Papers by Katalin Fenyvesi
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2022
This longitudinal study examined the influence of child-specific and environmental factors on the... more This longitudinal study examined the influence of child-specific and environmental factors on the development of English receptive vocabulary and grammar by two groups of Danish children: Early Starters (ES) and Late Starters (LS). Age of onset, gender, language aptitude and SES significantly predicted both outcome measures. English competence beliefs (ECB) were positively related to L2 proficiency but only for children with low foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA), suggesting a dynamic relationship between ECB and FLCA. Extramural audiovisual viewing and reading played a differential role for ES vs. LS whereas extramural English speaking significantly interacted with gender. Finally, child-specific factors explained more of the variance in English proficiency than environmental factors. This finding, which contradicts results obtained in instructed settings (e.g., Sun, Steinkrauss, Tendeiro & de Bot, 2016) but parallels those in naturalistic settings (e.g., Paradis, 2011), sup...
Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2020
This paper reports the results of a semi-longitudinal study investigating the role of age of onse... more This paper reports the results of a semi-longitudinal study investigating the role of age of onset in early foreign language (English) learning. We compared two groups of Danish school children (N = 276) who, following an educational reform in 2014, started their first English classes the same year but at different ages. One group (the early starters) was introduced to English in the 1st grade (age 7-8) and the other group (the late starters) in the 3rd grade (age 9-10). Children’s receptive vocabulary, receptive grammar, and phonetic discrimination skills were followed for three years, allowing comparisons across groups and time and tracking learning rate and shortterm proficiency (after one and two years of instruction). Results showed that the late starters outperformed the early starters in most tests. With respect to learning rate, the tests also revealed that the late starters had an advantage in the receptive grammar test, whereas the phonetic discrimination test showed a mor...
Ny forskning i grammatik, 2021
The English verb try and Danish prøve are primarily defined as ‘make an attempt’, ‘put to trial’.... more The English verb try and Danish prøve are primarily defined as ‘make an attempt’, ‘put to trial’. Danish prøve, however, is often used about easy activities without the need to make an attempt. This usage has not been analyzed in detail before. This paper describes the uses of prøve and discusses to what degree it has been grammaticalized. The corpus analysis shows that prøve is frequently used with an at-infinitive, e.g. verbs of saying and perception. The original meaning of prøve is often bleached. Especially the imperative, but also the infinitive assimilates phonetically with the following infinitive marker to a high degree whereby it also receives a new pragmatic function.
NyS, Nydanske Sprogstudier, 2008
Denne artikel er omfattet af ophavsretsloven, og der må citeres fra den. Følgende betingelser ska... more Denne artikel er omfattet af ophavsretsloven, og der må citeres fra den. Følgende betingelser skal dog vaere opfyldt: • Citatet skal vaere i overensstemmelse med "god skik" • Der må kun citeres "i det omfang, som betinges af formålet" • Ophavsmanden til teksten skal krediteres, og kilden skal angives, jf. ovenstående bibliografiske oplysninger. Artiklerne i de aeldre NyS-numre (NyS 1-36) er skannet og OCR-behandlet. OCR står for 'optical character recognition' og kan ved tegngenkendelse konvertere et billede til tekst. Dermed kan man søge i teksten. Imidlertid kan der opstå fejl i tegngenkendelsen, og når man søger på fx navne, skal man vaere forberedt på at søgningen ikke er 100 % pålidelig.
Language Teaching Research, 2021
This study explores what young Danish learners found anxiety-provoking or difficult in their Engl... more This study explores what young Danish learners found anxiety-provoking or difficult in their English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. Participants (n = 32) were early and later starters (ages 8...
The benefits of early starting EFL instruction are not well documented. The present questionnaire... more The benefits of early starting EFL instruction are not well documented. The present questionnaire study therefore investigated the difference between first-graders’ (7 years) and third-graders’ (9 years) EFL learning in terms of socio-cognitive and affective factors: self-esteem, anxiety and growth mindset (e.g., Dweck, 2000) in a large sample (n=295) of young first-time Danish learners of English. Children completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and the Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG) before and after one year of language instruction.
Language Teaching Research
Uploads
Papers by Katalin Fenyvesi