The engaged classroom is a space where teacher and students come together to share in the acts of teaching and learning. They embark on a collaborative journey of empowerment and through the process reciprocally influence each other's growth and emancipation. / Through an autobiographical exploration of my experiences as a student and as a teacher, I present an exploration of the concept of empowerment. I explore its significance not only on the level of literacy development in my kindergarten classroom, where I teach French in an Armenian heritage language setting, but also on a more personal and professional level. Working in the theoretical framework of teacher self-study, I present an epistemological exploration of postmodern feminist research paradigms and discuss the various aspects of autobiographical research. I build my thesis on the context of the heritage language school and the critical analysis of my past experiences. I present an account of the reflexive process I have engaged in during the past five years, which, coupled with the theories of critical and feminist pedagogy, has brought forth the main thesis of my dissertation: the interconnectivity of teacher and student empowerment. In the hope of providing some practical material, I include an appendix where I describe a collection of literacy activities from my kindergarten classroom. / My work provides insight into a teacher's journey of meaning-making and empowerment, which will, I hope, be useful as part of a larger exploration of teachers' work and students' experiences in classrooms.

This study, undertaken in the classrooms of minority-language students in French-language schools in Montreal, aims to test Stern's (1990, 1992) proposal for integrating analytic and experiential teaching strategies in second language pedagogy. A related objective seeks to establish the pedagogical orientation of instructional practices during French language arts as being more analytically---or more experientially---focused and to describe the setting from the perspective of these culturally and linguistically diverse students for whom French is a second language. Research procedures entailed the implementation of an integrated activity---journal writing with differential feedback (form-focused, content-based, and a combination of form-focused and content-based)---in four Grade 5 classrooms (N = 112 in total) for approximately four months of one academic year. Twenty-four classroom observations that included coding with the COLT observation scheme and taking fieldnotes were also carried out, and individual interviews were conducted with students, teachers, and administrators. Throughout the study, the francophone students in the participating classrooms acted as a comparison group. The study demonstrated that minority-language students' home cultures and the potentially positive role of the mother tongue in second language learning were not well understood in this context of submersion. COLT findings and qualitative outcomes triangulated to reveal instructional practices that were more inclined towards an analytic than towards an experiential approach to teaching. For both groups of students, MANOVA results indicated no significant effects for quantity of production, accuracy, and overall effectiveness in the journal writing as a function of differential feedback; behavioural and attitudinal data proved helpful in the interpretation of these statistical outcomes. A qualitative analysis of various aspects of the journals' contents revealed that the activity had b

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D.Litt. et Phil. / The final objective of this study involves the acquisition of received French pronunciation on the part of native speakers of siSwati. However, considering the sole aspect of phoneticophonological competence in the context of foreign language learning needs to be justified. Hence, we explain which role phonology plays in contemporary linguistics (chapter I). Further, we commit ourselves in chapter II to accommodating foreign language phonology in the framework of contrastive linguistics. This results in testing the development of foreign language pronunciation against the contrastive analysis hypothesis. To support this, we evaluate the degree to which L2 learners inherit the well-established phonological representation of Ll in their attempt to communicate in a foreign language. Secondly, we are convinced that it is needful to consider the way in which our learners decode phonological intelligibility into observable phonetic facts. This leads us to analyse the physioacoustic "surface" features of our learners' basis of articulation. Accordingly, we justify why the analysis and comparison of the phonological systems involved are to be complemented by experimental analyses of the recorded speech data. The formant tracking of the vowels and selected spectrographic analyses of the consonants in chapters IV, V and VI allow us to show to what extent the phonological abstract of the languages involved are decoded differently according to the respective bases of articulation. To achieve this, we rely on adequate experimental analyses and 'statistical tests. The first Part of chapter V identifies and compares the vowel qualities of the two languages by means of their first two formants, while the second part investigates the spectrographic differences between the siSwati and French consonant charts. To become familiar with the physio-acoustic characteristics of the target language, we introduce the French articulatory setting in chapter VII. Turning to the final aim of our contrastive and corrective undertaking, we need to select the most beneficial method of diagnosing the characteristics of our learners' foreign accent. Moreover, we design corrective strategies that will help our learners attain faithful speech performance in the targetlanguage community. Therefore, chapter III assesses the extent to which the verbo-tonal method of corrective phonetics can be instrumental in overcoming siSwati-induced French. Further, the error analysis of the recorded interlanguage discourse results in designing ad hoc corrective strategies to be implemented (chapter VIII).

As a result of the high price paid in time and concern by students, parents and educators in educating a child in French Immersion only to find that s/he would be better off in an English classroom, a predictor is needed to decide early in a child's life whether or not s/he is a good candidate for French Immersion. A 'good candidate' would be someone who would be able to learn French and , as a corollary, not be handicapped academically by being instructed in French. The present study is an examination of the L2 learning aspect of French Immersion. In particular this paper will explore the possibility that 'fast mapping',the ability to quickly make a partial representation of the meaning, form and use of a word after hearing it only a few times, may be a predictor of success in acquiring a second language irrespective of overall academic achievement. In a procedure adapted from Dollaghan (1985) eighteen students in Grade 2 French Immersion, seventeen in Grade 3 French Immersion and five former French Immersion students now in the Grade 3 English program were exposed to an unusually shaped, as yet unnamed object in the course of a hiding game. This object was randomly assigned one of a set of nonsense names. The children were then administered a 10 minute oral French Comprehension Test as a distractor before being tested for their comprehension and production of the new word. The scores on these tasks, which are an indication of "fast mapping" skill, did not correlate with i) number of years exposure to a second language, ii) age, iii) teacher ratings of oral French or iv) academic ability, v) oral French comprehension or vi) inclusion in French Immersion. This suggests that this set of fast mapping tasks is not a good predictor of success in second language learning or French Immersion. More research is needed to ascertain the reciprocal effect of L2 learning on fast mapping skills, the development of fast mapping skills with age, and the effect of a more complex fast mapping task on the fast mapping performance of school age children. / Medicine, Faculty of / Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of / Graduate

Following a review of the literature on French immersion, this thesis considers the implications of the systematic transcription of oral texts for linguistic analysis. In transcribing a corpus of spoken French by children attending a French immersion school and a corpus of children from Quebec (both from tape recordings and included in the appendice), the transcription conventions proposed by the Groupe Aixois de Recherche en Syntaxe were applied. In chapter III, some of the most common deviations from the norm that occur in the French immersion corpus are discussed, and for the most part these aberrations reflect the results of previous error analyses done on second language learners. In chapters IV and V, a study of "slip-ups" is undertaken. Slip-ups are repetitions or self-corrections, referred to as "rates" in this thesis. They occur frequently both in the Francophone and French immersion corpus. The purpose of this study is to analyse the intrinsic structure of these hesitations (that were previously brushed off as un-grammatical) and to discover whether the repetitions or self-corrections produced by the French immersion speakers share characteristics with or differ from the slip-ups identified in the Francophone corpus. Whereas an enumeration of grammatical errors will almost always show that the French spoken by French immersion pupils is not as "good" as that spoken by Francophone children, the analysis of slip-ups is a more objective endeavor. And indeed, the study reveals some unpredicted results. On certain parts of the sentence, such as the predicate, French native speakers surprisingly slip up more often than French immersion children, while the latter tend to hesitate more often on subjects and indirect objects. Further analysis reveals that native French speakers almost always repeat (or correct) entire word groups, or syntagms, although they don't always complete such groups. The French immersion children, on the other hand, do not always repeat the entire word group when they slip up, but they do seem to finish their construction (or sentence), once it has started. Finally, the situation (formal or informal) appeared to only affect the speakers in the Francophone corpus: they hesitated slightly more often in a formal setting, whereas the situation did not seem to affect the results for the French immersion speakers. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Teachers routinely conduct a period of review after a semester or summer holiday break due to expected loss of material learned. In the area of second language (L2) acquisition, this matter is of particular concern to instructors and students because, in general, during the period of disuse students have had little, if any, contact with the language. One factor which has proven to influence the maintenance of an L2 is that of motivation. Gardner and his colleagues’ (1959, 1971, 1973, 1985, 1987, 1988) studies of French as a Second Language (FSL) have highlighted strong correlations between attitude and achievement and achievement and language retention. Research on individual differences among learners (Brounstein, Holahan, William, & Sawyer, 1988; Gardner, 1990) has also contributed to identifying what leads to a successful learner. This study examined the loss of linguistic and reading comprehension skills among learners of all ability levels in FSL, with a focus on high ability learners, following summer vacation. In addition, between-group comparisons of motivational factors, as based upon subjects’ pre-test scores were conducted. Tests performed consisted of an analysis of exam questions and components to confirm an equal level of difficulty of both test versions used, as well as tests of reliability. Pre- and post-test measures were compared to identify any loss incurred, followed by Pearson correlations and t-tests. Ability groupings were then categorized as high, medium, and low according to their pre-test scores. Within these groupings, questionnaire statistics were calculated and contrasted to highlight any motivational differences between them. Findings from this research suggested that language skills among FSL learners of varying abilities deteriorate significantly after a period of disuse. In addition, these findings confirmed that highly proficient FSL learners are more immune to attrition due to their having a more stable language base. With reference to the motivational questionnaires, analyses concluded few significant differences among the three ability levels. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate