This dissertation follows an oral language assessment tool from initial design and implementation to validity analysis. The specialized variables of this study are the population: international teaching assistants and the purpose: spoken assessment as a hiring prerequisite. However, the process can easily be applied to other populations and assessment goals.While evaluating the TBEST (Task-Based English Speaking Test) and TAST (TOEFL Academic Speaking Test), I search for a preponderance of evidence for assessment validity that indicate the most appropriate tool for evaluating potential ITAs. The specific evidences of assessment validity that are examined are:1. Evidence of Domain (Content) Validity: Which test, the TBEST or the TAST most closely measures the actual skills needed to be an ITA?2. Evidence of Predictive Criterion Validity: Which test, the TBEST or the TAST, is more valid in predicting ITA teaching success based on end of semester student evaluation (TCEs)?Following the analyses of these points of evidence, the results of a follow-up survey of ITA impressions about the ITA training and evaluating process are reviewed. Reviewing the results of this survey places the language assessment and hiring process recommendations within its larger context, directing attention toward suggestions for improvement of ITA training and evaluating procedures.Over the course of 18 months, 335 ITAs were assessed using the TBEST. 193 ITAs took the TAST prior to taking the TBEST, and those scores are used for correlation analysis. 119 ITAs participated in a follow up survey about their ITA experience.Analysis of domain validity shows that the TBEST is better suited for assessing ITAs than the TAST due to specialized assessment content not present on the more generic TAST. The TBEST is marginally better at predicting teaching success, though the results were statistically insignificant and recommendations are made for a follow-up study. Post-hoc analysis of the discriminative utility of both tests show that the TBEST results show more useful shades of distinction between candidates while the TAST results place the majority of students in a `fair' category which requires secondary interviews to assess teaching ability.

The purpose of this research study is to compare two yearlong program models designed specifically to educate secondary-level newcomer immigrant youth within one large, urban school district in Southern California. The two divergent secondary-level programs that are compared in this study, a self-contained newcomer program and a beginning level English as a Second Language program (ESL 1/2), are explored to determine which program more successfully prepares secondary-level Latino immigrant youth to gain the language proficiency, academic skills, and academic self-concept necessary to exit after the requisite year. The research for this study is informed by scholarly literature that concerns the education of immigrant youth. The literature review is driven by the following four central concepts: an analysis of significant federal and California state language policy, mitigating factors in the education of immigrant youth, existing specialized program models, and guiding theories in the schooling of linguistically and culturally diverse students. The data for this study was collected utilizing a mixed-methods multiple case study approach. Three classrooms within each of the two programs were observed over a month-long period as simultaneous stakeholder interviews and focus groups were carried out to illuminate emergent themes and tensions. Additionally, both current and former students from the two programs were surveyed to determine their academic, social, and personal self-concept levels. The qualitative and quantitative data gathered through this study was analyzed and triangulated to determine the effectiveness of each program and answer the guiding research questions. The results of this study demonstrated mixed findings between the two programs under study. The students gained greater academic skill levels and a higher academic self-concept level as a result of the more supportive environment offered within the newcomer program, yet the ESL 1/2 students made greater gains linguistically, as was evidenced by higher redesignation rates. In addition, after their second year, the students from the newcomer program reported far lower academic self-concept levels than those who had exited the ESL program. Therefore, due to the mixed results, this study incorporated an action plan to assist districts in creating and implementing effective programs for newcomer youth.

Canada welcomes and supports refugees from all over the world. However, they encounter many struggles that force them to with withdraw from their English language classes. This Narrative Inquiry explores the lived experiences of two adult refugee students who could not continue with their English classes due to the hardships they encountered. Through research conversations I document their experiences in two narrative accounts, and read across them to find common threads. These common struggles include financial strains, employment, childcare, isolation and mental health. The findings point to the importance of further supporting refugee students in different ways. My recommendations are that ESL teachers develop lessons that include settlement, support services, and Canadian culture information. English language programs need to incorporate support services with professionals trained in ESL, and the different levels of government need to be part of the discussion on how to provide stronger supports through childcare, employment and information accessibility. / February 2016

Using quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, the current study examines Saudi students’ perspectives, coupled with EAL instructors’ views, regarding Saudi students’ English language-learning needs. Two data collection tools were used, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The study (N = 172) included samples of EAL learners (n = 127) and EAL instructors (n = 45) both in Saudi Arabia and Canada, Victoria. The mismatch between the skills identified as important and areas identified as needing support by the learners, in addition to the divergence between learners’ and instructors’ perceptions, underscores the necessity of triangulation when using needs analysis to discover language-learning needs. The study delineates oral communication (i.e., being able to interact by using the language appropriately and efficiently) as a language-learning need identified by both Saudi students and their language instructors. Quantitative (skill ratings) and qualitative (responses to open-ended questions and interviews) data suggest that both students and instructors view writing as a challenging area for Saudi English-language learners. The results also indicate issues that contribute to the challenges faced by Saudis in the process of learning English. Findings show the importance of educational background and cultural differences in the students’ language development. Responses report that reading is devalued in the Saudi educational system and Saudi culture in general. Hence, both Saudi students and instructors in Canada pinpointed reading as an area needing support. Based on the key findings, it is evident that the language-learning needs of Saudi students are shaped according to the requirements of their immediate study context and their prospective goals. The study contributes crucial findings about participants’ perceptions of the importance of skills and their assessment of skills status in Saudi Arabia and Canada. In addition to the implications for English language learning in Saudi Arabia, these findings can be informative for educational institutions and practitioners in the English-speaking world. Most importantly, the multi-level analysis confirms that language learning needs are context-specific. / Graduate

In this thesis we present a formalization of the combinatorial part of the proof of Feit-Higman theorem on generalized polygons. Generalised polygons are abstract geometric structures that generalize ordinary polygons and projective planes. They are closely related to finite groups. The formalization is carried out in Agda, a dependently typed functional programming language and proof assistant based on the intuitionist type theory by Per Martin-Löf.

Introduction: This thesis was submitted by Matthew Shardlow to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the year 2015. Lexical simplification is the practice of automatically increasing the readability and understandability of a text by identifying problematic vocabulary and substituting easy to understand synonyms. This work describes the research undertaken during the course of a 4-year PhD. We have focused on the pipeline of operations which string together to produce lexical simplifications. We have identified key areas for research and allowed our results to influence the direction of our research. We have suggested new methods and ideas where appropriate. Objectives: We seek to further the field of lexical simplification as an assistive technology. Although the concept of fully-automated error-free lexical simplification is some way off, we seek to bring this dream closer to reality. Technology is ubiquitous in our information-based society. Ever-increasingly we consume news, correspondence and literature through an electronic device. E-reading gives us the opportunity to intervene when a text is too difficult. Simplification can act as an augmentative communication tool for those who find a text is above their reading level. Texts which would otherwise go unread would become accessible via simplification. Contributions: This PhD has focused on the lexical simplification pipeline. We have identified common sources of errors as well as the detrimental effects of these errors. We have looked at techniques to mitigate the errors at each stage of the pipeline. We have created the CW Corpus, a resource for evaluating the task of identifying complex words. We have also compared machine learning strategies for identifying complex words. We propose a new preprocessing step which yields a significant increase in identification performance. We have also tackled the related fields of word sense disambiguation and substitution generation. We evaluate the current state of the field and make recommendations for best practice in lexical simplification. Finally, we focus our attention on evaluating the effect of lexical simplification on the reading ability of people with aphasia. We find that in our small-scale preliminary study, lexical simplification has a nega- tive effect, causing reading time to increase. We evaluate this result and use it to motivate further work into lexical simplification for people with aphasia.

Verb classifications have attracted a great deal of interest in both linguistics and natural language processing (NLP). They have proved useful for important tasks and applications, including e.g. computational lexicography, parsing, word sense disambiguation, semantic role labelling, information extraction, question-answering, and machine translation (Swier and Stevenson, 2004; Dang, 2004; Shi and Mihalcea, 2005; Kipper et al., 2008; Zapirain et al., 2008; Rios et al., 2011). Particularly useful are classes which capture generalizations about a range of linguistic properties (e.g. lexical, (morpho-)syntactic, semantic), such as those proposed by Beth Levin (1993). However, full exploitation of such classes in real-world tasks has been limited because no comprehensive or domain-specific lexical classification is available. This thesis investigates how Levin-style lexical semantic classes could be learned automatically from corpus data. Automatic acquisition is cost-effective when it involves either no or minimal supervision and it can be applied to any domain of interest where adequate corpus data is available. We improve on earlier work on automatic verb clustering. We introduce new features and new clustering methods to improve the accuracy and coverage. We evaluate our methods and features on well-established cross-domain datasets in English, on a specific domain of English (the biomedical) and on another language (French), reporting promising results. Finally, our task-based evaluation demonstrates that the automatically acquired lexical classes enable new approaches to some NLP tasks (e.g. metaphor identification) and help to improve the accuracy of existing ones (e.g. argumentative zoning).

The Sámi are a marginalized group in Sweden, there are a lot of preconceptions of them as the indigenous group of Sweden, like most States that has indigenous groups living within their boarders, clashes with the majority population will occur. The Swedish State has created management municipalities to help the Sámi gain control over some specified collective rights. The Sámi has, for example, collective rights assigned to them specifically because they are a people who internationally and nationally are recognized as the indigenous people of Sweden. This thesis sets out to investigate what rights the Sámi have to use their language and language education in connection to the management municipalities, and if Sweden, as a state that holds itself so high concerning the rights of indigenous peoples and a guardian of human rights for all, actually grant the Sámi the rights they are entitled to. I will do so by using a qualitative method and content analysis method which will draw on a liberal theory of collective rights. The research will show, that Sweden has indeed established the management municipalities to maintain rights assigned to the Sámi, however it does not provide all rights reserved and in some cases it actually violates the rights for the indigenous population.

This study investigated the role of vocabulary size in assessing learners from various L1 backgrounds and for institutional placement. Participants included native speakers of Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin, who took a test that estimated the size of their productive English vocabulary. First, the vocabulary size of students from each language group was compared and the relationship between vocabulary size and institutional placement level was examined. Then, scores were analyzed to determine how cognates and loan words influenced the participants' performance on the vocabulary test. Further, students' vocabulary size scores were correlated with their placement scores that evaluated reading, writing, speaking, listening, and grammar. Finally, the vocabulary size of new students was compared to returning students within the same institutional placement level. Within the same institutional placement levels, speakers of Spanish and Korean had larger English vocabularies than speakers of Japanese and Chinese. It was also found that there is a clear distinction between students at varying institutional placement levels in terms of their vocabulary size. The cognate analysis revealed that students learn cognates faster than non-cognates. The correlation analysis revealed that vocabulary size correlated most with speaking, and listening, followed by grammar, then reading and writing. Finally, the cross-sectional analysis indicated that the vocabulary size of newly placed students was generally larger than that of continuing students.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第24686号 / 人博第1059号 / 新制||人||248(附属図書館) / 2022||人博||1059(吉田南総合図書館) / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生人間学専攻 / (主査)准教授 PETERSON Mark, 准教授 中森 誉之, 教授 勝又 直也, 教授 Hawkinson Eric Charles / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM