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- Volume 1, Issue, 2012
Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2012
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2012
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Native listening: The flexibility dimension
Author(s): Anne Cutlerpp.: 169–187 (19)More LessThe way we listen to spoken language is tailored to the specific benefit of native-language speech input. Listening to speech in non-native languages can be significantly hindered by this native bias. Is it possible to determine the degree to which a listener is listening in a native-like manner? Promising indications of how this question may be tackled are provided by new research findings concerning the great flexibility that characterises listening to the L1, in online adjustment of phonetic category boundaries for adaptation across talkers, and in modulation of lexical dynamics for adjustment across listening conditions. This flexibility pays off in many dimensions, including listening in noise, adaptation across dialects, and identification of voices. These findings further illuminate the robustness and flexibility of native listening, and potentially point to ways in which we might begin to assess degrees of ‘native-likeness’ in this skill.
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A dynamic perspective on language processing and development
Author(s): Kees de Bot, HuiPing Chan, Wander Lowie, Rika Plat and Marjolijn Verspoorpp.: 188–218 (31)More LessIf language processing and development is viewed as a dynamic process in which all subsystems interact over time, then some basic assumptions behind more traditional approaches to language analysis are problematic: new methods of analysis and modeling are needed to supplement and partly replace existing paradigms. This argument is illustrated with two examples from recent studies.After a brief history of the reasons for a paradigm shift and an explanation of the role of variability in development, the first example study presents a variability-based approach to reaction time measurements in which spectral analyses of variability found during repeated measures of the same experiment may indicate moments of behavioral change. Then the principles of dynamic modeling are explained, illustrated with vocabulary developmental data. The second recent study shows how the vocabulary development of three learners is may be dynamically modeled using a logistic model.
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Towards a historical sociolinguistic account of language-in-education policy in the German-speaking community of Belgium
Author(s): Magali Boemer and Jeroen Darquennespp.: 219–235 (17)More LessOne finds a number of descriptive synchronic sketches of language-in-education policy in the German-speaking community of Belgium (GC). However, a systematic analytical account of the evolution of language-in-education policy over the last 90 years has not been provided yet. With a project entitled ‘Language, Education and Power in the German-speaking community of Belgium (1919–2012)’, the Pluri-LL research group at the University of Namur seeks to tackle this research desideratum. The present paper intends to provide some basic information on the research project, starting with the GC’s geography and demography (Section 2) and the political history (Section 3). An outline of the project’s theoretical and methodological backbone (Section 4) and some preliminary findings (Section 5) are discussed as well.
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Evaluatieve tweets van studenten en het effect van een interventie door docent-volgers
Author(s): Hilde Augusteijn, Anne Vermeer and Marije van Amelsvoortpp.: 236–251 (16)More LessIn this study, 21,085 tweets from university students over a period of twelve weeks were analyzed. Our aim was to investigate the number and evaluative content of students’ tweets related to their study, and to know whether the number of negative tweets decreases when teachers follow students on Twitter. About thirteen percent of all students’ tweets relate to their study. We categorized these in student-centered (10%) or curriculum-centered (3%), and divided both categories in negative (4%) or positive (9%) tweets. Teachers became followers of their students after six weeks, which led to a significant decrease of negative curriculum-centered tweets (from 2.2 to 0.7%), although a small decrease was observed even before the intervention started. Contrary to the teachers’ initial fears, it is unlikely that students ‘infect’ each other with negative evaluations about the curriculum, since the number of negative tweets is very low overall.
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‘A gup of dea, please’: Crosslinguistic influence in English and German word-initial stops produced by German L3 learners of Dutch
Author(s): Eltje Beckmannpp.: 252–262 (11)More LessAlthough crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in voice onset time (VOT) production is a widely studied phenomenon (e.g. Flege, 1987), few studies look at more than two languages. This study examines the production of word-initial stops in Dutch, English and German by two groups of German L3 learners of Dutch: frequent and less frequent L3 users. The aim was to uncover evidence for CLI between Dutch and English/German by employing a picture-naming task. An acoustic analysis revealed that the frequent users produced significantly shorter voiceless stops and more prevoicing in English than the other groups did. However, all participants produced native VOTs in German, indicating that the L1 is not affected.
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Measuring effectiveness in Focus on Form versus Focus on Meaning
Author(s): Audrey Rousse-Malpat and Marjolijn Verspoorpp.: 263–276 (14)More LessSo far empirical studies have shown that explicit Focus-on-Form (FonF) methods are more effective than implicit Focus-on-Meaning (FonM) methods (Norris & Ortega, 2000). However, many studies fail to address the notion of ‘effectiveness’ and the tests used usually favor the explicitly taught FonF groups in that some explicitly taught ‘rule’ is targeted. This paper argues that the effectiveness of FonF versus FonM methods will depend on how effectiveness is defined and operationalized and when it is measured. We compared the oral fluency of two groups of high school students after two years of instruction. One group was taught French with a FonF method, and the other with a FonM method called AIM (Maxwell, 2004). The free speech data of the two groups were scored for general proficiency (Study 1) and analyzed for grammatical accuracy (Study 2). The study shows that after two years of instruction the FonM scored higher than the FonF on oral proficiency and the same on grammatical accuracy.
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