scholarly journals Editorial overview for this special issue on understanding cognitive development: Approaches from mind and brain

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Barbara Landau
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Mind And Brain

Working with working memory and language

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Sharwood Smith
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Storage Facility ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
Second Language Development ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
The Mind

Working memory is generally understood to refer to a limited storage facility for information temporarily needed during online processing. It figures with increasing frequency both in studies on second language development and more widely in research on bilingual and multilingual acquisition and attrition studies. The importance of the concept to our understanding justifies the appearance of this special issue, in which both general and specifically second language (L2) oriented topics related to working memory are discussed. Unsurprisingly, working memory is a theoretical concept that remains subject to controversy since we still have much to learn about how the mind and brain work. Many researchers do not do research that focuses on the nature of memory itself but at the same time still rely on the concept and the various types of related measures that have been developed in psychology for their own investigations: for these researchers, it is still important to keep abreast of developments in memory research both within and beyond their own area.

scholarly journals Editorial: Introduction to the special issue on teaching English reading and writing to young learners

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-330
Author(s):  
Barry Lee Reynolds ◽  
Mark Feng Teng
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Teaching Reading ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Young Learners ◽  
Teaching Of Reading ◽  
Young Learner

We aimed for this special issue to offer up empirically supported advice to teachers for tackling some of the challenges in teaching reading and writing to young English as a second (L2) or foreign language (FL) learners. These challenges teachers face when providing instruction to young learners include cognitive development, motivation, attention, strategy use, and assessment (Nunan, 2011). It is now well understood that the teaching of reading and writing to young learners can no longer be equated with the teaching of adult learners (Cameron, 2001). In terms of cognitive development, language learners need to go through significant developmental changes in their learning journey from infancy to adulthood (Richardson, 2019). These differences in language learners’ cognitive development call for a need to design language learning tasks and materials that can fit the developmental stages of learners (Teng, 2020a). Language learner motivation can decline over time due to a lack of clarity in the goals of language learning and potential feelings that effort invested in learning the language has not paid off (Linse & Nunan, 2006). Furthermore, as young learners tend to have short attention spans, activities that can maintain their motivation and involvement are essential (Fenyvesi, 2020). Language learning strategy researchers have focused their attention on adult learners; however, we believe they should begin considering young learners’ language use and learning preferences, as this knowledge could help inform teachers’ instruction (Plonsky, 2019). To provide proper instruction, an educator of young learners must understand these needs. This requires the construction of appropriate language assessment tools, which will allow teachers to gauge learners’ strengths and weaknesses; doing so can further facilitate teacher scaffolding and other forms of feedback (Ma & Bui, this issue). Despite the acknowledged impact that these issues have on the teaching of reading and writing to young learners, we are still lacking in empirical evidence to support many creative and pedagogical decisions made in the young learner classroom (Cameron & McKay, 2010). Our intention in this special issue was to further focus language researchers’ attention on the young learner classroom and to encourage a rethinking of classroom practices for teaching reading and writing.

Commentary on “copular acquisition” – a response to Silva-Corvalán and Montanari

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIA D. SERA
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Distinctive Aspect ◽  
Language And Cognition ◽  
And Linguistics

Studies of copular forms are extremely relevant to issues in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. Psychologists have recently argued that the most distinctive aspect of human language is its combinatorial nature (e.g., Gentner, 2003; Spelke, 2003). They argue that this linguistic component might be what separates human from animal cognition. As combinatorial elements, copular forms have no equal. However, as the quote from Bertrand Russell implies, copular forms are multi-dimensional and complex. A full understanding of their use, linguistic variation, acquisition, and relation to cognition is a formidable task. While other papers in this special-issue volume of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition will address the different syntactic and semantic functions carried by these forms, in this commentary, I will focus on the relation between the acquisition of copular forms and cognitive development, or more specifically on the development of categorization.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document