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Since corpus linguistics gained popularity as a methodology in the latter half of the 20th century, second language acquisition research has seen the emergence of work investigating formulaic language, such as idioms, lexical bundles, and collocations. A collocation is a string of words that co-occur more routinely than probability would predict, and can be considered as an existing entity beyond the component words (Manning & Schütze, 1999). Although formulaic language processing has been investigated by many researchers, uncertainty exists regarding whether such items are processed holistically as single units, or componentially in the form of the constituent words, with no definitive research having weighted the evidence in either direction.The purposes of the current study are threefold. The first purpose involves conducting research specifically designed to investigate whether L1 and L2 collocational processing is componential or holistic. This issue is important because existing research makes claims based on putative entailments, such as recognition latencies, as opposed to assessing behavior with manipulations that could only produce certain results if processing is holistic. The second purpose involves investigating collocational processing through a unique letter transposition condition that was specifically designed to isolate a holistic processing effect. The third purpose involves assessing data from an experiment designed to investigate collocation processing during orthographic word recognition. Fifty-four adjective-noun collocations and 18 novel pairs were embedded in sentences and presented to L1 and L2 English users in a self-paced reading experiment. The target items were presented in one of three conditions; no transposition (e.g., pretty girl), word transposition (e.g., prtety gril), and phrase transposition (e.g., prettg yirl). Results revealed that phrase transpositions engendered significantly longer reading times than the other conditions, indicating that these manipulations were processed as word-final and word-initial substitutions as opposed to a single phrase-internal transposition. Thus, the results indicated that the collocations were most likely processed componentially as two separate words. These findings have implications for collocation processing theory by suggesting that future models should consider collocations as being componentially processed at the orthographic, word recognition stage, and that the faster reaction times observed in previous studies should be considered in terms of an entrenchment continuum as opposed to evidence of holistic processing. / Teaching & Learning

The study investigated business letter writing problems within the banking profession. It identified difficulties in letter writing aspects that bankers perceive; and it investigated the relationship of those perceived difficulties to assessed deficiency aspects in letters the bankers had written. A literature review revealed studies that addressed origination of business letters. These studies typically utilized either a survey of groups involved with writing or an analysis of completed letters. This raised the question of possible outcomes in combining the two approaches within a work setting. A Q-sort technique was used to determine perceptions of 15 branch location bankers concerning difficulty of 40 composition and 40 technical letter writing aspects. The bankers ranked the following composition aspects highest in difficulty: legalese; persuasion techniques; refusal conveyance; unfavorable news conveyance; conflict resolution; and direct versus indirect approach. They ranked the following technical aspects highest in difficulty: infinitives (split); sentence syntax; antecedents of pronouns; wordiness (excessive); dangling participles; and preposition usage. The bankers answered a survey concerning their access to training and instruction in business letter writing. Each banker submitted four recently originated business letters. Composition aspect deficiencies within bankers' submitted letters were assessed by a panel of post secondary business communication instructors. Combined grammar-checking software and researcher screening determined deficiencies for technical aspects of the letters. A total of 900 non-repetitive deficiencies were assessed in the 60 letters submitted -- an average of 15 per letter. comparative percentile rankings showed that perceived difficulties differed most from existing deficiencies in the following aspects: composition -- (perceived difficulties greater) refusal conveyance and euphemisms, (assessed deficiencies greater) sentence construction and letter organizing/structuring; technical -- (perceived difficulties greater) split infinitives and dangling participles, (assessed deficiencies greater) spelling and pronoun usage. / Ed. D.

Yes / Purpose.: Crowding describes the increased difficulty in identifying a target object when it is surrounded by nearby objects (flankers). A recent study investigated the effect of age on visual crowding and found equivocal results: Although crowded visual acuity was worse in older participants, crowding expressed as a ratio did not change with age. However, the spatial extent of crowding is a better index of crowding effects and remains unknown. In the present study, we used established psychophysical methods to characterize the effect of age on visual crowding (magnitude and extent) in a letter recognition task. Methods.: Letter recognition thresholds were determined for three different flanker separations in 54 adults (aged 18–76 years) with normal vision. Additionally, the spatial extent of crowding was established by measuring spacing thresholds: the flanker-to-target separation required to produce a given reduction in performance. Uncrowded visual acuity, crowded visual acuity, and spacing thresholds were expressed as a function of age, avoiding arbitrary categorization of young and old participants. Results.: Our results showed that uncrowded and crowded visual acuities do not change significantly as a function of age. Furthermore, spacing thresholds did not change with age and approximated Bouma's law (half eccentricity). Conclusions.: These data show that crowding in adults is unaffected by senescence and provide additional evidence for distinct neural mechanisms mediating surround suppression and visual crowding, since the former shows a significant age effect. Finally, our data suggest that the well-documented age-related decline in peripheral reading ability is not due to age-related changes in visual crowding. / Supported by an Age UK Scholarship (AJB); a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Postdoctoral Fellowship (ATA); and a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship (BSW).

I detta arbete beskrivs ett projekt som syftade till att skapa bokstavssånger som ökar elevernas kunskap om bokstavsljuden och bidrar till språkutveckling samt fonologisk medvetenhet, vilket i sin tur kan stödja läs- och skrivinlärningen. Sångerna ska också vara roliga, meningsfulla och inbjuda till delaktighet. Projektet startades under mitt tredje år på Grundlärarprogrammet vid Uppsala universitet, då jag under 7 veckor hade min tredje och sista verksamhetsförlagda utbildning (VFU) i en förskoleklass i Uppsala. Projektet fortsatte även resten av våren som en del av min utbildning, då jag läste kursen Självständigt arbete 1 på 15 hp och valde att tillverka ett pedagogiskt material. Bokstavssångerna riktar sig mot elever och lärare i förskoleklass och årskurs 1, och är tänkt som ett komplement till övrig språkundervisning (exempelvis enligt Bornholmsmodellen) samt övrig musikundervisning. I arbetet argumenterar jag varför musik kan (och bör) användas i språkundervisningen, bland annat genom en kortare översikt av forskning på området musik och språk. Arbetet innehåller även noter och länk till inspelningarna, en analys av vad sångerna kan tillföra befintligt material, en beskrivning av produktutvecklingsprocessen samt en diskussion kring arbetet och resulterande sånger och lärdomar. / The aim of the project described in this report was to create letter songs that increase students' knowledge of letter sounds and contributes to their development of language and phonological awareness, which in turn can support students who are learning to read and write. The songs should be fun to sing, meaningful and invite the students to participate. The project was started during my third year at the Primary School Teacher Education Programme at Uppsala University, and during my last and 7 weeks long teaching internship in a preschool class in Uppsala. The project continued for the rest of the semester as a part of my first (of two) Independent Project when I chose to create a pedagogical product.The letter songs are aimed towards students and teachers in preschool class and grade 1, and is meant to complement other language instruction (for example, in accordance with the Bornholm model) and other music instruction. In the report I argue that music can (and should) be used in language instruction, and the argument is among other things supported by an overview of studies and research about music and language. The report also contains sheet music and a link to recordings, an analysis of what these songs contributes to existing songs, an description of the product development process and a discussion of the project and resulting songs and lessons learned.

The purpose of this is study is to investigate the experiences of students in Latino/Latina fraternities and sororities. Five students were selected to take part of the study and were interviewed using a qualitative case study methodology grounded in critical race theory. Five themes were identified: the support system that Latino Greek Lettered Organizations (LGLO) offer, going Greek, challenges, differences from other Greeks, and shifting identify of the organizations from Latino to multicultural. Student affairs practitioners, educators, and researchers will be able to use the findings from this study to better support LGLO's and consequently the success of Latino students on college campuses. / Graduation date: 2012

The purpose of the study was to gather sufficient data from a campus questionnaire and subsequent follow-up interview with the primary college administrators within the target population to accurately describe conditions of the fraternity systems on those campuses. The population for this study consisted of selective, small, private colleges and universities in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic region of the country. The target population of twenty-six colleges and universities was identified from the respondents to the campus questionnaire and included schools from the states of Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

This study examines stereotypes of fraternities and sororities in the media. Recently the media, particularly movies and television, has produced numerous portrayals of fraternal organi zations. Through thi s study a content analysis of the television show GREEK from ABC Family was conducted. The first seven episodes were analyzed answer the following questions: Were stereotypes of fratern ities and sororities pmirayed through these episodes? If so, what were the stereotypes? Five stereotypes were studied for fraternities and six for sororities. Definitions of the chosen stereotypes are identified in the literature and recorded. Tally markers were used to tabulate each portrayal of stereotypes. An average of the three viewings was then calculated to help maximize the reliability of this study. The results were further manipulated to determine the frequency of both the fraternity and sorority stereotypes individually as well as together. Stereotypes were found throughout the television series. Fraternity stereotypes were recorded more often than sorority stereotypes. This study allows us to better understand the portrayals of fraternity and sorority life as shown in GREEK.