[etni] Fw: help with research
- From: "Ask Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 10:58:53 +0200
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----- Original Message -----
From: shirili shirki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: ask@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 10:44 AM
Subject: help with research
Shalom,
My name is Shirili Green. I am an MA candidate at the University of Hawaii,
Second Language Studies department. I am working on a scholarly paper, and I
need adult Hebrew NSs students volunteers. As you can read in my research
proposal (which follows), I need students of three proficiency levels- low,
intermediate, and high (which I assume can be measured by the psychometric
test results, or by other university placement exams). I will be in Israel
from 12/20/03 to 01/-5/04, and I was wondering if you could direct me on how
to gain access to such students. I am going to add a brief description of my
study, but if you have any questions, please contact me at
shirki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or at shirili@xxxxxxxxxx also, you may contact my
advisor at chaudron@xxxxxxxxxx
I hope to hear from you soon,
Tanks, Toda, Mahalo!
Shirili
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The Study and its purpose
For my SP, I decided to investigate how nonnative speakers use the English
definite article The. To do so, I decided to replicate a study by Liu &
Gleason, "The Acquisition of the Article The by Nonnative Speakers of
English," in Studies in Second Language Acquisition 2002, 24/1. Liu &
Gleason concluded that the four non-generic uses (Cultural, Situational,
Structural, and Textual) of the English definite article pose different
levels of difficulty, which suggested that ESL acquisition of the definite
article is use dependent and follows a natural order. Moreover, they found
that the correct suppliance of the English definite article in obligatory
context for all four categories improves as proficiency level improves. In
my study, I wish to investigate these claims in a partial replication
because they did not separate learners' L1 apart with respect to transfer
potential.
Methodology
To collect data, I am going to use a test instrument created by Liu &
Gleason. The test instrument involves 91 sentences of which 51 sentences
contain 60 deleted obligatory uses of the article The, and out of the
remaining 40 sentences, some were used as distractors, and others were used
as control items where The was not allowed.
For my study, I would like to give Liu & Gleason's test instrument to ELI
and HELP students who are native Korean, Japanese, or Chinese speakers
(because these languages specifically lack articles). To see if indeed the
correct use of the English definite article increases with proficiency
levels, students' performance will be compared. The students will have to
read the sentences of the test instrument and add the article The where they
think it is needed.
To investigate the issue of transfer, I would like to give the same
instrument to native speakers of Hebrew (because their L1 has a definite
article).
Students' English proficiency will be assessed according to their TOEFL
scores (for students at UH) and by scores of the psychometric
test/university placement test in Israel.
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