Even though rhotics are very common sounds in the languages of the world, there is a consensus in the literature that they are articulatorily complex. Not only do they tend to be acquired at the last stages of the acquisition period, but also their distribution is usually constrained (cf. Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996, Żygis 2005). As a consequence of being complex, rhotics manifest a strong susceptibility to phonetic change. The present paper reports the results of an experiment that aimed at describing various physical realisations of the Polish phoneme /r/ placed in intervocalic position. The data presented in the article show that in this position speakers do not articulate a tap, but in most cases they produce either a fricative or an approximant. In the light of the data, high vowels constitute an environment that is more conducive to this sort of reduction than mid or low vowels.

This article presents evidence about research-based teaching techniques that aided making the e-learning tool designed for this research more effective than traditional teaching methods when teaching English articles (e.g. 'a', 'an', and 'the'). The techniques employed were: Master's binary schema, explicit instruction, chunking, and direct feedback. Master's binary schema (Master 1988, 2003) is an easy-to-grasp and detailed method of teaching English articles. Explicit instruction is the provision of clear and simple instruction of specific target structures (Troia & Graham 2002); in this study, the focus is on English articles. Chunking is the splitting of longer instructions into smaller segments for easier processing (Coufal 2002). Direct feedback for written texts is when responses are placed above, below, or near the inappropriate target structure to guide students towards appropriate use of structures (Bitchener & Knoch 2010). The main study results strongly indicated that the elearning tool was more effective than the traditional teaching techniques employed in this study. For the overall results by stage and group, the e-learning group achieved significantly better results than the control group. The main study results provide valuable quantitative evidence about the research based teaching techniques incorporated into the e-learning tool for English article usage teaching and for the effectiveness of e-learning in the English grammatical structure teaching.

No abstract

There is a quantity of research in English speaking countries into the relationship between early oral language concepts and literacy. The research described in this paper attempted to transfer to the Polish language context the knowledge developed in English speaking countries on pre-literacy developmental norms. The aim of the study was also to increase children’s educational chances through an intervention program addressing pre-literacy concept deficit. As part of the research into Polish pre-literacy developmental norms and the teacher development program, a resource book was created with preliteracy concepts and activities sequenced developmentally according to current knowledge about how Polish children develop their skills in these areas. The textbook developed from a collaborative process between the researchers and pre-school teachers during the collection of pre-literacy developmental norm data and regular collaborative workshops focused of planning and implementing intervention programs with the use of explicit methodologies and formative assessment.

No abstract