http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1867 2018-01-23T17:23:21Z http://hdl.handle.net/10179/3992 Cultural and linguistic adaptation among Japanese women migrants in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Modern Languages at Massey University Natusch, Barry Antony A survey af the cultural and linguistic adaptation of 76 married Japanese women in New Zealand was carried out by means of interviews and language tests. Two basic sub-groups were identified: those who were married to Japanese husbands (INTRA subjects) and those who were interculturally married (INTER subjects). A number of marked differences, in particular those related to age and marriage type, were observed to exist between these INTRA and INTER groups. The INTER subjects appeared to have made a smoother cultural adaptation to life in New Zealand than those in the INTRA group. The INTRA subjects all identified themselves culturally as Japanese as did the more recently arrived INTER subjects. However, some of the INTER group who had lived in New Zealand for many years appeared to have a cultural identity which was neither fully Japanese nor western. The migrants continued to maintain the Japanese language for communicating among themselves although it did not seem to be passed on to the children of the INTER subjects. A considerable shift from Japanese to English was observed among the INTER subjects but was less evident among subjects in the INTRA group. Levels of oral proficiency in English were not particularly high among the subjects, ranging between 0+ and 3+ on the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) assessment scale. Most of the INTRA group were assessed between level 0+ and 1+ on the scale whereas the majority of INTER subjects scored between levels 2 and 3+. This difference in oral proficiency was due mainly to influences associated with intercultural marriage. An analysis of the subjects' oral English revealed that the INTRA subjects had higher frequencies of error in their English than the INTER subjects. Many phonological errors appeared to be due to interference from Japanese. An analysis of grammatical errors involving noun morphology, verb morphology and article usage, however, suggested several possible causes of error including interference, oversimplification, the learners' false hypotheses, faulty instruction and idiosyncratic variation. The nature and frequency of these errors resulted in pidginlike characteristics being observed in the subjects' English. Lexical errors and communication strategies employed by the subjects were also described. 1986-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10179/3962 'I don't learn at school, so I take tuition' : an ethnographic study of classroom practices and private tuition settings in the Maldives : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Second Language Teaching at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Mariya, Maryam This study explores the classroom practices of both secondary classrooms and private tuition settings in the Maldives. By adopting ethnographic methods of data collection informed by an interview as social practice approach, the study aimed to further understanding of these practices in urban and rural classrooms and in private tuition settings in the context of the Maldives. Qualitative data was collected through observation, interview and document analysis over the course of nine months. Detailed observations of the learning sites and interview as social practice were applied when conducting interviews with teachers, students and parent in the three various settings. Participants of this study included six teachers from the two secondary schools; students and parents from both schools; six private tuition teachers; and four students and parents from private tuition settings. Rich contextual data was obtained relating to classroom practices, and private tuition settings and their interrelationship in the Maldives. The analysis of the data was on-going throughout the observations. Thematic analysis was adopted within an interview as social practice approach, by examining the ‘hows’ as well as the ‘whats’ of the interviews. The detailed ethnographic ‘thick descriptions’ were analysed, including in-depth reflection on the interviews and how they were used as communication tools in social situations. The findings of the study revealed that the practices of teachers and students in the classrooms were shaped by: the sustained mini exam sessions of teaching and learning, the absence of teachers’ voices in decision-making; teacher-centred approaches; passive learning; the physical conditions of the classrooms; and ever-present concerns about noise and managing time in the classroom. The analysis was extended to uncover the complex reasons that led students and their parents to opt for private tuition, and how these reasons were interrelated with classroom practices. In addition, it was found that teachers preferred to give private tuition not only for financial reasons, but also to counterbalance some of the pressures they experienced in classroom settings. The study revealed the value of the interview as social practice approach within an ethnographic study as well as the need for sustained enquiry within and across both classroom and private tuition settings so as to reveal the meaning and significance of the practices that form learning contexts in both public and private contexts in the Maldives. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10179/3947 Written feedback in a freshman writing course in the U.A.E. : instructors' and students' perspectives on giving, getting and using feedback : a dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Second Language Teaching at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Shine, Elva Anne Instructors' frustration with the feedback/revision cycle in a tertiary setting provided the impetus for this study examining the complex issue of written feedback on L2 writing. Areas of contention considered included the type of feedback offered, when to offer it and how to present it to encourage maximum use by students as well as the actual use students made of the written feedback. An ethnographic approach led to three case studies being conducted in academic writing classes in a university in the United Arab Emirates. The students' and the instructors' perspectives were drawn on as well as those of other interested parties including other instructors in the department and writing center tutors. Interviews, focus groups and email exchanges were the principle sources used to gather participants' views. In addition, students answered questionnaires on instructor and peer feedback procedures. Essays were examined in terms of instructor and peer feedback, and the students' responses to that feedback were examined. The data gathered from these sources exposed contradictions and misunderstandings. It appeared that students had little faith in peer feedback but a strong desire for instructor feedback, which they believed they used when revising; however, instructors doubted that most students made any significant use of feedback or even revised productively. Examination of the essays suggested that: instructors did not always offer the feedback they intended to offer focusing more on grammar than content, and sometimes instructors underestimated how much feedback students attempted to act on. The study identified that key problems for students were: understanding the extent of revisions anticipated, knowing what to concentrate their efforts on and knowing how to act on the feedback, especially if they had exhausted their ideas on a topic. In addition, the difficulty of providing clear, usable feedback suggests that rather than relying extensively on written feedback, other ways of assisting students to revise their writing should be considered. The study suggests that feedback that relates explicitly to classroom instruction, and exposure to revision strategies are two techniques that offer a lot of potential for improving students' responses to written feedback. Instructors should also consider making their feedback strategies and expectations of the students explicit. Finally, individual variables mean that it is unlikely that one approach will work for all students; therefore, instructors need to be flexible and respond according to the needs of the student. 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10179/3880 A comparative study of the language used by New Zealand children of European and of Samoan descent aged 6 years 10 months to 8 years in conversation with an adult : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Language at Massey University Moynihan, Isobel Mary The research represents an attempt to establish some normative data for the oral language performance of native-English speaking children aged 6 years 10 months to 8 years in conversation with an adult, and by examining the performance of Samoan children in the same age-group to determine those areas which discriminate most strongly between the performances of both groups. Children were interviewed individually and the conversations recorded over a thirty-minute period. Tapes were transcribed on the same day as the recording, and the data quantified according to the procedures of Developmental Sentence Analysis Lee, L.L. and Koenigsknecht 1974, Developmental Sentence Analysis., which established a rank-order for each group. A more detailed analysis of the data was then made in order to identify those areas of development and/or of uncertainty which were common to both groups, and those which appeared only, or mainly, among the Samoan children. The statistical analysis, based on the developmental weighting of syntactic items, (DSS scores) indicated that where errors were specific to the Samoan children they occurred in structures described as early-developing among native-English speaking children. At the higher developmental levels, the performance of Samoan children above the 50th percentile (for that group) was similar to that of their English speaking age-mates. The classification of error-patterns also distinguished between 'growth errors' (where performance was characterized by over-generalizing or by substitution, for example), and 'deficiency errors' (where morphemes and syntactic items were omitted), the latter occurring more consistently among the Samoan children. In addition, a general indication of language development in relation to chronological age was derived by comparing the DSS scores of the Samoan children falling below the 25th percentile for that group with those obtained by younger children at the 50th percentile point for each one-year interval from age 4 to age 6. In the absence of New Zealand DSS norms for these age-levels, it was necessary to use those derived from a study of American children (Lee 1974), but the results are in accord with other New Zealand-based studies (See 0.1, Introduction) which have noted the "two-year gap" appearing around age 7 among Polynesian children when their achievement on a variety of measures and tests is compared with that of their Pakeha age-mates. In the present study, the "gap" ranged from about 20 months at the 25th percentile (for the Samoan group) to over 41 months at the 10th percentile. The general intention has been to sharpen the focus for teachers wishing to develop compensatory language programmes so that effort may be directed to those specific areas where non-native speaking children appear to have missed a developmental stage in their acquisition of English. The findings also suggest that difficulty with certain syntactic structures, semantic concepts, and phonological realizations is a function of age-level and the language-situation for both groups of subjects rather than of the ethnic background of the Samoan group. 1979-01-01T00:00:00Z