Teachers' Instruction and Students' Vocabulary and Comprehension: An Exploratory Study With English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Students in Grades 3-5

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca D. Silverman ◽  
C. Patrick Proctor ◽  
Jeffrey R. Harring ◽  
Brie Doyle ◽  
Marisa A. Mitchell ◽  
...  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista Byers-Heinlein ◽  
Tracey C. Burns ◽  
Janet F. Werker

The first steps toward bilingual language acquisition have already begun at birth. When tested on their preference for English versus Tagalog, newborns whose mothers spoke only English during pregnancy showed a robust preference for English. In contrast, newborns whose mothers spoke both English and Tagalog regularly during pregnancy showed equal preference for both languages. A group of newborns whose mothers had spoken both Chinese and English showed an intermediate pattern of preference for Tagalog over English. Preference for two languages does not suggest confusion between them, however. Study 2 showed that both English monolingual newborns and Tagalog-English bilingual newborns could discriminate English from Tagalog. The same perceptual and learning mechanisms that support acquisition in a monolingual environment thus also naturally support bilingual acquisition.


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 410-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Desjardins ◽  
Francisco Fernandez

Purpose Bilingual individuals have been shown to be more proficient on visual tasks of inhibition compared with their monolingual counterparts. However, the bilingual advantage has not been evidenced in all studies, and very little is known regarding how bilingualism influences inhibitory control in the perception of auditory information. The purpose of the current study was to examine inhibition of irrelevant information using auditory and visual tasks in English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual adults. Method Twenty English monolinguals and 19 early balanced Spanish–English bilinguals participated in this study. All participants were 18–30 years of age, had hearing thresholds < 25 dB HL from 250 to 8000 Hz, bilaterally (American National Standards Institute, 2003), and were right handed. Inhibition was measured using a forced-attention dichotic consonant–vowel listening task and the Simon task, a nonverbal visual test. Results Both groups of participants demonstrated a significant right ear advantage on the dichotic listening task; however, no significant differences in performance were evidenced between the monolingual and bilingual groups in any of the dichotic listening conditions. Both groups performed better on the congruent trial than on the incongruent trial of the Simon task and had significantly faster response times on the congruent trial than on the incongruent trial. However, there were no significant differences in performance between the monolingual and bilingual groups on the visual test of inhibition. Conclusions No significant differences in performance on auditory and visual tests of inhibition of irrelevant information were evidenced between the monolingual and bilingual participants in this study. These findings suggest that bilinguals may not exhibit an advantage in the inhibition of irrelevant information compared with monolinguals.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neriko Musha Doerr

Though the concept ‘global learner’ has become a buzzword in education, few have critically analysed it. This article examines three types of ‘unlikely global learners’ who are not usually considered global learners even though they could be, according to a current definition: Ma¯ori–English bilingual students in Aotearoa/New Zealand; an American student who studied abroad in the U.K. in ways not valued in the dominant study-abroad discourse of immersion; and immigrant English-as-a-Second-Language students in the U.S. I analyse what their erasure as global learners tells us, arguing that the notion of global learner acts as what Walter Benjamin calls a phantasmagoria that masks the power relations involved. Though critical of ‘global learners’ as a globalist concept, I call for expanding the notion in order to engage with current transformations in education.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keumsil Kim Yoon

AbstractThis article explores typology-based differences in patterns of bilingual behavior by analyzing code-switches of Korean-English bilingual speakers, a language group that has not received much study so far. Data collected from 20 balanced bilinguals was analyzed to address the issues of linguistic constraints on code-switching and applicability of the concepts of nonce borrowing, language assignment, and neutrality to the phenomena observed. Two interesting code-switching phenomena were found: a change of the part of speech in the process of making small-size nonequivalence constituent switches and an introduction of Korean “operating verbs,” which are inflected to indicate the degree of respect to the interlocutor. Four subjects (two males, two females), who were taped in two different contexts, showed a reduction in social code-switching and a higher rate of English monolingual sentences when talking to their spouses than to an acquaintance.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document