Framed within a Sociocultural Theory of Mind (SCT) in the field of Second Language Acquisition (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), this dissertation explores the role of verbalizing in the internalization of grammatical categories through the use of Concept-based Instruction (henceforth CBI) in the second language (L2) classroom. Using Vygotsky's (1986) distinction between scientific and spontaneous or everyday concepts applied to L2 development (Negueruela, 2008), this study focuses on the teaching and potential development of the grammatical concept of aspect in the Spanish L2 classroom, and the role of verbalizing in its internalization. It is proposed that verbalizing mediates between the learners' initial understandings of the grammatical concept of aspect, the development of conscious conceptualizations, and students' written and oral production of preterite and imperfect grammatical forms. This study presents and analyzes data from one of the thirty-two adult college students enrolled in an advanced Spanish conversation course. Data is analyzed through a clinical analytic approach, which has its roots in Vygotsky's (1978) genetic method of analysis. The study was carried out over a 12-week period and collected multiple sets of developmental data, including learners' definition of the grammatical concept of aspect, written performance protocols, and verbalization data recorded during two oral interviews. The study interprets learner performance in these three complementary, and dialectically connected types of L2 conceptual data. A close analysis of this participant's data provides critical insights to understand the role of verbalizing in L2 conceptual development. Findings confirm that learners' verbalizations are key factors to ascertain L2 conceptual development, as well as a mediational tool that fosters learners' internalization of the grammatical concept of aspect. It is proposed that verbalizing notably contributes to research on L2 development. Not only does it allow the researcher to have a more comprehensive picture of L2 development, but it also helps learners develop a more sophisticated semantic understanding of the grammatical concept of aspect and fosters their ability to understand and control relevant grammatical features in L2 communication.

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Spanish mood selection has long been of interest to grammarians. Much work has been done in a traditional semantic approach to mood use and, more recently, an attempt has been made to find a syntactic solution to the problem, using among others Transformational Grammar and X-bar Theory as models. This dissertation analyzes the problem from the viewpoint of acquisition. In chapter 1, I review the basic syntactic models of mood selection in embedded noun clauses and conclude that the structure of embedded noun clauses is better predicted by semantic type than by mood. The second chapter discusses possible models of first and second language acquisition and hypothesizes that the two may be similar in the acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive.

This dissertation describes in-depth, using participant's words, experiences of undergraduate college writers. The study was undertaken in an attempt to understand from a student perspective what it is like to write in one's major course of study and throughout the university curriculum. There were seven students, representing different academic majors at a large university. Each were interviewed in a series of three open-ended interviews totaling four and one-half hours. Key questions followed Seidman's (1987) protocol for phenomenological in-depth interviewing: What was writing like for you before college? What is writing like for you now? And, What does your writing mean to you? Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, Three participant's transcripts were edited into profiles of the individual writers while other interviews were used to illumine themes common to all the participants. Insights from this study suggest students are "practitioners" and possess a certain "practitioner-expertise" in being student writers. This practitioner knowledge reveals student experiences are more complex than indicated by previous research. Among these complexities are students' interactions with their instructors, and their own procrastination, which produce tension about writing. Forms of this tension are explored in the histories and current experiences of different students. These experiences indicated that when student writing is perceived as a "task" which must be completed simply to comply with a course requirement, there is a tendency to approach writing in a formulaic way, with little attention paid to the writing processes. On the other hand, the participants expressed that writing is a positive experience at times when they are consciously aware it has contributed to their learning in a subject-area or when it has aided them in their personal growth. The study indicates writing in college is often shaped by the bureaucratic enterprise of grading and sorting students. Recommendations include making teacher-student interactions consultative and personable, teachers and administrators stronger advocates for smaller class size, and giving students choices of instructional approaches to writing so individual needs as writers are being met in composition courses and across the curriculum.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2002. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Oct. 2, 2002). Thesis advisor: Patricia Davis-Wiley. Document formatted into pages (xi, 147 p. : ill.). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-135).

During 24 silent and oral readings of Guy de Maupassant and Arthur C. Clarke short stories (1294 and 1516 words) by proficient multilinguals, movement of the left eye was tracked and utterances were recorded. Three hypotheses investigate universality in the reading process: reading in English is similar in reading speed, miscues, and eye movements to reading in French (chapter 4); reading in a first, or native language (L1), is similar in reading speed, miscues, and eye movements to reading in a second, or later acquired, language (L2) (chapter 5); silent reading is similar to oral reading in reading speed and eye movements (chapter 6). Hypothesis are partially confirmed; implications are drawn for teaching and research.Silent reading is consistently faster than oral reading, with a mean difference of 28.7%. Reading speed is similar in English and French, but interacts differently with language experience: L2 readers of English read 50% slower than L1 readers, while in French, L2 readers read 13% faster.Retelling scores demonstrate a slight comprehension advantage for oral reading over silent, a wider range after oral than after silent, L1 readers having a slight advantage over L2 readers, and improved scores after second readings. Proscribing rereading to increase oral accuracy may disadvantage some readers: Second oral readings in English (but not in French) produced more miscues than first oral readings. This requires further study with tightly controlled groups. Overall, English readings produced 36% more miscues than French readings.Mean fixation durations are slightly longer during silent than oral reading, and show little variation between English and French reading. Wide variation in reading speed (L1/L2, silent/oral) is not reflected in mean eye fixation durations, although language dominance show an effect in French, where fixations during L1 readings are 18.6% shorter than during L2 readings.Individual variation is a factor. Emotional affect, poetic style, construction of syntax, and attention to metaphor are all observed in this EMMA data. Future analysis of this database may look at anaphoric relations, metaphor, how texts teach; and how readers develop narrative, verb phases, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations in complete textual discourse.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-11, Section: A, page: 4690. Adviser: Diane Musumeci. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-233) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Review of Deborah Uman. Women as Translators in Early Modern England. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2012. 166 pages. $65.00.

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