Volume 13 (2009): Issue 1 (June 2009)

The focus of this article is the manner in which 4 to 12 year old children deal with the "evaluative" component of narratives (Labov & Waletsky, 1967). After spontaneously telling their first version of a story of a misunderstanding between two characters, constructed on the basis of a sequence of five images, children participated in a scaffolding procedure during which they were questioned about the reasons for the events. After this non-intrusive, Piagetian-styled clinical interview, children were asked to recount the story a second time. For children's first narratives, our study confirms earlier results by showing that, before 8-9 years, children rarely mention the epistemic states of the characters. The false belief of one of the characters and its rectification are rarely mentioned before 10-11 years and even at that age by few children. Presenting a story based on a misunderstanding does not facilitate this kind of narration. However, in the narrative produced after scaffolding, 6-7 year old children increase considerably their references to the characters' internal states, and from 8-9 years, the expression of false belief and of its rectification. These results call for multiple evaluations in order to best grasp children's narrative competence.

The paper focuses on argumentation occurring in the process of co-constructing narrative text at the preschool age in the two types of situations: one where disagreernent between the discourse participants occurs, and another where none of the discourse participants has opposed the speaker's position, in undisputed, non-conflict situations. The data come from a study of 162 children between ages four and seven. The children participated in the study as co-narrators (two children in the role of co-narrators), who constructed a text for a peer listener (a third child in the role of a listener). The analyzed material consisted of 93 narrative texts. The findings show that the argumentation refers to both dimensions of children's narration activity: the content introduced by discourse participants, i.e., the semantic dimension of the constructed text, and the process of constructing the text, i.e., the interactive dimension (who, when and how introduces any given information). However, in conflict situations the argumentation more often concerns the interactive dimension. On the other hand, in non-conflict situations, the argumentation more often concerns the semantic dimension of the discourse. Moreover, when the argumentation refers to the rules of interaction in the discourse, it is mostly characterized by a simple structure and is constructed individually. When the argumentation refers to the content which is introduced in the discourse, in the non conflict situations it is still mostly characterized by asimple and individually created structure, but in comparison to the conflict situations it is more often constructed jointly and results in the more compound structures. The analyses of argumentation in the two types of situation - conflict and non conflict ones - reveal that convincing, as the main goal of argumentation, can be realized in narrative discourse in different ways.

Mistakes can be seen as an integral and natural part of learning. This is true of the development of a child's first language as well as of second language learning by children and adults. Learning never proceeds without making errors. They appear naturally in linguistic development. The main aim of the research is to find out if and how the learners appreciate error correction. Besides, its goal is to provide qualitative data concerning learners' opinions, as well as bring some comments on errors in their own experience. The research results clearly indicate that students generally believe that making errors is one of the things they do while learning a foreign language. They agree that they can learn a lot from their mistakes. Almost 40% of the research subjects think that error correction is absolutely necessary, and a half of them see correction as very helpful. They value correction as a means of improvement. Most learners are not afraid of errors and treat them as something natural. However, almost half of the research subjects associate making a mistake with the feeling of guilt. They use an avoidance technique in order not to be laughed at when they make a mistake. Thus, errors should not be approached with hostility. It is better to view errors as the sign of a learner's progress rather than a sign of lack of knowledge.

The article examines a variety of cognitive individual variables of a talented foreign language learner. The research complies with the qualitative and quantitative criteria of choice of a talented learner proposed by Arancibia et al., (2008); Hartas et al., (2008); Hewston et al., (2005), and Skehan, (1998). Cognitive variables included tested: foreign language aptitude, verbal and non-verbal intelligence, learning styles, and learning strategies. The purpose of the research was to construct an extended cognitive profile of a 21-year-old student proficient in three languages. The research revealed that the subject is linguistically talented, especially in the area of phonological, analytical, and memory abilities. It is hypothesized that her superior abilities result from an extraordinarily efficient short-term phonological memory (Mackey et al., 2002). She uses miscellaneous learning strategies and her learning styles are versatile. The final conclusion is that research into linguistic talent is scarce, therefore further investigation, especially in the field of working memory of talented foreign language learners, is required.

Background: This article is about the rehabilitation of a patient with kinaesthetic aphasia based on an original computer program. The program facilitates the practice of correct kinaesthetic responses in patients with impaired sensation of the configuration of the various elements of the articulation apparatus.

Case description: The study was conducted on JB, a male patient with kinaesthetic aphasia following left hemisphere apoplexy. The computer-assisted therapy began in February 2006 and lasted until the end of June 2006. The article provides a detailed account of the changes in the patient's functioning resulting from the speech therapy conducted in the year 2006, and presents the results of the speech examination conducted after 33 months since its completion. The second study was performed in order to evaluate the lasting effect of the therapy.

Conclusions: The results of this study have demonstrated the effectiveness of speech therapy using an original computer program for the rehabilitation of patients with kinaesthetic aphasia.