First Advisor

Kimberley Brown

Term of Graduation

Winter 1994

Date of Publication

1-24-1994

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Department

Applied Linguistics

Language

English

Subjects

Language transfer (Language learning), English language -- Errors of usage, English language -- Study and teaching -- Japanese speakers

DOI

10.15760/etd.6655

Physical Description

1 online resource (viii, 87 pages)

Abstract

The present study replicates research by Tomoko Takahashi (1984) on lexico-semantic patterns used by students in an acquisition poor environment. The purpose of the current study was to determine how an acquisition rich environment affects learners' use of four lexico-semantic patterns: congruence occurs when the L1 definition of a lexical item forms a one-to-one correspondence with the L2 lexical item; convergence occurs when the L1 lexical item has broader applications than the L2 lexical item; divergence occurs when the L2 lexical item has broader applications than the L1 lexical item; and semantic gap occurs when the L1 lexical item has no appropriate corresponding L2 lexical item.

The instrument, a lexico-semantics test, is the same instrument used in Takahashi's study. It was designed to measure which patterns are most frequently used by Japanese EFL students learning English.

The results, unlike Takahashi's, suggest that beginning and advanced ESL students use the four patterns equally well. No significant difference was found between the two groups.

The results also indicate that the acquisition rich environment seems to dramatically improve beginners' performance of the four patterns.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to pdxscholar@pdx.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/27889

Download

Share

COinS