The topic of this diploma thesis is Using dictation to develop listening and writing skills in English language classes at the lower secondary level. The aim of the theoretical part is to describe dictation and its contribution to the development of listening and writing skills in English language classes. This part of the thesis also deals with how dictation, listening and writing skills are reflected in the Framework Educational Programme and School Educational Programme. The practical part is based on a project whose goal is to teach a few English lessons based on dictation. A detailed description of each particular lesson is presented in this part. Questionnaires are used to find out the popularity of dictation among pupils and teachers and the frequency of their use in English language classes.

De nos jours, la construction en bă, en tant que structure particulière et fréquente à l’oral et à l’écrit en chinois mandarin moderne, est souvent un sujet à polémique dans les analyses sémantico-syntaxiques ; les études sur son emploi chez les enfants sont plutôt rares. Partant de cette réalité, en m’appuyant sur la description détaillée de son emploi chez des enfants préscolaires âgés de plus de 05 ;06, et en combinant analyse quantitative et analyse qualitative, j’ai réussi non seulement à faire un « état des lieux » plus actualisé sur son emploi chez ces enfants, mais aussi à expliquer ses spécificités linguistiques à travers son acquisition, qui sont les deux objectifs principaux de cette thèse. Convaincu par son efficacité et l’absence de contrainte qu’elle impose à l’enfant, j’ai pratiqué la dictée à l’adulte tout au long de mon expérimentation, ce qui m’a permis de constituer mon propre corpus longitudinal, constitué d’enregistrements audio et vidéo de plus de 72 heures. Cette thèse permet, de ce fait, de dégager des paramètres opérants pour évaluer la bonne maîtrise de cette structure à l’oral, de discerner des caractéristiques acquisitionnelles facilitant son apprentissage et son enseignement, mais encore de mettre en évidence que, malgré le fait que les enfants maîtrisent la plupart des structures du syntagme verbal de cette construction avant leur scolarisation, son acquisition se poursuit après à l’école. Les analyses syntaxiques confirment que, même si divers facteurs peuvent influencer son emploi, les enfants l’utilisent essentiellement en raison de contraintes syntaxiques imposées par la langue chinoise, ce qui prouve bien que la construction en bă n’a pas encore acquis un sémantisme distinct et qu’elle est toujours en relation étroite avec l’ordre S.-V.-O., l’ordre canonique du chinois. / Nowadays, the bă construction, as a particular but frequent structure in spoken and written modern Mandarin Chinese, is still a controversial subject in semantico-syntactic analysis; the studies on children’s acquisition of this structure are even rare. With this reality in mind, based on the detailed description of its use by over 05;06 years old preschool children, and combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, I not only have updated the knowledge of its use by children, but also have explained its linguistic properties through how it has been acquired. These are also the two main objectives of this thesis. Convinced by its effectiveness and the absence of experimental constraint for children, I practiced the “dictée à l’adulte” (dictation to adult) throughout all my experimentation in China, which allowed me to build up my own longitudinal corpus including audio and video recordings of more than 72 hours. This thesis permit to identify effective parameters to evaluate the level of its mastery in children’s spoken language, to discern acquisitionnal features which could improve its teaching and facilitate children’s learning, and to highlight that despite the fact that children master most of the predicative structure likely to be used in this construction before entering school, its acquisition will continue during their education at primary school. Syntactic analysis confirms that while many factors could influence its use, the children use it mainly for the syntactic constraints imposed by the Chinese language. This fact proves that the bă construction has not yet acquired a distinct meaning and it is still closely related to the order S-V-O, the canonical order of Mandarin Chinese.

De nos jours, la construction en bă, en tant que structure particulière et fréquente à l’oral et à l’écrit en chinois mandarin moderne, est souvent un sujet à polémique dans les analyses sémantico-syntaxiques ; les études sur son emploi chez les enfants sont plutôt rares. Partant de cette réalité, en m’appuyant sur la description détaillée de son emploi chez des enfants préscolaires âgés de plus de 05 ;06, et en combinant analyse quantitative et analyse qualitative, j’ai réussi non seulement à faire un « état des lieux » plus actualisé sur son emploi chez ces enfants, mais aussi à expliquer ses spécificités linguistiques à travers son acquisition, qui sont les deux objectifs principaux de cette thèse. Convaincu par son efficacité et l’absence de contrainte qu’elle impose à l’enfant, j’ai pratiqué la dictée à l’adulte tout au long de mon expérimentation, ce qui m’a permis de constituer mon propre corpus longitudinal, constitué d’enregistrements audio et vidéo de plus de 72 heures. Cette thèse permet, de ce fait, de dégager des paramètres opérants pour évaluer la bonne maîtrise de cette structure à l’oral, de discerner des caractéristiques acquisitionnelles facilitant son apprentissage et son enseignement, mais encore de mettre en évidence que, malgré le fait que les enfants maîtrisent la plupart des structures du syntagme verbal de cette construction avant leur scolarisation, son acquisition se poursuit après à l’école. Les analyses syntaxiques confirment que, même si divers facteurs peuvent influencer son emploi, les enfants l’utilisent essentiellement en raison de contraintes syntaxiques imposées par la langue chinoise, ce qui prouve bien que la construction en bă n’a pas encore acquis un sémantisme distinct et qu’elle est toujours en relation étroite avec l’ordre S.-V.-O., l’ordre canonique du chinois. / Nowadays, the bă construction, as a particular but frequent structure in spoken and written modern Mandarin Chinese, is still a controversial subject in semantico-syntactic analysis; the studies on children’s acquisition of this structure are even rare. With this reality in mind, based on the detailed description of its use by over 05;06 years old preschool children, and combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, I not only have updated the knowledge of its use by children, but also have explained its linguistic properties through how it has been acquired. These are also the two main objectives of this thesis. Convinced by its effectiveness and the absence of experimental constraint for children, I practiced the “dictée à l’adulte” (dictation to adult) throughout all my experimentation in China, which allowed me to build up my own longitudinal corpus including audio and video recordings of more than 72 hours. This thesis permit to identify effective parameters to evaluate the level of its mastery in children’s spoken language, to discern acquisitionnal features which could improve its teaching and facilitate children’s learning, and to highlight that despite the fact that children master most of the predicative structure likely to be used in this construction before entering school, its acquisition will continue during their education at primary school. Syntactic analysis confirms that while many factors could influence its use, the children use it mainly for the syntactic constraints imposed by the Chinese language. This fact proves that the bă construction has not yet acquired a distinct meaning and it is still closely related to the order S-V-O, the canonical order of Mandarin Chinese.

A tese divide-se em duas partes: 1) Relações entre leitura orofacial e leitura alfabética, vocabulário auditivo, consciência fonológica, memória de reconhecimento visual de figuras e de pseudofiguras, e compreensão de leitura de sentenças; 2) Escrita sob ditado e relações com leitura orofacial. Na Parte 1, 157 crianças de 6, 7 e 8 anos de idade de NSE muito elevado, foram avaliadas em leituras orofacial e alfabética, vocabulário auditivo, consciência fonológica, memória de reconhecimento visual, e compreensão de leitura de sentenças. Foram empregados: Prova de Leitura Orofacial, Teste de Vocabulário por Leitura Orofacial versão 1A computadorizada, Teste de Competência de Leitura de Palavras e Pseudopalavras, Teste de Vocabulário Auditivo Usp, Prova de Consciência Fonológica por Escolha de Figuras (PCFF-o), Teste Computadorizado de Memória de Reconhecimento de Figuras, e Teste de Compreensão de Leitura de Sentenças. Resultados revelaram que: 1) O léxico ortográfico aumenta sistematicamente de modo de modo monotônico desde o acaso aos 6 anos para 7 anos e daí para 8 anos; 2) A competência mais fortemente associada à leitura orofacial é a leitura de itens escritos; 3) O desenvolvimento das competências de leitura fonológica e lexical é diretamente proporcional ao desenvolvimento das habilidades metafonológicas no nível fonêmico; 4) Os subtestes de leitura fonológicos (decodificação) são mais fortemente associados com leitura orofacial. Assim, quanto maior a habilidade de converter grafemas em fonemas (rota fonológica de leitura por decodificação), maior a habilidade de converter optolalemas em fonemas para compreeder fala por leitura orofacial; 5) O desenvolvimento da leitura orofacial correlaciona-se mais fortemente com habilidades metafonológica de Transposição e Adição Fonêmicas. Logo, consciência fonêmica é precursora da leitura orofacial. Transposição Fonêmica correlaciona-se mais fortemente com rotas de leitura fonológica e lexical. De fato, a correlação com os subtestes logográficos foi não significativa, ou foi menos significativa que com subtestes fonêmicos (Transposição e Subtração Fonêmicas, e Trocadilho). Assim, o desenvolvimento de habilidades metalinguísticas no nível fonêmico (Transposição e Subtração Fonêmica e Trocadilhos) associa-se ao desenvolvimento de mais eficientes habilidades de leitura (inicialmente pela rota fonológica de decodificação grafema-fonema, convertendo grafemas em fonemas para compreender a escrita, e subsequentemente, pela rota lexical de reconhecimento visual direto das formas ortográficas, que, por sua vez, está associado com o desenvolvimento de mais eficientes habilidades de leitura orofacial (converter optolalemas em fonemas para compreender a fala lida nos lábios). Subtestes logográficos (de pré-leitura) não predizem confiavelmente nem bom nível de habilidade metafonológica nem bom nível de leitura orofacial (conversão de optolalemas em fonemas). Dados apoiam a interpretação de que a leitura orofacial (conversão de optolalemas em fonemas) depende de leitura alfabética que, por sua vez, depende de habilidades metafonológicas. Foram normatizados oito testes, e cinco subtestes de leitura, e nove subtestes de consciência fonológica. Na Parte 2, 154 alunos (61 do Ensino Superior e 93 do Ensino Fundamental) foram submetidos a uma prova de escrita sob ditado de 560 palavras de baixa frequência de ocorrência. Anovas revelaram que a precisão da cifragem das palavras ouvidas foi função positiva da média aritmética dos índices de cifrabilidade das relações fonografêmicas componentes dessas palavras, conforme modelo de Capovilla. Análise de erros de escrita (paragrafias) indicam efeito de leitura orofacial visual, pois os grafemas produzidos nas paragrafias mapearam mais concentradamente os fonemas dos mesmos pontos de articulação daqueles componentes das palavras ouvidas / The dissertation is divided into two parts. Part 1 assessed the relationships holding among alphabetical reading, speech reading, auditory vocabulary, phonological awareness, recognition memory, and sentence reading comprehension in a sample of 157 children aged 6- 8 years. Part 2 assessed writing under dictation: error analyses based on cyphering precision measures and phonetics underlying speech reading (articulation points of the phonemes corresponding to the writing errors) in 154 college and elementary school students.Part 1 used the following tests: Speech Reading Skill Test (SRST), Computerized Speech Reading Vocabulary Test (CSRVT), Alphabetic Reading Skill (Word Decoding-Recognition) Test (ARST); Auditory Vocabulary (AVT), Phonological Awareness Test (PAT), Computerized Picture Recognition Memory Test (CPRMT-112), Computerized Image Recognition Memory Test (CIRMT-180), Reading Comprehension Skill Test, Alphabetic Reading Skill (Word Decoding-Recognition) Test (ARST). Results showed that: 1) The orthographic lexicon (subtest of rejecting Homophone Pseudo-words) increased systematically in a monotonic way from kindergarten to 1st grade to 2nd grade; 2) Speech-reading skill is most strongly associated with the alphabetic reading skill; 3) Reading subtests that demand phonological reading strategy and lexical reading strategy were directly proportional to meta-phonological skills subtests, specially those at the phonemic level; 4) Subtests that demand phonological reading strategy were strongly associated with speech-reading tests. The greater the skill of converting graphemes into phonemes, the greater the skill of converting optolalemes into phonemes in order to comprehend speech via lip-reading. 5) Speech-reading skill was most strongly correlated with the meta-phonological skills of Phonemic Transposition and Addition. Thus, meta-phonological skills at the phonemic level seemed to foster speech-reading skill. Phonemic Transposition skill was most strongly correlated with phonological and lexical reading strategies. Alphabetic Reading Test subtests that demanded just basic logographic strategy were not correlated or were only very weakly correlated with Phonological Awareness Test subtests that demand high phonemic processing. There was a positive correlation between phonemic skills on one hand and, on the other hand, phonological reading skills and lexical reading skills. Also, there was a positive correlation between phonological and lexical reading skills on one hand and speech-reading skills on the other hand. Alphabetic Reading Skill Test subtests that require only a basic logographic reading strategydo not predict reliably neither meta-phonological skills, nor speech-reading skills. Such data give support to the interpretation that the speech-reading skill of converting optolalemes into phonemes relies on the alphabetic reading skills. In turn, such alphabetic reading skills rely on meta-phonological skills. In Part 2, 154 participants (61 college students and 93 elementary school students) were assessed in a spelling under auditory dictation test of 560 extremely rare words. ANOVAS revealed that the encoding precision of the spoken words to be spelled under dictation was a positive function of the encoding index mean of the phoneme-grapheme relationships that make up those words, according to Capovillas model. Spelling error (paragraphia) analyses suggest visual speech reading effects in spelling under auditory dictation: The unconventional spelling units produced in the paragraphias matched the articulation points of the phonemes to be mapped

<p>This project investigates the importance of availability in the scope of dictation programs. Using speech recognition technology for dictating has not reached the public, and that may very well be a result of poor availability in today’s technical solutions. </p><p>I have constructed a persona character, Johanna, who personalizes the target user. I have also developed a solution that streams audio into a speech recognition server and sends back interpreted text. Johanna affirmed that the solution was successful in theory. </p><p>I then incorporated test users that tried out the solution in practice. Half of them do indeed claim that their usage has been and will continue to be increased thanks to the new level of availability.</p>

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The first purpose of the present study was to determine whether the duration of preschool children's drawing and writing activity could be increased by introducing the process of dictation and dramatization of children's own stories. The second purpose of this study was to determine whether taking dictation from preschool children and facilitating the dramatization of children's dictations had an impact on print awareness. Samples of convenience were selected from a child care center in a small midwestern city. Results were based on the participation of 16 3- to 5-year-old children in the intervention group and 21 3- to 5-year-old children in the control group.Each participant's print awareness level was measured at the beginning and end of the study using the Print Awareness Test (Huba & Kontos, 1986). Videorecordings were made of the activity that occurred at a designated writing table. The duration of each child's writing and drawing activity was recorded (in seconds). For three hours a week during the eight weeks of the treatment period, children in the treatment group were encouraged to dictate their own individual stories to an adult who wrote their stories and read the stories back to the children. During the last four weeks of the treatment period, children in the treatment group also were encouraged to dramatize their own stories.The findings of the study were:1. A significant difference in children's print awareness was found in both the treatment and control groups (p<.05). There was no difference in print awareness change scores between the treatment and control groups.2. There was a moderate positive correlation (.471) between the number of stories dictated during the first four weeks of intervention and changes in print awareness scores within the treatment group.3. There was no significant difference between the control and treatment groups in the duration of writing and drawing at the end of the study. However, within the treatment group, during the time children were dictating and dramatizing their own stories, the duration of writing and drawing was significantly greater than either before or after intervention. / Department of Elementary Education

Skinner (1957) attested that the acquisition of one type of verbal operant will not necessarily occasion the emergence of another type of verbal response topography. In contrast, several studies have shown that multiple exemplar training (MET) is a mechanism that can facilitate the emergence of untrained operants, and it has been considered a powerful tool for establishing generalized operant responses also known as derived relational responses in the language of Relational Frame Theory (RFT). Using a multiple probe design across participants, the current study evaluated the effects of two training protocols in the emergence of untaught intraverbal responses (listing and vocal spelling of words). In Experiment 1, four participants diagnosed with intellectual disability were trained in taking dictation responses and tested for the emergence of intraverbal responses in the form of vocal spelling of words. In Experiment 2, three out of the four participants were trained to relate three sets of three synonyms each using a conditional discrimination training. The results demonstrated that the training procedures used during both experiments were effective in occasioning the emergence of untrained intraverbal responses. It was suggested that participants should have had a history of MET through the course of their academic life which facilitated the emergence of different intraverbal responses in this study.

The topics of this diploma thesis are dictations and orthographic exercises within didactics of the Czech language. The thesis consists of theoretical part, which contains a definition of the term didactics of Czech language, its inclusion among the other fields of science and their relationship. In this part of the thesis, I also focus on orthography, which includes dictation. The core of the theoretical part is characteristics of dictation, principles of dictated text and evaluation and classification of a written dictation. A part of the thesis is also a chapter dealing with specific learning disabilities. The practical part of this diploma thesis is dedicated to the analysis of textbooks of Czech language and orthographic publications. Detailed description of each particular dictation focusing on punctuation is presented in this part. At the end of the thesis is a brief summary and evaluation of the analysis of individual types of dictation and alternatively orthographic exercises.