With the growing number of students from China who study abroad, many initially struggle to engage with native English speakers due to limited opportunities to develop oral English skills within their homeland (Gu and Maley, 2008). The reasons why Chinese students' may exhibit varied levels of motivation to engage with others when they study abroad is not well understood. This thesis has employed MacIntyre's "Willingness to Communicate" pyramid model (MacIntyre et al., 1998) as a theoretical model to underpin this study. An 18 month longitudinal study was carried out upon a group of 24 tertiary students from China who were undertaking an undergraduate degree in Britain. Qualitative data were gathered by means of carrying out 60 interviews employing a multi-lingual platform. The study sought to understand the factors which may influence the reasons for the changes in students' Willingness to Communicate and Communicative self-confidence as they studied in Britain and also to identify any additional variables influencing them. The results of this research showed there to be a wide range of factors influencing Chinese students' L2 communicative behaviour. Some of these factors were linked to their home and education background in China. Others were linked to how they responded to others in English within differing communicative contexts. This study concluded that Willingness to Communicative within a Chinese context to be a complex phenomena as Chinese students may respond to interlocutors in differing ways. Hence, this study has contributed to our understanding of Chinese learners of English in that a wide range of variables have been identified, which may impact upon Chinese students' communicative behaviour. The model which MacIntyre and his associates formed, was found to be a helpful model in comprehending Chinese student's L2 communicative behaviour. However, this study has developed MacIntyre's model by identifying other culturally specific factors which were not covered. This research has also enhanced our comprehension of Chinese students' communicative behaviour within authentic English speaking environments, with both native and non native English speakers. Finally, this study has highlighted that there are significant cognitive factors which also impact upon Chinese students' Willingness to Communicate, suggesting the need to undertake additional future research in order to further investigate this area.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第22538号 / 人博第941号 / 新制||人||224(附属図書館) / 2019||人博||941(吉田南総合図書館) / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生人間学専攻 / (主査)准教授 PETERSON Mark, 准教授 中森 誉之, 准教授 勝又 直也, 教授 西山 教行 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Each year thousands of international students enroll in universities across the United States of America. However, we know very little about the challenges they encounter to become competent intercultural communicators in the American academic system. Therefore, the purpose of this is to use the basic components of Deardoff’s Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) model to explore the challenges international students face to acquire requisite attitudes, knowledge, and skills to achieve ICC. The study was conducted through in-depth interviews with eight foreign students who were enrolled in a large Midwestern university during the time of this study. Participants described about their experiences with the intercultural communication that took place between them and their American peers and professors. Results the thematic analysis revealed the presence of four main themes and several sub-themes.

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This study aims to investigate Some English teachers’ beliefs concerning form and function in connection to their teaching. The investigation was carried out through qualitative in-depth interviews and classroom observations focusing on critical incidents. During the study, it became clear that all the participating teachers found that both form and function were important parts in their teaching of English as a second language (L2). Nevertheless it was interesting to notice that they had different ideas about which of the two concepts was the most important one when it comes to language learning. Some of the teachers emphasized the need to put stress on form, arguing that knowledge about form makes it possible for the learner to understand how the language is built, while some believed that too much focus on form might block the communicative competence and thus affect the function.

This qualitative study explored young children's narrative competence, i.e. sense of story (Martinez, Cheney, & Teale, 1993). It used a combination of videotaping and interviewing to examine multiple perspectives of spontaneous child-constructed stories in the context of classroom sociodramatic play. Previous research of children's narrative competence was limited to a nearly exclusive focus upon children's individual mastery of skills such as recall and comprehension of adult selected or elicited stories (Guttman & Frederiksen, 1985; Pellegrini & Galda, 1982; Williamson & Silvern, 1991). This study utilized an alternative approach based upon Vygotskian theory (1967, 1978) to "re-vision" narrative competence as a collaborative social process. Social pretense has been called collaborative when it engages two or more children in complementary, i.e., cooperative, interactions (Howes, 1992; Roskos, 1988). / Ph. D.

The role that grammar should occupy in the teaching of the Spanish language, and of languages in general, has varied throughout history. From taking a central role in the grammar-translation method to positioning grammar on the periphery and implicitly teaching it in the communicative approach. The teaching of grammar is part of the training of students once they pass the introductory and most basic level of the language, so we will study how this process occurs in the classrooms of a couple of schools in the region of Skåne. For this we will make a distinction between the teaching of grammar explicitly and the implicit teaching of it. Our research is based on the testimonies of two professors with extensive academic competence on the subject and with a large number of years of experience. Through semi-structured interviews, we had access to detailed information about the choice of the way in which they work, and we corroborated that they favor explicit grammar teaching because, according to our informants, this provides solid knowledge, saves time and effort to students to form grammatical structures, students request it and have a positive attitude towards it and it motivates them. It is also the form that gives the best results for learning the language, in combination with the advantages of the communicative approach, affirm the teachers interviewed. Another aspect in our research that our informants confirm is the lack of materials for the formal teaching of grammar, since said material is almost non-existent in manuals for language teaching, so the responsibility to find, and in many cases create these materials rests with the teachers. This aspect together with the fact that the choice to teach explicit grammar in class may lead to more research that has an echo in the Skolverket curricula so that materials that cover these needs are developed. On the other hand, based on the information collected by our informants, we can say that it does not seem necessary to us that there is a sharp dichotomy between the grammar-translation method and the communicative approach, but rather that both methods be reconciled in a harmonious way. That is to say, that the best of both methods is taken advantage of without having to choose between one or the other in a clear way. Our research can serve to guide such future research.

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