Orientador: Paula Tavares Pinto / Resumo: A relação da Linguística de Corpus com o Ensino de Línguas, apesar de receber foco mesmo antes do advento dos computadores, se intensificou por volta da década de 90, momento em que pesquisas em corpora de aprendizes e em Aprendizagem Direcionada por Dados foram enfatizadas. Considerado esse estreitamento, esta pesquisa objetiva compilar quatro corpora de aprendizes a partir do uso autêntico da língua com o intuito de desenvolver atividades didáticas direcionadas por dados dos próprios alunos que promovam nos discentes um perfil autônomo de investigação linguística (mais precisamente das preposições with, in, on, at, for e to). No tocante à fundamentação teórica, destacam-se Prabhu (1987), Skehan (1996), Willis (1996), Nunan (2004) e Ellis (2006) a respeito do Ensino de Línguas por Tarefas, Jenkins (2012) e Neves (2014) que discorrem sobre as ficções de fã. Já sobre a Linguística de Corpus, tem-se Sinclair (1991), Berber Sardinha (2000) e Viana (2011). Granger (1998, 2002, 2013) mais relacionado a Corpus de Aprendizes, e Johns (1991, 1994), Berber Sardinha (2011) e Boulton (2010) no que diz respeito à Aprendizagem Direcionada por Dados. Como metodologia, levantaram-se textos escritos pelos alunos a partir de uma tarefa de produção escrita em que eles redigiram uma ficção de fã. Em seguida, esses textos formaram dois corpora de aprendizes iniciais, que foram analisados com o auxílio da ferramenta AntConc (ANTHONY, 2018) no intuito de observar a presença ou não de inadequações ... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Although the relation between Corpus Linguistics and Language Teaching has been emphasized even before the advent of computers, it has been highlighted around the 90s. This was the moment when research on learner corpora and Data-Driven Learning was focused. Having said that, this study aimed to compile four learner corpora based on the authentic use of the language. This was done in order to develop data-driven teaching activities that could promote, among the students, an autonomous profile of linguistic investigation (more precisely about the prepositions with, in, on, at, for and to). Concerning the existing literature, we highlight the works of Prabhu (1987), Skehan (1996), Willis (1996), Nunan (2004) and Ellis (2006) about Task-Based Language Teaching, and Jenkins (2012) and Neves (2014) about fanfictions. In relation to Corpus Linguistics, this study is based on Sinclair (1991), Berber Sardinha (2000) and Viana (2011). Granger (1998, 2012, 2013) is referenced to define learner corpora, and Johns (1991, 1994), Berber Sardinha (2011) and Boulton (2010) to discuss Data-Driven Learning. The methodological approach involved the collection of the compositions from Language Teaching undergraduate students who developed a writing task in which they had to write a fanfiction. These texts composed two learner corpora, which were analyzed with the AntConc tool (ANTHONY, 2018) with the purpose of observing the occurrence of prepositions in English and whether they were accurately ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

This study investigates the view of some students and a teacher’s attitudes towards the learning possibilities of the integration of personal interests to the teaching of English. The research carried out at one of the largest profile schools in Sweden, with an aesthetic subject-orientation. These subjects are referred to as “passion subjects”. Qualitative interviews and observation were the methods used for data collection. The research questions were about students’ and teachers attitudes towards the involvement of their passion subject in the formal education process, as well as their views on integrating English as a foreign language in the teaching/learning process of their passion subject. The results show that the teacher and the students view the involvement of students’ personal interests in the formal education as a key source for motivation. Regarding the involvement of English as a foreign language in the passion subject, the results are both positive and negative: positive in the sense that it is viewed as getting extra lessons in English and negative in the sense that information can be overlooked as the students not always understand the input.

Abstract Task-Based Language Teaching has long been a method for education in different subjects. This study investigates the use of Task-Based Language teaching regarding vocabulary acquisition in English upper secondary/high school students. Through the use of a database, multiple scientific studies and research papers on vocabulary acquisition through TBLT have been included. This study contains the results of the use of TBL through similar teaching methods with the focus on vocabulary development in the L2 classroom. The findings show that studies have different results regarding what tasks to include but present a similar conclusion regarding what method to use; TBLT. The results also show that regardless of what task is used, communication could be beneficial and even played a big role in multiple studies where it increased students vocabulary acquisition. The conclusion of our study suggests that TBLT is an efficient method for developing vocabulary acquisition in upper secondary and high school students. All research papers analysed concluded that TBL and TBLT can be used as means for motivating students which aided the task engagement, thus helping develop their vocabulary acquisition.

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Due to an educational system that tends to prioritize receptive reading and listening skills and a concomitant lack of opportunities to engage in meaningful spoken production in the target language outside of the class, many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Japan struggle to develop their English speaking abilities even after many years of study. For many of these learners, post-secondary coursework presents a first opportunity to engage in consistent active oral production of the language in interactive communicative situations, but how language abilities develop in this context over time is not well understood. This longitudinal, mixed methods research study explores the development of interactive second language (L2) speaking proficiency of Japanese university students throughout their first year of post-secondary study. The participants were 92 female students from five sections of a required oral communication course of which I was the instructor: 34 from two mid-proficiency sections and 58 from three low-proficiency sections. In addition to the standard curriculum for this course, these participants also completed a series of ten 10-minute discussion tasks in groups of three to four participants on personal information topics of general interest over the course of two 15-week semesters that comprise the academic year. All of the group discussion tasks were video-recorded and carried out under the same procedures: without any pre-task planning time but with a post-task transcription and reflection assignment. The first group discussion task was administered for training and instructional purposes and excluded from the data analyses leaving seven tasks conducted roughly one month apart throughout the academic year as well as one additional repeated task with the same group assignments completed at the end of each semester. In total, nine discussion tasks were carried out for analysis in this study. A number of quantitative measures were collected for this study at various points throughout the academic year. First, all of the group discussion performances were rated using an adapted rating scale consisting of criteria dedicated to complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) as well as interactional engagement and overall communicative effectiveness. Additional measures consisting of participant ratings assigned to topic difficulty and group member familiarity were collected via questionnaire after each discussion task. Furthermore, measures of extraversion and English-speaking self-efficacy were collected along with the three repeated tasks that spanned the entire year. Finally, initial and end-of-year scores on the TOEIC-IP test consisting only of listening and reading sections were used as measures of general English proficiency. To provide a richer understanding of the participants’ perceptions of their development as well the social and individual difference factors considered most directly relevant to the research questions, an embedded qualitative component consisting of two focus groups and one individual interview was also carried out. The results indicated that the participants in this study made small but significant improvements in their mean interactive English speaking abilities across both the three repeated tasks and between the most temporally distant earliest and latest new tasks administered in the first and second terms, accounting for relatively large amounts of the variance in the measures. Furthermore, the social and individual difference factors investigated were found to jointly predict 56% of the variance seen in the interactive English speaking measures for the three repeated tasks. Of these factors, the participants’ initial general proficiency scores, English speaking self-efficacy ratings, and averaged group member initial proficiency scores were found to be much stronger predictors than their topic difficulty, group member familiarity, and extraversion ratings. When the ratings given along the five rating scale dimensions were inspected, strong relationships were revealed among all of them, though particularly among the CAF rating measures. Tracking these relationships over time revealed that they tended to strengthen from one task to the next with the most readily identifiable changes found among the relationships between accuracy, interactional engagement, and overall communicative effectiveness. Finally, the qualitative component of this study revealed that the participants interviewed perceived changes in their conscious attention during the group discussion tasks shifting from accuracy concerns to speaking fluently/effectively, a general lack of concern for and attention to complexity throughout, and improvement in their interactional engagement over the course of the academic year. Furthermore, the interviewees were found to generally ascribe a high degree of influence on their resulting group discussion task speaking performances to both the topic prompts assigned and their group members’ personalities as well as to the complex interplay between group member proficiency and familiarity among other factors. Although a number of limitations should be taken into account, it is believed that the results of this study provide new, important insights into the longitudinal development of interactive English speaking proficiency in an EFL university context where learners have little engagement with target language beyond limited classroom contact hours. / Teaching & Learning

This study was an examination of the effects of explicit form-focused instruction on the English development of Japanese university students during a seven-week intervention. Speaking proficiency development is a continuous challenge for most EFL learners who have limited exposure to the target language outside the classroom. Within the communicative language teaching paradigm, task-based language learning (TBLT) has been considered an effective approach for developing students’ speaking proficiency. However, while TBLT has been increasingly implemented in English language classrooms, investigations in which explicit form-focused instruction has been integrated into task based speaking tasks are limited. This longitudinal classroom-based study had five purposes. The first purpose was to examine the development of speaking proficiency in terms of syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and oral fluency. The second purpose was to examine the development of speaking proficiency by comparing learners who received form-focused instruction with those who did not receive form-focused instruction by examining differences in their syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and oral fluency development. The third purpose was to quantitatively and qualitatively examine the week-to-week trajectory of changes in speaking proficiency development. The fourth purpose was to examine learner affective variables. The final purpose was to examine the participants’ perceptions concerning the development of speaking proficiency based on their self-assessments. The participants were 104 first-year students enrolled in a Japanese university. All of the participants narrated a different four-picture cartoon in English once a week for nine weeks. The participants were divided into one comparison group and two intervention groups: form-focused instruction (FFI) and form-focused instruction and peer feedback (FFI + PF). The form-focused instruction intervention included ten minutes of grammar instruction focused on three past tense forms: simple past, past continuous, and past perfect, as well as ten minutes of peer feedback. Between the pretest and posttest, the FFI and FFI + PF participants received seven weeks of instruction before their weekly cartoon narration. Participants in the comparison group did not receive any weekly interventions. The pretest and posttest narration data of all participants were transcribed and analyzed using six CAF measurements: mean length of T-unit, clause/T-unit ratio, percentage of error-free T-units, percentage of accurate past tense usage, speech rate, and self-repair. Moreover, the pretest and posttest narrations recorded by all of the participants were analytically rated by three raters. From the sample of 104 participants, nine participants (three representatives from each group) were chosen for a week-to-week trajectory analysis in which their six CAF performances were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. All of the participants completed two questionnaires after taking the pretest and posttest. I developed both questionnaires based on previous literature related to second language speaking proficiency development. The English Speaking Learner Affect Questionnaire was used to examine differences in participants’ classroom English speaking anxiety, English speaking self-efficacy, and desire to speak English. The Self-Assessment of Speaking Task Questionnaire was used to examine changes in the participants’ self-assessment of their own performances in terms of syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and oral fluency. The results indicated that form-focused instruction was effective at improving the participants’ global syntactic accuracy and their accurate use of the simple past tense. However, form-focused instruction did not lead to improvements in syntactic complexity or oral fluency. However, explicit form-focused instruction did not lead to detrimental effects on syntactic complexity or oral fluency; thus, form-focused instruction did not appear to stimulate trade-off effects between syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and oral fluency. The analytical ratings provided by the raters indicated that form-focused instruction did not lead to significant improvements in terms of syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, or oral fluency. The results also indicated that the form-focused instruction intervention was effective at quickly improving syntactic accuracy because participants who received both form-focused instruction and peer feedback improved more quickly in the simple past compared to the participants who only received form-focused instruction. However, the participants who improved syntactic accuracy quickly might have experienced trade-offs with oral fluency ability, as improvements in speed fluency were not noted until their syntactic accuracy reached a ceiling effect where their global accuracy and accurate use of simple past tense stopped to improve. The results indicated that form-focused instruction did not influence classroom English speaking anxiety, as there was no significant difference seen between participants who received form-focused instruction and participants who did not. However, an excessive amount of form-focused instruction might have negative impacts on speaking anxiety because the participants who received both form-focused instruction and peer feedback showed an increase in their classroom English speaking anxiety. On the other hand, form-focused instruction had no impact on English speaking self-efficacy and it had positive effects on the desire to speak English because the participants who received both form-focused instruction and peer feedback exhibited a significant increase in their desire to speak English compared to the participants who did not receive form-focused instruction and the participants who received only form-focused instruction. Finally, based on the learners’ self-assessment, form-focused instruction had no effects on speaking proficiency development as there was no difference in self-assessed syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and oral fluency between the participants in the three groups. Participants who received form-focused instruction interventions did not assess themselves to having higher syntactic accuracy despite their improvements on the CAF measures. / Teaching & Learning

Little empirical research has been conducted on what effect task-based reading instruction with reading questions will have on reading comprehension, particularly in the domain of second language reading comprehension. The purpose of this research is to investigate which type of questions, textually explicit (TE) or inferential (IF) questions, will best facilitate text comprehension, and which type will have the most beneficial effect on Japanese EFL learners at three proficiency levels (low, intermediate, and high). In the study, two groups of Japanese senior high school students (N = 69) were classified into three different proficiency groups. One group received instruction emphasizing TE questions while the other received instruction emphasizing IF questions. TE questions are text-bound questions whose answers are locally and explicitly stated in the text. In contrast, IF questions are more knowledge-bound questions whose answers largely depend on readers' cognitive resources, such as relevant linguistic knowledge, background knowledge, world knowledge or context. The different treatments lasted five months. The results were statistically analyzed. The study revealed a significant task effect for reading questions on Japanese EFL learners' reading. Although one type of instruction did not have a significantly better effect than the other, the large between-groups gain gap seems to imply that instruction emphasizing IF questions might facilitate text comprehension more. The study also found that the participants who received instruction emphasizing IF questions benefited from their instruction regardless of proficiency level. With regard to instruction emphasizing TE questions, the higher proficiency participants benefited significantly more from their instruction than the lower proficiency students. The study suggests that reading teachers should use a task-based teaching method with reading questions. If the use of reading questions is already a part of reading teachers' methodology, they should include not only commonly used textually explicit reading questions but also inferential ones. The study suggests that implementing these changes might help break the cycle of translation-bound reading instruction with its overemphasis on lower-level processing, and might lead students to read texts in a more meaningful, interactive way. / CITE/Language Arts

The overall purpose of this study is to investigate whether the motivation of Swedish pupilsin grades 4-6 to learn can increase when textbooks and workbooks are exchanged for fiction,and more fiction is incorporated in English teaching in Sweden. The study hopes tocontribute to knowledge development that strengthens and develops English teaching inSweden. The teacher is responsible for planning their teaching - at the same time, there aremany discourses about student influence in school contexts. According to the SwedishNational Education Agency (2022), all students should have the right to influence theireducation and school activities. The pupils’ life stories and experiences can contribute toschools' developmental work. Furthermore, this paper aims to find out why and how it ispossible to work with literature to achieve the learning goals stated in the curriculum. It alsoserves as a basis for teachers to gain in-depth knowledge of how they can motivate studentsto work with fiction when teaching English. The essay also provides a variety of workingmethods for integrating fiction in English teaching in grades 4-6 in Swedish schools. The methods used for this essay are qualitative group interviews of a semi-structured natureand the answers come from 25 pupils from two different schools in the middle of Sweden.The intervention study involved three classes, 66 pupils from grades 4 and 5. This study demonstrates that using fiction in English teaching increases pupils' motivationand knowledge acquisition compared to if they are only allowed to work with textbooks andworkbooks.

Denna studie undersöker genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys språksynen i två förlagsproducerade läromedel för spanska i årskurs 9, Colores 9 och Gracias 9. Kursplanen för moderna språk i grundskolan har en uttalad funktionell och handlingsorienterad språksyn som utgår från den Gemensamma europeiska referensramen för språk (GERS). I denna studie har lärandeaktiviteterna i övningsböckerna Colores 9 och Gracias 9 samt deras tillhörande digitala material klassificerats i olika aktivitetstyper utifrån kursplanens förmågor (lyssna, läsa, skriva och tala) dels för att ta reda på hur fördelningen mellan lärandeaktiviteterna inom förmågorna ser ut, dels för att ta reda på vilken typ av aktiviteter som representeras i materialet. Dessa aktiviteter har sedan analyserats utifrån Littlewoods kontinuum i syfte att undersöka vilken språksyn som speglas i materialet, samt om denna språksyn överensstämmer med kursplanens. Resultatet visar att majoriteten av lärandeaktiviteterna inom alla förmågor fokuserar på explicit inlärning med fokus främst på språkets strukturer där aktiviteter som övar uttal, översättning, grammatik och högläsning dominerar. Det framgår av denna studie att lärandeaktiviteterna i läromedlen speglar en traditionell och strukturell språksyn med inslag från grammatik- och översättningsmetoden och den audiolingvala metoden och därmed inte överensstämmer med kursplanens handlingsorienterade kommunikativa språksyn.

Availability of internet to a wide audiences has revolutionized how business is performed. Businesses now use e-commerce to trade products and services. The growth of e-commerce has been dramatically rapid among developed countries. Therefore, the adoption of e-commerce platforms is studied in these countries. Meanwhile less attentions has been given to developing countries. Developing countries can take advantage of lessons learned in the developed countries. One of the major success factors of e-commerce platforms in developed countries is improving the usability of e-commerce platform by considering user’s preferences. User preferences can be defined as feelings and attitudes of users for the interface and functional design of the ecommerce platform. This influences user’s decision and behavior. Considering the users preferences within an e-commerce platform enhances user’s satisfaction and increases user’s loyalty to the platform. To evaluate the user preferences a selection of usability factors are usually studied. Avicenna Research Institute (ARI) is currently considering the development of an e-commerce platform. For this ARI is investigating ways to consider users preferences in the design. This study aims to satisfy this goal. In this study previous research are analyzed, user’s preferences are identified, common used e-commerce platforms are investigated, and ARI’s perspective is included in the analysis. Using these information a set of recommendations on how to improve the usability of an e-commerce platform is given. For this task based approaches are used in form of participatory heuristic evaluation and observations. Interview is used to obtain ARI’s perspective on usability. The study has identified ten usability factors affecting the usability of the e-commerce platform based on user’s preferences. These include consistency, learnability, navigability, simplicity, readability, content relevance, supportability, interactivity, credibility, and telepresence. In addition a set of eighty evaluation criteria are presented to evaluate these factors. Using a qualitative approach, the study has analyzed all these factors in a multiple-case study. The analysis includes input from the users in form of observations, comments and questionnaire. This is combined with input from ARI in form of interviews. Finally the study concludes by providing a path for future research.