Deictic Demonstratives in Japanese, Finnish and Swedish : First and Third Language Perspectives

The goal of this thesis is twofold. Firstly, it investigates the actual, native use of spatial-deictic demonstratives in Japanese, Finnish and Swedish. Secondly, it investigates and elucidates the interlanguage of Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking learners of Japanese regarding their use of Japanese spatial-deictic demonstratives in the light of respective native use and, in comparison to the descriptions of demonstratives in the teaching materials used. Thus, the present study deals with analyses of two sets of empirical data: data produced by native-speaking informants (L1 data) and data produced by language learners (L2 data). These were elicited by Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) designed, collected and analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods by the author. The results showed that the actual use of demonstratives by the native informants was not always in accordance with the way described in grammars. The typological similarities between Japanese and Finnish were in this study not reflected in the native use of demonstratives, and some uses were not solely based on the spatial relations between the referent, the speaker and the addressee, but rather on social-interactional factors. The main findings regarding the learner data revealed some differences in the usage rate of the demonstratives between the two Finnish-speaking groups and the one Swedish-speaking learner group studied. There were, however, no particular differences found between them regarding the type of demonstrative used. It is suggested that these differences are first and foremost connected both with the teaching materials used and the more or less heterogeneous linguistic environment in which the learners reside, and only thereafter with the typological similarities or differences between their respective native languages, Finnish and Swedish, and the target language, Japanese. It is further argued that the learners’ use of the different Japanese demonstratives, that is the type of demonstrative used, could be explained in terms of familiarity with the grammar. That is, when the situations used in the DCTs were exemplified in teaching materials and were familiar to them, the learners seemed to use Japanese demonstratives as they are described in the teaching materials and as the native Japanese speakers use them. When the situations used in the DCTs were not exemplified in the teaching materials, the learners seem to rely more on their native language. The results, thus, suggest that the learners’ interlanguage is influenced by the grammar of the target language known to the learners, but also by the number of languages (or varieties) that the learners have contact with at the time of learning. The results of the present study have implications for the teaching of Japanese in at least two ways. Firstly, the importance of grammar instruction must be emphasized since its effect on the learners’ language is apparent. Secondly, the contents of teaching materials should be revised on the basis of the native speakers’ actual use of the grammar.

Upper Secondary Students’ Beliefs About Learning English as a Foreign Language : A contrast between the students’ beliefs and the Swedish curriculum

Learning English as a foreign language (EFL) entails different factors. Language learners use different strategies in order to make their language acquisition successful. Motivation and self-regulated learning are other factors that influence how successful the EFL learner is. This paper aims to analyze the beliefs of upper secondary students in a Swedish school about learning EFL, as well as how their beliefs relate to what is specified in the Swedish curriculum. An analysis of the differences between students’ beliefs and what is stated in the curriculum was done. A survey was conducted on a total of 54 students who were enrolled in the social sciences program. The results showed that students believed that motivation and self-regulated learning were important factors for a successful learning. For them, the language skill of reception is more important than production, which does not correspond with what it is stated in the national curriculum. First and second year students’ beliefs were similar in most of the cases, but not all of them.

Interação didática em língua estrangeira: contributos de um estudo baseado na dimensão sócio-afetiva da aprendizagem colaborativa

Pretendeu-se com este projecto de investigação estudar a interação didática co-construída por alunos do ensino superior em moldes de aprendizagem colaborativa na aula de Inglês língua estrangeira, com enfoque na dimensão sócio-afetiva da aprendizagem. Na base do quadro teórico encontra-se o pressuposto de que o conhecimento é algo dinâmico e construído colaborativamente, e que é na interação didática que emergem os comportamentos verbais reveladores do Saber―Ser/Estar/Aprender dos sujeitos, nomeadamente através da coconstrução e negociação de sentidos. Subjacente portanto ao estudo está a convicção de que “o trabalho crítico sobre a interação permite entender os modos relacionais entre os sujeitos pedagógicos, as relações interpessoais que se estabelecem e articular o desenvolvimento linguístico-comunicativo com o desenvolvimento pessoal e social dos alunos” (Araújo e Sá & Andrade, 2002, p. 82). Esta investigação centra-se exclusivamente nos aprendentes, na sequência de indicações provenientes da revisão de literatura, as quais apontam para uma lacuna nas investigações efetuadas até à data, referente ao número insuficiente de estudos dedicado à interação didática interpares, já que a grande maioria dos estudos se dirige para a relação professor-aluno (cf. Baker & Clark, 2010; Hellermann, 2008; O'Donnell & King, 2014). Por outro lado, o estado da arte relativo às investigações focalizadas na interacção entre aprendentes permite concluir que a melhor forma de exponenciar esta interação será através da aprendizagem colaborativa (cf. Johnson, Johnson, & Stanne, 2000; Slavin, 2014; Smith, Sheppard, Johnson, & Johnson, 2005). Circunscrevemos o nosso estudo à dimensão sócio-afetiva das estratégias de aprendizagem que ocorrem nessas interações, já que a revisão da literatura fez evidenciar a correlação positiva da aprendizagem colaborativa com as dimensões social e afetiva da interação (cf. Byun et al., 2012): por um lado, a dinâmica de grupo numa aula de língua estrangeira contribui grandemente para uma perceção afetiva favorável do processo de aprendizagem, incrementando igualmente a quantidade e a qualidade da interação (cf. Felder & Brent, 2007); por outro lado, a existência, na aprendizagem colaborativa, dos fenómenos de correção dos pares e de negociação de sentidos estimula a emergência da dimensão sócio-afetiva da aprendizagem de uma língua estrangeira (cf. Campbell & Kryszewska,1992; Hadfield, 1992; Macaro, 2005). É neste enquadramento teórico que se situam as nossas questões e objetivos de investigação. Em primeiro lugar procurámos saber como é que um grupo de aprendentes de Inglês língua estrangeira do ensino superior perceciona as estratégias de aprendizagem sócio-afetivas que utiliza em contexto de sala de aula, no âmbito da aprendizagem colaborativa e nãocolaborativa. Procurámos igualmente indagar quais as estratégias de aprendizagem sócio-afetivas passíveis de serem identificadas neste grupo de aprendentes, em situação de interação didática, em contexto de aprendizagem colaborativa. Finalmente, questionámo-nos sobre a relação entre a perceção que estes alunos possuem das estratégias de aprendizagem sócio-afetivas que empregam nas aulas de Inglês língua estrangeira e as estratégias sócio-afetivas identificadas em situação de interação didática, em contexto de aprendizagem colaborativa. No que respeita à componente empírica do nosso projecto, norteámo-nos pelo paradigma qualitativo, no contexto do qual efetuámos um estudo de caso, a partir de uma abordagem tendencialmente etnográfica, por tal nos parecer mais consentâneo, quer com a nossa problemática, quer com a natureza complexa dos processos interativos em sala de aula. A metodologia quantitativa está igualmente presente, pretendendo-se que tenha adicionado mais dimensionalidade à investigação, contribuindo para a triangulação dos resultados. A investigação, que se desenvolveu ao longo de 18 semanas, teve a sala de aula como local privilegiado para obter grande parte da informação. Os participantes do estudo de caso foram 24 alunos do primeiro ano de uma turma de Inglês Língua Estrangeira de um Instituto Politécnico, sendo a investigadora a docente da disciplina. A informação proveio primordialmente de um corpus de interações didáticas colaborativas audiogravadas e posteriormente transcritas, constituído por 8 sessões com uma duração aproximada de uma hora, e das respostas a um inquérito por questionário − construído a partir da taxonomia de Oxford (1990) − relativo à dimensão sócio-afetiva das estratégias de aprendizagem do Inglês língua estrangeira. O corpus gravado e transcrito foi analisado através da categorização por indicadores, com o objetivo de se detetarem as marcas sócio-afetivas das estratégias de aprendizagem mobilizadas pelos alunos. As respostas ao questionário foram tratadas quantitativamente numa primeira fase, e os resultados foram posteriormente triangulados com os provenientes da análise do corpus de interações. Este estudo permitiu: i) elencar as estratégias de aprendizagem que os aprendentes referem utilizar em situação de aprendizagem colaborativa e não colaborativa, ii) detetar quais destas estratégias são efetivamente utilizadas na aprendizagem colaborativa, iii) e concluir que existe, na maioria dos casos, um desfasamento entre o autoconceito do aluno relativamente ao seu perfil de aprendente de línguas estrangeiras, mais concretamente às dimensões afetiva e social das estratégias de aprendizagem que mobiliza, e a forma como este aprendente recorre a estas mesma estratégias na sala de aula. Concluímos igualmente que, em termos globais, existem diferenças, por vezes significativas, entre as representações que os sujeitos possuem da aprendizagem colaborativa e aquelas que detêm acerca da aprendizagem não colaborativa.

The Historical Thesaurus and the sentimental language of Robert Burns

This thesis demonstrates a new methodology for the linguistic analysis of literature drawing on the data within The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (2009). Developing ideas laid out by Carol McGuirk in her book Robert Burns and the Sentimental Era (1985), this study offers a novel approach to the cultural connections present in the sentimental literature of the eighteenth century, with specific reference to Robert Burns. In doing so, it responds to the need to “stop reading Burns through glossaries and start reading him through dictionaries, thesauruses and histories”, as called for by Murray Pittock (2012). Beginning by situating the methodology in linguistic theory, this thesis goes on firstly to illustrate the ways in which such an approach can be deployed to assess existing literary critical ideas. The first chapter does this testing by examining McGuirk’s book, while simultaneously grounding the study in the necessary contextual background. Secondly, this study investigates, in detail, two aspects of Burns’s sentimental persona construction. Beginning with his open letter ‘The Address of the Scotch Distillers’ and its sentimental use of the language of the Enlightenment, and moving on to one of Burns’s personas in his letters to George Thomson, this section illustrates the importance of persona construction in Burns’s sentimental ethos. Finally, a comprehensive, evidence-based, comparison of linguistic trends examines the extent to which similar sentimental language is used by Burns and Henry Mackenzie, Laurence Sterne, William Shenstone and Samuel Richardson. This thesis shows how this new methodology is a valuable new tool for those involved in literary scholarship. For the first time in any comprehensive way the Historical Thesaurus can be harnessed to make new arguments in literary criticism.

Language use and language attitudes in Malawian universities

This study aims to investigate patterns of language use and language attitudes amongst students in Malawian universities. This will highlight whether language issues affect Malawians’ ability to engage with tertiary education. It has been claimed that ineffective language policies in developing countries restrict people’s ability to access systems such as education. As a result, this has a negative impact on their own, and their country's, development. Specifically, Malawi frequently has the lowest rates of university enrolment worldwide and is consistently ranked amongst the world’s poorest countries. Recent language policy changes within Malawi have brought the issue of language use within education to the fore, with increased debate over whether English or indigenous languages are suitable for use in education. Through targeting university students across Malawi’s universities using semistructured interviews, data was collected to illustrate aspects of the sociolinguistic situation within Malawian universities. The results reveal that both English and indigenous languages are used within the university environment, while also suggesting that issues do arise from language use within university. While students recognise both positive and negative aspects of using each language, they are generally more favourable towards the use of English as a medium of instruction within university

Quichua-Spanish language contact in Salcedo, Ecuador: revisiting media lengua syncretic language practices

The purpose of the current thesis is to develop a better understanding of the interaction between Spanish and Quichua in the Salcedo region and provide more information for the processes that might have given rise to Media Lengua, a ‘mixed’ language comprised of a Quichua grammar and Spanish lexicon. Muysken attributes the formation of Media Lengua to relexification, ruling out any influence from other bilingual phenomena. I argue that the only characteristic that distinguishes Media Lengua from other language contact varieties in central Ecuador is the quantity of the overall Spanish borrowings and not the type of processes that might have been employed by Quichua speakers during the genesis of Media Lengua. The results from the Salcedo data that I have collected show how processes such as adlexification, code-mixing, and structural convergence produce Media Lengua-type sentences, evidence that supports an alternative analysis to Muysken’s relexification hypothesis. Overall, this dissertation is developed around four main objectives: (1) to describe the variation of Spanish loanwords within a bilingual community in Salcedo; (2) to analyze some of the prominent and recent structural changes in Quichua and Spanish; (3) to determine whether Spanish loanword use can be explained by the relationship consultants have with particular social categories; and (4) to analyze the consultants’ language ideologies toward syncretic uses of Spanish and Quichua. Overall, 58% of the content words, 39% of the basic vocabulary, and 50% of the subject pronouns in the Salcedo corpus were derived from Spanish. When compared to Muysken’s description of highlander Quichua in the 1970’s, Spanish loanwords have more than doubled in each category. The overall level of Spanish loanwords in Salcedo Quichua has grown to a level between highlander Quichua in the 1970’s and Media Lengua. Similar to Spanish’s lexical influence in Media Lengua, the increase of Spanish borrowings in today’s rural Quichua can be seen in non-basic and basic vocabularies as well as the subject pronoun system. Significantly, most of the growth has occurred through forms of adlexification i.e., doublets, well-established borrowings, and cultural borrowings, suggesting that ‘ordinary’ lexical borrowing is also capable of producing Media Lengua-type sentences. I approach the second objective by investigating two separate phenomena related to structural convergence. The first examines the complex verbal constructions that have developed in Quichua through Spanish loan translations while the second describes the type of Quichua particles that are attached to Spanish lexemes while speaking Spanish. The calquing of the complex verbal constructions from Spanish were employed when speaking standard Quichua. Since this standard form is typically used by language purists, I argue that their use of calques is a strategy of exploiting the full range of expression from Spanish without incorporating any of the Spanish lexemes which would give the appearance of ‘contamination’. The use of Quichua particles in local varieties of Spanish is a defining characteristic of Quichuacized Spanish, spoken most frequently by women and young children in the community. Although the use of Quichua particles was probably not the main catalyst engendering Media Lengua, I argue that its contribution as a source language to other ‘mixed’ varieties, such as Media Lengua, needs to be accounted for in descriptions of BML genesis. Contrary to Muysken’s representation of relatively ‘unmixed’ Spanish and Quichua as the two source languages of Media Lengua, I propose that local varieties of Spanish might have already been ‘mixed’ to a large degree before Media Lengua was created. The third objective attempts to draw a relationship between particular social variables and the use of Spanish loanwords. Whisker Boxplots and ANOVAs were used to determine which social group, if any, have been introducing new Spanish borrowings into the bilingual communities in Salcedo. Specifically, I controlled for age, education, native language, urban migration, and gender. The results indicate that none of the groups in each of the five social variables indicate higher or lower loanword use. The implication of these results are twofold: (a) when lexical borrowing occurs, it is immediately adopted as the community-wide norm and spoken by members from different backgrounds and generations, or (b) this level of Spanish borrowing (58%) is not a recent phenomenon. The fourth and final objective draws on my ethnographic research that addresses the attitudes of syncretic language use. I observed that Quichuacized Spanish and Hispanicized Quichua are highly stigmatized varieties spoken by the country’s most marginalized populations and families, yet within the community, syncretic ways of speaking are in fact the norm. It was shown that there exists a range of different linguistic definitions for ‘Chaupi Lengua’ and other syncretic language practices as well as many contrasting connotations, most of which were negative. One theme that emerged from the interviews was that speaking syncretic varieties of Quichua weakened the consultant’s claim to an indigenous identity. The linguistic and social data presented in this dissertation supports an alternative view to Muysken’s relexification hypothesis, one that has the advantage of operating with well-precedented linguistic processes and which is actually observable in the present-day Salcedo area. The results from the study on lexical borrowing are significant because they demonstrate how a dynamic bilingual speech community has gradually diversified their Quichua lexicon under intense pressure to shift toward Spanish. They also show that Hispanicized Quichua (Quichua with heavy lexical borrowing) clearly arose from adlexification and prolonged lexical borrowing, and is one of at least six identifiable speech styles found in Salcedo. These results challenge particular interpretations of language contact outcomes, such as, ones that depict sources languages as discrete and ‘unmixed.’ The bilingual continuum presented in this thesis shows on the one hand, the range of speech styles that are accessible to different speakers, and on the other hand, the overlapping, syncretic features that are shared among the different registers and language varieties. It was observed that syncretic speech styles in Salcedo are employed by different consultants in varied interactional contexts, and in turn, produce different evaluations by other fellow community members. In the current dissertation, I challenge the claim that relexification and Media Lengua-type sentences develop in isolation and without the influence of other bilingual phenomena. Based on Muysken's Media Lengua example sentences and the speech styles from the Salcedo corpus, I argue that Media Lengua may have arisen as an institutionalized variant of the highly mixed "middle ground" within the range of the Salcedo bilingual continuum discussed above. Such syncretic forms of Spanish and Quichua strongly resemble Media Lengua sentences in Muysken’s research, and therefore demonstrate how its development could have occurred through several different language contact processes and not only through relexification.

DOCUMENTS ANALYSIS DATABASE ON ETHNIC GROUPS CONTROL OF INDIGENOUS DOCUMENTARY OF COSTA RICA 1979-2003

One way to do a bibliometric study is to examine each of the records that make up a database, each record and extract key areas that may disclose relevant information about the use of the database and documents in the collection . This article shows how a reference database allows to obtain important data that can reach conclusions that in some cases surprising. For this study we used the following fields of Database Control Documentary Indigenous Nationalities of Costa Rica 1979-2003: author, place of publication, publisher, year, language and support. The database analyzed has two thousand records and was developed in the Winisis. Moreover, analysis of documents was made after processing of the data, which was to export records to Excel software Winisis. After this information extracted from their chosen fields and are held by their respective separate chart or graph to present the results obtained. Furthermore, we show the application of different methods to learn more about the scientific aspects as: the Price Index, the Index of Collaboration This contribution will, first, for (as) students in the course of the race Metric Studies of Library and Information Science, National University, demonstrate and practice what you learned in this area. They may also benefit the (as) professionals from different areas, such as anthropologists (as), sociologists (as), linguists and librarians (as), among others (as).

Is phraseology the third articulation of language? Fresh insights into a theoretical conundrum

Is phraseology the third articulation of language? Fresh insights into a theoretical conundrum Jean-Pierre Colson University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) Although the notion of phraseology is now used across a wide range of linguistic disciplines, its definition and the classification of phraseological units remain a subject of intense debate. It is generally agreed that phraseology implies polylexicality, but this term is problematic as well, because it brings us back to one of the most controversial topics in modern linguistics: the definition of a word. On the other hand, another widely accepted principle of language is the double articulation or duality of patterning (Martinet 1960): the first articulation consists of morphemes and the second of phonemes. The very definition of morphemes, however, also poses several problems, and the situation becomes even more confused if we wish to take phraseology into account. In this contribution, I will take the view that a corpus-based and computational approach to phraseology may shed some new light on this theoretical conundrum. A better understanding of the basic units of meaning is necessary for more efficient language learning and translation, especially in the case of machine translation. Previous research (Colson 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014), Corpas Pastor (2000, 2007, 2008, 2013, 2015), Corpas Pastor & Leiva Rojo (2011), Leiva Rojo (2013), has shown the paramount importance of phraseology for translation. A tentative step towards a coherent explanation of the role of phraseology in language has been proposed by Mejri (2006): it is postulated that a third articulation of language intervenes at the level of words, including simple morphemes, sequences of free and bound morphemes, but also phraseological units. I will present results from experiments with statistical associations of morphemes across several languages, and point out that (mainly) isolating languages such as Chinese are interesting for a better understanding of the interplay between morphemes and phraseological units. Named entities, in particular, are an extreme example of intertwining cultural, statistical and linguistic elements. Other examples show that the many borrowings and influences that characterize European languages tend to give a somewhat blurred vision of the interplay between morphology and phraseology. From a statistical point of view, the cpr-score (Colson 2016) provides a methodology for adapting the automatic extraction of phraseological units to the morphological structure of each language. The results obtained can therefore be used for testing hypotheses about the interaction between morphology, phraseology and culture. Experiments with the cpr-score on the extraction of Chinese phraseological units show that results depend on how the basic units of meaning are defined: a morpheme-based approach yields good results, which corroborates the claim by Beck and Mel'čuk (2011) that the association of morphemes into words may be similar to the association of words into phraseological units. A cross-linguistic experiment carried out for English, French, Spanish and Chinese also reveals that the results are quite compatible with Mejri’s hypothesis (2006) of a third articulation of language. Such findings, if confirmed, also corroborate the notion of statistical semantics in language. To illustrate this point, I will present the PhraseoRobot (Colson 2016), a computational tool for extracting phraseological associations around key words from the media, such as Brexit. The results confirm a previous study on the term globalization (Colson 2016): a significant part of sociolinguistic associations prevailing in the media is related to phraseology in the broad sense, and can therefore be partly extracted by means of statistical scores. References Beck, D. & I. Mel'čuk (2011). Morphological phrasemes and Totonacan verbal morphology. Linguistics 49/1: 175-228. Colson, J.-P. (2011). La traduction spécialisée basée sur les corpus : une expérience dans le domaine informatique. In : Sfar, I. & S. Mejri, La traduction de textes spécialisés : retour sur des lieux communs. Synergies Tunisie n° 2. Gerflint, Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, p. 115-123. Colson, J.-P. (2012). Traduire le figement en langue de spécialité : une expérience de phraséologie informatique. In : Mogorrón Huerta, P. & S. Mejri (dirs.), Lenguas de especialidad, traducción, fijación / Langues spécialisées, figement et traduction. Encuentros Mediterráneos / Rencontres Méditerranéennes, N°4. Universidad de Alicante, p. 159-171. Colson, J.-P. (2013). Pratique traduisante et idiomaticité : l’importance des structures semi-figées. In : Mogorrón Huerta, P., Gallego Hernández, D., Masseau, P. & Tolosa Igualada, M. (eds.), Fraseología, Opacidad y Traduccíon. Studien zur romanischen Sprachwissenschaft und interkulturellen Kommunikation (Herausgegeben von Gerd Wotjak). Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, p. 207-218. Colson, J.-P. (2014). La phraséologie et les corpus dans les recherches traductologiques. Communication lors du colloque international Europhras 2014, Association Européenne de Phraséologie. Université de Paris Sorbonne, 10-12 septembre 2014. Colson, J-P. (2016). Set phrases around globalization : an experiment in corpus-based computational phraseology. In: F. Alonso Almeida, I. Ortega Barrera, E. Quintana Toledo and M. Sánchez Cuervo (eds.), Input a Word, Analyse the World: Selected Approaches to Corpus Linguistics. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, p. 141-152. Corpas Pastor, G. (2000). Acerca de la (in)traducibilidad de la fraseología. In: G. Corpas Pastor (ed.), Las lenguas de Europa: Estudios de fraseología, fraseografía y traducción. Granada: Comares, p. 483-522. Corpas Pastor, G. (2007). Europäismen - von Natur aus phraseologische Äquivalente? Von blauem Blut und sangre azul. In: M. Emsel y J. Cuartero Otal (eds.), Brücken: Übersetzen und interkulturelle Kommunikationen. Festschrift für Gerd Wotjak zum 65. Geburtstag, Fráncfort: Peter Lang, p. 65-77. Corpas Pastor, G. (2008). Investigar con corpus en traducción: los retos de un nuevo paradigma [Studien zur romanische Sprachwissenschaft und interkulturellen Kommunikation, 49], Fráncfort: Peter Lang. Corpas Pastor, G. (2013). Detección, descripción y contraste de las unidades fraseológicas mediante tecnologías lingüísticas. In Olza, I. & R. Elvira Manero (eds.) Fraseopragmática. Berlin: Frank & Timme, p. 335-373. Leiva Rojo, J. (2013). La traducción de unidades fraseológicas (alemán-español/español-alemán) como parámetro para la evaluación y revisión de traducciones. In: Mellado Blanco, C., Buján, P, Iglesias N.M., Losada M.C. & A. Mansilla (eds), La fraseología del alemán y el español: lexicografía y traducción. ELS, Etudes Linguistiques / Linguistische Studien, Band 11. München: Peniope, p. 31-42. Leiva Rojo, J. & G. Corpas Pastor (2011). Placing Italian idioms in a foreign milieu: a case study. In: Pamies Bertrán, A., Luque Nadal, L., Bretana, J. &; M. Pazos (eds), (2011). Multilingual phraseography. Second Language Learning and Translation Applications. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag (Colección: Phraseologie und Parömiologie, 28), p. 289-298. Martinet, A. (1966). Eléments de linguistique générale. Paris: Colin. Mejri, S. (2006). Polylexicalité, monolexicalité et double articulation. Cahiers de Lexicologie 2: 209-221.

"Knock, knock! Is it english or portuguese sign language?"

A presente investigação mostra a importância do contacto de crianças muito jovens com línguas estrangeiras. Este trabalho concentra-se na tentativa de investigar, numa abordagem plurilingue, com enfoque para a Língua Inglesa e a Língua Gestual Portuguesa, a sensibilização de um grupo de alunos do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico para uma língua diferente da sua língua materna. Nesta pesquisa, adotou-se uma postura de investigação-ação, apoiando-se com grande particularidade numa metodologia qualitativa e com menor relevância numa metodologia quantitativa, onde os alunos, através das várias atividades que desenvolveram foram adquirindo diferentes competências nas duas línguas. Isto permitiu aos alunos despertarem todas as suas potencialidades para a aprendizagem destas duas línguas (Língua Inglesa e Língua Gestual Portuguesa), tendo como ponto de partida a sua sensibilização e a aprendizagem de alguns vocábulos. Acreditamos que esta abordagem plurilíngue poderá auxiliar os alunos no desenvolvimento de habilidades linguísticas, cognitivas e pessoais tais como: a intercompreensão, o conhecimento de características específicas de diferentes línguas existentes em seu redor, a comparação linguística entre elas, a sua compreensão lexical, e por fim a competência em relacionar as línguas a culturas, e acima de tudo, o respeito e valorização da diversidade linguística e cultural. Foram utilizadas nas aulas atividades de nível de compreensão e produção oral, num processo de sensibilização e aprendizagem de alguns vocábulos destas línguas, sendo que os resultados foram posteriormente analisados, através de grelhas de observação das atividades, de dois inquéritos por questionário e fotos. Das observações e conclusões retiradas desta análise, confirmou-se que a sensibilização quanto à Língua Inglesa assim como quanto à Língua Gestual Portuguesa promove o desenvolvimento da criança, assim como a valorização da respetiva diversidade linguística e cultural.

Governance and community capitals : understanding how governance has worked in three faith-based schools in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea

This thesis, titled Governance and Community Capitals, explores the kinds of practical processes that have made governance work in three faith-based schools in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG). To date, the nation of PNG has been unable to meet its stated educational goals; however, some faith-based primary schools have overcome educational challenges by changing their local governance systems. What constitutes good governance in developing countries and how it can be achieved in a PNG schooling context has received very little scholarly attention. In this study, the subject of governance is approached at the nexus between the administrative sciences and asset-based community development. In this space, the researcher provides an understanding of the contribution that community capitals have made to understandings of local forms of governance in the development context. However, by and large, conceptions of governance have a history of being positioned within a Euro-centric frame and very little, if anything is known about the naming of capitals by indigenous peoples. In this thesis, six indigenous community capitals are made visible, expanding the repertoire of extant capitals published to date. The capitals identified and named in this thesis are: Story, Wisdom, Action, Blessing, Name and Unity. In-depth insights into these capitals are provided and through the theoretical idea of performativity, the researcher advances an understanding of how the habitual enactment of the practical components of the capitals made governance work in this unique setting. The study draws from a grounded and appreciative methodology and is based on a case study design incorporating a three-stage cycle of investigation. The first stage tested the application of an assets-based method to documentary sources of data including most significant change stories, community mapping and visual diaries. In the second stage, a group process method relevant to a PNG context was developed and employed. The third stage involved building theory from case study evidence using content analysis, language and metaphorical speech acts as guides for complex analysis. The thesis demonstrates the contribution that indigenous community capitals can make to understanding local forms of governance and how PNG faith-based schools meet their local governance challenges.

The interaction factor as a challenge for foreign language learning in the technology based education: a pedagogical reflection

The author carries out a pedagogical reflection on how the technology driven distance learning repeatedly neglects the scientific achievements of Second Language Acquisition and Language Pedagogy. Seeing communicative competence as a major goal of a language classroom, she presents the main challenges that the communicative approach poses to distance learning. To this end, a general distance learning theory by Moore is adapted to the needs of language education, through a distinction between three aspects of learner interaction – with the teacher, with other learners and with content. In this three-dimensional paradigm the learner is seen as the main actor of the process, the teacher as a facilitator, the text as a main source of communicative data and the learner autonomy as the fundament of the process.

EXPLICIT WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK AND LANGUAGE APTITUDE IN SLA: IMPLICATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT OF LINGUISTIC ACCURACY

Most second language researchers agree that there is a role for corrective feedback in second language writing classes. However, many unanswered questions remain concerning which linguistic features to target and the type and amount of feedback to offer. This study examined two new pieces of writing by 151 learners of English as a Second Language (ESL), in order to investigate the effect of direct and metalinguistic written feedback on errors with the simple past tense, the present perfect tense, dropped pronouns, and pronominal duplication. This inquiry also considered the extent to which learner differences in language-analytic ability (LAA), as measured by the LLAMA F, mediated the effects of these two types of explicit written corrective feedback. Learners in the feedback groups were provided with corrective feedback on two essays, after which learners in all three groups completed two additional writing tasks to determine whether or not the provision of corrective feedback led to greater gains in accuracy compared to no feedback. Both treatment groups, direct and metalinguistic, performed better than the comparison group on new pieces of writing immediately following the treatment sessions, yet direct feedback was more durable than metalinguistic feedback for one structure, the simple past tense. Participants with greater LAA proved more likely to achieve gains in the direct feedback group than in the metalinguistic group, whereas learners with lower LAA benefited more from metalinguistic feedback. Overall, the findings of the present study confirm the results of prior studies that have found a positive role for written corrective feedback in instructed second language acquisition.

THE ROLE OF RULES, EXAMPLES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE ACQUISITION OF DECLARATIVE AND PROCEDURAL SECOND LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE

The relevance of explicit instruction has been well documented in SLA research. Despite numerous positive findings, however, the issue continues to engage scholars worldwide. One issue that was largely neglected in previous empirical studies - and one that may be crucial for the effectiveness of explicit instruction - is the timing and integration of rules and practice. The present study investigated the extent to which grammar explanation (GE) before practice, grammar explanation during practice, and individual differences impact the acquisition of L2 declarative and procedural knowledge of two grammatical structures in Spanish. In this experiment, 128 English-speaking learners of Spanish were randomly assigned to four experimental treatments and completed comprehension-based task-essential practice for interpreting object-verb (OV) and ser/estar (SER) sentences in Spanish. Results confirmed the predicted importance of timing of GE: participants who received GE during practice were more likely to develop and retain their knowledge successfully. Results further revealed that the various combinations of rules and practice posed differential task demands on the learners and consequently drew on language aptitude and WM to a different extent. Since these correlations between individual differences and learning outcomes were the least observed in the conditions that received GE during practice, we argue that the suitable integration of rules and practice ameliorated task demands, reducing the burden on the learner, and accordingly mitigated the role of participants’ individual differences. Finally, some evidence also showed that the comprehension practice that participants received for the two structures was not sufficient for the formation of solid productive knowledge, but was more effective for the OV than for the SER construction.

Constructivism and ICTs to Improve Language Skills

Se examina la experiencia de los estudiantes y los profesores de dos grupos de un curso de Elocución con el uso de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TICs), para mejorar sus habilidades de expresión oral en inglés. Se presenta el diseño del curso y la metodología en la cual se fundamentó, así como las apreciaciones de los trabajos de estos a lumnos a la hora de mejorar las habilidades comunicativas orales por medio del enfoque constructivista. Se incluyen recomendaciones para poner en práctica esta metodología.A description is provided here of the experience of the students and teachers of two Elocution courses in which Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) were used to improve oral communication skills in English. Reference is made to the design of the course and the methodology it is based on, together with some insights of the assignments that students did to improve their English speaking skills through the constructivism approach. Recommendations are also provided for others interested in using this type of methodology.