Digital Commons Network^™

Judgments Of Information Structure In L2 French: Nativelike Performance And The Critical Period Hypothesis, Robert V. Reichle

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Previous studies using judgments of morphosyntactic errors have shown mixed evidence for a critical period for L2 acquisition (e.g., Birdsong & Molis 2001, Johnson & Newport 1989). This study uses anomalies in the domain of information structure, the interface between syntactic form and pragmatic function, to shed light on the effect of age of arrival on L2 performance. In two experiments, high-proficiency L2 speakers of French were presented with sentence pairs containing either expected or anomalous information structure. Subjects judged each exchange as acceptable or unacceptable. A weak postmaturational effect of age on acceptability task performance was observed, along with …

Exploring The Impacts Of Wiki Collaborative Technologies Within The English Writing Environment, Valarie D. Dufrene

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The use of technology in the writing classroom has been a staple since the early-1990’s when the personal computer made its way onto the desks of teachers and students across America. Since that time, the challenge has been for educators to incorporate the most recent technologies in an effort to stimulate student writing. This study examined the effects the use of a web-based wiki technology can have on the writings of high school students. The primary goal of this study was to explore how the web-based collaborative technology in Google Docs and used in a secondary English IV classroom can …

The Interdependence Of Modality And Theory Of Mind, Danielle Rachel Alfandre

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Modality is traditionally defined as the expression of possibility or necessity. In English, modality is expressed by the modal auxiliaries such as can, would, should, or might; adjectives and adverbs such as possible, necessary, maybe, and absolutely; or phrasal verbs such as going to or have to. Theory of Mind (ToM) is broadly defined as the ability to attribute thoughts and beliefs to other people. ToM is usually expressed using propositional attitude verbs such as think as in Mary thinks that it will rain. Hegarty (2006, 2010) proposes that propositional attitude verbs are covertly modalized and can be analyzed using …

Collaboration Via Wikis: Social Aspects And Adapting Teacher Feedback In An Online Environment, Madeline Boudreaux

LSU Master's Theses

The primary goal of this thesis is to investigate the way in which learners interact when asked to work together to write and revise a composition in an online environment. Specifically, the first research question explores the working styles of learners in the context of a wiki. It seeks to determine whether the various dyads work collaboratively or cooperatively to write and revise a composition in Spanish. The second research question deals with the type and degree of politeness that students express towards each other when working together to write and revise their composition. Specifically, it investigates the nature of …

Recreating The Image Of Women In Mexico: A Genealogy Of Resistance In Mexican Narrative Set During The Revolution, Julia Maria Schneider

LSU Master's Theses

Traditionally, women have been relegated to the margins of society, history, and culture in male-dominated environments. Patriarchal systems have long denied women to play an appropriate role in nation building and to enter the public sphere, as is the case in Mexico. The female participation during one of the country’s most critical periods, the Mexican Revolution, has largely been ignored. Through situating their narratives into the context of the Revolution and describing the obstacles and limiting conditions that women experience, Mexican writers such as Elena Poniatowska and Laura Esquivel criticize the status quo of social and gender politics in Mexico …

Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Cooperative Learning Structures In Improving Students' Performance, Jonah Njenga

LSU Master's Theses

In a desperate attempt to improve high school classroom performances, recently, schools have begun to move towards incorporating cooperative learning strategies into their classrooms. Generally, cooperative learning strategies can be described as the use of small groups to encourage learners work together and accomplish shared goals and subsequently maximize theirs and others’ potential. In an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy on classroom learning, this study compares the gains in means of scores between a group taught using cooperative learning strategies and another group taught using non-cooperative learning strategies. Fifty-three students taking Algebra I were given a pretest …

Student Perspectives On Study Abroad: The Case Of Louisiana State University's Summer Internships In The French Alps, Terri Lee Schroth

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While many studies have been conducted on study abroad programs, few have sought to examine the inner workings of a short-term, non-traditional (non-classroom based) program, particularly from the participants’ point-of-view. This in-depth case study explores a short-term (4-week) cultural and linguistic internship program, “LSU in the French Alps,” as well as the perspectives of four program participants. This research was conducted during four phases of the study abroad experience: the pre-departure orientation (4 days on LSU’s main campus), the in-country stay (4 weeks in the French Alps), re-entry into the United States (first 10 days upon return), and post study …

The Illumination Of E. E. Cummings' Poetry In J. A. C. Redford's "Love Is The Every Only God", Amy Louise Aucoin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The choral work love is the every only god, composed by J. A. C. Redford, was published in 2001, placing it among the initial choral concert works published in the twenty-first century. love is the every only god is a song cycle for divisi mixed chorus with piano accompaniment based on six poems by E. E. Cummings. The work is organized into six movements with two interludes and lasts approximately twenty-five minutes. Beyond his regard for the art of poetry and care in choosing a text, Redford sees himself as an illuminator of the text, providing the listener with a …

Gender Differences In Core Symptomatology In Autism Spectrum Disorders Across The Lifespan, Tessa Taylor Rivet

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A preponderance of males with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has been evident since the initial writings on the topic. This male predominance has consistently emerged in all ASD research to date in epidemiological as well as clinical populations. Despite this long recognized gender disparity in ASD, surprisingly there is a paucity of research addressing gender as it relates to core ASD symptom presentation. Gender differences may manifest with regard to symptom domains, severity, breadth, and so forth. The present research examined gender differences in ASD symptomatology in three populations: infants and toddlers at risk for developmental disability, children and adolescents, …

Correlation Between Foreign Language Anxiety And Gender, Megan Week

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Investigation Of A Classroom-Based Reading Intervention Strategy For Older Elementary Students With Poor Decoding Skills, Shara Brinkley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Using a response to intervention framework, this study investigates the efficacy of a classroom-based intervention for struggling readers with decoding deficits in the upper elementary grades. Twenty two students in the fourth and sixth grades from four classrooms in low-performing schools received either a short 20-minute intervention delivered by their teacher or access to the lessons for an equivalent amount of time but no teacher instruction. Using three orthographic patterns, the 24 lessons consisted of a series of ten minimally contrasted words differing by one letter. The students in the experimental group decoded the words using a visual alphabet (Phonic …

An Exploration Of Strategy-Based Reading Instruction Using Expository Science Text In Grades 2-5, Carol Fetters

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored reading strategy-based reading instruction using science expository text between grades 2-5. The exploration revealed that elementary teachers used a variety of reading strategies using expository text for science instruction in grades 2-5, and that time barriers exist for strategy-based instruction using informational text. Spradley’s (1980) Developmental Reading Sequence, interviews, observations, and case studies of elementary science teachers in grades 2-5 were research techniques utilized for this study. This study centered on case studies of six elementary teachers and how they used reading strategies during science instruction. The findings of the study revealed that although the teachers’ use …

Christian Community And The Development Of An Americo-Liberian Identity, 1824-1878, Andrew N. Wegmann

LSU Master's Theses

By the mid-nineteenth century, two separate visions of civilization and Christianity existed in Liberia. On the one hand, the settlers – the emigrants sent from the United States to Liberia by the American Colonization Society starting in 1822 – worshiped the external appearance of a Christian mind and “civilized” western body. They revered those citizens who spoke the best American English, lived in the grandest wood-framed houses, and wore the best American clothes. They required total indoctrination of natives into the “religion of the tall hat and frock coat” to maintain a stable, “civilized” American society. On the other hand, …

The Effect Of Task Difficulty On Preschoolers' Problem-Solving And Emotion-Regulation Strategy Use, Courtney Marie Snyder

LSU Master's Theses

Although there has been a lot of research on problem-solving and emotion-regulation independently, little work has been done on how these constructs are related. The current investigation sought to explore differences in problem-solving, emotion-regulation, emotion-dysregulation and help-seeking based on task difficulty. Preschool children between 3-5 years of age participated in six frustration-inducing problem-solving tasks, three of which were possible (but difficult) and three of which were impossible for them to solve. Problem-solving, emotion-regulation, emotion-dysregulation, and help-seeking behaviors were coded for each task. I hypothesized that children’s behavior in each of these four areas would vary according to task difficulty, as …

Readiness For Lifelong Learning Of Volunteers Affiliated With A 4-H Youth Development Program In The Southern Region Of The United States, Kenneth Kimani Kungu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore and determine the level of readiness for lifelong learning of volunteers affiliated with a 4-H youth development program in the southern United States. Based on a literature review, readiness for lifelong learning was conceptualized as incorporating aspects of response to triggers for learning, self-directed learning readiness, and a readiness to overcome deterrents to participation in learning. The Readiness for Lifelong Learning Survey, a 75 item Likert-type scale, was developed and administered online to 1815 adult volunteers who had provided usable emails in a enrollment database system. The final response count was 277 …

Creencias Y Actitudes Populares Hacia La Mezcla Del Español Y El Inglés (Popular Attitudes And Beliefs Towards The Mixing Of Spanish And English), Sarah Ward Sullivan

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis presents an investigation of the attitudes upheld by a diverse group of informants towards the word Spanglish and the combination of Spanish and English in speech. A comparison is made of positive and negative attitudes regarding these two concepts along with an analysis of factors that condition these attitudes. The opinions of code mixing examined in this study were obtained through a survey, which was distributed to a group of 183 participants including bilingual speakers of Spanish and English (categorized by their native language) and monolingual English speakers. Through the employ of the statistical program, Goldvarb, five independent …

Extraversion And Oral Proficiency In Esl, Joshua Boyd Howard

LSU Master's Theses

Extraversion has been proposed as an influence on the success of a second language learner, although studies in this area have produced mixed results (Dewaele & Furnham, 1999; Marin-Marin, 2005; Wakamoto, 2007). Through a narrative retell task, the current study investigated the effects of extraversion on the spoken English performance of 25 native speakers of Spanish. Extraversion was measured with a Spanish version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire or EPQ (1975). Narratives were elicited using the wordless picture story Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Drawing on the work of Dewaele (1998), Dewaele and Pavlenko (2002), and Oya, Manalo, and …

"Do It For Me, My Dear": Structuration And Relational Dialectics Among Mother-Daughter Dyads In Lebanese Arranged Marriages, Khaled Nasser

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research applied a two-step triangulation approach to the study of mother-daughter communication in arranged marriages among the religious Sunnis of Beirut, Lebanon. Combining the theory of structuration and relational dialectics in one theoretical framework, the study investigated the role of mother-daughter interactions in the socialization of the daughter into the marital experience. The study investigated the process of marital socialization by first surveying 199 mother-daughter dyads, representing 398 individuals. In the second step, in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 families (three interviews per dyad), randomly selected out of the 199 surveyed pairs. The dyadic data analysis of the surveys …

Prejudice And The New Latino Migration: The Geographic Locus Of Anti-Latino Sentiment, Angela Caraway

LSU Master's Theses

A large body of literature on the relationship between prejudice and discrimination and the size of minority populations suggests that as a minority population increases so will incidents of prejudice and/or discrimination. This school of thought is led by Hubert Blalock who contends that large minority populations generate prejudice among the majority, who view the minority as a threat to their economic and/or political standing. Minority population size has been tested and widely confirmed as a cause of anti-black prejudice and discrimination. But the corresponding research for Latinos has generally produced inconsistent and largely inconclusive findings. The reason for this …

"You Can Never Convert The Free Sons Of The Soil Into Vassals": Judah P. Benjamin And The Threat Of Union, 1852-1861, Geoffrey David Cunningham

LSU Master's Theses

As one of the premier legal minds in the Senate, having twice declined presidential nominations to the Supreme Court, Judah Benjamin’s rhetoric contains the South’s most sophisticated and clear-minded legal expositions on constitutional theory, state sovereignty, and republican government since the writings of John C. Calhoun. A well-known moderate, Benjamin’s national political career also reveals the effect of extremism on his own political thinking, while offering a limited perspective into the shifting attitude of the Deep South as well. Benjamin’s judicious speeches counseled northerners that southern views of liberty and sovereignty were inexplicably linked to slavery. With measured rhetoric Benjamin …

Reputation In A Networked World: Revisiting The Social Foundations Of Defamation Law, David S. Ardia

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Which “Body” Is A Temple (1 Corinthians 6:19)? Paul Beyond The Individual/Communal Divide, Nijay Gupta

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

Pauline scholarship has always been interested in the “theology” of the Apostle, and questions of his understanding of God, Christ, salvation, the church, and ethics are as passionately pursued now as in any prior generation. An important methodological point that has been widely accepted among scholars, though, is that such attempts at extracting theological bits from Paul must take sufficient account of the ancient context of his writing and the “contingency” of his literary engagements, that is, “the specificity of the occasion to which it was addressed.” One major manifestation of this concern for understanding Paul in his original setting …

A Library And Its Community: Exploring Perceptions Of Collaboration, Phoebe Vincenza Daurio

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores perceptions of interorganizational collaboration through an investigation of the opinions and actions of a public library and three community-based organizations. Interorganizational collaboration is often viewed as an effective strategy for accomplishing objectives that would not otherwise be possible with a single organization. Particularly for complex societal issues such as adult literacy, researchers and practitioners believe collaboration between organizations is necessary in order to achieve desired outcomes. Public libraries are engaging in collaborations also to extend their reach, establish the library’s relevance, increase community involvement, and advocate for their position as a community asset.

This thesis is a …

Bilingual Spanish-English Speaking 4-Year-Old-Children: English Normative Data And Correlations With Parent Reports, Brooke Leann Powers

Dissertations and Theses

Many bilingual Spanish-English preschool aged children are impacted by speech sound disorders; and research has shown that bilingual speech sound systems develop differently than monolinguals'. Research has also shown that, for monolingual English and Spanish speakers, parent reports can be a valid tool for identification and single-word assessments can effectively diagnose speech disorder, yet little, if any, normative data or information about the validity of parent reports as an identification tool exists for bilingual Spanish-English speakers. The purpose of the present study was to create bilingual speech normative data for English single-word assessment scores for percent consonants correct (PCC), percent …

Symposium, The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years Of Teaching And Scholarship, Terrill Pollman

Scholarly Works

This is the transcript of Mercer Law Review’s Symposium, The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & Scholarship. In this Symposium Linda Edwards, among other panelists, discussed the work that goes into producing scholarship.

"Everybody Goes Down": Metaphors, Stories, And Simulations In Conversations, L. David Ritchie

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent work has shown that many problematic aspects of metaphor use and comprehension can be resolved through an account that includes both relevance and perceptual simulation. It has also been shown that metaphors often imply stories, and that stories are often metaphorical. Previous research on narratives has focused primarily on stories that appear either in formal literature or in structured interviews; this essay focuses on stories that occur as an integral part of conversation. It extends recent work on metaphor comprehension to show how use and comprehension of stories in natural, informal conversations can be usefully analyzed in terms of …

Trauma And The Representation Of The Unsayable In Late Twentieth-Century Fiction, Katina Rogers

Publications and Research

This dissertation explores the ways in which several fiction writers from France, the U.S., and Latin America experiment with the form of their works in writing about traumatic experience, as they navigate the tension between a propulsion toward expression and toward silence. Some of these traumas are vast, as in Edmond Jabès’ Le livre des questions (1963-1973), which addresses not only the Holocaust, but also questions of exile and identity. Others are on a smaller scale, such as Jacques Roubaud’s Quelque chose noir (1986), Julio Cortázar's Los autonautas de la cosmopista (1983), and Macedonio Fernández’s Museo de la Novela de …

My Name And My Face, Stuart Ewen

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

La Lengua, Los Bicentenarios Y La Estrategia Del Acompañamiento, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

In this article, the connection between language policy and the bicentennial celebration of Latin American´s independence from Spain is explored.

Disputas De Origen: Américo Castro Y La Institucionalización De La Filología En La Argentina, Fernando Degiovanni

Publications and Research

En este trabajo se revisa el proceso de institucionalización de la filología en la Argentina a partir del estudio de un conjunto de documentos desconocidos hasta el presente: las cartas que Américo Castro, primer director del Instituto de Filología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, que dirigió a Ramón Menéndez Pidal y Tomás Navarro Tomás, responsables del Centro de Estudios Históricos de Madrid. El análisis de estos materiales permite demostrar que la fundación del Instituto supuso la articulación de posiciones encontradas respecto de la definición de su agenda institucional. Los discursos culturales del nacionalismo y del hispanismo, así como ciertas …