Thesis--Munich. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 270-276).

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Amy L. Hubbell / This report is a portfolio demonstrating my background and commitment to teaching. It contains a collection of activities that I have created that demonstrates that students learn better when they are exposed to authentic input, provided through interaction. These activities are based on the theories of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) as conceptualized by Lev SemyonovichVygotsky. ZPD is based on what a learner can or cannot do with the help of a more proficient speaker. This theory affirms that language acquisition is greatly facilitated by the use of the target language in interaction. The pedagogical unit contained in this report is designed to teach college-aged native English speakers (English L1) learning French as a Second Language. Thus, they are learning French while living in a Francophone country. The teacher should be fluent in both French and English. This unit is designed to be taught in the middle of a four-month semester of an elementary French class. It should be the fifth out of ten lessons that constitute a whole semester. It is designed to build upon the four previous lessons taught. The objectives of this unit are to familiarize students with food-related vocabulary and grammar. Comparisons and contrasts between their L1 and L2 cultures will be made whenever necessary. Students will be encouraged to raise critical questions about their culture and the new cultural elements that are being taught. I incorporated the four skills that are reading, writing, speaking, and listening in the lessons I designed. I have also taken into account the different types of learners, namely the visual, audio and hands-on learners, to give all students opportunities to learn. The grammar lessons have been contextualized following the Presentation, Attention, Co-construct and Extension (PACE) model, developed by Richard Donato and Bonnie Adair-Hauck. This teaching unit is engaging and diverse as it sees French language through different perspectives. The majority of activities are cooperative and they encourage all students to participate in class. An instructor could easily teach with it following the clearly labeled teaching guides. It can also be a good source for lesson plan design.

This paper examines the ideological diversity evidenced in discourse about AIDS in the popular American print media within a framework of Gramscian concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony. By identifying several "discourses" on AIDS, I explore how they are distinct, what they reveal of the underlying ideologies of their promulgators and to what extent they overlap. An extended discussion of specific metaphors and rhetorical strategies characteristic of a hegemonic discourse, propagated by certain governmental agencies and mainstream news magazines, is contrasted with alternative discursive strategies employed by the gay/lesbian press, the liberal press and the Catholic Church. Moreover, areas of ideological tension within the hegemonic discourse are revealed, as well as points of intersection between "separate" discourses. Finally, the ideological complexity manifest in this discursive field is brought to bear on Gramscian theory which is found to be somewhat limiting in its implication of a dualistic opposition between domination and resistance.

This work comprised linguistic research on two Spanish-language newspapers in the United States, La Opinion, published in Los Angeles, and El Miami Herald, published in Miami. This study was a computer-assisted, partial syntactical analysis of the Spanish language newspaper prose of editorials and local news articles found in the selected periodicals. It was computer-assisted in that a personal computer was used to expedite the analysis. / The research focused on the syntax of verb phrases and the complexity of sentence structure found in the two types of newspaper prose and the two newspapers. The syntax of verb phrases and sentence complexity was based on a transformational model of Spanish grammar. This study was a descriptive quantitative comparison of the syntactical structure between editorials and local news articles and between La Opinion, a Mexican-American daily, and El Miami Herald, a Cuban-American daily. The following syntactical variables were analyzed: verb tenses, modal, perfective, and progressive auxiliaries, various types of verb phrases, adverbials of time, place, and manner, one-string transformations involving negatives and interrogatives, and two-string transformations involving conjunction, and nominal, relative, and adverbial clauses. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-12, Section: A, page: 3935. / Major Professor: James L. Wyatt. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

The novel of Armando Ramirez (b. 1951), a young writer recognized as "cronista de Tepito," are richly rewarding in the lyricism of their street language and the vulnerability of their tough characters, but they are obscure to readers unacquainted with the social and linguistic flavor of Tepito, the notorious inner city neighborhood of Mexico City best known to outsiders as the locale of Oscar Lewis's Children of Sanchez. This study aims to make the language of Ramirez's narrative more accessible and to place his work in the context of his society and culture. / Of Ramirez's seven published works of fiction, the five set in Tepito are discussed here: Chin Chin el Teporocho (1972), Cronica de los chorrocientos mil dias del barrio de Tepito (1973), Regreso de Chin Chin el Teporocho en: La venganza de los jinetes justicieros (1978), Tepito (1983), and Quinceanera (1985). Included is a preview of the author's next novel. / The discussion of context includes Tepito's tradition of political and economic marginalization, its emergence as a symbol of "mexicanidad," and the role of Arte Aca, an internationally recognized Tepito popular art movement of the Seventies. Connections are drawn with other Mexican works, including those of Jose Ruben Romero, Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Monsivais, and Arles (Rafael Ramirez). Discussed also is the ambience of the "vecindad," the predominant residential architecture of Tepito. A glossary is included on non-standard Spanish terms used by Ramirez in his narrative. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-12, Section: A, page: 4139. / Major Professor: Ernest C. Rehder. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

Despite the extensive research conducted on second language (L2) learning over the years, there is no emerging distinct choice of L2 learning approach or strategy that single-handedly facilitates beginning second language learning. Research that seek to find out how beginning L2 learning is best facilitated could make language learning more effective and help retain students who drop-out. This investigation was undertaken as an action research study. It sought to investigate which L2 learning strategy, oral or writing, is a better introduction of French as a L2. Participants involved in the study were beginning students in an Oral class and in a Writing class. Language performance tests, attitude surveys, interview, and journals were used to collect data. The study involved qualitative, quantitative, and a case study. No significant difference was found between oral and writing strategy introduction of L2 French for beginners in reading, vocabulary, and composition. However, learners in the Oral class did slightly better than the Writing class in listening activities. Role-playing and interviewing were two distinct positive teaching approaches that emerged after the treatment.

Pos/modernidad y (multi)forma en la obra de dos poetas mexicanos contemporaneos: Alberto Blanco y Coral Bracho studies the effects of modernity in Contemporary Mexican poetry. According to literary critics such as Evodio Escalante and Christopher Dominguez, Blanco and Bracho in their radical experimentation of poetic language create a multiform that concedes diverse possibilities of expression. This dissertation is theoretically backed by the works of Nestor Garcia Canclini and Edward O. Wilson, which allow me to underscore the importance and influence of politics, economics, and culture in these Mexican poets. Chapter Two analyzes twenty-two poetic anthologies with the intention of demonstrating the effects of posmodernity in poetic production and diffusion as well as to create a historiographic approach to the generation of poets from the 50s. Chapters Three and Four observe the poetic multiform in the works of Blanco and Bracho respectively. This analysis in grounded in the theoretical insights of Edward O. Wilson that explain how Consilience is the unity of knowledge through science and humanities. Consequently, Blanco explores the various theories of Physics, specifically the fractals and the hologram, while Bracho follows the discourse of Deleuze and Guattari about Rhizomes.

The present work seeks to identity possible sources of the persistent link between the Spanish language and national identity in Puerto Rico. By examining mass media discourse in the 1940s as a turbulent period of language policy conflict between the Island and the U.S. federal government, I suggest that the federal imposition of language policy without the consent or approval of local politicians or educators was influential in the construction of national identity that included language as a major defining factor. Local elites reacted to the colonial hegemony by defining Puerto Rican identity in opposition to American identity. The construction of identity in 1940s is characterized by a cultural conception of nation that redefined national symbols (such as language) in social rather than political terms in order to avoid disturbing the existing colonial hegemony.

Junto con romperse el sistema realista de representacion (alrededor de 1930) tambien en la novela latinoamericana contemporanea se transforma el narrador omnisciente y aparecen otras perspectivas de las relaciones del narrador con su obra. En un acercamiento literatura-historia, esta tesis estudia la posibilidad de una relacion entre la figura del dictador y la del narrador. Este ultimo--al relacionarse con la figura de poder a traves de un discurso contemporaneo--incide sobre la representacion de este dictador 'historico'. Se sospecha que este se ve 'despojado' de su poder a traves del tratamiento narrativo que recibe en algunos textos latinoamericanos contemporaneos. Se cree que esto llevara a una representacion aun mas profunda de la realidad latinoamericana contemporanea.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Mass Communications, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4280. Adviser: Peter Bondanella. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 20, 2008).