abstract: This semester-long study examined the functions for which English (L1) and Spanish (L2) were used in two intact hybrid Spanish as a foreign language (FL) university classes at the 202 (fourth semester) level. Five 75-minutes classes of two instructors were observed by the researcher, video- and audio-recorded, and transcribed. A survey was also used to determine the functions for which the instructors and students believed that Spanish and English were used in the classroom, and the functions for which both believed that the two languages should be used. Talking about a test and teaching grammar were the functions for which both instructors used the most English and the most Spanish. The questionnaire results indicated that the students who heard more Spanish in the classroom would have preferred that their instructor had used less Spanish for the functions of checking how well students understand a reading in class as well as when giving instructions or explaining how to do group activities. The Minnesota Language Proficiency Assessment for listening at the Intermediate-High level was administered to the students of both instructors at the beginning and at the end of the semester. The classroom observations indicated that although both instructors used more than 50% words in English during their classes, one instructor used twice as many words in Spanish as did the other. However, the results of the study revealed no significant relationship between the amount of Spanish used by the instructors in the classroom and the students' progress on listening proficiency from the beginning to the end of the semester. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2012

abstract: This investigation's goal was to add to the small body of research on pragmalinguistic acquisition of L2 Spanish. Specifically, it centered on the production of complaints in Spanish. Data was collected via a written Discourse Completion Task (DCT) of a complaint-provoking situation presented in a website voiceboard to two non-native speaker (NNS) students groups of different proficiency levels and to a native speaker (NS) control group. The lower proficiency group was comprised of 11 NNS enrolled in a 200 level beginning/intermediate Spanish grammar class and the advanced proficiency group of 11 NNS enrolled in a 400 level advanced Spanish conversation and composition class. Neither group contained any participants who had studied abroad or lived in a Spanish-speaking country for more than 3 months. The control group consisted of 10 NSs of Spanish who were all natives or current residents of Northern Mexico. Data from the DCT was categorized into strategies which were organized into Head Acts and Supporting Moves, Deference and Solidarity Politeness systems, according to the frameworks of Blum-Kulka, et al. (1989) and Scollon and Scollon (1983), respectively. The results of the analysis revealed that all three groups of participants have overarching similarities in the use of multiple Head Acts, some used several times throughout a response, to realize a complaint and used some Supporting Moves to mitigate these Head Acts. The lower proficiency group diverged from the advanced proficiency group and NS control group in that lower proficiency students not only used a fewer total strategies and strategy types, but also preferred Head Acts and Supporting Moves that expressed discomfort or dislike over strategies that expressed criticism, or requested a solution from the listener, these being the primary strategies preferred by the advanced proficiency and control group participants. It was also found that the percentage of Supporting Moves decreased with the raise in proficiency level, also. After a discussion of the results, pedagogical implications are given based on these results to help students notice and acquire pragmalinguistcally appropriate responses to complaint-provoking situations. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2012

One of the issues that have been debated at length in second language acquisition research circles is that of error-feedback and its desirability. Although there is as yet no conclusive evidence concerning its effectiveness in contributing towards the acquisition of a second language, a number of studies that have been conducted bear evidence to its desirability in L2 classrooms. This research then, was concerned with the way teachers of content subjects reacted to their learners' linguistically erroneous responses during oral interaction in their classes. The participants were four teachers who, with their pupils, are second language speakers of English . Three of these were content subject teachers while the fourth one teaches English. The data was collected from a class of Std 5 pupils in a rural school in the Eastern Cape where the lessons of these teachers were observed and audio-taped. Subsequently some of them were transcribed and analysed. The analysis of the data revealed that teachers in content subject classes, who teach through the medium of English showed more concern for content than for linguistic errors despite the fact that they are expected to extend the pupils' chances of second language acquisition.

This study set out to formulate criteria for evaluating reading comprehension materials intended for ESL readers in~high schools in South Africa. Such criteria may help teachers in selecting textbooks which have theoretically-informed reading programmes. It was first necessary, therefore, to isolate those points from reading comprehension theory that could be included in the criteria. Secondly, other checklists/criteria in ESL evaluation were examined to identify a framework within which to work. In the first draft, questions to be included in the criteria/checklist were formulated using justification from reading comprehension theory. A focus group technique was then used to obtain preliminary feedback on the usability of the checklist. Suggestions from the focus group were used to revise the cri teria . A final checklist was prepared which teachers could use as an instrument to evaluate reading comprehension programmes in language textbooks.

FONSECA, Maria Cristina Micelli. A semântica e a pragmática na compreensão das oposições present perfect X past simple do inglês e pretérito perfecto X pretérito indefinido do espanhol. 2006. 229f. Tese (Doutorado) - Universidade de São Paulo, Departamento de Linguística, São Paulo, 2006. / Submitted by anizia almeida (aniziaalmeida80@gmail.com) on 2016-09-09T11:22:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2006_tese_mcmfonseca.pdf: 2203074 bytes, checksum: 6e6d060283ef30feaa9761f29f478e51 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-09-13T14:39:48Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2006_tese_mcmfonseca.pdf: 2203074 bytes, checksum: 6e6d060283ef30feaa9761f29f478e51 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-13T14:39:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2006_tese_mcmfonseca.pdf: 2203074 bytes, checksum: 6e6d060283ef30feaa9761f29f478e51 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / In this thesis, the roles of Semantics and Pragmatics in text comprehension tasks have been investigated in Portuguese speakers interlanguage early grammar. The texts in both English and Spanish had past events told employing Present Perfect x Past Simple and Pretérito Perfecto x Pretérito Indefinido pairings. We have adopted (Michaellis, 1998) that the English periphrasis has as its most salient meaning the resultative reading and have applied it to the Spanish periphrasis as well. Portuguese, on the other hand, expresses resultative meaning in different ways most of the times leading students to see in the Present Perfect and Pretérito Perfecto structures the past event meaning alone. Consequently, when analyzing the foreign language structures, learners end up assigning them the aspectual values which belong to the Portuguese [TER+Participle] and [ESTAR+Gerund] periphrases, despite their not sharing the same aspectual values most of the time, because the English and Spanish forms express the perfective and resultative aspect, while the Portuguese periphrasis indicates the imperfective and durative aspect. This mismatch affects text comprehension, but is not perceived by the students. Learners first analyze the target language structure (topdown procedure, Liceras, 2003a), once they cannot have access to the features which trigger the parameter setting, precluding a bottom-up procedure. The same pattern of value assignment from the L1 periphrasis to both L2 is noticeable in both English and Spanish interlanguages. Analysis of Variance tests have proven that both interlanguages undergo the same process, which starts from L1 reestructuring. This fact suggests that adult L2 learner will make use of UG principles, but will not set parameters the way children do, L2 will grow by reestructuring portions of L1. The semantic values applied in both English and Spanish interlanguages at this stage, are L1?s as well, allowing a comparison to the phonology acquisition. Children are born sensitive to any semantic value, but due to a critical period for semantics, adult L2 learners will acquire L2 semantic values by reestructing not only the syntax of L1 but also its semantic values. Learners will have access to pragmatics, after semantics, as a fine-tuned meaning. / Nesta tese observa-se o papel que a semântica e a pragmática desempenham, na gramática inicial (early grammar) da interlingua de falantes de português, na compreensão de textos em inglês e em espanhol nos quais se relatam eventos passados e se empregam as oposições Present Perfect x Past Simple e Pretérito Perfecto x Pretérito Indefinido. Assumimos (Michaellis, 1998) que um dos valores mais fortes das formas compostas dessas duas línguas é o resultativo e que como o português, na maioria das vezes, expressa o resultado de outros modos, o aprendiz vê naquelas apenas uma maneira de expressar ações passadas. Em função disso, ao analisar a estrutura na língua estrangeira, acaba atribuindo aos tempos compostos de ambas os valores aspectuais das perífrases (TER+Particípio) e (ESTAR+Gerúndio) do português, que em muitos casos não coincide com os valores das formas perifrásticas das línguas que estão aprendendo. Enquanto as perífrases da língua estrangeira têm o aspecto perfectivo resultativo, as do português tem valor imperfectivo continuativo. Tal fato, que afeta a compreensão do texto, não é percebido pelos aprendizes. Estes analisam primeiramente a sintaxe da língua-alvo (top-drow procedure, Liceras, 2003a) uma vez que não tem acesso aos traços que desencadeiam a fixação de parâmetros para a realização do bottom-up. O padrão de atribuição dos valores das perífrases da L1 para a L2 aparece nas interlínguas do espanhol e do inglês, apontando para um mesmo processo, independente de a língua-alvo ser mais ou menos próxima do português. Testes com análise de variância comprovam que se trata de um mesmo processo para as duas línguas, que começa a partir da reestruturação da L1, sugerindo que a aquisição dessa é regida pelos princípios da GU, mas que a marcação de parâmetros não acontecerá como na L1, mas se dará via reestruturação de porções da L1. os valores semânticos utilizados na interlíngua, com a fonologia, a criança nasce com sensibilidade para acessar qualquer valor semântico, mas existe um período crítico que faz com que a aquisição da L2 ocorra por reestruturação não apenas sintática mas também semântica dos valores da L1. A pragmática, por sua vez, será acessada, após a semântica, como uma sintonia fina do sentido.

The Huang and Van Naerssen (1987) survey in Southern China proved conclusively that the more fluent Chinese L2 learners ofEnglish used more communicative strategies than their not :fluent counterparts. This study was an attempt to repeat the Huang and Van Naerssen study in a different setting with L2 learners of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. L2 learners of English at secondary level were chosen from four countries in which I had recently lived and worked. In addition an attempt was made to empirically test the validity of Schumann•s (1978) acculturation hypothesis on models for which it was not originally intended. A correlation was being sought between the level of acculturation ofL2 learners and their fluency in English. A cloze test was given to the one hundred and twenty-five L2 learners in the study in order to gauge their level of proficiency in English. A survey was then presented to L2 learners in all four countries, Chile, Paraguay, South Africa and Botswana. Part One of the survey asked questions related to acculturation. Part Two asked the same communicative questions used in the South China study. The results from the survey were inconclusive though the raw data for the communicative strategies and acculturation helped to show that the more proficient the student in English, the more likely he or she was to use communicative strategies or show a higher level of acculturation. The results were not statistically significant. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This study aimed to investigate the acquisition of the four non-generic uses of the English definite article the by Arabic learners of English in Saudi Arabia. These non-generic uses included textual, situational, cultural and structural. This study had three goals: (1) to determine whether these uses are acquired in a certain sequence; (2) to explore which one of these uses is the most difficult and the easiest in learning; (3) to investigate whether one or two of the uses are overused. The instrument consisted of 59 sentences adopted from Liu and Gleason (2002). There were 40 instances for required uses and 20 sentences for obligatory nonuse (5 instances for each use). The subjects were instructed to insert the where they deemed it necessary. The participants were 45 male undergraduate English major students, whose ages ranged from 18 to 22 with a Mean age of 21.6, from a university in Saudi Arabia. They were divided into three groups (15 students each) based on their proficiency levels as follows; low intermediate, intermediate, and advanced. The results revealed developmental trends in the acquisition of the non-generic uses of the English definite article related to proficiency. Specifically, the advanced group showed significantly higher accuracy of use in all four functions. Regarding the four functions, the order of acquisition, based on level of accuracy was as follows: situational, cultural, structural and textual. The study results are discussed in view of their pedagogical implications for the teaching of the definite article to Saudi learners of English.

The Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1994; 1996) proposes that the inherent lexical aspect of verbs plays a major role in the acquisition of tense-aspect (TA) morphology in both first and second language. This has been attested in most studies on TA morphology conducted with past and present TA markers. The present study examined the acquisition of Present Perfect, a rather insufficiently studied TA form from a Prototype Account, in two of its four functions, Experiential Past and Persistent Situation. The subjects were 85 L1-Spanish English language learners at intermediate and advanced levels. All participants had received formal instruction in English grammar as part of their curriculum. The data was collected through a forced-choice task with 16 situations equally distributed between the two Present Perfect functions and between telic and atelic verbs of four semantic categories: stative, activities, achievements, and accomplishments. Participants had to choose the correct verb form out of three options (Present, Past or Present Perfect) that would best complete the sentences given. The results showed evidence of clear developmental stages in the acquisition of the Present Perfect. The stages were characterized by an important role of proficiency level and lexical aspect as the more proficient participants showed a more accurate use of the target form. In addition, both the intermediate and advanced groups showed a tendency towards employing Persistent Situation with atelic verb types, whereas they used Experiential Past with telic verbs. Contrary to the predictions of the AH, the use that seemed to be first acquired and easier to learn was Persistent Situation, which obtained higher correctness rates in both groups than Experiential Past. When the results were analyzed across each aspectual verb type, the pattern of acquisition was less clear and thereby partly met the claims of the AH. This irregular trend attested in the data encouraged the argument that the acquisition of the functions of the Present Perfect may not be solely influenced by lexical aspect and verb prototypicality but several other factors may be at stake, such as sentence-type effect, input distribution, L1 transfer and rote-learned forms. Therefore, developmental stages in the acquisition of the Present Perfect should be examined in view of an interplay of "multiple factors" as already proposed by Sugaya and Shirai (2007), which work simultaneously and in a complementary fashion in the acquisitional process of TA morphology.

Vocabulary acquisition plays an important role in second language students’ performance. In the process of learning vocabulary, students are exposed to different sorts of input that might affect the way their working memory processes, retains, and recalls the new information they are exposed to, which can be visual, auditory, haptic, or multimodal (Paivio, 1991). Research has been extensively done on the effects of input modality on working memory in L1 word recall tasks in individuals with normal development and also in individuals with visual disabilities; however, no attention has been given to the effects of input modality on working memory in word recall tasks in blind individuals in the realm of second language learning. The current research sought to investigate the effects of input modality on working memory in L2 word recall tasks with the goal of determining if the lack of access to visual stimuli would have any substantial effects on L2 word retention and recall. It was predicted that participants would do better on those word recall tasks that involved the use of more than one modality simultaneously and that lack of access to visual stimuli would not negatively affect L2 word recall. To address these issues, we devised two word recall experiments: experiment 1 for the blind participant of the study (a 24 year old female graduate student who is an English native speaker), and experiment 2 for the sighted participants. Both experiments comprised a Digit Span Test, 4 word recall tasks in which participants were exposed to four different lists of high frequency Spanish words and their English translations in different modalities (Oral, Written (Braille), Oral+Written (Braille), Haptic/visual+Oral), and an interview. Thirty (16 females, 14 males) American English Native speakers who were sighted with ages ranging from 19 to 37 participated in this study; half of them were blindfolded for the last word recall task (Haptic+Oral). The results for both experiments showed that contrary to our predictions and to what dual coding theories claim, our participants were able to recall more words in those tasks that involved the use of only one modality. In part this may be attributed to 1) the fact that it was the first time these participants were exposed to Spanish vocabulary and so it made it more difficult for their working memories to integrate modalities and 2) an information overload since the stimulus words were presented with their translation. Moreover, the lack of access to visual stimuli did not have a strong effect in those participants who were blindfolded, which may be explained by the fact that the oral and haptic input triggered the use of mental imagery when retaining and recalling the words. Finally, the practical and pedagogical implications of the findings of the present study, as well as recommendations for the future research are discussed.

This paper proposes that SOUND SYMBOLISM, and more specifically PHONEMIC ICONICITY, plays a role in conveying emotional weight in the context of poetry. Previous research has indicated that the ratio of plosives to nasals in poetry predicts overall perception of emotional affect, with plosives designating activity and pleasantness, and nasals designating inactivity and unpleasantness (Auracher, Albers, Zhai, Gareeva, & Stavniychuk 2010); however, this research has ignored the influence of such potentially mitigating factors as orthography and lexical meaning. The current study involves naive English L1 speakers listening to recordings of selected haiku from Matsuo Basho's Oku No Hosomichi (`Narrow Road to the Deep North') in the original Japanese, and as such, the potential of orthography and lexical meaning to influence perception of emotion is eliminated. After listening to each haiku twice, subjects were asked to rate the appropriateness of eight emotion words that ranged from active and positive to inactive and positive, and from active and negative to inactive and negative, on a five-point Likert scale. Emotion words were chosen on the basis of their respective positions on the Circumplex Model of Affect, in which each emotion is conceptualized in terms of its location along two intersecting axes measuring valence (negative - positive) and arousal (inactive - active) (Russell 1980). The selected words occupied regularly spaced positions along this two-dimensional circular model. Results indicate that plosive to nasal ratio may indeed play a role in the perception of emotion in poetry, particularly in the case of poems with high plosive to nasal ratios, which were perceived as markedly more active and positive than other poems. Wider implications of the discernible patterns of perception of emotional affect based on plosive to nasal ratio include the possibility that phonemic iconicity plays a role in general language processing. As this research involves Japanese L2 phonemic perception by naÃ&hibar;ve English L1 listeners, current L2 phonological perceptual theory is discussed, and taken into account in the analysis of the results. Specific consideration is given to the potential of English L1 speakers to perceive the Japanese rhotic /r/, which does not appear in English, as the plosives /t/ or /d/, and the Japanese affricate /ts/, which commonly appears syllable-initially in Japanese, but is much rarer in this position in English, as /s/ (Nozawa 2008). Future research on English L1 speakers' underlying perceptual categorizations of targeted sounds in Japanese is also proposed.