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First and Second Language Acquisition

2019

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Full-Text Articles in Education

Mindfulness And Well-Being: A Mixed Methods Study Of Bilingual Guided Meditation In Higher Education, Chieh Li, Qinghong Ann Cai, Simone Elias, Linda Wilson-Jones Dec 2019

Mindfulness And Well-Being: A Mixed Methods Study Of Bilingual Guided Meditation In Higher Education, Chieh Li, Qinghong Ann Cai, Simone Elias, Linda Wilson-Jones

Journal of Research Initiatives

This mixed-methods study investigated the acceptability and outcomes of a mindful approach to teaching a foreign language in higher education institutions. The approach included Bilingual Guided Meditation (BGM®) in the classroom to reduce students’ anxiety and foster a positive mindset. The BGM program combines bilingual positive suggestions with guided meditation and relaxing background music. Results indicated that the BGM may reduce anxiety and can improve academic performance.

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Adult Educators At The Crossroads Of Language Learning And Workforce Development: A Qualitative Study Of Teacher Agency, Liz Ging Dec 2019

Adult Educators At The Crossroads Of Language Learning And Workforce Development: A Qualitative Study Of Teacher Agency, Liz Ging

Graduate Masters Theses

Since the passage of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) in 2014, there has been renewed questioning about the nature and purpose of adult education programs in the United States, including English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). The heavy workforce development orientation of the new law is a starker manifestation of trends focused on job training which have been sweeping through the field of adult education for the last few decades. In the midst of these shifts, little research has been done to investigate what the educators charged with meeting these policy goals think about these changes, the …

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Using The Linguistic Experiences Of Youth And Their Families As Curriculum: The Language Box Project, Molly A. Perara-Lunde Ms. Nov 2019

Using The Linguistic Experiences Of Youth And Their Families As Curriculum: The Language Box Project, Molly A. Perara-Lunde Ms.

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This qualitative curricular case study investigated the implementation of a project called the Language Box in a seventh grade Humanities classroom in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I worked with the classroom teacher to design the Language Box project, which focused on the language use practices of the students and their families. We designed the project with the goal of addressing issues of home language loss, bilingualism, and English language acquisition. The students in the classroom were almost exclusively Hispanic, many came from low income families and some were undocumented. Each student acted as a researcher, investigating the language use practices in …

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Silently Struggling In A New World: Exploring English Language Learners With Language Disabilities Nov 2019

Silently Struggling In A New World: Exploring English Language Learners With Language Disabilities

Symposium of Student Scholars

With the awareness that Spanish speaking households compose a significant number of students in English language learning (ELL) programs, this researcher will be illuminating areas of academic ambiguity where language learning overshadows learning disabilities in the United States— a country with no official language. This phenomenon will be thoroughly examined using textual methodologies such as secondary analysis, theoretical study, and an extended literature review to describe how these correlations negatively impact students with English as a secondary way of expression. By emphasizing this gap within academia, it is the hope of the author that additional teacher-created resources will be readily …

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Building The Nest: How Native English Speaking Teachers (Nests) In The Tefl Field Develop Intercultural Competence, Emily S. Kraus Nov 2019

Building The Nest: How Native English Speaking Teachers (Nests) In The Tefl Field Develop Intercultural Competence, Emily S. Kraus

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The role of an English foreign language teacher requires expertise in the English language and pedagogical skills to make the learning process approachable for a variety of students. There are certain characteristics that make a person ostensibly suitable for the role such as patience, intelligence, trustworthiness and creativity. However, the development of teachers is often shaped by their certification preparation, experiences in the field of education and the lessons they learn from their students. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine how native English speaking teachers (NESTs) in Costa Rica teaching English as a foreign language develop …

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All About The American Flap, Kristin Lems Oct 2019

All About The American Flap, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

In this column, I am going to talk about the American flap, a phonological feature of the American English dialect. Those of us with backgrounds in ESL/EFL learn about this in our master’s programs, but I have found that even teachers who have taken a course in linguistics may not be aware of the flap and its important implications for listening, reading, and spelling in English (Lems, Miller, & Soro, 2017)

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American Association Of Applied Linguistics (Aaal) And Language Testing Research Colloquium (Ltrc), Magda Tigchelaar Sep 2019

American Association Of Applied Linguistics (Aaal) And Language Testing Research Colloquium (Ltrc), Magda Tigchelaar

Instructional Development Grants

My goal in attending these two conferences was to find papers that would be of interest to my Master’s level students in the MA TESOL and ESL Certificate programs. Specifically, I used some of the information presented at these conferences to share with students in my ESL Teaching Methods (TEL6310) and ESL Assessment (TEL6320), and Advanced Assessment (TEL6320) classes.

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Relationship Between Empathy And Language Proficiency In Adult Language Learners, Mika Sakai Aug 2019

Relationship Between Empathy And Language Proficiency In Adult Language Learners, Mika Sakai

Dissertations and Theses

This study reviews concepts and the mechanism of empathy, and the relationship between empathy and language proficiency, focusing on the aspect of cognitive empathy. It also discusses whether empathy levels could be developed by learning language to a highly proficient level. I compared the empathy levels between high and low proficiency second-language learners to determine if there was correlation between empathy and other factors such as gender, studying abroad, education background, and usage of a second language. I found that there was no relationship between empathy level and language proficiency level; however, there was one between empathy and gender. For …

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Engaging In A Rural Deaf Community Of Practice, Kara Gournaris Aug 2019

Engaging In A Rural Deaf Community Of Practice, Kara Gournaris

Dissertations and Theses

The number of students taking American Sign Language (ASL) at the post-secondary level continues to increase as more Deaf-related graduate programs and employment settings require fluent ASL skills. Western Oregon University (WOU) is one of the few existing programs in the United States that offers four years of ASL instruction; however, as a rural university it has limited access to a Deaf community. The problem of practice is that students often have little exposure to rich language models who are fluent in ASL, which impacts their legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) in the local Deaf communities of practice (CoPs) and reduces …

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The Semantics Of Article Acquisition, Emily G. Renie Aug 2019

The Semantics Of Article Acquisition, Emily G. Renie

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

Accurately using articles has consistently been a difficult task for English language learners as articles are often treated as solely grammatical forms rather than also recognizing as representatives of complex semantic properties. This paper aims to synthesize individual research on semantic factors which influence article acquisition and explore how they interact with each other. This paper especially focuses on how native and second language speakers of English acquire and understand the concepts of definiteness and specificity and explores these features within the framework of Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar. This paper examines the Fluctuating Hypothesis (FH) and its use as …

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Cruzar Fronteras Em Espaços Acadêmicos: Transgressing “The Limits Of Translanguaging”, Brendan H. O’Connor, Katherine S. Mortimer, Lesley Bartlett, María Teresa De La Piedra, Ana Maria Rabelo Gomes, Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Gabriela Novaro, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Char Ullman Jul 2019

Cruzar Fronteras Em Espaços Acadêmicos: Transgressing “The Limits Of Translanguaging”, Brendan H. O’Connor, Katherine S. Mortimer, Lesley Bartlett, María Teresa De La Piedra, Ana Maria Rabelo Gomes, Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Gabriela Novaro, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Char Ullman

Publications and Research

Scholarship on translanguaging and related concepts has challenged traditional assumptions about how people use their multiple languages, urging us to move beyond the boundaries of named linguistic codes and toward conceptualizations of multilingual language use as flexible use of a speaker’s whole linguistic repertoire. Critiques of this theoretical shift have included assertions of translanguaging’s conceptual and practical limits—limits to its transformative potential as well as limits to its practical use. This paper takes up, in particular, the question of why we academics may assert the value of translanguaging in schools and communities while still largely failing to move beyond monoglossic …

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Challenges Of Employing Voicethread To Enhance U.S. Collegiate Chinese Language Learners’ Oral Proficiency, Guangyan Chen, Junyu Zhang Jul 2019

Challenges Of Employing Voicethread To Enhance U.S. Collegiate Chinese Language Learners’ Oral Proficiency, Guangyan Chen, Junyu Zhang

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

The digital age in education inspires Chinese teachers to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into Chinese as a second language (CSL) curricula to enhance teaching effects. However, few studies examine the challenges that teachers face when integrating Web 2.0 technologies to improve student oral proficiency in Chinese. This study aims to investigate students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the Web 2.0 technology VoiceThread (VT). It examines the challenges of integrating VT to enhance student oral proficiency. The authors conducted two studies with 31 students responding to a questionnaire in Study 1 and 48 students responding to the same questionnaire in Study …

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Simultaneous Bilingual Middle School Students Becoming Biliterate: What Do Students Think About Their Biliteracy As Taught Through The "Bridge" Strategy In A Humanities Dual Language/Immersion Class?, Alma Lucinda Diaz-Philipp May 2019

Simultaneous Bilingual Middle School Students Becoming Biliterate: What Do Students Think About Their Biliteracy As Taught Through The "Bridge" Strategy In A Humanities Dual Language/Immersion Class?, Alma Lucinda Diaz-Philipp

Dissertations and Theses

In response to the increasing number of United States school students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds at all grade levels, often called "simultaneous bilinguals," the U.S. school districts are opening schools that offer bilingual instruction. One instructional strategy that seems promising is the "Bridge," where students contrast and connect the literacy skills learned in one language to the literacy skills in their other language. An underlying component of learning a language is student attitude and motivation to learn. Research also seems to indicate that student attitude and motivation toward biliteracy can affect their achievement. There seems to be a …

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Understanding High School English Learners’ Chronic Absenteeism, Patricia A. George May 2019

Understanding High School English Learners’ Chronic Absenteeism, Patricia A. George

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Chronic absenteeism has significant implications for both the individual student and society at large and has been receiving attention for over a century. Every school day counts. Regular attendance provides students with opportunities to learn and has a strong link to achievement. Conversely, poor attendance has serious implications for high school students. For each subgroup of students there is a similar pattern: the likelihood of chronic absenteeism increases as students progress through high school. Notably, the U.S. Department of Education found English learners experience higher chronic absenteeism than their non-English learner peers when they reach high school. Furthermore, compared to …

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Methods Of Teaching Latin: Theory, Practice, Application, Morgan A. Nicoulin May 2019

Methods Of Teaching Latin: Theory, Practice, Application, Morgan A. Nicoulin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I present a way to effectively blend modern theories of language acquisition and the contemporary practice of teaching Latin. I intend to demonstrate that a curriculum is able to balance both traditional and innovative philosophies by adapting Second Language Acquisition Theory’s idealized way to learn a language to fit the realistic limitations of the classroom. I begin with a discussion of the history of language pedagogy, focusing on Latin’s influence on the study of language learning from antiquity to present. Next, I present the key topics in SLA and the practical implications of this research for today’s …

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Fictional Narrative Skills Of Preschool-Age Bilingual Children With Typical Language Development, Lydia Bias May 2019

Fictional Narrative Skills Of Preschool-Age Bilingual Children With Typical Language Development, Lydia Bias

Honors Projects

Oral narrative retells are commonly used in assessment to examine language and literacy development in young children. Due to the increasing number of bilingual children in the United States, it is necessary to understand typical development in order to assess and intervene when needed. English story retells from eight preschool-age Spanish-English bilingual children were analyzed in the present study using the Narrative Assessment Protocol. Analyses were conducted to examine differences in narrative microstructure at two time points. In the present study, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Sum test which is a nonparametric statistical measure was used to determine whether there was …

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More Than Just A Myth: How Shapeshifter Rhetoric Relates To Esl Students 2019, Amber Kent May 2019

More Than Just A Myth: How Shapeshifter Rhetoric Relates To Esl Students 2019, Amber Kent

Master's Theses

The academic analysis surrounding the shapeshifter, or shapeshifter mythologies has, so far, been related to modern issues of violence, militarization, feminism, gender studies, or studies simply focusing on the compilation of shapeshifter myths themselves. This essay will map out the current discussion surrounding shapeshifter mythology to illustrate that it has often fallen into two forms of analysis: that of an anthropological or sociological analysis, where shapeshifter myths were analyzed as a method for understanding different cultures and their development, and that of a poststructural analysis, where shapeshifter myths are analyzed as a means of deconstructing binaries such as good/bad and …

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Positioning Of English Language Learners And Its Power On Classroom Learning Opportunities And Interactions, Hawraa Nafea Hameed Alzouwain May 2019

Positioning Of English Language Learners And Its Power On Classroom Learning Opportunities And Interactions, Hawraa Nafea Hameed Alzouwain

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this qualitative study, the researcher investigated four aspects of positioning used by teacher and ESL students in a mid-south state of the United States. This study was based on the Positioning Theory of Davies and Harré (1990). The study aimed to explore various types of positioning used by the participants and how they impacted social interactions among the students and between them and their teacher. The researcher used four questions to outline the scope of the research, focused on: 1) how ELLs’ different positioning in the ESL classroom promoted or limited their learning opportunities; 2) how the ELL teacher …

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How To Attract African American College Students To Study Spanish: A Model For Virginia State University, Erika M. Neal Apr 2019

How To Attract African American College Students To Study Spanish: A Model For Virginia State University, Erika M. Neal

Virginias Collegiate Honors Council Conference

Being culturally aware and able to communicate with people from different regions of the world is one of the most critical skills a student of color can obtain during their educational career. Not only will a student’s perspective of the world be altered, but their market value will skyrocket by 5-10% on average according to Forbes. Being bilingual or multilingual is a skill that can be applied to any career field in today’s society. Unfortunately, many African American students have had little to no exposure to foreign languages and cultures specifically Spanish. Even for those who have had some exposure …

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Teaching English To Refugees Through Storytelling, Emily Camplejohn Apr 2019

Teaching English To Refugees Through Storytelling, Emily Camplejohn

Senior Honors Theses

Many refugees are trying to learn English while assimilating to a new culture. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has identified several needs and goals of refugees including competence in the language of the receiving culture and participation in a new, welcoming community. Storytelling, expressing or receiving a narrative through oral or written communication, can be implemented for teaching English to refugees with these goals and can link academic learning with real life experiences. In addition to using storytelling as a meaningful way to interact with language, storytelling also fosters a community within the classroom. The teacher is …

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Project On Designing Activities For Teaching Grammar, Sunny Hyon Feb 2019

Project On Designing Activities For Teaching Grammar, Sunny Hyon

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

This document outlines a project for a course in second language acquisition taken by undergraduates who intend to be high school or university teachers/professors. The project asks the undergraduates to design a sequence of activities for teaching English language learners (ELLs) a particular English grammatical construction, and to connect those activities to reading or writing assignments in their future classrooms. The students also must explain how their activities will facilitate ELLs' grammatical learning, drawing on research on language acquisition presented in the course.

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Techniques And Methods Change, Methodology Remains The Same: Web Technology Use As Cosmetic Change In Cfl Classrooms, Justin Olmanson, Xianquan Liu, Nannan Wang, Christopher Heselton Feb 2019

Techniques And Methods Change, Methodology Remains The Same: Web Technology Use As Cosmetic Change In Cfl Classrooms, Justin Olmanson, Xianquan Liu, Nannan Wang, Christopher Heselton

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Technology has been a staple in the language classroom for more than fifty years. From audio cassettes, to video tapes, to multimedia CD-ROMs, to static and interactive web technologies, language teachers have taken the time to learn these tools and integrate them into the classroom experience. Each new technology, each new app, creates an opportunity to alter the experience of teaching and learning—often supporting increased authentic interactions with the Chinese language. This potential however can go unrealized when the ways the technologies are used align with more traditional grammar and vocabulary-focused teaching methodologies and promote efficiency over communication. In this …

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Exploring The Use Of Podcasts On Students’ Language Learning And Change Of Students’ Self-Efficacy About The Use Of Podcasts, Silvia Rehulina Ginting Jan 2019

Exploring The Use Of Podcasts On Students’ Language Learning And Change Of Students’ Self-Efficacy About The Use Of Podcasts, Silvia Rehulina Ginting

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Similar to other types of mobile technologies, podcasts are believed to provide many advantages for language instruction, including English as a second language (ESL) learners’ listening skills and pronunciation and changes in their self-efficacy from using the podcasts for learning ESL. The convergent parallel mixed methods design used Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning and Bandura’s self-efficacy as foundations. It used 11 different instruments to collect quantitative data and qualitative data from two sections of an upper-intermediate ESL class at one university in Midwest United States. Quantitative data were collected using a pre-test, a post-test, and the note taking quizzes …

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Principals' Perceptions Of Professional Development And Caring Communities For English Learners, Sunny Sue Chang Jonas Jan 2019

Principals' Perceptions Of Professional Development And Caring Communities For English Learners, Sunny Sue Chang Jonas

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

A growing population of English Learners (ELs) have unique challenges when navigating the American educational system. In fact, there is an achievement gap such that EL students lag behind their native English peers in school outcomes. Accordingly, there is increased demand for professional development (PD) lead by principals to address the needs of the changing population of ELs. To support effective PD aimed at improved achievement for ELs, principals need embrace transformative thinking in their work. Although PD has the potential to be the driving force of change, traditional approaches to PD have limited impact on academic success of ELs. …

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Storytelling Study, Samantha Irene Pepe Jan 2019

Storytelling Study, Samantha Irene Pepe

Honors Theses and Capstones

Expressive prosody (i.e., a manner of communication that is characterized by lively rhythm and tempo) and inexpressive prosody (i.e., monotone speech) present different environments for listening to a story during a read-aloud session. This study aims to assess whether there are visual attention differences for preschoolers in these varied prosodic environments and how this affects comprehension.

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Journey To Refuge: Understanding Refugees, Exploring Trauma, And Best Practices For Newcomers And Schools, Trina D. Harlow Jan 2019

Journey To Refuge: Understanding Refugees, Exploring Trauma, And Best Practices For Newcomers And Schools, Trina D. Harlow

NPP eBooks

Pre-K through 12th grade schools within the United States have become much more diverse in recent years. Schools are now commonly not only diverse because of diverse students born in the United States, but also have many immigrant students. A growing number of these immigrant students are resettled children who have refugee status. In schools, these recent immigrants are called newcomers. This book is a culmination of research and anecdotal experiences regarding the refugee issue as it pertains to these students in American schools and schools elsewhere in the world. Scholars, policy makers, educators, those who work in the refugee …

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How Much Do Emotional, Behavioral, And Cognitive Factors Actually Impact College Student Attitudes Towards English Language Learning? A Quantitative And Qualitative Study, Xin Zuo, Regina D. Weaver, Julia Macrae, Limin Wang Jan 2019

How Much Do Emotional, Behavioral, And Cognitive Factors Actually Impact College Student Attitudes Towards English Language Learning? A Quantitative And Qualitative Study, Xin Zuo, Regina D. Weaver, Julia Macrae, Limin Wang

Intensive English Language Program Faculty Publications and Presentations

Researchers have proposed many multidimensional frameworks to identify significant and potential factors, e.g., educational background, positive feelings and career aspirations, that impact English learning attitude in second language acquisition. Yet, there is still very little research to graphically describe the interactions between these factors and how these factors directly or indirectly impact learning attitude. To this end, a questionnaire survey was conducted in Changchun University of Technology. Statistical measures and Bayesian network analysis were introduced to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the collected data. Furthermore, the significant attitudinal differences between students majoring in the Liberal Arts or Sciences were investigated for …

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Ita Language Proficiency Testing: Recommended Replacement For The Speak® Test, Anne Marie Stoughton Jan 2019

Ita Language Proficiency Testing: Recommended Replacement For The Speak® Test, Anne Marie Stoughton

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Oral language tests have been used since the 1950s to assess the proficiency of spoken language. In the 1980s and 1990s, the need for oral proficiency testing increased as states began to mandate that universities within their jurisdictions test the English proficiency of instructors due to growing concerns over international teaching assistants’ (ITAs) comprehensibility. Many universities turned to the Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit® (SPEAK test), a language proficiency test created and distributed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), as means to test ITA proficiency in English. ETS’s discontinuance of the SPEAK test in 2010 has forced, and is forcing, …

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El Cuento Como Estrategia Didáctica En El Aprendizaje Del Inglés En Los Estudiantes De Primero De Primaria Del Colegio Liceo El Rinconcito Del Saber, Luis Felipe Ríos Carvajal Jan 2019

El Cuento Como Estrategia Didáctica En El Aprendizaje Del Inglés En Los Estudiantes De Primero De Primaria Del Colegio Liceo El Rinconcito Del Saber, Luis Felipe Ríos Carvajal

Licenciatura en Español y Lenguas Extranjeras

El presente trabajo de grado tiene como fin determinar, ¿Cómo el cuento puede ser una estrategia didáctica en el aprendizaje del inglés en los estudiantes de primero de primaria del colegio Liceo el Rinconcito del Saber?. Por lo cual, el objeto de estudio es describir el cuento como estrategia didáctica en el aprendizaje del inglés, definiendo los elementos teóricos con el fin de establecer el uso del cuento como estrategia de aprendizaje del idioma extranjero, en donde se determine el uso del cuento como herramienta práctica, desarrollando en los estudiantes habilidades en la adquisición de un segundo idioma. Esta investigación …

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L’Enseignement Par Projets Dans La Formulation De Questions De Haut Niveau Cognitif, Natalia Cecilia Vergara Rodriguez, Nancy Lorena Montaña Carrillo Jan 2019

L’Enseignement Par Projets Dans La Formulation De Questions De Haut Niveau Cognitif, Natalia Cecilia Vergara Rodriguez, Nancy Lorena Montaña Carrillo

Licenciatura en Español y Lenguas Extranjeras

Cet article rend compte de la recherche réalisée sur le sujet de la formulation de questions chez les enfants lors des stages pédagogiques, qui a l’objectif de décrire comment l’enseignement par projets modifie la manière dont les étudiants de l'école Gustavo Restrepo posent des questions. Dans ce but, on a exécuté une recherche action au cours de laquelle on a proposé une intervention concernant la stratégie de l’enseignement par projets, on a collecté des données qui ont été étudiées à travers d’une analyse catégorielle qui a montré que les tâches et l’apprentissage coopératif sont les éléments qui aideraient à modifier …

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