Today, English is spoken by more non-native speakers than native speakers; current estimates by Graddol (2007) indicate five to one. With this transformation English has become the international language of business and intercultural communication. The emergence of English as Lingua Franca is apparent in Korean society where English plays a defining role in educational, career, social, cultural, and economic domains. Despite such inextricable links the acquisition of English in Korea has not been successful. This study examines the relationship between Korean university students' International Posture or non-ethnocentric attitude (Yashima, 2002, p. 57) and their L2 (Second Language) Learning Motivation, and L2 Proficiency in English, first described by Yashima (2002) in her study of Japanese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) tertiary students. The methodology used in this thesis was quantitative as it employed Likert scales in order to elicit students' International Posture, and L2 Motivation, and obtained L2 Proficiency from percentile grades in the TOEIC exam. With the use of path analysis software, AMOS 7, data from 118 university freshman (majoring in English literature) from Hannam University, South Korea were analyzed in order examine the relationship between International Posture, L2 Learning Motivation, and L2 Proficiency among South Korean EFL students. The results indicated a significant and very strong relationship between International Posture and L2 Learning Motivation and a significant and moderate relationship between L2 Learning Motivation and overall L2 Proficiency. The findings of the study conclude that EFL learner motivation can be understood by an agglomeration of integrative and instrumental motivational orientations. The findings in this study also suggest that the tendency for Korean EFL learners to approach, rather than avoid, interaction with people of different cultures is especially important to understanding Korean tertiary level students' attitude, motivation and performance in EFL. These findings could be implemented in the classroom by providing Korean EFL learners with safe and appropriate opportunities to interact with foreigners. Potential areas for further research include longitudinal studies (utilizing both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies) that look into the effect of EFL learner age, gender, and teaching pedagogy on International Posture, L2 Learning Motivation, and L2 Proficiency.

Most bilingual lexical models assume that L1 and L2 either share the same semantic system, or are distinguished at the semantic level but connected through lexical associations. For example, the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) assumes the stronger access from L2 to concepts via the L1 lexical representation at the early stage of L2 acquisition and direct access to concepts after L2 proficiency is achieved. However, the model is not well supported by subsequent empirical evidence, and encounters difficulty in explaining cross-language priming data. The recently developed Sense Model (Finkbeiner, M., Forster, K., Nicol, J., & Nakamura, K., 2004) assumes a direct access from the L2 form to its related meaning and argues for the representational asymmetry in lexical semantics between L1 and L2. This model was designed to account for the translation asymmetry and task effect in the masked priming literature: L2-L1 priming is not observed in lexical decision due to the small proportion of L1 senses activated by the L2 prime; however, the category provides a context which restricts L1 sense activation and thus enhances the effectiveness of the L2 prime in semantic categorization. This dissertation reports the results of several semantic categorization experiments designed to test several assumptions of the Sense Model. Experiments 1-4 investigated whether the Category Restriction Hypothesis assumed by the Sense Model was empirically supported when congruence effects are minimized. The results showed that translation priming could be obtained for exemplars when congruence effects were controlled, but that there were no effects for non-exemplars, as predicted by the Sense Model. Subsequent experiments showed that category size is an important variable, since L2-L1 priming was not obtained with large categories (e.g., living thing), which was taken to indicate that a large category is ineffective as a 'focusing' device to enhance the activation of L2 semantic senses. Finally, it was shown that the priming asymmetry in lexical decision was not due to differential degrees of semantic activation of the prime in L1 and L2.

abstract: This investigation's goal was to add to the small body of research on pragmalinguistic acquisition of L2 Spanish. Specifically, it centered on the production of complaints in Spanish. Data was collected via a written Discourse Completion Task (DCT) of a complaint-provoking situation presented in a website voiceboard to two non-native speaker (NNS) students groups of different proficiency levels and to a native speaker (NS) control group. The lower proficiency group was comprised of 11 NNS enrolled in a 200 level beginning/intermediate Spanish grammar class and the advanced proficiency group of 11 NNS enrolled in a 400 level advanced Spanish conversation and composition class. Neither group contained any participants who had studied abroad or lived in a Spanish-speaking country for more than 3 months. The control group consisted of 10 NSs of Spanish who were all natives or current residents of Northern Mexico. Data from the DCT was categorized into strategies which were organized into Head Acts and Supporting Moves, Deference and Solidarity Politeness systems, according to the frameworks of Blum-Kulka, et al. (1989) and Scollon and Scollon (1983), respectively. The results of the analysis revealed that all three groups of participants have overarching similarities in the use of multiple Head Acts, some used several times throughout a response, to realize a complaint and used some Supporting Moves to mitigate these Head Acts. The lower proficiency group diverged from the advanced proficiency group and NS control group in that lower proficiency students not only used a fewer total strategies and strategy types, but also preferred Head Acts and Supporting Moves that expressed discomfort or dislike over strategies that expressed criticism, or requested a solution from the listener, these being the primary strategies preferred by the advanced proficiency and control group participants. It was also found that the percentage of Supporting Moves decreased with the raise in proficiency level, also. After a discussion of the results, pedagogical implications are given based on these results to help students notice and acquire pragmalinguistcally appropriate responses to complaint-provoking situations. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2012

A primary purpose of second language (L2) research is to determine what factors hinder or help L2 acquisition. One aspect that has a strong effect on L2 proficiency is learners' age of onset of acquisition (AOA) (Johnson & Newport, 1989). These studies and others suggest that younger learners are more adept than older learners at learning an L2, especially to a near-native level. However, some older learners can become quite proficient in an L2 (Ioup, et al. 1994; Bialystok, 1997; Bongaerts, 1999), although learners who have acquired the L2 over the age of 30 are rarely studied. Why is it that some older learners are more adept at learning a second language than others? Some argue cognitive abilities (Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2002; DeKeyser, 2006) while others argue social and affective factors (Moyer, 1999) differ across the lifespan, causing younger learners to achieve a higher proficiency than older learners. Little research, however, has examined both these factors, especially in learners who acquired a language beyond early adulthood. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine 1) if there are age effects between groups of older adults learning an L2 and 2) what causes any differences found. This study examines a variety of both cognitive, affective and demographic factors that have been previously shown to affect language learning. The participants included 38 native Spanish speakers placed into four AOA groups: 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, and over 40. In order to test cognitive factors a working memory task as well as a switch task were included (Abrahamsson, 2012; Paradis, 2009). Other factors were assessed using a survey that inquired about motivation, amount of time using the L1 versus the L2, and musical ability (Slevc & Miyake, 2006). Subjects also participated in an elicited imitation task to assess global proficiency in the L2 (Erlam, 2009).Results suggest that age effects are found even in older learners. Participants with a younger AOA who spend more time speaking the L2 (English) tended to have greater proficiency in the L2. Attentional control was also a predictor.

Learning kanji (i.e., the Chinese characters utilized in the Japanese writing system) is unique for learners of Japanese who speak Chinese as their first language (L1) due to their ability to transfer their knowledge of L1 hanzi (i.e., the Chinese characters utilized in the Chinese writing system). The present study is a longitudinal investigation into the effects of affective variables and kanji growth on kanji learning utilizing the self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2002). L1 Chinese learners of Japanese as a second language (L2) responded to a questionnaire designed to measure eleven affective variables and took kanji tests three times over one academic semester (N = 229-340). In addition, interviews were conducted with 12 participants to further explore the affective variables influencing kanji learning. The data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate latent growth modeling, multiple regression analyses, and path modeling to answer six research questions. The results showed that: (a) there were no associations between the initial affective status and the initial kanji proficiency; (b) intrinsic motivation and introjected regulation exerted significant positive and negative influences on short-term kanji growth, respectively; (c) growth in kanji proficiency did not cultivate intrinsic motivation, nor did intrinsic motivation lead to growth in kanji proficiency; (d) perceived competence was significantly associated with both the initial status of intrinsic motivation and changes in intrinsic motivation; (e) perceived competence was not associated with either the initial level or the development of kanji proficiency; (f) perceived competence positively affected four variables, intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, external regulation, and mastery goals; (g) perceived autonomy led to lower amotivation and higher intrinsic motivation, but caused lower external regulation; (h) peers' positive influences positively affected all six variables, cultivating higher intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, introjected regulation, external regulation, and mastery goals, as well as causing lower amotivation; (i) peers' negative influences led to lower identified regulation and higher amotivation, and higher introjected regulation, and; (j) attitudes toward L2 community/speakers did not influence any of the SDT kanji learning motivation and mastery goals. The results of the interview study revealed that (a) the participants felt various types of enjoyment in kanji learning, including intrinsic motivation-knowledge, intrinsic motivation-stimulation, and intrinsic motivation-accomplishment; (b) ideal L2 self guided intrinsic motivation; (c) introjected regulation was channeled by ought-to L2 self and feared L2 self, and; (d) feared L2 self was uniquely formulated as a result of the complex interactions of various factors such as pride as L1 hanzi knowledge holders and normative pressure from Chinese peers. Evidence gathered in research targeting English learners is not necessarily applicable to the learning and motivation for learning other languages. The present study contributes to a better understanding of the universality as well as the individuality of the roles of motivation in L2 learning. / Applied Linguistics

The continued underperformance of many L2 students at primary, secondary and tertiary level is a cause for grave concern in South Africa. In an attempt to better understand the cognitivelinguistic conditions and processes that underlie academic performance and underperformance, this study looks at the problem of differential academic performance by focussing on the inferential ability of undergraduate L2 students during the reading of expository texts. The study works within a constructivist theory of reading, where the successful understanding of a text is seen to involve the construction of a mental representation of what the text is about. Inferencing plays an important role in constructing meaning during reading because it enables the reader to link incoming information with already given information, and it enables the reader to construct a mental representation of the meaning of a text by converting the linear input into a hierarchical mental representation of interrelated information. The main finding showed that the ability to make inferences during the reading of expository texts was strongly related to academic performance: the more inferences students made during the reading of expository texts, the better they performed academically. This relationship held across the making of various inferences, such as anaphoric inferences, vocabulary inferences, inferences about various semantic relations, and thematic inferences. In particular, the ability to make anaphoric, contrastive and causal inferences emerged as the strongest predictors of academic performance. The study provides strong empirical evidence that the ability to make inferences during reading enables a reader to construct meaning and thereby also to acquire new knowledge. Reading is not only a tool for independently accessing information in an information-driven society, it is fundamentally a tool for constructing meaning. Reading and inferencing are not additional tools that students need to master in the learning context- they constitute the very process whereby learning occurs. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

過去學者們對於雙語詞彙觸接歷程持有兩種相異的觀點：選擇性觸接假設（selective access hypothesis）認為雙語者在進行詞彙觸接時，只有符合語境的目標語言才會被激發；非選擇性觸接假設（non-selective access hypothesis）則認為雙語者的兩種語言表徵會同時被激發而產生競爭或促進效果。至今已有眾多研究結果支持雙語詞彙觸接歷程為非選擇性，然而，這些研究大多採用促發典範（priming paradigm）忽略語境在雙語詞彙觸接歷程所扮演的角色，且多數實驗中的受試者二語能力皆相當流利，對於二語能力個別差異對詞彙觸接歷程的影響也尚未清楚。此外，以非拼音文字系統為研究對象的相關雙語研究也不多。因此，本研究旨在從非拼音文字的角度探討語境限制及中文能力在雙語詞彙觸接中所扮演的角色，實驗操弄語境限制程度（高限制、低限制）及詞彙類型（同形同義詞、同形異義詞、中文單義詞），以日中雙語者為研究對象，控制句子語境呈現中立或偏向目標詞中文語意，使用眼動實驗來即時記錄受試者在進行詞彙觸接的過程，檢視中文能力對跨語言同形詞效果在高、低限制語境下的影響性。此外，本研究也分別以高低分組與眼動表現兩種方法當作中文能力指標進行分析，並將結果進行比較，以瞭解何種中文能力指標能夠較準確反映出受試者在閱讀中文篇章的能力。 實驗結果顯示，雙語詞彙觸接歷程為非選擇性，中文能力和語境限制能夠對詞彙觸接歷程造成影響，使得跨語言同形詞效果產生消長。首先，在高低分組結果方面，中文能力指標和各效果主要在晚期詞彙處理階段產生交互作用，高程度組在高限制語境下觀察到形同異義效果，低限制語境則沒有看到任何效果；低程度組在高、低限制語境下皆觀察到顯著的形同義同效果。另一方面，以眼動表現作為中文能力指標的分析結果中，則清楚中文能力在早期詞彙觸接階段就已經和語境限制、跨語言同形詞效果產生影響性，顯示眼動表現能夠視為測量中文能力的指標之一。總而言之，不同的分析結果皆反映雙語詞彙觸接歷程為非選擇性，語境與中文能力在語意提取歷程中扮演重要角色，中文能力較好的雙語者在早期詞彙觸接階段就會受到語境限制影響，而中文能力較低者則是在晚期階段受到語境影響。 / For decades, psycholinguists have disputes on the organization of the two language systems of bilinguals’ brain and how they retrieve lexical representations. The selective access hypothesis predicts that two languages are independent in the brain and bilinguals activate only one lexicon at a time while reading or speaking. Alternatively, non-selective access hypothesis predicts that two languages share an integrated conception representation, so representations from both languages are accessed simultaneously during comprehension. So far, many bilingual studies have demonstrated that bilingual lexical access is non-selective. However, these studies usually used priming paradigm such as lexical decision task which words are presented in isolation, ignoring the role of context in the bilingual lexical access processing. According to the monolingual literature, it is clear that lexical ambiguity resolution is influenced by the surrounding sentence context. While most of the previous studies investigated highly proficient bilinguals, the same question about non-selective access could also be asked of less proficient bilinguals. Moreover, most of results are based on alphabetic writing systems such as English-French or Dutch; only few of them examined the non-alphabetic systems. Besides, since bilingual experience is dynamic and poses a challenge for researchers to develop instruments that capture its relevant dimensions. The present study also examined the result of language proficiency from class level and eye movement indexs to confirm which one is more accurate.The present study aimed to examine whether Japanese-Chinese bilingual lexical access is non-selective and whether the context and L2 proficiency modulate the word recognition processing. Experiment manipulated contextual constraint (high or low constraint) and target word types (cognates, interlingual homographs, or Chinese words), using eye movement recordings to investigate the effects of contextual constraint for bilingual lexical access when reading Chinese sentences by Japanese-Chinese bilinguals, L1 and L2 proficiency were measured. The results support the non-selective hypothesis. Both sentence context and L2 proficiency could affect the bilingual lexical access. According to class level analysis, L2 proficiency has significant interaction with other effects in the late processing stage. The eye movement measures that reflects early processing of target words showed significant interlingual homograph interference and cognate facilitation in the higher proficient bilinguals. However, only cognate facilitation was observed for high-constraint sentences in the lower proficient bilinguals and no effect was founded in the low-constraint sentences. On the other hand, the eye movement index analysis showed L2 proficiency has significant interaction with other effects in the early processing stage, demonstrating the L2 reading proficiency can be measured by eye movement index. In summary, both sentence context and L2 proficiency can modulate bilingual lexical access. The early process is non-selective and bilinguals with more L2 proficiency could make use of sentence context in the early process than less L2 proficiency when reading L2 sentences.

The continued underperformance of many L2 students at primary, secondary and tertiary level is a cause for grave concern in South Africa. In an attempt to better understand the cognitivelinguistic conditions and processes that underlie academic performance and underperformance, this study looks at the problem of differential academic performance by focussing on the inferential ability of undergraduate L2 students during the reading of expository texts. The study works within a constructivist theory of reading, where the successful understanding of a text is seen to involve the construction of a mental representation of what the text is about. Inferencing plays an important role in constructing meaning during reading because it enables the reader to link incoming information with already given information, and it enables the reader to construct a mental representation of the meaning of a text by converting the linear input into a hierarchical mental representation of interrelated information. The main finding showed that the ability to make inferences during the reading of expository texts was strongly related to academic performance: the more inferences students made during the reading of expository texts, the better they performed academically. This relationship held across the making of various inferences, such as anaphoric inferences, vocabulary inferences, inferences about various semantic relations, and thematic inferences. In particular, the ability to make anaphoric, contrastive and causal inferences emerged as the strongest predictors of academic performance. The study provides strong empirical evidence that the ability to make inferences during reading enables a reader to construct meaning and thereby also to acquire new knowledge. Reading is not only a tool for independently accessing information in an information-driven society, it is fundamentally a tool for constructing meaning. Reading and inferencing are not additional tools that students need to master in the learning context- they constitute the very process whereby learning occurs. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)