WHAT MAKES SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION COMMUNICATIVE POWER: NATURE? NURTURE? INTERACTION? OR ALL TOGETHER? PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO TESOL IN COMPARATIVE MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES

The article discusses theories of second language acquisition within the framework of nature, nurturing, and interactionist views to language learning and reveals the results of their application to non-native multilingual people’s language acquisition experiences in communicative and meaningfully absorbing environments. The research proposes the necessary space for the discussion of practicality and authenticity of nature, nurture and interactionist theories in language learning, which can be conducted as an integral examination of second language learner efficacy. KEY WORDS: second language, acquisition, nature, nurture, interactionist, technique, authentic, skill and knowledge, experiences, environments, learn, acquire, comprehensible input and output, meaningful language acquisition, autonomous learning

Learner Development of a Morphosyntactic Feature in Argentina: The Case of vos

Students have been found to improve their sociolinguistic competence, particularly regarding the acquisition of dialectal features, while studying abroad. Nevertheless, most of the research on learner development of morphosyntactic features in Spanish-speaking immersion contexts has examined that of variants characteristic of Peninsular Spanish in Spain, namely clitics and the informal second-person plural vosotros. Since the informal second-person singular, vos, is more prevalent than its equivalent, tú, in several Latin American countries, learner acquisition of this feature also merits investigation. This article explores second-language learner production of vos among 23 English speakers during a 5-month semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a popular study abroad destination. The findings from the multivariate analysis of over 1200 tokens of tú and vos indicate that learners used vos verb forms over 70% of the time by the end of the sojourn. Factors including social networks, proficiency level, mood, and task significantly influenced this use. Most notably, the stronger the learners’ social networks, the more they used vos verb forms and learners with high proficiency levels used these forms more than lower-proficiency learners. This study provides one of the first accounts of the acquisition of a widespread morphosyntactic feature of Latin American Spanish.

Architecture design of a reinforcement environment for learning sign languages

Different fields such as linguistics, teaching, and computing have demonstrated special interest in the study of sign languages (SL). However, the processes of teaching and learning these languages turn complex since it is unusual to find people teaching these languages that are fluent in both SL and the native language of the students. The teachings from deaf individuals become unique. Nonetheless, it is important for the student to lean on supportive mechanisms while being in the process of learning an SL. Bidirectional communication between deaf and hearing people through SL is a hot topic to achieve a higher level of inclusion. However, all the processes that convey teaching and learning SL turn difficult and complex since it is unusual to find SL teachers that are fluent also in the native language of the students, making it harder to provide computer teaching tools for different SL. Moreover, the main aspects that a second language learner of an SL finds difficult are phonology, non-manual components, and the use of space (the latter two are specific to SL, not to spoken languages). This proposal appears to be the first of the kind to favor the Costa Rican Sign Language (LESCO, for its Spanish acronym), as well as any other SL. Our research focus stands on reinforcing the learning process of final-user hearing people through a modular architectural design of a learning environment, relying on the concept of phonological proximity within a graphical tool with a high degree of usability. The aim of incorporating phonological proximity is to assist individuals in learning signs with similar handshapes. This architecture separates the logic and processing aspects from those associated with the access and generation of data, which makes it portable to other SL in the future. The methodology used consisted of defining 26 phonological parameters (13 for each hand), thus characterizing each sign appropriately. Then, a similarity formula was applied to compare each pair of signs. With these pre-calculations, the tool displays each sign and its top ten most similar signs. A SUS usability test and an open qualitative question were applied, as well as a numerical evaluation to a group of learners, to validate the proposal. In order to reach our research aims, we have analyzed previous work on proposals for teaching tools meant for the student to practice SL, as well as previous work on the importance of phonological proximity in this teaching process. This previous work justifies the necessity of our proposal, whose benefits have been proved through the experimentation conducted by different users on the usability and usefulness of the tool. To meet these needs, homonymous words (signs with the same starting handshape) and paronyms (signs with highly similar handshape), have been included to explore their impact on learning. It allows the possibility to apply the same perspective of our existing line of research to other SL in the future.

GENERAL THEORIES AND SPECIAL THEORIES IN TEACHING LANGUAGE TO NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS

The field of teaching language for non-native speakers is a rich field that has been addressed by various theories that tried to explain the process of acquiring a second language, as some of them pay great attention to the innate characteristics of the learner, and others focus on the role that the environment plays, especially in terms of providing contact with those who modify their language and patterns of interaction to suit the needs of the language learner, while other theories focus on the learner’s participation in the social contexts, or the so-called immersion in the target language environment, and the importance of research is highlighted in uncovering the mechanisms and curricula that these theories have adopted in order to achieve meaningful and distinct learning. The research aims to address this topic, trying to delve into the concepts and procedures of each theory separately in an attempt to clarify and present it to the Arab reader and student in an accessible and understandable form. We will try to rely in this study on a research plan that includes two main topics: A first topic, which we will devote to general theories in teaching language to non-native speakers; That is, theories that dealt with linguistic acquisition in general, whether related to the first or second language, and includes three main theories; They are the structural behavioral theory, the innate or Universal Grammar theory, and the functional theory. As for the second topic, we will devote it to the special theories, which are theories that dealt exclusively with teaching the language to non-native speakers, and it includes eight basic hypothesis. They are the Monitor hypothesis, the interaction hypothesis, the contrastive analysis hypothesis, the creative construction hypothesis, the fundamental difference hypothesis, Noticing hypothesis, the projection hypothesis, the competition model.In order to delve into this topic, we raise the following problems: How did cognitive theorizing for teaching a language to non-speakers of it contributed to addressing the difficulties and mistakes faced by the second language learner? How did these theories address the issue of second language teaching and acquisition?

Investigating cross-linguistic similarity ratings: A Rasch analysis

A robust finding in psycholinguistics is that cognates and loanwords, which are words that typically share some degree of form and meaning across languages, provide the second language learner with benefits in language use when compared to words that do not share form and meaning across languages. This cognate effect has been shown to exist for Japanese learners of English; that is, words such as table are processed faster and more accurately in English because they have a loanword equivalent in Japanese (i.e., テーブル /te:buru/ ‘table’). Previous studies have also shown that the degree of phonological and semantic similarity, as measured on a numerical scale from ‘completely different’ to ‘identical’, also influences processing. However, there has been relatively little appraisal of such cross-linguistic similarity ratings themselves. Therefore, the present study investigated the structure of the similarity ratings using Rasch analysis, which is an analytic approach frequently used in the design and validation of language assessments. The findings showed that a 4-point scale may be optimal for phonological similarity ratings of cognates and a 2-point scale may be most appropriate for semantic similarity ratings. Furthermore, this study reveals that while a few raters and items misfitted the Rasch model, there was substantial agreement in ratings, especially for semantic similarity. The results validate the ratings for use in research and demonstrate the utility of Rasch analysis in the design and validation of research instruments in psychology.

Investigating cross-linguistic similarity ratings: A Rasch analysis

A robust finding in psycholinguistics is that cognates and loanwords, which are words that typically share some degree of form and meaning across languages, provide the second language learner with benefits in language use when compared to words that do not share form and meaning across languages. This cognate effect has been shown to exist for Japanese learners of English; that is, words such as table are processed faster and more accurately in English because they have a loanword equivalent in Japanese (i.e., テーブル /te:buru/ ‘table’). Previous studies have also shown that the degree of phonological and semantic similarity, as measured on a numerical scale from ‘completely different’ to ‘identical’, also influences processing. However, there has been relatively little appraisal of such cross-linguistic similarity ratings themselves. Therefore, the present study investigated the structure of the similarity ratings using Rasch analysis, which is an analytic approach frequently used in the design and validation of language assessments. The findings showed that a 4-point scale may be optimal for phonological similarity ratings of cognates and a 2-point scale may be most appropriate for semantic similarity ratings. Furthermore, this study reveals that while a few raters and items misfitted the Rasch model, there was substantial agreement in ratings, especially for semantic similarity. The results validate the ratings for use in research and demonstrate the utility of Rasch analysis in the design and validation of research instruments in psychology.

Investigation of Native Speaker and Second Language Learner Intuition of Collocation Frequency

© 2015 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan. Research into frequency intuition has focused primarily on native (L1) and, to a lesser degree, nonnative (L2) speaker intuitions about single word frequency. What remains a largely unexplored area is L1 and L2 intuitions about collocation (i.e., phrasal) frequency. To bridge this gap, the present study aimed to answer the following question: How do L2 learners and native speakers compare against each other and corpora in their subjective judgments of collocation frequency? Native speakers and learners of Italian were asked to judge 80 noun-adjective pairings as one of the following: high frequency, medium frequency, low frequency, very low frequency. Both L1 and L2 intuitions of high frequency collocations correlated strongly with corpus frequency. Neither of the two groups of participants exhibited accurate intuitions of medium and low frequency collocations. With regard to very low frequency pairings, L1 but not L2 intuitions were found to correlate with corpora for the majority of the items. Further, mixed-effects modeling revealed that L2 learners were comparable to native speakers in their judgments of the four frequency bands, although some differences did emerge. Taken together, the study provides new insights into the nature of L1 and L2 intuitions about phrasal frequency.

Investigation of Native Speaker and Second Language Learner Intuition of Collocation Frequency

© 2015 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan. Research into frequency intuition has focused primarily on native (L1) and, to a lesser degree, nonnative (L2) speaker intuitions about single word frequency. What remains a largely unexplored area is L1 and L2 intuitions about collocation (i.e., phrasal) frequency. To bridge this gap, the present study aimed to answer the following question: How do L2 learners and native speakers compare against each other and corpora in their subjective judgments of collocation frequency? Native speakers and learners of Italian were asked to judge 80 noun-adjective pairings as one of the following: high frequency, medium frequency, low frequency, very low frequency. Both L1 and L2 intuitions of high frequency collocations correlated strongly with corpus frequency. Neither of the two groups of participants exhibited accurate intuitions of medium and low frequency collocations. With regard to very low frequency pairings, L1 but not L2 intuitions were found to correlate with corpora for the majority of the items. Further, mixed-effects modeling revealed that L2 learners were comparable to native speakers in their judgments of the four frequency bands, although some differences did emerge. Taken together, the study provides new insights into the nature of L1 and L2 intuitions about phrasal frequency.

A cognitive meta-theory for TESOL

A general theory of human cognition must be able to explain all aspects of human thought including scientific and rational thinking, normal thought, and personal identity and emotions. We present a theory that began as a system of cognitive styles, was expanded through an analysis of biographies, mapped onto neurology, developed through a study of personality, and then tested by using it to explain human thought in a number of dissimilar fields. This paper will introduce the theory, show briefly how it is consistent with neurological research, and then use it to analyze the TESOL field, a ‘specialization’ that brings together a broad range of topics related to human thought and behavior which are normally viewed in isolation. The typical second language learner is struggling to learn a new language with all of its idiosyncrasies, while acquiring new paradigms, navigating culture and negotiating personal identity. Examining the mechanisms involved in diverse elements of TESOL, such as language acquisition and learning, identity constitution, intercultural pragmatics, research methodology, critical discourse analysis, and male and female intellectual development through the lens of a general meta-theory of human cognition has application both for TESOL and for cognitive science in general.