Childhood Language Learning Research Articles

Large-scale investigation of white matter structural differences in bilingual and monolingual children: An adolescent brain cognitive development data study.

Emerging research has provided valuable insights into the structural characteristics of the bilingual brain from studies of bilingual adults; however, there is a dearth of evidence examining brain structural alterations in childhood associated with the bilingual experience. This study examined the associations between bilingualism and white matter organization in bilingual children compared to monolingual peers leveraging the large-scale data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Then, 446 bilingual children (ages 9-10) were identified from the participants in the ABCD data and rigorously matched to a group of 446 monolingual peers. Multiple regression models for selected language and cognitive control white matter pathways were used to compare white matter fractional anisotropy (FA) values between bilinguals and monolinguals, controlling for demographic and environmental factors as covariates in the models. Results revealed significantly lower FA values in bilinguals compared to monolinguals across established dorsal and ventral language network pathways bilaterally (i.e., the superior longitudinal fasciculus and inferior frontal-occipital fasciculus) and right-hemispheric pathways in areas related to cognitive control and short-term memory (i.e., cingulum and parahippocampal cingulum). In contrast to the enhanced FA values observed in adult bilinguals relative to monolinguals, our findings of lower FA in bilingual children relative to monolinguals may suggest a protracted development of white matter pathways associated with language and cognitive control resulting from dual language learning in childhood. Further, these findings underscore the need for large-scale longitudinal investigation of white matter development in bilingual children to understand neuroplasticity associated with the bilingual experience during this period of heightened language learning.

Language aptitude, language interaction and age of language learning

Abstract This article reviews David Singleton’s books and articles published during the period 2014–2020. The first section concerns a popular book which he co-authored with Vivian Cook; the second gives an account of articles covering questions about the concept of language aptitude; the third deals with articles on the manner in which a learner’s competencies in different languages interact; the fourth section then summarizes his recent age-related work on second language learning in childhood, adolescence and midlife; and the fifth deals with his contributions on language learning in senior adulthood.

Capacity Enhancement of Family Development Centre Staff in Early Childhood Language Learning

This study aimed to identify effective plans using the Future Search Conference (FSC) approach to enhance the Thai Family Development Centre (FDC) staff in early childhood language promotion through good parenting.  Data from, 55 stakeholders FDC staff, district and local health centres, Child Care Centres (CCCs), and local authorities from 10 villages of rural subdistricts in a central Thai province, Thailand, checked for correctness and analyzed using thematic analysis, alongside field notes from observations, worksheets, videotape records, and photo voice. Results revealed that applying FSC techniques created a common future and successfully helped participants to understand past situations clearly and factors related to the problem. Three key strategies emerged to enhance FDC staff capacity including 1) organising ongoing training workshops to enhance staff knowledge and skills needed to achieve effective work performance, 2) building teamwork and 3) developing staff morale for working.

Il ruolo dei cartoni animati nell’acquisizione dell’italiano come L2: il caso degli studenti L1 sloveno dell’Università del Litorale

The first part of the article deals with cartoons as a possible source of authentic language input and the effect that exposure to them can have on incidental language learning in childhood. The second part presents a research work on the impact that watching cartoons in Italian can have in childhood on a group of Slovenian L1 students studying Italian at the Univerza na Primorskem / University of Primorska in Koper (Slovenia). The research work showed no correlation between the linguistic input of cartoons and the linguistic production of students. However, watching cartoons stimulated their motivation to learn Italian and produced a long-term loyalty to the network that broadcast the animated series. Key words: incidental L2 acquisition, childhood, cartoons, Italian language as L2, students of Italian as L2

Foreign Language Learning During Childhood

This paper attempts to clarify Importance of learning a foreign language in childhood. Among philosophers, empiricism and the psychologists, behaviourists believe that language is a social creature and like other social behaviours are acquired. This is perhaps the most complex and arguable question that have risen among linguists, psychologists and philosophers about language: how a child learns foreign language? Language learning is natural. Babies are born with the ability to learn it and that learning begins at birth. Many experts believe that learning the language before the age of ten years allow children to speak correct and fluent as an indigenous person. Therefore, whatever the earlier children become familiar with foreign language, he have better chance to speak proficiency. Research suggests that from birth through age 10 is the best time to introduce new languages to a young child. In this paper the child will learn the language faster, retain it better and most often speak it with near-native pronunciation. Finally, this paper highlights advantages and disadvantages foreign language learning in childhood.

THE STRUGGLE OVER NORWEGIAN

THE STRUGGLE OVER NORWEGIAN3 BY EINAR HAUGEN Now the question no longer is: how shall we learn English so that we may take part in the social life of America and partake of her benefits; the big question is: how can we preserve the language of our ancestors here, in a strange environment, and pass on to our descendants the treasures which it contains?2 Throughout the history of the Norwegian- American community , the relation of English and Norwegian has involved an element of controversy. Known as Sprogspfirsmaalet, or the Language Question, this controversy raged more or less openly within family, neighborhood, and social institutions wherever Norwegian immigrants settled in sufficient numbers to create a self-contained group. We cannot hope to do more here than sketch the profile of this struggle. Some of the more spectacular episodes will be told, but it must be understood that these are only the public expression of a private tension that had its root in the steady pressure exerted on the immigrant by the dominant American environment . The public discussion was protracted and often bitter, with vigorous agitators on both sides; but the basic trend was probably not greatly affected by it. The heart of the matter was the situation within the family; this was the primary battleground. But the individual family was supported in its linguistic usage by other families, which together constituted a neighborhood. Social institutions grew up which organized the teaching and indoctrination of the language, the most important of these being the church. We shall consider the role of each of these social groupings in the language struggle - home, neighborhood, and institutions - and then 1 This essay is chapter nine of an unpublished manuscript entitled "The Norwegian Language in America: A Study in Bilingual Behavior." 2 Thrond Bothne, Kort udsigt over det lutherske Jcirfcearbeide blandt nordmoendene i Amerika , 828 (Chicago, 1898). 1 2 EINAR HAUGEN sketch some of the major developments in the campaign that the immigrant fought so gallantly but vainly to maintain the language of his ancestors. I. THE FAMILY AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD Within the family the maintenance of a foreign language depends on the desire of the parents to carry it on, the authority of the parents over their chidren, and the degree of pressure from outside. Parents who had immigrated from Norway as adults usually had little inclination to adopt English as the family language. All the lore that it is natural for parents to transmit to their children had come to them in Norwegian and was available to them only in that language. The nursery rhymes, the proverbs, the anecdotes, the family sayings, the prayers, the songs: all of these had been woven into the very process of language learning in childhood. Even if the adult could learn them in a new language, they would have no flavor; and who was available in any case to teach them to him? Only in Norwegian could the immigrant father and mother function as such, and they vigorously resisted any attempt to lessen their socio-cultural role. By living in a Norwegian-speaking community they multiplied their chances of being able to carry out this role, since their children were not then under any strong social pressure to use English. Wherever contact with English-speaking children was active, as in an urban community, the children brought home with them a keen desire to speak English. Only by the establishment of ironclad rules, by which English was banned from the home, could the parents resist this invasion. This counterpressure by the parents had to be stronger than the social pressure toward English of the environment. If the social pattern in the community was favorable to English, the parents were in a difficult position. It now became a question of parental authority, with the children often sullen and rebellious and the parents torn between a determination THE STRUGGLE OVER NORWEGIAN 3 to impose their own linguistic pattern and a desire to see their children content. American social practice in general favored a weakening of parental authority, and so the rebellion against the Norwegian linguistic pattern went hand in hand with a freeing of the children from their other social...