This study aimed to investigate the role of time constraint on second language reading comprehension via the recruiting of 47 Saudi participants who were learning English as a second language. Subjects shared similar level of English proficiency; all participants were in their third semester of English at Aljouf University, Saudi Arabia, at the time of data collection. Participants were divided into three time groups; limited (20 minutes), extended (30 minutes), and unlimited (40 minutes). In terms of stimuli, a reading text was adapted from a standard English proficiency exam, TOEFL. The text consisted of 699 words and was of moderate level in difficulty, calculated as between 8th and 9th grade for native English speakers; passive structures comprised 6% of the text. Questions were also divided into three groups to elaborate the effect of time constraint on each type of questions. The particulars of the study were as follows. Firstly, this study analyzed effect of time constraint on the overall performance on the TOEFL reading passage. Then, effect of time on the three groups, including vocabulary-based questions, literal comprehension questions, and higher order inferential questions. Results revealed that time constraint tends to be an affective factor in reading. In the overall comparison among the 3 different time groups, the unlimited time group showed the highest performance on the reading comprehension task. ii In view of the categories of questions, no significant difference was found on the vocabulary-based questions between time condition groups. The overall low vocabulary scores across groups and the lack of significant effect for time constraint suggest that extended time does not compensate for poor vocabulary knowledge. On the other hand, the unlimited time group demonstrated the best performance relative to the other two groups on the literal comprehension and higher order questions. Of all three categories, the higher-order questions were the most difficult for all three time constraint groups. Overall, the results of this study show that time given to the reading task significantly affects overall reading comprehension scores, but they also suggest that this effect varies in relation to the types of questions.

This study aims to examine the developmental acquisition trends of English nasal /ŋ/ by Saudi learners of English. According to the previous literature, the velar nasal /ŋ/ presents significant difficulties for learners of English, especially for Arabic speakers. The literature indicates that their most serious problem lies in their tendency to insert a stop after the velar nasal, such as singing /sɪŋɪŋ/ pronounced as [sɪŋgɪŋg]. Accordingly, this study aims to examine this claim by studying Saudi learners of English as a second language to find the types of committed errors, and the effects of length of residence and language use in diminishing such tendencies. For this purpose, participants representing two ranges of length of residence in the US (LOR < 1 year and LOR >4 years) were recruited. The instruments included both a demographic questionnaire and a production task. A list of English words ending with the velar nasal preceded by different vowels was given. Data analysis made use of speech analyzer, descriptive statistics, frequency analyses, and an independent t-test to see if there are significant developmental trends in the acquisition of the target sound. The findings of this study provide empirical evidence in support of some of the most well-known theories in second language acquisition, namely, Contrastive Analysis hypothesis (Lado, 1957), Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Eckman, 1977), and Language Transfer Theory (Odlin, 1986; Gass & Selinker 1994). The absence of the marked velar nasal in coda position and the phonological rules of its use in the marked coda position caused many types of serious mispronunciations in Saudis' oral production of English words that end in such a segment. Resulting types of errors stem from the negative transfer of the allophonic environment of the velar nasal in Arabic language. Such transfer decreases as the length of residence and L2 use increase.

The current dissertation is a systematic study of variation in the English spoken in multilingual and multicultural India. Three experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of two native languages (Hindi and Telugu) on English, which is spoken by almost all Indians as a second language. The first experiment indicated that Indian English (IE) is accented by the first language of its speakers, but high English proficiency and the degree of divergence between the sound patterns of the speaker's native language and his or her IE suggested that other factors might influence the preservation of a native language accent in IE. The second experiment controlled for language investigated the effect of region on IE, finding that listeners were able to distinguish speakers based on region even when they spoke the same native language. The regional variation in IE was more noticeable for native Telugu speakers than for native Hindi speakers. This difference was attributed to differences in the social and political power associated with these native languages: Hindi being the national language and the language of the capital city of India; Telugu, a regional language of Andhra Pradesh and spoken by many fewer people than Hindi. The third experiment was motivated by the idea that persistent effects of the speaker's native language might also be used to reflect a speaker's personal identity. Accordingly, the experiment investigated the effect of speaking about personal versus neutral topics on IE pronunciation. The results were that speakers' IE pronunciation was more like their native language when speakers discussed personal topics then when they discussed neutral topics. Overall, the results suggest that the pronunciation of IE is conditioned by social factors, meaning that it has entered the differentiation phase of Schneider's dynamic model of English evolution. This dissertation includes previously published co-authored material.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Melinda Cro / Many recent video games feature complex narratives that contain increasing amounts of written and spoken language. There has thus been growing need for them to be localized into other languages; that is, translated and adapted for markets where languages other than the video game’s language of development are spoken. While the localization process shares many similarities with other projects of translation, because the primary goal of a video game is to be entertaining, video game localization teams are allowed certain creative liberties in translating video games in order to maximize entertainment for players in target markets. Non-literal translation techniques, including transposition, modulation, equivalence, and adaptation, are used to avoid mistranslating in-game language. However, Mangiron and O’Hagan identify in their 2006 analysis of the English localization of Final Fantasy X certain “transcreation” techniques that are used by localization teams in order to make video games more entertaining for players in other markets. These transcreation techniques include the addition of linguistic variation, the re-naming of in-game terminology, the re-creation of wordplay, “contextualization by addition”, and the deliberate use of regional expressions. These transcreation techniques not only serve to make the localized version of a video game more entertaining for a target market, but also make the gameplay experience more original for players in these markets. This study will analyze non-literal translation techniques and “transcreation” techniques in the French localization of BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 2 to determine how these translation techniques may be used to maximize entertainment and to create a more original gameplay experience for francophone players, followed by a discussion of how video game localizations may be implemented in second language acquisition contexts for the purposes of exploring certain L2 linguistic and cultural phenomena.

abstract: The present study investigates the role lexical access plays in the oral fluency of intermediate second language (L2) learners. In order to do this, I utilized a picture-naming task (PNT) in the target language to assess lexical access and generated spontaneous L2 speech through two narration tasks to assess oral fluency. The response times from the PNT were correlated with the two fluency measures analyzed from the narration tasks, the frequency of filled pauses and the overall rate of speech. The results revealed that intermediate learners with faster PNT response times used fewer filled pauses in spontaneous L2 speech but did not reveal a significant relationship between intermediate learners' PNT response times and their rate of speech. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Spanish 2017

Adaptation to Canadian graduate studies from a Chinese background is both culturally and linguistically challenging. This study reported how the traditional and contemporary methods of instruction used in teaching English as a second language in some Chinese universities prepared students adequately to study at a Canadian university in order to see what initial difficulties and coping strategies that students had. Twenty-four Chinese graduate students and six Canadian professors in the five engineering departments at the University of Calgary were randomly and proportionately selected for the study. In the first stage twenty students who had been in Canada for some time were interviewed using an interview guide about (1) their language preparation in China; (2) their initial language difficulties in their study; and (3) their compensatory strategies used to overcome the difficulties in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Six Canadian professors were then interviewed about Chinese students' actual English abilities in the four aspects of the language arts. Both sets of the interview data were subject to content analysis to perceive the emerging themes in the students' and professors' opinions. In the second stage, case studies of four newly-arrived Chinese students in engineering were done over a four month period to record monthly their adaptation process to academic language tasks in listening, speaking, reading, and writing through interviews and classroom observations. Meanwhile, students kept a weekly journal based on the findings of the first stage of the data analysis. The results indicated that prior preparation in reading skills was good, listening was mediocre, and speaking and writing were poor due to the massively used traditional methods of instruction which focused on grammar, exercises on sentence patterns, and reading in general English. Students had difficulty in understanding conversations among native speakers and professors with a strong accent, in making contribution to classroom discussion and in-depth conversations, and in expressing succinctly and linearly their research ideas and opinions in writing. They coped very well by excessive reading, strenuous preparation procedures, help from experts in English in their disciplines, and conscientious effort to improve their listening, speaking, and writing. The findings support the position that teaching English in the content area and study skills using simulations better prepare students for their communicative functional competency in their real educational life in Canada. / Graduate

The Mandarin potential complement construction is a language specific structure. This is different from most of the languages in the world including English where modal notions are expressed by modal verbs and auxiliaries. It is a syntactic construction used to convey potential possibility in Mandarin and Cantonese. The various behaviors of the modal expressions in these three languag，i.e., English, Cantonese and Mandarin, raise interesting questions in second language acquisition research. The present study aims to explore how Cantonese speaking learners and English speaking learners process the Mandarin potential complement construction. Acceptability judgment test and corpus study were conducted to examine typical learning difficulties and essential acqu isition patterns in the course of acquiring the Mandarin potential complement construction. Given that the Mandarin potential complement construction is less marked than the Cantonese counterpart but more marked than English modal expressions, I hypothesized that Cantonese speaking learners wou ld have more native-like performance than English speaking learners. Surprisingly, this hypothesis was not completely confirmed in the present study. I will spell out the subjects, performance from the perspectives of language transfer theory, markedness theory and subset principle theory.

M.Phil. ( Education Linguistics) / Since communication between language groups is of crucial importance in a multicultural country, the inadequate second language proficiency of school-Ieavers gives cause for concern. The current paradigm shift to relevant and vocationally orientated education raises questions about the relevance of the literature component and literature methodology within a communicative approach to second language teaching. The aim of this study is to investigate the nature of communicative competence and the way in which this is accounted for in second language teaching. The nature of literature is studied to determine whether it allows for a literature-orientated approach which can contribute towards the development of communicative competence within the parameters of a second language communicative approach. Research findings have indicated that communicative competence functions as a cognitive web of interwoven abilities and that second language teaching, which has as its ultimate aim the fluent and correct use of the target language, has to take the complex and interactive nature of the various components into account. It has also become evident that a literature teaching approach, based on the readerresponse theory, affords opportunity for stimulating language acquisition processes. By participating in analytical and communicative acts of learning, proceeding from the literature text, the leaner is involved in a process which can result in the gradual development of linguistic, strategic and psychomotor abilities. Literature thus forms a relevant and functional component of the second language syllabus and can contribute to the development of communicative competence.

M.Ed. (Education Linguistics) / Researchers generally agree that second languages are vitally important to diverse groups of people across the world today. The teaching of second languages in classrooms around the world alone constitutes a formidable undertaking. Their general importance in and out of the classroom is perhaps best expressed by Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991:2): •••not only do second languages have a place in school, they also affect many other aspects of people's lives. In the interdependent world of today, second language acquisition and use are ubiquitous. English alone, for example, is used by almost 1.5 billion people as their official second language (Crystal, 1985). The remarkable spread and use of the language has become an uncontested fact: it has become the international language for science and technology, with more than half of all the world's scientific and technical journals published in English. It is the medium for 80% of the information stored in the world's computers at present, while three quarters of the world's mail arid other correspondence are also in English (Peirce, 1989). This is just one example of second language use that has contributed to the general importance of second languages across the globe today. There are many others. So, for instance, is second language learning and use closely linked with the huge migrant worker force of Europe and other parts of the world, where there is a need amongst the people to be able to understand and speak the language of their new environment. Another such issue is the arrival and assimilation of immigrants who permanently resettle in a new country. The large entry of Indochinese refugees into many different countries around the world in the 1980's is a case in point (Larsen-Freeman and Long, 1991). Second languages also often play an important role in the affairs of state, especially in societies where there is a diversity of cultures and languages (Larsen-Freeman and Long, 1991). Which language or languages should receive official recognition and which should not? In our own country, for example, this is currently a much debated issue, following the socio-political changes and events of recent years. It appears that English has become the language people favour best in a post-apartheid South Africa.

M.A. (Applied Linguistics and Literary Theory) / Any person who tries to learn or acquire a second on foreign language will be subject to some form of mother tongue and/or cultural interference. In the South African context such interference can occur between any two cultural and language groups in contact e.g. between English and Afrikaans, or between both English and Afrikaans on the one hand, and any African language on the other. The investigator is of the opinion that such interference can cause serious barriers to communication. Her research focuses particularly on the impact of cultural interference. Her findings suggest that cultural interference has a significant negative impact, and as a result she recommends that differences need to be addressed as an important component of ESL and EFL teaching in South African schools. She believes that the new education system known as Curriculum 2005 will help to reduce some of the identified communication problems, because it emphasises the promotion of all languages, especially the African languages which were in the past not accorded official status.