Promoting educational achievement of language minority children in mainstream Merseyside primary schools
Author: Hossnieh Sargazi
Researcher/ Lecturer Liverpool
John Moores University John Foster Building
Mount Pleasant Street
L3 5UZ
h.sargazi@ljm.ac.uk
Bob McClelland
Researcher/ Lecturer Liverpool
John Moores University John Foster Building
Mount Pleasant Street
L3 5UZ
b.mcclelland@ljmu.ac.uk
Abstract: This paper investigates socio-linguistic needs of language minority children or children who speak English as an additional language (LMC/EAL) in mainstream primary classrooms. The paper outlines policy and provision of the teaching of LMC/EAL children within mainstream classrooms and details major and significant issues in teaching LMC/EAL children. Concerns over the underachievement of LMC/EAL children and a commitment to improve provision for these children has been acknowledged across a series of government reports and other documents over the last decade. Therefore, the paper intends to focus LMC/EAL pupils in the mainstream classrooms, and instructional strategies and a range of practices available in schools to be responsive to their needs, whatever their population alongside native speakers in Merseyside primary schools. In addition to this, utilising qualitative interview data collected from the primary school staffs and local authority advisers in Merseyside. The paper further aims to provide insights into the current dilemmas within mainstream classrooms, recognising the importance of bilingualism and community (use of first language), the lack of resources and support based on the perceptions of staff members operating within the sector. Moreover the paper indicates having most participants from a dominant language (English) background, embedded in institutional cultures.Key Words: Multilingualism, Linguistic and Cultural diversity, Educational policy, School improvement
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A Lexico-syntactic Analysis of Selected Dialects of Yoruba Language in Nigeria
Author: AYEOMONI, Moses
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
OBAFEMI UNIVERSITY, Nigeria
Abstract: The study was on comparative study of Ondo and Ikale dialects of the Yoruba language with a view to finding the areas of convergences and divergences between the two dialects. The study was based on 50 sentences from each of the dialects, but only 25 of the sentences were presented. They were anaylsed from the perspective of Halliday Systemic Function Grammar (SFG) in order to identify the prominent lexemes and syntactic structures of the sentences. Simple statistics based on percentages was used to calculate the number of lexemes and structures that are similar and different. It was discovered that the two dialects have basically the same lexemes at both subject and predicator levels. This shows that the speakers of the two dialects often make use of the same nominal and verbal items in their speeches. Besides, the two dialects share basically the same syntactic components – Subjects, Predicator, Complement and Adjunct in all the sentences examined, but the Adjunct is rarely used in the dialects. The dialects are however, found to be mainly different in the area of auxiliary verbs usage. Most of the words or lexemes in the dialects are found in the standard Yoruba, hence the mutual intelligibility of the dialects to an average Yoruba language native speaker. It is thus envisaged that other dialects of Yoruba language that are geographically close may equally share similar linguistic features and cultural norms.
Tags: Yoruba Language, Ondo, Ikale and Dialects
Download link: A Lexico-syntactic Analysis of Selected Dialects of Yoruba Language in Nigeria(PDF)
A Neurolinguistic study on communicative gestures and developed speech
Author: Zoltan Boka (PhD)
City University of New York
Neurolinguistics
(Beijing, China, Hong Kong and Seoul, South Korea)
Abstract: This paper looks to make an evolutionary connection between the communicative gestures of chimpanzees and the human development of speech. In so doing, the connection between brain size and speech abilities is explored with a particular focus on genetic and gene expression, rejecting the oft-stated hypothesis that humans are capable of speech due to a larger brain size and instead embracing the argument that an increase in diversity of genetic expression is likely to be more responsible for this phenomenon. In so doing, the author looks at previous work regarding the speed of evolution and how said speed differs depending on the magnitude of evolutionary changes which occur. Finally, the paper explores the role of mirror neurons in speech and proposes future research in this area, based on questions regarding how neural stuctures are organized and how they develop within chimpanzees over their lifespan.
Tags: development; evolution; genetics: gestures; neurons: speech
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Linguistic Transfer: Example from Arabic users of English
Author:
- Al-Khawalda, Mohammad
Associate Professor
Mutah University-Jordan
- Ahmed Al-Oliemat
Head of Department
Al-Albayt University-Jordan
Abstract: Linguistic transfer has been a field of many studies. This could be attributed to the strong association between linguistic transfer and both second language acquisition and linguistic errors. This paper aims at adding evidence about the effect of first language on mastering a second language and to fill a gap in linguistic studies of transfer. It will shed light on the problems which Arabic native speakers encounter when dealing with the usage of 'wish'. There has been few explicit studies addressing the grammatical transfer issue between Arabic and English directly. It has been recognized that the Arabic native speakers encounter serious problems when dealing with 'wish'. The usage of 'wish' in English is one of the most difficult structure for English learners. On the other hand, in spite of the strong association between 'wish' and 'if-clauses', they do not face such a problem when dealing with 'if-clauses'. Eighty eight first year students specialized in English enrolled in this experiment, all of them are Arabic native speakers. It turns out that the problems which they face when dealing with 'wish' result from applying their knowledge in Arabic language (L1) to answer the questions about ‘wish’ in English
Tags: transfer, linguistic, wish, if-clause, first language, second language
Download link: Linguistic Transfer: Example from Arabic users of English(PDF)
