scholarly journals Mother Tongue of Turkish Immigrant Children in Berlin: to Be or not to Be?

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 63-74
Author(s):  
Hristo Kyuchukov
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Kindergarten Children ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Turkish Children ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
New Information ◽  
Turkish Immigrant

How do bilingual Turkish children develop their mother tongue knowledge in German kindergartens and what are some of the difficulties they face? These are the questions which this paper tries to answer. For this purpose, a study with Turkish kindergarten children from Berlin, Germany was conducted. A total of 40 children were divided into two groups between 3 and 6 years old and tested twice in a year with the TEDIL Test . The test consists of pictures and measures the knowledge of Turkish nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and syntax. All of the children were tested individually by a native Turkish speaker and by the researcher. The testing was done in the kindergarten setting. The results showed that the knowledge of both age groups on different grammatical categories in Turkish was equal on the first test and there were no statistical differences. However, during the second test the group of older children showed a decrease in their knowledge of the grammatical categories in their mother tongue. This paper discusses the factors that influenced the regression in the knowledge of Turkish. This study is one of only a few on bilingual Turkish children and it presents new information about mother tongue loss among kindergarten children, discusses the reasons, and suggests that kindergartens and families should cooperate and work together in order to prevent mother tongue loss from a very early age as well as its effect on the cognitive development of bilingual children.

scholarly journals Mother Tongue of Turkish Immigrant Children in Berlin: to Be or not to Be?

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-64
Author(s):  
Hristo Kyuchukov
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Kindergarten Children ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Turkish Children ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
New Information ◽  
Turkish Immigrant

How do bilingual Turkish children develop their mother tongue knowledge in German kindergartens and what are some of the difficulties they face? These are the questions which this paper tries to answer. For this purpose, a study with Turkish kindergarten children from Berlin, Germany was conducted. A total of 40 children were divided into two groups between 3 and 6 years old and tested twice in a year with the TEDIL Test . The test consists of pictures and measures the knowledge of Turkish nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and syntax. All of the children were tested individually by a native Turkish speaker and by the researcher. The testing was done in the kindergarten setting. The results showed that the knowledge of both age groups on different grammatical categories in Turkish was equal on the first test and there were no statistical differences. However, during the second test the group of older children showed a decrease in their knowledge of the grammatical categories in their mother tongue. This paper discusses the factors that influenced the regression in the knowledge of Turkish. This study is one of only a few on bilingual Turkish children and it presents new information about mother tongue loss among kindergarten children, discusses the reasons, and suggests that kindergartens and families should cooperate and work together in order to prevent mother tongue loss from a very early age as well as its effect on the cognitive development of bilingual children.

scholarly journals Turkish Children in Germany Learning Grammatical Categories in Turkish as a Mother Tongue

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-57
Author(s):  
Хрісто Кючуков ◽  
Баріш Гірай
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Nursery School ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Intercultural Education ◽  
Childhood Development ◽  
Eine Analyse ◽  
Turkish Children ◽  
Grammatical Categories

The paper presents and discusses findings from a recent empirical study involving 40 Turkish children aged between 4 and 6 years attending two kindergartens in Berlin in the districts of Wedding and Neukölln. They were tested for their knowledge and comprehension of different grammatical categories in Turkish. Children from Wedding were found to be much better in their knowledge of the grammatical categories in their mother tongue. The differences are statistically significant F (1, 32) = 6. 6258, p = 0. 01488 (p< 0.05). The children from the kindergarten in Neukölln demonstrated lower results in Turkish grammar comprehension and thus their achieved literacy in L1. References Bagdoshvili, S. (2010) Turkish Migrants in Germany. Unpublished MA Thesis. Tbilisi: Institute of European Studies. Barac, R., Bialystok, E. (2012) Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: role of language, cultural background, and education. Child Development, 83(2), 413-422. Çakir, M. (2002) The use of Turkish as the mother tongue in multicultural settings in Germany. Anadolu University Journal of Social Sciences, 2(1), 39-58 Cummins, J. (2001). Bilingual children’s mother tongue: Why is it important for education? Rights and responsibilities of educators of bilingual-bicultural children. In: Making a Difference in the Lives of Bilingual-Bicultural Learners, (pp. 15-20). L.D. Soto, ed. New York: Peter Lang. Cummins, J. (2016) Intercultural education and academic achievement: a fraimwork for school based policies in multilingual schools. Intercultural Education, 26(6), 455-468. Haug, S. et al. (2009) Muslimisches Leben in Deutschland. Nurnberg. Horrocks, D. and Kolinsky, E. (1996) Turkish Culture in German Society Today. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Johnston, J. (2015) Factors that influence language development. In: Encyclopedia of Early childhood development [online], Tremblay, R. E., Boivin, M., Peters R. De V., (eds.). Retrieved from: http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/language-development-and-literacy/according-experts/factors-influence-language-development. Schmitz, Anke and Olfert Helena (2013): Minderheitssprachen im deutschen Schulwesen – Eine Analyse der Implementierung allochthoner und autochthoner Sprachen. Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung, 24(2), 203-227. Skutnabb-Kangas (2005) Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (2005). Linguistic Genocide. In: Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, 3 Volumes, (pp. 653-654). Shelton, D. (ed.). New York: Macmillan Reference, USA. Treffers-Daller J., Sumru Özsoy, A., Roeland van Houtet, R. (2007) (In)Complete acquisition of Turkish among Turkish German bilinguals in Germany and Turkey: An analysis of complex embeddings in narratives. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10(3), 248-276. Yazıcı, Z. (1999). Almanya ve Turkiye’de Anaokuluna Devam Eden 60-76 Aylar Arasındaki Turk Cocuklarının Dil Geli’imi ile Okuma Olgunlugˇu Arasındakiıliskinin Incelenmesi [Investigation of connections between language development and reading readiness ofTurkish nursery school children aged 60-76 months in Germany and Turkey]. Ph.D. thesis, Gazi University. Yazıcı, Z., İlter, B., & Glover, P. (2010). How bilingual is bilingual? Mother-tongue proficiency and learning through a second language. International Journal of Early Years Education, 18(3), 259-268.

scholarly journals Bilingual Children’s Phonological Awareness: The Effect of Articulation Training

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.42 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pi-Yu Chiang
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
English Proficiency ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Kindergarten Children ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Skills Transfer ◽  
Short Period

This study aims to investigate whether unbalanced Chinese-English bilingual children’s phonological awareness skills are limited to language experience, and whether these skills are improved after a short period of articulation training with L2 (English) tongue twisters. Sixty kindergarten children in Taipei whose English proficiency was lower than their mother tongue, Chinese, participated in a series of tests. They were divided into two age groups with an average age of 5;3 and 6;3 respectively. An English proficiency test was first administrated to understand these children’s command of English. Then, phonological awareness pre-tests in Chinese and English were used to tap these children’s phonological awareness in both languages. Tests include onset/ rhyme detection test, onset deletion test, and onset/ rhyme substitution tests. Based on the causal link between articulation and phonological awareness, an English articulation training was given to the experimental group of children after the pre-tests, to examine whether enhanced English phonological awareness skills transfer to Chinese. Results showed that phonological awareness acquired in L1 were also found in L2. A period of articulation training in English led to an improvement of these children’s performances in both English and Chinese, which implies a backward transfer from weaker L2 to stronger L1. Cross-language transfers in phonological awareness abilities also imply that an abstract underlying capacity facilitates language processing across languages.

scholarly journals Narrative of bilingual children: general productivity and lexical diversity

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Agnė Blažienė
Keyword(s):  
Age Groups ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Story Generation ◽  
Children's Narratives ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
Language Environment ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance ◽  
Middle Class Families

The paper deals with the narrative production of developing Lithuanian bilingual children (L1 – Lithuanian, L2 – English). The material was collected in four Lithuanian language schools based in London. The study employs the method of story generation. During the experiment, the participants were asked to tell a story according to a 6 picture sequence Cat Story (Hickmann 2003; Gagarina et al. 2012). There were 100 Lithuanian bilingual children (4-10 years old) from middle-class families involved in the experiment. They all lived in London and attended private Lithuanian schools (~3-6 hours per week). The narratives were recorded, transcribed and morphologically annotated for an automatic analysis of narrative language using CHILDES software. During the analysis, the general productivity and lexical diversity (the number of words, the number of utterances, mean length of utterance, type/token ratio) of the narratives were investigated.The results obtained demonstrate significant differences in productivity and lexical diversity among six age groups. The narratives of older children have been found to be longer; they also include more words, consist of more utterances, which on average are longer. A comparison of bilingual and monolingual children's narratives has revealed that bilingual children are capable of producing more words, while the lexical diversity of nouns, verbs and adjectives is similar in bilingual and monolingual children’s narratives or, in some cases, higher in the narratives of monolingual children. These indicators of productivity and lexical diversity suggest that the native Lithuanian language acquired in a bilingual environment is similar to the Lithuanian language acquired in a monolingual language environment.

Motion Lexicalization in Chinese among Heritage Language Children in Canada

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-296
Author(s):  
Youran Lin ◽  
Elena Nicoladis
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Second Language Speakers ◽  
Heritage Language Speakers ◽  
Two Age Groups

Heritage language speaking children often show signs of attrition, particularly as they get older and are educated in the majority language of the society where they live. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that simplification is one process of attrition for heritage language speakers. We tested this hypothesis on the expression of motion events among children who are first language speakers of Mandarin Chinese and early second language speakers of English, the majority language in this community. We compared their motion expressions to those of monolingual Mandarin-speaking children living in mainland China. Two age groups were included: younger children (4-6 years, not yet in school) and older children (8-10 years; in school for two to five years). The children watched a cartoon and recounted the story. We coded the motion expressions used in their retellings. The results showed that the older bilingual children showed clear signs of attrition, particularly simplification, but also some signs of cross-linguistic influence from English. These results suggest that attrition in a heritage language can quickly follow the onset of schooling in the majority language.

The role of home and school factors in predicting English vocabulary among bilingual kindergarten children in Singapore

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. QUENTIN DIXON
Keyword(s):  
Family Income ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Kindergarten Children ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Peabody Picture Vocabulary ◽  
School Factors ◽  
Home And School

ABSTRACTResearch in monolingual populations indicate that vocabulary knowledge is essential to reading achievement, but how vocabulary develops in bilingual children has been understudied. The current study investigated the role of home and school factors in predicting English vocabulary among 284 bilingual kindergartners (168 Chinese, 65 Malay, 51 Indian) in the multilingual context of Singapore. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Third Edition was administered in English and in translations into Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. Home factors including caretaker language, television language, and mother tongue vocabulary were found to be significant predictors of English vocabulary, controlling for mother's years of education and family income. The curriculum emphasis of the kindergarten center was also found to be a significant predictor of English vocabulary.

scholarly journals Sentence interpretation strategies in emergent bilingual children and adults

2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
ILIANA REYES ◽  
ARTURO E. HERNÁNDEZ
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
First Language ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
College Age ◽  
Emergent Bilingual ◽  
Developmental Theories ◽  
New Information ◽  
Children And Young Adults ◽  
Sentence Interpretation

This study examined sentence processing in emergent bilingual children and young adults in both English (second language – L2) and Spanish (first language – L1). One hundred participants from five different age groups (5;4–7;11, 8;0–10;11, 11;2–13;11, 14;0–16;8 years, and college-age adults) participated in this study. An online sentence interpretation paradigm was used to explore participants' processing patterns. Results of both choice and reaction time experiments provide new information about consolidation and “in between” strategies for Spanish–English bilinguals; on the use of the distribution of local vs. topological cues (namely early reliance on word order in both languages, followed by an integration of late-emerging subject-verb agreement cues from 11 to 13 years of age). The nature of these syntactic strategies and their implications for developmental theories of bilingualism are discussed.

scholarly journals Acquisition of Turkish Grammatical Categories in Bilingual Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-46
Author(s):  
Хрісто Кючуков
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Turkish Children ◽  
Children's Narratives ◽  
Turkish Language

The paper presents results form a study on acquisition of Turkish grammatical categories by first grade Turkish speaking minority children in Bulgarian primary school. Two groups of children speakers of Turkish are tested: ethnic Turks and ethnic Roma. The Roma are Muslims and are also speakers of Turkish. Both groups speak the Northeast variety of Turkish, spoken in the surroundings of Varna, Bulgaria. The author examines the lexical reaches, syntax complexity and narrative knowledge of the children and predicts that the low results on mother tongue tests will be a reason for difficulties in the second language acquisition - Bulgarian. The author connects the results of mother tongue knowledge of the children with the language interdependence theory of Cummins (1991), where the level of  the mother tongue is  a predictor of second language acquisition. References Aarssen, J. (1994) Acquisition of discourse anaphora in Turkish children’s narratives. VII International Conference of Turkish Linguistics. Mainz. Akıncı, M. (2016) From emergent bilingualism to biliteracy competences of French-Turkish bilingual children and teenagers in France. The Future of Multilingualism in the German Educational System, Berlin, March 3-4. Aksu-Koç and Slobin (1985) Acquisition of Turkish. In: The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition: Vol. 1. The Data, (pp. 839-878). D. I. Slobin (Ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Aksu- Koç, A. (1994) Development of linguistic forms: Turkish. In: Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. R. Berman and D. Slobin, (Eds.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Boeschoten, H. (1990) Acquisition of Turkish by immigrant children: a multiple case study of Turkish children in the Netherlands aged 4 to 6. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. Boeschoten, H. & Verhoeven, L. (1987). Turkish language development of Turkish children in the Netherlands. Proceedings of the Conference on Turkish Linguistics, A. Aksu-Koç & E. Erguvanli-Taylan (Eds.), Istanbul, 1984. Boaziçi University Press, (269-280). Cummins, J. (1991). Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children. In: Language Processing in Bilingual Children. (pp. 70-89). E. Bialystock (Ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620652.006 Küntay, A. (1997) Extended Discourse Skills of Turkish Preschool Children Across Shifting Con­texts. Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Berkeley. Kyuchukov, H. (2000) Introducing referents in Turkish children's narratives. Psychology of Language and Communication, 4(1), 65-74. Kyuchukov, H. (2007) Turkish and Roma Children Learning Bulgarian. Veliko Tarnovo: Faber. Kyuchukov, H. (2019) Za Mefkure Mollova i neyniyat prinos za izsledvane na turskite dialekti v Bulgaria. [About Mefkure Mollova and her commitment for researching the Turkish dialects in Bulgaria]. Veliko Tarnovo: Faber Luria, A. R. and Yudevich, F. Ia. (1959) Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child. London: Strapless Press. Pfaff, C. (1993) Turkish language development in Germany. In: Immigrant Languages in Europe, G. Extra and L. Verhoeven (Eds) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Verhallen, M. and Schoenen, R. (1993) Lexical knowledge of monolingual and bilingual children. Applied Linguistics, 14, 344-363. Verhoeven, L. (1993) Acquisition of narrative skills in a bilingual context. In: Current Issues in European Second Language Acquisition Research. V. Ketteman and W. Wieden, (Eds). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

scholarly journals A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE “THEORY OF MIND” OFTURKISH BILINGUAL CHILDREN

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-82
Author(s):  
Hristo Kyuchukov
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Lexical Knowledge ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
The One ◽  
L1 And L2

This article presentsthe results of a study with Turkish preschool bilingual children living in Berlin, Germany. This article aims to examine the influence between the level of proficiency in the mother tongue (first language L1) and the official language (second language L2) on the one hand and the “theory of mind” on the other, or more precisely, how the lexical knowledge of L1 and L2 and the understanding of interrogative sentences used with a verb indicating mental states helps to understand the ToM.Research methods and techniques. The study included 18 Turkish-German bilingual children attending a kindergarten in Berlin, Germany. The children were divided into two age groups: 1 g of 4–5 year-olds (8 children) and 2 gr. of 5-6 year-olds (10 children) and were tested in their native Turkish and then in German. The testing was performed in the kindergarten in a separate room, where only the experimenter and the examined child were present. The children are offered the classical tests for “theory of mind”, as well as language tests related to the comprehension of interrogative sentences, containing a verb showing a mental state and comprehension and production of vocabulary in native Turkish and German as a second language for them.The resultsshow that vocabulary is not an important factor, and mastery of interrogative sentences is the factor that helps to understand the “theory of mind”. The results obtained were analyzed statistically by means ofthe t-test.Children with German-Turkish bilingualism understand the vocabulary of their mother tongue well and it is obviously in their passive vocabulary, but this knowledge has not yet passed into their active vocabulary. German vocabulary predominates in the children's active vocabulary. With regard to the level of mastery of interrogative sentences, children are equally good at interrogative sentences in both languages.

RTS,S/AS01, a vaccine targeting pre-erythrocytic stages of Plasmodium falciparum

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 533-537
Author(s):  
Lorenz von Seidlein ◽  
Borimas Hanboonkunupakarn ◽  
Podjanee Jittmala ◽  
Sasithon Pukrittayakamee
Keyword(s):  
Protective Efficacy ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Phase Iii ◽  
European Medicines Agency ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Pivotal Phase ◽  
Malaria Epidemiology ◽  
Maximum Benefit ◽  
Sub Saharan

RTS,S/AS01 is the most advanced vaccine to prevent malaria. It is safe and moderately effective. A large pivotal phase III trial in over 15 000 young children in sub-Saharan Africa completed in 2014 showed that the vaccine could protect around one-third of children (aged 5–17 months) and one-fourth of infants (aged 6–12 weeks) from uncomplicated falciparum malaria. The European Medicines Agency approved licensing and programmatic roll-out of the RTSS vaccine in malaria endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa. WHO is planning further studies in a large Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme, in more than 400 000 young African children. With the changing malaria epidemiology in Africa resulting in older children at risk, alternative modes of employment are under evaluation, for example the use of RTS,S/AS01 in older children as part of seasonal malaria prophylaxis. Another strategy is combining mass drug administrations with mass vaccine campaigns for all age groups in regional malaria elimination campaigns. A phase II trial is ongoing to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of the RTSS in combination with antimalarial drugs in Thailand. Such novel approaches aim to extract the maximum benefit from the well-documented, short-lasting protective efficacy of RTS,S/AS01.

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