Bilingual speakers cannot suppress activation from their dominant language while naming pictures in a foreign and less dominant language. Previous research has revealed that this cross-langauge activation is manifested through phonological facilitation, semantic interference and between language competition. However, this research is based exclusively on highly proficient bilinguals. The present study investigates cross-linguistic activation in Swedish learners of Spanish, grouped according to their length of Spanish immersion, and one of the groups is in its very inital stages of learning. Participants named pictures in Spanish in two picture-word interference experiments, one with only non-cognates, and one including cognates. This study addresses the following research questions; (1) do the two groups of participants differ significantly from one another in terms of cross-linguistic activation, (2) what does cross-language activation look like in initial stages of L2 acquisition, (3) how does cognate status affect cross-linguistic activation and does this differ between participants depending on length of immersion?
The experiments show that cross-linguistic influence is dependent on length of immersion. The more immersed participants performed very similarly to what is usually the case in highly proficient bilinguals while the less immersed participants did not. The results of the less immersed participants are interpreted as manifestations of lexical processing in initial stages of L2 acquisition. Since this type of learner has never been tested before, there are no previous results to compare to. The results are discussed in relation to the large tradition of offline research which has shown that beginning learners predominantly process their L2 phonologically, and that conceptual processing is something requiring more L2 development.
Furthermore, the cognate word induced longer naming latencies in all participants and it turned out that the cognate words were highly unfamiliar. Hence all participants are sensitive to word frequency effects, and this sensitive is greater in early stages of learning. Finally this study suggests that more research must be conducted to establish cross-linguistic influence between the many languages of multi-lingual subjects, even when these languages may not be present in the testing situation.
Current didactic research stresses the formative aspects of assessment of teaching [1]. Formative assessment is considered to enhance students´ performance when including direct subject guidance through interaction. This is a challenge for teachers working online and exclusively with computer based student interaction. I teach courses in the didactics of Swedish as a second language, and the absolute majority of the students are teachers of Swedish or Swedish as a second language in primary school. The subject of this particular course segment was genre pedagogy and the challenge was to create a self-assessment test that gives the students direct feedback in the form of right answers. Students answer a number of multiple-choice questions and find out immediately whether they have given the right answer. In addition, a short explanation is posted in writing next to the right answer. Using the Blackboard platform for online teaching I wanted to create an online assignment in an attempt to create a learning path. It consists of several multiple-choice and yes/no question linked to. They are interdependent so that students can only proceed to the following question when answering the previous question correctly. Thus, the test features progression and students can be guided along a line of thought. Unfortunately, one of the questions was inadequately conveived and I had to record a short video in which I explained that question. I changed the settings for that particular question so that students could proceed without having to answer correctly, but they had to watch the video before they could go on with the remainder of the test. Interestingly, by giving the wrong answer and benefiting from further explanations about the concept to which that question referred, students later showed a better understanding of that particular concept in comparison with other notions for which they were tested at the exam. This was indicated in the final (summative) assessment and confirmed by the students themselves in their evaluations of the course. This incident has made me reflect upon the importance of the quality of the feedback used in online teaching and assessment. I identify this as one of our main challenges in online teaching and assessment right now.
[1] Giota, Joanna (2006). Självbedöma, bedöma eller döma?: Om elevers motivation, kompetens och prestationer i skolan. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 11(2), 94–115.
Second language academic writing at university level – Benefits of tutoring dialogue
Fifty years of immigration has resulted in a highly multilingual society and today Sweden hosts around 150-200 mother tongues beside Swedish. Teachers and researchers in both mandatory as well as higher education are struggling to find new ways to meet the challenge of teaching students in their second language.
The most significant measure taken at Swedish universities to meet this challenge, has been to implement academic recourse centers and academic text labs where students are offered tutoring by instructors specialized in academic writing. The University of Gävle offers academic text counceling in such a text lab which is visited by students from all subject areas.
We know from prior research that second language learners in higher education struggle with the formal features of academic texts. Research has also established that learning generally benefits from scaffolding and dialogue. But there is very little research on the benefits of tutoring academic text skills through dialogue in higher education.
The present paper focuses on academic texts written by second language learners of Swedish at university level. The data consists of comparison between second language texts before text and after text tutoring. The primary research question concerns which linguistic and textual features are successfully improved in the second version of the text. This study will contribute to our understanding of second language writing tutorship, the nature of qualitative second language writing feedback as well as second language writing development in higher education.
The aim of the present poster board proposal is to introduce new pathways in pedagogy and language in higher education concerning the teaching of Swedish as a foreign language. Five universities in the Baltic-Scandinavian region initiated a project called ”One step toward Sweden”, running from 2013 to 2016, financed by the Nordic Council. The five universities are the University of Daugavpils in Latvia, University of Klaipeda in Lithuania, University of Tallinn in Estonia, Turku University of Applied Science in Finland and University of Gävle in Sweden.
The primary purpose of the project is to develop educational materials for teaching the Swedish language, culture, literature and social life. The material will be developed specifically for young people in the Baltic region among whom the interest for the Swedish language and culture is increasing. Ten chapters will be outlined, centered around themes which are easily accessible for young people, relating to real life situations and containing natural dialogue. All chapters will be associated with a sound file containing natural speech of different speech genres (formal and informal for example). The teaching material will primarily be made accessible digitally, and will be made available free of charge.
A second purpose of the project is to create an innovative network for cooperation within the field of teaching Swedish as a foreign language between the teachers and researchers of the universities participating in the project. The project will stimulate student and teacher mobility and enable the implementation of technology in foreign language teaching.
Humanioras roll är delvis omstridd i dag. Vad har humanistisk forskning för relevans i samhället? Denna antologi rymmer ett brett spektrum av texter som visar att humaniora kan ha flera olika uppgifter i samhället och se ut på varierande sätt. Den traditionella bilden av humaniora håller långsamt på att ersättas av något nytt där en ökad mångfald av perspektiv och en vändning mot det praktiska är två framträdande karakteristika. Inom det humanistiska forskningsfältet, vilket speglas i texterna, påträffas allt från traditionellt kunskapssökande till samhällskritiska studier, vilka uttrycker ett motstånd mot rådande ordningar. I antologin återfinns också, såsom en del av den nyorientering som kan anas, bidrag som berör frågan hur det framtida samhället kan gestaltas.