Within the framework of task-based language teaching, various types of tasks have been proposed, yet in English as foreign language classroom contexts where learners’ exposure to target language input is often limited, the adoption of form-focused tasks seems to receive much credit. Although the potential academic gains brought forth by such tasks have been studied in some previous quantitative research, the call for investigations into those tasks from a learner perspective remains warranted. In this study I investigated the use of grammatical consciousness-raising (C-R) tasks as an inductive approach to grammar pedagogy in an EFL classroom from a learner perspective. While performing such tasks the informants, who were a class of secondary level English as foreign language learners, made discoveries about the targeted grammar items based on contextualized examples provided. In the study I first examined the extent to which adopting C-R tasks impacted on the informants’ learning of English grammar through pretests and posttests. Second, I elicited their perceptions of C-R tasks through a questionnaire and two semi-structured interviews. Third, with the think-aloud protocols method I studied the informants’ engagement with the grammar items presented through either C-R tasks or deductive explanation. The findings revealed that the majority of the informants were able to develop grammatical understanding through performing C-R tasks. They tended to respond positively to and show deep engagement with the grammar items presented though such tasks as well. To enhance the perceived effectiveness of such tasks and thus to maximize the effect of grammar teaching, I concluded by suggesting the need for teachers to make the learners fully aware of the nature of and rationale behind C-R tasks and to investigate whether and how such tasks can be integrated with other methodological options in realizing effective grammar instruction in their own contexts. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

No description available.

This thesis has presented a comparative study of English and Spanish determiners. The comparison has been made at a surface level of the determiner systems of the two languages and also at a deep structure level. The reason of this comparison has been to find out how the two languages differ or have points of similarities. The points of difference have been taken into consideration to see how these differences between the two languages affect errors in writing compositions by Spanish-speaking students learning English.Some ideas have been drawn up of how constrastive analysis could help in teaching or learning a language.

This project concerned the development of a computer software system to help students reinforce material previously discussed in the classroom.The software is written in Apple Pilot, a computer language especially designed to help teachers with little or no programming background develop simple computer assisted instruction courseware. The program creates an adventure style game where the student finds treasure, fights monsters, and overcomes obstacles by answering questions related to English comparatives and superlatives.

The study of body part metaphors provides a convenient way to examine human conceptual structuring because we start from what we as humans share. This study collected and compared Thai and English body part metaphors: one hundred and eighty-four English body part expressions and four hundred and eighty-eight Thai body part expressions were considered.The data are discussed in terms of the body part involved, the underlying conceptual metaphors, and syntactic and morphological form. The data show that basically, Thai and English share many conceptual metaphors, and there are a number of equivalent expressions in both languages, such as hua-hoog [head-spear] `spearhead', and waan-caj [sweet-heart] `sweetheart.' Furthermore, it was found that most body part metaphors are built on three different aspects of body parts: physical constitution, location and nature of involvement. In some contexts, more than one of these bases is involved in the same expression.Other similarities include sharing some of the same morphological and syntactic forms, using the same body parts; relative frequency of individual body parts; having completely equivalent expressions, and having pairs of opposite expressions. Differences involve having some different morphological and syntactic forms; the number of conventional body part metaphors found in translation-equivalent texts, with Thai having many more than English; a difference between the two languages in distribution across written vs. spoken texts; having similarly glossed expressions with different metaphorical meanings; level of markedness for an otherwise equivalent expression; and degree of explicitness in the components of an expression.Finally, applications of the findings to the teaching of English to Thai speakers and vice versa are discussed. I conclude that systematic attention to the bases of metaphorical expressions to facilitate learning is to follow the time-proven practice of linking the old to the new. / Department of English

There is no abstract available for this dissertation. / Department of English

The purpose of this study was to determine what effects The Christensen Rhetoric Program, a method of teaching sentence and paragraph development, (1) had upon the attitudes of college freshmen toward written composition and (2) had upon their persistence in using free modifiers after a lapse of time and instruction.

This study presents a pragmatic approach to the analysis of definiteness. The expression of definiteness in Korean is analyzed as controlled by the pragmatic motivation to differentiate nouns with respect to their topical relevance and importance.The primary claim of this study is that grammar utilizes formal marking systems not only for making semantic contrasts but also for producing pragmatic distinctions. As an illustration of this claim, the marking vs. lack of marking that determine pragmatic status in Korean is examined, and it is argued that the lack of marking indicates the relative lack of special significance of a given referent as a specific individual, while overt marking indicates the relatively higher significance of an intended referent as a specific individual.Definiteness is shown to be non-distinctive and non-categorical in nature, with five expressions of definiteness coding six degrees of definiteness in a definiteness continuum. This is illustrated in the following diagram:Definiteness ContinuumBare NP ---- com ---- etten ---- han ---- ku ---- Bare NPleastmostThe bare NP to the left comprises nonunique common nouns and the one to the right unique common nouns and proper nouns. In each case, the bare form is viewed as representing the referent in its most general use.It is also shown that definiteness and indefiniteness can coincide in the sense that semantically indefinite NPs can be marked formally as definite in certain contexts. This is explained motivated by the pragmatic need for upgrading the degree of definiteness in order to present it as a more prominent or salient entity. With cases in which both semantically definite referents and semantically indefinite referents are formally presented in the same bare NP form as crucial evidence, it is suggested that the realization and expression of definiteness is motivated only when pragmatic significance requires such a distinction. The study concludes that marking and lack of marking of definiteness in Korean does in fact signal the relative pragmatic importance of the referent in the development of the discourse. / Department of English

On the basis of an investigation of a corpus of 5.5 million words, this thesis analyses the use of the present perfect in modem American and British English. The investigation traces the development of the present perfect from its origins as a structure with adjectival meaning to its modern-day use as an aspectual verb form. A frequency analysis tests the claims of various writers that the present perfect is losing ground against the preterite and is less frequent in American than in British English. Neither claim is supported by the results of this analysis. A temporal specifier analysis investigates the co-occurrence of a large number of adverbials with the various verb forms. It finds that certain groups of specifiers which have hitherto been considered markers for the present perfect are in fact very poor indicators. Specifiers indicating a period of time lasting up to the moment of utterance, however, are found to be very reliable indicators. With one exception no significant difference was found between the British and American corpora in this respect. A functional-semantic analysis examines the various theories of the present perfect against the background of the results of the empirical investigation and finds them to be insufficient in one or more respects. In the final chapter the division between tense and aspect is shown to be artificial and a model of the present perfect is presented which is based on the idea of multilayered aspectual values. The model is centred on the unifying concept of phragmatisation - the closing of the event time-frame. According to this model, discourse topics involving the present perfect are perceived to describe an event which takes place in a time frame which is not closed to the deictic zero point at the moment of utterance. The final section describes which factors are operative in the phragmatisation or closing of event time frames.