Search results for: language tasks

Authors: Wajiha Fatima

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Various approaches and methods for second language classroom teaching have been proposed since the nineteenth century. Task Based Language Teaching has been prevailing approach in a second language classroom context. It is an approach which immerses students in a naturalistic setting. Tasks are the core unit of planning and instruction. This paper aims at expounding the concept of Task Based Language Teaching and how it has been evolved. In this study, researcher will highlight the usefulness of TBLT and the role it played as a powerful tool for learning and teaching in a second language setting. The article will reflect the implementation of various tasks based activities as well as the roles played by learners and teachers and the problems faced by them. In the end, researcher will discuss how TBLT can be implemented in second language classroom pedagogy.

Keywords: implementation, second language classroom, tasks, task based language teaching

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Authors: L. Freeborn

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Recent years have seen an increasing number of neuroimaging studies related to language learning as imaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG have become more widely accessible to researchers. By using a variety of structural and functional neuroimaging techniques, these studies have already made considerable progress in terms of our understanding of neural networks and processing related to first and second language acquisition. However, the methodological designs employed in neuroimaging studies to test language learning have been questioned by applied linguists working within the field of second language acquisition (SLA). One of the major criticisms is that tasks designed to measure language learning gains rarely have a communicative function, and seldom assess learners’ ability to use the language in authentic situations. This brings the validity of many neuroimaging tasks into question. The fundamental reason why people learn a language is to communicate, and it is well-known that both first and second language proficiency are developed through meaningful social interaction. With this in mind, the SLA field is in agreement that second language acquisition and proficiency should be measured through learners’ ability to communicate in authentic real-life situations. Whilst authenticity is not always possible to achieve in a classroom environment, the importance of task authenticity should be reflected in the design of language assessments, teaching materials, and curricula. Tasks that bear little relation to how language is used in real-life situations can be considered to lack construct validity. This paper first describes the typical tasks used in neuroimaging studies to measure language gains and proficiency, then analyses to what extent these tasks can validly assess these constructs.

Keywords: neuroimaging studies, research design, second language acquisition, task validity

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Authors: Sinan Serkan Çağlı

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This study explores the effectiveness of incorporating storytelling tasks into language acquisition programs for young learners. The research investigates how storytelling, as a pedagogical tool, can contribute to the enhancement of language acquisition skills in children. Drawing upon relevant literature and empirical data, this article examines the impact of storytelling on vocabulary development, comprehension, and overall language proficiency in early childhood education in Turkey. The study adopts a qualitative approach, including classroom observations and interviews with teachers and students. Findings suggest that storytelling tasks not only foster linguistic competence but also stimulate cognitive and socio-emotional development in young learners. Additionally, the article explores various storytelling techniques and strategies suitable for different age groups. It is evident that integrating storytelling tasks into language learning environments can create engaging and effective opportunities for young learners to acquire language skills in a natural and enjoyable way. This research contributes valuable insights into the pedagogical practices that promote language acquisition in early childhood, emphasizing the significance of storytelling as a powerful educational tool, especially in Turkey for EFL students.

Keywords: storytelling, language acquisition, young learners, early childhood education, pedagogy, language proficiency

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Authors: Bowen Ding, Yihao Kuang

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In recent years, large-scale pre-trained language models have achieved state-of-the-art performance on a variety of natural language processing tasks. The word vectors produced by these language models can be viewed as dense encoded presentations of natural language that in text form. However, it is unknown how much linguistic information is encoded and how. In this paper, we construct several corresponding probing tasks for multiple linguistic information to clarify the encoding capabilities of different language models and performed a visual display. We firstly obtain word presentations in vector form from different language models, including BERT, ELMo, RoBERTa and GPT. Classifiers with a small scale of parameters and unsupervised tasks are then applied on these word vectors to discriminate their capability to encode corresponding linguistic information. The constructed probe tasks contain both semantic and syntactic aspects. The semantic aspect includes the ability of the model to understand semantic entities such as numbers, time, and characters, and the grammatical aspect includes the ability of the language model to understand grammatical structures such as dependency relationships and reference relationships. We also compare encoding capabilities of different layers in the same language model to infer how linguistic information is encoded in the model.

Keywords: language models, probing task, text presentation, linguistic information

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Authors: T. Ito, K. Kawaguchi, R. Ohta

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The purpose of this study is to provide a guideline to assist globally-minded companies in developing task-based English-language programs for their employees. After conducting an online self-assessment questionnaire comprised of 45 job-related tasks, we analyzed responses received from 3,000 Japanese company employees and developed a checklist that considered three areas: (i) the percentage of those who need to accomplish English-language tasks in their workplace (need for English), (ii) a five-point self-assessment score (task performance level), and (iii) the impact of previous task experience on perceived performance (experience factor). The 45 tasks were graded according to five proficiency levels. Our results helped us to create a core guideline that may assist companies in two ways: first, in helping determine which tasks employees with a certain English proficiency should be able to satisfactorily carry out, and secondly, to quickly prioritize which business-related English skills they would need in future English language programs.

Keywords: business settings, can-do statements, English language training programs, self-assessment, task experience

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Authors: Prathiksha Kamath, Pratibha Jamkhandi, Prateek Ghanti, Priyanshu Gupta, M. Lakshmi Neelima

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Combining Image Captioning and Visual Question Answering (VQA) tasks have emerged as a new and exciting research area. The image captioning task involves generating a textual description that summarizes the content of the image. VQA aims to answer a natural language question about the image. Both these tasks include computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) and require a deep understanding of the content of the image and semantic relationship within the image and the ability to generate a response in natural language. There has been remarkable growth in both these tasks with rapid advancement in deep learning. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of recent progress in combining image captioning and visual question-answering (VQA) tasks. We first discuss both image captioning and VQA tasks individually and then the various ways in which both these tasks can be integrated. We also analyze the challenges associated with these tasks and ways to overcome them. We finally discuss the various datasets and evaluation metrics used in these tasks. This paper concludes with the need for generating captions based on the context and captions that are able to answer the most likely asked questions about the image so as to aid the VQA task. Overall, this review highlights the significant progress made in combining image captioning and VQA, as well as the ongoing challenges and opportunities for further research in this exciting and rapidly evolving field, which has the potential to improve the performance of real-world applications such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, and image search.

Keywords: image captioning, visual question answering, deep learning, natural language processing

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Authors: Fernanda Goulart, Rita de Cássia Barbirato

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Task-based language teaching has received attention among researchers as it has been pointed out with the potential to provide more significant opportunities for using the target language and therefore generate successful language acquisition. Nevertheless, in the Brazilian context, few studies have analyzed the potential of tasks in English language acquisition. There is also a need for textbooks to meet the needs of Brazilian students. This work is part of doctoral research in its initial phase. It aims to demonstrate and discuss thematic textbook samples on tasks designed to be applied among high school and undergraduate students in a public technological educational context in São Paulo State, Brazil. It is a qualitative study. The data collection process for course design and textbook development initially included a survey administered to 159 students. Questions related to students’ English background knowledge, main learning interests, and needs. Most students reported difficulties communicating in English and showed a strong interest in a communicative English course. The theme “Cultural diversity” was chosen among other options provided. The textbook was then designed and comprised nine task cycles divided into four sequences. Cycles were composed of pre-tasks, tasks, and post-tasks. The main findings of this first phase of the research revealed that designing a task-based textbook is not easy and requires the necessary steps and lots of effort to meet students’ language needs. Several revisions were needed before the conclusion of the final version of the textbook. The material will be further applied in a three-month English course. In this presentation, we hope to contribute to discussions in research on task-based teaching. Also, we intend to support teachers with their knowledge of tasks and thematic material development in this field.

Keywords: task-based language teaching, language acquisition, English language teaching, task cycles

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Authors: Sherri Franklin-Guy

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The emergence of language in young children has been well-documented and play-based activities that support its continued development have been utilized in the clinic-based setting. Speech-language pathologists have long used such activities to stimulate the production of language in children with speech and language disorders via modeling and elicitation tasks. This presentation will examine the importance of play in the development of language in young children, including social and pragmatic communication. Implications for clinicians and educators will be discussed.

Keywords: language development, language stimulation, play-based activities, symbolic play

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Authors: Dinesh Kumar Yadav

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Short stories for language development are deeply rooted elsewhere in any language syllabus. Its relevance is manifold. The short stories have the power to take the students to the target culture directly from the classroom. It works as a crucial factor in enhancing language skills in different ways. This article is an outcome of an experimental study conducted for a month on the 12th graders where they were engaged in different creative and critical-thinking activities along with various tasks that ranged from knowledge level to application level. The sole purpose was to build up their confidence in speaking in the classroom as well as develop all their language skills simultaneously. With the start of the class in August 2021, the students' speaking skill and their confidence in speaking in the class was tested. The test was abruptly followed by a presentation of a short story from their culture. The students were engaged in different tasks related to the story. The PowerPoint slides, handouts with the story, and tasks on photocopy were used as tools whenever needed. A one-month class exclusively on speaking skills through sharing stories was found to be very helpful in developing confidence in the learners. The result was very satisfactory. A large number of students became responsive in the class. The proficiency level was not satisfactory; however, their effort to speak in class showed a very positive sign in language development.

Keywords: short stories, relevance, language enhancement, language proficiency

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Authors: Kuei-Hao Li, Eden Huang

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Motivation suggests the willingness one person has towards taking action. Learners’ motivation has frequently been regarded as the most crucial factor in successful language acquisition. Without sufficient motivation, learners cannot achieve long-term learning goals despite remarkable abilities. Therefore, the study aims to investigate motivation of interaction tasks designed by the researchers for college EFL learners in Travel English class in virtual reality environment, integrating CUE model, Cognition, Usage and Expansion in the course. Thirty college learners were asked to join the virtual language learning website designed by the researchers. Data was collected via feedback questionnaire, interview, and learner interactions. The findings indicated that the course in the CUE model in language learning website of virtual reality environment was effective at motivating EFL learners and improving their oral communication and social interactions in the learning process. Some pedagogical implications are also provided in helping both language instructors and EFL learners in virtual reality environment.

Keywords: motivation, virtual reality, virtual language learning, second language acquisition

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Authors: Yinheng Li

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The remarkable advancements in large language models (LLMs) have brought about significant improvements in natural language processing tasks. This paper presents a comprehensive review of in-context learning techniques, focusing on different types of prompts, including discrete, continuous, few-shot, and zero-shot, and their impact on LLM performance. We explore various approaches to prompt design, such as manual design, optimization algorithms, and evaluation methods, to optimize LLM performance across diverse tasks. Our review covers key research studies in prompt engineering, discussing their methodologies and contributions to the field. We also delve into the challenges faced in evaluating prompt performance, given the absence of a single ”best” prompt and the importance of considering multiple metrics. In conclusion, the paper highlights the critical role of prompt design in harnessing the full potential of LLMs and provides insights into the combination of manual design, optimization techniques, and rigorous evaluation for more effective and efficient use of LLMs in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks.

Keywords: in-context learning, prompt engineering, zero-shot learning, large language models

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Authors: Narges Farokhshad, Milad Molazadeh, Saman Jamalabbasi, Hamed Babaei Giglou, Saeed Bibak

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The Persian language is an inflectional subject-object-verb language. This fact makes Persian a more uncertain language. However, using techniques such as Zero-Width Non-Joiner (ZWNJ) recognition, punctuation restoration, and Persian Ezafe construction will lead us to a more understandable and precise language. In most of the works in Persian, these techniques are addressed individually. Despite that, we believe that for text refinement in Persian, all of these tasks are necessary. In this work, we proposed a ViraPart framework that uses embedded ParsBERT in its core for text clarifications. First, used the BERT variant for Persian followed by a classifier layer for classification procedures. Next, we combined models outputs to output cleartext. In the end, the proposed model for ZWNJ recognition, punctuation restoration, and Persian Ezafe construction performs the averaged F1 macro scores of 96.90%, 92.13%, and 98.50%, respectively. Experimental results show that our proposed approach is very effective in text refinement for the Persian language.

Keywords: Persian Ezafe, punctuation, ZWNJ, NLP, ParsBERT, transformers

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Authors: Nurah Saleh Alfares

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An aim of TS in EFL is to help learners to understand how they learn, which could help them in using the target language with other learners in language classrooms, and in their social life. The early researchers have criticised the system of teaching methods in EFL applied in Saudi schools, as they claim that it does not produce students who are highly proficient in English. Some of them suggested that enhancing learners’ TS would help to improve the learners’ proficiency of using the EFL. The textbook in Saudi schools is the central material for teachers to follow in the EFL classroom. Thus, this study is investigating the main issues that could promote TS in Saudi EFL: the textbook and the teachers. The purposes of the study are: to find out the extent to which the tasks in the textbook have the potential to support teachers in promoting TS; to discover insights into the nature of classroom activities that teachers use to encourage TS from the textbook and to explore the teachers’ views on the role of the textbook in promoting TS in the English language. These aims will improve understanding of the connection between the potential of the textbook content and the participants’ theoretical knowledge and their teaching practice. The investigation employed research techniques including the following: (1) analysis of the textbook; (2) questionnaire for EFL teachers; (3) observation for EFL classroom; (4) interviews with EFL teachers. Analysis of the third intermediate grade textbook has been undertaken, and six EFL teachers from five intermediate schools were involved in the study. Data analysis revealed that 36.71 % of the tasks in the textbook could have the potential to promote TS, and 63.29 % of the tasks in the textbook could not have the potential to promote TS. Therefore, the result of the textbook analysis showed that the majority of the tasks do not have the potential to help teachers to promote TS. Although not all teachers of the observed lessons displayed behaviour helpful to promote TS, teachers, who presented potential TS tasks in their lesson encouraged learners’ interaction and students’ engagement more than teachers who presented tasks that did not have the potential to promote TS. Therefore, the result of the teachers’ data showed that having a textbook that has the potential to promote TS is not enough to develop teaching TS in Saudi EFL since teachers’ behaviour could make the task more or less productive.

Keywords: English as a Foreign Language, metacognitive skills, textbook, thinking skills

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Authors: Nouf Aljohani

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The research project described in this presentation focuses on designing and evaluating oral tasks related to students’ needs and levels to foster communication and negotiation of meaning for a group of female Saudi university students. The significance of the current research project lies in its contribution to determining the usefulness of synchronous technology-mediated interactive group discussion in improving different speaking strategies through using synchronous technology. Also, it discovers how to optimize learning outcomes, expand evaluation for online learning tasks and engaging students’ experience in evaluating synchronous interactive tools and tasks. The researcher used SpeakApps, a synchronous technology, that allows the students to practice oral interaction outside the classroom. Such a course of action was considered necessary due to low English proficiency among Saudi students. According to the author's knowledge, the main factor that causes poor speaking skills is that students do not have sufficient time to communicate outside English language classes. Further, speaking and listening course contents are not well designed to match the Saudi learning context. The methodology included designing speaking tasks to match the educational setting; a CALL framework for designing and evaluating tasks; participant involvement in evaluating these tasks in each online session; and an investigation of the factors that led to the successful implementation of Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) and using SpeakApps. The analysis and data were drawn from the technology acceptance model surveys, a group interview, teachers’ and students’ weekly reflections, and discourse analysis of students’ interactions.

Keywords: CALL evaluation, synchronous technology, speaking skill, task-based language teaching

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Authors: Zehra Sultan

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The study is based on the task-based language teaching approach which is found to be very effective in the EFL/ESL classroom. This approach engages learners to acquire the usage of authentic language skills by interacting with the real world through sequence of pedagogical tasks. The use of technology enhances the effectiveness of this approach. This study throws light on the historical background of TBLT and its efficacy in the EFL/ESL classroom. In addition, this study precisely talks about the implementation of this approach in the General Foundation Programme of Muscat College, Oman. It furnishes the list of the pedagogical tasks embedded in the language curriculum of General Foundation Programme (GFP) which are skillfully allied to the College Graduate Attributes. Moreover, the study also discusses the challenges pertaining to this approach from the point of view of teachers, students, and its classroom application. Additionally, the operational success of this methodology is gauged through formative assessments of the GFP, which is apparent in the students’ progress.

Keywords: task-based language teaching, authentic language, communicative approach, real world activities, ESL/EFL activities

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Authors: Craig Mertens

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Teaching art history or any other academic subject to EFL students can be done successfully. A course called Western Images was created to teach Japanese students art history while only using English in the classroom. An approach known as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) was used as a basis for this course. This paper’s purpose is to state the reasons why learning about art history is important, go through the process of creating content for the course, and suggest multiple tasks to help students practice the critical thinking skills used in analyzing and drawing conclusions of works of art from western culture. As a guide for this paper, Brown’s (1995) six elements of a language curriculum will be used. These stages include needs analysis, goals and objectives, assessment, materials, teaching method and tasks, and evaluation of the course. The goal here is to inspire debate and discussion regarding CLIL and its pros and cons, and to question current curriculum in university language courses.

Keywords: art history, EFL, content and language integration learning, critical thinking

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Authors: Indu Gamage

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Though commonly utilized as a language improvement technique, reading has not been fully employed by both language teachers and learners to develop reading comprehension skills in English as a second language. In a Sri Lankan context, this area has to be delved deep into as the learners’ show more propensity to analyze. Reading comprehension is an area that most language teachers and learners struggle with though it appears easy. Most ESL learners engage in reading tasks without being properly aware of the objective of doing reading comprehension. It is observed that when doing reading tasks, the language learners’ concern is more on the meanings of individual words than on the overall comprehension of the given text. The passiveness with which the ESL learners engage themselves in reading comprehension makes reading a tedious task for the learner thereby giving the learner a sense of disappointment at the end. Certain reading tasks take the form of translations. The active cognitive participation of the learner in the mode of using productive strategies for predicting, employing schemata and using contextual clues seems quite less. It was hypothesized that the learners’ lack of knowledge of the productive strategies of reading was the major obstacle that makes reading comprehension a tedious task for them. This study is based on a group of 30 tertiary students who read English only as a fundamental requirement for their degree. They belonged to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. Almost all learners hailed from areas where English was hardly utilized in their day to day conversations. The study is carried out in the mode of a questionnaire to check their opinions on reading and a test to check whether the learners are using productive strategies of reading when doing reading comprehension tasks. The test comprised reading questions covering major productive strategies for reading. Then the results were analyzed to see the degree of their active engagement in comprehending the text. The findings depicted the validity of the hypothesis as grounds behind the difficulties related to reading comprehension.

Keywords: reading, comprehension, skills, reading strategies

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Authors: Izabella Szollosi, Klara Marton

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Aphasia can be defined as a weakness in accessing linguistic information. Accessing linguistic information is strongly related to information processing, which in turn is associated with the cognitive control system. According to the literature, a deficit in the cognitive control system interferes with language processing and contributes to non-fluent speech performance. The aim of our study was to explore this hypothesis by investigating how cognitive control interacts with language performance in participants with non-fluent aphasia. Cognitive control is a complex construct that includes working memory (WM) and the ability to resist proactive interference (PI). Based on previous research, we hypothesized that impairments in domain-general (DG) cognitive control abilities have negative effects on language processing. In contrast, better DG cognitive control functioning supports goal-directed behavior in language-related processes as well. Since stroke itself might slow down information processing, it is important to examine its negative effects on both cognitive control and language processing. Participants (N=52) in our study were individuals with non-fluent Broca’s aphasia (N = 13), with transcortical motor aphasia (N=13), individuals with stroke damage without aphasia (N=13), and unimpaired speakers (N = 13). All participants performed various computer-based tasks targeting cognitive control functions such as WM and resistance to PI in both linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Non-linguistic tasks targeted primarily DG functions, while linguistic tasks targeted more domain specific (DS) processes. The results showed that participants with Broca’s aphasia differed from the other three groups in the non-linguistic tasks. They performed significantly worse even in the baseline conditions. In contrast, we found a different performance profile in the linguistic domain, where the control group differed from all three stroke-related groups. The three groups with impairment performed more poorly than the controls but similar to each other in the verbal baseline condition. In the more complex verbal PI condition, however, participants with Broca’s aphasia performed significantly worse than all the other groups. Participants with Broca’s aphasia demonstrated the most severe language impairment and the highest vulnerability in tasks measuring DG cognitive control functions. Results support the notion that the more severe the cognitive control impairment, the more severe the aphasia. Thus, our findings suggest a strong interaction between cognitive control and language. Individuals with the most severe and most general cognitive control deficit - participants with Broca’s aphasia - showed the most severe language impairment. Individuals with better DG cognitive control functions demonstrated better language performance. While all participants with stroke damage showed impaired cognitive control functions in the linguistic domain, participants with better language skills performed also better in tasks that measured non-linguistic cognitive control functions. The overall results indicate that the level of cognitive control deficit interacts with the language functions in individuals along with the language spectrum (from severe to no impairment). However, future research is needed to determine any directionality.

Keywords: cognitive control, information processing, language performance, non-fluent aphasia

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Authors: Soumia Hebbri

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English language has become a major medium for communication across borders. Nowadays, it is seen as a communicative medium not only for business but also for academic purposes. Some scientists describe English language as a way to enjoy an admired position in many countries. It is neither a national nor an official language in North Africa; it is considered as the most widely taught foreign language at the educational system. In order to achieve mastery of a foreign language, learners must develop the four principal language skills: Reading, writing, listening and speaking. However, being able to interact orally with others, using effectively the target language, is nowadays very important. People who cannot speak a foreign language cannot be considered effective language users, even if they can read and understand it. The teachers’ role in promoting foreign language acquisition is very important, as they are responsible for providing students appropriate contexts to foster communicative situations that allow students to express themselves and interact in the target language. So, we should understand the student’s reasons of their reluctance in oral participation when dealing with oral communicative tasks, in order to get insights about the possible motivating factors that may improve their involvement and participation in the classroom.

Keywords: EL, EFL, ET, TEFL, communication

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Authors: Moquan Gong

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In recent years, with the rapid development of deep learning, pre-training technology for natural language processing has made great progress. The early field of natural language processing has long used word vector methods such as Word2Vec to encode text. These word vector methods can also be regarded as static pre-training techniques. However, this context-free text representation brings very limited improvement to subsequent natural language processing tasks and cannot solve the problem of word polysemy. ELMo proposes a context-sensitive text representation method that can effectively handle polysemy problems. Since then, pre-training language models such as GPT and BERT have been proposed one after another. Among them, the BERT model has significantly improved its performance on many typical downstream tasks, greatly promoting the technological development in the field of natural language processing, and has since entered the field of natural language processing. The era of dynamic pre-training technology. Since then, a large number of pre-trained language models based on BERT and XLNet have continued to emerge, and pre-training technology has become an indispensable mainstream technology in the field of natural language processing. This article first gives an overview of pre-training technology and its development history, and introduces in detail the classic pre-training technology in the field of natural language processing, including early static pre-training technology and classic dynamic pre-training technology; and then briefly sorts out a series of enlightening technologies. Pre-training technology, including improved models based on BERT and XLNet; on this basis, analyze the problems faced by current pre-training technology research; finally, look forward to the future development trend of pre-training technology.

Keywords: natural language processing, pre-training, language model, word vectors

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Authors: Tatiana N. Astakhova, Alexander E. Saprygin, Tatyana A. Golovko, Alexander N. Savostyanov, Mikhail S. Vlasov, Natalia V. Borisova, Alexandera G. Karpova, Urana N. Kavai-ool, Elena D. Mokur-ool, Nikolay A. Kolchanov, Lubomir I. Aftanas

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The study is dedicated to the research of brain activity in bilingual inhabitants of Siberia. We compared behavioral reactions and event-related potentials in Turkic-speaking inhabitants of Siberia (Tuvinians and Yakuts) and Russians. 63 healthy aboriginals of the Tyva Republic, 29 inhabitants of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, and 55 Russians from Novosibirsk participated in the study. All the healthy and right-handed participants, matched on age and sex, were students of different universities. EEG’s were recorded during the solving of linguistic tasks. In these tasks, participants had to find a syntax error in the written sentences. There were four groups of sentences: Russian, English, Tuvinian, and Yakut. All participants completed the tasks in Russian and English. Additionally, Tuvinians and Yakuts completed the tasks in Tuvinian or Yakut respectively. For Russians, EEG's were recorded using 128-channels according to the extended International 10-10 system, and the signals were amplified using “Neuroscan (USA)” amplifiers. For Tuvinians and Yakuts, EEG's were recorded using 64-channels and amplifiers Brain Products, Germany. In all groups, 0.3-100 Hz analog filtering and sampling rate 1000 Hz were used. As parameters of behavioral reactions, response speed and the accuracy of recognition were used. Event-related potentials (ERP) responses P300 and P600 were used as indicators of brain activity. The behavioral reactions showed that in Russians, the response speed for Russian was faster than for English. Also, the accuracy of solving tasks was higher for Russian than for English. The peak P300 in Russians were higher for English, the peak P600 in the left temporal cortex were higher for the Russian language. Both Tuvinians and Yakuts have no difference in accuracy of solving tasks in Russian and in their respective national languages. However, the response speed was faster for tasks in Russian than for tasks in their national language. Tuvinians and Yakuts showed bad accuracy in English, but the response speed was higher for English than for Russian and the national languages. This can be explained by the fact that they did not think carefully and gave a random answer for English. In Tuvinians, The P300 and P600 amplitudes and cortical topology were the same for Russian and Tuvinian and different for English. In Yakuts, the P300 and P600 amplitudes and topology of ERP for Russian were the same as what Russians had for Russian. In Yakuts, brain reactions during Yakut and English comprehension had no difference, and were reflected to foreign language comprehension - while the Russian language comprehension was reflected to native language comprehension. We found out that the Tuvinians recognized both Russian and Tuvinian as native languages, and English as a foreign language. The Yakuts recognized both English and Yakut as a foreign language, and only Russian as a native language. According to the inquirer, both Tuvinians and Yakuts use the national language as a spoken language, whereas they don’t use it for writing. It can well be a reason that Yakuts perceive the Yakut writing language as a foreign language while writing Russian as their native.

Keywords: EEG, ERP, native and foreign languages comprehension, Siberian inhabitants

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Authors: Shivani Tiwari, Prathibha Karanth, B. Rajashekhar

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Impairments of syntactic morphology are often considered central in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In English and related languages, deficits of tense-related grammatical morphology could serve as a clinical marker of SLI. Yet, cross-linguistic studies on SLI in the recent past suggest that the nature and severity of morphosyntactic deficits in children with SLI varies with the language being investigated. Therefore, in the present study we investigated the morphosyntactic deficits in a group of children with SLI who speak Kannada, a morphologically complex Dravidian language spoken in Indian subcontinent. A group of 15 children with SLI participated in this study. Two more groups of typical developing children (15 each) matched for language and age to children with SLI, were included as control participants. All participants were assessed for morphosyntactic comprehension and expression using standardized language test and a spontaneous speech task. Results of the study showed that children with SLI differed significantly from age-matched but not language-matched control group, on tasks of both comprehension and expression of morphosyntax. This finding is, however, in contrast with the reports of English-speaking children with SLI who are reported to be poorer than younger MLU-matched children on tasks of morphosyntax. The observed difference in impairments of morphosyntax in Kannada-speaking children with SLI from English-speaking children with SLI is explained based on the morphological richness theory. The theory predicts that children with SLI perform relatively better in morphologically rich language due to occurrence of their frequent and consistent features that mark the morphological markers. The authors, therefore, conclude that language-specific features do influence manifestation of the disorder in children with SLI.

Keywords: specific language impairment, morphosyntax, Kannada, manifestation

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Authors: Inuwa Danladi Bawa

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One of the challenges of African states in the development of education in the past and the present is the problem of literacy. Literacy in the first language is seen as a strong base for the development of second language; they are mostly the language of education. Language development is an offshoot of language planning; so the need to develop literacy in both first and second language affects language education and predicts the extent of achievement of the entire education sector. The need to balance literacy acquisition in first language for good conditioning the acquisition of second language is paramount. Likely constraints that includes; non-standardization, underdeveloped and undeveloped first languages are among many. Solutions to some of these include the development of materials and use of the stages and levels of literacy acquisition. This is with believed that a child writes well in second language if he has literacy in the first language.

Keywords: first language, second language, literacy, english language, linguistics

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Authors: Toktam Khatibi

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Self-supervised learning (SSL) includes machine learning models that are trained on one aspect and/or one part of the input to learn other aspects and/or part of it. SSL models are divided into two different categories, including pre-text task-based models and contrastive learning ones. Pre-text tasks are some auxiliary tasks learning pseudo-labels, and the trained models are further fine-tuned for downstream tasks. However, one important disadvantage of SSL using pre-text task solving is defining an appropriate pre-text task for each image dataset with a variety of image modalities. Therefore, it is required to design an appropriate pretext task automatically for each dataset and each downstream task. To the best of our knowledge, the automatic designing of pretext tasks for image analysis has not been considered yet. In this paper, we present a framework based on In-context learning that describes each task based on its input and output data using a pre-trained image transformer. Our proposed method combines the input image and its learned description for optimizing the pre-text task design and its hyper-parameters using Meta-learning models. The representations learned from the pre-text tasks are fine-tuned for solving the downstream tasks. We demonstrate that our proposed framework outperforms the compared ones on unseen tasks and image modalities in addition to its superior performance for previously known tasks and datasets.

Keywords: in-context learning (ICL), meta learning, self-supervised learning (SSL), vision-language domain, transformers

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Authors: Thi Phuong Ly Tran

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Being a basic and unique to human beings, cognitive activity possesses spiritualistic characteristics and is conveyed through languages. Words that represent rational cognition or processes related to rationality as follow: know, think, understand, doubt, be afraid, remember, forget, think (that), realize (that), find (that), etc. can reflect the process by which human beings have transformed cognitive activities into diversified and delicate manners through linguistic tasks. In this research article, applying the descriptive method and comparative method, we would like to utilize the application of the theoretical system of linguistic characteristics of cognitive verbs in Vietnamese language in comparison with English language. These achievements of this article will meaningfully contribute to highlight characteristics of Vietnamese language and identify the similarities and differences in the linguistic processes of Vietnamese and English people as well as supply more knowledge for social requirements such as foreign language learning, dictionary editing, language teaching in schools.

Keywords: cognitive activity, cognitive perspective, Vietnamese language, English language

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Authors: Sandra Figueiredo, Margarida Alves Martins, Carlos Silva, Cristina Simões

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This study integrates a larger research empirical project that examines second language (SL) learners’ profiles and valid procedures to perform complete and diagnostic assessment in schools. 102 learners of Portuguese as a SL aged 7 and 17 years speakers of distinct home languages were assessed in several linguistic tasks. In this article, we focused on writing performance in the specific task of narrative essay composition. The written outputs were measured using the score in six components adapted from an English SL assessment context (Alberta Education): linguistic vocabulary, grammar, syntax, strategy, socio-linguistic, and discourse. The writing processes and strategies in Portuguese language used by different immigrant students were analysed to determine features and diversity of deficits on authentic texts performed by SL writers. Differentiated performance was based on the diversity of the following variables: grades, previous schooling, home language, instruction in first language, and exposure to Portuguese as Second Language. Indo-Aryan languages speakers showed low writing scores compared to their peers and the type of language and respective cognitive mapping (such as Mandarin and Arabic) was the predictor, not linguistic distance. Home language instruction should also be prominently considered in further research to understand specificities of cognitive academic profile in a Romance languages learning context. Additionally, this study also examined the teachers representations that will be here addressed to understand educational implications of second language teaching in psychological distress of different minorities in schools of specific host countries.

Keywords: home language, immigrant students, Portuguese language, second language, writing assessment

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Authors: Amir Zand-Moghadam, Mahnaz Alizadeh

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The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of teacher-scaffolding versus peer-scaffolding on EFL learners’ metapragmatic awareness in the paradigm of task-based language teaching (TBLT). To this end, a number of dialogic information-gap tasks requiring two-way interactant relationship were designed for the five speech acts of request, refusal, apology, suggestion, and compliment following Ellis’s (2003) model. Then, 48 intermediate EFL learners were randomly selected, homogenized, and assigned to two groups: 26 participants in the teacher-scaffolding group (Group One) and 22 in the peer-scaffolding group (Group Two). While going through the three phases of pre-task, while-task, and post-task, the participants in the first group completed the designed tasks by the teacher’s interaction, scaffolding, and feedback. On the other hand, the participants in the second group were required to complete the tasks in expert-novice pairs through peer scaffolding in all the three phases of a task-based syllabus. The findings revealed that the participants in the teacher-scaffolding group developed their L2 metapragmatic awareness more than the peer-scaffolding group. Thus, it can be concluded that teacher-scaffolding is more effective than peer scaffolding in developing metapragmatic awareness among EFL learners. It can also be claimed that the use of tasks can be more influential when they are accompanied by teacher-scaffolding. The findings of the present study have implications for language teachers and researchers.

Keywords: ILP, metapragmatic awareness, scaffolding, task-based instruction

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Authors: Michael Luc Andre, Célia Maintenant

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Theory of mind is a milestone in child development which allows children to understand that others could have different mental states than theirs. Understanding the developmental stages of theory of mind in children leaded researchers on two Connected research problems. In one hand, the link between executive function and theory of mind, and on the other hand, the relationship of theory of mind and syntax processing. These two lines of research involved a great literature, full of important results, despite certain level of disagreement between researchers. For a long time, these two research perspectives continue to grow up separately despite research conclusion suggesting that the three variables should implicate same developmental period. Indeed, our goal was to study the relation between theory of mind, executive function, and language via a unique research question. It supposed that between executive function and language, one of the two variables could play a critical role in the relationship between theory of mind and the other variable. Thus, 112 children aged between three and six years old were recruited for completing a receptive and an expressive vocabulary task, a syntax understanding task, a theory of mind task, and three executive function tasks (inhibition, cognitive flexibility and working memory). The results showed significant correlations between performance on theory of mind task and performance on executive function domain tasks, except for cognitive flexibility task. We also found significant correlations between success on theory of mind task and performance in all language tasks. Multiple regression analysis justified only syntax and general abilities of language as possible predictors of theory of mind performance in our preschool age children sample. The results were discussed in the perspective of a great role of language abilities in theory of mind development. We also discussed possible reasons that could explain the non-significance of executive domains in predicting theory of mind performance, and the meaning of our results for the literature.

Keywords: child development, executive function, general language, syntax, theory of mind

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Authors: Tatiana N. Astakhova, Alexander E. Saprygin, Tatyana A. Golovko, Alexander N. Savostyanov, Mikhail S. Vlasov, Natalia V. Borisova, Alexandera G. Karpova, Urana N. Kavai-ool, Elena D. Mokur-ool, Nikolay A. Kolchanov, Lubomir I. Aftanas

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The aim of the study is to compare behaviorally and EEG reactions in Turkic-speaking inhabitants of Siberia (Tuvinians and Yakuts) and Russians during the recognition of syntax errors in native and foreign languages. 63 healthy aboriginals of the Tyva Republic, 29 inhabitants of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, and 55 Russians from Novosibirsk participated in the study. All participants completed a linguistic task, in which they had to find a syntax error in the written sentences. Russian participants completed the task in Russian and in English. Tuvinian and Yakut participants completed the task in Russian, English, and Tuvinian or Yakut, respectively. EEG’s were recorded during the solving of tasks. For Russian participants, EEG's were recorded using 128-channels. The electrodes were placed according to the extended International 10-10 system, and the signals were amplified using ‘Neuroscan (USA)’ amplifiers. For Tuvinians and Yakuts EEG's were recorded using 64-channels and amplifiers Brain Products, Germany. In all groups 0.3-100 Hz analog filtering, sampling rate 1000 Hz were used. Response speed and the accuracy of recognition error were used as parameters of behavioral reactions. Event-related potentials (ERP) responses P300 and P600 were used as indicators of brain activity. The accuracy of solving tasks and response speed in Russians were higher for Russian than for English. The P300 amplitudes in Russians were higher for English; the P600 amplitudes in the left temporal cortex were higher for the Russian language. Both Tuvinians and Yakuts have no difference in accuracy of solving tasks in Russian and in their respective national languages (Tuvinian and Yakut). However, the response speed was faster for tasks in Russian than for tasks in their national language. Tuvinians and Yakuts showed bad accuracy in English, but the response speed was higher for English than for Russian and the national languages. With Tuvinians, there were no differences in the P300 and P600 amplitudes and in cortical topology for Russian and Tuvinian, but there was a difference for English. In Yakuts, the P300 and P600 amplitudes and topology of ERP for Russian were the same as Russians had for Russian. In Yakuts, brain reactions during Yakut and English comprehension had no difference and were reflected foreign language comprehension -while the Russian language comprehension was reflected native language comprehension. We found out that the Tuvinians recognized both Russian and Tuvinian as native languages, and English as a foreign language. The Yakuts recognized both English and Yakut as a foreign language, only Russian as a native language. According to the inquirer, both Tuvinians and Yakuts use the national language as a spoken language, whereas they don’t use it for writing. It can well be a reason that Yakuts perceive the Yakut writing language as a foreign language while writing Russian as their native.

Keywords: EEG, language comprehension, native and foreign languages, Siberian inhabitants

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Authors: Diyah Atiek Mustikawati

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Language register refers to a variety of a language used for particular purpose or in a particular social setting. Language register also means as a concept of adapting one’s use of language to conform to standards or tradition in a given professional or social situation. This descriptive study tends to discuss about the form of language register in transportation aspect, factors, also the function of use it. Mostly, language register in transportation aspect uses short sentences in form of informal register. The factor caused language register used are speaker, word choice, background of language. The functions of language register in transportations aspect are to make communication between crew easily, also to keep safety when they were in bad condition. Transportation language register developed naturally as one of variety of language used.

Keywords: language register, language variety, communication, transportation

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