Comment définir des objectifs d’apprentissage linguistiques spécifiques à un public d’étudiants allophones dans le domaine de la production écrite par l’étude d’un genre particulièrement représenté dans les littéracies universitaires : le texte argumentatif ? Partant de l’hypothèse de la nécessité d’un enseignement conjoint de la langue et des contenus disciplinaires, notre travail consiste à proposer des approches et modalités complémentaires aux outils du FLE « tout public » utilisés pour l’enseignement du français à l’université. Nous analysons d’abord ces outils du FLE : manuels de l’approche actionnelle, CECRL et certifications de langues (DELF/DALF et TCF), afin de mettre en exergue leurs apports pour un public étudiants allophones , mais aussi les lacunes qu’ils présentent pour une formation spécifiquement universitaire. Les études menées dans le domaine du FOU nous ont ensuite permis de formuler 5 hypothèses préalables à l’analyse de notre corpus contrastif. Ce corpus a été constitué dans le but d’identifier les besoins spécifiques des étudiants allophones dans l’exercice d’une production écrite argumentée. Il est constitué de productions d’étudiants allophones d’une part (corpus ETR) et francophones d’autre part (corpus FR). Nous présentons ce corpus et son analyse selon la typologie constituée sur la base de nos hypothèses de départ et proposons pour conclure une grille de critères permettant d’établir une évaluation diagnostique des compétences en littéracies universitaires. Enfin, nous soumettons quelques propositions didactiques pour des séances dans le cadre d’un enseignement de Français sur Objectifs Universitaires. / How can we define the specific learning outcomes of non-native students of French within the area of written production ? In order to answer this question, we study a highly frequent genre within academic literacy : the argumentative text.Given the neccessity of jointly teaching language and discipline based contents, our study aims to add approaches and modalities to « general » French as a Foreign Language (FLE) used to teach French at university. Emphasizing both their added value to the teaching of non-native speakers and their shortcomings when dealing with French for academic purposes, we set out to analyse the following tools : textbooks following the action-oriented approach, CEFRL, and language certifications (such as TCF, DELF/DALF).Drawing on existing studies of French for academic purposes, we came up with five hypothesises prior to the study of a comparative corpus. This corpus was established in order to identify the non-native speakers’ specific needs when faced with an argumentative written production. It consists of both productions by non-native (corpus ETR) and native speakers of French (corpus FR). This material is presented and analysed within the frame of a typology based on our initial hypothesises resulting in a framework of criteria facilitating a diagnostic evaluation of the academic literacy competency. Finally, we give didactic suggestions for the teaching of French for academic purposes.

Cette thèse se concentre sur la structuration du modèle acoustique pour améliorer la reconnaissance de la parole par modèle de Markov. La structuration repose sur l’utilisation d’une classification non supervisée des phrases du corpus d’apprentissage pour tenir compte des variabilités dues aux locuteurs et aux canaux de transmission. L’idée est de regrouper automatiquement les phrases prononcées en classes correspondant à des données acoustiquement similaires. Pour la modélisation multiple, un modèle acoustique indépendant du locuteur est adapté aux données de chaque classe. Quand le nombre de classes augmente, la quantité de données disponibles pour l’apprentissage du modèle de chaque classe diminue, et cela peut rendre la modélisation moins fiable. Une façon de pallier ce problème est de modifier le critère de classification appliqué sur les données d’apprentissage pour permettre à une phrase d’être associée à plusieurs classes. Ceci est obtenu par l’introduction d’une marge de tolérance lors de la classification ; et cette approche est étudiée dans la première partie de la thèse. L’essentiel de la thèse est consacré à une nouvelle approche qui utilise la classification automatique des données d’apprentissage pour structurer le modèle acoustique. Ainsi, au lieu d’adapter tous les paramètres du modèle HMM-GMM pour chaque classe de données, les informations de classe sont explicitement introduites dans la structure des GMM en associant chaque composante des densités multigaussiennes avec une classe. Pour exploiter efficacement cette structuration des composantes, deux types de modélisations sont proposés. Dans la première approche on propose de compléter cette structuration des densités par des pondérations des composantes gaussiennes dépendantes des classes de locuteurs. Pour cette modélisation, les composantes gaussiennes des mélanges GMM sont structurées en fonction des classes et partagées entre toutes les classes, tandis que les pondérations des composantes des densités sont dépendantes de la classe. Lors du décodage, le jeu de pondérations des gaussiennes est sélectionné en fonction de la classe estimée. Dans une deuxième approche, les pondérations des gaussiennes sont remplacées par des matrices de transition entre les composantes gaussiennes des densités. Les approches proposées dans cette thèse sont analysées et évaluées sur différents corpus de parole qui couvrent différentes sources de variabilité (âge, sexe, accent et bruit) / This thesis focuses on acoustic model structuring for improving HMM-Based automatic speech recognition. The structuring relies on unsupervised clustering of speech utterances of the training data in order to handle speaker and channel variability. The idea is to split the data into acoustically similar classes. In conventional multi-Modeling (or class-Based) approach, separate class-Dependent models are built via adaptation of a speaker-Independent model. When the number of classes increases, less data becomes available for the estimation of the class-Based models, and the parameters are less reliable. One way to handle such problem is to modify the classification criterion applied on the training data, allowing a given utterance to belong to more than one class. This is obtained by relaxing the classification decision through a soft margin. This is investigated in the first part of the thesis. In the main part of the thesis, a novel approach is proposed that uses the clustered data more efficiently in a class-Structured GMM. Instead of adapting all HMM-GMM parameters separately for each class of data, the class information is explicitly introduced into the GMM structure by associating a given density component with a given class. To efficiently exploit such structured HMM-GMM, two different approaches are proposed. The first approach combines class-Structured GMM with class-Dependent mixture weights. In this model the Gaussian components are shared across speaker classes, but they are class-Structured, and the mixture weights are class-Dependent. For decoding an utterance, the set of mixture weights is selected according to the estimated class. In the second approach, the mixture weights are replaced by density component transition probabilities. The approaches proposed in the thesis are analyzed and evaluated on various speech data, which cover different types of variability sources (age, gender, accent and noise)

Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo analisar as representações do falante nativo e do falante não-nativo de inglês construídas sob o ponto de vista do aluno brasileiro, e as implicações dessas representações no processo de constituição da identidade desse aluno, que tem o português como primeira língua e aprende inglês como língua estrangeira. Nossa hipótese é que a diferença significativa que se observa na relação entre o aluno brasileiro e falantes nativos, de um lado, e entre o mesmo aluno e falantes não-nativos, de outro, afeta as representações construídas pelo aprendiz, podendo resultar numa tentativa de resistência ao lugar aparentemente fixo ocupado pelo brasileiro enquanto falante não-nativo de inglês. A análise dessas representações baseia-se num corpus constituído por dez entrevistas com alunos brasileiros de inglês de uma escola de idiomas de São Paulo. Nossa pesquisa é embasada nos preceitos teóricos da Análise do Discurso, assim como em conceitos dos Estudos Culturais e da perspectiva psicanalista. Com base na análise da materialidade lingüística do corpus, destacamos representações sustentadas por oposições binárias que, se por um lado, parecem imobilizar o sujeito-aluno na relação com o falante nativo, pelo fato de o aluno brasileiro ser sempre representado como o polo negativo da oposição, por outro, permitem, na relação com o falante não-nativo, vislumbrar a possibilidade de um deslocamento dessas representações associadas ao aprendiz brasileiro. Porém, observamos que esse deslocamento é sempre adiado e não se concretiza devido à força que o falante nativo ainda exerce sobre o aluno brasileiro/falante não-nativo. Concluímos que essas representações fixistas, baseadas em oposições binárias, dificultam a prática de ensino de língua inglesa como um lugar de produção de novos sentidos. Com base nessa conclusão, ressaltamos a importância de uma prática pedagógica que vá além do ensino de inglês como mero instrumento de comunicação, permitindo desconstruir as oposições binárias e contribuir para uma ressignificação do lugar do aprendiz brasileiro/falante não-nativo de inglês em relação ao falante nativo e à língua inglesa. / This work aims at analyzing the representations of native and non-native speakers of English built by Brazilian students, and the implications of these representations to students identity as Portuguese native speakers and learners of English as a foreign language. Our hypothesis is that the significative difference noticed in the relationship between Brazilian students and native speakers of English, on the one hand, and between these students and other non-native speakers, on the other, affects the way Brazilian students represent themselves and other speakers, and may result in an attempt to resist the apparently fixed place occupied by Brazilians as non-native speakers of English. The analysis of these representations is based on a corpus containing ten interviews with Brazilian students of English from a language school in São Paulo. Our work is based upon the theoretical tenets of Discourse Analysis, as well as on concepts from the Cultural Studies and Psychoanalysis. The analysis of the linguistic materiality of the corpus showed representations that were sustained by binary oppositions, which seemed to immobilize the learners in the interaction with native speakers, since the Brazilian student is always represented as the negative pole of the opposition, but also suggested the possibility of dislocation of these representations when the interaction involved Brazilian students and other non-native speakers of English. However, it is argued that this dislocation is always postponed and never takes place because of the power that the native speaker has over the Brazilian student/non-native speaker of English. We concluded that these fixed representations, based on binary oppositions, make it difficult for the English language teaching practice to allow for the production of new meanings. Based on this conclusion, we highlight the importance of a pedagogical practice that goes beyond teaching English merely as a communication tool, by deconstructing binary oppositions and making it possible for the Brazilian student/non-native speaker of English to occupy a new place in the relationship with the native speaker and the English language.

Nous ne sommes pas réalistes si on affirme qu’un locuteur peut parler ou maitriser une langue parfaitement. Il est vrai qu’un locuteur peut maitriser honorablement les règles linguistiques, pourtant cognitivement parlant, cela ne signifie pas trop. Les relations cognitives qu’on entretient avec les langues du monde dépassent la dimension linguistique amplement analysée aux manuels scolaires. Parler une langue veut dire être capable d’exister dans cette langue, en ce sens que son être y est inscrit. On est dirigé par son intuition linguistique pour s’exprimer spontanément et conformément au génie de cette langue. Toutefois, toutes les relations cognitives qu’on entretient avec les langues du monde, sont assujettis au temps et aux circonstances de vie; elles peuvent soit évoluer, détériorer mais toujours se modifier. En ce sens, le locuteur est un locuteur inachevé, un être inachevé, perfectible à l’infini. Ceci est une des principes du cadre théorique que nous adoptons à cette thèse; la théorie de la néoténie linguistique. Il s’agit d’une étude scientifique des langues et de leur appropriation par les locuteurs, dans laquelle la dichotomie, faits de langue/faits d’appropriation y sont traités comme une entité.Dans cette étude nous utilisons le cade théorique de la néoténie linguistique et en adoptant ses termes et notions, nous examinons le cas intéressent du locuteur chypriote-grec. Un locuteur dont le paysage linguistique est au moins compliqué. La première (chronologiquement) langue de ce locuteur est le dialecte chypriote-grec, mais puis pendant sa scolarisation on doit s’exprimer et écrire en grec moderne. Certains locuteurs affirment que dans leur vie quotidienne ils parlent le grec moderne, des autres le chypriote-grec et en même temps les chercheurs semblent être indécis sur ce sujet. À cela s’ajoute la présence de facto du moins trois encore langues; l’anglais, le français et le turc. Avec la théorie de la néoténie linguistique, nous essayons de fournir d’attribuer nous aussi à la divergence du parler local du grec moderne et d’examiner les relations cognitives de ses locuteurs avec les langues trouvées dans leur environnement linguistique. / It is not realistic to claim that a speaker can use a language perfectly or that he /she has an excellent knowledge of whichever language, like many speakers like to claim when asked. It is true that a speaker may have some excellent linguistic skills, however cognitively speaking, this doesn’t say much. The cognitive relations that we maintain with the world’s languages are far beyond the linguistic dimension, excessively found in textbooks. Speaking a language means being able to exist in that language, in the sense that our being is there registered. We are led by our linguistic intuition to express ourselves and we do it spontaneously with respect to each language’s boundaries. However, all cognitive and linguistic relations we maintain with the world’s languages are subject to be modified in time; either evolve, deteriorate but they always change, that depends on the life’s circumstances. In that sense the speaker is considered an uncompleted being that is perfectible ad infinitum. This is one of the principles that advocates the theoretical framework that we adopt in this study. The theory of linguistic neoteny is a scientific study of the languages and their appropriation by the speakers, where the dichotomy linguistic events / appropriation facts is not considered as two entities but as one.In this study, using the theoretical framework of linguistic neoteny and adopting some new terms and concepts, we examine the interesting case of the Greek Cypriot speaker. A speaker, whose linguistic landscape, is at least complicated. These speakers’ first (chronologically) language is the Greek Cypriot dialect, but then with the school enrollment they have to speak and write in Modern Greek. Some speakers claim that in their everyday life, they speak Greek, some others that they speak Cypriot, while researchers also seem to be undecided. To this is added the de facto presence of at least another three languages in this speaker’s linguistic environment; English, French and Turkish. Using the theory of linguistic neoteny we seek to provide some evidence concerning the divergence of the dialect from the Modern Greek language and examine the cognitive relations the Greek Cypriot speakers maintain with all the languages found in their linguistic environment.

This research study deals mainly with the influence of the medium of instruction on throughput at the Vaal University of Technology. The underlying hypothesis driving this research, is that learners at the Vaal University of Technology will tend to underachieve during their period of study, largely because the medium of instruction and assessment is not their first language, but a second or even a third language. The assertion is that learners on tertiary level can only perform academically well if they have gained a certain level of competency in their mother tongue, to ease the difficult process of acquiring the second language English, which is the main medium of instruction at the VUT. For most human beings language is the medium through which knowledge is transferred or negotiated. The success of this interaction is determined by the effectiveness of communication. Thus it would be fair to say, that if the means of communication is inappropriate, there will be little or no language transfer. Further, it seems logical that before any other considerations are made with regard to teaching and learning, the instrument which enables this interaction should first be in place. The research aims are: to determine the influence of a second language as medium of instruction on academic performance, to establish the nature of the support system which might facilitate the advancement of learners not prepared for the academic demands of university, to determine what can be done to address the problem and provide possible recommendations for improved academic performance. In order to attain the abovementioned research aims, a literature review and an empirical investigation were undertaken. The literature study discussed the role which the medium of instruction has played in the history of South African Education. The South African Language Policy, before and after 1994, was then reviewed. Parent and learner choice in respect of the choice of medium of instruction was then considered. The findings of the empirical study have shown that the medium of instruction has a remarkable influence on learners' proficiency and eventual performance in their content subjects. The empirical research was conducted by using a questionnaire in order to obtain data on relevant variables as indicated by the literature study, as well as identify barriers perceived by students that hamper their academic progress. Descriptive statistics, such as frequencies, were used to summarize the data. Marks from the compulsory language test at the institution were also taken into account in order to establish learners' English language proficiency. This data, together with students' marks, were interpreted in the empirical analysis. The target population for this study consisted of L1 and L2 students who registered in 2004 and will have completed their studies in 2006, as well as students having completed in 2007. The population consisted of both female and male students from the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design. In the last chapter, Chapter 6, conclusions from the literature review and empirical investigation were drawn. Recommendations for further research were provided which stressed the need for developing an appropriate training course for L2MI (Second Language Medium of Instruction) content subject teachers. Effective training in L2MI is one of the most important factors in improving the level of academic literacy in South African learners. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

¡iabract¡j From the past to the present, we can find no matter mass media, public opinion, and even the government party and opposition party is in support of neutrality of the Speaker, nevertheless, it had been unable to accomplish the purpose in past decade. What we see is endless arguments, as often as there is election of the premier of legislative yuan or bill battle. Hence, the author thinks there is a gap between our subjective expectation and objective reality about neutrality of the premier of legislative yuan, otherwise why we can¡¦t put neutrality of the premier of legislative yuan into practice for a long time. So this text thinks whether the premier of legislative yuan should be development toward neutralization, it is worth to discuss. It is necessary to inspect the possibility of neutral development for the premier of legislative yuan. In this article, we define the meaning of neutrality of the Speaker includes three levels, such as neutrality of agenda, neutrality of political party and neutrality of electoral district, etc., and under the prerequisite of these three meaning, the Speaker acted multiple roles including congress chairman, legislative chief, representatives of political party, representatives of electoral district and coordinator, etc. And some of them are useful to neutrality; some of them are conflict and contradictive to neutrality. Further, these roles would be influenced by the historical background, political culture, constitutional government system, political party, electoral system, and parliamentary norm and convention. So from this point of view, we observe experience of foreign the Speaker and inspect key factor influencing role of the Speaker. At the same time, we also explored key factor influencing role of the premier of legislative yuan, and compared with both, to present useful and unfavorable conditions about neutrality. Eventually, according to these conditions, we analyze the possibility of neutral development for the premier of legislative yuan, and make the relevant suggestions. We find out something in the course of studying. At first, our government trends towards presidential government in constitutional government system, the administration and legislation is split, it is useful to strengthen orientation of representatives of political party of the premier of legislative yuan. Secondly, if the premier of legislative yuan wants to be the Speaker, he has to rely on the strength of the political party in election, it makes the premier of legislative yuan cant¡¦t keep neutrality. Finally, the establishment of legislative yuan is very short, norm and conventions that it is useful to neutrality is not formed, such as the Speaker withdrawing from the political party or setting up several vice speakers to share agenda resources. And this also makes neutral development of the premier of legislative yuan more and more difficult. So we get a clear understanding of our current institutional reality, it is unfavorable to neutrality of the premier of legislative yuan. Consequently, we should develop towards the American type of the Speaker, to strengthen authority of the premier of legislative yuan, to make him lead the political party and integrate the legislative to restrict the executive power, to improve the entity of the whole legislative yuan. Key word: the premier of legislative yuan, the Speaker , neutrality of the Speaker , neutrality of agenda , neutrality of political party , neutrality of electoral district, Constitutional government system , political party , electoral system , parliamentary norm and convention

Windows are a weakness in building facade sound transmission loss (STL). This coupled with the detrimental effects of excessive noise exposure on human health including: annoyance, sleep deprivation, hearing impairment and heart disease, is the motivation for this investigation of the STL improvements active noise control (ANC) of windows can provide. Window speaker development, ANC window experiments and analytical modelling of ANC windows were investigated. Five different window speaker constructions were characterised then compared with a previously developed window speaker. ANC window testing used three different ANC configurations and was performed in two different environments, one with a reverberant receiving room, and the other with an anechoic receiving room. Optimisation of ANC systems with particular control source locations was the aim of the modelling. This enabled comparison with the ANC window tests and would aid in further development of ANC windows. Window speaker constructions were characterised by sound pressure level (SPL) measurements performed in an anechoic room. These measurements were made in a way that enabled comparison with the previously developed window speaker. Total sound energy reduction calculations were used to determine the relative performance of the tested ANC windows. An STL model, based on a modal panel vibration model, was initially created and verified against published STL data before it was expanded to include ANC control sources. The model was used to simulate the performed anechoic environment tests and an ideal ANC case.

This study examines the beliefs of foreign language teachers regarding the relative positions of native and nonnative speakers in foreign and second language education. In particular, I am concerned with the idealization of the native speaker in this context and the foreign language anxiety that may occur in nonnative speaker language teachers if they internalize this idealization. I collected data from 29 college-level Arabic and Hebrew teachers using four methods: (1) a questionnaire on their background and beliefs regarding native and nonnative speaker language teachers, (2) a version of the Teacher Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, 2007), (3) a one-on-one interview, and (4) class observation. By and large, study participants believed that native speakers, because of their nativity, have reached higher levels of linguistic and cultural proficiency with relative ease, and as a result are more readily granted credibility as teachers of their native language. Participants believed that nonnative speakers are more empathetic and understanding of their students' problems because of their own experience and efforts as students of the language. With regard to foreign language anxiety, the main sources of anxiety among the nonnative speaker participants were the fear of making mistakes (and losing credibility as a result), of not having the authority to speak on cultural issues, of not being hired when competing with native speakers, and of addressing professional audiences. Native speakers feared that they cannot anticipate or understand as easily as nonnative speaker teachers the difficulties their students have in learning their language, because they cannot relate to their experiences in the same way. Neither group, however, reported feeling particularly anxious overall. I argue that anxiety was minimal for both groups because of specific steps that participants have taken to overcome the perceived disadvantages of their group and thereby bolster their confidence. Participants reported gaining confidence through some combination of the following factors: (1) gaining experience and education, (2) improving their linguistic and cultural proficiency, (3) presenting the persona of a credible language teacher through extra preparation and language choices, (4) receiving external validation, and (5) realizing that everyone can learn from and teach others. / text

In this paper a novel speaker recognition system is introduced. Automated speaker recognition has become increasingly popular to aid in crime investigations and authorization processes with the advances in computer science. Here, a recurrent neural network approach is used to learn to identify ten speakers within a set of 21 audio books. Audio signals are processed via spectral analysis into Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients that serve as speaker specific features, which are input to the neural network. The Long Short-Term Memory algorithm is examined for the first time within this area, with interesting results. Experiments are made as to find the optimum network model for the problem. These show that the network learns to identify the speakers well, text-independently, when the recording situation is the same. However the system has problems to recognize speakers from different recordings, which is probably due to noise sensitivity of the speech processing algorithm in use.

This research study deals mainly with the influence of the medium of instruction on throughput at the Vaal University of Technology. The underlying hypothesis driving this research, is that learners at the Vaal University of Technology will tend to underachieve during their period of study, largely because the medium of instruction and assessment is not their first language, but a second or even a third language. The assertion is that learners on tertiary level can only perform academically well if they have gained a certain level of competency in their mother tongue, to ease the difficult process of acquiring the second language English, which is the main medium of instruction at the VUT. For most human beings language is the medium through which knowledge is transferred or negotiated. The success of this interaction is determined by the effectiveness of communication. Thus it would be fair to say, that if the means of communication is inappropriate, there will be little or no language transfer. Further, it seems logical that before any other considerations are made with regard to teaching and learning, the instrument which enables this interaction should first be in place. The research aims are: to determine the influence of a second language as medium of instruction on academic performance, to establish the nature of the support system which might facilitate the advancement of learners not prepared for the academic demands of university, to determine what can be done to address the problem and provide possible recommendations for improved academic performance. In order to attain the abovementioned research aims, a literature review and an empirical investigation were undertaken. The literature study discussed the role which the medium of instruction has played in the history of South African Education. The South African Language Policy, before and after 1994, was then reviewed. Parent and learner choice in respect of the choice of medium of instruction was then considered. The findings of the empirical study have shown that the medium of instruction has a remarkable influence on learners' proficiency and eventual performance in their content subjects. The empirical research was conducted by using a questionnaire in order to obtain data on relevant variables as indicated by the literature study, as well as identify barriers perceived by students that hamper their academic progress. Descriptive statistics, such as frequencies, were used to summarize the data. Marks from the compulsory language test at the institution were also taken into account in order to establish learners' English language proficiency. This data, together with students' marks, were interpreted in the empirical analysis. The target population for this study consisted of L1 and L2 students who registered in 2004 and will have completed their studies in 2006, as well as students having completed in 2007. The population consisted of both female and male students from the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design. In the last chapter, Chapter 6, conclusions from the literature review and empirical investigation were drawn. Recommendations for further research were provided which stressed the need for developing an appropriate training course for L2MI (Second Language Medium of Instruction) content subject teachers. Effective training in L2MI is one of the most important factors in improving the level of academic literacy in South African learners. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.