Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2785

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Educational evaluation

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    Moderating Effects of Difficulty on Individual Differences' Prediction of Intensive Second Language Proficiency Attainment
    (2024) Pulupa, Catherine Maria; Hui, Bronson; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The United States government is perennially in need of employees with proficiency in critical foreign languages to communicate with foreign counterparts and maintain relationships worldwide. In order to fulfill this need, the government devotes significant resources training federal employees to advanced levels of language proficiency through intensive courses aimed at developing communicative language skills that reflect the work that employees will perform in their work advancing the interests of the United States abroad. Notable proportions of employees fail to meet proficiency goals at the end of training, and little is known about what learner individual differences drive whether or not employees will meet their proficiency goals in order to perform their work on behalf of the United States. To this aim, the current investigation utilizes multiple analyses to explore and explain the interrelationships between learner individual differences, language difficulty, and proficiency attainment throughout training. The investigation constitutes two related analyses. First, a path-analytic approach examines associations between a cognitive (aptitude) measure and non-cognitive (motivation, familiarity with curricula, previous advanced second language learning) measures with student proficiency achievement throughout training. A second analysis builds on the first: the path-analytic model incorporates a measure of difficulty of the language studied by the students to determine how difficulty influences language learning and ultimate attainment within the context of individual differences in L2 speaking and reading. Results demonstrated consistent influence of language aptitude on proficiency attainment, and notable influences of previous L2 acquisition and the alignment of training to individuals’ language use goals. L2 difficulty moderated the relationships between individual differences and proficiency assessment scores during several points in training. The findings support an understanding of adult L2 acquisition that more fully considers learners’ goals and previous L2 experiences and consideration of the impact that difficulty can have on individual learners’ abilities to achieve target proficiency goals.
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    Pathways to Proficiency: Examining the Coherence of Initial Second Language Acquisition Patterns within the Language Difficulty Categorization Framework
    (2018) Masters, Megan; Ross, Steven J.; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    It has perhaps never been clearer that in order to effectively communicate with global governments and develop reasoned foreign policy, the United States Intelligence Community requires the support of trained linguists. The development of foreign language proficiency is a complex process requiring a significant investment of time and resources. For learners involved in intensive foreign language training within the United States Government (USG), the Department of Defense (DoD) has developed various Language Difficulty Categorization (LDC) frameworks aimed at standardizing the amount of time learners are given to meet established proficiency criteria. Despite the widespread adoption of LDC frameworks over the past 60 years, few empirical studies have examined the systematicity in proficiency patterns for languages grouped within the same difficulty category. By situating the analysis within the framework of a logic model, data-mining techniques were used to statistically model, via path analysis, the relationships between program inputs, activities, and outcomes. Two main studies comprised the investigation. Study 1 employed a contrastive-analytic approach to examine the coherence with which both cognitive (e.g., general aptitude, language-specific aptitude, and average coursework outcomes) and non-cognitive (e.g., language preference self-assessment scores) variables contributed to the development of foreign language achievement and proficiency outcomes for three languages grouped within the same category. For Study 1, only learners who completed the entire foreign language-training program were included in the analysis. Results of Study 1 found a great deal of coherence in the role that language-specific aptitude and 300-level average coursework grades play in predicting end-of-program proficiency outcomes. To examine the potential hidden effects of non-random attrition, Study 2 followed the same methodological procedures as Study 1, but it imputed missing coursework and proficiency test score data for learners who attrited (that is, “dropped out”) during the intensive foreign language-training program. Results of the imputation procedure confirmed that language-specific aptitude plays a robust role in predicting average coursework outcomes across languages. Study 2 also revealed substantial differences in the role that cognitive and non-cognitive variables play in predicting end-of-program proficiency outcomes between the observed and imputed datasets as well as across languages and skills.