Digital Commons Network^™

Using Eye Tracking To Examine Working Memory And Verbal Feature Processing In Spanish, Erik William Arnold

Theses and Dissertations

Second language acquisition (SLA) has been a dominant field in linguistics research over the past several decades. In this field, researchers have investigated what makes learning the grammar of a second language difficult and they have identified many factors that may contribute to this difficulty, including agreement processing. In linguistic terms, agreement refers to the necessary covariation of grammatical features between two of more syntactic constituents. In prior years of agreement processing research, some authors examined how native speakers process varying grammatical features (e.g. number and gender) in agreement relations. In recent years, however, they have turned towards L2 learners …

Effects Of Peer-Tutoring On Language Attitudes, Maintenance, And Motivation Among 31 Native And Heritage Spanish-Speaking Adolescents At A Utah Valley High School, Rachel Marie Eaton

Theses and Dissertations

This 16-week long, observational study examined the effects of Spanish peer-tutoring on first language attitudes, maintenance, and motivation among native and heritage Spanish-speaking adolescents. In this study, 31 high school students from two ‘Spanish for Native and Heritage Speakers" classes peer-tutored second-year Spanish learners for an average of fifty minutes per week. The native/heritage Spanish-speaking students took a pre and post language attitudes, maintenance, and motivation survey and they completed two reflections during the course of the study. The native/heritage Spanish-speaking participants demonstrated a significant positive increase in language attitudes towards their native language, they also reported increased motivation to …

Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Studying Spanish And Construction In Tandem, Daniel Joseph Eide

Construction Management

Does Spanish bilingualism have measurable fiscal value in the U.S. construction industry? Studying and becoming proficient in Spanish is feasible, affordable, and can be accomplished at Cal Poly in conjunction with a Construction Management major. In a dynamic industry that values versatile employees, where communication is key to success, the capability of speaking Spanish is a substantial value-add in the workforce. Using qualitative and quantitative data analysis, it is concluded that individuals who possess English and Spanish-speaking abilities in the U.S. construction industry can expect a 3 percent wage premium when compared to English-only speakers. This study weighs the costs …

Using Google Translate To Prepare Discharge Instructions: Spanish-Speaking Patients With Limited English Proficiency In The Emergency Department, Alexis Cordone

Master's Theses

The purpose of this project is to evaluate whether Google Translate can be used to accurately translate discharge instructions from English to Spanish, and whether native speakers prefer translations provided by a certified interpreter or Google Translate upon leaving the Emergency Department. In order to study this question, 211 patient charts with discharge instructions in English were translated by a certified human interpreter and by Google Translate; then, those translations were analyzed by two independent reviewers who counted the number of errors in each translation. The human translations contained substantially less errors than those provided by Google Translate, and the …

A Bilingual Approach To Pediatric Occupational Therapy: The Importance Of Communication Between Providers & Spanish-Speaking Families In Northwest Arkansas, Emily Ann Davidson

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Undergraduate Honors Theses

Due to the demographic demands of Northwest Arkansas and the prevalence of disparities in health care, this study aims to assess the current practices, perceived need, and willingness to provide bilingual Spanish-English outpatient pediatric occupational therapy options in Northwest Arkansas. The hope of this study is to better inform pediatric occupational therapy providers of the growing need for bilingual services so that they may respond appropriately in order to better serve Latino and Spanish-speaking patients and their families or caregivers.

Spanish Civil War Museum Exhibit: Five-Day Playable Case Study (Pcs), Dennis West

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

To augment the classroom language learning and practice students receive, it is beneficial to provide opportunities for authentic, unrehearsed practice in speaking, listening, reading, and writing the language of study. The Spanish Civil War Museum Exhibit 5-day Simulation is a Playable Case Study (PCS) wherein students of advanced Spanish language may develop critical literacy skills, cultural competence, and linguistic proficiency in the Spanish language. The purpose of this PCS is to immerse students in an authentic narrative that takes place within emails, video chats, and other online activities with the goal of curating a museum exhibit on the Spanish Civil …

An Exploratory Survey Of Code-Switching In The Coachella Valley, Ca, Allan K. Escobar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis surveyed a group of second generation Mexican-American Spanish-English bilingual speakers in the Coachella Valley, California to determine common motives for code-switching in speech. In previous studies, motives or triggers to code-switching have been identified and recorded in major urban cities such as Los Angeles and New York, and this thesis seeks to identify this phenomenon in the rural and agricultural cities of the Coachella Valley, with focus on Indio and Coachella, CA. Furthermore, another goal of this study was to analyze research on code-switching in a sample of older adults ages 45-75 as compared to much of the …

Encouraging Languages Other Than English In First-Year Writing Courses: Experiences From Linguistically Diverse Writers, Alyssa G. Cavazos

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

First-Year Writing (fyw) courses are ideal writing spaces where students' diverse identities and language resources can flourish for specific rhetorical purposes. While research has focused on multilingual students' language and writing practices, little attention has focused on self-identified multilingual students' perceptions of language difference in fyw. Because fyw courses are an integral space in students' writing experiences and an ideal place to counter English-only ideologies, this article focuses on self-identified multilingual students' perceptions of how they negotiate language practices in academic contexts in higher education and how they perceive the role of languages other than English in fyw. Self-identified multilingual …

Acquiring Native-Like Norms Of Making A Request In Spanish During Short-Term Study Abroad In Argentina And Spain, Christine H. Song

LSU Master's Theses

The current study examines if L2 learners of Spanish acquire native-like norms of making a request during short-term study abroad in Argentina and Spain via Discourse Completion Tasks (DCT). The investigation included 3 groups of the participants: an experimental group of 15 U.S. students who studied in Argentina or Spain; a control group of 12 U.S. students who had not studied abroad; and a control group of 7 native speakers of Spanish. The results show that students in the study abroad group became more native-like in making a request to a certain extent. Firstly, the students in the experimental group …

The Microvariation Of The Spanish Perfect In Three Varieties, Paz González, Margarita Jara Yupanqui, Carmen Kleinherenbrink

Department of World Languages Faculty Research

This study investigates the variability in the use of the Preterit canté (‘I sang’) and the Present Perfect he cantado (‘I have sung’) across three Spanish dialects: Peninsular (PEN), Peruvian (PER) and Argentinian (AR). For this purpose, we analyze the effect of type of context and temporal adverbials on the selection of these two forms. The corpus has been obtained through online questionnaires, comprising a total of thirty-two exercises that evaluate the use of the two verb forms in the following contexts: continuative, relevance of present, life experience, prehodiernal context and without temporal adverbs. The results of this research seek …

The Processing Of Input With Differential Objectmarking By Heritage Spanish Speakers, Jill Jegerski, Irina A. Sekerina

Publications and Research

Heritage Spanish speakers and adult immigrant bilinguals listened to wh-questions with the differential object marker a (quién/a quién ‘who/whoACC’) while their eye movements across four referent pictures were tracked. The heritage speakers were less accurate than the adult immigrants in their verbal responses to the questions, leaving objects unmarked for case at a rate of 18%, but eye movement data suggested that the two groups were similar in their comprehension, with both starting to look at the target picture at the same point in the question and identifying the target sooner with a quién ‘whoACC’ than with quién ‘who’ questions.

Variable Neutralization Of The Tap/Trill Contrast In A Bilingual Spanish-Creole Community, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Best Practices For Teaching Social Studies In The Secondary Dual-Language Immersion Setting, Jonathan Mitchell

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teaching Social Studies in the Dual-Language Immersion setting provides unique challenges and opportunities. This paper’s introduction provides a brief explanation of the classifications, terminology and history of Dual Language Immersion programs in the United States and in Minnesota. The literature review is divided into five sections, each covering a significant challenge for secondary social studies teachers in the Dual Language Immersion program. The first section reviews best practices for teaching historical thinking skills in the immersion setting. Those best practices include implementing a specific framework for analyzing primary sources and content-obligatory and content-compatible vocabulary for each unit. The second section …

Language Contact And Divergent Paths Of Variation: Bilingual Rhotics In Two Island Communities, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

In the Caribbean Archipelago of San Andres, Colombia, Spanish coexists with an English-based creole known as Islander. This paper examines the outcomes of language contact in terms of the variable production of bilingual rhotics in two settings where contact with Spanish has taken place differently: the island of San Andres was declared a free-duty port in 1953, thus encouraging commercial expansion and greater contact with Continental Spanish, the immigrant language; on the other hand, Old Providence, its sister island, has far less day-to-day interaction with Spanish speakers, and as such Islander is still prevalent in most life aspects of native …

"Our Roots:": Latinx Parents' Language Ideologies Concerning Bilingualism, Akanne S. Torres Beltran

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Language is a fundamental component of one's identity, as well as a means of surviving in a globalizing world. This study draws upon sixteen narratives of first-generation Mexican and Puerto Rican parents in Central Florida to answer the research question: What are the language ideologies of Mexican and Puerto Rican immigrant parents towards the English Language acquisition and Spanish Language retention of their children? The information was gathered through semi-structured interviews and it aimed to learn how and if they value English and Spanish bilingualism and whether it was desired for their children. On the one hand, they are aware …

Development Of A Spanish Version Of The Main Concept Analysis For Analyzing Oral Disordered Discourse, Karla Simonet

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Aphasia is an acquired language impairment caused by damage in the regions of the brain that support language. The Main Concept Analysis (MCA) is a published formal assessment battery that allows the quantification of the presence, accuracy, completeness, and efficiency of content in spoken discourse produced by persons with aphasia (PWA). It utilizes a sequential picture description task (with four sets of pictures) for language sample elicitation. The MCA results can also be used clinically for targeting appropriate interventions of aphasic output. The purpose of this research is to develop a Spanish adaptation of the MCA by establishing normative data …

Second Language Recall In Methods Of Learning, Maria Garza

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This dissertation examined the relationship between the acquisition and recall of English language vocabulary. This study explored 2 different learning recall strategies to determine which approach was the quickest or more efficient way to remember vocabulary words. Previous researchers had focused on learning a second language phonetically and had not explored different instructional strategies to study the most useful or quickest way to learn a second language for adults. However, there remains an important gap in the current research regarding how to present different methods of instruction to acquire a new second language more rapidly. The purpose of this study …

System Challenges For Bilingual Clinical Social Work In Forensic Settings, Roberto G. Arroyo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Little information exists about challenges that bilingual clinical social workers face when engaging individuals with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) in forensic settings, which may influence the efficacy of services provided. Bilingual clinical social workers in the U.S. state of South Carolina lack operational guidelines to assist people with LEP who are involved in forensic matters. The purpose of this study was to explore challenges that affect delivery of bilingual clinical social work to people with LEP in forensic settings. Ecological systems theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. Purposive and snowball sampling methods led to the participation of …

Over, Under And Around: Spanish Heritage Speakers' Production (And Avoidance) Of Subjunctive Mood, David Giancaspro

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

The present study explores the subjunctive mood production of 29 heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish (17 advanced proficiency and 12 intermediate proficiency) and 14 Spanish-dominant controls (SDCs). All participants completed a Contextualized Elicited Production Task (CEPT), which tested their oral production of both lexically-selected (intensional) and contextually-selected (polarity) mood morphology in Spanish. Between-group analyses of the CEPT reveal that the HSs diverge significantly from the SDCs in subjunctive production, specifically by underproducing, overproducing, and avoiding subjunctive mood morphology. Despite these differences, however, the HSs still exhibited sensitivity to mood, producing significantly more subjunctive mood in expected subjunctive contexts than in …

Brechas En La Enseñanza De La Cultura Del Español Como Segunda Lengua, Elizabeth Mary Maldonado

Master's Theses

Esta investigación analiza el contenido cultural de cuatro libros de texto de español como L2 (segunda lengua) a nivel principiante publicados en los últimos siete años. La cultura suele estar presentada con poca profundidad por dos razones: hay más enfoque en conceptos de gramática y vocabulario y es un reto encontrar recursos auténticos a nivel principiante. Para investigar este problema, uso como guía las directrices del Método Comunicativo (MC) de Lee y VanPatten (2003) de la enseñanza de cultura. Además investigo si los libros presentan actividades con la cultura integrada, si es material que enseña "Cultura" o "cultura" y si …

Grammatical Error Types Using A Picture Description Task In English And Spanish With Young Children, Lisa Valles

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Purpose: The current study was part of a larger project examining diagnostic accuracy of various assessment tools for bilingual children living in a border community. The purpose of this project was to examine language sample measures in young children using a picture description task (Eisenberg & Guo, 2013) by answering the following questions:

1. What were the frequent types of errors exhibited by young children in English and Spanish?

2. Were there distinct types of grammatical errors across languages in bilingual children?

Methods: Participants were recruited from a large city on the US/Mexico border. There were 47 participants in the …

Dp Internal Codeswitching By Spanish And English Bilinguals In The Us, Yurena Castaño-Nuñez

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Codeswitching studies the boundaries that exist at all linguistic levels when a speaker switches between two or more languages in a single moment of speech.

(i) En el restaurante he pedido la big hamburguesa.

‘At the restaurant I have ordered the big hamburger.’

(ii) Juan conoce la highway para llegar a Washington D.C.

‘Juan knows the highway to get to Washington D.C.’

(iii) A Carmen no le gustan los pantalones cortos. A ella le gustan los long ones.

‘Carmen doesn’t like short pants. She likes the long ones.’

This thesis concentrates on the study of switches between adjectives and Noun …

Explaining Cross-Language Asymmetries In Prosodic Processing: The Cue-Driven Window Length Hypothesis, Marta Ortega-Llebaria, Daniel J. Olson, Alba Tuninetti

School of Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Cross-language studies have shown that English speakers use suprasegmental cues to lexical stress less consistently than speakers of Spanish and other Germanic languages ; accordingly, these studies have attributed this asymmetry to a possible trade-off between the use of vowel reduction and suprasegmental cues in lexical access. We put forward the hypothesis that this “cue trade-off” modulates intonation processing as well, so that English speakers make less use of suprasegmental cues in comparison to Spanish speakers when processing intonation in utterances causing processing asymmetries between these two languages. In three cross-language experiments comparing English and Spanish speakers’ prediction of hypo-articulated …

Spanish Translation And Validation Of The Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire, Caroline Silva, Gabriela Hurtado, Chelsey Hartley, José N. Rangel, Joseph D. Hovey, Jeremy W. Pettit, Paloma Chorot, Rosa M. Valiente, Bonifacio Sandín, Thomas E. Joiner

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

The present study reports the multistage development and evaluation of a Spanish translation of the Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire (INQ). The INQ measures the constructs of thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness, which the interpersonal theory of suicide proposes are proximal causes of suicidal desire. Participants were bilingual Hispanic college students in the United States (n = 56), heritage Spanish-speaking college students in the United States (n = 281), college students in Spain (n = 1,016), psychiatric inpatients in Mexico (n = 181), college students in Mexico (n = 239), and Spanish-speaking U.S. adults (n = …

Investigating Gender Assignment Strategies In Mixed Purepecha–Spanish Nominal Constructions, Kate Bellamy, M. Carmen Parafita Couto, Hans Stadthagen-Gonzalez

Faculty Publications

Purepecha has no grammatical gender, whereas Spanish has a binary masculine–feminine system. In this paper we investigate how early sequential Purepecha–Spanish bilinguals assign gender to Purepecha nouns inserted into an otherwise Spanish utterance, using a director-matcher production task and an online forced-choice acceptability judgement task. The results of the production task indicate a strong preference for masculine gender, irrespective of the gender of the noun’s translation equivalent, the so-called “masculine default” option. Participants in the comprehension task were influenced by the orthography of the Purepecha noun in the -a ending condition, leading them to assign feminine gender agreement to nouns …

Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction Of The Masses, Aurélie Vialette

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction of the Masses by Aurélie Vialette examines the practice of philanthropy in modern Spain. Through detailed studies of popular music, collective readings, dramas, working-class manuals, and fiction, Vialette reveals how depictions of urban philanthropic activities can inform our understanding of interactions in the economic, cultural, religious, and educational spheres, class power dynamics, and gender roles in urban Spanish society.

Effects Of An Elementary Immersion Program On Academic Achievement In Core Subject Areas, Marlee Schmidt

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This study sought to find out if students who became bilingual score

higher, lower, or the same on standardized tests as their monolingual peers across

multiple disciplines. An answer was obtained by comparing the Minnesota

Comprehensive Assessment scores of Spanish language immersion students to

scores of non-immersion students for the following subject areas: reading in

grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10; math in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11; and science

in 5, 8, and high school. The scores used came from a graduating class of 2018

with approximately 342 students. Data was analyzed …

The Effect Of A Multisensory Approach To Spanish Instruction On The Foreign Language Proficiency Of Students With Learning Disabilities, Linda Chui

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of a multisensory approach to Spanish instruction founded in Orton-Gillingham on the (1) foreign language writing, and (2) foreign language reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities in the middle school Spanish classroom. Additionally, the study inquired about the students' satisfaction with the Orton-Gillingham approach to learning to read in Spanish. Four middle school Spanish students with SLD, three male and one female, participated in the study. A single subject ABAB design was used. During the baseline phases, students received Spanish instruction in the traditional mainstream classroom. During the intervention, …

Preservice Teachers Perceptions Of Literature: A Study In A University Spanish Literature Class For Future Spanish Teachers, Stephanie Chantall Harrison

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study gave insight on the benefits that a university literature course for future Spanish teachers could contribute to preservice teachers as part of their preparation program. Nine university students participated in this study as they were the ones enrolled in this first-time offered university literature course for Spanish teachers. Data were collected from pre- and post-questionnaires, journals, and course observations. The findings suggested that the preservice teachers grew in pedagogical content knowledge, literary content, resources and strategies, and felt an overall sense of preparedness to use literary sources in their future classrooms

Preservice Teachers Perceptions Of Literature:A Study In A University Spanish Literature Class For Future Spanish Teachers, Stephanie Chantall Harrison

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study gave insight on the benefits that a university literature course for future Spanish teachers could contribute to preservice teachers as part of their preparation program. Nine university students participated in this study as they were the ones enrolled in this first-time offered university literature course for Spanish teachers. Data were collected from pre- and post-questionnaires, journals, and course observations. The findings suggested that the preservice teachers grew in pedagogical content knowledge, literary content, resources and strategies, and felt an overall sense of preparedness to use literary sources in their future classrooms