While various studies have investigated the effectiveness of certain types of error treatment methods, there has been little linguistic research conducted to examine how actual language teachers have been dealing with L2 learners’ written errors. The current research was designed to investigate the types of written errors ESL teachers corrected and the types of error treatment methods they used to correct those errors in the context of Bond University on the Cold Coast. Moreover, it was intended to highlight the relationship between the literature and actual practice in terms of error treatment of written work. In this study, sixty-six students’ written texts corrected by nine different teachers were collected and examined. The teachers’ treatment of the learner errors found in each sample were identified and classified according to their features. The findings from both quantitative and qualitative data on the patterns of error treatment were analysed, and following this, various comparisons were made. The results of the study indicated that despite the current trend of language teaching, error treatment was frequently provided by the teachers in the ESL classrooms. Moreover, the teachers constantly corrected the deviations of local aspects of the language, which did not seriously influence the intelligibility. In addition, the results of the study also demonstrated that the teachers used both explicit types and implicit types of correction methods in a hybrid manner, and they altered their mode of correction depending on the types of errors. They tended to provide explicit correction for wrong vocabulary and sentence construction errors whereas other surface features, such as grammatical and mechanical errors were generally highlighted with implicit correction, especially with correction codes. The findings of this study suggest that increasing the use of less-time consuming error treatment methods for rule-governed lexical errors and educating learners to be able to carry out self-correction could reduce the teachers’ burden of written error treatment. Moreover, constant information exchange would allow the teachers to revise, refine and change their ways to deal with errors. Until clear effectiveness of certain patterns of error treatment is proven by further studies, these suggestions could be made in order to maximise the benefits of the teachers’ treatment of written errors.

Guided by Thomas Kuhn's theory about paradigm shift advanced in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Mao Tsetung's theory of “the new superseding the old”, this thesis briefly examines the history of translation both in the West and in China and observes three paradigm shifts in each territory. The analyses reveal that paradigm shifts in translation theory occur when the changes in the social, economic, cultural and religious environments lead to significant changes in the practice of translation and that these changes then can no longer be adequately theorised by the old paradigms of translation. This study then critically reviews current literature on globalisation and translation and attributes its lack of depth in theorisation or some of its misleading predictions to certain scholars' inadequate investigation of the phenomenon of globalisation. In order to provide an adequate interpretation, description, explanation and prediction of the impact of globalisation on the theory and practice of translation, I investigate five aspects of globalisation and their respective impact on translation practice and find that globalisation has changed the mainstream of translation practice from canonical translation to professional (i.e., non-canonical) translation. The findings of the research demonstrate that traditional translation theories based on comparative literary study or on linguistics fail to provide an objective and comprehensive theoretical framework for the mainstream practice of translation. Therefore, it is justifiable to posit a paradigm shift in Translation Studies from canonical translation to professional translation so as to meet the demand of and challenges for the translation profession and business under the impact of globalisation. As an initiation towards the establishment of a new paradigm, I posit a “value-driven” theory based on recent developments in researches on the global economy to distinguish between canonical and professional translations. Influenced by theories of the knowledge-driven economy, I further propose to establish a force of translators as knowledge workers to better serve the demand of the global economy and the global community. To follow the principle of empiricism, I use several case studies from the real world of commercial translation to support my “value-driven” theory for Translation Studies. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

Guided by Thomas Kuhn's theory about paradigm shift advanced in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Mao Tsetung's theory of “the new superseding the old”, this thesis briefly examines the history of translation both in the West and in China and observes three paradigm shifts in each territory. The analyses reveal that paradigm shifts in translation theory occur when the changes in the social, economic, cultural and religious environments lead to significant changes in the practice of translation and that these changes then can no longer be adequately theorised by the old paradigms of translation. This study then critically reviews current literature on globalisation and translation and attributes its lack of depth in theorisation or some of its misleading predictions to certain scholars' inadequate investigation of the phenomenon of globalisation. In order to provide an adequate interpretation, description, explanation and prediction of the impact of globalisation on the theory and practice of translation, I investigate five aspects of globalisation and their respective impact on translation practice and find that globalisation has changed the mainstream of translation practice from canonical translation to professional (i.e., non-canonical) translation. The findings of the research demonstrate that traditional translation theories based on comparative literary study or on linguistics fail to provide an objective and comprehensive theoretical framework for the mainstream practice of translation. Therefore, it is justifiable to posit a paradigm shift in Translation Studies from canonical translation to professional translation so as to meet the demand of and challenges for the translation profession and business under the impact of globalisation. As an initiation towards the establishment of a new paradigm, I posit a “value-driven” theory based on recent developments in researches on the global economy to distinguish between canonical and professional translations. Influenced by theories of the knowledge-driven economy, I further propose to establish a force of translators as knowledge workers to better serve the demand of the global economy and the global community. To follow the principle of empiricism, I use several case studies from the real world of commercial translation to support my “value-driven” theory for Translation Studies. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

Master of Science / Psychological Sciences / Richard J. Harris / Figurative language use is not limited to poetry or literature but is a ubiquitous part of speech. Studies that looked at figurative language comprehension have shown that some cognitive mechanisms, such as working memory, may be involved in figurative language comprehension. For example, individuals with high working memory span tend to produce deeper metaphor interpretations. The current work was interested in how working memory is involved in a particular figure of speech comprehension: idioms. An idiom is a phrase whose meaning cannot be simply deduced from the literal meanings of the words that comprise that idiom. Idioms can vary according to their compositionality, which refers to the extent with which meanings of the idiom constituents provide cues for the idiom's idiomatic meaning. A number of researchers agreed upon certain idioms being decomposable and other idioms being fixed. The two different types were used in the Main Study. Models of idiom comprehension also vary from traditional "lexical look-up" models that consider idioms as multi-word lexical units stored as such in speakers' mental lexicons to "nonlexical" models, such as the Configuration Hypothesis, that states that an idiom as a whole does not have a separate lexical representation in the mental lexicon. Both models are considered in this work. Finally, understanding idiomatic expressions may require inhibiting irrelevant literal information. For example, literal meanings of the words dogs and cats in an idiom it is raining cats and dogs have to be inhibited in order to gather the figurative meaning of the expression. Thus, the main objective of the current work was to assess the role of working memory in idiom comprehension, as well as to explore whether idiom compositionality had an effect on how fast idioms were interpreted, while also considering implications for the two main models of idiom comprehension. A Preliminary Study narrowed down the list of idioms to the 26 that were used in the Main study, ensuring that both types of idioms did not differ in familiarity or length. The Main Study consisted of four tasks: working memory (Operation span task), inhibition (reading with distractions), idiom comprehension, and familiarity. Seventy-three general psychology students participated in the Main Study. The data were analyzed by several regression analyses and t-tests. The main finding was that there seems to be a difference in a way the two accepted types of idioms are interpreted: fixed idioms were interpreted faster than decomposable idioms. This is consistent with the lexical lookup hypothesis but only for fixed idioms and suggests that readers may not have to analyze the literal word meanings of fixed idioms when interpreting them, thus making their interpretation faster, since retrieving is faster than computing. Neither familiarity nor idiom length could account for this difference. On the other hand, neither operation span nor the number of critical errors committed by participants on the inhibition task predicted how long it took participants to interpret either type of idioms. Several possible explanations for such results are discussed, as well as the limitations and future directions.