Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2014

This article focuses on the influence of connectives (because, so) and layout (continuous placement of sentences versus each sentence beginning on a new line) on the quality of students’ mental representations. By using multiple comprehension tasks, we found that cohesive text features have different effects on each facet of deeper text comprehension. On local comprehension tasks (i.e. bridging inference questions), all students performed better after reading history texts containing connectives than after reading texts without these markers. On global comprehension tasks (i.e. sorting tasks), pre-vocational students performed better when coherence relations were marked, regardless of layout, while pre-un iversity students did not need connectives as long as texts were presented in a natural, continuous way. These findings indicate that connectives are an important factor in creating comprehensible texts, in particular for pre-vocational students. Finally, we conclude there is a mismatch between these findings and the current practice in designing optimal educational texts, at least in the Netherlands.

Code-switching comes in three major sub-types: insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalization. Turkish-Dutch code-switching is supposed to feature the first two types but not the third, because when the languages in contact are typologically distinct, there is not enough shared lexicon and structure to make the fine-grained integration of the two languages possible that is the basic requirement for congruent lexicalization. Recent data of third generation Dutch Turks, however, shows some instances of code-switching that do not rely as much on keeping the two languages separate as the prototypical instances of insertion and alternation do. This empirical development lends support to a theoretical approach to linguistics that makes use of an expanded definition of the lexicon. Many of the complex instantiations of code-switching qualify as both insertion and alternation, because the inserted unit is so large that it involves a complete switch to the other language at the same time.

This paper investigates whether instruction about phonological correspondences between the native and a closely related language contributes to the intelligibility of this closely related language. Previous research has shown that closely related languages can be mutually intelligible to a certain degree (cf. Gooskens, 2007). Little is known about methods for improving the intelligibility of a closely related language. In this paper we focus on improving the intelligibility of spoken Frisian for Dutch speakers. In a 50-minute instruction session, participants got information about the most frequent sound correspondences between Dutch and Frisian, e.g. /sk/ in Frisian is often /sx/ in Dutch. The results of the intelligibility test show no significant improvement, neither at the text level, nor at the word level. Further research could focus on other language combinations, but also on a longer time span of intervention and other linguistic factors, such as unknown vowels.

An increasing number of schools in the Netherlands offer bilingual (secondary) education, usually combining Dutch with English. As yet, it remains unclear whether students with dyslexia are able to cope in this type of educational setting. To address this question, the oral language and literacy skills of dyslexic and non-dyslexic students attending regular and bilingual VWO (pre-university) secondary education were compared. Results confirmed the benefits to English proficiency offered by this type of education as found in earlier studies (Van der Leij et al., 2010; Verspoor et al., 2010). In addition, dyslexic students at bilingual schools scored significantly higher on English literacy and language tasks than their dyslexic peers in regular programmes, suggesting that bilingual secondary education is not too difficult for students with dyslexia and may in fact be just as beneficial for this group as for non-dyslexics.

There are certain differences between Turkish as spoken in the Netherlands (NL-Turkish) and Turkish as spoken in Turkey (TR-Turkish). These differences concern issues of linguistic variation and change in immigrant communities and seem to be closely related to social, emotional and linguistic aspects of contact situations. Considering the fact that in a contact situation the social and linguistic relationships are crucial for the outcome of language change, this paper first examines the social values that three different generations give to the language and culture of their host and home communities; then, it discusses the linguistic consequences on the lexical and structural levels of NL-Turkish. The principal conclusion is that possible language shift in the third generation leads to intensive contact with Dutch language and culture, provokes the linguistic factors and, therefore, causes the lexical and structural changes in NL-Turkish.

The social cognitive view on essay rating process argues that human essay rating is constrained by a series of the measures issued by the test institution. However, studies of the institutional constraints all focused on text quality relevant factors interfering into the rating process. Text quality irrelevant social factors remain uninvestigated. Taking the TEM8 (a test for English majors in China) as an example, the present study explores into those factors. Raters’ think aloud protocols when rating essays and the follow up interviews identified a number of text quality irrelevant social factors raters bring into consideration when scoring essays, such as institutional awareness, test knowledge, test taker expectation, knowledge of rating system, ethical consideration and physical condition. The way those factors influence the rating process is further discussed. The results are meaningful both for the understanding of the essay rating construct and human essay rating practice.

Eightteen intellectually disabled children (IQ ≤ 70) between ten and twelve years old were compared with 18 typically developing children between four and six years old on their lexical productivity and their use and variety of seven word classes: verbs, conjunctions, pronouns, articles, adverbs, adjectives and prepositions. There were no significant differences between the intellectually disabled children and the typically developing children in terms of lexical productivity and vocabulary. Only the Dutch article het was used less by the intellectually disabled children. Explanations of the limited use of the article het and suggestions for language education for intellectually disabled children are discussed.