Browsing by Author "Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member"
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Item Open Access A decolonial analysis of peace education in India and Pakistan(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Jalal, Runeela, author; Jennings, Louise, advisor; Timpson, William, committee member; Archibeque-Engle, Shannon, committee member; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee memberThis dissertation investigates the current state of peace pedagogy in formal and informal educational platforms in India and Pakistan. The overarching goal is to amass pedagogical strategies for peace teaching by understanding the aspirations of peace as understood by the local wisdom in the spirit of decolonial educational approaches. The socio-political postcolonial conflict scene is understood through the theories of Structural Violence (Galtung, 1969) and Cascades of Violence (Braithwaite and D'Costa. 2018). It was important as India and Pakistan were colonized for a century and the postcolonial conflict climate has its distinctive nature. There is considerable research done to explain the postcolonial repercussions on a society entailing violence, conflicts, and nationalism and how such negative impacts trickle down into the education system in India and Pakistan. Additionally, The Theory of Positive Psychology (Seligman, 1998) defines the parameters of decolonized peace pedagogy for analyzing educational documents and the work of self-motivated peace practitioners working with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). After this foundational understanding is developed for this research study in Chapter 1, Chapters 2-4 explore the possible implementation of peace pedagogy in education in India and Pakistan through three interrelated articles. The first article is a systematic review of the peace pedagogy literature in postcolonial lands around the world. These regions mainly are located in the Global South which includes Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The second article takes a closer look at the place of peace pedagogy in existing formal/informal educational platforms through document analysis of policy papers, college programs, and a few non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Pakistan and India. The third article focuses on the efforts of NGOs at the grassroots level through phenomenological interviews with peace practitioners in Pakistan and India; this study focuses on how these practitioners engage with local communities to make meaning of peace at the local level and devise a suitable peace pedagogy to continue their mission of peace education. Chapter 5 addresses implications of this research study by contributing to the decolonial ways of building knowledge for implementing peace pedagogy in postcolonial lands specifically India and Pakistan. In doing so, Chapter 5 summarizes comparative knowledge through a literature review of peace pedagogy in postcolonial lands around the world and India and Pakistan. This helped identifying gaps which prevent linear implementation of peace pedagogy from early education up to graduate level in India and Pakistan, thus, compromising the objectives of establishing peace. Recommendations for the education system mainly through the lessons learned by the self-motivated peace educators and activists are put forward for considerations.Item Open Access A pilot study on the effectiveness of pronunciation teaching to EFL learners through focus on forms and focus on form instruction(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Chiba, Kaya, author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Beecken, Masako, committee memberTen Japanese university students participated in a 12-week English pronunciation instruction, in which the learners practiced segmentals and suprasegmentals in controlled activities with a focus on the accuracy (focus on forms) and practiced them in meaningful communication contexts while paying attention to the pronunciation (focus on form). They received the total of 20 hours of pronunciation instruction. The participants read a diagnostic passage before and immediately after the instruction. Ten Japanese EFL students were employed as a control group. Ten native speakers of English rated the comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and the accentedness (how different from NS's norms) of the utterances produced before and after the instruction by the learners in the experimental and the control groups. The results showed that the experimental group improved in terms of comprehensibility while the control did not. As for accentedness, neither group showed any improvement.Item Open Access An investigation of English language learners' motivation, imagined communities, and identities in an Intensive English Program in the United States(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Howard, Sarah Marie, author; Nekrasova-Beker, Tatiana, advisor; Becker, Tony, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Anderson, Sharon, committee memberThis study investigates three aspects of language acquisition that may be influenced by studying abroad at an Intensive English Program (IEP) in the United States: the English Language Learners' (ELL) motivation, imagined communities, and identity. More importantly, this study investigates how the interplay of ELL motivation, imagined communities, and identity factor into Second Language Acquisition (SLA) within the confines of Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory in an IEP. Sociocultural Theory perceives language acquisition as a product of interaction between students' social and cultural environment and academic material which consequently builds upon the development of their higher psychological function (Kozulin, 1998, 2003; as cited in Poehner, 2008). This naturalistic case study aims to investigate the qualities of language learning motivation, imagined communities, and identity. To record the development of these phenomena, a series of interviews, observations, and reflections were administered. The goal of this study is to provide insight to IEP instructors and English instructors within the field of Applied Linguistics on the complexities that students experience during study abroad. In order to bring awareness of these three concepts in relation to language acquisition to inform teaching practices.Item Open Access Code-switching in Filipino newspapers: expansion of language, culture and identity(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Erwin-Billones, Clark, author; Flahive, Doug, advisor; Aoki, Eric, committee member; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee memberThis research investigates code-switching beginning with a global, sociolingustic perspective of borrowed words and narrows down to a detailed examination of insertional code-switching in formal settings. The data were obtained by selecting and subsequently scanning English news articles from Philippines' printed newspapers which built evidence for which types of terms are substituted for English. The corpus was examined for identifiable patterns of code-switched lexical items from Tagalog and Cebuano/Visaya, two of the largest spoken languages in the Philippines. A significant presence of code-switching extends the phenomena from a bilingual, substitutional tool into a creative linguistic process that reinforces a growing global language identity out of multiple language speakers in a world of shifting nationalities and boundaries.Item Open Access Copula omission by EFL Arab learners(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Alshayban, Abdullah S., author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Hirchi, Mohammed, committee memberCopula omission is found to be one of the major and most frequent errors that Arab EFL learners make when writing in English. Several studies have examined copula omission by Arab EFL learners. Most of those studies have concluded that copula omission is the result of negative transfer from Arabic to English since Arabic and English are structurally far different. The present study investigates the phenomenon of copula omission by Saudi EFL learners. It also examines whether the negative transfer from Arabic to English leads to copula dropping by Arab learners. Data were collected from 100 Saudi students at Qassim University in Saudi Arabia. The participants were 100 Saudi male students of whom 50 were enrolled at the intermediate level, or the 3rd level, at the English department at Qassim University and the other 50 were enrolled at the advanced 7th level at the same department. The participants were asked to write an essay describing themselves, their family members, where they were born, the city they grew up in, how old they were, how old their parents and siblings were, the city they lived in currently, and also about their ambitions and plans for the future. The results of this study revealed that the participants made errors by deleting the English copula. The statistical analysis showed that the copula omission was more frequent in the present and past tenses. The findings also revealed that intermediate students make more errors than the advanced students. There was a significant difference between the advanced and intermediate participants as regards the number of errors in the present and future tenses. The study ends with pedagogical implications, limitations, and suggestions and recommendations for future research.Item Open Access Effect of textual enhancement and explicit rule presentation on the noticing and acquisition of L2 grammatical structures: a meta-analysis(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Alsadhan, Rasha O., author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Correa, Maite, committee memberThis meta-analysis examines whether two instructional treatments would have a positive effect on grammar "noticing" and/or acquisition in an EFL/ESL context. The instructional treatments represent two examples of input enhancement: textual input enhancement and explicit rule presentation. In order to test the effect of these two treatments, I synthesized and analyzed the results of 45 study reports that addressed these two treatments and that were published between the years of 1980 and 2010. Then, I calculated the effect size of each individual study report and the average effect size of all the study reports using a fixed method meta-analysis approach. The average effect size of the textual enhancement treatment showed a low effect size (d = 0.30) while the average effect size of the explicit rule presentation treatment showed a high effect size (d = 0.93). The study offers some pedagogical implications for ESL/EFL teachers and some suggestions for future researchers.Item Open Access Instrumental and integrative motivation among undergraduate Libyan students of English as a foreign language(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Zanghar, Ahmed, author; Delahunty, Gerald, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Feller, Rich, committee memberThe study examines instrumental and integrative motivations among undergraduate Libyan students of English as a foreign language (EFL). It investigates whether EFL Libyan students are instrumentally or integratively motivated to study English. The study also looks at the relationship between EFL Libyan students' motivation and their achievement in English. Forty Libyan students studying English as a foreign language at the College of Arts Bani Walid, Libya, participated in the study. The participants are in different levels of their four-year university program as ten students were chosen from each year. All of the participants completed a questionnaire that included 14 items reflecting their instrumental and integrative motivations for studying English. The questionnaire data was analyzed using SPSS version 21. The findings of the study showed that EFL Libyan students were highly instrumentally as well as integratively motivated to study English, and they their integrative motivation appeared to be a little higher than their instrumental one. These unusual results of the study were attributed to the Libyan students' interest in knowing more about the English-speaking peoples and learning about their societies and cultures, and that was due to the strong positive attitude Libyan students have had towards them. The findings also revealed that there was no relationship between the Libyan students' motivation and their achievement in English as a foreign language.Item Open Access Listening comprehension strategies of Arabic-speaking ESL learners(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Abdalhamid, Fouad, author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Hirchi, Mohammed, committee memberThe main goal of this investigation was to identify the listening strategies of advanced and intermediate second language listeners in English and to compare the listening strategies of both groups of research participants. A total of 30 Arabic-speaking ESL learners were administered a listening comprehension test and a listening strategy use questionnaire. The test instrument was constructed by the researcher to serve as both a listening comprehension measure and a listening input upon which the participants could reflect with regard to their mental strategies while completing the questionnaire items. The test consisted of two lectures, each followed by subtests comprised of multiple choice and essay questions. After completing the test, participants were also asked to complete a Likert-scale questionnaire that included 20 items asking about the use of cognitive, metacognitive, and socioaffective strategies. The listening test and listening strategy use questionnaire data was run through multiple statistical tests, including factor analysis, multiple regression, and t-tests, to identify the strategies the research participants had used and explain the relationship between strategy use and listening comprehension. The results indicated that both advanced and intermediate listeners used metacognitive, cognitive, and socioaffective strategies. However, there was some variation in terms of the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. As far as cognitive strategies were concerned, the results revealed that the advanced listeners employed more top-down strategies than the intermediate listeners, whereas there were no significant differences in the use of metacognitive strategies. The results also indicated that cognitive strategies are the most powerful predictor of listening comprehension, followed by socioaffective strategies, whereas metacognitive strategies were the predictor that accounted the least for listening comprehension.Item Open Access Meaning recall and retention: comparison between translation method and pictorial method in learning vocabulary in Saudis' school(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Al Nassir, Merriam, author; Flahive, Doug, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Hirchi, Mohammed, committee memberLearning vocabulary is an essential component in learning a second language. SLA researchers have argued that explicit vocabulary strategy is more effective than incidental vocabulary strategy especially for learners at the elementary proficiency level. Previous studies have shown that the translation method is an effective mode of instruction for teaching English vocabulary for ESL and EFL learners at the elementary level. This study compared the effectiveness of translation method and pictorial method in teaching English vocabulary for EFL learners at the elementary level. The total number of participants was 36. All participants were from a secondary school in Saihat, Saudi Arabia. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare the effectiveness of both methods. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between the translation method group (experimental) (MS = 8.76, SD = 7.67) and pictorial method group (control) (MS = 11.60, SD= 10.87). Pictorial method participants scored higher than translation method participants on all the immediate recall tests and the delayed post- test. The results of the study rejected the null hypothesis because they showed that the pictorial method is more effective than the translation method for EFL learners at elementary level. The author of this study suggests the use of several methods for teaching EFL and ESL learners at elementary level instead of using one method.Item Open Access Student identity, writing anxiety, and writing performance: a correlational study(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) DeDeyn, Rachel Ryan, author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Swaim, Randall C., committee memberWhile identity research has recently become popular in the field of language acquisition, most of the research conducted in this area has been qualitative in nature. Possibly due to the lack of quantitative identity research, few language acquisition studies have attempted to find relationships between identity and other individual differences. The purpose of this study is to fill these gaps in the literature by answering the questions: 1) Is there a relationship between student identity, writing anxiety, and writing performance? and 2) What is the nature of this relationship if it exists? Participants in this study were 33 international undergraduate students of advanced English proficiency enrolled in an introductory university writing course. This study defines student identity as the degree of student integration into the culture of an American university. This construct was measured through participant responses to open ended journaling prompts about their educational experiences in their home country and in the United States. These qualitative responses were read and scored by four raters, converting the data to a single, quantitative score for each participant. Writing anxiety was measured with the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) and writing performance was measured with the scores participants earned on the papers submitted for their writing class. The linear relationships between these variables were explored through correlations. Inverse relationships were found between student cultural integration and writing performance and between student cultural integration and writing anxiety for students who showed changes in writing performance over the course of the semester. The implications of these findings, limitations of this study, and suggestions for future research are considered.Item Open Access The effects of semantic and thematic categorization on Arabic-speaking EFL learners(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) AlShaikhi, Adel Z., author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Hirchi, Mohammed, committee memberThe present study aims at investigating the most effective method of clustering vocabulary in the presentation of vocabulary to learners. It investigated three types of clustering, semantically-related sets, semantically-unrelated sets, and thematically related sets and their effectiveness in helping Arabic-speaking learners recall and acquire new vocabulary. The study employed three lists of vocabulary according to their clustering type and immediate and delayed L2-L1 translation recall tests. In each list, 15 new English words along with their equivalents in Arabic were chosen to represent; a) semantically-related words, b) semantically-unrelated words, c) thematically related words. Recall test by giving the equivalent of the English word in Arabic which the immediate test is given right after the learners had studied the words and a week-late delayed test was given as well. 58 adult male Arabic-speaking students involved in advanced level of the English intensive program of a Saudi leading higher education institution participated in the study. The subjects were divided into three groups in which each group studied one type of clustering. A one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistical test was employed to analyze the data. The results showed that in the immediate test there was no significant difference among the three types of clustering on recalling new words. For the delayed test, the results showed a significant difference in favor of semantically-related and semantically-unrelated over the thematic clustering.Item Open Access The influence of extensive reading on junior high school students' reading motivation and reading performance in Taiwan(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Wu, Jiaying, author; Doug, Flahive, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Sprain, Leah, committee memberResearchers of second language learning have pointed out that the strategies students use in learning a foreign language can affect their reading motivation and performance in second language acquisition. As an important means of providing second language learners with systematic reading materials, extensive reading is an approach that involves a wide range of original and interesting cultures as well as linguistic phenomena which prompt reading motivation and enhance reading performance of learners. However, reading motivation and reading performance are both of multiple dimensions, and thus far it is unclear which of the dimensions can be influenced by extensive reading. This research focuses on the influence of extensive reading on junior high school students' reading motivation and reading performance. A motivational questionnaire and an English reading test were used for data collection. A total of 69 8th graders took part in this study. These participants, who have been learning English at school for formal English education for four and a half years, were divided into the experimental group and the control group. The two groups did not significantly differ with regard to scores in mid-term and final English exams. Both of the experimental and control groups took pretests of reading motivation and reading performance. Then the experimental group was given the opportunity to read just for pleasure by selecting at least one book from four graded books (such as Let Me Out!). For the experimental group, the instruction time was forty-five minutes for each class period twice a week which lasted for one and half month for the total six weeks. The control group was assigned the textbook Let's talk in English and were required to memorize five words appearing in the article after each class and a short passage. Six weeks later, both control and experimental groups took posttests for reading motivation and reading performance. Then six interviewees were asked their attitudes towards extensive reading. Independent t tests were used for statistical analyses. The major findings are as follows: 1) Extensive reading did not influence reading seven dimensions of reading motivation (the target of taking pride, reading efficacy, interest in English reading, self-efficacy, reading for grade, intrinsic interest, and extrinsic motivation).Unfortunately, extensive reading increased avoidance of English reading. 2) Extensive reading enhanced vocabulary recognition, reading performance and general performance. The results arising from this study have important implications for both the learning and teaching of English as a second language.Item Open Access The L2 exposure effect on avoidance of phrasal verbs by Arab ESL learners(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Aldukhayel, Dukhayel M., author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Hirchi, Mohammed, committee memberThere is little doubt that the phrasal verb structure is problematic and can be very challenging to many English language learners. Research has demonstrated that English learners tend to misunderstand or avoid English phrasal verbs. It has been claimed that the long exposure to the English-speaking environment might be an important factor in the nonavoidance of phrasal verbs. This study investigates the avoidance of phrasal verbs by Arab ESL learners in relation to phrasal verb types (literal, semi-transparent, and idiomatic) and their length of exposure to the English-speaking environment (long exposure, short exposure). To empirically investigate this working hypothesis, data were collected from 81 graduate and undergraduate Arab ESL learners who took a multiple-choice test comprising 45 questions. The results revealed that the phrasal verb type significantly affected Arab ESL learners' preferences for phrasal verbs. Also, the results revealed that Arab ESL learners with long exposure did not avoid any type of phrasal verbs. Moreover, they used the phrasal verbs as a whole significantly more than the one-word verbs. Their preferences for literal and semi-transparent phrasal verbs were significantly higher than those for their one-word counterparts. Regarding the idiomatic phrasal verbs, their preference for them was significantly not higher, but also their preference for their one-word counterparts was significantly not higher either. On the other hand, the results revealed that Arab ESL learners with short exposure avoided the idiomatic phrasal verbs. Moreover, they used the one-word verbs as a whole significantly more than the phrasal verbs. Their preferences for literal and semi-transparent phrasal verbs were significantly not higher than that for their one-word counterparts. In sum, these findings do not support previous studies that show that L1-L2 differences, or the semantic complexity of phrasal verbs by other studies, might motivate Arab ESL learners to develop a genuine avoidance; Arab ESL learners with long exposure in this study did not avoid any of the three types of phrasal verbs. The major outcome of this study is that Arabic-speaking learners' avoidance of English phrasal verbs is due to their relatively short exposure to the English-speaking environment.Item Open Access The productive and receptive knowledge of collocations by advanced Arabic-speaking ESL/EFL learners(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Alsakran, Rayed A., author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Ehlers-Zavala, Fabiola, committee member; Grim, Frederique, committee memberAlthough it is widely acknowledged that collocations play an important role in the field of second language acquisition, a number of previous studies have reported students' lack of collocational competence and the difficulties they encounter in learning and using collocations. The present study examines the productive and receptive knowledge of lexical and grammatical collocations among advanced Arabic-speaking learners of English. Furthermore, it investigates whether the language environment (ESL or EFL) has an influence on the acquisition of collocations. It also explores whether there is a significant difference between participants' performance on three types of collocations: verb-noun, adjective-noun, and verb-preposition. Data for this study were collected from 68 participants: 38 Saudi students at the Institute of Public Administration in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and 30 Arab students in the Intensive English program at Colorado State University. The participants' productive collocational knowledge was measured by three gap-filling tests: verb-noun and adjective-noun collocation tests where the initial letter of the collocant was provided and a verb-preposition collocation test where the meaning of the phrasal verb was supplied. Their receptive collocational knowledge was measured by an appropriateness judgment test in which participants have to circle the number corresponding to the underlined part of a sentence that is judged unacceptable. The results of the statistical analysis revealed that participants' learning environment has a strong effect on the acquisition of L2 collocations. The ESL learners had significantly higher scores than the EFL learners. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the participants' productive and receptive knowledge of collocations. The participants' productive knowledge of collocations lagged far behind their receptive collocational knowledge. The findings also revealed a statistically significant difference between the three types of collocation. The participants performed far better on the verb-noun collocations test than on the adjective-noun and verb-preposition collocations tests. Overall, the results showed that Arabic-speaking learners of English demonstrated poor knowledge of collocations on the four tests. The study concludes with pedagogical implications, limitations, and suggestions and recommendations for future research.