Digital Commons Network^™

Assessment And Diagnosis Of Autism Spectrum Disorder In Latino Children, Gesenia S. Sloan-Peña

Theses and Dissertations

There is an increase in the number of children who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. However, significant racial and ethnic disparities exist in the diagnosis and treatment of the disorder. Based on the literature, Latino children appear to be under diagnosed or misdiagnosed with other psychological disorders rather than autism spectrum disorder. In addition, Latino children are typically diagnosed at a later age than their White peers. There is almost no research devoted to the assessment of autism spectrum disorder with young Latino children and there is insufficient research related to cultural perceptions of symptoms which can influence parental …

A Comparison Of Maze Frequency And Type Across Language And Speaker: A Look At English And Spanish Narrative Retells, Melissa Silver

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: Mazes, as they are referred to in the language literature, are disfluencies that do not add meaning to an utterance including filled pauses, whole word revisions, part word revisions, part word repetitions and whole word repetitions. Extensive research has been conducted on mazes in monolingual and bilingual children, yet the research has not been extended to adults' narrative retell production.

Aims: The current study analyzes monolingual English, monolingual Spanish, and bilingual English and Spanish narrative retells to compare the percent of maze use and type of maze use amongst groups.

Methods & Procedures: The narrative retells of thirty-nine bilingual …

Tuteo O Ustedeo: Un Estudio De Las Formas De Tratamiento En Las Publicidades De Escaparates / Tutoiement Ou Vouvoiement: Une Etude Des Formes D'Adresse Dans Les Publicités Des Vitrines, Charlotte M. Klein

Senior Independent Study Theses

In both French and Spanish, there exist two pronouns of the second person singular form of address: tu/vous and tú/usted, respectively. While the first of each pair is typically considered the ‘informal’ pronoun of address, the second is more ‘formal’, creating a complicated distinction that every person must resolve when speaking. This project analyzes the difficulty of choosing between the two forms of address through the lens of politeness theory, emphasizing the concepts of solidarity and power as well as other important factors that contribute to this complex decision. To show how the pronouns are …

Pretérito Vs. Imperfecto: Variación En La Producción Lingüística De Los Mexicanos En El Sur De Luisiana., Jose Fernando Rojas

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT This thesis addresses the linguistic production of Spanish preterit and imperfect in the Mexican community that reside at the south of the state of Louisiana. More precisely in Baton Rouge, Scott and Lafayette. Other literature have worked this topic noticing a variation while the past tense is used, among others are Silva-Corvalán (1994) noticed that the Mexican community in Los Ángeles, California uses the imperfect in preterit context with stative verbs. Montrul (2009), on the other hand, notices similar behavior in heritage speakers and Delgado-Díaz (2013) suggested that same behavior in the use of these forms can be seen …

Incorporating New Areas Of Business Into Business Language Studies: Social Media Marketing, Annie Abbott

Global Business Languages

Despite the fact that social media marketing has established itself as a vital area of marketing for businesses both large and small, global and local, Business Language Studies (BLS) has yet to turn its full attention to this business activity that requires a keen sense of language, culture, and business. As BLS continues to build and articulate its theoretical and methodological grounds, social media marketing provides rich research and teaching possibilities. However, social media is a dynamic, constantly changing environment that can seem intimidating to BLS educators who are unfamiliar with its platforms and uses. This article serves as an …

Foreign Language News, Georgia Southern University

World Languages & Cultures: News & Publications (2013-2023)

• Dr. Dolores Rangel published in Tema y variaciones de literatura
• Dr. Marcela Ruiz-Funes published in book

• Teresa Buzo Salas published in La Voz Latina

What Predicts The Effectiveness Of Foreign Language Pronunciation Instruction?: Investigating The Role Of Perception And Other Individual Differences, Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

This study investigated second language (L2) learners’ perception of L2 sounds as an individual difference that predicted their improvement in pronunciation after receiving instruction. Learners were given explicit pronunciation instruction in a series of modules added to their Spanish as a foreign language curriculum and were then tested on their pronunciation accuracy. Their perception of the target sounds was measured with an AX discrimination task. Though the best predictor of pronunciation posttest score was pretest score, perception made a unique and significant contribution. The other factors associated with better pronunciation of some L2 sounds were time spent using Spanish outside …

A Comparison Of Student Achievement In The Second Language Acquisition Of Spanish In Both Total Online And Traditional College Level Courses, Vanessa P. F. Crump

Georgia Educational Research Association Conference

This quantitative, comparable study examined student achievement in online and traditional on-campus college level courses in SPAN 1001 and SPAN 1002 through an ex-post facto model of study. This area of study yielded little research and provided a unique view into course achievement. In this particular study, there were two types of final exams examined, the final oral exam and the final written exam. The study took place at a two-year college in middle Georgia. The student population included college level students that enrolled in the courses over a six-semester period. The students varied in age, previous foreign language background, …

The Effect Of Explicit Instruction On The Perception Of Spanish Stops By Speakers Of Korean, Paul J. Coats

Theses and Dissertations

Many studies have been conducted on the influence of explicit phonetic instruction on speech perception and production of English as a second (L2) and foreign (FL) language (e.g. Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada & Tohkura, 1997; Derwing, Munro & Wiebe, 1998), some of which have focused on Spanish as a FL learned by American students whose first or native language (L1) is English (e.g. Elliot, 1997; Lord, 2005). Nonetheless, research has only recently been carried out on third language (L3) perception, with an even greater scarcity of studies that have focused on non-native speakers of English (e.g. Llama, Cardoso & Collins, 2008; …

Phonetics Instruction Improves Learners' Perception Of L2 Sounds, Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Explicit phonetics instruction can help second language (L2) learners to moderately improve their pronunciation, but less is known about how the instruction affects learners’ perception, even though there is evidence that perception and pronunciation are related. This study provided phonetics instruction to students (n = 46) studying Spanish as a foreign language and measured the resulting change in their perception of eight target phones as compared with a control group (n = 41). Perception was assessed with discrimination tests immediately following instruction and three weeks later. Results indicated that the instruction conferred a small advantage in the delayed …

Brazil’S Economic, Social, And Political Legacy From World Cup Is Decidedly Mixed, Gregory Scruggs

NotiSur

No abstract provided.

Identity And Language Perceptions Among Second-Generation Spanish Speakers In Miami, Elizabeth G. Lanier

Open Access Theses

This study explored how second-generation Spanish speakers in South Florida imagine Miami in sociolinguistic terms, how linguistic identity is constructed within and outside of Miami, and how perceived language ideologies, labels, and stereotypes affect identity construction. The analysis was based upon semi-structured, open-ended interviews with thirteen young adults (ages 20-28) born in Miami, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from a Latin American country. The theoretical framework relied upon Anderson’s (1991) notion of imagined communities. Participants often contextualized their identity not only as English-speaking U.S. citizens, but also as members of their heritage country, and within the imagined Hispanic community …

Connecting Curriculum To Context: Our Story Of Two Liberal Arts College Spanish Programs Engaged In A Changing South, Laura Barbas Rhoden, Julee Tate

PRISM: A Journal of Regional Engagement

The purpose of this article is to reflect upon the process by which two professors in Spanish programs at small liberal arts colleges in the southeastern United States developed courses with civic engagement components that enabled our students to engage with the local Hispanic community in meaningful ways. From the outset, we focused on what we saw as an opportunity for connecting the curriculum we taught to our specific regional context, which had been shaped by new immigration patterns that brought large populations of Latin Americans to our region during the 1990s. We also explain how our interactions with local …

The Influence Of Pseudo-Relatives On Attachment Preferences In Spanish, David Branco-Moreno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper presents the results from an off-line experiment on the extent to which the availability of pseudo-relatives modulates attachment preferences in Spanish. Participants were presented with sentences in which different syntactic and semantic factors had been manipulated to allow for either both a pseudo-relative (PR) and a relative-clause (RC) reading or a RC reading only. All the experimental items included two potential antecedents with which the constituents of interest could be associated. The experimental items can be divided into four groups: group 1 consists of stimuli allowing for a double reading in direct object position, and groups 2, 3 …

Se Puede Y Se Debe: Educating Heritage Students, Edward Pinto, Itzia Luna, Isaac Meza

Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)

Teaching heritage students requires a wide variety of best practices that focus on the development of the students’ vocabulary, cultural competence, and grammar, in addition to the four language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). I will focus on the best practices of encouraging students to read many genres, providing a range of writing topics, assigning oral interviews with the community, and granting students the freedom to speak both English and Spanish in the classroom. Another effective teaching strategy for heritage language learners is using a macro-approach.

Se Puede Y Se Debe: Educating Heritage Students, Isaac Meza, Itzia Luna, Edward Pinto

Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)

There are many challenges in teaching heritage language learners because of the different levels of linguistic proficiency, cultural competence and identity. In the case of Spanish heritage speakers in the Central Washington region, most of them share a common background: their families come from rural areas in Mexico, and therefore, speak a Spanish vernacular that stigmatizes them. While some critics argue that it is important to teach a formal variety of Spanish and improve students’ writing skills, Kim Potowski (2002) contends that error correction should not be the framework. It would be more beneficial if heritage language teachers expanded their …

On Spanish Loanword And Loanblends In Hawai'i Creole English, Robert N. Smead

Faculty Publications

Hawai'i Creole English (HCE) has been the object of much linguistic research. Virtually all researchers agree that its principal lexical sources include English, Hawaiian and Japanese. Other languages, such as Chinese and Portuguese, have also contributed. To date, however, few publications have considered Spanish as an important lexical source for HCE. The research reported herein attempts to remedy that oversight by considering ten putative loanwords and loanblends thought to derive from Spanish. These include ethnic markers associated with and local dishes brought by Filipino and Puerto Ricans immigrants in the early twentieth century. By documenting cultural traditions and consulting authoritative, …

Exploring The Relationship Of Motivation, Anxiety, And Virtual Worlds In The Experiences Of Two Spanish Language Learners: A Case Study, Amy Katherine Wehner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Virtual Worlds (VWs) in foreign language education are slowly becoming more popular. Many studies have looked at the affordances of these worlds and how they affect some aspects of language acquisition. However, it is still unknown to what extent, if any, these virtual worlds can play a role in affecting motivation and anxiety. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between motivation, anxiety and virtual worlds to see how participation in activities within these environments interacted in two individual language learners, Jessica and Melissa.

Using a case study approach, I observed and interviewed the two participants in …

Software Architecture And Development For Controlling A Hubo Humanoid Robot, Anne Giulia Pellicciotti

Open Access Theses

This study considers the level of involvement of participants viewing bilingual and English language TV commercials. It analyzes results from 295 non-Hispanic participants studying at a Midwestern university. In the study, participants were asked to view four commercials. Using Zaichkowsky's (1994) 10-item Personal Involvement Inventory (PII), participants scaled the advertisements on a 7-level scale. The scale evaluated participants' emotional and cognitive involvement with the ad. This between-subjects design required that participants be randomly separated into viewing all-English or all-bilingual advertisements. Findings showed no significant difference in involvement levels between bilingual or English commercials within this demographic group. Those with higher …

Clausal Complements To Attitude Predicates Cross-Linguistically: Being Glad About What You Thought You Knew, Eric Anthony Follett

Open Access Theses

In this thesis I explore the syntactic structure of emotive factive predicates in Spanish, English, Tatar, and Mayangna. I analyze emotive factive predicates of the glad type, such as (1). (1) I'm glad you liked the cake.

First, I analyze the basic structural configuration of these predicates, claiming that the clausal Source of Experience argument is a complement to the lexical head glad. This is similar to the configuration of canonical transitive attitude predicates like semi-factive know and intensional think. Second, I claim, following Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1970) and Krapova (2010), that factive heads select complements headed by a (null) …

The Roles Of First Language And Proficiency In L2 Processing Of Spanish Clitics: Global Effects, Aroline E. Seibert Hanson, Matthew T. Carlson

Modern Languages and Cultures Faculty Work

We assessed the roles of first language (L1) and second language (L2) proficiency in the processing of preverbal clitics in L2 Spanish by considering the predictions of four processing theories—the Input Processing Theory, the Unified Competition Model, the Amalgamation Model, and the Associative-Cognitive CREED. We compared the performance of L1 English (typologically different from Spanish) to L1 Romanian (typologically similar to Spanish) speakers from various L2 Spanish proficiency levels on an auditory sentence-processing task. We found main effects of proficiency, condition, and L1 and an interaction between proficiency and condition. Although we did not find an interaction between L1 and …

Los Abismos Del Cainismo: La Sima De José María Merino, Stephen D. Gingerich

World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

L2 Perception Of Spanish Palatal Variants Across Different Tasks, Christine Shea, Jeffrey Renaud

Spanish: Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works

While considerable dialectal variation exists, almost all varieties of Spanish exhibit some sort of alternation in terms of the palatal obstruent segments. Typically, the palatal affricate [ɟʝ] tends to occur in word onset following a pause and in specific linear phonotactic environments. The palatal fricative [ʝ] tends to occur in syllable onset in other contexts. We show that listeners’ perceptual sensitivity to the palatal alternation depends upon the task and exposure to Spanish input. For native Spanish listeners, the palatal alternation boosts segmentation accuracy on an artificial speech segmentation task and also reduces latencies on a phonotactically-conditioned elision task. L2 …

Promoting Understanding Of Special Education Procedural Safeguards Through A Parental Workshop, Alejandra Revilla-Rico

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

By law, parents of children with disabilities must receive their Procedural Safeguards every time their student is going to be evaluated, re-evaluated, or considered for a change of disability identification or placement. Special Education teachers provide parents with a copy of Procedural Safeguards in their native language and provide an oral explanation of the safeguards. These efforts are often not enough for parents to understand their rights. This study analyzed the impact of providing a workshop on Procedural Safeguards for Spanish speaking parents. The research also examined parent's perception in regards to participation in IEPs. The results suggest that the …

Language-Change And Language-Mixing In A Proactive Interference Task, Candice Frances

Theses & ETDs

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on studying bilingualism and how it affects cognition. Nevertheless, little is known about the role of bilingualism in working memory. In an attempt to understand the way that language is encoded in memory, the current study focused on the effects of language-change and language-mixing on proactive interference. Forty Spanish-English young adult bilinguals participated in the study. Participants were given sets of four lists composed of words from the same category (e.g., animals) all in one language (Spanish or English) in the single-language condition, lists in which the first three were in …

Eyes, Ears And Guesswork: Creating Orthographic And Phonological Measures Of Vocabulary Breadth For Beginning And Advanced Spanish And Mandarin Chinese Second-Language Learners, Robert Matthew Klinkel

Theses & ETDs

Spanish is the most studied language in the U.S., and the study of Mandarin Chinese is increasing the most rapidly. Efficient measures of vocabulary acquisition, although available in other languages, are not readily available in Spanish and Chinese. Vocabulary measures are important because they help to assess learners’ receptive vocabulary breadth, or size, as well as to predict overall language ability. The X_Lex and A_Lex are standard measures of vocabulary breadth that assess two dimensions of vocabulary knowledge: the X_Lex measures orthographic, or reading knowledge, while the A_Lex measures phonological, or listening knowledge. Thus, the X_Lex better predicts reading and …

How To Conduct Business In Latin America: A Business Student's Guide To International Success, Michelle Hicks

Honors Projects

This project is a combination of studies in the fields of Spanish and International Business. The project is aimed at a specific target audience, the members of the Global Management and Leadership Society at Bowling Green State University, which aims to help prepare students for careers in International Business. The project focuses solely on Latin America which brings Spanish and International Business together. It is formatted to first delve into a brief history, then business etiquette and finally Spanish variations in the country being examined. This project may also be found electronically at https://blogs.bgsu.edu/latinamericabusiness/

El Uso Del Quechua En El Perú: Una Investigación De Identidad Y Performance Cultural, Theresa A. Renker

Honors Theses and Capstones

Utilizando varias fuentes diversas de campos de estudio diferentes, este trabajo investiga temas de autenticidad y autoridad como son relacionados a los “performances” culturales que tantas personas indígenas son forzadas dar para evitar la discriminación cultural y sobrevivir económicamente. Este proyecto se enfoca en el doble siguiente: la sociedad peruana dominante rechaza el quechua por representar atraso, mientras a la vez frecuentemente idealizándolo como reliquia del imperio inca. Generalmente quechua-hablantes del Perú no tienen el espacio ni la autoridad cultural necesarios para establecer sus propias identidades distintas. Concepciones sociales de sus culturas y formas de hablar son construidas por una …

Supporting English And Spanish Literacy Through A Family Literacy Program, Stephanie Wessels

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Family literacy studies have shown that the role of parental storybook reading has an impact on children’s success in school-based literacy instruction. However, many children who are English language learners come from homes or cultures where storybook readings are not common practice. The purpose of this qualitative research study explored the effects of an eight-week bilingual family literacy program for Latino, English learning families. Triangulation was assured through multiple sources of data: semistructured interviews conducted with participating parents; parent evaluation surveys; and researcher field notes. During the implementation of the bilingual family literacy program and the analysis of the data, …

Heritage Speakers Of Spanish In The Us Midwest: Reported Interlocutors As A Measure Of Family Language Relevance, Isabel Velázquez, Marisol Garrido, Mónica Millán

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

This article presents the results of an analysis of reported interlocutors in Spanish in a group of heritage speakers (HS), in three communities of the US Midwest. Participants were college-aged bilinguals developing their own personal and professional networks outside the direct influence of their parents. Responses are compared with those from two control groups: college-aged native speakers (NS) and college-aged second-language learners (L2). Seventy-seven per cent of HS reported speaking primarily in Spanish with 4–5 interlocutors on the week of the study. HS and NS reported more interactions in Spanish with older relatives, and more interactions with peers outside their …