Browsing by Subject "English as second language"

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    The acquisition of French by Chinese native speakers : influence from L1 or L2?
    (2006-05) Kao, Ju-hui; Meier, Richard P.
    The primary purpose of the study is to investigate whether learners' L1 or L2 plays a more influential role in their L3 acquisition. This study also seeks to discover the factors attributed to the influence, such as language typological distance and learning strategies. A total of 33 subjects are Taiwanese college students who have Chinese L1 and English L2 learn French as their L3. The survey asks the participants to finish a French test, which has 30 questions. Half of the questions have sentences with parallel structures in English and French, whereas the other half of questions have sentences with nonparallel structures. Quantitative results indicate that learners have significantly higher performance over the sentences where English and French do not have parallel structures. It draws a conclusion that English, as learners' L2, affects learners' L3 acquisition more because English and French are typologically closer. The learners also tend to apply the learning strategies that they use to acquire the second language to learn their third language.
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    Does an English reading intervention together with a discourse digital portfolio improve students' oral English skills?
    (2007-05) Perez, Daniel, 1976-; Moore, Zena T.
    Although portfolios in schools have proven to be useful especially with second language learners, their use in assessing L2 oral language skills has not been developed or examine at length. The author working with twelve students observes the outcome of using a digital discourse portfolio while tutoring students in English oral development. The weekly tutoring sessions span a nine week period with a student speech sample digitally recorded for each week and then analyzed by the tutor and the student. Selected samples, based on preset criteria, compose the student's digital discourse portfolio. The results of a district approved oral English exam indicate that the portfolio did not affect the students' oral English development as much as their teacher's belief in transitioning students from their first language into their second.