Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Tutor Assisted Vocabulary Support: Easing The Vocabulary Load For Burundian Refugees Studying For The U.S. Citizenship Test, Eleanor Anne Clark

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this thesis was to develop vocabulary materials to supplement those already in use for emergent literate Burundian refugees preparing for the U.S. Citizenship Test. These learners study in conjunction with the International Rescue Committee in Salt Lake City, Utah, and with volunteer tutors who help them study. The flashcards and supporting activities were designed to better enable tutors to teach learners highly-dense vocabulary items, as well as to provide vocabulary scaffolding support for both learners and tutors and to increase depth of vocabulary knowledge with the target vocabulary. The U.S. Citizenship Test Vocabulary Flashcards and Vocabulary Support …

A Teacher's Guide To Academic Reading: Focusing On The Academic Reading Demands Of Esl Learners, Rebecca Jean Stone

Theses and Dissertations

With over 765,000 English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students studying in the United States, a greater understanding of the academic requirements and demands these students face while studying in the US is needed. Some of the biggest challenges they face include the amount of reading required and the various tasks employed with academic reading. University reading tasks require more than an understanding of the text. These tasks place a strong emphasis on text comprehension, summary, synthesis, and critical analysis. This is problematic as students, especially ESL learners, lack experience with academic tasks, and many additionally struggle with low metacognitive awareness, limited or low …

Resemblance-Oriented Communication Strategies: Understanding The Role Of Resemblance In Signed And Spoken Languages, Daniel R. Eberle

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to propose that resemblance plays an important role in human communication. Saussure proposed a characteristic principle of the linguistic sign: that connections between linguistic codes and the objects they signify are arbitrary; however, I intend to show that resemblance, which I define as the visual or aural similarity between a stimulus, the thought it is intended to activate, and the real world target that utterance is about, is an important part of human communication and should be taken into consideration when defining language and proposing theories of human communication.

I have chosen Relevance Theory …

The Acquisition Of Relative Clauses: How Do Second Language Learners Of Arabic Do It?, Dola Algady

Theses and Dissertations

The new developments in syntactic theory under Minimalism reconsiders the relation between the language faculty and general cognitive systems whereby language acquisition is accomplished by the interaction of Chomsky (2005)'s three factors: (F1) a minimally specified UG (Genetic endowment); (F2) Primary Linguistic Data (PLD), i.e., input; and (F3) non-language faculty-specific considerations, including principles of efficient computation and principles of data analysis employed in acquisition. Based on this assumption, this study examines the role of economy conditions of (F3) on syntactic derivation and feature interpretability in accounting for the process of second language acquisition by investigating the nature of interlanguage grammars …

Numeral Incorporation In American Sign Language, Vanessa L. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Numeral incorporation is a moderately productive process in ASL which combines a numeral and a base to form a compounded fully formed sign. Numeral-incorporated signs involve some sort of simultaneity of the base and the numeral. I interviewed six individuals who use ASL as their primary language in order to gather examples of numeral-incorporated signs in ASL, thus getting a sampling of variation in the American deaf community.

Traditionally, numeral incorporation has been viewed as a process of combining a numeral sign with a noun, which I call a source sign. Instead, I found that the source signs are separate …

A Survey Of Those In The U.S. Deaf Community About Reading And Writing Asl, Jennifer Keogh

Theses and Dissertations

On average, students who are deaf do not develop English literacy skills as well as their hearing peers. The linguistic interdependence principle suggests that literacy in American Sign Language (ASL) may improve literacy in English for students who are deaf. However, the Deaf community in the United States has not widely adopted a written form of ASL. This research surveys individuals in the U.S. Deaf community to better understand the opinions surrounding literacy in ASL.

The survey was presented online, containing both ASL in embedded videos and written English. The survey asked for the participants' demographic information, language and educational …

Many Voices, Many Selves: An Analysis Of Education Blog Discourses, Kelli Lynn Finney

Theses and Dissertations

At this point, the majority of computer mediated communication (CMC) studies have employed a variation analysis approach, quantitatively describing language on the Internet and comparing CMC to speech and writing. While these studies have provided valuable information about CMC, they have also left many gaps, especially related to social and ideological issues such as language use.

This study responds to the need for more qualitative studies of language on the Internet by examining one form of CMC: education blogs. The study analyzes a selection of posts from five blogs published between March 21, 2012 and March 28, 2013. These five …

Borrowing The Essentials: A Diachronic Study Of The Semantic Primes Of Modern English, Karen Esther Swan

Theses and Dissertations

In order for communication to take place, there must be a set of core concepts that are universal to all speakers. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) has proposed an inventory of these concepts, called semantic primes, and uses them as universal concepts in the explication and exploration of cultural values. The English semantic primes, while the majority are Anglo-Saxon, contain words that have been borrowed from Latin, Old Norse, and French. Borrowing lexical items into core vocabulary has many implications. First, the primes are not entirely stable or immune to foreign influence, even the Anglo-Saxon primes have been susceptible to the …

Grammar Enhanced Biliteracy: Naskapi Language Structures For Facilitating Reading In Naskapi, William Joseph Jancewicz

Theses and Dissertations

The Naskapi language is the language of instruction in the early primary grades of the school in the Naskapi community. Only recently have Naskapi-speaking teachers received formal instruction in pedagogy, with a cohort of Naskapi teachers following courses for their Bachelor of Education degree towards careers teaching in the Naskapi language in their local school. These adults are highly motivated to become literate in their mother tongue in order to teach or prepare curriculum materials in the Naskapi language. This thesis explores how basic grammatical structures can be mastered, and provides insight into the form that pedagogical grammatical instruction should …

Ell Vocabulary Acquisition: How Improvement Measurements Are Affected By Text Type, English Reading Ability, And Assessment Methods, Joellen Magnus

Theses and Dissertations

Vocabulary acquisition is a crucial part of language learning. This study seeks to determine what textual and student factors affect vocabulary acquisition rates from reading English texts for high school students for whom English is a second language, as well as how assessment factors affect the measurement of vocabulary acquisition. In this study, vocabulary acquisition was measured by comparing the differences between pre-test and post-test scores from before and after reading different texts. Text type did not affect student outcomes, but the improvement rates were affected by students' pre-test scores, students' English reading ability, and the types of assessment questions. …

A Structured Pc-Patr Grammar Editor And Application To Bahasa Indonesia, Trafton Fletcher Hardison

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes the development of a structured editor for grammar files for the PC-PATR syntactic parsing program and an analysis tool for its output called PC-PATR-EDITOR. It describes the difficulties with authoring plain text grammar files and reading the parser's output. The editor solves these problems by providing an editing environment where users do not have to remember the file's syntax, where users can only input content valid at the point of editing, and by processing the parser's output and displaying it in ways familiar to most linguists. The paper contains three case studies that illustrate PC-PATR-EDITOR's usefulness by …

The Tone System Of Acatepec Me'paa, Kevin Cline

Theses and Dissertations

The tone system of Me'phaa, an Otomanguean language (or group of languages) spoken in the eastern part of the state of Guerrero, Mexico, is quite complex, largely due to the complex agreement systems used with nouns and verbs. Aspects of the tone system have been described to some degree for the Malinaltepec and Azoyú varieties, but little has been documented about tone in other varieties. This thesis focuses on the tone system of a less-documented variety, Acatepec, with the goal of broadening the understanding of the tone systems of other Me'phaa varieties.

The thesis follows the methodology set forth in …

Locative Expressions In Signed Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison, Sarah E. Eberle

Theses and Dissertations

The primary focus of this paper is to examine whether sign languages organize their locative expressions similarly to spoken languages. Paving the way in the study of spatial relations by focusing on the structuring of ON and IN locatives in spoken languages, Bowerman and colleagues (Bowerman 1980; Melissa Bowerman & Eric Pederson 1992a; Bowerman 1993; 1994; 1996a; 1996b; Bowerman & Levinson 2001) found that spoken languages organize the locative phrases representing the relationships of ON and IN in a continuum which is called the ON-IN continuum.

This thesis shows that sign languages do not linguistically pattern similarly to spoken languages …

The Mouthing Of Verbs In Japanese Sign Language, Mark Penner

Theses and Dissertations

Analyzing four publicly available stories told by Japanese Deaf people, this paper shows that verbs are mouthed in natural Japanese Sign Language roughly 20% of the time, whereas other word classes are mouthed roughly 46% of the time. More than half of mouthed verbs are always or nearly always mouthed as one of their lexical properties. Abstract verbs tend to be mouthed more frequently than concrete verbs. When a Japanese Sign Language verb corresponds to a word that is not a verb in Japanese, it is far more likely to be mouthed. Verbs in headed relative clauses are mouthed whenever …

Toward A Further Understanding Of The Extensibility Of Sign Languages, Jason Hopkins

Theses and Dissertations

Sign language video recordings have limited extensibility when compared with live, face-to-face communication by signers. In an effort to improve the extensibility of video recordings this study explores the possibility of leveraging a common meaning negotiation technique, depictional signing, to increase understanding of recorded texts. In an effort to gauge the understanding of depictional signing compared to lexical signing a Recorded Text Test was devised using two texts, one with a high number of visual depictions, the other with a high number of lexical signs. While a comparison of the results of the two tests did not substantiate the hypothesis …

Pro-Drop And Word-Order Variation In Brazilian Portuguese: A Corpus Study, Stewart Daniel Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examines certain syntactic properties of the Brazilian variety of Portuguese (BP): 1) BP is a pro-drop language with instances of both null subjects and covert objects, and 2) BP exhibits several possible word orders. To determine the frequency of pro-drop and word-order variations, the CDP (The Portuguese Corpus) was used to provide samples of transitive, main clauses, which were then categorized based on whether or not they had null subjects and covert objects. The clauses were also categorized according to word order. In addition to providing samples, the corpus allowed for the comparison of four different registers …

Sparking Metacognition: Contextualizing Reading Strategies For Low-Proficient Esl Readers, Deborah L. Pratt

Theses and Dissertations

Reading strategies are consciously controlled actions learners execute in order to aid comprehension. The effectiveness of strategies is increased with metacognitive awareness. Researchers have created instruments to raise metacognitive awareness targeted for native and highly proficient L2 readers. This article outlines the creation of a new survey, the Contextualized Inventory of Metacognitive Awareness for novice to low-intermediate L2 readers. Unlike other instruments, this survey contextualizes pre-, during-, and post-reading strategy deployment with the use of simplified, narrative reading passages. The survey was piloted at an Intensive English Program with 88 subjects. The overall readability of the survey had a Lexile …

Curriculum Development For The Novice Developer, Darcy L. Whetten

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addressed the need to inform and demonstrate to novice developers the process of developing a curriculum and the need to guide novice teachers with little or no access to formal training. A curriculum for novice teachers in community programs was developed such that the teachers were presented clear and specific guidance in presenting lessons with minimal preparation time and with minimal training. Eight novice teachers presented the lessons in ESL and EFL contexts and provided feedback on the success, strengths, and weaknesses of the curriculum and lessons. The participants indicated that the curriculum overall is satisfactory, easy to …

Perceptions Of English Proficiency Levels: The Unspoken Expectations Of Native English Speakers, Alison Divett Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the relationship between nonnative English speaker (NNES) proficiency level and native English speaker (NES) level of comfort interacting with NNES. The purpose of this study was to discover at what proficiency level NESs feel comfortable interacting with NNES. This study also looked at how communicative task and NES demographic variables affected the proficiency expectations NNESs have for NESs. Participants included 120 NESs and 7 NNESs. The NESs listened to sound clips from the 7 NNESs and rated how comfortable they would feel (on a scale of 0-10, 10 indicating very comfortable) interacting with the speaker in a …

Adult Second Language Learners' Social Network Development And Perceived Fluency Gain In An Immersion Environment, Marie Naomi Bejarano

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the social networks developed by language learners and their relationship with perceived changes in the learners' fluency in the context of an intensive English as a second language (ESL) program. Using data from the Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire (SASIQ) to determine SN development and native speaker ratings to determine perceived fluency, a simple linear regression to test the relationship between social network variables and fluency gain, as well as a hierarchical regression measuring (a) the combined effect of variables previously found to be significant in fluency gain, and (b) the additional joint effect of the remaining …

Pragmatic Transfer Of Compliment Responses Among Chinese Esl Lds Missionaries, Courtney Price Bodily

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the pragmatic transfer Chinese Latter-day Saint (LDS) missionaries speaking English display when responding to compliments in English conversations. Previous studies have shown that native American English speakers have a higher rate of compliment acceptance in their compliment response (CR) strategies. While, native Chinese speakers have a higher rate of denial in their CRs (. A common research question is whether or not CR strategies transfer from a Chinese English speaker's first language (L1) into their English conversations. To measure this, 40 missionaries from the LDS church participated in naturalized role plays. Half were native Chinese (10 male, …

Assisting Novice Raters In Addressing The In-Between Scores When Rating Writing, Brittney Greer

Theses and Dissertations

In the research regarding rating ESL writing assessments, borderline writing samples are mentioned, but a solution has yet to be addressed. Borderline samples are writing samples that do not perfectly fit a set level within the rubric, but instead have characteristics from multiple levels. The aim of this thesis is to provide an improved training module in the setting of an Intensive English Program by exposing new raters to borderline samples and rating rationale from experienced raters. The purpose of this training is to increase the confidence, consistency, and accuracy of novice raters when rating borderline samples of writing. The …

Understanding Chinese Language And Culture: A Guidebook For Teachers Of English In China, Austin Cody Pack

Theses and Dissertations

Many experts on English teaching in China argue that native-English-speaking teachers are too unfamiliar with Chinese culture and the Chinese language. Many of the resources available for these teachers do not address these issues and are not adequately tailored to the native-English-speaking teachers' specific needs. This 35 page guidebook in printable pdf form addresses three key issues with English teaching in China. First, the guidebook helps teachers understand how to bridge the gap that exists between their teaching styles and their Chinese students' learning styles. Second, the guidebook provides explanations of common errors Chinese students make in English because of …

Six Principles Of Self-Regulated Learning: Developing Self-Regulated Language Learners, Andrea Michelle Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Self-regulation is an important aspect of learning, and all teachers want to instill this ability in their students. However, students often feel confused or inadequate when it comes to being in charge of their own learning. This is especially true in intensive English programs where students expect the teacher to provide them with the information they need to pass tests and advance to higher levels. While the teacher's role cannot be overlooked, encouraging self-regulated learning is also vital to students' success in learning. The author saw a need for this in the intensive English program where she is teaching. She …

A Novice Teacher's Shoebox: A Volunteer Efl Teacher Training Curriculum, Piret Luik

Theses and Dissertations

This MA thesis presents the development of an online Pre-Missionary Training Centre (MTC) Teacher Training curriculum for missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints going to Mongolia to teach English. The thesis summarizes relevant literature on curriculum development and teacher preparation including a comparison of three prevalent curriculum development models - the ADDIE, Richards' principles, and Nation and Macalister. Thereafter, the process through which the online Pre-MTC Teacher Training was developed is outlined followed by the presentation of the curriculum. The implications, limitations and suggestions for improvement are then discussed.

Global Technical Communication And Content Management: A Study Of Multilingual Quality, Tatiana Batova

Theses and Dissertations

The field of technical communication (TC) is facing a dilemma. Content management (CM) strategies and technologies that completely reshape writing and translation practices are adopted in an increasing number of TC work groups. One driving factor in CM adoption is the promise of improving quality of multilingual technical texts, all the while reducing time/cost of technical translation and localization. Yet, CM relies on automation and privileges consistency¯an approach that is problematic in global TC with its focus on adapting texts based on the characteristics of end-users.

To better understand the interdisciplinary dilemma of multilingual quality in CM, during my dissertation …

First Language Status And Second Language Writing, Sheryl Stephanie Slocum

Theses and Dissertations

In spite of growing numbers in high schools and colleges, US-resident adolescent bilingual learners, sometimes termed "English as a second language" (ESL) or "Generation 1.5," are not succeeding academically in proportion to their monolingual English-speaking peers. This achievement gap is evident in their writing as they enter college. Depending on the elementary and secondary schools they have attended, bilingual learners may have received no extra English learning support (often termed "immersion"), ESL support classes, or bilingual education. In addition, depending on school and community resources, bilingual learners have varying knowledge of their first language (L1): some may only speak it, …

Emissaries Of Literacy: Refugee Studies And Transnational Composition, Michael T. Macdonald

Theses and Dissertations

"Emissaries of Literacy: Refugee Studies and Transnational Composition" uses qualitative research in refugee communities and textual analysis of stories written by and about refugees to argue that the experiences of resettled refugees, as well as the experiences of the volunteers, aid workers, tutors, and teachers who work with them, do not fit neatly within composition's current paradigms for studying literacy in global contexts. Refugee identity and experience shows a complex link between literacy and citizenship which is complicated by the economic and geographic histories of linguistic imperialism. Refugee perspectives, and more precisely the challenges they pose, can help composition scholars …

Classifier Constructions As Procedural Signs In American Sign Language, Stephen Perry Jones Ii

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I will be analyzing what has typically, in sign language literature, been termed classifiers and classifier constructions. I will be approaching them from the pragmatic perspective by applying Relevance Theory to explain their usage as representations that manipulate and modify their referents. The data comes from texts signed by native users of American Sign Language and are from academic lectures, interviews, narrative, and course curriculum. I have found that Relevance Theory adequately describes why and when classifiers constructions are used and that they function as a procedural referring expression.

Allophonic Variation In The Spanish Sibilant Fricative, Alison Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

In Spanish, the phoneme /s/ has two variants: [z] occurs in the coda when preceding a voiced consonant, and [s] occurs elsewhere. However, recent research has revealed irregular voicing patterns with regards to this phone. This dissertation examines two of these allophonic variations. It first investigates how speech rate and speech formality contribute to the gradient and variable nature of the voicing assimilation rule. Next, it explores possible intervocalic /s/ voicing in Highland Colombian Spanish.

In accordance with other studies, the results showed partial voicing of coda position /s/ before voiced consonants (25%-80% voiced frication noise). Furthermore, there was scarce …