Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Age and language learning'
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Daily, Stacy Lynn 1967. "Oral bound-morpheme skills of school-age, language-learning disabled and normal language children." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/278328.
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This study tested the hypothesis that oral bound-morpheme impairment is characteristic of school-age children with a language-based learning disorder. Ten school-age children (Mean age: 10:3) classified as language-learning disabled and ten controls (Mean age: 9:9) classified as "normal language" were presented with four tasks that assessed oral bound-morpheme skills. A two-way analysis of variance revealed significant group and task differences. Fisher a priori tests indicated significant group differences on three tasks: a measure of English bound-morpheme skill levels, a measure of ability to generalize English bound morphemes, and a measure of ability to learn novel bound morphemes. The findings suggest that the core deficit underlying the oral bound-morpheme impairment does not resolve with maturation and experience.
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Boron, Anna M. "The influence of age of learning on syllable structure in the L2 speaker." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0027/MQ52287.pdf.
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Malmgren, Gabriella. "Differences in Second Language Learning Depending on Starting Age and Amount of Exposure." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS), 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-32529.
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In the Swedish school system, English is one of three core subjects that are mandatory to pass at the end of year 9 to be able to engage in further studies in high school. However, English is not introduced at the same time in all schools. In fact, primary schools in Sweden can choose freely (between age 6-10) when they want to start introducing English to their students. The main purpose of this paper is to disclose if starting English education at an earlier age results in higher student scores on the total score and the three different parts of the National Exam for English in year 6. The National Exam scores from 14 different schools were collected and compared. 7 schools that introduce English in year 1, and 7 schools who begin their English education in year 3. The results from the statistical tests show that there is a significant difference between the two groups at the total score, speaking, and receptive skills. The early starters performed better on all parts. However, there was no significant difference between the groups in writing.
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Barros, Ana Marina do Val. "Pronunciation difficulties in the consonant system experienced by Arabic speakers when learning English after the age of puberty." Morgantown, W. Va. : [West Virginia University Libraries], 2003. http://etd.wvu.edu/templates/showETD.cfm?recnum=2937.
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Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2003.Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 80 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-77).
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Johnson, Nancy Ann. "Gender Differences in the Language Development of Late-talking Toddlers at Age 3." PDXScholar, 1996. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5253.
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Language is a major part of a child's early developmental growth. Research examining early language shows a wide variation in the rate of language acquisition and its pattern of development. These variations also exist when language development is delayed. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of a relationship between gender and language delay by looking for significant differences in the language skills of 3-year-old boys and girls who were identified as late-talkers (LTs) at the age of 2. Data used for analysis in this study were retrieved from data collected earlier as part of the Portland Language Development Project (PLDP) and a concurring study of late-talking girls. Subjects for this study were drawn from these larger cohorts. The files of all prospective subjects were examined for an expressive vocabulary of less than 50 words at 20-34 months, and for participation in the follow-up evaluation at age 3. Final selection of subjects for this study included 23 boys and 16 girls. Scores from five previously administered assessment measures were compiled for analysis, including the Developmental Sentence Score (DSS), the Expressive OneWord Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT), the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation (GFTA), the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language-Revised {TACL-R), and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. These measures were administered as part of the PLOP and the study of late-talking girls. Mean scores for the boys and the girls were computed for each assessment measure. A two-tailed t-test was used to analyze the differences between these mean scores. The results revealed a significant difference, beyond the .05 level of confidence, between the boys' and girls' scores for the EOWPVT. Although no other significant differences were found, it was noted that the boys' scores were consistently higher than the girls' scores on all measures. It was also noted that, on 4 out of 5 assessment measures, a higher percentage of girls did not respond or could not complete the test due to inability to attend. The fifth measure, the PPVT-R, was completed by all subjects.
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Cole, Jason. "Foreign language learning in the age of the internet : a comparison of informal acquirers and traditional classroom learners in central Brazil." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:db80473a-2075-4e91-bb07-a706bb6a433f.
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Several recent studies (e.g., Benson and Chik, 2010; Sockett, 2014) suggest that as a result of changes in technology and the concomitant emergence of a globalized culture, highly effective out-of-class, informal English acquisition is becoming more common. The present study compared high-level, well-motivated Central Brazilian classroom-trained learners (CTLs) with fully autonomous self-instructed learners (FASILs) of similar backgrounds. Using linguistic tests, a questionnaire and a structured interview, the study analysed group differences as well as individual differences in language proficiency, learner histories, behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes. The key research question asked whether there existed, in more than rare circumstances, FASILs who attained levels of proficiency at least as high as highly-motivated, well-trained CTLs? Furthermore, if the knowledge and skills of FASILs were, in some respects, superior to those of CTLs, what variables accounted for the advantage? FASILs significantly outperformed CTLs across a battery of linguistic tests measuring a range of knowledge and skills. Test results indicated that while CTLs tended to plateau at upper intermediate levels, FASILs generally improved through advanced levels, often achieving native-like levels of knowledge and use. The strongest contributing factor to proficiency was found to be self-determined motivation driven by a personalized relationship with English often marked by a transnational identity. The evidence suggests this type of motivation, significantly more associated with FASILs than CTLs, led users to engage deeply with the linguistic details of informal sources. The findings challenge dominant paradigms in several fields of SLA which prioritize expert regulation over independent discovery and controlled, collaborative environments over real-world contexts of use entered into for personal reasons. A hoped for consequence of this study is that SLA research and teaching practice will begin to recognize and promote rather than regulate or dismiss the unique learning arcs that more and more English learners experience in their everyday lives.
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Al-Shammari, Abbas H. "The role of age and other learner related factors in achievement in English as a foreign language of Kuwaiti intermediate school students." Thesis, Cardiff University, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.319350.
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Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne. "Lifelong interplay between language and cognition : from language learning to perspective-taking : new insights into the ageing mind." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/31398.
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A fundamental question in language research is the extent to which linguistic and cognitive systems interact. The aim of this thesis is to explore that relationship across new contexts and over the entire adult lifespan. This work centers on two branches of empirical research: the first is an investigation into the impact of later-life language learning on cognitive ageing (chapters 2-4), and the second examines the cognitive mechanisms underlying communicative perspective-taking from young adulthood into old age (chapter 5). The results of these chapters demonstrate that changes to one's linguistic environment can affect cognitive functions at any age, and similarly age-related changes to cognition can affect linguistic abilities, shedding light on the extent to which language and the brain are intricately connected over the lifespan. In the discussion (chapter 6), I consider how this work contributes new insights to the field, opening the door for future research to explore methods of improving cognitive abilities and linguistic behavior in old age.
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Avila, Sara Elise. "A Social Communication Intervention to Facilitate Emotion Word Learning in School-Age Children with Developmental Language Disorders." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2019. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/7367.
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Historically, social communication approaches to intervention for children with developmental language disorders (DLD) have been limited. However, several recent studies have shown that these interventions can produce positive changes in children with DLD. One weakness that children with DLD demonstrate is the production of words to express emotion. This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of a story-based social communication intervention to increase the production of emotion words in three elementary school-age children diagnosed with DLD. Data were collected and analyzed in pre-treatment baseline sessions, throughout the intervention, and in post-treatment follow-up data for the seven target emotion word categories of happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and contempt. The specific targeted emotion word categories were determined based on individual participants limited proficiency during baseline sessions. Thus, the emotions targeted were unique to each child. Intervention consisted of 40 intervention sessions using a combination of storybook therapeutic strategies (e.g., story enactment, story sharing, and modeling by the clinician to help increase the child's emotion understanding) as well as emotion recognition and emotion inferencing tasks. Each participants data were analyzed and presented in figures. The percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) was used in data analysis, quantifying how successful the intervention was for each of the targeted emotions. While the target emotion word categories varied between participants, all of the children showed improvement in the targeted emotions. While the intervention was more effective for some children than others, all increased in their ability to use the target emotion words more accurately as a result of participating in intervention.
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Daneshvar, Saman. "User Modeling in Social Media: Gender and Age Detection." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/39535.
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Author profiling is a field within Natural Language Processing (NLP) that is concerned with identifying various characteristics and demographic factors of authors, such as gender, age, location, native language, political orientation, and personality by analyzing the style and content of their writings. There is a growing interest in author profiling, with applications in marketing and advertising, opinion mining, personalization, recommendation systems, forensics, security, and defense.
In this work, we build several classification models using NLP, Deep Learning, and classical Machine Learning techniques that can identify the gender and age of a Twitter user based on the textual contents of their correspondence (tweets) on the platform.
Our SVM gender classifier utilizes a combination of word and character n-grams as features, dimensionality reduction using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier with linear kernel. At the PAN 2018 author profiling shared task, this model achieved the highest performance with 82.21%, 82.00%, and 80.90% accuracy on the English, Spanish, and Arabic datasets, respectively. Our age classifier was trained on a dataset of 11,160 Twitter users, using the same approach, though the age classification experiments are preliminary.
Our Deep Learning gender classifiers are trained and tested on English datasets. Our feedforward neural network consisting of a word embedding layer, flattening, and two densely-connected layers achieves 79.57% accuracy, and our bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network achieves 76.85% accuracy on the gender classification task.
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Erikson, Jessie Alise. "Phonological Transfer during Word Learning: Evidence from Bilingual School-Age Spanish-English-Speaking Children." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/613100.
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Purpose: This study examines potential cross-linguistic effects on accuracy of codas in newly learned English-like nonwords produced by bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children. Methods: Forty-two bilingual Spanish-English-speaking second-graders (age 7-9) were matched individually with monolingual peers on age (+/- 6 months), sex, and percentile score on the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation (GFTA-2; Goldman & Fristoe, 2000), and matched for group on mother's level of education. Participants named various sea monsters as part of computerized word-learning games. Sixteen syllable-final coda consonants were analyzed for accuracy. These were drawn from thirteen nonwords distributed across five word-learning tasks. Results: Bilingual children were less accurate than monolingual children in production of both shared and unshared codas, though the gap was greater for unshared codas. Both bilingual and monolingual children were more accurate in production of shared codas than unshared codas. Conclusion: The results suggest that native language phonotactics influence accuracy of coda production in bilingual Spanish-English-speaking school-age children during word learning. Influences of native phonology on word learning could potentially impact academic achievement through vocabulary learning in the classroom.
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Ho, Shuk Man Connie. "A comparison of L2 learners' interlanguage performance on apologizing in terms of age." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2008. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/947.
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Moran, Renee Rice, LaShay Jennings, Huili Hong, and Karin J. Keith. "Literacy Learning in the Digital Age: Practical Methods for Incorporating Digital Book Clubs." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/990.
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LaPlante, Rebecca Jayne. "The Relationship Between Cognitive Skills Measured by Piagetian Tasks at Age 2 and Linguistic Skills Measured by an Expressive Language Test at Age 4 in Normal and Late Talkers." PDXScholar, 1993. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4602.
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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between cognitive skills as measured by Piagetian tasks at approximately 2 years of age and expressive and receptive language scores from tests administered to the same children 2 years later. The questions this study sought to answer were: 1. Is there a significant difference in the performance of normal children and late-talking children on Piagetian cognitive assessment at age 2? 2. Is there a significant relationship between the cognitive scores at age 2 and language scores at age 4 in each of the two diagnostic groups? Sixty-four subjects participated in this study, 27 children with normal language and 37 children considered to be late talkers. These children are part of the Portland Language Development Project, a longitudinal study being conducted at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. The instruments used to gather data for this study were the Uzgiris-Hunt Scales of Infant Psychological Development, the Test of Language Development (TOLD), and the Developmental Sentence Score (DSS). No significant difference was found between normal children and late-talking children on Piagetian tasks. No significant correlation was found between cognitive scores at age 2 and language scores at age 4. The only significant difference found between the groups was in relation to expressive language. The DSS and the expressive language score on the TOLD were significantly different between the normal and late talkers.
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Ekström, Andrea. "Foreign language communication anxiety in correlation to the sociolinguistic variables gender, age, performance and multilingual competence : A linguistic pilot study of Swedish students’ attitudes." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-19129.
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This data-driven linguistic study investigates if levels of different types of foreign language communication anxiety, such as for speaking, listening, writing and/or reading that Swedish students in compulsory school (grades 7-9) and upper secondary school experience when communicating in English in their foreign language classes have any correlation to sociolinguistic variables such as gender, age, performance and/or multilingual competence. The compiled and analyzed self-report data have successfully provided a base for implied correlations between the different sociolinguistic variables and language anxiety. The most prominent indications of correlation to anxiety are the variables gender, performance (course grades) and linguistic competence. The age variable also showed indications of correlation but was less pronounced than the others. It was also found that students generally feel more and/or higher anxiety when speaking the target language than the other types of communication. The didactic implications that this study contributes to is that “communicating” as an activity conducted in the foreign language classroom needs to be further defined and broken down into specific types of skills (speaking, writing, listening, reading) and also be approached accordingly. This also implies that further research is needed to thoroughly examine the correlational effects different sociolinguistic variables have on the foreign language learning.
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Newey, Britney Ann. "The Classification Accuracy of a Dynamic Assessment of Inferential Word Learning for School-Age Children With and Without Language Disorder." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2020. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8672.
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Purpose: This study examines the classification accuracy and interrater reliability of a dynamic assessment (DA) of inferential word learning designed to accurately identify kindergarten through sixth-grade students with and without language disorder. Method: The participants included 127 school-age children from a mountain west school district who were administered a DA of inferential word learning that entailed a pretest, a teaching phase, an examiner rating of the child's ability to infer word meaning (modifiability), and posttests. Results: Hierarchical logistic regression and receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analyses revealed that combining all posttests, the modifiability total, and the final examiner judgement scores from this DA yielded the strongest sensitivity (.83) and specificity (.80). The static measures and the dichotomized final examiner judgement had excellent reliability; yet the individual modifiability measures (with the exception of disruption and frustration) had poor reliability. Conclusion: In concordance with a previous study, results indicate that a dynamic assessment of inferential word learning may be an efficacious method of identifying language disorders in school-age populations.
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Demmelmaier, Gustav, and Carl Westerberg. "Data Segmentation Using NLP: Gender and Age." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Avdelningen för datalogi, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-434622.
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Natural language processing (NLP) opens the possibilities for a computer to read, decipher, and interpret human languages to eventually use it in ways that enable yet further understanding of the interaction and communication between the human and the computer. When appropriate data is available, NLP makes it possible to determine not only the sentiment information of a text but also information about the author behind an online post. Previously conducted studies show aspects of NLP potentially going deeper into the subjective information, enabling author classification from text data. This thesis addresses the lack of demographic insights of online user data by studying language use in texts. It compares four popular yet diverse machine learning algorithms for gender and age segmentation. During the project, the age analysis was abandoned due to insufficient data. The online texts were analysed and quantified into 118 parameters based on linguistic differences. Using supervised learning, the researchers succeeded in correctly predicting the gender in 82% of the cases when analysing data from English online users. The training and test data may have some correlations, which is important to notice. Language is complex and, in this case, the more complex methods SVM and Neural networks were performing better than the less complex Naive Bayes and Logistic regression.
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Nakamura, Monica 1965. "Predictors of novel inflection learning by preschool-aged boys." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/277244.
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Twenty normally developing boys between the ages of 4:4 (years:months) and 5:7 were presented with stories designed to teach novel vocabulary and morphological inflections. A multiple regression analysis assessed the extent to which selected verbal and nonverbal skills contributed to the prediction of their performance on the inflection stories (INFL). Current inflection skills, as measured by the Grammatic Closure subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities, accounted for nearly half of the INFL variance. In addition, performance on a posttest of vocabulary learning significantly (p .05) contributed to the prediction of INFL performance. None of the three nonverbal measures was a significant contributor, although closer analysis of these findings indicates that the relationship between nonverbal rule learning and inflection learning warrants further investigation. The results suggest that inflection learning is a language-specific phenomenon more tied to vocabulary skills than to nonverbal cognitive skills.
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Mell, Thomas, Isabell Wartenburger, Alexander Marschner, Arno Villringer, Friedel M. Reischies, and Hauke R. Heekeren. "Altered function of ventral striatum during reward-based decision making in old age." Universität Potsdam, 2009. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2010/4523/.
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Normal aging is associated with a decline in different cognitive domains and local structural atrophy as well as decreases in dopamine concentration and receptor density. To date, it is largely unknown how these reductions in dopaminergic neurotransmission affect human brain regions responsible for reward-based decision making in older adults. Using a learning criterion in a probabilistic object reversal task, we found a learning stage by age interaction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dIPFC) during decision making. While young adults recruited the dlPFC in an early stage of learning reward associations, older adults recruited the dlPFC when reward associations had already been learned. Furthermore, we found a reduced change in ventral striatal BOLD signal in older as compared to younger adults in response to high probability rewards. Our data are in line with behavioral evidence that older adults show altered stimulus-reward learning and support the view of an altered fronto-striatal interaction during reward-based decision making in old age, which contributes to prolonged learning of reward associations.
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Shiffer, Mary Elaine. "A comparison of communication intentions in toddlers between sixteen and thirty-four months of age." PDXScholar, 1988. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3858.
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The purpose of this study was to compare the frequency and range of communication intentions in normally developing toddlers and ELD toddlers. Data were gathered from ten minute video tapes of low structured parent/child interaction by coding twelve communication intentions commonly acquired in the first two years of life and expressed with five modes of communication.
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Barton, Sheila Jan. "A Qualitative Analysis of Brigham Young University's Golden Age Theater Production and Outreach Course." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2007. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2142.pdf.
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Torkmani, Wajma. "Learning English as an additional language : an exploration of the factors influencing the process of learner identity formation for secondary age students." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2012. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020693/.
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In recent decades, EAL populations in schools have continued to increase in UK schools. Between 1997 and 2010, the primary age group increased from 7.8% to 16.8%, while for secondary age it has gone from over 7.3% to 12.3%. Despite increasing EAL populations, the underachievement of EAL students is an ongoing issue; however, in explaining underachievement in EAL groups the focus has often been on within-child attributes, such as language proficiency. The study aimed to explore factors affecting the learner identity of EAL students and implications for support provision. A sequential mixed methods approach was adopted in order to explore the research questions and aims. In Phase 1 a sample of 35 students ages 13 to 16 from 4 secondary schools completed an adapted version of the Self-Description Questionnaire II Short (SDQII-S) version. In Phase 2, two sub-groups were selected from the total sample based on self-reported English language proficiency levels and their views explored through in-depth semi-structured interviews. Interviews were also conducted with EAL co-ordinators from the participating schools. The findings indicated that EAL students' educational experiences are greatly influenced by a number of interlinked factors, such as peers, parents, teachers and perceived English language proficiency, which together, through a social comparison process and intersubjective interactions shaped EAL students' perceptions of themselves as learners. The findings highlighted that in order to better understand the complexity of interacting factors at work in shaping the educational experiences of EAL pupils and their identities as learners, a more holistic and integrated approach was needed in order to extend beyond incorporating language and content, and encompass elements of social integration into all aspects of the school community.
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Hooker, Rebecca. "The value and benefits of learning a foreign language in community settings in the UK : older adults' perceptions of what this does and means for them." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/21398.
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This is a qualitative and context-specific study into the meaning and value attributed by older people to learning a foreign language in their own time and for reasons mainly unconnected to attainment and qualifications. There appear to be two common misconceptions of the British as language learners. The first is that they are ‘language barbarians’ (Tomlinson, 2004), ever ready to rely on the global dominance of English as a lingua franca and unwilling to learn other languages. The second is that learning a language voluntarily and for leisure purposes (‘leisure language learning’) is regarded as essentially frivolous and of little value. Equally much scholarly research, especially concerning second language acquisition (SLA), implies that language learning is a relatively unsuccessful and difficult endeavour for adults. This study challenges these views. Far from being reluctant ‘language barbarians’, who find learning another language onerous and unrewarding, the findings suggest otherwise. The older (aged 45+) adult learners in this enquiry are not only resoundingly positive about ‘leisure language learning’ but they derive significant benefits in many areas of their lives from learning, of their own volition, and seemingly against the odds. These benefits include but extend beyond functional transactions, such as ordering food when abroad. Participants’ perceptions of the personal value of ‘leisure language learning’ include its role in providing and facilitating: mental stimulus and wellbeing; improved communication; fewer risks when travelling; a repositioning of the self; a purposeful pastime; cultural enrichment; awareness of the ‘other’, as well as the various benefits of social interaction. Wider advantages for society in general are also implied. Empirical data were collected by means of in-depth, conversational interviews, exploring participants’ personal histories of encounters with and learning foreign languages. A hermeneutic ‘fusion of horizons’ (Gadamer, 2001) has then allowed for a more comprehensive and multi-faceted interpretation and understanding of the experience of adult ‘leisure language learning’ in community settings. The resulting text describes the nature and essence of the phenomenon of ‘leisure language learning’ embracing its meaning for, and impact upon, older adults. This incorporates a way of thinking regarding language pedagogy which goes beyond the usual ‘commonplaces’ and ‘discourses of performance, competency and skills’ (Phipps, 2007:2), common to much SLA and linguistic research. At the same time a deeper appreciation of the adult language learning experience is more likely to engender a ‘tactful’ and ‘action-sensitive pedagogy’ (van Manen, 1997:168-169): responsive to learners’ expectations and motivation, and taking their backgrounds and routes to learning into account.
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Jones, Barclay Cameron Edwards. "Australian based international pathways to higher education: Associations between learning environment and primary language, cultural background, age, sex, program of study and attitude." Thesis, Curtin University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/399.
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The purpose of this first and unique study into Australian based international pathway learning environments was to develop an International Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (IQTI) to investigate associations between teacher-student interpersonal behaviour and student cultural background, sex, age, program of study and attitude. The new instrument was found to be valid and reliable. This study found that associations do exist between student perceptions of teacher-student interpersonal behaviour and the factors investigated in this study.
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Fischer, Andreas. "Prosodic organization in the babbling of German-learning infants between the age of six and twelve months." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultät II, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/15931.
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Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit der Fragestellung, wie die Wortbetonung in der kanonischen Lallenphase organisiert ist. Diese Entwicklungsphase tritt für gewöhnlich in der zweiten Hälfte des ersten Lebensjahres auf, wenn Kleinkinder erstmalig phonetisch wohlgeformte Silben äußern. Dabei gibt es jedoch noch keine klare Beziehung zwischen Wortbedeutung und bestimmten Sprachlauten. Die Einzelsilben werden allerdings schon zu größeren wortartigen Einheiten zusammengefügt und erscheinen in betonten wie unbetonten Positionen. Es wurden Sprachdaten von sieben deutschlernenden Kindern im Alter zwischen 0;5 und 1;0 gesammelt. Die phonetisch wohlgeformten Lalläußerungen wurden einer Reihe von perzeptiven und akustischen Analysen unterzogen, um der Frage nach einer bereits vorhandenen prosodischen Organisation der Wortbetonung nachzugehen. Die Äußerungen der Probanden werden anschließend mit einem theoretischen Parametermodell verglichen. Hierbei wird untersucht, ob Lalläußerungen eher sprachliche Universalien vorweisen oder doch eher durch ihre sprachliche Umgebung beinflusst sind. Dazu wird eigens eine Reanalyse des Betonungssystems des Deutschen vorgenommen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass eine leichte Tendenz hin zum trochäischen Betonungsmuster in Zweisilbern zu erkennen ist. Diese Tendenz lässt sich allerdings nur mit zwei der fünf Analysemethoden der vorliegenden Arbeit nachweisen. Bei Mehrsilbern scheint die Lage der hauptbetonten Silbe durch keine Analysemethode vorhersagbar zu sein. Es kann dennoch festgestellt werden, dass Silben vom Typus CVV in signifikanter Weise Betonung auf sich ziehen. Diese Ergebnisse lassen den Schluss zu, dass die Parameter der Betonungszuweisung während des kanonischen Lallens noch nicht zur Gänze gesetzt sind. Nur diejenigen für Fußform und Quantitätssensitivität erscheinen so konfiguriert, dass ein Einfluß der Umgebungssprache, des Deutschen, erkennbar wird.The current work addresses the question, how word stress is organised during the developmental stage of Canonical Babbling, which usually emerges in the second half of the first year of life. In this period infants begin to utter phonetically well-formed syllables, although there is no clear relationship between meaning and single speech sounds. However, syllables are combined to form larger word-like units containing prominent and less prominent syllables. Data was gathered from seven German-learning infants aged between 0;5 and 1;0. The phonetically well-formed babbling vocalizations were subject to perceptual and acoustical analyses, in order to find out whether there is already a prosodic organization of word stress. The subjects'' utterances are then compared to a theoretical parametric framework. It will be examined, whether babbling vocalizations are more universal or rather influenced by the ambient language. Therefore a reanalysis of the German system of word stress will be undertaken. Results indicate that there is a weak tendency towards the trochaic stress pattern in disyllabic babbles. This tendency is, however, only predictable in two of the five analysis parameters used in this study. In polysyllabic vocalizations, the location of main stress appears not to be predictable by any analysis. It can nevertheless be stated that CVV syllables tend to attract stress significantly. These results point to the fact, that the parameters of word stress assignment are not yet completely set during Canonical Babbling. Instead, only those for foot shape and quantity-sensitivity appear to be set in a fashion reflecting an influence of the subjects'' ambient language, German.
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Cheung, Wai-mun Rosana. "Is younger really better? : a comparative study of the strategies used by Hong Kong students who began learning English at different ages /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2002. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B25262865.
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Roquet, i. Pugès Helena. "A study of the acquisition of English as a foreign language: integrating content and language in mainstream education in Barcelona." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/41560.
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Esta tesis doctoral pretende aportar nuevos datos sobre los efectos del enfoque AICLE (Aprendizaje Integrado de Contenido y Lengua Extranjera) en las habilidades productivas y receptivas de los alumnos de una escuela privada de Barcelona (Catalunya). Se trata de una comunidad bilingüe en la que las lenguas oficiales son el catalán y el español y en la que el inglés representa la tercera lengua del curriculum.
Con este objetivo, se analizan longitudinalmente 100 alumnos bilingües catalán / español de edades comprendidas entre 12 y 15 a lo largo de dos años académicos en dos contextos de exposición diferentes: EFL (inglés sólo como asignatura de lengua extranjera, n=50, grupo de control) y AICLE (inglés como medio de instrucción cuando estudian ciencias naturales, n=50, grupo experimental). Se extraen datos a partir de las habilidades productivas y receptivas y se analizan de forma cuantitativa y cualitativa utilizando un diseño posttest al final de cada curso académico. Los resultados demuestran la efectividad del enfoque AICLE aunque no de forma generalizada en todas las habilidades. A diferencia de investigaciones anteriores, es importante destacar la mejora de la corrección dentro de la producción escrita y de las habilidades léxico-gramaticales. Finalmente, los resultados tienden a confirmar que el factor edad es relevante y que obtienen mejores resultados los sujetos mayores.The present study seeks to contribute new evidence on the effects of the CLIL approach (Content and Language Integrated Learning) on the learners’ productive and receptive skills in a private school in Barcelona (Catalonia). This is a bilingual community in which both Catalan and Spanish are official languages and where English represents the third language included in the currículum. For that purpose, 100 bilingual Catalan / Spanish students aged 12 to 15 are analysed longitudinally over two academic years in two different types of exposure contexts: EFL (English only as a foreign language school subject, n=50, control group) and CLIL (English as medium of instruction when learning Science, n=50, experimental group). Data are elicited both for productive and comprehension skills and are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively using a posttest design at the end of each academic year. The results show the effectiveness of the CLIL approach, however not in all skills. In contrast with findings published in previous studies, the subjects’ writing and particularly so accuracy, significatively progressed and so did lexico-grammatical abilities.Results also tend to confirm that age had an impact and thus the older, the better.
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Larsson, Lindberg Britta. "Discerning the Receiver : A learning study with inexperienced writers aged 14-16." Licentiate thesis, Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation, Jönköping University, Communication, Culture & Diversity @ JU (CCD@JU), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-48219.
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The overall aim of the present study is to develop knowledge of Swedish students’ writing in English, and how teaching of a specific kind of writing can be designed and enacted. The study focuses on what the students need to discern in order to develop a more differentiated knowledge of how to adapt a message to an unknown receiver—in this case a message for a person at a hotel. The research question addressed is how aspects of text and receiver can be varied and explored by teachers and students jointly in order to expand the students’ capability to adapt a text to an unknown receiver. The study is based on transcribed lesson data from a learning study, which is a research approach where teachers and researchers work together in an iterative process to understand and improve teaching and learning of a specific object of learning. The research question was explored in five cycles with five different groups. Thirty-four Swedish students, 14–16 years of age, from a special school for students with dyslexia and neuropsychiatric disorders, participated in the study. The theoretical framework of the study was variation theory. A basic assumption of variation theory is that, in order to develop a certain piece of knowledge, it is critical to discern some particular aspects of that knowledge. To enable the discernment of such aspects, they must be made discernible by means of variation. The results show that a short message, used as an example, needs to be deconstructed into its aspects. Once the students had discerned the concept of the receiver, they started to contrast ways to express the same content for known and unknown receivers. With the help of the concept of the receiver, the students explored the aspects amount of information, politeness, and formality together with the teachers. Each aspect needed to be focused on separately but within the framing whole of the specific context, that is, writing a message to a hotel. The findings also show that certain aspects on the macro-level were possible to discern when two texts were compared, whereas other aspects on the micro-level, such as modal verbs, had to be varied against the background of an invariant clause in order for the students to discern them.
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Vujisic, Zoran. "The role of achievement motivation on the interlanguage fossilization of middle-aged English-as-a-second-language learners." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003748.
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Second language acquisition (SLA) is seldom entirely successful with adult learners. It has been suggested that all second language (L2) learners, in the process of mastering a target language (TL), develop a linguistic system that is self-contained and different from both the learner's native language and the TL. This system is referred to as 'interlanguage' (lL). In the process of SLA, IL evolves into an ever-closer approximation of the TL, and ideally, a learner's IL should continue to advance until it becomes equivalent to the TL. However, it has been observed that somewhere in the L2 learning process, IL may reach one or more plateaus during which the development of the IL is delayed or arrested. A permanent cessation of progress toward the TL is referred to as 'fossilization'. Researchers in SLA agree that motivation is one of the key factors influencing language-learning success and studies suggest that some language learning motivation may be related to the need for achievement. The purpose of this research was to establish if adult ESL learners are aware of fossilization and, to examine if motivation, and more specifically achievement motivation, is a factor in IL fossilization. The participants in this study consisted of 15 ESL learners in Puerto Rico who had at least eight years of formal ESL training. The instrument used to gather information included a questionnaire to obtain demographical and qualifying data, an 'English Language Proficiency Evaluation' to determine levels of IL fossilization, a 'Measure of Achievement Motivation' to ascertain achievement motive, and individual and group interviews in order to ascertain perception(s) regarding the role of motivation on fossilization and perceptions regarding the barriers to achieving TL competency. The research demonstrated that there is a moderate to strong positive relationship between IL fossilization and achievement motivation, i.e., high achievement motive is correlated to TL competency and descending levels of achievement motive are correlated to ascending levels of IL fossilization. The findings have significant implications for both ESL learning and instruction, and suggest that not all IL fossilization may be permanent.
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Santana, Maria Inácia Vidigal. "A função epistémica da escrita: Da revisão de textos à reflexão sobre a escrita por alunos do terceiro ano de escolaridade." Master's thesis, Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/900.
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Dissertação de Mestrado em Psicologia EducacionalO presente estudo procura compreender como a escrita na escola, designadamente a revisão de textos realizada sistematicamente e em interacção, pode contribuir para a aprendizagem dos próprios processos de escrita pelas crianças, através da reflexão sobre a língua. Para isso foi realizado um estudo longitudinal de curta duração, num contexto escolar interactivo, em que a escrita, socialmente finalizada, era utilizada nas suas diversas funções. Numa amostra de doze crianças de uma turma do 3o ano de escolaridade, seis consideradas menos competentes na escrita e seis mais competentes, foi observada, ao longo do ano, a revisão de textos livres dos alunos, realizada individualmente por metade da amostra e em díades heterogéneas, em situação de co-elaboração, pela outra metade. Este processo iniciou-se com um pré-teste individual e terminou com um pós-teste realizado nas mesmas condições. Do pré para o pós teste foi analisada a evolução da consciência da tarefa de revisão, bem como os níveis textuais e linguísticos, os tipos de operações utilizados pelos alunos, comparando os resultados dos que trabalharam individualmente e a pares durante as revisões de textos ao longo do ano. Analisou-se ainda a interdiscursidade das díades para perceber os níveis de reflexão sobre a escrita desenvolvida pelos alunos. Verificou-se que as crianças da amostra evoluíram positivamente do início para o final do ano, no que se refere à consciência da tarefa, e registaram mais modificações de profundidade e semânticas. Comparando os dois grupos, verificaram-se, no final do ano, relativamente àqueles níveis textuais e linguisticos, valores significativamente superiores nas crianças que trabalharam a pares, designadamente nas menos competentes. Estes resultados apontam para a conclusão de que a instituição de rotinas de revisão de textos dos alunos, sobretudo em díades heterogéneas, inscritas em sistemas pedagógicos cooperativos, propicia níveis superiores de reflexão sobre a escrita, os quais concorrem para a apropriação de saberes e de competências no domínio da metatextualidade e da metalinguística, cumprindo, assim, a sua função epistémica.
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Hew, Soon Hin. "A study on the effectiveness and usefulness of AGA and IVF in Japanese computer-assisted language learning (JCALL)." Kyoto University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2433/148950.
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Kyoto University (京都大学)0048
新制・課程博士
博士(人間・環境学)
甲第10315号
人博第202号
14||166(吉田南総合図書館)
新制||人||50(附属図書館)
UT51-2003-H736
京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科人間・環境学専攻
(主査)教授 大木 充, 助教授 田地 野彰, 助教授 ロバート ファウザー, 教授 鮎澤 孝子
学位規則第4条第1項該当
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Elwér, Åsa. "Learning by Liking- a Mere Exposure Version of the AGL Paradigm." Thesis, Linköping University, Department of Computer and Information Science, 2004. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-2075.
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The artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm has been intensively researched since the 60-s. In general, these investigations attempt to study the implicit acquisition of structural regularities. Among other things, it has been suggested that the AGL paradigm can serve as a model for the process of acquiring a natural language. Thus it can serve as a well-controlled laboratory task that might be used to understand certain aspects of the process of language acquisition. For example the AGL paradigm has been used in an attempt to isolate the acquisition of syntactic aspects of language. Several experimental studies show that the participants acquire knowledge of the underlying rule system since they are able to differentiate grammatical strings from non-grammatical ones. It has been argued that the traditionally conducted AGL paradigm with grammaticality instructions might make the task explicit, at least during the test phase. In order to imitate the language learning process as close as possible, to rule out the possibility of an explicit component during the testing phase (i.e., keeping the retrieval process implicit) and to rule out explicit rule conformity or rule following, we modified the classical AGL paradigm. In a behavioural study we combined the AGL paradigm with an altered mere exposure paradigm in an attempt to better model aspects of language acquisition. We were able to show that subjects, classifying under mere exposure instructions, categorize grammatical and non-grammatical strings just as well as those solving the classification task with the grammaticality instructions. This indicates that the mere exposure version might serve as a more appropriate model for language acquisition.
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Benson, Katrina Rosamay. "Low-Level English as a New Language: Latino Adults' Perceptions Involving Their Learning and Teaching." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1586548364034606.
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Dungal, Fridur Rún. "The effects of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on students’ comprehension of idiomatic expressions in English as a second language." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för lärande, humaniora och samhälle, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-45645.
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In the present investigation, 99 compulsory school students in Sweden were asked to define nine English idioms chosen for their variation in inherent transparency and frequency. The participants were divided into two groups, where Group 2 was provided with context of varying degrees of support, while Group 1 was not. All students answered a biographical questionnaire. Thus, the effects of intrinsic (transparency and frequency) and extrinsic factors (contextual support, extra-curricular activities (ECAs) and age) could be examined. Results show that transparency and frequency do affect idiom comprehension, but to a much lesser extent than context. A tentative correlation between more time spent on ECAs and high scores could be found as well as between active/passive activities and high/low scores. Age did not seem to affect the participants’ idiom comprehension.
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Tebeweka, Stella Nanfuka. "The Impact of Digital Games on English Vocabulary Learning in Middle School in Sweden (ages 9-12)." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Institutionen för kultur, språk och medier (KSM), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-45740.
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In recent years, the age of additional language learning has been lowered in school education. What separates current students from the previous generation, however, is the fact that they use modern technology, such as digital games, and this can be used as a teaching strategy. Several studies show that modern technology can benefit students in their language learning, especially when it comes to vocabulary whose acquisition helps students to develop and master the four language basic skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing). The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the literature concerning the use of digital games and their characteristics in middle school in Sweden(ages 9-12), looking at the positive and negative effects game-use has on English vocabulary learning. Results from different studies indicate that the advantages of using digital games with the aim of vocabulary acquisition outweigh the disadvantages that this computer technology can cause. Using digital games together with pedagogical materials can, for example, reduce speaking stress, increase students’ interest, motivate them to language learning, and develop language learning strategies. It is nonetheless important to take the risks of modern technology into consideration, such as behaviour change or addiction, especially with young users. Overall, integrating entertainment games into educational contexts can result in effective student learning gains.
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Ryckbost, Lisa M. "PHONOLOGICAL AND LEXICAL INFLUENCES ON VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT: PREDICTING THE AGES AT WHICH INDIVIDUAL WORDS ARE ACQUIRED." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1143483102.
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Lau, Kai-yan Dustin. "Development of sub-character processing and the use of orthographical and phonological memories in learning new Chinese characters in primary school-aged normal readers." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2002. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B3620836X.
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Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2002."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, May 10, 2002." Also available in print.
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Lo, Ting-kau. "Lego TC logo as a learning environment in problem-solving in advanced supplementary level design & technology with pupils aged 16-19." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 1992. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/HKUTO/record/B38626305.
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Cheung, Wai-mun Rosana, and 張慧敏. "Is younger really better?: a comparative study of the strategies used by Hong Kong students who began learningEnglish at different ages." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2002. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31945247.
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Ruge, Jenny M. "The nature and role of peer assistance in the literacy learning of children aged six and seven years /." View thesis, 1996. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030616.114905/index.html.
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Gomes, Marta. "A relação entre o que a criança ouve, vê e recorda: Efeitos do tipo de estruturação do discurso e da apresentação da informação na memória e no conhecimento das crianças em idade pré-escolar." Master's thesis, Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/1278.
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Dissertação de Mestrado em Psicologia EducacionalO presente estudo pretendeu investigar os efeitos provenientes da forma de apresentação de um acontecimento na memória de crianças em idade pré-escolar. Com base num acontecimento “Fazer Bolos de nozes e chocolate", com uma estrutura logicamente ordenada, criaram-se assim, quatro condições experimentais para o efeito: uma situação denominada Não Verbal, onde não ocorria um acompanhamento verbal do adulto aquando da apresentação de cartões com as imagens referentes às acções do acontecimento, e três condições verbais, nas quais o acompanhamento verbal do adulto surgia a par da apresentação das imagens, assumindo três formatos específicos, Script, História, ou Descrição. Com base na manipulação da forma de apresentação e do tipo de discurso utilizado pelo adulto previram-se duas hipóteses. Na primeira hipótese postulámos, que as crianças sujeitas ao acompanhamento verbal do adulto durante a apresentação do acontecimento iriam apresentar um desempenho superior em relação às crianças da modalidade não verbal. Sugerimos ainda numa segunda hipótese, tendo em conta os três estilos linguísticos das modalidades verbais, que a verbalização do adulto num formato tipo script providenciaria uma superioridade no desempenho das crianças, comparativamente aos restantes formatos verbais, História e Descrição. Para estudar estes efeitos, avaliámos a recordação livre efectuada pelas crianças em três momentos, Recordação Imediata 1 (correspondente à primeira apresentação do acontecimento); Recordação Imediata 2 (a seguir à repetição da apresentação do acontecimento); e Recordação Diferida (após uma semana). A partir destas recordações, feitas nestes três momentos, analisámos a quantidade de informação recordada; a organização da informação recordada, o nível de discurso relativo à recordação da criança, e os conteúdos recordados. Na experiência participaram 128 crianças do pré-escolar de 9 Jardins de Infância pertencentes à Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Cascais. A análise dos resultados veio revelar que as crianças das modalidades verbais beneficiaram da verbalização do adulto, apresentando um melhor desempenho que as crianças da modalidade não verbal. Constatámos que estas últimas recordaram menos informação acerca do acontecimento, e fizeram-no de forma mais incompleta e parcial, referindo menos acções completas e mais acções isoladas (sem incluir os seus alvos e. complementos) e elementos isolados (objectos e ingredientes, sem referir as acções a desempenhar com eles), do que as crianças das modalidades verbais. Por seu turno, também se registou na situação não verbal um maior número de intrusões na recordação. Os efeitos da ausência de verbalização do adulto também foram observados numa menor capacidade das crianças desta condição ordenarem temporalmente o acontecimento, reflectindo-se consequentemente, num menor nível de estruturação da própria verbalização que realizaram a propósito da recordação do acontecimento. Das situações verbais abordadas, a verbalização do adulto num formato de um script veio a demonstrar maiores benefícios na recordação das crianças, comparativamente com os restantes formatos verbais. As crianças desta condição recordaram uma maior quantidade de unidades de informação pertencentes ao acontecimento, e numa forma verbal mais completa, referindo mais acções com os seus alvos e complementos e uma menor quantidade de intrusões, do que as das restantes condições verbais. Também foi nesta condição que se encontraram os maiores níveis de informação ordenada canonicamente e consequentemente, os níveis mais elevados de estruturação do discurso produzido pelas próprias crianças, resultante da sua recordação livre a propósito do acontecimento apresentado. Estes resultados sugerem que a linguagem organizou a memória e que as crianças do nosso estudo foram sensíveis ao estilo linguístico do adulto. Dependendo do formato verbal utilizado pelo adulto para apresentar o acontecimento geraram-se desempenhos muito diferenciados, nos quais o script se veio a destacar, favorecendo o acesso à representação do acontecimento, a recordação e a descrição verbal do mesmo.
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Wessels, Ester Marie. "The challenge and the crisis facing the educational publishing industry in the dissemination of information in South Africa." Diss., University of Pretoria, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/29120.
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In this study the role of the educational publisher as an information intermediary is considered. The focus is on the developmental role of the publisher, against the background of the information age the world is entering today. The publishing industry is regarded as both a vehicle for and the product of development, which entails a twofold responsibility: the development of society in general and the development of the industry in particular. This study highlights the role of the publisher in the development of society, and it is argued that the recent changes in the education system and the language policy potentially offer a great challenge to educational publishers in South Africa to help create suitable educational material in order to facilitate the successful implementation of the new curriculum, thereby contributing to the development of South African society as a whole. However, developments since 1994, when the new political dispensation came into effect, have practically halted the development input of publishers in the new education system and created a severe crisis for the educational publishing industry.Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
Information Science
unrestricted
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Lopes, Paulo Roberto de Lima. "Inglês para terceira idade: investigando o contexto UnATI/UERJ visando à elaboração de materiais didáticos." Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2014. http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=7019.
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Apesar de ter produzido incansavelmente na área de ensino e aprendizagem de língua adicional com crianças, adolescentes e jovens adultos, a Linguística Aplicada (LA) ainda não desenvolveu um acervo que ilumine os diferentes aspectos do processo de ensino e aprendizagem de segunda língua para adultos da terceira idade. Entre os poucos estudos desenvolvidos na área, destacam-se as pesquisas de Pizzolatto (1995), sobre as características do processo de ensino e aprendizagem de segunda língua com adultos da terceira idade; de Conceição (1999), sobre as estratégias de aprendizagem utilizadas por idosos; de Scopinho (2009), acerca dos subsídios para elaboração e utilização de materiais didáticos desenhados para a terceira idade; e de Oliveira (2010), sobre as crenças e experiências de idosas aprendendo inglês em uma escola pública. Como forma de contribuir para o preenchimento dessa lacuna e concretizar um desejo pessoal, surgido a partir dos desafios experienciados enquanto estagiário de iniciação à docência de inglês nos anos de 2008 e 2009, esta pesquisa almeja entender o processo de ensino e aprendizagem de inglês com adultos da terceira idade a partir de três perspectivas: a das professoras, a dos alunos e a minha, enquanto pesquisador. Para tanto, três perguntas de pesquisa foram estabelecidas: (1) como os participantes do contexto (professoras, alunos e pesquisador) entendem o papel do curso e o processo de ensino e aprendizagem de inglês? (2) Que práticas pedagógicas são apreciadas pelos alunos? e (3) De que forma os materiais existentes se relacionam com as preferências dos alunos? Compartilhando com Richardson (1994) o conceito de cristalização, intenciono compreender diferentes aspectos do contexto investigado, a saber, as aulas de inglês do projeto Línguas Estrangeiras para Terceira Idade (LETI) da Universidade Aberta da Terceira Idade da UERJ (UnATI/UERJ), encarando-o como um cristal multifacetado. Para gerar dados, utilizei quatro instrumentos de pesquisa: um questionário socioeconômico e cultural, duas entrevistas inspiradas no conceito de grupos focais (GASKELL, 2002), uma realizada com as professoras e outra com cinco alunos, e observações de aulas com notas de campo. Este estudo se vale do aporte teórico das áreas de Aquisição de Segunda Língua, condição Pós-método, ensino e aprendizagem de línguas sob a ótica da teoria da complexidade, teoria dos posicionamentos e ensino e aprendizagem de inglês com adultos da terceira idade. Os fios temáticos emergentes das práticas discursivas dos participantes são (1) memória, (2) afeto e emoções, (3) socialização, (4) conversação, música e tradução, (5) dedicação ao estudo, (6) heterogeneidade dos grupos, (7) uso de novas tecnologias e (8) material didático. As categorias de análise são memória e afetividade na aprendizagem de língua estrangeira, teoria dos posicionamentos e macroestratégias da condição Pós-método. Entre os achados estão a importância da memória e da afetividade na aprendizagem de inglês, o desejo dos alunos por atividades de conversação, o apreço que eles têm pela música e a inexistência de materiais desenhados para o público da terceira idade. As práticas discursivas são analisadas e discutidas com vistas à elaboração de materiais didáticos para o público da terceira idadeDespite having tirelessly produced in the area of teaching and learning of additional languages with children, adolescents and young adults, Applied Linguistics (AL) has not successfully developed a collection of works that illuminate different aspects of second language teaching and learning process with seniors. Among the few studies developed in the area, I highlight Pizzolatto's (1995) research on the characteristics of the process of teaching and learning a second language with seniors; Conceição's (1999) work on the learning strategies used by seniors; Scopinho's (2009) research on the subsidies for development and use of instructional materials designed for seniors, and Oliveira's (2010) work on the beliefs and experiences of elderly women learning English at a public school. As a way of bridging this gap in AL and fulfilling a personal desire that emerged from the challenges I experienced as a trainee teaching English to seniors in 2008 and 2009, this research aims to understand the process of learning and teaching English with seniors from three perspectives: that of teachers, that of students and mine as a researcher. To achieve this aim, three research questions were posed: (1) How do the participants of the context (teachers, students and researcher) understand the role of the course and the process of English language teaching and learning? (2) What pedagogical practices are appreciated by students? and (3) How do current materials relate to learners' preferences? Sharing with Richardson (1994) the concept of crystallization, I intend to understand different aspects of the context investigated, namely English classes from the Foreign Languages for the Third Age project of UERJ University of the Third Age (UnATI/UERJ), viewing it as a multi-faceted crystal. To generate data, I used four survey instruments: a socioeconomic and cultural questionnaire, two interviews inspired by the concept of focus groups (GASKELL, 2002), one held with the two teachers and the other with five students, and also classroom observations with field notes. This study relies on the theoretical basis of the areas of Second Language Acquisition, Post-method condition, language teaching and learning from the perspective of complexity theory, positioning theory and English teaching and learning with seniors. The thematic strands emerged from participants discursive practices are (1) memory, (2) affection and emotions, (3) socialization, (4) conversation, music and translation, (5) dedication to studies, (6) heterogeneity of groups, (7) use of new technologies and (8) materials design. The analysis categories are affection and memory in language learning, positioning theory and the macro strategic framework from the Post-method condition. Some of the findings are the importance of memory and affect in the learning process, students' desire for conversation activities, their esteem for music and the inexistence of materials designed for seniors. The discursive practices are analyzed and discussed with a view to the elaboration of teaching materials designed for seniors
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Seo, Young J. "Outcomes of students with learning disabilities at age 21 and age 24 /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/7635.
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Lo, Ting-kau, and 盧騰蛟. "Lego TC logo as a learning environment in problem-solving in advanced supplementary level design & technology with pupils aged 16-19." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1992. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B38626305.
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Walsh, B. "My language, our language : Expression and learning in learning." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.379524.
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Nagao, Kyoko. "Cross-language study of age perception." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2006. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3232572.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Linguistics and the Dept. of Speech and Hearing Sciences, 2006."Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 10, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 2962. Advisers: Kenneth de Jong; Diane Kewley-Port.
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Öhlander, Andersson Lina. "English Language Learning : Student's Perception on Their Own Language Learning." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-14371.
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This is a qualitative study, which aims at looking closer into how eight students look upon their own English perceiving skills. A qualitative interview method was used to interview eight students in upper secondary school. The participants were four girls and four boys. The result from the interviews have been presented under three different headings, which are as follows: Motivation, Classroom and Acquisition. A lot of studies have been done on the subject of language learning and it has resulted in many theories, and the ones that seemed relevant for this study have been brought up and connected to the answers the students gave. Most of the students felt motivated to learn English and the main reason was their future job plans. In the classroom, the participants thought that the teacher's behaviour and attitude towards the English subject was the most important factor to motivate them. The interview results showed that the student's thought that the best way to learn English was through media, foremost by speaking and writing with their friends on the computer. Those answers can be connected to something that the Russian psychologist Lev S. Vygotskij presents with the socio-cultural theory, were he promotes the idea that the best way to learn a new language is to interact with other people.
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Onnis, Luca. "Statistical language learning." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/54811/.
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Theoretical arguments based on the "poverty of the stimulus" have denied a priori the possibility that abstract linguistic representations can be learned inductively from exposure to the environment, given that the linguistic input available to the child is both underdetermined and degenerate. I reassess such learnability arguments by exploring a) the type and amount of statistical information implicitly available in the input in the form of distributional and phonological cues; b) psychologically plausible inductive mechanisms for constraining the search space; c) the nature of linguistic representations, algebraic or statistical. To do so I use three methodologies: experimental procedures, linguistic analyses based on large corpora of naturally occurring speech and text, and computational models implemented in computer simulations. In Chapters 1,2, and 5, I argue that long-distance structural dependencies - traditionally hard to explain with simple distributional analyses based on ngram statistics - can indeed be learned associatively provided the amount of intervening material is highly variable or invariant (the Variability effect). In Chapter 3, I show that simple associative mechanisms instantiated in Simple Recurrent Networks can replicate the experimental findings under the same conditions of variability. Chapter 4 presents successes and limits of such results across perceptual modalities (visual vs. auditory) and perceptual presentation (temporal vs. sequential), as well as the impact of long and short training procedures. In Chapter 5, I show that generalisation to abstract categories from stimuli framed in non-adjacent dependencies is also modulated by the Variability effect. In Chapter 6, I show that the putative separation of algebraic and statistical styles of computation based on successful speech segmentation versus unsuccessful generalisation experiments (as published in a recent Science paper) is premature and is the effect of a preference for phonological properties of the input. In chapter 7 computer simulations of learning irregular constructions suggest that it is possible to learn from positive evidence alone, despite Gold's celebrated arguments on the unlearnability of natural languages. Evolutionary simulations in Chapter 8 show that irregularities in natural languages can emerge from full regularity and remain stable across generations of simulated agents. In Chapter 9 I conclude that the brain may endowed with a powerful statistical device for detecting structure, generalising, segmenting speech, and recovering from overgeneralisations. The experimental and computational evidence gathered here suggests that statistical language learning is more powerful than heretofore acknowledged by the current literature.
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McGarry, Theresa. "Language Ideology and Second Language Learning." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2005. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/6144.
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