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Developing Linguistic Literacy: Perspectives From Corpus Linguistics And Multi-Dimensional Analysis, Douglas Biber, Randi Reppen, Susan M. Conrad

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

In their conceptual framework for linguistic literacy development, Ravid & Tolchinsky synthesize research studies from several perspectives. One of these is corpus-based research, which has been used for several large-scale research studies of spoken and written registers over the past 20 years. In this approach, a large, principled collection of natural texts (a 'corpus') is analysed using computational and interactive techniques, to identify the salient linguistic characteristics of each register or text variety. Three characteristics of corpus-based analysis are particularly important (see Biber, Conrad & Reppen 1998):(1) a special concern for the representativeness of the text sample being analysed, and …

Borrowings Into Kisi As Evidence Of Mande Expansionism And Influence, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Strong claims have been made as to the influence of Mande languages on the languages of the Atlantic Group. This paper analyzes Mande borrowings in one Atlantic language in order to understand the nature of that influence. The Atlantic language of focus is Kisi, a member of the Southern Branch, spoken primarily in Guinea. The Kisi people have separated from their closest relatives on the Atlantic Coast in historic times, probably due to the second Mande expansionist wave of the sixteenth century at the collapse of the Mali Empire. Today the Kisi are completely surrounded and interpenetrated by speakers of …

Dual Heuristic Programming For Fuzzy Control, George G. Lendaris, Thaddeus T. Shannon, Larry J. Schultz, Steven Hutsell, Alec Rogers

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Overview material for the Special Session (Tuning Fuzzy Controllers Using Adaptive Critic Based Approximate Dynamic Programming) is provided. The Dual Heuristic Programming (DHP) method of Approximate Dynamic Programming is described and used to the design a fuzzy control system. DHP and related techniques have been developed in the neurocontrol context but can be equally productive when used with fuzzy controllers or neuro-fuzzy hybrids. This technique is demonstrated by designing a temperature controller for a simple water bath system. In this example, we take advantage of the TSK model framework to initialize the tunable parameters of our plant model with reasonable …

Reading Techniques Employed By Mothers Vs. Fathers During Storybook Reading Events With Their Child, Kameron Brief Beaulieu

Dissertations and Theses

Research demonstrates that engaging children in storybook reading positively relates to the development of early literacy skills. Parents use a variety of techniques to facilitate interactions when reading to a child. Past research suggests that these techniques may have measurable effects on language and literacy development.

The purpose of this study was to investigate reading events shared by parents and their preschool aged children to determine if differences are present in the didactic techniques and language used by fathers and mothers. The primary research question addressed by this study was: Are there differences in reading techniques employed by mothers and …

An Antidote To The Anesthetic: A Diary Study, Carol Rasmussen Schramm

Dissertations and Theses

The teaching experiences of an American ESL teacher, recorded in a critically reflective diary, for the basis for this study. Through analysis of the diary, the culturally formed and framed attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions of the teacher are explored in an attempt to understand the dialectic relationship between the diarist's culture and the cultures of her students. The researcher believes that increases in awareness in these areas can lead to improved teaching practice. Thus, one goal of this study is the professional development of its author.

The literature in the field of TESOL does not adequately address the impact of …

Form Or Function First In Foreign Language Classrooms?, Senta Görtler

Dissertations and Theses

The study was inspired by continuous discussion in the field of second language acquisition and teaching on the role of grammar instruction in successful language learning. Traditionally foreign language and second language classrooms have been taught with a pedagogical focus on language structure. More recently there has been support for second language classrooms focusing on content, function, or communication rather than form. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to compare the effectiveness of an innovative function-based classroom with a traditional form-based classroom.

During a ten-week period, one class of Intermediate German was taught in a form-based classroom while another …

A Search For Peace, Kami Horton

Dissertations and Theses

This is a creative thesis on a personal experiences working for the European peace movement. It reflects the parallel efforts of working for personal and shared peace in order to contribute to both,

After several years as a reporter, I became disenchanted with my life choices and became an intern with the Catholic peace organization Pax Christi International in Belgium. It was a transition that proved both challenging and rewarding.

While I was discovering the physical peace work through Pax Christi I was also embarking on an inner journey to find personal peace with my decisions and myself.

This is …

Balkan Influences On The Eastern Sephardic Romance, Steve Nelson

Dissertations and Theses

The present study examines the local influences on the ballads on the Eastern Sephardic Jews. With very few exceptions, these influences are from the Turkish language and from Modern Greek folk balladry. Therefore, I have divided the results of my findings into these two categories.

In the section concerning Sephardic ballads influenced by Greek folk poetry, I synthesize and expand upon the findings of Samuel Armistead and Joseph Silverman, who have combed through more than one hundred different Greek ballad collections to determine how these have influenced the Sephardic romancero. I combine with their results the Peninsular and Turkish …

Regional Roundtable, Portland State University. Institute Of Portland Metropolitan Studies

Institute of Metropolitan Studies Publications

Transcript of the first Regional Roundtable on the issue of property rights and regulation.

Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published 2-3 times a year. In this issue: Ideas for downtown Portland that never made it off the drawing board; professor calls for change in how businesses think about work; alumni take their knowledge base to careers overseas; young civil engineering firm molds alumni and students to its culture; and more.

East Meets West In Paris, Kristen Kern

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Kristen Kern describes her visit to La Bibliotheque interuniversitaire des Langues orientales, or the Interuniversity Library of Oriental Languages (BIULO), located on the Rue de Lille, a few blocks east of the Musee d’Orsay on the Left Bank of the Seine, housed in the Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, as well as the history of the Interuniversity Library of Oriental Languages and some of the more special collections.

Class, Cultism, And Multiculturalism, Ramin Farahmandpur, Peter Mclaren

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Globalization has hurt both developed and developing countries. Capitalism's relations of exploitation can hurt people of color in disabling ways. Discusses the relationships among race, gender, ethnic, and class identities in order to articulate a political framework that moves toward transnational ethnic alliances, abolishing the role of capital and the forms of exploitation and violence that flourish under capitalism.

¿Corregir O No Los Errores En La Clase De Español Como Lengua Extranjera?, Eva NúÑEz-MéNdez

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

A lo largo de la historia de la enseñanza de las lenguas extranjeras los errores se han considerado desde diferentes perspectivas: algunas veces se han visto como algo totalmente negativo (como fallos que demostraban la incapacidad del estudiante para expresarse correctamente), otras como la única guía indicativa para examinar el proceso del aprendizaje lingüístico. Desde los años setenta con el método contrastivo hasta el contemporáneo método comunicativo el rumbo de la investigación y corrección de los errores ha cambiado en gran medida. Hasta que Pit Corder publicó “The significance of learners’ errors” en 1967 se pensaba que los errores se …

Bulletin: General Catalog Issue 2001-2002, Portland State University

Bulletin & Curriculum Change Documents

No abstract provided.

Attitudes At The Bank : A Survey Of Reactions To Different Varieties Of English, Sean Wilcox

Dissertations and Theses

In the modem world of international communication, it is more common for speakers of different varieties of English to come into contact with each other on a daily basis. This can occur not only in face to face communication, but in telephone communication as well.

This study investigates the attitudes towards a non-native or Expanding Circle (ECE) variety of English held by telephone customer service representatives at a large American financial institution. The central question of this study asks whether or not these telephone representatives will rate a speaker of a Korean-accented variety of English higher or lower than a …

Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published 2-3 times a year. In this issue: Finding ancient remnants of a rich Northwest culture; young readers—and the authors who love them—are shaking up the book world; a professor tells of his trip up the Amazon to bring medical care to isolated peoples; love ’em or hate ’em, holiday letters are an American tradition; a strong focus launches Michelle Collins ’85 on a stellar career; and more.

Preparing Teachers For Educating Linguistically Diverse Students, Teresa Kennedy

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

The nations resident population on Census Day, April 1, 2000, was 281,421,906- a 13.2 percent increase over the 248, 709,873 counted in the 1990 census. Since the ethnic profile of the United States is steadily increasing, the current drive for educational reform must strive to rethink and restructure schools to serve all students well. The intended modification of curriculum and instructional practices necessary to achieve this goal must focus on challenging and engaging all students while articulating programs across grade levels in a coherent, sequential manner. The teaching contexts are changing direction, and so, too, must teacher training and staff …

The Early Years In African American Education: A Life History Approach To Evaluating Control Theory, Beverly Diane Logan

Dissertations and Theses

The concern of this study is educational achievement, disproportionately low among inner-city African-American students. Because education is so highly valued, particularly among African-Americans, underachievement is considered deviation from cultural norms.

Social control theory attempts to explain why people conform to social norms in spite of pressures toward deviance. Many adverse pressures encountered in inner-city environments and persistent features of institutional racism toward blacks in school make underachievement understandable. Hirschi's (1969) control model, therefore, seemed most appropriate for examining black student achievement.

Control theory holds that individuals conform to cultural norms when their behavior is controlled through established social bonds, which …

Renaissance Courtesy And Book Vi Of The Faerie Queene, Matthew S. Martini

Dissertations and Theses

Book VI of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, with its chivalric and pastoral characteristics, has confounded critics for several generations. This thesis provides a chronological reading of Book VI that addresses many of its problems in the context of conduct manuals such as Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier and Stefano Guazzo's Civile Conversation. Rather than dismiss many of the tensions and contradictions in the text, this study seeks to embrace them by interpreting them with Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism as expressed in The Dialogic Imagination.

In chapter one, connections are made between the opening …

A Comparison Of Developmental Sentence Scores And Ratings Of Intelligibility, Julie O'Harrow Karnstein

Dissertations and Theses

Speech intelligibility is the term used to describe the degree to which an individual speaker is understood by both familiar and unfamiliar listeners. There are many factors that influence an individual's intelligibility, including (but not limited to) variations in phonology, grammar, rate of speech, and vocal features. Most research has focused on the articulation and phonological influences that impact speech intelligibility. Perhaps for this reason, treatment methods for improving speech intelligibility generally have targeted an individual's phonological production skills. Additional research is necessary to understand more about each of the areas of language production that may be influencing intelligibility. This …

Effects Of Language Interpretation Services On Medical Visit Patterns Of Patients With Limited English Proficiency, Anita Marie Kay

Dissertations and Theses

Due largely to immigration, a growing proportion of the U.S. population does not speak English well enough to communicate with medical providers. Many research studies have described ways in which language differences can compromise health care quality and access for language minority groups, but professional interpreter services are rarely provided due to costs of services and to increasing cultural and linguistic diversity among patients with limited English proficiency (LEP). Some researchers have argued that costs of interpreter services could be offset through enabling LEP patients to maintain better health and use health services more cost-effectively, such as obtaining care in …

Interview With Donald Leu, Donald Leu, Alma Bingham, Steve Brannan, Ulrich Hardt, Maxine Thomas, Barbara Wiegele

Portland State University Oral Histories

Donald Leu was interviewed on October 27, 2000, by Alma Bingham, Steve Brannan, Ulrich Hardt, Maxine Thomas, and Barbara Wiegele.

Effects Of Adapted Storybooks On Vocabulary Acquisition Of Children Who Have A Severe Speech Impairment (Ssi), Wendy Ann Peterson

Dissertations and Theses

Research has shown that children who are typically developing have the ability to rapidly learn (fast map) and receptively identify novel vocabulary words presented in the context of storybooks. It has also been shown that repeated exposure to the stories increases the amount of information, or the number of vocabulary words, acquired by the child. Furthermore, studies have shown that children learn more when they are actively rather than passively involved in the learning process. However, little is known about how children who have a severe speech impairment (SSI) fast map new vocabulary in storybook reading contexts, or how active …

Language Attitudes And Academic Achievement: A Study Of Mexican Immigrant Esl Students In The Northwest, Julie Ann Cheshire

Dissertations and Theses

As the population of Mexican immigrant learners continues to increase in the Northwest, an understanding of the cultural, social and psychological realities of these students' lives becomes an ever more important issue for professional language educators, classroom teachers, and school administrators. Our understanding of the needs of these learners will have an important effect on how prepared they are to participate in academic situations and community life.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between language attitudes and ESL learning among young adult Mexican-immigrant learners in one community education program in the Northwest. Learners' values and beliefs …

Contingencies Governing The Production Of Fricatives, Affricates, And Liquids In Babbling, Christina E. Gildersleeve-Neumann, Barbara L. Davis, Peter F. Macneilage

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Studies of early-developing consonants (stops, nasals, and glides) in babbling have shown that most of the variance in consonants and their associated vowels, both within and between syllables, is due to a "frame" produced by mandibular oscillation, with very little active contribution from intrasyllabic or intersyllabic tongue movements. In a study of four babbling infants, the prediction that this apparently basic "frame dominance" would also apply to late-developing consonants (fricatives, affricates, and liquids) was tested. With minor exceptions, confirming evidence for both the predicted intrasyllabic and intersyllabic patterns was obtained. Results provide further evidence for the frame dominance conception, but …

2000 Summer Commencement Program, Daniel O. Bernstine

Commencement Archives 2000-09

The program for the PSU Summer Commencement ceremony on August 12, 2000.

2000 Commencement Program, Vera Katz

Commencement Archives 2000-09

The program for the PSU Commencement ceremony on June 11, 2000.

Mayor of Portland, the Honorable Vera Katz, delivered the commencement address and was awarded an honorary doctorate by PSU President Dan Bernstine.

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet June 2000, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The June 2000 Monthly packet includes the June agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held May 2000.

Portland Dialect Study: The Story Of /Æ/ In Portland, Jeffrey C. Conn

Dissertations and Theses

This study reports on the hypothesized raising of the low, front vowel /æ/, which is characteristic of a regional dialect vowel shift found in cities of the Midwest and Eastern North of the United States. The raising of this vowel is the primary change in a series of vowel shifts that have traditionally been attributed to this region of the U.S. The purpose of this study is to document the production of this vowel by residents of Portland, Oregon, in order to see what light it can shed on dialect research of the Pacific Northwest, especially across age groups to …

On Communicative Competence: Its Nature And Origin, Mary Lou Emerson

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to trace the lineage of the term communicative competence (CC) and to provide a framework for understanding the term CC, a controversial term introduced by Hymes (1972). This pager argues that the term CC is only meaningful if it includes competence in the same sense as Chomsky (1980) defines it--underlying knowledge of the rules of language severed from ability. Although Chomsky discusses competence in terms of grammar, he suggests that there may be underlying knowledge of language use-pragmatic competence. In the end, I will attempt to demonstrate the possibility that there is a competence …