Second language learners in special education

1986 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 92-107
Author(s):  
Peggy W. Goldsmith
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Department Of Education ◽  
Adaptive Behaviour ◽  
South Wales ◽  
The Usa ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Assessment Procedures

During 1984, New South Wales Department of Education conducted a survey of ethnic-specific needs of students of non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) in schools for specific purposes (SSPs), which are special education schools. This paper indicates the results and outcomes of that survey. The percentage of students of NESBs in responding schools was 15.4%. The distribution of languages other than English spoken in homes of NESB students in SSPs is similar to that of the general population. The issues seen to be of greatest importance for schools with NESB pupils were assistance in communicating with non-English parents, and a knowledge of and contact with ethnic welfare/support agencies. A literature search revealed little in the way of studies on language provision for students of NESB in SSPs in the USA, Canada, Britain or in Australia. Assessment for placement in special education has always posed a difficulty in regard to students whose dominant language is not English. A move towards the use of Adaptive Behaviour Scales is a possible change in assessment procedures. where the level of language development will constitute just one factor among a number of others. The commencement of English as a second language programme and a bilingual programme are seen as innovatory in this field of education.

Phonological awareness in young second language learners

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie Bruck ◽  
Fred Genesee
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Phoneme Awareness ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Bilingual Group ◽  
English Speaking

ABSTRACTEnglish-speaking children (N = 91) who were attending French schools (bilingual group) were given a battery of phonological awareness tests in kindergarten and in grade 1. At the time of kindergarten testing the mean age of the children was 5:9. Their performance was compared to age-matched English-speaking children (N = 72) attending English schools (monolingual group). The bilingual children showed heightened levels of phonological awareness skills in kindergarten in the area of onset-rime awareness. By grade 1, the pattern of group differences was more complex. The monolingual and bilingual children performed similarly on onset-rime segmentation tasks. The monolingual children had higher phoneme awareness scores than their French-schooled peers; this result is interpreted to reflect the role of literacy instruction on phoneme awareness development. In comparison, the bilingual children had higher syllable segmentation scores than their monolingual peers. This result is interpreted to reflect the role of second language input on phonological awareness.

Second language learners’ production of geminate consonants in Japanese

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yukari Hirata
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Study Abroad ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Intermediate Level ◽  
Specific Training ◽  
Native Japanese Speakers ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Production Accuracy

This chapter examines whether learners of Japanese at an intermediate level make progress in accurately producing singleton and geminate stops after being immersed in Japan without specific training. Seven learners of Japanese, with two years of classroom instruction in the USA, recorded words such as [kako] and [kakːo] in a carrier sentence at three speaking rates before and after a four-month study-abroad experience in Japan. Duration of various segments was analysed, and the singleton and geminate boundary ratio of native Japanese speakers was used to determine learners’ production accuracy. Results indicated that the learners did make a singleton/geminate distinction, but their production accuracy showed limited improvement. The results suggest continuing difficulty in the mastery of native-level durational control.

Gender and number processing in second language Swahili

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-476
Author(s):  
Patti Spinner ◽  
Rebecca Foote ◽  
Rose Acen Upor
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Word Repetition ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Conflicting Evidence ◽  
English Speaking

Abstract For native speakers, congruent gender marking on determiners and adjectives facilitates recognition of subsequent nouns, while incongruent marking inhibits recognition (e.g., Bates et al., 1996). However, there is conflicting evidence regarding whether second language learners demonstrate this effect. We investigated this issue in Swahili. Native speakers and English-speaking L2 learners of Swahili in their 3rd-5th semester completed two word repetition tasks, one examining gender and one number. Participants heard verb-noun phrases in Swahili with verbal marking that was congruent, incongruent or neutral with respect to gender or number. The time to repeat each noun was recorded. Both language groups appeared sensitive to number marking; however, only native speakers appeared sensitive to gender marking. The findings suggest the lack of a feature in the L1 may impede online processing in the L2, while the presence of a feature may mean that native-like processing is possible, even at early levels of proficiency.

The Roles of Bilingual Special Educators in Creating Inclusive Classrooms

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spencer J. Salend ◽  
Judith A. Dorney ◽  
Maribel Mazo
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
Second Language ◽  
General Education ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Special Educators ◽  
Special Educator ◽  
Cooperative Teaching ◽  
Bilingual Special Education ◽  
General Education Classrooms

One group of students whose unique needs present a challenge to educators seeking to create inclusive general education classrooms is learners who are learning english as a second language. The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to distill from the literature of bilingual special education, bilingual education, and special education a description of the roles of bilingual special educators in cooperative teaching endeavors designed to educate second language learners in general education classrooms; and (b) to offer the observations of a bilingual special educator who worked as part of a cooperative teaching team.

Access to UG and language transfer: a study of L2 learners' interpretation of reconstruction in Chinese

1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Ying
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Parameter Setting ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
English Speaking

Twenty-seven English-speaking learners of Chinese (the experimental groups) and 20 native speakers of Chinese (the control group) participated in a study that investigated second language learners' knowledge of reconstruction (NP and predicate fronted sentences with ziji ‘self’) in Chinese. Results of a sentence interpretation task indicate that English-speaking learners of Chinese had knowledge of ambiguity of antecedence of ziji inside a moved predicate, and lack of ambiguity of antecedence of ziji inside a moved NP, although such information is not directly available in English. While the experiment produced evidence that they appeared to have access to Universal Grammar, English-speaking learners of Chinese bound ziji in non-movement sentences to an embedded subject, indicating that they mapped the narrower setting of reflexives in English onto a wider parameter setting of ziji in Chinese.

English possessive gender agreement in production and comprehension: Similarities and differences between young monolingual English learners and adult Mandarin–English second language learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 985-1017 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUCIA POZZAN ◽  
INÉS ANTÓN-MÉNDEZ
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
English Second Language ◽  
Study Support ◽  
English Speaking

ABSTRACTSecond language learners of English occasionally establish gender agreement between a possessive determiner and the local noun that follows it, rather than with its target antecedent (*“Maryi loves hisi brother”). The production and comprehension profiles of adult Mandarin second language learners of English and monolingual English-speaking children were examined to establish (a) if such errors result from an inherent tendency to establish agreement locally within the noun phrase or rather from transfer of first language agreement procedures, and (b) if these errors are production specific or rather reflect nontarget grammatical representations, thus also affecting comprehension. The results of the elicited production portion of the study support the hypothesis that gender agreement errors in learners’ production of possessives result from a generalized tendency to establish local agreement. The results of the comprehension portion of the study suggest that the observed tendency for local agreement within the noun phrase is production specific and does not characterize learners’ grammatical representations as a whole.

scholarly journals Reexamining L2 accent: How much can personality explain?

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
Germán Zárate-Sández
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Individual Difference ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Considerable Portion ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Speaking Task

Previous studies have shown that learners’ individual differences (e.g., motivation, age) can impact second language learners’ pronunciation. This study focused on one individual difference that has received relatively little attention, namely personality, and sought to determine to what extent personality accounts for learners’ L2 accent during quasispontaneous and unplanned speech. Fifty-one English-speaking learners of Spanish performed a speaking task that was scored for degree of L2 accentedness. Results revealed that personality explained a considerable portion of the variance, and that extraversion and neuroticism were significant predictors of L2 accent. 

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