This study examines the relationship between second language vocabulary and learning in terms of productive vocabulary and learning style. Overall, second language learners tend to follow a predictable pattern when they acquire vocabulary. More common words are acquired before less frequent ones. However, individuals display idiosyncratic paths in lexical development. In this study learning style is examined in order to understand whether lexical developmental patterns can be associated with particular learning strengths and weaknesses. The central argument put forward in this thesis is that learning style can help to understand how L2 learners differ in their acquisition of lexis for productive use. Learners were tested for a pre-disposition towards memory or analysis in learning style and their vocabulary was measured via written texts for lexical rarity and the extent to which learners avoid repetition (diversity). The main findings show that at low proficiency memory correlates with lexical rarity, but at higher proficiency and greater analysis there is less variability of function words. Lexical diversity, which is influenced by sentence structure, is more stable with learners who are strong in language analysis. Over time, analytical learners tended to gain rarer words. Individual lexical trajectories over several points in time highlight the variability and stability of lexical profiles in relation to memory and analysis. Task topic influences lexical rarity whereas diversity is relatively independent. There was no direct relationship found between holistic quality ratings of texts and quantitative measures of lexical frequency or diversity; however, the results suggest an indirect relationship with language analysis. The discussion of the results brings to light the heterogeneous nature of L2 lexis and how this interacts with learning style. The results also lend support to a Dynamic Systems Theory of SLA (de Bot et al, 2007); in particular, how variability is a developmental phenomenon which helps us to understand how lexis is assembled in response to local task conditions in real time. The pedagogical implications of these findings are also discussed and recommendations are made to help learners notice and restructure their language.

<p>The Simple View of Reading model (SVR) was used as a theoretical lens to explore some of the reading comprehension issues and challenges faced by Arabic Heritage Language Learners (HLLs) in the United States. This study investigated which of the two SVR model components, decoding and linguistic comprehension, is a better predictor of Arabic reading comprehension among HLLs. The study also examined if the level of reading proficiency affected the way the two components predict Arabic reading comprehension. To answer these questions, 70 participants from four different levels (i.e., fourth through seventh grade levels) from a southern California heritage language school were tested on one reading comprehension measure, one linguistic comprehension measure (i.e., a listening comprehension measure), and two decoding measures, word reading scores and spelling. </p><p> Results revealed that both components, linguistic comprehension and decoding, were equally significant predictors of reading comprehension in the overall sample accounting for 62% of the variance in reading comprehension. Moreover, the sample was then split into more skilled readers and less skilled readers. In the sample of less skilled readers, both linguistic comprehension and decoding were significant predictors of reading comprehension accounting for 42% of the variance in reading comprehension, with the spelling measure (i.e., decoding) being a slightly stronger predictor. In the sample of more skilled readers, only linguistic comprehension was a significant predictor of reading comprehension. However, when the decoding measure, spelling, was replaced with a fluency component (i.e., a fluency measure based on the recorded reading time of participants), both linguistic comprehension and the fluency component were equally significant predictors of reading comprehension accounting for 53% of the variance in reading comprehension. </p><p> Finally, additional preliminary observations and speculations were presented suggesting that: 1) the HLLs&rsquo; linguistic abilities may be closer to the abilities of second language learners; 2) the linguistic comprehension of HLLs may be influenced by multiple factors such as diglossia, language deterioration, and low oral proficiency; and finally, 3) the intertwined relationship between spelling and reading appeared to provide further insight into the literacy development of HLLs. </p>

This dissertation examines the academic and social goals that three second-grade English language learners in a U.S. urban school bring to their blog-mediated academic writing practices, and the interrelated nature of those goals. This study aims to bridge the dichotomy between approaches to studying computer-mediated language and literacy development that are oriented toward academic goals inside school, and those that are oriented toward social goals outside school. The study also aims to investigate connections between language use and language development by highlighting linguistic features of semiotic choices that the students made for their texts. This builds upon recent research studies of literacy practices that focus only on situated uses of literacy in various social and cultural contexts (Christie & Martin, 2007). In this study, learning is defined as appropriation and language is defined as a semiotic system, from sociocultural perspectives that capture the transformative nature of tool-mediated practices (Bakhtin, 1981; Halliday, 1985; Kress, 1998; Vygotsky, 1978). Ethnographic data collected over the course of a year include students’ texts, blog comments, videotaped classroom interactions, interviews, instructional materials, and school documents. Analysis of the data examines student goals, semiotic choices employed by the students, and roles adopted by the students, in the social processes of learning academic genres. Systemic functional linguistics is used to analyze register variables across texts and blogging comments, to examine changes in the students’ uses of linguistic resources. The findings demonstrate that students appropriate blogging for both academic and social goals, and compose their texts by drawing on linguistic features appropriate for goals related to the audiences reading their blog posts. Writing for meaningful goals and for wider audiences encourages ELLs to become more invested in learning, and to use linguistic patterns in context-dependent ways. The study concludes with a discussion of the significance of social goals in developing critical academic literacies (Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 2007), and implications for K-12 educators who are attempting to open up curricular spaces in which all stakeholders collaboratively work toward transformative learning experiences for ELLs (Willett & Rosenberger, 2005).

This study analyzed how six Heritage language learners at the university level gained conscious awareness and control of the concept of modality as revealed in student verbalizations (Vygotsky, 1998) throughout five different written communicative events. This work took place in the only course designed for Heritage language learners at a large public suburban university in the Northeast part of the United States. Grammatical simplification in bilingual speakers is due to incomplete acquisition of Spanish, attrition or loss of an underused linguistic system (Lynch, 1999; Martínez Mira, 2009a, 2009b; Mikulski, 2010b; Montrul, 2007; Ocampo, 1990; Silva-Corvalán, 1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2003; Studerus, 1995). The result of the process of simplification is reduction or loss of forms and/or meanings. In this work, I investigated in which ways Gal'perin's (1989) systemic-theoretical organized instruction promoted awareness, control and internalization of the concept of modality in three sets of data: definition, discourse and verbalization (Negueruela, 2003). In addition, I examined how the concept of modality emerged and proceeded. By focusing students' attention in Negueruela's (2003) Concept of Mood in Spanish orienting chart in a top down fashion, students were able to strengthen their theoretical understanding in practical activity while still accessing empirical knowledge, and eventually generalizing its use in new contexts across nominal, adjectival and adverbial clauses. At the definition level, Gal'perin's Systemic-theoretical instruction promoted emergence and progress of their conceptual understanding from perceptual to semantic. At the discourse level, students' theoretically based semantic understanding had a positive impact as revealed in student's discourse progress throughout tasks. At the verbalization level, semantic, abstract and systematic verbalizations showed students' emergence of awareness of the interrelated categories of modality. The conceptual category of anticipation was appropriately verbalized and contextualized 68% of the time. The absence of quality verbalizations referring to a specific conceptual category in some students lead me to conclude that students did not fully understand the meaning of some conceptual categories. On the contrary, their presence in any of the tasks showed emergence of conceptual meaning(s) in appropriate contexts, further appropriate recontextualization may provide full awareness and control.

In this current era of rapid demographic shifts and high stakes school reform, studies that explore the academic and social responses of students to critical language pedagogies are very much needed as resources for education policymakers and teachers. Through a combined ethnographic and systemic functional linguistic approach, this study explores the textual and classroom process of 5th-grade Puerto Rican students engaged in a SFL-based curricular unit on literature. Three interrelated questions guide the research: how SFL-based pedagogy supports students in developing an understanding of how to write literature and to accomplish social and political goals; and on a wider level, how institutional policies and practices constrain and facilitate teachers in developing such pedagogies. To address these issues, the dissertation draws on a critical sociocultural theory of language and literacy that sees language as a semiotic process and text as a web of previous texts and contexts woven together for a specific communicative purpose. To analyze ethnographic and classroom data, the study draws on concepts from Bloome and Egan Robertson (1993), Dyson (1997, 2003), and Keene and Zimmermann (1997). The comparative SFL analysis of literary source texts and students' writing is based on the work of Eggins (2004), Halliday and Matthiesen (2004), and Thompson (1996). Analysis of the data reveals that students in this SFL-based curricular unit learned in very different ways to interweave patterns of meaning from literary source texts into their literary and other academic writing. Furthermore, the students' access to a wide variety of literature and scaffolding activities afforded them different entry points into literature that resonated most strongly for each of them (Dyson, 2003). On an ethnographic level, a history of school-university-partnerships and school reform initiatives in the research site facilitated teachers' implementation of critical language-based curricula. Implications of this study for K–12 practitioners and researchers are discussed at length. They include the importance of the explicit use of intertextuality in heightening students' awareness of language as a pliable repertoire of choices and the crucial role school-university alliances need to play in supporting teachers and students in urban school classrooms.

<p> Bilinguals have been found to outperform monolinguals across a variety of cognitive tasks (e.g., Bialystok, Craik, &amp; Luk, 2008). Research regarding the generalizability of the bilingual advantage in driving, however, has not been conclusive (Chong &amp; Strybel, 2015; Telner, Wiesenthal, Bialystok, &amp; York, 2008). This study aimed to investigate differences in monolingual and bilingual performance in a simulated driving task. The Lane Change Test (LCT) was used to assess driving performance in the presence of a peripheral detection task (PDT), delayed digit recall task (2-back task), and visuospatial task (clock task). Results demonstrated that both monolinguals and bilinguals performed equally across all tasks. Completing a cognitive task, however, was found to be detrimental to both driving and the detection of peripheral stimuli. Given the controversial nature of the bilingual advantage, possible explanations for the null results obtained for the two language profiles are discussed.</p>

This study proposes that students and teachers make use of various social, intellectual, and material tools or resources in order to engage in classroom reading and writing. Furthermore, how resources are used for instruction defines and teaches students about reading. This study examines second grade students' perspectives about resources for classroom reading instruction. Theoretical constructs supporting this study were derived from ethnography of communication, social semiotics, and social interaction theory. Data were collected during twice-weekly classroom visits beginning with the first day of school in August of 1994 and ending in February of 1995. The data collection includes: (1) participant observation notes, (2) interviews, (3) students' interpretations of statements made by other students about reading instruction, (4) video and audio tape recordings of classroom interactions and interviews, and (5) photocopies of students' written book reviews. There are four principal findings about resources for reading. First, the term "reading" serves as a resource which students and their teacher draw from in order to (a) indicate what readers should do and (b) indicate who readers are. Second, students use time as a resource to tell what activities are considered reading and to mark changes in the ways they use reading resources. Third, learning what to do with reading resources leads to a unique series of interactions between students and teachers which define reading for them. Fourth, students use resources to evaluate their progress with reading. Implications are drawn for teachers' roles in the classroom, ways that reading lessons are planned, and ways that reading is evaluated. Suggestions are made for future research.

"Ms. Cowhey, I have a text to world connection!"-Gabriella, first grader, is a critical ethnographic account of a highly successful and nationally visible white teacher, and her first grade students who named themselves the Peace Class during the autumn of 2002 when the United States declared war on Iraq. The study examines the teacher's use of critical pedagogy as it relates to Freirian concepts of dialogue and revolution, and her use of critical intertextuality as I call it, and the academic achievement and agency of her students. The teacher, who is the main participant of this study, is committed to issues of equity and academic excellence. She is engaged in an interest convergence that promotes success for the teacher, her students, and the larger school community. Ms. Cowhey is an excellent white multicultural educator and ally. This critical ethnography includes findings from data collected over a full school year of research. The teacher featured in this study retained her students as they looped from first to second grade, providing a rare opportunity for further research. It is a hopeful study with implications for teacher preparation programs, professional development and white teachers who want to gain the understanding and skills needed to respond to a changing demographic landscape and who are committed to social justice issues in education.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:33:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Waldnylson Martiniano da Mata.pdf: 15029898 bytes, checksum: 707c214f8f54b72f6770ef3d032d18fd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-11-29 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / This paper aims at analyzing the book Sistema Positivo de Ensino teaching of Year 7 (former 6th grade) under the perspective of Educational Linguistics. The analysis will in the teaching of language teaching materials developed by this school that follows the guidelines of the official documents of the Ministry of Education and Culture, the National Curriculum, working to guide the process of teaching with the genre analysis. We will also consider whether the reflective teacher can carry out teaching with some autonomy by intervening when necessary in the process of teaching and learning, and how these interventions might occur. During this analysis we present the theoretical framework of Education Linguistics as a research and teaching. Define the concept of genre and how they can contribute to language teaching. We selected some of the concepts related to teaching Textual Linguistics and the concept of Education Booklet. After analyzing the corpus, we conclude that the reflective teacher can intervene in the development of language teaching, but the teacher's manual usually offers no theoretical knowledge, and Education Booklet does not address properly the teaching of genre in all its potential, sometimes emphasizing the normative grammar with focus on sentences / Este trabalho foca a análise do aspecto gramatical de ensino na apostila de ensino do Sistema Positivo de Ensino do 7º ano (antiga 6ª série), sob a perspectiva da Educação Linguística. A pesquisa tem como objetivo responder duas questões: 1. A apostila de ensino desenvolve o ensino da gramática dentro da abordagem dos gêneros textuais, levando em consideração situações de uso? 2. De que modo o professor reflexivo pode fazer uso desse material: ele é apenas um instrutor que segue as orientações do material, ou pode intervir no processo de ensino e aprendizagem? O objetivo da primeira questão é analisar se o ensino de gramática desenvolvido pela apostila de ensino está contextualizado com o ensino dos gêneros textuais estudados. Já o da segunda pergunta é analisar se o professor pode intervir durante o processo de ensino e aprendizagem, ou apenas cumprir as orientações da apostila de ensino. A análise foi desenvolvida por meio de três comparações entre: 1) Orientações Metodológicas ; 2) Como são desenvolvidas as atividades na apostila; 3) Fundamentos teóricos reunidos para a pesquisa, a fim de verificar se existem contradições entre eles. O resultado obtido é que a apostila de ensino consegue desenvolver o ensino da gramática de modo contextualizado e o professor reflexivo consegue intervir no desenvolvimento do ensino da língua