Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychology / Richard J. Harris / The use of different language learning methods for the purposes of acquiring foreign language vocabulary has long been explored but studies have often failed to take into account the potential effects on lexical processing. The current study examined the effectiveness of the Keyword, Context and Paired-Associate learning methods in acquiring foreign language vocabulary, but primarily focusing on the lexical and conceptual organization effects that each method may have on a foreign language learner. Three main theories/models (i.e., Word Association, Concept Mediated and Revised Asymmetrical Hierarchical) have been used to explain the organization of bilingual lexical, conceptual stores and connections between each store, but studies have not examined the addition of a third language (i.e., L3) and the potential connections created between new L3 and the two existing language stores. It was predicted that since low-proficiency bilinguals would create lexical models which heavily rely on translation equivalents, thus, the use of non-elaborative learning methods would assist in creating only lexical translation links, while more sophisticated elaborative methods would be successful in creating direct access to the conceptual meaning. The current study further explored the potential effects of language learning methods on comprehension ability, requiring the creation of situation models for comprehension. Finally, the present study explored the immediate and delayed effects of language learning methods on both vocabulary acquisition and comprehension ability. Results from the current study indicated that all learning methods were successful in creating and conceptual connections between the languages and the conceptual store, while Keyword learners had significantly better scores on certain trial types. Differences in terms in lexical and conceptual strength are suggested since differences in RTs and scores were found between some of the learning methods. Furthermore, in terms of comparisons across time, repeated testing learners attained better scores on all trial types in comparison to learners who were only tested at Time 2. Lastly, when assessing if lexical links could be created to a non-associated highly fluent second language known by the bilingual, results indicated that each language learning method successfully created such lexical connections, but these links were weaker in strength than those of the base language that was used during learning. Based on the current results, new models of lexical access are proposed which vary based on the use of language learning methods. The current findings also have strong implications and applications to the field of foreign language acquisition, primarily for bilingual language learners acquiring an L3.

Thesis advisor: Gustavo Morello / This qualitative study of female English language learners living in the greater Boston area investigates the relationship which exists between social networks, English language learning, and immigrant assimilation. Understanding that social networks are important for immigrant assimilation because of the social capital they provide (Portes and Zhou, 1993), this study aims to understand how immigrant women with limited English proficiency build social networks in the United States, both with immigrants and native-born citizens of the United States. Data analysis shows that English language learning plays an pivotal role in the formation of social networks both with other immigrants and with native-born citizens, and that immigrant networks are ultimately more beneficial because they are more accessible. As immigration policies in the United States continue to change, it is important to study the changing needs and experiences of immigrants. There is a need for the greater Boston area to provide more spaces for interaction between immigrants and Americans to facilitate the formation of social networks and exchange of social capital between the two groups. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Maria E. Brisk / Drawing on Collins' (2009) framework on domination and seeing language as a signifier (Bhaba, 1994), this critical ethnography explores the relationship between language and power within the context of a school focused on serving the needs of newcomer immigrant youth in the United States, a country that has increasingly become polarized around issues of immigration, social, and educational policy. Conducting observations in multiple social contexts and informal/semi-structured interviews, the study focuses on six non-Spanish speaking newcomer immigrant youth navigating a particular phenomenon - English and Spanish being dominant languages in their social contexts inside and outside of school. Data were analyzed using guidelines of critical ethnography (Carspecken, 1996). Salient findings include issues of assimilation, meritocracy, and invisibility at the school. The importance of transnational connection, restoration, and accessing social and cultural capital outside of school were also noteworthy. Suggested additions to theorizing work and research with this population as well as critical implications for newcomer schools are also presented. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: María Estela Brisk / This study was conducted to understand student identities of five Japanese children (the second through sixth grade) and the processes of identity negotiation within their sojourning experiences between Japan and the United States. An increasing number of Japanese elementary students internationally sojourn in today's globalized societies, and consequently shape their identities in multiple school contexts. Previous research has suggested the reciprocal relations between linguistic minority learners' identities and their diverse school experiences, and reported a wide variation of bilinguals' self-perceptions. However, few studies have focused on elementary sojourners to holistically theorize the internal and external processes of their identity negotiation. In this interpretive multiple case study, children's own perspectives were inductively gathered by following the constructivist grounded theory guidelines. Data collection methods included child in-depth interviews enhanced with drawing activities, classroom observations, and teacher and parent interviews. The cross-case analysis was facilitated by interpretive focus group interview with Japanese former sojourners. The results indicated that the children across varied stages of sojourning integrated their consistent self-relevant attributes (ordinary student status and familiar personal traits) and their changing attributes (oral English proficiency) together as the fuel for pursuing their identity standard--their own interpretation of positive student identities--which fundamentally represented their social adaptive and socioemotional competences. Their experiences with Japanese language and culture, bilingual/bicultural competences, and international transitions, appeared potentially influential for their student identities. Through the multi-layered complex negotiation processes, they successfully verified, improved, balanced, and imagined their self-relevant attributes salient for their identity standard. By proposing a competence-based identity negotiation model, this study recommends all educators to support their sojourning students by attending to two types of school competences: (a) the Identity-Relevant Competence which contributes to identity standard and (b) the Identity-Negotiation Competence to practice the holistic processes of identity negotiation for sustaining the identity standard. The findings add a new theoretical scope to the evolving field of child identity research, and suggest further interdisciplinary explorations of sojourners' student identities. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

There has been a strong advocacy of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in China since the 1980s. One underlying assumption behind this approach is that acquisition is a process which depends on conversational interaction (Wagner-Gough & Hatch, 1975). A specific kind of interaction, meaning negotiation, which “includes routines or exchanges that involve indications of non-understandings and subsequent negotiations of meaning” (Gass & Varonis, 1991, p. 127) has long been considered to be a key factor in L2 development research. From the interactionist perspective, the facilitative role of meaning negotiation in L2 learning is that it provides comprehensible input, and elicits corrective feedback, helps learners to produce comprehensible output, and has the potential to draw learners’ attention to non-target-like aspects of language output. However, recognising the growing role of synchronous computer-medicated communication (SCMC) in language learning, how EFL learners negotiate meaning and whether the claim of the interactionist approach still holds true in this new medium needs further investigation. Moreover, considering the complexity of tasks used in eliciting meaning negotiation and the SCMC involved in negotiating meaning, the exclusively cognitive approach applied by previous studies seems insufficient to explain the meaning negotiation elaborated. For instance, considering the Chinese culture of learning, some Chinese students may be reluctant to produce negotiated interaction. Also, little research has been carried out to investigate the effect of social factors, such as the context and relationship between interlocutors, in generating meaning negotiation. Furthermore, there is little conclusive evidence in previous research regarding the effects of tasks on the quality and quantity of meaning negotiation. This case study investigated 48 EFL students studying mechanical engineering in a Chinese university. Using the variationist perspective on the interaction approach, this study aimed to investigate the features of learners’ negotiated interaction during task-based SCMC, and their similarities and differences with face-to-face negotiated interaction, based on the Varonis and Gass model. Moreover, it also investigates the relationship between task (i.e., task type and task content) and meaning negotiation (i.e., quality and quantity), and the perceived benefits and difficulties of the use of paired task-based SCMC interaction. Also, as previous studies have neglected the individual differences and social factors, the last aim was to investigate how the social and cognitive factors were inextricably intertwined by studying the participants’ perceptions and their actual performances. The main results of the study indicate a low ratio of negotiated turns in paired task-based SCMC interaction due both to linguistic and social factors. Moreover, task did have an influence on the meaning negotiation generated. However, the five-task typology (Pica et al., 1993) applied by most previous studies investigating meaning negotiation cannot fully explain the influence of task on meaning negotiation in peer-peer SCMC context. Apart from the two recurrent features in task definitions, “interactional activity” and “communication goal”, “task complexity” and “task difficulty” (Robinson, 2003) are also influential factors. Overall, this study argues that task, SCMC, the relationship between interlocutors and the learners themselves are all factors which can influence learners’ generation of meaning negotiation. Both personal information and learning contexts have the potential to shape not only the quantity and quality of meaning negotiation but also the attention to the interaction and further influence the production of learners’ language.

Final research presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Program in Applied Linguistics (TESOL) at Queens College. Seminar in Research in TESOL. 2002 / Submitted by Nilson Junior (nilson.junior@unila.edu.br) on 2016-07-14T19:41:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 JALIL_Samira Abdel_Perspectives_ok.pdf: 9803609 bytes, checksum: 24ccb22735e5416db3bd3692ae05d6e2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-14T19:41:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 JALIL_Samira Abdel_Perspectives_ok.pdf: 9803609 bytes, checksum: 24ccb22735e5416db3bd3692ae05d6e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2002 / This study examines the views of ESL learners and their teachers regarding the advantages of being bilingual, the importance of cross-linguistic interaction, and the place of pronunciation in Second Language Learning. It is aimed at building on prior research and studies in the area as well as discussing and comparing the attitudes the participants of this study have towards these bilingualism-related issues. The participants of this study were 42 ESL learners and their 6 teachers at the International High School in New York. This questionnaire was administered with the attempt of gaining better understanding of these towards the outcomes of being a bilingual at an intermediate and developing stage of acquiring the second language.

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Cai, Jing. / "August 2010." / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-161). / Abstracts in English and Chinese; some appendixes in English and Chinese. / Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2 --- What is transfer? --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- History and development of transfer research --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- The problem of definition-transfer or CLI? --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Interlanguage transfer --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3 --- What can be transferred? --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Different types of transfer --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Transfer in comprehension- an ignored area in the transfer study --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4 --- The study of third language acquisition (TLA) and CLI in TLA --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Factors that influence transfer in the multilingual context --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- The role of (psycho) typology in the cross-linguistic influence of TLA --- p.18 / Chapter 2.4.3 --- The role of L2 proficiency --- p.21 / Chapter 2.5 --- Methodological considerations in the study of transfer --- p.23 / Chapter 2.5.1 --- Research using think-aloud protocol in reading comprehension --- p.25 / Chapter 2.5.2 --- Think-aloud protocol in the study of transfer --- p.26 / Chapter 2.5.3 --- Controversies and limitations in using the think-aloud method --- p.27 / Chapter 2.6 --- "A contrastive analysis of tense and aspect in Chinese, English and French" --- p.29 / Chapter 2.6.1 --- Tenses in French and in English --- p.29 / Chapter 2.6.2 --- Aspectual systems of French and English --- p.30 / Chapter 2.6.3 --- Tense and aspect in Mandarin Chinese --- p.34 / Chapter 2.6.4 --- Passe compose in French --- p.35 / Chapter 2.7 --- "Pilot studies: findings, implications and modifications" --- p.38 / Chapter 2.7.1 --- "The first pilot study (June, 2009)" --- p.38 / Chapter 2.7.2 --- "The second pilot study (July, 2009)" --- p.39 / Chapter 2.7.3 --- "The third pilot study (July, 2009)" --- p.40 / Chapter 2.8 --- Research questions --- p.43 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- METHODOLOGY --- p.44 / Chapter 3.1 --- Participants --- p.44 / Chapter 3.2 --- Sampling procedure --- p.44 / Chapter 3.3 --- Data collection technique: The think-aloud protocol --- p.46 / Chapter 3.4 --- The warming-up (training) session of TAP --- p.47 / Chapter 3.5 --- Research design --- p.48 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Task one: On-line comprehension task --- p.48 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Task Two: a test on English past and perfect tenses --- p.51 / Chapter 3.5.3 --- Task three: a follow-up interview --- p.52 / Chapter 3.6 --- Materials --- p.53 / Chapter 3.7 --- Data processing --- p.54 / Chapter 3.8 --- Data analysis --- p.55 / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- GENERAL RESULTS --- p.57 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.57 / Chapter 4.2 --- General results on how the tasks were completed --- p.57 / Chapter 4.3 --- Describing the coding scheme --- p.60 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- The criterion for judging the case of transfer and its category --- p.64 / Chapter 4.4 --- Answers to Research Question 1 --- p.67 / Chapter 4.5 --- Answers to Research Question 3 --- p.71 / Chapter 4.5.1 --- Some general descriptive analysis of transfer in tense and aspect --- p.71 / Chapter 4.5.2 --- Relationship between transfer (in tense and aspect) and other variables --- p.73 / Chapter 4.6 --- Answers to Research Question 4 --- p.80 / Chapter 4.6.1 --- Different causes for errors in tense and aspect- ProE and ProF --- p.82 / Chapter 4.7 --- General results of Research Question 2 --- p.84 / Chapter 4.8 --- Conclusion --- p.97 / Chapter CHAPTER FIVE --- DISCUSSION --- p.99 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.99 / Chapter 5.2 --- Research questions readdressed --- p.99 / Chapter 5.3 --- Discussion of Research Question 1 --- p.100 / Chapter 5.4 --- Discussion of Research Question 3 --- p.104 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- General descriptive analysis --- p.104 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Discussion of the relationship between transfer in tense and aspect and other variables related to L2 proficiency --- p.104 / Chapter 5.5 --- Discussion of Research Question 4 --- p.111 / Chapter 5.6 --- Discussion of Research Question 2 --- p.114 / Chapter 5.6.1 --- System transfer from Chinese in tense and aspect --- p.115 / Chapter 5.6.2 --- Patterns of transfer from English in tense and aspect- a dynamic system --- p.117 / Chapter 5.6.3 --- Cross-linguistic interaction in third language acquisition --- p.126 / Chapter 5.7 --- Conclusion --- p.129 / Chapter CHAPTER SIX --- "IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH" --- p.132 / Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction --- p.132 / Chapter 6.2 --- Implications for L3 instructions --- p.132 / Chapter 6.3 --- Limitations of the current study --- p.136 / Chapter 6.4 --- Suggestions for future research --- p.140 / BIBLIOGRAPHY / APPENDICES

Many students in an allied health program at a Middle Eastern Arab university were experiencing difficulties with courses taught in English, resulting in poor academic achievement, low grade point averages, a high failure rate amongst its first year students, and an adverse impact upon a future skilled and educated work force for the region. Tinto's theory of institutional action for students' success served as the conceptual framework for the inquiry that used a qualitative explanatory case study method to examine the experiences of those students who were facing difficulties with their studies. To address questions about why students were failing and leaving the school and how the institution might remedy this educational problem, the study employed initial and follow-up interviews and reviews of academic records and portfolios of 6 currently enrolled or recently graduated students over age 21, who volunteered to participate. Content and thematic analysis of the collected qualitative data produced findings indicative of lack of college readiness among students and gaps in institutional practices such as remedial methods for the unprepared students. Based on the study findings, a policy recommendation for improving the educational practices was introduced to support building a better educational environment at the school. The positive social change implications of this study are not only limited to establishing programs to support the students' success and improve retention rates at the institution but also may include the establishment of more effective approaches to the reform measures of the educational system in the country.