A post-structuralist framework (Foucault, 1976; Weedon, 1997) is used to explore language acquisition and identity construction in the life histories of four multilingual white South African men, who became fluent in the African language of isiXhosa in the racially-divided world of Apartheid South Africa, at a time when law and policy made fluency in an African language unusual for whites. Theories used within the 'social turn' in Second Language Acquisition (Block, 2003; Norton, 2000), as well as the social learning theory of Lave and Wenger (1991), support an exploration of how the men acquired this language on the farms in the Eastern Cape where they spent their early years. The identity implications of the men's multilingualism are examined using post-colonial studies of race, 'whiteness' and hybridity (Bhabha, 1994; Frankenberg, 1993; Hall, 1992a). The study was undertaken using Life History methodology (Hatch & Wisniewsky, 1995) and biographic interviewing methods developed within the Social Sciences (Wengraf, 2001). Poststructuralist discourse analysis (Wetherell & Potter, 1992), together with aspects of narrative analysis (Brockmeier, 2000), were used to analyse the data. The study contributes to research into naturalistic language acquisition, using theories from the 'social turn', and analysing a bilingual context in which language, power, race and identity interact in unique ways. The findings endorse the importance of a post-structuralist framing for the Communities of Practice model (Wenger, 1998), and show that participation in target-language communities requires investment by learners in identities which ameliorate the inequities of power relations. The study shows that isiXhosa can become linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1991) for white South Africans, depending on context and the isiXhosa register they use. It demonstrates that Apartheid discourse ascribes to the men an identity which is indisputably white, but that early experiences shared with isiXhosa-speakers shape their lives and form a potentially antihegemonic facet of their identities.

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Many students around the world have a strong desire to study in the United States, and in recent years international students in the United States have enrolled at an all-time high. There is a significant need to learn more about these students' needs and strategies to identify the most effective practices to improve their academic life and life quality. The demand for overcoming life challenges in a new country and achieve high academic performance with their second language creates high stress for these international students. One of the groups among these international students that has been understudied is the Turkish students. The purpose of this research is to explore the academic and second language-related stress of Turkish international students, in addition to investigating students' self-reported stress management strategies. This study uses a case study methodology to thoroughly understand the impact of the second language of participants' reported stress and how they manage their life and academic performance. The researcher collected interviews from three Turkish-International students who study in a graduate school in the US. The researcher conducted inductive coding and created themes from the qualitative data. The results of the study indicate that students experience challenges due to their second language which creates stressful situations. One of the most critical areas that participants emphasized is the difficulties that they experience while they speak. Participants indicated that the challenges of speaking tasks affect their self-confidence and they tend to speak up less. One of the other critical findings of the study that participants highlighted is that they need to spend more time studying just to be able to survive in a highly competitive academic life as it is challenging to comprehend content knowledge with a second language. The obligation of studying in long hours affects their social and family life. The researcher explored the coping mechanisms that participants found effective and a summary related to the COVID-19 pandemic and how it impacted these students' stress.

The purpose of the study was to analyze the self-reported experiences of Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) pre-service teachers with listening comprehension skills in their teaching classroom as university students and in their learning classroom as EFL students. Currently, Japanese EFL education is changing rapidly and focusing on developing overall English skills that include listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, pre-service teacher EFL education in Japan does not stress the importance of listening comprehension pedagogy. Moreover, there have been few studies about listening pedagogy from the perspective of preservice teachers. Through analyzing pre-service teacher's self-reported listening learning experiences, the current study aimed to analyze the current listening pedagogy targeting elementary, junior, and high school EFL preparation. Three participants responded to an interview conducted in Japanese regarding their experiences with the EFL listening pedagogy experiences in their teaching classroom as university students and in their learning classroom as EFL students. The interview data were transcribed, translated into English, and analyzed through a qualitative research approach. The findings revealed that the pre-service teacher training track focused mostly on developing the pre-service EFL teachers' language proficiency rather than their pedagogical knowledge. Several possible explanations for this trend that were Japanese-context specific were provided, as well as directions for future research on the topic.

The Conservation Authorities Act was passed by the Ontario Provincial legislature in 1946 to further the “conservation, restoration, development and development of natural resources other than gas, oil, coal and minerals.” On 8 May 1958, Ontario’s 25th conservation authority was established on the watershed of Spencer Creek near Hamilton. The Spencer Creek Conservation Authority (SCCA) recognized that in order to acquire the necessary lands for conservation it was in a race with developers and urban sprawl. An aggressive land acquisition programme was initiated by the SCCA (1958-1966) and continued by its successor, the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority. The success of this programme from 1958-1971 created a green framework for the region, with many of our most popular and ecological important conservation areas acquired during this period, including: Dundas Valley, Christie Lake, Valens, Spencer Gorge, Beverly Swamp, and Summit Bog. However, acquisition of such a vast acreage of conservation land doesn't just happen by desire, it involves many operational factors. Available funding, administrative policies, land owner engagement, knowledge of the property market, and public and political support were all central aspects of this land acquisition program. This research paper examines these inter-related factors and outlines the many challenges and initiatives that led to the acquisition of over 3,300 acres of land for conservation. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Summary When it comes to studying bilingualism and language acquisition in kids and infants, minimal pair-word learning is of particular importance due to this process being at play within a language and between languages. Having to discriminate between similar-sounding words within a language (i.e., dye & bye) and across languages (i.e., elephant & éléphant) is a complex task. The assumption that researchers have had since the early 1980s is that bilinguals may be better at certain aspects of word learning due to having to manage two languages concurrently. Previous studies have found mixed results regarding minimal pair word learning for both monolingual and bilingual groups depending on the ages. Discriminating between similar-sounding words is typically challenging before the age of 17 to 20 months regardless of the number of languages a child is learning. To investigate this question, we tested 19 participants between the ages of 14 and 18 months of age (14 monolingual and 5 bilingual). The level of attrition during the habituation trial or testing phase of the experiment made the data collection particularly difficult. Infants were recruited online from the Ottawa-Gatineau region and in Canada and the United States via a website for parents wishing to participate in various studies. During test trials, we recorded the looking time to the correctly and incorrectly labeled objects. Participants' performances were analyzed considering their language background, age, and socioeconomic status. Participants in the study were not able to discriminate between the two similar-sounding words regardless of their demographics. In conclusion, even while having access to visual cues from the speaker, monolingual and bilingual infants were not able to successfully learn similar-sounding words. Future studies should use a similar task using a live speaker via Zoom as opposed to a pre-recorded video to investigate whether the results would be different.