<p>Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka vilka ordtyper som är lätta respektive svåraatt nå fram till med bliss standardkarta och vilka strategier som är mer respektive mindreeffektiva. Deltagarna, 24 kvinnliga studenter utan funktionshinder, delades upp i par. Den enai paret fick i uppgift att förklara 12 målord, som inte finns med på bliss standardkarta, enbartgenom att använda bliss standardkarta. Den andra i paret fick i uppgift att gissa vilkamålorden var. Eftersom tidigare studier indikerat att ordklass, frekvensnivå ochabstraktionsnivå kan påverka ords svårighetsgrad, valdes målorden i föreliggande studieutifrån dessa variabler. Resultatet visade att målordens ordklass inte påverkade derassvårighetsgrad. Målordens frekvensnivå påverkade svårighetsgraden i viss utsträckning.Abstraktionsnivå var den variabel som påverkade svårighetsgraden mest. Eftersom deabstrakta och ovanliga målorden var svårast, kan det vara klokt att inkludera de ordtyperna påblisskartan. Några strategier som gynnade kommunikationen var när blissaren använde syntaxoch syntaktiskt prompting samt när gissaren gav blissaren tid att avsluta sina fraser. Dessastrategier kan vara lämpliga att rekommendera till blissanvändare och deras samtalspartners.</p> / <p>The aim of this study was to investigate which types of words that are easy and difficult toreach with Bliss Swedish standard chart and also which strategies that is more and lessefficient. The participants, 24 female students with no functional limitations, were grouped inpairs. One in each pair was given the task to explain 12 target words that is not present onBliss standard chart, by using only Bliss standard chart. The other person in each pair wasgiven the task to guess which words that were asked for. Since former studies have indicatedthat word class, level of frequency and level of abstraction can affect words' degree ofdifficulty, the target words in this study were chosen based upon those factors. The resultsdemonstrated that the word class of the target words did not affect their degree of difficulty.The frequency of the target words affected their degree of difficulty in some ways. The levelof abstraction of the target words was the factor that affected the degree of difficulty the most.Since the abstract and infrequent target words were most difficult, it may be a good idea toinclude those types of words on the Bliss chart. Some of the strategies that were beneficial forcommunication were the blisser’s use of syntax and syntactic prompting. Another strategy thatwas beneficial for the communication was giving the blisser enough time to finish herphrases. It may be appropriate to recommend those strategies to Bliss users and theircommunication partners.</p>

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka vilka ordtyper som är lätta respektive svåraatt nå fram till med bliss standardkarta och vilka strategier som är mer respektive mindreeffektiva. Deltagarna, 24 kvinnliga studenter utan funktionshinder, delades upp i par. Den enai paret fick i uppgift att förklara 12 målord, som inte finns med på bliss standardkarta, enbartgenom att använda bliss standardkarta. Den andra i paret fick i uppgift att gissa vilkamålorden var. Eftersom tidigare studier indikerat att ordklass, frekvensnivå ochabstraktionsnivå kan påverka ords svårighetsgrad, valdes målorden i föreliggande studieutifrån dessa variabler. Resultatet visade att målordens ordklass inte påverkade derassvårighetsgrad. Målordens frekvensnivå påverkade svårighetsgraden i viss utsträckning.Abstraktionsnivå var den variabel som påverkade svårighetsgraden mest. Eftersom deabstrakta och ovanliga målorden var svårast, kan det vara klokt att inkludera de ordtyperna påblisskartan. Några strategier som gynnade kommunikationen var när blissaren använde syntaxoch syntaktiskt prompting samt när gissaren gav blissaren tid att avsluta sina fraser. Dessastrategier kan vara lämpliga att rekommendera till blissanvändare och deras samtalspartners. / The aim of this study was to investigate which types of words that are easy and difficult toreach with Bliss Swedish standard chart and also which strategies that is more and lessefficient. The participants, 24 female students with no functional limitations, were grouped inpairs. One in each pair was given the task to explain 12 target words that is not present onBliss standard chart, by using only Bliss standard chart. The other person in each pair wasgiven the task to guess which words that were asked for. Since former studies have indicatedthat word class, level of frequency and level of abstraction can affect words' degree ofdifficulty, the target words in this study were chosen based upon those factors. The resultsdemonstrated that the word class of the target words did not affect their degree of difficulty.The frequency of the target words affected their degree of difficulty in some ways. The levelof abstraction of the target words was the factor that affected the degree of difficulty the most.Since the abstract and infrequent target words were most difficult, it may be a good idea toinclude those types of words on the Bliss chart. Some of the strategies that were beneficial forcommunication were the blisser’s use of syntax and syntactic prompting. Another strategy thatwas beneficial for the communication was giving the blisser enough time to finish herphrases. It may be appropriate to recommend those strategies to Bliss users and theircommunication partners.

Text in English / This study examined the vocabulary and academic literacy levels of undergraduate students at the University of Namibia, as well as the effects of an explicit and an implicit vocabulary programme on vocabulary development and academic literacy. The study also sought to determine the effects of the programmes on students’ attitudes about vocabulary and explicit vocabulary strategies. The relationship between students’ vocabulary size, academic literacy levels, and their self-assessment of their vocabulary knowledge was examined. Many students had not reached the desired word mastery and did not have adequate academic literacy skills to cope with the demands of university. Students in the explicit group modestly improved receptive vocabulary knowledge at the end of the intervention but there was no significant improvement in academic literacy skills. Overall, students showed an increase in positive responses regarding their attitudes to vocabulary. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Applied Linguistics)

對華語學習者而言，漢字的諸多特性使漢字閱讀成為學習者面臨的難點之一，而華語聲調也是許多學習者在聽和說上的難點。閱讀為連結字形與字音，再對應至字義的過程，因此本文以華語學習者為對象，嘗試找出漢字閱讀與華語聲調之間的關係，以不同形式的聲調標記（tone marker）作為視覺提示及不同熟悉度（word familiarity）的詞彙作為操弄變項，使用眼動儀（eye-tracker）為實驗工具，設計閱讀理解作業，了解聲調標記及詞彙熟悉度對閱讀程度不同的華語學習者在閱讀時的影響。 實驗採完全受試者內設計，操弄三種聲調標記（聲調輪廓、聲調數字及中性刺激）的實驗句呈現方式與實驗句中的目標詞熟悉程度（高、低），記錄閱讀實驗句的眼動資料。實驗共分三階段進行，每一階段受試者需閱讀具相同聲調標記的實驗句，並回答隨機出現的理解題；研究同時輔以中文年級認字量表、LEAP-Q問卷及目標詞理解程度問卷三項工具來評定受試者客觀及主觀上的中文閱讀程度差異，以及主觀對操弄目標詞的理解程度。眼動資料包含整體性、區域性及以實驗句中每個詞為單位分析的三種眼動表現，並以閱讀能力為分析變項，比較閱讀能力高、低兩組眼動表現的異同。 研究發現無論學習者閱讀程度為何，皆可以穩定地看到熟悉度的效果，閱讀高熟悉度詞彙的速度較快，顯示熟悉度影響了閱讀歷程。而聲調標記的效果較不明顯，但是聲調標記對低程度組的影響較大，且在閱讀高熟悉度詞彙時，添加帶有較多資訊的聲調輪廓標記可能是一種干擾，反之在閱讀低熟悉度詞彙時，可以幫助學習者辨識字詞。而在中文年級認字量表的結果中，有部分學習者容易將字唸為含有該字雙字詞的另一個字（蝶唸為蝴），這可能與學習者傾向以詞彙為單位記憶有關，因此本文也在最後進行詞素教學的相關討論，並針對華語學習者提出教學建議。

Contemporary theories on frequency processing have been developed in different sub-disciplines of psychology and have shown remarkable discrepancies. Thus, in judgment and decision making, frequency estimates on serially encoded events are mostly traced back to the availability heuristic (Tversky &amp; Kahneman, 1973). Evidence for the use of this heuristic comes from several popular demonstrations of biased frequency estimates. In the area of decision making, these demonstrations led to the conclusion that frequency judgments were generally error-prone. On the other hand, in memory literature detailed computational memory models are used to explain frequency estimates. Although these models to some degree differ evidently in their specific representational assumptions, they all arrive at the basic prediction that frequency estimates should usually be quite accurate but regressed. This prediction was confirmed in numerous studies. However, up to now there have been no systematic efforts in memory literature to identify factors that cause biases in frequency judgments and to explain the demonstrations of erroneous estimates in the area of decision making. The two studies presented in this thesis pursue the questions whether memory models are able to explain errors in frequency judgments and to generate new predictions about biasing factors. In the focus of the first series of experiments is the "famous-names effect": If participants are presented with a list of names of female and male persons, then the frequency of that sex is overestimated that was represented with more famous names on the list. As more famous names are additionally recalled better, this effect was usually explained with the availability heuristic. An alternative account was suggested within the framework of the associationist-model PASS (Sedlmeier, 1999) and the multiple-trace model MINERVA-DM (Dougherty et al., 1999). According to this, the effect is primarily caused by the different pre-experimental frequencies of famous and non-famous names. If this is correct, the famous-names effect should generalize to any stimulus material. This hypothesis was tested in four experiments. The predictions of the memory models were compared with the predictions of a recall-estimate version of the availability heuristic (e.g. Watkins &amp; LeCompte, 1991). Contrary to the predictions of all tested approaches, the participants were mostly able to judge the frequencies of the presented categories approximately correctly. The results indicate furthermore that systematic biases only occurred if the participants based their judgments at least partially on the recall-estimate strategy. However, as the participants only did this in exceptional cases the entire result pattern is explained best within a multiple strategy perspective (Brown, 2002). A re-analysis of the data from all four experiments suggests that the size of the sample of retrieved exemplars is the crucial factor for the (additional) use of the recall-estimate strategy. In the second study new predictions about the influence of associations on frequency estimates are derived from the PASS-model and tested. In two experiments words that were either strongly or weakly associated with each other were presented to the participants. Predictions of the PASS model for the frequency estimates about this stimulus material were gained by means of simulations. In a first step PASS acquired associations between the stimulus words from a large text corpus. Subsequently, the model encoded the experimental study lists. PASS expects higher frequency judgments for associated than for non-associated words. The size of this effect should be independent of the actual presentation frequencies of the words. Finally, the model expects that the frequencies of associated words are discriminated slightly worse than the frequencies of non-associated words. These predictions were largely confirmed in both experiments. The decision times required by the participants to generate their estimates indicate here that they did not base their judgments on the recall-estimate strategy. The results thus strengthen the assumption that the encoding and representation of frequency information are based on associative learning. / Aktuelle Theorien zur Häufigkeitsverarbeitung wurden in unterschiedlichen Teilgebieten der Psychologie entwickelt und weisen erstaunliche Diskrepanzen auf. So werden Häufigkeitsschätzungen über seriell enkodierte Ereignisse in der Urteils- und Entscheidungsforschung zumeist auf die Verfügbarkeitsheuristik (Tversky &amp; Kahneman, 1973) zurückgeführt. Evidenz für die Verwendung dieser Heuristik stammt aus einigen populären Demonstrationen fehlerhafter Häufigkeitsschätzungen. Diese Demonstrationen führten in der Entscheidungsforschung zu der Schlussfolgerung, dass Häufigkeitsurteile generell fehleranfällig seien. Demgegenüber wurden in der Gedächtnispsychologie detaillierte, computerimplementierte Gedächtnismodelle benutzt, um Häufigkeitsschätzungen zu erklären. Obwohl sich diese Modelle in ihren spezifischen Repräsentationsannahmen zum Teil deutlich unterscheiden, kommen sie alle zu der grundlegenden Vorhersage, dass Häufigkeitsschätzungen in der Regel recht genau, aber regrediert sein sollten. Diese Vorhersage wurde in zahlreichen Untersuchungen bestätigt. In der gedächtnispsychologischen Forschung hat es jedoch bisher kein systematisches Bemühen gegeben, Faktoren, die zu Verzerrungen in Häufigkeitsschätzungen führen, zu identifizieren und die Demonstrationen fehlerhafter Schätzungen aus der Entscheidungsforschung zu erklären. Die zwei in der vorliegenden Arbeit präsentierten Studien verfolgen die Fragestellung, inwieweit Gedächtnismodelle in der Lage sind, Fehler in Häufigkeitsurteilen zu erklären und neue Vorhersagen über verzerrende Faktoren zu generieren. Im Mittelpunkt der ersten Serie von Experimenten steht dabei der "Famous-Names Effekt": Nach der Präsentation einer Liste mit Namen weiblicher und männlicher Personen wird die Häufigkeit desjenigen Geschlechts überschätzt, das mit berühmteren Namen auf der Liste vertreten war. Da berühmtere Namen zudem besser erinnert werden, wurde dieser Effekt gewöhnlich auf die Verfügbarkeitsheuristik zurückgeführt. Eine Alternativerklärung wurde sowohl im Rahmen des assoziationistischen PASS-Modells (Sedlmeier, 1999) als auch innerhalb des Exemplarmodells MINERVA-DM (Dougherty et al., 1999) vorgeschlagen. Demnach wird der Effekt primär durch die unterschiedliche prä-experimentelle Häufigkeit berühmter und nicht-berühmter Namen verursacht. Ist diese Annahme korrekt, so sollte der Famous-Names Effekt auch auf anderes Stimulusmaterial generalisieren. Diese Hypothese wurde in vier Experimenten überprüft. Dabei wurden die Vorhersagen der Gedächtnismodelle mit den Vorhersagen einer "Recall-Estimate" Version der Verfügbarkeitsheuristik (z. B. Watkins &amp; LeCompte, 1991) verglichen. Entgegen den Vorhersagen aller getesteten Ansätze waren die Teilnehmer in der Regel in der Lage, die Häufigkeit der verwendeten Kategorien recht gut einzuschätzen. Die Ergebnisse sprechen zudem dafür, dass systematische Fehler in den Häufigkeitsurteilen nur dann auftraten, wenn sich die Teilnehmer bei der Generierung ihrer Schätzungen zumindest teilweise auf die Recall-Estimate Strategie stützten. Da die Teilnehmer dies jedoch nur in Ausnahmefällen taten, kann das gesamte Ergebnismuster am besten innerhalb einer "Multiple Strategy Perspective" (Brown, 2002) erklärt werden. Eine Reanalyse der Daten aus allen vier Experimenten legt dabei die Schlussfolgerung nahe, dass die Stichprobengröße erinnerter Exemplare ausschlaggebend für die (zusätzliche) Verwendung der Recall-Estimate Strategie ist. In der zweiten Studie werden neuartige Vorhersagen über den Einfluss von Assoziationen auf Häufigkeitsschätzungen aus dem PASS-Modell abgeleitet und getestet. In zwei Experimenten wurden den Teilnehmern Wörter präsentiert, die untereinander entweder stark oder schwach assoziiert waren. Die Vorhersagen des PASS-Modells über die Häufigkeitsschätzungen zu diesem Stimulusmaterial wurden mit Hilfe von Simulationen gewonnen. In einem ersten Simulationsschritt erwarb PASS aus großen Textkorpora Assoziationen zwischen den Stimuluswörtern. Anschließend enkodierte das Modell die experimentellen Stimuluslisten. PASS erwartet, dass assoziierte Wörter höhere Schätzungen erhalten als nicht-assoziierte Wörter. Die Größe dieses Effekts sollte von der Präsentationshäufigkeit der Wörter unabhängig sein. Schließlich erwartet das Modell, dass die Häufigkeit assoziierter Wörter geringfügig schlechter diskriminiert wird als die Häufigkeit nicht-assoziierter Wörter. Diese Vorhersagen wurden in beiden Experimenten weitgehend bestätigt. Die Verwendung einer Recall-Estimate Strategie konnte dabei mit Hilfe von Reaktionszeitmessungen ausgeschlossen werden. Die Ergebnisse stützen damit die Annahme, dass die Enkodierung und Repräsentation von Häufigkeitsinformation auf assoziativem Lernen basiert.

This study examines an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teacher's speech throughout one curricular unit of an intermediate grammar and writing course in order to better understand which high-value vocabulary students might acquire through attending to the teacher and noticing words that are used. Vocabulary acquisition is important for English for Academic Purposes students, given the vocabulary demands of academic language. The Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) has been shown to include important vocabulary in written academic texts, and has become a standard part of English for Academic Purposes curricula and pedagogical materials. Although explicit vocabulary instruction is important, research has shown that large amounts of vocabulary may be acquired incidentally by attending to meaning. Classroom instruction provides a great deal of input, and could potentially offer a chance for students to encounter and begin to learn academic vocabulary through incidental acquisition. However, existing research on incidental vocabulary acquisition in classrooms has focused on adult instruction and English as a Foreign Language settings, resulting in a lack of evidence about English for Academic Purposes classrooms. To respond to these needs, this study analyzes the occurrence and repetition of Academic Word List items in the teacher's speech throughout two weeks of a course in an intensive academic English program in the United States. Two weeks of naturalistic class recordings from the Multimedia Adult Learner Corpus were transcribed and analyzed using the RANGE program to find the number of academic vocabulary types in the teacher's speech and how often they were repeated. Additionally, I derived categories of classroom topics and coded the transcribed speech in order to investigate the connection between topics and academic word use. Academic Word List items are present in the teacher's speech, although they do not constitute a large proportion overall, only 2.8% of the running words. Most of the AWL types relate to specific classroom topics or routines. There are 13 AWL types repeated to a high degree, and 26 AWL types repeated to a moderate degree. These items are the most likely candidates for incidental vocabulary acquisition, though there is evidence from the videos that most of the students already understand their general meanings. It is unlikely that students could learn a great deal about AWL items that they were not already familiar with. However, it is possible that the teacher's speech provides incremental gains in AWL word knowledge. These findings show that there may be a substantial number of AWL items that students learn about even before explicitly studying academic vocabulary. Teachers should try to draw out students' familiarity with these forms when explicitly teaching AWL vocabulary in order to connect familiar words with their academic meanings and uses.

In many international schools where English is the language of learning and teaching there are large percentages of students whose first language is not English. Many of these students may have low vocabulary levels which inhibits their chances of taking full advantage of their education. Low vocabulary levels can be a particular problem for students in mainstream classes where fluent English speaking teachers are using English to teach content areas of Mathematics, Science and History. Not only do students have to comprehend the low-frequency, academic and technical vocabulary pertaining to the subject, but they also need to know the higher frequency vocabulary that makes up general English usage. If students’ vocabulary levels fall too far below the vocabulary levels with which their teachers are speaking, then their chance of comprehending the topic is small, as is their chance of succeeding in their subjects. This study has two broad aims. Firstly, I have set out to assess the English vocabulary levels of students at an international school where English is the language of learning and teaching. The majority of students at this school do not have English as their first language. The second aim of this study is to explore the vocabulary profile of the teachers’ spoken discourse at the research school. By gaining a better understanding of the nature of teacher discourse – specifically the percentage of high, mid and low-frequency vocabulary, as well as academic vocabulary that they use – English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers will be in a stronger position to identify what the vocabulary learning task is and be able to assist students in reaching the vocabulary levels necessary to make sense of their lessons. This study revealed a large gap between the generally low vocabulary levels of ESL students and the vocabulary levels spoken by their teachers. As a result the need for explicit vocabulary instruction and learning is shown to be very important in English medium (international) schools, where there are large numbers of students whose first language is not English. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Applied Linguistics)

The Diploma Thesis deals with the comparison of English and German textbooks for lower secondary schools from the perspective of vocabulary. The aim of the theoretical part of this Diploma Thesis is to make the readers familiar with the theoretical concepts which deal with the vocabulary teaching and serve as the theoretical source for the processing of the practical part. The aim of the practical part is the analysis of given textbooks for teaching English and German languages at the lower secondary schools. The analysis is not going to be done only on the basis of the theoretical findings, but also on the basis of criteria, which will be determined in the introduction of the practical part. The textbooks are going to be analysed from the perspective of vocabulary at first and then mutually compared.