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Early Immersion
Early immersion is a method of teaching and learning a foreign language. It entails having a student undergo intense instruction in a foreign language, starting by age five or six. Frequently, this method entails having the student learn all or much of his or her various "regular" subject matter (such as mathematics and science) via the foreign language being taught. Bilingualism has been associated with a vast array of cognitive advantages. It often develops as a result of experiential factors that shape an individual's upbringing. People who are bilingual have been found to possess greater navigation ability with respect to diseases like Alzheimer's and exhibit greater competence when it comes to internal mental processes such as memory and self-control. These positive outcomes associated with being bilingual serve as a motivational factor underlying what is known as " bilingual education", wherein children's education is conducted using not one but two languages. Immersion in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foreign Language
A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a given country, and that native speakers from that country must usually acquire through conscious learning - be this through language lessons at school, self-teaching or attendance of language courses, for example. A foreign language may be learnt as a second language, but there is a distinction between the terms, as a second language may be used to describe a language that plays a significant role in the region where the speaker lives, whether for communication, education, business or governance, and therefore a second language is not necessarily a foreign language. Children who learn more than one language from birth or from a very young age are considered bilingual or multilingual. These children can be said to have two, three or more mother tongues, and so again these languages would not be considered foreign to these children, even if one language is a foreign language for the va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Learning Theory
Social learning is a theory of learning process social behavior which proposes that new behaviors can be acquired by observing and imitating others. It states that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement. In addition to the observation of behavior, learning also occurs through the observation of rewards and punishments, a process known as vicarious reinforcement. When a particular behavior is rewarded regularly, it will most likely persist; conversely, if a particular behavior is constantly punished, it will most likely desist. The theory expands on traditional behavioral theories, in which behavior is governed solely by reinforcements, by placing emphasis on the important roles of various internal processes in the learning individual. History and theoretical background In the 1941s, B. F. Skinner delivered a series of lect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Genesee
Fred Genesee is a Professor of psychology at McGill University. He specializes in second language acquisition and bilingualism research. In particular, his research examines the early stages of the acquisition of two languages in order to better understand this form of language acquisition and ascertain the neurocognitive limits of the child's ability to acquire language. Specific topics Genesee has investigated in his research include language representation (lexical and syntactic) in early stages of bilingual acquisition, transfer in bilingual development, structural and functional characteristics of child bilingual code-mixing Code-mixing is the mixing of two or more languages or language varieties in speech. Some scholars use the terms "code-mixing" and "code-switching" interchangeably, especially in studies of syntax, morphology, and other formal aspects of langua ..., and communication skills in young bilingual children. In addition to this, Genesee has investigate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant university and the founding campus of the University of California system. Its fourteen colleges and schools offer over 350 degree programs and enroll some 31,800 undergraduate and 13,200 graduate students. Berkeley ranks among the world's top universities. A founding member of the Association of American Universities, Berkeley hosts many leading research institutes dedicated to science, engineering, and mathematics. The university founded and maintains close relationships with three national laboratories at Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos, and has played a prominent role in many scientific advances, from the Manhattan Project and the discovery of 16 chemical elements to breakthroughs in computer science and genomics. Berkeley is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition involves structures, rules and representation. The capacity to use language successfully requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign. Human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are: ''relativization'', ''complementation'' and ''coordination''. There are two ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sensitive Periods
In developmental psychology and developmental biology, a critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli. If, for some reason, the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this "critical period" to learn a given skill or trait, it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop certain associated functions later in life. Functions that are indispensable to an organism's survival, such as vision, are particularly likely to develop during critical periods. "Critical period" also relates to the ability to acquire one's first language. Researchers found that people who passed the "critical period" would not acquire their first language fluently. Some researchers differentiate between 'strong critical periods' and 'weak critical periods' (a.k.a. 'sensitive' periods) — defining 'weak critical periods' / 'sensitive periods' as mor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Period
In developmental psychology and developmental biology, a critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli. If, for some reason, the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this "critical period" to learn a given skill or trait, it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop certain associated functions later in life. Functions that are indispensable to an organism's survival, such as vision, are particularly likely to develop during critical periods. "Critical period" also relates to the ability to acquire one's first language. Researchers found that people who passed the "critical period" would not acquire their first language fluently. Some researchers differentiate between 'strong critical periods' and 'weak critical periods' (a.k.a. 'sensitive' periods) — defining 'weak critical periods' / 'sensitive periods' as mor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Language
A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongue'' refers to the language or dialect of one's ethnic group rather than one's first language. The first language of a child is part of that child's personal, social and cultural identity. Another impact of the first language is that it brings about the reflection and learning of successful social patterns of acting and speaking. Research suggests that while a non-native speaker may develop fluency in a targeted language after about two years of immersion, it can take between five and seven years for that child to be on the same working level as their native speaking counterparts. On 17 November 1999, UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day. Definitions One of the more widely accepted definitions of native sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second-language Acquisition
Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning — otherwise referred to as L2 (language 2) acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. The field of second-language acquisition is regarded by some but not everybody as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines, such as psychology and education. A central theme in SLA research is that of ''interlanguage:'' the idea that the language that learners use is not simply the result of differences between the languages that they already know and the language that they are learning, but a complete language system in its own right, with its own systematic rules. This interlanguage gradually develops as learners are exposed to the targeted language. The order in which learners acquire features of their new language stays rem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simultaneous Bilingualism
Simultaneous bilingualism is a form of bilingualism that takes place when a child becomes bilingual by learning two languages from birth. According to Annick De Houwer, in an article in ''The Handbook of Child Language'', simultaneous bilingualism takes place in "children who are regularly addressed in two spoken languages from before the age of two and who continue to be regularly addressed in those languages up until the final stages" of language development. Both languages are acquired as first languages. This is in contrast to sequential bilingualism, in which the second language is learned not as a native language but a foreign language. Prevalence It is estimated that half of the world is functionally bilingual, and the majority of those bilinguals are 'native speakers' of their two languages.Wölck 1987, p. 9. Wölck has pointed out that there are many "native bilingual communities", typically in South America, Africa, and Asia, where "monolingual norms may be unavail ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sequential Bilingualism
Sequential bilingualism occurs when a person becomes bilingualism, bilingual by first learning one language and then another. The process is contrasted with simultaneous bilingualism, in which both languages are learned at the same time. There is variation in the period in which learning must take place for bilingualism to be considered simultaneous. Generally, the term ''sequential bilingualism'' applies only if the child is approximately three years old before being introduced to the second language (L2). Sequential Bilingual Acquisition In contrast to simultaneous bilingualism which occurs within the first year of life, the sequential acquisition of a second language can occur at any age. As the dominant language of bilingual speakers is often the native language or the language used with a higher frequency, the language which is acquired later in life is often weaker. Although this is frequently the case, there are some situations where the language acquired later in life t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Acquisition Device
The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a claim from language acquisition research proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s. The LAD concept is a purported instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. It is a component of the nativist theory of language. This theory asserts that humans are born with the instinct or "innate facility" for acquiring language. The main argument given in favor of the LAD was the argument from the poverty of the stimulus, which argues that unless children have significant innate knowledge of grammar, they would not be able to learn language as quickly as they do, given that they never have access to negative evidence and rarely receive direct instruction in their first language. A summary explaining LAD by Chomsky states that languages are infinite pertaining to the sequence of word forms (strings) and grammar. These word forms organize grammatically correct sequences of words that can be pooled over a limited lex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
