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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Acquisition Of Japanese As A Second Language And Processability Theory: A Longitudinal Study Of A Naturalistic Child Learner, Junko Iwasaki Jan 2006

The Acquisition Of Japanese As A Second Language And Processability Theory: A Longitudinal Study Of A Naturalistic Child Learner, Junko Iwasaki

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of this study was to investigate longitudinally how a child learner acquired verbal morpho-syntax in Japanese in a naturalistic second language (L2) context. Specifically the points of emergence for three verbal morpho-syntactic structures, namely verbal inflection, the V-te V structure and the passive/causative structure, were investigated within a framework of Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998b). The subsequent development of these structures was also examined. Unlike earlier research about morpheme orders and developmental sequences in language acquisition which was criticised because of its apparent lack of theoretical underpinnings, Pienemann’s Processability Theory (PT)(1998b) connects the processability of morpho-syntactic structure to …


Searching For The Semantic Boundaries Of The Japanese Colour Term 'Ao', Francis Conlan Jan 2005

Searching For The Semantic Boundaries Of The Japanese Colour Term 'Ao', Francis Conlan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The Japanese language has a colour term, 'ao' (or 'aoi'), which is usually referred to in bilingual dictionaries as being the equivalent of English 'blue'. Very often, however, it is used to describe things which English speakers would describe as being green. Granny Smith apples are 'ao', so are all Westerners' eyes, regardless of whether they would be described as being 'blue' or 'green' in English. The sky and the sea are prototypically 'ao', but this term is also used to describe lawns, forests, traffic lights and unripe tomatoes. What, then, do Japanese native speakers (henceforth JNS) understand by this …


Ethnographic Descriptions Of English Corners In Shanghai, Gary Jones Jan 2003

Ethnographic Descriptions Of English Corners In Shanghai, Gary Jones

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study explored the phenomenon of English Comers (EC) in Shanghai. These are informal communities formed for the purpose of practising English. In 1978, just after the death of Mao Ze Dong and the fall of the 'gang of four', many eager Chinese people gathered together to practise their oral English in the Shanghai People's Park. Many of these were old men and had been educated in English at missionary schools in Shanghai in the early 20th century. Today we see many successors to such groups in the ECs which meet in different locations throughout the city and which comprise …


Ellipsis In Science And Technology Textbooks In English: Implications For Thai Students, Sripen Srestasathiern Jan 2003

Ellipsis In Science And Technology Textbooks In English: Implications For Thai Students, Sripen Srestasathiern

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This is an analytical study which attempted to investigate Thai students' ability to interpret elliptical sentences and to recover and recognise ellipted elements in a science and technology context in English. Students' awareness, understanding, perceptions, problems and strategies in relation to ellipsis were also examined. The subjects for the study were 60 first year students from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology North Bangkok (KMITNB) who had enrolled in two compulsory English courses in KMITNB, Bangkok, Thailand. The instruments for this study were three 20 item ellipsis tests based on 5 ellipsis types classified by Quirk, et al. (1985). Items of …


Facilitating Second Language Acquisition (Sla) Through Computer-Mediated Communication (Cmc) In An English For Civil Engineering (Ece) Environment, Masputeriah Hamzah Jan 2003

Facilitating Second Language Acquisition (Sla) Through Computer-Mediated Communication (Cmc) In An English For Civil Engineering (Ece) Environment, Masputeriah Hamzah

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study explores the application of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in an English for Civil Engineering (ECE) learning setting. The aim is to examine the interactional opportunities present in the computer-mediated environment for evidence of conditions deemed facilitative of second language acquisition, based on the tenets prescribed by the Interaction Hypothesis. This theory emphasizes the importance of interaction in language learning and the necessity for learners to have access to meaningful and comprehensible input. It is based on the premise that acquisition will occur through interaction where learners arc provided opportunities to negotiate meaning in order to develop mutual understanding. In …


Indeterminacy In First And Second Languages: Case Studies Of Narrative Development Of Chinese Children With And Without Language Disorder, Bee Hong Lo Jan 2000

Indeterminacy In First And Second Languages: Case Studies Of Narrative Development Of Chinese Children With And Without Language Disorder, Bee Hong Lo

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Bilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI) from non English speaking background (NESB) present a major diagnostic problem to speech pathologist and educationist in an English speaking country. There has been no known study on the simultaneous narrative development involving bilingual Chinese children with and without SLI. This longitudinal case study examined the relationship of Chinese (L1) and English (L2) in narrative development in a child with no language difficulty (Child LN) and a child (Child L1) diagnosed as having SLI. The hypothesis posed for this study was that Child L1 has the same developmental profile for narrative skill in …


Conversational Code-Switching Among Japanese-English Bilinguals Who Have Japanese Background, Yoshiko Morishima Jan 1999

Conversational Code-Switching Among Japanese-English Bilinguals Who Have Japanese Background, Yoshiko Morishima

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of this study is to investigate the code-switching of native speakers of Japanese in an English-speaking context. The languages involved in code-switching therefore are English and Japanese. This is an instance of communication in the participants' first language, in a setting where the speakers' second language is dominant. The research focused on a sample of twelve Japanese people. These participants were born in Japan, and their parents' native language is Japanese. Even though the length of time each has spent in residence in an English-speaking country varies, the minimum is two years. Further, all have previously studied English, …


Chinese And Australian Conversational Styles: A Comparative Sociolinguistic Study Of Overlap And Listener Response, Xudong Deng Jan 1999

Chinese And Australian Conversational Styles: A Comparative Sociolinguistic Study Of Overlap And Listener Response, Xudong Deng

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study compares the use of overlap and listener response by Chinese and Australian speakers in their respective intracultural conversations, that is, in conversations between Chinese interlocutors in Mandarin Chinese and between Australians in Australian English. The main purpose of this study is to locate similarities and differences between these two groups of speakers in their use of the two conversational strategies. Another major theme of the thesis is to examine the role of gender in the use of overlap and listener response in conversations of the two languages. The study is based upon the theoretical premise of interactional sociolinguistics …


Pedagogic Approaches And Cultural Scripts: The Use Of Talk During Shared Literacy Lessons In Three Primary Two Classrooms In Singapore, Maha Sripathy Jan 1998

Pedagogic Approaches And Cultural Scripts: The Use Of Talk During Shared Literacy Lessons In Three Primary Two Classrooms In Singapore, Maha Sripathy

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study investigates the use and occurrence of talk during the implementation of the key approaches of Shared Book Reading and Class Dictated Story in three Primary Two classrooms in Singapore. These approaches are based on a constructive perspective of literacy where children make meaning from texts read with the teacher through joint exploration and connection with their respective background knowledge and experiences. Central to this joint exploration and meaning-making is the teacher-pupil talk. The occurrence and use of talk in the implementation of these approaches in three primary two classrooms was recorded, transcribed and analyzed. Teachers' and pupils' experiences …


Errors In Pronunciation Of Consonants By Indonesian, Gayo And Acehnese Learners Of English As A Foreign Language, Ingrid B. Mathew Jan 1997

Errors In Pronunciation Of Consonants By Indonesian, Gayo And Acehnese Learners Of English As A Foreign Language, Ingrid B. Mathew

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis reports on research into consonantal phoneme pronunciation errors in the English of EFL learners from three different first language groups in the province of Aceh, northern Sumatra, Indonesia. It is a qualitative study, describing the errors found for each first language group. Error data was collected from each participant in the language laboratory using an aural discrimination test, a word repetition test and a reading passage test, and also from interviews with each participant which were recorded on audio cassettes. Analysis and explanation of the error data then followed. There were eight participants from each of the three …


The Recall And Retention Of New Vocabulary From Second Language Lessons, Toni Dobinson Jan 1996

The Recall And Retention Of New Vocabulary From Second Language Lessons, Toni Dobinson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study set out to take a close look at English language lessons and the Individual language learners ability to recall new words arising In those lessons. Learners were asked to report the new vocabulary items that they could recall immediately after a lesson. Many words were recalled and in some Instances the same word was recalled by more than one learner whereas in others, learners recalled words not recalled by anyone else. Just under half of the words recalled, fitted the former category and just over half fitted the latter category. The amount of vocabulary recalled by individuals varied …


A Cross-Cultural Study On Complaint Letters : Australian And Korean, Y. R. Kim Jan 1996

A Cross-Cultural Study On Complaint Letters : Australian And Korean, Y. R. Kim

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of the study is to examine the cross-cultural features of Australian and Korean complaint letters. The point of view adopted is that cultural barriers generate difficulties to producing efficient and successful intercultural communication in addition to linguistic barriers. Although the concept of complaint letters is the same in the two countries, there are difficulties when Australians and Koreans attempt to communicate with the other culture. Firstly the study will explore the validating of the concepts of Korean's four-unit structure (Ki-Sung-Chen-Kyul) and the three unit structure typical of western letter writing (Introduction-Body-Conclusion), and contrast the structures. It posits that …


Politeness And Paradigms Of Family: A Perspective On The Development Of Communicative Competence In The Japanese Esl Speaker, Christopher J. Conlan Jan 1996

Politeness And Paradigms Of Family: A Perspective On The Development Of Communicative Competence In The Japanese Esl Speaker, Christopher J. Conlan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis examines the issue of linguistic politeness in English with specific reference to Japanese ESL speakers. It develops a theoretical framework that sees shared assumptions concerning the marking of social-power and social-distance differentials as crucial. Developing the notion that linguistic politeness is a function of a status-dependent and context-dependent variety of language usage, it argues that there are four fundamental types of utterances, and that speech acts conforming to any of the power and distance configurations by means of which these four utterance types are defined can be considered to be polite if-but only if -both speaker and hearer …


Scientific Text Structure Awareness: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Tertiary Students From Different Language Backgrounds, Catherine Mcloughlin Jan 1994

Scientific Text Structure Awareness: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Tertiary Students From Different Language Backgrounds, Catherine Mcloughlin

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Research in both first and second language reading has shown that awareness of text structure, or rhetorical organisation is related to superior recall of main ideas from expository prose passages. The present study investigates awareness of scientific text structure among tertiary students from different language backgrounds. In this investigation, four reading passages containing two rhetorical text structures found in scientific discourse, comparison/contrast and problem/solution are employed. Meyer’s (1975) hierarchical content structure analysis was used to analyse the texts into top, high, mid and low level ideas corresponding to main and supporting ideas. The research questions were centred around three major …


English As An International Language: A Sociolinguistic Analysis Of The Japanese Experience, Marek M. Koscielecki Jan 1994

English As An International Language: A Sociolinguistic Analysis Of The Japanese Experience, Marek M. Koscielecki

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study was designed to investigate the nature of English as an International Language (ElL) in Japan from both a diachronic and a synchronic point of view, drawing some comparison with countries in South East Asia and Africa. Using comparative material from socio-historical and sociolinguistic literature from other countries it was possible to examine the use and cultivation of English in Japan and compare it with that in other countries where English fulfils different roles. The material on Japan was supplemented by research based on data obtained from questionnaires both at the high school level and within business corporations. From …


Picking Up The Principles: An Applied Linguistic Analysis Of The Legal Problem Genre, Colin J. Beasley Jan 1994

Picking Up The Principles: An Applied Linguistic Analysis Of The Legal Problem Genre, Colin J. Beasley

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Legal study requires not only the learning of new content, but also the learning of a new academic discourse with its own lexico-semantic, syntactic, and discoursal features. This thesis explores the answering of legal problem questions as an important and distinct new genre that undergraduates studying law units need to achieve competence in. In order to delineate the general features of this genre, systemic functional linguistic (SFL) analyses were performed on a series of texts (a tutorial question, an assignment question, and an examination question) written by lecturers in the introductory Commerce course Principles of Commercial Law as exemplars of …


Factors Affecting The Learning Of English As A Second Language Macroskills Among Tongan Secondary Students, Mele F. Latu Jan 1994

Factors Affecting The Learning Of English As A Second Language Macroskills Among Tongan Secondary Students, Mele F. Latu

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study aimed at determining factors which might have impact on the learning of English as a second language macroskills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) by Tongan secondary learners. The study was correlational in design and it worked from a synthetic perspective in that it looked at the way in which many aspects of language are interrelated to make the whole language system. The study looked at learning English language macroskills from a multiple interdisciplinary perspective taking into consideration linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic factors and classroom and bilingual education perspectives. The framework for language use required the learner to know the …


Tense, Aspect And Time Concepts In English And Bahasa Indonesia: Pedagogical Implications, S. Suwono Jan 1993

Tense, Aspect And Time Concepts In English And Bahasa Indonesia: Pedagogical Implications, S. Suwono

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of the study has been to provide theoretical foundations on which padagogical approaches to the teaching of English tense-aspect complexes to EFL teacher trainees in Indonesian tertiary institutions can be based. The study investigates how expression of time and related concepts in English and Bahasa Indonesia (BI) can be compared with particular regard to pedagogical implications. Two major areas of investigation have been explored: 1. questions relevant to the general linguistic theory of tense and aspect and how the two languages compared fit into such a general theory; ii. questions relevant to how the teaching of English tense-aspect …


An Investigation Of Communication Strategy Use In Reception, Kaye Malcolm Jan 1991

An Investigation Of Communication Strategy Use In Reception, Kaye Malcolm

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is a theoretical and empirical investigation of communication strategy use in the receptive behaviour of second/foreign language learners. The investigation is descriptive in design, and seeks to describe the phenomenon of communication strategies both as a constituent of communicative discourse and as a part of that discourse, in inter-relationship with other constituents. The theoretical framework for the research is an interactional one. Description is sought from analysis of the dynamics of communication. The need for a study on communication strategy use in reception lies in the fact that second/foreign language learners see reception as being particularly problematic, and …


Selected Topics In Limos Kalinga Grammar, Naomi J. Saggers Jan 1991

Selected Topics In Limos Kalinga Grammar, Naomi J. Saggers

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The Grammar is of the Limos Kalinga dialect, referred to by its speakers as Linimos. It . is one of ten Kalinga dialects belonging to the Central Cordilleran subgroup. An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Kalingas live in the mountainous Kalinga subprovince of Kalinga Apayo in northern Luzon, Republic of the Philippines. Linimos itself is spoken by about 8,000 people living in about ten villages along the lower Saltan river in the municipality of Pinokpok . The Grammar comprises an Introduction, followed by a survey of the basic grammar of the language. This survey includes a chapter on word classes, including …