The availability of Web 2.0 tools and multiple modalities through digital media is promoting a growing renaissance in linguistic diversity and cultural affiliations, providing a cosmopolitan and plurilingual and multicultural landscape for multilingual users. Full participation in these digitally-mediated activities involves not only print-based literacy but also new literacies that are emerging within Internet-mediated social and communicative contexts. In an effort to better understand how these communication technologies can be used to enhance second language acquisition (SLA), this study explores the relationship between social networking and second language (L2) learning. Grounded within theoretical frameworks of an ecological approach to language (van Lier, 2004), second language socialization (Duff, 2008), and new literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006), this dissertation examines use of social networking sites (SNS) by L2 learners/users of English as a group and as individuals over time in social networking communities through a mixed method approach, including quantitative (e.g., survey) and qualitative (e.g., case study) methods. The ultimate goal is not simply to describe the SNS use by L2 users, but to apply the findings to L2 writing pedagogy that can bridge students' in-school and out-of-school literacy practices and to examine the efficacy of that pedagogy. The three interrelated studies are comprised of 1) a survey-based study of SNS literacy practices and L2 learning, 2) a longitudinal case study of two L2 users' SNS-mediated community investment and identity formation, and 3) a study of the efficacy of an SNS-enhanced genre-awareness instructional unit in an ESL writing classroom. Findings show that L2 users, across culturally diverse groups, performed quantitatively and qualitatively differently in social media usage and displayed different culturally-informed patterns of technological affordances. The longitudinal case study on two users shows that the availability of Web 2.0-mediated semiotic resources allows users to perform complex identity work and explore multimodal selves over time. Implications are that L2 users can gain access to, develop new identities in, and acquire social capital in new communities. Results from the pedagogical intervention show that writing instructions using an SNS-enhanced genre-awareness approach can develop critical awareness of genres across both traditional and digital media.

Second language (L2) decoding – the sub-lexical process of mapping the graphemes of an alphabetic writing system onto the phonemes they represent – is argued to underpin various aspects of L2 learning, particularly vocabulary acquisition. Recently, second language acquisition research has shown increased interest in decoding, consistently finding evidence for L1-to-L2 transfer effects on learners’ processing mechanisms and outcomes. Correspondingly, studies conducted in Modern Foreign Language (MFL) classrooms in English secondary schools – an under-researched context – have found that beginner learners of French tend to (a) pronounce L2 words according to English decoding conventions and (b) make poor progress in this aspect of L2 learning. Recent official guidance for MFL teachers has addressed this problem by advocating an explicit focus on decoding, but there is a lack of convincing evidence (both in the MFL context and more widely) that explicit L2 decoding instruction can be effective. The current study therefore trialled two programmes of French decoding instruction for beginner MFL learners, delivered in ten- to fifteen-minute segments over around thirty lessons. Three intact secondary school classes followed a phonics-based approach; three classes from another school followed a programme in which learners were encouraged to derive the pronunciations of French graphemes from ‘source words’ in a memorized poem; and six classes in two other schools received no explicit decoding instruction. Participants (N=186) completed pre- and post-tests of French decoding; a sub-sample (N=15) also completed task-based self-report interviews. The two intervention groups made significantly more progress than the comparison group in terms of the number of graphemes pronounced ‘acceptably’, although the magnitude of the difference between the groups was small. Compared to the comparison group, the two intervention groups also appeared to show different and more extensive patterns of change in their realizations of individual graphemes, even where their pronunciations were still not ‘acceptable’. Finally, self-report data generally revealed little change in participants’ strategic reasoning, either in the intervention or comparison group. Together, these findings suggest that explicit instruction can improve beginner learners’ proficiency in decoding L2 French, but that their progress may follow a longer and more complex trajectory than simply moving directly from ‘incorrect’ to ‘correct’ forms. Further research is required to assess the effects (if any) of a given improvement in decoding proficiency on other language-learning outcomes; and to design and evaluate alternative programmes of instruction.

Collaborative work in pairs or groups is a common practice in the workplace, in content courses, and in classrooms across languages, settings, and geopolitical boundaries. However, research on collaborative writing—working with a partner to jointly produce a text, including both planning and writing phases—is limited. In addition, it has resulted in contradictory findings, especially in terms of whether learners deliberate about language and how the composition process affects the written texts produced learners produce. The present study, carried out in a fifth-semester university Spanish Writing course, examines the process (i.e., interaction) and product (i.e., written document) of a collaborative writing module that focused on the creation of narratives. The analysis of learners’ collaborative dialogue produced during the planning and writing phases of the interaction focuses on: (1) at a macro level, how learners apportion their time while collaboratively planning and producing a written narrative (e.g., planning, formulating, revising); and (2) at a micro level, the types (e.g., discourse, grammatical, lexical, mechanical), frequency, and resolution (e.g., resolved, unresolved, resolved incorrectly) of their language-related episodes (i.e., the instances where they talk about the language they are producing and question their language use). Learners’ jointly produced texts were examined analytically in terms of complexity, fluency, and accuracy measures, as well as holistically using a rubric. Additionally, a microdiscourse analytic approach was used to examine the means by which members of a collaborative pair position themselves as partners in a collaborative writing activity. Results indicate that a fully collaborative writing event is a productive site for co- constructed learning as students pool their knowledge to solve language-use problems, particularly those related to word choice and grammatical structures. Additionally, the texts composed collaboratively are of higher quality, based on several of the measures utilized, than texts composed individually by members of the collaborative pair. Finally, implications for implementing collaborative writing tasks in L2 classrooms are discussed.

Despite claims that the use of corpus tools can have a major impact in language classrooms (e.g., Conrad, 2000, 2004; Davies, 2004; O'Keefe, McCarthy, & Carter, 2007; Sinclair, 2004b; Tsui, 2004), many language teachers express apparent apathy or even resistance towards adding corpus tools to their repertoire (Cortes, 2013b). This study examines from a teacher cognition perspective (Borg, 2006) how three EAP (English for Academic Purposes) writing teachers identified their most pressing needs and considered possible ways that corpus tools might address those needs. After having an individualized corpus working session, each teacher put into practice one or more corpus tools to address self-identified needs in their writing classes. The teachers reflected on the process across a series of interviews and in a stimulated recall session, which were analyzed using qualitative research methods. Each teacher discussed the degree to which the lesson met her objectives, and considered how she might use such corpus tools in the future, as one component in the development of her teaching beliefs, knowledge base, and practices. Through thematic analysis of the interviews and the individualized corpus working sessions, themes emerged that tell the story of these three teachers as they moved through this process, relating to the issues of time, student engagement, material analysis, selection and design, issues related to corpus tools, language, institutional factors, and collaboration. A new area of specialization on the pedagogical uses of corpus tools is discussed, based on the results of the three cases. Implications for researchers, material designers, corpus tools specialists, teacher educators, administrators and teachers are considered.

In the theoretical and epistemological frameworks of Vygotsky’s cognitive theory and French intellectuals’ written legacy (Cixous, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, and Lyotard), the research explores philosophical, psychological, and educational migrations of a second language (L2) learner among cultures and languages in her comprehension and further nativization of an L2 through her comprehension and nativization of the culture of the language. The role of Canadian culture in Canada’s second/additional language education (SLE) is the research focus. In this research, the concept of Canadian culture is interpreted narrowly as literature, music, arts, and history of its people, and broadly as creations of its people. The dissertation consists of 3 parts: Pre-Theory, Theory, and Post-Theory. The Pre-Theory part is built according to the conventional thesis design: introduction, theoretical framework, literature review, research question, methodology, credibility, and significance. Narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006) as the initial methodology of the research unfolds in innovative ways as literary-philosophical essays in the Theory part, and later as a music-poetry work in the Post-Theory part. The Theory part is a conceptual philosophy-arts piece of writing that develops based on the principle “writing as a method of knowing”. The Post-Theory part is the researcher’s music-poetry work “I-Migrations: Psychedelic Story” that is a practical epitome of her research theory. Based on her own way of learning English, first, as a foreign language (FL) in Russia, and then as an L2 in Canada, the researcher theoretically substantiates her postulate of the underestimated role of Canadian culture, in terms of literature, music, arts, and history in Canada’s SLE and proposes to make Canadian culture an integral part of Canada’s SLE curricula. This research fulfils the gaps in the literature on an older L2 learner’s experience across a lifetime and the inclusion of arts and culture alongside of language learning in SLE. Keywords: second language, second language culture, writing, second language writing, second language education

The study, using a within-group design with eighteen adult high-beginner Chinese L2 learners, investigated the effects of peer review and co-writing on writing in Chinese-as-a-foreign language. Three writing conditions (peer review, co-writing, and individual writing) and three narrative writing topics were counterbalanced for the collection of data, including forty-five writing products, seventy-two questionnaires, videorecorded screen activities and interactions. The research has three main aims: (a) to investigate the effects of peer review and co-writing on writing with respect to fluency, complexity, and accuracy, (b) to explore the nature of verbal interactions during peer review and co-writing, and (c) to investigate students’ perceptions of the three writing activities. With regard to writing performance, the research found no statistically significant differences in measures of fluency and complexity. However, peer review and co-writing resulted in significantly more accurate writing than individual writing, but no difference was observed in the two collaborative writing activities. The analysis of verbal interactions indicated that (1) there were significantly more on-task episodes in peer review than in co-writing; (2) there were significantly more language-related episodes (LREs) and content-related episodes in peer review than in co-writing, while there were significantly more idea-related episodes and text-assessing episodes in co-writing than in peer review; (3) students paid significantly more attention to LRE-lexis and LRE-grammar in peer review than in co-writing, and the differences were mainly observed in discussions on word meanings, verb forms, word usage, and sentence/phrase meanings; and (4) there were also significantly more spelling episodes in peer review than in co-writing. Concerning students’ perceptions, although students tended to prefer co-writing to peer review and peer review to individual writing, they held competing attitudes toward the three activities and believed each of the three had their own strengths, which could not be replaced by the advantages of the other. The findings suggest that peer review, co-writing, and individual writing play different roles in Chinese L2 learners’ development of writing skills, as measured by a range of linguistic indices and as revealed by students’ evaluations. Thus, they are all important because they direct learners to different aspects of their language development. / Graduate

The influence of affective factors on learning has been studied by researchers in a range of disciplines, including within SLA research, where tests measuring anxiety specific to second language writing have been developed (Cheng, 2004). Recent studies on instructor perceptions show increasing numbers of second language learners (SLL) enrolled in mainstream university courses with instructors providing varying types of feedback to these learners. The current study investigates how the writing anxiety of second language learners in a mainstream context may relate to writing performance and how feedback anxiety resulting from one written assignment may be connected to writing performance on a subsequent assignment. Using modified writing anxiety survey instruments, 16 SLLs enrolled in two mainstream university English composition courses (taught by two instructors) completed two surveys, an informal interview, and an online questionnaire about feedback on two writing assignments prepared for their course; feedback and a grade from one assignment and a grade from a second assignment were also collected. Mainstream instructors were found to balance feedback provided to learners between content and organization feedback and grammatical feedback, similar to findings on feedback practices for second language instructors (Evans et al., 2010). Statistical analyses between survey results and grades revealed negative (non-statistically significant) correlations between anxiety scores (from surveys) and grades. Participants expressed 16 different emotions in response to feedback through qualitative data collection methods (open-ended survey questions, interviews, and online questionnaire); hope, acceptance, and anxiety were the three most commonly emotions reported. The number and complexity of emotional responses reported indicate that anxiety is only one of numerous responses to feedback and research on the effects of affective factors on learning may benefit from investigations of other emotions, including pleasant or positive emotions. Two data collection methods converged in reporting that nearly all participants made use of feedback through one or more forms of follow up action. Continued research into the complex emotions inspired by writing feedback may provide a deeper understanding of how SLLs may moderate their own emotional responses and provide instructors insight into additional factors that may affect learners’ writing performance. / Graduate / 0290 / amalec@uvic.ca

abstract: This yearlong project examines how multilingual undergraduate writers--including international visa students and U.S. permanent residents or citizens who are non-native English speakers--exercise agency in their first-year composition placement decisions. Agency is defined as the capacity to act or not to act contingent upon various conditions. The goal of the project is to demonstrate how student agency can inform the overall programmatic placement decisions, which can lead to more effective placement practices for multilingual writers. To explore the role of agency in students' placement decisions, I conducted a series of four in-depth interviews with eleven multilingual writers between Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 in the Writing Programs at Arizona State University. To triangulate these placement decisions, I interviewed some of the multilingual student participants' academic advisors and writing teachers as well as writing program administrators. Findings showed that when conditions for agency were appropriate, the multilingual student participants were able to negotiate placement, choose to accept or deny their original placement, self-assess their proficiency level as deciding to choose a writing course, plan on their placement, question about placement, and finally make decisions about a writing course they wanted to take. In the context of this study, conditions for agency include the freedom to choose writing courses and information about placement that is distributed by the following sources: advisors' recommendations, other students' past experience in taking first-year composition, the new student orientation, and other sources that provide placement related information such as an online freshman orientation and a major map. Other findings suggested that the academic advisor participants did not provide the multilingual students with complete placement information; and this affected the way the multilingual students chose which section of first-year composition to enroll in. Meanwhile, there was no formal communication about placement options and placement procedures between the Writing Programs and writing teachers. Building on these findings, I argue for improving conditions for agency by providing placement options, making placement information more readily available, and communicating placement information and options with academic advisors, writing teachers, and multilingual students. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2012

Orientador: Claudia Maria Xatara / Banca: John Robert Schmitz / Banca: Bento Carlos Dias da Silva / Banca: Claudia Zavaglia / Banca: Douglas Altamiro Consolo / Resumo: O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar parâmetros que possam ser utilizados para orientar melhorias e inovações lexicográficas, a fim de atender as dificuldades dos brasileiros na codificação escrita em línguas estrangeiras. Revisam-se criticamente várias pesquisas, em busca de subsídios que contribuam para diagnosticar as dificuldades de escrever em língua estrangeira, dentre elas os trabalhos produzidos por teóricos da Lexicografia, as pesquisas sobre o uso do dicionário e estudos sobre corpus de aprendizes. Realiza-se, também, uma pesquisa empírica sobre o uso dos dicionários na codificação a fim de complementar, com dados primários, as informações obtidas nas demais fontes. Uma vez conhecidas as necessidades dos usuários de dicionários, analisam-se as obras lexicográficas que expressam o propósito de auxiliar a produção em língua estrangeira. Nessa análise, verifica-se em que medida as necessidades identificadas são atendidas e como são atendidas. Chegase, assim, à conclusão de que algumas das dificuldades solucionáveis por meio da consulta ao dicionário já são satisfatoriamente atendidas pelas obras disponíveis, embora seja oportuno otimizar o acesso dos usuários às informações. Há necessidades, porém, que não são atendidas pelos dicionários ou são atendidas apenas parcialmente. A principal delas é a busca de equivalentes para itens lexicais do português. Há carência de dicionários bilíngües na direção português línguas estrangeiras que possuam, principalmente, a grande maioria dos sentidos e as colocações mais recorrentes de cada item lexical do português, além de ampla exemplificação do uso dos equivalentes em línguas estrangeiras. Para elaborar esses dicionários, o primeiro passo é definir uma nomenclatura que tome por base o léxico ativo do português do Brasil, incluindo lexias simples e complexas, com suas... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This work aims at presenting useful parameters for lexicographical improvements and innovations that meet encoding difficulties of Brazilian dictionary users. A critical review of lexicographers' works, and researches on second language writing, productive dictionary use, and learner's corpus, contributes to diagnose the problem of foreign language encoding. Also, an empirical research about dictionary use in encoding activities completes with primary data the information obtained from secondary sources. After identifying what dictionary users need, this work presents an analysis of five dictionaries which expressly mention their purpose to help users to write in a foreign language. Such analysis tries to measure to what extent, and how, users' needs are satisfied. The conclusion is that reference works are able to solve some of learners' difficulties, although it is desirable to improve the ways users retrieve information from them. However, there are some needs not met by dictionaries or only partially met. The major of them is the search for equivalents in foreign languages that correspond to Portuguese lexical items. There is a lack of bilingual dictionaries Portuguese-foreign language that present, specially, every meaning and recurrent collocations for Portuguese lexical items, besides examples of equivalents use in foreign language. To compile such dictionaries, the first step is to define a word-list based on Brazilian Portuguese active vocabulary, including simple and complex lexical units with all their respective senses. Then, it is suggested to find equivalents in foreign language with examples that illustrate pedagogically their use. For this work, results from other projects may be reused, such as semantic networks, collocation extraction, Brazilian learners corpus, and parallel corpora of Brazilian Portuguese and foreign languages. / Doutor

Although much research has reported the effectiveness of task repetition on oral performance (Bygate, 2018), few studies have investigated its effectiveness on writing performance (Manchón, 2014), especially in languages other than English. For instance, Nitta and Baba’s (2014) longitudinal study revealed that EFL undergraduates considerably progressed their syntactic complexity and lexical aspects, but not fluency, through repeating a timed writing task. In relation to the task repetition, however, whether and how L2 learners develop their grammatical accuracy and communicative adequacy (Pallotti, 2009) has remained unclear in the literature. Furthermore, in addition to the linguistic measurements and the qualitative assessments, scant research has attempted to investigate whether any significant changes are brought about in terms of learners’ perceptions through repeating language tasks. <br>Therefore, the current study has shed new light on the developmental changes in the writing performance of Japanese-as-a-foreign-language (JFL) learners. It investigated whether any remarkable changes are brought about in terms of overall complexity, complexity by subordination, accuracy, and fluency through repeating a weekly “15-Minute Writing Task” throughout one academic semester (16 weeks) and one academic year (32 weeks). The writing task topics were considered in terms of the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2001), which states that different cognitive demands of tasks will lead to different L2 output. Regarding this point, this study explored whether there were any significant differences between two task types: descriptive and argumentative essays. JFL learners who were enrolled in an intermediate-level course at an American university engaged in the two different types of timed writing tasks.<br>First, the one-semester investigation, based on the pre/posttest analysis, revealed different patterns between the two types of writing tasks. For the descriptive essays, despite the improvements in overall complexity, complexity by subordination, and fluency with a large effect size (r ≥ .6) (Plonsky & Oswald, 2014), no significant findings were confirmed for accuracy. In contrast, in the argumentative essays, the learners improved all the linguistic aspects but with a medium effect size (.4 ≤ r < .6).<br>Second, in the one-year investigation, the JFL learners significantly improved overall complexity, complexity by subordination, and fluency during the study period. The dynamic systems approach (Verspoor & van Dijk, 2011) also unraveled the developmental trajectories to show how different variables interacted in the two different types of writing tasks, respectively, throughout the measurement period. Although there were no statistically significant differences in grammatical accuracy measures, the process of L2 writing development showed fluctuations, demonstrating that the improvements in syntactic complexity seemed to have caused many grammatical errors temporarily. Lastly, the learners’ compositions, which were also assessed qualitatively by two native Japanese speakers in terms of readability, indicated significant improvements in communicative adequacy.<br>Finally, to investigate any changes in the learners’ beliefs toward Japanese writing before and after the task repetition, the JFL learners completed the Belief Questionnaire About Writing in Japanese (Ishibashi, 2009). In addition, to examine any changes in foreign language anxiety with a focus on Japanese writing, the learners were required to complete the second-language version of the Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test (Cheng, Horwitz, & Schallert, 1999). The study found that the extensive writing experience had a positive impact on the JFL learners’ confidence and willingness when writing in L2 Japanese.<br><br>