Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Comparative Study Of Chinese Efl Reading Instruction And American Esl Reading Instruction, Changhua Wang

Dissertations and Theses

Reading instruction in China and that in the United States are so different that they are not compatible. In fact, they seem to go in opposite directions. This study examined some of the differences between Chinese EFL reading instruction and American ESL reading instruction through analyzing selected tape-recordings of reading classes from China and the United States, and comparing Chinese EFL reading textbooks with American ESL reading textbooks.

This study was intended to answer the following questions.

1. Is a bottom-up method of reading really taught in China while a top-down method is taught in the United States?

2. Compared …

A Contextualized Grammar Proficiency Test Using Informal Spoken English, Sally Wellenbrock Hinrich

Dissertations and Theses

Intensive college-level ESL programs typically focus on building students' academic skills in English. Yet many ESL students leave the intensive programs only to find that they cannot sufficiently comprehend conversations with native English-speaking classmates or understand freshman-level lectures. While the students frequently perceive the problem as relating to the rapid speech tempo used by native speakers, an integral part of the comprehension problem is the pervasive use of modified forms of English, commonly called reductions, contractions, and assimilations.

The present research investigates whether comprehension of certain modified forms of spoken informal English can be used to measure students' level of …

Syntactic Complexity, Error And The Holistic Evaluation Of Esl Student Essays, John S. Sparks

Dissertations and Theses

This study was designed to test five hypotheses in order to answer the following general research questions: 1) Are measures of syntactic complexity valid indices of ESL writing quality as measured by the holistic rating of student essays? 2) Would a measure of frequency and seriousness of error reflect evaluators' perceptions of ESL writing quality?

Script Effects And Reading Strategies : Ideographic Language Readers Vs. Alphabetic Language Readers In Esl, Minglang Zhou

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine script effects of the Chinese Language on Chinese ESL/EFL students· reading strategies, in comparison to those employed by ESL students from alphabetic orthographic backgrounds.