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Productive English Vocabulary of Primary School Students Attending Two Bilingual Schools in Germany. The Influence of Language Background and Institutional Settings
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The chapter presents a general framework for studying the lexicon from a crosslinguistic perspective. In European languages, there are something in the range of 10,000 different verbs or more. The frequency of occurrence, however, singles out a small number of verbs as basic. The 20 most frequent verbs tend to cover close to 50% of the textual frequency of verbs in representative corpora. Among them are several verbs (in European languages) with predominantly grammatical function such as the copula ‘be’, the verb ‘have’ and modal verbs. But in addition, there is a number of lexical verbs referred to as nuclear verbs, which tend to be the most frequent verbs within the most basic lexical semantic fields (such as motion (‘go’/’come’), possession (‘give’/’take’), production (‘make’), verbal communication (‘say’) and perception (‘see’). The nuclear verbs tend to be basic even in non-European languages. Nuclear verbs also tend to have a rich pattern of polysemy. The chapter also presents a longitudinal study of learners of Swedish as a second language. L2 learners tend to overuse nuclear verbs at early stages. The overuse decreases relatively slowly over time, which means that this is a salient characteristic of learner language. Language-specific lexical patterns rather tend to be underused at earlier stages
Vocabulary size has been the primary focus of recent vocabulary research (see, e.g., Nation 2001; Webb 2008; Zimmerman 2004). However, size alone does not make the vocabulary available for use, which shows that vocabulary knowledge is more than meaning and form of a word. Depth of vocabulary knowledge is also an essential part of the learners' language use (Read 2007; Ishii & Schmitt 2009). While size and depth are important indicators of a learner's vocabulary knowledge, they may not fully reflect the complex nature of vocabulary knowledge. Henriksen (1999) defined vocabulary knowledge as a multi-dimensional construct, comprising: (1) the partial-to-precise dimension; (2) the depth dimension; and (3) the receptive-productive dimension. The first two dimensions are associated with vocabulary knowledge comprehension while the third dimension reveals the ability of using the comprehended vocabulary knowledge. In order to understand the development of vocabulary knowledge from receptive to productive use, the partial-to-precise and depth dimensions should be included. The present paper will present the definition of vocabulary knowledge as a multi-dimensional construct and review the research into receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge development under this multi-dimensional framework. In addition, the paper will discuss, from the research findings, how the three dimensions should be integrated to understanding of vocabulary knowledge acquisition and the implications for vocabulary teaching and learning.
Variation in verbal morphology is a phenomenon which has been the object of linguistic research for a long time. Two competing sets of predictions have been put forth to account for the distribution of verbal inflections in learner language: The Aspect Hypothesis posits that learners predominantly use inflections to indicate categories of lexical aspect, while the Discourse Hypothesis claims that they are used to differentiate foreground from background in narratives. Drawing on a corpus of more than sixty L2 narrations elicited in a German-English immersion elementary school, this longitudinal study analyzes the interaction of lexical aspect and discourse grounding. The results confirm both predictions and show more clearly than previous research in what way both effects can interact with each other.
From the psycholinguistic literature we know that monolinguals and bilinguals differ from each other in how they process language and that bilinguals can therefore not be seen as two monolinguals in one person (Grosjean, 1997, p. 167). We also know that perfect bilinguals are extremely rare and that most bilinguals are dominant in one or the other language (Fishman, 1971; Grosjean, 1997; Romaine, 1995). Therefore, there are probably important differences between bilinguals in the command they have of their languages, depending on the frequency with which they use each language, and the purposes for which they need them. As Grosjean (1998) has pointed out, there is a lot of confusion around the concept of bilinguals, and researchers use widely differing operationalizations of this concept. Few researchers attempt to assess the knowledge bilinguals have of either language in any detail, although it is legitimate to question how one can differentiate between different types of bilinguals or between bilinguals and second language learners. Some researchers are reluctant to engage in precise assessments of bilinguals’ proficiency profiles because this often leads to negative views of bilinguals or L2 users (see Cook, 1997a on the monolingual bias that is built into second language acquisition (SLA) research). Obtaining precise information about the proficiency of bilinguals is, however, important because language proficiency has an impact on language processing and thus it affects bilinguals’ performance on lexical decision tasks or any other tasks that involve informants’ language-processing mechanisms.
Am 25. März 2004 hat die Schweizerische Konferenz der kantonalen Erziehungsdirektoren einen richtungweisenden Beschluss bezüglich des Sprachunterrichts in der obligatorischen Schule gefällt. Ihre Strategie sieht u. a. als wesentliche Neuerung vor, dass bereits in der Primarschule eine zweite und damit eine zusätzliche Fremdsprache gelernt werden soll. Die Umsetzung dieser Vorgaben hat zu unterschiedlichen Lösungen geführt: In den deutschsprachigen Kantonen der Zentralschweiz Obwalden, Zug, Schwyz und Luzern hat sich das Modell 3/5 durchgesetzt, wonach die Schülerinnen und Schüler ab der dritten Klasse in Englisch (L2) und ab der fünften Klasse in Französisch (L3) unterrichtet werden (jeweils 2–3 Lektionen pro Woche).1
In this paper, we investigate the language development of children with migration backgrounds who live in Hamburg and are currently learning English as a foreign language in school. With data collected from bilingual Russian-German, Turkish-German, and Vietnamese-German children, we evaluate both the quality and the quantity of transfer effects. The investigated linguistic features are subject-verb-agreement and the use of articles. We interviewed 160 12- and 16-year old test subjects, distributed equally according to language cluster and age, comparing the results to test subjects’ developmental levels in their heritage language and German, which were investigated independently. In addition to the main cohorts, additional cohorts of L1 speakers of Turkish, Russian, and Vietnamese with English as an L2 as well as adult bilinguals in Germany were interviewed. After factoring out language external phenomena, we can observe that both L1 and L2 have an influence on the acquisition of English, but that these effects depend on the phenomenon investigated and the language pairs involved. Our findings suggest a model of language transfer in which the grammatical status of a phenomenon interacts with the learner’s developmental level yielding qualitatively different transfer effects.
Comparative studies in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) often show CLIL students to be at something of an advantage over their non-CLIL peers. However, such studies are often difficult to interpret given problems of cross-group comparability (different schooling systems, different number of instructional hours, bias attributable to selection/self-selection, etc.). This study focuses on a single group of schoolchildren (n = 22), aged eight years old, that were exposed to English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction in the fall term and to CLIL instruction (Science) in the winter term. The main objectives are to analyze the vocabulary of the class materials and to examine gains in productive lexical knowledge. Our results show that students were exposed to a greater number of words and to more abstract and technical vocabulary in the CLIL materials, but that they made significant progress in vocabulary learning in both contexts. The study also reveals that learning English through Science proved to be a more challenging experience than learning English in the EFL class.
This paper examines the effect of mother tongue literacy on third language learning in an English/French bilingual programme in Toronto. Subjects were eighth grade students who had acquired a Heritage Language at home and who had enrolled in an English‐medium programme up to grade 4. All were literate in English on entry to the bilingual programme at grade 5. In addition, some of the students had acquired literacy skills in their Heritage Language either at home or in Heritage Language programmes at school. A particular question of interest was the impact on third language learning of Heritage Language use which includes literacy compared to Heritage Language use which does not include literacy. Results showed that literacy in the Heritage Language has a strong positive impact on learning French as a third language in the bilingual programme, whereas Heritage Language use without literacy has little effect. The positive effect on third language learning is a generalised one and is not limited to literacy‐based activities in that language. The findings are discussed in terms of Cummins’ linguistic interdependence hypothesis.
Unlike many recent books on L2 vocabulary and processing, this volume does not set out to offer a complex perspective of the L2 lexicon, but rather represents a sustained attempt to come to grips with some very basic questions clustered around the relationship between the L2 mental lexicon and the L1 mental lexicon. It provides a substantial review of L1 and L2 lexical research issues such as similarities and differences between the conditions of L1 and L2 acquisition, the respective roles of form and meaning in L1 and L2 processing, and the degree of separation/integration between L1 and the L2 lexical operations. New research into the L2 lexicon from the Trinity College Dublin Modern Languages Project is considered in the latter part of the volume.
Measuring Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition provides an examination of the background to testing vocabulary knowledge in a second language and in particular considers the effect that word frequency and lexical coverage have on learning and communication in a foreign language. It examines the tools we have for assessing the various facets of vocabulary knowledge such as aural and written word recognition, the link with word meaning, and vocabulary depth. These are illustrated and the scores they produce are demonstrated to provide normative data. Vocabulary acquisition from course books and in the classroom in examined, as is vocabulary uptake from informal tasks. This book ties scores on tests of vocabulary breadth to performance on standard foreign language examinations and on hierarchies of communicative performance such as the CEFR.
In this paper, the influence of gender, language background and social status is examined for primary schoolers' performance in four tests of English as a foreign language. The children attended three different programs, in which the foreign language is taught with varying degrees of intensity (i.e., two lessons per week, 10-20% or 50% of the teaching time). In some foreign language studies, boys, minority language children and students from a lower social class performed worse than girls, majority language children and students with a higher socio-economic status. However, the data of the present studies support such findings only to a very limited degree. In addition, the interactions of these variables (following the in-tersectionality paradigm, which states that social inequality is not only determined by individual variables but also by their interplay) did not reveal any significant effects, except for the foreign language program with the lowest intensity.
Cambridge Core - ELT Applied Linguistics - Learning Vocabulary in Another Language - by I. S. P. Nation
Dans cet article, les As. rendent compte d'une etude realisee pendant les annees scolaires 1986/1987 et 1987/1988 dans des ecoles elementaires hollandaises, dans lesquelles l'enseignement de l'anglais est obligatoire. Cette etude a pour but de determiner si les enfants bilingues different de leurs pairs monolingues dans leur reussite en anglais, et de voir si les strategies bilingues employees sont differentes de celles employees par leurs pairs monolingues. Une attention particuliere est en outre portee sur le role de la langue maternelle des enfants bilingues dans l'apprentissage de la L3
Der vorliegende Beitrag präsentiert Untersuchungsergebnisse zur fremdsprachlichen Entwicklung deutsch-englisch bilingual betreuter Kindergartenkinder im Alter zwischen 3 und 6 Jahren. Die Daten der Kinder wurden an drei Kindertageseinrichtungen in Baden-Württemberg erhoben, die sich u.a. in Bezug darauf unterschieden, wie lange die Kinder täglich Kontakt zur Fremdsprache Englisch hatten. Vorgestellt werden Ergebnisse zur Entwicklung der rezeptiven Fähigkeiten im Bereich des englischen Wortschatzes und der englischen Grammatik. Dabei wird nicht nur der Frage nachgegangen, welche Bedeutung die tägliche Kontaktdauer zur Fremdsprache für die Entwicklung der fremdsprachlichen Fähigkeiten der bilingual betreuten Kindergartenkinder hatte, sondern es wird auch analysiert, inwieweit ihre fremdsprachliche Entwicklung durch die Variablen Alter, Geschlecht und Migrationshintergrund beeinflusst zu sein schien.
The eleven chapters of Vocabulary in a Second Language are written by the world’s leading researchers in the field of vocabulary studies in second language acquisition. Each chapter presents experimental research leading to new conclusions about and insights into the selection, the learning and teaching, or the testing of vocabulary knowledge in foreign languages. This book is intended as an up-to-date overview of the important domain of the lexicon for researchers in the field of second language acquisition, teacher trainers and professional teachers of second or foreign languages.
The eleven chapters of Vocabulary in a Second Language are written by the world’s leading researchers in the field of vocabulary studies in second language acquisition. Each chapter presents experimental research leading to new conclusions about and insights into the selection, the learning and teaching, or the testing of vocabulary knowledge in foreign languages. This book is intended as an up-to-date overview of the important domain of the lexicon for researchers in the field of second language acquisition, teacher trainers and professional teachers of second or foreign languages.
The eleven chapters of Vocabulary in a Second Language are written by the world’s leading researchers in the field of vocabulary studies in second language acquisition. Each chapter presents experimental research leading to new conclusions about and insights into the selection, the learning and teaching, or the testing of vocabulary knowledge in foreign languages. This book is intended as an up-to-date overview of the important domain of the lexicon for researchers in the field of second language acquisition, teacher trainers and professional teachers of second or foreign languages.
The eleven chapters of Vocabulary in a Second Language are written by the world’s leading researchers in the field of vocabulary studies in second language acquisition. Each chapter presents experimental research leading to new conclusions about and insights into the selection, the learning and teaching, or the testing of vocabulary knowledge in foreign languages. This book is intended as an up-to-date overview of the important domain of the lexicon for researchers in the field of second language acquisition, teacher trainers and professional teachers of second or foreign languages.
How do we teach and learn vocabulary? How do words work in literary texts? In this book, Ronald Carter provides the necessary basis for the further study of modern English vocabulary with particular reference to linguistic descriptive frameworks and educational contexts. Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives includes an introductory account of linguistic approaches to the analysis of the modern lexicon in English and discusses key topics such as vocabulary and language teaching, dictionaries and lexicography and the literary, stylistic study of vocabulary. This Routledge Linguistics Classic includes a substantial new introductory chapter situating the book in the current digital age, covering changes and developments in related fields from lexicography and corpus linguistics to vocabulary testing and assessment as well as additional new references. Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives has been widely praised since first publication for the breadth, depth and clarity of its approach and is a key text for postgraduate students and researchers studying vocabulary within the fields of English Language, Applied Linguistics and Education.
Most research on the acquisition of second language vocabulary has depended on estimates of vocabulary size, or 'breadth' measures, rather than on estimates of 'depth' defined either in terms of kinds of knowledge of specific words or in terms of degrees of such knowledge. Breadth tests provide rough comparative estimates of individuals' overall vocabulary knowledge, useful for such purposes as placement in instructional programs, and for charting group gains for purposes such as program evaluation. However, such measures have a number of limitations, an obvious one being that they do not measure how well given words are known (Read, 1988); thus they are of limited value in studies of the vocabulary acquisition process or in assessment of curriculum-related vocabulary learning. Few procedures and even fewer test instruments have been proposed that attempt to carry out these functions. This article surveys existing second language (L2) vocabulary measures of both kinds and describes in detail a recently developed instrument designed to assess levels of familiarity with given words, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) (Paribakht & Wesche, 1993a, 1993b).