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.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Robert L. Clark / Medieval French literature provides the modern researcher with references to the healing arts in many passages that are incorporated into prose or poetic works. Because there was no clear separation of the genres into modern classifications, references to treatment of sicknesses of body, mind or spirit are woven into many literary works, providing us with a kind of snapshot of the state of the art healing practices of the day. Texts make reference to herbs and plants used to cure the ailments of the body, gardens and flowers that refresh the spirit, miraculous unguents, cures through the intercession of the saints and the Virgin Mary and surgical procedures. Texts examined here include Le Roman de la Rose, Erec et Enide, Aucassin et Nicolette, Les Lais of Marie de France, Le conte du Graal, Le chevalier de la charrette, La Condamnation de Banquet, Yvain, Cligès, La Chanson de Roland and Treize Miracles de Notre-Dame. The picture they provide of the medicine of the time has a certain charm and quaintness that many moderns seek in holistic treatments of today which hearken back to this more rustic medicine.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Amy L. Hubbell / This portfolio presents demonstrably proven effective guidelines for classroom activities in accordance with the widely accepted, communicative approach to teaching foreign languages. Stemming from the author's own personal experience with eighth-grade French students, these examples are based on the standard principles of Communicative Language Teaching. As graphically and comprehensively illustrated in this portfolio with student-friendly, image- and table-enhanced templates, the author identifies and explains how structured input and output activities might be developed to encompass the four components of teaching a language: namely, listening; reading; writing; and speaking. Beyond the objective of showing the usefulness of this teaching/learning method through examples of structured activities, the author augments the portfolio with valuable associated teacher's materials including a current professional teaching CV, a philosophy of teaching statement, a working syllabus, a classroom management plan, and a rationale for the activities included -- all of which are applicable to typical classroom environment situations. These carefully constructed worksheets and visuals are amply and appropriately interspersed throughout the sectional contents of the portfolio, thereby adding to the understanding of the textual descriptions of recommended teacher and student activities. In this manner, the author has documented a tested and practical set of working materials designed to promote the facility, ease and enthusiasm of learning languages from both the teacher and student points-of-view and needs. The compartmentalized contents of this portfolio, organized into 13 sections as listed in the table of contents, comprise a wide range of actual classroom activities that evolved from the author's daily teaching experiences. The portfolio instructions and examples also incorporate the well-founded and well-known teaching techniques documented in the professional literature as cited throughout the narrative text. For this purpose then, this portfolio delivers a complete and thorough description of possible teacher and student activities in various foreign language classroom scenarios.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Douglas K. Benson / El siguiente trabajo tiene como objetivo investigar la influencia de la teoría de los esquemata durante el proceso de comprensión lectora en una clase de español como segunda lengua para principiantes. A la vez se investigan otras técnicas que facilitan la adquisición de una segunda lengua, entre ellas: el input comprensible, la circunlocución, el trabajo en grupo y la predicción. Para saber cómo son presentadas las lecturas a los estudiantes en las clases de español, fueron utilizados los libros Dos Mundos y Arriba. Cada texto fue analizado tomando en cuenta las actividades propuestas antes y después de leerlo. Como resultado del análisis se puede concluir que los libros no cuentan con las actividades necesarias para activar o crear los conocimientos previos en los estudiantes, provocando que el estudiante no logre el éxito esperado con respecto a la comprensión de lectura y que su nivel de ansiedad sea elevado. Por lo expuesto anteriormente, se propone un plan de clase que combina lecturas literarias y culturales de Costa Rica. Cada una de estas cuenta con actividades de pre-lectura, lectura y post-lectura, las cuales van a ayudar al estudiante durante el proceso de lectura.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Douglas K. Benson / La presencia africana en todos los países de América Latina es una realidad que pocas veces recibe el crédito por su aporte a la cultura del país del que forma parte. En este estudio nos enfocamos en la presencia africana de Chincha, departamento de Ica, Perú como base para una unidad de enseñanza de lengua. El presente trabajo tiene el propósito de integrar cultura al aprendizaje de un idioma. Su diseño lleva el objetivo que los estudiantes aprendan cultura al mismo tiempo que utilizan el idioma para conocer, comunicarse, y comparar lo que conocen con lo que están aprendiendo. Existen varios problemas con los estudiantes de idiomas y uno de ellos es que aprenden gramática (competence) y las reglas que la rigen y practican un poco de pronunciación, pero no saben qué hacer (performance) en situaciones prácticas con lo que aprendieron. Esto, además de los prejuicios que conlleva aventurarse a conocer una nueva cultura, bloquea el aprendizaje. La importancia de presentar información entendible con propósitos comunicativos (Comprensible Input) es vital ya que es el primer bloque de información que se adquiere en contexto o no se la adquiere, esta servirá de base para el procesamiento de la misma y finalmente se tendrá producción (comunicación) que es lo se busca en la enseñanza de idiomas. Por estas razones, se incluye una sólida base teórica de los métodos de enseñanza usados y con apoyo en los patrones nacionales de enseñanza vigentes por los organismos rectores de enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras. Se presentan secciones de lectura, que incluyen historia, comida, cantos y un poema; estas a su vez ayudadas con actividades auditivas. Se presentan en forma estructurada para que provean actividades comunicativas tanto escritas y auditivas como visuales y orales, que dan oportunidad a los estudiantes para procesar la información entendible antes de pedir producción de lenguaje. Se provee este trabajo para que el maestro que lo use, lo haga en forma guiada, usando diversas técnicas tales como circunlocución, trabajo en grupos, mapas cognoscitivos, y activación o formación de los esquemata. Al terminar de usar este trabajo los estudiantes tendrán la oportunidad de conocer una riqueza cultural que los haga sensibles a otras culturas y habrán aprendido una cantidad de lenguaje entrelazado al tema afroperuano.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Mary T. Copple / Adjective use and intensification by native speakers of English has been the subject of much study, yet intensification strategies used by non-native speakers have received relatively less attention. The present study compares adjective use by five native English speakers with that of five English L2 speakers at Kansas State University in order to describe in detail how learner patterns of use differ from those of native speakers living in the same community. From conversational data, adjectives were extracted and analyzed for linguistic features such as adjective class, and use of intensification. Results quantify how the non-native speakers have access to a smaller set of adjectives than native speakers, and how those sets differ. Interestingly, the L2 speakers intensify their adjectives at a higher rate than native speakers, again employing a smaller set. The types of adjectives used by the two groups differed in significant ways, with native speakers using more precise, contextually-specific evaluative adjectives such as crappy, elite, retarded, and obsessed, while non-native speakers used more generic adjectives such as happy, nice, long, and famous. The generalized nature of these adjectives, as well as the smaller number of lexemes at the non-native speakers’ disposal, may account for the increased rate of intensification shown by the non-native speakers. Specifically, the depth and complexity of meaning required for conversational interaction is more often handled by native speakers via a variety of specialized adjectives, while non-native speakers must rely more on adjective intensification in order to convey subtle differences in meaning. These results help us better understand how advanced learner language compares to native use. Implications for English language teaching include, but are not limited to, new insight into the types of adjectives taught for conversational English, explicit teaching of intensification strategies, and teaching learners how to construct compound adjectives.

Master of Arts / Modern Languages / Earl K. Brown / Considerable research exists on subjunctive versus indicative mood patterns of use by both native and L2 speakers of Spanish. Though intermediate level textbooks expose L2 learners to the various tenses of the subjunctive mood, literature has shown that students still struggle with its implementation in their discourse, and various reasons are offered. Little has been done to analyze the prescribed uses that textbooks offer to students regarding mood selection and how these prescribed uses may differ from what Spanish speakers do in real life. The paper first offers a brief explanation of L2 learners’ mood selection in Spanish, followed by a description of Spanish moods and the realis/irrealis dichotomy that is often placed at the center of Spanish mood selection in the literature. Following this, the study offers an analysis of six intermediate level Spanish textbooks’ prescribed uses of two past subjunctive tenses (present perfect and imperfect), as prior research has shown an overlap in the functions of their indicative counterparts. The textbook analysis is then compared to a corpus composed of messages sent on the social media platform Twitter, containing one of six emotive phrases as main clauses, with three in present, three in preterit. The results show that Spanish-speaking users of Twitter employ the prescribed subjunctive mood more often when the verb in the main clause is expressed in the preterit instead of the present, though no such tendency is discussed in the textbooks. The results also reveal an overlap in the functions of the past tense subjunctive moods. The present perfect subjunctive (i.e. haya trabajado ‘has worked’) is used in the subordinate clause nearly 40% of the time with emotive verbal main clauses expressed in the preterit, where the imperfect subjunctive would normally be expected according to prescriptive norms. This pattern of use is not discussed in any of the analyzed textbooks. A discussion of the limitations of the study, implications for textbook writers and further research then follow.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Mary T. Copple / Using the framework for politeness developed by Brown and Levinson (1987), this research evaluates the production of politeness strategies by sophomore and senior EFL learners in Afghanistan by focusing on the language used in letters of inquiry. Twenty eight letters emailed by Afghan students at Balkh University were surveyed by thirteen native American English speakers. Each letter was surveyed by six different American participants who gave their perspectives about the effectiveness and politeness of the language used in the letters by the students. The American participants’ evaluations of politeness were compared with actual linguistic features employed, including the word choice in the salutation and closing, the use of indirect language, and politeness markers (e.g. thank you or other expressions of appreciation). The results show that a relationship between proficiency and politeness exists, consistent with the findings of Tanaka and Kawade (1982) who found that second language learners acquire both linguistic and pragmatic knowledge as the learning of the target language progresses. In addition, this study describes the linguistic behavior perceived as most polite by the native speakers and reflects on possible instructional implications.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Douglas K. Benson / The primary aim of this thesis is to examine the appropriate procedures needed to implement a Two Way Bilingual Immersion (TWBI) Program designed for an elementary school from grades K-4 and to make recommendations related to that process. Section I begins with an introduction to bilingual education and the different types of BE programs in the United States. It also examines the growth of these programs throughout the United States in recent years. Section II presents a general introduction to the characteristics and advantages of a TWBI program over other types of BE. The advantages and strategies presented here are intended to help teachers better understand the importance of using daily repetition of routine phrases, songs, and poems in their instruction, and the benefits to students in their overall academic progress as well. It also discusses the importance of language variation. Section III explores the implementation of a TWBI program in public schools. It highlights the importance of the selection of students, parental and community involvement, staff development and curriculum development. All of these factors are essential to having an effective program. Section IV presents a description of a specific TWBI program implemented in an elementary school in southwest Kansas. This section highlights many of the same components mentioned in Sections I-III as they apply to those being implemented in this specific school. This process can serve as a model for other schools interested in the implementation of a TWBI Program. Section V presents an explanation of second language acquisition and some of the advantages of learning a second language in a communicative classroom. Section VI presents my evaluation of five math and five reading activities used in a kindergarten class based on second-language acquisition theory. I also make some recommendations for pre and post activities, which can be used to activate the students’ schemata and check for comprehension.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Douglas Benson / The principal objective of this paper is to provide a thematic teaching unit that explores the Aztec, Incan and Mayan cultures of Latin America, designed for a level II Spanish course. It contains theoretical underpinnings for teaching language, culture and literature while incorporating concepts related to the development of communicative competence; processing instruction; the use of scaffolding in the zone of proximal development; target language instruction; and the inclusion of authentic materials and language in the classroom. The classroom management strategies explained and used throughout the unit include pre, during and post-reading activities; small group activities that help to develop communicative competence through negotiation of meaning and interactional feedback; focused tasks and collaborative output tasks; the use of structured input, structured output and information exchange; the PACE approach to grammar teaching; and the incorporation of authentic aural and written texts. Lesson plans for an eighteen day unit consisting of 40 minute classes are outlined; the lesson objective, necessary materials, time needed for each activity, and expected results of each lesson are included. Each lesson activity is made clear through a description of the activity and instructions for the teacher. The daily lesson plans contain authentic and teacher-created materials that can be found in the appendices section. At the end of the thematic unit, students complete cumulative activities that relate indigenous cultures to present-day life in Latin America through investigating the influence of Aztec words on the Spanish and English languages, analyzing a poem about Peru, and reading an article about discrimination against Mayan descendants in Central America, Mexico and the U.S.