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URL: http://www.centre-multilingualism.ch/language-of-origin-language-at-school.html. The project "Language of origin and language at school: are language skills transferable?" has been initiated to explore potential transfers between the language of origin and the language spoken at school in schoolchildren who attend heritage language and culture (HLC) courses. A particular focus is placed on reading and writing skills. The project builds on research done by Moser et al. (2008) within the National Research Programme 56. This project focused on the transfer of language skills from the first language to the language spoken at school in 4 to 6-year-old children with an immigration background. Children who attended courses to advance their L1 were compared with their peers who did not participate in a programme to promote their language skills. In the current project, the focus is placed on reading comprehension and writing skills in the second language of slightly older schoolchildren (8 to 9 years of age). The results aim to provide supplementary information to the work of Moser et al. (2008), which was concerned mainly with phonological awareness and with vocabulary. The current project also examines whether transfers between L1 and L2 are more pronounced between closely related languages than between languages with a disparate typology. The project examines children in the 5th to 6th year of primary school (according to HarmoS) who have Portuguese roots. Their language skills in both Portuguese and the language at school (either French or German) undergo assessment at three different periods of time: before they attend HLC courses, and after one and two years of attendance.

The results of this project have been published in book form at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5378471. A project description is available from the Institute of Multilingualism's website: http://www.institut-plurilinguisme.ch/en/content/language-aptitude-why-and-how-assess-it

Once they have learnt about the effects of collinearity on the output of multiple regression models, researchers may unduly worry about these and resort to (sometimes dubious) modelling techniques to mitigate them. I argue that, to the extent that problems occur in the presence of collinearity, they are not caused by it but rather by common mental shortcuts that researchers take when interpreting statistical models and that can also lead them astray in the absence of collinearity. Moreover, I illustrate that common strategies for dealing with collinearity only sidestep the perceived problem by biasing parameter estimates, reformulating the model in such a way that it maps onto different research questions, or both. I conclude that collinearity in itself is not a problem and that researchers should be aware of what their approaches for addressing it actually achieve.

Le projet Langue d’origine et langue de scolarisation : dans quelle mesure les compétences en littéracie sont-elles transférables ? (HELASCOT) s’intéresse au développement langagier d’enfants issus de la migration portugaise en Suisse. Il porte en particulier sur les compétences en littéracie (compréhension et production écrites) de ces enfants dans leur langue d’origine (le portugais) et dans la langue de scolarisation de la région dans laquelle ils vivent (le français ou l’allemand). Les compétences de ces enfants ont par ailleurs été comparées à celles d’autres enfants d’âge équivalent scolarisés en Suisse romande, Suisse alémanique et au Portugal. The project Heritage language and school language: are literacy skills transferable? (HELASCOT) addresses the linguistic development in migrant children of Portuguese descent in Switzerland. It focuses primarily on the children’s literacy skills (reading comprehension and writing skills) in their heritage language (i.e. Portuguese) and in the language of instruction in the region in which they live (French or German). The skills of these children were also compared with those of other children of the same age schooled in French-speaking Switzerland, German-speaking Switzerland and Portugal. Das Projekt Herkunftssprache und Schulsprache: sind Literalitätskompetenzen übertragbar? (HELASCOT) befasst sich mit der sprachlichen Entwicklung von Kindern mit portugiesischer Herkunft in der Schweiz. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den schriftlichen Sprachkompetenzen (Rezeption und Produktion) dieser Kinder in ihrer Herkunftssprache (d.h. in Portugiesisch) und in der Schulsprache der Wohnregion (Deutsch oder Französisch). Die Kompetenzen dieser Kinder wurden mit denjenigen gleichaltriger Kinder verglichen, die in der französischsprachigen resp. der deutschsprachigen Schweiz sowie in Portugal die Schule besuchten. Il progetto Lingue d’origine e lingue di scolarizzazione: in che misura le competenze di literacy sono trasferibili? (HELASCOT) si occupa dello sviluppo linguistico di bambini con retroterra migratorio portoghese in Svizzera. Si concentra principalmente sulla capacità di lettura, comprensione e produzione scritta di tali bambini nella loro lingua d’origine (il portoghese) e nella lingua d’insegnamento della regione nella quale vivono (francese o tedesco). Le competenze di questi bambini sono state inoltre confrontate con quelle di altri bambini di età equivalente nella Svizzera romanda, nella Svizzera tedesca e in Portogallo. O projeto Língua de origem e língua de escolarização: será que competências de literacia são transferíveis? (HELASCOT) tem como pano de fundo o interesse pelo desenvolvimento linguístico de crianças provenientes da migração portuguesa na Suíça, incidindo- se sobretudo nas competências de literacia (compreensão e produção escritas) dessas crianças na sua língua de origem (o português) e na língua de escolarização da região onde vivem (francês ou alemão). As competências dessas crianças foram comparadas com crianças da mesma idade que frequentavam a escola na parte francesa, respectivamente, na parte alemã da Suíça.

We investigated how well readers’ perceptions of the lexical richness of short texts can be predicted on the basis of automatically computable indices of the texts’ lexical properties. 3,060 French, German and Portuguese texts (between 9 and 284 words long) written by 8- to 10-year-olds were rated for their lexical richness by between 3 and 18 uninstructed raters, and over 150 indices were derived from these texts. We found that the ratings could to a substantial degree be predicted on the basis of these indices and that the accuracy with which the ratings of shorter texts could be predicted was comparable to that of longer texts. For French and German, the greatest predictive power was attained by opaque models with scores of predictors, but models with fewer predictors based on a 6-dimensional framework of lexical richness perception or even with a single, easily computed predictor, Guiraud’s index, fared only slightly worse.

In diesem Aufsatz diskutieren wir Resultate einer Längsschnittstudie zu literalen Kompetenzen von 8- bis 10-jährigen Grundschulschüler(innen) mit portugiesischem Migrationshintergrund. Der Fokus liegt auf der Entwicklung der Vielfalt des produzierten Wortschatzes sowie der durchschnittlichen Korpusfrequenz der Wörter in der Schulsprache (Deutsch oder Französisch). Die Ergebnisse zeigen ausschliesslich eine allgemeine Zunahme der lexikalischen Vielfalt. Zudem zeigen sich Unterschiede zwischen den portugiesischstämmigen Schüler(innen) und anderen in der Schweiz eingeschulten Kindern, was die Wortschatzvielfalt angeht, jedoch nicht die Frequenz.Lexical diversity and sophistication (in term of average corpus frequency) development in the school language (German or French) is investigated longitudinally in a population of Portuguese heritage speakers aged 8 to 10. Results show an improvement in lexical diversity scores but not in lexical sophistication. Differences were found between Portuguese heritage speakers and age matched children from comparison groups regarding lexical diversity scores, but not regarding lexical sophistication.

A PDF version of my blog post on "What data patterns can lie behind a correlation coefficient?": http://janhove.github.io/teaching/2016/11/21/what-correlations-look-like

A classic topic in research on bilingualism across the lifespan is the relationship between the age at which learners start to acquire a second language (L2) and their ultimate level of proficiency in that language. Learning of an L2 that begins in infancy is typically associated with fluent speech, effortless language processing, and native accent. In contrast, late L2 learners tend to diverge from monolingual natives on measures of grammatical and lexical knowledge, processing speed, and acoustic properties of speech. Various classes of explanations for age effects in L2 acquisition – attitudinal, neurobiological, experiential, psycho-social, and cognitive – have been proposed in the literature. It is not the purpose of this chapter to examine these various accounts; for an overview, see Muñoz and Singleton (2011). Similarly, with the exception of a brief discussion in the section on social concerns, this chapter does not consider research on the efficiency of early foreign language teaching in schools; for an overview, see Lambelet and Berthele (2015). Rather, we are concerned with the hypothesis that L2 learning in naturalistic contexts is constrained by a critical period (CP). With its roots in the seminal works of Penfield and Roberts (1959) and Lenneberg (1967), the Critical Period Hypothesis for L2 acquisition (CPH/L2A) posits that nativelike attainment in the L2 from mere exposure is possible if learning begins within, but not after, a limited developmental span. Several recent overviews comprehensively summarize studies inspired by the CPH/L2A (references below), and we do not intend to rehash these surveys. Instead, we aim to provide readers with a technical toolkit to critically evaluate research on the divisive issue that is the CPH/L2A. To this end, we first discuss the CPH/L2A’s prediction that nativelikeness among learners with post-CP AoAs is impossible and highlight epistemological difficulties with this prediction. We then turn to the nature of the function that relates AoA to L2 attainment. The logic here is that a discontinuous function, but not a straight-line function, properly reflects the workings of a critical period. Here we illustrate how seemingly minor technical (statistical) caveats, which often risk being brushed under the rug as nit-picking, can fundamentally affect the conclusions of a study. In the final section, we expand our scope by considering the relevance of L2 acquisition theory to the social context of L2 learners and users. Specifically, we examine three issues relating to the notion that late L2 acquisition is inferior to L1 acquisition: early instruction of foreign languages in schools, the emphasis on deficits versus capacities, and societal prejudices against non-nativelikeness.

In this article, we discuss a receptive multilingualism task administered to German-speaking Swiss participants aged between 10 and 86 years. 159 participants were presented with 90 isolated Swedish words with German, English or French cognates and were asked to translate them into German. Half of stimuli were presented visually; half of them aurally. Translation accuracy in the written modality was found to improve sharply until age 30 and continues to gradually increase from that point onwards, whereas in the spoken modality, translation accuracy reaches its zenith in middle age and starts to drop off around age 50. The results furthermore indicate that these differing age patterns can be ascribed to a differential reliance on cognitive resources in the two modalities. We discuss the impact of these cognitive resources on receptive multilingualism as well as the implications of our findings for pedagogical approaches relying on this type of interlingual inferencing.