<p>I collected two types of data throughout Weeks 1-14, with the original purpose of enhancing teaching and learning in ENGL620. The data included weekly assignment recordings and weekly surveys.</p><p>The primary data were students' speech data, which were collected through 14 weekly timed speaking assessments conducted from Week 1 to Week 14. These assignments were made available on Monday at midnight and were required to be completed and submitted by Sunday at midnight). The assignments were delivered, and responses were collected using Extempore (<a href="http://www.extemporeapp.com/" target="_blank">www.extemporeapp.com</a>), a website specifically designed to support oral English assessment and practice.</p><p>To conduct more comprehensive assessments of students’ performances, I incorporated two OEPT item types into the weekly assignments, including PROS and CONS (referred to as “PC”) and LINE GRAPH (referred to as “LG”). See Appendix B for the assignment items. The PC item presented challenging scenarios ITAs may encounter and required the test-takers to make a decision and discuss the pros and cons associated with the decision. An example item is “<i>Imagine you have a student who likes to come to your office hours but often talks about something irrelevant to the course. What would you do in this situation? What are the pros and cons associated with the decision?</i>”. The LG item asked students to describe a line graph illustrating two or three lines and provide possible reasons behind those trends. It can be argued that the two tasks targeted slightly different language abilities and background knowledge. The two item types were selected because they represented two key skills that the OEPT tests. The PC task focused on stating one’s decision and presenting an argument within a personal context, while the LG item assessed students’ ability to describe visual information and engage in discussions about broader topics such as gender equality, employment, economic growth, college policy. The PC and LG items are the most difficult items in the test (Yan et al., 2019). Therefore, progress in the two tasks can be a good indicator of improvement in the speaking skills required in this context. All the items were either taken from retired OEPT items or developed by the researcher following the specifications for OEPT item development. In particular, the design of the items aimed to avoid assuming prior specific knowledge and to ensure that students could discuss them without excessive cognitive load.</p><p>For each task, the students were allocated 2 minutes for preparation and a maximum of 2 minutes to deliver their response to the assigned topic. The responses were monologic, resembling short classroom presentations. During the preparation time, the participants were permitted to take notes. Each item only allowed for one attempt, which aimed to capture students’ online production of speech and their utilization of language resources. Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics of the responses.</p><p>The PC prompt was deliberately kept consistent for Week 2 and Week 12 randomly selected as time points at the beginning and end of the semester. This deliberate choice of using the same prompt at these two distinct stages serves multiple purposes. Firstly, it provides a valuable perspective for analyzing growth over time. This approach adds depth to the study results and conclusions by providing additional evidence and triangulation. Second, this approach addresses one of the specific challenges identified by Ortega and Iberr-Shea (2005) in studies involving multiple data collection points, as maintaining consistency in the prompt can minimize potential variations in task difficulty or topic-related factors.</p><p>After completing each speaking assignment, the students were requested to rate the level of difficulty for each item on a scale of 1 (Very Easy) to 5 (Very difficult). Additionally, they were asked to fill out a weekly survey using Qualtrics. The Qualtrics survey contained six questions related to the frequency of their English language use outside of the classroom and their focus on language skills in the previous and upcoming week. These questions were considered interesting as potential contributing factors to changes in their performances throughout the semester. Refer to Appendix C for the survey questions.</p>

<p>This study examines the distribution of adverbs among child heritage speakers of Spanish. As demonstrated by previous research, the grammar of Spanish heritage speakers can be compared to that of monolingual speakers, but with slight differences in their use and interpretation that can occur given their language dominance, usage, and exposition to the heritage language (Camacho & Kirova, 2018). In adverb placement, a relevant difference comes with verb-raising, a syntactic feature that allows the verb (V) to move in the sentence, and that is common in romance languages, but uncommon in morphologically poor languages such as English (Camacho & Sanchez, 2017; Guijarro-Fuentes & Larrañaga, 2011). Other differences in adverb distribution also stem directly from their semantic use and interpretation (Zagona, 2002), differences that may create instances of cross-linguistic influence or transfer between English and Spanish grammars. Hence, this study intends to study the extent to which these phenomena are produced in adverb placement, considering the patterns of language dominance, use, and exposure of the participants and current bilingual research discussing language transfer in bilingual grammars. Hence, an elicited production task was administered to 14 child heritage speakers of Spanish from the U.S. Midwest and to a comparison group, 25 child monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico. Results suggest that child heritage speakers behave differently in their production of adverb placement compared to monolingual speakers, showing lower accuracy and little use of verb-raising structures that allow them to produce the post-verbal adverb position Sub-Verb-Adv-Obj. These findings suggest a different developmental path in the acquisition of adverb placement for heritage children in comparison to that of monolingual children.</p>

This dissertation examines effects of globalization on language, identity, and education through the case of four Korean jogi yuhak (early study abroad) students attending Toronto high schools. Resulting from a 2.4-year sociolinguistic ethnography on the language learning experiences of these students, the thesis explores how globalization--and the commodification of language and corporatization of education in the new economy, in particular--has transformed ideas of language, bilingualism, and language learning with respect to the transnational circulation of linguistic and symbolic resources in today‘s world. This thesis incorporates insights from critical social theories, linguistic anthropology, globalization studies, and sociolinguistics, and aims to propose a "globalization sensitive" Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory. To better grasp the ways in which language learning is socially and politically embedded in new conditions generated by globalization, this new SLA theory conceives of language as a set of resources and bilingualism as a social construct, and examines language learning as an economic activity, shaped through encounters with the transnational language education industry. The analysis examines new transnational subjectivities of yuhaksaeng (visa students), which index hybrid identities that are simultaneously global and Korean. In their construction of themselves as "Cools" who are wealthy and cosmopolitan, yuhaksaeng deployed newly-valued varieties of Korean language and culture as resources in the globalized new economy. This practice, however, resulted in limits to their acquisition of forms of English capital valued in the Canadian market. As a Korean middle class strategy for acquiring valuable forms of English capital, jogi yuhak is caught in tension: while the ideology of language as a skill and capital to help an individual‘s social mobility drives the jogi yuhak movement, the essentialist ideology of "authentic" English makes it impossible for Koreans to work it to their advantage. The thesis argues that in multilingual societies, ethnic/racial/linguistic minorities‘ limited access to the acquisition of linguistic competence is produced by existing inequality, rather than their limited linguistic proficiency contributing to their marginal position. To counter naturalized social inequality seemingly linguistic in nature, language education in globalization should move away from essentialism toward process- and practice-oriented approaches to language, community, and identity.

Upon IRB approval, a corpus of 1,192 texts consisting of three assignments written by a total of 1,736 first year engineering students was compiled, and 117 pedagogical materials were collected. Using an iterative quantitative-qualitative approach to written discourse analysis, instances of formulaic language (4- and 6-word sequences) were identified in the corpus; formulaic language was then coded for the rhetorical functions expected in problem statements as qualitatively identified in the pedagogical materials. Additionally, three discourse-based interviews were conducted with First-year Engineering Faculty. Interview data was coded for themes of effective communication and used to triangulate the findings from the corpus analysis.

This dissertation examines effects of globalization on language, identity, and education through the case of four Korean jogi yuhak (early study abroad) students attending Toronto high schools. Resulting from a 2.4-year sociolinguistic ethnography on the language learning experiences of these students, the thesis explores how globalization--and the commodification of language and corporatization of education in the new economy, in particular--has transformed ideas of language, bilingualism, and language learning with respect to the transnational circulation of linguistic and symbolic resources in today‘s world. This thesis incorporates insights from critical social theories, linguistic anthropology, globalization studies, and sociolinguistics, and aims to propose a "globalization sensitive" Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory. To better grasp the ways in which language learning is socially and politically embedded in new conditions generated by globalization, this new SLA theory conceives of language as a set of resources and bilingualism as a social construct, and examines language learning as an economic activity, shaped through encounters with the transnational language education industry. The analysis examines new transnational subjectivities of yuhaksaeng (visa students), which index hybrid identities that are simultaneously global and Korean. In their construction of themselves as "Cools" who are wealthy and cosmopolitan, yuhaksaeng deployed newly-valued varieties of Korean language and culture as resources in the globalized new economy. This practice, however, resulted in limits to their acquisition of forms of English capital valued in the Canadian market. As a Korean middle class strategy for acquiring valuable forms of English capital, jogi yuhak is caught in tension: while the ideology of language as a skill and capital to help an individual‘s social mobility drives the jogi yuhak movement, the essentialist ideology of "authentic" English makes it impossible for Koreans to work it to their advantage. The thesis argues that in multilingual societies, ethnic/racial/linguistic minorities‘ limited access to the acquisition of linguistic competence is produced by existing inequality, rather than their limited linguistic proficiency contributing to their marginal position. To counter naturalized social inequality seemingly linguistic in nature, language education in globalization should move away from essentialism toward process- and practice-oriented approaches to language, community, and identity.

Comment s'’institutionnalise dans la durée le statut du français comme langue d’'enseignement dans des formations universitaires en contexte non francophone ? L’'hypothèse principale est celle d’'une faible institutionnalisation du statut curriculaire du français en contexte non francophone, due notamment aux acteurs producteurs de la politique curriculaire universitaire, de moins en moins engagés dans un curriculum en français.L’'étude de l’'évolution de la politique curriculaire de l’'université Galatasaray - université créée en 1992 sur la base d’'un accord franco-turc - est envisagée selon une démarche qualitative et inductive, au moyen d’'une étude de cas élargie à d’'autres formations francophones, de moindre ampleur, mais créées à la même période au tournant des années 1980-1990 en Turquie et dans d’'autres pays d’Europe orientale. L’'étude s’'appuie sur un vaste corpus de données d’'archives et de données d’'entretiens. Les différents éléments recueillis sur plusieurs formations, permettent de mettre à jour des processus d’'institutionnalisation initiaux du statut du français communs à ces formations et à l’'université Galatasaray. Toutes sont représentatives d’'une période particulière, de courte durée, propice à un mouvement de création de formations universitaires francophones dans ces contextes globalement non francophones d’'Europe orientale.Dans la majorité des cas, à des degrés divers, vingt ans après, le statut du français apparaît d’autant plus instable que les réseaux d’'acteurs producteurs de la politique curriculaire universitaire sont faibles et que le statut du français est de moins en moins consensuel. / How does the status of the French language as the teaching language for the courses become institutionalized in academic training programs, within a non French-speaking context? The main assumption is that of a weak institutionalization of the curricular status of the French language in a non French-speaking context, due in particular to the players, who generate the academic curricular policy while being less and less committed to a curriculum in French.The study of the curricular policy evolution at Galatasaray University — a university created in 1992 on the basis of a franco-turkish agreement is —considered along the lines of a qualitative and inductive approach, by means of a case study extended to other training programs in French, of a lesser scope but created during the same era, at the turn of the 1980s-1990s in Turkey and in other Eastern Europe countries. The study relies on a vast corpus of archival data and interview-gathered data. The elements concerning the selected training programs enable us to bring to light some initial institutionalization processes of the status of the French language, that are common to these training programs and to Galatasaray University. All are representative of a particular era, of short lasting, propitious for a movement of academic training programs creation, in French, within these globally non French-speaking contexts in Eastern Europe. In the majority of cases, at various degrees, twenty years later, the status of the French language appears all the more unstable that the networks of players who generate the curricular academic policy are weak, and that the status of the French language is less and less consensual.

<p>A great deal of the research on cross-linguistic phonetic influence demonstrates that a speaker’s knowledge of their first language (L1) significantly affects their ability to perceive and produce sounds in any other language. While current studies show that cross-linguistic transfer occurs at the L3 level, some research suggests that properties of both L1 and L2 are present in the production of L3 (Ionin, Montrul & Santos, 2011). Many studies have addressed perception, production and factors that influence foreign speech in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) (Watkins, Rauber & Baptista, 2009). As the number of multilingual individuals rises, so does the need for studies that investigate not only SLA but also that of additional languages (i.e., Third Language Acquisition). This dissertation examines how cross-linguistic influence (CLI) occurs among English, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), examining instances of vowel reduction, an aspect of phonological production. English and BP are assumed as vowel reducing languages, whereas Spanish displays negligible vowel reduction in comparison. The vowel productions in L3 BP of two multilingual groups, L1English-L2Spanish-L3BP (ESP) and L1 Spanish-L2 English-BP (SEP) were investigated in two tasks: a paragraph reading task (PRT) and a carrier phrase task (CPT). The study sought to determine whether i) a native speaker of a vowel reducing L1 and a non-vowel reducing L2 displays more or less vowel reduction in a vowel reducing L3 than a native speaker of a non-vowel reducing L1 and vowel reducing L2 and ii) how length of exposure to an L3 affects phonological production. Three fixed effects were considered: duration ratio, intensity ratio and height (F1). The goal was to ascertain whether the Typological Primacy Model (TPM) (Rothman 2011, 2015) or the L2 Status Factor Model (Bardel & Falk 2007, 2012; Hammarberg, 2001) would be a better predictor for how vowel reduction would occur in the L3. Results for duration ratio and vowel height showed no significant difference between groups ESP and SEP. Results for intensity ratio suggest L2 Status as a better predictor, as group SEP displayed more phonological transfer than the ESP group. A hybrid approach to L3 acquisition models is proposed. </p>

<p>The question of whether second languages (L2s) are best learned implicitly or explicitly has been a topic of much empirical discourse, with the majority of studies pointing to the benefits of explicit instruction when learning L2 grammar rules. However, given the focus on grammar, it is unclear how generalizable these findings are to other linguistic domains, such as L2 speech and L2 vocabulary. The previous focus on laboratory-based settings, and the language bias in the literature, also make it unclear how ecologically valid and applicable these findings are to the real world. To address these macro research questions, two experiments were carried out on English-speaking L2 learners of German.</p> <p>Experiment I (ExI) investigated the effects of implicit and explicit learning on the acquisition of Final Obstruent Devoicing and Dorsal Fricative Assimilation. The effect of the two learning conditions on L2 perception was also measured using a perceptual discrimination task and a perceptual identification task. Experiment II (ExII) investigated the effects of explicit historical instruction on the learning of English-German cognates, which were compared to the effects of a non-explicit learning condition. To examine whether declarative knowledge of relevant historical changes can aid in vocabulary learning, an explicit condition received instruction on the Second Germanic Sound Shift, Ingvæonic Palatalization, and relevant historical semantic changes. Both experiments followed a pre-/post-/delayed-post-test design.</p> <p>Results indicate that the two explicit conditions significantly outperformed the non-explicit conditions, suggesting that explicit learning and explicit instruction can be beneficial when learning L2 speech and L2 vocabulary. In ExI, acoustic analyses of learner speech samples indicate that the explicit condition was more successful in the learning of the two phonological rules. In ExII, the explicit condition was more successful in the identification and learning of cognates, suggesting that knowledge of language history, and instruction on applied historical linguistics, can be beneficial when learning a language that is historically related to a language that learners already speak. The results from this dissertation are discussed in the context of implicit and explicit learning and instruction, the role of attention, and the role of declarative knowledge, with concluding remarks pointing to the importance of metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness in adult or university-level language courses.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Vocabulary is a crucial element in second language learning. However, researchers in vocabulary acquisition express concerns about students’ successful acquisition of vocabulary (e.g., no significant gain after one semester of instruction (Clark & Ishida, 2005)) and the limited classroom instruction dedicated to vocabulary. In an effort to address these issues, the present study developed an online vocabulary learning system intended for use as homework, incorporating relevant theories, hypotheses, and empirical findings from existing literature and investigated its effectiveness employing a mixed-methods design.</p><p dir="ltr">For the quantitative component, students’ vocabulary gains were measured across three aspects of vocabulary knowledge (breadth/size, depth, and speed of access). A three-week experiment was conducted with students enrolled in the third-semester Japanese language course at a US Midwest institution. The final dataset included 54 students’ data. The experimental group (<i>n</i> = 28) utilized the new system to learn target words, while the control group (<i>n</i> = 26) used the current system employed in the course. The current system is also operated online and includes two types of exercises (i.e., listen-and-repeat and flashcards). ANCOVAs were employed to identify any significant differences between the groups, controlling for their pretest scores. Additionally, regression analyses were conducted to explore the relationship between the time the experimental group students spent learning new words using the new system and their outcomes, while also controlling for their pretest scores.</p><p dir="ltr">For the qualitative component, eight students from the same participant pool as the quantitative component participated in one-hour focus group discussions, conducted separately for the experimental and control groups.</p><p dir="ltr">The quantitative analysis revealed no significant differences between the groups; however, it was found that the time spent by the experimental group learning new words using the system significantly predicted two aspects of vocabulary knowledge. The qualitative data offered insights into potential explanations for the lack of significant differences between the groups, including the influence of students’ motivation on the experiment and the perceived difficulty level of the vocabulary exercises implemented in the new system. Based on the results of the present study, numerous suggestions are made for future development projects of similar systems and research.</p>