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The corpus of Spanish learners: analysis of conflictive grammatical phenomena for foreign speakers.
GARCÍA FERNÁNDEZ, Sara
In this paper, we conduct a contrastive analysis among three languages (Spanish, Czech and English) as far as the explicit or implicit use of subject personal pronouns is concerned, given that it can entail a source of linguistic conflict from the standpoint of English and Czech speakers who learn Spanish, as this particular grammatical phenomenon works differently in their mother tongues. The issue of this study is firstly and mostly grounded on a collaboration project in which we have participated along this past academic year, focused on the revision, correction and annotation of certain mistakes detected in a section of texts compiled in an American learner corpus called Corpus of Written Spanish of L2 and Heritage Speakers (COWS-L2H). The second basis for our research is a small, own compiled corpus of Czech-speaking learners of Spanish, which we analysed using a special software for linguistic annotation called Analec. Our study can be contextualized within the framework of corpus linguistics as a growing and evolving methodology, applied to multiple language research fields via the development of different types of corpora. In this case, our main concern are those linguistic databases that contain essays from students of Spanish, since these materials allow for the analysis of their interlanguage in order to identify and determine the prime faculties and difficulties that they will face when learning this language. Following this path, teachers will be able to develop a more effective and suitable pedagogical approach, in accordance with the specific characteristics of the target group(s). However, to attain this goal, it is vital to foster the exposure of educators and students to these linguistic tools.
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Perception of native and non-native English accents by Czech listeners
Luongová, Ngoc Huyen My ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Nádraská, Zuzana (referee)
This bachelor thesis explores the perception of native and non-native English accents by Czech listeners, focusing on their intelligibility and comprehensibility. Furthermore, it aims to scrutinise the scope of the Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit (ISIB). The theoretical part provides the necessary terminology to set a theoretical framework for the research conducted in the practical part of the thesis. In the practical part, audio recordings of native and non-native speech were played to low and high-proficient Czech users of English. Data obtained through the transcription and rating tasks was employed to assess the intelligibility and comprehensibility of each accent. The intelligibility scores provided evidence substantiating the matched ISIB. However, the mismatched ISIB was not proven to be effective. As for comprehensibility, the speech produced by native speakers was rated to be more comprehensible in contrast with non-native speech production. This outcome also demonstrates that intelligibility and comprehensibility are related yet partially independent. Lastly, this thesis sheds light on the importance of exposure to non-native English accents.
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The Role of Czech-English Interlanguage Homonyms in Second-language Acquisition
Šupová, Marie ; Lancová, Klára (advisor) ; Jančovičová, Ivana (referee)
This bachelor thesis is concerned with the role of Czech-English interlanguage homonymy in the process of second-language acquisition. The aim is to prove or disprove that the Czech learners are not in general very well acquainted with Czech-English interlanguage homonyms and that various factors heavily influence the depth of their knowledge. The theoretical part provides a brief overview of the synchronic and diachronic development of both the Czech language and the English language, including the influence of the English language on Czech and their mutual history. A further focus is on explaining homonymy and the theory of interlanguage and its influence on second language acquisition. The practical part is based on a questionnaire and attempts to discover whether Czech learners are aware of the phenomenon of "false friends" and the differences between particular instances. Special emphasis is put on the individual factors that impact the learners' command of knowledge, such as depth and quality of knowledge, work or educational experience in an Anglophone country, length of learning English, and frequency of using English. The analysis and evaluation of the results confirmed the hypothesis as valid. KEYWORDS interlanguage, homonymy, second language acquisition, treacherous words
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The use of Connectors in the Texts of Non-Native Speakers of Czech
Pečený, Pavel ; Petkevič, Vladimír (advisor) ; Škodová, Svatava (referee) ; Zikánová, Šárka (referee)
Title: The Use of Connectors in the Texts of Non-Native Speakers of Czech Author: Pavel Pečený Department: Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication Faculty of Arts, Charles University Supervisor: doc. RNDr. Vladimír Petkevič, CSc. Abstract Over the last few years two learner corpora of authentic texts of non-native speakers of Czech have originated (MERLIN Corpus and CzeSL Corpus), giving linguists an important source of data for researching Czech as a foreign language. Ergo, for the first time it is possible to carry out the language analysis of non-native speakers of Czech using tools of corpus linguistics to formulate evidence-based research findings. The presented thesis uses that as well, focussing on the study and description of the use of connectors in the written text production of non-native speakers of Czech, being primarily based on evidence from the learner MERLIN Corpus, which as opposed to other corpora is characterized by linking written text production reliably to the proficiency levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), including the levels of A2-B2. At the same time, it also contains a text error annotation, thus enabling to ascertain what effect the language proficiency has on the extent of the repertoire and frequency of using connectors,...
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Compensation Strategies in Learning Czech as Foreign Language: Comparasion of Spoken and Written Communiques
Hlaváčková, Eva ; Hrdlička, Milan (advisor) ; Škodová, Svatava (referee)
This thesis deals with compensation strategies in learning Czech as a foreign language and concrete realisations of these strategies in spoken and written communiques. The theoretical part is based on the current linguistic-didactic approach to learning foreign languages, which includes the communicative method and the issue of communicative competence of non-native speakers. In connection with these issues, we also deal with the area of communication strategies and present the most important theoretical concepts and classifications of communication and compensation strategies by foreign researchers. We also introduce the definition of compensation strategies in Czech for foreigners within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which is presently a binding document for defining language competences at particular language levels. The theoretical part is followed by the empirical part which analyses concrete spoken and written productions of non-native speakers on the basis of theoretically established classification of compensation strategies designed for the purpose of research in this thesis. The data of the spoken communiques that was used for this analysis was collected from audio recordings and transcriptions of class content in various types of language courses. For the...
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Teaching English of Deaf and Hard-of-hearing University Students
Doležalová, Marie ; Janáková, Daniela (advisor) ; Píšová, Michaela (referee) ; Machová, Pavla (referee)
This dissertation titled Teaching English to Deaf and Hard-of-hearing University Students aims to portray a picture of the situation of teaching English to university students, more specifically of those studying at Charles University in Prague. The work is divided into two main parts. The first part brings general insight, also from linguistic perspective, into language competences and language acquisition by the hearing impaired. It describes variables and possible variables affecting spoken language acquisition by this minority. It gives basic overview of different levels of hearing loss on the grouds of medicine assessment of hearing loss. The dissertiation stresses out the neccessity of educating these students with respect to linguistic research and findings. Moreover, it emphasizes the needs to interweave linguistics and pedagogy and benefits of linguistics research and methods such as error analysis and contrastive analysis for enhancement of language productive skills of hearing impaired students. The second part of the dissertation is devoted to the research of English language teaching to hearing impaired students at Charles University in Prague. The work summarizes the findings of five-year long research carried out at the Language Resource Centre, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in...
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: The acquisition of the article by Czech learners of Dutch as a foreign language
Ungermannová, Eva ; Pekelder, Jan (advisor) ; Rezková, Iva (referee)
This Master's thesis deals with the phenomenon of learning Dutch as a foreign language. The paper draws upon the fundamental theories and methods associated with applied linguistics on second language acquisition, in particular on the interlanguage hypothesis. The theoretical basis to this study comes from psycholinguistic processes that accompany the second language acquisition, such as language transfer, fossilization, overgeneralization and variability. This section is followed by a brief summary of the theory of the Dutch article, in contrast with an outline on how definiteness and indefiniteness are expressed in Czech. The paper also mentions some recent findings on article acquisition by second language learners. The practical part describes and analyses a small corpus of written utterances by Czech students who followed courses of Dutch language and literature at three Czech universities. The corpus consists of utterances made by speakers at two levels of language proficiency. The thesis seeks to observe the differences between lower intermediate and upper intermediate students. The research focuses mainly on general tendencies in article use. Various factors that influence the use of this grammatical category are discussed. Based on the collected data, a number of hypotheses are formulated,...
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Linguistic pragmatics in Teaching of Czech as a foreign language
Mašín, Jaroslav ; Šebesta, Karel (advisor) ; Hrdlička, Milan (referee) ; Škodová, Svatava (referee)
The focus of dissertation belongs to the field of learning Czech as a foreign language and deals with the acquisition of pragmatic competence of non-native speakers. Whereas this is a broad area, the work concentrates on speech act request. The aim is to describe how two students of Czech acquired the speech act during a one-year intensive course. The theoretical background is given in Chapter I. The term Interlanguage Pragmatics is introduced to Czech readers. The Chapter further maps what the pragmatic research of non- native speakers generally deals with and what questions it asks. Attention is paid to possible methods for collecting data for research of pragmatic competence, what kinds of errors non- native speakers usually make, what environment is suitable for the acquisition of pragmatic competence or how individual differences among students affects pragmatic competence. In the second chapter attention is paid to speech act request. We present an overview of major longitudinal studies. On the bass of this longitudinal research it was found that students of English go through five stages of development when acquiring request. The stages are presented here in detail. In the research part of the dissertation the investigation of how two non-native speakers (a student from Taiwan and a student...
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