Applied Linguistics Commons^™

Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis From A Realist Perspective, Hyeseung Jeong, Juliana Othman

The Qualitative Report

The article presents how a study that investigated the acquisition of second language academic literacy skills practised the qualitative methodology, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), from a realist perspective. We share the rationale behind the methodological decisions made in the study, which is followed by a detailed description of the methodological practice. In addition, the evaluation of the study against the realist criteria is reported, and some implications of using IPA based on realism for educational research are discussed. Overall, we suggest that IPA practice from a realist perspective helps go beyond postmodernism paradigms that seems to exert considerable influence on …

Language Ideologies Of Tertiary Teachers In China: A Deeper Look Into English Educational Language Policy In Chinese Universities, Carrie Anne Thomas

Purdue Linguistics, Literature, and Second Language Studies Conference

No abstract provided.

Passport To Privilege: English For Survival In Pakistan, Sham Haidar

Purdue Linguistics, Literature, and Second Language Studies Conference

This qualitative study focuses on students, teachers, and administrators in different schools, from high to low SES, perceptions about the importance of English in academic, professional, and social life. Most study participants consider English competence a prerequisite for survival in Pakistan due its symbolic power and pragmatic need in life.

A Reconceptualization Of Identity In Sla And Writing Research, Zhaozhe Wang

Purdue Linguistics, Literature, and Second Language Studies Conference

In this article, I argue for a reconceptualization of identity in SLA and writing studies that would problematize and complicate the current notion of identity as a property with or without clearly-defined boundaries and that views the construction and negotiation of identity as unidirectional.

The Relationship Between Artificial And Second Language Learning, Marc Ettlinger, Kara Morgan-Short, Mandy Faretta-Stutenberg, Patrick C.M. Wong

CISLL Publications

Artificial language learning (ALL) experiments have become an important tool in exploring principles of language and language learning. A persistent question in all of this work, however, is whether ALL engages the linguistic system and whether ALL studies are ecologically valid assessments of natural language ability. In the present study, we considered these questions by examining the relationship between performance in an ALL task and second language learning ability. Participants enrolled in a Spanish language class were evaluated using a number of different measures of Spanish ability and classroom performance, which was compared to IQ and a number of different …

Nonstandard Languages: The Outcasts Of The Language Revitalization Movement, Whitney Snowden

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis compares the failures of the creolization movement with the success of the language revitalization movement and seeks to determine which elements are missing from the former to make it as successful as the latter. Education policy, identity, and language ideology are all examined as contributors to the future success of creole inclusivity in education and society, as well as the potential benefits such a movement would include. Specifically examined are Siegel’s research on creole education and Armstrong’s work on language ideology.

50 Años De Evolución En Los Estudios Lingüísticos Transculturales: De La Retórica Contrastiva A La Retórica Intercultural, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

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. …

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 …

Contextualized Views Of Practices And Competencies In Call Teacher Education Research, Nike Arnold, Lara Ducate

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

While teachers play a central role in capitalizing on the potentials of computer assisted language learning (CALL), CALL teacher education overall still appears not to be adequate and effective (Healey et al., 2011; Hubbard, 2008). Furthermore, foreign/second language teachers have expressed a desire for more and better professional development opportunities in that area (Beaven, Emke, Ernest, Germain-Rutherford, Hampel, Hopkins, Stanojevic & Stickler, 2010; Digedu, 2014; Kessler, 2006). Given the continuing and new challenges for CALL teacher education, this special issue of Language Learning & Technology on CALL teacher education further speaks to its importance for our field and ultimately our …

Lessons Learned: Insights Into One Teacher’S Experience Working With Karen Refugee Students In The United States, Daniel J. Gilhooly

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This study is informed by funds of knowledge and culturally responsive teaching studies that aim to explore and legitimize the cultural knowledge immigrant children bring to their communities and schools. Consequently, this paper specifically addresses issues related to the educational experiences of Karen children and their parents from one American teacher/researcher who has worked with the Karen for the past four years. In aggregate, this paper addresses issues germane to Karen education including; (1) background information on Karen educational experiences prior to resettlement, including a review of their journey from Thailand to the U.S.; (2) important characteristics of Karen culture; …

Social Media, Fandom And Language Learning: A Roundtable With Shannon Sauro And Steven L. Thorne, Dean Wang, Shannon Sauro, Steven L. Thorne

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Last November, Dr. Shannon Sauro and Dr. Steven L. Thorne visited the UAB campus to give lectures on, respectively, ‘Fandom, Social Media and Learning’ and ‘Human development and semiotic remediation through mobile place-based gaming’. (. . . ) Questions and responses are transcribed here.

Statistical Literacy Among Applied Linguists And Second Language Acquisition Researchers, Shawn Loewen, Elizabeth Lavolette, Le Anne Spino, Mostafa Papi, Jens Schmidtke, Scott Sterling, Dominik Wolff

Language Resource Center

The importance of statistical knowledge in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) research has been emphasized in recent publications. However, the last investigation of the statistical literacy of applied linguists occurred more than 25 years ago (Lazaraton, Riggenbach, & Ediger, 1987). The current study undertook a partial replication of this older work by investigating (a) applied linguists’ general experiences with statistics, (b) underlying factors that constitute applied linguists’ knowledge about and attitudes toward statistics, and (c) variables that predict attitudes toward statistics and statistical self-efficacy. Three hundred thirty-one scholars of applied linguistics and SLA completed a questionnaire. Eighty percent …

A Comparison Of Linguistic Features In The Academic Writing Of Advanced English Language Learner And English First Language University Students, Margo K. Russell

Dissertations and Theses

Writing for an academic purpose is not an easy skill to master, whether for a native English speaker (L1) or an English language learner (ELL). In order to better prepare ELL students for success in mainstream content courses at the university level, more must be known about the characteristics of student writing in the local context of an intensive English program. This information can be used to inform ELL writing instructors of which linguistic features to target so that their students produce writing that sounds appropriate for the academic written register.

Two corpora of 30 research essays each were compiled, …

Opportunities For Incidental Acquisition Of Academic Vocabulary From Teacher Speech In An English For Academic Purposes Classroom, Eric Dean Dodson

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teacher's speech throughout one curricular unit of an intermediate grammar and writing course in order to better understand which high-value vocabulary students might acquire through attending to the teacher and noticing words that are used.

Vocabulary acquisition is important for English for Academic Purposes students, given the vocabulary demands of academic language. The Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) has been shown to include important vocabulary in written academic texts, and has become a standard part of English for Academic Purposes curricula and pedagogical materials. Although explicit vocabulary instruction is important, research …

Self-Efficacy In Low-Level English Language Learners, Laura F. Blumenthal

Dissertations and Theses

Accounting for differences in second language proficiency attainment is an important area of inquiry in the study of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Accounts of the language acquisition process have generally come from cognitive or psychological perspectives, which view language learning as primarily an internal mental/emotional process, or from sociocultural or critical perspectives that emphasize the influence of the learner's social environment. Research on variability in language learning has also failed to take into account the learning experiences of low-level learners.

This study adopted a social-psychological perspective on language acquisition that focused on the role of self-efficacy in learning, and applied …

The Role Of Expectations On Nonnative English Speaking Students' Wrtiting, Sara Marie Van Dan Acker

Dissertations and Theses

This study centered on the expectations of a non-native English-speaking undergraduate student and her teacher in a general education course at Portland State University during winter term 2012. This was a qualitative case study, where I collected data throughout the duration of the course by means of interviews, classroom observations, and written assignment sheet data. I triangulated verbal data from interview transcripts from the two participants, along with data from the observation notes and the assignment sheets in order to gain a better understanding of the expectations each participant had about writing assignments.

Data from four sources were collected and …

Pedagogía De Hablantes De Herencia: Implicaciones Para El Entrenamiento De Instructores Al Nivel Universitario, Lina M. Reznicek-Parrado

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study researches the differences in pedagogical needs between learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (FL learners) and learners of Spanish as a Heritage Language (HL learners) at the university level. By using the UNL Modern Languages and Literatures Department as an illustrative case and based on an analysis of the Heritage Language student profile in the context of the United States, this study seeks to explore arguments in favor of providing training for university-level instructors of Spanish that responds to the specific pedagogical needs of Heritage Language Learners.

The relevancy of this study is not only based on …

Language Learning, Ecological Validity, And Innovation Under Conditions Of Superdiversity, Steven L. Thorne

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article describes three pedagogical proposals oriented toward moving language learning to the center of higher education, and further, to emphasizing the importance of both continued first (L1) and additional/foreign (L2) language learning as central to academic and professional success. The first project, titled Language-Integrated Knowledge Education (or LIKE), aims at making explicit the linguistic resources necessary for full participation in written and spoken academic contexts, in both students' first as well as (potentially) multiple foreign languages. The second project describes the benefits and rationale for broadening the use of online intercultural exchange within foreign language education as well as …

English Loan Words In Japanese: Exploring Comprehension And Register, Naoko Horikawa

Dissertations and Theses

English loan words (ELWs) have become a considerable part of the contemporary Japanese vocabulary. Meanwhile, it has been shown that there are individual differences in the rate of ELW comprehension. Among the factors for low comprehension is age; people over 60 years old have been shown to comprehend fewer ELWs than the overall age group. As Japan is expected to soon enter the era of an aging society, the issue of ELW comprehension is likely to present serious social and personal problems. The purpose of this study was to identify the current state of frequently used ELWs in contemporary written …

Aplicabilidad De La Tipología De Funciones Retóricas De Las Citas Al Género De La Memoria De Máster En Un Contexto Transcultural De Enseñanza Universitaria, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

The aim of this paper is to compare the rhetorical functions gathered from the citations of (14) fourteen master´s theses written by seven Spanish and seven Philippine authors. A typology of nine categories was used in order to identify the cultural rhetorical differences that exist in the use of citation from the contrast between contrasting this element in the Philippine and Spanish cultures. The methodology used is textual analysis of the linguistic context of these citations and its subsequent classification within these nine categories. The results show that there are quantitative and qualitative differences between the cultural conventions of citations …

Investigating The Prevalence Of Use By Japanese Speakers Of An Acceptable Alternative Articulation Of The Phoneme /S/ To That Commonly Taught In Esl And Efl Classrooms, Greg Raver-Lampman

English Theses & Dissertations

The International Phonetic Association (IPA) as well as textbooks on phonology and teaching English as a second language (ESL) or foreign language (EFL) characterize the /s/ as an "alveolar fricative," meaning that the tongue approaches the alveolar ridge to produce the sound. Japanese phonology texts characterize the Japanese /s/ as alveolar as well. This tongue position has become integral to teaching the sound to English-speaking children who have speech impediments and for teaching the sibilants to speakers of other languages, including first-language speakers of Japanese who often struggle with the English /s/ despite the fact that the sound occurs in …

Acquisition Of The Non-Generic Definite Article By Spanish Learners Of English As A Foreign Language, Christina Isabelli, Rachel Slough

Scholarship

This study explains the acquisition of the non-generic uses of the English definite article the by L2 learners. Chilean university students completed a questionnaire containing deleted obligatory uses of the. in all, four identified categories showed to have different accuracy rates. Of the four categories, the one most similar to the L1 was the least difficult to acquire while the most different resulted as the most difficult. This concurs with other research and can be explained by L1 rules that are transferred to the L2. The other two categories did not show the same acquisition rate as compared to previous …

Observing Census Enumeration Of Non-English Speaking Households In The 2010 Census: Spanish Report, Christina Isabelli, Yuling Pan, Lubkemann Stephen

Scholarship

This study was part of an ethnographic research project in the 2010 Census Assessment and Research Program to observe the 2010 Census Nonresponse Followup interviews with households that speak a language other than English, in areas of the U.S. with heavy concentrations of residents with limited English proficiency. A multilingual research team consisting of seven sub-teams in the seven primary languages (Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese) was commissioned to carry out the research in the 2010 Census.

The objectives of this research were to identify: (1) how language and socio-cultural factors affect the enumeration of non-English-speaking populations …

La Construcción Social Del Español En La Diglosia Educativa De California, Nicole Siminski

World Languages and Cultures

This project attempts to deconstruct the position of the Spanish language in society while observing its effects on Spanish speaking students in the education system. An extensive look at the history of bilingual education in California reveals its portrayal in society as well as how it is implemented in the school systems. I will study the reaction of both native English speaking children and native Spanish speaking children to learning a second language in a dual immersion setting. Dual Immersion programs are popular for English speaking families but Spanish speaking families are often hesitant to participate. Due to social class …

Cultural Brokering And Bicultural Identity: An Exploratory Study, Jorida Cila, Richard Lalonde, Zohrah Haqanee

Western Migration Conference Series

Abstract: Cultural brokering refers to a process where individuals mediate between two parties that are experiencing some type of cultural misunderstanding. Our exploratory study indicates that cultural brokering is a diverse experience that spans the boundaries of one’s family and includes various norms, values and traditions.

Student Use And Teacher Requirement Of E-Mail Conventions, Lora Ibrahim Galabi

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the use of conventions by EFL students and the requirement of conventions by EFL teachers in student-teacher e-mail communication, in an English-medium university in the Arab world. A convenience sample of 61 students and 13 teachers from the Intensive English Program at the American University in Cairo, Egypt was used. Data were obtained for this exploratory study from a student survey, a teacher survey, and a sample of student e-mails, and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and thematic content analysis. Chi-square tests revealed a correlation between the frequency of …

Instructional Practices That Hinder And Support Esl Students In The Self-Contained Esl Classroom And The Mainstream Classroom, Ebru N. Bozburun

MA TESOL Collection

This paper describes the academic challenges that many English Second Language (ESL) students must deal with from the moment they start attending a bilingual program at elementary school until they finish the last step of their academic experience. These students continually struggle to keep up with their peers, often fail the state mandated tests, and eventually, drop out before receiving their high school diploma. For the past three years, both as a self-contained ESL teacher and an ESL certified co-teacher in the mainstream classroom, I taught ESL Language Arts to Spanish- speaking students at a public junior high school in …

International Graduate Student Powerpoint Presentation Designs: A Reality Check, Alla Zareva

English Faculty Publications

The present study set out to examine what novice international graduate student presenters consider to be effective PowerPoint slide design practices and the extent to which these practices are in agreement with experts’ advice. The analysis focused on three main features of students’ PowerPoint presentations – organisation, style and typography. The general conclusion is that we can mostly rely on students’ intuitions concerning ‘relevance’ and ‘simplicity’ of PowerPoint presentation designs, but we should draw their attention to ‘consistency’, i.e., the systematic application of the organisation, style and typological features to their PowerPoint presentations.

Linguistic Realization Of Refusals In Persian By Iranian Farsi Speakers., Farzaneh Zilaie

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study investigates variations in the linguistics realization of the speech act of refusal in Persian language. It also aims at exploring the role of two social variables; namely ‘social distance’ and ‘power’ in the production of refusals. The data were collected using ethnographic observation, and were both field noted and recorded wherever possible. The results yielded 208 acts of refusals. These refusals were classified according to the refusal classification semantic formulae proposed by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss- Weltz (1990). The results showed that Iranian Farsi speakers employed indirect strategies and a combination of direct and indirect strategies more than …