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A Study On How Different Glosses Affect L2 Idiom Acquisition, Liting Luo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Adding glosses to a reading text is expected to be helpful for second (L2) language learners, especially when inferring the meaning of words or expressions is challenging. This project examines the use of glosses to foster comprehension and retention of L2 idioms (e.g., go against the grain and stick to your guns). More specifically, it compares the benefits of different types of information in glosses: simply clarifying the idiomatic meaning, clarifying the literal meaning from which the idiomatic meaning is derived, or clarifying both. The participants were 37 Chinese ESL learners who read texts with one of the three …

Language Dominance Modulates The Perception Of Spanish Approximants In Late Bilinguals, Martha Black, Marc F. Joanisse, Yasaman Rafat

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2020 by the authors. The ability to discriminate phonetically similar first language (L1) and second language (L2) sounds has significant consequences for achieving target-like proficiency in second-language learners. This study examines the L2 perception of Spanish approximants [Β, δ, γ] in comparison with their voiced stop counterparts [b, d, g] by adult English-Spanish bilinguals. Of interest is how perceptual effects are modulated by factors related to language dominance, including proficiency, language history, attitudes, and L1/L2 use, as measured by the Bilingual Language Profile questionnaire. Perception of target phones was assessed in adult native Spanish speakers (n = 10) and …

Adquisición De Los Contrafactuales Pasados En Español: Mapeo De Formas – Significados En Las Interfaces Morfología – Sintaxis – Semántica – Pragmática, Diana Patricia Botero Ibarra

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study focuses on the acquisition of the compound form of the Pluperfect Subjunctive to express counterfactual meaning in the past through conditional clauses. The aim was to examine in which instances we can find the greatest difficulty in the acquisition and what are the sets of information that stem from universal mechanisms.

This study included two experiments: Experiment 1 consisted of a sentence completion task and a written production task to investigate morphological recognition and morphological written production of subjunctive and conditional forms. Experiment 2 included an interpretation and context task, a sentence selection task, and a picture-matching task …

The Language Learning Of Refugee Students In Canadian Public Elementary And Secondary Schools, Hongfang Yu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigated the role that funds of knowledge play in refugee students’ language acquisition and acculturation to the new school, and the support schools provided for their language learning.

This study explores theoretical frameworks related to student ecological environments, second language acquisition, and funds of knowledge that refugee students bring with them to the classroom. This qualitative research study presents a case study of four refugee students in both ESL classrooms and mainstream classrooms at an elementary school and a secondary school. Refugee students’ English language learning was scrutinized through research techniques which include participant observation, interviews, and documents. …

Sentence Recall In Monolingual And Ell With And Without Parental Concerns About Language Development, Areej Mazin Balilah

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Sentence recall has been identified as a potential clinical marker of Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The extent to which sentence recall may be useful in distinguishing children with SLI from English Language Learners (ELL) has not been examined. Despite tapping existing language knowledge, sentence recall may be sufficiently sensitive to reveal differences between these groups. In the present study, 1253 school age children completed a sentence recall task and their parents declared whether their first language was English and whether there were any concerns about language development. Given the lack of a gold standard in identifying language impairment in bilingual …