Linguistics Commons^™

Empowering All Who Teach: A Portrait Of Two Non-Native English Speaking Teachers In A Globalized 21st Century, Rosa Dene David

Dissertations and Theses

One of most prevalent issues surrounding English education internationally is the differentiation between Native English-Speaking Teachers (NESTs) and Non-native English-Speaking Teachers (NNESTs). What is sometimes termed the "Native speaker fallacy" is the notion that in order to be a proficient teacher of the English language one must either be a native speaker or possess native like fluency (Phillipson, 1992). This position is furthered by Hollidays Native Speakerism (Holliday, 2006) which suggests that within the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) there is an assumption that NESTs are better equipped to teach English language learners due to language proficiency and Western …

Talking Back, With Reawakened Voices: Analyzing The Potential For Indigenous California Languages Coursework At California Polytechnic State University, Logan Cooper

Ethnic Studies

The legacy of colonialism in the United States, including genocidal practices and cultural assimilation, has left Indigenous languages endangered. Native peoples, scholars, and activists have been working to revive and heal the languages of America’s first peoples, and the cultures those languages speak to, yet more work remains in the field of language revitalization. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo currently does not offer any course specifically teaching or discussing Indigenous languages, even those of the Chumash people who know the San Luis Obispo area as their ancestral homelands.

By synthesizing revitalization and Indigenous activist literature with the narratives …

The Effect Of Two Foreign Language Teaching Approaches, Communicative Language Teaching And Teaching Proficiency Through Reading And Storytelling, On Motivation And Proficiency For Spanish Iii Students In High School, Maite Blanton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this comparative study was to examine the effects of two foreign language teaching approaches--communicative language teaching and teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling--on motivation and proficiency for Spanish III students in high school. These two teaching approaches have gained prominence over the last couple of decades and no consensus exists between second language (L2) researchers and practitioners on which approach might be best to increase students' motivation to learn and to become proficient. One hundred and seventeen Spanish III students in high school studying with the TPRS or the CLT teaching approach, completed the LLOS-IEA Motivation Scale …

Analysis Of English Language Learner Performance On The Biology Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System: The Impact Of English Proficiency, First Language Characteristics, And Late-Entry Ell Status, Mary A. Mitchell

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This study analyzed English language learner (ELL) performance on the June 2012 Biology MCAS, namely on item attributes of domain, cognitive skill, and linguistic complexity. It examined the impact of English proficiency, Latinate first language, first language orthography, and late-entry ELL status. The results indicated that English proficiency was a strong predictor of performance and that ELLs at higher levels of English proficiency overwhelmingly passed. The results further indicated that English proficiency introduced a construct-irrelevant variance on the Biology MCAS and raised validity issues for using this assessment at lower levels of English proficiency. This study also found that ELLs …

A Case For An Ecological Approach And Against Language Commodification In Elt, Vinicius O. Souza

MA TESOL Collection

This paper aims to provide an alternative approach to the English language education practiced in many developing countries which can help reverse their current low-proficiency status, as revealed by standard international examinations such as the PISA scores and others. The author argues that this can be best accomplished by adopting an ecological approach to teaching which promotes language learning as emergent and socially situated phenomena, two concepts largely neglected by current teaching methods. In fact, many of these countries have long been dominated by an extremely commodified and cognitivist ELT market, where business interests have taken precedence over pedagogical considerations. …

Survival Of The Fittest: The Role Of Linguistic Modification In Nursing Education, Brenda Strauch Moore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project’s long term goal was to improve English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) nursing student retention. Improving the quality of multiple choice exams is a first crucial step. ESL students find multiple-choice exams to be one of the most challenging aspects of nursing school. One reason for this is the presence of linguistic errors in exam questions. Linguistic errors include: irrelevant question content, poor sentence structure, and culturally biased words or phrases. Non-ESL students are less affected because exams are written in their native language. Linguistic modification, as part of best practices in item writing, removes these types of errors. The U.S. Department …

Gestures As Mimetic Forms Of Identity In Post-Secondary Italian As A Foreign Language Classrooms: A Sociocultural Perspective, Ilaria Nardotto Peltier

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study investigates the use of mimetic gestures of identity by foreign language teachers of Italian and their students in college classes as a form of meaning-making. All four of the teachers were found to use a variety of Italian gestures as a regular aspect of their teaching and presentation of self. Students and teachers also were found to mirror each other’s gestures. None of the teachers had been video-recorded before the study and all were surprised to see the degree to which they appeared to be Italian, although at the same time all believed this to be an important …

Defining Primary And Academic Discourse Through Instructional Methods In A Single Junior High Classroom, Ashley Nicole Gerhardson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine the use of academic discourse in the school setting and discuss the relation of the primary discourse to academic discourse. I focus on the verbal exchanges between a teacher and her students as these students acquire the academic discourse of the English classroom. The study focuses on the ideas of primary discourse and secondary or academic discourse as presented by Gee (1996) and focuses on his idea of Social languages.

Using a microethnographic study, I develop the idea of how the teacher related to her students and how a single educator felt about the purpose …

Use Of Phonetics In The Beginner French Classroom: An Analysis Of Textbooks, Melissa B. Scarbrough

Honors Scholar Theses

Textbooks are a common resource for teachers in a variety of content areas, as such it is important that teachers know whether or not textbooks are aligned to standards and current research. This study investigates if common textbooks, reported to be in use in schools across Connecticut, are aligned to recent second language acquisition and French linguistics studies.

Order Of Acquisition: A Comparison Of L1 And L2 English And Spanish Morpheme Acquisition, Kyle A. Mcferren

Senior Honors Theses

This paper examines the order of acquisition for grammatical morphemes in Spanish and English first and second language learners. Brown’s first morpheme order study, conducted in 1973, laid the foundation for what would become one of the most common types of study conducted within the field of second language acquisition. The four orders of acquisition relevant here are examined and compared in order to support the roles of salience, morphophonological regularity, complexity, input frequency, and native language transfer in first and/or second language acquisition. The conclusion is that these five determinants work interdependently in determining the difficulty of acquiring a …

English Vocabulary Teaching In Chinese Junior High Schools, Jinghong Zhang

Open Access Theses

Vocabulary learning is an important and indispensable part of the English language learning process. In this paper, the author tried to examine the vocabulary teaching practice in Chinese junior high schools. A questionnaire was used to investigate the problem from the perspectives of in-service teachers. Besides, the National English Curriculum (MOE, 2011) served as another important source of data in this study. The data revealed that progress has been made in English vocabulary teaching in Chinese junior high schools. Teachers are utilizing a wider range of educational resources and vocabulary teaching strategies during their instruction. The methods to assess vocabulary …

Metacognitive Instruction In L2 French: An Analysis Of Listening Performance And Automaticity, Shannon Becker

Open Access Dissertations

The goal of the present study was to investigate the instructional potential of metacognitive strategies to improve listening comprehension and the automaticity of listening processes. Metacognition can be described as focusing attention on the cognitive processes one is currently using. In the classroom, metacognitive listening instruction means guiding learners in applying metacognition to learning by monitoring the mental strategies they use while listening, evaluating the relative success of these strategies, and planning for future listening experiences. I argue that providing students with these tools to monitor and regulate the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in listening contributes significantly to building …

Implementing Culturally And Linguistically Responsive Strategies Using Children's Literature In The Urban Multicultural Preschool: Examining Teachers' Language Dialect Beliefs And Practices, Nicole Victoria Bailey Austin

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

This study examined preschool teachers' implementation of culturally and linguistically responsive strategies using children's literature in an urban multicultural preschool. Through a qualitative phenomenological design, this research aimed to expand understandings of language dialect and achievement in early childhood education and examine preschool teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and instructional practices regarding identified home languages—African American Vernacular English and Hispanic American English, Academic Language, and code switching. The phenomenon under investigation was early childhood professionals' beliefs and frequency of home language dialect use within the classroom and implementation of culturally and linguistically responsive strategies within the classrooms of an urban multicultural preschool …

Is Service-Learning The Answer? Preparing Teacher Candidates To Work With Ells Through Service-Learning Experiences, Sandra Rodriguez-Arroyo

Scholarship of Metropolitan Mission

In an effort to address the gaps in preparing teacher candidates (TCs) to work with English Language Learners (ELLs), service-learning experiences (SLE) were integrated into two courses within a teacher education program. This exploratory case study sought to explore the outcomes of teacher candidates (TCs) engaged in SLE with diverse students and families, particularly ELLs. Content analysis of students’ reflections provided insights of the impact of the SLE. Findings indicate that participating in service-learning with ELLs provides opportunities for TCs to engage in positive interactions that help to address misconceptions about students, families, and communities. TCs also began to confront …

Comparing Interaction And Use Of Space In Traditional And Innovative Classrooms, Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Avizia Long, Megan Solon

Faculty Publications

Despite myriad changes to language teaching methods over time, university-level classroom spaces have largely remained the same—until now. Recent innovations in classroom space design center on technological advances, include movable furniture and coffee-shop style rooms, and are believed to facilitate language learning in several ways. Specifically, compared to traditional classrooms, innovative spaces are designed in the hope of decreasing pre-task set up, increasing student-centered interaction, and facilitating collaborative work with multiple partners—features believed to be important for classroom learning. However, whether or not such features are present in these innovative spaces, or more so than in traditional classrooms, has yet …

Vocabulary Through Affixes And Word Families - A Computer-Assisted Language Learning Program For Adult Ell Students, Magdalena Kieliszek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vocabulary plays an important role in language learning of ELL (English Language Learner) students. This work discusses the importance of metalinguistic awareness in teaching vocabulary to adult English Language Learners at an intermediate- or advanced-level of English language proficiency with an emphasis on learning vocabulary through word families and increased morphological awareness. The main contribution is a computer-based program that guides users through a series of interactive reading and vocabulary practice exercises which allow them to explore and learn how certain words are connected through word families and how some of the most common affixes in English can affect the …

The Encoding Of Temporality In Second Language Acquisition: A Study Of Mandarin Chinese-Speaking Esl Learners, Li Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the influences of pragmatic factors, lexical devices, as well as the lexical aspectual properties of verbs on second language learners' encoding of temporality in their target language. The pragmatic factors being investigated include a recency effect and the number of occurrences of a tense in the previous context, and the lexical devices include past-time temporal adverbials and frequency adverbs. The role of the lexical aspectual properties of verbs is checked against the Aspect Hypothesis, which states that learners will initially restrict past or perfective marking to achievement and accomplishment verbs and later gradually extend this usage to …

Tradición Y Actualidad En La Enseñanza De La Escritura Académica En El Entorno Europeo (Reseña De Rethinking Academic Writing Pedagogy For The European University), David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Heritage Language Maintenance And Use Among 1.5 Generation Khmer College Students, Ravy S. Lao, Jin Sook Lee

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Most studies of heritage language maintenance have reported a steep attrition in heritage language use among the 1.5 and 2nd generation children of immigrants, in particular among East Asian groups. However, not much is known about the role of heritage languages and the patterns of language maintenance within refugee communities. This study focuses on heritage language use and maintenance among 1.5 generation Khmer college students. The findings show that Khmer students report a high frequency of heritage language use within the home with their parents as well as outside of the home with their co-ethnic peers. The data reveal that …

A Review Of Motivation And Foreign Language Learning: From Theory To Practice, Avizia Long

Faculty Publications

A review of Motivation and foreign language learning: From theory to practice, by David Lasagabaster, Aintzane Doiz, and Juan Manuel Sierra (Eds.). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Benjamins, 2014. Pp. viii + 190.

2015 Oklahoma Research Day Full Program, Northeastern State University

Oklahoma Research Day Abstracts

This document contains all abstracts from the 2015 Oklahoma Research Day held at Northeastern State University.

English Language Learning Kindergartners' Dynamic Responses To Picturebook Reading, Jiyoung Yi

Open Access Dissertations

This study explores the nature of English language learning by kindergartners as they engage in multimodal literacy practices in response to picturebook readings in a mainstream classroom. Three focal Spanish-speaking kindergartners and their classroom teacher took part in this study. Data were collected daily for four months in a half-day morning kindergarten program. The participants' verbal and nonverbal classroom interactions during picturebook readings were coded and analyzed to characterize the nature of ELL kindergartners' multimodal responses to picturebook readings. Findings indicate that the classroom instruction did not fully address the differences in the focal children's levels of English language proficiency. …

Second Language Research In Practice: Exploring Foreign Language Teaching, Maria Luisa Spicer-Ecalante, Karin Dejonge-Kannan, Aliza M. Atkin Kroek

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Spanish Language, Cultural Knowledge And Teachers’ Professional Development In An English-Only Environment, Sara Soledad Garcia

Teacher Education

This study documents the findings of action research projects generated by two teachers with different cultural backgrounds and grade levels; one is a bilingual Spanish-English high school teacher and the other is an English monolingual first grade-reading teacher. Teachers’ cognitive and professional development is examined by taking into account the results of the action research project on the literacy needs of their students. Qualitative data from teacher interviews and reflections have been collected and analyzed. These teachers as researchers of their own practice plan and integrate cultural interpretation produced by the children to better understand how learners construct knowledge through …

Experiential Language Learning: A Short-Term Study Abroad Program To Quetzaltenango, Guatemala For Canton High School, Michelle Traub

Capstone Collection

Canton High School (CHS) is a 485 student, small upper-middle class public school located in Canton, Connecticut. The mission of the school involves preparing productive, tolerant and responsible citizens with the character and independence to embrace and contribute to the global world. However, CHS is limited in its ability to provide students with opportunities to connect with the world outside of Connecticut and the United States, both linguistically and culturally. Although the majority of Canton students take a language class freshman year, the number of students continuing on in learning a language drops every year thereafter. Many students state that …

Rule, Pattern, And Meaning In The Second-Language Teaching Of Grammar, Joseph C. M. Davis

Publications and Research

This is a position paper aimed at the interface between meaning-oriented linguistics generally and instructed language-learning. The alliance between usage-based linguistics and form-focused instruction in language teaching stands to benefit from advances on both sides: a recognition by theoretical linguists that systematic meanings of grammatical forms are responsible for observed, emerging patterns of usage; and a greater willingness on the part of advocates of the teaching of grammar to engage in focusing upon individual, meaningful grammatical forms, as distinct from unanalyzed, holistic form. Explicit knowledge of forms and their meanings can usefully guide the practice of teachers and, …

Spanish-English Bilingual Adolescents' Attitude Towards Home Language: Effects On Narrative Language, Rebecca M. Hunt

Masters Theses

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship between use of English as a second language in academic and social settings, and attitude towards home language (Spanish) in bilingual adolescents in a Central Illinois high school. In addition, the study evaluated the possible relationship between home language attitude and the structure of a personal narrative. Participants included include 11 Spanish-English bilingual high school students who resided in Spanish-speaking homes. Participants completed a questionnaire pertaining to self-rated proficiency of English and Spanish, frequency of use in various settings, and attitude towards English, Spanish, and bilingualism. English narrative samples …

The Effects Of A New Method Of Instruction On The Perceptions Of Appalachian English, Michelle L. Compton

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This paper evaluates whether students’ perceptions of Appalachian English improve through a method of instruction that uses dialect literature in the classroom. Most existing methods of instruction tend to portray dialects as wrong, incorrect, or in some way less rule-governed than Standardized English, despite the numerous studies that have demonstrated otherwise (e.g., Labov 1969, Wolfram 1986). The data from this study derives from two groups of students enrolled in introductory composition and communication at the University of Kentucky. Each group is given a pre-test to determine attitudes toward Appalachian English and Standardized English. An experimental group is then exposed to …

Scribblescholar Was Here: Confessional Notes Of A Vandal Academic, Clay Shields

Theses and Dissertations--English

As a (former) vandal-punk in the academy, I often fear succumbing to Ivory Tower Stockholm syndrome. The identities I perform, vandal-punk and scholar, ideologically clash to the point that they often feel irreconcilable. By codemeshing the high-low discourses associated with these adopted cultures, I attempt to disrupt any hierarchal privileging of either, instead searching for a way to live with and harness both.

Using Cognitive Word Games To Promote Lexical Memory Access And Vocabulary Retrieval In Second Language Learners, Kejkaew Thanasuan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Fluency in a second language (L2) is one of the most important skills for the modern world. However, adults learning a new language face many obstacles, including motivation, time, and other challenges in learning. Technology learning tools may help solve these problems. In this dissertation, I tested the effectiveness of cognitive word games as a vocabulary learning method, with the main goal of investigating how different word games including a crossword paradigm task, a free association task and a word-stem completion task were effective at improving vocabulary memory access. The games selectively increased semantic (meaning) or orthographic (spelling) associations in …