Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Curriculum Development Of Elang 105: A Ge First-Year Academic Literacy Course For International Students, Tamara Lee Burton Lamm

Theses and Dissertations

Each year more international students enroll in American universities, and administrators nationwide must determine how to meet students' unique writing needs. Compared to similar institutions of higher learning, Brigham Young University (BYU) has a large percentage of international students—4.3 percent of the student body, approximately 2,000 students each year from 112 countries. Prior to Fall 2004, international students were placed in courses offered through the English composition program, which focuses on "mainstream" college writers who compose in their first language (L1) and not on second language writers and their unique needs. As a result, many international students did poorly and …

Toward Ontology Generation From Tables, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Yuri A. Tijerino, David W. Embley, Yihong Ding, George Nagy

Faculty Publications

At the heart of today’s information-explosion problems are issues involving semantics, mutual understanding, concept matching, and interoperability. Ontologies and the Semantic Web are offered as a potential solution, but creating ontologies for real-world knowledge is nontrivial. If we could automate the process, we could significantly improve our chances of making the Semantic Web a reality. While understanding natural language is difficult, tables and other structured information make it easier to interpret new items and relations. In this paper we introduce an approach to generating ontologies based on table analysis. We thus call our approach TANGO (Table ANalysis for Generating Ontologies). …

The Development Of A Certified Nursing Assistant English For Specific Purposes Curriculum: Teaching Materials And Methods, Nancy Waireana Tarawhiti

Theses and Dissertations

After careful review of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Medical Purposes (EMP) literature, I assisted in the development of a curriculum for an ESP Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) Preparation course. The course participants were non-native English speaking employees of Utah Valley Regional Medical Center (UVRMC), currently working in the department of housekeeping, wanting to further their employment opportunities. The ESP CNA Preparation course was 12 weeks duration, three days per week, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm.

My contribution to the curriculum was the development of teaching materials and methods and I used two guiding questions to assist …

Self-Access Centers: Maximizing Learners' Access To Center Resources, Benjamin L. Mcmurry

Theses and Dissertations

The Self-Access Study Center (SASC) at Brigham Young University's English Language Center (ELC) is a self-access lab where students can work independently to improve their language skills. Although some students have discovered how to use the SASC effectively, the majority of them appear to be unaware of the resources available in the center. Their trips to the SASC end up becoming more like a cyber cafe situation, where friends send email and chat online. If the SASC is used merely as a computer lab, then students are not using the resources available to fine-tune their English skills. The current project …

Computer-Aided Self-Access Pronunciation Materials Designed To Teach Stress In American English, Ann-Marie Krueger Bott

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, increasing attention has been placed on providing pronunciation instruction that meets the communicative needs of nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English. Empirical research and pronunciation materials writers suggest that teaching suprasegmentals before segmentals to intermediate and advanced NNSs could be more beneficial in a shorter period of time. However, the majority of the materials available that emphasize suprasegmentals are textbook-based, relying principally on classroom settings and teacher feedback. The purpose of Pronunciation Progress: Stress in American English is to provide NNSs with pronunciation materials for self-access and student-directed learning environments. These materials are designed as a series of …

500 Essential English Words For Esl Missionaries, Carrie A. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

In order to help ESL missionaries teach the gospel from their hearts using their own words, I have developed a 500-word list of core gospel vocabulary in English. To enhance the 500-word list, I included a lexicon with simple definitions, some grammatical information, and examples of the words in context. The resulting product complies with the standards for master's projects established by the Department of Linguistics and English Language. Published literature shows that the development of specialized corpora can be beneficial for students learning another language. Additionally, specialized corpora act as a catalyst for in-depth vocabulary analysis and the development …

Beliefs About The Education Of Children: A Comparison Of Hispanic Immigrant And Anglo-American Parents, Elodie Gisele Martine Bertola

Theses and Dissertations

In light of the fact that the number of Hispanic children enrolled in American schools is dramatically increasing and that these children are at higher risk of academic difficulty than any other group, the present study investigates the educational and child-rearing beliefs held by Hispanic parents. Understanding these beliefs is pivotal in any attempt to improve Latinos' educational attainment since current research recognizes that parental educational beliefs influence home-literacy practices, which in turn influence subsequent academic achievement. The research questions focus on two types of potential differences in terms of educational and child-rearing beliefs: (1)intercultural (Anglo-Americans vs. Hispanics), (2) intracultural …

Progress On Nl-Soar, And Introducing Xnl-Soar, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Jamison Cooper-Leavitt, Warren C. Casbeer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Developing An Electronic Film Review For October Sky, Farrah Dawn Keeler

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this Electronic Film Review (EFR) Project was to take the feature film October Sky and apply the EFR approach to an ESL setting. By the use of a special EFRaid player, high-intermediate to low-advanced ESL/EFL students access vocabulary and cultural material in short segmented clips in order to improve their listening and overall comprehension of the film. This material was developed and tested by the materials developer of this project.

Preparing Students For Peer Review, Alison Irvine Mcmurry

Theses and Dissertations

In order to enhance the effective use of peer review, I have developed materials to assist teachers in compliance with the standards for Masters' projects enacted by the Department of Linguistics and English Language. Published literature shows that as peer review grows in popularity in both L1 and L2 English writing classes, many researchers and teachers are trying to increase its effectiveness. In some cases it is very effective, while in others it is marginally effective. This has led researchers to ask why. The difference between helpful and less helpful peer review seems to be in the preparation. In studies …

Analogical Modeling And Morphological Change: The Case Of The Adjectival Negative Prefix In English, Don William Chapman, Royal Skousen

Faculty Publications

This article examines the usefulness of Skousen’s Analogical Modeling (AM) for explaining morphological change. In contrast to previous accounts of analogy, AM constitutes a general unified model of language that accounts for both sporadic and systematic changes. AM also provides explicit constraints on analogy that allow explanation of how morphological changes begin, which forms most likely serve as patterns for analogy, and which forms are most likely to change.

AM is then tested on the case of the adjectival negative prefix in English (in-, un-, dis-, etc.), using the Middle and Early Modern English portions of the Helsinki corpus as …

Word-Formation As Creativity Within Productivity Constraints: Sociolinguistic Evidence, Don William Chapman, Pavol Stekauer, Slávka Tomaščíková, Štefan Franko

Faculty Publications

Productivity has been one of the central topics in the field of word-formation in recent decades. Heretofore, productivity has been mainly, if not solely, discussed in formal terms, such as which affixes can be used with which stems, the productivity of rival affixes, etc. Such a formal approach leaves out the speakers’ needs for creating new words. Accounting for speakers’ word-formation needs requires a re-evaluation of the notion of creativity. In our approach to word-formation, this notion emphasizes the active role of language users, reflecting the fact that, in each act of naming, there is more or less significant space …

Preaspiration And Gemination In Central Numic, Dirk Elzinga, John E. Mclaughlin

Faculty Publications

The Numic (Uto-Aztecan) languages are well known for consonant gradation, which each language shows to some degree. Three consonantal series have been reconstructed for Proto-Numic: Geminating, Nasalizing, and Spirantizing. The Central Numic languages Timbisha, Shoshoni, and Comanche have preserved these three consonantal series and added a fourth, Aspirating. The Aspirating series is historically derived from the Geminating series, but it is synchronically distinct from it. On the basis of verb class behavior in Central Numic, we show that the Central Numic Aspirated series is a straight forward consequence of Proto-Uto-Aztecan stress patterns as reflected in pre-Proto-Central Numic.