This study is an attempt to determine the impact of teachers' attitudes on their classroom behaviour and therefore on their implementation of the Communicative Approach. A descriptive case study was conducted at six secondary schools in Harare, Zimbabwe (as ESL environment) to determine the effect of 38 O-level English teachers' attitudes on their classroom practice. Quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection, including a questionnaire, an observation instrument and a semistructured interview were used to gauge teachers' attitudes, assessing the extent to which attitudes are reflected in their classroom behaviour, and eliciting teachers' verbalisation of how they conceive of their professional task. The findings show that the effective implementation of the Communicative Approach was critically dependent on teachers' positive attitudes towards this approach in the five categories covered by this study. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Applied Linguistics)

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:44:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2929.pdf: 11352418 bytes, checksum: 28d64060a63b9aea98de01a8294ef436 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-03-01 / Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais / Acquisitions of verbal functions in prelingually deaf children have shown progress in the listener s behavior, but less significant gains in the speaker s behavior. The aim of this study was to develop and assess the effectiveness of teaching procedures designed to develop listening comprehension and speech intelligibility in this population. Three studies were conducted. In the first one, subjects were taught conditional auditory-visual relations between dictated words and pictures, and between dictated words and printed words, along three successive learning problems. Two teenage girls with extensive sensory deprivation periods and late cochlear implants learned the auditory-visual relations and showed the emergence of equivalence relations, progressing from the learning relations with conventional words to learning relations between pseudo-words and abstract pictures. Study 2 investigated the effects of a curriculum of conditional discriminations between dictated words and pictures and between dictated and printed words to preschoolers and children acquiring literacy, thus extending the amount of experience with successive sets of words, in relation to Study 1. A multiple baseline design among word sets assessed the curriculum effects. Five of the seven participants learned the conditional discrimination and presented the emergence of equivalence relations, echoic behavior and naming pictures and printed words. Speech production scores, however, lag behind scores in matching tasks. In Study 3 participants learned conditional discriminations between dictated sentences and videoclip scenes. Different sentences were dictated, warranting overlapping of sentence elements, seeking to engender recombinative repertoires (in identifying new scenes formed by recombination of subject, verb and object of previous sentences). Participants demonstrated recombinative generalization and produced intelligible sentences. Results indicate the potential of the teaching procedures for the (re)habilitation of implant users. The persistence of the imbalance between speech production and auditory comprehension suggests important issues concerning the ontogenesis of the listener and speaker s repertoire. / As aquisições de funções verbais em crianças com surdez pré-lingual usuárias de implante coclear têm mostrado progressos no comportamento de ouvinte e poucos ganhos no comportamento de falante. O presente estudo teve por objetivo desenvolver e avaliar procedimentos de ensino para ampliar a compreensão e a inteligibilidade nessa população. Foram conduzidos três estudos. No primeiro foram ensinadas relações condicionais auditivo-visuais entre palavras ditadas e figuras e entre palavras ditadas e palavras impressas, em três problemas sucessivos de aprendizagem. Duas adolescentes com longo período de privação sensorial e implante tardio aprenderam as relações auditivo-visuais e formaram classes de estímulos equivalentes, progredindo da aprendizagem de palavras convencionais até a de relações entre pseudo-palavras e figuras abstratas. O Estudo 2 investigou os efeitos do ensino de um currículo de discriminações condicionais entre palavras ditadas e figuras e entre palavras ditadas e impressas para pré-escolares e crianças em alfabetização. Foram empregados vários conjuntos de estímulos, cada um com três elementos; um delineamento de linha de base múltipla entre os conjuntos avaliou os efeitos do ensino. Cinco dos sete participantes aprenderam as relações condicionais e mostraram emergência de novas relações (formação de classes, comportamento ecóico e nomeação de figuras e de palavras impressas) em tarefas de seleção e na produção de fala (com escores mais baixos). No Estudo 3 foram ensinadas discriminações condicionais entre sentenças ditadas e vídeos. As sentenças apresentavam sujeito, verbo e objeto. O ensino de diferentes sentenças envolveu combinações entre elementos com sobreposição, buscando favorecer a generalização recombinativa. Os participantes aprenderam as relações condicionais, demonstraram generalização recombinativa e produziram fala compreensível com sentenças. Os resultados indicam o potencial dos procedimentos de ensino para a (re)habilitação de usuários de implante. A persistência da defasagem na produção de fala em relação à compreensão sugere questões importantes sobre a ontogenia dos repertórios de ouvinte e de falante.

Notre thèse envisage la production écrite en classe de français comme une pratique scolaire novatrice lorsqu’elle est accomplie au sein d’un espace-atelier et réalisée par l’entremise du jeu, de la mise en scène et du montage d’un spectacle. Pour ce faire, nous avons mis en œuvre une pièce de théâtre, Caligula d’Albert Camus, comme moyen d’enseignement-apprentissage, en l’accompagnant d’une gamme d’outils –dispositif ou unité didactique, vidéo de la pièce, carnet de bord, etc., – favorisant en parallèle une recherche-action sur terrain. Notre travail questionne en outre la possibilité d’une telle expérience menée dans un lieu peu commun, le Sud de l’Algérie, dans l’oasis de Bou-Saâda, et auprès d’un groupe d’apprenants d’une classe de 2e année Langues Étrangères au lycée. Nos objectifs sont de cultiver la compétence écrite chez l’apprenant oasien via l’écriture théâtrale, de lui donner goût à l’apprentissage de la langue et de conférer une certaine dynamique à cet apprentissage en lui permettant de créer et de voir représenté ce qu’il écrit sur le plateau. Au-delà d’une simple acquisition de compétences rédactionnelles, nous avons pu constater des mutations dans les représentations scolaires et sociales de la langue française chez le groupe-apprenant, issu d’une société sudiste conservatrice, chez qui la langue-cible a un statut différent de celui dont elle bénéficie au Nord, ce qui renvoie, par là même, à l’histoire, à la géographie et au plurilinguisme du pays. / Our thesis considers the written production, in a French class, as an innovative school practice when it is accomplished in a workshop space, and realized through the play, staging, and editing of a show. In order to do this, we have implemented a play, Caligula by Albert Camus, as a way of teaching and learning, accompanied by a range of tools - a teaching device or unit, a video of the play, Logbook, etc., - promoting, at the same time, an action research on the ground. Our work also questions the possibility of such an experiment conducted in an unusual place, the South of Algeria, in the oasis of Bou-Saâda, and with a group of learners 2nd Year, Foreign Languages in high school. Our aims are to improve the written skills of the oasis learner through theatrical scripture, to give him a taste to learn the language; and to give a certain dynamic to this learning by allowing him to create and see represented what 'He writes on the set’. Beyond a simple acquisition of editorial skills, we have seen changes in the academic and social representations of the French language in the learner group, from a conservative Southern society, in which the target language has a different status has the respect to the North, evoking the history, geography and multi-linguals of the country.