Thesis (MA (African Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / The purpose of this study is to apply existing theories with regard to second language acquisition in a South African context, in order to address specific needs of Sepedi second language learners in the South African Police Service, with specific focus on the Community Service Centre and within the guidelines of the Batho Pele principles. The study presents an overview on Universal Grammar and the roles it played within second language acquisition as well as the principles and parameters it presented for language development. It further analysed the acquisition processes of languages and the roles the learner plays as individual and part of a social interacting group. Form-meaning connections utilised by learners is defined as a fundamental aspect for both first and second language acquisitions are discussed broadly in the study, inclusive of the psycholinguistic consequences as well as other input factors that may influence form-meaning connections. The specific role of language instruction is also reviewed in this study. Specific focus is placed on the roles of implicit and explicit instruction and the effectiveness thereof in second language acquisitioning and noticing. Task-based theories were also evaluated, with the accent on the definition of tasks, task characteristics, task grading and other factors relating to tasks such as procedural factors. The role of tasks was further explored in second language acquisition, inclusive of the variables that need to be addressed. The definition of tasks into focussed and unfocused tasks are also scrutinized against the learner interaction in the acquisition process. The implementation of tasks and the impact thereof on comprehension and language acquisition is also reviewed. Different models of methods to design a focussed task are discussed. The successful acquisition of a second language will also be based on the correct collation of data and the sequencing thereof in such manners to allow learners the opportunity to comprehend it as sufficiently as possible. The study further focuses on the methodology of task-based teaching and the use of communicative tasks in second language acquisition. Finally the interviews between the community and the police officials are then analysed in respect of complexity models, against the cognitive and syntactic complexity for specific purposes as well against the genre-approach to second language teaching. The characterizing of such interviews will allow the defining and grading of tasks to ensure sound development of teaching models for second language learning.

Thesis (DLitt (African Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / This study explores how focus on form can be included by means of computer within a task-based approach to the teaching of as specific purposes isiXhosa course for student teachers ...

Um dos principais objetivos da pesquisa em aquisição da linguagem tem sido a compreensão da forma como os processos de aprendizado ou aquisição ocorrem, assim como a elaboração de alternativas metodológicas que consigam promover a comunicação autêntica em sala de aula, habilitando os aprendizes a participar das mais diversas situações comunicativas encontradas no cotidiano. Dentre os enfoques comunicativos, o ensino de línguas por tarefas tem sido fortemente aceito como sendo uma abordagem que permite o desenvolvimento de uma desejável habilidade comunicativa, através da prática autêntica e do foco nos significados, e que, concomitantemente, abre espaço para a ocorrência de momentos ou etapas durante a tarefa em que a atenção do aluno seja temporariamente dirigida a aspectos formais da língua-alvo, sem que haja uma inversão de prioridades no aprendizado, isto é, sem que o foco principal das tarefas seja preterido em relação ao foco excessivo em aspectos estruturais. A presente pesquisa investigou um projeto de elaboração de um guia de críticas de filmes. O projeto ocorreu em um curso livre de idiomas, no qual 22 alunos adultos de inglês como língua estrangeira foram divididos em três grupos e realizaram atividades que visavam a aumentar sua atenção sobre elementos relevantes ao gênero textual crítica de filme, assim como sobre aspectos gramaticais e lexicais, durante os encontros que ocorreram em meio à produção escrita de 3 críticas por cada participante. Os procedimentos adotados visaram a verificar de que maneira os aprendizes obtiveram ganhos de produção escrita no que se refere aos elementos de gênero e aos aspectos gramaticais. A análise dos dados obtidos demonstrou que as atividades de aumento de atenção e consciência trouxeram resultados bastante positivos. Além disso, o projeto demonstrou que os dois enfoques metodológicos tomados como base para os procedimentos adotados – o Ensino de Línguas por Tarefas e a proposta de Sequências Didáticas com gêneros textuais - são bastante compatíveis e que podem ser muito produtivos para aplicações futuras no ensino de língua estrangeira. / One of the main goals of the research in language acquisition has been to understand in which ways the learning or acquisition processes occur, and to propose methodological alternatives which are able to promote authentic communication in classroom, enabling learners to take part in a range of communicative situations found in daily life. Among the communicative approaches, the task based-language teaching has strongly been regarded as an option that permits both the development of desirable communicative skills, through authentic practice and a focus on meaning, and which also provides room for moments or steps during the task when the learner’s attention be temporarily focused on formal aspects of the target language, without any kind of inversion on the learning priorities, that is, keeping the main focus on the tasks, instead of an excessively strong focus on structural aspects. The present research investigated a project involving the production of a movie review guide book. The project took place in a free language course, where 22 adult participants, learners of English as a foreign language were split into three groups, and were assigned activities that intended to enhance their attention to both text genre-relevant elements and to grammar and lexical aspects during the meetings which happened in midst of the production of 3 reviews by each participant. The chosen procedures sought to investigate in which ways learners had gains in their writing production in relation to those elements and aspects. The data analysis shows that the attention and consciousness-raising activities brought about significantly positive results. In addition, the project has demonstrated that both methodological approaches used to design the task sequence adopted in the research – the task based-language teaching and the use of text genres in didactic sequences – are quite compatible and that they can be very productive in similar future applications in foreign language teaching.

Um dos principais objetivos da pesquisa em aquisição da linguagem tem sido a compreensão da forma como os processos de aprendizado ou aquisição ocorrem, assim como a elaboração de alternativas metodológicas que consigam promover a comunicação autêntica em sala de aula, habilitando os aprendizes a participar das mais diversas situações comunicativas encontradas no cotidiano. Dentre os enfoques comunicativos, o ensino de línguas por tarefas tem sido fortemente aceito como sendo uma abordagem que permite o desenvolvimento de uma desejável habilidade comunicativa, através da prática autêntica e do foco nos significados, e que, concomitantemente, abre espaço para a ocorrência de momentos ou etapas durante a tarefa em que a atenção do aluno seja temporariamente dirigida a aspectos formais da língua-alvo, sem que haja uma inversão de prioridades no aprendizado, isto é, sem que o foco principal das tarefas seja preterido em relação ao foco excessivo em aspectos estruturais. A presente pesquisa investigou um projeto de elaboração de um guia de críticas de filmes. O projeto ocorreu em um curso livre de idiomas, no qual 22 alunos adultos de inglês como língua estrangeira foram divididos em três grupos e realizaram atividades que visavam a aumentar sua atenção sobre elementos relevantes ao gênero textual crítica de filme, assim como sobre aspectos gramaticais e lexicais, durante os encontros que ocorreram em meio à produção escrita de 3 críticas por cada participante. Os procedimentos adotados visaram a verificar de que maneira os aprendizes obtiveram ganhos de produção escrita no que se refere aos elementos de gênero e aos aspectos gramaticais. A análise dos dados obtidos demonstrou que as atividades de aumento de atenção e consciência trouxeram resultados bastante positivos. Além disso, o projeto demonstrou que os dois enfoques metodológicos tomados como base para os procedimentos adotados – o Ensino de Línguas por Tarefas e a proposta de Sequências Didáticas com gêneros textuais - são bastante compatíveis e que podem ser muito produtivos para aplicações futuras no ensino de língua estrangeira. / One of the main goals of the research in language acquisition has been to understand in which ways the learning or acquisition processes occur, and to propose methodological alternatives which are able to promote authentic communication in classroom, enabling learners to take part in a range of communicative situations found in daily life. Among the communicative approaches, the task based-language teaching has strongly been regarded as an option that permits both the development of desirable communicative skills, through authentic practice and a focus on meaning, and which also provides room for moments or steps during the task when the learner’s attention be temporarily focused on formal aspects of the target language, without any kind of inversion on the learning priorities, that is, keeping the main focus on the tasks, instead of an excessively strong focus on structural aspects. The present research investigated a project involving the production of a movie review guide book. The project took place in a free language course, where 22 adult participants, learners of English as a foreign language were split into three groups, and were assigned activities that intended to enhance their attention to both text genre-relevant elements and to grammar and lexical aspects during the meetings which happened in midst of the production of 3 reviews by each participant. The chosen procedures sought to investigate in which ways learners had gains in their writing production in relation to those elements and aspects. The data analysis shows that the attention and consciousness-raising activities brought about significantly positive results. In addition, the project has demonstrated that both methodological approaches used to design the task sequence adopted in the research – the task based-language teaching and the use of text genres in didactic sequences – are quite compatible and that they can be very productive in similar future applications in foreign language teaching.

Um dos principais objetivos da pesquisa em aquisição da linguagem tem sido a compreensão da forma como os processos de aprendizado ou aquisição ocorrem, assim como a elaboração de alternativas metodológicas que consigam promover a comunicação autêntica em sala de aula, habilitando os aprendizes a participar das mais diversas situações comunicativas encontradas no cotidiano. Dentre os enfoques comunicativos, o ensino de línguas por tarefas tem sido fortemente aceito como sendo uma abordagem que permite o desenvolvimento de uma desejável habilidade comunicativa, através da prática autêntica e do foco nos significados, e que, concomitantemente, abre espaço para a ocorrência de momentos ou etapas durante a tarefa em que a atenção do aluno seja temporariamente dirigida a aspectos formais da língua-alvo, sem que haja uma inversão de prioridades no aprendizado, isto é, sem que o foco principal das tarefas seja preterido em relação ao foco excessivo em aspectos estruturais. A presente pesquisa investigou um projeto de elaboração de um guia de críticas de filmes. O projeto ocorreu em um curso livre de idiomas, no qual 22 alunos adultos de inglês como língua estrangeira foram divididos em três grupos e realizaram atividades que visavam a aumentar sua atenção sobre elementos relevantes ao gênero textual crítica de filme, assim como sobre aspectos gramaticais e lexicais, durante os encontros que ocorreram em meio à produção escrita de 3 críticas por cada participante. Os procedimentos adotados visaram a verificar de que maneira os aprendizes obtiveram ganhos de produção escrita no que se refere aos elementos de gênero e aos aspectos gramaticais. A análise dos dados obtidos demonstrou que as atividades de aumento de atenção e consciência trouxeram resultados bastante positivos. Além disso, o projeto demonstrou que os dois enfoques metodológicos tomados como base para os procedimentos adotados – o Ensino de Línguas por Tarefas e a proposta de Sequências Didáticas com gêneros textuais - são bastante compatíveis e que podem ser muito produtivos para aplicações futuras no ensino de língua estrangeira. / One of the main goals of the research in language acquisition has been to understand in which ways the learning or acquisition processes occur, and to propose methodological alternatives which are able to promote authentic communication in classroom, enabling learners to take part in a range of communicative situations found in daily life. Among the communicative approaches, the task based-language teaching has strongly been regarded as an option that permits both the development of desirable communicative skills, through authentic practice and a focus on meaning, and which also provides room for moments or steps during the task when the learner’s attention be temporarily focused on formal aspects of the target language, without any kind of inversion on the learning priorities, that is, keeping the main focus on the tasks, instead of an excessively strong focus on structural aspects. The present research investigated a project involving the production of a movie review guide book. The project took place in a free language course, where 22 adult participants, learners of English as a foreign language were split into three groups, and were assigned activities that intended to enhance their attention to both text genre-relevant elements and to grammar and lexical aspects during the meetings which happened in midst of the production of 3 reviews by each participant. The chosen procedures sought to investigate in which ways learners had gains in their writing production in relation to those elements and aspects. The data analysis shows that the attention and consciousness-raising activities brought about significantly positive results. In addition, the project has demonstrated that both methodological approaches used to design the task sequence adopted in the research – the task based-language teaching and the use of text genres in didactic sequences – are quite compatible and that they can be very productive in similar future applications in foreign language teaching.

The present study examines and classifies learning activities found in teaching materials of Spanish as a foreign language produced for a Swedish context with the aim of determining to what extent they conform to the functional, action-oriented language view advocated by the Swedish curriculum. Both the distribution of learning activities within receptive, productive and interactive skills, the activity types within each skill, and the theoretical underpinnings of the activities have been studied in four popular coursebooks and two websites for teaching Spanish as a foreign language. The activities analyzed have shown a dominance of the written language even in oral activities. The results have also shown a bias towards more controlled, non-communicative activities with an explicit focus on forms at the expense of freer communicative activities with a primary focus on meaning, known to support language acquisition.

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

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

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.