RJA #6

As a disclaimer for this post, I feel that I have found just about all the possible sources I can use to research my topic. The references are all quite extensive, but I will still give researching online a shot.


RJA #6a: Websites

Using http://www.alltheweb.com, I used the following search string: Keywords had to include Italian and L2. They needed to be in the title, and the results needed to be from Central Europe and in Italian. The number of results I found were 1,073. Most of them, however, didn't relate exactly to what I want my topic to be.

Using http://www.metacrawler.com, I used the keywords: Italian L2, and found 73 results. Many of them were direct links to articles which I have already cited and plan to use in the research for my paper.

The directory I searched was http://www.dir.yahoo.com. I used the keyword search of Italian L2 acquisition, and got three results, which, in my case, is a very good thing. My topic is so specific that having resources which argue one side or another but don't just talk about Italian L2 acquisition somewhere in the article is very helpful.

Using http://www.incywincy.com, I searched using the keywords: "Italian L2 acquisition", and found one source. This is a source I'm going to have to check out more, and, provided it works out well enough, might just have to use it for my paper.


RJA#6b: Social Media and Multimedia

I used http://blogsearch.google.com, I researched using "Italian L2" and found 12 results. When I have more time, I'm going to go back through and see what kinds of social media results I can find.

RJA #5

RJA #5a: Books

Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Pascual José Masullo, Erin O'Rourke, and Chia-Hui Huang. Romance Linguistics 2007: Selected Papers from the 37th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Pittsburgh, 15-18 March 2007. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub, 2009.

Barni, Monica, and Andrea Villarini. La questione della lingua per gli immigrati stranieri: insegnare, valutare e certificare l'italiano L2. Scienze della formazione, 39. Milano: F. Angeli, 2001.

Pichiassi, Mauro. Misurazione e valutazione di test d'italiano L2: aspetti docimologici e tecniche statistiche. Perugia: Guerra, 2000.

For all of the above book sources, I'm going to need to take a field trip to UC Boulder to find them in the library there. I know I could have them shipped all the way down to Denver, but it will be nice to get away for a bit.

For these books, I simply searched at the Auraria Library's website using the keywords: Italian L2. I got about 200 hits, searched on February 25, 2010, and the relevance of my hits were absolutely 5 out of 5--very related to what I'm researching. Hopefully actually reading these books will help me further narrow my topic.


RJA #5b: Periodical Aricles/Electronic Articles

Going beyond the Native Speaker in Language Teaching
Author(s): Vivian Cook
Source: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 185-209
Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3587717
Accessed: 01/02/2010 22:42

Language and Linguistics in the Italian Curriculum: Towards the Integration of Language
Study and the Study of Language
Author(s): Diane Musumeci
Source: Italica, Vol. 73, No. 4, Linguistics and Pedagogy (Winter, 1996), pp. 493-507
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/479503
Accessed: 28/01/2010 11:09

Beyond Learning Italian: Total Immersion for Cultural Diversity
Author(s): Diane Senior
Source: Italica, Vol. 75, No. 4, Linguistics and Pedagogy (Winter, 1998), pp. 517-531
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/479610
Accessed: 28/01/2010 11:30

Fuori di classe! Una proposta didattica per l'insegnamento dell'italiano come lingua straniera
fuori dell'aula tradizionale
Author(s): Irene Marchegiani Jones
Source: Italica, Vol. 75, No. 4, Linguistics and Pedagogy (Winter, 1998), pp. 495-516
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/479609
Accessed: 28/01/2010 11:37

Comparing the outcomes of online listening versus online text-based tasks in university level Italian L2 study
Authors: Matthew Absalom, Andrea Rizzi
Source: CALL 20(1): 55-66. 2008, European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning
DOI: 10.1017/S0958344008000517
Pages: 55-66

Cognitive task complexity and written output in Italian and French as a foreign language
Authors: Folkert Kuiken, Ineke Vedder
Source: Journal of Second Language Writing 17 (2008) 48–60.

Sensoni, Remo (1991). Verso l'italiano : insegnamento e apprendimento dell'italiano come seconda lingua (88-211-9107-9, 978-88-211-9107-7). Genova: Marietti.

Musumeci, Diane. "Language and Linguistics in the Italian Curriculum: Towards the Integration of Language Study and the Study of Language.". Italica (New York, N.Y.) (0021-3020), 73 (4), p. 493.

Oliva, Maurizio. "Internet Resources and Second Language Acquisition: An Evaluation of Virtual Immersion.". Foreign language annals (0015-718X), 28 (4), p. 551.

Vedovelli, Massimo (1999). Indagini sociolinguistiche nella scuola e nella società italiana in evoluzione (88-464-1609-0, 978-88-464-1609-4). Milano Italy: F. Angeli.

Obviously, I found a lot of electronic articles, because, in my opinion, these are easier to navigate than through books. However, I could be proven quite wrong after my field trip to Boulder.

These articles were all found using the articles search on the Auraria Library website. The keywords I used were: Italian foreign language education L2, and these few articles were some of several hundreds which I encountered. The relevance of the hits to my topic are, once again, 5/5. The website on which I found all of my electronic articles was http://www.jstor.org.


RJA #5c: Reference Articles

As far as reference articles are concerned, I'm still trying to discover non-scholarly journal research articles for my topic. It's a bit more difficult, being that the method through which an individual learns Italian as a foreign language is not a very common topic. For right now, I hope that it's okay if I only give my word that I will do my best to find reference articles, but at this point in my references search, have yet to find any.

RJA #4

RJA #4a: Keywords & Ladder of Generalization

I figured it would be best (in this section of RJA #4) to post my ladder of generalization first, then the keywords I found.

So, for my ladder of generalization:

World

Communication

Language

Indo-European Language

Italian

Education

Second Language Acquisition



As far as keywords are concerned, I came up with the following:

• Italian
• L2 (short for second language acquisition)
• acquisition
• teaching
• education
• foreign
• learning

Synonymous terms & related items to pair with each keyword I came up with:

• Italian: Italy, Italians, Italia, Italics
• L2: second, language(s), seconds, secondary
• acquisition: acquire, acquiring, acquired
• teaching: teach, teacher, teaches
• foreign: culture, country, countries, foreigners, Europe, european
• learning: learn, learner(s), learned

RJA #4b: Search Strings

Following are three search strings I've used to find scholarly articles and books using online resources given us in class.

1. Ital* AND L2 AND educat* OR acquisit*
2. Ital* AND teach* OR learn* AND foreign*
3. Ital* AND second* AND educat* OR acquisit* OR L2
4. +Italy +language +learning
5. +L2 +education +Italy
6. +inglese +italiano +educazione +acquisizione

RJA #4c: Research Question Check

I have posted comments on a couple other of my classmates' blogs. They can be found at:

http://subbasblog-subba.blogspot.com/2010/02/rja-3c-research-question.html

http://carmelosbornresearchjournal.blogspot.com/2010/02/rja-3c-research-question.html#comment-form


Overall, I'm very interested to see what happens over the course of the semester with my class' progress, and then what further interests come from it.

RJA #3

RJA #3a: Research Topic Exploration

I'm pretty eager to research my topic, since it is one for which I'd like to go to grad school someday. Throughout my research, I've found many interesting articles about different methods of teaching Italian in the classroom, how the linguistics play a role in the learning process, how to address a teacher in an Italian classroom, and the like. So far, I have primarily used JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org to research scholarly articles which can be found in hard-copy print, but which have (thankfully) been archived online. One must have an account to use JSTOR, which I would recommend very highly to everyone, but the Auraria Library has many great online journal resources which can be accessed if one just goes to : http://library.auraria.edu. The library has paid for the membership on all of these accounts, and they're included with our tuition. Please be smart and take advantage of these things you're already paying for in your schooling.

I have links to all the articles on JSTOR which I personally have found, and they can be accessed at http://www.delicious.com/katherine.fehr


RJA #3b: Research Topic Focus
On Tuesday, our class broke up into groups and brainstormed a list of possible questions related to each other's topics. We were also directed to write our findings in our blog. The following is what happened when we discussed my topic.

Things I put as possible debates over my topic:

1. Immersion in a foreign country is more effective.
2. Partial immersion in a foreign country (at an American or English language university).
3. Schooling in America/English-speaking country is more effective (in classroom).

Throughout our discussion regarding my topic, here are some of the things the others (Braden, Sally, and Luke) had to say:

• Which limits--reading, writing, grammatical-- are the goal and level to which the students in my research are aiming?
• Is it a full literacy program?
• What if one evaluated the process of language from infancy or a very young age?
• Is your topic just researching speaking alone, or does it include reading/writing?

Overall, the opinions I received from my classmates were very helpful. It made me want to ensure that I set basic information for the audience I'm writing for. It's important to keep that in mind, since I'm not writing for an audience who are specifically knowledgeable in language and linguistics.


RJA #3a: Research Topic Exploration

1. Basic question words, and answers I get off the top of my head:

• Who: Students studying a foreign language.
• What: Which approach is most effective for overall literacy and learning of a foreign language?
• When: Currently (perhaps in about the last 20 years, if my scholarly journal articles were written then).
• Why: Because I'm interested to see what results could be possible, since I could be using this information to help me in grad school.
• How: Through online research and research in the Auraria Library.

2. My goal is simple. I want to learn more information about my specific topic, so that perhaps someday I can incorporate it into another paper or something of the sort.

3. I'm writing to my classmates in this paper, and perhaps someday I could incorporate more advanced language or something to the degree that might make more sense to linguists.

RJA #2b: The Role of basic linguistics and grammar in the Italian learning progress--their effectivity in overall fluency

1. So, overall, although I think my topic will definitely become narrower over the course of the coming weeks, I want to research the approach of Italian linguistics and their role in the Italian curriculm in foreign language departments at various universities. What I want to argue is still a bit vague to me since I haven't read any of my sources, but I think I'm interested in discussing the difference of effectivity of learning Italian in an American university in the United States, learning Italian during a semester abroad at a university which teaches its classes in English and in which a student is surrounded by other English-speakers, and the complete immersion experience, where a student is placed in a smaller town where they are one of the few people who can speak English. I'm interested to see how the lack or abundance of learning the language--that is, the basic grammar--affects the overall learning and increase in fluency of the student over the course of time. This will be a subject of great interest to me, and I'm looking forward to being able to use my findings in my studies beyond this class.

2. Things I already know:

• In my previous research, I have found that a full-immersion experience is far more effective in the overall learning of the Italian language--that opposed to the learning of the foreign language through an American classroom and professors.
• I have first-hand experience of the above two types of learning the Italian language, and can say which I believe helped me more.
• I know I am greatly interested in the basic grammar of the language and how it affects the learning of a student of Italian.
• Because I greatly enjoy linguistics, I'm willing to break the language down into bits and pieces in order to achieve my goal of a great research paper.

3. Things I don't know and would like to know more about:

• Which approach of language learning is more effective.
• What the different approaches of language learning are, and how they have worked over the years.
• Which types of experiences American university students have had in the course of their Italian language study--(I am completely open to learning about the learning processes of other languages in order to further understand my specific love of Italian)--this is something I could learn more about by interviewing students as part of my field research.
• I'm also very interested to see what my Italian professor at Metro has to say--I'm very close with her and plan on interviewing her as a great asset to my paper--she is very knowledgeable and had many opinions to share with me after reading my first paper (which has been mentioned several times before).

In addition, I fully intend to somehow post my previous research paper, as someone or another might be interested in learning more about what I already know.

I'm very excited to learn, and am intrigued to see what I can find!

RJA #2a: Possible Topics

When I think about what type of a topic I wanted to use, I know that I love travel, languages, and the like. However, how I can incorporate the following into a research paper will be something I have to think about. In the past, I've done a couple papers about foreign language education. I think that's something I might want to stick to, but I'm going to need to first check my sources to see what's out there to compare.
Five topics, however, are:

• Which is better? Learning a foreign language in a university in the United States, or living in a foreign country and learning the language at a university where primarily English is spoken there?
• Maybe, I could write about something related to the Montessori approach of teaching versus an Americanized kindergarten.
• Researching general topics on online journals and sources have included things such as "Italian foreign language education" and "Italian linguistics". I'm interested in something of the sort.
• Many of the sources the search engines have provided me with have been the phonetics and linguistics of Italian, and perhaps other Romance languages. I am very intrigued by the contrast between teaching approaches--complete immersion vs. English-based teaching in the United States.
  

RJA #1: Areas of Academic Interest

• Traveling around the world, but I love Europe.
  
• Foreign languages, specifically Italian, Spanish, and German.
• Music of all sorts, but I love singing. I play the piano and other musical instruments as well.
• I enjoy meeting new people.
  
• I really enjoy linguistics and all it entails, the principle of that being the study of language.