This thesis looked at the concept of sonority and its influence in the acquisition of complex coda consonant clusters by ESL Spanish speakers. An experiment was performed to test the relationship between the sonority values of the segments of final complex clusters and the rate of errors. The goal of this thesis was to test the hypothesis that the Sonority Sequencing Principle was a powerful linguistic constraint that affected the acquisition of L2 phonology. The findings confirmed the idea that sonority played a crucial role in the phonological acquisition of L2 learners. Subjects reduced the least sonorant segment of the final cluster in order to achieve the minimal sonority descent. The choice of the segment could not be attributed to possible L1 interference since Spanish did not license complex codas and any final obstruents except /s/. The minimal sonority distance factor effected the rate of errors. Subjects produced more errors in clusters where the sonority distance between their segments was small (e.g., one, two, and three).

Despite the importance of the speech act as an analytic category, a general comprehensive definition of it that allows for methodical definitions of particular acts has not been provided. As a consequence, large areas of language use are often treated inadequately, both in learning research and in course planning. Among other problems, applied linguists presuppose different dimensions in discourse and their codings of utterances are insufficiently reliable. Therefore, valid comparisons regarding their empirical results or their design proposals are often impossible. The lack of definitions ESOL work requires is intimately associated to a defective understanding of the nature of acts. Existing classifications separate akin acts and group diverse ones together. To clarify the confusions, it is necessary to distinguish sharply acts which make present, create or modify knowledge from acts that set deontic conditions, ie acts like defining, classifying and generalizing from acts like ordering, requesting and inviting. The first kind, which are referred to here as dissertation acts, are not a subtype of illocutionary acts, as has previously been considered. Rather, they constitute a category at the same hierarchical leveL The distinction is shown to be fundamental following the same approaches that Strawson, Austin, Searle and Widdowson used to establish the sentence, the proposition and the speech act as independent units. The discussion leads to two general definitions of illocutionary and dissertation acts, which postulate a fixed number of parameters for each. Sets of conceivable values for every parameter are also delimited. Hence, a given combination of values determines a particular act, and all possible acts are determinable. The systematic framework thus produced suggests spiral research and teaching programmes which, at different stages, focus on speech act elements, speech acts and speech act combinations. These would allow analysts and students to discern the global organization of a discourse from its final results. They might also lead to a better understanding of its linguistic realization.

No description available.

The research begins with an examination of the problems attending the growth in the use of English as a lingua franca between non-native speakers. It is argued that vanable first-language specific phonological 'errors' generate much of the miscommunication that is a characteristic of such interlanguage talk (ILT), original support for this claim being provided by a pilot study involving non-native speaker postgraduate students. Following a brief reappraisal of the place of language transfer in second language acquisition, its role in interlanguage (IL) phonology is examined in detail. Phonological transfer is revealed as a central and complex feature of the developing IL The theoretical position is exemplified by a selection of phonological transfer errors drawn from ILT classroom observation, such errors being redefmed in seriousness according to a taxonomy of new criteria based essentially on their effects on ILT communication. The extensive variation to which these taxonomic errorS are subject is discussed in the light of current theories of IL variation, and Accommodation Theory is concluded to have the greatest potential to account for phonological transfer or variation in ILT. The motivations underlying the accommodative processes of convergence and divergence are discussed and the framework is then extended to a motivation considered more salient in ILT: that of interlocutor comprehensibility. Two empirical studies investigate phonological variation in ILT from an accommodation perspective, the findings leading to the conclusion that while accommodation has an essential role in determining phonological error in ILT, its linguistic manifestation is usually one of suppression and non-suppression rather than of traditional convergence and divergence. Pedagogical implications of the research include the benefits of pair and smallgroup work, thus supporting previous research, and the need for classroom exposure to IL varieties of English.

<p> English prosody works as a structural and semantic glue that establishes relationships among words and phrases within a sentence, and among sentences within a larger discourse. This dissertation hypothesizes and demonstrates an association between acoustic measurements of English prosody and holistic measures of English proficiency. To test this hypothesis, acoustic data was used from 10 examinees each of low, medium, and high oral English proficiency groups of L1 Chinese speakers who took Purdue&rsquo;s Oral English Proficiency Test (OEPT). Prosodic measurements of duration, F0, and intensity were gathered from adjacent function and content words in the OEPT audio data and compared with holistic OEPT scores. An ordered logistic regression found a significant difference (p = 2.00^e-16) among the three groups for how groups used durational differences between adjacent function and content words. Parallels of mental mapping of information are proposed between acoustic treatment of function and content words and the suppression and enhancement mechanisms of Gernsbacher&rsquo;s (1997a) Structure Building Framework.</p><p>

This thesis examines the possibility that connectivity in learner lexicons can be measured using receptive word-association tasks.

Abstract not available.

A thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, 2008. / Judging from what several of teachers have generally said about the poor performance and low levels of English proficiency, (how poorly they spoke, read and wrote), there seems to be a lack of interest or motivation among rural high school learners to acquire English proficiently. Thus, motivation being what initiates, sustains and directs thinking and behavior, as Louw and Edwards (1997:425) put it, and that motivational processes make us seek and find the things we need for our survival and development (approach motives) - one of the three variables on which good language learning depends, in Pride’s (1979) words, lack of it (motivation) is considered a worrying enough a situation, which warranted scrutiny and careful study. Many factors could account for such a decline or loss of interest in learning English, which is a need for survival in a cosmopolitan country like South Africa and in the world today. Only some kind of misunderstanding of freedom and language rights or misinformation and ignorance or even some form of a misguided ethnic endeavour suicidal in nature on the part of learners, could create or inform such an unfortunate situation of lack of motivation to learning English, when competition for jobs is so high. This research has investigated factors, which might account for what seems to be clearly a decline in interest or motivation among the rural KZN high school learners to acquire English proficiently. In order to meet the aims and objectives of the study, four different groups of people key to the study (people directly involved in the learning and teaching taking place in high schools situated in the rural communities of KwaZulu- Natal) had to be questioned about the matter: 1) learners from several rural high schools 2) high school educators - English subject specialists from a wide selection of rural high schools, as well as few primary school educators 3) parents of children learning in different rural high schools. 4) Some officials, too, from the KZN department of education were interviewed, from whom official information and statistics were obtained.

A thesis Submitted as a requirement for the degree of doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil) in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts at University of Zululand, 2008. / This study investigates communicative competence in English among rural African high school learners in the Eshowe circuit. Poor student performance especially in higher institutions has generally been linked to incompetence in English Second Language, which motivated an investigation into communicative competence among high school learners from a rural background. The study was conducted in five high schools in the Eshowe circuit The design of the study necessitated the adoption of qualitative approach in order to probe the multifaceted phenomenon of communicative approach in its natural setting (the classroom situation). The theoretical underpinnings on which this study relied on were extracted from the field of discourse analysis and text linguistics. Also, due to the nature of the study i.e. being concerned with communicative competence and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), much of the literature reviewed surveyed the concept of communicative competence from scholars and researchers such as Chomsky (1969); Hymes (1982); Widdowson (1985), and Saville-Troike (1997). Moreover, the linguistic context on which the study was based necessitated that we explore the definitions of bilingualism and multilingualism. Classroom discourse was used in analysing the lessons in a Second Language classroom setting. Lessons seemed to display a unique classroom interaction pattern, typical of teacher-pupil interaction in a Second Language classroom. In addition, the study looked at the extent to which the lessons complied with the expectations of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) with particular attention to \earner roles and teacher roles in CLT. Moreover, the analysis of lessons is subjected to seven standards of textuality discussed by Beaugrande and Dressier (1981), which helped determine the textuality of lesson texts, as these standards are activated during communicative events. The study further considered possible remedy to the errors found in English lesson transcripts. Though the National Curriculum Statement offered viable solutions to learners' errors, a challenge lied with errors committed by teachers, who according to the study, fell below the assumed competence and fell short of being subject specialists. Nevertheless, teachers' utterances were characterised by occurrences of code-switching, which according to the study played a positive role in regulating classroom behaviour. From the analysis of lessons it emerged that in most lessons, though a communicative approach was followed, there was little or no linguistic input from the teachers, which raised doubts about the implementation of the communicative approach to language teaching. Indeed, data indicated shortfalls in the implementation of CLT as expected in NCS. The problem of communicative incompetence loomed heavily not only over the learners, but also over the teachers as well, which is a cause for concern in the teaching of English as a Second Language.

Traditionally, the explanation of grammatical rules of a second language has been done in an explicit and deductive way. This means that the instructor explains the rules, and these grammatical explanations are followed by communicative practice activities. This case study will analyze the results obtained in the grammatical teaching of a Spanish rule using the PACE method (Adair-Hauck and Donato, 2016). This method is explicit and inductive, which means that the instructor who teaches the grammar rule guides the discussion of that rule to see if students are able to extract it from the text presented to them. Then, communicative activities of linguistic production follow.This study assumes that there is a connection between explicit and implicit knowledge of grammar (Ellis, 2005). This study teaches three lessons using the PACE method. One lesson teaches impersonal se, another teaches the passive se, and another lesson teaches the inchoative se to students who have studied three years of Spanish at an urban public school in Madison. This structure is complicated both syntactically and semantically for Spanish students as a second language. For this study, I fully transcribed the conversations about the grammar rule of three groups of students in the three lessons they received. I counted the amount of time they spent discussing the grammatical rule of the lesson of the day, and I also divided that conversation into four levels of increasing depth of analysis. I then fully transcribed all the communicative activities they had practicing the rule they previously discussed. Thus, I counted the number of cases that each student performed the correct or incorrect use of the rule. Finally, I counted the cases in which the activity stops being of a communicative nature because of problem or challenge arises. In order for students to solve the problem, they need to pay attention to the form. Therefore, I counted these interruptions and then divided such interruptions in four different categories, so that I could analyze the nature of the challenges students face when they communicate using the target rule. The results of my study did not count on the individual variability I found. In order to explain this unexpected variability, I used Storch's group dynamics (2002). According to his study, collaborative and expert/novice dyads are the ones that produce the best results in linguistic accuracy. The results of my study show that the collaborative dyad is the one that gets the best results in accuracy using the target rule, while in the other two groups that are an expert/novice dyad, the results obtained were positive as well, despite two texts missing in the communicative activities. This study concludes that the PACE method is a valid one, and an alternative to the traditional deductive way of teaching of grammar. Although this study makes no comparison with deductive teaching, the results point to a positive connection and impact between explicit grammatical explanations that are developed through PACE, and their subsequent realization in communicative activities where students speak spontaneously. In addition, this study proposes to encourage and analyze mutuality in groups that discuss the rule in future studies. It is the common element of the two most productive dyads, and it seems to be the easiest variable to control. / Spanish