In this dissertation, I investigate how people navigate ambiguity in everyday speech, with a focus on quantifier-negation sentences. Combining corpus analysis, behavioral experiments, and computational modeling in the Rational Speech Act framework, I explore preferred interpretations of quantifier-negation and examine the contexts and prosodies…

What is vision's role in driving early word production? To answer this, we assessed parent-report vocabulary questionnaires administered to congenitally blind children (N = 40, Mean age = 24 months [R: 7-57 months]) and compared the size and contents of their productive vocabulary to those of a large normative sample of sighted children (N =…

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) or pedagogic research (PedR) has become an international movement that encourages academics to use research-informed approaches to understand and enhance their teaching. However, the definition and understanding of SoTL/ PedR have been ambiguous, impacting career progression, orientation of scholarship…

Vygotsky chose consciousness as a foundation for his approach to psychology, although it took several iterations to arrive at his final conception of a dynamic, semantic system, which included not only thought and language, the subject of most of his work up to that point, but how we refract our experience of the world through personhood as well.…

Teacher questioning is crucial for fostering critical thinking in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. Understanding how teachers use critical thinking questions is essential for researchers and practitioners seeking to enhance students' critical thinking skills. This study draws on the Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Model and the…

This study examined givenness in discourse via passive constructions in research articles. While it is commonly held in grammar books and grammar classes that the passive voice is the counterpart of the active voice, the present study argues that Argument movement in passive constructions can act as a syntactic device contributing to sound…

A wide range of English for academic purposes (EAP) programs are offered in British Columbia and across Canada. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of an English for general academic purposes (EGAP) approach can provide important insights into how students might most benefit from their EAP program experiences. The insights in this…

This case study explores the experiences of two teacher candidates (TCs) in professional development school (PDS) settings with multilingual learners. While valuing multilingual learner's diverse linguistic backgrounds and language repertoires by drawing from a toolkit of responsive practices, the TCs embraced but struggled with layering…

This study aims to explore university students' experiences and preferences of feedback (types and delivery methods) during their higher education. The research design incorporates a survey combining quantitative and qualitative data to examine university students' feedback experiences and satisfaction. Conducted on 105 students at a state…

This paper explores the integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) into peer feedback in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing class as a collaborative companion, aiming at enhancing peer feedback engagement and improving overall writing ability. This study first proposes a framework for integrating GAI in peer feedback,…

This paper investigates how an assessment roleplay task was being interpreted and performed by its student test-takers. The rationale for this is that we need feedback into whether the task is functioning as intended and to ensure that our interpretation of the scores from grading these students correctly informs our decision making about their…

Although conversation openings and closings are ritualized speech acts (House & Kádár, 2023), they do require interactional work (Schegloff, 1986). Thus, they are important elements of interactional competence (Roever, 2022) and have been studied extensively in L2 interactions, including various types of technology-mediated communication…

Researchers and practitioners have long been interested in the role of learner agency in the emergence of learning opportunities. However, despite the growing number of studies, few of them have empirically been able to demonstrate how such moments can create learning opportunities. Based on 12 hours of videotaped data, this study describes the…

Research suggests that elements of the family environment may have significant associations with cognitive and language development outcomes. Less is known, however, about the family environment in peri-urban China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0-3 years are as high as 51% and 54%, respectively. Using data collected…

What opportunities and challenges occur in reclaiming Indigenous languages within state institutions? This article considers the case of intercultural bilingual education in Ecuador. The school system is remarkable as a national-level initiative run by and for Indigenous "pueblos" and nationalities. Based primarily on two years of…