Дисертації з теми "Acting in a foreign language"

Since economic reform started in China in 1978, the educational objectives for English language teaching have undergone many changes. In secondary school, reading and writing abilities have become increasingly important, not only in assisting students to study and work in English language contexts, but also in setting up the foundation for further English learning at university level. Thus, new materials have been devised and new teaching methods have been used. However, in practice, the English reading skills of many learners do not seem to have improved and learners have difficulty in achieving the syllabus goals set for reading. This study investigated the factors which influence the development of reading skills by learners in one Grade 10 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class in Taiyuan, a city in China.

This research used diary studies and interviews with five Japanese learners of English to investigate the different affective, cognitive and social factors that affected their learning of English in Cape Town between 2004 and 2005. The findings of this study corroborate arguments put forward by Gardner that factors such as learning goals, learning strategy, attitude, motivation, anxiety, self-confidence and cultural beliefs about communication affect the acquisition of a second language and correlate with one another.

Language diversity continues to create a language barrier to international tourism. Tourists from non-English speaking countries face a language barrier in South Africa and this affects their experiences in the country. Measuring and understanding something of this challenge is the purpose of this study. The focus is on how the tourism industry in Cape Town uses languages to sell and promote the city internationally. The study investigates procedures, strategies, and policies adopted by the tourism industry in Cape Town to cater for tourists from across the world. In addition, the study also investigates how tourists from non-English speaking countries adapt linguistically to cope with their stay in Cape Town. The study targeted both tourism organisations and international tourists who use tourist facilities in most popular tourist areas in Cape Town. Both primary and secondary data were collected. Convenience sampling was used to select both tourism service providers and tourists. To enhance validity, reliability, and accuracy, various tools have been deployed to collect the data. Primary data were collected from both tourism service providers and international tourists using questionnaires, interviews, photographs and observations. Secondary data collection involved observations of public signage as well as analysis of electronic and printed promotional materials such as brochures, guidebooks, menus, newspapers and websites. Collected data were captured in spread sheets to enable descriptive analysis of tourists&rsquo
languages and of language use in tourism organisations in different of forms of niche tourism in Cape Town. Survey results reveal that a little more than half of all surveyed tourism organisations in Cape Town sell and promote their products using only South African languages including English whilst a minority sell and promote their products using English coupled with foreign languages. The majority of multilingual staff in those surveyed tourism organisations who have adopted multilingualism are working part-time or employed temporarily. In addition, results also indicate that English dominates other languages in public signs and printed and electronic promotional publications used by surveyed tourism organisations in Cape Town. Foreign languages are used most in tour operations and travel agencies sector whilst South African languages dominate in accommodation and restaurants sectors. On the other hand the research shows that a big proportion of foreign tourists in Cape Town were able to speak English and other foreign languages. The research shows that the majority of tourists from non-English speaking countries are more interested in learning foreign languages compared with their counterparts from English speaking countries. Only less than a quarter of all surveyed tourists from non-English speaking countries in Cape Town are monolingual in their home languages. These tourists struggle to communicate with service providers in Cape Town. Translators and gestures were used by non-English speaking tourists as a way of breaking down communication barriers in Cape Town. Contrarily, a big proportion (two thirds) of all surveyed tourists from English speaking countries in Cape Town does speak only English. Foreign tourists in Cape Town speak tourism service providers&rsquo
language rather than tourism service providers speaking tourists&rsquo
languages. The majority of tourism service providers in Cape Town are reluctant to learn foreign languages and to employ multilingual staff. This means that most tourism organisations sell and market their product in English only. Other South African languages such as Afrikaans and Xhosa are used frequently in informal communication in the tourism industry in Cape Town. Seemingly, Afrikaans dominates Xhosa in all forms of tourism except in township tourism where the majority of service providers are Xhosa-speakers. To market and promote Cape Town internationally, the tourism industry in Cape Town should employ multilingual staff who can communicate in tourists&rsquo
native languages. Multilingualism should be practised in all tourism sectors rather than in one or few sectors because all tourism sectors compliment each other in meeting customer&rsquo
s satisfaction. Failure in one tourism sector may affect other tourism sectors&rsquo
performance.

This study uses an interdisciplinary approach in the analytical framework combining Systemic Functional Linguuistic theoty (SFL) (Martin 1992
Halliday 19994) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Wodak 7 meyer 2001
Fairclough 1989, 1993, 1995, 2001). Further, the study draws on christie's (1997, 2001, 2002, 2005) work on classroom discourse analysis, which in turn builds on Bernstein's (1990, 1996, 2000) model on pedagogic practice and interaction, to examine dominanceand power relationsin the classroom. The interdisciplinary approach enabled this study to evaluate Al-Thadi university students' English language competence, linguistically and textually.

This study has been prompted by the negative remarks that lecturers make concerning the academic performance of students and the number of years they spend at the Eastern Cape Technikon before completing their diplomas. The aim of this study was to identify the kinds of strategies that English Second Language (ESL) students use to cope with English language writing tasks.

Academic writing requires a conscious effort and much practice in composing, developing, and analyzing ideas. Black students at tertiary institutions in South Africa face additional difficulty, especially when they have to deal with writing in English which is an unfamiliar language to them. This presents them with social and cognitive challenges related to second language acquisition. Since the black students do not often consider the social contexts in which L2 academic writing takes place, models of L1 writing instruction and research on composing processes are often found wanting in their L2 writing pedagogy. In this study, I argue that language proficiency and competence is the cornerstone of the ability to write in the L2 in a fundamental way. L2 writing instructors should take into account both strategy development and language skill development when working with black students. This is critical in South Africa considering the apartheid legacy and the deprived social conditions under which black students often live and acquire their education. Therefore, using critical discourse analysis and aspects of systemic functional linguistics, this study explores errors in written cohesion and coherence in relation to L2 writing strategies used by black students at the Eastern Cape Technikon. The study focuses on errors in the form of cohesive devices of referring expressions using topic development used by students. The aim was to explore the strategies used by black students to write coherent academic texts. Further, the study intends to scrutinize the grammatical devices of reference, through analyzing the forms of cohesive devices and theme development. A focus on the writing process as a pedagogical tool enables me to explore the relationship between the quality of students‟ academic writing and coping strategies used, and come up with a model of L2 writing (coping) strategies for academic writing at the Eastern Cape Technikon. I investigate the L2 writing process adopted by competent and non-competent black students in the process of producing coherent academic texts by comparing strategies that the two groups of students adopt.

Chinese language is the only ideographic language remaining in the world (Osaka, 1976). It conveys affluent Chinese culture and has great influences on the East Asian countries (Miyake, 2013). In the economic globalization of the world, China’s economy and international influence are expanding. For these reasons and many more the Chinese language is widely accepted as one of the major world languages. It makes sense then Chinese language classes are experiencing popularity and growth with United States undergraduates. Despite this growth, however, the enrollment of African American students is constantly low in college Chinese language classrooms (Li, Wen, & Xie, 2014). This call to action argues that this low representation of African American students lies on a course promotion system that denies African American students a preliminary learning opportunity that systematically limits their representation in Chinese language classrooms from the beginning.

This call for action examines systematic avenues for creating early opportunities. First the study explores the utility of offering African American students an informational workshop introducing the features of the language and the potential benefits of learning it. Next the study examines the leverage that could be gained by providing direct feedback and assessing student interest to explore whether students are more inclined to enroll in Chinese language courses following the information workshop. Such a process could lead to suggested policy changes that might close the enrollment gap between the African American students and their peers. This call for action considers the reality that even a well-designed action plan may not always produce positive consequences. Therefore, an impact evaluation is explored along with suggested instruments and uses. Finally possible outcomes of an impact evaluation are described.

To ground this call for action, a set of foundational theories are employed that mainly include networked improvement communities, leadership and teamwork, and critical theories. The call for action strongly suggests the iterative cycle of Plan, Design, Study, and Act (PDSA) of the NIC improvement science (Bryk, Gomez, & Grunow, 2011) in the change process beginning with the examination of a local four-year university Chinese Studies Program.

This work consists of two parts: the theoretical and the experimental. In the theoretical part, some general and some language specific theories of tense, aspect and aktionsart are presented, and the temporal systems of Swedish and Polish are compared.

The theoretical part is not a mere review of the literature on the subject. The comparison of the descriptions of aspect and aktionsart by Slavic researchers with the universal theory of Smith (1991) and (1977) and with description of aktionsart in Swedish in Teleman et al. (1999) has allowed me for some important observations as to the nature of the long-lasting dispute about the differences between aspect and aktionsart.

The experimental part is a cross-sectional study on the role of the linguistic context on the acquisition of the pluperfect by Polish learners Swedish as a foreign language. The informants are university students studying Swedish as a foreign language. The language samples were collected by means of two types of tests: gap-filling and translation from Polish.

Twelve linguistic factors, each divided into two subgroups, were hypothesised to have affected the correct use of the pluperfect. All those hypotheses as to which of the subgroups may inhibit and which may facilitate the correct use of the pluperfect are grounded in linguistic theories, i.e. presented in the form of linguistically-based discussions as to what kind of effect, facilitative or inhibiting, each of the linguistic factors may have had, and why.

The effect of those factors upon the correct use of the pluperfect has been tested by means of a step-wise multiple regression which measured the simultaneous effect of each factor upon the correct use of the pluperfect. This method has confirmed the facilitative effect of the following six linguistic factors: intrasentential indication of topic time (subordinate clause), unbounded verb indicating topic time, agentive meaning of the target verb, specifying subordinate clause, statal pluperfect and location of the time of action of pluperfect clause outside the temporal frame of narrative plot.

The purpose of this study is to outline students’ attitudes towards ICT in the learning of English. The research was carried out as action research at a vocational high school in Sweden. The study aims at giving answers to the questions what the students’ attitudes towards ICT are, to what extent they think that ICT affects their learning and if ICT use changes their attitudes towards English. The students had little or no previous experience of ICT. For a period of two months, they used ICT in their English studies. This work was organized according to Svensson’s (2008) definitions ICT as a tutor, ICT as a tool and ICT as an arena, which are connected to behavioristic, cognitive/constructive and social constructivist/socio-cultural learning perspectives, respectively. For example, the students read and listened to texts online, wrote their own dialogues for a movie and maintained their own blogs. After each module, they evaluated the method and at the end of the project they were interviewed. The study shows that most of the students were positive towards ICT in learning English. They were most positive towards ICT as a tutor, which was interesting given that behavioristic ways of learning are often criticized by today’s scholars. Furthermore, the students claimed that ICT gives them new opportunities to learn. Not surprisingly, to learn in a way that suits the individual learner was seen as positive. They stated that it was difficult to comment on the impact that ICT might have had on their performance after such a limited period of time, but they indicated that they thought that they had improved at least a little. During the interviews, a few students claimed to have changed their attitudes towards English a little, in a positive way, but it was difficult to confirm this after such short time.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate some uses of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a pedagogical aid for supporting students with difficulties in reaching the curricular goals in the school subject English. Special focus is on students with reading and writing difficulties and on students with a foreign background in the ninth grade of the compulsory school and in upper secondary school. The method of investigation consisted of two parts: (a) interviews with eleven regular English teachers and with four remedial teachers about their experiences of using ICT as a pedagogical aid, and (b) an action study in which ICT-based activities were tested in a group of six students with difficulties in English. The results of the interviews showed that in the remedial classes ICT-based support was rather limited. The exceptions were students with severe reading and writing difficulties and other grave learning disabilities. These students were offered greater access to various technical aids and systematic support. For dyslexic students various ICT tools often proved to be an effective and indispensable support in their learning. In non-remedial English lessons, the use of ICT was somewhat greater. Here teachers used ICT as a pedagogical aid for the benefit of all students. The computer was considered to be a good support for project writing as it provided the students with a huge database, with online dictionaries and with a spell checker. The results of the action research showed that students were positive about communicating in English via ICT and they showed great interest in other activities facilitated by technology, such as training grammar, vocabulary, and reading. In conclusion, these surveys generated results similar to those of other studies, showing that although ICT can be an effective pedagogical aid in supporting students with difficulties learning English, it is not presently being used to its full potential.