Metonymy and reference-point errors in novice programming

Using Technology to Support Teaching Computer Science: A Study with Middle School Students

“…While their math ability was also correlated with their programming error rate, only the English ability of these Chinese students was important for explaining the variance of the error rate in the regression model. This finding conflicts with the results of previous studies on English speakers that found that students' natural language may have negative impacts on the learning of programming commands (Bruckman & Edwards, 1999;Miller, 2014). For instance, students who are English speakers often inappropriately link a word's meaning in natural language with the same word in the programming language (Bonar & Soloway, 1985;Miller, 2014).…”

“…In other words, students' prior math knowledge may have both positive and negative impacts on their learning of programming. Another factor that can interfere with the learning of programming constructs is students' natural language (Bonar & Soloway, 1985;Bruckman & Edwards, 1999;Miller, 2014). Students often inappropriately link a word's meaning in English with the same word in the programming language (Bonar & Soloway, 1985;Miller, 2014).…”

“…Another factor that can interfere with the learning of programming constructs is students' natural language (Bonar & Soloway, 1985;Bruckman & Edwards, 1999;Miller, 2014). Students often inappropriately link a word's meaning in English with the same word in the programming language (Bonar & Soloway, 1985;Miller, 2014). As most programming languages are based on English, students' English ability may have different impacts on misconceptions of English and non-English speakers.…”

How Do Students Use Program Visualizations within an Interactive Ebook?

“…If we can. Beginner programmers are plagued by various difficulties and misconceptions that may relate to metonymy [27] and, more generally, to the beginners' attempts to instruct a computer in a way that only works with recipients that are co-operative, intentional, and sufficiently informed [30,48].…”

“…Referring to a thing indirectly in the way just discussed, by mentioning an associated thing, is called metonymy, and it is something we humans naturally accept and indeed embrace [20,27]. Metonymy is effortless because of the imaginative nature of human thought [20] and the co-operative nature of human communication [12].…”