This three-article dissertation addresses three different yet interrelated topics: language testing, assessment, and evaluation. The first article (Saudi Student Placement into ESL Program Levels: Issues beyond Test Criteria) addresses a crucial yet understudied issue concerning why lower-level ESL classes typically contain a disproportionate number of Saudi students. Based on data obtained from different stakeholders, the findings revealed that one-third of the study students intentionally underperformed on ESL placement tests. However, ESL administrators participating in this study provided contradicting findings. The second article explores the efficacy of (Integrating Self-assessment Techniques into L2 Classroom Assessment Procedures) by examining the accuracy of CEFR self-assessment rubric compared to students' TOEFL scores, and the extent to which gender and levels of language proficiency cause any potential score underestimation. By obtaining data from 21 ESL students attending the Center for English as a Second Language at University of Arizona, the findings revealed no statistically significant correlations between participants' self-assessed scores and their TOEFL scores. However, the participants reported that the CEFR self-assessment rubric is accurate in measuring their levels of language proficiency. On the other hand, the third article (Quality Assurance and Accreditation as Forms for Language Program Evaluation: A Case Study of Two EFL Departments in A Saudi University) provides a simulated program evaluation based on an integrated set of standards of the NCAAA (the National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment) and CEA (the Commission on English Language Program Accreditation). The findings indicated that the standards of the mission, curriculum, student learning outcomes, and program development, planning, and review, were partially met, whereas the standards of teaching strategies, assessment methods, and student achievement were not.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to apply contemporary theories about language and language learning in a South African and Western Cape context in order to address the specific needs of isiXhosa second language learners in local government. This study explores the use of communication tasks for vocational language teaching. It aims at providing a sound theoretical foundation of second language learning principles that support a task-based approach to language teaching for specific purposes. The perspectives of a broad range of theories that view the learner as autonomous and a social individual are regarded. Second language learning is assumed to rely on some degree of access to Universal Grammar and an innate ability to acquire language. It is argued that controlled and purposeful learner-learner interaction provides the learner with the most opportunities to negotiate meaning and to develop effective communication. The role of instruction in second language acquisition is explored. A greater interface between second language acquisition theory and pedagogy is motivated and classroom research is regarded to form a platform for more open dialogue between the two fields. The study addresses practical issues regarding learner participation, error treatment, learning strategies and culture studies. A discussion of task types, examples of tasks and criteria for task development has the potential to inform and guide second language teachers and programme developers. In order to motivate the use of tasks in second language teaching for specific purposes, theoretical perspectives of the instructional task are reviewed and the properties of communication tasks and referential communication tasks are described. Learning tasks which focus on form and provide learning strategies and cross-cultural awareness are assumed to playa supportive role in the taskbased syllabus. Finally, a task-design that addresses the needs of the municipal worker is presented and provides a framework for developing task-based second language teaching programmes for local government workers. A range of target tasks are described and analyzed according to the principles and properties of communication tasks and possible move-structures and language structures are listed for consideration for learning tasks. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie studie is om huidige teorieë omtrent taal en taalleer in "n Suid-Afrikaanse en Wes-Kaapse konteks toe te pas ten einde die spesifieke behoeftes van leerders van isiXhosa tweede taal in plaaslike regeringsinstansies aan te spreek. Die studie ondersoek die gebruik van kommunikasie-take in beroepsgerigte taalonderrig. Dit stel ten doel die daarstelling van "n deeglike fondasie van beginsels van tweedetaalverwerwing wat "n taakgebasseerde benadering tot taalonderrig vir spesifieke doelstellings steun. Die perspektiewe van "n wye verskeidenheid van teorieë wat die leerder as outonoom en as "n sosiale individu beskou word in ag geneem. Tweedetaalverwerwing word beskou as afhanklik van "n mate van toegang tot Universele Grammatika en "n aangebore vermoeë om taal aan te leer. Daar word geredeneer dat beheerde en doelgerigte leerderleerder interaksie die meeste geleenthede bied vir onderhandeling van betekenis en die ontwikkeling van effektiewe kommunikasie-vaardighede. Die rol van onderrig in tweedetaalverwerwing word ondersoek. "n Hegter interaksie tussen tweedetaalverwerwingsteorie en onderrig word gemotiveer en klaskamer-navorsing word beskou as "n platform vir meer vrye-dialoog tussen die twee velde. Die studie spreek praktiese kwessies aan, soos leerder-deelname, hantering van foute, leerstrategieë en kultuurstudies. "n Bespreking van taaktipes, voorbeelde van take en kriteria vir taakontwikkeling kan moontlik van praktiese waarde wees vir tweedetaalonderwysers en programontwikkelaars. Ten einde die gebruik van take in tweedetaalonderrig vir spesifieke doeleindes te motiveer, word die teoretiese perspektiewe ten opsigte van die instruksionele taak hersien en die eienskappe van kommunikasie-take en verwysingskommunikasie-take beskryf. Leertake wat op vorm fokus en wat leerstrategieë en kruiskulturele bewustheid voorsien, word beskou as ondersteunend in 'n taakgebaseerde sillabus. Ten laaste word 'n taakontwerp voorgestel wat die behoeftes van die munisipale werker aanspreek en wat 'n raamwerk voorsien vir die ontwikkeling van taakgebaseerde onderrigprogramme vir plaaslike regeringswerkers. 'n Reeks teikentake word beskryf en geanaliseer volgens die beginsels en eienskappe van kommunikasie-take en moontlike struktuur-skuiwe en taalstrukture word gelys om vir leertake oorweeg te word.

published_or_final_version / Curriculum Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Japanese Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Over the past decade, there have been diverse theoretical perspectives and increasing empirical literature on bilingualism and specific language impairment (SLI), some of which highlighted the complex nature of accurately diagnosing SLI in bilingual populations. The goal of the current study is to enhance our understanding of morphosyntax development in an understudied bilingual population - Mandarin-English children who are growing up in an L2-dominant environment (English) in the United States. The study included a total of 55 bilingual Mandarin-English children between the ages of four and seven years, including 53 typically developing (TD) children and 2 children diagnosed with SLI. Using a newly developed screening test - the Bilingual English-Mandarin Oral Screener (BEMOS), we compared Mandarin performance in both TD and SLI children on 7 morphosyntax tasks which respectively measure passive -bei, possessive -de, prepositional phrases, noun classifiers, quantifier and scope, aspects (imperfective “-zai” and perfective “-le”), and sentence repetition. Our analysis of TD bilingual children revealed a trend towards a significant age effect in the total score and a near-significant effect in the preposition and the aspect sub-sections of the screener. When age was considered, perceived Mandarin proficiency by parents was associated with TD bilingual children’s performance. All students performed poorly on the classifier section, but our error analysis showed a predominant response pattern of imitation, suggesting bilingual children have growing sensitivity and are attentive to semantic similarity of nouns. Overgeneralized use of the general classifier “ge” was also observed in the errors. Both children with SLI scored lower overall compared to their age- and gender-matched TD peers, especially in the classifier and quantifier & scope sections. Reliable clinical markers were not identified due to the two SLI children’s distinct performance. Clinical implications and future research needs were also discussed. / text

This paper utilizes prior studies attempting to explain different possible phonological production errors among adults who learn American Sign Language (ASL) as a second language (L2). These studies have offered theoretical grounding to such production errors. One area of study in particular is further explored in this paper and that is how specific joints of the arm and hand are used in the production of signs (Mirus, et al., 2001, Meier, et al 2008). L2 learners of ASL are essentially learning a new language using a different modality and this new modality requires that they relearn how to use specific motor skills needed in order to produce sign vocabulary. To address this, an exploratory teaching module is proposed with the need for further action research to discuss its effectiveness. / text

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an instructional programme designed to improve the regulatory fit of, and lessen the working memory demand upon, students in the process of second language (L2) writing. Drawing on the theoretical understanding of regulatory focus theory (RFT) and cognitive process of writing, a quasi-experiment with control group was designed and testified on 138 secondary school students in Hong Kong over a period of 16 weeks. The findings suggest that the aforementioned instructional design is effective in promoting students’ writing performance in terms of quality, creativity and accuracy. The pretest-posttest gains exhibited in the experimental group suggest that the students were able to internalize the writing instruction, self-regulate their writing processes, and benefit from it. In hierarchical regression, working memory explained unique variances in the control group but not in the experimental group, perhaps because the writing instruction rendered working memory constraint unimportant. The results not only offer empirical support for the application of RFT in education settings, but also inspire teachers with ways to improve students’ writing performance by fine adjustment in writing activities and grading system. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Studies on implicit learning have provided evidence for L2 acquisition of syntactic features, yet limited effort has been made to gauge the applicability of the implicit learning paradigm on syntactic structures that are posited by nativists as innate and need not to be learned. This thesis investigates the implicit learning of the Overt Pronoun Constraint(OPC), a claimed UG-derived constraint (White, 2003a,b; Hawkins, 2008)that prevents overt pronouns from taking quantified NPs as antecedents in null-argument languages(Montalbetti, 1983), and seeks alternative explanations to such knowledge from the usage-based perspective in SLA. In Experiment 1, participants’L1 prior knowledge of the binding constraint of the overt pronoun he in Mandarin Chinese and English was investigated respectively. Results show that Chinese participants accepted the bound variable interpretation of the pronoun他 (he) when the matrix subject (the subject of the main clause) was 有人someone, suggesting that the OPC may not be fully applicable in Chinese, and that the OPC may not be a universal phenomenon in all null-argument languages as claimed by nativists (e.g. Kanno, 1997). In terms of English participants, they rejected bound variable interpretations more often when the matrix subject of the sentence was a quantified NP than when it was a referring NP, indicating some biases of the interpretation towards the reference of the overt pronoun. Potential explanations for these cross-linguistic differences include the popularized use of singular they in English (Bhat, 2004) to refer to gender-ambiguous antecedents, and the degree of consistency in definiteness between the matrix subject and the pronoun as the sub-clause subject. In Experiment 2, Chinese L1 speakers were exposed to a semi-artificial language system that combined the binding constraint of the Japanese pronoun “kare” with Chinese to see whether they could acquire the OPC implicitly. The learning was measured by a timed Grammatical Judgment Test (GJT), and awareness was assessed by confidence ratings, source attributions and verbal reports. Results show that learning effect (both implicit and explicit) was observed in the Chinese group. In Experiment 3, Chinese participants were exposed to a semi-artificial language system that combined the overt pronoun binding constraint with their L2 English, and no learning effect was observed in this group, indicating that implicit learning could be affected by participants’L2 proficiency. In Experiment 4, the implicit learning of the pronoun constraint by English native speakers was investigated and L1 transfer effect was found in this experiment. To sum up, results show that the interpretation bias of the overt pronoun might be learned implicitly, although the learning process could be affected by participants’ prior linguistic knowledge. It also suggests that this bias might be learned without the assumption of UG existence, which show support for the usage-based approach in SLA. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

<p>Abstract</p><p>It is unclear how L2 students acquire vocabulary – how is it taught – or wheather it can even be taught. In an SSL (Swedish as second language) program for young adults the ambition has been to integrate the L2 students’ into the national high school (gymnasium) courses as quickly as possible, in order to meet the students’ demands for subject education and to challenge them on an appropriate knowledge level. Teachers noticed quite early that the course – integrated L2 students seemed to have a deeper understanding of words and an easier flow in their speech. The study was conducted to map and learn more about the differences in vocabulary with L2 students who were integrated in the national L1 programs in several subjects and L2 students who have chosen to focus, in an isolated group, on SSL only. How does the students’ vocabulary evolve in relation to time? The study is based on the vocabulary knowledge scale as the methodological tool and Stephen Krashen’s monitor model as the theoretical practice, and in particular the input hypothesis and the hypothesis of acquisition and learning in combination with Pauline Gibbons’s methodologies in scaffolding. In the study the test results of eight SSL students are compared; four of the students have chosen to integrate with the L1 classes and four of them have chosen not to integrate with the L1 students. We will show that students that participate in national “high school” courses on the same premises as the L1 students will, through exposure to vocabulary in text books, lectures and post scaffolding, learn their vocabulary at a faster and higher rate than students who focus on the structural functions and, often non-contextual, vocabulary training alone.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>