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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is taking on bilingual education in the 21st century. In this particular context, Spain, this approach has firmly taken hold. Due to mainstreaming, or the move to entirely bilingual schools, diversity has been put at the forefront of research. Charged with bolstering language learning competences in Spain, a country with notoriously poor foreign language competence and an unbalanced tradition with bilingual education, CLIL has now risen to meet the challenge to cater to the wide spectrum of students and foment access to high quality, functional language education. Thus, analyzing the perceptions of those implementing these classes, the teachers, is critical to gauge how the CLIL methodology is working with all types of students. Through the use of ADiBE protocol and instruments, this study explores six teachers' perceptions at the secondary education level in Andalusia through the use of questionnaires, one-onone interviews, and classroom observations. The results show how diversity is being attended to by teachers in this particular context, while simultaneously casting light on the obstacles and limitations that are still in need of addressing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inhibitory effect of positional syllable frequency is a well-known phenomenon in visual word recognition: words with high-frequency syllables require extra time for deactivating the lexical syllabic neighbors. The inhibitory effect implies that a connection exists between graphemes, phonemes, the first syllable, and the phonological lexicon. However, experimental results of the first developmental stages of occurrence are scarce and inconclusive. A second- and fourth-grade sample of typical school readers participated in a lexical decision task containing high/low frequency words and high/low syllable frequency words. Our primary hypothesis was that the inhibitory effect would be found on both school grade groups. We did not predict significant differences in magnitude of effect between second- and fourth-grade participants. A general inhibitory effect was found, and separate analyses by school grade groups also indicated significant inhibitory effects. Furthermore, second- and fourth-grade children showed small sizes of the inhibitory effect, resembling the sizes found in adult normal readers. Our results suggest that Spanish readers reach a functional connection between syllables and words at an early stage. The straightforward theoretical implication is that the inhibitory effect relies heavily on the structural properties of the lexical access system that are acquired at an early age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within higher education, it is often believed that the adoption of English-medium instruction (EMI) will provide domestic students with the language skills that will enable them to be more competitive in their future professional pursuits. However, research into language learning and EMI at the university level is very scarce. This study examined essays by 195 undergraduate students (99 1st-year and 96 3rd-year learners) at a major university in Spain in order to investigate the effect of three years of instruction through the medium of English on their level of proficiency, essay quality and lexical diversity (as measured by the Oxford Placement test, the CEFR writing scale and three measures of lexical diversity). The results showed a significant improvement in the learners' second language (L2) proficiency and a significant but subtle increase in essay quality ratings but no significant increase in lexical diversity scores. In the same vein as the findings of some of the other studies we discuss, the present findings seem to suggest the need to rethink and re-evaluate the implementation of EMI in contexts like the one examined in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article has as main objective to discover where were Spanish dots before becoming for flamenco and find their traces in the commerce of Spain. To do this the research we will focus on the formation of the Spanish nation between 1750 and 1847. The main method of research has been the reading of images and graphic material related to gypsies, ballet and flamenco. We were immersed in the history, the etymology and semiotics of the word to find the source of the polka dots in the print of the typical flamenco dress in Spain. In the beginnings of flamenco, it was not uncommon to see a flamenco dressed with dots. The gypsy wore skirts plain or with other prints such as paintings vichy. To find the reason of this event we have focused on the evolution of the textile industry which has led us to the evolution of the rules of tariffs in the customs and this is how we were able to see that theyhad vetoed the entrance to the trade in Spain, considered as foreigners since 1792 intermittently until 1841. During that time, the noun acquired negative connotations in Spain, assimilating to sin or defect. The little time that flamenco out conforming, dots began to be seen between the fashion of the Spanish women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The present research aims at describing and gaining knowledge about the lexical availability in Spanish in a sample of students of the Basque Country, categorized according to the model of bilingual education they have attended. The Basque Autonomous Community (henceforth BAC) establishes a frame of two official languages: Basque and Spanish. In order to fulfill this legal precept, one of the tasks of the public authorities of the Basque Country is well-defined: to assure the general knowledge of both languages, adopting the appropriate measures for such a purpose. The fact of both languages being co-official makes it necessary to analyze the situation of bilingual education from the moment it was established. This will permit us to know whether the bilingual school model our young population has attended influences the lexical variety in their speech production in Spanish; specifically, their production in social contexts. The measuring method used here is based on the common model for measuring lexical availability, that is, the words that first come to mind are the ones that are most available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: It is well known that tip-of-the-tongue (ToT) states, which are due to failure in the phonological activation of words, especially proper names, are more common in older than in younger adults. Nevertheless, the relationship between increased numbers of ToTs and cognitive aging remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to clarify this relationship by examining ToT production and the performance of cognitive tasks such as working memory and processing speed tests. Methodology: In order to study the relationships between these constructs, the performance of 133 participants in different language, working memory and processing speed tasks was analysed by use of LISREL software. Results: The best fit model included direct and indirect effects of age, mediated by cognitive variables, on lexical production variables. The model incorporated the indirect effects of age on vocabulary through working memory and also the indirect effect of age on ToT through processing speed. Conclusion: The results indicate negative modulation of slowed processing in the age-related increase of ToT and positive modulation of working memory in vocabulary, as well as an absence of any relation between vocabulary and ToT. Assuming that ToT events involve controlled processes, the relationship between slowed processing and ToT in aging could be interpreted as reflecting controlled compensatory mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Nowadays discourse parsing is a very prominent research topic. However, there is not a discourse parser for Spanish texts. The first stage in order to develop this tool is discourse segmentation. In this work, we present DiSeg, the first discourse segmenter for Spanish, which uses the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory and is based on lexical and syntactic rules. We describe the system and we evaluate its performance against a gold standard corpus, divided in a medical and a terminological subcorpus. We obtain promising results, which means that discourse segmentation is possible using shallow parsing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Our goal in this paper is to shed some light on the treatment of immigration issues in the current Spanish press via the analysis of the visual and lexical choices used in the journalistic representation of immigration. With this in mind, taking Critical Discourse Analysis and Visual Grammar as theoretical paradigms, we will explore how immigration is represented in a representative sample of multimodal texts found in newspapers from Alicante, a province with a very high percentage of immigrants in Spain. To this end, we will analyse the image and the euphemistic lexical references to immigration in the headlines, subheadings and captions of the pieces of news that constitute our corpus. The findings obtained provide evidence for the fact that, in the majority of the texts analysed, a considerable number of lexical and visual elements do not contribute to a positive representation of immigrants and tend to provoke, whether consciously or not, discriminatory attitudes towards them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elderly people experience more failures in word form access (tip-of-the-tongue events, 'TOTs') than young people. There is general agreement that TOTs are signs of cognitive decline in older people, but because of the diversity and ambiguity involved in measuring TOTs, certain questions regarding age-related trends in semantic access remain unsolved. Age-related increases in vocabulary may raise the level of efficiency of access to semantic representations and compensate for lexical access failures. We explore the relationships between lexical knowledge and lexical retrieval in ageing by re-examining the data obtained by Juncos-Rabadan et al. on TOTs induced in 140 volunteers aged from 19 to 82 years. We found that older adults displayed significantly more difficulty in accessing the phonological representations of personal names, but not those of common nouns. The results revealed greater semantic access efficiency in older participants. We discuss the findings in light of the transmission deficit theory of TOT production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Studies of cognitive processes in SL writing have paid attention to the strategies that writers use to tackle problems in composing. In text-generation, finding lexical items in the L2 to express their meanings is one of the most crucial problems writers have to face, for reasons related to the availability and accessibility of relevant linguistic knowledge. However, L2 writers have a resource at their disposal: their mother tongue. Our study used think-aloud (TA) protocols to explore the strategic use of the L1 by a group of seven advanced Spanish learners of EFL engaged in solving lexical problems in two tasks: a narrative and an argumentative essay. We analysed the effect of task difficulty on the number and type (compensatory/upgrading) of lexical problems these writers tackled using their mother tongue and attempted to categorise the specific purposes for which the L1 was used. Our results indicate that the cognitive difficulty of the task plays a role in determining the number of lexical searches (LSs) undertaken and the type of search in which the writer uses the L1. The amount of L1 use is also affected by task. These findings will be interpreted from a number of perspectives including individual differences and theories of cognitive task complexity, multicompetence, and the language learning potential of L2 writing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas is the property of Revista Nebrija de Linguistica Aplicada a la Ensenanza de Lenguas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)