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Word recognition skill is fundamental for readers to successfully process any given text. Proficiency in the component skills of word recognition, orthographic, phonological, and semantic knowledge, is what readers need to accurately and automatically decode words to apply meaning to what they have read. For second language readers, the challenge of reading is often hindered by a lack of word recognition skills and therefore, they often suffer from low reading rates and consequently poor reading comprehension. This study was a quasi-experimental longitudinal inquiry into the effects of extensive reading, word recognition training, and timed reading on second language reading comprehension. Through word recognition tasks focused on orthographic, phonological, and semantic knowledge development, the aim of this study was to (a) better understand the effects of orthographic, phonological, and semantic skill training on word recognition skills, (b) better understand the effects of word recognition training on reading rate and reading comprehension, (c) understand the effects of long-term word recognition training on reading comprehension, (d) investigate if changes in word recognition components correlate with changes in reading comprehension, and (e) better understand reasons for expected and unexpected outcomes of participants in the study. A total of 248 participants took part in the study. The participants were a combination of first- and second-year economics majors from a private university in western Japan. They were from ten intact classes that were randomly assigned to one of four groups. The first group acted as a comparison group and focused on intensive reading training. The second group did extensive reading and included sustained silent reading. The third group did extensive reading and received word recognition training. The fourth group did extensive reading, word recognition training and timed reading training. All participants took a reading course as part of the required English program that lasted for two 15-week academic terms. The first 30 minutes of each class were used for each group’s respective training, and the remaining 60 minutes were used to teach general reading strategies. Quantitative data were gathered using a variety of instruments that included a lexical decision test, an antonym pairs test, a pronunciation test, a reading comprehension test, and a reading rate test. Additional qualitative data were gathered via selected participant interviews and a post-study survey. The results showed that the participants who received word recognition training in conjunction with extensive reading, produced positive changes in reading comprehension. However, only two of the components of word recognition ability improved with training, semantic knowledge and phonological knowledge. This indicated that more focus on specific components of word recognition might provide better scaffolding to foster reading development. The results also indicated that the three treatment groups all performed significantly better than the comparison group in reading rate gain and those improvements were reflected in reading comprehension gains. With respect to word recognition and its impact on reading comprehension, there was evidence showing that word recognition training did positively impact reading comprehension, but that more time might be required than used in this study to see its full impact. Finally, there were data to indicate that there was a correlation between semantic knowledge and reading comprehension. This study shows that although extensive reading is an effective approach to teaching L2 English reading, the addition of word recognition training and timed reading can benefit readers by improving reading comprehension. The addition of word recognition training can assist lower-proficiency readers to automatize low-level cognitive processes such as orthographic, semantic, and phonological processes, and by doing so, reallocate cognitive resources to higher-level cognitive processes such as inferencing and schemata activation required for reading comprehension. Finally, the addition of timed reading seems to have contributed to overall reading rate and reading fluency development. / Applied Linguistics

<p> Listener vs. speaker-oriented speech: Studying the language of individuals with autism There are many mechanisms speakers utilize in conversation that aid a listener's understanding. However, there are also many characteristics of speech where it is unclear whether they serve listener or speaker-oriented functions. For example, speakers frequently produce disfluencies such as "um or "uh," which are helpful to listeners, indicating that the speaker is not finished speaking yet. We do not know, however, if these are used intentionally to aid listeners. In addition, the tendency to place animate items as sentential subjects may benefit either speaker or listener. Since individuals with autism engage in minimal listener-oriented behaviour, they are a useful group to differentiate these functions. Results showed that individuals with autism used fewer ums and uhs, and more silent pauses than controls, but used animacy similarly. This suggests that the use of ums and uhs is for the benefit of listeners, but the bias toward animate subjects is not.</p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

The speech commonly addressed to infants (infant-directed speech or IDS) is believed to have multiple functions, including communication of emotion and highlighting linguistic aspects of speech. However, these two functions are most often studied separately so that the influence of emotional prosody (the changes in intonation and vocal quality that relate to emotion) on linguistic processing in infants has rarely been addressed. Given that language learning during infancy occurs in the context of natural infant-caretaker exchanges that most certainly include emotion communication and co-regulation, it is important to integrate the concepts of emotional communication and linguistic communication in studying language learning. This study examined the influence of both positive (happy) and negative (sad) face+voice contexts on word recognition in 11-to-13-month-old infants. It was hypothesized that infants would learn and subsequently recognize words when they were delivered in a happy context, but will experience more difficulty in learning and/or recognition of the same words when delivered in a sad context. The general pattern of results confirmed these predictions in that after habituating to sentences containing a specific target nonsense word, infants in the Happy Condition recovered their attention to the same sentences with a novel target word. In contrast, infants in the Sad Condition showed no significant recovery to a change in target words. These results contribute to our understanding of how emotional tone can facilitate and/or attenuate attention in older infants as they engage in language learning with their caretakers. / Ph. D.