Page 12 - ELG1711 Nov Issue 452

RESEARCH NEWS . NEWS
NEWS

Cristina Cifuentes Both systems were found to be BILINGUAL BRAINS RESEARCH NIBS
unsustainably expensive to run.
HANDLE THIRD
reactions
The
of
both
‘C-WORD’ NOT SO RUDE
governments were the same:
remove the programmes. Families
reacted in fury. In France, the LANGUAGE LIKE NATIVES FOR NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS
intervention of Germany’s When a prankster announced that the
Angela Merkel persuaded the
French government to allow the By Claudia Civinni researchers to control the amount of government would send the Conservative
and Unionist Negotiating Team to Brussels
programme to continue, although A bilingual brain is quickly able to exposure the participants would get.
only in German and only in handle a third language with the same Participants completed a series of for Brexit negotiations, the whole country
chuckled. But do second-language users truly
the French regions along the neural mechanisms it uses for its native comprehension and practice tests,
border. In New Brunswick, the languages – putting it a step ahead of and their electrical brain activity was understand how offensive the ‘C-word’ actually
is?
courts forced the government to a monolingual brain, a new study has monitored twice, early and later in the
Not really, studies by linguist Jean-Marc
compromise and allow children to found. training, while reading grammatically Dewaele have found. The C-word is the
enrol in Year 3 rather than in Year Bilinguals process their L3 in the correct and incorrect sentences in
5 as proposed. same way they process their L1, even Brocanto2. only word in the English language whose
offensiveness is significantly underestimated by
Bilingual schooling is a hot at low proficiency. Monolinguals only Bilinguals developed comprehension
political issue – nowhere more develop this ability when they reach a and production skills faster than non-native users, he says. Dewaele collected
data from 2,324 participants who completed an
so than in Spain, where English- high proficiency in another language. monolinguals, but overall behavioural
Spanish models have been Michael T. Ullman, professor data did not highlight a statistically online survey to test their understanding of the
Cristina Cifuentes, adopted in many monolingual of neuroscience at Georgetown significant difference between the two offensiveness of the C-word. About half of them
president of the Madrid region, a strong Spanish regions. In regions such as University Medical Centre and the groups. had English as L1, the others as LX.
supporter of bilingual schools Both groups reported using that word very
Catalonia, regional languages are study’s author, said, ‘The difference But brains don’t lie. Analysis of infrequently, but the non-natives reported
is seen in language learners’ brain bilinguals showed a ‘P600’ brainwave
used alongside Spanish instead.
Do bilingual schools become system show the same bias against patterns. When learning a new pattern commonly associated with a significantly lower level of perceived
So does the Spanish bilingual
understanding of the meaning of the word and
language, bilinguals rely more than native language syntactic processing
disadvantaged children found in monolinguals on the brain processes while reading sentences in Brocanto2 its offensiveness.
L1 users who rated the offensiveness of
middle class ghettos? other countries? We have too little that people naturally use for their far earlier than monolinguals did. the word as high were also less likely to use
native language.’
demographic data from Madrid to
The fact that the brainwave pattern
it, whereas the opposite was true for LX: the
say, though figures suggest more
Two groups – bilinguals and came later for monolinguals, whose
girls than boys opt for bilingual. monolinguals – were taught Brocanto2, brains also activated additional higher the understanding, the more frequent
the use. Dewaele attributes this to the fact that
International studies make uncomfortable reading for the Spanish There is no demographic data at all an artificial language composed of processing resources, indicates that swear words in English are increasingly being
fourteen words and limited grammar it may have actually been easier
from the other regions doing Clil.
An EL Gazette analysis of the rules, over the course of one week. The and quicker for bilinguals to learn used in non-English speaking contexts, where
By Melanie Butler against the disadvantaged. fifteen and 30 per cent more likely English language test results in use of an artificial language allowed Brocanto2. the ‘verbal dynamite’ of the word is defused.
Instructed learners reported a more limited
Are bilingual school programmes A study in Luxembourg showed to do so in written English. Madrid showed the majority of understanding of the offensiveness of the
an expensive perk for the affluent that immigrant children may be Optional bilingual programmes, children in primary schools did
middle classes that discriminate disadvantaged. In the country’s where families can choose to well in English, although a small word and a less frequent use than mixed and
naturalistic learners. Time to break the taboo in
against disadvantaged students? primary schools, the spoken enrol their children, can become minority of children learned
This is one of the questions language in class is generally middle-class ghettos. This was none. Who are these children? class and explain how offensive it is?
asked in The Bilingual Programme Luxembourgish, a West Germanic found in both France and in the Immigrants? Those with special
Examined, a new report from language, but children are taught province of New Brunswick in educational needs? The socially SCHOLARS’ ENGLISH
Accion Educativa, a Spanish to read and write in Standard Canada. Socially advantaged disadvantaged? Boys?
association of education German. children predominated both In secondary, the outcomes MEASURES UP
professionals. Children who don’t speak a in the French Middle School were starkly divided between
The study claims to be a Germanic language at home programmes and in Canadian those who were not ‘invited’ to With ever-growing pressure on academics to
critical analysis of the principles underperform, but the negative early immersion, where children join the special bilingual sections get published, are those who speak and write
underpinning the Spanish effect on academic results was were enrolled in French immersion and those who were. Kids in the English as a foreign language at a disadvantage?
bilingual school model in general particularly marked among the from the first year of primary. The bilingual sections outperformed A researcher from Augusta University in the US
and the Madrid programme large Portuguese immigrant Canadian studies also found just other children, not just in English says they probably have nothing to worry about.
in particular. Since so little community who make up 16 per 7 per cent of children in the early but across all academic subjects. Dr Zhao analysed and compared the
demographic data is available cent of the population. immersion stream had special A shocking number of children academic writing produced by four groups of
for the Spanish system, it uses A study in Malta suggests girls educational needs compared to outside the sections made little participants: L1 and L2 graduate students and
international studies, although may learn the target language 23 per cent in the English medium progress in English, and in 7 per L1 and L2 scholars, all in the field of applied
international comparisons should more effectively than boys in stream. cent of cases made no progress linguistics. She found that while the ‘student’
always be used with care. a state school system where The educational outcomes at all. Why not? The report groups differed from one another and from
However, the data from four the L2 is the medium for many varied. In France, children in from Accion Educativa does not the ‘scholar’ groups, there was no discernible
countries – Malta, Luxemburg, academic subjects. In a study of the bilingual sections did better prove that the Madrid bilingual difference in the writing style of L1 and L2
France and Canada – shows that in the Maltese language results in across all academic subjects, while programme discriminates against scholars.
some cases bilingual programmes an EU language test, girls were Canadian children who went into disadvantaged students, but it While L1 students display a wide range of
certainly have become elitist 10 per cent more likely to reach late immersion in Year 5 did better does raise questions that need to conjunctions, causative verbs and nouns, L2
institutions that discriminate B2 in spoken English at the age of than those who started in Year 1. be answered. graduate students still sometimes show a ‘lack
of contextual awareness in their linguistic
choices’. For example, they use more informal
conjunctions such as ‘anyway’, and use ‘thus’ or
‘hence’ less often.
12 November 2017 editorial@elgazette.com 13