Linguistics Commons^™

The Problems Of Perception And Production Of English Sounds By Persian Learners : A Contrastive And Error Analysis., Mohammad Javad Hejazi

Student Works (2010-2019)

The aim of the research presented in the current study is two fold: (i) to describe the phonetic and phonological systems of Persian and English, and (ii) to identify and analyze the errors committed by Persian learners in the perception and the production of English sounds. The research is based on a contrastive analysis of the Phonetic and Phonological systems of the two languages and an error analysis of the problems faced by Iranian students in the perception and pronunciation of the sounds of the English phonetic system. Findings of this study showed underprediction by CA, that is, the contrastive …

Transivity Choices In The Malaysian Prime Minister's 2009 National Day Blog Posting., Daphne Rosaline Henry Thomas

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study unveils inherent experiential meaning by utilising the framework of the System of Transitivity, a component of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics in weblog interaction. The interactive feature of weblogs helps uncover the experiential meaning as the writers are uninhibited in penning their thoughts. The data for the study is from the Malaysian Prime Minister’s National Day Address posted on 30 August 2009 and the Comments received in response to it. The aim of the study is to uncover the perceptions of the Prime Minister and the Comment Writers on national unity, identity and nation building. The aim of the …

International Students' Beliefs And Perceptions Of Learning English In Malaysia., Sharifah Ayeshah Syed Mohd Noori

Student Works (2010-2019)

Among the cognitive and affective variables thought to influence language learning are language learning beliefs (Horwitz, 1987; Wenden, 1998; Ellis, 2008). These assumptions influence learners’ strategy choices and, as a result, their potential success. Therefore, it is necessary for language teachers and language programme administrators to understand the language learning beliefs of each new group of learners. One relatively new group of English language learners in Malaysia is the international student population. Since recent research in language learning beliefs, as well as in second language acquisition, has advocated a contextual, socio-cultural approach to studying the language learning process, the contextual …

Strategi Tanya-Jawab Dalam Bilik Darjah : Satu Analisia Pragmatik., Woon Chee Chee

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study analyzed pragmatically on the usage of Malay Language in classrooms’ question-answer contexts. The study focused on main question-answer strategies used by the lecturers and the students of Ungku Omar Polytechnic during five sampled sessions of teaching and learning. This research report explicitly revealed some significantly unique sequences of question-answer throughout the whole data, to be analyzed based on Searle’s felicity conditions specified in the Speech Act Theory (1969). The methodology of observation, note-jotting, and audio recordings were used to gather data in the study. Five sessions of teaching and learning in Pendidikan Moral were recorded and transcribed based …

A Contrastive And Error Analysis Of The Use Of English Prepositions By Malay Learners., Woo Sow Yin

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study has two main objectives. The first objective is to find the similarities and differences between the prepositions in English and Malay through the description of the prepositions of both the languages. Next, the second objective is to identify prepositional errors in the written text of Malay Form Five students and explain why these errors occur. The primary sources of reference for English prepositions are from four written sources namely Casell’s Students’ English Grammar, A University Grammar of English, A Practical English Grammar, and A Communicative Grammar of English. Tatabahasa Dewan, Tatabahasa Melayu and Nahu Kemas Kini: Panduan Bahasa …

The Effect Of Collaborative Learning On Individual Writing Performance Of Esl Learners., Suganthi Subramaniam

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study investigates the effects of collaborative learning on individual writing performance of ESL (English as Second Language) learners. The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of collaborative learning on individual writing performance among pre university students taking the Malaysian University English Test (MUET). The subjects in this study are a group of ten Lower Six students from the Science stream. The study is based on Vygtosky’s theory of cognitive development and Piaget’s social cognitive theory. The two research questions that have been the basis for this study are “To what extent does collaborative learning help ESL …

Ciri-Ciri Wacana Penjaga Di Rumah Warga Emas., Yaw Yee Peng

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study looks at the features of the discourse in a home for elderly residents. It also determines if the care-takers use elderspeak while communicating with the residents and determines the features of elderspeak in the discourse of the care-takers. The respondents consist of 12 care-takers and 23 elderly residents. Audio-recordings, observation and field notes were the instruments used for data collection and this was for a duration of 270 hours. The analysis shows that elderspeak exists in the discourse of the care-takers. The features of elderspeak included ‘questions structures’, ‘repetitions’, ‘limited vocabulary’, ‘simple syntax’ and ‘patronizing code’. It was …

Surat Al-Rahman : Dirasah Bayaniyah., Sahban Farouk Mushwh

Student Works (2010-2019)

In this study, “Surah AL-Rahamn : Rhetoric Study’,” the researcher reviewed the difference between the ‘ Tafseer’ and ‘Ta’weel’ of the Holy Quran . In our time, the difference has almost disappeared, and it is only seen in the scientific studies or researches. The researcher also discussed the trends and types of ‘Tafseer’. Chapter two, particularly, shows the rhetoric trend: the concept, the inception as well as the stages form the era of Prophet Mohammed (P.B.U.H) and his noble companions, the precedent scholars, and Imam Muhammed Abduh’s school of thought, which has had the greatest impact on the Sharia studies, …

A Study Of Epistemic Modality In A Television Interview., Papiya Chakrabarty

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research explores the use of modals such as will, would and shall which are epistemic in nature in an interview from America’s MTP (Meet the Press) of the present millennium which involves five politicians as speakers. It applies a qualitative approach and is a corpus based lexico-grammatical research which plans to identify the modality and its frequency in only one type of discourse. The research tests aims to test why speakers use epistemic modality and how committed they are towards their views, opinions which become truth propositions when involved in a question and answer session with other participants of …

A Positional Tagset For Russian, Jirka Hana, Anna Feldman

Department of Linguistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Fusional languages have rich inflection. As a consequence, tagsets capturing their morphological features are necessarily large. A natural way to make a tagset manageable is to use a structured system. In this paper, we present a positional tagset for describing morphological properties of Russian. The tagset was inspired by the Czech positional system (Hajič, 2004). We have used preliminary versions of this tagset in our previous work (e.g., Hana et al. (2004, 2006); Feldman (2006); Feldman and Hana (2010)). Here, we both systematize and extend these preliminary versions (by adding information about animacy, aspect and reflexivity); give a more detailed …

Extraversion And Oral Proficiency In Esl, Joshua Boyd Howard

LSU Master's Theses

Extraversion has been proposed as an influence on the success of a second language learner, although studies in this area have produced mixed results (Dewaele & Furnham, 1999; Marin-Marin, 2005; Wakamoto, 2007). Through a narrative retell task, the current study investigated the effects of extraversion on the spoken English performance of 25 native speakers of Spanish. Extraversion was measured with a Spanish version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire or EPQ (1975). Narratives were elicited using the wordless picture story Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Drawing on the work of Dewaele (1998), Dewaele and Pavlenko (2002), and Oya, Manalo, and …

A Library And Its Community: Exploring Perceptions Of Collaboration, Phoebe Vincenza Daurio

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores perceptions of interorganizational collaboration through an investigation of the opinions and actions of a public library and three community-based organizations. Interorganizational collaboration is often viewed as an effective strategy for accomplishing objectives that would not otherwise be possible with a single organization. Particularly for complex societal issues such as adult literacy, researchers and practitioners believe collaboration between organizations is necessary in order to achieve desired outcomes. Public libraries are engaging in collaborations also to extend their reach, establish the library’s relevance, increase community involvement, and advocate for their position as a community asset.

This thesis is a …

Analisis Kesilapan Sintaksis Dan Morfologi Dalam Khutbah Jumaat., Ahmad Sa'aduddin Wahab

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study attempts to evaluate two main aspects of the Arabic Language – its syntax and its morphology – as they are commonly practiced by preachers or religious workers. It has been found that errors have been continuously made by religious workers. Observations made by the researcher have proven that errors can be found in religious talks, lectures, supplications of prayers, sermons, books, brochures etc. The study conducted began with the distribution of questionnaires to the religious workers in the District of Central Perak. Its purpose was to generally gauge the mastery level of the Arabic Language, focusing specifically on …

A Computer-Aided Error Analysis Of Multi-Word Units In A Malaysian Learner English Corpus., Lee Yit Sim

Student Works (2010-2019)

This is a study on multi-word unit (MWU) errors made by Malaysian English learners. The major approaches used in the analysis of learners’ writings are: error analysis and corpus-based approach. The findings from this study reveal that learners have problems with these MWUs: modal structures , infinitive structures , ‘adjective + noun’ collocations , and connectors . An analysis of these structures shows that the common erroneous patterns in these structures can generally be categorized as ‘overgeneralization’, ‘misformation’, ‘misselection’, and ‘distortion’. The causes of such errors are both interlingual as well as intralingual. Besides these factors, this study also highlighted …

El Análisis De Errores Ortográficos De Estudiantes Filipinos En El Aprendizaje De Español Como Le Y Su Aplicación Didáctica, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La presente investigación fue presentada en 2006 en la Universidad de Salamanca, como memoria final del Máster en Enseñanza de Español como Lengua Extranjera. Este estudio se realizó en la Universidad de Filipinas y en el Instituto Cervantes de Manila, para el que se encuestó a un total de 258 informantes. La tesis principal de la investigación partía de la hipótesis de que los errores ortográficos cometidos por los estudiantes filipinos de español eran fruto de unas dificultades específicas que no coincidían con las causas de los errores ortográficos que generan este tipo de error en los estudiantes nativos, especialmente …

1337 W4yz Of {Dollar}P34king: Toward A Unifying Pragmatic Theory Of Virtual Speech Community Building, Tracy Rene Leblanc

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Building a speech community requires building a shared history of communicative interaction. Within a virtual medium, speech community members employ accommodations for the lack of shared physical space that face-to-face interactions provide. These accommodations, amassing through extended discourse, bring to light the communicative strategies that virtual interlocutors employ in order to build community. Drawing from a corpus of unscripted, naturally occurring discourse of a particular virtual speech community, I engage three frames of linguistic analysis in order to recognize the communicative strategies that constitute speech community building. Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995) accounts for the individual cognitive work involved …

Using Mathematics As A Gateway To Literacy For English Language Learners, Krista Hemphill

Honors Program Theses

One teaching approach that alleviates language barriers involves teachers using what students know and can do to develop students‟ understanding of and ability in another area. Thus, 2 teachers can promote ELLs‟ literacy development by integrating knowledge and skills ELLs have from another subject area into their literacy instruction. Specifically, teachers can integrate mathematics into literacy instruction because research suggests that ELLs often understand and successfully carry out mathematical tasks. For example, Gunning (2003) points out that ELLs tend to perform well on mathematical computations. The universality of mathematical symbols seems to promote ELLs‟ understanding of mathematics instruction although lessons …

Developmental Variation In Children's Acquisition Of Metrical Structure: How Early Treatment Of Stressless Syllables Can Inform Phonological Theory, Clifford S. Jones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The present study uses 26 color photos to elicit a total of 14 words conforming to a very specific pattern: a stressless syllable word-initially, followed by a stressed syllable, and at most one more stressless syllable. This was found to be a particularly difficult metrical structure for the two- and three-year old participants to produce in an adult-like manner. Based on the findings that a fairly reliable (if language-particular) order of acquisition is observable for contrasts of both place and manner of articulation, the case is made for a system of six emergent features, which may be characterized as combinable …

An Investigation Of The Individual Differences In Cognitive Factors That Contribute To Bilingual Lexical Disambiguation, Ana B. Areas Da Luz Fontes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of working memory capacity, access to subordinate meanings of L1 homonyms and degree of cross-language activation on the access to subordinate meanings of L2 homonyms. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals completed a word recognition task which assessed how quickly and accurately they accessed subordinate meanings of English homonyms that were either noncognates (e.g. fast/rápido) or cognates (e.g. letter/letra) with Spanish. In Experiment 2, another group of Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences while having their eye-movements recorded for measures of lexical access. On the critical trials, sentences contained a homonym that was …

The Acquisition Of Colloquial Speech And Slang In Second Language Learners Of English In El Paso, Texas, Patricia Brannon Bradford

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Colloquial and idiomatic speech seem to be some of the more difficult areas for achieving native-like language competence in the acquisition of a second language (L2), though very few studies have been performed on this topic. Acquiring the colloquial speech of a community is crucial for second language learners who wish to achieve native-like proficiency in the target language. The majority of studies done on this area have focused on the attitude towards the teaching of colloquialisms in a formal classroom setting, or the attitude that native speakers have towards non-native speakers' use of colloquial speech and slang. Typically, L2 …