Applied Linguistics Commons^™

Financial Literacy For Latino Immigrants: A Guidebook For Esl Teachers, Anna Braden

Master's Projects and Capstones

Latino immigrants face many financial challenges in the United States. Language barriers exclude them from jobs as well as financial and consumer markets. Lack of familiarity with the U.S. financial system or bad experiences with financial systems in their home countries can create mistrust and lead to Latino immigrants being unbanked or underbanked. Consumer vulnerabilities may also be exploited as immigrants turn to nonbank financial services such as predatory lenders (check cashers, payday lenders, etc.). Lack of access to jobs and marketplaces results in lower income and less wealth accumulation. Over time this results in wealth inequality between Latino immigrants …

Noun Animacy As A Factor In The Production Of L2 English Passives By L1 Mandarin Learners, Shanshan Duan

UM Graduate Student Colloquium in Applied Linguistics and TESOL

Shanshan investigates whether there is a greater likelihood of producing passives with animate (as opposed to inanimate) patients being placed in the grammatical subject position during syntactic priming activities.

50 Anos De Evolução Nos Estudos Linguísticos Transculturais: Da Retórica Contrastiva À Retórica Intercultural, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

Este trabalho apresenta um panorama histórico dos estudos linguísticos transculturais, discorrendo sobre o surgimento da retórica contrastiva por meio do trabalho seminal de Robert Kaplan em 1966 e as contribuições de Ulla Connor ao rebatizar tais estudos como retórica intercultural. Explana-se também sobre as críticas endereçadas à retórica contrastiva feitas durante os anos 1980, 1990 e 2000 e de que maneira tais críticas redefiniram o quadro teórico-metodológico e o objeto de estudo da disciplina. Conclui-se com exposição de uma crítica à homogeneização das distintas culturas retóricas causada pela globalização e internacionalização do inglês no âmbito acadêmico e nas atividades profissionais.

Acquisition Orders And Instructional Sequences: A Case Study Of Russian Textbooks, Olga Ozhiganova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Previous research on English as a second language has established the linguistic phenomenon of the natural order of morpheme acquisition in which grammatical features are acquired by learners in a specific order. The acquisition of Russian morphosyntax as an L2 had not been established until Gor’s (2019) research. The present study employs Gor’s (2019) findings to examine whether the order in which five Russian morphosyntactic features—case, impersonal sentences, location-direction, aspect, verbs of motion (VoM)—are acquired is reflected in second-year Russian instructional materials by investigating three commonly used textbooks. The results reveal that (1) the documented order in which Russian morphosyntactic …

Adding Production To High Variability Phonetic Training, Caleb Crosby

Honors Theses

The effectiveness of adding a production component to a High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) regimen to improve native Japanese speaker’s pronunciation of English [b], [v], [f], and [h] was investigated. L1 Japanese-speaking English learners were recruited as participants, and a pretest-posttest procedure was used to evaluate improvement at production of the target consonants. For the pretest and posttest, recordings were taken of participants pronouncing twelve tokens, and the recordings were rated for intelligibility by a phonetically trained native English-speaking rater. Participants were divided into two groups. Group A received only HVPT training, and group B received a regimen of half …

The Effect Of Semantic Neighborhood Density On Vocabulary Learning In Spanish As A Second Language And Spanish As A Heritage Language, Marián Giráldez Elizo

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This dissertation reviews the results from an online survey created to identify and compare how second language (L2) learners and heritage language (HL) learners of Spanish, enrolled in beginning-level coursework at the college level, acquired and built vocabulary. A total of 451 participants completed the survey. The purpose of the online survey was to serve as a baseline for pedagogical purposes, since it provided information about participants’ language profiles and the way they build vocabulary based on sematic relatedness. Overall, the findings from the survey showed that HL and L2 learners differ in the way they build semantic neighborhoods and, …

Intercultural Rhetoric In The Written Academic Discourse: The Rhetorical Functions Of Citation In English And Spanish By College Students And Expert Writers, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

This research studies the practice of citation in two cultural communities, the American and the Spanish, in an academic setting. The main objective of this research is to determine what are the rhetorical functions of citations in the master’s thesis of 12 American and 12 Spanish students written in their native language, as well as in scientific articles of 12 American and 12 Spanish professional writers in Applied Linguistics, and to identify the differences found among these groups.

To study this pragmalinguistic phenomenon, I used the computational text analysis of the rhetorical functions of citations via the Antconc 3.2.4w concordance …

Restructuring A Beginner Language Program: A Quantitative Analysis Of Face-To-Face Versus Flipped-Blended Spanish Instruction, Nina Moreno, Paul Malovrh

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Critical Period Controversies For Second Language Acquisition: Implications For Language Teaching, Randy Lucio

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

It was proposed by Eric Lenneberg (1967) in Biological Foundations of Language that implicit first language (L1) acquisition was only possible during a critical period (CP) spanning from infancy to puberty. The critical period hypothesis (CPH) has since been a topic of controversy among L1 and second language (L2) scholars, whose studies have produced varying results that argue for and against a CP. It is suggested in this paper, however, that these often-varying results offer important insight that can serve to inform current and future L2 educational policy and instruction within K-12 education in the U.S. Thus, it is imperative …

Khmer Phonetics & Phonology: Theoretical Implications For Esl Instruction, Alex Donley

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis develops an approach to English teaching for Khmer-speaking students that centers on Khmer phonetics and phonology. Cambodia has a strong demand for English instruction, but consistently underperforms next to other nations in terms of proficiency. A significant reason for Cambodia’s skill gap is the lack of research into linguistic hurdles Khmer speakers face when learning English. This paper aims to bridge Khmer and English with an understanding of the speech systems that both languages use before turning to the unique challenges Khmer speakers must overcome based on the tenets of L1 Transfer Theory. It closes by outlining strategies …

Student Perceptions Regarding The Use Of Purposive English In A Spanish As A Foreign Language Classroom, Kacey Booth

Dissertations

In modern American society, diversity is both challenged and celebrated, and inclusion is imperative. This ideology begins in the classroom. Oftentimes, this celebration of diversity, more specifically linguistic diversity, is most visible in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) classes and similar bilingual educational programs. In TESOL programs, students’ international identities are highlighted and students are often instructed using multilingual educational resources to scaffold their acquisition of English. Historically, foreign language teaching also utilized dual-language instructional methodologies. Such archaic teaching methodologies have since been replaced by more modern and immersive sociopsycholinguistic approaches such as Communicative Language Teaching. Such …

Knowledge Of The Present Perfect By Albanian/English Bilinguals, Erjon Xholi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper concerns the acquisition process of a specific part of English grammar by native speakers of Albanian. The focus is the English present perfect, and the similarities and differences that it bears to the Albanian Compound Perfective. The two constructions are made from similar parts, but they crucially differ in the aspectual nature of their participles. While the Albanian particle is perfective, the English is underspecified. We argue that the process of the acquisition of the PP by Albanian bilinguals is one where input, analogy, and direct grammar teaching do not suffice. We apply Generative Grammar logic to the …