Applied Linguistics Commons^™

Devil And Tapster 3, George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

Transcriptions of the third of three parts of the telling of the folk tale "Devil and the tapster," by Amara Camara in Palatougou.

Dog And Monkey (Part 2), George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

Transcriptions of the folk tale "Dog and monkey" as told by Kaba Camara in Palatougou.

Why Dogs Have No Names (Part 2), George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

Part 2 of "Why dogs have no names," as told by Kaba Camara in Palatougou. The audio version of this folk tale can be found here.

Herbalist (Part 2), George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

The second of three parts of the story "The Herbalist," as told by Amara Camara in Palatougou.

A Man And His Four Wives (Part 2), George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

The second of four parts of the telling of the folk tale "A man and his four wives."

A Man And His Four Wives (Part 3), George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

The third of four parts of the telling of the folk tale "A man and his four wives."

Mani History, George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

Audio and transcriptions of an interview with Morlaye Boyo Keita, who describes the history of the Mani people, and how they came to be situated in their current location

Evolutionary Trajectories, Internet-Mediated Expression, And Language Education, Steven L. Thorne, J. Scott Payne

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article describes the evolution of communication technologies, accompanying transformations in everyday communicative activity, and pedagogical possibilities these tools support in second and foreign language (L2) settings. We begin with an overview of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) and uses of the Internet to mediate intercultural communication for purposes of L2 learning. We then describe generational shifts in Internet technologies and their proliferation and uses, with the majority of our efforts focused on contemporary environments such as blogs, wikis, podcasting, device-agnostic forms of CMC, and advances in intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL). Throughout, we engage in a discussion of praxeological fusions …

Review Of Critical Pedagogies And Language Learning, Edited By Bonny Norton And Kelleen Toohey., Eva Núñez-Méndez

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Review of Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning, edited by Bonny Norton and Kelleen Toohey (2003),

Book Review Of, The Music Of Everyday Speech: Prosody And Discourse Analysis, John Hellermann

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviews the book "The Music of Everyday Speech" by Ann K. Wennerstrom.

The Acquisition Of A Stage Dialect, Nathaniel George Halloran

Dissertations and Theses

This study reports on the effectiveness of (theatrical) stage dialect learning techniques in bringing about linguistically authentic change. Actors use several techniques, some rather esoteric in nature and others more closely tied to linguistic fact such as the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The purpose of this study is to examine some of these techniques as to their ability to bring about linguistic authenticity, as well as to attempt a comparison of stage dialect acquisition and naturalistic dialect acquisition.

Data were collected by interviewing a convenience sample of twelve student actors. Six of these (three males, three females) were …

The Development Of Language Choice In A German Immersion School, Miranda Kussmaul Novash

Dissertations and Theses

When bilinguals converse with one another, they make choices about which language to speak. Many different factors have been shown to influence adult bilinguals' language choice, including interlocutor, setting, discourse content and discourse function. Less, however, is known about the factors influencing the language choice behavior of young bilinguals. Although case studies have provided into the type of language choice behavior exhibited by individual children, there is a lack of knowledge of the course of development from the language choice behavior of early childhood bilinguals to the more complex behavior of adult bilinguals.

This thesis examines the developmental pattern of …

Artifacts And Cultures-Of-Use In Intercultural Communication, Steven L. Thorne

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding how intercultural communication, mediated by cultural artifacts (i.e., Internet communication tools), creates compelling, problematic, and surprising conditions for additional language learning. Three case studies of computer-mediated intercultural engagement draw together correlations between discursive orientation, communicative modality, communicative activity, and emergent interpersonal dynamics. These factors contribute to varying qualities and quantities of participation in the intercultural partnerships. Case one, "Clashing Frames of Expectation -- Differing Cultures-of-Use," suggests that the cultures-of-use of Internet communication tools, their perceived existence and on-going construction as distinctive cultural artifacts, differs interculturally just as communicative genre, pragmatics, and institutional …

The Interactive Work Of Prosody In The Irf Exchange: Teacher Repetition In Feedback Moves, John Hellermann

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the interactive import of prosody from a perspective of participants' orientation to talk in interaction, taking advantage of data from institutional discourse to focus on the prosodic packaging of recurring turn sequences of the same discourse activity. The analysis focuses on the third slot of a ubiquitous three-part classroom discourse sequence, the IRF exchange (Sinclair & Coulthard 1975), a site in which teachers make repetitive feedback moves following student responses. Examination of more than 25 hours of classroom discourse and more than 300 third-turn teacher feedback types uncovered a systematic use of prosody for these teacher repetitions …

Self-Perceptions Of Non-Native English Speaking Teachers Of English As A Second Language, Kathryn Ann Long

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the present study was to examine the self-perceptions of effective non-native English speaking teachers (non-NESTs) of English as a Second Language (ESL) regarding their teaching behaviors. The study also sought to discover the relationship between effective non-NEST perceptions of their teaching behaviors and stereotypes for those behaviors. It further sought to define what experiences have contributed to their non-conformation if their perceptions do not fit the negative stereotypes of teaching behaviors of non-NESTs.

An Antidote To The Anesthetic: A Diary Study, Carol Rasmussen Schramm

Dissertations and Theses

The teaching experiences of an American ESL teacher, recorded in a critically reflective diary, for the basis for this study. Through analysis of the diary, the culturally formed and framed attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions of the teacher are explored in an attempt to understand the dialectic relationship between the diarist's culture and the cultures of her students. The researcher believes that increases in awareness in these areas can lead to improved teaching practice. Thus, one goal of this study is the professional development of its author.

The literature in the field of TESOL does not adequately address the impact of …

¿Corregir O No Los Errores En La Clase De Español Como Lengua Extranjera?, Eva NúÑEz-MéNdez

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

A lo largo de la historia de la enseñanza de las lenguas extranjeras los errores se han considerado desde diferentes perspectivas: algunas veces se han visto como algo totalmente negativo (como fallos que demostraban la incapacidad del estudiante para expresarse correctamente), otras como la única guía indicativa para examinar el proceso del aprendizaje lingüístico. Desde los años setenta con el método contrastivo hasta el contemporáneo método comunicativo el rumbo de la investigación y corrección de los errores ha cambiado en gran medida. Hasta que Pit Corder publicó “The significance of learners’ errors” en 1967 se pensaba que los errores se …

Attitudes At The Bank : A Survey Of Reactions To Different Varieties Of English, Sean Wilcox

Dissertations and Theses

In the modem world of international communication, it is more common for speakers of different varieties of English to come into contact with each other on a daily basis. This can occur not only in face to face communication, but in telephone communication as well.

This study investigates the attitudes towards a non-native or Expanding Circle (ECE) variety of English held by telephone customer service representatives at a large American financial institution. The central question of this study asks whether or not these telephone representatives will rate a speaker of a Korean-accented variety of English higher or lower than a …

Language Attitudes And Academic Achievement: A Study Of Mexican Immigrant Esl Students In The Northwest, Julie Ann Cheshire

Dissertations and Theses

As the population of Mexican immigrant learners continues to increase in the Northwest, an understanding of the cultural, social and psychological realities of these students' lives becomes an ever more important issue for professional language educators, classroom teachers, and school administrators. Our understanding of the needs of these learners will have an important effect on how prepared they are to participate in academic situations and community life.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between language attitudes and ESL learning among young adult Mexican-immigrant learners in one community education program in the Northwest. Learners' values and beliefs …

Portland Dialect Study: The Story Of /Æ/ In Portland, Jeffrey C. Conn

Dissertations and Theses

This study reports on the hypothesized raising of the low, front vowel /æ/, which is characteristic of a regional dialect vowel shift found in cities of the Midwest and Eastern North of the United States. The raising of this vowel is the primary change in a series of vowel shifts that have traditionally been attributed to this region of the U.S. The purpose of this study is to document the production of this vowel by residents of Portland, Oregon, in order to see what light it can shed on dialect research of the Pacific Northwest, especially across age groups to …

On Communicative Competence: Its Nature And Origin, Mary Lou Emerson

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to trace the lineage of the term communicative competence (CC) and to provide a framework for understanding the term CC, a controversial term introduced by Hymes (1972). This pager argues that the term CC is only meaningful if it includes competence in the same sense as Chomsky (1980) defines it--underlying knowledge of the rules of language severed from ability. Although Chomsky discusses competence in terms of grammar, he suggests that there may be underlying knowledge of language use-pragmatic competence. In the end, I will attempt to demonstrate the possibility that there is a competence …

Use Of Cultural Topics In Electronic Dialogue Journals In The Foreign Language Classroom, Katya Elizabeth Monge Jacome

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study has been to determine what effect the difference in cultural and general topics has on the length, complexity, and quality of resulting entries in electronic dialogue journals. The data, which consisted of 132 electronic dialogue entries generated by eleven adult students in a second year university Spanish course over a period of four weeks, were measured for length, in terms of total words and total number of t-units; complexity, by dividing the total number of words by the total number of t-units; and quality, as assessed by the Jacobs profile (1981), which considers the following …

Discourse Analysis: Backchanneling Behavior Of Advanced Speakers Of English/Japanese As A Second/Foreign Language, Keiko Ikeda

Dissertations and Theses

When a Japanese speaker or an American English speaker is engaged in an interaction in their second/foreign language (L2), they have choices in terms of language performance. They can maintain their behavior as what is conventional in their own first language/culture, what is expected in the partner's first language/culture, or what is believed to be the appropriate language behavior in the language in use (L2).

In this current study, backchanneling behavior is chosen to be one socio-pragmatic behavior that can be very different depending on language/culture. Data were collected in telephone conversations from a total of four listeners, all advanced …

Learning, Motivation, And Self: A Diary Study Of An Esl Teacher's Year In A Japanese Language Classroom, Laura Ruth Hawks

Dissertations and Theses

Using a journal kept during a year in a second-year level Japanese language class, a diary study of an adult's foreign language experience was undertaken by an ESL teacher and graduate student. Kept as a means of releasing the anger, stress, and frustration that initially accompanied the learning experience, the journal provides a basis for the analysis of cultural, pedagogical, and personal variables that affected the learning process.

The introspective and longitudinal nature of the study provides not only a description of the learning environment and teaching method over time, but also illuminates otherwise unobservable aspects of the learning experience, …

Survey Of Support For And Opposition To English Only Legislation In The Greater Portland Region, Leah Ann Woodruff

Dissertations and Theses

The politics of language is something that all ESL instructors will deal with at some point in their careers. The English Only Movement is an important part of the current trend in language legislation. As ESL instructors we need to understand what motivates people in our communities to support or oppose such legislation, so that we can better prepare our students to operate in that community. Many articles have been written on the English Only Movement, but the vast majority of them are from a historical or politically partisan view. Little research has been done in regard to why this …

The Relationship Between Chinese Character Recognition Strategies And The Success Of Character Memorization For Students Of Mandarin Chinese, Hui-Yen Emmy Chen

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between beginning Chinese language students' character memorization and the strategies they used for the recognition of Chinese characters. In the experiment, a new character teaching approach, the phonetic-ideograph strategy, was introduced to all the subjects during two quarter terms. Subjects participated in the study were divided into two groups depended upon their language backgrounds: the phonographic group and the morphographic group. All the subjects in the phonographic group were English speakers and subjects in the morphographic group were Japanese speakers. All the subjects received the same treatment in the study. …

Error Correction Preferences Of Latino Esl Students, John Burrell

Dissertations and Theses

The present study looked at the error correction preferences of 172 adult Latino ESL students. It was a modified replication of a study which looked at the error correction preferences of Japanese university students. A questionnaire was used to gather the data. The questionnaire measured the participants' general preferences for error correction, attitudes towards peer correction, the desired frequency of correction in five aspects of language and preferences for specific types or methods of error correction.

The study found a very positive attitude towards error correction by the teacher. There was a positive attitude towards peer correction, but only from …

The Influence Of Cultural Backgrounds On The Interpretations Of Literature Texts Used In The Esl Classroom, Barbara Jostrom Gates

Dissertations and Theses

This study was a detailed descriptive investigation into the different interpretations and perceptions that are evoked by readers of United States literature, based on their cultural backgrounds and experience. Grounded in research that advocates for the convergence of culture and literature in the language classroom and a research design based on reader-response theory, this study explored the responses of two groups of students from the University of Portland: international students, the majority of whom were English as a Second Language (ESL), and U.S. citizens, all of whom were native speakers of American English.

Through a reader-response style questionnaire modeled after …

A Comparison Of The Child Directed Speech Of Traditional Dads With That Of Stay-At-Home Dads, Judith Nancarrow Barr

Dissertations and Theses

The speech that mothers use when addressing adults has consistently been shown to exhibit modifications when the conversation partner is their language-learning child. Fathers adopt similar changes in the structural linguistic aspects of their Child Directed Speech (CDS), but their patterns of discourse remain more of a challenge for the child. This contrast in parental language is thought to be beneficial to the language-learning child: a mother's language focuses on the child as a conversation partner, whilst a father's more demanding language is considered a "Bridge" between the mother's and that of adults in the outside world. With family roles …

Chinese Numeratives And The Mass/Count Distinction, David Goodman

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates the mass/count distinction for lexical nouns, and how this is formalized morphosyntactically in language. English is one language in which a grammaticized mass/count distinction can be seen--though there are varying explanations regarding what this distinction actually signifies. Chinese, on the other hand, is a language which might appear to be missing a formalized mass/count distinction. However, I postulate that Mandarin Chinese does in fact have a syntactic-distributional diagnostic available for teasing apart mass nouns from count nouns.

The diagnostic that I propose for finding a mass/count distinction among lexical nouns in Mandarin lies in the distribution of …