This study investigated the relationship between pragmatic ability and proficiency in 16 Japanese learners of English. Two measures of pragmatic ability were developed: a multiple-choice questionnaire designed to probe pragmatic awareness of various speech acts and a set of oral role-plays designed to elicit two requests, two apologies and one refusal. These measures were also administered to eight native speakers in order to establish a scoring system for the pragmatic awareness test and target norms for the role-plays. A background questionnaire was given to all participants while a proficiency test, Combined English Language Skills Assessment in a Reading Context, or CELSA was administered only to the Japanese participants. / The findings in this study demonstrated that there was not a strong relationship between proficiency and pragmatic ability, nor was there one between pragmatic awareness and production. The measures were moderately correlated but they also exhibited a great deal of variation from learner to learner. / Certain linguistic abilities were observed to be valuable regarding pragmatic ability, such as being able to make conventionally indirect requests. Learners were more direct in their speech acts than native speakers. They also used fewer and less varied strategies and lexical modification, with the exception of the politeness marker, please, which they over-used. / There was evidence both in terms of the pragmatic awareness measure and in the analysis of the production that over-directness decreased with increasing proficiency. The two assessment instruments produced different kinds of errors at different levels of proficiency, pointing to the possibility that they were tapping the abilities associated with pragmatic awareness and production at different stages of development. / This research has implications for both testing and teaching pragmatic ability.

This study examines how changing notions of literacy are translating to curricula in the teaching of English. Two tasks are undertaken: the first is to survey the literature that has informed the ongoing evolution of the concept literacy with the specific goal of highlighting recurring themes in an effort to determine what a New Literacy curriculum would look like in practice. The second part of this study is a document analysis of the Secondary English Language Arts (SELA2) Program for Cycle Two students. The analysis attempts to determine the degree to which the SELA2 document has been informed by new theories of literacy stemming from social theory, critical theory, and New Literacy Theory. Special attention is given to the ways in which the document politicizes the teaching of English, shifting the learning of literacy from an individual skill to a social endeavor that has as one of its tenets a societal move toward greater democracy.

The Canadian language training sector is a booming industry for those interested in capitalizing on the worldwide demand for English, such as private language schools. Thus, this study analyzed the websites of two Montreal-based private language schools to elucidate how these schools use discursive and visual resources to advance their ideology. Defined as a form of social practice (Fairclough, 1992; Pare, 2002), ideology is the way in which the schools are acting discursively in order to serve their for-profit interests. Specifically, the study investigated how both schools manage the tension between their claims to educational legitimacy and their business concerns. The study used analytical strategies from Fairclough's (1992, 2003) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Kress and van Leuuven's (2006) visual grammar. Findings revealed that the schools further their ideology by positioning and legitimating themselves as educational institutions, and commercializing non-educational services (e.g., sightseeing tours) promoted as having second language (L2) developmental value.

This longitudinal inquiry into the academic literacy practices of ten Turkish scholars of International Relations (IR) attempts to answer three broad questions: what factors have affected the participants' acquisition and maintenance of academic reading and writing skills; what patterns of similarities and differences can be found among their literacy practices; and what relationships might be discovered between the various factors and the scholars' literacy practices. Data for the study were collected through observations, autobiographical accounts of the participants' literacy practices via interviews, and textual analysis of the participants' published works. / The theoretical framework for the study draws on neo-Vygotskian Activity Theory and Bakhtinian Dialogic Theory, to create a model for uncovering and understanding the contextual factors mediating scholars' academic literacy practices. The model begins with the assumption that scholars operate within multiple "activity systems" (Engstrom, 1990), in this case: (1) the core American IR discipline; (2) the local Turkish IR discipline/particular Turkish IR departments; and (3) Turkish society. The model reconceptualizes the idea of activity systems as "filters," which mediate individuals' production and reception of texts, i.e. their literacy practices. Conflicts may arise according to the "thickness" of a filter and depending on the "operational means" acceptable within it. / By contributing to a deeper understanding of how people acquire and maintain academic literacy skills in a second language the study ultimately aims to aid in the construction of pedagogical models and approaches that reflect the complex nature of these multi-lingual literacy practices.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 244-257). / Microfiche. / xii, 257 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1982. / Bibliography: leaves 228-239. / Microfiche. / xiv, 239 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-186). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / ix, 186 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 676-721). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / 721 leaves, bound in 2 v. ill. 29 cm

The purpose of this study was to determine the implication for learning for learners whose home language is different from the medium of instruction at school.The study is focused on a group of Afrikaans learners for whom English is not a foreign language. Rather, English is a language that they are in contact with on a daily level through the media, their peers and in the classroom. The study looked at why these learners find themselves in English classes when the language policy of the country makes provision for their specific home language in the classroom. It also tried to determine whether these learners experience problems in their learning as they shift from Afrikaans as a home language to an English medium of instruction in class.

Cloze procedure involves the skills of thinking, understanding , reading and writing based on the learners underlying knowledge of reading comprehension and writing subskills such as grammar and sentence construction. It is regarded as a very efficient test for measuring students integrative competence in English, and has been used in most of the important English tests in China. It is also used as a teaching instrument to help students to improve their reading competence. However, a majority of students perform poorly in cloze tests and they regard it as the most difficult and most unpopular part of the English test. The aim of this study was to find out the problem that Chinese students have with cloze tests and to determine whether they are associated with the inefficient use of reading strategies.