Typical experiments investigating the accessibility and/or role of principles of Universal Grammar (UG) in adult second language acquisition (SLA) use a written grammaticality judgment (GJ) task to infer knowledge of principles of UG. The present investigation examined whether subjects would judge sentences differently in the aural modality than the visual. It was hypothesized that subjects in the aural condition would be less accurate and slower at judging sentences violating the subjacency principle than subjects in the visual condition. Four language groups were tested: ESL (English second-language) FSL (French second-language), L1.E (English first language) and L1.F (French first language). Subjects were assigned to either an aural or a visual condition; the same sentences were presented via computer. The target sentences presented to the subjects were declarative sentences involving embedded questions, as well as ungrammatical wh-questions which violated subjacency. The presentation times for all sentences were matched across conditions. Accuracy and reaction time to grammaticality judgment were measured. The hypothesis that subjects would be slower and less accurate in the aural condition than the visual one was supported. Furthermore, subjects were less accurate and slower to judge violations of subjacency than other sentences, in both modalities. The detrimental effects of the auditory task on judgments was most pronounced for the L2 learners. These results are discussed in the context of the informativeness and validity of outcomes derived from GJ tasks, and the ways in which they are presented.

This thesis examined several possible explanations for young bilingual children's code-mixing: the unitary language system (ULS) hypothesis, parental rates of code-mixing, parental discourse strategies in response to children's code-mixing, and children's language dominance. These explanations were examined in six French-English bilingual children, observed between the ages of 18 and 30 months. They were observed separately in interaction with each of their parents. The results showed that the ULS hypothesis cannot explain children's language use. Similarly, parental input could not explain children's code-mixing. In contrast, children's dominance was shown to be the best explanation of their code-mixing. It was suggested that bilingual children are particularly likely to code-mix when they do not know a translation equivalent. These results suggest that bilingual children's code-mixing is largely due to performance factors rather than underlying competence.

Questions surrounding the impact of feedback in response to learner error are of interest in the fields of both Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL). Current empirical SLA research seeks to ascertain what feedback types have a statistically significant positive impact on the process of acquiring a second language. Similarly, research in ICALL focuses on testing Intelligent Language Tutoring Systems (ILTSs) generally as well as the effectiveness of the feedback that they deliver. Despite this common interest in feedback, to date there has been no significant interdisciplinary research involving the two fields. The experiment reported here seeks to bridge this gap. Using a purpose-built ILTS, we tested the effect of two types of feedback on the acquisition of French past tense aspect among anglophone learners. Inspired by previous work in SLA, Explicit Inductive (EI) and Input Processing (IP) feedback were tested against a control group using a pre test/post test design. The learners completed a transformation and a grammaticality judgment task. For the transformation, they were presented with texts in the present tense and asked to re-write them in the past tense. For the grammaticality judgment, they had to rank the grammaticality of each sentence in a set of texts. In response to errors, EI feedback interpreted the aspectual meaning of the learners' answer and explicitly told them that it was not the most natural according to the context. In order to encourage formmeaning mapping, IP feedback asked the learners to match their erroneous answer to its interpretation. Two interpretations were presented: one was the target interpretation and the other matched the learner's answer. Having made their choice, they were then told whether it was correct as well as which interpretation was in fact target-like. The quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of the EI and IP feedback was not statistically significant. We argued that this was due to a combined effect of learner level, target structure and feedback.

No description available.

In the Storyline approach a fictive world is created in the classroom. Learners become characters in a story, which develops as they work in small groups on open key questions, devised by the teacher on the basis of curriculum content and in which practical and theoretical tasks are integrated. Though established in first language contexts, Storyline is less known in second language education, although it would seem to offer conditions considered to promote language development in young learners: the story framework provides an engaging and meaningful context in which learners use their language skills holistically, in tasks which simulate the way they might use English in the real world, and in which they can use their creative talents. This multi-strategy case study investigated the language development of a class of Swedish 11-13 year olds who took part in Storyline, Our Sustainable Street, lasting five weeks. In the topic the learners were families living in a new street in a fictive English town. The aim was to consolidate their existing structural and lexical knowledge, develop their language skills and introduce the lexis of sustainability. Findings show that the learners became engaged when they worked with the Storyline, and that this impacted positively on their language development, especially regarding the learning of new words, losing the fear of speaking English before their peers, and in the voluntary production of longer and more structurally and lexically complex written texts. Features which contributed most to learner engagement were found to be group work, art work and the variety of task types, with the boys also motivated by not working with a textbook and girls by opportunities to use their imagination. The results suggest that inclusion of the Storyline approach in a teaching repertoire can facilitate language development in young learners.

Any attempt at understanding the influences that impinge on teacher development in South Africa is incomplete without an exploration of the role of NGOs, particularly those alternative development agencies that were conceived in response to apartheid education and which continued to pursue progressive, contextually relevant interventions in the transitional democracy. Using the archaeological approach to excavate deep insights into the behaviour of a language development NGO, this study documents the institutional memory of the English language Education Trust (ELET). Portraying two decades of its history (1984 to 2001) through the eyes of key participants in the organisation, the study traces the multiple influences, internal and extraneous, that have shaped ELET's mutating identity as it negotiated the challenges of a volatile and unpredictable NGO climate. The study pursues two reciprocal outcomes. First, it attempts methodological elaboration. In advocating transdisciplinary research, it borrows from the established traditions of empowerment and illuminative evaluation, appropriating their key tenets for an institutional evaluation. Underpinned by the genre of narrative research, the study expands the lifehistory method as an evaluative tool, providing opportunities for organisational members to engage in self-reflexive interrogation of the organisation's life as it negotiated a multiplicity of development challenges. Second, it attempts theoretical elaboration. It challenges classical organisational theory (which derives from the structural - functionalist corporatist mode of management theory), as conservative and inadequate in understanding the organisational culture of an NGO. The study proposes a post-structuralist mode of discourse analysis as complementary to classical management theory in organisational analysis. Conflating theory and method provides incisive conceptual lenses to appraise the contribution of ELET to language teacher development. The study finds that while ELET has been complicit in allowing its mission as a counter-hegemonic agency to be undermined by its submission to normative, coercive and mimetic isomorphism, it nevertheless demonstrates agency to innovate rather than replicate. It achieves this despite the cumulative constraining pressures of globalisation, manifest through volatility in corporate funding, shifting imperatives of bilateral funding agencies, and the fickle agendas of the fledgling democratic government. The study demonstrates that, given these unpredictable conditions, NGOs Iike ELET are forced to reinvent themselves to respond to emerging development opportunities as a hedge against attrition. In this regard, ELET has benefited from astute management and a vigilant quest for homegrown intervention programmes as alternatives to imported literacy programmes, all of which helps it redefine what constitutes emancipatory literacies. Despite its proven record of accomplishment as a site for alternative teacher development, the study demonstrates that a competitive higher education sector a hostile policy environment and the debilitating reporting mechanisms demanded by funders results in ELET's potential as a site for 'authentic' knowledge production to be devalued. A further consequence of this marginilisation is that the organisation finds itself increasingly vulnerable to co-option by the state as a functionary of service delivery, accounting upwards to funders rather than downwards to beneficiaries of development. The study argues that the exploitative relationship the NGO endures with other development constituencies is as much a consequence of the NGO's failure to embrace an expedient corporate culture as it is the failure of these constituencies to acknowledge the potential of the NGO. Hence, rather than preserve the antagonistic relationship between higher education institutes and alternative agencies for knowledge production, they will each benefit by mutually appropriating the accumulated expertise of the other, giving substance to the ideal of a community of reason through creative dialectical evolution. The study concludes with the proposition that one mechanism to operationalise the notion of a community of reason is community service learning, a partnership between higher education institutes, corporate funders and development NGOs, a relationship in which the NGO provides leadership in appropriating disparate energies towards the cultivation of a socially literate country. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

With the growth of recent research on the internal benefits of gesture for second language learners, the emphasis has begun to shift away from the traditional focus on addressee-related benefits. The current study explores student-student interactions which reflect internal benefits during face-to-face video game play. Data was collected in the conference room at a local Victoria high school and involved 7 participants; 6 English as a Second Language students and one native English speaker. Using discourse analysis as a method of data analysis, Long’s social constructivist model is taken as the grounded theory whereby it is thought that learners construct their new language through interaction that is socially mediated (Brown, 2007). The database is composed of videotaped sessions where student dyads, in a laddered consecutive order, take turns first as ‘novice’ gamers when learning how to play and then teaching in the next dyad. Each dyad experienced 5 minutes of instruction, 10 minutes of game play and 10 minutes of reflection about the game using a set number of questions. Videotapes of participants and transcripts were later examined and re-examined for face and body gestures, signs of social bonding as well as different types and uses of vocabulary. Two dyads emerged as having the most interesting results on almost all measures. These dyads both displayed a high number of gestures, vocabulary, mimicking and simultaneous gesturing. These findings reflect the potential utility of using student gesture to predict and gauge learner readiness, engagement and learning. This study has implications for both the instruction and learning of a second language as well as the use of interactive media and even video games for educational purposes. In addition, it contributes to the understanding of student-student interaction and the social construction of learning English as a second language. / Graduate

No description available.

The study has two main aims. The first is theoretical and the second methodological. Theoretically, the study seeks to investigate the nature and extent of variation in interlanguage with the aim of identifying and assessing the extent to which factors such as discourse mode (e.g. narrative vs descriptive) and linguistic context are likely to result in variable interlanguage performance. Methodologically, the study seeks to highlight the problems of eliciting valid interlanguage data using the concept of planning as is currently formulated by Ochs (1979) and Ellis (1987). Although interlanguage performance may be shown to be variable it still remains important to assess how widespread variation is in interlanguage, because variation is likely to shed much more light on interlanguage development and use, if it is demonstrated that it is neither restricted to specific structural areas nor typical of learners at particular stages of interlanguage development. With this in mind this study investigates the performance of second language learners at three different levels of proficiency in two linguistic areas - spatial and directional prepositions and the 3rd person singular. Variation in interlanguage has been attributed to a large number of factors some of which are enumerated below - discourse mode, varying planning conditions, topic, setting, interlocutor, linguistic context etc.

This study examined structural constraints on early child code mixing. Constraints are widely attested in adult bilinguals (Myers-Scotton, 1993; Poplack, 1980). It has been argued that these constraints preserve the structural properties of both languages. It is uncertain whether constraints on early child code mixing are the same as constraints on adult code mixing. The present analysis was based on Poplack's two structural constraints: the free morpheme and the equivalence constraints. Ten French-English bilingual subjects were observed at 4 time periods, between approximately 2;00 and 3;06 years of age. The children's utterances containing elements from both languages were analysed for violations of Poplack's constraints. The violation rate was extremely low, less than 2% of the total mixed utterances. These results corroborate Lanza (1997), Vihman (1998), Allen et al. (2000), and Paradis et al. (2000), who likewise found that structural constraints on code mixing are operational from early in acquisition.