Educated Native Speaker Research Articles

Terms of Theory of Generations in Modern Russian Media Discourse and in Youth Speech

The article is devoted to Anglicisms-neologisms with the meaning of ‘generation’, which have become quite widespread in modern journalistic discourse and go back to the metalan guage of the “theory of generations” by W. Strauss and N. Howe (lexemes millennials, zoomers, boomers and others). The purpose of the article is to identify how well does native Russian speakers understand the meaning of these words, identify the most common neologisms that claim to be included in the Russian language, compare the data of the National Corpus of the Russian language (NCRL) with the results of a linguistic experiment, describe the meanings of the most common neologisms based on the data of the NCRL, contexts collected by the authors on other Internet resources and conducted linguistic experiments. The article presents the results of two linguistic surveys in which 70 undergraduate students of the humanitarian faculties of Lomonosov Moscow State University participated (35 respondents in each survey). The Survey-1 was aimed at identifying which terms of the “theory of generations” or its Russian adaptations, reproduced by the domestic media, are known to young educated native speakers of the Russian language and are used in speech by them. According to the results of the Survey-1, the words boomers, zoomers, millennials were selected for the Survey-2, which aims to determine the meanings attributed to these words by informants, to identify the level of active ownership. As a result of the Survey-2, a significant discrepancy was found with the quantitative data of the NCRL sample (according to the results of the Survey-2, the most commonly used and mastered word is zoomer, it is the least frequent in the NCRL sample). The word zoomer has the meaning of ‘new generation’, ‘digital generation’, enters into semantic opposition with other generational nominations, mainly with boomers, on the basis of ‘new/ old’, in a number of contexts this opposition is presented as a conflict of fathers and children. The results of linguistic experiments show that relatively common terms break away from the chronological boundaries set in the “theory of generations”: the words boomer and zoomer develop the meanings of ‘parents generation, older generation’ and ‘children’s generation, new generation’. The lexeme millennials is chronologically attributed due to the internal form, however, the generation boundaries indicated by respondents in the surveys differ significantly from those set in the “theory of generations”, the respondents’ answers show a change in meaning from “new generation” to “previous generation”.

Counterpoint to Henry Widdowson’s point

English evolved as a creole from several languages in islands off the European coast. It was consolidated as a unifying national language by creative writing that reached a peak in the sixteenth century, and in translation of the Christian Bible into English. There has always been considerable variation in speech, whereas the generalization of education in the nineteenth century consolidated a standard form of the written language. This was a nation-building task, part of colonization, both in the United States (Webster’s dictionaries leading to linguistic independence) and England educating for a unified, stratified United Kingdom. To suggest, as Henry Widdowson does, that there is no serious study of ‘educated native speakers’ is disingenuous. Dictionaries are a benchmark. The emergence of phonetics led Daniel Jones to consecrate Received Pronunciation as a class dialect. The status of the privileged variant is confirmed in plays from Shakespeare to Shaw, and in novels from Defoe onwards. In twentieth-century analysis, normative, hierarchizing forms and functions were clarified by Basil Bernstein, Raymond Williams, Nancy Mitford, and many others. The team of grammarians, led by Randolph Quirk, proclaimed their grammar as ‘comprehensive’, but were in reality focusing on and standardizing middle-class British norms. Studies of regional varieties and Black English celebrate diversity but do not challenge this hierarchy. Educated native speakers are those who do reasonably well in formal education.

Thematization in EFL Students’ Composition Writing and its Relation to Academic Experience

This study made frequency and functional analysis of thematization in English students’ compositions in Shahid Chamran University. Ninety students were selected and divided into three groups, followed by a homogeneity test (Fowler and Coe, 1976). An educated native speaker was also used as a criterion measure. Then, they were asked to narrate three pictorial stories, given to them, each in a 30-minute session. The data were analyzed based on Halliday (1985) and McCabe (1999) models of thematicity. The results suggested thematically different compositions in terms of interpersonal, unmarked, simple, and multiple themes. The results also showed that students’ level of language proficiency monitor the use of linear and split thematic progression chains. This study may have implications for teaching composition writing at different levels of language proficiency.

The role of ‘educated native speakers’ in providing language analysis for the determination of the origin of asylum seekers

This paper speaks to a debate which has arisen across various branches of linguistics (see Eades, 2009) regarding the relative levels of responsibility that should be given to (a) qualified linguists with professional expertise in a particular language, and (b) ‘educated native speakers’ of the language, in conducting Language Analysis for the Determination of the regional or social Origin of asylum seekers (LADO). It reviews existing evidence from the phonetic and sociolinguistic literature regarding the reliability of accent judgments by linguists and non-linguists. It argues that, while LADO is a valid form of assistance to offer in the asylum process, careful evaluation of its limitations, in general and in specific cases, is crucial - ,as in other branches of forensic linguistics. The paper concludes by calling for (a) a proper research program to investigate people’s actual abilities in recognising, discriminating and identifying accents under various sociolinguistic conditions; (b) collaboration between LADO agencies and linguists to develop analysis and testing procedures; and (c) a system of accreditation by an independent, international authority for the agencies that carry out LADO.

Judging the Frequency of English Words

Given the lack of empirical corpus-based frequency counts in many languages, it would be useful and of theoretical interest if judgements of relative frequency of words in a language by proficient speakers of that language could substitute objective frequency counts for the purposes of devising language teaching materials, tests, and research instruments. The present paper reports on three investigations of frequency judgements. Using different methodologies and with varying sizes of word samples, it is shown that judgements by professional linguists do not correlate highly with corpus-based frequency counts. There are considerable individual variations in judgements of frequency, and the most reliable results are likely to be achieved by aggregating and averaging judgements. However, even averaged judgements do not predict frequency counts particularly well. This research does not inspire confidence in word frequency judgements as surrogates for objective frequency measures. It is suggested either that judgements of word frequency, even by highly educated native speakers of a language, may not be very accurate estimates of the frequency of words in their language, or that even large modern corpora are inadequate indicators of word frequency as experienced by individuals and groups of individuals. Further research is needed into the nature of intuitions about word frequency.

Five factors in interpreting the last decade/ century and the next decade/ century in American English

Temporal nouns such as week, month, and year have two meanings: “even units,” e.g. from January to December, and “arbitrary periods,” e.g. any 12 months. The disambiguates the meanings of these temporal nouns preceded by last/ next: Ø next week means “from Sunday to Saturday,” e.g. Next week will be fun, and the next week “the next seven days,” e.g. The next week will be fun. Decade and century also have two meanings; however, they do not usually combine with Ø last/ next. Consequently, the last decade, for example, refers to either “the 1990s” or “the past 10 years.” Based on the analyses of tokens from the 1996 LA Times and New York Times corpora, this paper argues that the following five factors are involved in interpreting the last/ next + decade/ century: prepositions, tense, other lexical clues, pragmatic world knowledge, and relevance to the utterance time. Furthermore, two questionnaires containing authentic sentences from the two corpora were used to supplement these corpus findings. Thirty educated native speakers of American English living on the West Coast answered the questionnaires, the analyses of which support the aforementioned findings and also reveal that native speakers do not agree on what preposition to use for which interpretation.

Using the OPI to Place Heritage Speakers of Russian

Abstract: This study explored the possibility of using an ACTFL oral proficiency interview (OPI) to assess the spoken proficiency of heritage language speakers of Russian for the purpose of placing them in Russian language classes. The authors also considered whether the norm of an educated native speaker could be used as a valid reference point for Russian heritage speakers. The OPI was administered to a group of college‐age Russian heritage speakers with little or no formal instruction in the language. The results indicated that the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines could be used to assess oral proficiency of Russian heritage speakers and that the standard of an educated native speaker of Russian could be used as a norm.

Functionally Organized Grammars Can Improve Language Learning

This paper compares current German grammar books for language learners with regard to their functional usefulness, that is, from an onomasiological (or functional) point of view. Traditional grammars are organized semasiologically (or formally), since they explain first and foremost the formation of grammatical forms and structures and only secondarily their use, rarely giving information about the corresponding functions, let alone about frequency of use or contextual restrictions. In an ironic reversal of priorities, in order to obtain information about a particular communicative functioni from these grammars, one must already know which forms and structures can be used to express it. A linguistically educated native speaker may know the prototypical ones, but relatively few will manage to list out all the existing means, particularly if they are scattered among diverse formal categories. For instance, proceeding from form, relatively few people would look up the future tense in German in order to inform themselves of the possible ways to express supposition; although this is in fact one of the most commonly used means in German to express that function:

Selective impairment of italian grammatical morphology in the congenially deaf: A case study

Abstract Z is a congenitally deaf woman who has acquired an extraordinarily high level of competence in Italian, a spoken language with a rich system of inflectional morphology. Examples of Z's spoken and written language are compared with equivalent samples for an educated native speaker (NC) and a second control subject (BC) who acquired Italian as a second language. Like NC and BC, Z produces complex and well-formed syntactic constructions. Unlike BC, Z also demonstrates near-normal levels of lexical competence (in word selection, spelling, derivational morphology). By contrast, Z displays severe impairments in grammatical morphology. Her pattern of morphological impairment is also qualitatively different from that of our bilingual control: violations of bound morphology are restricted almost entirely to long-distance agreement; most errors involve omission, addition, or substitution of free-standing function words. Results are discussed in terms of a possible causal link between phonetic/phonological deprivation and problems with grammatical morphology. Some models proposed to account for loss of morphology in aphasia are discussed, and we conclude that these models cannot account for the unique profile of grammatical impairment displayed by the deaf.

Improving Fluency in Spoken French Through a Study of Native Pause Behavior

ABSTRACT Pauses are often thought to detract from fluency in French when spoken by foreigners. However, proper pause behavior, if modeled after that of educated native speakers, is actually a definite mark of authentic‐sounding and well‐controlled speech. This article reviews the different categories of native pauses and suggests techniques for incorporating them cautiously into the spoken French of anglophones, especially Americans.

The Pragmatics of Left Detachment in Spoken Standard French

Left detachment constructions (LDs) (e.g. <i>un buffet de campagne, c’est un meuble</i>) are examined in a corpus of informal spontaneous conversation between educated native speakers of French. The overwhelming majority of these constructions are shown to have a clearly pragmatic motivation. The author’s observations support a view of LD in French as a particular type of paratactic structure which should be seen primarily as a feature of unplanned discourse. The analysis partly builds on views expressed by Knud Lambrecht in an earlier contribution tot this series.

A Million Running Words

Randolph Quirk Well, the Survey is in part a collection of data. Now this makes it sound very dull – to contemplate filing cabinets filled with slips registering the repertoire of the educated, mature native speaker. But that is, of course, only part of what constitutes our data in the Survey. The Survey has always from the outset had two deliberate and quite specific aims: first, to collect samples of continuous usage of that mature, educated native speaker, and, secondly, to devise psycholinguistic techniques that would elicit from a sample of such adults constructions and usages which would only by a sort of happy accident come to be enshrined in the texts, whether spoken or written, that they actually recorded.

Nurturing the Hothouse Special: When Proficiency Becomes Performance

The U.S. Government Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Proficiency Definitions and the ACTFL/ETS Guidelines are becoming increasingly well-known and accepted in the profession for purposes of proficiency assessment, curriculum planning and materials design.' As use of the standards increases, there is an inevitable, natural temptation to adapt them for specific purposes. Experience in adapting the Guidelines and Definitions for a special audience is clarifying a number of dangers inherent in this temptation, dangers which must be addressed immediately if the standards themselves and our ability to use them to their maximum potential are to be preserved.2 The ACTFL/ETS Proficiency Guidelines, and the ILR Definitions from which they derive, take as their task the assessment and description of stages in the acquisition of global proficiency-the ability to use the entire range of the target language. Their ultimate point of reference is speech production equivalent to that of an educated native speaker. Three major categories to be considered in rating a speaker's proficiency are defined: function, content, and accuracy. Together they comprise the Functional Trisection and provide the underpinning for the proficiency level descriptions.3

Literature and Readability: Bridging the Gap in Foreign Language Reading

to experience a rather sudden and magic improvement in reading ability as they enter the third year of foreign language study.1 To this point, they have been carefully nursed with small amounts of structurally graded texts containing high frequency vocabulary. Now, after three to four semesters of spoon feeding, they are usually started without mercy on the chronological study of the literary masterworks of the target language in a survey course. Suddenly, instructors expect a transition from the stage of painful word-by-word decoding of contrived written dialogs or narrations dealing with simple everyday events to comprehension of relatively lengthy literary texts containing highly abstract vocabulary, complex syntactical patterns, and sophisticated style and content which even an educated native speaker often cannot read without effort. To continue my analogy of reading instruction to infant nutrition: we do not just expect to wean the students from the bottle to the cup; we hand them knife, fork, and the uncooked ingredients for a gourmet meal and expect them to enjoy a Lucullan repast. The major goal of most u.s. undergraduate foreign language programs is to develop familiarity with and appreciation of the literature of the target language culture. Anyone contesting this assertion should examine course offerings and sequences in current college catalogs. Yet, somewhere in our program sequence we seem to lose sight of the fact that reading comprehension is at the very base of literary reception and appreciation, and that training for reading comprehension must come before training in literary criticism. McGuigan notes that many fourth quarter German students at the University of Minne-