摘要:

This article describes a study assessing the influence of religious‐specific background knowledge on adult ESL listening comprehension. Sixty‐five university‐level students participated in the study. Twenty‐eight students self‐reported being religion‐neutral with virtually no knowledge of Moslem or Christian religious rites. Sixteen of the students declared themselves to be practicing Moslems, and twenty students reported being practicing Christians. The students listened to one passage describing the prayer rituals of Islam and a second passage describing the prayer rituals of Christianity.The results clearly suggest that passage content exerts a powerful influence on the listening comprehension scores of students professing close ties to a particular religion. Particularly strong differences were observed regarding the recall of major idea units. Less striking, yet obviously supportive differences were in evidence with respect to the creation of schema‐appropriate elaborations and inappropriate distortions. The religion‐neutral students performed somewhat erratically in that they recalled more major idea units pertaining to the Moslem passage, but also provided more appropriate elaborations regarding the Christian passage. In addition, retrospective interviews that yielded insightful information that generally supported the quantitative findings

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00563.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The validity of a traditional language proficiency test,Language Assessment Scales, and an integrated test, the cloze text, in measuring academic language proficiency was assessed. TheLanguage Assessment Scalesand two written cloze passages were administered to 28 Mexican‐American third graders enrolled in bilingual education classes and compared to their performance on theCalifornia Test of Basic Skills.Results indicate that correlations between theLanguage Assessment Scalesand theCalifornia Test of Basic Skills, and theLanguage Assessment Scalesand the cloze test are nonsignificant, whereas the cloze test correlates significantly with all subtests of theCalifornia Test of Basic Skills.An error analysis for cloze responses reveals subjects make proportionately fewer errors in using syntactic cues as their total errors decrease. Implications for the use of the cloze test in assessing academic language proficiency, the existence of an academic language threshold, exit criteria from bilingual programs, and the need for continued language development are discusse

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00564.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Data on Dutch‐Turkish language‐mixing behavior of Turkish children growing up in The Netherlands are presented and analysed. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which the descriptive models developed in research on language‐mixing are generalizable. It was found that the functional characteristics of the children's language‐mixing are compatible with earlier results. Structural analysis of the data, however, yielded results that shed considerable doubt on the universal applicability of surface structure constraint rules for sentence‐internal langua

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00565.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This article presents analysis of the narrative proficiency of L1 and L2 learners of Dutch. A group of Dutch native children and a group of Turkish immigrant children, born and reared in The Netherlands, were asked to tell a story from a series of pictures, first when they entered primary school and again when they were in the third year of primary school.In comparison with their Dutch peers, the Turkish children exhibit more or less the same level of narrative proficiency in Dutch; however, their grammatical knowledge is deficient. It was concluded that by using their communicative skills, the L2 learners are able to perform almost as well as native children in a task that is cognitively and contextually easy.

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00566.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This study examines the word‐final, voiceless, stop‐sibilant clusters formed by the attachment of [−z] morphemes to verbs and nouns in the spontaneous speech production of Japanese learners of English and finds that reduction is the favored production strategy; that noun attachments are subject to less error than are verb attachments; and that the initial consonant of the cluster affects the rate of omission.An acoustic study of the same clusters follows, which finds that the length of the [−z] morpheme in Japanese L2 English is shorter in the phonetic environment where there is greatest omission and longer when attached to nouns than when attached to verbs. It finds considerable evidence for post‐cluster epenthesis, even when a vowel segment follows, and for mid‐cluster epenthesis. The study also finds evidence that reduction and epenthesis are not alternative strategies in the resolution of production difficulties in

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00567.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Not enough attention has been paid in the past to the variable of sex differences in language‐learning research. This may be because it is taken as proven that girls are superior to boys in language ability. Although the majority of evidence does favor this conclusion, there is one area of language ability in which boys seem to be superior to girls, even in view of overall female superiority in language proficiency. This area is the comprehension of heard vocabulary.Evidence from first‐language studies prompted an experiment with second‐language subjects: two sets of Chinese college students (n= 285 and 205). Ten tests were used to establish general language proficiency, and two tests of listening vocabulary were included in the battery. With both sets of subjects, the females were superior in general language proficiency, but the males had higher mean scores in both tests of listening vocabulary.The difficulties of conducting such an experiment are discussed, notably the problem of constructing satisfactory listening vocabulary tests. Reasons for the phenomenon of male superiority in this select area of language ability are suggested, and similar experiments are encou

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00568.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This article discusses the design and interpretation of instrumental phonetic studies of L2 speech production. The notionphonetic normplays a crucial role in many recent studies that examine acoustic dimensions such as the frequencies of F1‐F3, vowel duration, or voice‐onset time (VOT). The speech of L2 learners is evaluated to determine to what extent it diverges from the differing phonetic norms of L1 and L2, which are estimated from the speech of a small number of native speakers, it is advisable to use monolinguals to establish the L1 norms because L2 learning has been shown to affect L1 production. In initial stages of learning, L2 learners often produce words in L2 withL1 sounds: they do not modify phonetic dimensions when producing corresponding sounds in L1 and L2 phonetic norm. L2 learners with relatively greater experience in L2, on the other hand, generally approximate the phonetic norm of L2: the values of the phonetic dimensions being measured generally fall between the mean values representing the phonetic norms of L1 and

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00569.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00570.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Books review in this article:The Brain in Wisdom, Loving and Hating.Kenneth L. Artiss, M.D.

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00571.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00572.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1987

数据来源: WILEY