Suchergebnisse

The traditional definition of language aptitude sees it as "an individual's initial state of readiness and capacity for learning a foreign language, and probable facility in doing so given the presence of motivation and opportunity" (Carroll, 1981, p. 86). This conception portrays language aptitude as a trait, in the sense of exhibiting stability over long periods of time and being immune to training. The trait view of language aptitude tends towards the notion that it is innate, and indeed language aptitude has often been associated with the popular notion of a "gift for languages" (cf. Rosenthal, 1996, p. 59). The view of language aptitude as an innate trait has, however, long been questioned (see e.g., Neufeld, 1978). Recently, this questioning has intensified (see Singleton, 2014), especially since the development of a widespread consensus that working memory needs to be recognized as an important component of language aptitude (see Wen, 2016). Working memory was also once thought of as a trait, but is now recognized as susceptible to the influence of experience and instruction (see e.g., Williams, 2012). The present paper will track the trajectory of the above theoretical discussion and will explore the implications of the stage it has now reached.

Language awareness and language aptitude often crop up in discussion of various second language acquisition phenomena, including age-related phenomena. There is a troublesome and ongoing definitional and theoretical problem in this connection: Different researchers have different perspectives on what is to be included in the respective notions; on how do to measure language awareness, on the one hand, and language aptitude, on the other; and on how or whether to differentiate the two constructs in terms of innateness versus experience. This article begins by addressing the entire problematic of the conceptualization of language awareness and language aptitude. The language awareness/aptitude issue features in the maturational debate in connection with two claims. First, it is discussed in relation to the view that second-language (L2) learning of older individuals is explicit (whereas that of younger individuals is implicit). Second, it is referred to in regard to the notion that there are older L2 learners who appear to be able to "beat" the critical period thanks to high levels of language aptitude. The article critically explores both these propositions and concludes that neither is particularly safe, especially given the uncertain state of the relevant research context.

This book is an authoritative account of multilingualism in the present era, a phenomenon affecting a vast number of communities, thousands of languages and millions of language users. The book's focus is specifically on the knowledge and use of multiple languages, but its treatment of the topic is very wide-ranging. It deals with both bilingualism and polyglottism, at the level of the individual speaker as well as at the societal level. The volume addresses not only linguistic facets of multilingualism but also multilingualism's cultural, sociological, educational, and psychological dimension

The concept of affordances originating in Gibson's work (Gibson, 1977) is gaining ground in multilingualism studies (cf. Aronin and Singleton, 2010; Singleton and Aronin, 2007; Dewaele, 2010). Nevertheless, studies investigating affordances in respect of teaching, learning or using languages are still somewhat rare and tend to treat isolated aspects of multilingualism. This is despite the fact that the theory of affordances can actually provide a valuable, supplementary, up-to-date framework within which a clearer, sharper description and explication of the intriguing range of attributes of multilingual communities, educational institutions and individuals, as well as teaching practices, become feasible. It is important that not only researchers and practitioners (teachers, educators, parents, community and political actors) but also language users and learners themselves should be aware of how to identify or, if necessary, design new affordances for language acquisition and learning. The aim of this article is to adapt the concept of affordances to multilingualism studies and additional language teaching, and in so doing advance theoretical understanding in this context. To this end the article contains a brief summary of the findings so far available. The article also goes further into defining the ways of how affordances work in relation to multilingualism and second language teaching and puts forward an integrated model of affordances.

INTRODUCTION: Existing mobility endpoints based on functional performance, physical assessments and patient self-reporting are often affected by lack of sensitivity, limiting their utility in clinical practice. Wearable devices including inertial measurement units (IMUs) can overcome these limitations by quantifying digital mobility outcomes (DMOs) both during supervised structured assessments and in real-world conditions. The validity of IMU-based methods in the real-world, however, is still limited in patient populations. Rigorous validation procedures should cover the device metrological verification, the validation of the algorithms for the DMOs computation specifically for the population of interest and in daily life situations, and the users' perspective on the device. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This protocol was designed to establish the technical validity and patient acceptability of the approach used to quantify digital mobility in the real world by Mobilise-D, a consortium funded by the European Union (EU) as part of the Innovative Medicine Initiative, aiming at fostering regulatory approval and clinical adoption of DMOs. After defining the procedures for the metrological verification of an IMU-based device, the experimental procedures for the validation of algorithms used to calculate the DMOs are presented. These include laboratory and real-world assessment in 120 participants from five groups: healthy older adults; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, proximal femoral fracture and congestive heart failure. DMOs extracted from the monitoring device will be compared with those from different reference systems, chosen according to the contexts of observation. Questionnaires and interviews will evaluate the users' perspective on the deployed technology and relevance of the mobility assessment. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study has been granted ethics approval by the centre's committees (London—Bloomsbury Research Ethics committee; Helsinki Committee, Tel Aviv ...