Any attempt at understanding the influences that impinge on teacher development in South Africa is incomplete without an exploration of the role of NGOs, particularly those alternative development agencies that were conceived in response to apartheid education and which continued to pursue progressive, contextually relevant interventions in the transitional democracy. Using the archaeological approach to excavate deep insights into the behaviour of a language development NGO, this study documents the institutional memory of the English language Education Trust (ELET). Portraying two decades of its history (1984 to 2001) through the eyes of key participants in the organisation, the study traces the multiple influences, internal and extraneous, that have shaped ELET's mutating identity as it negotiated the challenges of a volatile and unpredictable NGO climate. The study pursues two reciprocal outcomes. First, it attempts methodological elaboration. In advocating transdisciplinary research, it borrows from the established traditions of empowerment and illuminative evaluation, appropriating their key tenets for an institutional evaluation. Underpinned by the genre of narrative research, the study expands the lifehistory method as an evaluative tool, providing opportunities for organisational members to engage in self-reflexive interrogation of the organisation's life as it negotiated a multiplicity of development challenges. Second, it attempts theoretical elaboration. It challenges classical organisational theory (which derives from the structural - functionalist corporatist mode of management theory), as conservative and inadequate in understanding the organisational culture of an NGO. The study proposes a post-structuralist mode of discourse analysis as complementary to classical management theory in organisational analysis. Conflating theory and method provides incisive conceptual lenses to appraise the contribution of ELET to language teacher development. The study finds that while ELET has been complicit in allowing its mission as a counter-hegemonic agency to be undermined by its submission to normative, coercive and mimetic isomorphism, it nevertheless demonstrates agency to innovate rather than replicate. It achieves this despite the cumulative constraining pressures of globalisation, manifest through volatility in corporate funding, shifting imperatives of bilateral funding agencies, and the fickle agendas of the fledgling democratic government. The study demonstrates that, given these unpredictable conditions, NGOs Iike ELET are forced to reinvent themselves to respond to emerging development opportunities as a hedge against attrition. In this regard, ELET has benefited from astute management and a vigilant quest for homegrown intervention programmes as alternatives to imported literacy programmes, all of which helps it redefine what constitutes emancipatory literacies. Despite its proven record of accomplishment as a site for alternative teacher development, the study demonstrates that a competitive higher education sector a hostile policy environment and the debilitating reporting mechanisms demanded by funders results in ELET's potential as a site for 'authentic' knowledge production to be devalued. A further consequence of this marginilisation is that the organisation finds itself increasingly vulnerable to co-option by the state as a functionary of service delivery, accounting upwards to funders rather than downwards to beneficiaries of development. The study argues that the exploitative relationship the NGO endures with other development constituencies is as much a consequence of the NGO's failure to embrace an expedient corporate culture as it is the failure of these constituencies to acknowledge the potential of the NGO. Hence, rather than preserve the antagonistic relationship between higher education institutes and alternative agencies for knowledge production, they will each benefit by mutually appropriating the accumulated expertise of the other, giving substance to the ideal of a community of reason through creative dialectical evolution. The study concludes with the proposition that one mechanism to operationalise the notion of a community of reason is community service learning, a partnership between higher education institutes, corporate funders and development NGOs, a relationship in which the NGO provides leadership in appropriating disparate energies towards the cultivation of a socially literate country. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

Japanese contains many words borrowed from English, which differ from the source word both phonologically and/or semantically. This study examined how short classroom interventions can facilitate recognizing (i) the spoken forms of these words in English, and (ii) semantic differences between loanwords and their English counterparts. Thirty participants were divided into 3 groups: an English-only treatment group, a Japanese English treatment group, and a control group. Each group completed a pretest requiring them to (i) identify loan words pronounced in English, and (ii) provide the meanings of these words. Thereafter the first group was given the correct English pronunciation and meanings of these words without reference to their Japanese counterparts. The second group was explicitly taught the difference between the English and Japanese versions. To assess the efficacy of the 2 treatments, the groups were given a posttest. Results confirmed that the contrastive method is the most effective.

Japanese contains many words borrowed from English, which differ from the source word both phonologically and/or semantically. This study examined how short classroom interventions can facilitate recognizing (i) the spoken forms of these words in English, and (ii) semantic differences between loanwords and their English counterparts. Thirty participants were divided into 3 groups: an English-only treatment group, a Japanese English treatment group, and a control group. Each group completed a pretest requiring them to (i) identify loan words pronounced in English, and (ii) provide the meanings of these words. Thereafter the first group was given the correct English pronunciation and meanings of these words without reference to their Japanese counterparts. The second group was explicitly taught the difference between the English and Japanese versions. To assess the efficacy of the 2 treatments, the groups were given a posttest. Results confirmed that the contrastive method is the most effective.

With the growth of recent research on the internal benefits of gesture for second language learners, the emphasis has begun to shift away from the traditional focus on addressee-related benefits. The current study explores student-student interactions which reflect internal benefits during face-to-face video game play. Data was collected in the conference room at a local Victoria high school and involved 7 participants; 6 English as a Second Language students and one native English speaker. Using discourse analysis as a method of data analysis, Long’s social constructivist model is taken as the grounded theory whereby it is thought that learners construct their new language through interaction that is socially mediated (Brown, 2007). The database is composed of videotaped sessions where student dyads, in a laddered consecutive order, take turns first as ‘novice’ gamers when learning how to play and then teaching in the next dyad. Each dyad experienced 5 minutes of instruction, 10 minutes of game play and 10 minutes of reflection about the game using a set number of questions. Videotapes of participants and transcripts were later examined and re-examined for face and body gestures, signs of social bonding as well as different types and uses of vocabulary. Two dyads emerged as having the most interesting results on almost all measures. These dyads both displayed a high number of gestures, vocabulary, mimicking and simultaneous gesturing. These findings reflect the potential utility of using student gesture to predict and gauge learner readiness, engagement and learning. This study has implications for both the instruction and learning of a second language as well as the use of interactive media and even video games for educational purposes. In addition, it contributes to the understanding of student-student interaction and the social construction of learning English as a second language. / Graduate

No description available.

The study has two main aims. The first is theoretical and the second methodological. Theoretically, the study seeks to investigate the nature and extent of variation in interlanguage with the aim of identifying and assessing the extent to which factors such as discourse mode (e.g. narrative vs descriptive) and linguistic context are likely to result in variable interlanguage performance. Methodologically, the study seeks to highlight the problems of eliciting valid interlanguage data using the concept of planning as is currently formulated by Ochs (1979) and Ellis (1987). Although interlanguage performance may be shown to be variable it still remains important to assess how widespread variation is in interlanguage, because variation is likely to shed much more light on interlanguage development and use, if it is demonstrated that it is neither restricted to specific structural areas nor typical of learners at particular stages of interlanguage development. With this in mind this study investigates the performance of second language learners at three different levels of proficiency in two linguistic areas - spatial and directional prepositions and the 3rd person singular. Variation in interlanguage has been attributed to a large number of factors some of which are enumerated below - discourse mode, varying planning conditions, topic, setting, interlocutor, linguistic context etc.

This study examined structural constraints on early child code mixing. Constraints are widely attested in adult bilinguals (Myers-Scotton, 1993; Poplack, 1980). It has been argued that these constraints preserve the structural properties of both languages. It is uncertain whether constraints on early child code mixing are the same as constraints on adult code mixing. The present analysis was based on Poplack's two structural constraints: the free morpheme and the equivalence constraints. Ten French-English bilingual subjects were observed at 4 time periods, between approximately 2;00 and 3;06 years of age. The children's utterances containing elements from both languages were analysed for violations of Poplack's constraints. The violation rate was extremely low, less than 2% of the total mixed utterances. These results corroborate Lanza (1997), Vihman (1998), Allen et al. (2000), and Paradis et al. (2000), who likewise found that structural constraints on code mixing are operational from early in acquisition.

No description available.

In light of recent theoretical and methodological developments in the areas of French morphosyntax and child acquisition, the present dissertation reconsiders the asymmetry reported in previous studies of the acquisition of subject and object clitics in French-speaking children. Our reanalysis allows us to address two important questions in the domain of acquisition, namely optionality in the child’s grammar and the role of input in development. By means of an exhaustive analysis of child and adult production, our research illustrates that adults produce several subject/object asymmetries, and we propose that the asymmetry reported for children is attributable to properties of the target language and not to the acquisition process. Beyond these conclusions, our research reveals a significant asymmetry during the course of acquisition, namely that the subject clitic reaches the target grammar faster than the object clitic. This asymmetry, which we qualify as rhythmic, is caused by a prolonged optionality of the object clitic. However, our study shows that this optionality is not generalized. Until roughly 3 years of age, object and subject clitics show a parallel development in spontaneous speech: they are optional. After this period (around 3 years), their production reaches the levels observed in adults. In contrast, some studies in elicited production have shown that object clitics are still optional beyond 3 years. These contradictory results lead us to propose that there are two types of optionality: spontaneous and induced. We explore possible sources of these phenomena and propose that the status of pronouns as clitic elements plays a role in spontaneous optionality. As for the induced optionality, we propose that it is attributable to variation in the input and the child’s tendency to regularize it. Overall, our results allow us to redefine the asymmetry, to propose that optionality is a multifactorial phenomenon, and to illustrate the role of input in the optionality exhibited by French children for this domain.

This study provides a thorough examination of the role of orthography in promoting first language-based phonological transfer. Specifically, it analyzes the role of auditory-orthographic condition, type of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence and aspects of phonological memory on shaping transfer. Although, there has been previous work on the role of orthography in the acquisition of second language phonology, not much is known about the factors that shape orthography-induced transfer. In addition, the role of orthography remains to be formalized in the future models of the acquisition of second language phonology. In this experiment, data was elicited via a primary Spanish-based picture-naming task and a secondary Farsi-based non-word repetition phonological memory task. In the picture-naming task, participants were divided into four groups and assigned to four conditions, three with different degrees of exposure to orthography and one auditory condition. The data based on the productions of 40 novice adult English-speaking learners of Spanish, reveal a robust effect of orthography on phonological transfer leading to non-target-like productions at the very beginning stages of second language acquisition. There is also strong evidence that individual grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences differ in the extent to which they trigger phonological transfer. In addition, the findings show that while the presence of orthography at learning or at production induces transfer, the presence of orthography at learning has a stronger effect. The results also indicate some effect for the different aspects of phonological memory, namely, primacy and repetition effects. However, there was no correlation between individual phonological memory and the quantity of transfer. Based on the findings, I argue that when a shared grapheme corresponds to two different phonemes in the learners’ first language and the second language, the less salient the acoustic/phonetic difference between the target language and the first language phonemes, the higher the probability of first language transfer. I also argue for an effect of first language grapheme-to-phoneme frequency on transfer, suggesting that when there is variability in the realization of a particular grapheme in the first language, transfer will be based on the most frequent first language realization. Moreover, based on the findings in this study and previous research on the effect of orthography on second language production, I propose that exposure to orthography may interfere with the establishment of second language phonological categories.