TeangaPub Date : 2021-12-09DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v28i.728
Colin J. Flynn, Pádraig Ó Duibhir, Laoise Ní Thuairisg, Colm Ó Ciardubháin, Gearóidín Uí Laighléis
{"title":"Féiniúlacht agus Inspreagadh i gcás Cúntóirí Teanga i Scoileanna Gaeltachta","authors":"Colin J. Flynn, Pádraig Ó Duibhir, Laoise Ní Thuairisg, Colm Ó Ciardubháin, Gearóidín Uí Laighléis","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v28i.728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v28i.728","url":null,"abstract":"San alt seo, cuirtear i láthair taighde a rinneadh ar ghnéithe éagsúla de chur i bhfeidhm Scéim na gCúntóirí Teanga (an Scéim feasta) atá á reáchtáil ag an Roinn Turasóireachta, Cultúir, Ealaíon, Gaeltachta, Spóirt agus na Meán. Cuireann an Scéim, atá ar bun ó bhí 1999 ann, cúntóirí teanga ar fáil do scoileanna Gaeltachta d’fhonn an Ghaeilge a láidriú mar theanga labhartha i measc daltaí scoile sna ceantair sin. Ba é aidhm mhór an tionscadail taighde ná iniúchadh a dhéanamh ar staid reatha na Scéime agus ina dhiaidh sin moltaí chun feabhais a chur ar fáil. Úsáideadh ceistneoirí, agallaimh agus grúpaí fócais le sonraí a bhailiú ó pháirtithe leasmhara na Scéime. San alt seo, dírítear ar shonraí a bhaineann le féiniúlacht agus inspreagadh na gcúntóirí teanga a tháinig chun cinn sna grúpaí fócais ar ghlac 50 cúntóir páirt iontu. I gcomhthéacs na féiniúlachta, is iad na téamaí a d’eascair ó na comhráite ná féindearcadh na gcúntóirí orthu féin, a ról i suíomh na hoibre, agus ról na hoibre a dhéanann siad i dtacú leis an phobal lena mbaineann siad. I dtaca leis an inspreagadh, bhain na téamaí leis an teanga féin, na páistí a mbíonn siad ag obair leo, tacú le céad ghlún eile chainteoirí na Gaeilge agus todhchaí na Gaeltachta. Pléitear ráitis na gcúntóirí i gcomhthéacs na litríochta ar fhéiniúlacht teanga agus inspreagadh múinteoirí teanga, mar aon le cás na Gaeilge agus na Gaeltachta.\u0000[In this article we present data from a research project which reviewed various aspects of the implementation of Scéim na gCúntóirí Teanga (The Language Assistants Scheme), which is run by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. The Scheme, established in 1999, provides language assistants to Gaeltacht schools in order to strengthen spoken Irish among pupils in those regions. The main aim of the research was to evaluate the current state of the Scheme and to make recommendations for its enhancement. Questionnaires, interviews and focus groups were used to gather data from the Scheme’s stakeholders. The present article focuses on issues of identity and motivation which were discussed by the 50 language assistants who took part in the focus groups. In relation to identity, the themes that emerged were assistants’ self-image, their role in the workplace, and the role of the work they do to support their own community. As for motivation, the themes were connected to the language itself, the children they work with, supporting the next generation of Irish speakers, and the future of the Gaeltacht. The assistants’ statements are discussed in relation to the literatures on language identity and language teacher motivation, as well as the Irish language and the Gaeltacht.]","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77167663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2021-12-09DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v28i.1891
Anne T. Gallagher
{"title":"Twenty-Five Years of Language Policies and Initiatives in Ireland: 1995-2020","authors":"Anne T. Gallagher","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v28i.1891","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v28i.1891","url":null,"abstract":"Ireland is a multilingual country, home to at least 212 languages, as well as English, the Irish language - the oldest language in Europe still spoken as a vernacular - and our native Irish Sign Language, whose users’ rights have only recently been signed into law. This paper will consider the main issues in language education in Ireland today from primary to third level, together with the economic, geopolitical and cultural forces which influence the ways in which we engage in communication both at home and abroad. Following a brief examination of the history which has led us to this point, it will review a number of European policies which continue to shape the manner in which both Irish and Modern Foreign Languages are learned and taught in present-day Ireland. Finally, it will assess recent policies/strategies and initiatives published by Government, the strengths and weaknesses of language education here today, and propose some measures which could boost our national languages capacity in a world which, despite some impressions to the contrary, continues to be decidedly multilingual.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73792576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v20i.512
Martin Howard
{"title":"Review of Robert J. Fouser. 1997. Pragmatic transfer in highly advanced learners: some preliminary findings. CLCS Occaisonal Paper No. 50. Dublin: CLCS, Trinity College Dublin. 44pp.","authors":"Martin Howard","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v20i.512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v20i.512","url":null,"abstract":"Review of Robert J. Fouser. 1997. Pragmatic transfer in highly advanced learners: some preliminary findings. CLCS Occaisonal Paper No. 50. Dublin: CLCS, Trinity College Dublin. 44pp.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87259808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2020-09-24DOI: 10.35903/TEANGA.V11I1.191
L. Leeson, Carmel Grehan
{"title":"Bridging the gap","authors":"L. Leeson, Carmel Grehan","doi":"10.35903/TEANGA.V11I1.191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/TEANGA.V11I1.191","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000\u0000\u0000The European Language Portfolio (ELP) has been widely implemented to support the development of learner autonomy in the teaching and learning of spoken languages, but, until this study, had not been implemented with learners of sign languages. Across 2017–18, we developed and piloted a sample ELP for Irish Sign Language (ISL), which fed into work on the development of an ELP for sign language learners, under the umbrella of the PRO-Sign 2 project (European Centre for Modern Languages). We piloted the ELP with a cohort of ISL learners in the second year of their Bachelor in Deaf Studies, who perform at A2-B1 level on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (2001; Leeson et al., 2016). All are learning ISL as a second language (L2), and are acquiring this sign language in what is, for them a new modality (M2). We met students on four occasions across 2017–18 to explore how/if use of the ELP in the ISL classroom supports the development of robust self-evaluation skills, and how the ELP enhances student-reported perception of motivation and autonomy. We report on the process, and present a grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1968), “Bridging the Gap”, drawn from key concerns of these ISL M2L2 learners at A2–B1 level.\u0000\u0000\u0000","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88364404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2020-09-24DOI: 10.35903/TEANGA.V11I1.162
Robert G. Smith, M. Hofmann
{"title":"Lexical Frequency Analysis of Irish Sign Language","authors":"Robert G. Smith, M. Hofmann","doi":"10.35903/TEANGA.V11I1.162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/TEANGA.V11I1.162","url":null,"abstract":"Word frequency has a significant impact on language acquisition and fluency. It is often a point of reference for the teaching and assessing of a language and indeed, as a control for psycholinguistic studies. This paper presents the results of the first objective frequency analysis of lexical tokens from the Signs of Ireland corpus. We investigate the frequency of fully lexical, partly lexical and non-lexical signs in Irish Sign Language as they are presented in the corpus. We confirm the accuracy of the lexical gloss frequency data with a supplementary corpus subset that is tagged for grammatical class and additional insights from previous lexical frequency studies conducted for American Sign Language, Australian Sign Language, British Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language. This approach has informed us that signers who learn the 100 most frequent signs in Irish Sign Language, will know a third of the language’s vocabulary. This study has found that, in the main, frequency statistics from Irish Sign Language are in line with previous studies and that the text type and annotation strategy can significantly impact results. We found that, without a formalised lexicon, lexical glosses fell short of the requirements for a lexical frequency analysis. However, supported by grammatical class data, frequency data may be reported for symbolic units.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84899228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-11-29DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v26i0.88
Meghan Dowling, Teresa Lynn
{"title":"Investigating backtranslation for the improvement of English-Irish machine translation","authors":"Meghan Dowling, Teresa Lynn","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v26i0.88","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v26i0.88","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we discuss the difficulties of building reliable machine translation systems for the English-Irish (EN-GA) language pair. In the context of limited datasets, we report on assessing the use of backtranslation as a method for creating artificial EN-GA data to increase training data for use state-of-the-art data-driven translation systems. We compare our results to earlier work on EN-GA machine translation by Dowling et al (2016, 2017, 2018) showing that while our own systems do not compare in quality with respect to traditionally reported BLEU metrics, we provide a linguistic analysis to suggest that future work with domain specific data may prove more successful.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"189 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83466240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-11-29DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v26i0.134
Jennifer Bruen
{"title":"Languages Connect and the languages of the new Irish","authors":"Jennifer Bruen","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v26i0.134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v26i0.134","url":null,"abstract":"Ireland’s linguistic profile has been further enriched by the arrival of the New Irish. It is incumbent upon the higher education sector to harness and support this linguistic diversity to aid the social, cultural and economic development of Ireland and all its people. Therefore, consideration should be given to new degree programmes and to the inclusion of Language Management Strategies in existing programmes.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"46 47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74180378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-11-04DOI: 10.35903/TEANGA.V26I0.85
Juan Pablo Rodríguez Prieto
{"title":"The impact of college students' motivational orientations and the social dimension of emotional intelligence in their willingness to study abroad","authors":"Juan Pablo Rodríguez Prieto","doi":"10.35903/TEANGA.V26I0.85","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/TEANGA.V26I0.85","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigated the effect of motivational orientations and the social aspects of emotional intelligence (EI) on L2 Spanish learners’ willingness to participate in a study abroad program. The only significant result was the correlation between an integrative motivational orientation and the Altruism Scale score (N = 68, r = .290, p < .05), indicating that those learners with a higher desire to learn the L2 in order to interact with members of the target community also showed more responsiveness to others as measured by empathy, nurturance, helpfulness, and social responsibility. No additional interactions were found between the motivational orientations and the social aspects of EI. Neither the motivational orientations (integrative/instrumental) nor the social subscales of EI used correlated with the L2 learners’ participation in a short-term (three weeks to Costa Rica, N = 30) or a long-term study abroad program (a full semester to Spain, N = 13). This finding is indicative that those variables do not seem to have an influential effect or predictability on whether participants would ultimately continue their study of L2 Spanish in a foreign country or at home in the near future.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87590643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-08-27DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v21i0.179
W. Cheng, M. Warren
{"title":"The intonation of declarative-mood questions in a corpus of Hong Kong English: // ➘➚ beef ball // ➙ you like //","authors":"W. Cheng, M. Warren","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v21i0.179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v21i0.179","url":null,"abstract":"In the English Department of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University we are compiling the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English. In the examination of our data we have found that the ways in which the two sets of participants (i.e. Hong Kong Chinese and native speakers of English) ask questions share some similarities, but also differ in a number of respects. It seems, for example, that the Hong Kong Chinese have a stronger tendency to ask questions by means of declarative-mood questions, and the intonation used to achieve this indirect question form is examined in this paper and compared with the native speakers in the data. The implications of the findings for learning and teaching the English language are explored.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73441880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TeangaPub Date : 2019-08-27DOI: 10.35903/teanga.v21i0.175
San San Hnin Tun
{"title":"Not a study of English! A corpus analysis of discourse features in spoken Burmese","authors":"San San Hnin Tun","doi":"10.35903/teanga.v21i0.175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35903/teanga.v21i0.175","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is part of a larger research project on the ‘Comparative analysis of discourse markers in Burmese and in English’, and the product of my attempt to identify so-called particles in Burmese in terms of their discourse functions. Particles are bound morphemes, many of which do not have one-to-one equivalents in English. In traditional grammars, these lexical items are usually described in terms of their syntactic distribution: these studies present different kinds of sentential environments, but often fall short of a systematic generalization describing their semantic or pragmatic properties. A corpus-based study of spoken Burmese in different genres, within the framework of Discourse Analysis, suggests that particles often have prominent discourse functions, and many are in fact used primarily for their discourse functions in natural spoken discourse, in which propositional meaning remains the same with or without the particles.","PeriodicalId":36036,"journal":{"name":"Teanga","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87325588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}