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Interaction is a prominent part of our everyday life and experience; daily reality is constructed within the interactions that individuals establish with those around them, with whom they share experiences in a concrete context. Objects, phenomena and individuals permanently influence each other through this dynamic process. The authors of this volume engage in an on-going interpretative process of defining this influence, giving considerable attention to the way participants to interaction t.

This wide-ranging survey of issues in intercultural language teaching and learning covers everything from core concepts to program evaluation, and advocates a fluid, responsive approach to teaching language that reflects its central role in fostering intercultural understanding. * Includes coverage of theoretical issues defining language, culture, and communication, as well as practice-driven issues such as classroom interactions, technologies, programs, and language assessment * Examines systematically the components of language teaching: language itself, meaning, culture, learning, communicating, and assessments, and puts them in social and cultural context * Features numerous examples throughout, drawn from various languages, international contexts, and frameworks * Incorporates a decade of in-depth research and detailed documentation from the authors' collaborative work with practicing teachers * Provides a much-needed addition to the sparse literature on intercultural aspects of language education  

Purpose: In this study, the authors investigated factors that affect bilingual children's vocabulary and story recall abilities in their 2 languages. Method: Participants included 191 Latino families and their children, who averaged 59 months of age. Data on parental characteristics and children's exposure to and usage of Spanish and English were collected. The authors assessed children's Spanish and English vocabulary and story recall abilities using subtests of the Woodcock-Munoz Language Survey--Revised ( Woodcock, Munoz-Sandoval, Ruef, & Alvarado, 2005). Results: Sizeable percentages of variation in children's English (R[superscript 2] = 0.61) and Spanish (R[superscript 2] = 0.55) vocabulary scores were explained by children's exposure to, and usage of, each language and maternal characteristics. Similarly, variations in children's story recall scores in English (R[superscript 2] = 0.38) and Spanish (R[superscript 2] = 0.19) were also explained by the factors considered in this investigation. However, the authors found that different sets of factors in each category affected children's vocabulary and story recall abilities in each language. Conclusions: Children's exposure to and usage of their two languages as well as maternal characteristics play significant roles in bilingual individuals' language development. The results highlight the importance of gathering detailed sociolinguistic information about bilingual children when these children are involved in research and when they enter the educational system.

Vocabulary is essential for comprehension, especially in specialized disciplines. However, the research on the lexical features of forestry remains underexplored. This study focuses on the vocabulary frequency profile of forestry academic texts, and compares forestry vocabulary with general vocabulary and general academic vocabulary. Using Range software and the BNC/COCA word lists, this research analyzed a corpus of 331 research articles and 14 textbooks across eight forestry sub-disciplines. Results demonstrate a rich and diverse vocabulary in this discipline. Two forestry-specific word lists, the forestry Latin loan word list and the forestry English word list, were developed from words not included in the BNC/COCA word lists. The analysis indicates that mastering the top 5,000 word families and four supplementary word lists from the expanded BNC/COCA word lists provides 95% lexical coverage of the forestry academic corpus. For 98% coverage, prioritizing the two forestry-specific word lists reduces the required word families from 11,000 to 8,000. While both forestry research articles and textbooks need 5,000 word families for 95% coverage, research articles require an additional 2,000 for 98% coverage. Lexical demands across sub-disciplines range from 4,000 to 6,000 word families for 95% coverage, and from 8,000 to 11,000 for 98% when including the forestry-specific word lists. Furthermore, findings also indicate that the forestry vocabulary contains a higher proportion of mid- and low-frequency words than general vocabulary and general academic vocabulary. These findings provide important guidance for setting vocabulary learning goals and sequences for learners in the forestry discipline, thereby contributing to improved comprehension of forestry academic texts and enhancing the effectiveness of English for Specific Purposes instruction.

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) often struggle to participate in traditional language assessments due to their limited mobility, making it challenging for speech-language therapists (SLTs) to accurately assess their language abilities. In recent years, there has been evidence that eye-tracking is an effective way of measuring the receptive language abilities of children who demonstrate difficulties with traditional language assessments. This study aimed to (i) develop eye-tracking assessment materials based on a receptive vocabulary subtest of a Malay language assessment and (ii) evaluate the performance of children with CP on the receptive vocabulary assessment conducted via eye-tracking, compared to their performance on a traditional receptive vocabulary assessment. The first phase of the study focused on developing eye-tracking receptive vocabulary assessment materials from the Malay Preschool Language Assessment Tool and trialling the materials and assessment protocol. This phase involved 15 typically developing children aged 4–6 years. The finalized materials and protocol were administered to 15 children with CP in the second phase. Each child attended two assessment sessions: the first was a traditional receptive vocabulary assessment, and the second utilized eye-tracking technology. Children practiced eye-tracking through online games. Results showed that eight children with CP performed better in the eye-tracking assessment, two scored similarly across both methods, and five scored lower during eye-tracking. The Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test conducted revealed no significant difference in scores across both assessment methods (p  > .05). Furthermore, most children exhibited poor consistency in their scores across the two methods. These findings suggest that while some children with CP may benefit from receptive vocabulary assessments conducted via eye-tracking, no single assessment method is optimal for all children with CP. Instead, children with CP may benefit from a combination of assessment methods, including eye-tracking, to increase the accuracy of assessment results.

This study aims to investigate the perception of phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures by 8 children (age range: 8;2–9;5) with developmental language disorders (DLD). Another 8 age-matched (age range: 8;4–10;0) typically developing (TD) children served as controls. The results demonstrated that children with DLD had lower performance than children with TD in the phonology and grammar tests, corroborating earlier findings, which reported difficulties of children with DLD in discriminating voicing contrasts and perceiving grammatical structures. However, both groups had similar performance in the semantic test. The absence of semantic atypicality can be explained possibly due to the simplicity of the sentences included in the test. The study offers important clinical implications for the identification and treatment of the disorder.

Action word learning is believed to rely on mechanisms of Hebbian learning. However, this biological mechanism requires activation of the neural assemblies representing a word form and a corresponding movement to repeatedly overlap in time. In reality, though, these associated events could be separated by seconds. In the current MEG study, we examined trial-and-error learning of associations between novel auditory pseudowords and movements of specific body parts. We aimed to explore how the brain bridges the temporal gap between the transient activity evoked by auditory input and the preparatory motor activation before the corresponding movement. To address this, we compared learning-induced changes in neuromagnetic responses locked to the onset of the stimulus and to the onset of the movement. As learning progressed, both types of neural responses showed sustained enhancement during the delay period between the auditory pseudoword and the required movement. Cortical sources of this learning-induced increase were localized bilaterally in the lateral and medial temporal cortices. Notably, the learning effect was significantly stronger when measured time-locked to the movement onset, rather than to the pseudoword onset. This suggests that once pseudoword-movement associations were reliably acquired, extensive regions of the auditory cortex were reactivated in synchrony with the preparation for the upcoming movement. Such reactivation likely served to bring together in time the representations of the correct action and the preceding auditory cue. This temporal alignment could enable Hebbian learning, leading to long-lasting synaptic changes in temporally correlated neural assemblies.

As an essential component of interpreting competence, knowledge competence has long been under-researched in the field of interpreting education and training, in contrast to language competence and various interpreting skills. This study presents the results of a survey investigating student interpreters’ attitudes toward the acceptance of concept mapping as a tool to enhance their knowledge competence and examining the pathways of factors influencing these attitudes using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results showed that undergraduate student interpreters enrolled in a Mandarin-English interpreting course were willing to use concept maps as a knowledge enhancement tool, and their attitudes toward this tool were positively influenced by their perceived usefulness of concept maps in supporting extra-linguistic knowledge acquisition and interpreting performance, and their perceived ease of use of concept maps. Accordingly, pedagogical implications for introducing concept maps in interpreting classes are presented.

Many studies showed that prosodic cues such as f0, duration and intensity are used in focus marking cross-linguistically. Usually, on-focus words exhibit expansions of acoustic cues such as f0 expansion, whereas post-focus words may show compression of acoustic cues. However, how features in a sub-syllabic level are employed in focus marking remain to be investigated. F0 perturbation refers to the phenomenon that vocal folds vibration is affected by the preceding non-sonorant consonant. The current study aims to examine how f0 perturbation is realized in focus marking in two languages Japanese and Korean. Tokyo Japanese is a pitch-accent language and Seoul Korean is considered to be at the stage of quasi-tonogenesis. Our results showed that f0 perturbation effects were enhanced in on-focus positions and compressed in pre- and post-focus positions for both narrow and contrastive focus in both languages. In addition, our results showed that pitch accent can also affect the realization of f0 perturbation in various focus conditions. Compared to Korean, our results in Japanese showed that f0 perturbation effects were less restricted. These results provide new insights into the current model of communicative functions that sub-syllabic level acoustic cues such as f0 perturbation can also be employed in focus marking.

A study of first and second language development in an indigenous community with implications for broader linguistic and cognitive issues. When two or more languages are part of a child's world, we are presented with a rich opportunity to learn something about language in general and about how the mind works. In this book, Norbert Francis examines the development of bilingual proficiency and the different kinds of competence that come together in making up its component parts. In particular, he explores problems of language ability when children use two languages for tasks related to schooling, especially in learning how to read and write. He considers both broader research issues and findings from an ongoing investigation of child bilingualism in an indigenous language–speaking community in Mexico. This special sociolinguistic context allows for a unique perspective on some of the central themes of bilingualism research today, including the distinction between competence and proficiency, modularity, and the Poverty of Stimulus problem. Francis proposes that competence (knowledge) should be considered as an integral component of proficiency (ability) rather than something separate and apart, arguing that this approach allows for a more inclusive assessment of research findings from diverse fields of study. The bilingual indigenous language project illustrates how the concepts of modularity and the competence-proficiency distinction in particular might be applied to problems of language learning and literacy. Few investigations of indigenous language and culture approach bilingual research problems from a cognitive science perspective. By suggesting connections to broader cognitive and linguistic issues, Francis points the way to further research along these lines.