Attitudes of Primary School Children and Second Language Proficiency

AbstractCase is one of the grammatical categories that pose great challenges to children acquiring German, both in first and second language acquisition. The paper examines the special case of the second language acquisition of case within prepositional phrases (PPs). A prototypical German PP consists of a preposition selecting a determiner phrase (DP) whose case is governed by the prepositional head. One problem is that the case assigned by a preposition and its semantics are not related to each other, while in the case of socalled two-way prepositions, the semantics of the PP and the case within the DP are closely connected. This conflict between arbitrariness and semantically driven case assignment could pose an additional obstacle for learners of German. I have conducted an experiment in which I examined how case within PPs is acquired by 56 primary school children whose first language is not German. My study shows that the children have great difficulties regarding the dative and that the accusative is used instead very often. This overgeneralization decreases with an increase in age.

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Metacognitive Schemes as a Tool for Teaching English to Young Learners: Psychological Discourse

Revista Romaneasca pentru Educatie Multidimensionala ◽

10.18662/rrem/12.4/333 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 53-71

Author(s):

Natalya Tokareva ◽

◽

Maryna Tsehelska ◽

Keyword(s):

Primary School ◽

Language Proficiency ◽

School Children ◽

Research Problem ◽

Practical Experience ◽

Primary School Children ◽

Teaching English ◽

School Students ◽

Dominant Type ◽

Active Approach

The article presents the results of a theoretical and empirical analysis of the problem of optimizing teaching English to students of primary school age, taking into account the requirements of the modern information society. It was stated that training should format an active approach to modeling the knowledge and competencies of students. This position of the authors allows us to consider thinking in a foreign language as the goal of learning and an indicator of the degree of language proficiency. As a research problem, the authors considered an attempt to evaluate the heuristic and developing resource of metacognitive schemes in the logic of projective-recursive technology for teaching English to primary school children. The authors present the results of a study of the dominant type of thinking of primary school students as an indicative construct of metacognitive development. It is proved that younger students are mostly characterized by sign and symbolic thinking; this confirms the possibility of using metacognitive schemes in teaching English to children of this age group. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the practical experience of using metacognitive schemes in the practice of teaching English to primary school children at the Educational Centre «Interclass» (Kryvyi Rih). This technique involves the construction of a mental denotative graph that performs the function of sense formation and mental interpretations modeling in the students' minds. The obtained results complement the materials presented by scientists regarding the trends in teaching English to primary school children using a resource of metacognitive schemes.

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Social Robots for (Second) Language Learning in (Migrant) Primary School Children

International Journal of Social Robotics ◽

10.1007/s12369-021-00824-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Elly A. Konijn ◽

Brechtje Jansen ◽

Victoria Mondaca Bustos ◽

Veerle L. N. F. Hobbelink ◽

Daniel Preciado Vanegas

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Primary School ◽

Language Learning ◽

School Children ◽

Second Language Learning ◽

Social Robots ◽

Social Robot ◽

Human Robot Interaction ◽

Primary School Children ◽

Story Telling

AbstractEspecially these days, innovation and support from technology to relieve pressure in education is highly urgent. This study tested the potential advantage of a social robot over a tablet in (second) language learning on performance, engagement, and enjoyment. Shortages in primary education call for new technology solutions. Previous studies combined robots with tablets, to compensate for robot’s limitations, however, this study applied direct human–robot interaction. Primary school children (N = 63, aged 4–6) participated in a 3-wave field experiment with story-telling exercises, either with a semi-autonomous robot (without tablet, using WOz) or a tablet. Results showed increased learning gains over time when training with a social robot, compared to the tablet. Children who trained with a robot were more engaged in the story-telling task and enjoyed it more. Robot’s behavioral style (social or neutral) hardly differed overall, however, seems to vary for high versus low educational abilities. While social robots need sophistication before being implemented in schools, our study shows the potential of social robots as tutors in (second) language learning.

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