Digital Commons Network^™

A Constructional Analysis Of Written Academic English As A Lingua Franca: The Case Of Unedited And Edited Research Writing, Selahattin Yilmaz

Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language Dissertations

Recent English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) research has started to document the general characteristics of academic writing by international scholars from different linguistic (similectal) and disciplinary backgrounds, as well as the complex patterns of variation that shape these characteristics. However, not only is this line of research in its infancy, studies are also generally small-scale, resulting in a limited understanding of the complexities of ELF academic writing. Adopting a Construction Grammar (CxG) approach, this study aims to comprehensively examine the distinctive constructions, here defined as multi-word sequences with discourse-functional properties in three corpora of academic writing from 50 disciplines …

Investigating Reading Behavior And Inference-Making In Advanced L2 Reading Comprehension Assessment Tasks, Rurik Tywoniw

Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language Dissertations

Despite the ubiquity of reading comprehension tasks in English language proficiency tests (or sections of tests), the constructs underlying successful reading comprehension in English as a second/additional language at the advanced academic level are still not completely understood. Part of the reason for this gap in the current state of knowledge comes from how existing models of second language reading neglect higher-order reading skills. Many reading assessments overly target language proficiency skills and assume the transfer of first language literacy skills, leaving unexamined the higher-order skills of language learners who become skilled academic readers in their second or additional language. …

Language Program Development Through Internationalization, Mackenzie Bristow

Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language Dissertations

This study explores the development of a new English language support program (ELSP) between two international educational partners. Inspired by the renewed interest to investigate ELSP development holistically (Bhowmik & Kim, 2018; Dafouz & Smit, 2020; Fenton-Smith & Gurney, 2016; Pennington & Hoekje, 2010), this study pulls from four years of research in the United States and China. ELSP development has always included elements of institutional and national policies, administrative structures, and curriculum development; however within English language teaching literature, the latter dominates, resulting in an underdeveloped description of the process as a whole (Johnston & Peterson, 1994; Pennington & …

Seeking The Unseen Humanities Macrostructures: The Use Of Corpus- And Genre-Assisted Research Methodologies To Analyze Written Norms In English And Spanish Literary Criticism Articles, William Lake

Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language Dissertations

Descriptive studies of general and discipline-specific academic writing genre conventions have paved the way for pedagogical materials that build real-world skills for novice academic writers. To name some better-known cases, breakthroughs have taken place in this regard in the fields of psychology, engineering, and chemistry. However, attested scholarship on rhetorical patterns in humanities writing, such as published literary criticism (hereafter “LC”) is less common. This dearth of research affects scholars of literature produced by Spanish-speakers who write in both English and Spanish. Many L1 Spanish user scholars must often publish their research in English, rather than Spanish, to maintain institutional …

Developing And Testing Alternative Benchmarks Of Lexical Sophistication: L2 Lexical Frequency, Semantic Context, And Word Recognition Indices, Katia Vanderbilt

Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language Dissertations

Previous research has traditionally used first language (L1) English linguistic norms as a benchmark to assess second language (L2) production (Cook, 1992) and to select experimental stimuli in bilingual studies (Vaid & Meuter, 2017). Despite the immense contribution of this approach, L1 benchmarks may not completely represent the linguistic experience of L2 users, and they might limit our understanding of multicompetence or the state of knowing multiple languages (Cook, 1991; Klein, 1998; Vaid & Meuter, 2017). A few attempts to develop indices that more closely represent L2 linguistic experience have been made (e.g., Monteiro et al., 2020; Naismith et al., …

Examining Task Transferability In Task-Based Language Teaching: A Multi-Case Study, Charlotte Nolen

Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language Dissertations

Although there has been a surge of research on the effectiveness of task-based language teaching (TBLT), little is known about transferability of task performance skills and vocabulary in a different context such as in a public domain (Benson, 2015; Ellis, 2017; Long, 2016). The purpose of the current dissertation was to examine transferability in task performance skills and target vocabulary between pedagogical tasks, real-world tasks and vocabulary learning in different contexts while utilizing two modalities. Learner perceptions of the effects of pedagogical tasks and real-world tasks on language learning are also examined.

Four lower level English as a Second Language …