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

The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of explicit instruction and feedback on the development of lexis and cohesion in second language writing as well as the extent to which these two measures correlated with overall writing quality scores. The participants were two intact classes of first-year Japanese university students who attended class twice a week for 14 weeks. The classes were randomly assigned to an explicit instruction group (n = 34) and a comparison group (n = 31). The explicit group received instruction and feedback on the use of target vocabulary and cohesion, while the comparison group only submitted drafts. Both groups produced three drafts of a comparison-contrast essay for Task 1 and a problem-solution essay for Task 2 during one academic semester. Based on their writing performance, six participants were selected for interviews about their learning experiences to complement the results of the quantitative analyses. Writing samples from each participant were analyzed with TALLES (Kyle & Crossley, 2015), TAALED 1.41 (Zenker & Kyle, 2021), and TAACO 2.0 (Crossley et al., 2016). Each draft was assessed for the number of target words, three lexical complexity metrics— MATTR 50 content words (MATTR), COCA academic frequency logarithm content words (COCAFrq), and COCA academic trigram MI2 (Trigrams) —two cohesion indices—All connectives and Adjacent overlap between paragraphs content words (AdjacentP)—and overall writing quality produced with a writing rubric. Six raters trained in applied linguistics assessed the participants’ essays, and FACETS 3.80.0 (Linacre, 2017) was used to produce interval measures of student ability and rater severity. Five hypotheses were assessed. Hypothesis 1 predicted that the explicit instruction group would score higher than the comparison group on target word and cohesion use, and overall writing quality. The results supported Hypothesis 1 for both tasks. The explicit instruction group increasingly used target words and cohesion based on descriptive statistics. Both groups significantly improved overall writing quality over time. The explicit instruction group significantly scored higher. The comparison group was slower in learning about writing essays during Task 1. Both groups scored higher in Task 2. Hypothesis 2, which predicted that both groups would improve on the lexical indices and that the explicit instruction group would exceed the comparison group, was partially supported. MATTR and COCAFrq significantly improved, but Trigram did not improve. There were significant group differences in COCAFrq and Trigrams, but not in MATTR. The comparison group scored higher on COCAFrq, and the explicit instruction group scored higher on Trigram. In Task 2, MATTR improved significantly, but COCAFrq and Trigrams did not. There were no group differences. More effects were found in Task 1 than in Task 2. Hypothesis 3, which predicted that cohesion would improve over time for both groups and that the explicit instruction group would exceed the comparison group, was mostly supported. The results of Task 1 showed that All connectives and AdjacentP significantly improved. Although there was no group significant difference in All connectives, there was a group difference in AdjacentP, as the explicit instruction group scored higher. The results of Task 2 showed that All connectives did not significantly improve over time, but AdjacentP did. Global cohesion was affected more than local cohesion. Hypothesis 4, which predicted that lexis would be positively correlated with overall writing quality for both groups, was supported for Task 1 and not supported for Task 2. In Task 1, MATTR was significantly positively correlated with overall writing quality. COCAFrq was significantly negatively correlated. Trigrams were not correlated. In Task 2, none of lexical indices were correlated. Hypothesis 5 predicted that cohesion would be positively correlated with overall writing quality. This hypothesis was partially supported in Task 1 and Task 2. All connectives were not correlated with overall writing quality, but AdjacentP was significantly and positively correlated with overall writing quality in Task 2. The study contributes to the understanding of the development and assessment of lexis and cohesion using computational automated tools. L2 development is a complex phenomenon, so a further examination of assessment indices offers a wealth of research in future studies. / Applied Linguistics

No description available.

Word recognition skill is fundamental for readers to successfully process any given text. Proficiency in the component skills of word recognition, orthographic, phonological, and semantic knowledge, is what readers need to accurately and automatically decode words to apply meaning to what they have read. For second language readers, the challenge of reading is often hindered by a lack of word recognition skills and therefore, they often suffer from low reading rates and consequently poor reading comprehension. This study was a quasi-experimental longitudinal inquiry into the effects of extensive reading, word recognition training, and timed reading on second language reading comprehension. Through word recognition tasks focused on orthographic, phonological, and semantic knowledge development, the aim of this study was to (a) better understand the effects of orthographic, phonological, and semantic skill training on word recognition skills, (b) better understand the effects of word recognition training on reading rate and reading comprehension, (c) understand the effects of long-term word recognition training on reading comprehension, (d) investigate if changes in word recognition components correlate with changes in reading comprehension, and (e) better understand reasons for expected and unexpected outcomes of participants in the study. A total of 248 participants took part in the study. The participants were a combination of first- and second-year economics majors from a private university in western Japan. They were from ten intact classes that were randomly assigned to one of four groups. The first group acted as a comparison group and focused on intensive reading training. The second group did extensive reading and included sustained silent reading. The third group did extensive reading and received word recognition training. The fourth group did extensive reading, word recognition training and timed reading training. All participants took a reading course as part of the required English program that lasted for two 15-week academic terms. The first 30 minutes of each class were used for each group’s respective training, and the remaining 60 minutes were used to teach general reading strategies. Quantitative data were gathered using a variety of instruments that included a lexical decision test, an antonym pairs test, a pronunciation test, a reading comprehension test, and a reading rate test. Additional qualitative data were gathered via selected participant interviews and a post-study survey. The results showed that the participants who received word recognition training in conjunction with extensive reading, produced positive changes in reading comprehension. However, only two of the components of word recognition ability improved with training, semantic knowledge and phonological knowledge. This indicated that more focus on specific components of word recognition might provide better scaffolding to foster reading development. The results also indicated that the three treatment groups all performed significantly better than the comparison group in reading rate gain and those improvements were reflected in reading comprehension gains. With respect to word recognition and its impact on reading comprehension, there was evidence showing that word recognition training did positively impact reading comprehension, but that more time might be required than used in this study to see its full impact. Finally, there were data to indicate that there was a correlation between semantic knowledge and reading comprehension. This study shows that although extensive reading is an effective approach to teaching L2 English reading, the addition of word recognition training and timed reading can benefit readers by improving reading comprehension. The addition of word recognition training can assist lower-proficiency readers to automatize low-level cognitive processes such as orthographic, semantic, and phonological processes, and by doing so, reallocate cognitive resources to higher-level cognitive processes such as inferencing and schemata activation required for reading comprehension. Finally, the addition of timed reading seems to have contributed to overall reading rate and reading fluency development. / Applied Linguistics

This dissertation is a combination of two manuscripts. By using autoethnography in manuscript one, this study first reflects on my learning English as a foreign language journey and the influences that brought to my life. The seven stories in this study cover many aspects of foreign language education, including teaching contents, teaching methods, and teacher preparation. Through the lens of autoethnography, I will further explore factors that influence foreign language education. Through detailed analysis, I discover language learning is not isolated. Foreign language teaching and learning will be influenced by economy, politics, cultures, and society. Based on these findings, I ask many thought-provoking questions on foreign language education, such as teaching contents and teaching methods. Manuscript two is traditional qualitative research using ethnographic methods. I use in-depth interviews to explore teachers' beliefs and practices of one supervisor and three foreign language teachers. I first present findings on their beliefs and practices in foreign language teaching and learning, including changes and challenges in the division's language education and foreign language teachers' beliefs and practices and their alignment with the ACTFL Standards. I will also use the ACTFL Standards as a lens to analyze how their beliefs and practices match with the 5Cs: Communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, communities. Finally, I will provide suggestions for future similar studies. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation is a combination of two manuscripts. Manuscript one reflects on the author's journey learning English as a foreign language and the influences that had brought to her life. The seven stories in this study cover many aspects in foreign language education, including teaching content, teaching methods, and teachers' preparation. The author further explores the causes and other related factors in foreign language education. Through detailed analysis, the author discovers language learning is not isolated. Foreign language teaching and learning will be influenced by economy, politics, cultures, and society. Manuscript two is traditional qualitative research using ethnographic methods. The author uses interviews to explore teachings beliefs and practices of one supervisor and three foreign language teachers. She provides suggestions for future studies.

In the theoretical and epistemological frameworks of Vygotsky’s cognitive theory and French intellectuals’ written legacy (Cixous, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, and Lyotard), the research explores philosophical, psychological, and educational migrations of a second language (L2) learner among cultures and languages in her comprehension and further nativization of an L2 through her comprehension and nativization of the culture of the language. The role of Canadian culture in Canada’s second/additional language education (SLE) is the research focus. In this research, the concept of Canadian culture is interpreted narrowly as literature, music, arts, and history of its people, and broadly as creations of its people. The dissertation consists of 3 parts: Pre-Theory, Theory, and Post-Theory. The Pre-Theory part is built according to the conventional thesis design: introduction, theoretical framework, literature review, research question, methodology, credibility, and significance. Narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006) as the initial methodology of the research unfolds in innovative ways as literary-philosophical essays in the Theory part, and later as a music-poetry work in the Post-Theory part. The Theory part is a conceptual philosophy-arts piece of writing that develops based on the principle “writing as a method of knowing”. The Post-Theory part is the researcher’s music-poetry work “I-Migrations: Psychedelic Story” that is a practical epitome of her research theory. Based on her own way of learning English, first, as a foreign language (FL) in Russia, and then as an L2 in Canada, the researcher theoretically substantiates her postulate of the underestimated role of Canadian culture, in terms of literature, music, arts, and history in Canada’s SLE and proposes to make Canadian culture an integral part of Canada’s SLE curricula. This research fulfils the gaps in the literature on an older L2 learner’s experience across a lifetime and the inclusion of arts and culture alongside of language learning in SLE. Keywords: second language, second language culture, writing, second language writing, second language education

Beginning in April 2020, the Japanese government continued its English education language policy reform by introducing foreign language instruction as an academic subject for Grade 5 and Grade 6 students. The purpose of this study was to investigate how stakeholders across the education system have contended with policy creation, policy interpretation, and policy appropriation in public elementary school classrooms. Using a conceptual framework of ethnography of language policy and open systems theory, this multiple case study was designed to investigate policy as text, policy as discourse, and policy as classroom practice. In order to achieve these aims I used qualitative methods of data collection that included content analysis of policy documents, and interviews with national policymakers, educational authorities from local Boards of Education, school principals, and classroom teachers. In addition, observations of English lessons at three public elementary schools within the same prefecture were analyzed to understand how the schools approached policy implementation and how close did the teachers’ appropriation of EFL lessons correspond with the goals of the 2020 Course of Study. The 2020 Elementary School Course of Study established English as an academic subject for students in Grades 5 and 6. An analysis of the policy documents revealed positive changes in the realignment of the purpose and aims of education from elementary school through high school. In addition, the 2020 Course of Study introduces an updated assessment framework for teaching and learning across all subjects for elementary school, junior high school and high school. However, how English is conceptualized and integrated into the national curriculum appears in places not to match some of the new aims of the 2020 Course of Study and uses ambivalent terms, such as language activities with little guidance for teachers on how to teach English. The interviews with participants provided insights from various stakeholders on their beliefs and experiences towards educational language policy creation, transmission, and implementation. A total of 72 interviews were conducted for this study. National-level policymakers and advisors spoke of the politics during policy formulation. In addition, discursive struggles between conservative and progress views of education and foreign language education also influenced policymakers’ objectives. A discourse of expertise, which restricted agency and voice for certain participants, also emerged from the interview data. All of these points and others created a situation where policy implementation took on a form of bricolage. During the 17 months of field work at the three participating schools, 58 lessons were observed, recorded, and analyzed. The findings from the classroom observations revealed that each school’s approach to implementing English as a subject in Grades 5 and 6 changed each year. Teachers had difficulties navigating shifting discourses towards English lessons, along with understanding new and ambiguous terminology towards teaching practices and assessment. The findings showed that teachers were generally meeting the goals of the 2020 English Course of Study; however, the teaching of reading and listening were problematic for many teachers. The discussion section comprises implications for future policy creation and implementation, classroom pedagogy, and the theoretical implications. The intended audience for this investigation includes stakeholders interested in applied linguistics, language policy and planning, comparative education, and Japanese studies. This study contributes to the research on educational language policy and our understanding that policy is more than declaring and seeking particular outcomes, but a consistently evolving process with conflicting discourses and ideologies. This study adds to our understanding how the structure of Japan’s education system and the social organization of the schools can enable and inhibit certain stakeholders positioned across the education system. Lastly, this study contributes to our understanding of what it means to be an English teacher in Japan’s public elementary school schools. / Applied Linguistics

This study is a longitudinal study that investigated the development of English oral proficiency—complexity, accuracy, and fluency—under the pre-task and on-line planning conditions with task repetition among Japanese high school students. This study is unique because it is longitudinal and includes qualitative data. The participants were 15 Japanese high school students whose English proficiency level is categorized as low proficiency. Narrative tasks, post-task questionnaires, journals, and interviews were used in this study. In the narrative tasks, they were asked to describe a four-picture story three times with two minutes planning time, when they were allowed to listen to an ALT (assistant language teacher) tell the story and take notes. They completed a post-task questionnaire and a journal after completing the task. Interviews were conducted two times to further investigate their questionnaire responses and what they wrote in their journal entries. The results showed that low proficiency learners increased oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy through repeating the same task within a single session, and syntactic complexity and lexical complexity through repeating the same type of task during the academic year. The aural input between the first, second, and third performance can lead them to draw their attention to form-meaning connections, resulting in increased oral performance. In addition, low and intermediate beginners benefited in increasing oral fluency, syntactic complexity, and syntactic accuracy, while high beginners benefited in improving oral fluency and lexical complexity under pre-task and on-line planning conditions with repetition during the academic year. The study suggests that the combined use of pre-task planning, on-line planning, and task repetition have a cumulative effect and can facilitate the development of oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy for low proficiency high school learns of English. If learners are given the opportunity to plan before and during task performance with repetition, and to make the condition that draws their attention to both form and meaning, it is the most effective strategy to improve oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy in task-based teaching in the classrooms. / Language Arts

by Mo Ping-kui. / Includes bibliographical references / Thesis (M.Ph.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986

The current thesis is a theoretical and empirical investigation of the foreign language classroom, conducted from a cross-national comparative perspective. The study is based on quantitative and qualitative data which were collected from students and teachers of German in selected universities of Ukraine and Australia. The following research questions were formulated: 1. What are the structure and objectives of the German language program at Ukrainian and Australian universities? 2. What are the peculiarities of the German language curriculum and teaching methodology in the universities of Ukraine and Australia? 3. What are students’ motives to study German in Ukraine and Australia? 4. What are students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the curriculum, content and teaching? 5. How do students themselves evaluate their present language skills, and those expected to be acquired by the end of the course? 6. What are the advantages and disadvantages in both education practices? / Each country’s distinctive social and pedagogical factors, such as language policy, attitudes towards languages and pedagogical tradition were taken into account. / The research was conducted at universities in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv (Ukraine) and Melbourne (Australia). A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was adopted which included student and teacher questionnaires, interviews, classroom observations and study of departmental programs and policy documents. In general terms, it was revealed that: Substantial differences exist in areas such as curriculum, teaching methods and approaches, content and student motivation for studying German. Although education systems in Australia and Ukraine are different, learners in both countries have similar aims and expectations from their language course, and their perceptions of a good language course are also similar. Students in both countries expressed an urgent need for an increase in the communicative component and greater exposure to practical, up-to-date lexical and grammar material in order to be able to communicate effectively. In Australia there is a mismatch between the course objectives and content outlined in the program and what is really taught in the class In Ukraine, a shift has occurred towards more practice-oriented and integrated language learning/teaching; however there is a great need for the creation of better conditions for acquisition of communicative skills and up-to-date vocabulary.