Teacher's code-switching and bilingual children's heritage language learning and cognitive switching flexibility

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
He SUN ◽  
Nurul YUSSOF ◽  
Poorani VIJAYAKUMAR ◽  
Gabrielle LAI ◽  
Beth Ann O'BRIEN ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cognitive Flexibility ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Card Sort ◽  
Heritage Language Learning ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cognitive Switching ◽  
Language Output

AbstractTo code-switch or not to code-switch? This is a dilemma for many bilingual language teachers. In this study, the influence of teachers’ CS on bilingual children's language and cognitive development is explored within heritage language (HL) classes in Singapore. Specifically, the relationship between children's language output, vocabulary development, and cognitive flexibility to teachers’ classroom CS behavior, is examined within 20 preschool HL classrooms (10 Mandarin, 6 Malay, and 4 Tamil). Teachers’ and children's utterances were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for CS frequency and type (i.e., inter-sentential, intra-sentential). 173 students were assessed with receptive vocabulary and dimensional card sort tasks, and their vocabulary and cognitive switching scores assessed using correlational and mixed effects analyses. Results show that inter-sentential and intra-sentential CS frequency is positively and significantly related to children's intra-sentential CS frequency. Overall, findings revealed that teachers code-switched habitually more often than for instructional purposes. Neither inter-sentential nor intra-sentential CS was significantly related to children's development in HL vocabulary, and intra-sentential CS was found to positively and significantly relate to children's growth in cognitive flexibility. These findings reveal the multi-faceted impact of teacher's CS on children's early development.

scholarly journals Rethink about Heritage Language Learning: A Case Study of Children’s Mandarin Chinese learning at a Community Language School in Ontario, Canada

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxiao Du
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Knowledge Mobilization ◽  
Heritage Language Learning ◽  
Children's Literacy ◽  
And Migration

On-going knowledge mobilization and migration take place on a daily basis in the globalized world. Canada is a multilingual and multicultural country with a large number of visitors and immigrants. One in five Canadian speaks a foreign language other than English and French (Postmedia News, 2012). This case study examined six-year-old Chinese children’s heritage language learning in a community school from multiliteracies perspective using observations, interviews, and artefacts to understand children’s literacy learning. The findings indicated that Chinese children’s literacy learning was not in the traditional repetitive way but involved multimodal communication at school. Useful implications are made for heritage language educators regarding ways to support meaningful heritage language teaching and learning.  

scholarly journals On the Relationship between Iranian L2 Teachers’ Pedagogical Beliefs and L2 Learners’ Attitudes

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Maryam Sharajabian ◽  
Mahmood Hashemian
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Survey Design ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Pedagogical Beliefs ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
Efl Teachers ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
The Relationship

<p>The present study employed a descriptive survey design to investigate L2 learners’ attitudes towards language learning, and the possible effects of teachers’ beliefs on learners’ attitudes. Participants were chosen from among 2 groups: Twenty EFL teachers were asked to take part in this study and 80 from a pool of 213 learners at 2 language schools who were chosen to fill out the learners’ attitude questionnaire. The teachers were subsequently placed at/in 3 groups of high-opinion group (HOG), moderate group (MG), and low-opinion group (LG), and the attitudes of the learners of these 3 groups of teachers were compared to uncover the possible impact of teacher beliefs on learner attitudes. The relationship between the teachers’ beliefs and the learners’ attitudes was analyzed, and it that showed there was a statistically significant difference in the learners’ attitude scores for HOG, MG, and LOG. Analysis of the data showed that the learners of the HOG teachers gained significantly higher attitude scores than the learners of the MG teachers. Simply put, it was found that EFL teachers’ beliefs can influence their learners’ attitudes about language learning. Language teachers should learn about the effect of their beliefs and experience it and become more aware of practicing them.</p>

Construction grammars

AILA Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 115-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randal Holme
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Grammatical Analysis ◽  
Second Language Teachers ◽  
Lexical Phrase ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Pedagogical Grammar ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Language Content

Constructions are the central unit of grammatical analysis in cognitive linguistics. In formal linguistics ‘construction’ referred to forms that were projected from lexical items rather than from an autonomous syntax. Thus, an expression, ‘I danced the night away’ requires an intransitive verb in a transitive construction provided ‘away’ is present. In cognitive linguistics, constructions comprise any grouping of words or morphemes that in combination possess meanings that cannot be predicted from the parts in isolation. This meaning belongs to the construction itself and is not necessarily dependent upon the presence of a given item of lexis. If this definition is accepted by second language teachers the fundamental interest is that language learning is about learning lexis, constructions, and the text types by which constructions are combined. This article first distills a concept of a construction useful to a pedagogical grammar and considers the relationship of this concept of form to better known language content ‘packets’ such as the structure and the lexical phrase. Last, it discusses how a CL concept of construction does and does not propose different pedagogical methods.

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