Though communicative methodologies have been preeminent over the past several decades, the skill of L2/FL pronunciation instruction has remained in the shadows, having been relegated to the sidelines along with the outdated methodologies with which it was taught. The purpose of this study was to gan insight into the efficacy of one types of second language pronunciation instruction: Individualized English pronunciation instruction under the Covert Rehearsal Model (Dickerson, 1989). To this end, seventeen university ESL students from various degree programs were recruited to receive six hours of English pronunciation tutoring spread out across six to eight weeks. Instruction was provided by eleven MA student-teachers (tutors), who concurrently received instruction in applied linguistics and pronunciation pedagogy. To evaluate the actual and perceived efficacy of the model. this study drew upon multiple instruments, such as recorded pre- and post-student-assessments, student and tutor questionnaires, and tutor portfolios. Study results indicated that (a) the individualized pronunciation instruction provided by graduate student-teachers was effective in improving tutees' reading of English reduced vowels, contracted words, intonation contours, and primary phrasal stress, and (b) tutees perceived their instruction as both effective and personally empowering. / text

<p> Collocations, two or more words that co-occur (e.g., <i>extensive research, conduct a study),</i> are linked with native-like lexical accuracy and fluency. Yet even advanced-level second language (L2) learners frequently have difficulty producing appropriate collocations. To help them achieve accurate and fluent collocation production, researchers believe that L2 writers should take advantage of learner friendly collocation tools. To explore whether L2 writers benefit from collocation tools, the current study examined the effect of three collocation tools (two online and one paper) on accurate production of collocations in L2 writing. The collocation tools included (a) the <i> Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English</i> (LDOCE) (online), (b) <i> Macmillan Collocation Dictionary</i> (MCD) (online), and (c) <i> wordandphrase.info</i> (WPI) (paper).</p><p> L2 writers of English (<i>N</i> = 45) in an intensive English program (IEP) in the southwestern part of the USA were divided into three groups. Each group was provided with collocation training for a different collocation tool. After training, each group used the collocation tool to correct 16 miscollocations (8 verb + noun; 8 adjective + noun) embedded in an essay-format collocation test. After each test, the participants completed a quality review checklist. The procedure was repeated three times so that each group used each tool but in a different order; thus, the study employed a Latin Square Design.</p><p> This study used quantitative data to examine the effect of these three collocation tools on L2 learners&rsquo; ability to self-correct collocations in their own writing. Qualitative data were used to further understand L2 writers&rsquo; use of and perception of the collocation tools.</p><p> The results indicated that online collocation tools (LDOCE and WPI) contributed more than a book collocation dictionary (MCD) to accurate collocation production in L2 writers&rsquo; essays. L2 writers favored WPI because it was easier to navigate and it helped them locate the correct collocations. Furthermore, both online tools, namely, LDOCE and WPI, helped the participants correct more collocations than MCD. Focusing on the type of collocations, the participants made more accurate collocation corrections to adjective + noun collocations than to verb + noun collocations.</p><p> The study has several implications. First, English language teachers need to introduce collocation tools to L2 writers because without such introductions, L2 writers will remain unaware of the availability of useful collocation tools. Second, L2 writers will benefit from explicit collocation introduction to and practice with strategies for using collocation tools effectively. Such training will help L2 writers improve their collocation accuracy and fluency. Third, learners should be able to differentiate verbs, adjectives, and nouns. These parts of speech are important to assist learners in producing appropriate verb + noun and adjective + noun collocations.</p>

As a result of migratory movements in recent decades, an increasing number of children are educated in a language which is not their mother tongue. For these children, learning to read takes place in their second language. This learning context is made unique by two challenges. First, the learning of the written code occurs simultaneously with the learning of the oral language. Second, no reference to the written code of the maternal language is made available to these children. / This particular learning context can lead to inequity between the second language learner and his or her unilingual peers in terms of phonetic encoding and decoding. Furthermore, the limited vocabulary of a beginning language learner can impede the direct lexical access used when learning to read. / Fourteen students were evaluated for their metalinguistical abilities, lexical and phonic knowledge. Following these tests, an analysis was conducted of student reading errors made in a real reading context. / This descriptive study explores the interaction between reading strategies used by second language learners: bottom-up (word comprehension derived from the context of the text) and top-down (text comprehension derived from word recognition). In addition, this study seeks to describe the linguistic and metalinguistic abilities of these second language students in the process of learning to read.

Within the framework of generative grammar, it is assumed that children are endowed with an innate language faculty called Universal Grammar (UG). Children learn their native language on the basis of the interaction of positive evidence in the input with the principles and parameters of UG. In terms of parameter setting, positive evidence consistent with just one value of a parameter causes the preemption of any incorrect settings hypothesized by the child, in accordance with the Uniqueness Principle (Pinker 1984, Wexler and Culicover 1980) which ensures that only one parameter setting can be held at a time in the child's grammar (Berwick 1985). / This thesis investigates the operation of preemption in parameter setting in second language (L2) acquisition in cases where the learner initially adopts the L1 value of a parameter. Focussing on a parametric difference between French and English, namely, the verb movement parameter (Pollock 1989) which relates to (among other things) the placement of adverbs, 58 grade 5 francophone students learning English as a second language in intensive programmes in Quebec schools were exposed over a two week period to a flood of positive evidence on adverb placement in English--input which was consistent with only the English value of the parameter. The results indicate that the subjects did not reset the verb movement parameter to the English value, suggesting that preemption does not function in L2 as in L1 acquisition. Possible explanations for these results and their implications for theories of L2 learnability are developed.

This study primarily examined the use of second language production as a measure of second language text comprehension in 18 first-year nursing students enrolled in French for Nursing courses (nine low-intermediates, nine high-intermediates). / Although few differences were found between the two levels of proficiency with respect to recall and inference, the high-intermediates were more proficient in reading highly variable material and difficult vocabulary in their second language than the low-intermediates as measured by sentence reading times. The within-subjects results indicate a greater amount of propositional recall of the second language text when it was interpreted in the first language than when it was interpreted in the second language.

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In this study, form-to-meaning mapping of the bilingual mental lexicon is investigated. Sixty native speakers of Arabic, divided into intermediate and advanced ESL groups, served as the participants of the study. They performed a semantic relatedness rating task of sixty high frequency semantically related English word pairs on a 6point scale. While thirty word pairs had the same translation (ST) word in Arabic, the other thirty had a different translation (DT) word. Fifteen of the word pairs in each of the two word pair categories were abstract, while the other fifteen were concrete nouns. The vast majority of these word pairs were synonyms. The results showed that there was a significant difference in the word pair ratings between the intermediate and advanced ESL groups. The intermediate group rated all word pairs higher than the advanced learners. Both groups, however, rated the ST word pairs higher than the DT word pairs. Nonetheless, the rating mean difference score between the ST and DT was significantly lower in the advanced group than it was in the intermediate group. In addition, both ESL groups rated the abstract word pairs higher than their concrete counterparts. Overall, the results support the claim that beginning ESL learners map their bilingual lexicon to Ll translation, and as they become advanced move toward mapping form-to-meaning directly. This is particularly evident in the higher rating of ST and the lower rating of DT as well as in the higher rating mean difference score between ST and DT in the intermediate group. / Department of English