Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Disentangling Fluency, Comprehensibility And Coherence: Toward A Better Understanding Of Oral Proficiency Profiles, Haiying Cao

Open Access Dissertations

This study is an empirical attempt to examine how removal of all possible disfluency markers can help disentangle proficiency components assessed by the Oral English Proficiency Test (OEPT) in order to help build empirical foundations for establishing OEPT profiles. Silent and filled pauses, false starts and repetitions were removed from 50 test recordings in WAVEPAD SOUND EDITOR. Five trained OEPT raters rated the original and edited speeches. Statistical analyses addressed three research questions: 1) do fluency, comprehensibility and coherence ratings significantly change after the disfluency manipulation; 2) do correlations between fluency, comprehensibility, coherence and coherence subcomponents change after the disfluency …

Chinese Undergraduate Students’ Preference For Chinese Tas And American Tas In The U.S. Context, Ruochen Li

Open Access Theses

This study researches and compares Chinese undergraduate students' (N=70) perceptions of and preferences for American TAs and Chinese TAs, and identifies factors that play significant roles in influencing Chinese students' perceptions and preferences. Multiple independent variables were measured, including age; gender; years at Purdue; years in the U.S.; GPA; overall TOEFL score; experiences with Chinese TAs; effectiveness of Chinese TAs; effectiveness of American TAs; English ability of Chinese TAs; and native speaker preference, ethnic identity, and level of acculturation, among which ethnic identity and level of acculturation are the major variables the current study aims to examine. Preference for Chinese …

Makers: Technical Communication In Post-Industrial Participatory Communities, John Timothy Sherrill

Open Access Theses

In the past few decades, web technologies and increasingly accessible digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printers and laser cutters have made it easier for individuals and communities to create complex material objects at home. As a result, communities of individuals who make things outside formal institutions, known as maker communities, have combined traditional crafts and technical knowledge with digital tools and web technologies in new ways. This thesis analyzes maker communities as post-industrial participatory design communities and examines them as participatory spaces where technical communication occurs between individuals with varying levels of expertise and sometimes drastically different knowledges. Ultimately, …

Patterns Of Language Use And Language Choice Among The Cuban Community In Russia, Maria Yakushkina

Open Access Theses

The multiculturalism of a modern society involves constant interrelations of minority and dominant linguistic communities, which are reflected in language. Within this context patterns of language use and choice, language attitudes and language and identity connection have received special attention from a sociolinguistic perspective to better understand the outcomes of such language contact

The aim of the present study is to analyze patterns of language use, language choice, and language identity issues of two groups of Cuban immigrants in Russian society: individuals born in Cuba with both parents of Cuban origin (CC group) and individuals born in Cuba from mixed …

The Case Of Capaz In Argentina: An Epistemic Adverb With Mood Variability, Boris Yelin

Open Access Theses

This thesis examines mood selection in Argentine Spanish with epistemic adverbs considering the independent variables of certainty, temporal reference, and epistemic adverb. It is the first known study to investigate mood selection with the epistemic adverb capaz . A sentence completion task included 24 written contexts, each followed by a sentence with an epistemic adverbial to be completed with a verb, either in the indicative or subjunctive. The contexts contained information that made participants Certain (N = 12) or Not Certain (N = 12). Within the Certain and Not Certain contexts, four contexts expressed events in the future, four in …