Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-09, Section: A, page: 4933. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

This study treats several areas of composition theory, giving special attention to the presence of inductive procedures in each approach. The Neo-classical approach, the Pre-writing approach, Free Writing, dramatism, and tagmemic theory. Two theories are analyzed in special depth: (a) the dramatism of Kenneth Burke, and (b) the tagmemic theory of Kenneth Pike. / In the last part of the study attention is given to pedagogical applications of certain inductive methods identified earlier in the study. The procedures suggested by Burke and Pike are again developed in greater detail than other methods discussed. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-05, Section: A, page: 1988. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

The primary purpose of this study was to ascertain if sentence combining (SC) activities had an effect on the reading and listening comprehension of seventh grade students. Further purposes were to investigate correlations among reading, listening, and mean T-unit length and to determine what attitudes toward various SC activities would develop among the experimental subjects. / This twelve-week study involved eighty-seven students in four seventh grade classrooms at Belle Vue Middle School in Tallahassee, Florida. The experimental and control groups were each divided into regular and advanced language arts classes by reading ability. Each of the two teachers taught an experimental and control class. The treatment consisted of one and a half hours per week of open and closed, written and oral SC exercises as well as SC-cloze activities. / The data for reading comprehension were gathered from a pre- and posttest administration of the comprehension subtest of Science Research Associates Achievement Series, Level E, Forms 1 and 2. Listening comprehension scores were taken from a pre- and posttest administration of the listening comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test, Intermediate Level II, Forms A and B. Syntactic fluency data were calculated from pre- and posttest free writing samples in the narrative mode. A two-way analysis of variance of gain scores yielded results indicating no significant differences between the experimental and control groups, ability groups, or sexes for reading or listening comprehension. There were no significant changes among reading, listening, and mean T-unit length correlations from pre- to posttest. The analysis of the SC attitude inventory showed enjoyment of both SC activities and reading with the open and oral SC exercises achieving highest popularity. / Conclusions from this study were that a-contextual SC instruction was not found to be an effective means of increasing reading or listening comprehension among seventh grade students. The SC treatment, however, was evaluated as enjoyable by the majority of the experimental students, particularly in its oral and open aspects. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-06, Section: A, page: 2545. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

The purposes of this study were to (a) develop a two-part Table of Cultural Descriptors as a tool to evaluate the cultural content of ESL reading texts, (b) determine the most widely used ESL reading texts used in adult intensive English language courses in the United States, (c) determine the interjudge reliability of the Table of Cultural Descriptors, and (d) evaluate the cultural content of the 25 most widely used ESL reading textbooks using the validated Table. Of the 329 intensive English programs contacted, 151 or 45.9% responded, giving the titles of reading textbooks they use. From the 300 titles reported, the 25 most widely used were evaluated using the Table. The Table was inspired by Nostrand's Emergent Model. The Table consists of three main sections: the Culture, the Society, and the Individual. The Society section, following Nostrand, is subdivided into 13 units (family, religion, etc.). There are a number of descriptors under each division or subdivision taken from the Outline of Cultural Materials (Murdock, et al, 1971). Part II of the Table consists of brief descriptions of characteristics of American culture, using Hsu's (1969) postulates and characteristics developed by Nostrand (1967). Each text was read and culturally relevant material noted in the Table using values of 1, 2 or 3 to indicate extent of coverage. Interjudge reliability was determined by having three experienced ESL teachers evaluate 15 text samples of 5,000 words each, then ranking the samples. The rankings were tested for agreement using Kendall's coefficient of concordance, W. The evaluators reported significant problems in using Part II of the Table and this was confirmed by applying measurements of W to results using Part I, and Parts I and II combined. W with results from Part I and II combined was .607 at the .05 level of probability. W was .687 at the .025 level of / probability with the results from Part I only. Thus, Part II was not used in the evaluation by Seale of the 25 most widely used texts. High and significant values for W suggest that there is substantial agreement among experienced and trained teachers of ESL as to what is, and is not, culturally instructive material. No relationship was found between the extent to which a text was used and its cultural content. The procedures used in this study do not produce absolute values for textbooks, but relative ones for comparison. The procedure also yields information concerning the number of culturally relevant items in a text and the average extent of coverage of those items. These procedures compell a close, critical examination of the cultural content of a textbook. This study did not evaluate the pedagogical value of the texts as to teaching reading skills. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-10, Section: A, page: 4340. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

The findings of recent studies in Error Analysis and the acquisition sequence reveal that familiarity with the types of errors students actually make and their degree of difficulty can tell us more about the types of variables that most strongly influence second language (L2) learning. This in turn may have some implications for determining the sequence and emphasis of instruction for individual learners, in addition to providing information about the nature of L2 acquisition process in general. The objective of this study was to investigate the sources of errors made and the difficulty order followed by adult Iranian students in their learning of certain grammatical structures of English. The general difficulty order found here was in many ways similar to the orders reported in other L2 studies for adult ESL learners indicating that adults follow a natural and similar sequence in learning the grammatical structures of English and also that the structural difficulty order might be universal for all adults learning a second or foreign language. However, the results of a further analysis revealed that EFL adults and ESL children follow different developmental sequence in learning the grammatical structures of English, although previous studies have found similar orders for ESL adults and ESL children (Krashen, 1976; Fuller, 1978). Furthermore, insignificant correlation found between the difficulty order of this study and the order obtained for children learning English natively indicated that the difficulty order followed by adult (and child) learners of English is different from the order that children follow in learning English as their first language. The results of the error analysis showed that in each proficiency group (elementary, intermediate, and advanced) the subjects' reliance on developmental strategy was greater than on the strategy of native / language transfer and that, regardless of the type of error, the frequency of occurrence of errors is directly proportional to the proficiency level of the learner. That is, the learner's errors of any type will decrease with his progress in the target language. However, it may be the case that differences in language learning situations, i.e., ESL and EFL, and in the type of testing instrument used may be responsible for the occurrence of different types of errors and also for their distributions within the proficiency level of the individual learners. Furthermore, the findings of this study, while providing strong support for the claim that interference from the mother tongue is not the only source of errors adult L2 learners make, but rather a large number of errors made by these learners can be explained due to interference from the target language, indicate that in addition to these two major sources of errors, other factors such as teaching and testing materials and techniques, type of language exposures available to the learner, transfer from a third or more languages known by the learner, and so on, should also be evaluated as the causes of errors in L2 learning. On the basis of these findings, therefore, a systematic approach to the problem of errors and their possible sources as predictors of areas of difficulty in L2 learning should include the information gained from the results of both Contrastive- and Error Analysis studies. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-01, Section: A, page: 0139. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

This study is an investigation of the transfer of relative pronoun functions (RP functions) from Farsi to English. The purpose of the study was (a) to determine the extent of native language transfer in relative clause productions of Iranian subjects, and (b) to find out whether there is a hierarchy among English RP functions in the amount of transfer they are likely to allow from Farsi. / First, data was collected from the performance of 120 Farsi-speaking subjects on four tests of English RP functions. The frequency analysis of the data indicated a high incidence of native language transfer in the English relative clause productions of Iranian students. This finding contradicts the results of current relativization studies that assign a nonsignificant role to L1 transfer in the process of L2 acquisition. / Second, a multivariate statistical analysis of the data was carried out to determine a hierarchy among the RP functions. The analysis showed a causal relationship between transfer and RP functions. The subject function was shown to be less conducive to transfer from Farsi than the direct object, object of preposition, and genitive functions. The results, however, did not indicate a significant difference among the latter group of functions in promoting transfer. / In sum, the study showed (a) an abundance of Farsi features in the English relative clause productions of Farsi speakers, and (b) a difference among English RP functions in promoting transfer. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-04, Section: A, page: 0917. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

This study is an investigation of the transfer of subject functions (SF) from Chinese to English. The purpose of the study was (a) to determine to what extent errors reflect subject transfer from Chinese to English in the performance of Chinese students, (b) to determine whether Chinese students with low English proficiency would show greater adherence to native language transfer strategies more than those with high English proficiency, and (c) to find out whether there are significant differences among the four Chinese subject structures tested, and if so (d) to find out whether there is a hierarchy in the transfer of the subject functions. / The data was collected from the performance of 40 Chinese students on Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency, and a translation test on the four subject structures from Chinese to English. First, the frequency and percentage analysis showed that there was a high incidence of native language transfer in the four Chinese subject functions in the translation performance from Chinese to English. / Secondly, the analysis indicated that there was a significant relationship between grammatical and transfer errors in the Chinese students' performance. Those who knew less English grammar showed greater adherence to language transfer strategies than those who knew more English grammar. However, the study showed that there was no significant relationship between English proficiency and transfer errors, which indicated that those with low English proficiency did not show greater adherence to native language transfer strategies than those with high English proficiency. / Finally, the statistical analysis of this study showed that there are significant differences across the transfer score means in the four Chinese subject functions, and that there was a hierarchy among the SF functions in language transfer with adjective function being the highest and "de" function being the second in native language transfer from Chinese to English. / In sum, the study showed that there was (a) a high percentage and frequency in the transfer of subject functions from Chinese to English, (b) no indication of showing greater adherence to language transfer strategy in the performance of these with low English proficiency than those with high English proficiency, and (c) evidence of statistical difference across the subject function means in language transfer. / The study is restricted to the syntactic structures of the four Chinese subject functions in Chinese students' written translation. This is one of the syntactic areas that cause greater native language interference than in some other areas. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-03, Section: A, page: 0773. / Major Professor: Frederick Jenks. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-07, Section: A, page: 3835. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-06, Section: A, page: 3168. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-06, Section: A, page: 3168. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.