Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-106).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 271-290).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 322-328). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-137). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-100). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ66400.

<p> Abstract not available.</p>

The present study aims to explore in what ways teachers work in a heterogeneous classroom with particular focus on the students’ diverse knowledge of the English language – a diversity caused by the fact that there are numerous students who learn English in an informal context outside of school, at the same time as there are those students who do not. In order to explore this aim, a study was conducted where five teachers at upper secondary level were interviewed. The results show that this diversity is the most challenging part of working as an English teacher today as experienced by four of the five teachers. It thus adds to other factors, such as, multiculturalism, multilingualism, difficulties with reading and writing etc. and makes it an even more difficult task for the teacher to support every student’s individualised learning.

No description available.

The process of second language acquisition is usually assumed to be affected by differences between the source language (L 1) and the target language (L2). Within the Minimalist approach (Chomsky 1995) crosslinguistic variation is accounted for in terms of differences in the values of features of functional categories instantiated in specific languages. Mature English differs from Hungarian in that its Tense category does not carry the [+f] feature characteristic of Hungarian focused sentences. Also, English lacks an additional functional projection dominating IP, namely F(ocus)P(hrase), which hosts focused, wh-, and negative operators in Spec,FP and attracts the verb or adjectival predicate into its head in order to satisfy spec-head agreement. It follows that English learners of Hungarian will have . to instantiate a new functional category FP and reset the values of the Tense category in their IL grammar. In this thesis we account for the difficulties faced by adult English learners of Hungarian by adopting the hypothesis that the two main classes of features have distinct learnability properties. It has been suggested that interpretable features (among them phi-features of nouns as well as [+wh] and [+f] features) are acquired easier than non-interpretable features (such as features responsible for V2 word order, resumptive pronouns, verbal inflection and nominal case morphology, as well as verb-movement associated with the Focus Projection in Hungarian). We demonstrate that this effect is also found -in our English-Hungarian interlanguage data. We show that even though L2 learners manage to prepose wh, focus and negative operators, they have continued difficulties with the accompanying verb-movement properties of Hungarian. This is reminiscent of the difficulties we find in child L 1 language acquisition of Hungarian. However, we argue that learnability factors have to be complemented by considerations about the nature of the target language input L2 learners receive. We propose that the nature of the TL input accounts for the differences between child and adult learners of Hungarian. It is well known that robust data (i.e. simple, salient and frequently occurring sentences) are required for the acquisition of correct feature-specifications of a target language. Infrequent data may cause a delay in the process of establishing L2 feature specifications and result in incomplete representations. Ambiguous data, on the other hand, are Iikely to ultimately result in divergent L2 representations at near native level. Testing these predictions in a study of acceptability judgements of adult English-speaking learners of Hungarian, we show that adult English speaking learners of Hungarian have difficulties in acquiring double wh- and double focus constructions as well as focused infinitives, long and partial operator movement in Hungarian. It is demonstrated that in the case of double wh- and double focus constructions native speakers' intuitions are indeterminate/optional, therefore the data L2 learners receive are not robust, leading to optionality in learners' interlanguage grammars. Although enjoying categorical judgements in native grammars, the nature of the input is similarly non-robust in the case of focused infinitives as well as long and partially extracted operator sentences. This is argued to lead to the difficulties L2 learners exhibit with respect to these structures. In the face of non-robust target language data learners are found to fall back on L 1 values and/or to resort to general learning strategies, such as overgeneralization and analogy.

This dissertation presents results from three experiments to address two research questions: What do the acquisition and processing of information structure tell us about the acquisition and processing of language in general, and what do the acquisition and processing of information structure tell us about the nature of information structure as a syntactic and pragmatic phenomenon? The first two experiments were behavioral studies of native and L2 speakers of French in which subjects made acceptability judgments of sentences containing felicitous or infelicitous information structure. In Experiment 1, there was evidence of a postmaturational effect of age of arrival on judgment task scores; the geometry of this age effect did not show evidence of leveling off over time, contrary to the predictions of some formulations of the critical period hypothesis for second language acquisition (e.g. Newport, 1990; cf. Birdsong & Molis, 2001). The results of this experiment are interpreted as evidence against the presence of a critical period for the acquisition of information structure in a second language. In Experiment 2, L2 learners in low- and high-proficiency groups performed a similar judgment task. Low-proficiency L2 learners exhibited lower scores on the information structure anomaly judgment task than did high-proficiency L2 learners and L1 speakers. The behavioral results from this experiment, in conjunction with electrophysiological data from Experiment 3, suggest that many subjects judged the target sentences based on truth value, rather than information structure. In Experiment 3, subjects were presented with sentences containing felicitous and infelicitous information structure while a 14-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. Results from this experiment suggest the presence of an N400 and P600 effect indexed with the processing of information structure anomalies in native-speaking subjects. L2 subjects of both high- and low-proficiency also exhibited a late positivity; however, results for the two groups diverged in the earlier time window, suggesting that high-proficiency speakers exhibit a P600 but low-proficiency speakers exhibit a P3 effect reflecting the processing of oddball stimuli. Taken together, the results from these experiments suggest that L2 speakers can acquire aspects of information structure processing to a nativelike degree. / text