No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship among self-concept, racial identity development, and perceptions of the graduate and professional educational experience of African American female college students planning to pursue advanced degrees. The researcher explored the relationship among the factors to determine if they were predictive of the pursuit of advanced degrees among African American female college students. The investigation would provide counselors, educators, and administrators with information which could positively impact the enrollment and retention of African American women in advanced degree programs.;A sample of 85 graduating African American female college seniors at a very selective, private, historically Black institution was studied. The institution selected has historically produced a high number of African American female students who pursued advanced degrees upon graduation. Data were gathered utilizing the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, the BRIAS Social Attitude Scale-Revised, a researcher developed Graduate and Professional School Perception Survey and a demographic questionnaire. The student's plans of pursuit were assessed using five items from the demographic questionnaire (acceptance, attendance, entrance exam, cumulative grade point average, enrollment).;It was hypothesized that (1) a significant relationship existed between self-concept and plans to pursue advanced degrees, (2) a significant relationship existed between racial identity development and plans to pursue advanced degrees, (3) a significant relationship existed between perception of the graduate and professional educational experience and plans to pursue advanced degrees, (4) a significant difference existed between advanced degree program pursued and the three independent variables, and (5) a significant difference existed between definite and tentative plans to pursue groups and the three independent variables.;In general, the results revealed four significant relationships and no significant evidence of discrimination. Significant relationships existed for self-concept (social self-concept) and cumulative grade point average; two measures of racial identity development (pre-encounter and encounter), pre-encounter and acceptance and encounter and enrollment; and the perception of the graduate and professional educational experience and acceptance.;Additional investigations that focus on the complexities of the independent variables with a more diversified sample of African American women may reveal significant findings relating to self-concept, racial identity development, and perceptions of graduate and professional schools.

The purpose of this study was to sort out and specify the dimensions of acculturation for kaigaishijo, Japanese sojourning students who presented an anomaly in a monocultural setting, based on factors that surfaced through data collected in the interviews and observations as a result of my conceptual framework that focused on the family, educational environment, and maturity. By sorting the data and comparing and contrasting one child's experiences to those of others as individuals and as an aggregate, nine factors appeared to repeatedly impact the process of acculturation. These essential factors that provide insights into acculturation are (1) the mother's role, (2) language acquisition, (3) clothing, (4) artistic endeavors, (5) educational experiences, (6) a receptive attitude, (7) personality, (8) length of residency, and (9) family value of education.;Elements of two of the three original concepts that organized my thinking, interviewing, and observations, that is family and school, played significant to moderate roles in the acculturation process of all four students of the study. The children, according to information gleaned from their parents, teachers, and school records, had met appropriate maturational milestones; therefore, the concept of maturation did not impact in these cases. Specific elements from the familial and educational environments did, however, impact the process. Two factors directly pertaining to the individual children's social and psychological make-up rendered significant consequences in the process.;Numerous variables impacted the acculturative process and each child's story was varied and complex. The nine common factors isolated in the study do not appear to influence the process of acculturation with equal weight. Some constitute a more salient role than others. It was concluded that three factors appear to play a minor role in acculturation, four appear moderately important, and two factors, personality and a receptive attitude, display the greatest importance.;The study was conducted in a Middle Atlantic state where the author was a school administrator. The dimensions of the process of acculturation should raise consciousness levels regarding the need to dispel stereotypes and to acknowledge differences as means to understanding and accepting diversity. Further study is needed to ascertain the generalizability of the findings to other cross-cultural populations.

A typological implicational universal based on a diverse sample of the world's languages describes a hierarchy for interrogatives. The universal hierarchy states that in any given language, inversion in Yes-No questions (YNQs) implies inversion in information questions (WHQs in English), which, in turns implies the fronting of the information word pronoun to sentence-initial position. Several researchers have proposed that typological implicational universals such as this one for interrogatives may constrain not only the primary languages on which they are based, but also the interlanguages of second language learners. This study, a partial replication of one by Eckman, Moravcsik, and Wirth (1989), examined second language acquisition data to determine whether constraints of the interrogative universal were evident in the interlanguages of learners of English as a second language. It was hypothesized that learners' control of WH-word fronting would exceed their control of WHQ inversion, which, in turn, would exceed their control of YNQ inversion. Data were elicited in oral interviews with 32 Japanese-speaking learners of English. The task of the subjects during the interviews was to ask questions in order to discover the story partially told by a grid of puzzle-like drawings. The interviews were tape-recorded, the recordings transcribed, and the transcribed interrogative forms analyzed. Two methods of data analysis showed strong support for the hypothesis. A third method of analysis revealed that seven subjects produced patterns of interrogatives not predicted by the universal; six of the exceptions could be resolved using an argument also used by Eckman et al. (1989) in explaining their exceptions.

Researchers in the cognitive sciences, and in particular those in acoustic phonetics, investigate the acoustic properties in the speech signal that enable listeners to perceive particular speech sounds. Temporal cues have been found to convey information about the linguistic content of an utterance. One acoustic characteristic that is particularly well documented in American English is the difference in vowel duration preceding voiced and voiceless consonants, which has been found to play a role in the perception of the voicing of postvocalic word-final consonants. Research on vowel duration and its role in the perception of the voicing distinction of the following consonant has primarily involved data from native English speakers. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the vowel durations preceding word-final voiced and voiceless stops in the English production of four native Spanish speakers. This study sought to determine if differences in vowel duration are exhibited preceding voiced and voiceless consonants in the English production of the native Spanish speakers, and to determine if the vowel durations affected the perception of the voicing distinction of the postvocalic stop by four native English speakers A significant effect of voicing on the vowel durations in the English production of the native Spanish speakers was found. However, the degree of variation in the vowel lengths with respect to voicing was much less than the degree of difference exhibited in native English, and similar to the variation produced in native Spanish. The average mean difference in length with respect to the voicing of the following consonant was 17.8 msec. in the present study. In native English the mean difference between vowels preceding voiced and voiceless consonants ranges from 79 msec. to 92 msec. and in Spanish the average mean difference is 18 msec. Statistical analysis performed to quantify the contribution of vowel duration on the perception of the voicing distinction found only minimal affect. It was concluded that although the cue of vowel duration variation was present in the speech signal of this data, the listeners generally did not utilize it as a cue to the voicing distinction of the following stops.

Typically, most native speakers of Japanese, who have been taught English in Japan, have had limited exposure to prosodic features of English. Consequently, their ability to understand the meaning of different intonation patterns is limited as well. Though it is generally accepted that intonation plays a crucial role in English communication, comprehensive pedagogical materials for teaching English intonation to native speakers of Japanese are not widely available or used in Japan. This is, in part, due to the complexity of English prosodic features and their abstractness. A better understanding of these barriers requires that the extent and the nature of native speakers of Japanese' understanding of English intonation be explored. The scope of this study is restricted to the examination of the following questions: (1) How well, compared with native speakers of English, can Japanese adult learners comprehend intonation patterns of English? (2) Are there any patterns in their misinterpretations of test sentences, according to three types of errors: paraphrase, categorization, or attitudinal judgments? (3) Can Japanese learners who comprehend one variation of intonation also interpret correctly the same sentence with the contrastive variation of intonation? Seventy-four native speakers of Japanese and thirty-one native speakers of English (control group) listened to twenty pairs of sentences presented with contrastive intonation. For each sentence they were asked to choose one of three different interpretations. Their responses were evaluated, at a 0.05 level of significance, using statistical tests of hypothesis (t and chi-square), and measures of correlation (r, phi and Cramers' s V). Major findings of this study are (1) the Japanese students had more difficulty with comprehending English intonation than the American students; (2) the Japanese students seemed to lack know ledge of grammar-intonation relationships; (3) they were able to understand attitudinal judgment intonation as well as native speakers.

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This study explored challenges related to issues of diversity for faculty members teaching in nontraditional adult degree completion programs. The problem addressed was an increasing expectation that faculty members facilitate learning to help increase the cultural proficiency of their students without having prior training or needed experience. A critical appreciative inquiry (CAI) case study methodology with a transformative conceptual framework was used to explore the intersection of effective adult learning paradigms and multicultural competence. The primary research question addressed the cultural competence challenges that faculty members confront when teaching in the adult classroom. A purposeful sample of 188 faculty members was selected to take a self-reflective survey. Ten participants then self-selected to participate in follow-up focus groups and interviews. Qualitative data analysis was conducted through line-by-line analysis resulting in emergent themes, both in the self-reflective survey and in the focus groups and interviews, and then filtered through the change process phases of CAI. Findings revealed a need for further knowledge about diversity scholarship and identity formation, particularly related to sociocultural power differentials that may impact student learning engagement. The resulting project was a training module with opportunities for follow-up faculty learning communities to deepen learning about inclusive practice. Positive implications for social change included, but were not limited to, increased critical consciousness for faculty members and the successful use of CAI as a methodology for facilitating nondefensive dialogue in faith-based institutions of higher learning.