Research on morphological variability in second language (L2) acquisition has focused on the syntactic consequences of variability: that is, whether or not morphological variability entails underlying syntactic deficits. The interrelationship between morphological features in their own right has been largely ignored. This thesis addresses the representation of L2 features by investigating the use of default morphology---the outcome of systematic substitution errors employed by speakers of L2 Spanish. It is hypothesized that underspecified features act as defaults; by assumption, those features that are unmarked are underspecified. / Evidence to support this hypothesis comes from two sets of experiments conducted on intermediate- and advanced-proficiency L2 Spanish subjects (L1 English). The first set of experiments addresses verbal morphology, and consists of a spontaneous production experiment on person, number, tense, and finiteness, and a comprehension task on person and number. The second set of experiments addresses gender and number in nominal morphology, and consists of a spontaneous production experiment on determiners, an elicited production experiment on clitics and adjectives, and a picture-selection task on the comprehension of clitics. Across tasks and across verbal and nominal domains, errors involve the systematic substitution of underspecified morphology. The observation that morphological variability extends to comprehension, and is qualitatively similar to the variability found in production, counters the suggestion that variability is strictly a product of mere performance limitations on production. Finally, the systematicity of substitution errors suggests that the natural classes of features such as gender, number, tense, and person are acquirable in an L2, regardless of whether or not these features have been instantiated in the native language.

This thesis examined the effects of audio-taped feedback on ESL graduate student writing. Thirty-two students participated in the study over one semester. A triangulated approach to data collection was used by gathering and analyzing information from three principal sources: (a) students' written texts, (b) audio-taped feedback from the instructor, and (c) interviews with the participants. The research revealed that single and multiple feedback moves, in the form of models and prompts, were used by the instructor with similar frequency. Results also indicated that students benefited in all cases from audio-taped feedback. Overall, findings suggest that audio-taped feedback is very effective at helping students to produce an improved draft. The study includes discussion of the pedagogical implications of audio-taped feedback. Limitations to the study are discussed and conclusions are drawn based on the findings.

In this classroom-based study, the effects of input enhancement on the acquisition of a linguistic feature known to be problematic to francophone children learning English. were investigated. The research questions were: (1) Can L2 learners benefit from typographically enhanced input in their acquisition of third person singular possessive determiners? (2) Is typographically enhanced input more effective than unenhanced input? (3) Is typographically enhanced input more effective when combined with a book flood? / To investigate these questions, three treatment conditions were implemented with Grade 6 ESL learners. Groups E and E+ received a typographically enhanced input flood. This did not include explicit reference to the learners' L1 nor was a pedagogical rule presented at any time. In addition to the typographically enhanced input, Group E+ was exposed to extensive reading and listening activities. To ensure that all groups in the study were exposed to written input containing the target features, Group U read unenhanced versions of the texts read by the other two groups. A pretest, immediate and delayed posttest design was used in this quasi-experimental study. / Results indicated that all three instructional treatments improved the learners' acquisition of the target forms and that those in Group E+ received the greatest apparent benefits. At the immediate posttest, learners in Group E+ outperformed those in the other two groups on written tasks designed to measure their ability to recognize correct instances of the target forms. Learners in Group E+ also outperformed the others on an oral production task. On the delayed posttest five weeks later, however, Groups E and U had caught up with Group E+, and most of the between-group differences had disappeared. / The finding that all learners had significantly increased in their accuracy and development of possessive determiners immediately following instruction suggests that the target forms were equally salient to the learners in the three groups. That all learners continued to improve but did not reach advanced developmental stages, however, suggests that the salience of these features in the input may not have been sufficiently explicit. The results are discussed in terms of the potential need for more explicit instruction in the acquisition of third person singular possessive determiners. This may be particularly important because of substantial differences in the way in which gender is marked in English and French.

Pinker and Prince (1988, 1994) propose that there are two separate systems involved in linguistic representation and processing; one system is rule-governed, and incorporates symbolic hierarchical linguistic representations, the other is associative with linguistic information represented in a more distributed fashion. One particular linguistic feature of English said to exemplify the principles of this dual-mechanism model is inflectional morphology. Pinker and Prince (1988; 1994) present a range of evidence showing that native speakers of English process regular inflectional items in ways that are both quantitatively and qualitatively different from irregular inflectional items. This dual-mechanism model has been largely investigated within the context of first language (L1) learning, and has received considerable support from investigations using a number of different research paradigms. Nonetheless, there have been a number of serious criticisms in that the apparent behavioural distinctions between regular and irregular inflectional items can be supported by an alternative associative system (Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi & Plunkett, 1996). The research presented in this dissertation investigates how knowledge of second language (L2) inflectional morphology might be processed and represented. The research is grounded within the theoretical framework provided by the dual-mechanism model and evaluates whether the claims and assumptions of this model are relevant to how L2 learners process, represent and learn about inflectional morphology. Three experiments are presented which address the issues of: compounding with regular and irregular noun plurals (Experiment 1); past tense generalization with regular and irregular verbs (Experiment 2); and finally, the development of knowledge of a new inflectional paradigm (Old English noun plurals, Experiment 3). Each of these experiments provides findings which are difficult for the dual-mechanism model

Typescript. / Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1988. / Bibliography: leaves 167-173. / Photocopy. / Microfilm. / xiii, 173 leaves, bound ill

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 88-93. / Microfiche. / xii, 159 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

In Australian schools in the late nineties approximately one quarter of all students are from a language background other than English. Although many of these students are fluent in English in informal conversational contexts, there is evidence that such students are not always able to control the more academic registers of English associated with school learning and literacy. A major challenge for teachers is therefore to integrate subject learning with English language learning, and to find ways to support the language development of students concurrent with the construction of curriculum knowledge. This study addresses that challenge. Drawing on data from two classrooms of nine and ten year olds in the curriculum area of science, the study explores how the discourse of the classroom can be enabling of language development. It does not attempt to make claims about what might be common to all classrooms, but rather points to those practices which are shown to be supportive of second language learning. The aim therefore is not to suggest what is common to all classroom discourse but what its potential can be for second language development. The study takes as a basic principle the notion that language development interacts dynamically with the socio-cultural context in which it occurs, and cannot be fully understood without taking account of this context. Although the analysis draws on systemic functional linguistics it does not purport to be a study 'in' linguistics, but rather, through a theorisation of practice, seeks to contribute to a theorisation of second language pedagogy in the mainstream classroom. To this end, the analysis is also informed by a neo-Vygotskian approach to learning and teaching, by second language acquisition (SLA) research, and by critically conceived notions of minority education. A number of conclusions are drawn from the study. First, it shows how, through a process of recontextualisation of student talk, the teachers jointly construct with the students aspects of the science register. It concludes that when teachers encourage the dialogic function of discourse to develop, (that is, when knowledge is seen as co-constructed between teacher and learners, rather than transmitted from teacher to learners), this also leads to the kind of teacher-student talk which is most enabling of second language development. The study demonstrates that even apparently minor changes in interactional patterns can have quite major effects on the progress of the discourse as a whole, and can make the difference between discourse which is likely to constrain or facilitate language development and learning. The thesis also shows how the discourse incorporates a range of interactional patterns, each of which tend to be used for distinct pedagogical purposes, and thus how the role of the teachers correspondingly changes at different phases of the teaching and learning cycle. The study concludes that a reconceptualisation of pedagogy is required which foregrounds the relationship between teaching and learning and the nature of teacher mediation in the teaching and learning process. The study identifies other significant factors for language development in the classrooms examined: the language knowledge of the teachers, the explicitness of the discourse, (including explicitness about language and about the social aspects of participating in the class), the sequence of teaching and learning activities, and the importance of the intertextual links, the 'dynamic' context, which were the result of this sequence. Finally, the study points to the value of approaching SLA research and pedagogy with a model of language which goes beyond a description of its phonology, morphology and syntax, one which allows for the study of discourse and for the study of language development in terms of socio-linguistic competence, and for the value of a socio-cultural and classroom-based approach to research into second language learning and pedagogy.

The problematic areas of the teaching of Korean as a foreign language have been largely neglected in the past. Few studies combine the following three aspects: 1) an examination of learner Korean; 2) the provision of substantial linguistic and pedagogical explanations; and 3) the devising of teaching or learning strategies based on empirical evidence. By studying KFL learners and their language production, insights can be gained relating to the learning of KFL and instructors will be able to provide appropriate corrective measures. This study investigated errors produced by KFL learners, focusing primarily on high frequency orthographic, lexical and grammatical errors in written language production. The study attempts to identify key areas of difficulty in learning Korean, to investigate the possible cause of difficulties and to provide more adequate information for the teaching and learning of KFL. To this end the study uses two classes of textual data and employs both statistical and descriptive analyses. At an orthographic level the study has identified four main error categories: 1) mismatch in three series consonants, 2) mismatch in vowel sounds, 3) misuse of nasals and laterals, and 4) omission and addition of ???h???. Overall the cause of key error types correlates strongly with the differences in sound quality and sound patterns between Korean and English, with some intralingual features. At a lexical level, the study found nine types of errors including 1) semantic similarity, 2) lexical misselection and 3) overgeneralization. The findings suggest that learners have a great deal of difficulty in differentiating lexical items with similar meaning and in selecting words appropriate to particular contexts or situations. As for grammatical errors, the study identified the five most active error categories, which made up more than 80% of the total grammatical errors. An overwhelming majority of grammatical errors and case particle errors in particular were errors of substitution. Many high frequency grammatical errors had distinctive triggering factors such as particular types of verb and sentence construction. The findings of the study have several pedagogical implications. First, there are key common errors for English L1-KFL learners and these common errors need increased linguistic and pedagogical attention. Secondly, the results reinforce the need to pay more active attention to the usage of the main case particles, along with the triggering constructions causing substitutions. Thirdly, the findings suggest that different types of analysis should be done in order to facilitate a plausible description of the problematic KFL items. The study argues that despite being problematic, the items discussed in this thesis are learnable and worthy of being taught with explicit or intentional strategies and that there is a need for pedagogically effective and adequate instructional input to maximize the potential of the learner???s language development in Korean.

The study revolves around the delivery of an ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) program on conflict management in the workplace to a small group of adult learners studying in a private educational institution in Sydney, Australia. The program was of four days???? duration, and was delivered over a four-week period. It involved both in-class and out-of-class tasks, and required learners to analyse their own discourse practices, those of other learners, and those of the speech community in which they were living. The program had two principle objectives. Firstly, it asked whether learners are able to modify their discourse practices at will in order to achieve successful negotiation outcomes. Secondly, it explored the effect of deliberately altered discourse styles on perceptions of learners held by speech community members. The methodology employed to achieve these objectives was ethnographic in nature and involved the following processes: 1. Learners were video-taped negotiating with other learners before and after the program. 2. Learners undertook the program aimed at increasing their ability to negotiate in business environments using culturally appropriate spoken language in conjunction with compatible prosodic and paralinguistic features as well as conversation management strategies. Learners kept diaries of their experiences and self-evaluation, and were interviewed following the course. 3. A group of nine native speakers of English viewed the 'before' and 'after' video-tapes and completed a survey aimed at collecting and quantitatively measuring (change in) their perceptions of the learners. This change was statistically analysed using a repeated-measures t test. The effect proved statistically significant overall; t(80) = 1.990, p&gt.01, two-tailed. 4. The 'before' and 'after' negotiations were then analysed by the researcher using ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis, modified to include some aspects of facial expression. The implications of the findings for teaching 'Business English', 'Global English' and 'Speaking' more generally are then discussed.

This thesis is a case study of dialogic learning in a university context as demonstrated in tutorial talk. The aim of the study is to examine the effectiveness or otherwise of dialogic learning as applied in an economics curriculum. More specifically, the thesis examines the learning experiences of a second language international student cohort as they attempted to understand the role of prediction and causality in economic principles and theories through spoken dialogue. This approach means interpreting the students’ learning as a semiotic process and the students’ cognitive development as shaped by their language in use. The theoretical framework for this examination is offered by the analytical resources of systemic functional linguistics, as developed by M.A.K. Halliday (from 1975 to 2004) combined with frameworks for mediated learning offered by Vygotsky (1986, 1987); Bakhtin (1986); Hasan (from 1985a to 2001); Bernstein (from 1971 to 2001) and Cloran (from 1994 to 2006 draft); and more recent research in ‘scaffolded learning’. The study applies these resources to analyse significant rhetorical functions of economic discourse, such as predictive reasoning and argumentation, and to examine how these were negotiated and mediated by the students and their lecturer. The method for analysing negotiation and mediation in these students’ learning draws on Rhetorical Unit (RU) analysis as devised by Cloran. Linguistically, the analysis takes account of categories and relations between the Rhetorical Units on the basis that these are able to provide theoretical explanations for the predictive reasoning construed in the interactions. The analysis of Rhetorical Units primarily involved the identification of relations between the basic constituent of the text, ie, the message, and how these relations constructed the units of rhetorical meaning in the discussion. The advantage of adopting this approach is the possibility of realising rhetorical activities as an abstraction at the semantic stratum, and, as such, how they were realised by lexicogrammatical phenomena. The analysis examined: first, the use of Rhetorical Units by the lecturer and students in their construal of the critical pedagogic discourses identified by Bernstein, being the regulative and the instructional; and second, the adjustments and shifts to more congruent explanations as a result of contingency strategies taken by both the lecturer and students in response to the students’ difficulties. The findings throw a different light onto dialogic learning in a new social constructivist pedagogical approach in a university context. The study reveals that while the students’ learning was a highly collaborative dialectical process, any transformations in understanding were not at all neatly incremental as described in the literature. Indeed, the negotiations were highly ‘peripatetic’; any increments in understanding were overall devolutionary. While the lecturer’s initial guidance reflected the monologic discourse of written economics, her responses became more congruent and reactive. It was shown that a key predictor of these contingency strategies was the kinds of meanings sought by the students’ extensive questioning. Hence, in this case study, the contingency strategies undertaken within the interactional dynamic reveal a different view of semiotic mediation, necessarily a process of semiotic remediation. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1283936 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Mechanical Engineering, 2006