Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 77, Issue 1, 2007

The research in this article deals with the effect of a teacher training course on vocabulary teaching and learning. Two months before, and three months after an intensive vocabulary teaching training course, four teachers of different grades in primary education were observed and interviewed, and their pupils' retention of the wTords taught was tested before and after the vocabulary lessons in question. The observations and interviews focused on six categories of vocabulary teaching: irord selection, preparation, sewantisation, consolidation, evaluation and registration (e.g., Nation, 2001). On a reference scale formulated in Van den Nulft & Verhallen (2005), the teachers scored 28% on 'basic level' before the training, and they turned out to score 68% on this 'basic level' scale three months after the training. The pupils appeared to profit from the progress their teachers made in vocabulary teaching. Their retention of the words they had to learn in these lessons rose from 8% learning improvement before the training, to 38% after the training. A learning improvement of 8% is considered very low in intentional learning situations (being comparable to incidental learning); a learning improvement of 30-50% is normal in intentional word learning situations. Given the average learning improvement of the pupils, and the quite low level of the teachers on the reference scale of vocabulary teaching, these teachers still need intensive and professional coaching to improve their vocabulary teaching.

To gain more insight into intentional vocabulary learning by students at secondary education three research questions wTere addressed: 1) According to students in the lower grades of secondary education, w7hat are good strategies for intentional vocabulary learning? 2) What vocabulary learning strategies do these students actually use? 3) How effective are the vocabulary learning strategies used? The research sfunved that the students value and demonstrate a variety of cognitive and meta-cognitive vocabulary learning strategies pertaining to 'non-elaboration of words', 'elaboration of words', 'planning', 'evaluation and self-regulation', and 'help seeking'. Differences were found between the students, but on the whole the quality of word knowledge is not optimal. Based on the research findings, several recommendations were formulated such as the exchange of learning strategies between students, the use of an on-line vocabulary learning programme with special attention to word forms, and the organisation of learning experiences in which students draw pictures of new words and invent ludicrous, bizarre or emotionally significant sentences for the words in order to promote vocabulary acquisition.

This sociophonetic study is concerned with the relationship between attitude and behaviour in language. A two-fold research design investigates the English accent spoken in and around Bangor, North Wales and the influence of Liverpool English on that accent in relation to people's attitudes. The speech of adolescents and elderly participants from higher and lower socioeconomic backgrounds has been recorded. Participants' linguistic behaviour, categorized through accent judgements, has been compared to their attitudes toward two accents from the area, Welsh English and Liverpool English, as expressed in an attitude questionnaire. Phonetic measurements investigate whether affrication of ,/t/ in North Wales English is a result of Scouse influence. The study has found the Welsh English accent to be a lower class norm, whereas among higher class speakers BBC English is the popular (prestige) norm. A clear influence of Scouse has been found, although only in the speech of lower class teenagers. Affrication of /t/ is shown to be a characteristic of a North Wales English accent. The study confirms the strong relationship between affective attitude and (linguistic) behaviour. Interestingly, it has been found that people's accents are not always congruent with their attitudes.

Non-native phoneme contrasts are hard to perceive for second-language learners. A case in point is the English /æ/-/e/contrast, which is notoriously difficult for Dutch listeners. Previous research has shown, however, that Dutch listeners are not oblivious to this contrast. This may either be caused by word-specific learning or by incomplete phonological learning which may falter if the vowels are slightly hypo-articulated. In this study it was investigated whether Dutch listeners' performance may be related to the acoustic, phonological, and lexical characteristics of minimal pairs distinguished by the vowels /æ/ and /ε/ in a 2AFC perceptual discrimination task. Acoustic differences, lexical frequency, and number of syllables per word all affected listeners' sensitivity to the contrast. However, regression analyses showed that lexical frequency had no effect once number of syllables was accounted for. This may indicate that listeners indeed learn a new phonological contrast, rather than a contrast between unanalysed whole words.

This paper reports on a between subject experiment inwhich the attitudes of 144 highly educated British professionals towards Dutch-accented English and RP were measured. Half of the respondents were familiar with Dutch English, and half unfamiliar. The test items consisted of samples of RP, moderately Dutch-English and lightly Dutch-English accents. Respondents were asked to rate one of the samples on a number of personality traits. An analysis of these traits rates showed a resolution into two factors: STATUS and AFFECT. RP speakers were assigned more Status than both Dutch accents. RP speakers and slightly accented Dutch-English speakers commanded more Affect than moderately accented Dutch English speakers. In addition, respondents unfamiliar with Dutch English had a more positive attitude towards speakers with a moderate Dutch English accent than respondents familiar with Dutch English and the latter assigned a lower affect to RP speakers than the former.

The focus of the current study is on the temporal relation of simultaneity between events. Investigating the expression of simultaneity, and the development thereof, reveals interesting insights concerning the use of a particular grammatical aspectual marker in Dutch. Adult native speakers of Dutch and 4-7-year-old children acquiring Dutch as their only L1 were set to the task of retelling simple animated clips depicting either simultaneous or sequential events. The data provide an overview of linguistic means available in Dutch for expressing various types of simultaneity. A main finding is that the Dutch progressive construction - aan het + V-inf zijn - is widely used when expressing simultaneous events, already from an early age onwards. Furthermore, when examining children's production data, several age-specific temporal linking strategies can be described. For example, children do not always adhere to the Principle of Natural Order in their narrations. Instead, children, especially at the early developmental stages, are mainly concerned with changes of state in the depicted event. That means, changes of state have a direct impact on children's cognitive development of temporality. We speculate that the concept of simultaneity is therefore easier to acquire than that of sequentiality.

The assumption that L2 acquisition is constrained by processing is the basis for several approaches to SLA. Pienemann's Processability Theory (PT) is one of them (Pienemann, 1998; 2005). PT is a universal framework that predicts the order in which certain morphological and syntactic phenomena of a specific language are acquired. The current paper presents the results of a test of the validity of PT for L2 Dutch. For this study I elicited utterances of 32 foreign students learning Dutch. Three phenomena were chosen for this test: (i) attributive adjective-noun agreement; (ii) subject-verb agreement in main clauses: (iii) the placement of conjugated verbs in subordinate clauses. These phenomena are located at successive developmental stages in the hierarchy predicted by PT. The presented results appear not to support PT and raise questions about the predictions made by the theory.

This paper describes the gaze behaviour of television viewers talking to each other. It is based on the ATTAC-corpus which consists of transcribed video recordings of Britons watching football at home on TV. In regular everyday conversation, generally people tend to face each other, and gaze is used as a key cue for turn-taking and interactionalitv. However, in this specific setting, the conversationalists face the following dilemma: they can direct their gaze at each other, but only at the cost of not being able to look at the screen. The data suggest that spatial arrangements, age, and an orientation towards humour influence the gaze behaviour of the viewers. In contrast to conversation in general, the rule "the listener should look at the speaker, when the speaker chooses to look at the listener" could not be corroborated.

Young children can build up a range of knowledge and ideas about literacy because it is used in their environment. This paper examines how literacy is part of natural, everyday interactions in preschool. The focus is on mundane classroom interactions about components of literacy in activities that are not primarily meant to stimulate literacy. A variety of different ideas, knowledge and practices about writing and text can come up in (art) activities in preschool. The type of knowledge in these interactions can range from the use and function of writing to writing as a technical activity. The results show that everyday activities in preschool can be a setting for meaningful interactions about writing, in which children and teachers can share knowledge and ideas and focus on different aspects of writing.

The ability to organise talk-in-mteraction appeals to a competence which articulates linguistic, discursive and interactional resources. Studying explanations in interaction is a way to learn more about this competence, which constitutes a resistant object in the acquisition of a second language, even at an advanced level of proficiency. Analysing vocabulary explanations, this article discusses the opportunities given to advanced learners of French L2 to practice and improve their mastering of talk-in-interaction in the language classroom. Stating that discursive complexity is an indicator of a rich and challenging learning environment, the article provides some key features to determine the level of complexity in the learners' explanations. It then shows that discursive complexity does not depend on the kind of didactic activity, but on the participants' orientations towards the object to be explained and on the interaction formats.

This paper proposes a comparative analvsis of DP in three Atlantic Creoles, Sranan, Jamaican and Haitian, and their substrates and superstrates. It investigates whether DPs in Creoles point to the role of substrate/superstate influence or UG in creolization. Different theories of creole genesis have proposed each of these factors as the sole factor underlying creolization.It appears that creole DPs possess hybrid properties combining substrate and superstrate features in diverse ways. The combinations are only restricted by UG. Based on this, the paper argues against the suggested extraordinary homogeneity of the factors underlying creolization and the assumption of creole exceptionality. It suggests that emerging Creoles were affected by the same forces as 'normal' L2 varieties, i.e. the linguistic environment (substrate/Ll and superstrate/TL) and UG. Given that, comparative creole studies can provide interesting implications for SLA studies. In particular, they can shed more light on the mechanisms of L1 transfer and its interaction with TL.