Influence of Phonological Memory on ESL Learners Essay examples

For the Purpose of this study EAL will be used to describe any child with English as an Additional Language. Information from the January 2012 schools census found that over one million children in the United Kingdom now speak another language in addition to English. It also found that there are over three hundred and sixty languages spoken in primary schools. These children can range from beginner speakers of English, such as refugees or asylum seekers, to those who are advanced speakers of English who have grown up at home with both English and another language being spoken (Webster, 2011)

A foundational aspect of all children’s learning is oral language. Communication orally entails the ability to include four components of spoken language to incorporate, and build on, a child’s vocabulary and grammar. These four elements consist of the phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic components. Development of a child’s language skills should form together resulting in literacy success later in life. In order to master the teaching of oral language, three strategies are used. These include, the use of open –ended questions, talking about sophisticated words and incorporating sociodramatic play in to lessons, which in the end, enhance expressive and receptive oral language skills. Fellowes & Oakley and numerous other literature sources explore the significance of oral language in the child’s development.

Nature and nurture both play a significant role in language development. Language development refers to how children understand, organise, speak and use words in order to communicate at an effective, age-appropriate level (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). For centuries, theorists have been debating the roles of nature versus nurture. Although, each child’s language will develop at their own pace and there will be many individual differences based on culture, ethnicity, health and ability. As well as physical, social, emotional and cognitive development in which will contribute to a child’s language development.

Here, the independent variable was the writing of words with or without distraction and the dependent variable was the time it took to complete each word task. The dependent variable was measured in seconds. It was determined that if distractions do not affect

Yana is starting to attend a setting, however, she speaks little English (appendix one). This language barrier could affect Yana in all areas of development, particularly her social development as it will limit her verbal communication skills (Davies, 2011). As Yana has English as an additional language (EAL), she may find it difficult to communicate her basic needs with limited vocabulary- Schaffer (1926) views this as a crucial barrier as it will prevent practitioners from successfully meeting children’s needs (Schaffer, 2004). Schaffer (1926) believes that EAL is a barrier to learning, however, Vygotsky (1896) along with Chomsky (1928) believe that language is a skill that can be learnt (Graf & Birch, 2009). Therefore, if language is modelled by the practitioners then Yana should learn new words and soon form sentences which will support Yana in all areas of

All participants in this study were right-handed and had normal to corrected normal vision. Following that, 14 participants were excluded due to suspected neurological abnormalities. The main aim of this study was to investigate the development of working memory across the lifespan and if age groups caused a different result for each group. They found that young children and older adults had a harder time distinguishing if the animal pictures were used in the trial before that, younger adults did significantly better. Therefore, item specific proactive interference is stronger in younger children and older adults. Older children and adults do significantly better than young children because their working has developed more over time. Also, with older adult studies have shown working memory decreases with age so this could be the cause of why they did worse than older children and adults. However, older adults did significantly better in the first trial identifying an animal's in one-word syllables. This information can be used in the future in schools for teachers to help improve children’s working memory and this information can also be used to try to improve older adults working memory with experiments and

The purpose of this article is to find out if there is any correlation or causation effect between playing competitive sports and the development of Working Memory (WM). In order to achieve the purpose of this research, researchers studied various types of students and categorized them according to the sports they play, or not play. Researchers measure the Working Memory Capacity (WMC) of subjects using a software called Automated Operation Span (AOSPAN), which has been proven to be a good measure of WMC.

(2010) and Melby-Lervag et al. (2012) both researched the effectiveness working memory training programs as treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other cognitive disorders in children which also helped improve cognitive abilities in developing children and healthy adults. The Buschkuehl article gave a more general overview of the studies’ procedures by providing a gist of the studies and whether or not they showed a significant improvement of intelligence through the use of working memory training programs . Both articles also took note of the issues with the lack of use of a consistent methodological criteria used to accurately measure the effectiveness cognitive performance training programs. The Melby-Lervag article was more specific in terms of providing more information on the theoretical issues on the capacity of training working memory, giving more examples on the variety of working memory programs available, provided more details in terms of its meta-analytic procedure, and discussed in more detail the effects of working memory training on verbal and visuospatial working memory and their long-term training

In previous research, it was found that there are significant deficits when comparing the composite working memory of both low socioeconomic status and high socioeconomic status children. These deficits impact the daily lives and futures of children from a low-income background. Working memory is a necessary cognitive ability needed in everyday life. It is needed to process information in short term memory and to maintain and manipulate information in the memory system actively. Even when the researchers controlled specific variables such as gender, ethnicity, and age, the deficit was still evident. The study conducted by Michele Tine at Dartmouth College was the first to compare the verbal working memory deficits and visuospatial working memory

The study solidified the theory that social interaction is key to a toddler developing his language. This study proved that children with mothers who talk and text frequently, or disengage from their children, are less likely to learn the new words. This disengagement distracts the toddler and thus interrupts the important cognitive processes occurring in the brain to map the new words. This study was effective because of the intention and concern in its design. The researchers did an amazing job explaining the material and taking great pains to control as many

Working memory is a cognitive system that maintains and manipulates task-relevant information for a short period of time. (Cowan, J. 1999) Memory plays a crucial role in everyday life. It enables one to effectively perform complex tasks such as the ability to reason and solve new problems independently on a daily basis. Working memory is limited in capacity and sensitive to interruptions. “Without memory, our awareness would be confined to an external present and our lives would be virtually devoid of meaning.” (Schacter,D..L and Scarry,E 2001) Impairments in working memory are often apparent in individuals with ADHD, acquired brain injury, depression and several other conditions. It is important that researchers grasp an in-depth understanding of what working memory is and how it works in order to develop interventions and ways to improve working memory. Recent research has revealed that working memory can be enhanced through Cogmed Working Memory Training. (Söderqvist,S. and Nutley, S. 2015) This essay will focus predominantly on Baddeley’s working memory model. It will outline the constituents of the model, drawing upon evidence for and against the model. Atkinsons and Shiffrin’s multistore model of memory will be briefly mentioned. However, it is apparent that this model lacked detail and is outdated.

On the other hand bilingual individuals should have enhanced processes such as increased cognitive flexibility, inhibition along with increased competence in updating information in the working memory (Miyake et al., 2000; Bialystok, 2009). Multiple researches and studies have indicated bilingual children gain the ability to attend to new features and switch criteria for sorting decisions while ignoring misleading distraction from meaning, earlier than their monolinguals (Ben-Zeev, 1977, Bialystok, 1999; Bialystok, 2010; Bialystok & Martin, 2004). Additionally, bilingual children have been shown to perform significantly better than monolingual children on metalinguistic tasks that require controlled attention and inhibition (Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Bialystok, 2009; Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009; Kovács & Mehler, 2009 and Bonifacci, Giombini, Bellocchi, and Contento, 2011). That said, Bialystok, Craik, and Ruocco (2006) and Bialystok (2006) found that these differences were not as statistically noteworthy in undergraduate university students. This seems to indicate that the functions under discussion may only be significantly different during childhood hence the bilingual child may learn these functions earlier than the monolingual child.

Working Memory in Children with Developmental Disorders, written by Tracy Packiam Alloway, Gnanathusharan Rajendran, and Lisa M. D. Archibald, was designed to test for the differences in working memory skills in children with various developmental disorders, such as Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), and Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). The study consisted of one-hundred and sixty-three participants, whose parents all signed consent forms for their children. Of those participants, fifty-five had DCD, eighty-three had ADHD, fifteen had SLI, and ten had AS. All participants were separated into four groups. Three of the four groups received written tests assessing their working memory, and one group received a verbal test using the Working Memory Test Battery for children. Digital recall, word recall, and nonword recall tests were also administered to each group. Tests that assessed verbal working memory utilized the following exercises: listening

This term paper aims at reviewing various stages of language development in human being early life in regards to language development. The paper also analyzes various theoretical issues and hypothesis that contributes to change of speech and how human beings corporate the changes in their daily development as far as language is concerned. Adult language and child language are quite different especially because adults have more exposure to the society norms than the children. It will also take in to consideration various processes of learning, how children acquire linguistic inputs such as forms meanings and word use during their talking processes. This term paper will focus on the child development in terms of language and gender. It is a paper on how children under the age of 10, learn language adaptation to their first language during their early developmental stages. It will identify theories for learning of a language, childhood development as well as look into the societal norms of gender socialization.

Forty-two preschoolers whom had a primary language of Spanish and secondary language of English were recruited for this study. The participants included sixteen boys and twenty-six girls, with a mean age of 5.14 months. All participants spoke minimal English and were enrolled in an English-only classroom. The children were placed randomly in either the CLR group or the comparison group, ECR. Both groups used the same vocabulary instructional approach, with only the language of vocabulary instruction being different (Mendez et al., 2015).