Dissertations / Theses on the topic '200401 Applied Linguistics and Educational Linguistics'

This project investigates the integration of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) into educational settings by closely looking at the uptake of the perceived affordances offered by ICTs by students enrolled in a French language course at Queensland University of Technology. This cross-disciplinary research uses the theoretical concepts of: Ecological Psychology (Gibson, 1979; Good, 2007; Reed, 1996); Ecological Linguistics (Greeno, 1994; Leather & van Dam, 2003; van Lier 2000, 2003, 2004a, 2004b); Design (Norman, 1988, 1999); Software Design/ Human-Computer Interaction (Hartson, 2003; McGrenere & Ho, 2000); Learning Design (Conole & Dyke, 2004a, 2004b; Laurillard et al. 2000;); Education (Kirschner, 2002; Salomon, 1993; Wijekumar et al., 2006) and Educational Psychology (Greeno, 1994). In order to investigate this subject, the following research questions, rooted in the theoretical foundations of the thesis, were formulated: (1) What are the learners’ attitudes towards the ICT tools used in the project?; (2) What are the affordances offered by ICTs used in a specific French language course at university level from the perspective of the teacher and from the perspective of language learners?; (3) What affordances offered by ICT tools used by the teacher within the specific teaching and learning environment have been taken up by learners?; and (4) What factors influence the uptake by learners of the affordances created by ICT tools used by the teacher within the specific teaching and learning environment? The teaching phase of this project, conducted between 2006 and 2008, used Action Research procedures (Hopkins, 2002; McNiff & Whitehead, 2002; van Lier 1994) as a research framework. The data were collected using the following combination of qualitative and quantitative methods: (1) questionnaires administered to students (Hopkins, 2002; McNiff & Whitehead, 2002) using Likert-scale questions, open questions, yes/no questions; (2) partnership classroom observations of research participants conducted by Research Participant Advocates (Hopkins, 2002; McNiff & Whitehead, 2002); and (3) a focus group with volunteering students who participated in the unit (semi-structured interview) (Hopkins, 2002; McNiff & Whitehead, 2002). The data analysis confirms the importance of a careful examination of the teaching and learning environment and reveals differences in the ways in which the opportunities for an action offered by the ICTs were perceived by teacher and students, which impacted on the uptake of affordances. The author applied the model of affordance, as described by Good (2007), to explain these differences and to investigate their consequences. In conclusion, the teacher-researcher considers that the discrepancies in perceiving the affordances result from the disparities between the frames of reference and the functional contexts of the teacher-researcher and students. Based on the results of the data analysis, a series of recommendations is formulated supporting calls for careful analysis of frames of reference and the functional contexts of all participants in the learning and teaching process. The author also suggests a modified model of affordance, outlining the important characteristics of its constituents.

This study investigates linguistic, perceptual, and pedagogical change (LPPC) in a short-term, study abroad English immersion program. It proposes the LPPC Interactive Model of second language acquisition based on Gardner's 1985 socioeducational model and Woods' 1996 beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge (BAK) structure. The framework is applied in a cross-cultural context, highlighting participants in the 1993 Camosun Osaka Aoyama English Language Institute involving Japanese English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students from Aoyama Junior College in Osaka, Japan, and non-Japanese ESL teachers at Camosun College and Canada's University of Victoria in British Columbia. The study examined the definition of teacher achievement; distinctions between language activation and language acquisition in the short-term, study abroad context; development of the constructs student BAK+, teacher BAK+, and class BAK+ to describe interactions in "class fit"; and the influence of temporal parameters on linguistic, perceptual, and pedagogical change. Data from teacher and student surveys and interviews suggest that change occurs in each of the linguistic, perceptual, and pedagogical dimensions and support constructs proposed for the model.

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate teachers’ beliefs about a fundamental aspect of foreign language teaching: grammar. Whilst progressively reinstated in the national curriculum and consistently sustained by foreign languages teachers’ practices, grammar’s perceived irrelevance for assessment criteria of the nationally adopted method of assessment - the General Certificate of Secondary Education – kept it caught in conflicting discourses of policy, linguistic research and teaching practices. Whilst foreign languages policy and practice kept converging towards increasing focus on forms in language education along correspondences with linguistic research, the assessment has remained focused on generic communicative, skill-focused criteria. My small-scale research aimed to find how foreign languages teachers translated grammar teaching policy and possible theoretical guidelines in their teaching practices, by collecting data through interviews, observations and think-alouds. The findings revealed disparate educational contexts, approaches, as well as interpretations of grammar teaching. It led me to realise the necessity to probe further into a much more thorough theoretical and methodological underpinning of foreign languages education. As this study concludes, the secondary foreign languages curriculum has become disapplied, and schools and teachers have been left to devise their idiosyncratic foreign language learning strategies and rationales. As foreign languages teaching becomes anchored in the primary education curricular provision, this research hopes to document the need to frame theoretical and methodological guidelines, a consistent foreign languages education rationale, leading to a consistent and convincing education and provision of future foreign language teachers.

The present study observed the use of educational code-switching to the L1 (Arabic) among six Arabic EFL teachers at Majmaah University, in Saudi Arabia. It used an a priori set of purposes based on Creswell (2003) and derived categories to examine the linguistic, social, and class management purposes behind code-switching. The instrument consisted of two parts: a demographic questionnaire and an audio recorder used in conjunction with a classroom observation sheet. Although some studies have suggested that educational code-switching to the L1 in EFL classrooms is an unconscious act (e.g., Moghadam, Abdul Samad, & Shahraki, 2012), the present study's results concluded the reverse: that the use of educational code-switching could be interpreted as an intentional practice among teachers in EFL classrooms. The results provided a more in-depth understanding of the use of educational code-switching to the L1 (Arabic). They agreed with previous studies that have found such code-switching to be very common among EFL teachers. Although participants displayed different linguistic, social, and class management purposes, analysis of the data revealed that certain purposes were more common than others, with linguistic purposes being far more common than social, class management, or other purposes. The most common linguistic purpose was to explain new words, and for class management was to clarify activities/exercises. Only two purposes, to engage in small talk with students and to connect between sentences, could not be categorized into one of the three main types.

Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge are two (among many) components of multi-faceted word knowledge critical for language development and ultimately, academic performance, as they strongly correlate with other essential, literacy-related skills, such as spelling, writing and reading comprehension (Ramirez, Chen, Geva & Kiefer, 2010). Developing these types of knowledge is a non-linear process for school-age children: morphological awareness, in particular, involves long-term learning towards a full mastery beginning in mid-dle childhood and continuing through adolescence. Such learning processes can pose significant challenges especially for children attending a school entirely in a second language (L2) while speaking, as a first language (L1), a language which is ethno-linguistically minority in status in the larger (L2) society. Despite globally growing populations of L2 children in school settings, little is known about the nature of morphological/vocabulary knowledge in one language, relative to the other, especially when children are learning two typologically distant languages with different writing systems. The current study, situated within the theoretical framework of multicompetence (Cook, 2003), set out to investigate specific aspects of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in different groups of English- and Japanese-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, whilst also examining the extent to which English morphological awareness influences/or is influenced by Japanese morphological awareness among the bilingual sample. The purpose of the study is largely three-fold. One was to examine the children’s ability to understand and express a connection between a word and its meaning. The former taps into receptive vocabulary knowledge, whereas the latter expressive vocabulary knowledge. Two vocabulary tests were administered to three groups of children per language: two bilingual groups (24 Japanese learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) and 21 learners of Japanese as a Heritage Language (JHL)) and a group of 25 English Language Monolinguals (ELMs) (English); and ESLs, JHLs and a group of 27 Japanese language Monolinguals (JLMs) (Japanese). The second purpose was to investigate the children’s ability to identify morphemes included in a word and also to produce inflectional and derivational forms of a word, using two morphological tasks per language – a Word Segmentation (WS) task and a Word Analogy (WA) task. Lastly, the current study examined, through statistical analyses, the nature of an association between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in each language, and also whether morphological awareness in one language could act as a significant predictor of morphological awareness in the other, i.e., cross-linguistic influence. Four key findings were obtained. First, the patterns in which each group demonstrated vocabulary knowledge through English tests contrasted with the pattern observed in the Japanese results. In English, the ESL group scored more highly on the receptive test than the expressive test, whereas the reverse pattern was the case for the ELM group. The JHL group yielded comparable scores across tests. In Japanese, in contrast, all three groups (ESL/JHL/JLM) scored more highly on the expressive test than on the receptive test. Second, all groups of children typically demonstrated higher degrees of an awareness of inflectional morphemes than of derivational morphemes in the English morphological tasks (both the WS and WA tasks) and the Japanese WA task. A slightly different pattern was observed in the Japanese WS task, where the performances of ESL and JLM children were not sensitive to morpheme type, whereas the JHL group yielded higher scores on the inflectional morphemes than the root morphemes. As regards the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in each language, in English, it was the ability to produce morphologically complex items, as opposed to recognising morphemes, that was positively related to vocabulary knowledge in all three groups (ESLs, JHLs & ELMs). In Japanese, in contrast, both morpheme recognition and production were positively related to vocabulary knowledge in all Japanese-speaking groups (ESLs, JHLs & JLMs). Lastly, the bilingual data identified a reciprocal nature of morphological transfer (Japanese -> English) only in the ESL group. More specifically, the ESL children’s ability to identify morphemes in Japanese words through segmentation may have a positive influence on the ability to produce English inflectional and derivational items. The latter ability is, in addition, likely to play a positive role in its Japanese equivalent, namely, the ability to produce Japanese inflectional and derivational items. No transfer effects were established in either direction for the JHL group. These within-language and cross-linguistic investigations of the nature of, and the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge are discussed in terms of the existing evidence in the literature (e.g., Carlisle, 2000; Ramirez at al.,2010) and are graphically illustrated via the integration continuum based on the notion of multicompetence (Cook, 2003). Several limitations of the current study are reviewed and discussed, fol-lowed by the Conclusion chapter, where the unique contribution of the current study to the literature is revisited, together with a brief remark about its indirect links with the field of educational research in Japan and suggestions for future research.

This dissertation investigates the challenges faced by learners of English for academic purposes (EAP) when required to complete writing assignments that use source texts. In order to address this problem, I explore the issue from the perspectives of applied linguistic researchers, writing program administrators, and classroom composition instructors. These three perspectives are highlighted in distinct articles that build on one another to create a more complete understanding of the challenges that EAP students face when writing from sources. The first article contains a literature review of relevant studies that explore the reading-to-write construct. Experts suggest that unintentional plagiarism, or patchwriting, can be attributed to a lack of cultural and linguistic competence. In order to address these limitations, researchers identify several reading and writing subskills that are integral to success in academic source writing. The literature review concludes with recommendations for teaching and testing contexts. The second article details a rater training evaluation study that resulted in unexpected, but welcomed, recommendations. Teacher-raters provided feedback that influenced how the institution made use of benchmark portfolios to train teacher-raters as well as inform students about writing achievement standards. The increased use of benchmark portfolios also helped to clarify classroom and program standards regarding citation, attribution, and anti-plagiarism policies. The final article is a practical guide for classroom composition instructors. I outline a recommended curriculum for teaching source writing to EAP students. The guide incorporates the findings of the literature review and the evaluation study into a collaborative and iterative pedagogical model. This recursive approach to EAP writing instruction helps students to diagnose and develop the advanced literacy subskills required for successful source integration into their writing. As a set, the three articles demonstrate that effective solutions to instructional issues can be developed when a problem is approached from multiple perspectives. Indeed, linguistics-based research, program administration, and teacher experience can be combined to produce a model for writing instruction that acknowledges principles of second-language advanced literacy and accounts for learner struggles as students develop source writing skills.

Teaching & Learning
Ph.D.
In this study I addressed three problems related to how sandhi-variation, the adjustments made by speakers to the speech stream, filters comprehension for second language listener processing. The first was the need to better understand proficiency problems encountered by L2 listeners as they decode the speech stream with the phonological features of sandhi-variation, elision and assimilation, by investigating the item difficulty hierarchy of the phenomena. The second was the scarcity of research on aural processing abilities of second language learners in relation to their understanding sandhi-variation in aural texts. The third concerns the lack of research investigating links between learners’ backgrounds and their ability to handle listening texts, especially variations in the speech stream in target aural texts. The purpose of this study was threefold. My first purpose was to investigate the item difficulty hierarchy of sandhi-variation types that learners have in relation to L2 listening proficiency. My second purpose was to evaluate links between aural input containing elision and assimilation and second language aural processing, to provide insight into how learners deal with sandhi-variation as they process such input. My third purpose was to investigate through the use of interviews the aural input that participants have encountered prior to the interventions of this study, to help explain which types of aural input can facilitate intake. Twenty-five first- and second-year Japanese university students participated in the current study. The participants completed a series of instruments, which included (a) a Test of English as a Foreign Language Paper-Based Test (TOEFL PBT), (b) a Listening Vocabulary Levels Test (LVLT), (c) a Modern Language Aptitude Test–Elementary (MLAT-E), (d) a Pre-Listening in English questionnaire, (e) an Elicited Imitation Test (EIT), and (f) a Background and Length of Residency interview. The EIT was used as a sandhi-variation listening test with two component parts (i.e., elision and assimilation) and two sub-component parts (e.g., two different utterance rates), using elicited imitation. Finally, the participants were interviewed about their language backgrounds to gauge their understanding and feelings about English. An empirical item hierarchy for elision and assimilation was investigated, along with the determinants of the hierarchy. Overall, the tendency was for items with elision and assimilation to be more difficult. Results also indicated that the two input rate variables combined with elision and assimilation affected the non-native participants’ listening comprehension. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between two measures of the participants’ language ability, proficiency and aptitude, and their comprehension of items with and without the phonological features of elision and assimilation, were investigated. The results confirmed a positive relationship between language aptitude as measured by the MLAT-E and the comprehension of the phonological features of elision and assimilation. Finally, the results indicated that there were no significant, positive correlations between English language proficiency scores and both the Pre-Listening Questionnaire, which measured the participants’ feelings about second language listening, and the Background and Length of Residency Interview. More research needs to be conducted to determine how learners’ backgrounds are related to listening comprehension in order to better prescribe aural input in second language listening classrooms.
Temple University--Theses

Using an applied anthropological approach focused on language, this study investigates the relationship between linguistic, racial, and ethnic identities and school resource access in the context of migration. This project examines how these identities are established, experienced, reified, and resisted by various school actors. Exposing power at its roots through a multi-level analysis, this research informs on how people negotiate socialization into particular identities, propelling them toward positions in school and society of varying opportunity. Focused on two elementary schools in a central Florida county that has been and is undergoing demographic changes, this work offers applications for educational institutions dealing with migration. One school’s orientation to meeting needs of non-English speaking students significantly impacts its ability to reach and form relationships with parents and improve the educational outcomes for children. The second school’s culturally responsivity makes it possible to meet higher expectations. At both schools, there is a disconnect between how the school and state think about people and how those people think about themselves, which erases groups and raises questions about how well students from those groups are served. While the ideologies promoted in dominant society are constraining, struggles and resistance do impact and reorganize the system. This study provides recommendations for the research site and similar schools to address linguistic, racial, and ethnic educational inequity. For instance, this project emphasizes the need to provide linguistically appropriate school-home communication. It also offers a means for the schools and state to better serve students by understanding the nuances of identity through more appropriate measures of race and ethnicity.

Nossa pesquisa teve como objetivo explorar as implicações relativas à utilização de material didático de natureza virtual livre em contexto formal de ensino-aprendizagem de italiano LE/L2. As implicações foram tratadas em forma de Problemas de Ensino e o termo utilização foi desdobrado em dois aspectos: utilização em sala de aula presencial e produção. Orientou-nos a hipótese de que o uso de materiais didáticos de natureza virtual livre, em contexto formal de ensino-aprendizagem de língua italiana como LE/L2, deflagra uma série de implicações observáveis e específicas as quais podem ser definidas em termos de Problemas de Ensino (ORTALE, 2010) , dada a sua natureza peculiar, ou seja, livre. A fim de alcançar nossos objetivos, lançamos mão de uma metodologia qualitativa de viés construtivista e interpretativista. Os Problemas de Ensino foram identificados por meio da análise de Relatos de Problemas de Ensino (ORTALE, 2010). Balizaram nossas análises a metodologia de formação de professores, alicerçada na ideia de Aprendizagem Baseada em Problemas (ABP), explicitada em Ortale (2010), e as técnicas e procedimentos de desenvolvimento de teoria fundamentada, conforme Strauss e Corbin (2008). Os Problemas de Ensino relativos à utilização foram investigados em duas disciplinas de língua italiana ofertadas em nível de graduação junto à Faculdade de Letras de uma universidade pública do estado de São Paulo. Os Problemas de Ensino relativos à produção foram pesquisados nos contextos de duas edições de um curso de formação de professores de língua italiana em serviço e em pré-serviço que ministramos no âmbito de duas universidades públicas brasileiras - uma no estado de Santa Catarina e outra no estado de São Paulo. Encontramos um total de 11 (onze) Problemas de Ensino - 7 (sete) relacionados ao aspecto da produção de Material Didático Virtual Livre e 4 (quatro) relacionados ao aspecto da utilização. Notamos, por meio de nossa análise, a proeminência de dois fatores associados aos Problemas de Ensino encontrados: as crenças a respeito de materiais didáticos de natureza virtual livre e a demanda pelo desenvolvimento de competências relativas aos aspectos virtual e livre desse tipo de material didático. Concluímos que os Problemas de Ensino identificados não são específicos, mas, sim, característicos dos materiais didáticos de natureza virtual livre
The aim of our research was to explore the implications related to the use of Free Virtual Educational Materials in the context of formal teaching and learning Italian as FL/SL. The implications were dealt as Problems of Teaching (ORTALE, 2010) and the term use was considered according to two aspects: use in presential classrooms and production. The hypothesis was that the use of Free Virtual Educational Materials, in the context of formal teaching and learning Italian as FL/SL, triggers a series of observable and specific implications, which can be defined in terms of Problems of Teaching due to its peculiar nature, that is, being a free educational material. The methodology adopted here was qualitative, both constructivist and interpretativist. The Problems of Teaching were identified through the analysis of the Reports of Problems of Teaching (ORTALE, 2010). The analyses were based on the methodology of teacher education, supported by the idea of Problem-Based Learning (PBL), explained in Ortale (2010), and the techniques and procedures of the Grounded Theory, according to Strauss e Corbin (2008). The Problems of Teaching related to the use were investigated in two undergraduate subjects of Italian Language offered by the College of Arts in a public university in São Paulo state. The Problems of Teaching related to the production were researched in the context of two editions of the training course for teachers of Italian Language in-service and pre-service, taught at two Brazilian public universities one in Santa Catarina state and the other in São Paulo state. We have found the total of 11 (eleven) Problems of Teaching 7 (seven) related to the aspect of production of Free Virtual Educational Materials and 4 (four) related to the aspect of its use. We have noticed through our analysis, the prominence of two factors associated to the Problems of Teaching which were found in the research: the beliefs regarding Free Virtual Educational Materials and the demand to develop the competences related to the free and virtual aspects of this sort of material. We concluded that the Problems of Teaching identified here are not specific but are typical of educational materials that are virtual and free

This paper evaluates whether students’ perceptions of Appalachian English improve through a method of instruction that uses dialect literature in the classroom. Most existing methods of instruction tend to portray dialects as wrong, incorrect, or in some way less rule-governed than Standardized English, despite the numerous studies that have demonstrated otherwise (e.g., Labov 1969, Wolfram 1986). The data from this study derives from two groups of students enrolled in introductory composition and communication at the University of Kentucky. Each group is given a pre-test to determine attitudes toward Appalachian English and Standardized English. An experimental group is then exposed to a method that incorporates texts that use Appalachian English features, while no specific dialect literature is included in the control group. After the conclusion of the lessons, students in both groups complete a post-test used to analyze whether their perceptions of Appalachian English changed throughout the study. The experimental method results in significant increases in several of the attitude measures for Appalachian English, while the students that did not receive this method of instruction experienced no increase for the linguistic variety. These results demonstrate that this method has potential for reducing negative perceptions towards speakers of non-standard dialects.

The purpose of this study is to examine, gain, and ultimately share an understanding of certain cognitive differences, similarities, intelligence patterns, and preferences between competent monolingual (English) and multicompetent bilingual/multilingual first-year composition (FYC) college students. Within this project is an attempt to address the following questions: Do monolingual and bilingual/multilingual FYC students show different strengths and weaknesses in their cognitive abilities? Are there learning preferences and literacy differences or similarities between monolingual and bilingual/multilingual FYC students? Primarily, two cognitive concepts were used in this examination to provide perspectives and quantitative data in response to the above questions. First, is Vivian Cook’s (1992, 1999) multicompetence theory, which involves cognitive differences between monolingual (L1) and bilingual/multilingual (L2/L3) speakers/users; and second, Howard Gardner’s (1999, 2004, 2006) multiple intelligences (MI) theory, whereby two types of MI assessments were used to study any such differences and similarities among FYC students. To fulfill the requirements for this particular thesis, included is a conference proposal (abstract), a conference paper, and a publishable scholarly article. The necessary charts, graphs, tables, and appendices are provided, accordingly.

This project explores research-based methods for creating an e-learning resource to teach an intellectual skill. Intellectual skills are one of the five domains of learning defined by Robert M. Gagné. The intellectual skill taught via the e-learning resource is the rules of Turkish vowel harmony, a fundamental phonological feature of the Turkish language. The purpose of the e-learning resource is to provide novice learners with a set of tools and strategies with which to approach the future study of Turkish. A literature review was conducted in three areas: Gagné’s instructional design theories, Turkish language learning, and best practices for the design of multimedia e-learning. Two rapid prototypes in the form of Moodle course sites were developed. Guidance for improving the prototypes was sought from experts in instructional design, usability, and computer software. The resulting finished e-learning product is a nine-topic Moodle course based on Gagné’s nine events of instruction. The main Moodle course content teaches the rules of Turkish vowel harmony as an intellectual skill which has been broken down into discriminations (the Turkish vowels), concepts (the Turkish vowel groups) and rules (Turkish vowel harmony). Higher order rules are taught in the form of exceptions to the rules of Turkish vowel harmony found in foreign loan-words in Turkish. Practice is provided in applying the rules of Turkish vowel harmony as a set of word attack skills for approaching Turkish language artifacts found online and in the environment. A comprehensive list of resources relating to learning Turkish, learning about the Turkish language, and learning about learning Turkish, is provided to facilitate future extension and application of what was learned in this course. Each lesson is presented in the form of a Moodle book. Each lesson is followed by an ungraded assessment in the form of an Adobe® PDF quiz. The quizzes and accompanying answer keys are designed to provide guided practice, feedback, and self-assessment to help students extend and apply the lesson material. All lessons were beta-tested to ensure usability and reduction of extraneous cognitive load. The project resulted in the development of a Best Practices Checklist for designing e-learning resources to teach intellectual skills. The Best Practices Checklist, which can be found in Appendix B, was used to develop the outline for e-learning resources to teach intellectual skills in other subject areas and was found to be an effective rapid prototyping and instructional design tool. Insight was gained into the significance of prior knowledge for teaching intellectual skills, and on how to calibrate cognitive load in e-learning design relative to the learner’s prior knowledge of the subject matter being taught.

El asumir la diversidad lingüística y cultural de México —mediante la instauración de la Ley de Derechos Lingüísticos (2003)—, como una característica invaluable del país condujo hacia la búsqueda de estrategias que desarrollen y fortalezcan cada una de las lenguas y las culturas que conforman el territorio mexicano. Una de las estrategias implementadas para tal fin ha sido la creación de universidades interculturales, entre los objetivos de dichas universidades está el de fortalecer las lenguas y culturas indígenas. Sin embargo, y aun con las leyes a favor y los espacios construidos para tal fin, dicha tarea no resulta fácil ni mucho menos inmediata, es un proceso largo y a veces complicado. Este trabajo desarrollado en la Universidad Intercultural Maya de Quintana Roo, una de las 10 universidades Interculturales de México, tiene como propósito contribuir a fortalecer las estrategias de revitalización lingüística del maya. Con dicho propósito el objetivo de la investigación fue conocer las razones de la escasa comunicación en lengua maya de los estudiantes en la mencionada universidad. Es una investigación-acción que opta como metodología el análisis del análisis del discurso. Mediante la palabra de los participantes se develan las actitudes e ideologías de docentes y alumnos. Las voces dejan al descubierto las razones que dificultan la comunicación oral en lengua maya de los estudiantes. Las actitudes e ideologías de los participantes reflejan tanto un pasado de represión lingüística y cultural como un presente lleno de carencias y falto de motivación y de herramientas que procuren una revitalización lingüística y cultural real. Entre los problemas destacan la falta de motivación de los alumnos, las actitudes negativas por el uso del maya tanto de docentes como de alumnos y la poca competencia comunicativa en maya de parte de los bilingües receptivos y en castellano de parte de los mayahablantes. El análisis del discurso también permitió conocer estrategias para una revitalización lingüística del maya, entre ellas la preparación y actualización docente y la motivación de los estudiantes para usar el maya.
Assuming that linguistic and cultural diversity of Mexico - through the establishment of the Law of Linguistic Rights (2003) - is an invaluable feature of the country led to the search for strategies that develop and strengthen each of the languages and cultures that make up the Mexican territory. One of the strategies implemented for this purpose was the creation of Intercultural Universities. Among the objectives of these universities is to harness indigenous languages and cultures. However, even with the laws in favour and purpose-built space and venues, the task is not easy, and much less immediate. It is a long and sometimes difficult process. The present work was carried out at the Universidad Intercultural Maya de Quintana Roo, one of the 10 Intercultural Universities running at present in Mexico. This institution aims to contribute to strengthening linguistic revitalization strategies of Maya. Fuelled by this purpose, the aim of this research was to determine the reasons for poor communication in the Mayan language among students in that University. It is an action-research work carried out according to the discourse analysis methodology. The attitudes and ideologies of both instructors and students are unveiled through the analysis of their words. Their voice exposes the reasons that hinder oral communication in Maya among students. Those participants’ attitudes and ideologies reflect a past of linguistic and cultural repression as well as a present lacking both motivation and the tools which would effectively promote linguistic and cultural revitalization. The main problems include lack of students’ motivation, negative attitudes towards the use of Maya both by teachers and students, and little communicative competence in Maya among passive bilinguals, on one hand, and lack of competence in Spanish among Maya speakers, on the other. Discourse analysis also provided insights for language revitalization strategies of Maya, including the preparation and updating of teachers and students' motivation to use the Mayan language.

This dissertation is three interlinked studies that pilot new methods for combining corpus linguistics and semantic network analysis (SNA) to understand and teach academic language. Findings indicate that this approach leads to a deeper understanding of technical writing and offers an exciting new avenue for writing curriculum.

The first phase is a corpus study of fixed and variable formulaic language (n-grams and p-frames) in academic engineering writing. The results were analyzed functionally, semantically and rhetorically. In contrast to previous n-gram analyses, the p-frame analysis found that variable phrases are often participant-oriented and communicate author stance.

The second phase combined corpus and network analysis tools to create educational materials. Several elements of successful design were highlighted. The final phase tested the materials in two classes with fifteen graduate students, finding evidence for the value of this novel approach.

Based on the fact that the number of second/foreign language learners diminishes as their study advances to a higher level, this study investigates how learnersâ?? motivation affects their persistence/termination of the learning of Japanese. The subjects are university students studying Japanese at two levels, elementary and intermediate, either as their major or as an elective in south-east Queensland, Australia. It was assumed that there are many motivational variables, such as the purpose of study, the strength of commitment, their attitudes towards the target language and languages in general, their cultural/linguistic backgrounds, their interest in Japanese language and culture, gender, and the learning environment, which may affect learnersâ?? persistence differently, depending on their level of study. Questionnaires were used as a tool to collect data and were conducted twice, at the beginning and at the end of their course of study. Learnersâ?? motivational traits were examined from the data in accordance with their intention of continuing or discontinuing the study to the next semester. The results show that motivation is not something fixed in the learnersâ?? minds, but may change during the process of learning, and that motivational factors vary according to levels of language proficiency. Based on the findings, this study claims five major points: 1) learnersâ?? sustaining motivation which is based on studentsâ?? continuous appraisal of their learning events may be important for their persistence/termination decision making, 2) one of the most important factors which affect sustaining motivation is the studentsâ?? sense of investment in their Japanese language study, 3) development of the culture-based intrinsic interest in Japanese may work strongly for the investment, and learning environment, especially foreign language learning environment, may play a significant role for studentsâ?? investment, 4) a large gap between learnersâ?? self-efficacy and the demands of real study weakens their motivation, which often leads to the termination of their study, especially at the elementary level, and 5) studentsâ?? cultural/linguistic distance from Japanese, educational background, and gender may affect their sustaining motivation, thus, they perform differently with regard to their persistence in Japanese as a foreign language study in Australian context.

The theory underlying L2 oral fluency has focused on cognitive processes, particularly proceduralization (Anderson, 1983; Levelt, 1989, 1999) and linguistic constructs, especially vocabulary and grammar (Segalowitz, 2010). Towell, Hawkins, and Bazergui (1996) argued that development of formulaic language enables automatic speech production. However, no research has studied the longitudinal development of L2 oral fluency concurrently with any of the following lexical variables: lexical frequency profile, formulaic language use, and MTLD (a measure of lexical diversity). The purpose of the present study is to clarify the process by which L2 oral fluency, syntax, and vocabulary develop concurrently.

Data analysis involved three sequential phases: oral fluency analysis, lexico-syntactic analysis, and discourse analysis. Oral fluency measures were calculated using the transcribed oral test responses of 100 L1-Chinese EAP learners at the beginning and end of a required two-course EAP language and culture sequence at Purdue University. The task completed was a computer-administered, two-minute argumentative speaking task. This study included eight oral fluency measures: speech rate, mean length of speech run, articulation rate, phonation time ratio, mean length of silent pause, mean length of filled pause, silent pause frequency, and filled pause frequency. For the ten participants who made the largest percentage-wise oral fluency gains (in terms of the oral fluency variable associated with the largest effect size of gains), oral transcripts were analyzed to compute descriptive statistics for the three lexical variables mentioned above and three syntactic variables: coordinate clause ratio, dependent clause ratio, and words per T-unit.

Results indicated significant change in all oral fluency measures, except mean length of silent pause and mean length of filled pause. The largest gains were made in mean length of speech run. Of the linguistic variables, the largest longitudinal change was associated with coordinate clause ratio. Discourse analysis of the transcripts of large fluency gainers' pre-post responses suggested that large fluency gainers used coordinate clauses to build more sophisticated discourse models in the post-test response than they did in the pre-test response. Implications for L2 oral fluency theory, EAP pedagogy, and L2 oral assessment are discussed.

Research into the effects of extensive reading (ER) in second language acquisition has surged over the past few decades. Many studies report several benefits that come from engaging in ER, including reading rate gains. However, these studies almost exclusively focus on English language learners and tend to be limited by their lack of control over how the ER treatment is conducted. Furthermore, experimental and quantitative studies that investigate the possible effects of ER on the reading skills of learners of Japanese have yet to be fully explored. The goal of this study was to investigate the possible effects of ER on the reading rate development of learners of Japanese as a foreign language. This study also aimed to examine the level of comprehension learners were able to maintain as their reading rates increased as well as the feasibility of a 12,000 character (7,200 standard word) per week reading goal. Finally, this study also surveyed learner perceptions of ER.

Using a quantitative single-case experiment design, eight intermediate-level learners of Japanese were monitored engaging in ER following strict adherence to ER principles over two and a half to four months. Longitudinal reading rate data as well as reading comprehension, ER, and survey data were collected over the course of the study. Results showed that participants’ reading rates increased significantly following the ER treatment. Furthermore, participants’ comprehension abilities were not hampered by an increase in their reading rates. Results also indicate that a weekly reading goal of 12,000 characters is likely feasible for intermediate-level learners. Finally, it was found that participants had overwhelmingly positive attitudes towards ER. This study provides evidence that ER has the potential to provide a highly enjoyable activity while substantially increasing learner reading rates without hindering comprehension.

This project examined the acquisition of third person accusative clitics in Spanish by Chinese-speaking learners. Specifically, it focused on the role of cross-linguistic influence and patterns of language exposure and use in the acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties constraining the production and intuition of overt and null clitics in Spanish. An elicited production task and an acceptability judgment task were performed on a total of 83 participants divided into four groups. A group of Chinese immigrants in Spain (n = 24), a group of classroom learners in China with study abroad experience (n = 23), and a group of learners without study abroad experience (n = 19) were compared to a group of native speakers of Spanish (n=17). The results showed that, while all the experimental groups showed knowledge of accusative clitics, their knowledge regarding the distribution of overt and null clitics was generally not related to definiteness or syntactic island. However, some participants with higher proficiency or more use of Spanish showed some sensitivity to the syntactic property of null clitics but not definiteness. Proficiency in Spanish had different effects on the immigrants and the classroom learners. Use of Spanish also played different roles between the pure classroom learners and the other two groups with naturalistic exposure. Finally, the results also showed that, while the three groups all showed influence from Chinese, the Spanish and Chinese grammars of the immigrants showed more similarity, compared to the two groups of classroom learners. Based on a proposed path of acquisition, the results were discussed in line with second language acquisition theorizing on feature accessibility and reassembly. Some implications on classroom instruction are also discussed.

Service learning has been proposed as a widespread educational movement that merges academic work with real-life community service activities that encourages students to reflect and think critically about their experiences. As a pedagogical tool for second language acquisition, the greatest benefit of utilizing service learning activities results in the fact that it creates connections to the target language community and provides authentic experiences for target language use. Although service-learning has been extensively implemented into language programs such as Spanish and English as a Second Language (ESL), it is still in its infancy with Chinese second language learners.

This dissertation examines the effects and outcomes of service-learning involvement on the advanced Chinese learners towards language acquisition, cultural understanding, and community engagement. The study was conducted in a Midwest university with 30 students from a variety of educational and cultural backgrounds.The data was collected through pre-/post-survey, observation and reflective journals. Findings indicated that the service-learning experiences enhanced and enriched students' Chinese language learning. Additional benefits to the students included increasing their knowledge of Chinese culture and history, developing a higher motivation for community engagement and transformative learning, and forming connections to people and community beyond the classroom. However, differences were also found in students' service-learning experiences and outcomes based on gender, race, and cultural backgrounds. Future directions of Chinese service-learning in the emerging fields were discussed as promising avenues for future Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) research and practice.

Despite an emphasis on oral communication in most foreign language classrooms, the resource-intensive nature (i.e. time and manpower) of speaking tests hinder regular oral assessments. A possible solution is the development of a (semi-) automated scoring system. When it is used in conjunction with human raters, the consistency of computers can complement human raters’ comprehensive judgments and increase efficiency in scoring (e.g., Enright & Quinlan, 2010). In search of objective and quantifiable variables that are strongly correlated with overall oral proficiency, a number of studies have reported that some utterance fluency variables (e.g., speech rate and mean length of run) might be strong predictors for L2 learners’ speaking ability (e.g., Ginther et al., 2010; Hirotani et al., 2017). However, these findings are difficult to generalize due to small sample sizes, narrow ranges of proficiency levels, and/or a lack of data from languages other than English. The current study analyzed spontaneous speech samples collected from 170 Japanese learners at a wide range of proficiency levels determined by a well-established speaking test, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). Prior to analysis, 48 Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency (CAF) measures (with a focus on fluency variables) were calculated from the speech samples. First, the study examined the relationships among the CAF measures and learner oral proficiency assessed by the ACTFL OPI. Then, using an empirically-based approach, a feasibility of using a composite measure to predict L2 oral proficiency was investigated. The results revealed that Speech Speed and Complexity variables demonstrated strong correlation to the OPI levels, and moderately strong correlations were found for the variables in the following categories: Speech Quantity, Pause, Pause Location (i.e., Silent pause ratio within AS-unit), Dysfluency (i.e., Repeat ratio), and Accuracy. Then, a series of multiple regression analyses revealed that a combination of five CAF measures (i.e., Effective articulation rate, Silent pause ratio, Repeat ratio, Syntactic complexity, and Error-free AS-unit ratio) can predict 72.3% of the variance of the OPI levels. This regression model includes variables that correspond to Skehan’s (2009) proposed three categories of fluency (speed, breakdown, and repair) and variables that represent CAF, supporting the literature (e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 1978, Skehan, 1996).

Motivation always attracts language teachers’ attention as one of the most significant factors for second language learning. In the past decades, motivational studies have experienced transitions and developments, and various studies investigated language learning motivation. (Dörnyei and Ryan, 2015) However, those motivational studies indicate that research outcomes vary depending on languages, contexts, and individuals, and understanding L2 learning motivation requires investigations at the local level.

There is no doubt that the video game industry is undergoing a major upheaval, yet in spite of the recent reconceptualization of video games, educational games as a whole remain the pariah of the industry. Very little has been done in the wake of recent social and industry trends to adapt instruction of academic subjects, especially foreign language, for delivery through video games. Prior studies discussing the potential of games developed specifically for language learning have focused primarily on general principles and have offered no recommendations for platform, genre, or other aspects of design. Through an online survey as well as qualitative analysis of gaming forum discussions and student evaluations of an existing educational language game, this study goes straight to the learners and players themselves in order to determine the opinions and behavioral intentions of potential customers. By synthesizing these insights into consumer demand with theory and industry trends, this study argues that mobile or casual games that are intrinsically social and communicative hold the most potential for success, both in academia and in the industry.

A great deal of the research on cross-linguistic phonetic influence demonstrates that a speaker’s knowledge of their first language (L1) significantly affects their ability to perceive and produce sounds in any other language. While current studies show that cross-linguistic transfer occurs at the L3 level, some research suggests that properties of both L1 and L2 are present in the production of L3 (Ionin, Montrul & Santos, 2011). Many studies have addressed perception, production and factors that influence foreign speech in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) (Watkins, Rauber & Baptista, 2009). As the number of multilingual individuals rises, so does the need for studies that investigate not only SLA but also that of additional languages (i.e., Third Language Acquisition). This dissertation examines how cross-linguistic influence (CLI) occurs among English, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), examining instances of vowel reduction, an aspect of phonological production. English and BP are assumed as vowel reducing languages, whereas Spanish displays negligible vowel reduction in comparison. The vowel productions in L3 BP of two multilingual groups, L1English-L2Spanish-L3BP (ESP) and L1 Spanish-L2 English-BP (SEP) were investigated in two tasks: a paragraph reading task (PRT) and a carrier phrase task (CPT). The study sought to determine whether i) a native speaker of a vowel reducing L1 and a non-vowel reducing L2 displays more or less vowel reduction in a vowel reducing L3 than a native speaker of a non-vowel reducing L1 and vowel reducing L2 and ii) how length of exposure to an L3 affects phonological production. Three fixed effects were considered: duration ratio, intensity ratio and height (F1). The goal was to ascertain whether the Typological Primacy Model (TPM) (Rothman 2011, 2015) or the L2 Status Factor Model (Bardel & Falk 2007, 2012; Hammarberg, 2001) would be a better predictor for how vowel reduction would occur in the L3. Results for duration ratio and vowel height showed no significant difference between groups ESP and SEP. Results for intensity ratio suggest L2 Status as a better predictor, as group SEP displayed more phonological transfer than the ESP group. A hybrid approach to L3 acquisition models is proposed.

The present study investigated technical qualities of the elicited imitation (EI) items used by the Assessment of College English – International (ACE-In), a locally developed English language proficiency test used in the undergraduate English Academic Purpose Program at Purdue University. EI is a controversial language assessment tool that has been utilized and examined for decades. The simplicity of the test format and the ease of rating place EI in an advantageous position to be widely implemented in language assessment. On the other hand, EI has received a series of critiques, primarily questioning its validity. To offer insights into the quality of the EI subsection of the ACE-In and to provide guidance for continued test development and revision, the present study examined the measurement qualities of the items by analyzing the pre- and post-test performance of 100 examines on EI. The analyses consist of an item analysis that reports item difficulty, item discrimination, and total score reliability; an examination of pre-post changes in performance that reports a matched pairs t-test and item instructional sensitivity; and an analysis of the correlation patterns between EI scores and TOEFL iBT total and subsection scores.

The results of the item analysis indicated that the current EI task was slightly easy for the intended population, but test items functioned satisfactorily in terms of separating examinees of higher proficiency from those of lower proficiency. The EI task was also found to have high internal consistency across forms. As for the pre-post changes, a significant pair-wise difference was found between the pre- and post-performance after a semester of instruction. However, the results also reported that over half of the items were relatively insensitive to instruction. The last stage of the analysis indicated that while EI scores had a significant positive correlation with TOEFL iBT total scores and speaking subsection scores, EI scores were negatively correlated with TOEFL iBT reading subsection scores.

Findings of the present study provided evidence in favor of the use of EI as a measure of L2 proficiency, especially as a viable alternative to free-response items. EI is also argued to provide additional information regarding examinees’ real-time language processing ability that standardized language tests are not intended to measure. Although the EI task used by the ACE-In is generally suitable for the targeted population and testing purposes, it can be further improved if test developers increase the number of difficult items and control the contents and the structures of sentence stimuli.

Examining the technical qualities of test items is fundamental but insufficient to build a validity argument for the test. The present EI test can benefit from test validation studies that exceed item analysis. Future research that focuses on improving item instructional sensitivity is also recommended.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) began to audit Australian universities. At the same time, universities were increasingly using online technologies for teaching and learning. Little is known about how these two significant changes in teaching and learning might be acting and interacting at a time of increasing focus by universities on the educational marketplace. This thesis investigates the AUQA audits carried out in 2002 of three Australian universities which had different locations in the Australian higher education marketplace and had different approaches to the use of online technologies. I use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyse a range of artefacts produced between 2002 and 2005 by and about the universities. I analyse the first three editions of the AUQA manual, the universities' web sites before and after their audit, the submissions of those universities to AUQA, and the audit reports by AUQA on them. I explore the role that representations of the "online university" discourse play in constructions of a "quality university" discourse within these texts. I discovered a number of shifts in emphasis in the texts over time. Notions of the "online university", while prevalent in the texts produced early in the time frame of the study, were absent from later texts. Also, texts produced early in the study represented the three universities as very different institutions. However texts examined towards the end of the study represented the universities to be more similar in nature. Given the diverse nature of the institutions' market locations, I found that quality assurance processes work to reduce the representation of institutional diversity. There was evidence that the "online university" discourse came to be used more as a marketing tool and less as a marker of quality education over the time period of the study. I argue that AUQA's audits do not support institutions? various market positionings as described by Marginson and Considine (2000), but rather provide the imprimatur of "brand Australia" by producing representations of each institution that are safe and amenable to the audit process. The "online university" discourse speaks of new and borderless teaching strategies, while the "quality university" discourse speaks of containment and control of university activities. The bounding and limiting effect of the "quality university" discourse over the outward reaching "online university" discourse resulted in the three universities representing themselves in increasingly isomorphic ways. My analysis shows that over the time frame of the study, the surveillance of a national quality audit body, through self-audit by universities and the subsequent publication of reviews of universities by that body, produced more cautious representations of the universities and ironically, less direct influence by the audit body over universities? actions in the marketplace. The study suggests that the degree of influence which the ?online university? discourse and the "quality university" discourse have on the representations of universities is dependent largely on the degree to which they can impel universities within the market.
Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2007

Upon IRB approval, a corpus of 1,192 texts consisting of three assignments written by a total of 1,736 first year engineering students was compiled, and 117 pedagogical materials were collected. Using an iterative quantitative-qualitative approach to written discourse analysis, instances of formulaic language (4- and 6-word sequences) were identified in the corpus; formulaic language was then coded for the rhetorical functions expected in problem statements as qualitatively identified in the pedagogical materials. Additionally, three discourse-based interviews were conducted with First-year Engineering Faculty. Interview data was coded for themes of effective communication and used to triangulate the findings from the corpus analysis.

This dissertation examines effects of globalization on language, identity, and education through the case of four Korean jogi yuhak (early study abroad) students attending Toronto high schools. Resulting from a 2.4-year sociolinguistic ethnography on the language learning experiences of these students, the thesis explores how globalization--and the commodification of language and corporatization of education in the new economy, in particular--has transformed ideas of language, bilingualism, and language learning with respect to the transnational circulation of linguistic and symbolic resources in today‘s world. This thesis incorporates insights from critical social theories, linguistic anthropology, globalization studies, and sociolinguistics, and aims to propose a "globalization sensitive" Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory. To better grasp the ways in which language learning is socially and politically embedded in new conditions generated by globalization, this new SLA theory conceives of language as a set of resources and bilingualism as a social construct, and examines language learning as an economic activity, shaped through encounters with the transnational language education industry. The analysis examines new transnational subjectivities of yuhaksaeng (visa students), which index hybrid identities that are simultaneously global and Korean. In their construction of themselves as "Cools" who are wealthy and cosmopolitan, yuhaksaeng deployed newly-valued varieties of Korean language and culture as resources in the globalized new economy. This practice, however, resulted in limits to their acquisition of forms of English capital valued in the Canadian market. As a Korean middle class strategy for acquiring valuable forms of English capital, jogi yuhak is caught in tension: while the ideology of language as a skill and capital to help an individual‘s social mobility drives the jogi yuhak movement, the essentialist ideology of "authentic" English makes it impossible for Koreans to work it to their advantage. The thesis argues that in multilingual societies, ethnic/racial/linguistic minorities‘ limited access to the acquisition of linguistic competence is produced by existing inequality, rather than their limited linguistic proficiency contributing to their marginal position. To counter naturalized social inequality seemingly linguistic in nature, language education in globalization should move away from essentialism toward process- and practice-oriented approaches to language, community, and identity.