Bilingual Areas Research Articles

Werbesprache im Kultur- und Sprachkontakt: Russische Inseratwerbung in deutschsprachigem Umfeld

Abstract This exploratory study addresses an object that has not been examined so far: (mostly) Russian-language advertising newspapers as an advertising medium in Germany. The study analytically examines characteristic – especially structural – features of hybrid (Russian and German) advertisements and thereby contributes to the research of one context area of life-worldly bilingualism of Russian speakers. Overall, the examined advertising newspapers show little professionalism – for obvious reasons, especially due to their communication background. Their prototypical feature consists of a colorful combination of both languages, Russian and German, and both writing systems, Cyrillic and Latin, which constitutes their advertisement style. It is not yet clear if and how these various manifestations of hybridity are used intentionally as an advertisement strategy or – with regard to the linguistic competences and needs of the target audience – simply serve as a means to ensure understanding of country-specific circumstances. The empirical data mostly suggests the latter.

Emergent plurilingualism and metalinguistic awareness in primary school

This paper aims to present some of the results from a project conducted in primary schools within a bilingual area in northern Italy, focusing on enhancing language skills and metalinguistic awareness. The project is inspired by the “Éveil aux langues” approach as represented in the FREPA/CARAP project (Candelier et al., 2012) and the studies conducted by Andorno and Sordella (Andorno & Sordella 2017, 2018). It took place during the 2021-22 school year in three classes at a primary school in the province of Bolzano, Italy. In this multilingual region there are at least two languages of instruction (German L1/L2 and Italian L1/L2 respectively). Children from international/migrant backgrounds are learning these languages as their L2/L3/LX, presenting a challenge for teachers who need to adapt their classroom practices for newly arrived pupils.

Dilemmas of Public and State Administration: Bilingualism Bonus or Multilingualism without Bonus

Abstract The role of education systems is crucial in creating bilingualism and multilingualism. Based on domestic and foreign literature and structured interviews with public officials in North Macedonia and Italy, the article analyses the solutions and incentives for institutional bilingualism, which have proven insufficient thus far. It also offers a model of multilingualism as a concept of an ideal environment where speakers can communicate using multiple languages. The impact of new information and communication technologies on language learning and use in bilingual areas and their contribution to the creation of an ideal environment conducive to multilingualism will also be examined. The data obtained shows, among other things, that artificial intelligence is also revolutionising language use and learning. Nonetheless, despite rapid progress, human communication in different languages cannot be replaced by artificial algorithms.

Motivation towards the foreign language (English) and regional language (Basque) in immersion schools: Does CLIL in the foreign language make a difference?

Motivation to learn languages strongly correlates with language achievement, and the school context has a great influence on the motivation of young learners (YLs). A key rationale for the implementation of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) programs, therefore, was pupil motivation. Very few studies have measured motivation in this context, especially in primary schools. Even fewer have done so in bilingual areas, where the continuation of widespread use of the regional language often depends on its presence in the school system and where CLIL reduces this presence. To address these gaps, motivation towards the foreign language (FL), English, and the regional language, Basque, was measured in 399 YLs of English (aged 10–12 years) in Basque immersion schools. The learners were divided into a CLIL group ( n = 230), with English as a foreign language (EFL) and CLIL lessons, and a non-CLIL group ( n = 169), which received only EFL lessons. Results showed that the CLIL learners had a more positive attitude towards English and a slightly lower motivation towards Basque. This suggests that increasing the amount of exposure to the foreign language (FL) via CLIL lessons improves the motivation towards English but could decrease the instrumental motivation towards the regional language.

Odnos do jezika in dvojezičnosti pri dijakih na dvojezičnem italijansko-slovenskem območju v Italiji

The paper reports the findings of a questionnaire-based study of high school pupils from Slovenian and Italian state secondary schools in the bilingual areas of Gorizia/Gorica and Trieste/Trst. Over the past years, there has been some rapprochement between the two principal ethnic communities, the Italian majority and the Slovenian minority, which can be perceived, among other things, in a heightened interest in Slovenian language and culture among the majority Italian community. The questionnaire, which focuses on three topics (pupils’ linguistic identity, their view of an ideal language situation, and their attitude towards bilingualism and multilingualism), reveals that the two groups of pupils have more common points than points of divergence. Both groups are well aware of the importance of a knowledge of languages and of the value of bilingualism. Understandably, the views of pupils from Slovenian schools are more influenced by the local situation, in which they feel more urgently the need for the minority language to be represented. Some stereotypical perceptions of the Other persist, but on the whole it appears that the local environment is characterised by a significant openness towards and interest in the Other.

Off the paper and into the dance: investigating preservice elementary teachers’ experiences with dynamic spatial reasoning choreography tasks

ABSTRACT This study aimed to empirically investigate preservice teachers’ learning experiences during a series of geometry-themed choreography and dance activities. These pedagogical tasks were designed to examine the challenges and solutions that participants experienced when exercising their spatial reasoning abilities, particularly during the transition between the choreography designs they had generated on a Lego-based grid worksheet and real-world dancing positions. The data collection for this study took place at an elementary school located within a bilingual metropolitan area along the southwestern United States border. The overall findings indicated that all of the participating preservice teachers’ dance teams encountered interrelated challenges, most of which were variations on disorientation, primarily due to transitioning between representations of space and the deprivation of the typically employed spatial navigation reference points that are used in normal activities.

The Research Trends of Multilingualism in Applied Linguistics and Education (2000–2019): A Bibliometric Analysis

This study explored the state of the arts of bilingualism or multilingualism research in the past two decades. In particular, it employed a bibliometric method to examine the publication trend, the main publication venues, the most influential articles, and the important themes in the area of bilingualism or multilingualism. The main findings are summarised as follows. First, a significant increase of publications in the area was found in the past two decades. Second, the main publication venues and the most influential articles were reported. The results seemingly indicated that the research in the area focused largely on two broad categories, that is, (1) bilingualism or multilingualism from the perspective of psycholinguistics and cognition research and (2) how second/additional languages are learned and taught. Last, the important themes, including the hot and cold themes, were identified. Results showed that researchers prefer to study bilingualism or multilingualism more from deeper cognition levels such as metalinguistic awareness, phonological awareness, and executive control. Also, they may become more interested in the issue from multilingual perspectives rather than from the traditional bilingual view. In addition, the theme emergent bilinguals, a term closely related to translanguaging, has recently gained its popularity, which seemingly indicates a recent advocate for heteroglossic language ideologies.

Italian in the mainstream schools of the bilingual border area of the Slovenian coast: language policy, teachers’ perspectives and a vision for the future

ABSTRACT The Italian language in the ethnically mixed coastal area of Slovenia is an official language, regulated by the principle of ethnic autochthony, which recognizes the rights of linguistic minorities regardless of their number of speakers. Slovenia has been always very sensitive toward its two national minorities (Italian and Hungarian) and set up models of bilingual schools along its borders. In the official Italian-Slovenian bilingual area the “Littoral school system model” has been in place since 1959, requiring, in addition to establishing minority Italian schools, the compulsory teaching of the Italian language in all mainstream schools (Italian as L2), the teaching discussed in this paper. Nevertheless, Italian is not perceived as the language of the territory any longer; indeed, students at the end of elementary/middle school (15 years) typically reach a very low level of proficiency in Italian. Through an explanatory study based on the perceptions and perspectives of mainstream elementary/middle school Italian teachers we tried to identify the possible areas of investigation so as to understand the reasons of this decline and discover potential new ways of teaching. Moreover, examples of newly tried teaching approaches are introduced as new possible teaching and learning methods.

Bilingualism in connection with executive functions and cognition in children in Slovenian bilingual area

The purpose of this study was to research the assumptions about the connection between bilingualism and results in the field of cognitive functioning. Research showing the advantage of bilingual individuals in comparison with monolinguals in cognitive functioning is often explained by the mechanisms that allow bilingual individuals to control and represent the two languages in the brain. Our study included children aged 9 to 11 years: a group of bilingual children who speak Slovene and Hungarian and a control group of monolingual, Slovene speaking children. We tested them with the following cognitive abilities tests: executive functions with TMT and Stroop test, working memory with digit span task forward and backward, verbal abilities with verbal fluency test and vocabulary. The data showed that, although verbal fluency was lower in bilingual group, bilingual children performed better on versions of Stroop task, which could indicate advantage in speed of processing and to lesser extent also in ability of handling conflicting information.

La posizione dell’italiano come lingua seconda nel sistema educativo sloveno e le proposte per la sua rivitalizzazione

The Position of Italian as a Second Language in the Slovenian School System and the Proposals for Its Revitalization among Young People in the Bilingual Area The objective of this article is to offer the reader a presentation of the alarming position of Italian as a second language along the Slovenian coast and to propose a variety of possible solutions for its revitalization and improvement in schools in Slovenian Istria. For this purpose are presented two examples of good practice: the Welsh and Basque model. The success of these two models can fill us with hope that in the current situation, there is still room for an effective intervention for the Italian language. Key words: Italian language, Slovenian Istria, linguistic revitalization, Welsh model, Basque model

Can you tell by their English if they can speak Welsh? Accent perception in a language contact situation

Aims: The purpose of this research was to gain a better understanding of accent perception in language contact situations in which monolingual speakers of a contact variety and bilinguals live in the same community. Design: We investigated the English accents of monolinguals and bilinguals from the same area in South-West Wales, and listeners’ perceptions thereof, in three inter-related studies. Data: In Study 1, an accent perception experiment, participants from four different listener groups were asked to differentiate English monolinguals and Welsh–English bilinguals on the basis of short English speech samples. In Study 2, the same participants’ views about differences between the accentual features of monolinguals and bilinguals were examined in individual structured interviews. Finally, in Study 3, the speech samples from the accent perception experiment were analysed phonetically based on the accentual features mentioned in Study 2. Findings: Study 1 revealed that monolinguals and bilinguals can be identified above chance based on their English accent, but performance was unexceptional. Identification was better with greater accent familiarity, but unrelated to the listener’s ability to speak Welsh. Study 2 revealed the specific segmental and suprasegmental features that the listeners considered indicative of monolingual and bilingual speakers’ English accents, while Study 3 showed that only some of the listeners’ views are consistent with the production data from Study 1. Originality: This paper is the first to examine whether monolinguals and bilinguals from a bilingual area with historical language contact can be identified on the basis of their majority language accent, and on what grounds these identifications are made. Implications: This research shows that settings in which minority-language features originate from both historical language contact and individual bilingualism yield subtle accentual differences in the majority language between monolinguals and bilinguals to which even listeners from the same accent background may not be responsive.

СОВРЕМЕННАЯ ИНТЕРНАЦИОНАЛИЗАЦИЯ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОГО ПРОЦЕССА КАК ОДИН ИЗ КРИТЕРИЕВ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ РУССКОЯЗЫЧНОГО ДИСКУРСА МОНОЛИНГВАЛЬНЫХ И БИЛИНГВАЛЬНЫХ ГРАЖДАН ПРИКАСПИЯ В КОНТЕКСТЕ ЕВРОПЕЙСКОГО ОПЫТА СОСЕДСТВА

The modern Russian speech includes different lexemes, many of which are borrowed. The article aims to analyse the results of assimilation of the English borrowing “melomaniac” and possible changes of the semantic meaning depending on monolingual and bilingual area of usage. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that for the first time the borrowed lexeme is analysed in the comparative aspect. The findings indicate the broadening of the lexeme’s semantic meaning in monolinguals’ speech.

Validating the Power of Bilingualism on Conflict Regulation, Cognitive Control and Recognition of Iranian Primary School Students

The purpose of the study is to measure the effects of bilingualism on conflict regulation, cognitive control and recognition among primary school children. This study is a description study on primary school students in the city of Parse Abab, the branch of Ardabil, Iran that is studying in the school year 94-95. The sample consists of 120 students which include 60 boys and 60 girls. The samples were selected by randomly. In this study the questionnaires and tasks based on cognition and recognition was used. The questionnaires were collected from both groups were analyzed by SPSS software and SPSS software was used to measure mean, median, standard deviation, significance level, etc., and to analyze the hypotheses of variance by (MANOVA). The results showed that the bilingualism has direct effect on the conflict regulation, cognitive control and recognition among primary school children. There is significant difference among bilingual and monolingual students performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the temporal aspects of bilingualism in relation to the conflict regulation, cognitive control and recognition of students in primary schools in bilingual areas. Other studies try to examines the effect of bilingualism on only one of the variables but this study consider three variable in order to show clearly its effect on each of the variables separately.

Beobachtungen zum Artikelgebrauch durch Lerner des Deutschen (L1: Französisch und Italienisch)

This explorative study sheds light on article usage in German academic texts by French and Italian university (including Ph. D.) students. Given the differences between and among Romance and Germanic language systems, one might expect deviations in article usage in L2 German; in particular, speakers of Romance languages would seem likely to overgeneralise articles in their German language production. Contrary to these hypotheses, the corpora of learner varieties investigated in the present paper do not show evidence of overrepresentation and overgeneralisation of German articles, not even in generic sentences. In fact, articles tend to be underrepresented, as L2 learners often omit articles that are required in L1 German. Potential explanations of these findings are provided, giving rise to further research questions and desiderata. The latter include empirical studies on L1 German article usage in bilingual areas such as South Tirol, the use of articles in translations, and comparisons of article usage between L1 German and the L2 varieties of learners whose L1 does not have grammaticalised articles. Such studies should apply qualitative (i. e. semantic and pragmatic) as well as quantitative methods.

Bilingual Areas within the Territory of the Republic of Albania

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Sviluppo della competenza fonologica nelle lingue seconde/straniere

Nella ricerca, nei programmi di insegnamento e nei materiali didattici per l’italiano come lingua seconda o straniera viene generalmente data scarsa attenzione allo sviluppo della competenza fonologica e delle abilità del parlato. La presente ricerca, cui hanno partecipato 140 allievi delle scuole con lingua d’insegnamento slovena dell’Istria slovena, dove l’italiano è insegnato come lingua seconda, ha studiato l’impatto dell’insegnamento della fonologia e dello sviluppo della capacità di elaborazione fonologica dell’input linguistico sulla percezione uditiva dell’informazione fonologica. I risultati della ricerca indicano che i programmi di sviluppo dell’ascolto discriminativo e di segmentazione fonologica influiscono significativamente sulle capacità di percezione uditiva, a patto che avvengano nell’interazione diretta con il parlante della lingua obiettivo (seconda o straniera) e che siano sistematici, intensivi e estensivi. Di conseguenza, tali programmi influiscono anche sullo sviluppo della comprensione uditiva e della competenza comunicativa nella lingua obiettivo.

Attitudes and anxieties of business and education students towards English: some data from the Basque Country

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to focus on university students’ attitudes towards English and their anxieties concerning the use of English in the Basque Country, a multilingual context where exposure to English is limited but internationalisation is an important aim. Participants were 360 undergraduate university students of business (N = 180) and education (N = 180) at the University of the Basque Country. The results of the questionnaires indicate that business students had a more positive attitude(s) towards English than education students. The findings also indicate that female business students have a relatively positive attitude in comparison to male business students but also a higher level of anxiety. The results are discussed as related to the situation of English-medium instruction in Southern European bilingual areas and previous studies on gender, attitudes and anxiety.

Siblings as Language Socialization Agents in Bilingual Families

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the siblings’ contribution to shaping the language practices and language environment of immigrant families. The data consist of interviews, observations, and video recordings of everyday family interactions and sibling play in five Iranian families residing in Sweden. Detailed interaction analyses show that siblings targeted various aspects of each other’s language use (heritage languages, Swedish, and English). They corrected each other’s language use and choices and requested and provided language instructions when language-related problems occurred. However, the main language of siblings’ talk was Swedish. The siblings addressed the multifaceted linguistic demands of Swedish society and helped to develop each other’s multiple languages. Simultaneously, however, by primarily using Swedish, they were contributing to language shift. The study broadens the focus of family language policy studies (i.e., parents’ views on family language planning or parent-child dyadic interactions) and adds to the underresearched area of family bilingualism and heritage language maintenance.

Relationship between Georgian-Persian biliterate additive bilingualism and learners’ proficiency in English as a foreign language

Third language acquisition (TLA) is a broad, complex, and also new topic of research. The present research aimed to find out the relationship between Georgian-Persian biliterate additive bilingualism on learners’ proficiency in English as a foreign language. In this study, the participants were both monolingual and bilingual. Monolinguals live in Golpayegan, which is a monolingual region and people speak Persian. Bilinguals live in Ferydunshahr, which is a bilingual area, and Georgian and Persian are spoken there. All the participants were divided into two groups of A and B. Each group consisted of 40 participants, both male and female, who were 14-18 years old. Monolinguals were studying English at the intermediate level in Arad Private Institute and bilinguals were studying English at the intermediate level in Pegah Omid Private Institute. After completing the questionnaires and tests by the participants, the results were analyzed. The findings indicated that there was no significant relationship between Georgian and Persian biliterary additive bilingualism and proficiency in English as a foreign language. The finding also showed that there was no significant relationship between languages typology and the third language acquisition. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the income, education, and profession of parents had no effect on enhancing learners' language acquisition.

Supporting the home language of bilingual children with developmental disabilities: From knowing to doing

There is a growing awareness of bilingualism and the needs of children with developmental disabilities who are exposed to more than one language. This growing awareness is paralleled by a growing research base in the area of bilingualism and emerging research in bilingual children with developmental disabilities. In this set of articles we see that there is general agreement that bilingualism does not increase risk for language impairment nor does intervention in the home language interfere with second language learning. Yet there continues to be challenges in putting this knowledge into practice. By better understanding the challenges to implementation in context we can better address the needs of children, families, and practitioners.