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A simplified view of the pragmatic mapping problem: to link one side with the other in an articulate or appropriate way.
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This treatise establishes connections between the modern streams of pragmatic outlooks, joining ideas from Chomsky in linguistics as applied in the work of Stephen D. Krashen to second language acquisition and by Frank Smith to reading, writing, and what he called "the literacy club". A lesser objective is to connect the foregoing to Piagetian psyc...
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Abstract: The Arab world has witnessed a very positive and drastic change in the use of English language both in business and education. This change is significant in many ways including a society more inclined to literacy, as well as a keenness to learn and command the English language. However, in universities and other higher educational institu...
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... Therefore, intelligence is a problem of symbolization from start to finish. Interestingly, John Dewey understood "language" in the broad sense of "semiosis" or representational capacity, a sense in which it has been used in various discussion pertaining to the general content of this book (Oller, 1981, 1983a, 1989a, Streiff, 1983 ). Dewey saw "language" as properly applied to all modes of conventional semiotic representation . ...
While social problems should not be "biologized", biology is increasingly a semiotic science, and semiotics an increasingly biological one. In fact, biology affords perhaps the strongest empirical basis for the general theme that semiotic abilities are the essence of intelligence.The capacity to reason or make inferences has long been associated almost exclusively with homo sapiens. To the extent that this exclusivity is empirically justified, the argument from inference is already a biological one. Inference, the capacity to reason, is apparently the special (if not unique) gift which sets human beings apart from other creatures. This is obvious and well-known. However, what has not been discussed much in the literature concerning either language or intelligence, is that both biological organization itself and man's capacities of reason are dependent on the kinds of structures typified in natural language systems--especially in propositional forms linked together to
form sequentially structured and meaningful discourse. Biological as well as other types of logical discourse presuppose operations linking subjects and predicates, negation, conjunction, modification, and the like.
... However, Peirce also showed with the same rigorous logic that all ordinary reasoning is a manifestation of representational capacity. The hierarchical model based on Peirce's theory (Oller, 1983a;1989a) and the testable hypotheses that follow from it, however, are passed over by Boyle in favor of a simpler interpretation: he says the model equates general intelligence with primary language proficiency and with non-primary language proficiency. Neither of these equations, however, follows from the hierarchy which was proposed specifically to distinguish general semiotic capacity from more specialized types and at the same time to show how they are all interrelated (more about this in Chapter 2). ...
This book considers the role of language as a factor in educational practice in general, but more particularly in educational or mental tests. As such, it is both sequel and update to Language in Education: Testing the Tests published by Newbury House in 1978. Another pair of books dealing with some of the same subject matter were Issues in Language Testing Research (Oller, 1983b) and Research in Language Testing (Oller and Perkins, 1980). The positions staked out in Chapter 22 of the Issues book especially are updated here and carried somewhat further. The central question remains: what part does language proficiency play in education in general, and more particularly, in educational or other mental tests?
... Finally, a solid theoretical basis is proposed for the hypothesis that intelligence itself is a kind of semiotic or representational capacity (cf. Oller, 1989a). This idea has its roots deep in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce , and more recently, Albert Einstein, and John Dewey . ...
... Interestingly, John Dewey understood "language" in the broad sense of "semiosis" or representational capacity, a sense in which it has been used in various discussion pertaining to the general content of this book (Oller, 1981, 1983a, 1989a, Streiff, 1983. Dewey saw "language" as properly applied to all modes of conventional semiotic representation. ...
This book aims to accomplish three objectives: (I) to deepen theoretical understanding of bilingualism and proficiency in more than one language; (2) to improve the measurement and statistical methods applied to measuring bilingual proficiencies; and (3) to broaden the data base concerning bilingualism and its measurment. In addition to monolinguals, five bilingual groups are studied: Hopis, Crows, Choctaws, Navajos, and Spanish/English bilinguals. Monolinguals are also examined relative to the new wave of competency testing (as an exit requirement for graduation) at the secondary school level. Throughout the book, the purpose is to examine critically the validity of educational tests. Based on the proposed theory, the data show that the role of primary language ability is generally predicted correctly and is differentiated from various other semiotic abilities on an intuitively appealing basis. It is argued that a comprehensive theory of semiotic abilities is critical to educational and psychological testing and measurement theory, and that primary language abilities will playa critical role both in educational testing theory and practice.
In Chapters 8-11, bilingual populations were examined. However, in those studies it was not possible to obtain actual measures of proficiency in English and the primary language of the bilinguals tested. For instance, in Chapter 8 all of the test Scores ostensibly represented proficiency in English, achievement, or non-verbal intelligence; in Chapter 10, all of the testing was actually done in English though many of the children had learned Navajo as their first language; in Chapter 11, it was possible to get a measure of proficiency in Choctaw in addition to the Scores on English-based achievement tests, but there was no measure aimed explicitly at proficiency in English (only subjective ratings of English ability by teachers and aides were obtained). Here, in Chapter 12, therefore, it may be interesting to examine the relative predictive power of measures of Spanish and English proficiency in relation to achievement scores of Spanish-English bilinguals. Another unique aspect of the present study is that here it was possible to compare a widely used set of procedures for assessing bilingual competencies in Spanish and English, namely, the DeAvila and Duncan Language Assessment Scales (often referred to by the abbreviation LAS) with a more or less standard application of doze procedure (also see Laesch and Van Kleeck, 1987).
The population sampled for the pilot study reported in this chapter consisted of Choctaw-English bilingual children in Mississippi. They were all at the kindergarten level. In this case, objective scores and subjective ratings were obtained in the primary language (Choctaw) as well as in the secondary language (English) and were regressed onto a measure aimed at assessing readiness for instruction. The purpose was to investigate the importance of primary language development to school performance.
Like Chapter 9 above, this chapter too is a follow-up to V. Streiff (1978) with differences in the method and in the population studied. Here, scores attained by Navajo-English bilinguals on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills and on a written doze test are examined. As in previous chapters, the objective was to find out how much of the variance in each of the subtests examined could be attributed to a common factor underlying all of the tests and how much of it would be specific to the respective subtests. Again, a central question was to see how much of the common variance might be attributed to a deep and general factor of semiotic capacities.
Here, language and achievement tests were investigated with a new sample of the population of subjects studied by Streiff in 1978. In that study, Hopi-English bilingual children took the California Achievement Tests along with written and oral doze tests. Here only written doze tests were used, but measures of fluency in English and Hopi were added. As in previous chapters, the focus was on the tests rather than the persons tested. The purpose was to find out more about the role of language proficiency in achievement tests.
Studies of minority groups in America have often focused on the contrast between the minority in question and the majority. The focus here is different. In this chapter we are concerned with the factors that are measured by various tests aimed at specific areas under the general headings of achievement, intelligence, and language proficiency. The data samples come from the elementary school at Crow Agency, Montana. The tests used in this study included the Peabody Individual Achievement Tests (with sections on Mathematics, Reading Comprehension, Reading Recognition, Spelling, and General Information), five of the twelve sub tests of the Revised Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (including Auditory Reception, Auditory-Vocal Association, Visual-Motor Association, Verbal Expression, and Grammatic Closure), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, the Bellugi Syntax Measure, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and Cattell's Culture Fair Intelligence Tests, Scale 2, Forms A and B. As in previous chapters, the purpose was to find out how much of the variance underlying the several tests would be attributable to a common factor, and how much would be specific to each test. As before, it was also asked to what extent it might be reasonable to interpret the variance in the common factor as a general factor of semiotic capacity.
Harry Jerison, UCLA neuroscientist, once remarked that "language and language-related performances are inevitably dominant in most human performances" (1977, p. 59). He was writing, of course, from the vantage point of biology, and more specifically, brain science. IIowever, it is possible to seek evidence for or against his claim through study of human performance on tests. The fact that verbal and non-verbal test scores are substantially correlated has been known for a long time. The existence of such a correlation is no surprise, therefore, to anyone who has considered the research evidence. For instance, by 1931 Stephenson (as cited by Spearman and Jones, 1950) had obtained a correlation of .82 between eight verbal tests and eight non-verbal tests used with 1,037 subjects. More recently, psychometricians have succeeded in rather deliberately reducing this correlation, and increasing the amount of specific variance attributable to the distinct constructs believed by many to underlie verbal and non-verbal tasks. (In recent years, the term "performance" has sometimes been preferred over the term "nonverbal".) Still the term "general intelligence" persists against all efforts to purge it. In this chapter the question is asked: just what kinds of specific abilities might that general factor consist of?
The research reported here used a sample of adult ESL students at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) at Lackland Air Force Base. They were given tests of English proficiency and also of nonverbal intelligence. The instructions for the nonverbal tests were given both in English and in the native languages of the students tested. Earlier, working with a group of advanced ESL learners, Flahive (1980) had reported substantial correlations between scores on the Raven Progressive Matrices (a test aimed at non-verbal intelligence; discussed in Chapter 4 above), and scores on such language oriented tests as the McGraw Hill Reading test, and the Test of English as a Foreign Language. In this study the primary aim was to find out how much of the variance in the non-verbal scores in the data sample from DLI was specific and how much was common to the ESL tests. The question was whether it would be possible to identify a deep language or semiotIc factor in the variance common to the ESL and nonverbal IQ scores.
