Home truths from abroad? : a TESOL blueprint for the mediation of L1/L2 language awareness

The status of the cross-linguistic dimension of second language learning, and hence of L2 pedagogy, appears to have been systematically underplayed in epicentric, i.e. flowing from centre to periphery, theories of second language acquisition (SLA). Indeed, following the advent of cognitivism, mainstream SLA theory has frequently sought to marginalize anything suggestive of a contrastive paradigm. SLA conceptions of the nature of the influence of a learner’s first language on L2 acquisition and performance have tended to take the form of reductive dichotomies of the interference versus facilitative resource type – a mutually exclusive either/or interpretation. Consciously or otherwise, epicentric theories of L2 learning and pedagogy have filtered down to the language improvement and language awareness components of TESOL initial teacher education (ITE) and in-service education and training (INSET), where the focus is exclusively monolingual L2 and necessity all too often masquerades as principle. Against this backdrop, the present inquiry set out to evaluate the perceived benefits of an explicitly cross-linguistic (L1/L2) approach to language awareness on an L2 ITE program for pre-service trainees from the Japanese EFL context. Based on the evaluative response data from the non-native speaker (NNS) program participants, I invoke the notion of analytic generalization to argue that an explicit focus on selected cross-linguistic aspects of L2 learning, together with awareness-raising in respect of a range of context-specific ESOL-related issues has the potential to positively contribute both to trainees’ L2 development and to their development as pre-service TESOL professionals. The thesis further argues for a more holistic appreciation of the dynamic, complex nature of cross-linguistic influence viewed within a broader, context-specific conception of the L2 Teacher Language Awareness (L2 TLA) construct

Western Extended Techniques in Traditional Japanese Wind Performance: Gagaku Kangen and Shakuhachi Honkyoku

The term “extended techniques” in the context of Western art music refers to performance techniques that fall outside the normal course of study for an instrument. The purpose of this study is, 1) to show that woodwind techniques considered “extended” and relatively “new” in Western classical music appear in traditional repertoires in Japan, and 2) to show that these techniques do not function as merely ornamental or virtuosic devices, but are instead structurally significant. I approach these two objectives through case studies of the instrumental kangen repertoire of the gagaku court ensemble (with a focus on the hichiriki and ryūteki wind parts) and the classical Zen Buddhist honkyoku repertoire of the shakuhachi flute. Whereas previous studies have disregarded the role of performance techniques in their analyses of form and mode, I have investigated how performance techniques confirm, emphasize, and even outline the formal and modal structure of the case-study pieces: Etenraku (gagaku) and Sokaku Reibo (shakuhachi). In this study, I analyze two recordings of the virtuosic shakuhachi piece Sokaku Reibo by recognized masters: Aoki Reibo II and Yamaguchi Gorō, and three recordings of the well-known gagaku piece Etenraku by Japanese court ensembles, in addition to recordings of the individual wind parts and sung mnemonics. In order to create a comprehensive picture of the role of the relevant performance techniques, I combine the methods of transnotation of tablature scores and mnemonics into staff notation (and lists of pitch cells in the case of Sokaku Reibo), transcription of recordings, and spectral analysis of recorded excerpts. This study demonstrates that all elements of a performance should be considered in analysis. An analysis that considers only the basic melodic line of a piece risks discarding elements that could inform and confirm the results. In the case of Etenraku and Sokaku Reibo, my investigation of performance techniques has led to a discovery of their structural significance

Investigating Multilingual, Multi-script Support in Lucene/Solr Library Applications

Yale has developed over many years a highly-structured, high-quality multilingual catalog of bibliographic data. Almost 50% of the collection represents non-English materials in over 650 languages, and includes many different non-Roman scripts. Faculty, students, researchers, and staff would like to make full use of this original script content for resource discovery. While the underlying textual data are in place, effective indexing, retrieval and display functionality for the non-Roman script content is not available within our bibliographic discovery applications, Orbis and Yufind. Opportunities now exist in the Unicode, Lucene/Solr computing environment to bridge the functionality gap and achieve internationalization of the Yale Library catalog. While most parts of this study focus on the Yale environment, in the absence of other such studies it is hoped that the findings will be of interest to a much larger community.Arcadia Foundatio

Document Meta-Information as Weak Supervision for Machine Translation

Data-driven machine translation has advanced considerably since the first pioneering work in the 1990s with recent systems claiming human parity on sentence translation for highresource tasks. However, performance degrades for low-resource domains with no available sentence-parallel training data. Machine translation systems also rarely incorporate the document context beyond the sentence level, ignoring knowledge which is essential for some situations. In this thesis, we aim to address the two issues mentioned above by examining ways to incorporate document-level meta-information into data-driven machine translation. Examples of document meta-information include document authorship and categorization information, as well as cross-lingual correspondences between documents, such as hyperlinks or citations between documents. As this meta-information is much more coarse-grained than reference translations, it constitutes a source of weak supervision for machine translation. We present four cumulatively conducted case studies where we devise and evaluate methods to exploit these sources of weak supervision both in low-resource scenarios where no task-appropriate supervision from parallel data exists, and in a full supervision scenario where weak supervision from document meta-information is used to supplement supervision from sentence-level reference translations. All case studies show improved translation quality when incorporating document meta-information

The effect of podcast tasks on students' engagement and performance in a beginning level Japanese language course

As the growing popularity of podcasting and its application in education become more apparent, there have been a number of studies on the academic use of podcasts. A podcast is a digital file that can be delivered automatically to a device such as a portable media player or a computer via the Internet. However, the majority of research studied the use of instructor-generated podcasts for reviewing materials and supplemental materials. Little research has focused on learner-generated podcasts as a learning tool. Only a few studies investigated how podcast production could contribute to students learning, and these previous studies were not theory-based. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of podcast tasks (PTs) on students’ engagement and performance in a beginning level Japanese course. This study utilized student production of a series of PTs of vocabulary and grammar, as a treatment, and assigned three groups: Early Semester (ES), Late Semester (LS), and Entire Semester (ENT). ES worked on the PTs during the first half of the semester. LS worked on the PTs during the last half of the semester. ENT worked on the PTs for an entire semester. The study investigated differences in students’ engagement and performance based on treatment conditions. Student engagement was defined as motivation and self-regulation in this study. A student engagement survey, adapted items from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), was used to collect data. The students’ performance was assessed by two sets of pre-tests and post-tests for their literacy skills including the comprehension of written Japanese grammar and vocabulary. The study also examined differences in students’ engagement and performance in a high achieving (HA) group and a low achieving (LA) group determined by their Grade Point Average (GPA). Though more than 60% of participants expressed that they enjoyed working on podcasts and would not mind using them as a learning tool, working on PTs did not make a statistically significant difference on students’ engagement or performance. LS had the highest mean motivation and selfregulation score, but that score was probably due to the effect of outliers in this small group. ENT scored the lowest on both the motivation and the self-regulation scales. The result of the Japanese language tests indicated that all groups made statistically significant gains on both post-tests, but the gains on the first test were statistically significantly higher than the gains on the second test. There was no statistical difference among the three groups in their gains. Among HA and LA, the sample cell size was too small to determine if there was any statistically significant difference although HA outperformed LA. Recommendations for future research include replication of the study with a much larger sample size, use of video podcast (vodcast) as a task instead of enhanced podcast and multiple administrations of a students’ engagement survey instead of one time at the end. Recommendations for future practice include application of learner digital media production into students’ learning process and environment

2D-barcode for mobile devices

2D-barcodes were designed to carry significantly more data than its 1D counterpart. These codes are often used in industrial information tagging applications where high data capacity, mobility, and data robustness are required. Wireless mobile devices such as camera phones and Portable Digital Assistants (PDAs) have evolved from just a mobile voice communication device to what is now a mobile multimedia computing platform. Recent integration of these two mobile technologies has sparked some interesting applications where 2D-barcodes work as visual tags and/or information source and camera phones performs image processing tasks on the device itself. One of such applications is hyperlink establishment. The 2D symbol captured by a camera phone is decoded by the software installed in the phone. Then the web site indicated by the data encoded in a symbol is automatically accessed and shown in the display of the camera phone. Nonetheless, this new mobile applications area is still at its infancy. Each proposed mobile 2D-barcode application has its own choice of code, but no standard exists nor is there any study done on what are the criteria for setting a standard 2D-barcode for mobile phones. This study intends to address this void. The first phase of the study is qualitative examination. In order to select a best standard 2D-barcode, firstly, features desirable for a standard 2D-barcode that is optimized for the mobile phone platform are identified. The second step is to establish the criteria based on the features identified. These features are based on the operating limitations and attributes of camera phones in general use today. All published and accessible 2D-barcodes are thoroughly examined in terms of criteria set for the selection of a best 2D-barcode for camera phone applications. In the second phase, the 2D-barcodes that have higher potential to be chosen as a standard code are experimentally examined against the three criteria: light condition, distance, whether or not a 2D-barcode supports VGA resolution. Each sample 2D-barcode is captured by a camera phone with VGA resolution and the outcome is tested using an image analysis tool written in the scientific language called MATLAB. The outcome of this study is the selection of the most suitable 2D-barcode for applications where mobile devices such as camera phones are utilized

Pragmatic borrowing between English and Chinese: A comparative study of two-way exchanges

Through centuries of cross-cultural communication, English has been enriched by elements from other languages around the world, including Chinese; meanwhile, English has also exerted considerable influence on the Chinese language. Lexical exchanges between the two languages have been studied in previous research, and yet are mostly restricted to the lexical items themselves. This thesis particularly explores the pragmatic aspect of this language contact, examining items that are used to convey attitudinal or interpersonal meanings. I conduct a series of case studies on bi-directional pragmatic borrowing between English and Chinese, using a variety of data sources, which include dictionaries, corpora, social media data, and other online resources. I take a broad view of what constitutes pragmatic borrowing: I not only investigate the borrowing and integration of discourse-pragmatic items that are transferred between the two languages, but also examine the pragmatic motivations for the borrowing of other lexical items and even grammatical units. The items discussed in the thesis range from parts of words, specifically affixes, to individual words to longer structures, and contextual analysis shows that all of these have been used to achieve pragmatic effects. The study demonstrates the important role of cultural context, speaker creativity, and sociolinguistic factors in the borrowing, integration, and innovative use of linguistic items