scholarly journals Assessment and final reports in foreign language lessons

EduLingua ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Feryal Çubukçu

Psycholinguists are interested in how words are stored in human memory. The question as to whether words are stored as single root words or whether they are stored along with the affixes still remains a controversial issue. Aitchison (1987) believes that each word has a separate entry. Mackay (1978) and Taft (1981) hold that words are made of constituent morphemes. When we listen, we decompose the morphemes and when we speak, we combine them to make multimorphemic words. The decomposition view claims that only the root is stored in memory. To test this claim, a group of 50 intermediate level students at the preparatory department of a state university situated on the western coast of Turkey were selected. They were taught 10 pseudo root nouns and verbs and 10 psuedo complex nouns and verbs. To see how the morphological complexity affected lexical access and which type of words were better remembered, they were tested on these words. Then the same group was given 10 root and 10 complex words in their mother tongue and their answer times were compared. Students recalled the root words more easily and accurately.The results shed light on the validity of the decomposition theory, showcasing we remember the words in roots better.

Author(s):  
Olga Kostrova ◽  
Izabela Prokop

The aim of this article is to present the project of a contrastive Polish-German and Russian-German grammar, which arose as a result of the cooperation between Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. The idea of a unilateral grammar which is based on the categories of the mother tongue of the learner and is aimed at the foreign language to be learned, is designed as a suitable measure within the framework of error prevention. The grammar contains selected grammatical categories that are significant sources of errors for native Slavic speakers


Author(s):  
Monika Kowalonek-Janczarek

The purpose of this study is to compare Poland’s and Japan’s foreign languagepolicies in preschool, elementary, lower/upper secondary and higher education and shed light on the aspect of multilingualism in this milieu as well. Based on secondary data (ministerial ordinances, governmental reports, curricula) and literature knowledge, the paper provides a comparative overview of the Polish and Japanese contexts which differ in a strong way. While Poland’s foreign language policy is mainly based on the objectives of the EU’s policy according to which every European citizen should master two other languages in addition to his or her mother tongue, the Japanese government’s policy aims at improving English education.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-139
Author(s):  
M. A. Yelizaryeva ◽  
I. V. Alexandrova

The article focuses on the comparative approach in teaching German as the second foreign language simultaneously with Czech as the first foreign language at the Russian State University for the Humanities. The bachelor program “Slavistics and Central European studies: languages, culture and literature of the Czech Republic and Austria” at the RSUH has some unique features: from the first year of this program students learn simultaneously two foreign languages: Czech as the first foreign language and German as the second one, therefore, they often make mistakes in German due to the influence of their mother tongue, Russian, as well as English, learned at school, and Czech. If the teacher of German has a good command of the Czech language, he or she can use some similarities between German and Czech that have appeared due to their long-term language contact and convergent evolution. The prepositional government of some Czech and German verbs is one of these similarities that distinguish them from the Russian language. And many mistakes are made by students in their target languages due to the verbal government of Russian. But with that said this language transfer could be avoided or reduced if we show that plenty of German and Czech verbs have analogous verb government. In order to check this statement, we have made a set of exercises (substitution drill and translation “Czech – German”, “German – Czech”, “Russian – Czech, German”), which contained four couples of German and Czech verbs with prepositional government. The testing of these exercises on seven second-year-students of the RSUH has shown that such exercises could help students to focus on Czech-German grammatical similarities and reduce the influence of the Russian language.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Kusumarasdyati .

<p>It is virtually impossible to teach a foreign language without teaching the culture where this language is spoken as a mother tongue because the use of a language relies heavily on the culture observed by the speakers. This principle also applies to the teaching of English in Indonesia, where it is spoken as a foreign language. The present paper aims to describe how the native cultures and the target cultures are explored in a course offered by the English Department of Universitas Negeri Surabaya (State University of Surabaya) in an effort to build understanding across cultures through their similarities and differences. While this may be a tedious task to accomplish due to the multicultural backgrounds of the learners and their diverse experiences that shape their personal opinions, it does not necessarily mean that cross-cultural understanding is impossible to achieve. It should be approached with appropriate methods to ensure that the teaching-learning process can yield the desired results. In addition, learners are engaged in a variety of motivating activities that not only have them examine how their native and target cultures are alike or different, but also give them relevant experiences that can lead to understanding.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong><em>TEFL, foreign language, culture, cross-cultural understanding<strong></strong></em></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 00053
Author(s):  
E.N. Kvasyuk ◽  
O.V. Putistina ◽  
O.V. Savateeva

The importance of correct English pronunciation is growing due to its central role in communication and the speaker’s identity. Non-native English speakers lack a natural linguistic environment and tend to carry articulation rules and intonation from their mother tongue. Modern conditions of the fast-paced world require a revision of the forms and methods of the educational process. Teachers should engage students in independent and individual work at classes, increase the use of practical and research tasks. Information technologies in the teaching process at different levels of education (both school and university) change the roles of all participants in the educational process. Thus, teachers are given more opportunities to improve their work, and students are taught a foreign language at a higher level. The article aims to state the advantages of using multimedia technologies as an educational tool in teaching English practical phonetics and to find out university students’ attitude to it. The object of the research is the benefits of working in a language laboratory, equipped with Rinel-Lingo (a multimedia language programme to train phonetics of a foreign language of university students). The article analyzes the results of the survey conducted in Murmansk arctic state university.


2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linnaea Stockall ◽  
Alec Marantz

Against longstanding assumptions in the psycholinguistics literature, we argue for a model of morphological complexity that has all complex words assembled by the grammar from lexical roots and functional morphemes. This assembly occurs even for irregular forms like gave. Morphological relatedness is argued to be an identity relation between repetitions of a single root, distinguishable from semantic and phonological relatedness. Evidence for the model is provided in two MEG priming experiments that measure root activation prior to lexical decision. Both regular and irregular allomorphs of a root are shown to prime the root equally. These results are incompatible both with connectionist models that treat all morphological relatedness as similarity and with dual mechanism models in which only regular forms involve composition.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Manuela Svoboda

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyse any potential similarities between the Croatian and German language and present them adopting a contrastive approach with the intent of simplifying the learning process in regards to the German syntactic structure for Croatian German as foreign language students. While consulting articles and books on the theories and methods of foreign language teaching, attention is usually drawn to differences between the mother tongue and the foreign language, especially concerning false friends etc. The same applies to textbooks, workbooks and how teachers behave in class. Thus, it is common practice to deal with the differences between the foreign language and the mother tongue but less with similarities. This is unfortunate considering that this would likely aid in acquiring certain grammatical and syntactic structures of the foreign language. In the author's opinion, similarities are as, if not more, important than differences. Therefore, in this article the existence of similarities between the Croatian and German language will be examined closer with a main focus on the segment of sentence types. Special attention is drawn to subordinate clauses as they play an important role when speaking and/or translating sentences from Croatian to German and vice versa. In order to present and further clarify this matter, subordinate clauses in both the German and Croatian language are defined, clarified and listed to gain an oversight and to present possible similarities between the two. In addition, the method to identify subordinate clauses in a sentence is explained as well as what they express, which conjunctions are being used for each type of subordinate clause in both languages and where the similarities and/or differences between the two languages lie.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2319-2324
Author(s):  
Rina Muka ◽  
Irida Hoti

The language acquired from the childhood is the language spoken in the family and in the place of living. This language is different from one pupil to another, because of their social, economical conditions. By starting the school the pupil faces first the ABC book and then in the second grade Albanian language learning through the Albanian language textbook. By learning Albanian language step by step focused on Reading, Writing, Speaking and Grammar the pupil is able to start learning the second language on the next years of schooling. So, the second language learning in Albanian schools is related to the first language learning (mother tongue), since the early years in primary school. In our schools, the second language (English, Italian) starts in the third grade of the elementary class. On the third grade isn’t taught grammar but the pupil is directed toward the correct usage of the language. The textbooks are structured in developing the pupil’s critical thinking. The textbooks are fully illustrated and with attractive and educative lessons adequate to the age of the pupils. This comparative study will reflect some important aspects of language learning in Albanian schools (focused on Albanian language - first language and English language - second language), grade 3-6. Our point of view in this paper will show not only the diversity of the themes, the lines and the sub-lines but also the level of language knowledge acquired at each level of education. First, the study will focus on some important issues in comparing Albanian and English language texts as well as those which make them different: chronology and topics retaken from one level of education to another, so by conception of linear and chronological order will be shown comparatively two learned languages (mother tongue and second language). By knowing and learning well mother tongue will be easier for the pupil the foreign language learning. The foreign language (as a learning curriculum) aims to provide students with the skills of using foreign language written and spoken to enable the literature to recognize the achievements of advanced world science and technology that are in the interest of developing our technique. Secondly, the study will be based on the extent of grammatical knowledge, their integration with 'Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing' as well as the inclusion of language games and their role in language learning. The first and second language learning in Albanian schools (grade III-VI) is based on similar principles for the linearity and chronology of grammatical knowledge integrated with listening, reading, writing and speaking. The different structure of both books help the pupils integrate and use correctly both languages. In the end of the sixth grade, the pupils have good knowledge of mother tongue and the second language and are able to write and speak well both languages.


2003 ◽  
Vol 139-140 ◽  
pp. 129-152
Author(s):  
Paul Bogaards ◽  
Elisabeth Van Der Linden ◽  
Lydius Nienhuis

The research to be reported on in this paper was originally motivated by the finding that about 70% of the mistakes made by university students when translating from their mother tongue (Dutch) into their foreign language (French) were lexical in nature (NIENHUIS et al. 1989). This was partially confinned in the investigation described in NIENHUIS et al. (1993). A closer look at the individual errors suggested that many problems were caused by words with more than one meaning which each require different translations in the target language. In the research reported on in this paper, we checked our fmdings in the light of what is known about the structure of the bilingual lexicon and about the ways bilinguals have access to the elements of their two languages. On the basis of the model of the bilingual lexicon presented by KROLL & Sholl (1992) an adapted model is proposed for the processing of lexical ambiguity. This leads to a tentative schema of the mental activities that language learners have to perfonn when they are translating from their mother tongue into a foreign language, The second part of the paper describes two experiments we have carried out in order to find empirical support for such a schema. The last section of the paper contains a discussion of the results obtained as well as the conclusions that can be drawn.


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