Orientador: Plínio Almeida Barbosa / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-19T23:34:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Merlo_Sandra_D.pdf: 6723815 bytes, checksum: b6ff391ab121e4b75d42eef04f5a7d28 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Premissa: esta pesquisa partiu da premissa de que pausas demarcativas estão relacionadas ao planejamento conceitual e hesitações, à formulação linguística. O planejamento conceitual refere-se a um esquema abstrato do texto falado, composto pelas informações que o falante julga relevantes de acordo com sua meta comunicativa. A formulação linguística refere-se à seleção de lemas e sua organização em estruturas sintáticas e fonológicas. Se pausas demarcativas e hesitações estão relacionadas a processos tão cruciais para a produção falada, sua ocorrência não deve ser marginal e sua distribuição não deve ser aleatória ao longo do texto falado. Método: participaram da pesquisa dez sujeitos do sexo masculino, entre 20 e 34 anos, falantes nativos do português brasileiro, com alto grau de escolaridade e sem distúrbios de comunicação. Foram realizados cinco experimentos de fala semi-espontânea com as seguintes variáveis independentes: memória declarativa, memória operacional, macroplanejamento textual, tipos textuais e taxa de elocução. As variáveis dependentes (pausas demarcativas e hesitações) foram examinadas através de três medidas: proporção, duração e ciclos periódicos (p < 0,05). A variabilidade individual na manifestação das variáveis dependentes também foi avaliada. Resultados: em média, 24% do texto falado é composto por pausas e 21% por hesitações. Dois terços das pausas duram entre 0,5 e 1,5 s, enquanto dois terços das hesitações duram até 1 s. Todos os textos falados apresentam ciclos de pausas e de hesitações, sendo que dois terços dos ciclos de pausa apresentam períodos até 5 s, enquanto dois terços dos ciclos de hesitações apresentam períodos até 10 s. As séries temporais de pausas e de hesitações estão correlacionadas, de forma que mudanças nas séries de pausas precedem em 300 ms mudanças nas séries de hesitações. Apenas 15% dos ciclos de pausas e hesitações são sincronizados e a grande maioria está em oposição de fase. Todos os cinco experimentos modificaram a dinâmica temporal das pausas demarcativas: textos que exigem elaboração conceitual, análise de novas informações e decisões mais conscientes sobre o sequenciamento de informações aumentam a proporção, a duração e/ou o período dos ciclos de pausas. Dois dos cinco experimentos modificaram a dinâmica temporal das hesitações: textos novos e pouco familiares aumentam a duração das hesitações em relação a textos previamente conhecidos. A variabilidade individual também interfere na dinâmica das pausas e das hesitações, existindo sujeitos que produzem esses fenômenos em abundância, enquanto outros os produzem com parcimônia. Conclusões: os resultados obtidos confirmam a hipótese de que as pausas demarcativas estão relacionadas ao planejamento conceitual e as hesitações, à formulação linguística. Também confirmam que a ocorrência desses fenômenos é significativa e que apresentam distribuição periódica no texto falado. Adicionalmente, os resultados indicam que pausas e hesitações são fenômenos dinâmicos da língua, que emergem de acordo com as necessidades da tarefa e o estilo do sujeito / Abstract: Background: this investigation assumed that demarcation pauses are related to conceptual planning, while hesitation phenomena are related to language formulation. "Conceptual planning" refers to an abstract scheme of spoken text, constituted by the information that the speaker consider relevant to his/her communication intent. "Language formulation" refers to lemma selection and its organization in syntactic and phonological structures. Considering that pauses and hesitations are related to essential processes to spoken language production, their occurrence may not be insignificant and their distribution may not be random in spoken text. Method: subjects of this research were ten males, from 20 to 34 years old, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, highly educated, and free from communication disorders. Five experiments of semispontaneous speech were done; each one addressed one of the following independent variables: declarative memory, working memory, text macroplanning, text types, and speech rate. Dependent variables (pauses and hesitations) were analyzed according the following three measures: proportion, duration, and periodic cycles (p < 0.05). Individual variability was also analyzed. Results: on average, 24% of spoken texts are composed by pauses and 21% by hesitations. Two thirds of pauses last from 0.5 to 1.5 s, while two thirds of hesitations last until 1 s. Pauses and hesitations are periodically distributed in all spoken texts; two thirds of pauses cycles exhibit periods until 5 s, whereas two thirds of hesitation cycles exhibit periods until 10 s. Time series of pauses and hesitations are correlated; changes in time series of pauses occur 300 ms before changes in time series of hesitations, on average. Just 15% of pauses and hesitations cycles are synchronized and the big majority is in phase opposition. All five experiments affect temporal dynamics of pauses: texts that demand conceptual elaboration, analysis of new information, and active decisions about information sequencing increase pauses proportion, durations and/or period of cycles. Two of five experiments affect temporal dynamics of hesitations: less familiar texts increase hesitations' durations compared to more familiar texts. Individual variability also affects temporal dynamics of pauses and hesitations; there are subjects that produce a lot of pauses and hesitations, while others produce them in small quantity. Conclusions: results support the initial assumption that demarcation pauses are related to conceptual planning and hesitations to language formulation. Results also indicate that the occurrence of pauses and hesitations is significant and that they are periodically distributed in spoken texts. Besides, results indicate that pauses and hesitations are dynamic components of spoken language, arising according to tasks needs and to subject style / Doutorado / Linguistica / Doutor em Linguística

This study investigates the acquisition and use of metadiscourse markers in learners/users of L2 Spanish and the role these markers play in the development of fluency and conversational participation during a five-month stay in Spain as exchange students of business administration. The study has been conducted in three steps. The first part focuses on the theory and categorization of metadiscourse markers, followed by an analysis of the use and development of these markers in learners of L2 Spanish. The second part deals with the categorization and operationalization of aspects of fluency and conversational participation that can be associated with the use of metadiscourse markers; followed by an analysis of these aspects in the performance of the learners. The third part of the study is a summary of the results obtained and a discussion of the relationship between the use of metadiscourse markers and the development of fluency and conversational participation. The data underlying the current study consists of a selection of 17 recorded conversations between learners of L2 Spanish and native speakers of Spanish taken from the AKSAM database. The conversations belong in two activity types: discussions and simulated negotiations. The selected sample has a duration of approx. 10 hours and comprises 87 683 words. The study focuses on nine learners who have been recorded at the beginning and at the end of their five month study-abroad stay. Results show that frequency of use of metadiscourse markers has increased considerably at the end of the stay in the majority of the learners under study. A qualitative development can also be found, through which the metadiscourse markers that characterize the learners’ L1 and/or interlanguage have been substituted by more target-like expressions. Furthermore, both their fluency and level of conversational participation have generally increased. Within this development, however, a notable individual variation can be found. The learners who show the strongest development as regards fluency and conversational participation are also found to exhibit the most salient development of metadiscourse markers. Since disfluency is reduced to a lesser degree in those participants who also exhibit a less developed use of metadiscourse markers, it is argued that the development of metadiscourse markers in the L2 learner runs parallel to the development of discourse skills, but also that acquiring an adequate use of metadiscourse markers helps developing these skills.

Native speakers often ignore the limitless potential of language and stick to institutionalized formulaic sequences. These sequences are stored and processed as wholes, rather than as the individual words and grammatical rules which make them up. Due to research on formulaic sequence in spoken language, English as a Second Language / Foreign Language pedagogy has begun to follow suit. There has been a call for a shift from the traditional focus on isolated grammar and vocabulary to formulaic sequences and context. I tested this hypothesis with 19 L2 English learners who received 5 weeks of task-based instruction and found substantial progress in oral fluency only for the experimental group. Differences between pretest and posttest oral fluency were examined by looking at the learners' speech rate and their mean length of run. Subjective evaluation of fluency by 16 native English judges confirmed the calculated measures.

Thesis (M. A. (English Studies)) --University of Limpopo, 2019 / There is a universal consensus among educationalists and cognitive development theorists that integration of higher order thinking (HOT) in language teaching has farreaching positive implications in learners‘ future. Their extensive body of research clearly indicates the interrelationship between language and thinking. It shows that to develop well-rounded learners who can later deal capably with varying demands of the 21st century, teaching them linguistic and cognitive skills concurrently is a prerequisite. However, there is still a dearth of language teaching classroom-based data to be collected to ascertain which language pedagogic practices promote thinking or not. Hence, a qualitative exploratory case study was conducted to address this gap. The study was undertaken in five intermediate English FAL classes in Mankweng circuit. The aim was to establish whether HOT is encouraged in the intermediate English FAL classes. The study used two data analysis techniques: firstly, Tesch‘s inductive coding technique was used to analyse semi-structured interview results sourced from five English FAL teachers. They were sampled for the study to assess their conceptualisation of HOT and its application in their language classes. Contrastingly, Anderson and Krathwohl‘s (2001) framework was used to analyse one Grade 4 English workbook. To determine if its exercises‘ instructional verbs were promoting HOT or not; to check if the questions in its exercises were equally distributed over all the six levels of Bloom's revised Taxonomy of the cognitive domain; and to evaluate if there was an incremental introduction of HOTs in its exercises through the year. The results revealed the following: the five teachers could not conceptualise HOT and showed poor knowledge of how to teach it in their classes. The instructional verbs did not comprehensively encourage HOT; those which did were only pitched at the third level of thinking i.e. apply; most of the questions were in favour of low order thinking and there was little incremental introduction of the three top levels of Bloom‘s revised taxonomy in Grade 4 English FAL workbook specifically analyse, evaluate and create/design. Key words: High order thinking skills, cognitive domain, high order thinking and Bloom‘s revised taxonomy.

Sixth grade students at a Mid-Atlantic, urban, PreK-8 public school have shown weak mathematical performance. In accordance with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the local district has implemented numerous policy changes to improve performance, but no substantial improvements in test scores have been seen so far. This project study focused on the development of automaticity and fluency of math facts to address this problem. The theoretical framework of the study was based on Haring and Eaton's instructional competency hierarchy framework, which claims that students who master basic mathematics skills are better able to progress to more general and abstract skills. A modified, quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control-group design was used with 2 groups of 20 sixth grade students who were neither randomly selected nor assigned to either group. Data analysis using one-way analysis of variance revealed that computer aided instruction--specifically, Fluency and Automaticity through Systematic Teaching and Technology (FASTT) Math--was more effective than the other classroom's mathematics instruction in developing multiplication fluency. In response, a curriculum policy recommendation was drafted as a project and will be presented to the board of education to conduct additional evaluations of FASTT Math as a supplemental tool in third through eighth grades in the district. This project is expected to contribute to social change by improving mathematics achievement which will create a mathematically literate cadre of students to meet the needs of 21st century employers, thus improving the quality of life in the broader community.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a significant percent of 4th grade students read below the basic level. In one elementary school students participated in additional reading instruction as intervention for students scoring basic and below basic on the state standardized test. The purpose of this ex post facto non-experimental quantitative study was to determine the effectiveness of direct instruction versus fluency (repeated reading) instruction on the reading achievement of 4th grade students. This study is based on the theory of automatic information processing in reading and the theory of prosody. The overarching research question for this study examined if the reading achievement scores of 4th grade students improved with fluency instruction or direct instruction. Two separate years of archived data from the 2011-2012 (Group A) and 2012-2013 (Group B) school years were used to examine student reading levels using the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) test. Sample size for both Group A and Group B equaled 76 participants respectively. Use of an independent samples t test indicated there was a significant mean difference of reading achievement scores between student groups as measured by the DRA. Students who received fluency instruction achieved greater comprehension scores than students who did not receive fluency instruction . Findings from this study give indication of improvement in reading achievement with the implementation of fluency instruction. Implications for social change include changing the behavior, perceptions, and customs of teachers towards students in and urban public school and district through professional development and professional learning community sessions.

Explicit timing and interspersal assignments have been validated as effective methods to facilitate students' math practice. However, no researchers have explored the combinative effect of these two methods. In Study 1, we extended the literature by comparing the effect of explicit timing with interspersal assignments, and interspersal assignments without timing. Generally, participants' rate of digits correct on easy and hard addition problems was higher during the explicit timing condition than during the untimed condition. However, the participants' rate of digits correct decreased after initial implementation of the explicit timing condition. Motivation plays a crucial role in maintaining performance levels and helping students make continuous progress. Preferred reinforcers and setting academic targets have been widely utilized as active motivational components to increase the likelihood of a successful strategy in school settings. In Study 2, we employed a brief MSWO reinforcer assessment to identify individual student's low- and high-preference reinforcers and examined the effects of explicit timing on interspersed assignments combined with high preference or low preference reinforcers, and setting academic targets. In general, explicit timing combined with preferred reinforcers and academic targets produced a more sustainable effect on participants' rate of digits correct than explicit timing alone. In addition, high-preference reinforcers were more effective than low-preference reinforcers for three of five participants. For two participants, an increasing trend was observed when low preference reinforcers were contingent on meeting academic targets. These results are discussed relative to using preference assessments with students with mild/moderate disabilities.

The efficacy of reading interventions on elementary students’ decoding and word reading skills and reading comprehension has been well-established in the literature. The efficacy of online reading interventions, however, is unknown. This study adapted an in-person reading fluency intervention for synchronous online implementation and examined its effectiveness in a single-case research design. Three struggling readers in grades 2 and 3 participated in an 8-week online reading intervention. Pre-test, post-test, and progress monitoring data were collected and analyzed. The results indicated that the online RAVE-O intervention was effective in increasing the participants’ accurate word reading and decoding skills as well as their reading comprehension. The adapted intervention was implemented with fidelity and maintained its efficacy in an online setting. For struggling readers who cannot access intervention resources in person, an online reading intervention such as the one used in this study could have a positive effect on their reading skills. / Graduate

No description available.

Today, a countless number of untrained and volunteer English as a second or foreign language teachers are working throughout the world to help meet the rising need for English teachers. Many of these volunteers have little or no training in teaching English. However, Basic Training and Resources for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BTRTESOL) is a book and website that can be used as both a teacher-training program and a self-learning resource to help prepare these volunteer teachers. The idea for this program started with Dr. Lynn Henrichsen, who later invited a team of graduate students at Brigham Young University to work with him. This report documents the developmental process of two BTRTESOL units, namely, Unit 6A, "Developing English Language Learners' Listening Skills" and Unit 6B, "Developing English Language Learners' Speaking Skills." Both of these BTRTESOL units were designed to, first, familiarize novice and volunteer teachers with what it takes to listen and speak in a second language so that these teachers can identify the needs of their students successfully and plan and teach effectively. In addition, Unit 6A identifies several factors that make the second language listening process challenging. Unit 6B, on the other hand, describes four important characteristics of successful speaking activities. Finally, some of the most commonly used listening and speaking activities are recommended for novice and volunteer teachers to use with all levels of students. Additional resources, both print and electronic, are included at the end of each unit to help users learn more about each subject area and get additional teaching ideas.