Journal of Psycholinguistic Research最新文献

In the field of Russian linguistics, history, and jurisprudence, the Russian language is widely regarded as a political instrument and, to some extent, reflects the development and influence of contemporary language policy of the Russian language in the Soviet Union. This study aims to examine the process, characteristics, influencing psychological and sociological factors, and consequences of Russian language policy in the early Soviet Union (1917-1930s). Thematic analysis and discourse strategy analysis methods were employed to achieve this goal. The results indicate that a well-thought-out language policy necessitates the establishment of language legislation and a precise legal definition of the status and use of different languages. The absence of language legislation can be a major drawback of language policy. While the Soviet Constitution and other relevant political documents broadly define the status and use of Russian and other languages, there is no specific language legislation regulating the use of each language. Analysis of word frequency statistics demonstrates that the key concepts of Stalinist policy differed compared to the time of Lenin's rule, resulting in a lack of effective legal force and strong mechanisms for controlling language policy practices. As the functional advantages of the Russian language become increasingly evident, some ethnic minorities tend to lean towards studying and using it, leading to the emergence of many bilingual and even trilingual individuals. Other minorities with small or underdeveloped populations turn to the Russian language, which is the most widely spoken language. These findings contribute to the theoretical and practical knowledge base for research in the fields of linguistics, linguistic culturology, history, psycholinguistics, and political science. Subsequent research can focus on current aspects of the country's language policy.

This study investigated challenges that Saudi undergraduate learners face in translating oil contracts from English into Arabic. The study used a quantitative approach of data collection. The sample of this study consisted of 18 Saudi undergraduate learners of transaction departments at some Saudi universities. To achieve the objectives of this study, a test was designed and administered. Additionally, the relevant theoretical framework of legal translation and features of oil contracts were analysed to pinpoint the problematic areas and the gaps. The results of the study indicated that undergraduate learners provided unacceptable translation based on lexical and textual features. On the other hand, they provided poor translation based on syntactic features. The study suggests some practical solutions to overcome the difficulties of legal texts for translators.

This research aimed to determine the impact of the effectiveness in the application of an independent method of teaching students on their progress in achieving a certain level of Japanese. The study used key methods that implied the experimental involvement of 60 3rd- and 4th-year American and Chinese students with the N3 and N2 levels of Japanese to pass a simplified version of the international JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) after applying the autonomy learning methodology. The analysis and processing of the experimental exam results were performed using the Microsoft Excel program and derivation of the average statistical percentage of the number of points scored at each stage of the N3 and N2 exams. The results of the study and the test scores led to the conclusion that the most difficult tasks for American students are those in writing and reading. On the other hand, Chinese students have difficulties in listening and speaking Japanese over linguistic phonetic differences and complex grammar compared to Chinese. Referring to the N2 group of American and Chinese students, their scores are somewhat equal due to the total complexity of this level, which requires utmost care for all four skills of foreign language learning. The present findings can serve as auxiliary material for the educational sphere in terms of an individual approach in autonomy learning to more effectively study Japanese and obtain positive results when passing the JLPT test.

Intercultural language learning (ICLL) has become an important concept that drives English learners' attention to the understanding and application of cultural elements in their English learning process; however, the learning motivation for and engagement in the proliferation of culture in English language teaching vary from one context to another. This study aimed to unpack L2 students' motivation for and engagement in ICLL, and the correlation between the two research variables. A group of 198 L2 students, who were learning at a high school in Vietnam, were recruited based on a convenience sampling technique. A closed-ended questionnaire was employed for data collection. The sociolinguistic perspective was adopted for data analysis using the SPSS software. The findings unraveled that Vietnamese L2 students had a high level of motivation for ICLL, and they tended to get engaged in ICLL actively; however, their level of emotional engagement in ICLL seemed higher than their behavioral and cognitive engagement in ICLL. Additionally, a positive correlation between Vietnamese L2 students' motivation for and engagement in ICLL was significantly found. This study recommends pedagogical implications in an attempt to enhance the quality of intercultural language teaching and learning in the research context and other similar ones.

This preliminary cross-sectional study, focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI), aimed to assess the impact of ChatGPT on translation within an Arab context. It primarily explored the attitudes of a sample of translation teachers and students through semi-structured interviews and projective techniques. Data collection included gathering information about the advantages and challenges that ChatGPT, in comparison to Google Translate, had introduced to the field of translation and translation teaching. The results indicated that nearly all the participants were satisfied with ChatGPT. The results also revealed that most students preferred ChatGPT over Google Translate, while most teachers favored Google Translate. The study also found that the participants recognized both positive and negative aspects of using ChatGPT in translation. Findings also indicated that ChatGPT, as a recent AI-based translation-related technology, is more valuable for mechanical processes of writing and editing translated texts than for tasks requiring judgment, such as fine-tuning and double-checking. While it offers various advantages, AI also presents new challenges that educators and stakeholders need to address accordingly.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the uniqueness of the pop singing genre by determining the role of the Chinese language in the creation of popular singing in education with modern innovative technologies. The paper began by determining which types of popular music were the most popular among respondents and the influence of modern innovative technologies on music education. The results showed that popular folk music (25%) and popular music (23%) are the most popular genres. This is because they are based on improvisational elements and combine modern and ethnic musical elements with the use of modern innovative technologies. Pentatonic preservation (94.3), modern innovative technologies (91.2), expressive performance (85.6), sound fluidity and mobility (82) and instrumental accompaniment have been identified as the most defining characteristics of contemporary Chinese popular music (78.1). Taking into account how pure and expressive Chinese music is, the study found that singing should take into account the following aspects of the Chinese language: the tonality of vowels, the influence of consonant sounds, the use of sound imitations, the performance of words with different levels of complexity, and the relationship between speech and musical intonation. It has been proven that students in group 1 who studied vocals and were taught the rules for combining phonetic features of language when singing had better results in terms of quality performance (0.83) and expressive performance (0.91). The non-professional singers in group 2 attained scores of 0.62 and 0.85, respectively.

Covid-19 out broke gave an extreme impact to the globe, imposing a challenge to health publicly and causing social interruptions. As a result, the role of mainstream media in promoting anti-epidemic measures and disseminating national images has become increasingly important. In this study, we examine the anti-epidemic reports in 2020 from three types of international news sources, identifying 566 samples for content and text analysis. Through our analysis, we found that each component of the anti-epidemic report has a clear focus, and that these reports presented China's national image of anti-epidemic in four dimensions. Notably, the European version of People's Daily exhibited a positive reporting tendency, accounting for 86% of the total, with only 8% of reports being negative. This indicates a relatively comprehensive national image construction and communication strategy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, our research reveals the important role of media in shaping a nation's image during a global crisis. The positive reporting tendency of the European version of People's Daily reflects an effective strategy for promoting a positive national image, thereby dispelling misunderstandings and prejudices towards China's anti-epidemic measures. Our findings provide inspiration for the dissemination of national images in times of crisis, highlighting the importance of comprehensive and well-coordinated communication strategies to promote a positive image.

It has been observed that Turkish university students suffer in L2 writing when they lack background knowledge about the writing topic. Triggered by this observation, this study intended to explore effectiveness of content-schemata activation for scaffolding Turkish students in their challenging L2 writing practices. Study participants, students studying at an English-medium university in Turkey, were asked to write an essay on a specific topic at the beginning of the week before participating in any activities and then they were asked to write a second essay on the same topic after being engaged in various skills activities designed to activate their content-schemata. The same procedure was repeated for seven weeks with a different topic each week. To gather data, students' first and second essays were compared and students' and teachers' perceptions regarding their experiences in English writing classes were elicited through questionnaires. As study findings reveal that content-schemata activation leads to the production of better essays in terms of content and that both students and teachers are positive about the use of skills activities for idea generation prior to essay writing, integration of activities that would activate students' content-schemata into the language curriculum in other ESL/EFL educational contexts is highly recommended.

Understanding how feedback is employed in various forms, positions, and contexts can provide valuable insights into improving communication and the design of human-machine dialogue systems. This paper aims to deepen the understanding of feedback in daily conversation and investigate how feedback is employed in various linguistic forms, position, preceding and following contexts, using a large corpus of telephone conversations. The study identifies three subclasses of feedback, including understandings, agreements, and answers, which account for almost one-third of the total utterances in the corpus. Acknowledge (backchannel) is the most frequently used subtype of feedback, accounting for almost 60% of the feedback, and is primarily used for conversational management and maintenance. Assessment/appreciation, on the other hand, is used less frequently, accounting for less than 10% of feedback, and is mainly realized by more creative, unpredictable, longer forms. The analysis also reveals that speakers are intentional in distinguishing the three subclasses of feedback based on various variables, such as position and the proximal discourse environment. Furthermore, the three subclasses of feedback are restricted by the function of preceding contexts, which shape the length of the remaining turn. The study suggests that future research should focus on exploring the individual differences and investigating the possible variations across different cultures and languages.

The aim of this research was to explore the progression of narrative macro-structure in Chinese children between the ages of 3 and 6 in preschool. To investigate the narratives of young children in a Chinese prefecture-level city kindergarten, the study selected the wordless picture book "Frog, Where Are You?" as their material. They employed the story grammar analysis method and examined the storytelling of 41 preschoolers (aged 3-4), 47 preschoolers (aged 4-5), and 66 preschoolers (aged 5-6). Significant disparities were observed among age groups in terms of both the total score for story grammar ability and the specific indicators associated with story grammar ability scores, as highlighted by the study. Notably, substantial variances were observed in the total story grammar ability score between children aged 3-4 and 4-5, between children aged 4-5 and 5-6, and between children aged 3-4 and 5-6, as evidenced by p-values of 0.000. Furthermore, substantial dissimilarities were evident in the specific indicators of story grammar ability scores, encompassing "story background, story cause, attempt, and story results," when comparing children aged 3-4 years with those aged 4-5 years (p-values of 0.001, 0.000, 0.025, and 0.008, correspondingly). Moreover, significant differences were identified between children aged 4-5 years and children aged 5-6 years (all p-values of 0.000). However, there were no significant differences in the "internal response" indicator between different age groups (p-value of 0.777 > 0.05). The study found that Chinese preschoolers' narrative macrostructure development showed extremely strong age effects, and their narrative macrostructure ability increased with age. Furthermore, the study identified that the development of narrative macrostructure in Chinese preschoolers may be related to their own cause-and-effect logical reasoning abilities.