This study aimed to provide a clearer understanding of the phonetic influence a native speaker of Arabic can experience during the acquisition of English as a second language (ESL), specifically...Show moreThis study aimed to provide a clearer understanding of the phonetic influence a native speaker of Arabic can experience during the acquisition of English as a second language (ESL), specifically for the consonants /p/ and /v/ in spelling and pronunciation. In a small-scale experiment, Arabic speakers of English were asked to translate an Arabic story to English by hand to create an authentic product of their spelling abilities. Afterwards, the same participants read a short story in English, which was recorded with audio equipment to later evaluate their pronunciation through the program PRAAT. Contrary to existing literature, the small-scale experiment conducted for this study found no significant effect for the influence of Arabic on English spelling despite this being hypothesised and proven in previous research. Along with this, no effect was found for the experiment based on the pronunciation of /p/ and /v/. Whereas the results did show that Arabic speakers of English had a Voice Onset Time (VOT) of /p/ that was considerably lower, they did not realise a [b] instead of the target [ph] as hypothesised. Speakers did not significantly devoice their /v/ to an [f], which does not directly coincide with the literature that has hypothesised the influence of native language phonology on the pronunciation of English as a second language. When evaluating the results as a whole, two things are implied: (1) there is a possible focus in ESL learning on spelling and therefore no issues were found, and (2) pronunciation is a difficult aspect of ESL learning due to the unfamiliar articulatory processes involved and Arabic learners experience difficulties when faced with the unfamiliar /p/ and to a lesser degree also /v/. However, they are able to make the distinction between the phoneme pairs. These implications may help ESL learners in the future to focus on problem areas, further improve their skills, while simultaneously providing the research niche of phonology with new material to investigate.Show less
Korean internet discussions, especially those of teens, tend to be full of deliberate spelling errors. In this work, I tried to find out if there is any phonological way to clarify these...Show moreKorean internet discussions, especially those of teens, tend to be full of deliberate spelling errors. In this work, I tried to find out if there is any phonological way to clarify these alternative spellings by analysing a multitude of discussions on the Korean internet platform Naver Cafe. I collected spelling errors from these discussions and compared them to the official spelling of Korean. To ensure a consistent corpus of data, I only considered recent discussions about BTS, a Korean boy band that is popular among female Korean teens. All collected spelling errors could be divided into accidental spelling errors and deliberate spelling errors. Most of these deliberate spelling errors are based on the pronunciation rules of the Korean writing system, making the spellings stand closer to their actual pronunciations than their correct counterparts. A small proportion of all deliberate spelling errors is based on morphophonological rules that are usually only applied in the context of verbal morphology. All of this shows that Korean language users tend to be very creative while writing their language, usually for the sake of coming across cute or innocent. From this we can conclude that even spelling errors can be a fruitful source of information.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Nederlandse taal en cultuur (BA)
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Een onderzoek, met behulp van egodocumenten van negentiende eeuwse schoolmeesters, naar de negentiende-eeuwse-schoolmeestersattitude t.a.v. de ingevoerde spelling-Siegenbeek in 1804.
Deze scriptie vergelijkt verschillende spellingskenmerken (de lange ij, de ei en de ui, de lange e's en de lange o's) en twee naamvallen (de genitief en de datief) in Nederlandse persoonlijke...Show moreDeze scriptie vergelijkt verschillende spellingskenmerken (de lange ij, de ei en de ui, de lange e's en de lange o's) en twee naamvallen (de genitief en de datief) in Nederlandse persoonlijke brieven in de perioden 1770-1790 en 1820-1840. De scriptie draait om de vraag in welke mate de spelling van Siegenbeek en de grammatica van Weiland invloed hebben gehad op het 19e-eeuwse geschreven Nederlands in de regio’s Noord-Holland, Utrecht en Zuid-Holland. Het blijkt dat Siegenbeeks voorschriften op alle onderzochte spellingskenmerken invloed hebben gehad, behalve op de spelling van de lange ij. Weiland heeft weinig invloed gehad bij beide naamvallen.Show less
This study investigated whether gender and motivation influence the academic achievement of schoolchildren between the ages of 7 and 12. School achievement was measured using the the “Centraal...Show moreThis study investigated whether gender and motivation influence the academic achievement of schoolchildren between the ages of 7 and 12. School achievement was measured using the the “Centraal Instituut voor ToetsOntwikkeling” (CITO) test for technical reading, spelling and math. Motivation was measured using the “Prestatie Motivatie Test voor Kinderen” (PMT-K). It is a general assumption that girls perform better than boys when it comes to language skills. Boys on the other hand do better in math. This study focused on these differences with an independent t-test. It was also examined with a multiple regression if motivation influenced these differences in school achievement. It was expected that motivation and gender influenced academic achievement. Boys should be better in math and girls in spelling and comprehensive reading. Boys and girls should be evenly motivated. The results showed that boys scored significantly higher on math skills than girls. Surprisingly, no significant differences were found for reading and spelling. Furthermore, no significant differences were found for achievement motivation. However, girls scored higher on the subscales negative social anxiety and social desirability and boys scored higher on positive social anxiety. Social desirability and achievement motivation were significant predictors of spelling and math. This research showed that there is a small difference in achievement between boys and girls and motivation and gender partially influenced these school achievements. This study offers further incentive to investigate gender differences in the school environment.Show less
