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Language Class (language + class)
Selected AbstractsSelf-Assessment of Speaking Skills and Participation in a Foreign Language ClassFOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS, Issue 1 2009Diane De Saint Léger French; relevant to all languages Abstract: This article investigates the ways in which learners' perception of themselves as second language (L2) speakers evolved over a 12-week period. Thirty-two students of the advanced French stream in a tertiary institution participated in this semester-long study. Students self-assessed their speaking skills and their level of participation in French oral tasks in weeks 4, 6, and 12, and set learning goals accordingly. Self-perception evolved in a positive fashion over time, particularly in relation to fluency, vocabulary, and overall confidence in speaking in the L2. In addition, individual goal-setting encouraged learners to take increased responsibility toward their own learning, although increased awareness did not necessarily lead to concrete actions to modify learning behavior. To conclude, this study highlights the potential pedagogical benefits of self-assessment at both the cognitive and affective levels. [source] Taking a Closer Look at Vocabulary Learning Strategies: A Case Study of a Chinese Foreign Language ClassFOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS, Issue 4 2007Paula M. Winke Over the past decades, there have been a number of studies investigating the vocabulary strategies used by learners of Indo-European languages, especially English. However, studies of the strategies used by learners of non-Indo-European languages are rare. This classroom-based case study investigates the vocabulary learning strategies used by nine learners of Chinese as aforeign language and tests a taxonomy, based on Long's (1996) interaction hypothesis, for classifying strategies that mayfacilitate our understanding of strategies and their role within second language acquisition. [source] Making Culture the Core of the Language Class: Can It Be Done?MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 2 2010GILBERTE FURSTENBERG First page of article [source] Reading motivation, perceptions of reading instruction and reading amount: a comparison of junior and senior secondary students in Hong KongJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 4 2009Kit-Ling Lau This study examined the relations between students' reading motivation, perceptions of reading instruction and reading amount, together with grade differences, in a Chinese educational context. A total of 1,146 students from 19 secondary schools in Hong Kong voluntarily responded to a questionnaire that measured these three sets of variables. The study's findings indicated that students' intrinsic motivation was most strongly related to their reading amount. Students' perceptions of the reading instruction they received in their Chinese language class were significantly related to their reading motivation, but were only indirectly related to their reading amount, being mediated through reading motivation. Consistent with previous studies, significant grade differences were found in all types of reading motivation, students' perceptions of reading instruction and students' reading amount. The findings indicated that junior secondary students had better self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and social motivation than senior secondary students. The largest grade difference was in students' self-efficacy. Junior secondary students also perceived the reading instruction in their Chinese language class as more mastery-oriented and read more frequently than senior secondary students. The implications of these findings for understanding Chinese students' reading motivation and for planning effective reading instruction to enhance their motivation are discussed. [source] "Now, like Real Israelis, Let's Stand Up and Sing": Teaching the National Language to Russian Newcomers in IsraelANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2001Deborah GoldenArticle first published online: 8 JAN 200 This article addresses the links between nationalism, national identity, and the socialization of migrants through an ethnographic account of an encounter between an Israeli teacher of Hebrew and adult newcomers from the former Soviet Union at a state-sponsored Hebrew language class (ulpan) in Israel. A close look at the axes around which learning was organized, as well as the modes of instruction, reveals a particular conceptualization of learning to belong to Israeli society, one which the newcomers themselves appeared to contest. [source] Katakana representation of English loanwords: Mora conservation and variable learner strategiesJOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 3 2004Dennis R. Preston In Japanese, English CVC monosyllables usually show consonant gemination after obligatory vowel epenthesis (e.g. ,put' becomes ,putto'). The katakana syllabary, which is a good reflection of pronunciation, allows us to study very quickly how a number of native speakers and learners at various levels handle novel loanwords. We show that, while learners do not geminate at as high a rate as native speakers do, they improve over years of study. More interestingly, learners use another strategy, namely vowel lengthening (e.g. ,puuto'), to represent these items, a compensatory strategy, we believe, related to their perception of the proper number of morae to be rendered in the output. We show how Broselow and Park's (1995) account of mora conservation will not handle the complexity of these data, particularly learner performance in the gemination of unstressed syllables, and we provide a variable account rather than one which suggests that parameters are set to a native speaker, learner, or mixed setting. Additionally, we show the surprising influence of gender in some areas of learner performance, a reflex, we believe, of the type of male students more typically registered in Japanese language classes at the university level. [source] Teaching Language Categories and Learning About Language Categories from TeachingLINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2010Sachiko Yamahashi Familiar category terms, such as ,noun', ,verb', and ,adjective', are usually used in language classes. However, the application of these labels in the target language is not necessarily intuitive. English learners of Japanese often have problems with: (i) ,deverbal nouns', problems that stem from the ,noun,verb' distinction, and (ii) ,adjectives', which are divided into two types unlike English ,adjectives'. This article builds on these examples toward an analysis of Japanese involving four categories defined by the intersection of the nominative case and tense markers. The moral is that a language could be learned more accurately and readily if categories were based on such salient distinctions in the target language. [source] | ||||||||||