Άρθρα

Zoe Gavriilidou* and Angeliki Psaltou-Joycey**

Democritus University of Thrace*,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki**

The present article offers a brief overview of the field of language learning strategies by following the growth of relevant research over the past thirty years or so, which developed alongside the increased attention to learner-centred instructional models of foreign language teaching. As such, it highlights key concepts, relates the use of strategies to other learner variables, and touches on the issue of strategy instruction and its effect on language learning.

Lydia Mitits

Democritus University of Thrace

The present study investigates possible differences in language learning strategy (LLS) use between monolingual (L1 Greek) and multilingual (L1 non-Greek) early adolescent learners. The participants were junior high school learners (932 monolinguals and 307 multilinguals) who completed an adapted self-report questionnaire. Both groups responded to the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) Version 7.0 (Oxford, 1990) about their language learning strategies when learning English1. The multilingual group then completed another SILL reporting on the strategies they used when learning/using Greek. The data were analyzed via descriptive statistics and t-tests. The findings showed statistically significant differences between monolinguals and multilinguals concerning individual strategies and strategy categories in favor of multilinguals as well as multilinguals‟ transfer of strategies from Greek to English and vice versa.

Ifigeneia Dosi*, Ianthi Tsimpli**, Despina Papadopoulou***

Democritus University of Thrace*
University of Cambridge**
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki*

It is debated what exactly Elicited Imitation Tasks (EITs) measure; more specifically, it is not clear to what extent language ability andworking memory capacityare involved.Some researchers note that language abilities are more prevalent in those tasks, since participants focus on the meaning of the sentence in order to retrieveit(DeKeyser,2003; Ellis, 2005; Erlam, 2006).Furthermore, language proficiency affects task performance (Bley-Vroman& Chaudron, 1994; Munnich, Flynn & Martohardjono,1994).On the other hand, there is a debate regardingthe role of memory in EITs. Some studies argue that the contributionof memory, either working memory (WM) or short-term memory (STM) is critical for accurate performance (Alloway &Gathercole, 2005; Alloway, Gathercole,Willis & Adams, 2004).Otherspoint out the involvementof further cognitive abilities, such as episodic buffer(Baddeley & Wilson, 2002) or metalinguistic awareness (Bialystok 1991). Fewstudies claim that EITs do not entail any linguistic processing and are based onrote memory capacity (Hamayan, Saegert, & Larudee, 1977),whereasthere are also studies whichdo notfind a correlation between EIT and WM tasks (Okura& Lonsdale, 2012).More recent studies demonstrate that both language abilities and cognitive skills are neededin EITs (Riches, 2012; Klem,Melby-Lervaog, Hagtvet,Lyster,Gustafsson &Hulme,2015). To our knowledge, there are no studies that explored the role of other executive functions(i.e. updating)in the performance onEITs.

Ifigeneia Dosi

Democritus University of Thrace

 The present study examines the linguistic (i.e. grammatical aspect) and cognitive abilities of 8;0 to 8;9-year-old Greek-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Previous studies on Greek-speaking children with DLD have indicated that, both in comprehension and production, the perfective is more prevalent than the imperfective. However research on the acquisition of the habitual feature is scarce, although it is a problematic feature even in typical development. The results of this study indicate that aspectual asymmetries are task-dependent. Interestingly, language deficit in DLD children seem to be due to their general cognitive deficit.

Ifigeneia Dosi*, Eirini-Chrysovalantou Koutsipetsidou**

Democritus University of Thrace*
Queen Margaret University of Edinburgh**

 The aim of the present study is twofold: (a) to examine linguistic and cognitive abilities in Greek-speaking children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) or Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), and (b) to detect whether the performance on Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) is affected by (verbal) working memory (WM) abilities.Previous studies have indicated that children with bothDLDand DD have lower linguistic and WMabilitiesin comparison to their peers. More recent studies focus on the interaction of these two abilities, indicating that the linguistic deficit is driven by the cognitive deficit. Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) isan appropriate and reliable tool for measuring both linguistic and cognitive abilities. For this reason, we tested 30 monolingual children (with DD, DLD and non-impaired controls) by means of an SRTand a verbal working memorytask(VWMT). The results have shown that both clinical groups had lower linguistic and cognitive abilitiesthan the control group; however the DLD group show a lower performance on the SRTboth in terms of accuracy and grammaticality in comparison to the DD group.Interestingly,we found that theperformanceon the VWMT predicts the accuracy on the SRT, while lexical knowledge predicts thegrammaticalityscores in both clinical groups, albeit not in the control group.From our findings we deduce that(a) both clinical groups have impaired linguistic and cognitive abilities; however the DLD group encounters more difficulties withtheir linguistic abilities and (b) SRT measures both morphosyntactic abilitiesand WM abilities, as different predictor variables have a different impact on participants’performance.