The thesis analyses the accuracy and fluency exhibited in the spoken advanced-learner English of Czech students of English philology. It draws its data from a learner corpus comprising fifty 15-minute interviews with these learners and from a parallel native-speaker corpus of forty-nine 15-minute interviews. As regards accuracy, the learner data is analysed using techniques of error analysis. Salient features of advanced learner English are identified and the subsequent quantitative analyses reveal that throughout the entire group of students (which is characterized by what revealed itself to be a wide proficiency span) two groups of error types are found to be much more frequent than any other, namely errors in the use of articles and tenses. For the fluency measurements a small selection of variables has been chosen to describe speed fluency (speech rate) and breakdown fluency (the frequency of unfilled and filled pauses), and the results are compared with those for the parallel native-speaker corpus. The analysed native speakers are found to produce speech at a generally much higher rate than the majority of the learners. There does not appear - at least in the light of the given sample - to be any direct correlation between fluency and the frequency of errors. Moreover, the learners are found...

This work has taken the region of Qwaqwa as a case study. Through this study, the researcher attempted to join in the debate around language varieties that occur as a result of contact between different language groups. To achieve this objective, the factors that have an impact on Sesotho spoken in the Qwaqwa area and, in particular, in schools, have been assessed. The researcher provides a broad and general picture of the language situation and patterns of language use in the Qwaqwa area. A brief overview of the geographical description, historical background and economic development of Qwaqwa is given. Some of the linguistic phenomena that play a role in language variation in this area fall under the spotlight. Language contact, i.e. language and dialect, regional and social dialect, the use of language and the impact of language contact between languages is discussed. Patterns and the extent of language contact and the resultant effects of interference, codeswitching and borrowing as well as the processes and points at which these processes occur are identified. The major similarities and relationships between spoken and written Sesotho, as used by learners in Qwaqwa schools, is highlighted with the discussion focussing on the linguistic description of the similarities and relationships between the two forms. / African Languages / (M.A.(Afican Languages))

Esta dissertação tem dois objetivos básicos: primeiro, investigar se há marcas de oralidade na linguagem narrativa e das personagens do livro Quarto de despejo: diário de uma favelada, de Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977); segundo, examinar como essas manifestações se processam linguisticamente no texto no plano lexical. Suscitam-se, portanto, duas perguntas: Primeira: Há em Quarto de despejo manifestações linguísticas da oralidade? Segunda: Em caso afirmativo, em que níveis essa oralidade se processa linguisticamente? Para responder a essas perguntas, temos a hipótese de que a língua falada foi aproveitada de maneira mais ou menos inconsciente pela autora de Quarto de despejo e que, entre vários níveis linguísticos, a oralidade se manifesta de maneira notável em nível lexical, por meio de um vocabulário de uso popular. Estudar-se-á como o léxico da linguagem narrativa e das personagens apresenta efeitos de língua falada, tornando o texto dinâmico e expressivo. Este trabalho está teoricamente fundamentado em pressupostos da Sociolinguística e da Estilística. A metodologia de trabalho envolveu várias leituras da obra, anotações de vocabulário e análises à luz da teoria proposta. Estabelecem-se relações entre fala e escrita, compreendidas não como uma dicotomia, mas como polos de um continuum tipológico. Nesse continuum, um gênero da escrita pode apresentar características da fala e vice-versa. Ressalte-se que, tendo em vista esse referencial teórico, a narrativa de Quarto de despejo não é considerada um texto oral, mas um texto escrito em cuja enunciação se evidencia a presença da oralidade graças a um leque de vocábulos expressivos. / This thesis has two basic goals: first, to investigate whether there are marks of orality in the narrative language and lines from the characters from the book \"Child of the dark: The diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus\", by Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977); secondly, to examine how these manifestations are processed linguistically into the text on the lexical sphere. Two questions, therefore, are raised: First: are there linguistic manifestations of orality in Child of the dark? Second: if so, at what levels is this orality processed linguistically? To answer those questions, we hypothesized that the spoken language was used more or less unconsciously by the author of Child of the dark, and that between several linguistic levels, orality manifests itself in a remarkable manner in the lexical level, by use of a colloquial vocabulary. We shall study how the lexicon of the narrative language and of the characters has effects of the spoken language, making the text dynamic and expressive. This paper is theoretically grounded in assumptions of Sociolinguistic and Stylistic. The work methodology involved several readings of the book, vocabulary annotations and analysis in the light of the proposed theory. Relationships between speech and writing are set, understood not as a dichotomy but as poles of a typological continuum. In this continuum, a genre of writing can display characteristics of speech and vice versa. It is emphasized that, in view of that theoretical framework, the narrative of Child of the dark is not regarded as an oral text, but as a written text where enunciation highlights the presence of orality using a variety of expressive vocabularies.

La thèse étudie d’un point de vue sociolinguistique la rencontre de la langue parlée et de la langue écrite, surtout à travers ce que nous avons appelé la classicisation, dans la production romanesque du syrien Ħalīm Barakāt, auteur sur lequel s’est fixé notre choix après de multiples lectures de romans proche-orientaux contemporains. Ħalīm Barakāt est l’auteur de 18 romans et d’une cinquantaine d’essais, en arabe et en anglais, sur la société et la culture. Nous avons choisi de comparer cette rencontre dans quatre de ses romans. Chaque roman est traité dans un chapitre. Dans les deux premiers chapitres sont étudiés les romans les plus récents : “Tā’er al- ħūm” un roman autobiographique écrit en 1987 et réédité en 2007 et “Ināna wan-nahr” une oeuvre mélangeant non seulement les langages et leurs registres mais aussi fantaisie entre mythes locaux et réalité. Puis sont étudiés dans les deux chapitres suivants les deux romans écrits dans les années soixante et soixante-dix : “Sittat Ayyām” qui raconte une histoire d’amour entre deux personnages de religions différentes pendant une guerre, et “Al-raħīl bayna Alsahm wal-watar”, un roman illustré par une vingtaine d’histoires et de contes choisis dans tout le monde arabe et racontés par des personnages représentant la jeunesse arabe dans les années soixante-dix. Dans l’introduction nous proposons un plan pour le travail, qui est fondé surtout sur la traduction en français de tous les extraits arabes choisis pour l’analyse sociolinguistique. Pour bien cerner la rencontre de la langue parlée et de la langue écrite nous avons décidé de relever tout ce qui est proverbe et figements lexicaux propres à une langue comme à l’autre et nous avons gardé des passages écrits entièrement en langue standard ou en langue dialectale pour montrer la différence entre ces textes et ceux qui sont hybrides. En ce qui concerne les passages écrits dans une langue hétérogène, nous proposons des termes linguistiques que nous définissons et auxquels nous avons recours tout au long des commentaires qui interviennent entre les tableaux où sont donnés les extraits choisis en regard de leur traduction. La conclusion reprend et synthétise les principaux résultats de la recherche. / This sociolinguistical study is about the encounter of spoken and written language, focusing on the unique phenomenon of the ‘classicisation’, a phenomenon which emerged in modern Arab literature by converting the spoken everyday language into a written form. After long readings into Arab Middle Eastern novelists we have chosen to take as example four novels of Syrian novelist Ħalīm Barakāt, who has authored over 18 books and some fifty essays in both Arabic and English on society and culture. We categorized our study into four chapters; we have chosen to begin with the two most recent ones then the chronologically older ones. The first chapter concentrates on the novel: “Tā’er al- ħūm” which describes the author’s journey alongside his wife to the American mountain side while he remembers his old days in his hometown Kafroun. The second chapter is all about “Ināna wan-nahr”, a love story loaded with mythological references and different religion-related social problems. The third chapter studies “Sittat Ayyām” a tale about an imaginary Arab Middle Eastern village throughout a devastating war. The fourth chapter takes as example some stories told by Arab youth from all over the Arabic world, in “Al-raħīl bayna Al-sahm wal-watar”. In the introduction we suggested some definitions then we relied upon them to integrate the analysis between the lines of the selected passages each time the language register changes. We presented the samples and the translation to French and we focused our analysis on examples that define the register change such as proverbs and expressions, dialectal and classic and common ones, and regional songs and sometimes purely classical-language written passages. In the conclusion we tried to summarize the main results of the research.

The present study has two purposes. One aim is to investigate to what extent 20 pupils in grade 3 use two different forms of presentation in their narrative texts and how these choices of forms of presentation create certain patterns in the pupils’ texts. Another aim is to study to what extent the pupils use various features of spoken language in their narrative texts and whether these features correlate with the forms of presentation. The material in the study consists of 20 narrative texts from the national test in Swedish in 2011. The analytical models are based, among other things, on the theory of linguistic variation (see Nordberg 2013). A central finding of the study is that the pupils mainly choose to write their narrative texts from their own standpoint and that the choice of forms of presentation creates two different patterns in the pupils’ texts. One pattern that is found in several pupils’ texts builds on an interplay between the pupils’ own voice and the voice of other characters. Another central finding is that the pupils use many colloquial forms of pronouns, and that the features of spoken language are more common in various dialogue contexts than when the pupils tell the story in their own voice.

The diploma thesis is concerned with the analysis of recurrent word-combinations in the speech of advanced Czech speakers of English and native speakers of English. The data used for the analysis is extracted from two corpora, learner corpus LINDSEI and native speaker corpus LOCNEC. The aim of the thesis is to compare the two groups of speakers, determine differences in their use of recurrent word-combinations and compare the findings to previous studies involving speakers of different languages. The quantitative analysis is performed on a sample of 50 speakers from each corpus and the frequency data is used to compare the two groups as to the number of types of word-combinations they use and how frequently they do so. The qualitative analysis is performed on a sample of 15 speakers from each corpus to determine functional differences. Four categories of word-combinations are determined in the analysis. In the conclusion, the quantitative and qualitative findings are compared to previous research involving speakers of different languages. Keywords: spoken language, learner language, n-grams, n-gram analysis, recurrent word- combinations, lexical bundles, learner corpus

La thèse présentée ici a pour but de proposer des systèmes de détection, de composition de constituants sémantiques et d’interprétation dans la compréhension de la langue naturelle parlée. Cette compréhension se base sur un système de reconnaissance automatique de la parole qui traduit les signaux oraux en énoncés utilisables par la machine. Le signal de la parole, ainsi transcrit, comporte un ensemble d’erreurs liées aux erreurs de reconnaissance (bruits, parasites, mauvaise prononciation...). L’interprétation de cet énoncé est d’autant plus difficile qu’il est issu d’un discours parlé, soumis à la disfluence du discours, aux auto-corrections... L’énoncé est de plus agrammatical, car le discours parlé lui-même est agrammatical. L’application de méthodes d’analyses grammaticales ne produit pas de bons résultats d’interprétation, sur des textes issus de transcriptions de la parole. L’utilisation de méthodes d’analyses syntaxiques profondes est à éviter. De ce fait, une analyse superficielle est envisagée. Un des premiers objectifs est de proposer une représentation du sens. Il s’agit de considérer des ontologies afin de conceptualiser le monde que l’on décrit. On peut exprimer les composants sémantiques en logique du premier ordre avec des prédicats. Dans les travaux décrits ici, nous représentons les éléments sémantiques par des frames (FrameNet ). Les structures de frames sont hiérarchisées, et sont des fragments de connaissances auxquels on peut insérer, fusionner ou inférer d’autres fragments de connaissances. Les structures de frames sont dérivables en formules logiques. Nous proposons un système de compréhension de la parole à partir de règles logiques avec le support d’une ontologie, afin de pouvoir créer des liens à partir de composants sémantiques. Puis, nous avons mené une étude sur la découverte des supports syntaxiques des relations sémantiques. Nous proposons une expérience de composition sémantique afin d’enrichir les composants sémantiques de base. Enfin, nous présentons un système de détection de lambda-expression pour mettre en hypothèse les relations à trouver à travers le discours / The thesis presented here is intended to provide detection systems, composition of components and semantic interpretation in the natural spoken language understanding. This understanding is based on an automatic speech recognition system that translates the signals into oral statements used by the machine. The transcribed speech signal, contains a series of errors related to recognition errors (noise, poor pronunciation...). The interpretation of this statement is difficult because it is derived from a spoken discourse, subject to the disfluency of speech, forself-correction... The statement is more ungrammatical, because the spoken discourse itself is ungrammatical. The application of grammatical analysis methods do not produce good results interpretation, on the outcome of speech transcription. The use of deep syntactic analysis methods should be avoided. Thus, a superficial analysis is considered. A primary objective is to provide a representation of meaning. It is considered ontologies to conceptualize the world we describe. We can express the semantic components in first order logic with predicates. In the work described here, we represent the semantic elements by frames (FrameNet ). The frames are hierarchical structures, and are fragments of knowledge which can be inserted, merge or infer other fragments of knowledge. The frames are differentiable structures in logical formulas. We propose a system for speech understanding from logical rules with the support of an ontology in order to create links from semantic components. Then, we conducted a study on the discovery supports syntactic semantic relationships. We propose a compositional semantics experience to enrich the basic semantic components. Finally, we present a detection system for lambda-expression hypothesis to find the relationship through discourse

This dissertation titled Teaching English to Deaf and Hard-of-hearing University Students aims to portray a picture of the situation of teaching English to university students, more specifically of those studying at Charles University in Prague. The work is divided into two main parts. The first part brings general insight, also from linguistic perspective, into language competences and language acquisition by the hearing impaired. It describes variables and possible variables affecting spoken language acquisition by this minority. It gives basic overview of different levels of hearing loss on the grouds of medicine assessment of hearing loss. The dissertiation stresses out the neccessity of educating these students with respect to linguistic research and findings. Moreover, it emphasizes the needs to interweave linguistics and pedagogy and benefits of linguistics research and methods such as error analysis and contrastive analysis for enhancement of language productive skills of hearing impaired students. The second part of the dissertation is devoted to the research of English language teaching to hearing impaired students at Charles University in Prague. The work summarizes the findings of five-year long research carried out at the Language Resource Centre, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in...

Negli ultimi 70 anni, c'è stato un incremento degli studi e ricerche inglesi sulle collocazioni (Firth 1957; Hoey, 2005; Moon, 1998b; Sinclair 1991; 2004; Stubbs, 1996; 2001), i quali hanno evidenziato che la fraseologia è pervasiva alla lingua (Altenberg, 1998; Biber et al., 1999; Cowie, 1991; 1992; Howarth; 1998). Questo indica anche che una buona padronanza delle collocazioni è necessaria se i discenti mirano a raggiungere una fluidità simile a quella di un nativo nella L2. Infatti, la ricerca sulla produzione di linguaggio formulaico da parte degli apprendenti ha dimostrato che le collocazioni sono essenziali nell'acquisizione della lingua seconda (Cowie, 1998; Pawley & Syder, 1983; Peters, 1983) e sono una componente chiave per lo sviluppo della "fluency" (Ellis, 2002; 2003; Ellis et al., 2015; Howarth, 1998). Nonostante il maggior numero di studi sulle collocazioni, la maggior parte degli studiosi si è concentrata su dati scritti e su un insieme ristretto di combinazioni, come le collocazioni verbo + sostantivo. La scarsa disponibilità di corpora orali di discenti e la maggiore attenzione per le sequenze formulaiche più soggette a errori hanno portato i ricercatori a trascurare collocazioni come avverbio + aggettivo. L'intensificazione è una parte intricata dell'apprendimento delle lingue straniere (Lorenz, 1999) e merita ulteriore attenzione, soprattutto per quanto riguarda i dati parlati, che riflettono meglio il linguaggio dei discenti (Myles, 2015). Il presente lavoro indaga le collocazioni di avverbi + aggettivi in un corpus parlato di recente compilazione di studenti italiani avanzati di inglese L2. La tesi adotta un approccio di Analisi Interlinguistica Contrastiva (Granger, 1998) per verificare se: a) ci sono differenze tra la produzione di collocazioni degli studenti italiani di inglese rispetto ai coetanei madrelingua; b) ci sono differenze tra le collocazioni prodotti dagli studenti italiani e quelle dei madrelingua in termini di modelli sintattici e significato lessicale; c) la congruenza della L1 ha un effetto di trasferimento sulla produzione da parte dei discenti di collocazioni poco frequenti e/o non attestate. Per rispondere alle tre domande di ricerca, sono state condotte analisi quantitative e qualitative sull'Italian Spoken Learner Corpus (ISLC) e sul corpus gemello di LINDSEI, LOCNEC. LOCNEC è stato utilizzato come corpus di riferimento di madrelingua per il suo alto livello di comparabilità con ISLC. Per le analisi quantitative, è stato seguito l'approccio di Durrant e Schmitt (2009) per il calcolo dei punteggi delle misure di associazione delle collocazioni (t-score e MI) sulla base del corpus di riferimento BNC e le collocazioni sono state poi divise in tre categorie in base al loro punteggio: collocazioni (t-score e MI maggiore o uguale a 2 e 3 rispettivamente), collocazioni infrequenti/non attestate (t-score e MI non disponibili a causa dell'infrequenza), collocazioni in area grigia (t-score e MI inferiore a 2 e 3 rispettivamente). I test T-test e Wilcoxon rank sum test sono stati utilizzati sulle collocazioni estratte da ISLC e LOCNEC e sono state calcolate le dimensioni degli effetti. Inoltre, i test sono stati impiegati per valutare i valori medi individuali di t-score e MI degli studenti e dei madrelingua. Per quanto riguarda le analisi qualitative, è stato impiegato uno schema a tre livelli per analizzare due serie di collocazioni: la prima serie comprende 11 collocazioni con t-score e MI maggiore uguale a 2 e 3 rispettivamente e una frequenza di 5 nell'ISLC; la seconda serie comprende 9 collocazioni infrequenti/non attestate con una frequenza maggiore o uguale a 2 nell'ISLC. Seguendo lo schema, i due set di collocazioni estratti sia dall'ISLC sia dal LOCNEC sono stati analizzati tenendo conto del loro background collocativo (etimologia, livello CEFR, congruenza L1), delle variabili del discente (sesso, esperienza di soggiorno all'estero, corso universitario, altre lingue), e delle variabili testuali (funzione attributiva vs predicativa dell'aggettivo, pronomi vs it-sentences, tempo verbale, affermativo vs negativo, connotazione positiva vs negativa). I risultati dei test statistici sono stati tutti significativi con effect size medio-grandi e, insieme alle analisi qualitative, hanno indicato che: gli studenti italiani di inglese producono un minor numero di collocazioni; un maggior numero di non-collocazioni; le loro combinazioni sono meno collocative di quelle dei madrelingua (ovvero, i loro punteggi di misura delle associazioni sono in media più bassi di quelli dei nativi); non ci sono differenze marcate in termini di modelli lessico-grammaticali tra le collocazioni degli studenti e quelle dei madrelingua, ma gli studenti tendono ad assegnare alle loro collocazioni funzioni più creative dal punto di vista pragmatico; non è stata trovata alcuna prova di trasferimento L1 (negativo) in relazione alla produzione da parte dei discenti di collocazioni infrequenti/non attestate, sostenendo così ulteriormente la conclusione precedente. I risultati corroborano ulteriormente la letteratura sulle collocazioni prodotte dai discenti e aggiungono un altro tassello al puzzle della lingua parlata: il ritardo collocazionale, cioè lo sviluppo più lento delle prestazioni di produzione di collocazioni, può essere trovato anche nei dati parlati e i discenti sembrano anche produrre meno collocazioni identificate da punteggio t-score. Questo ha due importanti, anche se semplici, implicazioni: che gli studenti dovrebbero probabilmente essere esposti a più input di lingua parlata, e che le teorie di acquisizione della lingua seconda potrebbero utilmente rivedere i processi di acquisizione fraseologica degli studenti nel contesto EFL. Un'altra scoperta è relativa ai modelli lessico-grammaticali delle collocazioni degli studenti non erano marcatamente diversi da quelli dei madrelingua, ma erano meno vari e mostravano una creatività pragmatica. Questo potrebbe informare gli studiosi sui potenziali processi di fossilizzazione (Selinker, 1972) nella fraseologia e/o sulle strategie di semplificazione o di evitamento (Farghal & Obiedat, 1995). Infine, anche se gli studi tradizionali hanno trovato che la congruenza L1 gioca un ruolo chiave nella produzione di collocazioni (cfr. Bahns, 1993; Granger, 1998b; Nesselhauf, 2005; Wang, 2016), nessuna prova di congruenza L1 è stata trovata per quanto riguarda i dati parlati, il che è un'interessante controprova. Nel complesso, questa tesi ha sottolineato che la produzione di collocazioni, sia quantitativamente sia pragmaticamente, è in ritardo rispetto alla competenza collocazionale e, sebbene questa linea possa essere molto sottile e non significativa nei testi scritti, il divario si allarga nella lingua parlata. / In the last 70 years, there has been an increase in English studies on collocations (Firth 1957; Hoey, 2005; Moon, 1998; Sinclair 1991; 2004; Stubbs, 1996; 2001) and research which have documented that phraseology is pervasive to language (Altenberg, 1998; Biber et al., 1999; Cowie, 1991; 1992; Howarth; 1998). This also indicates that a good command of collocations is needed if learners aim to achieve native-like fluency in the L2. Indeed, research on learner production of formulaic language has shown that collocations are essential in the acquisition of second language (Cowie, 1998; Pawley & Syder, 1983; Peters, 1983) and are a key component for the development of fluency (Ellis, 2002; 2003; Ellis et al., 2015; Howarth, 1998). Despite the surge in studies on collocations, the majority of scholars have focused on written data and on a restricted set of combinations, such as verb + noun collocations. The poor availability of spoken learner corpora and the more error-prone formulaic sequences have led researchers to neglect collocations such as adverb + adjective. Intensification is an intricate part of foreign language learning (Lorenz, 1999) and deserves further attention, especially as regards spoken data, which is a better reflection of learner language (Myles, 2015). The present work investigates adverb + adjective collocations in a newly compiled spoken learner corpus of advanced Italian learners of English L2. The thesis adopts a Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 1998) approach to verify whether: a) there are any differences between the collocation production of Italian learners of English compared to native-speaker peers; b) there are any differences between the Italian learners’ collocations and the native speakers’ in terms of syntactic patterns and lexical meaning; c) L1 congruency has a transfer effect on the learner production of infrequent and/or unattested collocations. In order to address the three overarching research questions, quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out on the Italian Spoken Learner Corpus (ISLC) and the sister corpus of LINDSEI, LOCNEC. LOCNEC was used as the native-speaker reference corpus for its high level of comparability to ISLC. For the quantitative analyses, Durrant and Schmitt’s (2009) approach was followed for the calculation of the collocation’s association measure scores (t-score and MI) based on the large reference corpus BNC and the collocations were then divided into three categories based on their score: collocations (t-score and MI equal or greater than 2 and 3 respectively), infrequent/unattested collocations (t-score and MI scores unavailable due to infrequency), grey area collocations (t-score and MI lower than 2 and 3 respectively). T-tests and Wilcoxon rank sum tests were computed on the collocations extracted from ISLC and LOCNEC and effect sizes were calculated. In addition, the tests were employed to assess the average individual t-score and MI values of learners and native speakers. As regards the qualitative analyses, a three-fold scheme was employed to analyse two sets of collocations: the first set comprises 11 collocations with t-score and MI equal or greater than 2 and 3 respectively and a frequency of equal or greater than 5 in the ISLC; the second set includes 9 infrequent/unattested collocations with a frequency equal or greater than 2 in ISLC. Following the scheme, the two sets of collocations extracted from both ISLC and LOCNEC were analysed by taking into account their collocational background (etymology, CEFR level, L1 congruence), the learner variables (gender, stay-abroad experience, university course, other languages), and the text variables (attributive vs predicative function of the adjective, pronouns vs it-sentences, tense, affirmative vs negative, positive vs negative connotation). The results of the statistical tests were all significant with medium to large effect sizes and, together with the qualitative analyses, indicated that: Italian learners of English produce a fewer number of collocations; a higher number of non-collocations; their combinations are less collocational than native speakers’ (i.e., their association measure scores as on average lower than the natives’); there are no marked differences in terms of lexico-grammatical patterns between the learners’ collocations and the native speakers’, but the learners tend to assign more pragmatically creative functions to their collocations; no evidence of L1 (negative) transfer was found in relation to the learners’ production of infrequent/unattested collocations, thus further supporting the previous finding. The findings further corroborate the literature on learners’ collocations and add another piece to the puzzle of spoken language: collocational lag, that is the slower development of collocation performance, can also be found in spoken data and learners also seem to produce fewer t-score collocations. This has two important, though simple, implications: that learners should probably be exposed to more spoken language input, and that second language acquisition theories might usefully review phraseological acquisition processes of EFL learners. Another finding is that the lexico-grammatical patterns of learners’ collocations were not markedly different from native speakers’, but they were less varied and displayed pragmatic creativity. This could inform scholars about potential fossilisation processes (Selinker, 1972) in phraseology and/or simplification or avoidance strategies (Farghal & Obiedat, 1995). Lastly, although mainstream studies have found that L1 congruency plays a role in the production of collocations (cf. Bahns, 1993; Granger, 1998b; Nesselhauf, 2005; Wang, 2016), no evidence of L1 congruency was found as regards spoken data, which is an interesting counter-finding. Overall, this thesis has underlined that collocation production, both quantitatively and pragmatically, lags behind collocation competence and, although this line may be very thin and not significant in written texts, the gap widens in spoken language.

Language is the learning device and the device which forms the student''s knowledge in math, his ability to define concepts, express mathematical ideas and solve mathematical problems. Difficulties in the Language are seen more in word problems, clarity and in the way the text is read by the student have a direct effect on the understanding of the problem and therefore, on its solution, could delay the problem solving process. The connection between language and mathematical achievements has a more distinctive significance regarding the Arab student. This is due to the fact that the language which is used in the schools and in textbooks is classical (traditional) Arabic. It is far different than the language used in everyday conversations with family and friends (the spoken Arabic). Our research examine whether rephrasing word problems can affect the achievements of the Arab students in it. The experimental group received mathematics instruction using learning materials of word problems that were rewritten in a “middle language” closer to the students’ everyday language (spoken Arabic), thus keeping the mathematical level of the problems. The research findings showed that students in the experimental group improved their achievements in word and geometric problems significantly more than students from control group.