Applied Linguistics Commons^™

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 …

The Washback Of The Toefl Ibt In Vietnam, Melissa Barnes

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Washback, or the influence of testing on teaching and learning, has received considerable attention in language testing research over the past twenty years. It is widely argued that testing, particularly high-stakes testing, exerts a powerful influence, whether intended or unintended, positive or negative, on both teachers and learners. This article investigates the washback effects of a high-stakes English language proficiency test, the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-Based Test (TOEFL iBT), in Vietnam. Vietnam, a developing country whose educational philosophies differ from those underpinning the TOEFL iBT, provided a unique context to explore the test's washback. In the …

Identity Phauxnetics, Nathan T. Jones

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the construction of identity and authenticity through sociophonetic variation, focusing on British Hip Hop artist Amy Winehouse. Prior work on British vocal artists’ phonetic variation has relied upon regional categorical frameworks (Trudgill, 1983; Carlsson, 2001) and found variation to be evidence of production errors and speakers’ misidentification of targeted speech patterns, resulting in summative interpretations of conflict between speakers’ discreet identities and speech pattern categories. More recent work has attended to linguistic processes within cultural movements influenced but not strictly delimited by sociolinguistics’ canonical categories of region, class, race, etc. Within the context of the Hip Hop …

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.

Emotional Facial Expressions In Synthesised Sign Language Avatars: A Manual Evaluation., Robert G Smith, Brian Nolan

Other Resources

This research explores and evaluates the contribution that facial expressions might have regarding improved comprehension and acceptability in sign language avatars. Focusing specifically on Irish sign language (ISL), the Deaf (the uppercase ‘‘D’’ in the word ‘‘Deaf’’ indicates Deaf as a culture as opposed to ‘‘deaf’’ as a medical condition) community’s responsiveness to sign language avatars is examined. The hypothesis of this is as follows: augmenting an existing avatar with the seven widely accepted universal emotions identified by Ekman (Basic emotions: handbook of cognition and emotion. Wiley, London, 2005) to achieve underlying facial expressions will make that avatar more human-like …

Why Digital Problem Solving Matters: A Closer Look At How Education And Skills Online Can Be Used To Inform Educational Outreach Efforts, Jill Castek, Cindy Gibbon

Presentations and Publications

This presentation focuses digital problem solving and the approaches and strategies digital problem solvers use.

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.

Relationship Between Acoustic Measures And Speech Naturalness Ratings In Parkinson’S Disease: A Within-Speaker Approach, Marie I. Klopfenstein

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This study investigated the acoustic basis of across-utterance, within-speaker variation in speech naturalness for four speakers with dysarthria secondary to Parkinson’s disease (PD). Speakers read sentences and produced spontaneous speech. Acoustic measures of fundamental frequency, phrase-final syllable lengthening, intensity and speech rate were obtained. A group of listeners judged speech naturalness using a nine-point Likert scale. Relationships between judgements of speech naturalness and acoustic measures were determined for individual speakers with PD. Relationships among acoustic measures also were quantified. Despite variability between speakers, measures of mean F0, intensity range, articulation rate, average syllable duration, duration of final syllables, vocalic nucleus …

Why Get Lost In Translation? On The English Translations Of Wen Yiduo's Poems, Choi Yung Ng

Lingnan Theses

The debate over the translatability of poetry has been a long-standing issue for decades. Relatively few discussions, however, have focused on the concrete reasons of poetry being translatable (or untranslatable). Moving beyond traditional ways of elucidating the matter through theoretical argument, this study aims to investigate the question of poetry translation in a more solid, empirical manner by looking into linguistic and language-based aesthetic differences between Chinese and English, in particular their prosodic features and capacities. Part One seeks to answer the question “Why does poetry get lost in translation?” from a linguistic and language-based aesthetic perspective, using the English …

Exploring Adult Punjabi-Speaking Immigrants’ Path To English Language Acquisition: A Case Study, Pankaj Sharma

All Theses And Dissertations

Punjabi-speaking immigrants to the United States find many successes and face many challenges as they strive to become full citizens of their new communities. There are success stories and obstacles faced by immigrants as they embark upon a journey from another country. This study examined what major obstacles Punjabi speaking immigrants face when they immigrated from India, including poverty, lack of employment, and stress specifically related to moving from the Punjabi to English language that ultimately affect the acculturation process for the entire family. The study also looked at support received by Punjabi immigrants from others in the community and …

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 …

Sound Effects: Age, Gender, And Sound Symbolism In American English, Timothy Krause

Student Research Symposium

This mixed-method study investigated the correlation of sound symbolic associations with age and gender by analyzing data from a national survey of 292 American English speakers. Subjects used 10 semantic differential scales to rate six artificial brand names that targeted five phonemes. Subjects also described the potential products they imagined these artificial brand names to represent. Quantitative analysis alone provided insufficient evidence to conclude that age or gender affect sound symbolism in American English. While 26 out of 60 scales showed a monotonic shift among the means of the three age groups, only three were statistically significant. The evidence of …

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. …

Leveraging Research To Inform Better Practice, Jill Castek

Presentations and Publications

Panel focused on the importance of research being designed strategically from the very beginning and thinking about dissemination at the outset of every project design, not as an afterthought.

Linguistic Landscape Of Main Streets In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Rachel E. Lay

Undergraduate Honors Theses

After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina erupted into ethnic conflict and ultimately genocide. Nearly 100,000 people, mainly Bosniaks, died in the Bosnian War. Two decades later, the violence has ended but the conflict is still present in Bosnia; the societal segregation of the 1995 Dayton Accords, intended only as an immediate solution to the violence, still stands. Population and language distribution are evidence of this segregation. Bosnia’s two entities are home to two different ethnic majorities: Serbs in the Republika Srpska and Bosniaks in the Federation of BiH. In an environment so sensitive that the government …

Linguistic Landscape Of Main Streets In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Rachel E. Lay

Undergraduate Honors Theses

After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina erupted into ethnic conflict and ultimately genocide. Nearly 100,000 people, mainly Bosniaks, died in the Bosnian War. Two decades later, the violence has ended but the conflict is still present in Bosnia; the societal segregation of the 1995 Dayton Accords, intended only as an immediate solution to the violence, still stands. Population and language distribution are evidence of this segregation. Bosnia’s two entities are home to two different ethnic majorities: Serbs in the Republika Srpska and Bosniaks in the Federation of BiH. In an environment so sensitive that the government …

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 …

Using Piaac’S Education And Skills Online To Examine Adults' Skills Locally, Jill Castek, Amy Honisett, Drew Pizzolato, Stephen Reder

Presentations and Publications

This session will explore Education and Skills Online (ESO) – a valid and reliable assessment tool based on PIAAC that addresses Literacy, Numeracy, and Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments (PS-TRE). This project will use ESO’s PS-TRE together with the North Star Assessment to assess the digital literacy skills of library patrons.

Operationalizing Success In A Digital Learning Environment Designed To Support Vulnerable Adults, Elizabeth Withers, Jill Castek, Robert Fountain, Drew Pizzolato, Kimberly D. Pendell, Gloria Jacobs, Stephen Reder

Presentations and Publications

This study seeks to examine patterns of successful learning identified when economically vulnerable, underserved, and high-need adults engaged in self-access, tutor facilitated learning to acquire digital literacy. In large part, this diverse population of learners has been left behind in the digital revolution, thus compounding their social, economic, and educational disadvantages. These individuals have unique patterns of engagement within educational endeavors, at times dropping in and out of programs as a result of social and economic impediments that permeate their lives. Traditional means of identifying success in their learning endeavors inadequately describe the paths these learners take on the road …

Philology, Anthropology And Poetry In Arthur Waley's Translation Of The Shijing, Qingyang Lin

Lingnan Theses

The topic of my thesis is Arthur Waley and his translation of the Shijing, or The Book of Songs (1937), as Waley entitled it. The Book of Songs is especially noted for its philological ingenuity, anthropological insight and poetic appeal; during my preliminary research I discovered that there exists an interesting interplay between these three aspects of this translation. In this thesis, I hope to examine the textual and thematic hermeneutics of The Book of Songs.

Waley did not read the Shijing as a scriptural text inscribed with sagely intention and authority; rather, he returned it to its folkloric origin, …