I conducted 3-experiments to examine incidental language learning of two languages by bilingual Swedish- and English-speaking children, monolingual English- speaking children, and monolingual English-speaking adults. More specifically, I tested for the presence of Naming in English and in Swedish for all participants. In Experiment 1, I tested for the presence of Naming in Swedish and in English for 5 simultaneously bilingual Swedish- and English-speaking preschoolers. Results showed that the Swedish- and English-speaking children performed similarly in both languages. Naming repertoires were balanced across the languages. In Experiment 2, I replicated the first experiment with 5 monolingual English-speaking preschoolers. Results showed that all participants had the listener component of Naming in repertoire for both languages, but results differed for the speaker component of Naming. One participant emitted 0 speaker responses in either language, 3 participants emitted more correct speaker responses in English than in Swedish, and 1 participant emitted more correct speaker responses in Swedish than in English. In Experiment 3, I tested for the presence of Naming in Swedish and in English for 30 monolingual English-speaking adults. Results showed that adults listening capability was balanced in English in Swedish, but there was a significant difference in the number of correct speaker responses in English than in Swedish.

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This study investigated public school administrator perception of the extent to which federal civil rights, equal employment opportunity, and affirmative action legislation have affected the personnel policies and practices of Virginia public schools since 1972. Another purpose of this study was to determine if there is a correlation between administrator perceptions of EED/AA impact and the characteristics of school divisions.;It was hypothesized that school officials would perceive that the imposition of EED/AA regulations has greatly altered the personnel function in Virginia public school divisions. It was also hypothesized that school officials would perceive that (1) EED/AA regulations caused an increase in both costs and staff requirements; (2) EED/AA necessitated the codification of selection, promotion and transfer criteria and procedure as well as strict adherence to them; (3) EED/AA necessitated modification of causes and procedures for non-selection and dismissal of personnel. Finally, it was hypothesized that the perceived degree of impact would be related to the type of division--that officials of high black concentration divisions, urban divisions and large divisions would perceive greater impact than those of low black concentration, non-urban or small divisions.;A survey instrument was designed, tested and sent to school personnel officials in all 135 Virginia Public School Divisions. Ninety-four responded.;Analysis was accomplished by comparison of responses to questions through analysis of variance using division size, ethnic concentration level and urban, suburban, non-urban nature of the division as the independent variable and response category as the dependent variable.;It was concluded that there was no significant relationship between the three background variables and school officials' responses. It was further concluded that school officials viewed the impact of EED/AA uniformly and that these officials perceived little or no change in staff workload cost or effort due to EED/AA compliance over the period of most vigorous enforcement.

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This study reviews concepts and the mechanism of empathy, and the relationship between empathy and language proficiency, focusing on the aspect of cognitive empathy. It also discusses whether empathy levels could be developed by learning language to a highly proficient level. I compared the empathy levels between high and low proficiency second-language learners to determine if there was correlation between empathy and other factors such as gender, studying abroad, education background, and usage of a second language. I found that there was no relationship between empathy level and language proficiency level; however, there was one between empathy and gender. For further research, I suggest continuing studies in executive function in adults, especially adult bilinguals (including highly proficient second language learners), and to investigate how executive function in adults influences behavior and empathy development.

The process of reading consists of the interaction of many subcomponent processes that transpire between perception of the letters on the page and the building of an interpretation of the text. Essential to comprehension is the ability to access the context-specific meanings of words. Thus, one line of second language (L2) reading research has examined the relationship between the percentage of known words in a text (i.e., lexical coverage) and reading comprehension. Overall, studies in this vein have found that if second language readers report knowing 95-98% of the words in a text, their comprehension is nearly the same as it would be if they knew 100% of the words (e.g., Hu & Nation; 2000; Schmitt, Jiang, & Grabe, 2011). This lexical coverage figure is recommended for extensive reading, but the reading conditions of the existing studies may not be generalizable to this type of reading, nor has the vocabulary-comprehension relationship been studied with beginner L2 language learners. Moreover, comprehension is not a unitary construct. Theories of comprehension posit multiple levels of representation (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005). Therefore, this thesis reports on a study (N = 44) that looked at how lexical coverage relates to the construction of a literal representation of the text (i.e., textbase) and the reader’s mental model of the situation (i.e., situation model). Because a primary purpose of extensive reading being enjoyment, this study also investigated how lexical coverage and comprehension relate to the enjoyment experienced by beginning L2 Spanish learners when reading under conditions more like those desired for extensive reading (Day and Bamford, 2002). In this study, a yes/no vocabulary test was used to measure knowledge of all the words in the texts. Comprehension was first measured productively by means of a cued written recall (CWR), followed by a multiple-choice question (MCQ) test. Both comprehension measures focused on the ten main events identified by four advanced Spanish speakers, and for each main event there was a literal and an inferential question. The results demonstrated a moderate to strong relationship between lexical coverage and comprehension. Participants with 90-94% lexical coverage outperformed the 85-89% lexical coverage group on all measures of comprehension. However, there was a lot of variation in comprehension among readers with 90-94% lexical coverage and they, on average, only comprehended half of the main events. In general, inferential questions were of equal or greater difficulty than literal questions. There was a small to medium effect for the relationship between enjoyment and overall CWR test scores, as well as between enjoyment and perceived comprehension. The significance of these findings for textbase and situation model construction, as well as pedagogical implications are discussed. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester 2019. / April 19, 2019. / extensive reading, lexical coverage, reading comprehension, second language acquisition, vocabulary / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael J. Leeser, Professor Directing Thesis; Antje Muntendam, Committee Member; Gretchen Sunderman, Committee Member.

This investigation was designed to determine levels of self-concept and creative thinking abilities of Vietnamese refugee kindergarten students. Children in a bilingual program were compared with their counterparts in regular classes in order to determine whether significant differences existed. The groups were controlled for background differences (sex, socioeconomic status, years in the United States, and language proficiency). The research questions were: (1) Does participation in a bilingual program have a positive effect on the self-concept of Asian-American children when background factors are controlled? (2) Is there a positive relationship between self-concept and creative thinking ability? / The sample used consisted of 105 Vietnamese children: 47 in a bilingual program and 58 in regular classes. The following tests were administered: Purdue Self-Concept Scale for Preschool Children and Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement. In addition, an informal language assessment test was used along with a parent questionnaire. Four null hypotheses were tested. The first research question (Hypothesis 1) was analyzed using Multiple Regression Analysis. The second research question (Hypotheses 2, 3, and 4) were analyzed using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. / All the hypotheses were rejected. It was found that: (1) Participation in a bilingual program had a positive effect on the self-concept of Asian-American kindergarten children (regression coefficient beta = .194). (2) Sex, years in the United States, fathers' occupation, and mothers' education did not affect the self-concept. (3) Fathers' education and language proficiency had a significant effect on self-concept. (4) There was a significant correlation between the self-concept and the subtest fluency of the creative thinking test (r = .23), with originality (r = .18), and imagination (r = .30). / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-02, Section: A, page: 0418. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.

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