Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-111). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-222).

Although computer use has become widespread throughout foreign language (FL) education, availability of computers alone is not sufficient for increasing their use. Integration requires rich and varied technology support, which includes instructional as well as technical support. To date, in the field of adult FL learning no quantitative examination of the relationship between the different aspects of technology support and computer integration into the curricula has been attempted. This study explores the direction and strength of the relationships among the different types of technology support and the integration of computers into the curricula of college and university FL programs. The investigation was conducted by means of an online survey instrument developed and pilot tested by the researcher and disseminated nationwide to teachers in U.S. college and university foreign language departments. It probes the extent and nature of computer integration within FL curricula as well as the extent and nature of the technology support available. It also examines the relationships between the different types of technology support and the extent and nature of integration to determine which, if any, were the strongest. The study found that technology support in the form of professional development that enables teachers to understand and create ways to seamlessly integrate computers into their teaching is needed more than any other type of technology support, including the provision of new, updated, stat-of-the art computers. The findings provide a broader understanding of technology support and its role in increased technology integration among college-level foreign language teachers. Further, the findings potentially provide guidelines for FL program directors as to the areas of technology support in which their expenditure of resources will best benefit their institute.

In the phonological integration of loanwords, the original structures of the donor language can either be adopted as innovations or adapted to the recipient language. This dissertation investigates how structural (i.e. phonetic, phonological, morpho-phonological) and non-structural (i.e. sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic) factors interact in determining which of these two integration strategies is preferred. Factors that affect the accuracy of the structure’s perception and production in the donor language as a result of its acquisition as a second language are given special consideration. The three studies in the dissertation examine how the same phonological structure from different donor languages is integrated into the same recipient language Turkish by two different types of initial borrowers: elite bilinguals in Turkey and heritage bilinguals in Sweden. The three investigated structures are word-final [l] after back vowels, long segments in word-final closed syllables, and word-initial onset clusters. The main hypothesis is that adoption will be more prevalent in heritage bilinguals than in elite bilinguals. Four necessary conditions for adoption are identified in the analysis. Firstly, the donor-language structure must have high perceptual salience. Secondly, the borrowers must have acquired the linguistic competence to produce a structure accurately. Thirdly, the borrowers must have sufficient sociolinguistic incentive to adopt a structure as an innovation. Fourthly, prosodic structures require higher incentive to be adopted than segments and clusters of segments. The main hypothesis is partially confirmed. The counterexamples involve either cases where the salience of the structure was high in the elite bilinguals’ borrowing but low in the heritage bilinguals’ borrowing, or cases where the structure’s degree of acquisition difficulty was low. Therefore, it is concluded that structural factors have the final say in the choice of integration strategy. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Submitted. </p>

Since Joan Rubin opened the discussion of the existence of techniques of memorization, recall, and production that marked the performance of successful learners of foreign languages, the study of Language Learning Strategies (LLS) has expanded into innumerable directions. Such studies have attempted to establish a link between LLS use and improved student performance in the classroom and beyond, determine what drives students to select particular strategies for use, and analyzed the effectiveness of LLS instruction. Few studies have examined the relationship between LLS and the study of Arabic as a foreign language. The present study identifies, among university-level students of Arabic, the LLS whose use is associated with student language success. Using a combination of survey response analysis and classroom observation, the study highlights the benefits of 17 separate strategies and recommends a phased introduction of those strategies to students in order to maximize their potential effect. The study then moves on to explore the role of the Arabic instructor in student strategy use, determining the effectiveness of current methods of strategy instruction and provides recommendations to the Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL) field that may improve the techniques used to impart strategic learning competence to students of the language. In the final section of analysis, the study turns toward the Arabic textbooks that most commonly used in American colleges and universities and examines the level of support that these texts provide to the development of strategic learning methods within students, providing advice to instructors and learning materials developers intended to enhance presentation of strategies. The ultimate goal of these suggestions is improving the overall strategic capability of students of Arabic so that they can become more independent learners, capable of continuing study of the language beyond the boundaries of the university classroom. / text

Dynamical Systems Theory (DST) (De Bot, Lowie, & Vespoor 2007; Larsen-Freeman 1997, 2007; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron 2008; Dörnyei 2009; and van Lier 2000) represents a scientific paradigm shift derived from the fields of physics, engineering and theoretical mathematics that attempts to solve real-world scenarios that do not respond to scientific reductionism, otherwise known as ‘analysis’. The purpose of this dissertation is to (re)frame foreign language learning/use as a dynamical process that that involves interplay among what Dörnyei (2009) terms the language, the agent and the environment. More specifically, this dissertation presents a quasi-experimental, psycholinguistic study that looks at the interface between language (in this case the talk that resulted from NS-NNS interactions) and agent (as defined by a set of personal traits, or Individual Differences [IDs], including motivation, attitudes, personality and aptitude) in order to answer the research question: Do IDs vary in conjunction with language learning/use, and if so, how? Eight tutored Spanish learners were followed over the course of 16 weeks during which time they participated in 8 chat sessions with a native Spanish-speaker. Their ID profiles were measured immediately before and after each session and sessions with significant pre- to post-session ID shifts were analyzed to determine to what extent such shifts correlated with certain types of talk and/or think-aloud sequences. Results indicated that all participants’ pre- and post-interactional ID profiles fluctuated measurably and significantly, even within the span of a single interaction. Moreover, those sessions with significantly positive ID shifts were qualitatively different in terms of language-related episodes (LREs), conversation management/pragmatic markers, and metacognition from those with significantly negative ID shifts. Other unexpected findings revealed, for example, that LREs (especially NS-initiated LREs) negatively impacted motivations and attitudes and, therefore, the language-learning process itself. Taken together, the results of this study indicate that the agent’s IDs and their (inter)language co-emerge; that is to say, they evolve simultaneously and in response to one another. Moreover, this study suggests that DST can indeed be quasi-experimentally applied to the study of SLA, thus necessitating further development in DST-oriented methodologies and research questions. / text

This three-part study explores an application of the dynamic assessment of narratives in a bilingual Spanish and English-speaking early elementary population as a preliminary study of bilingual children’s response to a short-term intervention. Dynamic assessment has been used successfully to differentiate culturally diverse monolingual children with language impairment from their typically developing peers. In order to extend this assessment measure to bilinguals, specifically Spanish and English-speaking children, the effects of the language of intervention and the language of production was explored. Profiles of bilingual children’s narratives with and without impairment and their differential responses has not been well documented in both languages. Thus, narrative profiles and from pre to post intervention changes were compared for typically developing and language-impaired children. The first study examined whether parallel stories were elicited within languages using two books. The second study explored the effects of the language of intervention and the language of story production on narrative performance, and the transfer of narratives skills across languages using the dynamic assessment paradigm. The third study examined children’s performance with and without language impairment pre and post mediated learning experience in comparison to a non-intervention control group. Results from study one indicated that children told parallel stories for the two books within each language. Findings from study two indicated that children’s stories in Spanish were stronger overall, and children’s performance did not differ as a function of intervention in Spanish vs. English. Children demonstrated transfer of narrative macrostructure across both languages. Finally, study three indicated that the children who were typically developing demonstrated a greater amount of pretest to posttest gain as compared to children in the language impaired and control groups. The typically developing children were rated as more modifiable in comparison to those with language impairment. / text

This dissertation assesses a new technique intended to improve Arabic learning outcomes by enhancing the ability of learners to perceive a phoneme contrast in Arabic that is notoriously difficult for native speakers of English. Adopting a process approach to foreign language listening comprehension pedagogy, we identify and isolate an important listening subskill, phonemic identification, and develop a methodology for improving that skill. An online training system is implemented that is based upon known principles of speech perception and second language speech learning and has previously been used to improve phonemic perception in a laboratory setting. An empirical study investigating the efficacy of the training methodology was conducted with 24 2nd and 3rd year students of Arabic in several different intensive Arabic programs in American universities. The contrast under investigation was the Arabic pharyngeal (/h̄/) versus laryngeal (/h/) voiceless fricatives. Training participants completed 100 training modules, each consisting of a 24 item minimal pair test featuring the /h̄/-/h/ contrast in word initial position for a total of 2400 training trials over 4 weeks. The training website design was based on the high variability training protocol (Logan, Lively & Pisoni, 1991). The experiment finds significantly greater improvement (F₁,₂₂=8.89, p = .007, [mathematical symbol]₂ = .288) on a minimal pair test contrasting /h̄/ and /h/ for a group that received approximately 5 hours of phonetic training (n=10) compared to a control group (n=14) with no training. Critically, these perceptual improvements were measured with stimuli that were not part of the training set, suggesting language learning and not just stimulus learning. Qualitative data from participants suggested that these perceptual gains were not restricted to the simple minimal pair task, but carried over to listening activities and perhaps even pronunciation. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of phonemic perception and foreign language instruction and implementation of phonetic training within an Arabic curriculum. / text

This dissertation examines the developmental trajectory of online processing toward second language (L2) pragmatic comprehension. This goal stems from two shortcomings of previous research: (1) approaching L2 pragmatics as the acquisition of discrete phenomena through progressive stages (see Kasper, 2009), and (2) focusing narrowly on production. Building upon previous L2 pragmatic comprehension work (Carrell, 1981; P. García, 2004; Taguchi, 2005, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2011a, 2011b; Takahashi & Roitblat, 1994), the current study investigates the development of L2 Spanish request speech act comprehension by native English-speaking adult learners. The analysis involves accuracy, comprehension speed and the relationship between the two dimensions across three levels of directness over a 13-week period. Previous research was informed by skill acquisition theories (Anderson & Lebiere, 1998) to account for increased accuracy and decreased speed over time. Here, further analysis is based on Complexity Theory / Dynamic Systems Theory (CT/DST) (Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008a; de Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2007; Ellis, et al., 2009; Verspoor, de Bot, & Lowie, 2011) to account for the seemingly chaotic results often found in L2 research. The findings of the current study show significant overall improvement in accuracy and speed of Spanish request identification, and a moderate relationship between the two measures. However, the association between slower responses and higher accuracy in the current data contradicts skill acquisition theories. Rather, the theoretical framework of CT/DST provides a more authentic account of development. As such, the results indicate that the levels of request directness develop along distinct trajectories and timescales. Direct requests reflect higher accuracy and faster interpretation. While the most indirect level of requests shows the largest improvement in accuracy, the responses for these items are no faster at the end of the study than at the beginning. The development of conventionally indirect requests occupies a middle ground in terms of accuracy similar to direct requests and comprehension speed like implied items. Further findings reflect L2 pragmatic comprehension as a complex, dynamic system that emerges through the differential effects of predictor variables across measures and within sub-groups of participants based on proficiency improvement, motivation and response strategy. / text

This Report answers three questions: (a) Why is teaching pragmatic competence important? (b) What are the approaches to teaching pragmatic awareness? Specifically how do instructors teach Spanish requests?, and (c) What role does technology play in pragmatic awareness instruction? The first chapter explains why I chose to write my Report on developing pragmatic awareness through speech act instruction. Chapter two discusses development of pragmatic awareness. Chapter three and four address approaches to teaching pragmatic knowledge and technology’s role in pragmatic instruction. Chapter five proposes a lesson for an intermediate university Spanish class grounded on speech act theory. Materials and a rubric for classroom use accompany the lesson (Appendices A-C). The chapter concludes with a discussion of pedagogical challenges as well as pedagogical recommendations for teachers. Chapter six concludes the Report by answering my guiding questions succinctly, summarizing the pedagogical lesson proposed, and explaining the reasons why I think the lesson is a useful resource for teachers. / text