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23education plays in preparing students to go into the world, it seems clear that there should be a connection between the world and the classroom. Unless education reflects the world in which it exists, it has no relevance for the students." [4.23]
As the popularity of English is expanding day by day and worldwide, the teachers of English feel the need of change in their language teaching methods. Digital technologies can be very essential and flexible helpers of foreign language teachers. Above we analysed the researchers of Min Pun, Kathleen Patrice Gulley and others who investigated several advantages of digital technology in language teaching. According to our consideration, foreign language teachers should use these advantages for improving learners' language skills and managing classes effectively.
REFERENCES
1. Gulley K. Pros and Cons of Computer Technology in the Classroom.- California State University, 2003. - P. 20-21.
2. Guy Posey. The advantages and disadvantages of the virtual classroom and the role of the teacher. - Alabama University, 2005. - P. 12-13.
3. Guy Posey. The advantages and disadvantages of the virtual classroom and the role of the teacher. - Alabama University, 2005. - P. 16 - 17.
4. Gulley K. Pros and Cons of Computer Technology in the Classroom.- California State University, 2003. - P. 23- 24.
A CASE STUDY ON INFANT INTENTIONAL BILINGUAL ACQUISITION1
Anna Hurajova Denisa KraVovicova
Slovak Republic, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Faculty of Mass Media Communication
1. Introduction
In today's society, bilingualism, polylingualism and multilingualism play an important social and cultural role, and in theory, are accessible to the vast majority of population. When taking account that there currently exist about 200 countries in the world and the total number of languages is about five thousand, it is obvious that the number of languages significantly exceeds the number of countries and thus bilingualism or multilingualism is considerably more wide-spread than monolingualism. Therefore, the majority of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual, with monolingual speaker in the minority. In view of how common bilingualism is worldwide, it is important to understand bilingual people and bilingualism.
What has engaged researchers and linguists for a long time, is the question of how to define bilingualism or multilingualism. There is no agreed, common definition of these terms but only many possible definitions, depending mostly on the view of the researchers on types of bilingualism and an ability of an individual to function, at different levels, in more than one language.
Weinreich (1968) in his book Languages in Contact offered probably the most famous definition: "The practice of alternately using two languages will be called bilingualism, and the person involved, bilingual". Bloomfield (1933) added a notion of a certain 'degree of perfection' in bilingualism, characterisig bilingualism as "... native-like control of two languages". Slovak linguist Jozef Stefanik (2000) defines bilingualism as „ an ability of alternative use of two (or more) languages when communicating with others, and depending on a situation and environment in which this communication is taking place, thus characterizing language consciousness of an individual ".
2. Previous work on bilingualism
Most studies on bilingualism are relatively recent considering that the phenomenon of bilingualism is as old as language itself. The first study on the issue of bilingual upbringing was carried out by Ronjat (1913) on his French/German bilingual son Louis. Ronjat concluded that his son's
1 Faculty of Mass Media Communication, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, The Slovak Republic, [email protected], [email protected]
intellectual development was no retarded in any way by his becoming bilingual (Baker, 1998). The most extensive study was conducted by Werner Leopold (1939-49) on his bilingual English/German daughter Hildegard whom he observed up to the age of 15;7 years. His study is not only descriptive, but also visionary. In the period when research had connected bilingualism to lower IQ, he suggested that bilingualism was advantageous for the child (Baker, 1998). Stefanik carried out a study on Slovak/English bilingual upbringing of his daughter Natalia whom he observed up to teenage years and he described her language development in detail, including interferences between the two languages, in his book Jeden clovek, dva jazyky (One person, two languages). He proposed to call the particular type of bilingualism he applied 'intentional', referring to the fact that a parent intentionally chooses to raise his/her child bilingually even if the second language is not their mother tongue (Hurajova, 2011). His study is considered a pioneering study on the issue of intentional bilingualism in Slovakia.
3. L2 acquisition
The field of second language acquisition may be roughly divided into natural acquisition and formally trained L2 acquisition. Natural bilingual language acquisition can be further divided into simultaneous acquisition when a child acquires the two languages at the same time, and sequential acquisition when a child learns one language first and acquires the second language later. Formal second language acquisition means that a person is instructed by a teacher when learning the second language, usually in an educational institution.
Observations on bilingual children who acquired the languages simultaneously frequently find that these children very often go through stages of language mixing, they do not separate the languages nor do they associate them with the specific person. Some authors, however, claim that children differentiate the two linguistic systems from the very beginning and that the process of language acquisition is basically the same for bilinguals as it is for monolinguals (Bergman, 1976; Padilla and Lindholm, 1984). When comparing natural and formal language acquisition, the former being much more successful at mastering an additional language than the formal process.
4. Early bilingualism as a chance
Although bilingualism is a widespread phenomenon, it still raises a lot of questions. Does being a bilingual have any negative consequences on an individual's personality and development? There is evidence that bringing up children bilingually need not involve any risks. Where any negative consequences have been observed it usually has much more to do with social, personal, cultural or other factors rather than with the process itself of becoming or being bilingual. Despite the fact that the research into bilingualism has proceeded rapidly over the last four decades, many prejudices and incorrect opinions still persist in the society, partly as a result of insufficient knowledge of bilingualism and premature conclusions, and partly as a result of very little knowledge of public about the issue of bilingualism.
Currently, it is not proven that there is a critical period for language acquisition, but there is a host of evidence that second language learning is more difficult for older learners. Based on the reasoning that young children learn a second language with ease, a conclusion may be made that learning of L2 should start as early as possible.
Among the most common prejudices against bilingualism concerning negative consequences of becoming/being bilingual on an individual's personality and development are as follows (Hurajova, 2012):
- slower speech development
- handicap in intellectual progress (adverse effect on an individual's intelligence)
- bilingual children's bad performance at school and their underachieving
- it triggers schizophrenia
- it causes stuttering
- it causes cultural disorientation
- bilinguals can have a deficit in vocabulary when compared with monolinguals
Due to restricted space, this article does not provide a comprehensive description of the results of the latest research concerning the below mentioned assumptions.
However, there is now increasing evidence that bilingualism can confer benefits like communication, cultural, cognitive, character, social and economic improvement of the individual (Hurajova, 2012). Bilinguals are also said to have increased metalinguistic awareness.
5. How to raise children bilingually?
Raising children to be bilingual is an important decision which can considerably and irreversibly affect their lives (and their parents' lives). Shortly, being bilingual may affect an individual's identity, education, employment, marriage, way of thinking and intelligence. The question remains, how to
produce a bilingual child in family environment. Baker (2000) mentions three main strategies used by parents to raise a child to become bilingual. They are as follows:
Strategy 1: Each parent speaks a different language to the child. This is often called the 'one-person-one-language ' strategy (OPOL strategy).
Strategy 2: The parents speak one language to the child who acquired a second language outside the home. This often occurs in language minority situations.
Strategy 3: Both parents speak both languages to the child.
Aspects that are considered to be important for a successful bilingual upbringing are: parental input should be natural, parents should stick to the one-person-one-language approach and language mixing should be avoided because it confuses the child.
The particular kind of family bilingualism where one of a child's languages is learned from a parent who is not a native speaker of the language is described below in this paper. Natural bilingualism is merely imitated. This type of bilingualism is referred to as artificial bilingualism, the notion introduced by Kielhofer and Jonekeit in 1983. This older notion 'artificial' evokes something unnatural and abnormal and expresses a point of view of people who are not members of the family. From this reason, Stefanik proposes to call this particular type of bilingualism ,intentional', referring to the fact that a parent intentionally chooses to raise his/her child bilingually even if the second language is not their mother tongue. Some psycholinguists have a negative attitude to this kind of bilingualism, claiming that all similar experiments they have expereienced, failed, and consider it doomed to failure. However, many successful research studies have proven these opinions to be far from the truth. Many people wonder why parents should immerse their children in a language other than their mother tongue claiming that they consciously steer a child's language development in unnatural and even dangerous way.
6. A case study on infant intentional bilingual acquisition
This study is under child bilingualism. This study looks closely at acquisition of child bilingualism in English and Slovak of a Slovak boy - Henrich (aged 12). From birth, he has been addressed with two languages - English and Slovak. English is spoken to him by his mother and Slovak by his father. Mother has chosen the above mentioned "one-person-one-language" method and she has been using exclusively English when speaking to him. However, English is not her mother tongue, so this approach falls into category of intentional bilingualism.
The aim of this modest research is to observe bilingualism development of Henrich (12), specifically to find answer to the research question stated below. Considering the fact, that this research is a qualitative one, the research question was stated as follows: Which factors influence the level of language knowledge of bilingual children in linguistically mixed families?. Data was collected from Henrich for three months. We used the method of case study which we consider suitable for this type of research especially from the reason that we did not intend to make a statistical survey or collect rigid data; on the contrary, our aim was an intensive analysis of the two bilingual children and their parents, the events or decisions in the family. Data was collected by method of direct observation of bilingual upbringing in the chosen family and by method of interview with the children (open, semi-structured interviews). Besides observing the bilingual family, the data was written down in a notebook and later saved in a computer. For the sake of our research, only the most interesting and most important data for us were taken into account.
Son Henrich is a boy, aged 12. He has been brought up in Slovak environment, with all extended family speaking Slovak to him and Slovak is his mother tongue. Since he was born, his mother has been talking to him exclusively in English, using "one-person-one-language method". His bilingualism can be labelled as intentional. As a result, Henrich has reached a very high level of English in speaking and listening, accordingly to his age. According to the fact that he is able to use English also in emotionally difficult situations we tend to believe that English is his second mother tongue. At present he attends the sixth grade of a Slovak elementary school. As his mother spent most time with him by the age of three (before visiting the kindergarten), English was his dominant language. His father used only Slovak when talking to him. It was a usual habit in the family to read books in English with Henrich and his younger sister Veronika and they both loved the books and Henrich learnt many rhymes or simple stories by heart. He did not only understand the plot but was also able to ask questions in English as well as answer those his mother asked him. If he did not seem to understand some English words, his mother tried to describe them in a simpler way. She also patiently simplified the plot sentence by sentence. Besides this, his mother spoke exclusively English to him, she read him books in English, they watched DVDs in English and listened to English CDs. At that time, she was consistent and persistent in using English with him. His English was fluent and his vocabulary really broad. He had no difficulties in listening to authentic English recordings. Henrich strictly separated the two languages, used them in different
situations and almost no interferences (on morphological, lexical and syntactical level) occurred. The situation did not change radically even after his younger sister Veronika was born. As he started attending elementary school, he spent most of his time in Slovak environment which resulted in less frequent use of English language.
As time passed, and currently being a 12-year old boy, his use of English is minimal and Slovak has become his dominant language. His vocabulary in English has narrowed down and when addressed in English, he starts using it immediately.
7. Results of the research
From this qualitative research, it is found that the following factors influence the level of language knowledge of bilingual children in a linguistically mixed family:
- Children acquire a language they are exposed to since their infancy. The research shows that children could speak better that language of the parent who spends more time with them. Since they start attend a kindergarten or a school and they get influenced by this environment, the proportion of level of the languages changed in favour of the language prevailing in the environment.
- The level of language knowledge is influenced by the age of the children, their maturity and language aptitude, the approach and persistence of their parents and, last but not least, by support of siblings of the family. To learn more about how sibling affect the language balance in the family, see (Obied, 2009).
- If parents want to communicate with their children in a language that is not their mother tongue, they must acquire this language at a very high level. Nevertheless, their children may have certain difficulties (phonetics, morphology, syntax, uncertainty in verbal expression). In short, we found a certain influence of the fact that the second language is not parents' mother tongue on the children's level of language knowledge.
- Although reading books, watching TV, DVDs and listening to CDs cannot substitute for everyday contact with native speakers, they considerably influence the level of children's knowledge in a positive way (broadening of vocabulary, improvement of productive skills - mainly speaking, children get used to listening to different articulation and intonation).
- Short- or long-time stay in a country where the second language is spoken helps children realize the necessity of learning foreign languages, which fosters their motivation to further acquisition of the language.
- The motivation of parents plays an important role in intentional bilingual upbringing of their children. Parents choose to raise their children bilingually depending on their level of education, the level of a second-language knowledge and to some extent social prestige of the language.
- Consistent following of the "one-person-one-level" strategy, alongside with the parents' persistence have an important influence on the children's bilingual language development. Opportunities of the family to travel, communicate with native speakers, access to literature in English only support children's acquired knowledge of the language, they do not substitute for direct language contact.
8. Reccommendations for further research
Based on the described research and the authors' findings, the following topics are provided for future research in intentional bilingual upbringing of children:
1. To discover and describe the reasons for weaker performance in the foreign language of bilingual schoolchildren and/or schoolchildren in puberty.
2. To test language abilities of intentionally bilingual children in various ways such as language production when telling a story, language production on demand or translation
3. To check correlation between language aptitude and the efficiency of bilingual L2 acquisition.
REFERENCES
1. Weinreich, Uri. 1968. Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. The Hague: Mouton. [Originally published as Publications of the Linguistic Circle of New York, no. 1, 1953]
2. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehard and Winston.
3. Stefanik, Jozef. 2000. Jeden clovek, dva jazyky. Bratislava: Academic Electronic Press.
4. Baker, Colin, and Jones Prys, Sylvia. 1998. Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Multilingual Matters Ltd.
5. Baker, Colin. 2000. A Parents'and Teachers'Guide to Bilingualism. Multilingual Matters
Ltd.
6. Obied, Vicky. 2009. "How Do Siblings Shape the Language Environment in Bilingual Families?". Int. Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Volume 12, Issue 6, Nov. 2009 — pp. 705-720.
7. Hurajova, Anna. 2011."Slovak-English bilingual upbringing of children using the method of intentional bilingualism (a case study)". Studia Germanica et Romanica. Inozemni movi. Zarubizna literatura. Metodika vikladannja. vol. 8, no. 2(23) . Donetsk, Ukraine. pp.131-143.
8. Hurajova, Anna. 2012. "Bilingualism - blessing or curse? Some considerations concerning the possible negative effects of bilingualism and prejudices against bilingualism". Humanities Across the Boarders: collection of papers / editors-in-chief: O.L. Byessonova, N.I. Panasenko; reviewers: A. Böhmerova, S.I. Potapenko.- Donetsk: Donetsk National University, University of SS Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, pp. 206-221.
9. Bergman, Coral Rhodes. 1976. "Interference vs. Independent Development in Infant Bilingualism". Bilingualism in the Bicentennial and Beyond. New York: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, pp. 86-96.
10. Padilla, Amado M., and Lindholm Leary, Kathryn. 1984. "Child Bilingualism: The Same Old Issues Revisited". Chicano Psychology, pp. 369-408.
DER EINSATZ DER ARBEITSFORM "AQUARIUM" IM DAF-UNTERRICHT IN DER UKRAINE
Dr. Phil. Halytska O. B.
Ukraine, Luzk, Fakultät für Fremdsprachen, Osteuropäische Lesja-Ukrainka-Nationaluniversität
Abstract. This article deals with the praxis research project in Ukraine. The main objective of the practice-oriented research is to reflect and document the development of my own praxis by using of the fishbowl in German language course for adults. This teaching strategy helps the participants being contributors and listeners in a discussion. This article explains the process of my praxis research project, including formulation of a research question, data collection and analysis, and writing up my findings.
Keywords: fishbowl, praxis research project, teacher research, action research.
Bereits vor 100 Jahren hat sich der amerikanische Pädagoge und Philosoph John Dewey sehr intensiv mit der forschenden Haltung von Lehrenden beschäftigt. Er kann als Begründer dessen gelten, was wir heute als Handlungsforschung bzw. Lehrerforschung bezeichnen (s. [1]). Darunter versteht man eine Forschungsform, in der LehrerInnen ihre Praxis mit dem Ziel untersuchen, diese besser zu verstehen und zu optimieren. Lehrerforschung kann man sich am besten als Spirale vorstellen: Alltagsproblem, Untersuchungsfrage, Ermittlung des Ist-Zustandes, Plan für Erprobung und Untersuchung, Vermutungen über Wirkungen, Durchführen des Plans und Sammeln von Daten, Auswertung und Reflexion, Diskussion mit Kolleginnen und Kollegen, neuer Versuch. Handlung und Reflexion lösen einander ab und durchdringen sich [3, S. 158]. Das Praxiserkundungsprojekt (weiter -PEP) ist ein zentrales Instrument der Lehrerforschung. Mit dem PEP versuchte ich 2016 einen für mich wichtigen und interessanten Aspekt der eigenen Praxis - Diskussion - zu erkunden.
Im folgenden Beitrag soll gezeigt werden, inwieweit - unter Beachtung eben genannter Aspekte -die Arbeitsform "Aquarium" im DaF-Unterricht mit ukrainischen Lernenden auf Anfangerniveau anzuwenden ist und was dabei eventuell zu beachten ist. Ideen und Impulse für meinen PEP kamen aus dem Fortbildungsseminar zum Thema "Aufgaben, Übungen und Interaktion: DLL 4" (Seminarleiterin: Christiane Bolte-Costabiei, Veranstalter: Goethe-Institut Kiew (22.02.-24.02.2016)).
Da ich mich auf die Situation meiner jeweiligen Lerngruppe bezog, war meine Lehrerforschung insofern kontextbezogen. Ich habe bemerkt, dass in meinem Unterricht die Podiumsdiskussion nicht gut funktioniert (meistens sprechen dann immer die gleichen, denen das Sprechen sowieso leicht fallt.). In DLL-Einheit 4 "Aufgaben, Übungen, Interaktion" habe ich erfahren, dass die Arbeitsform "Aquarium" die Aufmerksamkeit und Beteiligung bei Diskussionen erhöht (s. [2, S. 98]). Aus diesem Grund wollte ich diesen Aspekt des Unterrichts untersuchen, der mir persönlich wichtig und für mich neu war.
