Diss.--Freie Universität Berlin. / Bibliography: p. 6-22.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-180).

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Zurich, 1999/2000--Cf. t.p. verso. / Includes three of Burgos' short novels: El perseguidor; La flor de la playa; and El brote. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-308). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pennsylvania State University, 2009. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. Thesis advisor: Almeida Jacqueline Toribio.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-213). Also available on the Internet.

This report investigates the amount and types of feedback that are produced on the social language learning site Livemocha.com in response to learners’ written and oral productions. The data are 200 speaking and writing activity submissions with a total of 674 reviewer comments and 1,357 feedback tokens. Feedback is separated into 19 categories which take into account interpersonal communication as well as task-based and grammatical information. More than one-third of all feedback tokens consist of the reviewer encouraging, congratulating, or otherwise offering emotional support to the learner. This strongly indicates that Livemocha.com users are not solely focused on the mechanics of learning languages, but also are creating a welcoming community of practice. / text

The primary purpose of this study was to assess Spanish-speaking patients’ satisfaction with their clinical pharmacists’ communication skills and demonstration of cultural sensitivity and to determine their association with Spanish-speaking patients’ socio-demographic, clinical, and communication factors, as well as pharmacists’ Spanish proficiency, cultural rapport, knowledge of complementary and alternative medicines, and race/ethnicity. A self-administered survey was designed to assess the study objectives, and a convenience sample of 93 adult (≥18 years) Spanish speakers with limited English proficiency was obtained from five CommUnityCare Health Centers in Austin, Texas. Satisfaction with communication skills and satisfaction with cultural sensitivity were measured as a 6-item construct and a 4-item construct, respectively, where Spanish-speaking patients rated their satisfaction using a 4-point Likert scale (1=extremely dissatisfied, 2=dissatisfied, 3=satisfied, 4=extremely satisfied). The participants’ mean age was 52.0±14.3 years, where respondents primarily were female (65.9%), utilized publicly-funded insurance (100%), received less than a high school education (86.9%), and reported a “fair” health status (64.8%). Spanish-speaking participants reported overall satisfaction with their clinical pharmacists’ communication skills (3.6±0.5) and demonstration of cultural sensitivity (3.6±0.5). Study participants also indicated items within the cultural rapport subscale were generally important characteristics to Spanish speakers (3.5±0.5). The cultural rapport subscale instructed participants to rate the importance of pharmacists’ specific characteristics (i.e., speaks Spanish, is Latino, provides written information in Spanish, is respectful, is kind, is friendly, and understandings the importance of family opinion in healthcare decisions) on a 4-point Likert scale, where 1=not at all important, 2=somewhat important, 3=important, 4=very important. Multiple linear regression analyses showed that cultural rapport was the only significant predictor of Spanish speakers’ satisfaction with their clinical pharmacists’ communication skills (p<0.01) and demonstration of cultural sensitivity (p<0.001). The results of this study may be instrumental in understanding the communication-related and cultural sensitivity-related needs of Spanish speakers in relation to pharmacists’ cultural rapport and may help initiate future initiatives and interventions involving pharmacists and Spanish-speaking patients with limited English proficiency. / text

Cognitive-based narrative intervention for bilingual preschoolers Abstract The aim of this study was to determine how an intervention conducted in Spanish and English influenced macro and micro structure in the oral narratives produced by eight preschool Spanish-speaking English-language-learners (M = 68 months, range 59 to 79 months) during a four-week summer intervention program. Following a single-subject pre-experimental repeated A-B measure design, each subject completed an initial treatment phase in Spanish followed by an English treatment phase. The cognitive-based intervention method focused on the mediated learning of language-independent cognitive strategies such as attention, self-regulation, organization, and problem solving. Analysis at the macrostructure level included story component and episode structure and microstructure level analysis considered lexical diversity and use of grammatical forms in each language. All narrative samples were evaluated to determine the effect of language treatment condition and narrative productivity in both languages. Mediated learning significantly increased participants’ ability to independently produce narrative macrostructure story component and episodic structure on multiple elicitation tasks across both languages. Mixed results were observed at the microstructure level for participants’ demonstration of lexical diversity and grammatical complexity specific to language condition and elicitation task. These findings help us understand which macro and micro structure skills transfer under a cognitive-based intervention conducted in two languages. / text

This study investigates the perception of vowel lengthening in the tonada cordobesa, a feature of the Spanish spoken in Córdoba, Argentina. Unlike other dialects of Argentine Spanish, lengthening occurs in the pre-tonic syllable (Fontanella de Weinberg 1971; Yorio 1973; Lang 2010) and is believed to be accompanied by a pitch peak (Fontanella de Weinberg 1971). The goals of this dissertation are to determine if duration alone (i.e., without intonational changes) is significant in identifying a speaker’s Cordoba provenance, and to discover what listener features affect perception. A matched-guise methodology presents speech tokens with natural and manipulated pre-tonic vowel durations to Argentine listeners in a dialect identification task. Results show a main effect of speaker region and token type (natural versus manipulated). Shorter durations made Córdoba speakers difficult to identify, reducing accuracy from 59% for natural tokens to 28% for manipulated tokens with shortened pre-tonic syllables. Buenos Aires speakers received the highest identification accuracy for natural tokens (80%) and Tucumán speakers the lowest (43%). Longer pre-tonic vowel durations are associated with a Córdoba identity, regardless of speaker origin and other linguistic cues. Control tokens produced by speakers from Buenos Aires and Tucumán confirmed this effect: these tokens, when manipulated to have a longer pre-tonic vowel, induced the perception of a Córdoba identity. Listener experience is also shown to improve accuracy of dialect identification: listeners of more geographically distant provinces, relative to the speaker’s province of origin, present significantly reduced identification rates. Acoustical analyses of the Cordoba samples confirm pre-tonic lengthening as well as an early peak rise within the stressed syllable, and valley alignment before the onset of this syllable. Pre-tonic, tonic and post-tonic syllable durations are lengthened, resulting in a segmentally unbalanced intonational phrase for which prominence is disproportionately concentrated in these final segments. The durational, intonational, and rhythmic properties make the Cordoba dialect unique among regional lects within Argentina and across the Spanish-speaking world. This research contributes experimental evidence for the prosodic features marking this dialect and supports its saliency and social significance within Argentina. / text