This study investigated the underlying factor structure of second language (L2) cloze test performance as explained by a theoretical model including the following hypothetical constructs: cloze-taking ability, knowledge of language, knowledge of text content, and knowledge of contextual constraints. Eight cloze tests reflecting the posited factors were constructed and administered to 182 Francophone, university-level students. The factors were examined separately and in combination through a causal model building process. A model composed of three orthogonal factors was confirmed and accepted as the best explanation of the data. The results indicate that cloze performance is dependent upon knowledge of a specific language (second language or first language) and nonlinguistic-specific knowledge related to close-taking ability that crosses over linguistic boundaries. Cloze has been considered as an overall L2 proficiency measure. This study empirically demonstrates that factors other than language are significantly contributing to cloze performance. It also demonstrates the potential of a causal modeling approach.

<p> The purpose of this holistic single-case study was to identify and to understand the child, the family, and the school interactions that influence the development of Brazilian students&rsquo; English fluency. The general research question was: What perceived influences act within and on the students&rsquo; language acquisition to acquire English fluency? A purposeful sample of seventeen participants evidenced the factors that influenced the seventh and the eighth grade Brazilian students&rsquo; English fluency. Data were collected through 17 interviews, tape-recordings, interview transcriptions, document analysis, and 17 member-check interviews. Data were coded and analyzed through the NVivo 10.0 for Mac Beta. The seven themes of external influences that emerged from the data of the factors that influenced Brazilian students&rsquo; English fluency included: English Lessons are Priority in Extracurricular Activities, Technology Use is Fundamental in English Fluency, Parents Participate in the Learning Experience, Contact with Culture and Native Speakers Advances English, Parents Set High Standards, the Curriculum, and Teachers&rsquo; Competency Influences English Fluency. One sub-theme resulted: Parents&rsquo; Motivate through Example. The two internal themes included: (1) Students are Naturally Interested in English, and (2) Students Enjoy Learning. The findings of this study supported the literature that ecological factors influence students&rsquo; learning, specifically the family, the school, and the community. Identifying and understanding the positive interactions that influenced the students&rsquo; learning of English in this case may benefit teachers and families, to improve the students&rsquo; learning a foreign language for success in the Brazilian context.</p>

<p> From a critical race theory perspective, this study examined how leaders in a California public school district support English language learners (ELLS) while implementing Proposition 227, a policy that strengthened the structures of inequality by imposing English as the language of instruction. The problem this study addressed was the effect Proposition 227 has had on school leaders' capacity to support the needs of ELLs. A qualitative multiple-case study, this study examined inconsistencies among tiers of leadership with regard to support systems for ELLs, irregular monitoring practices, and a lack of language resources. These findings also reveal a focus on oral and academic language development and outline professional development and review of ELLS' data as best practices.</p><p> This study employed nine semistructured interviews. Analysis is presented through a tiered leadership model that includes perceptions from board members, district administrators, and school principals. This study is vital to informing the literature on how leaders understand instruction for ELLs and implement support services in public schools.</p>

The number of learners of Japanese as a second or other language has increased rapidly worldwide over the past several decades. The objectives of their study have largely changed from pursuing purely academic research interests to acquiring the communicative skills needed for business or leisure purposes. There are five language competency skills needed to master foreign languages: reading, writing, listening, speaking and intercultural competence. Students, particularly those studying outside Japan, depend more on textbooks for learning how to speak than their peers in Japan; and speaking is studied formally through analysis of model discourses in selected textbooks. In particular, if the learner’s first language is very different from Japanese, which in fact almost all other languages are, the complexity of the spoken language, including gender difference and respect forms, presents most learners with certain challenges that require adequate explanation to be comprehended. Likewise, the larger the cultural gap between learner and target language, the greater are the challenges for acquiring intercultural competence, which is closely interrelated with the production of ‘natural speech’. It is, therefore, crucial for learners from other cultures who have little opportunity to speak in Japanese to learn from a textbook of good quality which provides appropriate explanation of the social and cultural context of the model dialogues they employ as exemplars. The present study aims to analyse and evaluate the appropriateness of model dialogues contained in intermediate level textbooks for learners of Japanese as a second or other language. The findings suggest that none of the selected textbooks included satisfactory explanation about the model discourses, so there seems to be much room for improvement in this regard. It is anticipated that the results of this study will contribute to the design concept of foreign language textbooks in future.

No description available.

<p> The purpose of this quantitative descriptive dissertation study was to examine teacher perceptions of instructional issues and delivery and working environments of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programs. Data were collected from ESP teachers at 12 universities in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam through an online survey. This study was significant since the results might benefit the design, development, and evaluation of ESP curriculums to reduce significant problems and enhance ESP teaching quality. Also, the exploration of teacher perceptions can help school administrators work around the limitations of their contextual conditions and impose a higher level of impact on transformation and development of ESP programs.</p><p> The collected data were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The questionnaire included 32 items that were rated on a four-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Descriptive statistics including means and standard deviations were used to answer Research Question 1. Independent samples t-tests and ANOVAs were used for research question 2 to determine how the groups were different from one another. The results pointed out aspects of ESP programs that were perceived similarly and differently by groups of respondents based on the gender, age, educational backgrounds, and ESP teaching experience.</p>

<p> Research on age and second language acquisition (L2A) is vast, but inconclusive. Such research has mainly been motivated by the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), which postulates that language acquisition becomes extremely difficult after the onset of puberty. Also, there is a lack of research on age and third/additional language (L3/Ln) learning. To fill this gap, this dissertation examines differences in morphosyntactic knowledge between early and late learners of English as a L3/Ln. In this study, `early' and `late' learners are those participants first exposed to English as a medium of instruction (MOI) in 1st and 11th grades, respectively. Participants' morphosyntactic knowledge was assessed based on two tasks: (a) a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) and (b) an editing task, which required participants to correct morphosyntactic errors. Three hundred and thirty five undergraduate and graduate students from two universities in Pakistan voluntarily participated in the research. </p><p> Results of the group comparisons showed no statistically significant differences between early and late learners on the GJT; however, on the editing task, a modest but significant difference was observed between the two groups, with late learners scoring higher. This finding contradicts the predictions of the CPH. </p><p> On individual morphosyntactic features in the GJT, a significant difference was observed between the two groups on past tense and third person singular. The effect sizes supported an edge for late learners. In contrast to the GJT, on the editing task all morphosyntactic features (a total of eight features) except adverb suffix, present progressive, and past tense showed a small but significant difference, again favoring late learners. In terms of task difficulty, both groups attained higher scores on the GJT and lower scores on the editing task. Also, a strong and statistically significant correlation was found between scores for grammatical and ungrammatical stimuli on the GJT, but a very weak and statistically non-significant correlation between the grammatical and ungrammatical halves of the GJT and the editing task. </p><p> Results showed that early L3/Ln learners did not have an edge over late L3/Ln learners in their morphosyntactic proficiency in this English as an additional language context. This dissertation explored L3/Ln learning by predominantly Urdu and Punjabi bilingual speakers, a previously unexplored population. The two measures used provided complementary perspectives on grammatical knowledge. Future research should also examine early and late proficiency differences using a more ecologically valid measure (e.g., a writing task). </p>

This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a software-administered shaping procedure in guiding English monolinguals to acquire accurate Mandarin pronunciation. A single-subject reversal ABAB design was used to evaluate treatment effects. A purposely-developed algorithm generated an accuracy score defined as the similarity between a participant’s utterance and the target pronunciation. The shaping procedure provided performance-dependent reinforcement, while the control condition provided performance-independent reinforcement at a density yoked to the shaping procedure. A no-feedback condition assessed spontaneous language learning ability prior to treatment. Data were evaluated via visual analysis and complemented with effect size analyses and repeated-measures ANOVAs. There were no overall treatment effects. However, three individuals demonstrated a statistically significant difference between treatment and control. A follow-up study compared shaping to no feedback using a simplified procedure and simpler stimuli. A multiple-baseline design was used. The results showed no treatment effects. Possible contributing factors and directions for future research are discussed.

<p> This dissertation study investigated the extent to which formulaic sequences that were manipulated for mutual information (MI; the strength of co-occurrence) and congruency (the existence of equivalent forms between languages) are holistically stored and processed in reading aloud by Korean learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) as well as English native speakers. Despite the claims made for the role of formulaic sequences (e.g., idioms, collocations, and lexical bundles) in saving processing effort as ready-made chunks, little is known about second language (L2) on-line processing (Siyanova-Chanturia &amp; Martinez, 2014). </p><p> To advance our understanding of this research domain, a read-aloud task was developed and administered to the two language groups of students in lab-based, individual settings. A total of 225 spoken verb-noun sequences were used as stimuli: 180 collocations and 45 noncollocations. A total of 12 collocation sets contained 15 items each (high vs. low MI; congruent vs. incongruent; high, mid, and low frequency bands), and 3 noncollocation sets contained 15 items from each of the three frequency bands. The numbers of letters and syllables, the whole sequence frequency, and the bigram frequency were matched across the sets. Using DMDX (Forster &amp; Forster, 2003), the read-aloud task was administered to each participant who read aloud each sequence as quickly and accurately as possible. A translation task of the target stimuli was additionally administered to the L2 speakers so that only known stimuli were included in the analyses. Linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) were used to answer the overarching question: <i>Are advanced Korean learners of English likely to process collocations and noncollocations in the same ways native speakers?</i> </p><p> Results of the analyses showed that: (a) the L2 group as well as the L1 group read the collocations more slowly than the noncollocations; (b) MI level had no effect on both group&rsquo;s collocation processing; (c) congruency had no effect on L2 students&rsquo; collocation processing; and (d) using LMMs to analyze the read-aloud time data was challenging but powerful. It was concluded that, when reading aloud, collocations were not holistically stored or retrieved based on a comparison with noncollocations. A few potential factors, such as experimental tasks, types of formulaic sequences, or semantic transparency, which could affect the processing, were also discussed. The dissertation concludes by providing implications, limitations, and suggested venues for future research.</p>

<p>This study investigated the longitudinal impact of an extensive reading approach on Korean EFL university students? reading comprehension, reading rate, vocabulary acquisition, and motivation to read over a 15-week semester. The study also examined the relationship between two types of vocabulary tests (i.e., a generalized vocabulary knowledge test and individualized vocabulary knowledge tests) designed for the study. Additionally, students? perceptions of extensive reading throughout the semester were explored. A quasi-experimental research design was employed using four intact classes, two comparison (n = 88) and two experimental (n = 83) classes. The comparison classes received 100-minute intensive reading instruction per week whereas the experimental classes received 70-minute equivalent intensive reading instruction and 30-minute extensive reading instruction per week. A reading comprehension and rate test and a generalized vocabulary test were administered at pre- and post-tests. Sixty-two students in the experimental classes who read consistently throughout the semester also took individualized vocabulary tests to assess learning of the words that appeared in the reading materials read by individual students. Additionally, an extensive reading motivation questionnaire (post-test only) was administered to the experimental classes to determine which factors in the questionnaire would predict students' reading amount. Finally, a semi-structured interview protocol was employed at three different time intervals during the semester. Repeated-measures MANOVA revealed that the experimental classes significantly outperformed the intensive reading classes on the combination of the three dependent variables (i.e., reading comprehension, reading rate, and vocabulary acquisition). Results of the investigation of the relationship between the two types of vocabulary tests revealed that the two tests showed similar patterns in terms of measuring vocabulary knowledge as a result of extensive reading. Finally, in terms of the participants? motivation to read, a multiple regression analysis indicated that one predictor variable (i.e., Reading for Academic Achievement) was able to predict the participants? motivation to read. In addition, qualitative results from interviews with 19 students showed that the participants had positive extensive reading experience over a 15-week semester; their perceptions of extensive reading and extensive reading practices support the findings from the quantitative data. Implications for extensive reading in L2 curricula are discussed.