The main objective of this case-study research is to document the learning and potential development of Spanish aspect by a female multilingual learner of Spanish, Judith, during her second year of study in an SLA classroom context at a university in Northeastern United States over a two semester (one year) period. This research also examines the specific classroom context in which this learner's development was documented. The second objective is therefore to document the extent to which this approach mediated potential grammatical development in Judith, particularly in her conceptual understandings of Spanish aspect. A Vygotskyan-inspired concept-based pedagogy (CBP) (Gal'Perin, 1989, 1992; Negueruela, 2003; Negueruela and Lantolf, 2006; Negueruela, 2008) and dynamic assessment (DA) procedures (Poehner and Lantolf, 2005;, Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Poehner, 2008), both based on Sociocultural Theory (Vygotsky 1978, 1986) were implemented to teach Spanish to learners. The quality of the new meanings being developed by Judith was documented over time under this particular concept-based teaching context. Data was collected in order to capture the personal histories and orientations to different contexts and activities for this research participant. A combination of insights from Spradley (1980) and Emerson (1995) on ethnographic records was used in order to document the social learning situation taking place in the classroom. It included a combination of artifacts such as field notes, teaching artifacts, tape-recorded interviews, and oral and written discourse from Judith. To analyze how the research participant developed the concept of Spanish aspect (preterit versus imperfect), I used the SCOBA (Schema for Complete Orienting Basis of Action) that was developed by Negueruela (2003) for L2 learning of Spanish. I also used Poehner (2008) and Bloome et al. (2008)'s perspective on data analysis to examine the meaning-making of the L2 learner participant in interaction while she was using the artifacts and interacting with her peers and me, the instructor and investigator. This combination of ethnographic and CBI tools aims at providing a richer picture of this multilingual learner's development over time that would reflect the complexity and dynamic nature of language learning and development (as suggested by Van Lier, 2004).

Framed within a Sociocultural Theory of Mind (SCT) in the field of Second Language Acquisition (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), this dissertation explores the role of verbalizing in the internalization of grammatical categories through the use of Concept-based Instruction (henceforth CBI) in the second language (L2) classroom. Using Vygotsky's (1986) distinction between scientific and spontaneous or everyday concepts applied to L2 development (Negueruela, 2008), this study focuses on the teaching and potential development of the grammatical concept of aspect in the Spanish L2 classroom, and the role of verbalizing in its internalization. It is proposed that verbalizing mediates between the learners' initial understandings of the grammatical concept of aspect, the development of conscious conceptualizations, and students' written and oral production of preterite and imperfect grammatical forms. This study presents and analyzes data from one of the thirty-two adult college students enrolled in an advanced Spanish conversation course. Data is analyzed through a clinical analytic approach, which has its roots in Vygotsky's (1978) genetic method of analysis. The study was carried out over a 12-week period and collected multiple sets of developmental data, including learners' definition of the grammatical concept of aspect, written performance protocols, and verbalization data recorded during two oral interviews. The study interprets learner performance in these three complementary, and dialectically connected types of L2 conceptual data. A close analysis of this participant's data provides critical insights to understand the role of verbalizing in L2 conceptual development. Findings confirm that learners' verbalizations are key factors to ascertain L2 conceptual development, as well as a mediational tool that fosters learners' internalization of the grammatical concept of aspect. It is proposed that verbalizing notably contributes to research on L2 development. Not only does it allow the researcher to have a more comprehensive picture of L2 development, but it also helps learners develop a more sophisticated semantic understanding of the grammatical concept of aspect and fosters their ability to understand and control relevant grammatical features in L2 communication.

Talk is the vehicle of exchange in language classrooms when communicative competence is being developed. Turns of talk then facilitate the meaning-making process as students and teachers collaboratively come to understand the discourse of knowledge they are co-constructing. During the pivotal third turn in the essential teaching exchange, there is potential for teachers to realise productive pedagogies as they facilitate their students' organisational and pragmatic skills in the foreign language. This study brings a lens to Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) triadic dialogue, which has been criticised for its monological overuse and limitation of students' language production. Analysis of the third turn shows the uptake to be an implicit move in the exchange. Teachers appear not to be aware of the potential benefit it offers them for co-constructed language use at that point in teacher-student interactions. Teachers draw on students' background knowledge and experiential learning in the four domains of productive pedagogies (intellectual quality, supportive classroom environment, recognition of difference and connectedness) when they engage them through an authentic use of language. For this study, potential for productive pedagogy was investigated in the classroom talk of two teachers of Japanese at year 10 level. In a case study, six transcribed and translated lessons were subjected to conversational and membership categorisation analyses using Bachman's (1990) communicative language ability framework to describe language production around the third turn and to hypothesise its effectiveness in providing opportunities for students to generate output in the target language.

This dissertation assesses a new technique intended to improve Arabic learning outcomes by enhancing the ability of learners to perceive a phoneme contrast in Arabic that is notoriously difficult for native speakers of English. Adopting a process approach to foreign language listening comprehension pedagogy, we identify and isolate an important listening subskill, phonemic identification, and develop a methodology for improving that skill. An online training system is implemented that is based upon known principles of speech perception and second language speech learning and has previously been used to improve phonemic perception in a laboratory setting. An empirical study investigating the efficacy of the training methodology was conducted with 24 2nd and 3rd year students of Arabic in several different intensive Arabic programs in American universities. The contrast under investigation was the Arabic pharyngeal (/h̄/) versus laryngeal (/h/) voiceless fricatives. Training participants completed 100 training modules, each consisting of a 24 item minimal pair test featuring the /h̄/-/h/ contrast in word initial position for a total of 2400 training trials over 4 weeks. The training website design was based on the high variability training protocol (Logan, Lively & Pisoni, 1991). The experiment finds significantly greater improvement (F₁,₂₂=8.89, p = .007, [mathematical symbol]₂ = .288) on a minimal pair test contrasting /h̄/ and /h/ for a group that received approximately 5 hours of phonetic training (n=10) compared to a control group (n=14) with no training. Critically, these perceptual improvements were measured with stimuli that were not part of the training set, suggesting language learning and not just stimulus learning. Qualitative data from participants suggested that these perceptual gains were not restricted to the simple minimal pair task, but carried over to listening activities and perhaps even pronunciation. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of phonemic perception and foreign language instruction and implementation of phonetic training within an Arabic curriculum. / text

Cette thèse vise à étudier l’interaction pédagogique par visioconférence entre sept futurs professeurs de français langue étrangère en formation professionnelle à l’Université de Lyon et douze apprenants de français langue étrangère inscrits dans une école de commerce à Dublin City University. A partir de données écologiques, nous avons construit un corpus audiovisuel de vingt-huit séances et de quinze heures et demie d’interactions. Par une démarche inductive, en nous appuyant sur des méthodes développées dans le cadre de l’analyse conversationnelle, nous avons identifié 295 séquences d’explication lexicale. Nous avons analysé celles-ci par une approche multimodale qui adopte une vue holistique de la communication et prend en compte l’utilisation de l’ensemble des ressources sémiotiques sans privilégier par défaut le langage oral. Nos analyses multimodales montrent de quelles façons les enseignants utilisent les ressources à leur disposition pour se focaliser sur la forme des items lexicaux, pour se focaliser sur leur sens et pour impliquer les apprenants dans les séquences d’explication. Nos données permettent également de mener des comparaisons interindividuelles grâce au fait que plusieurs enseignants, ayant reçu les mêmes consignes et se trouvant dans des situations similaires, expliquent les mêmes items lexicaux. / This thesis aims to study videoconferenced pedagogical interaction between seven future teachers of French who are undergoing professional development at the University of Lyon and twelve learners of French who are enrolled in a business school at Dublin City University. From naturally occurring interaction, we have constructed an audiovisual corpus comprised of twenty-eight sessions and fifteen and a half hours of interaction. Through an inductive approach, and relying on methods developed in the field of conversation analysis, we have identified 295 lexical explanation sequences. We have analyzed them using a multimodal approach which adopts a holistic view of communication and takes into consideration the entire palette of semiotic resources used without automatically prioritizing spoken language. Our multimodal analyses show the ways in which the teacher trainees use the resources at their disposal to focus on the form and meaning of lexical items as well as how they involve their learners in the explanation sequences. Our corpus also allows us to conduct an interindividual comparison due to the fact that several teacher trainees, having received the same instructions and being put in similar situations, explain the same lexical items.

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Research has shown increasing interest in the influence of learner psychology on second language acquisition (e.g. Ellis, 2019; MacIntyre, Gregersen & Mercer, 2019). This research has demonstrated that motivation, focus, and feelings of autonomy and self-efficacy are particularly important in creating the necessary conditions for learning to occur (e.g. Dörnyei, 2009; Norton & Toohey, 2011; Piniel & Csizér, 2016; Robinson, 1995, 1997). When these factors converge, a learner can experience flow, which has been described as the “optimal experience” of engagement (Csíkszentmihályi, 1975, 1990, 2008) and has been linked to language learning success (Hong et al., 2017). Existing research has shown that student-centered, open-ended, authentic, and competitive activities tend to generate more flow than their opposites (Egbert, 2003; Zuniga & Rueb, 2018). However, these studies are scarce and have focused on a very limited quantity of immediate language-class activities, thus excluding many other possible flow experiences from consideration. To expand this line of research, this study seeks to determine what types of language-class activities generate the most flow, as well as which of the theorized psychological components of flow are most strongly associated with such experiences. Eighty-two North American undergraduate, intermediate-level (estimated CEFR B1/ACTFL intermediate mid-high) students of French, Italian, German, and Spanish completed a questionnaire about their lifetime language-learning experiences. First, the participants rated a list of activities on perceived overall flow using a Likert scale. Next, they rated the same activities on four theorized psychological components of flow (enjoyment, focused attention, control, positive challenges) also on a Likert scale (Csíkszentmihályi 1975, 1990, 2008; Egbert, 2003; Zuniga & Rueb, 2018). Finally, they answered open-ended questions about salient language-class experiences. The results of this study support the hypothesis that student-centered, open-ended, authentic, and competitive activities would generate more flow than their opposites (teacher-centered, closed-ended, inauthentic, and non-competitive). The results also revealed that enjoyment and challenges best predict flow. While competitive activities were shown to be particularly strong flow generators in the quantitative analysis, the qualitative analysis of the open-ended survey responses showed student-centered activities to be particularly associated with high-flow experiences, though usually in conjunction with other flow-generating categories. When taken together, these results suggest that, in order to create learning-favorable conditions through flow, teachers should use activities that belong to as many flow-generating categories as possible while also paying special attention to students’ perceptions of enjoyment and the challenges-skills balance. / Spanish

There is no doubt that the video game industry is undergoing a major upheaval, yet in spite of the recent reconceptualization of video games, educational games as a whole remain the pariah of the industry. Very little has been done in the wake of recent social and industry trends to adapt instruction of academic subjects, especially foreign language, for delivery through video games. Prior studies discussing the potential of games developed specifically for language learning have focused primarily on general principles and have offered no recommendations for platform, genre, or other aspects of design. Through an online survey as well as qualitative analysis of gaming forum discussions and student evaluations of an existing educational language game, this study goes straight to the learners and players themselves in order to determine the opinions and behavioral intentions of potential customers. By synthesizing these insights into consumer demand with theory and industry trends, this study argues that mobile or casual games that are intrinsically social and communicative hold the most potential for success, both in academia and in the industry.

This work explores various methods teachers can use to promote high quality second language oral production. It consists of a review of empirical research and pedagogical implications related to the following factors: 1) Pre-task planning, 2) within-task planning, 3) task repetition, 4) task design, 5) formulaic sequences, 6) learner strategies, 7) form instruction, and 8) error correction. The work concludes with a consideration of issues within the literature and a brief summary of pedagogical implications. / text

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