This study investigates the morphosyntactic competence of advanced ESL learners and native speakers of English. Using the framework of the Government and Binding approach (Chomsky,1981, 1986), the study tests the predictions made by the evolved Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 2009), namely that the grammars of advanced L2 learners are unreliable(where reliability means converging to the L2 grammar), non-convergent to the L2 grammar, and characteristic of patches (where patches are extragrammatical principles independent of the normal syntactic processes). The participants of the study were tested on three tasks (timed grammaticality judgment task, a correction task, and a preference task). The findings of the study indicate that the difference between the morphosyntactic competence of the advanced ESL learners and that of native speakers is gradient rather than categorical.

This study investigates the morphosyntactic competence of advanced ESL learners and native speakers of English. Using the framework of the Government and Binding approach (Chomsky,1981, 1986), the study tests the predictions made by the evolved Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 2009), namely that the grammars of advanced L2 learners are unreliable(where reliability means converging to the L2 grammar), non-convergent to the L2 grammar, and characteristic of patches (where patches are extragrammatical principles independent of the normal syntactic processes). The participants of the study were tested on three tasks (timed grammaticality judgment task, a correction task, and a preference task). The findings of the study indicate that the difference between the morphosyntactic competence of the advanced ESL learners and that of native speakers is gradient rather than categorical.

This dissertation research investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying second language (L2) listening comprehension. I use three types of sentential contexts, congruent, neutral and incongruent, to look at how L2 learners construct meaning in spoken sentence comprehension. The three types of contexts differ in their context predictability. The last word in a congruent context is highly predictable (e.g., Children are more affected by the disease than adults), the last word in a neutral context is likely but not highly predictable (e.g., Children are more affected by the disease than nurses), and the last word in an incongruent context is impossible (e.g., Children are more affected by the disease than chairs). The study shows that, for both native speakers and L2 learners, a consistent context facilitates word recognition. In contrast, an inconsistent context inhibits native speakers’ word recognition but not that of L2 learners. I refer to this new discovery as the facilitation-without-inhibition phenomenon in L2 listening comprehension. Results from follow-up experiments show that this facilitation-without-inhibition phenomenon is a result of insufficient suppression by L2 learners.

This study investigated the use of lexical bundles in research articles written in English by Turkish scholars. For the purpose of the study, a corpus of published research articles produced by Turkish scholars in six different academic disciplines was collected. The four-word lexical bundles that appeared at least twenty times in this one million word corpus were identified and further analyzed both structurally and functionally based on the previous taxonomies developed by Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999) and Biber, Conrad and Cortes (2004). The results of this study revealed that the lexical bundles found have structural correlates as well as strong functional features that help to construct discourse in academic writing. The conclusions drawn from this study could be applied to the teaching of academic genres to researchers in English as a Foreign Language context and are expected to provide insights for further corpus-based studies in academic writing.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

As Chinese is a topic prominent language and English is a subject prominent language, there are many differences between these two languages. The present study investigates the influence of Chinese topic prominence constructions on the acquisition of English with the instrument of a translation task. 60 Chinese college students of two levels were divided into two groups according to their English proficiency level (the non-English majors for low level and the English majors for high level). The results were analyzed and calculated in terms of four types of topic prominence constructions: Noun phrases as topics, clauses as topics, verb phrases as topics and prepositional phrases as topics.     Through this study, it is found that the interlanguage of Chinese learners for English is characterized by topic prominence construction. What is more, Chinese learners of English can gradually decrease the use of topic prominence construction, turning into more target-like interlangage with the increase of their English proficiency level.   The findings of the present study contribute to a better understanding of Chinese English learners' interlanguage development from topic prominence to subject prominence. Furthermore, the results of the current study are significant for the English teaching in China. The language teacher should enhance the comparison between Chinese and English so that the learners could be more aware of the difference between these two languages and errors could be avoided.

This essay studies the written performance of 43 Swedish junior high school students. Relative clauses, prepositional usage and subject-verb agreement are studied and analysed in order to see what and how many errors the students make and then finally to see if there is any difference in the performance of boys and girls. Previous research in the area has shown an advantage in favour of girls and this study confirmed this. Even though the differences were not marked, the girls performed better than the boys in the majority of the cases studied. The data further indicated that there is great variation within the gender groups as well as between them.

The purpose of this study was to find out how well Swedish pupils succeeded in their use of the progressive verb forms. A comprehensive research has been carried out in the area of second language acquisition, in which an interest in the order of acquisition of a second language as well as verb forms also was included. The material for the study was collected from second year pupils at an upper secondary school and consisted of two consecutive writing assignments. The first assignment was preceded by the teaching of the progressive verb forms, which the pupils were implicitly expected to use in their writing. In the second assignment, no grammar lessons were given prior to the assignment. A comparison of the evolution of the use of the verb forms mentioned was then conducted. The result indicates an increase of an accurate use. One conclusion that can be drawn is that learner strategies and motivation are beneficial to second language acquisition, as well as learning a more accurate grammar.

The aim of this essay was to analyze bilingual children in conversation. The essay examinesunder what syntactic circumstances bilingual Spanish / Swedish speaking children codeswitch.The data for this essay is based on recordings of two of the author’s familymembers. The focus is on how bilingual children code-switch, if it is more likely forbilingual children to code-switch when the syntax of two languages are in alignment and ifthere is a dominant language. The collections of recordings are based on real conversationsbetween two bilingual children. The two participants in the study are Spanish and Swedishspeakers; they were born and raised in Sweden with Hispanic parents. The children havebeen exposed to both Spanish and Swedish at home. To be able to obtain the data the authoronly took the most important parts from the transcripts; both audio and video recordingswere made to capture spontaneous conversations between the two brothers. The results showthat the two participants code-switch most frequently at points when the syntax of the twolanguages is in alignment.

I denna uppsats undersöks hur lärare arbetar med skönlitteratur i skolan, dels i språkförberedande undervisning på IVIK programmet såväl som i svenska som andraspråksundervisningen och i svenskan med andraspråkselever. Syftet med uppsatsen är att studera vilka arbetsmetoder lärarna använder sig av med andraspråkselever, hur lärarna arbetar med ämnets syften och språkutvecklingen. En undersökning har gjorts genom intervjuer med fem lärare på en gymnasieskola. Utgångspunkten för uppsatsen är följande frågeställningar: Hur arbetar lärare med skönlitteratur i skolan, dels i språkförberedande undervisning på IVIK programmet såväl som i svenska som andraspråksundervisningen och i svenskan med andraspråkselever? Hur arbetar lärarna språkutvecklande i de skönlitterära momenten och hur ser man att det har uppnåtts? Hur arbetar lärarna med de skönlitterära syftena i ämnet och hur ser man att eleverna har tagit till sig innehållet i syftet?   Resultatet av undersökningen visar att arbetet i grupper med enbart andraspråkselever har ett tydligt andraspråksperspektiv. Lärarna i svenskgrupperna ger alla elever samma undervisning men andraspråkseleverna ges mer stöd när det behövs. Alla de intervjuade lärarna använder frågor och samtal om texten som arbetsmetod i den skönlitterära undervisningen i arbetet med syfte och språkutveckling men det är svårt att utvärdera om eleverna har tagit till sig innehållet i syftet och om språkutveckling verkligen har skett genom de skönlitterära momenten och om insikterna i syftet påverkat eleverna på djupet. / This essay review the way teachers work with literature in school, partly in language preparation classes as well as in Swedish as a second language and in Swedish with second language learners. The purpose of the essay is to study which methods teachers use in education with second language learners, how the teachers work with the aims of the course and development of language. A survey has been made by way of interviews with five teachers at an upper secondary school. The premises of the essay are following question formulation: How do teachers work with literature in school, partly in language preparation classes as well as in Swedish as a second language and in Swedish with second language learners? How do teachers work with development of language in teaching literature and how can one see it is successful? How do teachers work with the literary aims of the course and how can one see that the students have embraced the aims?  The results of the survey show that the work in groups with alone second language learners has got a clear second language perspective. The teachers of the Swedish classes give all students the same instructions but second language learners acquire more support if needed. All the teachers in the survey use questions and dialogue about the text as a method in education in literature in the work with the aims and the development of language, but it is hard to evaluate if the students have embraced the aims and if progress in language has been made by way of the parts of literature and if the knowledge in the aims have influenced the students in depth.