Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The purpose of the dissertation was to investigate English as a foreign language (EFL) students' use of their first language (L1) in composing English texts. The first study focused on factors associated with students' spontaneous use of L1 in EFL writing. The research questions of this study concerned how spontaneous L1 use in EFL writing may interact with cognitive demands of writing tasks, learners' English proficiency, and writing quality. Thirty Taiwanese college students from different disciplines participated. Writing tasks included the issue analysis and argument analysis tasks, both derived from GRE and GMAT writing. Students' percentage of L1 use in think-aloud protocols was calculated within each phase of the composing process and compared to the cognitive demands of writing tasks, students' English proficiency, and writing scores. EFL students' percentage of L1 use was found to vary not only by cognitive demands of writing tasks but also by types of writing tasks. Total quantity of L1 use of EFL students was not related to their English proficiency. Further, EFL students' spontaneous use of L1 was found to be associated with better writing quality when used in activities such as making logical transitions, posing questions about logic and content development, or summarizing long chunks of reasoning. The second study, concerning the advantage of L1 used as the only composing language in EFL writing, looked in detail at four cases to examine factors such as the cognitive demands of writing tasks, students' English proficiency, and students' ability to use L1 strategically. The choice of composing language was found to be associated with English writing quality only in cognitively demanding writing tasks, such as argumentation. In argumentation, the advantages of composing in L1 depended on the interaction of students' English proficiency and students' ability to use L 1 strategically. Compared to English, L1 Chinese as a composing language was advantageous to writing quality when students had either the ability to use L1 strategically or high English proficiency. On the other hand, L1 as a composing language was disadvantageous to English writing scores when the student had neither the ability to use L1 strategically nor high English proficiency. Pedagogical implications are discussed. / 2031-01-02

This paper is a curriculum proposal for students from grades 2 – 5 at the Elementary level in a bilingual-immersion school in Brasilia, Brazil, who are enrolled in the English Adaptation (EA) program. The curriculum is based on the SIOP Model, an approach to teaching language through content in strategic ways to enhance students’ development in both content and language. The paper also provides detailed lesson plans as an example and assessment processes that can be carried throughout the school year. / text

Dictionary use has played an important role in English learning. Researches showed that dictionary has facilitating effects on vocabulary learning, writing and reading comprehension. However, not all dictionary users can benefit from the use of dictionaries. In fact, dictionary use is not as easy as what we thought, but dictionary skills instruction does not receive much attention in spite of the prevalence of dictionaries. The purpose of this study is to carry out dictionary skills instruction in English classrooms and to assess the effects of dictionary skills instruction on reading comprehension of junior high EFL students in Taiwan. The subjects in the study were 40 second-year junior high students of two classes from Tainan Municipal Cheng-gong Junior High School. Each class was randomly assigned to the experiment group or the control group. The experiment group received dictionary skills instruction in English classes, and the control group did not. First, the 40 subjects were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their dictionary use backgrounds. Then, they were asked to take a pre-test on their dictionary skills and local reading comprehension. After the pre-test, the experimental group received dictionary skills instructions during each class time for about 20 minutes. The instruction lasted about 3 weeks in the beginning of the second semester. Finally, the 40 subjects were asked to take a post-test on their dictionary skills and local reading comprehension. The major findings of the current study were summarized as follws: 1. Generally speaking, among the ten dictionary skills investigated in the current study, junior high EFL students in Taiwan encounter problems more or less. The problems include understanding short forms, labels, and grammar codes of the dictionary, getting familiar with the alphabetical orders, making use of guide words, scanning a dictionary page, distinguishing a homograph, removing regular inflections, removing affixes of derivatives, scanning nearby entries or seeking in the addendum, recognizing compounds or idioms, and finding the right meaning of a polysemous. 2. In addition to these problems, the frequent application of ¡¥Kidrule strategy¡¦ made the situation worse. The participants were very likely to pick any Chinese fragments ¡¥near¡¦ the target words (or other words with similar spellings.) and misinterpret the fragments as the meanings of the target words. 3. Most of the above mentioned problems could be reduced after receiving dictionary skills instruction from their English teacher in a short time. Only the ability to distinguish a homograph can not be improved merely through the teacher¡¦s instruction in a short time. It seems that, to distinguish homographs, the participants¡¦ grammatical knowledge played a more important role than the dictionary skills instruction. As for the using of guide words and the removing of inflections, these two skills can be improved without the teacher¡¦s instruction. 4. According to the study, the use of dictionaries with proper dictionary skills instruction and enough practice could make a significant difference in the performance of local reading comprehension tasks.

This paper provides an investigation of recent empirical research from the EFL literature on the advantages and possible problems that may occur when using films in Swedish upper secondary schools to increase student interaction and oral production during English lessons. Also examined is what specific film-based teaching strategies educators can utilize to increase the level of speaking and interacting in the English classrooms for Swedish secondary-school students. The investigation shows that although a number of researchers agree on the many benefits of using films was large, some problems can also be identified. These advantages and problems are discussed in the study in light of different teaching theories, for example, Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and the Swedish curriculum. Overall, films were found to be a valid tool to be used for teachers to increase the production of speaking and interacting in Swedish upper secondary schools.

This paper aims to investigate how audiobooks can be used didactically in the EFL classroom. The research questions are: “How do EFL students perceive and visualize the storyworld when listening to audiobooks?”, “Does EFL students’ comprehension differ when listening to an audiobook as opposed to reading a printed book”, and lastly, “What are the benefits of using audiobooks didactically in an EFL classroom?”. A mixed method has been used in conducting a survey with the participation of 30 ninth graders from Östergårdsskolan in Halmstad. The survey is divided into three parts where the first two parts are based on Neil Gaiman's novel The Graveyard Book and the third part focuses on the students’ attitudes towards audiobooks. This paper will draw on the theories of Judith Langer, Lars Elleström as well as those of Iben Have and Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen. The survey used in this paper is theoretically founded on Langer’s five stances of envisionment. The students were divided into two groups where the control group read a printed passage and the other group listened to the passage. The results indicate that the participants had a positive attitude towards audiobooks as they found such affordances as hearing the pronunciation as well as being able to multitask. Previous research indicates that there are didactical advantages of using audiobooks with students. This paper suggests that with the increased growth of digitization, audiobooks should be considered as a learning tool in the EFL classroom.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of strategy training in small group work on the reading comprehension of academic texts in English by Thai English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. The strategy-training used was the Reciprocal Teaching Procedure (RTF) which focused on the four reading comprehension strategies: predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarizing. The research study was an experimental one using a single group design. The participants were thirty-four first year students enrolled in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program at a tertiary institution in the northeastern part of Thailand. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. The pre-, post- and follow-up reading tests were employed for quantitative analysis. The students' performances were analyzed for statistically significant differences immediately at the end of the ten-week training and in the follow-up test eight weeks after the training. Qualitative data were collected from students' pre-, post- and follow-up questionnaires, checklists and journals, teacher's checklists and journal, and independent observer's checklists and field notes.

This study examined the possible causes of language anxiety among three upper secondary school students Sweden. In addition, the study explored the strategies used by said students’ English teachers to decrease language anxiety in their students. The data was collected by using semi-structured interviews and analyzed through content analysis. The analysis showed that the main causes of language anxiety were four significant factors: communication apprehension, test anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and classroom environment. In particular, the study showed that all the students felt more anxious when they were uncomfortable with their surroundings and when they felt under pressure to perform. Negative evaluation from other students affected their confidence level, which was another crucial cause of anxiety. All the students expressed that the teacher's approach had a significant effect on their anxiety level, and all the teachers claimed to adapt their English-speaking activities to each student’s needs. A general conclusion is that the students’ anxiety varies depending on the English-speaking activity and their teacher’s approach, which was acknowledged by the teacher.

It is generally assumed that in order to learn a language, learners need to master reading, writing, listening and speaking. However, merely possessing the skills and abilities to communicate is not sufficient; one must have the will to use the language. In order to formulate a model that can accurately describe the willingness to communicate, Mac-Intyre et al. (1998) formulated a model that attempts to do just this. The goal of this study is to verify the veracity of the Willingness to Communicate (WTC) model in terms of to what extent students’ self-reported WTC correlate with their actual WTC in the class-room. To accomplish this, this study utilized interviews with Swedish EFL students in southern Sweden, based on the WTC framework, and classroom observation in order to collect data on said connection. The results of this study showed that self-reported WTC and actual WTC do not necessarily correlate with one another; for some students, they spoke English more than they reported, some spoke less, and others’ WTC reflected their self-assessed WTC. Although the WTC model could account for the students’ actual WTC, it could not account for this discrepancy. However, this discrepancy may not be due to the model itself, but rather to the situational factors that, to a certain degree, influenced the outcome of this study. Based on this study, teachers are recommended to consistently speak English, as this raises the students’ own WTC, and to encourage English usage among students themselves. For future research, it is therefore recom-mended that non-linguistic factors be taken into account, possibly through factor analysis, in order to produce more nuanced data, as well as conducting a longitudinal study.

Learning English as a foreign language (EFL) entails different factors. Language learners use different strategies in order to make their language acquisition successful. Motivation and self-regulated learning are other factors that influence how successful the EFL learner is. This paper aims to analyze the beliefs of upper secondary students in a Swedish school about learning EFL, as well as how their beliefs relate to what is specified in the Swedish curriculum. An analysis of the differences between students’ beliefs and what is stated in the curriculum was done. A survey was conducted on a total of 54 students who were enrolled in the social sciences program. The results showed that students believed that motivation and self-regulated learning were important factors for a successful learning. For them, the language skill of reception is more important than production, which does not correspond with what it is stated in the national curriculum. First and second year students’ beliefs were similar in most of the cases, but not all of them.

本研究旨在於觀察對話者之間的熟悉度對於外語學習者的語言影響。溝通互動性質的作業能提供語言學習者機會來對話；然而，很少有學者研究對話者之間的社會層面對於溝通互動的影響。在此研究中，實驗對象是一群台灣的高一生，程度介於全民英檢初級和中級之間，他們依彼此間熟悉程度的調查而分成19個熟悉組和不熟悉組，並進行三種不同性質的溝通作業，再分別計算negotiation for meaning，language-related episodes，和recasts的使用次數。量化分析的結果顯示對話者之間的熟悉度並沒有造成以上三種溝通特性的顯著性差異，唯有在作業類型中有顯著性差異。但質性研究發現由於權力關係帶來的張力，對話者間的熟悉度會因著面子的考量而造成互動模式的些微差異，對於學習者的情意層面、投入程度和溝通策略的使用產生一定的影響。此結果將對於語言課室中配對練習有重要的教學啟示。 / The purpose of this paper is to observe how the interlocutors' familiarity influences the language produced by EFL (English as a foreign language) students. It is widely argued that communicative language tasks may provide learners with opportunities to manipulate and modify their language productions, which in turn helps learners develop their target language. However, few studies concern the social dimension of interlocutors in task-based interactions. In this study, some senior high school English learners in Taiwan were divided into 19 familiar and 19 unfamiliar pairs. Every dyad was engaged in the picture differences task, the describe-and-draw task, and the discussion task. Negotiation for meaning, language-related episodes, and recasts viewed as crucial to second language acquisition (SLA) were interactional features used for quantitative analysis. The results showed that interlocutor’s familiarity had no significant effect; only in task types did the researcher find discernable differences. Opposed to such negative results, the qualitative analyses showed a divergence of interactional patterns due to the face issue resulting from social dynamics. Learners’ interloctutors’ familiarity, which may impact learners’ affective domain and conversational strategy use, may bring some pedagogical implications for pair work in second language classroom teaching.