Vicarious language instruction with bilingual children through self-modeling

The present experiment was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a self-modeling procedure and a self-modeling procedure combined with social reinforcement on the language acquisition of bilingual children. In the self-modeling condition the children were prompted to mimic portions of sentences on audiotape. These fragments were edited into complete sentences and served as models during instruction. Children in the self-modeling group displayed significantly more adjective usage and adopted more of the modeled content than children whose self-modeled responses were socially reinforced and children assigned to the two control conditions.     

Facilitating invented spelling through language analysis instruction: An integrated model

Invented spelling ability reflects young children's developing awareness of the internal structure of words-at syllabic, phonemic, and morphemic levels, as well as their lettersound knowledge. Controlled intervention studies have demonstrated that these language analysis skills can be taught in kindergarten, with a significant effect on early spelling. This paper examines the effects of an instructional approach that emphasized integration of language analysis teaching into the whole-language kindergarten curriculum. Children who received this type of instruction were, on average, representing all of the phonemes in written words at the end of kindergarten, and their performance continued to improve into first grade.     

The language of instruction in Chinese communities

Conclusion The number of Chinese receiving their education in Mandarin will continue to increase steadily as a result of the implementation of essentially similar national language policies in the People's Republic of China, and in the Republic of China on Taiwan. The import of these policies will also be reflected in language developments in other Chinese communities such as Hong Kong and Singapore.     

Torture of children: An investigation of Chilean immigrant children in Denmark: Preliminary report

Torture of children occurs in many different ways: children may be forcibly adopted by strangers; children may be arrested and imprisoned; they may witness torture of their parents or may be tortured in the presence of their parents; and, similarly several reports of mass executions of children are available.The Danish Medical Group under Amnesty International has investigated 88 Chilean children now living in Denmark, whose parents had been tortured. Approximately $\text{1}\text{3}$ of the children were abnormally anxious and approximately $\text{1}\text{3}$ had disturbances of sleep in the form of difficulty falling asleep accompanied by broken sleep with nightmares. Approximately $\text{1}\text{4}$ of the children developed secondary nocturnal enuresis. Seventeen percent of the children showed behaviour difficulties in the form of aggression while 16% became introverted and depressed and had difficulties in establishing contact with children of the same age-group.     

节奏:语文教学的生命展现

教学节奏与教学质量和效率有十分密切的关系。在语文课堂教学中,教师要充分发挥自己的教育机智,从宏观角度来说,要力图设计出节奏鲜明的教学结构;从微观角度来说,要注重采用灵活多样的教学方法、抑扬顿挫的教学语言和新颖别致的教学板书。     

语文课程的基本理念与语文教学改革

语文课程的基本理念包括目的理念、过程理念、学习方式理念和内容理念。只有正确把握这些基本理念的内涵,才能明确语文教学改革的方向。     

体态语言在生物教学中的应用

曾记得，初中的物理学科定理、定律较多，我总容易将它们张冠李戴，混淆不清。然而，脑海中却对右手安培、左手定则记忆深刻。打开手掌，磁场方向、受力方向、电流方向一目了然，乾坤尽数在自己小小的指掌之间……现在回想起来，这大概是非言语教学中体态语言——手势语言在教学中成功应用的一个典范例子吧。     

The medium of instruction in Tanzania: reflections on language,education and society

The use of English as a medium in post‐primary education in Tanzania raises issues of language education policy, of relations between English, education and science and of access to opportunities and economic dependency. It also underlies questions of power relations and of resource distribution. It is argued here that language education policy decisions are socio‐economic, since they entail a reversal of power relations and may lead to certain groups in the community, whose language is not selected, finding themselves at the fringes of the socio‐economic and political spectrum. Language policy is about choice, speaking rights, representation, since language is inseparable from politics and development. Education becomes a prerequisite for socioeconomic development in post‐colonial Africa.     

The benefit of assessment-based language and reading instruction: perspectives from a case study

We present a case study of the language and literacy development of a deaf child, Marcy, from preschool through sixth grade. The purpose of the project was to examine the connection between language and reading and to provide insight into the relationships between them. To compile the case study, we analyzed data from nine years of follow-up, including listening, speech articulation, semantic, syntactic, reading, and writing information drawn from a number of informal and formal assessments. Annual evaluation of language and literacy skills was used to select educational placements, as well as instructional methods, strategies, and materials. Given that Marcy began school at 4 years of age, mute and without expressive language of any form (oral or sign), it may at first appear remarkable that she read narrative and expository text as did her hearing peers by sixth grade, because a substantial body of research shows that most deaf students read at the fourth-grade level by high school graduation (review by Paul, 1998). However, those responsible for Marcy's education prevented reading failure by carefully planning, instituting, and monitoring elements of language and literacy instruction. We present Marcy's progress and instruction by grade level and discuss it within the framework of phases/stages of reading development. We hope that the resulting case study may serve as an example of the language-reading connection, an awareness important not only for the literacy instruction of deaf and language-challenged children but for hearing students as well.     

The effects of multisensory structured language instruction on native language and foreign language aptitude skills of at-risk high school foreign language learners

Research findings suggest that most students who have foreign language learning problems have language-based difficulties and, in particular, phonological processing problems. Authors of the present study examined pre- and posttest scores on native language and foreign language aptitude tests of three groups of at-risk high school students enrolled in special, self-contained sections of first-year Spanish. Two groups were instructed using a multisensory structured language (MSL) approach. One of the groups was taught in both English and Spanish (MSL/ES), the other only in Spanish (MSL/S). The third group (NO-MSL) was instructed using more traditional second language teaching methodologies. Significant gains were made by the MSL-ES group on measures of native language phonology, vocabulary, and verbal memory and on a test of foreign language aptitude; the MSL/S group made significant gains on the test of foreign language aptitude. No significant gains on the native language or foreign language aptitude measures were made by the NO-MSL group. Implications for foreign language classroom instruction of at-risk students are discussed.     

The immigrant paradox and math self-concept: An SES-of-origin-country hypothesis

The immigrant paradox is the phenomenon where recent immigrants have better outcomes than individuals from native-born families. Although limited past research has shown the paradox to exist for math self-concept, neither its exact nature nor a theoretical explanation for its existence have been reported. Using Australian cohort data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 (N = 12,551) and 2012 (N = 14,481), we first establish that immigrant students have higher math self-concepts than native students, controlling for gender and absolute parental socioeconomic status (SES), and show that it is similar to—albeit weaker than—the expectation-achievement gap. We then provide an SES-of-origin-country hypothesis as a contextual explanation for this effect; we show that the immigrant paradox for both math self-concept and educational expectations substantially reduces when accounting for parents' SES relative to their country-of-origin. Our findings suggest that the paradox for math self-concept and educational expectations may partly result from immigrant parents’ socioeconomic advantage in their home countries.     

The educational performance of immigrant children at Czech schools

The integration of immigrant children into the education system is a process that is accompanied by serious debate, especially in advanced countries, which have large shares of immigrants and a long history of immigration. The poorer educational outcomes of foreign-born children are largely explained there through their socio-economically disadvantaged background compared to the native-born population. This article examines whether the observations for those countries also apply to the Czech Republic—a country with a relatively short immigration history and immigration flows from different source countries than those in Western Europe. Regression analyses conducted on PISA 2012 data focusing largely on the maths skills of 15-year-olds reveal that the performance of immigrant children in Czech schools roughly compares to that of their counterparts in Western Europe. While their PISA outcomes were lower than those of Czechs, this was because immigrant children have poorer conditions at home or in the classroom.     

When language of instruction and language of application differ: Cognitive costs of bilingual mathematics learning

Bilingual education programs implicitly assume that the acquired knowledge is represented in a language-independent way. This assumption, however, stands in strong contrast to research findings showing that information may be represented in a way closely tied to the specific language of instruction and learning. The present study aims to examine whether and to which extent cognitive costs appear during arithmetic learning when language of instruction and language of retrieving differ. Thirty-nine high school students participating in a bilingual education program underwent a four-day training on multiplication and subtraction problems in one language (German or French), followed by a test session in which they had to solve trained as well as untrained problems in both languages. We found that cognitive costs related to language switching appeared for both arithmetic operations. Implications of our findings are discussed with respect to bilingual education as well as to cognitive mechanisms underlying different arithmetic operations.     

Local language a medium of instruction: challenges and way forward

The paper reports on a participatory action research study conducted in six rural primary schools in Uganda in 2013 to establish why children taught in the local language had difficulties in reading and writing. Findings through interviews, focus group discussions, reviews of exercise books and lesson observations indicated that though it was easier for pupils to learn the concepts in the local language; challenges ranging from poor translation, inadequate teachers’ language proficiency, lack of instructional materials, high pupils’ enrolment, lack of administrative support and teacher-centred approach of teaching, affected pupils’ learning to read and write. Participants recommended adopting the child-centred pedagogy, incorporating instructional materials, conducting continuous assessment and recording pupils’ competencies attained in reading and writing. Teachers need to engage more in Participatory action research in order to reflect on their practices and pupils’ learning, and collaboratively decide what works best and what needs improvement in their classrooms.     

Effect of language of instruction on physics achievement

This study investigated the relationship between physics achievement and language of instruction in a situation where instruction was in the second language of both students and teachers. One hundred and seventy-six grade ten physics students (first language was Chinese) were selected from four classes of two secondary schools in Hong Kong. For three months (with four lessons per week), two classes of students learned the content material (light and sound) in Chinese and two classes learned the material in English. Group differences were controlled by using individual aptitude scores as covariates in the analysis. There were no differences in achievement, students' motivation, and effort spent in physics in that controlled teaching period. This was probably because the Anglo-Chinese group was sufficiently proficient in English so they did not encounter additional difficulty in learning physics when compared with the Chinese group.     

The effects of multisensory structured language instruction on native language and foreign language aptitude skills of at-risk high school foreign language learners: A replication and follow-up study

According to research findings, most students who experience foreign language learning problems are thought to have overt or subtle native language learning difficulties, primarily with phonological processing. A recent study by the authors showed that when a multisensory structured language approach to teaching Spanish was used with a group of at-risk high school students, the group’s pre- and posttest scores on native language phonological processing, verbal memory and vocabulary, and foreign language aptitude measures significantly improved. In this replication and follow-up study, the authors compared pre- and posttest scores of a second group of students (Cohort 2) who received MSL instruction in Spanish on native language and foreign language aptitude measures. They also followed students from the first study (Cohort 1) over a second year of foreign language instruction. Findings showed that the second cohort made significant gains on three native language phonological measures and a test of foreign language aptitude. Follow-up testing on the first cohort showed that the group maintained its initial gains on all native language and foreign language aptitude measures. Implications for the authors’ Linguistic Coding Deficit Hypothesis are discussed and linked with current reading research, in particular the concepts of the assumption of specificity and modularity.     

The status of sign language instruction in institutions of higher education: 1994-2004

Surveys of sign language programs in institutions of higher education in the United States, conducted in 1994 and 2004, are compared to reveal changes over time. Data are presented concerning the institutional environment of programs, program administrators, and instructors. Institutions examined in 2004 were on average 5 years older than those examined in 1994. More institutions accepted sign language for general education and foreign language requirements. Program administrators in 2004 were more likely to have primary duties as teachers rather than administrators, and to have greater understanding of the subject matter. Faculty in 2004 had more education and teaching experience. Full-time faculty showed increases in the proportion who were Deaf and the proportion who were in tenure-track positions. Program staff size increased. Overall, evidence indicates that sign language has become more accepted as an academic discipline and that programs are more entrenched at their institutions.