Second language (L2) decoding – the sub-lexical process of mapping the graphemes of an alphabetic writing system onto the phonemes they represent – is argued to underpin various aspects of L2 learning, particularly vocabulary acquisition. Recently, second language acquisition research has shown increased interest in decoding, consistently finding evidence for L1-to-L2 transfer effects on learners’ processing mechanisms and outcomes. Correspondingly, studies conducted in Modern Foreign Language (MFL) classrooms in English secondary schools – an under-researched context – have found that beginner learners of French tend to (a) pronounce L2 words according to English decoding conventions and (b) make poor progress in this aspect of L2 learning. Recent official guidance for MFL teachers has addressed this problem by advocating an explicit focus on decoding, but there is a lack of convincing evidence (both in the MFL context and more widely) that explicit L2 decoding instruction can be effective. The current study therefore trialled two programmes of French decoding instruction for beginner MFL learners, delivered in ten- to fifteen-minute segments over around thirty lessons. Three intact secondary school classes followed a phonics-based approach; three classes from another school followed a programme in which learners were encouraged to derive the pronunciations of French graphemes from ‘source words’ in a memorized poem; and six classes in two other schools received no explicit decoding instruction. Participants (N=186) completed pre- and post-tests of French decoding; a sub-sample (N=15) also completed task-based self-report interviews. The two intervention groups made significantly more progress than the comparison group in terms of the number of graphemes pronounced ‘acceptably’, although the magnitude of the difference between the groups was small. Compared to the comparison group, the two intervention groups also appeared to show different and more extensive patterns of change in their realizations of individual graphemes, even where their pronunciations were still not ‘acceptable’. Finally, self-report data generally revealed little change in participants’ strategic reasoning, either in the intervention or comparison group. Together, these findings suggest that explicit instruction can improve beginner learners’ proficiency in decoding L2 French, but that their progress may follow a longer and more complex trajectory than simply moving directly from ‘incorrect’ to ‘correct’ forms. Further research is required to assess the effects (if any) of a given improvement in decoding proficiency on other language-learning outcomes; and to design and evaluate alternative programmes of instruction.

The major purpose of this study was to determine the possible correlation between reading and writing abilities of college students who are identified as second language learners. It was also aimed at determining the relationships between variables pertaining to the ESL college students, namely, their self-selected reading materials, their reading interests, the amount of time spent studying English, how they studied English, how they were taught English, and the length of residence in the United States.

A thesis submitted to the Wits School of Education Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2017. / This thesis investigates the potential of an externally initiated and facilitated professional learning community (PLC) to influence and possibly change teachers’ beliefs and practices with regard to the teaching of writing in South African senior phase English home language classrooms. The main research question is: What factors enable and / or constrain the development of a PLC which has as its focus the teaching of writing. Questions related to the main question are (1) What is enabling or constraining about the contexts in which teachers work in public schools? (2) What, if any, impact do teachers’ life histories and current identities have on their take up of professional development opportunities in a PLC which focused on the teaching of writing? (3) In the context of South African public education, to what extent is a PLC a suitable vehicle for developing teachers’ understanding of and enactment of writing pedagogies? I chose to undertake an action research project and participated in the process of establishing PLCs as both a researcher and a facilitator. The main sources of the data analysed are transcribed audio-recordings of meetings with teachers, transcribed interviews with each teacher participant, lesson observations (for only some of the teachers) and journal notes. The unexpected challenges encountered in finding teachers willing to participate in a sustained professional development initiative are described and critically reflected on and findings in relation to each of the research questions are presented and discussed. A key finding is that societal culture and context fundamentally shaped the inception, development and sustainability of PLCs (Hairon and Dimmock, 2012) at the center of the study. It is argued that many South African teachers’ participation in a PLC is likely to be constrained by their personal and professional life histories and by the passive and compliant identity created for teachers by the lasting effects of the apartheid educational philosophy of fundamental pedagogics and by the currently increasingly prescriptive approach to teaching and assessment adopted by the provincial and national departments of education. Such an identity is likely to impact on teachers’ confidence and sense of agency to devise and drive their own professional growth agenda. The study found that the ethos of the schools in which teachers teach is also likely to be influential in enabling or constraining whether, and if so, how, teachers choose to participate in a PLC. An implication of this finding is that there is a need to acknowledge the impact of contexts on teachers’ attitudes and values, and to structure PLC activities to challenge existing assumptions and create a dissonance that will enable current knowledge to be reconstructed (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). The teachers who participated in the study used similar, traditional approaches to the teaching of writing which involved the presentation of ‘set prescriptions’, with an emphasis on grammatical correctness and the final product rather than on writing as a process of thinking, drafting, reflecting and redrafting. In instances where teachers adopted strongly deficit discourses about learners, they tended to resort to low level drill and skill instruction (Ball and Ellis, 2008). I argue that providing opportunities for teachers to engage thoughtfully and critically on their understanding and enactment of writing pedagogy in their contexts and classrooms over an extended period of time in a PLC could contribute to the disruption of deficit discourses and to the reconstruction of writing pedagogies. Key words: professional learning communities; societal culture; context; teacher life histories; teacher identities; dissonance; deficit discourse; teacher agency; writing pedagogies / LG2018

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:56:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcella Meirelles Ardito.pdf: 2700101 bytes, checksum: b7ccd8bf069ed603c6d06966eab541d9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-11-30 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Literacy is a subject very much studied and discussed, once reading and writing are essential factors of living in today`s society. Studies of written language based on meta-language are still very recent in Brazil - Cognitive Psychology shows that reading comprehension is made possible through the means of decoding, although other factors such as syntactic, semantic and phonological awareness are also needed. The decoding together with the identification of words help reading comprehension, but when reading is not yet automated, the use of context clues will be necessary to understand what is read. However, this survey asked: How is the reading comprehension of words, phrases and text in a group of children in the 4th grade of elementary school? Also, what observed differences in the skills of word, phrases and text comprehension are related to the type of school attended? With this in mind, this study took place in two public schools in the eastern region of the city of São Paulo, totaling 150 students from the former 4th grade of elementary school, with an average age between 10 and 13 years. To this end, three tasks were given, being the tasks of word recognition, sentence and text comprehension. Then the tasks were corrected, scored and subjected to statistical tests. The findings show significant differences between the two schools examined, Mary and Francisca - the school Francisca achieved the best results in all tasks in relation to the school Mary , in which students from the former 4th grade of elementary school show lag in relation to the reading comprehension of words, phrases and text / A alfabetização é um tema muito estudado e discutido, uma vez que ler e escrever são fatores primordiais para se viver em uma sociedade letrada. Estudos da linguagem escrita com base na metalinguagem ainda são muito recentes no Brasil. A Psicologia Cognitiva entende que a compreensão da leitura é possível por meio da decodificação, embora sejam necessários também outros fatores como a consciência fonológica, sintática e semântica. A decodificação juntamente com a identificação de palavras auxilia a compreensão da leitura, porem enquanto a leitura não estiver automatizada será necessário ainda um tratamento leitor para que aconteça a compreensão do que foi lido. Contudo, esta pesquisa perguntou-se: como se apresenta a compreensão da leitura de palavras, frases e texto em um grupo de crianças da 4ª série do ensino fundamental? E também, que diferenças observadas nas habilidades de compreensão de leitura de palavras, frases e texto estão relacionadas ao tipo de escola frequentada? Sendo assim, este estudo realizou-se em duas escolas públicas municipais da região leste da cidade de São Paulo, totalizando 150 alunos da antiga 4ª série do ensino fundamental, com idade média entre 10 e 13 anos. Para tanto, aplicou-se três tarefas, sendo tarefa de reconhecimento de palavras, tarefa de compreensão de frases e tarefa de compreensão de texto. Em seguida as tarefas foram corrigidas, pontuadas e submetidas a testes estatísticos. Os achados mostram diferenças significativas entre as duas escolas analisadas Maria e Francisca, demonstrando que em ambas as escolas os alunos da antiga 4ª série do ensino fundamental apresentam defasagem em relação à compreensão da leitura de palavras, frases e texto, porém a escola Francisca conseguiu atingir melhores resultados em todas as tarefas em relação à escola Maria

Advancements in technology have greatly influenced how students write, the ways they interact with readers, and the genres they create. In order to reflect real-world writing behaviors in the assessment setting and to be able to generalize test-takers’ performance from the assessment to their true writing ability, the current study investigated test-takers’ use of linguistic tools in second language academic writing assessment. The linguistic tools of interest involved three frequently used tool types: spelling, grammar, and reference tools (i.e., dictionary and thesaurus). Three highly contextualized tasks which reflect the tasks second language learners may encounter in the academic domain of language use (i.e., writing an apologetic email, a negative online review, and an opinion on a discussion board) were used as a way to elicit test-takers’ writing ability. Additionally, as a means of measuring writing performance, writing ability was defined in terms of the accuracy and/or variety of grammatical forms, semantic meanings, and pragmatic meanings produced in the written responses (Purpura, 2004, 2014, 2017). Using a mixed methods design, the current study first analyzed the quantitative data, which included 120 test-takers’ scores on the writing test, based on an analytic rubric through classical test theory, many-facet Rasch measurement, and multivariate generalizability theory. Test-takers’ scores across assessment conditions (i.e., access to no linguistic tools, spelling, grammar, or reference tool), proficiency levels (i.e., intermediate, advanced, and proficient) and three tasks (i.e., email, online review, and discussion board post) were compared. In order to explain the reasons behind the similarities and difference across the assessment conditions, proficiency levels, and tasks found in the quantitative analyses, the qualitative data, which included screen recordings of test-takers’ process of producing text, were analyzed. The results of the study were discussed to provide empirical evidence in supporting the domain description, evaluation, generalizability, explanation, extrapolation, and utilization claims (Kane, 2006, 2013) in regard to providing support in discussing the possibilities of allowing test-takers’ use of linguistic tools in second language writing assessment. Based on Kane’s framework for validation, the findings revealed that allowing linguistic tools—especially spelling and reference tools—in writing assessment contexts could be a possibility.

This study looked at the effect of written and oral comments on students' writing. The research hypotheses were that the use of oral comments would improve the overall quality of the students papers, increase the length more, and cause more changes in content than the use of written comments. On the other hand, the use of written comments would cause a greater decrease in grammatical errors in the students' papers than oral comments. The tests used to evaluate these hypotheses were the holistic writing scale used by the Test of Written English (TWE), a word count, a content percentage scale developed by the researcher, and an adaptation of Brodkey and Young's Composition Correctness Score (1981). The procedures used in the study were as follows: Three different classes were used. Each class was randomly divided in half. After the students had written the first draft of an essay assignment given by their teacher, they were assigned to either the written or the oral group. Students in the written comments group received written comments only on their papers. Students in the oral conference group had conferences with their teachers about their papers. Then the students wrote a second draft of their papers. At this point, the process was repeated; students wrote a second paper. After this first draft, those students who had received written comments on the first paper had oral conferences, and those who had had oral conferences received written comments were revised based on these comments.

Collaborative work in pairs or groups is a common practice in the workplace, in content courses, and in classrooms across languages, settings, and geopolitical boundaries. However, research on collaborative writing—working with a partner to jointly produce a text, including both planning and writing phases—is limited. In addition, it has resulted in contradictory findings, especially in terms of whether learners deliberate about language and how the composition process affects the written texts produced learners produce. The present study, carried out in a fifth-semester university Spanish Writing course, examines the process (i.e., interaction) and product (i.e., written document) of a collaborative writing module that focused on the creation of narratives. The analysis of learners’ collaborative dialogue produced during the planning and writing phases of the interaction focuses on: (1) at a macro level, how learners apportion their time while collaboratively planning and producing a written narrative (e.g., planning, formulating, revising); and (2) at a micro level, the types (e.g., discourse, grammatical, lexical, mechanical), frequency, and resolution (e.g., resolved, unresolved, resolved incorrectly) of their language-related episodes (i.e., the instances where they talk about the language they are producing and question their language use). Learners’ jointly produced texts were examined analytically in terms of complexity, fluency, and accuracy measures, as well as holistically using a rubric. Additionally, a microdiscourse analytic approach was used to examine the means by which members of a collaborative pair position themselves as partners in a collaborative writing activity. Results indicate that a fully collaborative writing event is a productive site for co- constructed learning as students pool their knowledge to solve language-use problems, particularly those related to word choice and grammatical structures. Additionally, the texts composed collaboratively are of higher quality, based on several of the measures utilized, than texts composed individually by members of the collaborative pair. Finally, implications for implementing collaborative writing tasks in L2 classrooms are discussed.

published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Education

Despite claims that the use of corpus tools can have a major impact in language classrooms (e.g., Conrad, 2000, 2004; Davies, 2004; O'Keefe, McCarthy, & Carter, 2007; Sinclair, 2004b; Tsui, 2004), many language teachers express apparent apathy or even resistance towards adding corpus tools to their repertoire (Cortes, 2013b). This study examines from a teacher cognition perspective (Borg, 2006) how three EAP (English for Academic Purposes) writing teachers identified their most pressing needs and considered possible ways that corpus tools might address those needs. After having an individualized corpus working session, each teacher put into practice one or more corpus tools to address self-identified needs in their writing classes. The teachers reflected on the process across a series of interviews and in a stimulated recall session, which were analyzed using qualitative research methods. Each teacher discussed the degree to which the lesson met her objectives, and considered how she might use such corpus tools in the future, as one component in the development of her teaching beliefs, knowledge base, and practices. Through thematic analysis of the interviews and the individualized corpus working sessions, themes emerged that tell the story of these three teachers as they moved through this process, relating to the issues of time, student engagement, material analysis, selection and design, issues related to corpus tools, language, institutional factors, and collaboration. A new area of specialization on the pedagogical uses of corpus tools is discussed, based on the results of the three cases. Implications for researchers, material designers, corpus tools specialists, teacher educators, administrators and teachers are considered.