In 1987, as a matter of utmost urgency and importance, Negara Brunei Darussalam called for a new system of education that emphasized nationalistic commitment: “Languages for Bruneians”. With the era of globalization, the Brunei Ministry of education argued that new patterns of communication were necessary and implemented a bilingual policy where children are taught in Malay until the fourth year of primary school when the medium of instruction changes to English. While the new policy supports Bruneians’ proficiency in two languages, rumour has been magnified through recent established research findings that a large percentage of pupils are underachieving in science. The main focus of this study is the effect of language transfer, from Malay to English as the medium of instruction, on the development of children’s conceptual understanding in science. Two clusters of science concepts, evaporation and condensation and living and non-living, provide the science context through which children’s understanding is explored. The theoretical framework that includes viewing and examining children’s conceptual understanding from conceptual development and epistemological and ontological perspectives of conceptual change informs the analysis of this study. The research design employed a cross sectional case study method involving the administration of interviews to a total of 255 children aged between 6 and 12 years of age. The interviews about the concepts of evaporation and condensation involved two phases. For the first phase, 60 children from each primary level of 1, 3 and 4 (total n = 180) were interviewed. Fourteen months later, 18 children from the same sample were selected based on their fluency in the first interviews and revisited for more detailed interviews. / For the concepts of living and non-living, 75 children were chosen from a wider range of primary levels, fifteen from each level of Primary 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Each participant in this study was asked 2 types of questions; forced-response and semi-structured. For the forced-response questions, scores were entered into the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer software based on a 5- point scale. For the semi-structured questions, analysis involved initial grouping of responses before entry into the software and quantitative manipulation. The data from the semi-structured interviews also were analysed qualitatively with systematic searches for themes and evidence that supported and disconfirmed the quantitative results. As this study produced qualitative as well as quantitative data, rigour was determined by two sets of parallel criteria. Ensuring rigour for the quantitative data involved the criteria of validity and reliability. Within the qualitative paradigm, the criteria that evolved in response to the quality of the research were credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. The results indicated a steady progress of conceptual understanding when the pupils’ explanations about the concepts of evaporation and condensation were in Malay. However, the pattern of development of understanding did not reach projected patterns i n Primary 4 when only English responses were analysed. The findings show that the change in language of instruction significantly hampered communication about and possibly conceptual understanding of the cluster of concepts associated with evaporation and condensation. / Similarly, the findings about children’s conceptual understanding of living and non-living suggested that the expected patterns of development were not realised. Closer qualitative inspection of the data revealed that the idiosyncratic nature of the bilingual system perpetuated particular misconceptions specifically related to the nature of the Malay and English languages in both clusters of concepts. The primary conclusion of the study was that the change in language of instruction from Malay to English in Brunei primary schools had a significant, detrimental impact on the children’s expressed understanding of the concepts associated with evaporation and condensation and living and non-living.

This present study aimed to: 1) Update and expand the data pool of normal Korean-English speaker’s generative naming task from previous data in Food, Clothes, and Animal categories, 2) analyze the relationship between language proficiencies and total number of words and different categories, and 3) provide easier means of testing Korean-English bilinguals with aphasia through translated standardized tests such as Aphasia Language Performance Scale (ALPS) and Boston Naming Test (BNT). Five additional subjects were added to 25 participants from Kim (2010). The participants were asked to name as many different items as possible in 60 seconds in Food, Clothes, and Animal category in both English and Korean. The participants generated more items in Korean than in English. A significant negative correlation was observed between number of words generated in Korean and Korean proficiency and between number of category doublets produced and language proficiency difference scores. A significant positive correlation was observed between number of words generated in English and English proficiency. Large differences in the number of words generated were observed between the participants assessed and participants from Kim (2010), indicating education level and field of study impacts generative naming ability. / text

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2004 / Refer to the document / Department of Sports, Arts and Culture

Thesis (M. A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2005 / Refer to the document

Thesis (M. A. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2005 / Refer to the document

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / This study is a comparative analysis of two English monolingual dictionaries and two Northern Sotho – English bilingual dictionaries, namely Concise Oxford English Dictionary(2006), Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2006), Pharos Popular Northern Sotho Dictionary (1995) and Sesotho Sa Leboa – English Pukuntšu Dictionary (2006). The above four dictionaries are compared in terms of cross – referencing, pronunciation and parts of speech. The microstructure of certain dictionaries does not address most problems that dictionary users have. It is in the microstructure, where dictionary users learn that certain lemmata are synonymous, polysemous in sense, antonyms or that a lemma has two alternative spellings, and that both spelling are acceptable. This is done through cross –referencing. Dictionary users need to be guided on how lemmata are pronounced, otherwise the meaning of lemmata become distorted. The other problem which the microstructure has to deal with, is to indicate the type of parts of speech lemmata are. This research is an attempt to make lexicographers aware of the importance of including the above aspects in the microstructure of their dictionaries.

This present study investigated generative naming in Korean-English bilingual adult speakers. Specific aims were: 1) to compare the total number of named items generated in Korean-English bilingual adults in the categories of Food, Clothes, and Animals, 2) to investigate the relationship between language proficiency and the total number of items named in each category and across categories for each language, and 3) to examine the relationship between language proficiency and the total number of overlapped items (doublets) in each category and across categories. Twenty five Korean-English bilingual adults named as many different items as they could in 60 seconds in the categories of Food, Clothes, and Animals in Korean and English. Results indicated that the participants produced significantly more items in Korean than English in all categories. Participants named fewer items in the category of Clothes than in the categories of Food and Animals, suggesting that generating items for the Clothes category was more difficult than for the other categories. No significant correlations were found between participants’ language proficiency and the total number of items generated and the number of doublets. There is a need to develop more reliable measures of language proficiency for bilingual speakers. / text

As the Latino portion of the United States population continues to grow each year, more and more children in the United States leave their Spanish-speaking homes and enter English immersion schools. Throughout their lives, these children are likely to shift language preferences from their home language, to the language of the community. However, maintaining development in their first language would be a benefit to them in multiple ways. Identifying factors within bilingual homes that influence English and Spanish language development in preschool-aged children will help researchers and practitioners encourage families to cultivate the optimal learning environment. This study endeavored to identify some specific social, linguistic, and literacy-related factors within the home that predict Spanish and English language development in 4-year-old children from low-income, predominantly Spanish-speaking families. Extant data from the Bilingual Early Language and Literacy Support Project (BELLS) were analyzed. Data were collected in participants' homes using various measures of the home and family environment. Results indicated children may begin to repress their first language in order to focus on learning a second language as early as 48 months. Maternal use of unique words, in Spanish, was a strong predictor of children's English expressive vocabulary, indicating that continuing to provide a rich language environment in the home language facilitates English language development. Furthermore, current measures of literacy and learning environments may be missing important behaviors present in Latino families that are distinctly different from behaviors in Caucasian families, thus making such measures inapt to predict language-related outcomes in Latino homes.

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