This thesis is a comparative study of Ewe and English based on the Grammatical categories of Determiners and Aspects. First, it deals with determiners with reference to sub-categories such as articles, demonstratives, pronouns and quantifiers. Second, it explores. the domain of aspects with particular attention to the differences between tense and aspect. The thesis also studies the grammatical categories of present, past and future with emphasis. on perfective and imperfective meanings. In this work, there is a general attempt to see how related the two languages are on structural and semantic levels.At the end of each part, the thesis specifies the contrasts between the two languages, makes an account of possible interfering areas, and analyses how they can help the instructor in teaching English to native Ewe students.

This creative project is composed of a series of ten lessons that should be suitable for use in English-Bible classes and/or seminary classes for non-native speakers of English. The main emphasis is on learning English for communication, but the lessons are also structured to utilize learning English as a tool to stimulate spiritual growth. The material is sequenced according to grammatical structures and Biblical chronology. The major grammatical patterns include present tense, continuous present tense, imperative, past tense, future tense, present perfect tense, continuous present perfect, past perfect, and continuous past perfect tense verb forms. The Biblical material has been selected to give a chronological view of the Old Testament period and to trace the plan of salvation from Adam and Eve's fateful choice in the Garden of Eden through the Old Testament.

This thesis analyses article errors made in written English by Japanese students of English as a foreign language. The study attempts to determine whether the use of articles is a fossilizable item for the Japanese learner of English, and, if so, what types of article errors trouble the learner most. The hypotheses set up are: 1) there is no significant correlation between frequency of article errors in a student's writing and the student's level of English proficiency; 2) of the types of errors under study, the omission error is prevalent; and 3) the first language interference is the main cause of the omission error.By means of careful error analysis, the investigator substantiates the hypotheses showing that the group which was in the higher grade in school was not always the one which made fewer errors, that in all the groups but one, the percentage of omission errors was conspicuously high, and that the subjects made fewer errors when the specific use in English had a lexical counterpart in Japanese.

This paper attempts to provide a description of the LP process for the English language in Kuwait as it is related to planning activities in education and other areas. It will outline some of the policies for English language instruction and the development of curricula in several areas. The English language needs as they pertain to both educational and broader societal goals are discussed. A description of the language planning bodies, their interactions, and their priorities with regard to the development of policies for English is presented in order to gain insight into the LP process for the English language i_n Kuwait and to contribute to the growing body of international research in LP. It is hoped that the information in this study will be the foundation for further significant research in LP for English in Kuwait and elsewhere.

The English language has acquired such great importance in the world that we cannot go on teaching it to our students at the Ecole Secondaire des Techniques Administratives in Burundi on the basis of the actual and inadequate English program. This project examines how inadequate the actual English course is, and makes proposals for an adapted curriculum using most recent methods of teaching and of curriculum development. The proposed change puts a special accent on the language and on the technical vocabulary as a means of communication on the job.

Using a combination of Error Gravity and Composition Evaluation research methods, the author examined unguided responses to three non-native speaker compositions by 16 college composition and 10 TEFL teachers. A total of 13 to 15 content or form items per paper were rated, but for each paper, no more than five were selected by 50% or more of the teachers. The lack of agreement among the respondents concerning the items rated for seriousness throws doubt on the feasibility of producing meaningful rank orders of weaknesses using authentic written discourse as the sample. The findings show that the respondents rated content weaknesses as more serious than form weaknesses, but there was evidence that attention to form can obscure content problems for some teachers.

The purpose of this study was to make an original contribution to the literature concerning the question: How can the study of the English language best be taught to secondary school students in the United States? It is the result of an intensive six-year study of position papers on the definition, role and function of English in the high school, of curriculum theories and theoretical curricula, of teacher preparation studies and current trends in the teaching of English in the secondary schools, and, most of all, of the development of the English language and culture, particularly in America. It is also an attempt at an integrated answer to the often diverse problems of the teacher of secondary school English, and of his students, in approaching the study of the English language. The answer proposed is a comprehensive year's study of American English at the senior high level, perhaps on the order of an American Studies course, with emphasis placed on the historical development of American English as the foundation and generative force for the study.Chapter one examines some important preliminary considerations toward constructing new curricula based on American English, and includes a definition of the subject itself, the so-called "New English", the components of language study, the preparation of teachers in this subarea, the range of the student population, some broad objectives of the new curriculum, and the need for such an approach; in short, a brief history of recent trends in the field of historical English language study in the secondary schools.Although there exist no near-comparable formats for the study of American English, chapter two treats related proposals, most of them growing out of the Project English Curriculum Development Centers. The thrust of the great majority of sample curricula is toward the study of generative-transformational grammar, with only superficial treatment given to language history.Chapter three provides further justification, conceptually and pedagogically, for a curriculum in the history and development of American English. More importantly, this section offers specific suggestions on the construction of such a curriculum. Attention is given to the four major aspects of curriculum development: objectives, conceptual content, activities and materials. The four are integrated through an approach using special behavioral objectives.A brief resource history in the development of American English from its earliest beginnings is presented in chapter four as an important adjunct to the construction of a workable curriculum. The history is not meant to be comprehensive; rather, it is an attempt to give the teacher who proposes to construct or fulfill a curriculum an overview of the trends, processes and changes in the development of English in America. The relatively heavy documentation and the lengthy bibliography are meant to serve as a list of resources for information in depth or for specialized knowledge.Taken together, the four chapters represent the first serious attempt to integrate the many facets of language history and behavior within a comprehensive study of American English at the secondary school level.

This study examined the effectiveness of the context and the direct vocabulary strategies in the acquisition of vocabulary by secondary students. Forty-eight low-ability tenth grade and eleventh grade students were divided into either the direct or context treatment group. One hundred sixty words were presented over a period of sixteen weeks using either the direct or the context vocabulary strategy. A pretest and a post test of fifty randomly selected words from the one hundred sixty words taught were administered to determine any gains in vocabulary acquisition by the students in the two treatment groups. A multivariate analysis of covariance indicated that there was no significant difference in the two different vocabulary strategies of context and direct in the acquisition of vocabulary by low-ability secondary students. / Department of Elementary Education

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a task-oriented learning group approach to writing or a traditional, one-teacher, whole-class approach would be more effective in (1) teaching basic descriptive-narrative-expository writing skills to eleventh grade English students, and (2) producing a positive attitude change toward writing in these students.The experimental study was conducted from January to May, 1972, at Southside High School, Muncie, Indiana. Two existing classes of junior academic English students, 29 in the experimental group and 21 in the control group, were statistically equated by analysis of covariance because randomization was not possible.As preinstruction baselines of writing skills, the following measures were administered during the first week of the term: the better of two writing samples; the STEP Writing Test, Form 2A; and the Cooperative English Test, English Expression, Form 2A. The Lorge-Thorndike I. Q. scores were readily available as concomitant variables. Preinstruction attitudes were measured by the Tovatt-Miller "Composition and Literature Inventory."From January to May, 1972, both experimental and control groups were instructed in the English VI course designated by the Muncie Community Schools, the major emphases for which included American literature, and composition including description, narration, and exposition. Only the experimental group was instructed by means of the task-oriented learning group designs structured by the writer at the prewriting, writing, and evaluation stages of composition. These required students to interact with one another in the completion of tasks structured to pool information, divide responsibilities, and observe the responses of others. They included such techniques as brainstorming, role playing, generating original materials, and consensus seeking in the completion of writing tasks. The control group, meanwhile, wrote the same assignments and studied the same literature in traditional fashion.At the close of the instruction phase, alternate forms the the STEP Writing Test and Cooperative English Test, English Expression, were administered, two samples of essays were collected, and the same form of the Tovatt-Miller "Composition and Literature Inventory" was given. Efforts were made to control the writer, rater, and assignment variables; themes were judged by two qualified and trained raters.Conclusions of the analysis of covariance for theme of the obtained F ratios was statistically significant. Chi square analysis of the attitude measure revealed that only one variable, Meaningful-Meaningless, approached significance in registering a primarily negative shift in the control group. It was impossible on the basis of these analyses to conclude and test criterion measures at the .05 level were that none that either the task-oriented learning group approach or the traditional approach was better or poorer than the other in increasing writing ability or improving attitudes toward writing.Scores for both groups were also compared to norm tables for both the STEP Writing Test and the Cooperative English Test, English Expression section. In both of these comparisons, the experimental group showed larger mean gains in achievement than those recorded in baseline normative tables in the technical manuals for the standardized tests. The experimental group was also higher than the control group.Observed mean gains for theme ratings also favored the experimental group over the control group.The chi square analysis data also indicated that a larger proportion of the experimental group changed to favorable attitudes than did the control group, though both groups became more positive in attitude toward writing during instruction.While the task-oriented learning group approach to teaching narrative-descriptive-expository writing cannot be interpreted as having a differential effect on writing skills or change to more favorable attitudes, these findings recommend it as an effective alternative to the traditional classroom approach.

The case studies offered in this ethnography describe the learning experiences of 13 second and third grade students, six girls and seven boys, living in a medium-sizemidwestern town in the United States, who are taught Spanish as a foreign language once a week in 30 minute sessions during the 1995-6 school year. None of the children had any prior exposure to Spanish nor any additional exposure to Spanish outside the class I taught.The research investigates several areas of individual variety, including motivation, learning style, approach to vocabulary learning, classroom behavior, expectations, and listening and pronunciation skills.The study also investigates the impact of age and gender, as well as associations between the individuals' basic skills and L2 learning success.In addition, the study documents the teacher's experiences, observations, and insights during these classroom sessions. The researcher functioned as a participant-observer by teaching, recording, transcribing, and analyzing.The material for this study comes from hours of classroom teaching which were video- and audio-taped and from careful notes. The tapes and notes were transcribed and analyzed for patterns of learning behavior.A large number of observations resulted from this indepth study. One of the main findings of the study was that classroom management, emotional climate, and peer group influence are very closely interconnected. Learning was strongly related to cooperativeness and supportiveness in the two groups of girls but not seem to be so with the boys. There was no conclusive evidence that any one personality trait was more important than another in the long run. Overall scores on the CTBS were positively related to success in second language learning and were not negatively affected from one year to the next from the time taken out to study Spanish. There was no one area in the CTBS battery that could successfully predict foreign language aptitude; the best predictor seemed to be overall classroom success. Learning a foreign language was not particularly easy or automatic with this group; however, they did seem to have an aptitude and a willingness for repeating unfamiliar sounds. / Department of English