Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Complaint Patterns Of Japanese English As A Second Language Students, Eriko Matsuda

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates cross-cultural production of speech acts of complaints. Speech acts are considered culture-specific. Speakers of different cultural background may have different ways of dealing with speech act situations. It is important for language educators to be aware of such differences. Previous studies show that second/foreign language learners tend to transfer their first language habits when performing speech acts in a target language. In this study, the complaint speech act performance of Japanese English as a second language students was compared to the performance of native speakers of English and native speakers of Japanese to see if first language …

Šawaš Ili?I-Šawaš Wawa -- 'Indian Country--Indian Language' : A Participant Observation Case Study Of Language Planning By The Confederated Tribes Of The Grand Ronde Community Of Oregon, Gregry Michael Davis

Dissertations and Theses

The Kwelth Tahlkie Culture and Heritage Board (KTC&HB) of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (CTGR) have made it a priority to revitalize one of the languages which historically has been associated with being a Grand Ronde Indian-Chinook Jargon, referred to as činuk wawa 'Chinook talk' or simply činuk.

The purpose of the present study was to observe the language planning process as executed by the KTC&HB. Initial guiding questions were: (i) What stages is the KTC&HB going through in the process of planning for činuk revitalization? (ii) How do these efforts compare with theory and …

The Bolinger Principle And Teaching The Gerunds And Infinitives, Anna Maria Baratta-Zborowski

Dissertations and Theses

As teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, few would dispute the importance of teaching a subject such as English complementation by using a semantic rule. The difference in semantic meaning between the -ing and to-infinitive forms has been the object of many studies which have focused on specific groups of verbs (verbs of effort/ perception, emotive verbs, factive verbs, and implicative verbs). However, not many studies were found that covered, systematically, those verbs that are more often part of a native speakers's vocabulary and that might be found in form of lists in ESL/ENNL (English as a …

Training For Volunteer Teachers In Church-Affiliated English Language Mission Programs, Janet Noreen Blackwood

Dissertations and Theses

There is currently a debate among language educators regarding the training and certification of EFL teachers. Largely ignored in this debate are short-term volunteer teachers in church-affiliated English language mission programs. These teachers fall somewhere on the continuum between untrained language teachers and trained professional language educators. The current study took place in response to the lack of research information available on this aspect of ESL/EFL teacher education.

This study focused on the training that is provided to volunteer ESL/EFL teachers affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) denomination. The four research questions sought to determine how the content and procedures …

The Effects Of Educational Setting And Instructor Type On Interaction Modifications, Katrina Kay Mcconaughey

Dissertations and Theses

The precise role of interaction in the process of second language acquisition and its place in the second language classroom are questions that continue to be important in research for both theoretical and applied linguists. The framework for this study is based on Long's (1983b) Interaction Hypothesis which proposes that input is made comprehensible by the modification of interactional structures. Many studies have looked at the differences between teacher-fronted classroom interaction and small group or dyad interaction without a teacher. The use of tutors and teaching assistants is common but not many studies have looked at how variation among instructor …

Academic Esl Reading : Semantic Mapping And Lexical Acquisition, Jeffrey Darin Maggard

Dissertations and Theses

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theoreticians and educators disagree whether vocabulary should be explicitly taught in second language learning classrooms. These individuals are divided about the most efficient way for L2 learners to increase the size of their lexicons. This thesis proposes that explicit vocabulary instruction may significantly facilitate lexical acquisition for adult second language learners in academic contexts.

An experimental study designed to investigate the relationship between explicit vocabulary instruction and the rate of lexical acquisition is described. It was hypothesized that metacognitive strategy training in semantic mapping activities would significantly increase the rate of lexical acquisition for upper-intermediate university …

Perception Of English Passives By Japanese Esl Learners : Do Adversity Passives In L1 Transfer?, Koichi Sawasaki

Dissertations and Theses

The role of the first language (L1) in second language acquisition (SLA) has been disputed among researchers since the classic Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) was proposed. Some recent research shows that similarities between L1 and a second language (L2) can cause negative L 1 transfer. Others claim that functional differences between L1 and L2 should play more significant roles for L 1 interference.

The purpose of the present study is to examine whether negative L1 transfer would occur when Japanese learning English as a second language (ESL) perceive English passives. Japanese has so-called adversity passives, a productive linguistic system of …

The Representation Of Gender In Current Esl Reading Materials, Kyunghee Ma

Dissertations and Theses

This study is a partial replication of E.W. Hoomes' dissertation (1978). The purpose of this study is to investigate whether or not gender bias exists in current ESL reading materials and in cases where gender bias exists, whether it varies by learning levels. Eleven reading books which were used in ESL classes at Portland State University were selected from the textbook lists of Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall in 1997. Content analysis was employed to examine distribution of males and females in passages and illustrations.

Gender bias was found to be statistically significant in the following categories: the assignment of …

ŠAwaš Ilıˀ--ŠAwaš Wawa: A Participant Observation Case Study Of Language Planning By The Confederated Tribes Of The Grand Ronde Community Of Oregon, Gregry Michael Davis

Dissertations and Theses

The Kwelth Tahlkie Culture and Heritage Board (KTC&HB) of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (CTGR) have made it a priority to revitalize one of the languages which historically has been associated with being a Grand Ronde Indian-Chinook Jargon, referred to as c̽ɪnʊk wawa 'Chinook talk' or simply c̽ɪnʊk.

The purpose of the present study was to observe the language planning process as executed by the KTC&HB. Initial guiding questions were: (i) What stages is the KTC&HB going through in the process of planning for c̽ɪnʊk revitalization? (ii) How do these efforts compare with theory and …

Phonological Processing Of Japanese Kanji Characters, Randy L. Evans

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the lexical access of Japanese kanji characters, particularly the access of on-readings and kun-readings, which are different pronunciations that kanji may realize in different contexts. A modified Stroop experiment was used, using drawings instead of colors, in which subjects were to call out what they saw in the drawings while ignoring written distractors. The following three conditions were used:

1. A Kunyomi condition, which offered a distractor that is graphically and phonologically identical to the character that represents the object in the drawing,

2. An Onyomi condition, which offered a distractor that …