This mix-methods study examined the language anxiety levels that the Chinese international students perceived in second language (L2) academic context at four universities in the northeastern region of the United States of America; it explored the impact of language anxiety that these students perceived on their academic learning; it also…

The United States has been experiencing an ever-growing increase in the last few decades of English Language Learner students (ELLs) whose primary language is Spanish and who are of Mexican descent. At the same time, the teaching force in the country remains strongly homogeneously White, English-speaking, and female. This creates an inequitable…

This dissertation investigates the neural and behavioral correlates of grammatical agreement computation during language comprehension in native English speakers and highly advanced L1 Spanish-L2 English bilinguals. In a series of electrophysiological (event-related brain potential (ERP)) and behavioral (acceptability judgment and self-paced…

Study abroad is often viewed as an ideal setting to improve target language proficiency due to opportunities for extensive contact with locals in the target language. However, research on study abroad demonstrates that this local contact and target language use can be quite limited, and that there is considerable variation in the linguistic…

Traditional pronunciation instruction and instruction in second language (L2) phonetics have been shown to improve learners' L2 accent in some, though certainly not all, cases. Learners in intermediate and advanced Spanish FL courses have shown modest improvement in the pronunciation of some L2 phones after receiving such instruction.…

Foreign language educators as well as educators from other disciplines agree that learning any foreign language improves student language skills and stimulates creative thinking and flexibility to use the language. The purpose of the current quantitative, correlational study was to examine the relationship between student proficiency in Spanish…

This dissertation explores identity construction, mainly focusing on the ethnonational identity of "Japanese," in contrast to that of "non-Japanese" from ethnomethodological and social constructionist perspectives. Within these approaches, identity is not given "a priori" but emerges through sociohistorical contexts…

Today's teachers need preparation, support, and professional development to help them change their curriculum and teaching practices. One area of potential for this preparation, support, and professional development is currently being evidenced in the field of online teaching and learning. In preparing teachers for teaching online, research…

This case study, conducted in the context of an interactive classroom-based action research, has examined the process by which Language 1 (L1-native speakers of English) and Language 2 (L2-non-native speakers of English) students develop the ability to acquire the standard written form of the English language. The dissertation was designed to…

The current dissertation investigated segmental and prosodic aspects of first- (L1) and second-language (L2) speech production. Forty Korean-speaking adults and children varying in L2 experience (6 months-inexperienced vs. 6 years-experienced) as well as twenty age-matched native English speaking adults and children participated. Experienced…

This mixed methods study investigated the English verbal interactions of seven 3rd-6th grade beginning level English language learners across three different instructional settings: the mainstream grade level classroom, the sheltered English classroom, and the ELL pullout group. The quantitative component of the study documented significant…

This study discusses cognitive processes when speakers produce language in real time, with its focus on cross-linguistic differences in the procedural aspect of language use. It demonstrates that the syntactic characteristics of a language shape the speakers' overall process of sentence planning and production: how they construct sentential…

The linguistic relativity hypothesis proposes that speakers of different languages perceive and conceptualize the world differently, but do their brains reflect these differences? In English, most nouns do not provide linguistic clues to their categories, whereas most Mandarin Chinese nouns provide explicit category information, either…

This dissertation compares the knowledge of Russian Verbal Aspect in two types of learners enrolled in college level Russian courses: foreign language learners of Russian whose native language is English and heritage language speakers of Russian whose dominant language at the time of study is English. Russian Aspect is known to be problematic both…

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the processing mechanisms of non-native English speakers at both the sentence level and the morphological level, addressing the issue of whether adult second language (L2) learners qualitatively differ from native speakers in processing linguistic input. Using psycholinguistic on-line techniques…