This study investigated the acquisition of English tense and aspect through the manipulation of collostructional strength, instructional saliency, and frequency of use in group activities. Past research has focused on some of the factors in this study and their influence on acquisition, such as explicit instruction, but no research to date has attempted to compare the different factors to each other and attempt to create a working model of processing depth with these factors. Additionally, little research exists on the influence proficiency level and personal meaningfulness has on acquisition and in relation to these other determinants, or the role of lexical aspect in verb use and acquisition. The participants in this study were all females from a university in Japan. They were separated into different groups based upon their proficiency level, and each group was given a different treatment of group activities that focused on learning the simple past tense, present perfect, and past progressive over the course of a two week session. Pretests, immediate and delayed posttests were conducted to attempt to measure acquisition. MANCOVAs, Factorial MANCOVAs, and a Chi-Square test were all run to determine the outcome of the treatments. The results of the study suggest a loose continuum in terms of processing depth with explicit instruction as the most effective factor followed by frequency of use, and collostructional strength having minimal and conditional, effectiveness. The results also suggest the powerfulness of proficiency level as a determiner of whether acquisition will occur, with personal meaningfulness playing a lesser but still important role. The lexical aspect use of verbs appeared to show that the learners in this study leaned heavily on activity verbs and using the progressive aspect. Overall the results add to the growing collection of knowledge in understanding how learners develop their verb use as they acquire language. / Applied Linguistics

The material taught in a Formal Languages course is mathematical in nature and requires students to practice proofs and algorithms to understand the content. Traditional Formal Languages textbooks are heavy on prose, and homework typically consists of solving many paper exercises. Some instructors make use of finite state machine simulators like the JFLAP package. JFLAP helps students by allowing them to build models and apply various algorithms on these models, which improves student interaction with the studied material. However, students still need to read a significant amount of text and practice problems by hand to achieve understanding. Inspired by the principles of the Programmed Instruction (PI) teaching method, we seek to develop a new Formal Languages eTextbook capable of conveying these concepts more intuitively. The PI approach has students read a little, ideally a sentence or a paragraph, and then answer a question or complete an exercise related to that information. Based on the question response, students can continue to other information frames or retry to solve the exercise. Our goal is to present all algorithms using algorithm visualizations and produce proficiency exercises to let students demonstrate understanding. To evaluate the pedagogical effectiveness of our new eTextbook, we conduct time and performance evaluations across two offerings of the course CS4114 Formal Languages and Automata. In time evaluation, the time spent by students looking at instructional content with text and visualizations versus with PI frames is compared to determine levels of student engagement. In performance evaluation, students grades are compared to assess learning gains with text and paper exercises only, with text, visualizations with exercises, and with PI frames. / Doctor of Philosophy / Theory textbooks in computer science are hard to read and understand. Traditionally, instructors use books that are heavy on mathematical prose and paper exercises. Sometimes, instructors use simulators to allow students to create, simulate, and test models. Previously, we found that students tend to skip reading the text presented in the books. This leads to less understanding of the topics taught in the course. To increase student engagement, we developed a new eTextbook for the Formal Languages course. We used pedagogy based on Programmed Instruction, presenting the content in the form of short bits of prose followed by the related question. If students can solve the question correctly, this means that they understood the content and are ready to move forward. To help both instructors and students, we developed a new Formal Languages simulator named OpenFLAP. OpenFLAP allows instructors to create many exercises, and OpenFLAP can grade these exercises automatically.

Работа посвящена выявлению влияния уровня владения иностранным языком и уровня языковой тревожности на преодоление языкового барьера. Объектом исследования является языковой барьер, предметом – установление корреляции между уровнем владения иностранным языком, языковой тревожностью и преодолением языкового барьера. Цель диссертационного исследования состоит в теоретическом и экспериментальном выявлении закономерностей влияния уровня владения иностранным языком и языковой тревожности на способность преодоления языкового барьера у студентов первого курса департамента лингвистики УрФУ через обращение к индивиду, т. е. в условиях психолингвистического эксперимента. Материалом для исследования послужили данные психолингвистического эксперимента, в котором приняли участие 30 обучающихся профильного языкового департамента Уральского федерального университета. Анализ результатов исследования показал прямую взаимосвязь между уровнем владения иностранным языком и языковой тревожностью среди студентов первого курса департамента лингвистики УрФУ. А именно, чем ниже уровень владения иностранным языком, тем выше уровень языковой тревожности. Помимо этого, в рамках проведенного эксперимента удалось доказать, что группа, обладающая более высокими навыками владения иностранным языком, более способна к преодолению языкового барьера. / The study investigates the influence of foreign language proficiency and language anxiety on overcoming the language barrier. The object of the research is the language barrier. The subject of the study is the establishment of a correlation between foreign language proficiency, language anxiety, and overcoming the language barrier. The objective of the research is to theoretically and experimentally identify the patterns of influence of foreign language proficiency and language anxiety on the ability to overcome the language barrier among first-year students of the Linguistics Department at Ural Federal University by addressing the individual, that is, in the context of a psycholinguistic experiment. The research material consists of the data derived from a psycholinguistic experiment involving 30 students from the language department at Ural Federal University. The analysis of the research findings shows a direct correlation between foreign language proficiency and language anxiety among first-year students of the Linguistics Department at Ural Federal University. Specifically, the lower the level of foreign language proficiency, the higher the level of language anxiety. Additionally, the experiment demonstrates that the group with higher foreign language proficiency is more capable of overcoming the language barrier.

Minoritized students in public schools in Texas and across the nation continue to underachieve academically compared to their white peers. Despite similar academic achievement and socioeconomic backgrounds, minoritized students are often perceived more negatively by a predominantly white teacher workforce. The idea of cultural dissonance or mismatch between teachers and their students has led to the development of pedagogical frameworks such as culturally responsive teaching (CRT) that seek to bridge this cultural gap. This embedded multiple case study examined the perceptions, lived experiences, and level of preparedness of four school principals and one assistant superintendent in a white-majority school district with rapidly changing demographics. My findings support previous studies that show the limited resources and continued failure of universities and school systems in building educator capacity in culturally responsive school leadership CRSL. Furthermore, culturally responsive and visionary leaders may be more critical than previously thought due to school systems imbued with the dominant white culture and its deeply ingrained stereotypical views towards minoritized individuals. Despite these findings, my study also provides compelling evidence that meaningful relationships and diverse experiences alone can play an important role in fomenting and enhancing individuals' cultural proficiency, regardless of their racial/ethnic background. Finally, the implications of these findings are discussed in detail, followed by recommendations.

There has been growing concern in the higher education sector in South Africa about the high number of students with low academic literacy (AL) levels who are gaining entry into the sector. This influx necessitated the introduction of academic literacy interventions which are aimed at supporting these students in meeting the academic literacy requirements of university education. As a result, the tertiary sector has seen a growing number of AL interventions, each catering for a different context. However, the available literature reports very little substantial evidence on the impact/effectiveness of such interventions regarding the purpose for which they have been designed. The Vaal Triangle Campus (VTC) of the North-West University has also found that the majority of first year students who register at this Campus in order to attain a tertiary qualification, show inadequate levels of academic literacy in English. However, the academic literacy intervention that is currently used at this campus has never been formally assessed for its effectiveness in improving students’ academic literacy levels. The purpose of the current study was therefore to investigate the impact of the academic literacy intervention on students’ academic literacy levels. This intervention, which consists of two complementary semester modules, is offered over a one-year period to new first year students. As a first step, a comprehensive literature survey was conducted on important changes that took place in the tertiary education sector after 1994. The reason for this enquiry is based on the fact that many of these changes, such as the ‘massification’ of tertiary education, had far-reaching consequences for the tertiary sector in terms of more underprepared students who gained access to university education. Furthermore, available literature on the types of academic literacy interventions in South Africa, as well as specific sources on the reported impact of such interventions, were critiqued. The empirical part of the study made use of both a qualitative and quantitative research paradigm in order to investigate the impact of the AL intervention at the VTC. A highly reliable academic literacy test (the TALL – Test of Academic Literacy Levels) was used to determine whether students showed any significant improvement in their levels of academic literacy as a result of the intervention. This study reports positive findings in this regard. The investigation further gathered opinion-based data through the administration of three questionnaires aimed at determining student and lecturer perceptions of the impact of the intervention. The main findings of the two student questionnaires (one administered for each AL module) show that students generally see the value in attending the academic literacy modules because they feel that they derive benefit from them. The findings of the lecturer survey indicate that although mainstream lecturers are acutely aware of the low academic literacy levels of their students, they do not see the impact of the intervention on improving such levels. They are further not very knowledgeable about what the focus of the intervention entails. The main conclusion of this study is, in brief, that the academic literacy intervention has a definite effect on the improvement of students’ academic literacy levels. However, no conclusive data was found to support the idea that the improvement was due only to the influence of the intervention. / MA (Applied Language Studies), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

There has been growing concern in the higher education sector in South Africa about the high number of students with low academic literacy (AL) levels who are gaining entry into the sector. This influx necessitated the introduction of academic literacy interventions which are aimed at supporting these students in meeting the academic literacy requirements of university education. As a result, the tertiary sector has seen a growing number of AL interventions, each catering for a different context. However, the available literature reports very little substantial evidence on the impact/effectiveness of such interventions regarding the purpose for which they have been designed. The Vaal Triangle Campus (VTC) of the North-West University has also found that the majority of first year students who register at this Campus in order to attain a tertiary qualification, show inadequate levels of academic literacy in English. However, the academic literacy intervention that is currently used at this campus has never been formally assessed for its effectiveness in improving students’ academic literacy levels. The purpose of the current study was therefore to investigate the impact of the academic literacy intervention on students’ academic literacy levels. This intervention, which consists of two complementary semester modules, is offered over a one-year period to new first year students. As a first step, a comprehensive literature survey was conducted on important changes that took place in the tertiary education sector after 1994. The reason for this enquiry is based on the fact that many of these changes, such as the ‘massification’ of tertiary education, had far-reaching consequences for the tertiary sector in terms of more underprepared students who gained access to university education. Furthermore, available literature on the types of academic literacy interventions in South Africa, as well as specific sources on the reported impact of such interventions, were critiqued. The empirical part of the study made use of both a qualitative and quantitative research paradigm in order to investigate the impact of the AL intervention at the VTC. A highly reliable academic literacy test (the TALL – Test of Academic Literacy Levels) was used to determine whether students showed any significant improvement in their levels of academic literacy as a result of the intervention. This study reports positive findings in this regard. The investigation further gathered opinion-based data through the administration of three questionnaires aimed at determining student and lecturer perceptions of the impact of the intervention. The main findings of the two student questionnaires (one administered for each AL module) show that students generally see the value in attending the academic literacy modules because they feel that they derive benefit from them. The findings of the lecturer survey indicate that although mainstream lecturers are acutely aware of the low academic literacy levels of their students, they do not see the impact of the intervention on improving such levels. They are further not very knowledgeable about what the focus of the intervention entails. The main conclusion of this study is, in brief, that the academic literacy intervention has a definite effect on the improvement of students’ academic literacy levels. However, no conclusive data was found to support the idea that the improvement was due only to the influence of the intervention. / MA (Applied Language Studies), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

This study deals with the testing and grading of Swedish school leaving students’ oral proficiency in English, and with certain aspects of these students’ linguistic competence. The analyses and results are based on material drawn from an assessment project carried out at Gothenburg University in 1993. The 29 students taking part in the project were interviewed three times by three different interviewers in tests comprising three tasks, similar in structure but different in content. The interviewers were of three categories: school teachers of English, university teachers of English and native speakers of English. The student production was graded on a five-point scale according to a set of rating criteria. The interviewers assigned generally positive but often differing grades to the student performance. The grades were influenced by the students’ ability to communicate and speak with flow, and by gaps in vocabulary and by occurrences of grammatical errors. The students’ use of discourse phenomena and compensatory strategies was also of importance to the grades assigned. Many students were considered to have acceptable intonation and rhythm, but nevertheless an evident Swedish accent. The linguistic features studied comprised the verbal group, vocabulary, discourse markers and pronunciation. Differences could be observed between the members of the interviewer categories regarding the grades they assigned to student production. The school teachers seem to have paid special attention to grammatical accuracy, and the native speakers appear to have had a notion of communicative competence where accuracy plays a less important role. Differences in the grades assigned could also be explained by the order in which the interviews were made, by some students’ hesitant delivery, by the positive or negative effect of various fillers in the students’ speech, and by the interviewing methods used by the interviewers in the tests.

Upon entering middle school, students within the study district in southeastern Tennessee had low literacy proficiency scores on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) for 3 consecutive years. Middle school administrators implemented a program called Lexile Framework (LF) into the literacy curriculum in 2011 to improve TCAP scores. However, the change in literacy scores had not been examined following the implementation of LF. The purpose of this quasi-experimental research study was to examine the differences in literacy scores on TCAP of students across the years of pre- and post-LF implementation into the curriculum (2009-2011 and 2012-2014). The theoretical framework for this research study was Vygotsky's social development theory used within the LF to create student-centered learning in order for students to construct new knowledge by making connections with their literacy experiences. With a convenience sample of 225 students, a repeated-measure analysis of variance determined if there was a significant change in the archived matched literacy TCAP scores before and after the implementation of LF. The multivariate tests indicated a significant (Wilk's Î? = .21, F (3, 222) = 276.85, p < .01) and linear effect (F (1, 224) = 709.75, p < .01) with partial eta squared (η2 = .76) of LF on literacy TCAP scores of students across the years of pre- and post-LF implementation. Positive social change implications include providing school administrators with research findings to inform district-wide decisions regarding the use of LF in the curricula in their middle schools. Increasing students' literacy TCAP scores may ultimately improve graduation rates for students.

Thesis (MEd)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / Bibliography / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The final school examination is the gateway to higher education (HE) in most countries. Many students are however ill-prepared for HE because of a lack of quality education. Internationally, alternative access programmes are offered to address this problem. SciMathUS is the Science and Mathematics bridging programme at Stellenbosch University with the aim to allow educationally disadvantaged students whose Grade 12 results are below the standard entrance scores for admittance to HE, a second chance to improve their scores in Mathematics and Physical Sciences and then reapply for HE. SciMathUS follows a hybrid Problem-based Learning (PBL) philosophy, encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning. While it is expected that performance in the final school examination correlates with performance in HE, this is questioned in the case of students who do not have access to good education and, as a result thereof, leave school with poor to low results. With the high demand for HE internationally, identifying students with the potential to succeed is however a huge challenge. Alternative measurements have been and are being considered and researched. The focus of this quantitative research is to determine whether Grade 12 results (Mathematics and Physical Sciences) and Stellenbosch University Access Test (AT) results could predict success in HE for students who first attended a bridging programme. Success was defined quantitatively and measured by the results obtained at the end of their first year in HE. Quantitative techniques were used to analyse the possible relationships between the different variables. The findings were that SciMathUS students managed to improve their Grade 12 Mathematics and Physical Sciences and AT significantly after attending the bridging programme. These results allowed them to participate in HE. No correlation could, however, be found between their NSC results or the AT results and their performance in HE. In spite of this, more than 40% of the students in this group passed their first year in HE with an average of more than 50%. Another almost 40% obtained between 30% and 50% and were therefore allowed to continue with their studies. In three faculties at Stellenbosch University, the former bridging programme students performed on par with their peers from the same schools who enrolled in HE directly after school. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die finale skooleksamen bied internasionaal toegang tot hoër onderwys. As gevolg van ʼn gebrek aan goeie skoolopleiding, is baie studente egter nie voldoende voorbereid vir hoër onderwysstudies nie. Om hierdie probleem aan te spreek, het alternatiewe toegangsprogramme ontstaan. SciMathUS is die Wiskunde- en Wetenskapoorbruggingsprogram by Stellenbosch Universiteit. Die program bied aan opvoedkundigbenadeelde studente, wie se Graad 12-punte nie voldoende is om toegang tot hoër onderwys te kry nie, ʼn tweede kans om hul punte in Wiskunde en Fisiese Wetenskappe te verbeter. Met hierdie nuwe uitslae kan hulle dan weer aansoek doen vir toelating. SciMathUS volg ʼn hibriede probleem-gebaseerde leerbenadering wat onder meer daarop gemik is om die studente aan te moedig om self verantwoordelikheid vir hul eie leer te aanvaar. Die verwagting is dat daar ʼn korrelasie sal bestaan tussen skooluitslae en prestasie in hoër onderwys. Dit word egter bevraagteken vir studente wat nie toegang tot goeie skoolopleiding gehad het nie en as gevolg daarvan swak presteer in die finale skooleksamen. Omdat meer studente tot hoër onderwys wil toetree, raak dit toenemend belangrik om die studente met potensiaal te kan identifiseer. Alternatiewe meetinstrumente word dus geruime tyd al oorweeg en nagevors. Dit is ook die fokus van hierdie kwantitatiewe studie: om te bepaal of Graad 12 uitslae (in Wiskunde en Fisiese Wetenskappe) en die uitslae van die toegangstoetse van die Universiteit van Stellenbosch gebruik kan word om sukses van studente wat eers die SciMathUS oorbruggingskursus bygewoon het, in hoër onderwys te kan voorspel. Vir hierdie studie word sukses kwantitatief gedefinieer en gemeet aan die student se gemiddelde persentasie wat aan die einde van hul eerstejaar in hoër onderwys behaal het. Statistiese analises is gebruik om die moontlike korrelasies tussen die verskillende veranderlikes te bepaal. Die bevindinge van hierdie studie is dat die SciMathUS-studente se Graad 12 Wiskunde en Fisiese Wetenskappe uitslae en toegangstoetsuitslae noemenswaardig verbeter het nadat hulle die program gevolg het. Hierdie uitslae het hulle toegelaat om toegang te kry tot hoër onderwys. Geen korrelasie is egter tussen die Nasionale Senior Sertifikaatuitslae of die toegangstoetsuitslae en prestasie in hoër onderwys gevind nie. Ten spyte daarvan het meer as 40% van die studente in die groep hul eerstejaar met ʼn gemiddelde persentasie van meer as 50% geslaag. Ongeveer nog 40% van die studente het tussen 30% en 50% behaal en is dus toegelaat om met hul studies te kon voortgaan. In drie fakulteite by Stellenbosch Universiteit het die voormalige brugprogramstudente net so goed gevaar soos die studente wat dieselfde skole as hulle bygewoon het maar direk na skool by Stellenbosch Universiteit ingeskryf het.

In an inner-city elementary school, students continue to lag in reading proficiency, and implementation of research-based, district-mandated teaching strategies is not well understood. The purpose of this case study was to explore teachers' perceptions of mandated, read-aloud expository text strategies in K-2 classrooms. The conceptual framework was Vygotsky's social constructivism model of learning, which envisions students learning by interacting with teachers and peers, in this case, using read-aloud strategies, until they become autonomous, expository readers. The research questions focused on benefits and challenges of the implementation of read-aloud expository text by K-2 teachers who were given a 5-year mandate by the school to use strategies of scaffolding, graphic organizers, think-alouds, and text talk. Data were gathered from 5 teachers who volunteered to participate and were trained in the strategies. Data collection included individual interviews, collaborating interviews, reflective journals, and field notes. Open coding and thematic analysis identified 6 themes of teacher perceptions, including benefits, situational strategies, and explanations for use, challenges, support, and implementation. Throughout the data collection process, teachers suggested the use of Text Talk Kit materials. These kits, in use by other districts, may be beneficial to all teachers and may lead to social change by allowing teachers to access materials to better instruct all struggling readers, a benefit across all curricular areas and for all students.