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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (3 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
The CATESOL Journal, Volume 29, Issue 2 (2017)
This study analyzed the grammatical control of verbs exercised by 145 monolingual English and Generation 1.5 bilingual developmental writers in narrative essays using quantitative and qualitative methods. Generation 1.5 students made more errors than their monolingual peers in each category investigated, albeit in only 2 categories was the difference statistically significant. Yet the overall effect was cumulative: The total number of verb errors in the essays of bilinguals was statistically larger than that in the essays of monolinguals. Both monolingual and bilingual writers inappropriately transferred the features of spoken English into the written medium, and both displayed difficulties in the appropriate use of the perfect aspect. However, Generation 1.5 learners also exhibited ESL-like traits in their writing, demonstrating a weak control of verbal inflection. The findings suggest that explicit grammar instruction may be warranted in all Developmental Writing classes, especially those with large proportions of Generation 1.5 learners.
    Cover page: Verb Errors of Bilingual and Monolingual Basic WritersCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    Issues in Applied Linguistics, Volume 20 (2016)

    This paper explores how speakers use direct reported speech (DRS) and indirect reported speech (IDRS) in conversational narratives to establish the importance of particular story characters to the plot and to display the interactional goal of the story.  When the story is designed as being about a particular person, the speaker uses DRS to depict the character’s behavior and qualities, thus marking the centrality of the character to the plot. When the story is designed as being about a non-human phenomenon (e.g. the quality of healthcare, the noise in the neighborhood, etc.), the narrator may use IDRS to mark characters as secondary or even tangential to the plot.  By manipulating the grammatical resources of reporting someone else’s talk, storytellers can also manipulate the centrality of the story characters to the interactional point of the narrative, or the story’s “aboutness.”

    • 1 supplemental file
    Cover page: Center stage: direct and indirect reported speech in conversational storytelling
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    Issues in Applied Linguistics, Volume 14, Issue 2 (2004)
      Cover page: <em>Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance</em> by Adam Kendon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, ix+400 pp.
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