Writing is one of the four skills that students learning a foreign language are supposed to acquire, and writing often has an important role in the language classroom. Furthermore, in the field of cultural and arts education, a process-oriented approach is considered essential for learning. However, even though we see an increased interest in emphasizing the writing process, in reality, what is often commented, discussed and graded is the final outcome - the product. Consequently, features of the writing process, like fluency, revisions, and pauses, are not considered. This thesis explores what information about the writing process might add to the picture. In this manner, the current study investigates the writing process of advanced Swedish EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners through keystroke logging programme. With the increased use of word processing tools, and not least with the development of keystroke logging tools, we now have the possibility to take also the details of the writing process into account. As Spelman Miller and Sullivan (2006:1) point out, “[a]s an observational tool, keystroke logging offers the opportunity to capture details of the activity of writing, not only for the purposes of the linguistic, textual and cognitive study of writing, but also for the broader applications concerning the development of language learning, literacy, and language pedagogy”. In the present study, a keystroke logging programme named Inputlog has been used, which allows researchers to get a better understanding of writing processes as well as cognitive processes during writing (Lindgren & Sullivan, 2002).

The present thesis compares the use of result/inference discourse connectives in two corpora compiled by the author. The student corpus consists of 43 literary essays by Czech university students of English and American studies and the reference corpus contains 34 journal articles written by native expert writers. The main objective of the thesis was to determine to what extent students resemble professional writers in their use of result/inference connectives with respect to the frequency, position and scope of the connectives. The thesis revealed a strong overall overuse of result/inference connectives by students as well as overuse and underuse of individual connectives. It was also found that both types of writers generally prefer initial to non-initial placement of result/inference connectives; however, students more frequently use the connectives with the immediate scope.

This study investigated Swedish primary school EFL learners' foreign language anxiety in years 1-3 by using mixed-method research. The aim of this study was to illustrate what factors caused foreign language anxiety (FLA) and unwillingness to communicate among the second language learners. In this study, a total of 85 pupils and five teachers participated. The study includes Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope's (1986) foreign language classroom anxiety scale, in a pupil-based questionnaire. The study was also complemented with classroom observations and interviews with the teachers and the pupils. The results showed a tendency for girls experiencing more foreign language anxiety than boys. The study also showed that FLA increased throughout the grades. The pupils' expressed beliefs of FLA were the fear of making mistakes and different factors related to their low self-esteem.

Little empirical research has been conducted on what effect task-based reading instruction with reading questions will have on reading comprehension, particularly in the domain of second language reading comprehension. The purpose of this research is to investigate which type of questions, textually explicit (TE) or inferential (IF) questions, will best facilitate text comprehension, and which type will have the most beneficial effect on Japanese EFL learners at three proficiency levels (low, intermediate, and high). In the study, two groups of Japanese senior high school students (N = 69) were classified into three different proficiency groups. One group received instruction emphasizing TE questions while the other received instruction emphasizing IF questions. TE questions are text-bound questions whose answers are locally and explicitly stated in the text. In contrast, IF questions are more knowledge-bound questions whose answers largely depend on readers' cognitive resources, such as relevant linguistic knowledge, background knowledge, world knowledge or context. The different treatments lasted five months. The results were statistically analyzed. The study revealed a significant task effect for reading questions on Japanese EFL learners' reading. Although one type of instruction did not have a significantly better effect than the other, the large between-groups gain gap seems to imply that instruction emphasizing IF questions might facilitate text comprehension more. The study also found that the participants who received instruction emphasizing IF questions benefited from their instruction regardless of proficiency level. With regard to instruction emphasizing TE questions, the higher proficiency participants benefited significantly more from their instruction than the lower proficiency students. The study suggests that reading teachers should use a task-based teaching method with reading questions. If the use of reading questions is already a part of reading teachers' methodology, they should include not only commonly used textually explicit reading questions but also inferential ones. The study suggests that implementing these changes might help break the cycle of translation-bound reading instruction with its overemphasis on lower-level processing, and might lead students to read texts in a more meaningful, interactive way. / CITE/Language Arts

When deciding on topics for academic research papers, many students face difficulties that vary from choosing themes whose scope is too extensive to be satisfactorily analyzed in the given task, to selecting topics that are too limited, to not being able to make a decision on a topic at all. Such struggles seem to manifest themselves in both native and non-native speakers of English. Despite extensive research on the writing process and its strategies, be it for academic writing or other genres, and even research focused on writers’ difficulties, previous research has found little about the troubles students must overcome when deciding on a research topic, and how to overcome them. This study employed a qualitative case study design with two graduate students in a master’s program in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, who were enrolled in two sections of a course on research, to investigate these students’ writing processes as they defined a topic for their literature review research paper. Through an in-depth analysis of samples of their writing in combination with their verbal reports, collected during individual semi-structured interviews, this case study examined how two graduate students successfully calibrated their topics, which strategies they employed to that end, and how their instructors’ actions helped them in the process. Consequently, the findings shed light on instructional practices, and their implications for teachers’ training programs.

Thesis (DAppLing)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Dept. of Linguistics, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 208-233. / Introduction -- Conceptual frameworks: language competence and the acquisition of modality -- Generic frameworks: speech, writing and electronic communication -- Linguistic frameworks: modality and related concepts -- Research design and methodologies -- FTDs in the ACAD and BB corpora -- Learner's use of FTDs in discoursal context and their individual repertoires -- Conclusions and implications. / While natural interaction is one of the important components that lead to successful language learning (Vygotsky 1978, 1986), communication in classroom practice in Thailand is mostly teacher-centered and not genuinely interactive. Online group communication is different because it allows learners to exercise interpersonal communicative skills through interaction and meaning negotiation, as in reciprocal speech situations. At the same time it gives learners time to think and produce language without having to face the kind of pressure they feel in face-to-face classroom discussion. The language learner's competence is thus likely to be enhanced by opportunities to communicate online, and to be more visible there than in academic contexts, although there is a dearth of experimental research to show this. One way of investigating the pedagogical potential of bulletin board discussions is to focus on the interpersonal linguistic devices used in textual interactions (Biber 1988). -- The purpose of this research is to find out whether students communicating online in bulletin board writing will exercise their repertoires of linguistic fine-tuning devices (hedges, modals, and intensifiers) more extensively than when writing academic essays. This was expected because hedges, modals and intensifiers are likely to be found in interactive discussions (Holmes 1983), while academic tasks do not create such an environment. Though hedges and modal devices are also found in academic genres (Salager-Meyer 1994, Hyland 1998), those used tend to be academic in function rather than communicative. -- In order to compare the frequency and variety of the fine-tuning devices used by learners in the two mediums, data was gathered from 39 Thai students of English at Kasetsart University, from (1) their discussions in online bulletin boards and (2) their academic essays. Tasks were assigned on parallel topics in three text types (narrative, explanatory, argumentative) for both mediums. The amount of writing was normalized to create comparable text lengths. Measures used in the quantitative analysis included tallying of the types and tokens of the experimental linguistic items, with the help of the AntConc 2007 computer concordancer. Samples of written texts from the two mediums were also analyzed qualitatively and compared in terms of their discourse structure (stages, moves and speech acts), to see which functional segments support or prompt particular types of pragmatic devices. -- The findings confirm that in electronic bulletin boards the students exercise their repertoires of fine-tuning devices more frequently, and use a greater variety of pragmatic functions than in academic essays. This is probably because online discussion fosters interactions that are more typical of speech (Crystal 2006), and its structure allows for a series of interpersonal moves which have no place in academic tasks. Text-type also emerged as a significant factor: writing argumentative texts prompted greater use of modals and intensifiers than the narrative and explanatory ones. Thus students' communicative competence showed itself most fully in the argumentative online assignments, and was not so evident in academic and expository essays. Frequent use of modal and intensifying elements was also found to correlate with the students' English proficiency grades, and how regularly they wrote online. This incidentally shows the importance of exposure to L2 in language acquisition, and that lower-proficiency learners need more opportunities to exercise their L2 resources in interactive discourse, in order to develop competence in using them. -- These research findings support Long's (1996) 'Interaction Hypothesis', that learners learn best in situations that cater for interaction; and Swain's (1985) 'Output Hypothesis', that learners need the chance to exercise their language naturally in a variety of contexts -through academic tasks as well as social interactions, which are equally important for language education. Extended performance opportunities undoubtedly feed back into the learner's communicative competence. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xi, 389 p. ill

Thesis (DAppLing)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Department of Linguistics, 2008. / Bibliography: p. 404-418. / Introduction -- Literature review -- Methodology -- Results -- Discussion -- Conclusion. / This study sets out to examine the pragmatic competence of Cantonese adult learners of English possessing different levels of proficiency when performing the speech act of requesting for a formal purpose in writing. Pragmatic judgment - one of the two aspects of pragmatic competence - was examined by studying the most proficient group (i.e., native Cantonese-speaking EFL teachers at university), whereas pragmatic performance - the other aspect of pragmatic competence - was examined by studying the two weaker groups (i.e., university students at two language proficient levels). Both pragmatic judgment and pragmatic performance were examined by investigating the same four dependent variables (i.e., politeness, directness, formality and amount of information). Teacher data, collected through a Pragmatic Judgment Questionnaire completed and returned by sixteen EFL teachers (eight native Cantonese speakers and eight native English speakers) and by means of individual interviews, were analyzed quantitatively for responses to twelve questions and qualitatively for responses to an additional two questions. Student data, consisting of both experimental and authentic letters and e-mails, were analyzed quantitatively. -- Main research findings suggest: *It is possible for very proficient NNSs of English, (i.e., the EFL teachers in this study), to achieve native-like pragmatic judgments in most aspects, except for their views on several pragmatic considerations (i.e., "unnaturally polite" expressions, usefulness of "negative" words, supportive moves not to be used and writing plans preferred). *As the English proficiency of L2 learners improves from Grade E to Grade A/B (as determined by the Hong Kong A-level Examinations in the subject "Use of English"), their pragmatic performance shows improvement. -- For pedagogical reasons, a qualitative analysis was conducted for Questions 1 and 2 in order to generate examples of "unnaturally polite"/ "polite" / "impolite" expressions and to provide examples of inappropriate supportive moves in relation to three writing topics. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xvii, 576 p

本論文探討以實境學習觀點來培訓技職校院學生英語口語溝通能力的教學設計與實施。由於技職校院學生英語程度較弱，乃根據實境學習理論中的認知學徒見習期 (cognitive apprenticeship)的二個階段:觀察期(observation)及實作期(practice)來設計教學。在觀察期階段中，藉由觀賞英文電影讓學生觀察英語母語使用者之真實口語溝通情境及技巧；在實作期階段中，則指導學生為電影片段配音，目的在以影片做為前導與幫助(scaffold)，使學生在真實語言情境中建立英語口語溝通能力。本研究設計採用設計型研究（Design-based research）探討學生在此電影教學中的知覺及反應，研究結果顯示學生對電影配音活動的反應良好，例如能在其中觀摩英語母語使用者之口語技巧，較容易記得影片中英文單字及句子，以及建立開口說英語的自信與勇氣。 / This study is a design-based research focusing on the application of situated learning perspectives to the EFL classroom for the development of English oral communicative competence. Situated learning theory features cognitive apprenticeship, a learning process in which an apprentice learns a skill or knowledge from a master through the observation of expert process and practice with scaffolds (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991). In this study, a teaching project based on film dubbing activities was designed and implemented to 39 vocational college students, who were classified as lower-level EFL learners due to their limited English proficiency, with the purpose of developing their English oral communicative competence through cognitive apprenticeship. Film clips were viewed and instructed in class to provide the students with access to the social context of oral communication by native English speakers. After the students observed the expert process in the film clips, they were instructed to execute film dubbing tasks, in which they practiced oral skills with the scaffolds of the audio-visual presentation in the film clips. As a qualitative case study, the purpose of this study is to explore the students’ learning experiences, including their perceptions and reactions, in the teaching project. The research results reveal the students’ overall positive reactions to the film dubbing activities; for example, they were impressed by the opportunities to make close observation of real English use by native English speakers; they found it easier to remember English vocabulary and sentences through film dubbing activities; and they became more confident in speaking English.