Abstract : In the contemporary world, English has become the international language in which most intercultural communication is conducted (Seidlhofer, 2011). The number of speakers using English as a foreign or second language (L2) outnumbers the number of native speakers of the language six times (Crystal, 2003) and, accordingly, English is used more commonly as a Lingua Franca in the international context than to communicate with its native speakers (Jenkins, 2007). Because of the global spread of English, there are more people who speak English with a non-native accent. Such accents often trigger a set of stereotypes insofar as it could have negative consequences for the speaker in terms of academic success and employability (Lippi-Green, 1994). From decades of research in social psychology and sociolinguistics, it has been established that accent plays a significant role in how native speakers perceive non-native speakers of English (Garrett, 2010). However, little has been done in exploring how non-native speakers of English view their own accent and judge acceptability of other non-native English accents. Therefore, this study addressed the need for further research focusing on non-native students’ attitudes towards Arabic- and Chinese-accented English in an English Intensive Program at an English-speaking university in Montreal. This study employed the verbal guise technique from the field of social psychology to elicit spontaneous reactions to L2 accented speech with two levels of first language (L1) influence. Unlike other verbal guise studies, this study did not include a native speaker sample for comparison. We believed our participants’ potential negative attitudes to L2-accented speech would be attenuated by the reference frame effect. To explain and clarify verbal guise test results, we also conducted semi-structured interviews. The results show that the respondents displayed a relatively low level of solidarity with Chinese and Arabic accents in English. Notwithstanding relatively low solidarity ratings given to the accented voices, they were still higher than the evaluations documented in the literature. In addition, high status ratings were found for non-native speakers despite the fact that they were recognized as such. This suggests that in addition to the positive effect triggered by the lack of inclusion of native speaker accents, there might be some contextual factors at play. We found that the participants were harsher in their ratings when the voices represented the more formal domain of higher education but more lenient when they referred to informal settings. From our data, it is also evident that non-segmentals play an important role in language attitudes. The female speakers who approximated their rhythm patterns and intonation contours to those of a native speaker received higher ratings on all the traits in our data. We believe that, if we want them to serve the needs of international students, these often ambivalent attitudes should be considered in the choice of a classroom pronunciation model, and in the development of pronunciation materials. / Résumé : Dans le monde contemporain, l’anglais est devenu la langue internationale utilisée pour la plupart des communications interculturelles (Seidlhofer, 2011). Le nombre de locuteurs utilisant l’anglais comme langue étrangère ou langue seconde est six fois plus important que le nombre de locuteurs natifs (Crystal, 2003). L’anglais est plus souvent utilisé comme Lingua Franca dans un contexte international que pour communiquer avec des locuteurs natifs (Jenkins, 2007). A cause de cette diffusion globale de l’anglais, la plupart des gens qui parlent anglais ont un accent non-natif. Ces accents déclenchent souvent une panoplie de stéréotypes qui peuvent avoir des conséquences négatives sur l’employabilité ou la réussite professionnelle des locuteurs (Lippi-Green, 1994). Des décennies de recherche en psychologie sociale et sociolinguistique ont reconnu que l’accent joue un rôle significatif sur la perception des locuteurs non-natifs par les locuteurs natifs (Garrett, 2010). Cependant, peu d’études se sont penchées sur la façon dont les locuteurs non-natifs perçoivent leur propre accent et jugent l’acceptabilité des autres accents non-natifs. Par conséquent, la présente étude se concentre sur les attitudes des étudiants internationaux du programme d’anglais intensif d’une université anglophone montréalaise envers les accents arabes et chinois en anglais. Cette étude utilise la technique de locuteur masqué employée dans le domaine de la psychologie sociale pour déclencher des réactions spontanées à un discours de langue seconde accentué par deux niveaux d’influence de la langue maternelle. Contrairement aux autres études utilisant la technique de locuteur masqué, cette étude n’inclus pas de discours de locuteurs natifs à des fins de comparaison. Nous pensons que les attitudes négatives potentielles pourraient être atténuées par l’effet de cadre de référence. Pour expliquer et clarifier les résultats de la technique de locuteur masqué, nous avons également mené des entrevues semi-dirigées. Les résultats montrent que les participants expriment un niveau de solidarité relativement faible envers les accents arabes et chinois en anglais. Pourtant, ce niveau de solidarité est tout de même plus haut que les études reportées dans la littérature. D’autre part, le statut social des locuteurs non-natifs a été évalué positivement malgré que les locuteurs aient été reconnus comme non-natifs. Ceci suggère qu’en plus d’un effet positif déclenché par l’exclusion des accents natifs, certains facteurs contextuels peuvent avoir influencé les résultats. Nous avons trouvé que les personnes interrogées notaient plus sévèrement les voix suggérant un niveau d’éducation élevé, mais étaient plus clémentes envers les voix faisant référence à un contexte informel. De l’analyse des données, il apparait que les non-segmentals jouent un rôle important dans les attitudes langagières. De plus, les locutrices se rapprochant du rythme et de l’intonation des natifs ont reçu des évaluations supérieures sur tous les traits. Nous pensons que ces attitudes souvent ambivalentes devraient être considérées dans le choix du modèle d’enseignement et dans le développement de nouveaux supports d’apprentissage de la prononciation pour les étudiants internationaux.

The new world of academic discourse is complex and necessitates that L1 and L2 graduate students learn a multiplicity of texts, master intertextuality, and actively participate in emerging literacies or genres of their disciplines (Molle & Prior, 2008; Swales, 2004; Warren, 2013). Challenges arise about how doctoral students produce, interpret, and learn texts and genres, and how they act and react around text production in particular multicultural institutional contexts (Hyland, 2000; Prior, 2004). Little is known about how students, particularly those in higher education, establish intertextual connections among different modes of texts (e.g., written, oral, visual) for actively engaging in literacy (Belcher & Hirvela, 2008; Seloni, 2012). The purpose of this study is to examine how L1 and L2 doctoral students use intertextual practices to create meaning and develop their academic literacies during the literacy events of Global Conversations and Literacy Research (GCLR) web seminars. Drawing upon microethnographic discourse analysis, more particularly the constructs of intertextuality (Bloome, & Carter, 2013), I investigate the following questions a) How are the L1 and L2 students engaged in intertextual practices in the literacy events of GCLR web seminars? b) How does the use of intertextuality contribute to L1 and L2 students’ academic literacies? The participants are two L1 and two L2 doctoral students, who are also multilinguals, had different first languages (i.e., Korean, English, Chinese), and actively engaged in the GCLR web seminars. Data drew upon interviews, chat transcriptions, video recordings of the web seminars, and visuals. Data collection and analyses began in September 2014, and continued through November 2015. Microethnographic discourse analysis showed how participants constructed intertextual connections during the literacy events of the GCLR web seminars. The findings show how L1 and L2 doctoral students used intertextuality to socialize into academic discourse, mediate discoursal identities, and develop cultural models. The study has implications for L1 and L2 pedagogy, multilingual’s learning, and research: Future research should investigate academic literacies with intertextual connections to oral, written, and online discourses. Educators and graduate students are encouraged to exploit the full potential of intertextuality through metacognition in emerging academic literacies and mediated discoursal identities.

This study analyses the textbook Veckans ord 5 by Britta Redin and Görel Hydén (2003), which is used as a teaching aid in Swedish as a second language. The aim is to examine the theories of vocabulary learning and the learning strategies revealed in the content and design of the textbook and thereby examine its functionality for Swedish L2 pupils. We use content analysis as a method and apply it to selected chapters in the book connected to vocabulary learning and how pupils are expected to consolidate the words they learn. The analysis also considers whether the exercises deal with the form of words (morphology, orthography, phonology) or their content (syntax, lexical field, synonyms, hyponyms, antonyms).   The result shows that the arrangement of the textbook agrees with some common theories and vocabulary learning strategies such as repeating words, linking them to synonyms and learning words through pictures. Another finding is that the exercises highlight the form of words more than their content and meaning.

The main focus of the thesis is to derive stability criteria for networked control system (NCS) models featuring imperfections such as time-varying and constant delays, quantization, packet dropouts, and non-uniform sampling intervals. The main method of proof is based on matrix algebra, as opposed to methods using Lyapunov functions or integral quadratic constraints (IQC). This work puts a particular focus on handling systems with a single integrator. This framework is elaborated in different specific directions as motivated by practical realizations of NCSs, as well as through numerical examples. A novel proof of the discrete time multivariate circle criterion and the Tsypkin criterion for systems including a single integrator is presented, as well as a stability criterion for linear systems with a single integrator subject to variable sampling periods and sector-bounded nonlinear feedback. Four stability criteria for different classes of systems subject to packet loss and time-varying delay are given. Stability criteria for a closed loop system switching between a set of linear time-invariant systems (LTIs) are proved. This result is applied to a single-link NCS with feedback subject to packet loss. Finally, necessary and sufficient conditions for delay-independent stability of an LTI system subject to nonlinear feedback are derived.

The issue of identity has generated a significant amount of research in recent years. In this literature review, the relationship between learner identity and accent is explored, specifically the learner’s cultural affiliation and identity and the link to his/her accent acquisition in a second or foreign language. Social networks, motivation, L1 use, socio-cultural knowledge, discrimination and power relations, and anxiety are all shown to affect parts of the learner’s cultural identity, which, in turn, may influence his/her accent in the L2. / text

This literature review sets out to revisit the studies exploring impact of rater characteristics on language oral assessments. Three categories of raters' backgrounds: occupation, accent familiarity, and native language are identified and will be addressed respectively in the following sections. The results showed that no consensus regarding raters' occupational background, linguistic background and native-speaker status on examiners' rating has been found so far. However, this review will highlight the current testing situations, bring up limitations from previous studies, provide implications for both teachers and raters, and hopefully shed light on future research. / text

This thesis considers possible criteria for the selection of example sentences for difficult or unknown words in reading texts for students of German as a Second Language (GSL). The examples are intended to be provided within the context of an Intelligent Computer-Aided Language Learning (ICALL) Vocabulary Learning System, where students can choose among several explanation options for difficult words. Some of these options (e.g. glosses) have received a good deal of attention in the ICALL/Second Language (L2) Acquisition literature; in contrast, literature on examples has been the near exclusive province of lexicographers. The selection of examples is explored from an educational, L2 teaching point of view: the thesis is intended as a first exploration of the question of what makes an example helpful to the L2 student from the perspective of L2 teachers. An important motivation for this work is that selecting examples from a dictionary or randomly from a corpus has several drawbacks: first, the number of available dictionary examples is limited; second, the examples fail to take into account the context in which the word was encountered; and third, the rationale and precise principles behind the selection of dictionary examples is usually less than clear. Central to this thesis is the hypothesis that a random selection of example sentences from a suitable corpus can be improved by a guided selection process that takes into account characteristics of helpful examples. This is investigated by an empirical study conducted with teachers of L2 German. The teacher data show that four dimensions are significant criteria amenable to analysis: (a) reduced syntactic complexity, (b) sentence similarity, provision of (c) significant co-occurrences and (d) semantically related words. Models based on these dimensions are developed using logistic regression analysis, and evaluated through two further empirical studies with teachers and students of L2 German. The results of the teacher evaluation are encouraging: for the teacher evaluation, they indicate that, for one of the models, the top-ranked selections perform on the same level as dictionary examples. In addition, the model provides a ranking of potential examples that roughly corresponds to that of experienced teachers of L2 German. The student evaluation confirms and notably improves on the teacher evaluation in that the best-performing model of the teacher evaluation significantly outperforms both random corpus selections and dictionary examples (when a penalty for missing entries is included).

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur mycket talutrymme elever med annat modersmål än svenska får och tar i klassrummet, i jämförelse med elever med svenska som modersmål. Särskild vikt läggs vid utrymmet för utforskande tal och mediering. Studien utgår från det sociokulturella perspektivet enligt vilket allt lärande sker i en social kontext. Det empiriska underlaget bygger på strukturerade observationer i sammanlagt sex klasser i år 1-2, med kompletterande anteckningar. Observationerna genomfördes under 100 minuter per klass. Resultatet presenteras i kvantitativ form. Resultatet visade att L1-talarna var de som tog och fick mest talutrymme även om skillnaden var marginell. Däremot fick L2-talarna något fler direkta frågor än L1-talarna. Mediering användes i samtliga klasser, men inte i den grad som var befogat. Utforskande tal användes aldrig under de sammanlagt 600 minuter som observerades. Detta resultat visar att lektionsstrukturen behöver ses över så att den bättre uppmuntrar och kräver att eleverna ska prata. Att använda sig av fler direkta, öppna frågor kan även fördela talutrymmet bättre mellan eleverna. Man kan även använda sig av så kallade minilektioner där talet står i fokus. Genom att vara mer flexibel med möbleringen i klassrummet kan man skapa fler möjligheter till interaktion eleverna emellan.

Abstract The aim of the study is to investigate how class teachers and Swedish L2 teachers perceive their work with recently arrived immigrant pupils in grades F to 3. Six teachers were interviewed about how they teach so that these pupils will achieve the target skills in Swedish as a second language in grade 3, and about their view of the integration of newly arrived pupils in the ordinary class and the preparatory class. In the study the teachers say that they lack shared guidelines for receiving newly arrived pupils and that the charting of the pupils is inadequate. The teachers prefer direct placement in the ordinary class because the pupils learn from others and improve in their zone of proximal development. The informants feel that they have sufficient training to teach newly arrived pupils and that working with them contributes to their professional development. The results of the study indicate that development-based teaching can benefit newly arrived pupils. The teachers say that they teach many words and concepts and use concrete material.

In second language (L2) listening assessment, various factors have the potential to impact the validity of listening test items (Brindley & Slatyer, 2002; Buck & Tatsuoka, 1998; Freedle & Kostin, 1999; Nissan, DeVincenzi, & Tang, 1996; Read, 2002; Shohamy & Inbar, 1991). One relatively unexplored area to date is who controls the aural input. In traditional standardized listening tests, an administrator controlled recording is played once or twice. In real world or classroom listening, however, listeners can sometimes request repetition or clarification. Allowing listeners to control the aural input thus has the potential to add test authenticity but requires careful design of the input and expected response as well as an appropriate computer interface. However, if candidates feel less anxious, allowing control of listening input may enhance examinees' experience and still reflect their listening proficiency. Comparing traditional and self paced (i.e., examinees having the opportunity to start, stop, and move the audio position) delivery of multiple choice comprehension items, my research inquiry is whether self paced listening can be a sufficiently reliable and valid measure of examinees' listening ability. Data were gathered from 100 prospective and current university ESL students. They were administered computer based multiple choice listening tests: 10 identical once played items, followed by 33 items in three different conditions: 1) administrator paced input with no audio player visible, 2) self paced with a short time limit, and 3) self paced with a longer time limit. Many facet Rasch (1960/1980) modeling was used to compare the difficulty and discrimination of the items across conditions. Results indicated items on average were similar difficulty overall but discriminated best in self paced conditions. Furthermore, the vast majority of examinees reported they preferred self paced listening. The quantitative results were complemented by follow up stimulated recall interviews with eight participants who took 22 additional test items using screen capture software to explore whether and when they paused and/or repeated the input. Frequency of and reasons for self pacing did not follow any particular pattern by proficiency level. Examinees tended to play more than once but not two full times through, even without limited time. Implications for listening instruction and classroom assessment, as well as standardized testing, are discussed.