Processing instruction (PI) is a language teaching technique based upon the model of input processing developed by VanPatten (1993, 1996, 2002, 2004). The present study investigated the effects of PI as well as two other experimental conditions (traditional instruction and control) on the acquisition of the Spanish copulae ser and estar by 66 Chinese university students enrolled in a blended (partially presential and partially online) fourth-semester language course. The PI treatment condition included non-paradigmatic grammar explanations, processing strategies designed to help learners avoid commiting errors they may be predisposed to make, and structured input activities which eliminate redundant features of language that may make difficult the establishment of form-meaning connections. The traditional instruction (TI) treatment condition included paradigmatic explanations of grammar as well as production-based activities and exercises. Participants assigned to the control condition did not receive any instruction during the course of the study. The results of an experiment comparing the effects of each treatment condition on learners' scores on the Knowledge Test of Spanish Copulae, a measurement instrument designed for this study, found PI to be superior to TI at the immediate posttest level for tasks of interpretation and production. However, mean difference scores for the PI group were not significant when compared to those of the control group. Moreover, the learning gains exhibited by the PI group at immediate posttest were not durative, as they were not significant at the delayed posttest.

abstract: Creativity is increasingly cited as an educational goal in many international contexts and as a facet of academic and economic success. However, many myths surround creativity that impede its facilitation in the classroom: it is an individual talent, not teachable, and not relevant to adult life outside of artistic domains. Further, perceptions of creativity are largely informed by treatment in North American contexts. In second language instruction, linguistic creativity in particular faces greater hurdles for recognition and value, as language learners’ creative language use is often treated as error. In this paper, I argue that creative pedagogies and second language instruction can inform each other; creative pedagogy can lead to greater recognition of the creative power of language learners, and second language research can provide a cultural lens through which to gain understanding of how creativity is enacted in language. To argue that creativity facilitates language learning and is a necessary component of proficiency, I employ B. Kachru’s (1985) notion of bilingual creativity to demonstrate the ubiquity of linguistic creativity in the lives of bilingual language users. With support from Carter (2016) and G. Cook’s (2000) works on everyday creative language and language play, respectively, I demonstrate the value of linguistic creativity for language learning and language socialization. I end by suggesting five guidelines for second language instructors interested in implementing a creative pedagogy framework: (1) promote reflection and noticing in learning and creativity, (2) offer authentic models of linguistic creativity, (3) provide emotion language and multiple methods for emotional expression in interaction, (4) allow for a fusion of L1 and L2 linguistic and cultural knowledge, and (5) respond actively to opportunities for collaborative creativity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Linguistics and Applied Linguistics 2020

abstract: Globalization is driving a rapid increase in motivation for learning new languages, with online and mobile language learning applications being an extremely popular method of doing so. Many language learning applications focus almost exclusively on aiding students in acquiring vocabulary, one of the most important elements in achieving fluency in a language. A well-balanced language curriculum must include both explicit vocabulary instruction and implicit vocabulary learning through interaction with authentic language materials. However, most language learning applications focus only on explicit instruction, providing little support for implicit learning. Students require support with implicit vocabulary learning because they need enough context to guess and acquire new words. Traditional techniques aim to teach students enough vocabulary to comprehend the text, thus enabling them to acquire new words. Despite the wide variety of support for vocabulary learning offered by learning applications today, few offer guidance on how to select an optimal vocabulary study set. This thesis proposes a novel method of student modeling which uses pre-trained masked language models to model a student's reading comprehension abilities and detect words which are required for comprehension of a text. It explores the efficacy of using pre-trained masked language models to model human reading comprehension and presents a vocabulary study set generation pipeline using this method. This pipeline creates vocabulary study sets for explicit language learning that enable comprehension while still leaving some words to be acquired implicitly. Promising results show that masked language modeling can be used to model human comprehension and that the pipeline produces reasonably sized vocabulary study sets. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Software Engineering 2020

Students’ and teachers’ own choices and actions – their agency – are an integral part of language education, yet we know little about agency in specific classroom contexts. One such context is when students search for information online as part of their foreign language education. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the agency enacted through the choices and actions of six upper secondary Spanish students and their teacher. Their choices and actions take place while they are working with a task that asks the students to read authentic web sites with text originally written in Spanish for a native Spanish speaking audience. Using a sociocultural perspective on the process of language learning in this task, the research question is: Through what choices, actions and reports do the students and the teacher exercise and express their agency? The study was carried out in two student groups in their second year at upper secondary school. Primary data were collected during the first lesson of a theme and consist of multiple sources, including computer screen recordings, sound and video uptake along with prompted interviews performed with both students and teacher. The main findings suggest that student and teacher choices and actions did not cohere, due to different objects of their respective activity system. The data shows that when students search for information online as a part of their language studies, they: Act as producers at the same time as consumers Multitask Translanguage Focus on end product more than the learning process Divide their work between them rather than work collaboratively Finding “third spaces” – where students’ home practices are not easily applied to student or teacher objects of the activity systems, leads to a discussion concerning language view and language learning through the use of the Internet.

No description available.

The focus of this study is the potential reduction of first language (L1) use during group activities in the second language (L2) classroom through the introduction of L2 support phrases with the goal of enabling learners to carry out three information exchange tasks without resorting to communication in L1. Many language instructors tend to limit group interaction because learners would typically revert to the language they are comfortable with and thus receive less comprehensive input and feedback from peers or get a chance to modify their output in the target language. Group work in the second language classroom is, however, most beneficial as it maximizes the number of turns students take and their overall speech production.  In the study I conducted, the participants were 16 students, forming eight pairs, from beginning Spanish language classes. Those in the L2 support class received linguistic assistance while those in the no L2 support class did not receive any additional help during the three information-exchange activities completed by the participants four to five weeks apart. The transcribed learner-learner interactions were analyzed in order to reveal the extent to which beginning Spanish language learners use the L1 rather than the target language during group work, and to make observations about the communicative functions of the languages used.  The findings revealed that providing L2 support phrases to manage tasks and deliberate over language use did not have an impact on the amount of the use of L1. On the contrary, it demonstrates that verbalizing less in the L1 in learner-learner interactions does not produce more target language. Thus, this study contributes to the theoretical explanation for the use of an L1 during learner-learner interactions, which does not always align with pedagogical practices. / Spanish

Large class size as a growing phenomenon in developing countries is closely related to two reasons: initiatives to achieve universal education and rapid population growth (Bendow, Mizrachi, Oliver, & Said-Moshiro, 2007; Shehu & Tafida, 2016). Given the fact that the large class phenomenon cannot be eliminated within a reasonable amount of time, it is important for teachers to develop effective strategies to teach English in large classes (Hayes, 1997). The purpose of this study was to understand in what ways post-observation discussions lead to increased self-awareness by a College English teacher of her pedagogy, especially related to large class teaching, and to provide insights which might be useful to teachers who teach large classes in China and around the world. The research site for this study was a four-year college in northern China. Data were collected from document analysis, observations, and discussions to answer the research questions. The post-observation discussions were structured by using the theoretical frameworks of the Cooperative Development model and a “collaborative conversation” approach. From a series of data analysis, four themes were generated from the data which included student participation, affective factors, classroom management, and instructional strategies. This study also provided implications of the findings and recommendations for further research.

ABSTRACT In educational psychology and first language writing, many studies have established a link between self-regulation, key motivational factors associated with self-regulation, and academic achievement, but only a handful of research has examined this relationship in the context of L2 first-year writing. Using a sample of 170 non-native English speakers enrolled in different sections of two levels of first-year writing courses at an American university in Japan, the present study tested a hypothesized model of L2 first-year writing achievement using Structural Equation modeling. The model examined the impact of SRL strategy use, Academic Writing Self-Efficacy, Goal Orientation, Writing Attitude—key motivational factors associated with self-regulated learning—and general English proficiency, as measured by TOEFL iBT, on the writing achievement of students’ final essays, measured by their essay grades. The impact of gender on the hypothesized model of writing achievement was also investigated by conducting two separate Structural Equation modeling analyses on the hypothesized model for males and females. The study also examined the impact of SRL Strategy Use and Academic Writing Self-Efficacy on four levels of Writing Achievement, as well as the impact of four levels of Writing Experience on SRL Strategy Use and Academic Writing Self-Efficacy. The results of the study indicated that the hypothesized model had adequate fit to the data, and was, therefore, interpreted as being representative of the sample population examined in the current study. Statistically significant relationships in the model were found among the following variables: (a) English Proficiency and Essay Grade, (b) Academic Writing Self-Efficacy and Essay Grade, (c) Writing Attitude and Academic Writing Self-Efficacy, (d) Mastery Goal Orientation and SRL Strategy Use. These results corroborate findings in first-language and second-language writing research, which have reported statistically significant positive relationships among these variables, and lend support to the notion emphasized in socio-cognitive models of SRL that self-efficacy is a strong predictor of writing achievement. However, statistically significant relationships were not found among: (a) SRL Strategy Use and Essay Grade, (b) Writing Attitude and SRL Strategy Use, (c) Academic Writing Self-Efficacy and SRL Strategy Use, (d) Academic Writing Self-Efficacy and Goal Orientation. Possible explanations for the lack of statistically significant findings among the relationships between SRL and the other variables were attributed to the small sample size, and methods used to assess the use of SRL strategies. While the importance that the participants’ attribute to earning credits for the courses, as opposed to mastering writing skills, was considered a reason for the lack of a statistically significant relationship between Academic Writing Self-Efficacy and Goal Orientation. The examination of the influence of Gender on the hypothesized model of writing achievement indicated that the model for females had more adequate fit to the data than the model for males, suggesting that the model was more representative of the female participants. Differences in the models were found in the relationships between English Proficiency and SRL Strategy Use and the relationship between Academic Writing Self-Efficacy and Essay Grade. The results were in line with previous findings that have reported that female students use more SRL strategies and hold higher self-efficacy beliefs than male students. With regards to the influence of SRL Strategy Use and Academic Writing Self Efficacy on levels of Writing Achievement that ranged from Poor to Excellent, statistically significant differences were only found between the mean scores of the Poor and Excellent groups with regards to Writing Self-Efficacy. SRL Strategy Use did not exert a statistically significant difference on the mean scores of the groups. The results were in line with previous findings that reported the predictive influence of self-efficacy on writing achievement, but the results did not corroborate previous findings in relation to the predictive strength of SRL Strategy Use. The methodology used to assess the use of SRL strategies in the present study was considered a possible explanation for the lack of statistically significant results. In relation to the influence of Writing Experience on SRL Strategy Use and Academic Writing Self-Efficacy, the results also yielded non-significant differences between four groups with different levels of Writing Experience and SRL Strategy Use. This result was attributed to the broad nature of the method used to assess Writing Experience in the current study. Statistically significant differences were found between Academic Writing Self-Efficacy and Writing Experience, and the results supported previous findings in first language writing research, which have shown that learners with less experience often report higher levels of efficacy due to perhaps to overestimation of their skills. Overall, in the current study SRL did not predict the participants’ essay grades, and did not mediate the influence of other variables on essay grade. However, Academic Writing Self-Efficacy emerged as a powerful predictor of Essay Grades, and writing achievement. Therefore, while the current study supported social cognitive views about the predictive nature of self-efficacy on writing achievement, it did not corroborate theoretical assumptions about the relationship between the use of SRL strategies and writing achievement. / Teaching & Learning

A growing number of studies has shown that collaborative writing tasks facilitate second language (L2) development by providing learners with opportunities to focus their attention on language and to collaborate in the solution of their language-related problems (e.g., Choi & Iwashita, 2016; Storch, 2013; Swain & Lapkin, 1998; Williams, 2012). However, most of these studies have focused almost exclusively on L2 learners, and particularly on English as a second language learners. In an effort to address this gap and drawing from a sociocultural framework, this study investigated the interactions of Spanish heritage language (HL) learners and Spanish L2 learners enrolled in the same class. Twenty-four intermediate-level learners of Spanish, organized in four HL-HL, four HL-L2, and four L2-L2 dyads, participated in the study. As part of their regular class work, they completed four collaborative writing tasks in pairs. Participants were also asked to individually complete a pretest and two posttests. The tasks and tests were intended to elicit the present subjunctive in nominal and adjectival clauses. The interactions between each pair were recorded and coded for the nature of the relationships the learners formed (Storch, 2002) and the quantity and quality of learners’ deliberations about language choice, using Language Related Episodes (LREs) (Swain & Lapkin, 1998) as units of analysis. Results showed that the most common type of patterns of interaction the learners developed was collaboration. Moreover, three pairs displayed a dominant/passive pattern of interaction and two pairs an expert/novice pattern. Results also indicated that overall, participants produced slightly more LREs focused on form than LREs focused on lexis. Furthermore, results showed that whereas all pairs produced morphosyntactic LREs, they were more frequent in HL-L2 dyads. Lexical LREs occurred more often in L2-L2 dyads, and orthographic LREs occurred only in HL-HL dyads. With regards to learning gains, results revealed that six participants obtained high scores in all tests and did not show a score change from pretest to delayed posttest. Five of these participants were identified as HL learners. However, data also showed that 16 participants scored higher on their delayed posttest than they did on their pretest. Overall, considering that most dyads developed a collaborative pattern of interaction and achieved learning gains after task-based interaction, the data suggest that despite the differences in linguistic and cultural backgrounds, learners in mixed and matched pairs provided assistance to one another and produced LREs associated with the target structure. These findings have important pedagogical implications and thus, future studies need to investigate the best practices for teaching HL and L2 learners simultaneously and the types of tasks that encourage collaboration. / Spanish

Research has shown increasing interest in the influence of learner psychology on second language acquisition (e.g. Ellis, 2019; MacIntyre, Gregersen & Mercer, 2019). This research has demonstrated that motivation, focus, and feelings of autonomy and self-efficacy are particularly important in creating the necessary conditions for learning to occur (e.g. Dörnyei, 2009; Norton & Toohey, 2011; Piniel & Csizér, 2016; Robinson, 1995, 1997). When these factors converge, a learner can experience flow, which has been described as the “optimal experience” of engagement (Csíkszentmihályi, 1975, 1990, 2008) and has been linked to language learning success (Hong et al., 2017). Existing research has shown that student-centered, open-ended, authentic, and competitive activities tend to generate more flow than their opposites (Egbert, 2003; Zuniga & Rueb, 2018). However, these studies are scarce and have focused on a very limited quantity of immediate language-class activities, thus excluding many other possible flow experiences from consideration. To expand this line of research, this study seeks to determine what types of language-class activities generate the most flow, as well as which of the theorized psychological components of flow are most strongly associated with such experiences. Eighty-two North American undergraduate, intermediate-level (estimated CEFR B1/ACTFL intermediate mid-high) students of French, Italian, German, and Spanish completed a questionnaire about their lifetime language-learning experiences. First, the participants rated a list of activities on perceived overall flow using a Likert scale. Next, they rated the same activities on four theorized psychological components of flow (enjoyment, focused attention, control, positive challenges) also on a Likert scale (Csíkszentmihályi 1975, 1990, 2008; Egbert, 2003; Zuniga & Rueb, 2018). Finally, they answered open-ended questions about salient language-class experiences. The results of this study support the hypothesis that student-centered, open-ended, authentic, and competitive activities would generate more flow than their opposites (teacher-centered, closed-ended, inauthentic, and non-competitive). The results also revealed that enjoyment and challenges best predict flow. While competitive activities were shown to be particularly strong flow generators in the quantitative analysis, the qualitative analysis of the open-ended survey responses showed student-centered activities to be particularly associated with high-flow experiences, though usually in conjunction with other flow-generating categories. When taken together, these results suggest that, in order to create learning-favorable conditions through flow, teachers should use activities that belong to as many flow-generating categories as possible while also paying special attention to students’ perceptions of enjoyment and the challenges-skills balance. / Spanish