The focus of this dissertation is the development and testing of a CALL tool which assists
learners of German with the extensive reading of German texts of their choice. The application provides functionality that enables learners to acquire new vocabulary, analyse the
meaning of complex word forms and to study a word’s semantic and syntactic features
with the help of corpora and online resources.
It is also designed to enable instructors to create meaningful exercises to be used in
classroom activities focusing on vocabulary acquisition and word formation rules.
The detailed description of the software development and implementation is preceded
by a review of the relevant literature in the areas of German morphology and word formation, second language acquisition and vocabulary acquisition in particular, studies on the
benefits of extensive reading, the role of motivation in second language learning, CALL,
and natural language processing technologies.
The user study presented at the end of this dissertation shows how a first test group of
learners was able to use the application for individual reading projects and presents the
results of an evaluation of the software conducted by three German instructors assessing
the affordances of the applications for students and potential applications for language
instructors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:WATERLOO/oai:uwspace.uwaterloo.ca:10012/5680 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Wood, Peter |
| Source Sets | University of Waterloo Electronic Theses Repository |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
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