This mixed method study investigated the development of E.S.L. writers' skills in revision when scaffolded by peer reviewers, with Lev Vygotsky's social-interactionist theory as the framework. Repeated-measures ANCOVA analyzed scores of four essay projects (first drafts and revisions) evaluated by blind holistic readings with a pretest score as covariant. Participants came from existing sections at a state university in the South in which the instruction was the same. The experimental group wrote revisions based on peer feedback; the control group received instructor feedback. Qualitative data came from semi-structured interviews with participants. Neither group showed significant improvement (at .05) in revising. Interviews revealed participants’ perception that they had improved and also their preference for instructor feedback.

A thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, 2008. / Judging from what several of teachers have generally said about the poor performance and low levels of English proficiency, (how poorly they spoke, read and wrote), there seems to be a lack of interest or motivation among rural high school learners to acquire English proficiently. Thus, motivation being what initiates, sustains and directs thinking and behavior, as Louw and Edwards (1997:425) put it, and that motivational processes make us seek and find the things we need for our survival and development (approach motives) - one of the three variables on which good language learning depends, in Pride’s (1979) words, lack of it (motivation) is considered a worrying enough a situation, which warranted scrutiny and careful study. Many factors could account for such a decline or loss of interest in learning English, which is a need for survival in a cosmopolitan country like South Africa and in the world today. Only some kind of misunderstanding of freedom and language rights or misinformation and ignorance or even some form of a misguided ethnic endeavour suicidal in nature on the part of learners, could create or inform such an unfortunate situation of lack of motivation to learning English, when competition for jobs is so high. This research has investigated factors, which might account for what seems to be clearly a decline in interest or motivation among the rural KZN high school learners to acquire English proficiently. In order to meet the aims and objectives of the study, four different groups of people key to the study (people directly involved in the learning and teaching taking place in high schools situated in the rural communities of KwaZulu- Natal) had to be questioned about the matter: 1) learners from several rural high schools 2) high school educators - English subject specialists from a wide selection of rural high schools, as well as few primary school educators 3) parents of children learning in different rural high schools. 4) Some officials, too, from the KZN department of education were interviewed, from whom official information and statistics were obtained.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oklahoma State University, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-285).

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There is awareness and concern in Japan that the process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in the school system does not produce students who can communicate in the target language. This is especially true of communication in the spoken mode. Attempts have been made to move towards more communicative language teaching, despite constraints such as large class size, compulsory use of structurally-organized textbooks, and grammar-based university entrance examinations. However, such attempts do not seem to have been particularly successful. The purpose of this study is to suggest modifications to the teaching of English in upper secondary schools in Japan which could enable students to develop their communicative competence and also to consider implications for the assessment of spoken communication. Chapter I describes the scope and background of the study. Chapter II looks at the teaching of English in upper secondary schools in Japan, discussing aspects such as the place of English in the total school curriculum and constraints on the introduction of spoken communicative activities. Chapter III discusses the theory and practice of the Communicative Approach to Language Teaching in the English teaching context in Japan. Chapter IV offers suggestions for incorporating spoken communication in English lessons at upper secondary school level. In Chapter V, the problem of assessing oral communicative performance is considered in practical terms. The final chapter highlights major constraints and points to recent developments which may give an impetus to a move towards more communicative teaching of English as a foreign language in Japanese schools. It is intended that this Study Report will provide guidelines for the feasible introduction of spoken communicative activities in large classes at upper secondary level and that it will offer practical suggestions for assessing students' performance in such activities.

This study aims to discuss the noun and prepositional phrases in English and in Vietnamese and their impact upon teaching and learning English in the Vietnamese situation. Attempts have been made to state the similarities and differences in noun and prepositional phrases in the two languages and raise and solve some difficulties and problems arising particularly from differences between English and Vietnamese. In this study, Contrastive Linguistics is concerned with the comparison of the two languages with a view to determining the differences and similarities between them. With this practical aim the study tries to provide a model for comparison and determine how and which of the phrases are comparable. It is hoped to provide as much information as is possible in a limited study of this kind on English noun and prepositional phrases, then on Vietnamese noun phrases. The study draws attention to differences with examples. It analyses the heads of noun phrases in the two languages as well as the pre and postmodifications and their positions. It also analyses the uses of the prepositional phrases in the two languages. At the same time, it points out the kinds of errors made by Vietnamese learners in the above-mentioned areas and their causes. Finally, some suggestions are made for those who may be responsible for teaching English as a Foreign Language to younger pupils as well as adults, or to students at universities or colleges

While there is a “T” in the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), the focus in both academia and the real world often shifts solely to sexuality. Even though the real world discussion of sexuality (and perhaps academia’s as well) is also much lacking in both attention to all sexualities (not simply heterosexual and homosexual), there is also a distinct lack of awareness about subtleties all along both the sexuality and gender spectrums. Although sexuality can depend on gender to some extent, particularly where limiting prefixes related to the preference for a specific binary gender (such as ‘hetero,’ ‘homo,’ or ‘bi’) occur, gender is separate from sexuality and the two cannot be simply conflated. Once gender is separated from sexuality, the issue of teaching LGBTQ topics in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom becomes even more complex. Previous research in the field has focused exclusively on sexuality while using the LGBTQ acronym, which serves as a subtle erasure of gender identities that are not explicitly bound within sexual identity. In the ESL classroom, gender should be problematized so that gender identity is moved from the passive acceptance of an assigned set of performative behaviors to a conscientious decision made by an empowered agent. This battles both cisnormativity (the functioning assumption and cultural framework that all people identify with their assigned sex at birth, which in turn leads to ostracism of those who do not operate in gender normative ways) but also allows all ESL students, regardless of gender identity, to look critically at what defines their gender and what factors go into the construction of any particular gender. Considering that many ESL students are coming from gender constructions present in their own cultures, even if those constructions resemble the Western binary, this is an incredibly feasible option given that scholars, such as Ged (2013), have found that gender identity, like all other aspects of identity, must be renegotiated in the language learning process, with results from the first cultural gender identity that are necessarily different by virtue of being constructed in an entirely difficult culture. This thesis examines the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) corpus as it relates to non-binary gender identity and sexuality, as well as transgender and nonconforming topics in other disciplines, and suggests several means of opening up and reframing the conversation of gender in the ESL classroom. In addition, a modified replication of Dumas’s (2010) study tool towards measuring educator perceptions in the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) classroom was used to poll the opinions of four pre-service and thirteen in-service with regards to transgender and nonbinary topics in the American ESL classroom. This thesis concludes that there needs to be more research completed in the area, that teacher perceptions and their role in the classroom should be studied further to recognize what understandings or misunderstandings regarding gender in America are making their way into the ESL classroom.

abstract: Computer assisted language learning (CALL) has become increasingly common as a means of helping learners develop essential skills in a second or foreign language. However, while many CALL programs claim to be based on principles of second language acquisition (SLA) theory and research, evaluation of design and learning outcomes at the level of individual CALL exercises is lacking in the existing literature. The following proposed study will explore the design of computer-based vocabulary matching exercises using both written text and images and the effects of various design manipulations on learning outcomes. The study will use eye-tracking to investigate what users attend to on screen as they work through a series of exercises with different configurations of written words and images. It will ask whether manipulation of text and image features and combinations can have an effect on learners’ attention to the various elements, and if so, whether differences in levels of attention results in higher or lower scores for measures of learning. Specifically, eye-tracking data will be compared to post-test scores for recall and recognition of target vocabulary items to look for a correlation between levels of attention to written forms in-task and post-test gains in scores for vocabulary learning. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2019