言语流畅性与双语研究

从分析双语机制对双语者言语流畅性的影响入手,探讨了言语流畅性在双语研究中的作用,并总结出该测验在运用中应注意的几个问题,旨在明了言语流畅性与双语研究两者之间的关系,从而避免双语研究中存在曲解。     

双语者大脑结构的可塑性

掌握一种以上的语言是人类的特殊能力,一般认为这种技能是大脑的功能发生可塑性改变,并非结构有所变化。然而,Mecheli及其同事提出了不同的看法,他们使用全脑无偏向性的客观技术——以体素为基础的形态测量方法（VBM）,来检测双语者大脑结构的可塑性,这种方法可以自动选择性地将灰质和白质区分开来。     

语码转换在微生物学双语教学中的应用

改革传统的双语教学,探索高校新型的双语教学方式已经成为教育教学改革的必然趋势.语码转换是指在一个语段或语篇中使用两种或两种以上语言的现象.为了保证双语教学效果,提高教学质量,在微生物学授课过程中应用语码转换的方式进行渗透式双语授课,适时适量地向学生渗透专业英语语汇、语句、语段或语篇,激发了学生的学习热情,增强了学生英语表达的自信心.     

维-汉双语语义认知的事件相关电位特征研究

为了研究维-汉双语者维吾尔语和汉语双语语义认知特点,本实验使用事件相关电位(event-related potentials,ERP)技术,以"图片-词语"语义启动范式研究了维-汉双语者的维吾尔语和汉语N400波的特点及差异波脑电地形图分布特点。结果显示:双语均有明显的语义启动效应,双语者两种语言的N400波的平均波幅没有语言间的差异,仅在汉语中存在语言与电极位置的交互作用,F3、F4、PZ三点波幅比其余电极波幅显著偏负;差异波脑电地形图显示,维吾尔语激活了几乎所有脑区(除了枕叶激活较弱),汉语的激活较维吾尔语弱,但也有大部分脑区激活,左右额叶和顶叶的激活明显。以上结果表明,维-汉双语者的两种语言均对语义启动敏感,额叶、顶叶参与两种语言间的转换,不熟练的维-汉晚双语者的双语语义加工过程均为大脑两半球共同协作的结果,没有明显的偏侧化。     

音乐训练影响儿童语音意识的认知神经机制

音乐是一种听觉艺术形式，在儿童教育和发展中，尤其是语言能力发展中扮演着重要角色。语音意识是个体感知识别、分析和运用语音的能力，是预测儿童语言读写能力的重要指标。本文梳理了近十年来音乐训练影响儿童语音意识的研究证据，并讨论了音乐训练可能促进语音意识的神经基础和解释模型。大量研究表明，音乐训练可以在行为水平提高儿童在语音意识测量任务上的成绩。此外，音乐训练从两方面影响语音加工的神经基础：一方面通过影响皮层下基本听觉神经通路与大脑听觉皮层，促进儿童前注意水平的语音感知能力；另一方面通过影响语音加工大脑区域间的功能连接，促进语音编码，强化语音加工的听觉-运动整合功能。相关神经机制为音乐训练促进儿童的语音意识提供了生物学基础。基于已有研究，本文提出综合的层级模型对音乐训练影响儿童语音意识的认知神经机制进行系统的解释，该模型认为音乐训练影响语音意识的认知神经机制分为3个层级：第一层级，音乐训练通过影响基本听觉神经通路促进了语音的基本听觉加工，其中节奏训练促进对语音时长信息的感知，音高训练促进对语音频率信息的感知；第二层级，音乐训练通过影响语音加工的神经网络，进一步促进语音编码，其中节奏训练主要促进辅音、韵脚和音节的识别和编码，音高训练促进元音、韵脚和音节的识别和编码；第三层级，音乐训练通过增强听觉与运动脑区之间的信息整合，增强语音运动表征，以及听觉-运动整合能力，进一步提高了语音表征的质量。该领域的研究不但可以揭示人类语言发展的认知神经机制，而且在儿童教育领域具有非常重要的现实意义和应用价值。     

系统解剖学立体化双语教学资源建设的探讨

系统解剖学是医学生最为重要的专业基础课程之一。近年来,我们一直坚持双语教学,2008年我校系统解剖学获得首批国家双语教学示范课程。为建设好双语教学示范课程,我们积极开展解剖学双语教学探索和实践,着重于该门课程的立体化双语教学资源的建设,以纸质教材为主体,利用不同教学媒体的优点来呈现解剖学不同的教学内容,形成一个立体化的双语教学资源,并应用于教学实践活动中,达到提高学生专业英语理解能力,灵活运用外语思维解决医学问题能力的目标。     

“兽医微生物学”双语教学探析

结合高等农林院校"兽医微生物学"专业教学特点及双语教学的现状,分析了影响双语教学效果的因素。在此基础上,提出了相应完善"兽医微生物学"双语教学的建议和措施。在教师配备、教材编写、教学手段等方面做了大量改进,以切实提高"兽医微生物学"双语教学质量。     

“植物堂”于双语教学的实践与思考

双语教学是在现代教学经济国际化的影响下所形成的一种新兴教育形式。结合曲靖师范学院的植物学教学实践,总结和分析了植物学双语教学过程中的经验及其实施过程中遇到的主要困难。提出了引进并完善外文原版教材、加强教师队伍建设、提高学生综合素质、培养学生学习兴趣、实施多样化教学方式等完善植物学双语教学的相应对策。最后提出了“保持-过渡-双语思维”的双语教学改革模式,这对于双语教学理论系统化的形成有一定的参考价值。     

连续语音的神经编码——脑电图、脑磁图研究进展

语音是人类交流的主要方式,语音理解也是人脑特有的核心认知功能。人脑中的动态神经活动如何编码连续语音流的声学特征,并解析出多个层级的语言结构是认知神经科学领域的重要问题。近年来,一系列脑电图、脑磁图研究通过包络跟踪响应、层级跟踪响应等新指标来刻画连续语音的神经加工机制。本文对这些研究进行综述,并聚焦于对两个语音加工问题:一是大脑如何编码语音中连续变化的声学特征。这方面的研究表明,大脑中的低频神经活动可以动态跟踪语音包络并且受到高级认知功能调节。二是大脑如何表征语音中不同大小的语言单元,比如音节、词、短语、语句。研究显示,大脑皮层中不同时间尺度的神经活动分别跟踪不同大小的语言单元,构成对多层级语言单元的并行表征。综合上述,近期研究初步揭示了大脑如何表征连续语音的声学特征并构建不同层次的语言单元,为进一步研究大脑如何加工连续语音提供了新的思路。     

制药工程专业药物化学双语教学尝试与思考

药物化学是高等院校制药工程专业的核心专业课,开设《药物化学》双语课程的学习能在传授专业知识的同时给学生提供双重语言环境,让学生在学习现有的专业课理论基础的条件下获得专业英文音频、书籍和文献的学习能力。为现有知识面的拓宽和进一步的深入学习以及从事新药等方面的研究奠定基础。文章从《药物化学》双语课程的教师教学设计、具体的教学内容、选择何种教学方式以及对学生掌握程度的考核方式等方面对双语教学的教与学进行讨论,并提出教学实践中存在的问题和拟解决方式。     

The Gender Gap in Second Language Acquisition: Gender Differences in the Acquisition of Dutch among Immigrants from 88 Countries with 49 Mother Tongues

Gender differences were analyzed across countries of origin and continents, and across mother tongues and language families, using a large-scale database, containing information on 27,119 adult learners of Dutch as a second language. Female learners consistently outperformed male learners in speaking and writing proficiency in Dutch as a second language. This gender gap remained remarkably robust and constant when other learner characteristics were taken into account, such as education, age of arrival, length of residence and hours studying Dutch. For reading and listening skills in Dutch, no gender gap was found. In addition, we found a general gender by education effect for all four language skills in Dutch for speaking, writing, reading, and listening. Female language learners turned out to profit more from higher educational training than male learners do in adult second language acquisition. These findings do not seem to match nurture-oriented explanatory frameworks based for instance on a human capital approach or gender-specific acculturation processes. Rather, they seem to corroborate a nature-based, gene-environment correlational framework in which language proficiency being a genetically-influenced ability interacting with environmental factors such as motivation, orientation, education, and learner strategies that still mediate between endowment and acquiring language proficiency at an adult stage.     

Factors affecting the variability of the central mechanisms for maintaining bilingualism

The article discusses the probable role of many factors that determine the individual variety of the neurophysiological mechanisms that provide the opportunity to learn and use fluently two or more languages. The formation of the speech function is affected by both the general factors for bilinguals and monolinguals, as well as by the specific characteristic of bilingualism. General factors include genetic and environmental impacts explaining the diversity of individual options for the development of the morphofunctional organization of the speech function. Bilinguals, obviously, have an even wider variation of the central maintenance of speech ability, due to the combination of different conditions that influence the language environment, which include the age of second language acquisition, the language proficiency, the linguistic similarity of the languages, the method of their acquisition, intensity of use, and the area where each language is used. The influence of these factors can be mediated in different ways by the individual characteristics of the bilingual??s brain. Being exposed to two languages from the first days of life, the child uses for the development of speech skills the unique features of the brain that exist only at the initial stages of postnatal ontogenesis. At an older age, mastering a second language requires much more effort, when, in the course of maturation, the brain acquires new additional possibilities but permanently loses that special ??bonus?? that nature gives to a small child only in the first months of life. Large individual variability patterns of activation of the cortex during verbal activity in older bilinguals, compared with the younger ones, allows us to assume that the brain of the older bilingual mastering a new language is forced to manipulate a large number of backup mechanisms, and this is reflected in an increase in the variation of the cerebral processes responsible for speech functions. In addition, there is a serious reason to believe that learning a second language contributes to the expansion of the functional capabilities of the brain and creates the basis for successful cognitive activity.     

Variation in Instructional Discourse Features: Cultural or Linguistic? Evidence from Inuit and Non-Inuit Teachers of Nunavik

This article examines discourse features in the instructional interactions of eight Inuit and six non-lnuit teachers of Inuit children in northern Québec. Significant differences existed between these two groups of teachers in their use of Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) routines, nomination format, and teacher response to student initiations. The research distinguishes cultural factors from factors related to second language teaching. Findings suggest the cultural variability of discourse features that have significant ramifications for teacher judgments regarding students' academic and communicative competence.     

Bilingual and multilingual language processing

This chapter addresses the interesting question on the neurolinguistics of bilingualism and the representation of language in the brain in bilingual and multilingual subjects. A fundamental issue is whether the cerebral representation of language in bi- and multilinguals differs from that of monolinguals, and if so, in which specific way. This is an interdisciplinary question which needs to identify and differentiate different levels involved in the neural representation of languages, such as neuroanatomical, neurofunctional, biochemical, psychological and linguistic levels. Furthermore, specific factors such as age, manner of acquisition and environmental factors seem to affect the neural representation. We examined the question whether verbal memory processing in two unrelated languages is mediated by a common neural system or by distinct cortical areas. Subjects were Finnish-English adult multilinguals who had acquired the second language after the age of ten. They were PET-scanned whilst either encoding or retrieving word pairs in their mother tongue (Finnish) or in a foreign language (English). Within each language, subjects had to encode and retrieve four sets of 12 visually presented paired word associates which were not semantically related. Two sets consisted of highly imaginable words and the other two sets of abstract words. Presentation of pseudo-words served as a reference condition. An emission scan was recorded after each intravenous administration of O-15 water. Encoding was associated with prefrontal and hippocampal activation. During memory retrieval, precuneus showed a consistent activation in both languages and for both highly imaginable and abstract words. Differential activations were found in Broca's area and in the cerebellum as well as in the angular/supramarginal gyri according to the language used. The findings advance our understanding of the neural representation that underlies multiple language functions. Further studies are needed to elucidate the neuronal mechanisms of bi/multilingual language processing. A promising perspective for future bi/multilingual research is an integrative approach using brain imaging studies with a high spatial resolution such as fMRI, combined with techniques with a high temporal resolution, such as magnetoencephalography (MEG).     

From a Bodily-based Format of Knowledge to Symbols. The Evolution of Human Language

Although ontogeny cannot recapitulate phylogeny, a two-level model of the acquisition of language will be here proposed and its implication for the evolution of the faculty of language will be discussed. It is here proposed that the identification of the cognitive requirements of language during ontogeny could help us in the task of identifying the phylogenetic achievements that concurred, at some point, to the acquisition of language during phylogeny. In this model speaking will be considered as a complex ability that arises in two different steps. The first step of competence widely relies on a bodily-based format of knowledge. The second step relies on more abstract meta-representations and implies high-level socio-cognitive skills. It is hypothesized that in order to reach the second level of language competence, symbolic communication and interaction with a cultural community are needed. Hence, the origins of species-specific human complex language and cognition are in both the brain and culture. Moreover, in this model, data from the embodied language research will be discussed in the light of a usage-based account of language.     

Origin of symbol-using systems: speech,but not sign,without the semantic urge

Natural language—spoken and signed—is a multichannel phenomenon, involving facial and body expression, and voice and visual intonation that is often used in the service of a social urge to communicate meaning. Given that iconicity seems easier and less abstract than making arbitrary connections between sound and meaning, iconicity and gesture have often been invoked in the origin of language alongside the urge to convey meaning. To get a fresh perspective, we critically distinguish the origin of a system capable of evolution from the subsequent evolution that system becomes capable of. Human language arose on a substrate of a system already capable of Darwinian evolution; the genetically supported uniquely human ability to learn a language reflects a key contact point between Darwinian evolution and language. Though implemented in brains generated by DNA symbols coding for protein meaning, the second higher-level symbol-using system of language now operates in a world mostly decoupled from Darwinian evolutionary constraints. Examination of Darwinian evolution of vocal learning in other animals suggests that the initial fixation of a key prerequisite to language into the human genome may actually have required initially side-stepping not only iconicity, but the urge to mean itself. If sign languages came later, they would not have faced this constraint.     

Cognitive abilities and language comprehension in preschool children with perinatal brain lesion

Perinatal brain lesion is a risk factor for development, making parents of such children particularly worried about consequences it may have on the child's cognitive and language development. Although literature findings on the outcome of perinatal brain lesion are inconsistent, most of the studies have found a positive general outcome, but also subtle deficits that affect the child's academic success. Since language comprehension and cognitive abilities influence learning abilities at school, we wanted to know how six-year olds who were selected based on pathological ultrasonographical findings (ischemic or hemorrhagic brain lesion) would perform on subtests of Wechsler battery (WISC) and language comprehension measures (Reynell Developmental Language Scale and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), compared with controls. The second issue we investigated was whether in children who suffered a perinatal brain lesion cognitive abilities predicted the level of language comprehension in the same way as in children without perinatal brain lesion. The relation between cognitive and linguistic abilities is still a controversial one, and a different relation would mean that these two groups of children have different structure of abilities probably due to perinatal brain lesion. Forty children who suffered a perinatal brain lesion and forty age-matched children without perinatal risk factors were examined. Our results showed that the groups differed more in linguistic than in cognitive variables. Also, the two groups showed different relation patterns between cognitive abilities and language comprehension. Cognitive abilities were statistically significantly associated with language comprehension in children who suffered a perinatal brain lesion, while this association was not statistically significant within the control group. Since a number of participants with perinatal brain lesion had language difficulties, it is presumed that they rely on cognitive abilities in order to overcome and compensate for language shortcomings.     

Happy Art

This article looks at how arts integration can boost the language development of limited English proficient students in kindergarten through second grade. I first review existing research on how young children learn and describe the special challenges faced by children who must learn in an unfamiliar language. I then identify arts-based mechanisms that boost the language development of limited English proficient students and examine strategies used by a successful urban arts-and-literacy program to enhance the language development of English language learners in the primary grades.     

Language proficiency modulates the recruitment of non-classical language areas in bilinguals

Bilingualism provides a unique opportunity for understanding the relative roles of proficiency and order of acquisition in determining how the brain represents language. In a previous study, we combined magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the spatiotemporal dynamics of word processing in a group of Spanish-English bilinguals who were more proficient in their native language. We found that from the earliest stages of lexical processing, words in the second language evoke greater activity in bilateral posterior visual regions, while activity to the native language is largely confined to classical left hemisphere fronto-temporal areas. In the present study, we sought to examine whether these effects relate to language proficiency or order of language acquisition by testing Spanish-English bilingual subjects who had become dominant in their second language. Additionally, we wanted to determine whether activity in bilateral visual regions was related to the presentation of written words in our previous study, so we presented subjects with both written and auditory words. We found greater activity for the less proficient native language in bilateral posterior visual regions for both the visual and auditory modalities, which started during the earliest word encoding stages and continued through lexico-semantic processing. In classical left fronto-temporal regions, the two languages evoked similar activity. Therefore, it is the lack of proficiency rather than secondary acquisition order that determines the recruitment of non-classical areas for word processing.