This study was an ethnographic case study of a Vietnamese unaccompanied minor in a post secondary setting. There were two guiding questions for the study: (1) How does the subject perceive language as it relates to educational experience? (2) What kinds of observable personality, cognitive, or affective factors have contributed to his language and educational experience, and in what way have they contributed? The subject for this study was selected because he had declared himself an unaccompanied minor and immigrated to the United States as a young adult. He was an ESL student who graduated from an American high school within two years of arrival. He was deemed successful by the academic community based on hours of completed course work and grade point average. The subject was extremely motivated to receive a four year degree, but was hampered by college requirements in classes which required high levels of English proficiency and competence. The theoretical base for this research was phenomenology. The subject, purposefully selected, was observed for six months in three different classroom settings: philosophy, physics, and English composition. Validity/replicability was obtained through triangulation of personal interviews and written questionnaires, interviews with faculty and other college personnel, and examination of artifacts such as school records, diaries, and journals. With the exception of school records, portions of artifacts are included in this thesis. The subject exhibited unusual abilities to comprehend complex written and oral material, relate information across disciplines, and adapt to instructional requirements and methodologies. Based on the results of this case study, three hypotheses were generated: 1) Listening skills and memory/recall, or auditory memory, appear to be essential to the subject's academic success. 2) General information about learning styles and strategies may be less useful than specific strategy application in academic situations for this subject. 3) Explicit, structured writing instruction may be more useful than process writing for this subject. / Graduation date: 1996

Thesis (M. Communication Pathology)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Summary in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2004. / Bibliography: leaves 111-116.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Denna studie undersöker om dold språkförståelse i ett andraspråk kan synliggöras vid återberättande på förstaspråket. Det kan vara svårt att skilja språkutvecklingen hos barn med typisk språkutveckling med svenska som andraspråk från språkutvecklingen hos flerspråkiga språkstörda barn om man testar dem på andraspråket. Därför behövs det referensdata för normalspråkiga barn. Sexton barn i femårsåldern med normal språkutveckling, åtta enspråkiga barn med svenska som första språk och åtta flerspråkiga barn med arabiska som första språk och svenska som andraspråk, testades med Buss-sagan (Buss Story Test, BST) och TROG (Test for Reception of Grammar). De flerspråkiga barnen fick sagan uppläst på svenska och återberättade först på svenska och sedan på arabiska. Resultatet i den kvantitativa analysen visade att de enspråkiga barnen fick signifikant bättre resultat för parametern information på BST och bättre resultat på TROG. Däremot skiljde sig resultatet för parametern information i berättelserna på arabiska inte signifikant från resultatet i de flerspråkiga barnens berättelser på svenska. Den kvalitativa analysen visade att de flerspråkiga barnens återberättelser på svenska och arabiska jämfört med de enspråkiga barnens framför allt lexikalt och diskursivt var mindre komplexa och korrekta. Detta kan till viss del bero på testsituationen, men också på brister i språkförståelse och uttrycksmedel. Slutsatsen man kan dra är att man som logoped behöver vara medveten om att olika språkliga strukturer utvecklas i olika takt både i första- och andraspråket, och att det behövs anpassat inflöde på alla språk för att underlätta språkförståelsen och den lexikala utvecklingen. / This study examines if language comprehension which may be concealed in a second language can be made visible by retelling in the first language. It can be difficult to separate the language development of typically developed children with Swedish as their second language from that of multilingual children with language impairment. Therefore, reference data for multilingual children with typical language development are needed. Sixteen five-year-old children with normal language development, eight monolingual children with Swedish as their first language and eight multilingual children with Arabic as their first language and Swedish as their second language, were tested with Buss Story Test (BST) and TROG (Test for Reception of Grammar). The multilingual children got the story of Buss Story Test read to them in Swedish and then retold the story first in Swedish and then in Arabic. The result of the quantitative analysis showed that monolingual children achieved significantly better results for the parameter information on BST and better results on TROG. On the other hand, the result of the parameter information in the children’s Arabic retellings did not differ significantly from that in the multilingual children’s Swedish retellings. The qualitative analysis showed that the multilingual children’s retellings in Swedish and Arabic compared with the monolingual children’s retellings were less complex and correct in regard mostly to lexical and narrative structure. This can, to a certain extent, be due to the testing situation, but also due to deficiencies in language comprehension and means of expression. The authors conclude that speech therapists need to be aware of the fact that different linguistic structures develop at a different rate both in the first and the second language, and that tailored input in all the children’s languages is needed in order to facilitate comprehension and lexical development.

The study of clitic clusters and the restrictions that surface when two or more clitics are combined have long intrigued linguists and, as such, clitic phenomena are at the core of an ever-growing body of research in linguistic theory. However, three aspects remain largely unexplored when it comes to clitic cluster constraints, namely the evolution of these restrictions through time, the perception and processing of different clitic combinations, both acceptable and unacceptable, by native speakers and the acquisition of such combinations by non-native speakers. This dissertation, which focuses on 1st and 2nd person clitic clusters in Spanish, aims to shed new light on clitic phenomena with a new analysis and new data from all these perspectives. Specifically, I study the effects that case and marked features have on Spanish clitic combinations, both synchronically and diachronically. In addition, I explore the effects of clitic combination restrictions in language processing and analyze the learnability issues derived from such restrictions in three groups of speakers of Spanish as a second language whose L1s are English, French and Romanian, respectively. At a particular level, this dissertation is a study of clitic cluster constraints from different perspectives, both traditional and new, namely linguistic theory, diachrony, language processing and language acquisition. At a general level, it constitutes an attempt to explore the ways in which linguistic theory can guide applied research and, conversely, the ways in which experimental data may contribute to linguistic theory.

This study investigated relationships between individual learner differences and the learning of two English structures that differed in their grammatical difficulty. Using a quasi-experimental design, 66 secondary-level learners of English as a foreign language from three intact classes were provided with four hours of instruction on two L2 structures –one considered relatively easy to learn (i.e., past progressive) and the other relatively difficult to learn (i.e. passive construction). The participants were pretested on their knowledge of both structures and posttested immediately after the instruction. Learners’ progress was measured via written grammaticality judgment tests (GJT) and oral production tasks (OPT). The instruments to measure individual learner differences included a computerized language aptitude test, an L1 metalinguistic awareness test, a motivation questionnaire, a backward digit span test, and a learner retrospection questionnaire. The results revealed that aptitude and motivation were the two variables that significantly contributed to learners’ gains with respect to the ‘passive’ and that L1 metalinguistic awareness explained significant variation in learners’ gains regarding the ‘past progressive’. These relationships were observed with learners’ performance on the written but not oral measures. A detailed analysis of the aptitude test components revealed that the grammatical inferencing subtask was significantly related to L2 gains on the ‘passive’ – again only with respect to learners’ performance on the written GJT. The results also revealed that learners with different aptitude profiles (i.e., low, medium, high) benefited differently from instruction on the two target features. High aptitude learners performed better than low aptitude learners on the ‘passive’ as measured by the GJT posttest. With respect to the ‘past progressive’ only learners in the medium aptitude profile group improved significantly on the written GJT. These findings confirm that language aptitude holds a role in language learning but that there are other factors (i.e., motivation and L1 metalinguistic awareness) that also contribute to L2 progress. These results also provide evidence from a classroom-based study that the grammatical difficulty of what is to be learned is a factor in determining what cognitive abilities L2 learners rely on in their efforts to learn a new language.