Catalonia, struggling with a national identity, minority language rights, and an independence movement serves as the backdrop for this dissertation which focuses on the communicative practices of fifteen Honduran youth immigrants living in a segregated neighborhood on the periphery of a Catalan city. Ethnographic fieldwork in a Catalonian neighborhood and high school dominated by Latin American immigrants reveal a number of factors which influence the languaging of Honduran diasporic youths. The participants in this study negotiate multi-layered, often hybrid, transnational identities which influence their linguistic choices both in and out of school. Data collection via in-depth interviews and participant observations identify investment in Catalan language for academic and employment purposes and the maintenance of Honduran Spanish and/or variations for social "currency." Furthermore, this dissertation examines the implications of the Honduran youths' communicative practices for educational and pedagogical purposes as well as for language policy and planning in Catalonia, Spain.

<p> This quasi-phenomenological study identified the common lived classroom experiences of high school (grades 9-12) teachers who used the Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) method of world language instruction. The study also explained why some teachers who were trained in and had some experience using TPRS abandoned the method, and what they perceived as obstacles to its use. Additionally, the study identified the techniques perceived as effective by traditional teachers for promoting student success in producing and comprehending the target language with the goal of bridging the gap between TPRS and non-TPRS teachers.</p><p> The central phenomenon studied was teachers&rsquo; lived experiences using TPRS, a method of world language teaching for providing a near-immersion classroom learning experience. The TPRS method required no textbook or grammar syllabus and focused on providing students with interesting, repetitive, and comprehensible input of commonly used verb structures and high-frequency vocabulary within the context of a story. For this study, a non-TPRS traditional approach included using a textbook, a grammatical syllabus, and production-based communicative classroom learning activities.</p><p> A purposeful sample of study participants included three groups of ten teachers each. The first two groups constituted the phenomenological part of the study because they had training and experience with TPRS. In the first group, ten participants used TPRS and considered themselves primarily as TPRS teachers. In a second group, ten teachers were selected because they were trained in TPRS and had some experience using the method but discontinued or limited its use when they encountered obstacles and resistance. A third group, not part of the phenomenological portion of the study, consisted of ten teachers who were not trained in TPRS, used a traditional approach, and had no experience using the method. That group provided a perspective outside of TPRS training and experience to discover which teaching techniques they perceived as effective. That input was included in the study to inform the researcher of potential improvements to recommend for the continuously developing TPRS method.</p><p> Data were collected through in depth, face-to-face, in-person, open-ended, semi-structured interviews. The results of the data analysis identified sixteen common lived experiences of TPRS teachers, twelve obstacles encountered by teachers when using or trying out TPRS, and four recommendations to consider incorporating into this changing and evolving method of world language instruction. </p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to explore policy as it exists amongst literacy professors working with linguistically diverse students in higher education. The goal of this study was to provide research-based guidance on how explicit and implicit policies are created and implemented within a higher education setting. This study explored the declared, practiced, and perceived language policies related to the literacy instruction of linguistically diverse students at a four-year, post-secondary institution. </p><p> The design was a qualitative, embedded case study. Semi-structured interviews of professors, a student diversity survey, and an artifact review were performed. Study results found that higher education&rsquo;s management of its program provided ample space for policy interpretation. Professor practices were influenced by their knowledge of teaching and influenced student learning. Also, although professors believed in improving student literacy, ideologies around power and bilingualism complicated this goal.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality types and second language acquisition. The study addressed a problem that is inadequately investigated in foreign language acquisition research; specifically, personality traits as predictors of language learning in college students studying Spanish as a foreign language. The researcher conducted one sample t-tests to assess statistically significant differences between mean personality type score and the test value, as well as, a multiple linear regression analysis. A convenient sample of college students (n=52) completed the Neris Personality Type Indicator at the beginning of the course, and took several examinations throughout the semester. Personality traits were correlated with examination grades. The results of the analysis indicated that personality types were not related to second language acquisition. The results of the multiple linear regression analysis were not significant, F (5,46) = 0.39, p = .85, R2 = .04, indicating that the model consisting of the personality types contributed to 4% of the variance in test grade. Because the model was not statistically significant, the researcher did not evaluate the individual predictors.</p><p>

This study investigates the reading and studying of Arabic literature in U.S. collegiate education as a site for engagement with alterity. The purpose is to explore how students in foreign language (FL) literature courses encounter alterity, how they construct the other and reconstruct themselves as they read modern Arabic literary texts, and how the political, historical, geographical, and cultural contexts in which students read shape their reading. Using ethnographic methods, I examine an Arabic literature U.S. collegiate class that I created and taught. Data sources include audio recordings of class discussions, audio recording of out-of-class discussion groups with students, researcher’s memos after classes and out-of-class discussion sessions, in-depth interviews of students, qualitative analysis of students’ written work. Witnessing the growing movement of literacy-based approaches to foreign language education, I use theories of alterity as a framework to illuminate understanding of literacy in foreign language contexts and possibly engender an other-oriented literacy. Notions of alterity that constitutes my theoretical framework are synthesized through analyses of Levinas’s ethics of alterity and post-colonial conceptualization of alterity, supporting my investigation of the consumption of Arabic literature in the Western Academy (Huggan, 2002). The post-colonial lens enables me to interpret the construction of the self and the other through the act of reading within its specific historical, cultural and political contexts (Drabinski, 2011). Building on the works of scholars using Levinas’s ethics to theorize an ethical reading (Attridge, 2004a; Cohen, 2004; Davis, 2010; Tarc, 2015), my theoretical framework envisions an ethical textual engagement with the literary work. Participants of the study encountered different aspects of alterity when reading and studying Arabic literary works, and each aspect posed a different challenge to them. Through the encounter with the alterity of the literary works, the Arabic language and their peers, participants were challenged to rethink their habitual modes of thinking, (Attridge, 2004a), to be open to different interpretation and be uncertain about their own, to embrace their differences (Biesta, 2004), to rely on and be responsible for each other, and learn from each other (Todd, 2003) and to produce knowledge in conversation with an other (Katz, 2013). In their reading, participants encountered cultural distance with the literary works (Attridge, 2011) both close and far and made efforts to account for it. The study demonstrates how alterity as a framework in FL literature class can create opportunities for students to ethically respond to literary works and to each other and engage in learning as a transformative experience of encountering otherness.

博士(学術) / 甲第636号 / 186 p. / Hitotsubashi University(一橋大学)

Bibliography: pages 333-356. / This investigation is concerned with what three children remembered or had forgotten of a second language after an interval of two years. An in-depth study, consisting of recognition and recall tests, was made of 13-year-old identical twin girls and their 9-year-old brother, who previously had been English/French bilinguals. A phenomenological approach was taken, which included the children's reaction to the tests, and their description of the personal framework within which the learning and forgetting had taken place. The findings, which are suggestive due to limited data, are: first, cognitive and maturational differences between the children caused the twins to retain more recognition and active recall of French than their brother; second, the twins showed a surprising difference in their recognition of French, pos9ibly caused by affective factors; third, all three children showed strongest recognition in the area of semantics, while in recall they retained phonology best; fourth, in the tests, habit memory and episodic memory were more durable than semantic memory. The investigation is a first step towards understanding how children forget a language in which they have been submersed.

This study aims to investigate to what extent Swedish upper secondary school learners of L2 English understand the meanings of polysemous words and whether puns can be used to teach such words. A test and two questionnaires were constructed to retrieve data from both students and teachers. The results of the study show that Swedish upper secondary school learners of L2 English generally have an acceptable knowledge of polysemous words, but depending on the type of program the students are attending, their understanding differs. Based on these results, it was also concluded that puns can be used in education to teach students about the meanings of polysemous words. The results from the questionnaires display that students in general have a positive attitude towards using puns in the classroom and that they found them entertaining and humorous. In addition, the students also saw this approach as beneficial to their retention and motivation. Lastly, the teachers expressed that using humor can strengthen the learning process, and if the students find the teaching situation enjoyable, they learn faster and it can increase their retention.

Learning is a process that involves both cognitive and emotional aspects. However, most of the research in education in South Africa tend to focus only on the cognitive side of learning and neglects the very important, emotional side. The consequences of this neglect lie most prominently with migrant learners, especially as the immigration process itself involves high emotional strain, cultural adjustment, and most obvious language barriers. These can negatively influence the learning process. Therefore, if existing teaching practices do not cater for the complexity of a multicultural and multilingual classroom or the emotional needs of migrant learners, the learning process of these learners is likely to be stunted. This thesis is concerned with the role of the emotions in the learning contexts of migrant learners in Cape Town and the strategies used by teachers to manage this. With this in mind, this study looks at the affective aspects of learning in teaching literacy to migrant learners from the Congo in the context of an English-medium school in Cape Town, South Africa. Using a qualitative case study approach, I focused on two layers of the issue. First, I explored the experience of Congolese learners and their emotional needs in an English language and literacy class. With this first layer, I compared the needs between French and English-speaking learners to explore how emotional needs played out in the classroom setting using interviews and observation. I used Krashen's affective filter theory as a lens to understand learners' feelings in the classroom environment. Second, I investigated classroom-teaching styles, in particular, how two Grade 3 teachers incorporated affective strategies in their pedagogy. I conducted this analysis through sociocultural understandings of literacy, using the principles of affective pedagogy. The findings were that English-speaking learners, receiving instructions in English, were less likely to suffer from emotional stress and anxiety in their learning than French-speaking learners learning in English. The French-speaking Congolese learners reported that they experienced emotional distress and anxiety, which affected their literacy learning. Not only were learners experiencing difficulties, but teachers too felt limited in their capacity to deal with learners' emotional needs as the cognitive approach for teaching literacy did not meet the needs nor context of migrant learners. Therefore, teachers felt they were required to go above and beyond what would be considered normal classroom activities to create a holistic learning environment that caters to a learner's emotional challenges, which was not always possible in the context of a prescriptive CAPs curriculum and resources. In this study, I argue that when children learn in a language that is different from their first language, this poses an emotional challenge, which often impacts the learning process. This emotional challenge is likely to be compounded by the circumstances that migrant learners often find themselves in. Therefore, I argue that for children to learn effectively (successfully) in a language that is different from their mother tongue, their emotional needs must be met first. This implies that for literacy learning to be most effective (successful), teachers may take into consideration the emotional aspects of each learner and develop their teaching styles according to the diverse needs of the learners. This study will benefit teachers in multilingual contexts as it takes into consideration the emotional difficulties that come with learning in a language that is not one's primary language, to understand learners' learning styles, and consequently to inform and adjust teaching strategies to fit their needs. The findings suggest a need for teacher training that takes into consideration the affective and cognitive needs of learners from diverse backgrounds, such as migrant learners, for more effective literacy and language education. .

The onset of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020 gave way to a precipitous transition to online learning in colleges and universities across the globe. Learners and teachers alike were forced to adapt to new procedures and norms within a matter of days. Among the many questions regarding the development of rigorous courses that can adequately replace face-to-face learning, there was a need to examine and understand the complex ties between identity and second language (L2) classroom discourse in the ever-expanding sphere of online learning. Thorne et al.’s (2015) study demonstrates that there is a considerable body of work that sheds light on the role of L2 identity in online contexts, with some studies focusing on platforms that are not entirely synchronous but that contain synchronous capabilities (Thorne et al., 2015). Despite this, few studies have focused on the manifestation of learner identity using exclusively synchronous video communication for L2 instructional purposes in educational contexts.The present study aims to fill this gap in the literature on L2 identity in synchronous online courses that utilize video web conferencing platforms using qualitative methodological approaches. This study relied on data from one-on-one interviews with five focal participants, classroom transcripts, and weekly written reflections to demonstrate relationships between recurring themes in their data to theoretical constructs that were relevant to the research questions being examined. The theoretical constructs that were used to interpret the data were activity theory (Engeström, 1987, 2001), Lave and Wenger’s theory of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), and Norton’s theories of identity and imagined communities (Norton-Peirce, 1995; Norton, 2000, 2001, 2013; Norton & Toohey, 2011). Activity Theory was used to understand how learners made use of the affordances of the online classroom to accomplish their individual goals of learning about Spanish linguistics. The communities of practice (CoP) framework was used to examine how learners negotiated their identities within this community and how their identity or role within the online classroom community impacted their participation. Regarding investment and imagined communities, this research focused on how learners were able to draw connections between class activities and their personal and professional goals. Theoretical and practical implications for this study outline how instructors can constructively negotiate the use of technological affordances for communication in the online classroom to meet the learning goals of their courses. / Spanish