Language proficiency

In the late 1960s, Singapore government introduced a bilingual education policy. Mother Tongue languages such as Mandarin, Malay and Tamil are known to be the students’ second language in Singapore. It is mandatory for each student to take up at least one second language. However according to an online news "Much Ado About Mother Tongue", students have not been coping well with their Mother Tongue language over the past years. Instead, the students are excelling in other subjects such as…

Critical Thinking and Language Teaching As mentioned above, one of the advantages of critical thinking is its flexible and multifaceted nature, which allows for adaptation of critical thinking nearly in every educational discipline. Language learning, in this regard, has open spaces for critical thinking, especially in learning second languages. In fact, there is a huge number of single empirical studies supporting the positive effects critical thinking has on second/foreign language learning,…

Students experience language or are exposed to language uses either by native or non-native speakers. In this educational context, students come across the spoken English Language through listening activities run in class or by the interaction with the EFL Teacher. In this session representative, samples of the listening tasks of the coursebook of 3rd grade Think Teen will be reviewed in terms of the criteria set by Rost (2002, p.160-181). In particular, the listening tasks under scope derive…

that have identical phonology across languages but different meanings. An example is /more/ which means “peacock” in Hindi and pronounced as “more” in English. Bilingualism is commonly defined as the use of at least two languages by an individual (ASHA, 2004). It is a fluctuating system in children and adults whereby use of and proficiency in two languages may change depending on the opportunities to use the languages and exposure to other users of the languages. It is a dynamic and fluid…

the words automatically and as we grow up and go to school, we develop our speaking ability by expanding our knowledge of the language and we learn writing as well. Both Speaking and writing are essential to communicate with others, and, in any language, there are different registers used by its speakers. These registers vary based on our age, proficiency of the language and the environment. The way we speak and write is also affected by the situation, the people in the situation, and our…

associate with increase language and reading proficiency. (Patton Terry, N., McDonald Connor, C., Petscher, Y., Ross Conlin, C. 2012) It was concluded through this study that children were able to increase MAE production, which lead to greater reading gains from 1st grade to 2nd grade. (Patton Terry, N. et. al). Studies such as this one suggest that there is an advantage in implementing MAE curriculum to students who us a NMAE in order to increase their overall academic proficiency. However,…

art, Patchameena, to articulate language barriers, and also let audiences to be personally on the scene and feel the barrier. Lucio Pozzi was also not born in America, but Milan, Italy, and he immigrated to the United States in 1962 as a guest of Kissinger’s Harvard International Summer Seminar. Patchameena was performed in th CR10 Contemporary Arts Center, where Lucio gave a speech using nonsensial gibberish and fake languages, attached with abundant body languages, gestures, emotional changes,…

1 Imagine that you are responsible for admitting students to an English language school. Design a simple interview based on 20 personal questions for the student about his job, family, school or country. Begin with simple grammar and vocabulary and develop more complexity by the conclusion. This is to follow the school´s placement test to confirm its results. 1. What is your name and how old are you? 2. What country do you come from? 3. How long have you been in this country? 4. Did you come to…

Much research showed the benefits of bilingualism in many aspects. The most important benefit is bilingual children can use languages for traveling, learning the other culture, making new friends, and working. Bilinguals have better social understanding than monolinguals. Also, bilinguals show cognitive advantages. Research showed bilinguals have a little better performance than monolinguals on tasks that involve switching between activities and inhibiting previous learned responses (Bialystok,…

Maintaining Spanish as a Heritage Language in Australia Stephanie Natolo, Griffith University, Australia Abstract: Heritage language maintenance in Australia faces great challenges. In Australia, English is the dominant official language de facto, whilst Spanish is a community language. Spanish is primarily learnt and used in the home with parents and other family members, however, English holds power via hegemonic means, and is used in a multiplicity of domains. This paper presents an…