The ability to communicate in different languages is increasingly essential in today's interconnected world. However, language learning outcomes can often suffer due to low engagement and participation, especially among students from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. To address this challenge, it is crucial to create a culturally…

A study of distinctive characteristics of the style in which people communicate in computer-mediated communication (CMC), focusing on use of politeness conventions, is reported. Aspects of the concept of "face" and politeness in social interaction are first reviewed, and threats to speaker's and hearer's face are outlined. The…

This study attempts to bring some clarification into the concept of translation, especially into the theoretical problems presented by the difficulties of translation. The following aspects of the question are treated: (1) translation in the past and present, including the controversy over translation as an art or a science, the relevance of…

The question of dividing language proficiency into components was explored by determining which of three models best fit the experimental data: a model postulating numerous specific sources of variance (the extreme divisible model), one postulating a single, large source of variance (the unitary model), or one postulating a large general factor…

This study examines the use of teacher and student humor in the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classroom. A summary and synthesis of previous research on theories of humor, humor and its use in society, and applications of humor revealed its importance as an object of study. An analysis of audiotaped transcripts of samples of ESL classes…

An approach based on sociolinguistic theory is reported that was devised to describe the way written language operates in the different domains that make up the everyday lives of a given group of people. The approach involves the practices that the people use to deal with written language, and the perceptions (uses, beliefs, attitudes) they have…

The unitary competence theory claims the existence of a general language proficiency that makes the global evaluation of language skills possible and accounts for the high correlations between language tests of whatever form and modality. This study aims to test the theory by investigating the correlation between reading and listening…

A study investigating difficulties encountered by Chinese graduate students in asking questions in the American classroom, and suggested solutions, are presented. An introductory section describes features of the Chinese educational system, focusing on attitudes toward questioning. The first chapter offers sociolinguistic and pragmatic…

A study examined the existence in elementary school children of (1) sentence constructivity, (2) developmental differences in constructivity, (3) differences in constructivity across performance levels, and (4) differences after a one- or two-day delay. The study was intended as a partial replication of work by C. Z. Blachowicz (1977-78), which…

A study investigated the effects of second language (L2) acquisition age, length of L2 exposure, and gender on bilingual coding, and examined whether the bilingual dual coding effect in incidental recalls would be the same as in Indo-European languages. The bilingual dual coding hypothesis proposes that the individual's image system and the two…

This thesis focuses on the transferability of grammatical competence to grammatically correct performance in the future tense in 10th grade German students who were learning English as a Second Language. The goal was to suggest an empirical contribution to the issue of whether implicit or explicit knowledge of grammatical rules or grammatical…