What do Creole speakers reveal about the acquisition of aspect marking in L2?

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Creole discourse effects on the speech conjunctive system in expository texts

The study illustrates how communicative patterns in the speech community and the degree of exposure to registers typical of written genres in home and out of school experiences are reflected in writing development through such pervasive but subconsciously selected language features as conjunctions. The structure of discourse in Creole cultures as well as the ramifications of an oral tradition were shown to have an effect on the Creole-speaking subjects’ tendency to draw on conjunctions and clause-linking strategies typical of registers of spoken discourse in their academic expository writing. On the contrary, the ESL subjects, from a literate tradition, exhibited fewer challenges than their Creole-speaking counterparts with respect to the transfer of the speech conjunctive system into the registers of written academic discourse. The study is guided by the sociocognitive notion that the social and cultural patterns of discourse are linked to the cognitive aspects of academic expository writing. As such, it demonstrates how the communicative patterns of the Creole speech community become pervasive in the development of expository writing. It also emphasizes the fact that the acquisition of these skills is shaped by the social and cultural environments in which they are embedded and are constructively viewed from these environments. Finally, the study provides the context for examining how Creole-speaking students, as opposed to ESL students, grapple with the unfamiliar registers of academic expository prose as they learn to distinguish the conjunctive system typical of registers of spoken discourse from that of registers appropriate for academic expository writing

El efecto de la comunicación mediada por computadora en la adquisición de los registros del discurso académico en español Migrantes puertorriqueños de retorno en Puerto Rico

Este artículo analiza la tendencia de transferir las características de los registros del discurso oral al discurso académico en español cuando se les enseña a los migrantes puertorriqueños de retorno (MPRR) las características de los registros del discurso académico a través de la Comunicación Mediada por Computadora (la CMC). Puesto que los sitios Web en la CMC tienen exigencias psicolingüísticas y lingüísticas inherentes a la exposición gráfica del discurso, el artículo examina cómo estas propiedades electrónicas e interactivas obligan a los estudiantes MPRR a: (a) considerar la coherencia textual al mismo tiempo que el impacto inmediato sobre los lectores; (b) variar constantemente de los registros típicos del discurso oral a los registros del discurso académico; (c) pensar en las estructuras de las cláusulas y en la forma que éstas dan al discurso; (d) crear cláusulas interactivas, claras y sucintas; y (e) emplear la estructura y el contenido conceptual del discurso académico en sus sitios Web personales

Dimensions of Locus of Control: Exploring Their Influence on ESL Students' Interlanguage Development

This paper reports the findings of a study which sought to determine whether adult ESL students with internal orientations on two dimensions of locus of control also have positive expectancies about their life situations in the United States and therefore show a higher degree of proficiency in their English interlanguage than their counterparts with external orientations on these same two dimensions. Broadly speaking, internal orientations of locus of control refer to people's belief that rewards in life are contingent on their own actions. External orientations refer to people's belief that rewards occur independently of their actions and that life situations are determined more by fate and luck (Rotter, 1966, 1975; Lefcourt, 1982). The study acknowledged that locus of control is a complex and multidimensional construct; that is, a person not only does not necessarily have similar internal or external orientations across a broad range of situations, his or her other orientations may differ with respect to the particular dimension of locus of control being measured (Wilhite, 1986). In the present study, internal-external orientations on two different dimensions of locus of control (locus of responsibility and locus of personal control) were investigated in order to observe their effect on interlanguage development. The findings show that locus of personal control correlates significantly with interlanguage development. Rationalizations for and implications of the findings are discussed