The Egg and Jerry: narration and gesture in L1 and L2 by Italian schoolchildren
In this paper we present a sociolinguistic research conducted on Italian schoolchildren learning English as LS. Following on from renowned researchers, we focused on a less studied population, that is school-aged monolingual children. Our participants consist in 15 students of a 4th grade class at a...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Universidade Estadual de Campinas
2020
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://econtents.sbu.unicamp.br/inpec/index.php/joss/article/view/14968 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | In this paper we present a sociolinguistic research conducted on Italian schoolchildren learning English as LS. Following on from renowned researchers, we focused on a less studied population, that is school-aged monolingual children. Our participants consist in 15 students of a 4th grade class at a primary school in Pavia, all aged around 9 y.o, 7 boys and 8 girls. All children do not present any recorded cognitive problems and they are all Italian L1 speakers with little or no use of other languages at home, and English learnt as LS since the beginning of primary school at age 6. We recorded all children performing a task of re-narration of a “Tom & Jerry” cartoon, firstly in Italian and then, after one week, in English. The corpus consist of about 2h 45’ of recordings, transcribed and annotated in ELAN. Lexical knowledge in English was also tested through a questionnaire before the recordings. The results were analyzed both qualitatively and, partly, quantitatively. During qualitative analysis, two elements were observed: (1) general tendencies in speakers general behavior and (2) differences in the relationship between syntactic-conversational system and gesture system in relation to L1/L2. The quantitative analysis show a difference in the use of beats gestures and iconic ones between L1 and LS, but also between boys and girls. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2236-9740 |
