Current research into L2 motivation addresses all aspects of language learning. However, there is a paucity of research into students’ L2 motivations to improve their speaking skills. Specifically, research on pronunciation issues is very rare. This report sheds light on factors that relate to pronunciation issues and their facilitating or hindering effects on L2 motivation. It starts by reviewing research that informs about students’ social-psychological and utilitarian motivations to acquire a second language. Interestingly, these general L2 motivations are mostly affected by factors related to students’ pronunciation skills. The second section discusses the negative factors, which have been found to hinder students’ motivations to learn, and in particular to improve their pronunciation. Based on these research findings, the third section of the report offers recommends pronunciation-teaching strategies to motivate and empower students. This report makes a case for Multi-competence that focuses on increased intelligibility through suprasegmentals and sociopragmatic awareness. / text

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published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

<p> With an increasing concern in the American school system being the significant growth in the number of bilingual students, the communication between teacher and student, and student to student, has become a focus of attention. The purpose of the present study was to draw on Sullivan&rsquo;s (2012) dialogical approach and Bakhtin&rsquo;s theoretical framework on the concept of dialogism, using Bakhtin&rsquo;s notions of utterance as the unit of analysis. Bakhtin&rsquo;s (1986) primary (oral speech genres) and secondary genres (narrative texts) were applied to analyze the growth of oral language and meaning-making during interactive read-alouds when carefully scaffolded open-ended questions were utilized. The study approached the field through an individual and collective case study with two dual language learners (Ballantyne et al., 2008) in a kindergarten classroom. Participants&rsquo; utterances were collected using videotaped and audiotaped sessions and were analyzed by applying Cazden&rsquo;s IRE (2001) protocol and a writing protocol. The findings suggested that Bakhtin&rsquo;s ideas of author/hero, double-voicing, and elements of carnivalesque matter in the narrative texts read during interactive read-alouds. The findings also determined that Bakhtin&rsquo;s concepts of (a) One Utterance, (b) Multiple Utterances, (c) Double-voicing, and (d) Revoicing emerged from the dataset. The triangulation of data sources confirmed the importance of teachers examining the texts to be used during read-alouds, and the importance of creating a dialogical atmosphere that generates multiple utterances from its participants and increases oral language skills and meaning-making.</p>

<p> Focusing on a Vygotskian theory of cultural historical psychology, this dissertation features a narrative analysis to examine the role of subjectivity and the generative potential and agency manifested in Non Native English Speaking Teachers&rsquo; (NNESTs) successful development of L2 (English) fluency. My research creates another view of a Vygotskian theory by means of the imagination. Building on a cultural-historical approach, I conducted a qualitative analysis of how these teachers&rsquo; pathway to fluency evolved from their Imagined Destinations. This term is defined as a goal or objective in the mind of the learner that mediates, and is mediated by, his or her lived experiences. </p><p> The concept I coin as Imagined Destinations surfaced in my three initial pilot cases and took shape while working with NNES Panam&aacute;nian teachers, from the analysis of online survey data with 27 of these experienced teachers, and detailed case study analyses of the language learning of eight of these teachers. These data revealed how participants dynamically create and recreate their environments through agentive roles that support the transformation of their environments to advance their goals. </p><p> These transformations have implications for how subjectivity, agency, and acquisition of the target language intertwine throughout the participants&rsquo; lived experiences or pathways to learning, thus providing an additional way to look at subjects and subjectivities within a Vygotskian theoretical frame. The findings also indicate that teachers&rsquo; language trajectories are continuous, emergent, and the result of taking on very deliberate ecological roles in their bilingual success despite recurring salient and limiting circumstances. These findings about the centrality of Imagined Destinations in learning &ldquo;smudges&rdquo; the perception that societal power outweighs the dynamic and agentive roles of individuals as active molders of their lives. </p><p> Finally, this dissertation also seeks to enrich scholarship by demonstrating how NNESTs use their bilingual identities built from their trajectories to bilingualism as ways to influence and inspire their own students&rsquo; second language learning.</p>

<p> This Master's thesis seeks to gain further understanding of the issues confronting Latino speakers of ESL with respect to language learning and identity. Specifically, through group and individual interviews that I conducted with Latino immigrants involved with a community-based ESL program in Southeast Michigan, I investigate the factors that shape these individuals' attitudes towards the English language as well as the ways in which pedagogical practices may foster or impede the development of ownership, confidence, and a positive sense of self in the target language. In the first chapter, I examine how recent applications of poststructuralism in second language acquisition (SLA) research serve as the theoretical underpinnings of the present study. Additionally, I outline some of the social, political, and cultural hegemonies impacting the lives of Latinos living in the United States and how SLA researchers have investigated these as they concern the social aspects of language learning. Chapter Two not only delineates the ethnographic methods I used to carry out the current research, but also aims to describe in detail many of the difficulties I encountered as a novice researcher in the hopes that it may benefit other newcomers to empirical exploration. The third chapter of this paper is dedicated to elucidation and analysis of the insights shared by interview participants. Amidst findings that life circumstances and the opinions of others (both native English speakers and Hispanic peers) often preclude these individuals from feeling they can take legitimate claim to English, I offer implications for the ESL classroom that may help students to explore their relationship to the language. Lastly, I propose the limitations of my research as well as directions for future inquiries.</p>

No description available.

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) allows designers to control for rate of speech and the amount and kinds of control learners have over playback in listening comprehension exercises for second language (L2) learners. Research shows that slower rates of speech can improve listening comprehension (Chaudron, 1988; Zhao, 1997), as can pausing (Zhao, 1997). Jensen and Vinther's (2003) work suggests that, in listening comprehension training, slower speeds can help improve L2 learners' comprehension of grammatical structures.This study examined the influence of different rates of speech and learner controls in a CALL environment. The study used a pretest--training--posttest design. All subjects were pre-tested on listening comprehension on both slow (135 words per minute) and fast (180 words per minute) dialogues. They also performed a maze task as a pretest. Then the participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions for ten training sessions: A) trained on only fast dialogues, B) trained on only slow dialogues, C) given a choice of speed for the second playback during the lessons, and D) given an option to pause playback when listening the second time. Posttests followed training. Data were also collected through surveys and interviews, allowing the issues of CALL design and communication and learning strategy use to be investigated as well.The data support the previous research but also suggest that design features can affect L2 learners either positively or negatively. This study, which was done with Chilean, college-level students of English as a foreign language (EFL), has implications for CALL design and classroom teaching, as well as language testing. These are discussed, as are suggestions for future research.