Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Also available in print.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Marcella D. Genz, Florida State University, School of Information Studies. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 7, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Dept. of Psychology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Orlando Kelm. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

This study addresses the question of the necessity of propositional content in children's comprehension of speech acts. In investigating this aspect of communicative competence in children the study considered the relative importance of age (3, 4), context (Requests, Questions, and Offers), and quantity of propositional content. Two factorial experiments were conducted in which 54 three and four-year-old children were administered a discrimination task, where, through puppet play, contexts were constructed for utterances in order to simulate particular speech acts. Judgments of the illocutionary force of such contexts were elicited by having children decide which one of two paraphrased utterances matched the stimulus utterance. Quantity of linguistic information in the stimulus presentations was progressively reduced. While younger children's performance was relatively unaffected by the reduction of linguistic information, the older children's discrimination of speech acts was relatively adversely affected. These findings were supported by additional data from an elicited imitation task and spontaneous responses. A developmental shift is proposed, from more direct context-dependent strategies of speech act processing to a later more linear or text-dependent approach linked to developing linguistic awareness. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

by Suen Lai Kuen, Denise. / Publication date from spine. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-114). / Abstract --- p.i / Chapter Chapter 1 --- The issue and its background --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Languages in Hong Kong society --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- The validation of the HKCE Eng. (B) Examination Paper III --- p.3 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Review of relevant literature / Chapter 2.1 --- Reliability and validity --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Reliability --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Validity --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.2.1 --- Test validation --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.2.2 --- Construct validity --- p.10 / Chapter 2.1.2.3 --- Content validity . --- p.11 / Chapter 2.1.2.3.1 --- Qualitative and quantitative approaches to content validation --- p.12 / Chapter 2.1.2.3.2 --- Item difficulty and item discriminability --- p.13 / Chapter 2.1.2.3 --- Criterion-related validity --- p.14 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Validity and reliability --- p.16 / Chapter 2.1.4 --- Summary --- p.16 / Chapter 2.2 --- Communicative paradigm and the study of language --- p.18 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Communicative competence --- p.20 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Framework of communicative competence --- p.21 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Problems in communicative language testing --- p.23 / Chapter 2.2.4 --- Characteristics of communicative language tests --- p.24 / Chapter 2.2.5 --- HKCE Eng. (B) Examination Paper III in the communicative paradigm --- p.25 / Chapter 2.2.6 --- Features of spoken language --- p.26 / Chapter 2.2.6.1 --- Speaking against time --- p.26 / Chapter 2.2.6.2 --- Spoken against written language --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2.6.3 --- Variety of vocabulary --- p.28 / Chapter 2.2.6.4 --- Level of vocabulary --- p.29 / Chapter 2.2.6.5 --- Intonation unit --- p.30 / Chapter 2.2.6.6 --- Clausal construction --- p.32 / Chapter 2.2.6.7 --- Sentence construction --- p.33 / Chapter 2.2.6.8 --- "Involvement with audience, with self, and with concrete reality" --- p.33 / Chapter 2.2.6.9 --- Features of conversations and lectures --- p.34 / Chapter 2.2.7 --- Summary --- p.35 / Chapter 2.3 --- Second language listening comprehension --- p.37 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Factors in L2 listening comprehension --- p.37 / Chapter 2.3.1.1 --- Speech rate and syntactic structure --- p.37 / Chapter 2.3.1.2 --- Sandhi and proficiency level --- p.38 / Chapter 2.3.1.3 --- "Syntactic simplication, repetition, and proficiency level" --- p.39 / Chapter 2.3.1.4 --- Discourse markers and proficiency level --- p.40 / Chapter 2.3.1.5 --- Background knowledge --- p.41 / Chapter 2.3.1.6 --- Text type and question type --- p.42 / Chapter 2.3.1.7 --- "Note taking, memory, and proficiency level" --- p.43 / Chapter 2.3.1.8 --- Syntactic simplicity and redundancy --- p.44 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Different types of listening skills --- p.46 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Summary --- p.49 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Content validation of the HKCE Eng. (B) Examination Paper III / Chapter 3 1 --- Test objectives and test specifications --- p.51 / Chapter 3.2 --- Question types in the HKCE Eng. (B) Examination Paper III --- p.53 / Chapter 3.3 --- Validity of test specifications --- p.58 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Domains of use --- p.58 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Listening comprehension component skills as test specifcations --- p.59 / Chapter 3.4 --- Validity of test content --- p.61 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Domains of use in test content --- p.62 / Chapter 3.4.1.1 --- Domains of use in section A items --- p.62 / Chapter 3.4.1.2 --- Domains of use in section B items --- p.66 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Content validity in terms of skills --- p.66 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- Content validity in terms of text authenticity --- p.68 / Chapter 3.5 --- Quantitative approach to content validation --- p.71 / Chapter 3.6 --- Summary --- p.77 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Criterion-related (concurrent) validation of the HKCE Eng. (B) Examination Paper III / Chapter 4.1 --- The choice of the criterion --- p.78 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Test of English as a Foreign Language --- p.78 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Section 1 (Listening comprehension) of the TOEFL --- p.79 / Chapter 4.1.3 --- The TOEFL program under the policy council --- p.80 / Chapter 4 1.4 --- Development of TOEFL questions --- p.80 / Chapter 4.1.5 --- Reliability and validity of the TOEFL --- p.81 / Chapter 4.1.6 --- TOEFL as the criterion --- p.86 / Chapter 4.2 --- The subjects and the procedure --- p.89 / Chapter 4.3 --- Basic assumptions of correlation analysis --- p.90 / Chapter 4.4 --- Statistical procedure and findings --- p.94 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Discussion and conclusion / Chapter 5.1 --- Content validity of the HKCE Eng. (B) Examination Paper III --- p.98 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Validity of test objectives and test specificiations --- p.99 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Validity of test content in terms of testing specifications --- p.99 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Content validity in terms of skills --- p.99 / Chapter 5.1.4 --- Content validity in terms of text authenticity --- p.100 / Chapter 5.1.5 --- Content validity based on internal analysis --- p.100 / Chapter 5.2 --- Criterion-related validity of the HKCE Eng. (B) Examination Paper III --- p.102 / Chapter 5.3 --- Further research as corroboration --- p.103 / Bibliography --- p.103 / Appendix Materials of the 1991 (session 2) HKCE Eng. (B) Examination Paper III --- p.115 / Appendix 2 Teacher A's evaluation form --- p.136 / Appendix 3 Teacher B's evaluation form --- p.142 / Appendix 4 Materials of the TOEFL Secion 1 (Listening Comprehension) used as the criterion --- p.147 / Appendix 5 HKCE scores and TOEFL scores in the criterion-related validation study --- p.158

Thesis (Ph. D)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-194).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-93).