<p>Research has shown that children who have English as a first language acquire grammatical morphemes in a predictable order. Many researchers claim that second language learners also follow a predictable pattern when learning English grammatical morphemes regardless of their linguistic background, and that the same mechanisms are responsible for both first and second language acquisition.</p><p>The aim of this paper was to study Swedish students’ knowledge of English grammatical morphemes, and to compare their knowledge with that of second language learners from other countries as well as with that of first language learners.</p><p>The results show that Swedish students seem to acquire morphemes in a similar way to that of second language learners in general and that they make errors similar to those made by first language learners. For example, the copula was almost fully acquired, while the third person regular and irregular constituted a problem for the students. The most notable exception was the possessive ´s, which Swedish students seem to acquire at an early stage compared to other second language learners.</p>

<p>This research used diary studies and interviews with five Japanese learners of English to investigate the different affective, cognitive and social factors that affected their learning of English in Cape Town between 2004 and 2005. The findings of this study corroborate arguments put forward by Gardner that factors such as learning goals, learning strategy, attitude, motivation, anxiety, self-confidence and cultural beliefs about communication affect the acquisition of a second language and correlate with one another.</p>

Abstract This study is to finding out how second language teachers can use music as a method to teaching multilingual students in Swedish as a second language. This study even deals with assets and challenges using music as a method in teaching and learning Swedish as a second language. To answer these questions, data was collected by interviews with three pedagogues who have experiences from teaching in Swedish language with music as a method. The result shows that music helps multilingual students to learn Swedish as a second language both in an individual level and in a group level. With music you can practice accent, vocal clang, pitch, and rhythmics. Music has a social influence and creates safe atmosphere in the classroom. It even creates a place of meetings between different cultures and generations. This way of working requires a brave, flexible and a direct pedagogue. There are different ways of working with music as a method in second language teaching. The students can translate favorite songs from their homelands and then teach their classmates the same song in both languages. Together you can create your own songs connected to other theoretical subjects in school. The students can shape music and songs by drawing pictures and then let them write texts to their own pictures. What is obvious is that music promotes second language progress.

Understanding the process of language acquisition is a challenge that many researchers spanning different disciplines (e.g. linguistics, psychology, neuroscience) have grappled with for centuries. One which has in recent years attracted a lot of attention has been in the area of non-native phoneme acquisition. Speech sounds that contain multiple phonetic cues are often difficult for foreign-language learners, especially if certain cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. Greek adult and child speakers of English were studied to determine which cues (duration or spectral) they were using to make discrimination and identification judgments for an English vowel contrast pair. To this end, two forms of identification and discrimination tasks were used: natural (unedited) stimuli and another ‘modified’ vowel duration stimuli which were edited so that there were no duration differences between the vowels. Results show the Greek speakers were particularly impaired when they were unable to use the duration cue as compared to the native English speakers. Similar results were also obtained in control experiments where there was no orthographic representation or where the stimuli were cross-spliced to modify the phonetic neighborhood. Further experiments used high-variability training sessions to enhance vowel perception. Following training, performance improved for both Greek adult and child groups as revealed by post training tests. However the improvements were most pronounced for the child Greek speaker group. A further study examined the effect of different orthographic cues that might affect rhyme and homophony judgment. The results of that study showed that Greek speakers were in general more affected by orthography and regularity (particularly of the vowel) in making these judgments. This would suggest that Greek speakers were more sensitive to irrelevant orthographic cues, mirroring the results in the auditory modality where they focused on irrelevant acoustic cues. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of language acquisition, with particular reference to acquisition of non-native phonemes.

The present thesis investigates to what extent contemporary ELT textbooks include reading materials as well as what types of texts are being used and what reading strategies they seemingly promote. Additionally, the study analyzes whether there is a noticeable discrepancy in teaching materials designed for the vocational and university preparatory and considers whether the design of the current textbook is representative of the current view of reading as a teaching tool as reflected in official policy documents. Through the means of a content analysis of a total of six in use ELT textbooks, the study discovers that few ELT textbooks include a satisfactory amount of reading materials and that there is a significant discrepancy between teaching materials intended for the separate orientations of upper secondary school in Sweden. It is also discovered that the set of textbooks largely reflect the current view of language teaching. The study concludes that the current practice of language teaching is ill-suited to counter the development of declining reading literacy and suggests an alternative methodology in extensive reading.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how preschool teachers in preschools inspired by the pedagogical philosophy of Reggio Emilia use aestheticforms of expression to support the Swedish language development of children that have Swedish as a second language. We want to know how these teachers incorporate aesthetics in the work with second language learners and how they use creative expressions as tools in this process. The study is based on a qualitative method focusing on interviews with five preschool teachers. The interviews were held in four different preschools in the county of Stockholm, all inspired by the pedagogical philosophy of Reggio Emilia and all located in multicultural areas. The results are analysed with the help of three theoretical perspectives: Dewey’s theories concerning experience, pedagogy and art, the socio-cultural perspective and social semiotics. The results of the study show that aesthetics are a vital part of the ReggioEmilia-preschools we have visited, though they aren’t always incorporated in the work with the second language learners. Second language development was stimulated through aestheticforms of expression in both planned and spontaneous activities, with the help of the preschool teachers. Aestheticexperiences were used as tools through their potential to include everyone and introduce multiple paths towards language development. Preschool teachers also experienced that their presence and listening skills were important in this process. As they, for example, named things and happenings around the children they scaffolded the children’s second language development.

This corpus-based study examined English and Spanish learner language for ‘heart’ metaphors. Gutiérrez Pérez (2008) compared ‘heart’ metaphors across five languages and that study served as a reference framework for the work presented here. This work intended to find evidence of metaphor transfer and/or new metaphor learning in second language writing. Conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) and linguistic or lexical metaphors (Falck, 2012) from both languages were considered in the analysis. This work analyzed ‘heart’ metaphors taken from two learner corpora, the Cambridge Learner Corpus and the Corpus de Aprendices de Español. Results were compared to the findings of Gutiérrez Pérez (2008) to see whether these metaphors typically occur only in English, only in Spanish, or are found in both languages. The results showed evidence of language learners using several kinds of metaphors that do not typically occur in their first language. The aim of this study was to add a new facet to this body of research by examining these phenomena in learner corpora rather than monolingual corpora. Furthermore, this study also examined both second language English and second language Spanish corpora, addressing potential bi-directionality of transfer or conversely, the use of new linguistic forms.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Curriculum and Instruction / Socorro Herrera / The primary purpose of this study was to explore ways in which teachers can increase their second language (L2) learners’ reading comprehension through constructing situation models. The author incorporated theoretical frameworks, including the situation model theory (Kintsch, 1998/2007), the event index model (Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998), and the linguistic threshold hypothesis (Clark, 1980; Aldersen, 1984; Carrell, 1991). As an educational intervention, a set of adjunct questions were asked during reading to elicit readers’ explanations of causality and intentionality to promote coherent comprehension. A total of 117 L2 readers’ ability to make appropriate inferences based on situation models was assessed through both quantitative (experimental-control design) and qualitative (think-aloud) methods. This experimental study examined the effect of explaining to target situation models, while also looking at the relationship between the readers’ inferential ability and their L2 proficiency. In addition to the main effects of the intervention and L2 proficiency, the interaction between the intervention and L2 proficiency were discussed as results of the quantitative analysis. Also discussed was the nature of the L2 readers’ responses to adjunct questions, which were designed to measure the quality of their explanations based on the underlying situations in the text that they were reading. This study extended existing research on situation model-level comprehension to L2 literacy, which has not previously been well studied. This made the study theoretically interesting as well as highly applicable to L2 reading instruction. The main findings of this study were: (1) there was a strong effect of question types (inferential vs. non-inferential questions) with greater accuracy overall for non-inferential questions, (2) there was a suggestive trend of question type interacting with L2 proficiency, such that higher proficiency participants showed little difference between question types, (3) there was no statistically significant main effect of the adjunct question manipulation on accuracy, and (4) there was a trend suggesting an interaction between experimental condition and L2 proficiency, with higher proficiency participants showing a somewhat larger effect of the adjunct question manipulation. Additionally, both quantitative and qualitative data trended in the direction consistent with the linguistic threshold hypothesis.

This study investigates the acquisition of Chinese connectives by second language learners under the theoretical framework of usage-based theory. Language is not a random set of words and phrases, but rather a coherent and cohesive set of utterances. As such, learning a second language (L2) entails, among other processes, learners’ development of employing cohesive devices to construct a coherent discourse in their target language. One type of cohesive devices frequently used by L2 learners is connectives. In Chinese, connectives are utilized to denote various semantic relationships between the clauses in a compound sentence. Due to their flexibility and complexity in nature, Chinese connectives present a huge challenge to L2 learners’ learning. However, to date no study has been set up to explore the learners’ development of Chinese connectives within L2 Chinese research community. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature and build an L2 acquisitional model of Chinese connectives under the theoretical framework of Constructionist Usage-based Theory. Constructionist Usage-based Theory maintains that the basic unit of language is constructions and that the syntactic and lexical form of constructions and its corresponding semantic and discourse functions are conventionalized in language usage. According to these notions, language learning is believed to be driven by the factors grounded in the form and function of constructions in language usage. This study specifically examines how the factors of frequency, form, function, contingency (interaction of form and function), and L1-tuned attention affect L2 Chinese learners’ development of Chinese connectives. Furthermore, the study investigates the learners’ knowledge about the distribution of Chinese connectives across different proficiency levels. Specifically, this study aims to address four research questions: (1) what is the relationship between L2 learners’ proficiency level and language background and the acquisition of Chinese connectives?; (2) do L2 learners overuse or underuse Chinese connectives in constructing responses when the other in a pair is given and what errors do L2 learners make when using Chinese connectives?; (3) how can 12 target pairs of Chinese connectives be categorized into (hierarchical) groups based on L2 Chinese learners’ performance?; and (4) how do theoretically-motivated models represent the factorial structure underlying L2 acquisition of Chinese connectives? To address the four research questions, this study elicited L2 Chinese learners’ performance in two tests: a mini-discourse completion test and a form-function association test. In the mini-discourse completion test, learners were required to supply a missing clause to complete a three-clause discourse in which one of paired connectives was embedded; in the form-function association test, learners were asked to choose options of paired connectives to link two given clauses where connectives were omitted. Results showed that the development of all Chinese paired connectives was positively correlated to L2 learners’ L2 proficiency level. Learners with heritage language background seemed to have an advantage over less frequent and less prototypical connectives. Predominantly, L2 learners underused Chinese connectives, resulting from the cross-linguistic influence of disparity between English and Chinese connectives at the structural level in particular and between English and Chinese textual cohesion at the discourse level in general. Based on L2 learners’ performances in the two tests, the 12 pairs of Chinese connectives were classifier into four hierarchical groups. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the usage-based factors (i.e., frequency, co-occurrence strength, formulaicity, prototypicality, contingency, and L1-tuned attention) jointly determined the L2 acquisition and development of Chinese connectives in a complex, adaptive, dynamic manner. Summarizing these findings, this study proposed a usage-based acquisitional model of L2 Chinese connectives, providing theoretical contributions to the usage-based theory and pedagogical implications for Chinese connectives.

The general aim of this study is to better understand aspects of using reference tools for writing and to identify technologies that can assist foreign language writers. The specific purpose of this study is to look closely at how English as a Second Language (ESL) students from Korea use a corpus as a reference tool in conjunction with dictionaries when paraphrasing English newspaper articles. The participants were Korean graduate students with advanced English proficiency (N=10). Their task was to paraphrase an English newspaper article. The results show that purposes for using a concordancing program include collocations, definitions, context, and parts of speech. The subjects looked for a variety of information in a concordancing program, including prepositions, authentic samples, and the context in which the search terms were used. Reasons for using dictionaries include definitions, parts of speech, and sample sentences. The most common strategy was to combine reference tools, while the second most common was to use a specific search word. Subjects who used more than one tool for a search or performed multiple searches were more successful in finding what they were looking for. A concordancing program enabled users to see multiple examples of everyday language use. By using the concordancing program, learners were able to see words that were used most frequently, their patterns, and collocations. Learners took more responsibility for their language learning, as they became researchers in their own right. They gained confidence as L2 writers as they had inside access to linguistic resources. The subjects became more independent and were able to solve their own writing and linguistic problems as they became more aware through the use of authentic texts. In this study, the subjects found the corpora to be useful for sentence-level composition and revision. Overall, the use of reference tools led to an improvement in the accuracy of writing. A concordancing program played an important role in defining the structure and context of English phrases and sentences.