abstract: Learning to read in English is difficult for adult English language learners due to their diverse background, their level of experience with literacy in their first language, and their reason and desire for wanting to learn to read in English. Teachers of adult language learners must consider the educational and language experiences of adults enrolled in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in order to provide adequate learning opportunities for a diverse student body. Promoting learning opportunities for adult Arabic speakers was an area of interest for me when I first began teaching adult English language learners six years ago. The purpose of my action research study was to provide the adult Arabic speakers in my classroom with strategies they could use in order to read accurately in English. Current research used to guide my study focused on the difficulties Arabic speakers have with the orthographic features of the English language. As I conducted various cycles of action research in an ESL reading class, I developed an intervention to support adult Arabic speakers gain an understanding of the sound spelling system of the English language inclusive of instructional strategies to support accurate word reading. Data was collected to identify the individuals experience in learning to read. I included a pre and post miscue analysis to help identify the common error patterns of the participants of my study. Over an eight-week period, I followed a constructivist approach and facilitated word sorts to help students identify common sound spellings found in the English language. Instructional strategies were included to help the participants decode multisyllabic words by bringing awareness to the syllable types found in the English language. The findings of my study revealed that Arabic speakers benefited from an intervention focused on the sound spellings and syllabication of the English language. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2020

African Languages / M.A. (African Studies (Linguistics))

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L’objectif de ce mémoire est de vérifier si la dernière réforme de l’Académie française (1990) a changé l’orthographe des mots, afin de les rendre moins étymologiques au profit d’une orthographe plus phonétique. Au XIVème siècle, des lettres étymologiques ont été insérées dans la langue française pour lui conférer une stabilité. Dès la naissance de l’Académie française en 1694, celle-ci a voulu les préserver. Mais depuis 1990, elle est accusée d'appauvrir la langue française parce qu’elle aurait ôté ces lettres étymologiques muettes des mots réformés. Par l'intermédiaire d’un corpus dictionnairique (CNRTL, 1-9 éditions de l’Académie) nous évaluerons la véracité de ces accusations en analysant une dizaine de mots rectifiés, en guise d’exemples, pour examiner si une perte étymologique est constatée. Cette méthodologie se rapproche de celle d’André Goosse dans La « nouvelle » orthographe : Exposé et commentaires. Suite à l’analyse nous pouvons en déduire que 50% des mots étudiés ont perdu des lettres étymologiques pour une graphie plus phonétique. Étant donné que ce pourcentage est élevé et que ces lettres n’ont plus de fonction linguistique, l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’Académie s’est débarrassée d’un maximum des lettres étymologiques est plausible mais une étude sur l’ensemble des 2 400 mots réformés est nécessaire pour la vérifier. / The objective of this study is to verify whether the last reform of the French Academy (1990) changed the spelling of words in order to make them less etymological in favor of a more phonetic spelling. In the 14th century, etymological letters were inserted into the French language to give it stability and since the creation of the French Academy in 1634, it has wanted to preserve them. But since 1990 the Academy has been accused of impoverishing the French language because it would have removed these silent etymological letters from reformed words. Through a dictionary corpus (CNRTL, 1-9 éditions de l'Académie), we will assess the veracity of these accusations by analyzing ten rectified words, as examples, to examine whether an etymological loss is noted. This methodology is similar to that of André Goosse in La « nouvelle » orthographe: Exposé and commentaires Following the analysis we can deduce that 50% of the words studied have lost etymological letters for a more phonetic spelling. Given that this percentage is high and that these letters no longer have a linguistic function, the hypothesis according to which the Academy got rid of a maximum of the etymological letters is plausible but a study on all 2400 words reformed is necessary to verify it.

The purpose of this study was to determine the practical value of selecting upper primary spelling words from the developmental reading program. Two major aspects of the study were: (1) Will upper-primary children more easily learn to spell words which have previously appeared in their developmental reading program? (2) Will they retain the spelling or those words longer than other words of similar spelling difficulty?

Due to the increased usage of technology and its indicated aid in writing acquisition, it is important to investigate the effects of spell-checkers on the English language. Thus, this essay has conducted a quantitative study to ascertain if there has been an improvement or regression in English spelling with the aim of gathering an indication of if and how spelling has evolved and changed with the development of spell-checkers. This study intended to answer two main questions: “Has spelling improved after spell-checkers were invented?” and “Can spell-checkers be seen as an aid in helping people learn how to spell better?”. Texts from before the development of spell-checkers and texts from after were utilized and searched for possible misspellings, to identify whether spelling has improved or not. The main finding was that there was a numerical difference between the two groups of texts, with the older texts containing an average of 43% misspellings as opposed to the newer texts which comprised an average of 7% misspellings. Thus, it was concluded that with the emergence of spell-checkers, spelling has improved. In relation to the second question, this research detected that although spelling mistakes have decreased, certain misspellings and errors are occurring, such as errors in transposition and omission, indicating that spell- checkers might not in fact be an aid in improving spelling competence. However, more data is required with regard to the second question, thus the answer remains inconclusive, with the need for further data to reach an assertive answer.

Children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy (CP) often face barriers to accessing speech research participation and clinical speech services. Utilizing at-home online videoconferencing may be a practical solution to these accessibility barriers if the speech signal yielded from online recordings is valid. This study aimed to determine the validity of acoustic and perceptual measures obtained from speech data collected (remotely) online from children with dysarthria due to CP. The speech of 17 children with dysarthria was recorded by means of two data collection methods performed simultaneously: 1) via Zoom video communications and 2) via a professional audio recording device sent to the children's parents. A calibration procedure permitted the children’s original vocal sound pressure level (SPL) to be represented in the speech signal. Acoustic and perceptual measures extracted from the two recordings were compared in order to determine the validity of speech data collected online from the children. The acoustic measures, obtained from 1,690 tokens of words and 605 tokens of sentences, were the second formant (F2) range of diphthongs, F2 slope of diphthongs, fricative-affricate duration difference, word duration/articulation rate, mean fundamental frequency (F0), F0 variation, SPL, shimmer, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and cepstral peak prominence (CPP). Perceptual measures were 187 adult listeners’ orthographic transcription accuracy and visual analog scale (VAS) ratings of the children’s speech, collected via an online crowdsourced platform. Acoustic measures of F2 range of diphthongs, fricative-affricate duration difference, word duration, and mean F0 reached the validity criterion of rrm-value .75 and demonstrated good agreement within the predetermined clinical criterion at both word and sentence levels. Moreover, SPL met the validity criterion and exhibited good agreement at the word level; however, it failed to meet the validity criterion and demonstrated agreement outside the clinical criterion at the sentence level. The F2 slope of diphthongs showed a strong correlation between online and audio-device recordings and reached the validity criterion; however, it did not show agreement within the clinical criterion at either word or sentence level. Perturbation-based, noise-based, and cepstral measures (i.e., F0 variation, shimmer, SNR, CPP) showed a wide range of correlation and agreement outside of clinical criteria between online and audio-device recordings. Both perceptual measures showed strong correlations between the two recording methods, reaching the validity criterion. Findings suggest that measures that reflect physiological aspects of speech production may be valid and appropriate to extract from online recordings. However, measures capturing noise and variability within the signal may not be valid when obtained from online recordings. Additionally, the results suggest that perceptual measures of listeners’ transcription and ratings from online recordings may be valid to use for research and clinical purposes. Therefore, careful consideration of the appropriate measures and their limitations is essential to obtaining accurate results when extracting measures from online recordings. These findings provide a valuable foundation of evidence supporting the use of online videoconferencing platforms for several acoustic and perceptual measures commonly implemented in speech research, clinical assessment, and treatment.

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