The Influence of Texting Language on Grammar and Executive Functions in Primary School Children

When sending text messages on their mobile phone to friends, children often use a special type of register, which is called textese. This register allows the omission of words and the use of textisms: instances of non-standard written language such as 4ever (forever). Previous studies have shown that textese has a positive effect on children’s literacy abilities. In addition, it is possible that children’s grammar system is affected by textese as well, as grammar rules are often transgressed in this register. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to investigate whether the use of textese influences children’s grammar performance, and whether this effect is specific to grammar or language in general. Additionally, studies have not yet investigated the influence of textese on children’s cognitive abilities. Consequently, the secondary aim of this study was to find out whether textese affects children’s executive functions. To investigate this, 55 children between 10 and 13 years old were tested on a receptive vocabulary and grammar performance (sentence repetition) task and various tasks measuring executive functioning. In addition, text messages were elicited and the number of omissions and textisms in children’s messages were calculated. Regression analyses showed that omissions were a significant predictor of children’s grammar performance after various other variables were controlled for: the more words children omitted in their text messages, the better their performance on the grammar task. Although textisms correlated (marginally) significantly with vocabulary, grammar and selective attention scores and omissions marginally significantly with vocabulary scores, no other significant effects were obtained for measures of textese in the regression analyses: neither for the language outcomes, nor for the executive function tasks. Hence, our results show that textese is positively related to children’s grammar performance. On the other hand, use of textese does not affect—positively nor negatively—children’s executive functions.     

A Comparison between Teaching Methods in Secondary School Biology

The advent of cheaper SLR digital cameras and associated software has allowed the rapid creation of digital images. We explain three simple techniques that allow the generation of micrographs. A further technique is described that allows the production of an image from a full section of the microscope slide. Class sets of micrographs greatly enhance any discussion before or after the practical session.     

The Origin and Diversification of Language

The Origin and Diversification of Language. Nina G. Jablonski and Leslie C. Aiello. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 202 pp.     

The Phylogenesis of Language: The Grammar of Gestures and the Manipulation of Words

Current studies on the origin of language clearly show the necessity to go beyond the debate of nature vs. culture in order to pursue an interdisciplinary perspective. The convergence of researches carried out in different fields – neurobiology, palaeoanthropology and linguistics – outlines in a rather clear and convincing framework the strong link between language and motility. Various sources of evidence demonstrate how the mechanisms of culture acquisition and transmission – imitation, language and dexterity – refer back to the same cerebral structures. Moreover, both the motor and the linguistic systems show an identical multileveled basic structure that allows humans high levels of expressiveness. Actions such as the production of tools or the throwing of objects, connected to the very first human behaviours, emerge through space-time concatenations related to the linguistic logic. The hypothesis of a coevolution of language and motor patterns and of a very remote origin of verbal communication is thus debated.     

Natural Signs and the Origin of Language

This article considers natural signs and their role in the origin of language. Natural signs, sometimes called primary signs, are connected with their signified by causal relationships, concomitance, or likeliness. And their acquisition is directed by both objective reality and past experience (memory). The discovery and use of natural signs is a required prerequisite of existence for any living systems because they are indispensable to movement, the search for food, regulation, communication, and many other information-related activities. It is argued that the birth of conventional signs, sometimes called secondary signs, was determined by a connotative use of natural signs and that, regulated and maintained by them, human language developed. At the same time, the origin and development of human language presupposes a ‘rational turn’ from the given and external reality of natural signs to the rationally constructed reality of artificial signs and rules that are internally maintained by the subjects’ deliberate activities, and actual and inherited social tradition (social memory). In view of this, language is defined as a dynamic system that must both be natural and artificial, empirical and a priori, inductive and deductive. This bilateral origin and regulation of language is the dual-inference of language.     

Chapter VII: Some Problems of Phonetics,Grammar, and Semantics in Learning a Language

In this - our concluding - chapter, we want to discuss some more specific problems that are currently being debated by methodologists and psychologists specializing in foreignlanguage learning. Let us begin with phonetics.     

Belongingness in Early Secondary School: Key Factors that Primary and Secondary Schools Need to Consider

It is unknown if, and how, students redefine their sense of school belongingness after negotiating the transition to secondary school. The current study used longitudinal data from 266 students with, and without, disabilities who negotiated the transition from 52 primary schools to 152 secondary schools. The study presents the 13 most significant personal student and contextual factors associated with belongingness in the first year of secondary school. Student perception of school belongingness was found to be stable across the transition. No variability in school belongingness due to gender, disability or household-socio-economic status (SES) was noted. Primary school belongingness accounted for 22% of the variability in secondary school belongingness. Several personal student factors (competence, coping skills) and school factors (low-level classroom task-goal orientation), which influenced belongingness in primary school, continued to influence belongingness in secondary school. In secondary school, effort-goal orientation of the student and perception of their school’s tolerance to disability were each associated with perception of school belongingness. Family factors did not influence belongingness in secondary school. Findings of the current study highlight the need for primary schools to foster belongingness among their students at an early age, and transfer students’ belongingness profiles as part of the hand-over documentation. Most of the factors that influenced school belongingness before and after the transition to secondary are amenable to change.     

Teaching Elsewhere: Anthropological Pedagogy,Racism and Indifference in a Hong Kong Classroom

This essay is concerned with the political, historical and cultural contexts of teaching and learning in Hong Kong, focusing on my recent experiences of tertiary teaching there. Although an emphasis on rote learning driven by an exam oriented educational trajectory is now widely criticised, strong institutional and social forces still operate to produce a student body highly resistant to radicalising discourses. I argue that cultural indifference, chauvinism and racism pervade the classroom, posing particular challenges for anthropological pedagogy.     

"Now, like Real Israelis, Let's Stand Up and Sing": Teaching the National Language to Russian Newcomers in Israel

This article addresses the links between nationalism, national identity, and the socialization of migrants through an ethnographic account of an encounter between an Israeli teacher of Hebrew and adult newcomers from the former Soviet Union at a state-sponsored Hebrew language class (ulpan) in Israel. A close look at the axes around which learning was organized, as well as the modes of instruction, reveals a particular conceptualization of learning to belong to Israeli society, one which the newcomers themselves appeared to contest.     

The Neurophysiology of Language Processing Shapes the Evolution of Grammar: Evidence from Case Marking

Do principles of language processing in the brain affect the way grammar evolves over time or is language change just a matter of socio-historical contingency? While the balance of evidence has been ambiguous and controversial, we identify here a neurophysiological constraint on the processing of language that has a systematic effect on the evolution of how noun phrases are marked by case (i.e. by such contrasts as between the English base form she and the object form her). In neurophysiological experiments across diverse languages we found that during processing, participants initially interpret the first base-form noun phrase they hear (e.g. she…) as an agent (which would fit a continuation like … greeted him), even when the sentence later requires the interpretation of a patient role (as in … was greeted). We show that this processing principle is also operative in Hindi, a language where initial base-form noun phrases most commonly denote patients because many agents receive a special case marker ("ergative") and are often left out in discourse. This finding suggests that the principle is species-wide and independent of the structural affordances of specific languages. As such, the principle favors the development and maintenance of case-marking systems that equate base-form cases with agents rather than with patients. We confirm this evolutionary bias by statistical analyses of phylogenetic signals in over 600 languages worldwide, controlling for confounding effects from language contact. Our findings suggest that at least one core property of grammar systematically adapts in its evolution to the neurophysiological conditions of the brain, independently of socio-historical factors. This opens up new avenues for understanding how specific properties of grammar have developed in tight interaction with the biological evolution of our species.