This research is an empirical multiple-case study that is designed to explore adult individual learners’ vocabulary learning processes, and to examine their use of vocabulary learning strategies. It investigates the following key questions: (1) What vocabulary learning strategies do the individual learners usually use to find the meaning of unknown words? (2) What vocabulary learning strategies do the individual learners usually use to consolidate the words? (3) How do the individual learners apply the vocabulary learning strategies for the purposes mentioned above? (4) What are the differences between the learners’ use of vocabulary learning strategies? By using multiple data collection methods – questionnaires, interviews, and think-aloud protocols – I not only investigate what strategies the individual research participants use to study vocabulary, but also look at how they actually employ the strategies while completing a series of vocabulary activities. Finally, I also compare the patterns in the use of strategies between the participants. After the introduction, Chapter Two begins with the clarification of basic terms: “word,” “word knowledge,” and “strategy.” In Chapter Three, studies in the fields of vocabulary learning strategies are reviewed. Chapter Four deals with mental processes involved in vocabulary learning. Chapter Five focuses on the empirical study. I describe briefly the German language course (GER 101) and the language textbook, Vorsprung (2nd edition, 2002), and illustrate in depth the methodology used for data collection and data analysis. The results of the study are presented in Chapter Six. Chapter Seven summarizes the study results, followed by suggestions for foreign vocabulary instruction and for future research. The study illustrates that participants used a variety of vocabulary learning strategies to learn vocabulary. In total, 49 individual vocabulary learning strategies are identified and classified. Further, the differences between the learners are shown to be not only in what strategies they use but also in how they employ them. Finally, the study shows that well-organized and planned learning strategy training should be provided to language learners in order to make sure that they can use the strategies effectively, and that language instructors and the language textbook should play an active role in strategy training.

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This study examined the features of the classroom discourse in eight Algebra I classes from two urban high schools with diverse student populations. In particular, by using the discursive analysis perspective, the type of communication between teachers and students was examined. The study investigated to what extent teachers' patterns of discourse change as a result of the number of ELLs present or their particular teaching experiences and ESOL endorsement. Furthermore, the impact of teachers' cultural and linguistic backgrounds upon ELLs' mathematics experiences was explored, particularly the teachers' patterns of discourse and adjustments to their teacher talk, or modifications of instructions that contributed to ELLs' engagement in the mathematics classroom. Data analysis from various sources (observations, video-recordings, frequency counts, interviews, the teachers' self-evaluations, and the researcher's and the ELLs' evaluations) indicated that to some extent all teachers changed their patterns of discourse simply due to the presence of ELLs, regardless of the total number in the class. Teachers with more teaching experience and with ESOL training had a smaller number of ELLs in their classes, whereas in both schools the novice teachers were assigned to teach classes with the highest number of ELLs. The novice teachers frequently used almost the same strategies as their more experienced colleagues did. Yet the qualitative analysis of the type of modifications to their speech they made, the type of questions they asked, and the provision of information of higher cognitive demand according to Bloom's Taxonomy indicated that even though all teachers needed improvement in using these strategies, the more experienced teachers with ESOL training applied those strategies to a fuller extent. They more often used slower and simpler speech and different questioning techniques sensitive to the ELLs' level of English language acquisition (i.e., pre-production, early-production, and speech emergence) and provided the students with content specific, enriched information. However, they still did not ask enough questions that could provide the ELLs with opportunities to justify and explain their opinions, and rarely led the discussions to a point which could move the ELLs to the highest level of the subject-specific literacy - intermediate speech and fluency in mathematics in English.

Web services are autonomic software applications that provide specific services on the Web and are accessible through standards-based protocols and interfaces in order to ensure interoperability. Web services have gained immense popularity due to the potential of dynamically composing multiple Web services over the Internet into complex multi-organizational Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer processes. The management of such composite processes, however, poses a non-trivial problem in terms of cost and complexity due to technology growth, increasing consumer demands for service quality, and the varying Internet workload. Based on a study of the state-of-the-art and a critical assessment of the limitations of the existing solutions, we present the Comprehensive Service Management Middleware (CSMM) framework to facilitate execution of the four major tasks of client-side process management namely, service selection, negotiation of Service Level Agreement (SLA), composition and execution of the process, and monitoring and validation of SLAs. We also propose the Negotiation Broker (NB) framework for automated intelligent agent-based negotiation of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and the Performance Monitor (PM) framework for distributed client-side monitoring and verification of SLAs. The NB expedites bilateral bargaining of SLAs in a trusted broker framework with enhanced decision algorithms to enable consumer feedback during negotiation. The PM presents a flexible and extensible trusted monitoring solution, which enables faster error detection and recovery and automatic creation of a reputation knowledge base. We explain a scenario of autonomic process management using the CSMM. We describe experiments using agent simulations on a prototype of the NB to validate our proposed policy model for business level specification of negotiation preferences, the mathematical policy mapping model, and the decision algorithms for different consumer preferences. The optimality of the negotiation results are illustrated by combined utility value of the negotiation outcomes for both parties. The experiments conducted on the proof of concept prototype of the PM show its viability, efficiency, and accuracy in distributed SLA monitoring and verification because it does not include network performance. The CSMM enables partial or complete automation of all the client-side management tasks to leverage use of Web services in business processes. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2009-04-20 02:01:50.8

In this research, Communicative Accommodation Theory (CAT) is investigated while native speakers address nonnative peers. For the intentions of this research, three native speakers of Canadian English were asked to have conversations with native and nonnative peers. The conversations were in the form of giving directions on the map. Later on, the participants’ formants and vowel durations were measured and used for comparing native-nonnative peer effect(s) on the speakers’ vowel formants and duration. Based on the analyses, it is suggested that accommodation may take place based on providing stereotypical vowel durations and formants, as well as reducing inter-token variations in the nonnative peer context.

In this research, Communicative Accommodation Theory (CAT) is investigated while native speakers address nonnative peers. For the intentions of this research, three native speakers of Canadian English were asked to have conversations with native and nonnative peers. The conversations were in the form of giving directions on the map. Later on, the participants’ formants and vowel durations were measured and used for comparing native-nonnative peer effect(s) on the speakers’ vowel formants and duration. Based on the analyses, it is suggested that accommodation may take place based on providing stereotypical vowel durations and formants, as well as reducing inter-token variations in the nonnative peer context.

The influence of affective factors on learning has been studied by researchers in a range of disciplines, including within SLA research, where tests measuring anxiety specific to second language writing have been developed (Cheng, 2004). Recent studies on instructor perceptions show increasing numbers of second language learners (SLL) enrolled in mainstream university courses with instructors providing varying types of feedback to these learners. The current study investigates how the writing anxiety of second language learners in a mainstream context may relate to writing performance and how feedback anxiety resulting from one written assignment may be connected to writing performance on a subsequent assignment. Using modified writing anxiety survey instruments, 16 SLLs enrolled in two mainstream university English composition courses (taught by two instructors) completed two surveys, an informal interview, and an online questionnaire about feedback on two writing assignments prepared for their course; feedback and a grade from one assignment and a grade from a second assignment were also collected. Mainstream instructors were found to balance feedback provided to learners between content and organization feedback and grammatical feedback, similar to findings on feedback practices for second language instructors (Evans et al., 2010). Statistical analyses between survey results and grades revealed negative (non-statistically significant) correlations between anxiety scores (from surveys) and grades. Participants expressed 16 different emotions in response to feedback through qualitative data collection methods (open-ended survey questions, interviews, and online questionnaire); hope, acceptance, and anxiety were the three most commonly emotions reported. The number and complexity of emotional responses reported indicate that anxiety is only one of numerous responses to feedback and research on the effects of affective factors on learning may benefit from investigations of other emotions, including pleasant or positive emotions. Two data collection methods converged in reporting that nearly all participants made use of feedback through one or more forms of follow up action. Continued research into the complex emotions inspired by writing feedback may provide a deeper understanding of how SLLs may moderate their own emotional responses and provide instructors insight into additional factors that may affect learners’ writing performance. / Graduate / 0290 / amalec@uvic.ca

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Over the last 25 years socially-based SLA research has increasingly focused on contextual factors that constitute the local learning environments of learners of English as a second language in attempting to better comprehend the socially embedded nature of learning outcomes. These scholars have largely postulated language learning not only as the acquisition of linguistic knowledge in the abstract but rather as fundamentally constituted by participation in social praxis as situated within local sociocultural and institutional contexts. The emergence of „the social‟ in SLA research is especially significant to academic contexts in which learners belonging to diverse cultural and literacy traditions typically struggle to identify with target literacy practices of their academic communities. Drawing on a sociocultural approach and the community of practice construct, this thesis takes a qualitative approach. Through the analysis of teacher and student focus group data, this thesis sets out to illustrate learner and teacher articulations surrounding what constitutes learner engagement in an academic English program at an international university in Vietnam. The data collected in this study suggests that the focal learners perceived higher levels of learner engagement in learning contexts in which collaborative, dialogic activity was extensively integrated in the acquisition of target academic literacy practices. While the focal teacher articulations surrounding student engagement also took into account the importance of such collaborative class activity, the teachers did not attribute the same level of importance to it that the focal students did. This study concludes that teachers should extensively use activity frameworks within class that encourage group work in the learning of target academic literacy practices, especially academic reading and writing practices. Even where target practices will ultimately be elaborated and assessed on an individual basis, this study illustrates that collaborative dialogic frameworks seemed to provide students with opportunities to pool linguistic, content, and skills-related resources, thus allowing students to overcome learning difficulties associated with academic literacy practices. Ultimately, such activity frameworks appeared to mediate higher levels of student engagement within class activities, which students linked to more effective and enjoyable learning of academic English. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar

Critical networked services established between service provider and customers are expected to operate respecting Service Level Agreements (SLAs). An interesting possibility to monitor such SLAs is using active measurement mechanisms. However, these mechanisms are expensive in terms of network devices resource consumption and also increase the network load because of the injected traffic. In addition, if the number of SLA violations in a given time is higher than the number of available measurement sessions (common place in large and complex network infrastructures), certainly some violations will be missed. The current best practice, the observation of just a subset of network destinations driven by human administrators expertise, is error prone, does not scale well, and is ineffective on dynamic network conditions. This practice can lead to SLA violations being missed, which invariably affect the performance of several applications. In the present thesis, we advocated the use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology to improve the detection of SLA violations. Such use is described using principles to control active measurement mechanisms. These principles are accomplished through strategies to activate measurement sessions. In this context, the major contributions of this thesis are: i) An approach to improve the detection of SLA violations through the steering of the activation of active measurement sessions using local and remote past service level measurement results and resource utilization constraints; ii) The concept of destination rank as an approach to autonomically prioritize destinations for the activation of active measurement sessions using destination scores; iii) The concept of correlated peers to enable the autonomic provisioning of a P2P measurement overlay for the exchange of relevant active measurement results; iv) The concept of virtual measurement sessions to enable the sharing of measurement results among correlated peers in order to save network devices resources and to improve SLA monitoring coverage; v) The definition of decentralized strategies to steer the activation of active measurement sessions using P2P principles. The method used on the investigation started with the execution of literature reviews on the networkwide control of measurement mechanisms and the employment of P2P technology on network management. After that, the proposed principles to control active measurement mechanisms and the strategies to activate measurement sessions were described. Finally, experiments were performed to evaluate the performance as well as to highlight properties of such principles and strategies. The findings showed properties which improve the detection of SLA violations in terms of the number of detected violations and the adaptivity to network dynamics. We expect that such findings can lead to better SLA monitoring tools and methods.

La Sclérose Latérale Amyotrophique (SLA) est une maladie neurodégénérative caractérisée par une perte sélective des motoneurones et impliquant les effets neurotoxiques des astrocytes. Le but de ce travail est d’explorer les altérations du métabolisme dans les astrocytes induites par des conditions associées à la SLA. Nous avons dans un premier temps mis en place une méthodologie d’analyse spectrométrique (résonance magnétique nucléaire et spectrométries de masse) du métabolome cellulaire. Ensuite, nous avons invalidé les cellules NSC-34 comme modèle in vitro d’étude de l’excitotoxicité induite par le glutamate. Nous avons enfin étudié les altérations métaboliques dans les astrocytes primaires dans des conditions de la SLA et décrit plusieurs dysfonctionnements métaboliques dans ces cellules induits par l’expression de la mutation SOD1G93A, par la présence des motoneurones sauvages et par l’exposition au glutamate. Ce travail met en évidence les relations métaboliques entre la SLA et le métabolisme énergétique cérébral. Nos résultats contribuent à la compréhension des altérations métaboliques des astrocytes dans la SLA et pourraient aider à appréhender de nouvelles cibles thérapeutiques associées aux altérations métaboliques dans la SLA, afin de protéger les motoneurones des perturbations induites par le glutamate. / The selective degeneration of motoneuron that characterizes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), implicates non-cell-autonomous effects of astrocytes. The aim of this work is to explore the metabolic status of astrocytes exposed to ALS-associated conditions, using metabolomics approach. We first, developed a methodology for the analysis of cellular metabolome using different analytical technologies, and then we evaluated the relevance of differentiated NSC-34 as an in vitro model for glutamate excitotoxicity studies. Finally, we evaluated metabolic alterations in astrocytes in ALS-associated conditions and we described several metabolic dysfunctions in these cells induced by the expression of a SOD1G93A mutation, the presence of wildtype motoneurons and glutamate exposition. These studies highlight major impacts of ALS on the brain energetic metabolism. This work provides novel insight for understanding the metabolic dysfunction of astrocytes in ALS conditions and opens perspective of therapeutics targets though focus on these metabolic ways, in order to protect motoneurons from glutamate injury.