Education Commons^™

Investigating Bilingual Aac Practices In Bilingual Communities, Johanna R. Salisbury

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates best practices for teaching and supporting bilingual augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) users as they develop their communication skills. Although there are guidelines that inform best practices for teaching and supporting bilingual AAC users, there is very little information on what these practices look like. This thesis investigates the techniques and strategies that bilingual speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who practice in Catalunya, a bilingual community in northeastern Spain, use to evaluate, teach, and support people who use pictogram-based AAC modalities to communicate.

To do this, six SLPs who practice in Catalunya participated in interviews regarding their practices when …

The Acquisition Of Advanced Level Chinese Heritage Language (Chl) Learners：A Comparative Analysis Concerning The Aspect Marker “Le了”, Jingjing Ao

Masters Theses

Over the decades, research on heritage language learners has been quite popular, but most studies concern Russian, Spanish and other languages rather than Chinese. The Chinese heritage language learner’s studies focus mainly on K-12 students and their learning motivations, writing characteristics, and identification recognition and those concerned with language acquisition address their vocabulary and verbal Chinese development. There have been very few studies about learning grammar. This study emphasizes on the acquisition of the aspect marker LE among advanced learners.

To investigate the acquisition characteristics of advanced CHL learners, this study adopted the advanced CHL learners as the research group …

The Role Of Translation Style In Fostering Cultural Connections Through World Literature, Bridget Baudinet

Masters Theses

While many high school English instructors in the United States teach world literature in translation, few of them explicitly present the literature as translated. High school English students would benefit from learning more about the linguistic origins of the world literature they read. This awareness would increase student understanding of the source culture and benefit their language skills. Various translation theorists have suggested methods to teach translational awareness, but few have offered advice on the type of translation to select. In my research, I examined the question of whether students would derive more cultural knowledge, and specifically language-related knowledge, by …

Kofifi/Covfefe: How The Costumes Of "Sophiatown" Bring 1950s South Africa To Western Massachusetts In 2020, Emma Hollows

Masters Theses

This thesis paper reflects upon the costume design process taken by Emma Hollows to produce a realist production of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company’s musical Sophiatown at the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts in May 2020. Sophiatown follows a household forcibly removed from their homes by the Native Resettlement Act of 1954 amid apartheid in South Africa. The paper discusses her attempts as a costume designer to strike a balance between replicating history and making artistic changes for theatre, while always striving to create believable characters.

How Students Of Japanese Perceive And Use Technology, David Rubino

Masters Theses

The role of technology in education has expanded to a near universal reality. In foreign languages the field of Technology-enhanced Language Learning, has long sought to effectively implement instruction with these tools, and often to great success, often through the guise of Computer-assisted Language Learning. However, most studies investigating the student perception of class structures incorporating technology are based on what instructors have implemented.

Students, the counterparts of instructors, often own more than one technological tool and will often employ these tools in their studies. For learners of foreign languages, certain aspects of technology are selected for various tasks based …

Translating Françoize Boucher’S Le Livre Qui T’Explique Enfin Tout Sur Les Parents For Us Audiences: Playing With Words And Images, Evgeniya Bugaeva

Masters Theses

The focus of this thesis is my translation of Le livre qui t'explique enfin tout sur les parents by Françoize Boucher from French into English. Chapter one begins with a brief history and definition of children’s literature, as well as children’s literature in translation. I discuss the subgenre of informational picturebooks—its objectives, characteristics, and current trends. What follows is a short biographic and bibliographic sketch of Françoize Boucher. Then, I discuss the content, format, style, and illustrations of Le livre qui t'explique as well as examine the work’s audience, aims, and values. Finally, I discuss my English translation of the …

Inferring Word-Meaning, Morpheme-Based, And Word-Based Second Language Vocabulary Teaching Methodologies, Qingli Liu

Masters Theses

In this study, an experiment was conducted to compare the three teaching methods: the inferring word-meaning method, the morpheme-based teaching method, and the word-based teaching method. The results showed that students taught by the inferring word-meaning method outperformed both the students taught by the morpheme-based method and the word-based method in terms of word retention. The possible reason is that the inferring word-meaning section enabled students to pay attention to and spend more time on each word. On the other hand, the disadvantage of the inferring word-meaning method is that it might not be an efficient way to teach a …

An Investigation Of Native And Non-Native Chinese Language Teachers And Their Pedagogical Advantages, Thomas Burns

Masters Theses

The motivation for this thesis stems from my own personal decade long struggle learning Mandarin Chinese. The inherent difficulty of mastering this intricate language too often will leave students feeling bewildered, confused, frustrated, and even hopeless. Having walked down this path myself, I was inspired me to investigate how the Chinese language educational landscape could be improved. What are its shortcomings? What are its strengths? How can the journeys of future Chinese language learners be made easier?

The research investigates the ongoing discussion of native and non-native speaking teachers. Teacher surveys, student surveys, student classwork, and classroom observations are utilized …