporally distorted lexical items depends on the structure of basic linguistic units in each language, and the Japanese language might have a unique characteristic because of its CV and V structure.

Is language interference (when it occurs) a graded or an all-or-none effect? Evidence from bilingual reported speech production

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNA HATZIDAKI ◽  
MIKEL SANTESTEBAN ◽  
WOUTER DUYCK
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Word Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reported Speech ◽  
Cross Lingual ◽  
Syntactic Differences ◽  
Degree Of Similarity

Do cross-lingual interactions occur even with structures of different word order in different languages of bilinguals? Or could the latter provide immunity to interference of the contrasting characteristics of the other language? To answer this question, we examined the reported speech production (utterances reporting what just happened; e.g., Holly asked what Eric ate) of two groups of proficient, unbalanced bilinguals with varying similarity between their native (L1-Spanish/L1-Dutch) and second language (L2-English). The results showed that both groups of bilinguals produced word order errors when formulating indirect What-questions in L2, regardless of how similar the L1 was to the L2 in that respect. Our findings suggest that in the case of reported speech production in the examined bilingual groups, cross-linguistic syntactic differences by themselves suffice to induce language interference, and that the degree of similarity between the L1 and the L2 does not seem to modulate the magnitude of this effect.

Tweede-Taalonderwijs Op Maat

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 103-115
Author(s):  
Liza van den Bosch
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Educational Measurement ◽  
Language Test ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Second Language Teaching ◽  
Educational Activities ◽  
Set Up

The Institute for Educational Measurement (Cito) and Tilburg University have developed an instructional device for second language teaching to adults. It consists of: - a diagnostic language test - a set of teaching materials The diagnostic language test is based on a psycholinguistic model for language proficiency in which several linguistic levels are distinguished (Levelt & Kempen, 1976): phonological level, lexical level, morphological level, syntactic level and text level. The diagnostic language test consists of eleven subtests with which lexical, morphological, syntactic and textual skills can be examined. If test results show lack of proficiency, the additional set of teaching materials can be used in various ways to set up educational activities.

Towards Text-Based Second Language Teaching

2003 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Blom
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Statistical Approach ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Teaching Methodology ◽  
Second Language Teaching ◽  
Introductory Section ◽  
Short Section ◽  
Conventional Sequencing

This article surveys corpus research into what might generally be referred to as conventionalism in language use, and discusses its implications for second language teaching methodology. After an introductory section with traditional and more recent views on the idiomatic and formulaic nature of language use, Section 2 presents a survey of corpus-based case studies into preselected types of lexical patterning like idioms and collocations. Section 3 presents the cruder statistical approach of automatically assessing the frequency of recurrent combinations in texts. The results suggest that conventionalism extends far beyond the traditionally recognised patterns, and might be the basic combinatory principle underlying the composition of written and oral texts. After a short section with some evidence that conventional sequencing is also a feature in learner output, the concluding section (5) argues that to do justice to the phenomenon of conventionalism in language use, teaching methodology should be essentially text-based.

Some observations on the acquisition of evidentiality in bulgarian as a second language by native english speakers

Proglas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandrina Raykova ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Current Analysis

Second language acquisition of grammatical evidentiality in Bulgarian is studied through analyzing the spoken language use of a number of native English speakers. The category is found unstable at the higher levels of language proficiency, which indicates incomplete acquisition. There are cases of probable full acquisition which the current analysis cannot confirm. Suggestions regarding the role of the linguistic worldview are put forward.

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