Ludo Th Verhoeven

Hendrik Boeschoten

Proceedings of the Third Conference on Turkish Linguistics

Studies on Modern Turkish

Guus Extra

Paperback. In this volume recent studies on bilingual development will be presented. Previous studies on bilingual development give no reason to believe that the process of language acquisition in bilinguals and monolinguals is different in its basic features. The essential difference is that bilingual children are confronted with two sets of input and that they have the additional task of distinguishing the two language systems. However, the very complex process of learning to separate two different languages is still poorly understood. It remains unclear what sort of operating principles children use while acquiring two languages at the same time. It is also unclear under what conditions processes of language transfer and code mixing occur. Moreover, most of the studies that have been conducted so far were limited in their scope, given the fact that the languages under consideration were highly related. In the present volume the simultaneous or successi

The Cross-linguistic Study of Bilingual Development

Sven Strömqvist

Relating Events in Narrative, Volume 2: Typological and Contextual Perspectives edited by Sven Strömqvist and Ludo Verhoeven, is the much anticipated follow-up volume to Ruth Berman and Dan Slobin's successful "frog-story studies" book, Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study (1994). Working closely with Ruth Berman and Dan Slobin, the new editors have brought together a wide range of scholars who, inspired by the 1994 book, have all used Mercer Mayer's Frog, Where Are You? as a basis for their research. The new book, which is divided into two parts, features a broad linguistic and cultural diversity. Contributions focusing on crosslinguistic perspectives make up the first part of the book. This part is concluded by Dan Slobin with an analysis and overview discussion of factors of linguistic typology in frog-story research. The second part offers a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, all dealing with contextual variation of narrative construction in a wide sense: variation across medium/modality (speech, writing, signing), genre variation (the specific frog story narrative compared to other genres), frog story narrations from the perspective of theory of mind, and from the perspective of bilingualism and second language acquisition. Several of the contributions to the new book manuscript also deal with developmental perspectives, but, in distinction to the 1994 book, that is not the only focused issue. The second part is initiated by Ruth Berman with an analysis of the role of context in developing narrative abilities. The new book represents a rich overview and illustration of recent advances in theoretical and methodological approaches to the crosslinguistic study of narrative discourse. A red thread throughout the book is that crosslinguistic variation is not merely a matter of variation in form, but also in content and aspects of cognition. A recurrent perspective on language and thought is that of Dan Slobin's theory of "thinking for speaking," an approach to cognitive consequences of linguistic diversity. The book ends with an epilogue by Herbert Clark, "Variations on a Ranarian Theme."

Relating Events in Narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives

The focus of this book is on immigrant groups and immigrant languages with a recent or earlier background of migration to industrialized countries in Western and Northern Europe. After presenting some basic concepts in the area of language and immigration, the book focuses on demographic statistics of immigrant groups in European Community countries and Scandinavia, and on research in the field of immigrant language varieties.

Immigrant Languages in Europe

Carsten Elbro

Pieter Reitsma

The purpose of this volume is to present recent research in the field of the acquisition of functional literacy and its precursors. The volume aims to capture the state of the art in this rapidly expanding field. An attempt is made to clarify the vague and often inconsistent definitions of functional literacy from the perspective of development. Cognitive, linguistic, educational, and social factors of literacy development are all taken into account. The volume consists of three subsequent parts. The first part goes into phonological precursors of literacy development. In this part the focus is on the development of early language precursors of of reading and writing. The cultural foundations of these precursors are explored, and their links with reading development are dealt with in detail. Different psycholinguistic approaches are also proposed to explain the occurrence of literacy problems. In the second part, the scope is on the constraints of reading and writing efficiency at the word level and beyond. The acquisition of reading and writing is seen as a result from the interaction between phonological, orthographic, and semantic processes. A crosslinguistic perspective is taken on the role of writing system factors in the acquisition of literacy skills. The final part deals with the role of social and educational factors in literacy acquisition. Starting from a crosscultural perspective, the central issue is how the attainment of functional literacy is dependent on sociocultural variation. The predictors of more advanced levels of literacy development are considered, including foreign language literacy and adult literacy.

Precursors of Functional Literacy

Charles K. Kinzer

Interactive Literacy Education combines the latest research and theory related to technology-based instructional design for children’s literacy development. It shows how technology can be used to build literacy learning environments that are compatible with students’ cognitive and social processes. Topics addressed throughout this enlightening work include: *technology environments and applications that preservice teachers can use with young children; *detailed information regarding the development and implementation of specific technological programs; and *various technologies, from interactive reading and spelling programs to speech recognition to multimedia, that teachers can use to enhance their literacy learning environments. Interactive Literacy Education is intended for graduate courses in methods of literacy instruction; educational technology; curriculum/curriculum design; general preservice education; special education; and applied psychology/cognitive studies. It is also appropriate for use as a supplement in undergraduate courses in methods of literacy instruction and educational technology.

Facilitating Literacy Environments Through Technology

Interactive Literacy Education

In this volume, the results of a number of empirical studies of the development of narrative construction within a multilingual context are presented and discussed. It is explored what operating principles underlie the process of narrative production in L1 and L2. Developmental relations between form and function will be studied across a broad range of functional categories, such as temporality, perspective, connectivity, and narrative coherence. Moreover, a variety of language contact situations is considered with broad variation in the typological distances between the languages in order to enable cross-linguistic comparison. The analysis of learner data in various cross-linguistic settings may thus offer new information on the role of the structural properties of unrelated languages on the process of narrative acquisition. In the present volume, an attempt is also made to find out how transfer from one language to the other is facilitated. Finally, the effects of input on narrative construction in children's first and second language are examined in several studies.

Ludo Th Verhoeven

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