Article
Bringing m-learning into an ESP classroom at tertiary level
The purpose of this article is to look into new opportunities of using mobile devices for teaching English to ESP students and develop an understanding of possible ways of incorporating these ideas into a classroom at tertiary level. The research is based on prepared in advance questionnaire. Results of this study show that the majority of 1st year students would like to be taught using new technologies but the offered tasks, which can be done in mobile learning, are limited to online tests and learning vocabulary and speaking. A number of 1st-year students of the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Higher School of Economics (HSE), Russia are reluctant to any changes since they find the traditional way of teaching English more efficient. A few 4th-year students of Design school of the HSE regret not having been taught with mobile devices because they could make the learning process more convenient, faster and more interesting.
The article considers the development of word semantics during the Old- and Middle English periods and reflects the notion of DWELLING representing the onomaseological field of the aforementioned notion.
This research tests the hypothesis that 3- and 4-year-olds can use characteristics of a social context created by adults to learn new words. One of the strategies that a child can use in multi-party conversations is to decide to whom a message (and a new word) is addressed. The ability to do so may simplify word learning situations by making the learning selective and by reducing the amount of perceived words. In the current experiment we test children's ability to learn a new word from a natural conversation when the communicative context is kept constant and when it is altered by adding a new game partner. We predicted that children will differentially interpret verbal messages containing a new word as addressed to them or to the new person, and this will affect their ability to remember the new word. Children heard a new word in one of two conditions: when a communicative context shared with an adult was kept constant and when it has changed (a new adult joined the conversation). We found that 3-year-olds could learn new words only when the communicative context was constant, but 4-year-olds could learn new words in both conditions. A control condition revealed that these findings cannot be explained by task difficulty.
The attunement of speech perception/discrimination to the properties of one’s native language is a crucial step in speech and language development at early ages. Studying these processes in young children with a history of institutionalization is of great interest, as being raised in institutional care (IC) may lead to lags in language development. The sample consisted of 82 children, split into two age groups. The younger age group (<12 months) included 17 children from the IC and 17 children from the biological- family-care (BFC) group. The older group (>12 months) consisted of 23 children from the IC group, and 25 children from the BFC group. A double-oddball paradigm with three consonant-vowel syllables was used, utilizing native (Russian) and foreign (Hindi) languages. A Mismatch Negativity (MMN) component was elicited within a 125–225 ms time window in the frontal-central electrode. Findings demonstrate the absence of MMN effect in the younger age group, regardless of the living environment. Children in the older group are sensitive to native deviants and do not differentiate foreign language contrasts. No significant differences were observed between the IC and BFC groups for children older than 12 months, indicating that children in the IC have typical phonological processing. The results show that the MMN effect is not registered in Russian speaking children before the age of 12 months, regardless of their living environment. At 20 months of age, institutionally reared children show no evidence of delays in phonetic development despite a limited experience of language.
Institutions affect investment decisions, including investments in human capital. Hence institutions are relevant for the allocation of talent. Good market-supporting institutions attract talent to productive value-creating activities, whereas poor ones raise the appeal of rent-seeking. We propose a theoretical model that predicts that more talented individuals are particularly sensitive in their career choices to the quality of institutions, and test these predictions on a sample of around 95 countries of the world. We find a strong positive association between the quality of institutions and graduation of college and university students in science, and an even stronger negative correlation with graduation in law. Our findings are robust to various specifications of empirical models, including smaller samples of former colonies and transition countries. The quality of human capital makes the distinction between educational choices under strong and weak institutions particularly sharp. We show that the allocation of talent is an important link between institutions and growth.