Problem Of Language Acquisition Research Articles

The Acquisition of Slavic as a Foreign Language as a Condition for Successful Integration of Refugees (On the Situation of Ukrainian Medics in the Czech Republic

The aim of this paper is to present the problems of second language acquisition (Slavic by Slavs) in a specific socio-political context. The text deals with the situation of Ukrainian refugees, medics who need to master Czech in order to take a professional qualification exam, and are placed in a specific psycholinguistic situation - they need to quickly acquire both the basics of the second language from the elementary level of training, and specialized medical terminology, usually in a very limited timeframe. In this study, we point out some types of typical mistakes made by Ukrainian medics learning mainly specialized (medical) Czech. The results of such an analysis provide an opportunity to classify the errors, highlight the typical characteristics of Czech in the Slavic comparative context through the prism of language learning, and from a methodological point of view, which can indicate some of the most common places requiring additional and detailed attention in the learning process, especially for a specific group of students with specific goals within their studies.

Learning Media "ARASIK" in Understanding the Meaning of Nouns for SDLB Deaf Students at SLB Negeri Bogor

Deaf children experience speech and language difficulties due to hearing loss. Children with hearing loss experience delays and communication difficulties due to delays in speech and language development. The main problem in language acquisition for deaf children is that they have difficulty understanding the meaning of words. The problem is that children can read, but they do not understand what they read. The title of this article is ``The learning media "ARASIK" in understanding the meaning of nouns in SDLB Deaf students at SLB Negeri Bogor" The theoretical foundations used in this study are: (1) understanding the meaning of words, as stated by Nurbeiti Jamalus that the meaning of a word is the relationship between the sound (language) of the word spoken or written with the object concerned; (2) Augmented Realitiy learning media promoted by scientists, that AR can visualize abstract concepts for understanding and the structure of an object model allows AR as a more effective media in accordance with the objectives of learning media. This research uses a descriptive-qualitative approach, with data collection techniques through observation, interviews and documentation studies. The data analysis technique used refers to Miles and Huberman (1994) which includes three activities, namely: (1) data reduction, (2) data presentation, and (3) conclusion drawing from the application of "ARASIK" media. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that the "ARASIK" media can help facilitate SDLB Deaf students in understanding the meaning of nouns.

Impaired Cortical Tracking of Speech in Children with Developmental Language Disorder.

In developmental language disorder (DLD), learning to comprehend and express oneself with spoken language is impaired, but the reason for this remains unknown. Using millisecond-scale magnetoencephalography recordings combined with machine learning models, we investigated whether the possible neural basis of this disruption lies in poor cortical tracking of speech. The stimuli were common spoken Finnish words (e.g., dog, car, hammer) and sounds with corresponding meanings (e.g., dog bark, car engine, hammering). In both children with DLD (10 boys and 7 girls) and typically developing (TD) control children (14 boys and 3 girls), aged 10-15 years, the cortical activation to spoken words was best modeled as time-locked to the unfolding speech input at ∼100 ms latency between sound and cortical activation. Amplitude envelope (amplitude changes) and spectrogram (detailed time-varying spectral content) of the spoken words, but not other sounds, were very successfully decoded based on time-locked brain responses in bilateral temporal areas; based on the cortical responses, the models could tell at ∼75-85% accuracy which of the two sounds had been presented to the participant. However, the cortical representation of the amplitude envelope information was poorer in children with DLD compared with TD children at longer latencies (at ∼200-300 ms lag). We interpret this effect as reflecting poorer retention of acoustic-phonetic information in short-term memory. This impaired tracking could potentially affect the processing and learning of words as well as continuous speech. The present results offer an explanation for the problems in language comprehension and acquisition in DLD.

Chinese Learner Challenges in English Subject-Verb Agreement

The second language learners are experiencing manifold challenges when acquiring a new language. English is one of the most prevalent languages nowadays. The English speakers hail from around the world. Therefore, English has become a compulsory course in China since the late 1980s. As Chinese is my first language and English is the second, I can intermittently perceive the learner challenges especially the English grammar. Grammar is the set of rules in fields of phonology, morphology, and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. Chinese grammar differs from English to a great extent, including subject-verb (S-V) agreement. It is sometimes really hard to compose grammatically correct sentences due to the influence of Chinese grammar patterns as well as the sociocultural context. Consequently, the aim of the paper is to define the challenges that the learners face whose first language is Chinese and seek for answers to this problem in second language acquisition.

Language Errors in the Thesis Title of Arabic Education Students

One of the main problems in language acquisition is the grammatical mastery of either nahwu or sharaf, as has happened in several cases, both in formal and non-formal educational institutions. The purpose of this paper was to find language errors in the students' thesis of Arabic Language Education Study Program which was prepared by using Arabic in UIN Prof. K.H. Saifuddin Zuhri Purwokerto. Content analysis and language error analysis based on Language Theory was used in this research that lied by Miles and Huberman. The study found that there were several forms of language errors in the morphology and syntax. Morphology is an error in grammatical arrangement. There were structure of idafiyah or compound words errors in 9 titles or 50%. Afterwards, Na’atman'ut and hal were found in 3 titles or 20%. Meanwhile, the semantics errors found that related to the use of standard words in 6 titles or 30% and the rest was related to inaccurate word choice or diction. Syntax errors in Arabic writing are very common. It has implications for several things, such as professionalism or the ability to master one form of expertise in Arabic other than qira'ah or kitabah.

Language Acquisition On Early Deaf Children With Cochlear Implants In Inclusion Kindergarten

Deaf children have problems in language acquisition due to hearing loss. Early use of cochlear implants can help deaf children listen and learn language and speech. This study aims to determine how language acquisition in early deaf students uses cochlear implants in an inclusive kindergarten in Bandar Lampung. This research is qualitative descriptive research. The methods of collecting data use interviews, observations, and documentation. The results showed that maximizing and familiarizing the hearing function can improve language acquisition. The use of cochlear implants accompanied by oral methods and rhythm sound awareness exercises assists in acquiring phonological, morphological, and semantic (linguistic awareness). Schools use the principle of learning by doing and integrating programs at home so that the process is more natural. In addition, it takes time for children to get accustomed to hearing and repeating what they hear. So it can conclude that using cochlear implants accompanied by the proper method can help the language acquisition of early deaf children.

The UG Paradox of Native and Foreign Language Acquisition

In this paper, I discuss the two issues: the properties of the language acquisition device, an biological organ related to the human language and Plato’s and Orwell’s problems, which are well known as the problems of language acquisition. The nature of human language, that is, creativity and arbitrariness, are also discussed based on the theory of generative grammar. It is argued that the working principle of the algorithm of the language acquisition device enables the chemical combination of essential elements of language, which leads to the creativity and arbitrariness of language. Plato s problem related to the native language acquisition is accounted for by the maturation of the biological language organ and by the substantial minimalism and derivational minimalism. For Orwell s problem related to foreign language acquisition, I tried to find the answer in Chomsky’s(1981) principles and parameters theory. Although all languages are composed by the same principle, the differential characteristics of each language comes from its parameters. The greater differences of parameters between the native language and the foreign language lead to the greater difficulties experienced by foreign language learners. Therefore, in the case of learning a foreign language which has different parameters from the native language, I argue that starting the foreign language learning early is more effective in reducing the difficulty of learning the language.

The nature of the semantic stimulus: the acquisition of every as a case study

We evaluate the richness of the child’s input in semantics and its relation to the hypothesis space available to the child. Our case study is the acquisition of the universal quantifier every. We report two main findings regarding the acquisition of every on the basis of a corpus study of child-directed and child-ambient speech. Our first finding is that the input in semantics (as opposed to the input in syntax or phonology) is rich enough to systematically eliminate instances of the subset problem of language acquisition: overly general hypotheses about the meaning of every can violate pragmatic constraints, making such hypotheses incompatible with the child’s input. Our second finding is that the semantic input is too poor to eliminate instances of what we refer to as the superset problem, the mirror image of the subset problem. We argue that at least some overly specific hypotheses about the meaning of every are compatible with the child’s input, suggesting either that those hypotheses are not made available by UG or that non-trivial inductive biases are involved in children’s acquisition of every.

Intervention in relative clauses: Effects of relativized minimality on L2 representation and processing

This article reports on an experiment investigating the effects of featural Relativized Minimality (Friedmann et al., 2009) on the representation and processing of relative clauses in the second language (L2) English of Mandarin speakers. Object relatives (ORCs) are known to cause greater problems in first language (L1) acquisition and in adult processing than subject relatives (SRCs). Featural Relativized Minimality explains this in terms of intervention effects, caused by a DP (the subject of the ORC) located between the relative head and its source. Intervention effects are claimed to be reduced if the relative head and the intervenor differ in features, such as number (e.g. I know the king who the boys pushed). We hypothesize that L2 learners will show intervention effects when processing ORCs and that such effects will be reduced if the intervenor differs in number from the relative head. There were two tasks: picture identification and self-paced reading. Both manipulated relative clause type (SRC/ORC) and intervenor type (±plural). Accuracy was high in interpreting relative clauses, suggesting no representational problem. Regarding reading times, ORCs were processed slower than SRCs, supporting an intervention effect. However, faster reading times were found in ORCs when intervenor and head noun matched in number, contrary to hypothesis. We suggest that our more stringent stimuli may have resulted in the lack of an effect for mismatched ORCs, in contrast to some earlier findings for L1 acquirers.

PHONEMIC INTERFERENCE AND OVERREGULARIZATION IN THE /S/ AND /∫/ PHONEMES REALIZATION IN FRENCH

One of the problems in foreign language learning is interference, a rearrangement of patterns resulting from the presence of foreign elements in the language domain (Weinreich, 2010). This research shows how and why phonemic interference of /s/ and /∫/ phonemes occur from Indonesian and English although both phonemes exist in all three languages. Some interference begins from lexeme and then to phonemic level. Other faults are overregularization which is the application of regular grammatical patterns to irregular cases. This seems to support the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition which states that a student cannot correct his/her mistakes without explicit feedback from the linguistic environment (Pinker, 2004).The results of this research indicate that foreign language learning requires knowledge of non-structural elements that are outside of the language, not only following phonological, syntactic, morphological, or lexical rules (structural elements). For example, students' foreign language knowledge and cultural content in teaching materials.

Learning problems on educational context for cascol parish

Learning problems have become a relevant topic within the psycho-pedagogical area, referring to problems in language acquisition, reading, and writing or in the numerical area. Students who have learning problems have certain characteristics such as normal or higher intelligence and do not have any sensory deficits. The objective of the work is to know the different learning problems that arise in the students of the educational institutions of the Cascol parish of the Pajàn canton. The paper offers a conceptual analysis of the different learning problems. It has approached from the definition, causes, and consequences where several authors who have studied the subject have analyzed. The ability of teachers to analyze and investigate the problems that generate or cause the blockage in the development of their skills and the importance of psychological support to students who have learning problems to provide strategies to correct and avoid complications in the future has analyzed. The impact on the youth of the parish of Cascol, the importance of knowing the causes and consequences of different learning disorders has analyzed. Finally, the conclusions of the work have exposed, where the relevance of the study has shown to know the different learning problems in adolescents.

"Look up!" Using easy words to explain how we learn hard words and other aspects of language, an interview with Lila Gleitman

Lila Gleitman is undoubtedly one of the world’s foremost experts on language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics. Starting in the 60s, she rose to prominence by bringing experimental methods from psychology to bear on the questions raised by linguistics and philosophers of language, namely how children could learn the rules of a language when there is so much ambiguity both in the language and in the world surrounding them. She has done much work in this vein, focusing both on how children learn words that refer to abstract concepts such as think or believe, as well as how they acquire concepts when they lack certain inputs, such as in the case of blind or deaf children. Though her contributions and collaborations span many questions and problems in language acquisition, she is perhaps best known for proposing and showing that, from an early age, children are capable of using syntactic cues to learn the meaning of words, particularly verbs (especially those she describes as “hard words” because they are difficult or impossible to observe, like think). Through this process, termed syntactic bootstrapping, young children would be able rely on the linguistic context in which the words appear to discover aspects of the meanings of words that they don’t know yet (e.g., Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Gleitman, 1990; Gleitman, Cassidy, Nappa, Papafragou, & Trueswell, 2005). More specifically, Lila and her collaborators proposed that syntax could serve as a “zoom lens” allowing language learners to figure out which part of the world is being talked about, which would then help them identify candidate meanings for novel words (e.g., Fisher, Hall, Rakowitz, & Gleitman, 1994). ---DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2018.v14n3a22643

O processo de ensino-aprendizagem em língua inglesa de um aluno com autismo: um estudo de caso em uma escola inclusiva

A preocupação referente à educação inclusiva cresceu paralelamente ao aumento da presença de alunos com deficiência nas escolas regulares. O Brasil, seguindo a tendência internacional, vem legislando em defesa de um ensino inclusivo de qualidade, assegurando o direito de matrícula destes alunos. Dentre as várias especificidades presentes em salas, encontram-se os alunos com autismo. Autistas, no geral, apresentam problemas na aquisição de linguagem, na produção oral e na socialização. Logo, este estudo possui como objetivo investigar como o processo de ensino-aprendizagem em língua inglesa ocorre com autistas. Assim, pretende-se conhecer o papel do professor neste processo, quais os desafios que surgem a partir disso, e quais estratégias utilizadas para ajudar o aluno a aprender. Esta é uma pesquisa qualitativa, de natureza exploratória e descritiva que foi realizada na forma de um estudo de caso. Os dados foram coletados a partir de uma entrevista semiestruturada com uma professora e observações de aulas. Os dados foram analisados qualitativamente a partir de análise de conteúdo e os resultados estão apresentados em eixos temáticos. Os resultados obtidos demonstram que, apesar da professora não possuir formação adequada para ensinar este público, esta encontra suporte com a família do aluno e com a escola. Quanto às estratégias utilizadas, as mesmas pareceram eficazes devido à resposta do aluno e sua produção. Espera-se que os achados desta pesquisa possam contribuir para o entendimento da questão abordada, e as estratégias aqui citadas possam ajudar professores de língua inglesa a melhorar suas práticas pedagógicas.

К проблеме овладения иностранным языком в контексте информального образования

К проблеме овладения иностранным языком в контексте информального образования

The Effects of Language Skills on the Economic Assimilation of Female Immigrants in the United States

AbstractThis paper uses recent data from the American Community Survey between 2010 and 2015 to investigate the effect of language skills on women’s economic assimilation who immigrated to the United States as children. The problem of endogenous language acquisition and measurement error in the language variable is addressed utilizing the phenomenon that younger children learn languages more easily than older children to construct an identifying instrument. Two‐stage‐least‐squares estimates suggest that greater English proficiency has a positive effect on a number of indicators of economic assimilation of adult women including several measures of labor supply and earnings. A range of sensitivity tests are undertaken to check the validity of these results.

Early Language Acquisition: from a Language Periphery to Verbal

The aim of the article is to discuss the early language acquisition, which comprises the language acquisition period from the very beginning of the grammar system development to its complete formation. In the present research, the part of The Corpus of Lithuanian Children Language, which comprises transcribed and grammatically coded longitudinal language records of four singletons (two typically developing children, one typically developing early talker, and one typically developing late talker) and one heterozygous twin pair (a girl and a boy). The following hypotheses have been proposed: 1) the period of the grammar system formation of atypical language (twins’ language) is later and lasts longer than in the case of a typical language development; 2) children with atypical language development (twins) experience more language acquisition problems than children with typical language acquisition. The quantitative comparative research has confirmed the first hypothesis that the development of twins’ language is later and the formation of the grammar system lasts longer than in typical language development. The second hypothesis has been only partly confirmed: in the language of the twin girl, the tendencies of the grammar system acquisition correspond to the typical late talking, while in the language of the twin boy, the acquisition of the grammar system is slower and longer than in typically developing children. In addition, slower development of lexis related to the frequent use of onomatopoeias and twins’ secret language and uneven mean length of an utterance are typical of twins’ language.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.32.0.19640

Parametric Adjustments by Children Acquiring Urdu Language

The present research lies in the field of language acquisition. Chomsky’s principles and parameters (1981, 1986) serve as the theoretical framework for this study. The research takes acquisition of Urdu as a case. The data for the study comprises of common recorded utterances produced by children between the ages of 24-30 months, acquiring Urdu language. The study explores the parametric settings and adjustments in these utterances. The results show that children remained consistent with non-null subject, head last principle while wh fronting was rarely observed in these utterances. Knowledge of the parametric settings can be helpful for the language teachers in predicting difficulties in second language acquisition. It offers a plausible solution to the logical problem of language acquisition.

Bilinguals and knowledge of language: a commentary to “Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory”

Abstract How infant and adult humans learn languages and what this tells us about the various aspects of the language system is currently a central topic in linguistic research, one that more and more includes bilingualism and language attrition in its embrace. Despite the centrality of the problem of language acquisition for Generative Grammar, it is fair to say that other modes of language learning are now entering the arena of discussion, having shown their potential for discovery in Cognitive Science at large. Some aspects of grammatical knowledge that are hard to acquire and yield differences between native and non-native speakers reveal that language learning is indeed a special type of learning, which in turn reveals that knowing more about these entails knowing more about language.

A Spiking Neuron Model of Word Associations for the Remote Associates Test.

Generating associations is important for cognitive tasks including language acquisition and creative problem solving. It remains an open question how the brain represents and processes associations. The Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a task, originally used in creativity research, that is heavily dependent on generating associations in a search for the solutions to individual RAT problems. In this work we present a model that solves the test. Compared to earlier modeling work on the RAT, our hybrid (i.e., non-developmental) model is implemented in a spiking neural network by means of the Neural Engineering Framework (NEF), demonstrating that it is possible for spiking neurons to be organized to store the employed representations and to manipulate them. In particular, the model shows that distributed representations can support sophisticated linguistic processing. The model was validated on human behavioral data including the typical length of response sequences and similarity relationships in produced responses. These data suggest two cognitive processes that are involved in solving the RAT: one process generates potential responses and a second process filters the responses.

A Critique to Fundamental Differences Hypothesis

Chomsky’s Theory of Universal Grammar was proposed in response to “the logical problem of language acquisition”, that is, how children come to acquire L1with ease and complete success despite the insufficiency of the L1 stimulus. Chomsky attributes the phenomenon to the Language Acquisition Device or UG inherited by human brain. Since “the logical problem” exists in SLA. What is the role of LAD or UG in SLA? Or, is UG accessible to L2 learners? This is a question that has attracted SLA researchers since the establishment of UG theory. This paper gives some own analysis of one of the most influential theory of UG accessibility—Fundamental Difference Hypothesis, which belongs to the no-access views and points out its weakness by discussing its theoretical explanation as well as the supporting evidence. To be more specific, this paper will discuss mainly 2 points, one is the nine fundamental characters of foreign language learning and the other is its theoretical explanation related to the Critical Period Hypothesis.