Digital Commons Network^™

Facilitation Of Language Acquisition Viewed Through An Interpretative Lens: The Role Of Authenticity, Melanie Ann Harper

Wayne State University Dissertations

A paradigm is the conceptual framework or lens one uses to view reality. The field of speech-language pathology is traditionally rooted in the empirical paradigm, which believes that language can be fragmented into isolated skills and taught in a hierarchal fashion. This belief has resulted in service delivery models that remove students from naturalistic contexts for decontextualized exercises. Progress in language acquisition is measured objectively. The empirical belief is exemplified by the accountability requirements in special education law (e.g., IEP). It is compounded by the realities of public school speech-language pathologists (SLPs), such as high caseload numbers, multiple buildings, and …

Preschool Language And Phonological Proficiencies In Predicting Stuttering Recovery Or Persistence, Caroline E. Spencer

Open Access Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between expressive and receptive language, phonological, and verbal working memory proficiencies in the preschool years and eventual recovery from or persistence in stuttering. Participants included 40 children who stutter (CWS). At ages 3-5 years, participants were administered the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language, 3rd edition (TACL-3), the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test, 3rd edition (SPELT-3), Bankson-Bernthal Test of Phonology--Consonant Inventory subtest (BBTOP--CI), Test of Auditory Perceptual Skills--Revised (TAPS--R) auditory number memory and auditory word memory subtests, and the Dollaghan & Campbell Nonword Repetition Test (NRT). Stuttering behaviors were tracked …

Pragmatic Transfer In Japanese Requests In Emails, Takako Noda

Open Access Theses

The speech act of request is known as a face threatening act (FTA) in the sense of Brown and Levinson (1987) and is considered a speech act that may negatively affect human relationships when it is used against cultural norms and constraints. Requests have been investigated in various languages, including English and Japanese (e.g., Hill et al., 1986; Fukushima, 1996; Gagné, 2010). Studies about interlanguage pragmatics, such as Matsuda et al. (2008) and Wada et al. (2008), showed characteristics of requests made by learners of Japanese. However, these studies all focused on the oral speech act, and there are few …

The Relationship Between Student Self-Efficacy And English Proficiency In A University Intensive English Program, Vanessa Carrie Cook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between learner self-efficacy and English-language proficiency in a native English environment involving participants from various non-native English backgrounds. Participants were 43 English language learners in a university-level Intensive English Program in the Southeast United States. Previous studies, including those by Idrus and Sivapalan (2010); Nasseri and Zaferanieh (2012); Rahimi and Abedini (2009); Teng (2005); Tifarlioglu and Cinkara (2009); Wong (2005); and Hsieh and Kang (2010), have examined self-efficacy and learning outcomes for students who shared a comlanguage and were studying English in the students' native language environments. Findings in these …

Using Multivariate Pattern Analysis To Investigate The Neural Representation Of Concepts With Visual And Haptic Features, Laura Bradshaw Baucom

Theses and Dissertations

A fundamental debate in cognitive neuroscience concerns how conceptual knowledge is represented in the brain. Over the past decade, cognitive theorists have adopted explanations that suggest cognition is rooted in perception and action. This is called the embodiment hypothesis. Theories of conceptual representation differ in the degree to which representations are embodied, from those which suggest conceptual representation requires no involvement of sensory and motor systems to those which suggest it is entirely dependent upon them. This work investigated how the brain represents concepts that are defined by their visual and haptic features using novel multivariate approaches to the analysis …

Language Development Among Preschool Age Children Born Prematurely, Brittany Nicole Peters

Wayne State University Theses

Premature birth has been shown to be associated with various deficits in neuropsychological functioning during early childhood; however, few studies have attempted to understand the variables that contribute to variability in performance among children born prematurely. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationships between specific perinatal factors and language and cognitive outcome measures in a group of preschool-aged children born prematurely (N=47). As predicted, there were significant relationships between sex and specific outcome measures, with boys performing more poorly than girls; however, contrary to hypotheses, significant relationships failed to be found between outcome measures and both …

Structural Processing Of Language Components: Detection And Comprehension, Samantha Rose Crow

Wayne State University Theses

Although music and language share many perceptually functional characteristics, research endeavors are still focusing on the underlying neural circuitry. Past research has indicated a distinction of hemispheric lateralization between music and language processing. Recently, efforts have shifted to the notion of an initial general shared pathway in the brain with auditory stimuli differentiated in later processing to specialized regions. Therefore, both linguistic and musical components have been examined in numerous experiments to discern the possible influence of music and language components on auditory perception and comprehension, including their potential interaction. However, the effects of sentential prosody on early language structural …

Relationship Between Social Cognition, Language, Executive Functioning And Theory Of Mind Ability In High-Functioning Autism, Meghan E. Wendelken

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Whereas it is generally accepted that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have deficits in theory of mind, or the ability to understand that other people have thoughts and to infer or predict what those thoughts might be, the relationship of this deficit to other aspects of ASD is still debated. This study examined the relationship between measures of social cognition, language, and the specific executive functions of working memory and cognitive flexibility, and measures of ToM using a large sample of 272 children and adults with high-functioning autism (HFA). The results of a series of hierarchical linear regression models …

“Languages Of The Peoples Of Kazakhstan And Their Interaction” By Bakhytzhan Khassanov, And “Languages Of The Peoples Of Kazakhstan” By Eleonora Suleimenova, Nursulu Shaimerdenova, Dana Akanova, Aidyn Aldaberdikyzy

Russian Language Journal

A rich vein of articles and books has recently addressed some critical issues in the field of sociolinguistics in Kazakhstan, both in terms of theoretical perspectives and of their implications in the context of education and policy. A wide range of theoretical and practical questions of Kazakhstani sociolinguistics are addressed, including:

• Defining de jure and de facto status of languages;

• Content and stages of status and corpus language planning;

• Ethnic and linguistic identification of individuals, ethnic groups and the population altogether;

• Ethnic and linguistic consciousness and self-consciousness;

• Possibility and prevention of language conflicts;

• Defining …

La Actitud Hacia El Castellano En San Antonio, Texas (The Attitude Towards Spanish In San Antonio, Texas), Simone Renee Roberts

LSU Master's Theses

The dominant language in the United States is English but there are different minority languages spoken such as Spanish. Today, Spanish can be found in every state and territory of the United States. In Texas, the city of San Antonio is in intense contact with Spanish, partly because of the long history between Texas and Mexico and the constant influx of Hispanic immigrants. This thesis studies the attitude toward Spanish in San Antonio, investigating the uses of Spanish and English and the social factors (age, generation, education, gender, etc.) that affect the use of Spanish. Through a questionnaire designed to …

The Construction Of The Ideal Female Body: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Malaysian Slimming Advertisements / Lau Kui Ling, Kui Ling Lau

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study examines how slimming advertisements work to frame slimness as the ideal female beauty. To investigate this issue, this study undertakes to analyze two sources of data: slimming advertisements (100 print advertisements altogether) and interviews (40 sets of transcription). The following research questions guide the development of this investigation: 1) How is the ideal female body textually constructed in the selected slimming advertisements? 2) How is the ideal female body visually constructed in the selected slimming advertisements? 3) In what ways are women influenced by the ideology of the ideal female body? Fairclough’s (1995a) three-dimensional conception of discourse is …

Comparing Spoken Language Treatments For Minimally Verbal Preschoolers With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Rhea Paul, Daniel Campbell, Kimberly Gilbert, Ioanna Tsiouri

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Preschoolers with severe autism and minimal speech were assigned either a discrete trial or a naturalistic language treatment, and parents of all participants also received parent responsiveness training. After 12 weeks, both groups showed comparable improvement in number of spoken words produced, on average. Approximately half the children in each group achieved benchmarks for the first stage of functional spoken language development, as defined by Tager-Flusberg et al. (J Speech Lang Hear Res, 52: 643–652, 2009). Analyses of moderators of treatment suggest that joint attention moderates response to both treatments, and children with better receptive language pre-treatment do better with …

A Cognitive Grammar Approach To Teaching The Russian Case System, Carlee Arnett, Diana Lysinger

Russian Language Journal

This study examines modern Russian cases within a Cognitive Grammar framework. Grammatical case, as one of the fundamental language categories, has always interested linguistic researchers. In languages that possess case systems, virtually no utterance is possible without taking into account grammatical case. This grammatical category is very complex and its acquisition is an enormously arduous task for learners whose native language does not possess a case system or a case system that is not as pronounced as it is in the target language. According to Janda (2002), “the meanings of grammatical cases are probably the biggest obstacle faced by students …

Appraisal Theory: Old And New Questions, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

I describe my current thinking on two old questions—the causal role of appraisals and the relationship of appraisal theories to basic emotions theories and constructivist theories, and three (sort of) new questions—the completeness of appraisals, the role of language, and the development of automaticity in emotional responses.

Universal Reading Processes Are Modulated By Language And Writing System, Charles A. Perfetti, Lindsay N. Harris

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

The connections among language, writing system, and reading are part of what confronts a child in learning to read. We examine these connections in addressing how reading processes adapt to the variety of written language and how writing adapts to language. The first adaptation (reading to writing), as evidenced in behavioral and neuroscience data, is achieved through a universal constraint that language places on writing and through the tuning of reading procedures imposed by specific features of writing systems. Children acquire skill in reading through increasing specialization of procedures tuned to their writing system, while also acquiring more general (universal) …

Individualized Project-Based Reading And Its Effect On Students’ Reading Habits And Beliefs, Filip Zachoval

Russian Language Journal

In recent years, a number of empirical and conceptual studies about Project-Based Learning (PBL) have presented consistent arguments rationalizing this approach to language learning and teaching. However, there are no known studies available on PBL in the Russian language classroom. This article presents the results of a qualitative research study that investigates incorporating an individualized reading project into a third-semester Russian classroom. Within the movement of studentcentered pedagogies, the overall purpose of this study was: (a) to implement a reading project into a third-semester university Russian language class and (b) to provide an analysis of some of the educational gains …

Key Indicators Of Language Impact On Identity Formation In Belarus, Tony Brown

Russian Language Journal

In 1986, a group of 28 intellectuals from Belarus wrote the following brief letter to then-General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev: “Language is the soul of a nation, the supreme manifestation of its cultural identity, the foundation of its true spiritual life. A nation lives and flourishes in history while its language lives. With the decline of the language, culture withers and atrophies, the nation ceases to exist as a historical organism” (Letters to Gorbachev, 1987).

Review Essay: Popularizing Russian Language, Michael S. Gorham

Russian Language Journal

In an era rife with complaints over the degradation of language in the face of a host of commonly cited bugaboos (inferior schools, lazy pupils, declining morals, insidious new media technologies), one can only be heartened by the fact that language and language usage continue to be a source of popular discussion and debate. Even in American culture, where reverence for the national tongue has historically paled compared to the likes of France and Russia, one can find regular language-related rubrics in both print and broadcast media (e.g. “Word on the Street” and “Week in Words” [Wall St. Journal], “On …

Using A Corpus-Based Approach To Russian As A Foreign Language Materials Development, Edie Furniss

Russian Language Journal

The increase in availability and sophistication of corpora in recent years has facilitated the application of usage-based approaches to language pedagogy. Although the use of corpus data is certainly not without its difficulties, it offers great pedagogical promise. Corpora, consisting of natural language culled from a multitude of sources and genres, provide valuable information about language in use. While a corpus can provide us with contextualized linguistic data and statistics on the behavior of lexicon (with respect to frequency and collocation), a connection needs to be forged between the data and their practical use. Two main areas ripe for the …

Our Russian Classrooms And Students: Who Is Choosing Russian, Why, And What Cultural Content Should We Offer Them?, Jason Merrill

Russian Language Journal

Language instructors are well aware of the many challenges facing our profession. Financial pressures and fluctuating enrollments have caused many institutions to look critically at their language programs and curricula. Adding to these concerns is the lingering sentiment in some areas that foreign languages are not something that “you (really) need to know,” as Lawrence Summers stated in 2012 (Summers). Colleagues have produced impassioned defenses of the many benefits of language study (e.g. Geisler 2012), but ultimately we, as a profession, need to combine such efforts with the most effective and relevant language instruction we can provide. Geisler is not …

Virtual Teams And Intercultural Ethics: Preventative Measures For Ethical Dilemmas, Rebecca Blanton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the ethical challenges faced by technical communicators working in global virtual teams. Virtual teams usage are becoming increasingly more popular and diverse. As a result, it is valuable for technical communicators to understand and recognize the challenges that are faced within global virtual teams in order to find solutions and preventive measures for these challenges. The ethical challenges present in global virtual teams were determined by examining the literature on virtual teams and intercultural ethics and conducting a survey of practicing technical communicators who have experience in virtual teams. The purpose of the survey was to determine …

Contextual Factors, Bilingualism And English Language Learning Among A Group Of Primary School Pupils In Nigeria, Nkechi M.Christopher

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Contextual factors impinge directly and indirectly on second language learning through its influence on attitudes towards, and motivation to learn, a language among learners of a target language. This paper describes language learning situation, bilingual behaviour and academic performance of some primary school pupils. It suggests that learners’ independent use of digital and literacy activities could be harnessed for multimodal teaching where digital learning facilities have not been provided by the school. The researcher believes that such inclusion would encourage autonomous and collaborative learning among students; empowering learners to take responsibility for their own language learning – an attitude toward …

Biases In Children's Cognitive Styles: Investigating Local, Global, And Rule-Based Processing In Autism Spectrum Disorders And Typical Development, Sandra Beatriz Vanegas

Dissertations

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is classified as a pervasive developmental disorder that presents a triad of impairments across communication, social behavior, and restricted interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). To date, many attempts have been made to explain the cognitive profiles of children and adults with ASD. Three prominent theories, Weak Central Coherence (Frith, 1989), Systemizing (Baron-Cohen, 2002), and Executive Dysfunction Theory (Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996), may together provide a plausible explanation for the cognitive biases of individuals with ASD.

Weak Central Coherence (WCC) Theory proposes that individuals with ASD have difficulty learning new information due to a fixation towards local …

Speech And Language Processes In Children Who Stutter Compared To Those Who Do Not Within An Oral Narrative Task, Sarah Pillar

Theses : Honours

Background and Purpose: Language ability in children who stutter has been linked to the occurrence of stuttering, however, the validity of research supporting this connection has been recently questioned. Previous research, within this area, has been limited by methodological confounds, such as lack of appropriately matched comparison groups, and the use of measures with insufficient sensitivity to potentially examine the subtle differences between children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS). Frequent hesitations or pauses are defining characteristics of the speech of people who stutter. However, little is known about the nature and frequency of the pauses …

All Things Forget The Forest: The Convergence Of The War And The Pastoral In Edward Thomas's Body Of Work, Nicole Trobaugh

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Edward Thomas, often identified as a war poet, eludes definitive characterization despite the fact that his poems are often anthologized as war poems. However, unlike other widely-known war poets, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, the imagery present in Thomas's poetry contains much subtlety and features dominant usage of nature themes. This project attempts to navigate the multi-faceted world of Edward Thomas through consideration of his love for nature, his melancholic predispositions, and his preoccupations with the looming Great War in order to study Thomas's use of natural imagery in the context of grief, melancholy, and traumatic experience. To …

Addressing The Higher Level Language Skills For The Common Core State Standards In Kindergarten, Ashley Bourque Meaux

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Kindergarten is a critical year, providing a foundation for children’s success in school. With a common set of standards, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), finalized and made available to states for adoption critical skills in numeracy and literacy will be uniformed from kindergarten through high school. Some children enter school with a sufficient foundation to support success in kindergarten and subsequent years. However, some children either because of lack of exposure during preschool years (e.g., Aikens & Barbarin, 2008; Hart & Risley, 1995; Schacter, 1979; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998) or because of language delays associated with developmental disabilities …

The Effects Of Morphophonic Faces As A Method For Teaching Sight Words, Ashley Jean Williams

LSU Master's Theses

Previous studies exploring the use of superimposed pictures for sight word learning provide mixed results, with inconclusive benefits. One criticism is that even when sight word learning is enhanced, it does not improve the learner’s use of the alphabetic principle. A second criticism is that it is only feasible for easily depicted words. This study addressed these criticisms by using pictured sight words representing a hybrid between alphabet and sight word learning, MorphoPhonic Faces (MPF). MPF have the first letter drawn in the mouth of a face suggesting speech production cues. Thus, participants were provided alphabet cues first and then …

Language, Politics, And History: An Introductory Essay, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This book chapter examines different articulations of language and history and introduces a new configuration that focuses on the political dimension of language.

Effects Of Hypertension And Diabetes On Sentence Comprehension In Aging, Dalia Cahana-Amitay, Martin Albert, Emmanuel Ojo, Jesse Sayers, Mira Goral, Loraine Obler, Avron Spiro Iii

Publications and Research

Objectives. To assess the impact of hypertension and diabetes mellitus on sentence comprehension in older adults.

Method. Two hundred and ninety-five adults aged 55 to 84 (52% men) participated in this study. Self-report mail survey combined with medical evaluations were used to determine eligibility. Multiple sources were used to determine whether hypertension and diabetes were present or absent and controlled or uncontrolled. Sentence comprehension was evaluated with two tasks: embedded sentences (ES) and sentences with multiple negatives (MN). Outcome measures were percent accuracy and mean reaction time of correct responses on each task.

Results. Regression models adjusted for age, gender, …

Hemispheric Processing Of Vocal Emblem Sounds, Yael Neumann-Werth, Erika Levy, Loraine Obler

Publications and Research

Vocal emblems, such as shh and brr, are speech sounds that have linguistic and nonlinguistic features; thus, it is unclear how they are processed in the brain. Five adult dextral individuals with left-brain damage and moderate– severe Wernicke’s aphasia, five adult dextral individuals with right-brain damage, and five Controls participated in two tasks: (1) matching vocal emblems to photographs (‘picture task’) and (2) matching vocal emblems to verbal translations (‘phrase task’). Cross-group statistical analyses on items on which the Controls performed at ceiling revealed lower accuracy by the group with left-brain damage (than by Controls) on both tasks, and …