As more second-language acquisition research is published about the optimal age to begin foreign language instruction, and the best methods for teaching foreign languages, many colleges and universities are seeking to create intensive immersion programs which would prepare prospective students for the rigors of their language programs and serve as a productive language-learning environment. One such program, the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy, is based on the highly successful summer language schools model. This research isolates the components which would help create successful, intensive Arabic immersion programs. Specifically, this thesis asks: How can an institution create a successful Arabic immersion learning environment for high school students? To answer this question, this thesis reviews current literature in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), includes personal observations about the program and analyzes responses to surveys administered to two groups of stakeholders, namely students, and teachers/resident assistants. After the descriptive section, the thesis proposes a curricular framework which encompasses the main components of the curriculum (including goals, teacher and learner training, instructional materials, and native versus target language use). This framework is presented as a model to help teachers and other administrators as they try to set up new Arabic programs for high school students. / text

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Cette thèse, qui s’inscrit dans le domaine de l’acquisition des langues étrangères, a pour objectif de comprendre comment les étudiants chinois, au cours de l’acquisition du français, expriment la référence spatiale (la localisation et le déplacement dans l’espace) lorsqu’ils s’acquittent d’une tâche verbale complexe. Nous avons effectué une étude longitudinale de trois ans, en recueillant des productions orales narratives à trois reprises, auprès de 22 apprenants de la même classe, avec des supports en images : Le Chat et Le Cheval respectivement aux deux premiers cycles, et Frog, where are you ? à chaque cycle. Cette procédure permet non seulement d’observer l’acquisition de la spatialité en français de tous les apprenants à un moment donné, mais aussi de mettre en lumière la progression acquisitionnelle de chaque apprenant dans le temps. Basée sur des analyses aux niveaux phrastique, conceptuel et discursif, nous essaierons de trouver les facteurs qui influencent l’expression de la spatialité en français, et de proposer des solutions pédagogiques en fonction des difficultés identifiées chez les apprenants, en vue d’améliorer l’acquisition de la spatialité dans le contexte de l’enseignement du français en Chine. / This thesis intervenes in foreign language acquisition, and has an objective to understand how Chinese students in university learn French space expression. I have thus conducted a three-year research and carried out three corpus collections with 22 Chinese learners from the same class, respectively in the first three years in French learning. The Chinese learners are required to tell a story according to the pictures. In every collection, all learners are assigned to tell the Frog story; in the first two collections the additional Cat and Horse stories are respectively required. From the collected corpus, each learner are fully studied, including the space expressions at specific stages and the progress in three-year period. The analysis based on the data has been carried out in the three levels: the sentence level, the conceptual level and the discursive level. It is aimed to find the factors which influence the space expression in French. Moreover, the thesis provides teaching solutions according to the learning difficulties identified in the corpus.

China’s growing economic power has led to over one hundred million people speaking Chinese world-wide (Chai & Wang, 2017). Although the Chinese language may not replace English as the most popular language worldwide, it is acknowledged that the Chinese language is an indispensable part of the future world (Zhao & Huang, 2010). However, there appears to be a paucity of research into the role self-efficacy and establishing good habits as a language learner play in non-native speaking students experiencing success while learning Chinese. A phenomenological study was conducted to investigate college students who were early Chinese learners in a beginning level preparatory course of a non-academic long-term Chinese language program, their experiences of learning Chinese, and the association, if any, between students’ self-efficacy as learners of Chinese and their demonstration of characteristics of Good Language Learners (GLLs). Data were collected from a survey, questionnaires, and one-on-one interviews. Six research findings were generated from research data and based on early Chinese learners, referred to students in the findings. Research findings from this study are listed as followed. Research Finding 1: Students’ perceptions of their strengths in learning Chinese are the strengths related to language aspects and personality traits. Research Finding 2: Students’ perceptions of their challenges in learning Chinese are language-related challenges, challenges from the teachers, challenges from the curriculum setting, and challenges from the class members. Research Finding 3: Students have at least five characteristics of GLLs (Edge & Garton, 2009) which are Characteristics 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7 and partial of Characteristics 8 and 10. More specifically, early Chinese learners have a positive attitude toward Chinese and Chinese speakers (Characteristic 1). They have strong motivations to learn Chinese (Characteristic 2). They are confident in becoming successful learners (Characteristic 3). They actively organize Chinese practices (Characteristic 6). They have ways to express themselves correctly (Characteristic 7). They are willing to engage in Chinese-speaking situations (partial of Characteristic 8). They use strategies to learn Chinese (partial of Characteristic 10). Research Finding 4: Students tend to have Characteristics 4 and 5 and partial of Characteristic 10. To be more specific, early Chinese learners tend to have their minds prepared for making mistakes when using Chinese and to learn from the mistakes (Characteristics 4). They tend to like learning Chinese (Characteristics 5). And they tend to try out new strategies while learning Chinese (partial of Characteristic 10). Research Finding 5: Students lack Characteristic 9 and partial of Characteristic 8. To be more specific, early Chinese learners are not used to working directly in Chinese (Characteristic 9). They are neither ready to use Chinese as frequently as their native languages (partial of Characteristic 8). Research Finding 6: There is no obvious association between students’ efficacy and their demonstration of characteristics of GLLs (Edge & Garton, 2009) while learning Chinese. This study investigated college students who were early Chinese learners in a beginning level preparatory course of a non-academic long-term Chinese language program, their experiences of learning Chinese, and the association, if any, between students’ self-efficacy as learners of Chinese and their demonstration of characteristics of Good Language Learners (GLLs). This study offered recommendations for teachers, administrators, and policy makers, in non-academic long-term Chinese language programs and in the field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Last but not least, recommendations for further research were provided for researchers in the field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

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Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Mary T. Copple / This study investigates the effectiveness of visuals in the language classroom. Two types of visual aids commonly used in the language classroom, video and still pictures, are used to elicit narratives from L2 English speakers, and these narratives are subsequently compared. The data come from eleven international students from a university English Language Program, who voluntarily participated in two separate 15-minute interviews. In each interview session, they were shown either a series of pictures or a video, both depicting a story. Upon completion of the presentation of each visual, participants were asked a prompt question and their narration of the events portrayed in the visuals recorded. The narratives were transcribed and analyzed in order to test (1) if still pictures and video are equally effective in eliciting elaboration in the narratives, defined in this case, as the number of new referents introduced and the number of adjective and verb types produced; and (2) if exposure to still pictures and video elicit narrations of similar length. Both kinds of visuals stimulated learners to create narratives and elaborate on what had been shown in them. The video task elicited narratives roughly 10% longer than the picture task in regards to the raw number of words. When linguistic factors were compared, participants introduced new referents at comparable rates in both tasks while they employed 10% more verb types in the video task. Additionally, the series of still pictures prompted participants to employ a much higher number of adjective types. These observations suggest that a series of still pictures are an effective alternative for video for eliciting narratives. This study provides support for the use of still pictures as an equivalent to videos in situations where videos are less accessible in language classrooms (due to lack of technological access).

This thesis reports on a study, which investigated the process of early foreign language learning in a classroom context and the functions of multi-word units of language known as formulaic sequences in the oral language production of young foreign language learners. A classroom with 11 students in the age range 9 to 11 years was observed and video recorded for 16 sessions (90 minutes per session). The observations were accompanied by two elicitation tasks. 10 sessions out of the 16 sessions of the collected speech samples were transcribed chronologically. In the next step, formulaic sequences were identified based on pre-established criteria, which were further developed during the analysis. The data was analyzed in order to identify the functions of formulaic sequences in learners’ oral language production in addition to the inter-learner variations in the application of formulaic sequences for different functions. The results revealed evidence of incidental learning of formulaic sequences from input; the language input provided instances for the learners to learn multi-word units. In addition, formulaic sequences played different roles in the language production of the learners. These sequences helped young language learners to overcome their lack of knowledge, to improve their fluency, and to enjoy some language play. Formulaic sequences were used as a strategy to economize effort on processing and also to buy time for processing. The findings of the study suggested that language users might introduce dis-fluency in the production of their sequences in order to buy time for further processing. Moreover, the data provided examples illustrating communicative functions of formulaic sequences where the use of formulaic sequences was affected by the relationship between the speaker and listener. The analysis revealed that although all the learners applied formulaic sequences in their language production, there was a great variation among individual learners in their intention and the extent of the application of formulaic sequences. Some learners used these sequences to be able to extend their utterances and produce more of the language, whereas other learners used them to avoid further language production. In sum, it seemed that individual learners' different personalities, needs or limitations served as explanation for the application of formulaic sequences in different contexts.

This study applied the latest developments in language testing validation theory to derive a core body of evidence that can contribute to the validation of a large-scale, high-stakes English as a Foreign Language (EFL) testing program in Japan. The testing program consists of a set of seven level-specific tests targeting different levels of proficiency. This core aspect of the program was selected as the main focus of this study. The socio-cognitive model of language test development and validation provided a coherent framework for the collection, analysis and interpretation of evidence. Three research questions targeted core elements of a validity argument identified in the literature on the socio-cognitive model. RQ 1 investigated the criterial contextual and cognitive features of tasks at different levels of proficiency, Expert judgment and automated analysis tools were used to analyze a large bank of items administered in operational tests across multiple years. RQ 2 addressed empirical item difficulty across the seven levels of proficiency. An innovative approach to vertical scaling was used to place previously administered items from all levels onto a single Rasch-based difficulty scale. RQ 3 used multiple standard-setting methods to investigate whether the seven levels could be meaningfully related to an external proficiency framework. In addition, the study identified three subsidiary goals: firstly, toevaluate the efficacy of applying international standards of best practice to a local context: secondly, to critically evaluate the model of validation; and thirdly, to generate insights directly applicable to operational quality assurance. The study provides evidence across all three research questions to support the claim that the seven levels in the program are distinct. At the same time, the results provide insights into how to strengthen explicit task specification to improve consistency across levels. This study is the largest application of the socio-cognitive model in terms of the amount of operational data analyzed, and thus makes a significant contribution to the ongoing study of validity theory in the context of language testing. While the study demonstrates the efficacy of the socio-cognitive model selected to drive the research design, it also provides recommendations for further refining the model, with implications for the theory and practice of language testing validation.

The aim of this master's thesis " education of German language on secondary schools" -