Stavroula Mavrommatidou
Democritus University of Thrace

In order to be efficient in understanding and producing texts and improving their vocabulary, good dictionary users should have a number of reference skills (Elola, Rodrıguez-Garcıa &Winfrey 2008;Fraser 1999; Author1 2013). Especially digital dictionaries and smart technology require the development of new skills for their successful and efficient use. Since research in skills required for electronic means is very limited, our aim is to create a reliable online tool, the Strategy Inventory for Electronic Dictionary Use (S.I.E.D.U.), for the evaluation of skills users should have for a successful online search. The purpose of this paper is to present the construction steps and characteristics of S.I.E.D.U. and to provide data about the instrument test specification and content validity.

While the importance of considering the wide variation among language learners has been brought to the forefront in recent years, the impact of such individual differences on the process of second or foreign language writing has been largely neglected. This paper aims to explore the ways in which individual students develop and transfer strategies within and between foreign language (FL) and first language (L1) writing. A two-phase intervention of strategy-based instruction was conducted primarily in the FL German classroom, and later also in the L1 English classroom of a Year 9 (age 13–14) class in a secondary school in England. This paper draws on in-depth qualitative data from writing tasks and stimulated recall interviews. A range of students’ trajectories through the intervention were evaluated and four distinct writer ‘profiles’ were identified: the strategic writer, the experimenter, the struggling writer and the multilingual writer. Both the development and transfer of strategies for these students were shown to be influenced by a complex and dynamic range of factors such as the learner’s proficiency level, their level of metacognitive engagement with the task, their attitude towards writing and their strategic use of other languages in their repertoire.

Although multilingualism has become a fact of life in the last few decades, this phenomenon has largely failed to find a reflection in research on language learning strategies. Even when scholars have addressed this issue, it has mostly been done with the purpose of proving the advantage of multilingualism over bilingualism, and scant attention has been given to how the nature, utility or status of a particular additional language can impact the frequency and patterns of strategy use. The present paper seeks to partially fill this gap by investigating the employment of strategies by 107 Polish university students majoring in English and, at the same time, being required to reach a high level of proficiency in another additional language. The data were collected by means of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, 1990) and interviews conducted with selected participants. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis demonstrated that strategy use in the second language was higher than in the third language, both overall and with respect to specific groups of strategies, mostly traditional and memory strategies were deployed, and the outcomes could be attributed to the proficiency level in both languages and varied motivation to master these languages.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the views held by teachers in Thrace, Greece with respect to their multilingual students and the teaching practices. A questionnaire (De Angelis, 2011) was used to assess teachers' beliefs about the role of prior linguistic knowledge, the teacher, the school and the family in the education of multilingual learners, as well as about their teaching practices. The effect of variables (gender, age, subject taught, teaching experience, intercultural education, and contact with languages) on teachers‟ attitudes and beliefs were examined. 60 primary and secondary school teachers, who mainly taught languages but also other school subjects, participated. They worked in an area comprising a significant number of multilingual learners with a non-Greek L1 belonging to the minority or immigrant families. Overall results suggest that teachers tend to share similar views and that the tested variables significantly affected their responses on a number of questions.

In diesem Beitrag werden die verschiedenen Funktionen des Pronomens es untersucht, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dessen Darstellung in einer Reihe von Grammatiken, in Lehr-Grammatiken und verschiedenen Lehrwerken für Deutsch als Fremdsprache (im Folgenden DaF) liegt. Die Bearbeitung erfolgt mit dem Ziel. Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten in der Präsentation der Funktionen des es zu erörtern. Danach folgt ein Vergleich zwischen den Grammatiken, den Lehr-Grammatiken und den Lehrwerken, um zu untersuchen: (a) wie die Funktionen des Pronomens dargestellt werden, und (b) inwieweit sich die Lehr-Grammatiken und die Grammatikpräsentationen in Lehrwerken bezüglich der Darstellung der Funktionen von es unterscheiden. Schließlich wird ein Vorschlag für Lehrwerke unterbreitet, der einerseits das Pronomen es anhand seiner syntaktischen und semantischen Eigenschaften darstellt und der andererseits Möglichkeiten aufzeigt, die effektives Lernen in DaF bewirken.

The present paper reports on a Greek lexicographic project that introduces dictionary use in early primary school curriculum providing children with a useful workbook during their first literacy steps. What follows is a brief account of the factors taken into consideration and the decisions made in order to adjust the dictionary to its user preferences, to map linguistic information on effective illustration and to raise pedagogical interest, reducing the metalinguistic difficulties that a dictionary can convey.

 This paper reports on the design and compilation of ELeFyS (Εικονογραφημένο Λεξικό Φυσικής για το Σχολείο, ΕΛεΦυΣ), a Greek specialized school dictionary of science. Since its conception ELeFyS has been intended as a reference tool for the parallel development of scientific and linguistic literacy in a school con-text. To fulfil such an objective, generic entries include scientific terms that fall within the school subject of physics and are likely to be encountered in the upper grades of primary and lower grades of secondary school; however, the dictionary coverage is not restricted to terminology, but is also expanded to the terms/headwords’ respective general sense(s) and use(s). Moreover, encyclopedic and cultural material is given as further stimuli for critical thinking. Under this scope, ELeFyS works both as a lexicographic product and a multi-functional teaching resource. In sum, it constitutes a novel endeavor of combining pedagogy and specialization in order to meet the complex linguistic and cognitive/scientific needs of school children in the late primary and the early secondary school grades. Such a complex aim of determining both communication- and knowledge-oriented lexicographic functions is being realized thanks to the enduring collaboration of a linguist and a science expert, well-rooted in long teaching experience. In what follows, we focus on the policy decisions made at the outset of the lexicographic project and the entry-building process.

Stadiou Street bespeaks a story of urban de-gentrification and appropriation by ‘the others’ of Greek society, as suggested by the spray-canned messages on its prized national monuments and up-market shops. The linguistic landscape (LL) has become an arena for the discursive public negotiation of gendered and sexed predicates and meanings, as well as for the discursive production of social categories. It surfaces as a radically globalized ‘canvassing’ arena, which is being transformed through mass media, social media, and contact among local advocacy groups. Therefore, although writing can arguably be considered static, the LL of Stadiou can hardly be conceptualized – let alone studied – as static. To this effect, I approach Stadiou Street ethnographically arguing for the advantages of this approach to the LL as semiotic space.

Building upon previous research, the present large-scale study looks into the relationship between multilingualism and factors influencing language learning strategies by comparing 932 monolingual and 307 multilingual learners’ strategy use. The participants completed the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) Version 7.0 (Oxford 1990). The collected data were computed and analyzed via t-test, oneway and two-way ANOVA with respect to overall strategy use and the six categories by monolingual and multilingual learners and the independent variables. Interactions tested among the independent variables were not statistically significant pointing to the variables’ discreteness. However, the main effect of each independent variable, without the interference of the other variables, was statistically significant for certain strategy categories.

S.I.E.D.U. (Strategy Inventory for Electronic Dictionary Use) is a valid and reliable electronic instrument designed for assessing users’ skills in electronic dictionary searches. It can be used for research purposes mainly for the detection of users’ profiles in order to design appropriateintervention programs in classrooms. In the present paper,it has been used for collecting empirical data onusers’ dictionary skills, which is an important but poorlyresearched topic in language learning contexts.700 people (students from high schools and universitiesas well asteachers) participated in the investigation and completed the online questionnaire S.I.E.D.U.,reflecting on their own digital dictionary use. It was found that not all users are familiar enough with the strategies required when using digital dictionariesand some of them lack the right skills to fully benefit from this useful source of information. In addition, there are differences in the skills applied by usersdepending on their level of education butnot between university students in different study fields.

Η εργασία αυτή αποσκοπεί α) στην περιγραφή και ανάλυση του κλιτικού συστήματος των ονομάτων (ουσιαστικών και επιθέτων) της κοινής αστικής κυπριακής με βάση τις αρχές της Μορφολογίας των Παραδειγματικών Συναρτήσεων και β) στην παρουσίαση του μορφολογικού λεξικού ΚΟΜοΛεξ, η σύνταξη του οποίου βασίστηκε στο προαναφερθέν θεωρητικό πλαίσιο.

The purpose of the present study was to identify the range of strategies reported to be used by university students learning English as foreign language and to determine whether the reported strategies vary, depending on the proficiency in foreign language, gender, knowledge of more than one foreign language and career orientation of the students. 117 students filled in a questionnaire. The results showed that university students use learning strategies to a high degree. No significant effects of gender, career orientation and knowledge of more than one language was found. On the contrary, there was a significant effect of language proficiency on the use of metacognitive strategies.

This paper reports on how Lesson Study (LS) has been used and researched as a supporting tool in EFL teacher education at the University of Stavanger. LS has been a compulsory part of EFL teacher education courses at the University of Stavanger since 2012. All EFL student teachers are required to carry out a LS project during their group teaching practice and to write a follow-up report that includes reflective notes and a presentation to their peers. Data collected over the last four years has included recordings of supervision sessions, video-recorded lessons, focus group interviews, LS reports and student reflection notes. These were analysed using two types of content analysis: the first was where the categories emerged from the text (Krippendorf 2013), while the second used a predesigned rubric adapted from Cochran-Smith et al. (2009). The experiences and research on LS in EFL teacher education at the University of Stavanger show that, while it is challenging and demanding, the student teachers nevertheless acknowledge that it makes a positive contribution to their professional teacher development. The implications are that there are clear benefits of using LS as a supporting tool in EFL teacher education.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the theoretical background and methodological tools for the elaboration of a specialized dictionary, the Dictionary of the Learned Elements of Modern Greek (DILLEMOG). The learned level of Modern Greek (MG), which originates from the natural diachronic inheritance and from the prototyping of Ancient Greek, includes segments, structures and processes which pertain to all levels of linguistic analysis. DILLEMOG will constitute an innovative lexicographical database which will provide the user with all the necessary information on the [+ learned] linguistic items of MG, such as definitions, collocations, degree of learnedness, lexical and morphological classification, functionality and usage.

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.

There has beena long debate whetherElicited Imitation Tasks (EITs) measure linguistic skills, or they are more based on the rote memory skills. Some studies have noted that the role of memory (either working memory or short term memory) is crucial for the performance on EITs (Alloway and Gathercole, 2005; Alloway, Gathercole, Willis and Adams, 2004). Few studies have claimed that the contribution of memory is more important than the contribution of language to EITs performance (Hamayan, Saegert, and Larudee, 1977). Nonetheless, other studies have not observed the impact of memory on the performance in EITs (Okura and Lonsdale 2012, Dosi, Papadopoulou and Tsimpli, 2016). There ishowever,a great number of recent studies which maintain that EITs draw on both language ability and cognitive resources,primarily from working memory (Riches, 2012; Klem, Melby-Lervaog, Hagtvet, Lyster, Gustafsson and Hulme, 2015), especially when the sentences are quite short (Fattal, Friedmann and Fattla-Valevski, 2011), since language processing is less demanding in short sentencesand memory abilities are more possible to affect the participants’ performance (Alloway et al., 2004). Language proficiency also seems to affect the performance on the task (Bley-Vroman and Chaudron, 1994; Munnich, Flynn and Martohardjono, 1994). Limited is the evidence about Greek native speakers, who learn English as a second language (L2), such data would be useful for the educators to plan a more targeted lesson.

The present study investigates the language and working memory skills of native speakers of Greek, who learn English as a L2. Additionally, it also takes into account the aforementioned issues in order to test whether (a) EITs measure both linguistic and (verbal) working memory abilities and (b)language proficiency hasanyimpact on participants’ performance. Hence, in the present study eight participantstook part; half of them (n=4) were intermediate learners of English and the other half (n=4) were advanced learners of English.

 The present study aims at exploring: (a) the role of the educational settingin the acquisition of aspect and executive functions (i.e. updating) skills, (b)the acquisition of the aspectual features in Greek-German bilingualchildren and (c) the impact of updating on the acquisition of aspect.Imperfective aspect has been found to be acquired later than perfectivein previous studies. Moreover, a bilingual educational setting seems toenhance not only cognitive but also linguistic abilities. The participantsof the present study are Greek-German bilingual children, who attend abilingual or a Greek dominant educational setting. They were tested intwo baseline tasks, two linguistic tasks and an executive function,updating, task. Thefindings reveal that bilinguals who attend amonolingual educational setting performed similarly to the monolingualcontrol group on aspect, whereas bilinguals who attend a bilingualeducational setting scored lower than the monolinguals. In the updatingtask, the students of the bilingual educational setting scored higher thanthe other groups. Overall, ourfindings suggest that the bilingualeducational setting seems to boost executive function (updating) skills,while the acquisition of aspect is affected by vocabulary knowledge.

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.

The present study investigates the comprehension of perfective and imperfective aspect in Greek-English bilingual children. Previous work on L2 acquisition of aspect indicates that imperfective aspect appears later than perfective aspect in the marking of past events across various languages (Andersen & Shirai 1996; Bardovi-Harlig 2000) and that the [+ habitual] feature of imperfective aspect, appears later than the [+ continuous] feature (Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds 1995; Shirai 2002); the same pattern also holds for adult learners of L2 Greek (Mattheoudakis et al. 2011; Papadopoulou 2005). Sixty children, thirty Greek-English bilinguals and thirty Greek monolinguals, completed a forced choice oral task, in which they had to select between the perfective and imperfective aspect of a specific verb. The task consisted of short stories which tested three ex-perimental conditions: perfective, [+ continuous] imperfective and [+ habitual] imperfective; for each condition individual stories with and without temporal conjunctions were provided. The results revealed that the perfective aspect was successfully acquired, while problems with the imperfective aspect are evident, especially when the imperfective sentences denote habituality. The participants’ performance suggests no association between the presence of conjunctions and the decoding of aspect. Interestingly, a significant correlation was found between children’s vocabulary level and their performance on aspect.