TESI DOCTORAL: L'estudi se centra a Viladecans, vila de l´àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona, i incideix sobre una població formada majoritàriament per immigrants d'arreu de L´Estat espanyol Aquesta recerca es proposa dos objectius fonamentals:a) Analitzar la competència, l'ús i les actituds lingüístiques d'un grup d´escolars fills d´immigrants, la majoria dels quals han rebut classes de català però mai han fet immersió lingüística. Aquests estudiants estudiàven vuitè d´EGB en escoles públiques i privades de Viladecans el curs 1995/96.b) Estudiar la competència, l'ús i les actituds lingüístiques dels fills/filles de les unitats familiars formades per un dels progenitors nascut a l´àrea de llengua catalana i l´altre a fora.Aquest treball és de caire descriptiu a la primera part (competència, ús i actituds ) i de caire exploratori a la segona (factors del procés). Partim fonamentalment de les dades contestades pels alumnes al llarg de l'enquesta que els vam administrar.S'analitzen les actituds lingüístiques, les espectatives de futur en la utilització del català, les preferències i normes d'ús entre catalanoparlants i castellanoparlants, la normalització lingüística, el sentiment nacional i les creences sobre el futur lingüístic a Catalunya. S'investiga en quines situacions usen el català i en quines el castellà en el seu comportament quotidià. S'intenta demostrar si les relacions personals determinen les pautes d'ús lingüístic dels nens /nenes i, per altra banda, comprovar si els nois/noies tendeixen a seguir la mateixa regla a l'escola, entre ells i a casa. Investiguem, quin ús fan del català una mostra de 249 alumnes de cinc escoles i barris diferents que han estudiat assignatures en català, i el català com assignatura, però no han fet l-aprenentatge de la lectoescriptura en català. El procés que es va seguir fou: 1) entrevistes individuals 2) converses entre grups de vuit/deu alumnes previament entrevistats, i 3)enquestes administrades a tota la mostra. L'enquesta estava subdividida en quatre grans apartats a) dades generals, b) dades familiars c) dades individuals d) actitudsResultats de la investigacióEls resultats reflecteixen en cert grau, la realitat lingüística de Viladecans Majoritàriament la població enquestada ha nascut a Catalunya l'any 1982. La majoria dels seus progenitors són de fora de Catalunya, arribats a Viladecans bàsicament per la bona oferta d´habitatges, la proximitat a Barcelona i les zones industrialitzades que l´envolten. Aquesta gran migració que ha rebut Viladecans s´ha adaptat al poble per poder treballar i viure. El volum de la població desplaçada ha estat tan important que ha arribat a superar la població autòctona. Els progenitors de la mostra parlen entre ells en castellà en un 78% i només un 9% ho fa en català Els enquestats diuen en un 88% que entén i parla en català. L'ús lingüístic, és major en algun àmbit concret com ara la classe de català , però és molt menor en àmbits informals com ara amb els companys i amics amb qui es relacionen. En general, no s´hi troben actituds negatives vers el català. Però tot i que la majoria pensa que a Catalunya s´ha de saber el català, un 73% de la mostra no està d´acord amb l´oficialitat única del català.Comparant el grup mixt amb el grup d-immigrants no s-han trobat diferències importants. Per tant, es podria dir que el lloc de naixement dels progenitors no seria rellevant, ja que estem parlant de segones generacions.En quant als factors del procès, l'escola és determinant a l'hora de l'aprenentatge del català. / The purpose of this work was to analyze the situation of the Catalan language in Viladecans. The study included interviews with this village schools' students. The main purpose was to analyze how these students use this language.Viladecans is a big town located near to Barcelona. When the the data for the study were collected the town had 45.000 habitants. Nowadays, It has 61.000 habitants. Most of them are immigrants who came - twenty or thirty years ago- from other areas of Spain. These immigrant people never speak in Catalan. In Viladecans threre are lots of immigrants from Africa and South America. The study shows both the situation of these people's childrens and the situation of those who were born in Catalonia and speak both Spanish and Catalan.In all the schools of Catalonia the teachers speak in Catalan in their classroom. We have studied, on one hand, how a group of students, -the immigrants' childrens- who had never learnt in Catalan, speak and use this language (between them, with their family etc). On the other hand, we have studied, a group of students, who had born in a family with one of their parents speaking Catalan and the other Spanish.The results of this investigation show that most of the children that were born in Catalonia in 1982, had parents who had born in other parts of Spain or in another country. They came to Viladecans when this town was needing a lot of people to work both in factories and building houses. They were more than the population that had born in Viladecans.The situation in general is the following: The parents speak between them mostly in Spanish (78%); only few parents speak Catalan (9%). Most of the parents understand Catalan (88%), but they don't use it with their family.Everybody agree that people in Catalonia have to use Catalan language. Normally, they prefer to use both languages (Spanish and Catalan), and they disagree with the obligation of speaking only in Catalan.Finally, the most important conclusions of this study are: 1) that the place where people was born is not important to speak catalan, and 2) that the school is very important to determine the language children adopt when move to another country or city with another language.

OF THE DISSERTATION:"Teachers' Reactions to Foreign Language Learner Output"BY: Leticia Vicente-RasoamalalaTEXT:A series of theoretical and practical educational studies have suggested that learners need teacher assistance to progress in their learning. Therefore, a considerable amount of language classroom research has been concerned with the study of teacher activities, especially those focusing on their instructional methods.In an attempt to contribute to this research area, the general objective of the dissertation is to develop a better understanding of one recurrent practice in formal FL instruction: how teachers react to FL learner output in classroom oral interactions. To this end, the formal features and phenomena involved in Teacher Reaction Episodes (TREs) are addressed. 'Teacher reactions' refer to any instructional strategies that handle language learner oral productions. In traditional SLA research, this teacher practice has been conceptually examined under the rubric of 'corrective feedback'.This thesis covers multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches related to TREs. Part I (Chapters 1-4) puts in perspective the general conceptual framework that underpins the empirical second part of the thesis. A literature review encompasses: i) general and specific components comprising TREs), ii) the features surrounding these instructional moves, iii) their potential benefits for FL learner acquisition and, iv) the methodological frameworks previously used to examine teacher reactions.We have identified the key questions that SLA research has addressed in relation to "Teacher Reactions to Foreign Language Learner Output" by covering different methods of enquiry such as:1) SLA theories2) Socioculturalism3) FL classroom social interaction studies4) Teacher reaction features in the light of SLA worksPart II (Chapters 5-8) describes microanalysis case studies carried out for observing and identifying the turns of TREs. Video data collected from two Senegalese international bilingual schools illustrate the differential effects of teacher reactions on FL learner uptake. Through corpus-based evidence from three immersion settings, an attempt is made to discover conditions and means for felicitous TREs in acquisitional terms. The term "immersion" refers to the teaching approach in which students receive academic instruction of core content subjects in a language that is not usually their mother tongue (Wesche, 2001).Specifically, 3 language teachers were observed with their students in their FL immersion classrooms in three main differentiated learning settings, which involve different levels and languages: i. Advanced English immersion (Years 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) at the primary school (Setting 1); ii. Intermediate English immersion (Years 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) at the primary school (Setting 2); iii. Spanish as L3 immersion (Years 9 and 10) at the secondary school (Setting 3) In order to conduct further research in the area of teacher feedback (Lyster & Mori, 2006; Lyster & Ranta, 1997), this study has focused on teacher reactions to foreign language learner output in such peculiar formal instruction (FI) learning contexts. A total of 14 lessons were observed to this end in each classroom year level.This part of the dissertation has been theoretically and methodologically framed into one hybrid approach covering diverse complementary perspectives. For instance, the SLA social interactionist views, socioculturalism, Conversation Analysis and ethnomethodology. In methodological terms, this study aimed at:1) describing the way(-s) in which learners and teachers verbally and non-verbally engage didactic negotiations during TREs;2) identifying how TREs might be salient for language acquisition in engaging learner noticing of their deviant target language forms; 3) investigating if learners engage after teacher interventions, pay attention to their errors, and if they might fruitfully self-repair; 4) surveying teacher and learner beliefs on TREs.The results seem to reflect certain trends in relation to the error types, the kinds of teacher reactions and the immersion settings, classroom years and levels vis-à-vis learner uptake. Globally, learners receiving metalinguistic feedback appear to generate more uptake than those receiving recasts. / EXTRACTO DE LA TESIS:TÍTULO: Reacciones docentes ante el output de los aprendices de lenguas extranjerasTEXTO: Una serie de estudios teóricos y prácticos que versan sobre aspectos educativos han postulado que el soporte del profesor es necesario para la progresión del aprendizaje de los estudiantes. Por esta razón, un número considerable de trabajos ha indagado sobre las actividades docentes haciendo especial hincapié en los métodos didácticos aplicados con el fin de examinarlas.En un intento de contribuir en esta área de investigación, el objetivo general de esta tesis es profundizar en una práctica docente recurrente en la enseñanza de idiomas. Se trata de las reacciones de los profesores ante el output de los aprendices que tienen lugar durante las interacciones orales en las aulas de lenguas extranjeras. En particular, se pretende examinar los rasgos formales de los "episodios de reacciones docentes" (ERD) y los fenómenos circundantes que se manifiestan en ellos. Las "reacciones docentes" se refieren a la totalidad de estrategias didácticas verbales y no verbales que se despliegan ante las producciones orales de los aprendices de idiomas. Tradicionalmente, el campo de la adquisición de lenguas segundas examina de manera conceptual esta práctica docente como "feedback correctivo".Este trabajo contextualiza los estudios teóricos y metodológicos multidisciplinarios afines con los ERD abarcando: i) los componentes generales y específicos de los episodios de reacciones docentes, ii) las condiciones que rodean estas acciones, iii) los beneficios potenciales para el aprendiz en relación con el "feedback" o la retroalimentación docente en diferentes contextos de adquisición de lenguas y iv) los marcos metodológicos previamente aplicados para examinar las reacciones del profesor o del instructor de lenguas.Los datos recogidos mediante una videocámara en dos escuelas bilingües internacionales privadas de Senegal ilustran los efectos diferenciados de las reacciones docentes sobre las producciones subsiguientes ("uptake") de los aprendices. A través de un corpus basado en datos empíricos extraídos de tres contextos de inmersión, se ha intentado hallar las condiciones y los recursos que podrían posibilitar que las reacciones docentes ante el output de los aprendices de idiomas sean más facilitadoras en términos de adquisición. En el presente estudio, la provisión de feedback metalingüístico pareció generar más "uptake" por parte de los aprendices que en el caso de las reformulaciones.

This thesis aims to explore the video game medium in depth, to relate it to the stories foundon Internet communities about users’ gameplay experiences during burdensome moments inlife. To achieve that, the phenomena is explored through the lenses of Uses & Gratificationstheory by means of a netnography on the ‘/Persona 5’ official subReddit; interpreting, codingand analyzing all narratives that fit the criteria with the help of a proposed ‘USE’ system. Themodel is in charge of classifying the information into explicit displays of ‘Dissatisfaction’,‘Motivation’, ‘Immersion’ and ‘Emersion’. The resulting codification enabled the creation ofeight different types of reports among a sample of one-hundred threads, all in correlation withthe varied aspects of the game that act as categories. The data derived from the conclusions ofthis study shows that players are not motivated to use the video game for any other purposesthan mere entertainment. Yet, the immersive potential of the virtual world addressed theirdissatisfactions and made them emerge back to reality with, mostly, not-sought gratifications. Still, not all players were able to control their video game uses to regulate their emotions,further implying the importance to continue researching cases of media immersion toestablish guidelines of ethical design and appropriate production and consumption practices.