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Es freut mich sehr, dass die Frage der Mehrsprachigkeit in der Wissenschaft mit dieser Veranstaltung breite Aufmerksamkeit erfährt. Ich hoffe sehr, dass sie nicht nur theoretisch und konzeptionell die Notwendigkeit der Förderung von Mehrsprachigkeit in den Wissenschaften unterstreichen wird, sondern dass sie dazu beiträgt, dass dies auch praktisch umgesetzt wird. Auch hierzu möchte ich einige Anregungen geben, die vielleicht die Diskussion befördern werden. Ich beginne mit einigen wenigen grundsätzlichen Betrachtungen zum Thema Mehrsprachigkeit vs. Einsprachigkeit in der Hochschullehre und den jeweiligen Konsequenzen für Gesellschaft und Kultur.1 Daran anschließend möchte ich anhand von drei Beispielen zeigen, wo derzeit das Problem von wissenschaftlicher Einsprachigkeit am virulentesten ist und welche alternativen Konzepte es zu entwickeln gilt bzw. welche bereits entwickelt wurden. Abschließend, in einem dritten Teil, möchte ich nochmals benennen, welche konkreten Maßnahmen aus meiner Sicht nötig sind, wenn wir Mehrsprachigkeit nicht nur am grünen Tisch oder in wissenschaftlichen Vortragssälen, sondern in der gesellschaftlichen Realität umsetzen wollen.

Magister Artium - MA / Terminology such as mother tongue, first language and second language remain prevalent in South African schools’ language policies. These monolingual terms seem out of place within our multilingual landscape (Banda, 2018). With the emergence of the concept of translanguaging (Garcia, 2009, 2014; Banda, 2018), the linguistic practices that people of the Western Cape (and elsewhere in South Africa) have now been legitimised as a useful communicative tool within multilingual spaces. Despite research showing the advantages of using translanguaging in classrooms to enhance comprehension (Banda, 2018), language policies remain monolingual in nature. By conducting research at two schools in Delft, Western Cape, I am able to show how learners and teachers defy the monolingual structure of the language policy, by translanguaging, to make learning and teaching more comprehensible. Using Heller’s (2007) concept of language as social practice, it becomes apparent how learners become social actors within the classroom, by languaging to make meaning. In addition to looking at classroom practices, I use supplementary data, an analysis of the school’s language policy, observations of and commentary on linguistic practices outside of the classroom, to further support the idea that school’s confinement of language is incongruous with the language practices in the area. Finally, I propose that translanguaging be legitimised as classroom practice and teaching materials also be adapted likewise, by producing trilingual posters, showing Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa terms, for the Western Cape.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study attempts to understand the nature of the cultural and linguistic experiences that affected a single, monolingual, female teacher during her first overseas experience in an American school in Brazil. A descriptive, qualitative, case study methodology utilized extensive observations, video-taping, and interviews with the teacher, her colleagues, students, and parents to explore how those experiences affected her perceptions and actions towards her colleagues, students, and parents, and how she made sense of these experiences. At the time of this study, there were an estimated 1,000 international schools worldwide, and just over half of these were autonomous institutions sponsored by a variety of interests and corporations. The Escola Americana de Campinas fits into this group. As a worldwide average, the U.S. student population in international schools today is about 30 percent of the total enrolment, and the majority of overseas-hire native English speaking teachers are female, white, middle class and monolingual; many are not adequately prepared for the challenges of teaching children who have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The study of one such teacher describes the cultural and linguistic discomfort she experienced in her daily life, and with her colleagues and parents. Although she was pedagogically competent, she was not open to changing her teaching practices to more effectively teach students with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. However, as this teacher learned to speak some Portuguese she became empathetic to some of the linguistic needs of her multi-lingual and multi-cultural students. This case study suggests that this teacher's personal and professional reasons to live and work overseas did not enable her to anticipate and to face the challenges she experienced. She did not have the training or experience to work with a diverse group of students, and the school did not provide adequate support to help her adjustment. This study offers implications and practical suggestions for recruitment agenc1es, administrators, teachers, and pre-service institutions faced with such situations. / 2031-01-02

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2011 / This study evaluates the comparative analysis of cross-referencing in Northern Sotho monolingual dictionary and Northern Sotho-English bilingual dictionaries. The study argues that Northern Sotho-English Lexicographers do not treat cross-referencing in accordance with the lexicographic theories and principles. Since in this study cross-referencing is treated with regard to synonyms and antonyms only, the study has discovered that there are many problems in relation to the application of cross-referencing in these dictionaries. This enables dictionary users to follow it with ease, because if theories are not adhered to, then the motive for using dictionaries becomes null and void. The other thing is that lexicographers mix the translation equivalents of partial synonyms and complete synonyms, that is, partial synonyms are paired with complete synonyms, thus leading to orthorgraphic errors. Moreover, the study discovered that some emerging lexicographers are attempting to apply cross-referencing in their dictionaries, something which is a very good attempt. Therefore, the study recommends that major theories and principles of lexicography should be indicated in the front matter of the dictionaries. This will be to make sure that lexicographers themselves know about those theories, as that will make their dictionaries very useful to their readers.

The purpose of this thesis has been to study vocabulary elicited from ten different areas of subject matter by means of limited time testing on mixed control-groups comprising ninety-nine students in the 16-17-18 year-old age range, of which 33 were monolinguals in Spanish (from Monterrey, Mexico), 33 were monolinguals in English (from Houston, Texas), and 33 were bilinguals (also from Houston). The history of such testing and its recent evolutions; important pre-testing discoveries; the manual and technological methods used in carrying out the actual testing; its rationale, and how vocabulary studies may be classified are important properties of the techniques and analyses of this study. The practical applications of lexical availability are seen in relation to what lexical availability is and how it may be measured. The testing was divided into distinct areas of subject matter and for each, the students gave, by means of a free association type response, words which they related directly or indirectly to one stimulus at a time. The participants were required to write down their responses as pretesting experimentation uncovered some severe disadvantages in using oraltype recording devices. Each stimulus was allowed two minutes. Lexical homogeneity to the highest degree possible was desirable; therefore, subject matters were selected on a basis of universality. The socioeconomic and sociocultural backgrounds of the Spanish speaking monolinguals was seen to be advantaged over that of the English speaking monolinguals and the bilinguals, based on the occupational statuses of their families and types of city districts wherein their homes are found. The analytical development of the results brought to light some surprising findings. The English speaking monolinguals ranked first in production of total lexical items (6,/140); the Spanish speaking bilinguals ranked second in total production (5,672); English speaking bilinguals ranked third (5,572) and Spanish speaking monolinguals totaled 4,696 items, ranking fourth. As to different items, Spanish speaking bilinguals produced 2,539, ranking first; English speaking monolinguals elicited 2,454, ranking second; English speaking bilinguals ranked third with 2,384 and Spanish speaking monolinguals yielded 1,904 different items, ranking fourth. Females consistently outranked the males in lexical production-by 11.59% in total items and 10.89% in different items. Of the 22,380 total items produced, girls elicited 13,404 to the males' production of 8,976 (weight-corrected figure: 10,145). That portion of the entire corpus which yielded items of 8 occurrences or more comprised 44.81%. Significant to the study of lexical availability is cognitive concomitance; that is, the degree of universal agreement to be found concurrent to the participating group. In the case of this study, the fact that 45% (rounded figure) of the lexical items were shared by and dispersed to such a substantial degree among all informants was confirmation of lexical homogeneity.

The master's thesis Theoretical Problems of Spanish Lexicography introduces issues associated with creating general monolingual dictionaries. The thesis has two main objectives. Firstly, it aims to summarise the most frequent lexicographic issues and attempt to find their suitable solutions in practice through an analysis of significant research studies dealing with this subject. The issues have been divided into two groups depending on whether they regard the macrostructure (collection of dictionary entries) or microstructure (collection of headword information). As for the macrostructure, one of the main issues is posed by determining the criteria for the selection of dictionary entries. Modern descriptive lexicography considers lexical unit usage frequency to be the main criterion. The macrostructure of general monolingual dictionaries should generally not include proper nouns while productive affixes and affixoids, phraseological units with a high degree of idiomaticity, abbreviations and frequently used neologisms should be included. The thesis also explores the issue of distinguishing between cases of homonymy and polysemy and its impact on lexicographic practice. The chapter on microstructure focuses primarily on the issues of constructing lexicographic definitions with user...

The present study seeks to explore if the bilingual advantage and disadvantage of children who are natively bilingual in English and Spanish extends to children who gain exposure to and eventually become bilingual in these languages beginning at ages 5 and 6. Specifically, the study compares executive control, vocabulary, and verbal fluency for three groups of children: a) native Spanish-English bilinguals, b) late bilinguals that have completed at least 5 years of a 50-50 dual language immersion program in English and Spanish in school, and c) English monolinguals that have not had second language instruction. The proposed study seeks a better understanding of the unique cognitive skill sets of native and late bilingual and monolingual children, and to inform educational policy related to bilingual students. / text

Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / There is an overwhelming concern about substance use amongst adolescents across the world, especially in low socio-economic status communities. The South African Substance Use Contextual Risk Instrument was developed to capture the contextual risk factors for adolescents in low socio-economic status South African communities. This study is part of a larger study which aimed to develop and conduct the initial validation of the instrument. In piloting the instrument, both English and isiXhosa mother tongue speakers were tested using the English version since the instrument is only available in English. The equivalence of the measure across the English and isiXhosa mother tongue speakers is however unknown. The purpose of this study is therefore to assess the scalar equivalence of the English version across the English and isiXhosa mother tongue speakers. The total sample was 674 consisting of 420 English and 247 isiXhosa language groups from low socio-economic status communities in Cape Town. The study employed the Hoteling’s T square test (to assess significant difference of means between the groups), the equality of reliabilities (to assess the significance of differences between the scale reliabilities) and the Tucker’s Phi coefficient of congruence (to assess the congruence of the construct across the two groups). In assessing the mean differences, the results revealed that there were significant mean differences, with the isiXhosa-speaking group performing significantly lower than the English-speaking group for most of the scales. Internal consistency was also generally lower for the isiXhosa group. The structural congruence revealed that there was incongruence between the two language groups for most of the scales with an exception of two of the twenty one scales. It can thus be concluded that the measure cannot be accepted as structurally equivalent across the two groups. It is clear that bias exists in the majority of the scales of the SASUCRI and that this version is thus not applicable for an isiXhosa speaking sample. The study recommends that the instrument is adapted for the isiXhosa speaking group. / National Research Foundation (NRF)

Monolingual children identify referents uniquely in gesture before they do so with words, and parents translate these gestures into words. Children benefit from these translations, acquiring the words their parents translated earlier than the ones that are not translated. Are bilingual children as likely as monolingual children to identify referents uniquely in gesture; and, if so, do parental translations have the same positive impact on the vocabulary development of bilingual children? Our results showed that the bilingual children—dominant in English or in Spanish—were as likely as monolingual children to identify referents uniquely in gesture. More important, the unique gestures, translated into words by the parents, were as likely to enter bilingual children’s speech, as it does for monolinguals—independent of language dominance. Our results suggest that parental response to child gesture plays as crucial of a role in the vocabulary development bilingual children as it does in monolinguals.