Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-29T15:08:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_8534_Dissertação - Nádia Silveira.pdf: 1780469 bytes, checksum: 395e795d8be80dc34d27c5d8e3e32991 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-09 / Esta pesquisa teve por objetivo avaliar o desempenho em inglês como L2 de alunos submetidos a atividades em uma abordagem híbrida com o uso de ferramentas da internet na Escola de Aprendizes de Marinheiros do Espírito Santo. Um total de 40 alunos de duas turmas intactas foram divididos em dois grupos, o experimental (ensino tradicional + ambiente virtual) e o controle (ensino tradicional apenas). O referencial teórico revisou a literatura sobre abordagem de ensino de línguas estrangeiras baseada em tarefas, metodologias híbridas de ensino de L2, multiletramentos e novas tecnologias. A metodologia de pesquisa usada foi mista com dados qualitativos e quantitativos. O estudo avaliou o impacto de atividades on-line na aprendizagem de L2 e no desenvolvimento da autonomia e do letramento digital. Três tarefas usando variados sítios da internet foram administradas ao grupo experimental, seguidas de um questionário para cada uma, usado para a avaliação qualitativa. A análise quantitativa foi feita por meio de pré e pós testes analisados estatisticamente. Para esta pesquisa-ação, foram utilizados questionários, entrevistas semiestruturadas e o diário da professora-pesquisadora como instrumentos de coleta de dados. De forma geral os resultados não mostraram ganhos estatisticamente significativos no tratamento, porém os resultados da análise qualitativa das impressões dos alunos-participantes sobre as tarefas realizadas revelaram que a abordagem híbrida de ensino de L2 pode ajudar os alunos a desenvolver a autonomia, motivação, um maior contato com a língua-alvo e o letramento digital.

The study aimed to investigate the difficulties English teachers in Sweden experience when teaching English to students studying English as an L3. A second aim is to investigate what students at the upper secondary level in Sweden experience as difficult when learning English as an L3. The study was conducted with three teachers and ten students using semi-structured interviews and observations. Results suggest several difficulties in teaching and learning English as an L3. Most students agree that listening comprehension is one of the most challenging parts of learning English as an L3. The teachers agreed that language structure was the most difficult for L3 learners. Several students and teachers also bring up spoken English. Writing is not brought up to any great extent as a primary issue for the students. Among the issues regarding spoken English, pronunciation is brought up, and the fear of speaking a foreign language. As for strategies, the teachers mention a few, such as tests at the beginning of the term and adjusted assignments. However, one teacher mentioned that there is not enough time to help the students even though he has resource class after school hours. On the other hand, the students do not have specific strategies other than translations of words they do not understand. There seems to be a lack of knowledge for both teachers and students regarding how to use strategies for learning English as an L3

Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) is a self-regulation method shown to increase goal achievement through a combination of positive visualization and planning to overcome anticipated obstacles, specifically in time management, physical fitness, smoking cessation, dieting, social interaction, and classroom performance (Duckworth et al. 2013; Oettingen & Reininger 2016) Because second language (L2) acquisition is highly influenced by learner motivation, this study investigated whether MCII could be applied to motivation to acquire L2 vocabulary in beginning Arabic classes. A control group was compared to two treatment groups, one receiving vision-oriented MCII training that asked them to recall what first motivated them to begin language study when facing lack of motivation and a second receiving action-oriented MCII training encouraging participants to create an action-based plan when facing lack of motivation. Motivation levels of all participants were tracked through a survey of student motivation given at the beginning and end of the semester as well as through shortened weekly surveys tracking motivation level and L2 vocabulary acquisition over time. The results of this study showed that while there was no statistically significant motivational gain in any one group, there were several level items that revealed statistical significance within and between groups. No significant differences were found between groups in terms of motivation development, but raw averages of student motivation levels pre and post MCII training show that more participants in the vision-oriented groups saw motivational gains than those in the action-oriented group. Additionally, qualitative student comments revealed that many participants had failed to incorporate their MCII plans into their study regularly. This consequently may have limited the impact of MCII. Additional qualitative comments by students who did incorporate MCII suggest that they felt positively about MCII and believed it benefited their motivation and vocabulary acquisition. Consequently, additional research in which greater participation and more active use of MCII are promoted and qualitative data such as student journals and post interviews of students utilizing MCII are carefully analyzed is recommended. is recommended to further understand the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of MCII as applied to learner motivation level.

This study is dedicated to the investigation of the motivational profiles in university students on campus and on distance. Having said that, the present study aims to investigate the following aspects related to these groups of students: a) their motivational profile; and b) if they differ in the motivational profile according to the type of study in which they are inserted (campus ordistance).  A survey has been carried out on campus on university students as well ason distance students, these students were surveyed through a questionnaire based on, in part, on the theory of the motivational self-system in L2 created by the psycholinguist Zoltán Dörnyei in 2009. Due to the limitations of the study and of the members the groups, this study doesn’t intend to generalize, moreover, this study was carried out with the materials and resources available, to date.  This study will try to demonstrate the different aspects of the motivational system in L2 in the two different groups and in their modalities.

When Chinese language learners reach intermediate level, approximately in the second year of their Chinese study, they start to encounter near-synonyms, words that have the same translations in English, and characters that look alike. These words are often called 易混淆词 yi hunxiao ci “easily confusable words” by Chinese scholars. This lexical acquisition study researches a group of near synonyms about Chinese verbs of ‘change’, which either express a stative change (where an argument which expresses the result of the change is required) or causative change (where an argument which expresses the instigator or cause of the change is required). The study selected seven typical Chinese verbs, which are approximately equivalent to the words ‘to change’ and ‘to become’ in English. This study explores how the seven verbs of ‘change’ are different from each other through both literature review and an analysis of native speakers’ corpus. Among Chinese verbs of ‘change’, the most difficult pairs are 变成 biancheng and 成为 chengwei, 改 gai, 变 bian and 改变 gaibian, because of their morphological, semantic and syntactic similarities. 变成 biancheng and 成为 chengwei are very close in meaning, however, 成为 chengwei indicates a change that has gone through a development, while 变成 biancheng emphasizes on the comparison of status before and after the action. 成为 chengwei is used mainly to describe getting a new job or obtaining a special status, while 变成 biancheng is mostly to describe physical changes. As for 改 gai and 变 bian, under the sense of ‘to change’, 变 bian is more often used as an intransitive verb to express a stative change, 改 gai in contrast, is frequently used to express a causative change. As for collocations, 改 gai, 变 bian and 改变 gaibian collocate with very different nouns and other syntactic structures. This acquisition study then adopts an interlanguage analysis and experiment test as means to determine the effect that these semantic differences have on language learners. Heritage language learners have demonstrated advantages since the first year. Participants in their fourth year of Chinese classes have demonstrated their full knowledges on the verbs’ pronunciation and meaning, including secondary meaning of polysemy, which are comparable to Chinese speakers. Nevertheless, foreign language learners after four years of learning have not yet achieved native level in term of using the verbs correctly in sentences. The most difficult lexical pairs are 改 gai and 变 bian; 变成 biancheng and 成为 chengwei. Even though heritage and foreign language learners have different learning patterns, it is found that as students proceed in studying Chinese, their performance on Chinese verbs of ‘change’ improves in U-shape patterns. With in-depth comparison and analysis, it is determined that the causes of difficulties may come from English and Chinese differences, complexities of Chinese verbs of change, transfer of training.

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The L2 gain of a nonlinear time-dependent system measures the maximal gain in the transfer of energy from admissible input signals to the output signals, in which both the input and output signals are measured with the L2 norm. For general nonlinear systems, obtaining a sharp estimate of the L2 gain is challenging both theoretically and numerically. In this thesis, we explore a computationally efficient way to obtain numerical estimations of L2 gains for systems with quadratic nonlinearity. The approach utilizes a recently developed method that solves a class of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations via a Taylor series-based approximation, which is scalable to high-dimensional problems given the utilization of linear tensor systems. The ideas are demonstrated through a few concrete examples that include a one-dimensional problem with an explicit energy function and several Galerkin approximations of the viscous Burgers equation. / Master of Science / With nonlinear systems that are of the form of input-output models, questions often arise as to how to measure the energy that passes through such systems and determine strategies to look for specific signals that allow the designer freedom to explore certain system behaviors. The energy comes in the form of a signal. For general nonlinear systems, obtaining a sharp estimate of such energy gain is challenging both theoretically and numerically. In this thesis, we explore a computationally efficient way to obtain numerical estimations of these gains for systems with quadratic nonlinearity. The approach combines fundamental theoretical understandings established in the literature with scalable software recently developed in approximating the solution of the underlying partial differential equation, called the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation. In this approach, the energy gain is linked to a single scalar parameter in the HJB equation. Roughly speaking, the energy gain is the lower bound of this scalar parameter above which the HJB equation always admits a non-negative solution. Thus, it boils down to approximating the HJB solution using the software while changing this scalar parameter. We will present the theoretical foundation of the approach and illustrate the foundation through several academic examples ranging from low to relatively high dimensions.

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