Alternative Assignment

Nesteruk, O. (2010). Heritage language maintenance and loss among the children of Eastern European   immigrants in the USA. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 31(3), 271- 286.           

This article is interesting and can be very helpful to my research paper because it explores immigrants and their language in schools and professions. It does a little bit of comparing the immigrants in an ethnic community to an immigrant who migrates amongst the U.S. in search of a job. The author calls this “highly skilled immigrants.” Furthermore, this article focuses on Eastern European immigrants  in America, exploring their children and heritage loss, school age immigrants, and immigrants in their professions.

Jiang, M., Green, R.J., Henley, T.B., & Masten, W.G. (2009). Acculturation in relation to the acquisition of a second language. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 30(6), 481-492.

This article is beneficial to my paper because focuses on post-puberty Chinese immigrant students and the difference between L2 acquisition and acculturation. The authors state, “…the more positively identified with and the more psychologically integrated into the target language group, the more likely the learner is able to succeed in L2 acquisition (Jiang, Green, Henley, & Masten 2009). One of my main focuses is on the difference between language acquisition in an ethnic community versus an affluent area and this article does a whole lot of exploration in acculturation.

Devrim, D.Y., & Bayyurt, Y. (2010). Students' understandings and preferences of the role and place of 'culture' in english language teaching: a focus in an efl context. TESOL Journal, 2, 4-23.

In this article, the author explores the roles of culture within EFL classrooms. Furthermore, comparisons are made between native and non-native teachers. This article could have relevance to my paper because I am interested in specifically exploring the environmental differences and effects of those differences on l2 learners. Perhaps a native teacher could have a different influence on his/her students than a non-native teacher.

Crossley, S., Salsbury, T., & McNamara, D. (2010). The development of polysemy and frequency use in english second language speakers. Language Learning: A journal of Research in Language Studies, 573-605.

           This article points out a few aspects of second language acquisition in which I am interested in the frequency use in learning a language. In my research paper, I will be exploring both ethnic communities and non-ethnic communities; the frequency will be much higher in an environment where a non English speaker cannot communicate without having to attempt speaking English. I am interested in seeing the effects and influences of frequency use.