Ambiguity is inherent to human language. In particular, word sense ambiguity is prevalent in all natural languages, with a large number of the words in any given language carrying more than one meaning. Word sense disambiguation is the task of automatically assigning the most appropriate meaning to a polysemous word within a given context. Generally the problem of resolving ambiguity in literature has revolved around the famous quote “you shall know the meaning of the word by the company it keeps.” In this thesis, we investigate the role of context for resolving ambiguity through three different approaches. Instead of using a predefined monolingual sense inventory such as WordNet, we use a language-independent framework where the word senses and sense-tagged data are derived automatically from Wikipedia. Using Wikipedia as a source of sense-annotations provides the much needed solution for knowledge acquisition bottleneck. In order to evaluate the viability of Wikipedia based sense-annotations, we cast the task of disambiguating polysemous nouns as a monolingual classification task and experimented on lexical samples from four different languages (viz. English, German, Italian and Spanish). The experiments confirm that the Wikipedia based sense annotations are reliable and can be used to construct accurate monolingual sense classifiers. It is a long belief that exploiting multiple languages helps in building accurate word sense disambiguation systems. Subsequently, we developed two approaches that recast the task of disambiguating polysemous nouns as a multilingual classification task. The first approach for multilingual word sense disambiguation attempts to effectively use a machine translation system to leverage two relevant multilingual aspects of the semantics of text. First, the various senses of a target word may be translated into different words, which constitute unique, yet highly salient signal that effectively expand the target word’s feature space. Second, the translated context words themselves embed co-occurrence information that a translation engine gathers from very large parallel corpora. The second approach for multlingual word sense disambiguation attempts to reduce the reliance on the machine translation system during training by using the multilingual knowledge available in Wikipedia through its interlingual links. Finally, the experiments on a lexical sample from four different languages confirm that the multilingual systems perform better than the monolingual system and significantly improve the disambiguation accuracy.

The purpose of this descriptive research study was to analyze the student recruitment processes employed by The College of William and Mary, one of the Commonwealth of Virginia's foremost public institutions of higher education, to recruit African-American undergraduates. This analysis was completed using Kotler & andreasen's (1991) Systematic Marketing Audit Model--a six-part conceptual framework of marketing for non-profit organizations--to determine the marketing effectiveness of current strategies implemented for the successful recruitment of African-American undergraduates and provide useful guidance to assist admission and financial aid personnel in improving their interpersonal relations with African-American prospects/applicants and their parent(s).;Data were collected from admission/financial aid administrators, financial aid counselors, admission representatives, African-American students, and parents using qualitative research methods that included 114 in-depth interviews and an analysis of historical documents.;Findings revealed that multicultural recruitment processes at The College of William and Mary were generally the same as its competition with campus visitation programs being the most successful method of attracting African-American undergraduates while national college fairs and college search tapes were the least effective. The study also revealed that students relied heavily upon the input of their parent(s) rather than upon the advice of high school guidance counselors and teachers in making a college choice decision. The social climate on campus for students of color, the general financial aid application process, and the availability of support services for students of color were the primary issues and concerns of African-American students and their parent(s). In addition, admission/financial aid representatives of African-American heritage were more desirable for parents than students.;Further, it was the finding of this case study that the African-American undergraduate recruitment strategies of a selective, state-supported four-year university (The College of William and Mary) were not "optimally adapted to the current and forecasted marketing environment" as prescribed by Kotler & andreasen's (1991) Systematic Marketing Audit Model. This first research hypothesis was supported by several weaknesses uncovered that included: (1) little in the way of measuring overall marketing achievement of the current African-American undergraduate recruitment plan to attribute success to the elements that are effective and identifying strategies that do not produce admission results; (2) lack of recruitment objectives that were defined in specific, measurable terms to better enable The College of William and Mary in evaluating its African-American undergraduate recruitment program; and (3) limited research conducted to determine if the marketing effort is "optimally structured to meet the demands" of a changing student market environment.;Consequently, the results of the case study did support the second hypothesis--if Kotler & andreasen's (1991) Systematic Marketing Audit Model reveals main marketing problem areas facing The College of William and Mary, then it will be possible to recommend various initiatives to improve the institution's overall efforts to attract African-American undergraduates.;The case study offers several recommendations for improving the current African-American undergraduate recruitment program and suggestions for future research.

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1 ABSTRACT The present work deals with the development of speech child educated in a multilingual environment, resp. with children bilingualism and any difficulties that may accompany this development. The aim of this work is to investigate the effect of the action of multiple languages in the acquisition of speech and the possibility of child therapy of multi-lingual children. The theoretical basis is based on the analysis of scientific literature on the topic. Includes basic terms, follows the development of the child's speech in connection with multilingual environment, the type and manner learning another language. It deals with the problems of these children in speech, specifics and possible redress procedures in the context of logopedic intervention. The practical part consists of qualitative research in the form of case studies, using the method of interview, observation and analysis of results of operations. KEYWORDS multilingual environment, logopedic intervention, bilingual, multilingual, development of speech

English language learners (ELLs) spend a majority of their instructional time in mainstream classrooms with mainstream teachers. Reading is an area with which many ELLs are challenged when placed within mainstream classrooms. Scaffolding has been identified as one of the best teaching practices for helping students read. ELL students in a local elementary school were struggling, and school personnel implemented scaffolding in an effort to address student needs. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine how personnel in one diversely populated school employed scaffolding to accommodate ELLs. Vygotsky's social constructivist theory informed the study. Research questions were designed to elicit the teachers' perceptions related to the use of scaffolding for ELLs and to examine the impact scaffolding had on ELLs reading performance. The perceptions of 14 out of 15 participating teachers were investigated via focus group interviews that were transcribed. Observation data were gathered to determine teachers' use of particular strategies. Hatch's method for coding and categorical analysis was used. Emerging themes included background knowledge, comprehension and evaluation. Participating teachers felt scaffolding strategies were crucial for building a solid foundation for ELL academic success. Pre and posttest scores in reading of 105 ELLs were analyzed using a paired samples t test. There were statistically significant gains in 13 of 15 performance indicators over the 3-month cycle of instruction. Implications for social change include strategies for classroom teachers and their administrators concerning scaffolding reading instruction with ELLs in order to help these students increase their reading performance levels.

Educational disparities exist between English language learners (ELLs) and native English-speaking students. Evidence suggests that, by fourth grade, 35% of ELLs, compared to their native English-speaking peers, are behind in math, and 47% are behind in reading. There is also evidence to suggest that these lower achievement scores are impacted by teachers' perceptions of and expectations for ELL students. Guided by the theories of interpersonal expectancy and self-fulfilling prophecy, this study examined first grade teachers' perceptions of and expectations for their ELL students in a small southern U.S. town. Using a case study approach, data were collected through interviews, observations, and a qualitative questionnaire. Data were analyzed by comparing and contrasting emergent themes, with similar themes being combined as a method of data reduction. Findings from this study indicated that the teachers did not see their ELL students as inferior to their native English-speaking peers. Students were viewed as similarly capable as any other student in the classroom and are expected to reach the same level of achievement as their native English-speaking peers. Teachers generally expressed the need for more training to address ELL learning styles and communicate more effectively with parents. Teachers, administrators, and parents would be interested in the findings of this study, and this study may motivate teachers and administrators to consider how their perceptions of and expectations for ELL students are linked to effective and equitable curriculum and instruction for these students. The implication for social change is that examining equitable instruction of ELL students will enhance these students' chances to compete for good jobs and be productive citizens of the local community.

This study explored the perceptions of adult English language learners about the use of audience response systems (clickers) to facilitate communication in a classroom environment. In the early stages of second language acquisition, learners' receptive capabilities surpass expressive capabilities, often rendering them silent in their second language. Educational strategies and tools may be available to help English language learners communicate more effectively by enabling them to demonstrate their knowledge and express their opinions nonverbally. Many studies have been conducted with clickers, but none were found pertaining to adult English language learners. Second language acquisition theory provided the theoretical base for this research. In this Q-methodological study, adult English language learners enrolled in a computer skills course ranked statements about using clickers according to how closely they align with their personal perceptions. Factor analysis was performed to identify commonalities and patterns in perceptions. The findings support the view that second language acquisition theory influences how technology tools are perceived by English language learners. Adults with lower English language proficiency levels perceived the anonymity provided by clickers to be beneficial. Participants with beginning to intermediate levels of English proficiency perceived the clickers to be more valuable for communication than did those with lower levels of English proficiency. Results of this study may affect positive social change by leading to more effective instructional and assessment practices for adult English language learners and by fostering research into the viability of educational technology communication tools with all English language learners.

This paper studies the educational effect of the two-way immersion dual language programs (DLE) in California’s public elementary school system using statewide testing scores as the common measurement tool. The average California Test Standards (CTS) test scores for English language arts (ELA), Mathematics and Science on the California statewide assessment, STAR, for 5th graders in the years 2009-2012, were utilized to compare student achievement for dual language participants to students in similar schools in the same district. Similar schools are matched to the participating schools by the state assigned schools ranking. This study evaluated DLE programs in terms of academic achievement and its effect on minimize the achievement gap between English learners (ELL) and English speakers (ES). The analysis consists of a series of OLS regression models that evaluates test scores on a series of variables that can help the state government assess quality of education received by DLE participants. I found a highly statistically significant correlation between ES’s achievement level and DLE participation, this relationship was consistent even when I considered scores from the far right tail of the achievement distribution. A positive but not statistically significant correlation was found for ELL in the participating schools. It should be noted that in this study, only those student who had yet to be identified as English proficient were considered under the ELL subgroup. Therefore, the end of the year examination might be testing language proficiency more than academic achievement. Nevertheless, DLE was found to be positive for all regressions.

Lorsqu’il s’agit la construction de ressources lexico-sémantiques multilingues, la première chose qui vient à l’esprit, et la nécessité que les ressources à alignées partagent le même format de données et la même représentations (interopérabilité représentationnelle). Avec l’apparition de standard tels que LMF et leur adaptation au web sémantique pour la production de ressources lexico- sémantiques multilingues en tant que données lexicales liées ouvertes (Ontolex), l’interopérabilité représentationnelle n’est plus un verrou majeur. Cependant, en ce qui concerne l’interopérabilité des alignements multilingues, le choix et la construction du pivot interlingue est l’un des obstacles principaux. Pour nombre de ressources (par ex. BabelNet, EuroWordNet), le choix est fait d’utiliser l’Anglais, ou une autre langue comme pivot interlingue. Ce choix mène à une perte de contraste dans les cas où des sens du Pivot ont des lexicalisations différentes dans la même acception dans plusieurs autres langues. L’utilisation d’une pivot à acceptions interlingues, solution proposée il y a déjà plus de 20 ans, pourrait être viable. Néanmoins, leur construction manuelle est trop ardue du fait du manque d’experts parlant assez de langues et leur construction automatique pose problème du fait de l’absence d’une formalisation et d’une caractérisation axiomatique permettant de garantir leur propriétés. Nous proposons dans cette thèse de d’abord formaliser l’architecture à pivot interlingue par acceptions, en développant une axiomatisation garantissant leurs propriétés. Nous proposons ensuite des algorithmes de construction initiale automatique en utilisant les propriétés combinatoires du graphe des alignements bilingues, mais aussi des algorithmes de mise à jour garantissant l’interopérabilité dynamique. Dans un deuxième temps, nous étudions de manière plus pratique sur DBNary, un extraction périodique de Wiktionary dans de nombreuses éditions de langues, afin de cerner les contraintes pratiques à l’application des algorithmes proposés. / When it comes to the construction of multilingual lexico-semantic resources, the first thing that comes to mind is that the resources we want to align, should share the same data model and format (representational interoperability). However, with the emergence of standards such as LMF and their implementation and widespread use for the production of resources as lexical linked data (Ontolex), representational interoperability has ceased to be a major challenge for the production of large-scale multilingual resources. However, as far as the interoperability of sense-level multi-lingual alignments is concerned, a major challenge is the choice of a suitable interlingual pivot. Many resources make the choice of using English senses as the pivot (e.g. BabelNet, EuroWordNet), although this choice leads to a loss of contrast between English senses that are lexicalized with a different words in other languages. The use of acception-based interlingual representations, a solution proposed over 20 years ago, could be viable. However, the manual construction of such language-independent pivot representations is very difficult due to the lack of expert speaking enough languages fluently and algorithms for their automatic constructions have never since materialized, mainly because of the lack of a formal axiomatic characterization that ensures the pre- servation of their correctness properties. In this thesis, we address this issue by first formalizing acception-based interlingual pivot architectures through a set of axiomatic constraints and rules that guarantee their correctness. Then, we propose algorithms for the initial construction and the update (dynamic interoperability) of interlingual acception-based multilingual resources by exploiting the combinatorial properties of pairwise bilingual translation graphs. Secondly, we study the practical considerations of applying our construction algorithms on a tangible resource, DBNary, a resource periodically extracted from Wiktionary in many languages in lexical linked data.