Sample records for process create english

  1. Research and Policy Considerations for English Learner Equity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Robinson-Cimpian, Joseph P.; Thompson, Karen D.; Umansky, Ilana M.

    2016-01-01

    English learners (ELs), students from a home where a language other than English is spoken and who are in the process of developing English proficiency themselves, represent over 10% of the US student population. Oftentimes education policies and practices create barriers for ELs to achieve access and outcomes that are equitable to those of their…

  2. Environmental Peace Education in Foreign Language Learners' English Grammar Lessons

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Arikan, Arda

    2009-01-01

    English language teachers create contexts to teach grammar so that meaningful learning occurs. In this study, English grammar is contextualized through environmental peace education activities to raise students' awareness of global issues. Two sources provided data to evaluate the success of this instructional process. Fourth-year pre-service…

  3. Processes Involved in Composing a Narration in a First and a Second Language.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bowie, David G.; Schallert, Diane L.

    1988-01-01

    In a study of the processes used to compose a story, 12 Portuguese/English bilingual adults created narrations for 2 published, wordless picture stories and, while viewing a videotape of their narration, recalled aloud the processes they used in constructing the stories. One study was narrated in Portuguese and the other in English. The narrations…

  4. Digital Stories: A 21st-Century Communication Tool for the English Language Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brenner, Kathy

    2014-01-01

    Digital storytelling can motivate and engage students and create a community in the classroom. This article lays out a 12-week digital storytelling project, describing the process in detail, including assessment, and pinpointing issues and challenges as well as benefits the project affords English language students.

  5. Methods & Strategies: 5E for ELL

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gomez-Zwiep, Susan; Straits, William; Topps, Jo

    2015-01-01

    Science provides a rich context for English learners (ELs) to develop language skills in meaningful ways. This article outlines steps to create a lesson that blends both inquiry science and formal English language development (ELD) strategies. The process, developed through a four-year research project in a large urban school district (Gomez-Zwiep…

  6. Indexicality and "Standard" Edited American English: Examining the Link between Conceptions of Standardness and Perceived Authorial Identity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Davila, Bethany

    2012-01-01

    This article explores the indexicality (the ideological process that links language and identity) of "standard" edited American English and the ideologies (specifically, standard language ideology and Whiteness) that work to create and justify common patterns that associate privileged White students with written standardness and that disassociate…

  7. Deeper Processing for Better EFL Reading Comprehension.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Oded, Brenda; Walters, Joel

    2001-01-01

    Investigates the extent to which tasks involving processing differences in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) reading result in differences in performance on comprehension. Processing differences were created by the assignment of two tasks--writing a text summary and listing the examples in the text. (Author/VWL)

  8. Cross-language activation of morphological relatives in cognates: the role of orthographic overlap and task-related processing

    PubMed Central

    Mulder, Kimberley; Dijkstra, Ton; Baayen, R. Harald

    2015-01-01

    We considered the role of orthography and task-related processing mechanisms in the activation of morphologically related complex words during bilingual word processing. So far, it has only been shown that such morphologically related words (i.e., morphological family members) are activated through the semantic and morphological overlap they share with the target word. In this study, we investigated family size effects in Dutch-English identical cognates (e.g., tent in both languages), non-identical cognates (e.g., pil and pill, in English and Dutch, respectively), and non-cognates (e.g., chicken in English). Because of their cross-linguistic overlap in orthography, reading a cognate can result in activation of family members both languages. Cognates are therefore well-suited for studying mechanisms underlying bilingual activation of morphologically complex words. We investigated family size effects in an English lexical decision task and a Dutch-English language decision task, both performed by Dutch-English bilinguals. English lexical decision showed a facilitatory effect of English and Dutch family size on the processing of English-Dutch cognates relative to English non-cognates. These family size effects were not dependent on cognate type. In contrast, for language decision, in which a bilingual context is created, Dutch and English family size effects were inhibitory. Here, the combined family size of both languages turned out to better predict reaction time than the separate family size in Dutch or English. Moreover, the combined family size interacted with cognate type: the response to identical cognates was slowed by morphological family members in both languages. We conclude that (1) family size effects are sensitive to the task performed on the lexical items, and (2) depend on both semantic and formal aspects of bilingual word processing. We discuss various mechanisms that can explain the observed family size effects in a spreading activation framework. PMID:25698953

  9. Creating a medical English-Swedish dictionary using interactive word alignment.

    PubMed

    Nyström, Mikael; Merkel, Magnus; Ahrenberg, Lars; Zweigenbaum, Pierre; Petersson, Håkan; Ahlfeldt, Hans

    2006-10-12

    This paper reports on a parallel collection of rubrics from the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, MeSH, NCSP and KSH97-P and its use for semi-automatic creation of an English-Swedish dictionary of medical terminology. The methods presented are relevant for many other West European language pairs than English-Swedish. The medical terminology systems were collected in electronic format in both English and Swedish and the rubrics were extracted in parallel language pairs. Initially, interactive word alignment was used to create training data from a sample. Then the training data were utilised in automatic word alignment in order to generate candidate term pairs. The last step was manual verification of the term pair candidates. A dictionary of 31,000 verified entries has been created in less than three man weeks, thus with considerably less time and effort needed compared to a manual approach, and without compromising quality. As a side effect of our work we found 40 different translation problems in the terminology systems and these results indicate the power of the method for finding inconsistencies in terminology translations. We also report on some factors that may contribute to making the process of dictionary creation with similar tools even more expedient. Finally, the contribution is discussed in relation to other ongoing efforts in constructing medical lexicons for non-English languages. In three man weeks we were able to produce a medical English-Swedish dictionary consisting of 31,000 entries and also found hidden translation errors in the utilized medical terminology systems.

  10. Creating a medical English-Swedish dictionary using interactive word alignment

    PubMed Central

    Nyström, Mikael; Merkel, Magnus; Ahrenberg, Lars; Zweigenbaum, Pierre; Petersson, Håkan; Åhlfeldt, Hans

    2006-01-01

    Background This paper reports on a parallel collection of rubrics from the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, MeSH, NCSP and KSH97-P and its use for semi-automatic creation of an English-Swedish dictionary of medical terminology. The methods presented are relevant for many other West European language pairs than English-Swedish. Methods The medical terminology systems were collected in electronic format in both English and Swedish and the rubrics were extracted in parallel language pairs. Initially, interactive word alignment was used to create training data from a sample. Then the training data were utilised in automatic word alignment in order to generate candidate term pairs. The last step was manual verification of the term pair candidates. Results A dictionary of 31,000 verified entries has been created in less than three man weeks, thus with considerably less time and effort needed compared to a manual approach, and without compromising quality. As a side effect of our work we found 40 different translation problems in the terminology systems and these results indicate the power of the method for finding inconsistencies in terminology translations. We also report on some factors that may contribute to making the process of dictionary creation with similar tools even more expedient. Finally, the contribution is discussed in relation to other ongoing efforts in constructing medical lexicons for non-English languages. Conclusion In three man weeks we were able to produce a medical English-Swedish dictionary consisting of 31,000 entries and also found hidden translation errors in the utilized medical terminology systems. PMID:17034649

  11. Translating questionnaire items for a multi-lingual worker population: the iterative process of translation and cognitive interviews with English-, Spanish-, and Chinese-speaking workers.

    PubMed

    Fujishiro, Kaori; Gong, Fang; Baron, Sherry; Jacobson, C Jeffery; DeLaney, Sheli; Flynn, Michael; Eggerth, Donald E

    2010-02-01

    The increasing ethnic diversity of the US workforce has created a need for research tools that can be used with multi-lingual worker populations. Developing multi-language questionnaire items is a complex process; however, very little has been documented in the literature. Commonly used English items from the Job Content Questionnaire and Quality of Work Life Questionnaire were translated by two interdisciplinary bilingual teams and cognitively tested in interviews with English-, Spanish-, and Chinese-speaking workers. Common problems across languages mainly concerned response format. Language-specific problems required more conceptual than literal translations. Some items were better understood by non-English speakers than by English speakers. De-centering (i.e., modifying the English original to correspond with translation) produced better understanding for one item. Translating questionnaire items and achieving equivalence across languages require various kinds of expertise. Backward translation itself is not sufficient. More research efforts should be concentrated on qualitative approaches to developing useful research tools. Published 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  12. Snapshots of the Universe: A Multilingual Astronomy Book

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Beaton, R. L.; Sokal, K. R.; Liss, S. E.; Johnson, K. E.

    2015-11-01

    Dark Skies, Bright Kids! (DSBK) is an outreach organization at the University of Virginia, focused on enhancing elementary level science education in under-served communities. Early in the program, DSBK volunteers encountered difficulties connecting with English as a second language (ESL) students. To meet that challenge, DSBK volunteers created story-book style art with short descriptions of astronomical objects in both Spanish and English to help communicate basic astronomy concepts to these students. Building on this initial success, our simple project has evolved into a full multilingual children's book targeted at 2nd-5th grade students. Though originally in Spanish and English, a partnership with the University of Alberta (Canada) has produced a French translation of the text, broadening the outreach potential of the book. In this contribution, we describe Snapshots of the Universe (Instantáneas del Universo) and reflect upon the process of creating this unique resource.

  13. The Pearl Side of Online Portfolios: A Descriptive Study on the Rich Experience of Using PearlTrees by Master Students of Teaching English as a Foreign Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Albaiz, Tahany

    2016-01-01

    Teaching English to ESL teachers is a challenging task for a number of reasons, the lack of connection between the target language and the native one being one of the most challenging factors (Ferlazzo & Sypnieski, 2013). Therefore, teachers are supposed to be innovators in creating the tools that could boost the learning process, as well as…

  14. A Research on Second Language Acquisition and College English Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Li, Changyu

    2009-01-01

    It was in the 1970s that American linguist S.D. Krashen created the theory of "language acquisition". The theories on second language acquisition were proposed based on the study on the second language acquisition process and its rules. Here, the second language acquisition process refers to the process in which a learner with the…

  15. Linguistic validation of the US Spanish work productivity and activity impairment questionnaire, general health version.

    PubMed

    Gawlicki, Mary C; Reilly, Margaret C; Popielnicki, Ana; Reilly, Kate

    2006-01-01

    There are no measures of health-related absenteeism and presenteeism validated for use in the large and increasing US Spanish-speaking population. Before using a Spanish translation of an available English-language questionnaire, the linguistic validity of the Spanish version must be established to ensure its conceptual equivalence to the original and its cultural appropriateness. The objective of this study was to evaluate the linguistic validity of the US Spanish version of the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire, General Health Version (WPAI:GH). A US Spanish translation of the US English WPAI:GH was created through a reiterative process of creating harmonized forward and back translations by independent translators. Spanish-speaking and English-speaking subjects residing in the US self-administered the WPAI:GH in their primary language and were subsequently debriefed by a bilingual (Spanish-English) interviewer. US Spanish subjects (N = 31) and English subjects (N = 35), stratified equally by educational level, with and without a high school degree participated in the study. The WPAI-GH item comprehension rate was 98.6% for Spanish and 99.6% for English. Response revision rates during debriefing were 1.6% for Spanish and 0.5% for English. Responses to hypothetical scenarios indicated that both language versions adequately differentiate sick time taken for health and non-health reasons and between absenteeism and presenteeism. Linguistic validity of the US Spanish translation of the WPAI:GH was established among a diverse US Spanish-speaking population, including those with minimal education.

  16. Use of Referential Discourse Contexts in L2 Offline and Online Sentence Processing.

    PubMed

    Yang, Pi-Lan

    2016-10-01

    The present study aimed to investigate (a) the extent to which Chinese-speaking learners of English in Taiwan use referential noun phrase (NP) information contained in discourse contexts to complete ambiguous noun/verb fragments in a sentence completion task, and (b) whether and when they use the contexts to disambiguate main verb versus reduced relative clause (MV/RRC) ambiguities in real time. Results showed that unlike native English speakers, English learners did not create a marked increase in RRC completions in biasing two-NP-referent discourse contexts except for advanced learners. Nevertheless, like native speakers, the learners at elementary, intermediate, and advanced English proficiency levels all used the information in a later stage of resolving the MV/RRC ambiguities in real time. The delayed effect of referential context information observed suggests that L2 learners, like native speakers, are able to construct syntax-to-discourse mappings in real time. It also suggests that processing of syntactic information takes precedence over integration of syntactic information with discourse information during L1 and L2 online sentence processing.

  17. Contrastive Analysis of Spanish and English Sounds Which Create Pronunciation Difficulties.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stewart, Adela Artola

    This pamphlet presents the content of a workshop on the contrastive analysis of Spanish and English sounds which create pronunciation difficulties for Mexican- American children learning the English language. Introductory remarks lead to teaching procedures for: (1) "ch" (voiceless alveo-palatal affricate, (2) "sh" (voiceless alveo-palatal…

  18. Improving Science and Vocabulary Learning of English Language Learners. CREATE Brief

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    August, Diane; Artzi, Lauren; Mazrum, Julie

    2010-01-01

    This brief reviews previous research related to the development of science knowledge and academic language in English language learners as well as the role of English language proficiency, learning in a second language, and first language knowledge in science learning. It also describes two successful CREATE interventions that build academic and…

  19. Creating Subjects: The Language of the Stage 6 English Syllabus

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anson, Daniel W. J.

    2016-01-01

    This paper investigates the language of the 2009 NSW Stage 6 English Syllabus. I argue that the language of the syllabus aims to create two distinct subjects: Subject English, that is, what students learn; and the subject position of its students, that is, what students are expected to become. Analysis reveals themes of personal development and…

  20. Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry Out Instructional Units

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smagorinsky, Peter

    2007-01-01

    "Teaching English by Design" is two books in one: a primer for teaching secondary English and a comprehensive guide to creating and using four to six-week instructional units. Peter Smagorinsky shares important insight about students, how they learn, and what kinds of classrooms support their achievement in reading and writing. Then he uses those…

  1. The Create-a-Game Assignment and English Teaching Ability of Japanese College Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kobayashi, Futoshi

    2013-01-01

    Japanese college students (N = 18) aspiring to become English teachers in junior or senior high schools studied several examples of educational games and created their own English games as an assignment during the last two weeks of an educational psychology course. Results indicated (1) a significant increase between pre- and post-…

  2. Collective Digital Storytelling: An Activity-Theoretical Analysis of Second Language Learning and Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kalyaniwala-Thapliyal, Carmenne

    2016-01-01

    This paper describes the collective activity of a group of four students who created a digital story as a teaching resource that was to be used for teaching English as a foreign language. It uncovers and analyzes the actual processes underlining the activity as it unfolds from one stage to another. Four processes, viz., sociocognitive…

  3. The Proximate Phonological Unit of Chinese-English Bilinguals: Proficiency Matters

    PubMed Central

    Verdonschot, Rinus Gerardus; Nakayama, Mariko; Zhang, Qingfang; Tamaoka, Katsuo; Schiller, Niels Olaf

    2013-01-01

    An essential step to create phonology according to the language production model by Levelt, Roelofs and Meyer is to assemble phonemes into a metrical frame. However, recently, it has been proposed that different languages may rely on different grain sizes of phonological units to construct phonology. For instance, it has been proposed that, instead of phonemes, Mandarin Chinese uses syllables and Japanese uses moras to fill the metrical frame. In this study, we used a masked priming-naming task to investigate how bilinguals assemble their phonology for each language when the two languages differ in grain size. Highly proficient Mandarin Chinese-English bilinguals showed a significant masked onset priming effect in English (L2), and a significant masked syllabic priming effect in Mandarin Chinese (L1). These results suggest that their proximate unit is phonemic in L2 (English), and that bilinguals may use different phonological units depending on the language that is being processed. Additionally, under some conditions, a significant sub-syllabic priming effect was observed even in Mandarin Chinese, which indicates that L2 phonology exerts influences on L1 target processing as a consequence of having a good command of English. PMID:23646107

  4. Human/autonomy collaboration for the automated generation of intelligence products

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    DiBona, Phil; Schlachter, Jason; Kuter, Ugur; Goldman, Robert

    2017-05-01

    Intelligence Analysis remains a manual process despite trends toward autonomy in information processing. Analysts need agile decision-­-support tools that can adapt to the evolving information needs of the mission, allowing the analyst to pose novel analytic questions. Our research enables the analysts to only provide a constrained English specification of what the intelligence product should be. Using HTN planning, the autonomy discovers, decides, and generates a workflow of algorithms to create the intelligence product. Therefore, the analyst can quickly and naturally communicate to the autonomy what information product is needed, rather than how to create it.

  5. An Interdisciplinary Model for Connecting Writing, Psychology, and Printmaking

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stone, Staci

    2015-01-01

    This article presents an effective model for a manageable interdisciplinary project that shows students the connections among art, English, and other disciplines; gives composition students an external audience for their writing; and emphasizes the importance of research in the process of creating arguments and art. This interdisciplinary project…

  6. Process and Product: Creating Stories with Deaf Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Enns, Catherine; Hall, Ricki; Isaac, Becky; MacDonald, Patricia

    2007-01-01

    This article describes the implementation of one element of an adapted language arts curriculum for Deaf students in a bilingual (American Sign Language and English) educational setting. It examines the implementation of writing workshops in three elementary classrooms in a school for Deaf students. The typical steps of preparing/planning,…

  7. Defining Identities through Multiliteracies: EL Teens Narrate Their Immigration Experiences as Graphic Stories

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Danzak, Robin L.

    2011-01-01

    Based on a framework of identity-as-narrative and multiliteracies, this article describes "Graphic Journeys," a multimedia literacy project in which English learners (ELs) in middle school created graphic stories that expressed their families' immigration experiences. The process involved reading graphic novels, journaling, interviewing, and…

  8. Bangladesh: Background and U.S. Relations

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2006-09-07

    influence through the political process and that this is creating space for militant activities inside the country. Some allege that the presence in the...well as its democratic process . Further, there is concern that should Bangladesh become a failed state, or a state controlled by Islamist...than 1 million Language : Bengali (official); English widely used Religion: Muslim 88.3%; Hindu 10.5% Life Expectancy at Birth: 62.46 (2006 est

  9. Tips from the Classroom.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilhelm, Kim Hughes; Leverett, Thomas; Barrett, Rob J.; Chur-Hansen, Anna; Dantas-Whitney, Maria; Zapata, Gabriela; Garcia, Juan Felix

    1998-01-01

    Five articles present tips for rallying English-as-a-Second-Language students to the enterprise of creating context, tools, and language itself. The articles focus on using original dramas created by students, teaching nonnative English-speaking medical students to comprehend their patients' colloquial language, conducting research with native…

  10. English Perceptive Teaching of Middle School in China--Based on an Empirical Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lifen, He; Junying, Yong

    2016-01-01

    Perception is the reconstruction and interaction between the new information and prior knowledge in mind or in the process of internalization about the new information. It has three teaching procedures: First, teachers elicit the learners to acquire text meaning. Second, teachers create situation in practical teaching. Third, learners comprehend…

  11. Simplifying the ELA Common Core; Demystifying Curriculum

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schmoker, Mike; Jago, Carol

    2013-01-01

    The English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards ([CCSS], 2010) could have a transformational effect on American education. Though the process seems daunting, one can begin immediately integrating the essence of the ELA Common Core in every subject area. This article shows how one could implement the Common Core and create coherent,…

  12. The Fail-Safe Micro Research Paper.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Saunders, Mary Anne

    A key element in a research paper writing assignment modified for students of English as a second language to assure their success is teacher control over most of the process. A chronological plan for action for the micro research project includes these steps: creating an awareness of current events and controversial issues, practicing necessary…

  13. Unconventional Internships for English Majors.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Otto, Don H.

    After five years of research, the English department at St. Cloud (Minnesota) State University created an internship program for English majors. The philosophy behind the program is that the typical experience of the English major in college is excellent preparation for what the college graduate will be doing in most careers in business,…

  14. "Will This Hell Never End?": Substantiating and Resisting "Race-Language" Policies in a Multilingual High School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Malsbary, Christine

    2014-01-01

    This article presents a critical race theory analysis of teachers' and students' language policy negotiation. It draws on an ethnographic study in a high-school English as a Second Language (ESL) program. Results demonstrate how race-language processes create conditions that traumatize immigrant and bilingual youth of color through…

  15. Rio De Janeiro to Claremont: Promoting Intercultural Competence through Student-Driven Online Intercultural Exchanges

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Aristizábal, Juanita C.; Welch, Patrick McDermott

    2017-01-01

    This article describes the process by which the authors created a Virtual Learning Community for cultural and linguistic exchange between college students of Portuguese in the United States and undergraduate and graduate students of English in Brazil. In addition to describing the way the so-called tandem model for telecollaboration was adapted to…

  16. Creating Original Products and Infomercials to Study Rhetorical Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Larrotta, Clarena

    2017-01-01

    Rhetorical analysis was a required unit of study for college students enrolled in intermediate English as a second language (ESL) composition. Twenty-six students participated in a project creating an original product and its infomercial. The project aimed at increasing student motivation to continue writing essays in English and providing a space…

  17. Interdisciplinary Connections and Academic Performance in Psychology-English Learning Communities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grose-Fifer, Jillian; Helmer, Kimberly A.; Zottoli, Tina M.

    2014-01-01

    We investigated whether students in psychology-based learning communities (LCs; i.e., cohorts who took introductory psychology and English together) performed better on psychology tests than those in standard classes. There were two types of LC; in one (connected LC), we created links between English and psychology by using English class readings…

  18. Integrating Scaffolding Strategies into Technology-Enhanced Assessments of English Learners: Task Types and Measurement Models

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wolf, Mikyung Kim; Guzman-Orth, Danielle; Lopez, Alexis; Castellano, Katherine; Himelfarb, Igor; Tsutagawa, Fred S.

    2016-01-01

    This article investigates ways to improve the assessment of English learner students' English language proficiency given the current movement of creating next-generation English language proficiency assessments in the Common Core era. In particular, this article discusses the integration of scaffolding strategies, which are prevalently utilized as…

  19. The Processing of Extraposed Structures in English

    PubMed Central

    Levy, Roger; Fedorenko, Evelina; Breen, Mara; Gibson, Ted

    2012-01-01

    In most languages, most of the syntactic dependency relations found in any given sentence are PROJECTIVE: the word-word dependencies in the sentence do not cross each other. Some syntactic dependency relations, however, are NON-PROJECTIVE: some of their word-word dependencies cross each other. Non-projective dependencies are both rarer and more computationally complex than projective dependencies; hence, it is of natural interest to investigate whether there are any processing costs specific to non-projective dependencies, and whether factors known to influence processing of projective dependencies also affect non-projective dependency processing. We report three self-paced reading studies, together with corpus and sentence completion studies, investigating the comprehension difficulty associated with the non-projective dependencies created by the extraposition of relative clauses in English. We find that extraposition over either verbs or prepositional phrases creates comprehension difficulty, and that this difficulty is consistent with probabilistic syntactic expectations estimated from corpora. Furthermore, we find that manipulating the expectation that a given noun will have a postmodifying relative clause can modulate and even neutralize the difficulty associated with extraposition. Our experiments rule out accounts based purely on derivational complexity and/or dependency locality in terms of linear positioning. Our results demonstrate that comprehenders maintain probabilistic syntactic expectations that persist beyond projective-dependency structures, and suggest that it may be possible to explain observed patterns of comprehension difficulty associated with extraposition entirely through probabilistic expectations. PMID:22035959

  20. Using Literacy Coaching to Promote the Teaching and Learning of English Learners in Content Areas. CREATE Brief

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reutebuch, Colleen K.

    2012-01-01

    This brief describes the literacy coaching that was provided as part of the CREATE research project aimed at improving the teaching and learning of English learners in seventh-grade content areas. Coaching was intended to extend professional development and increase teacher capacity through multiple layers of support that included lesson…

  1. Engaging Students as Tutors, Trainers, and Leaders

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Derrick, Deirdre

    2015-01-01

    While starting a tutoring program may seem like a daunting and time-consuming task, it does not have to be. The best way to approach the creation and development of a tutoring service is with a list of clear objectives. In this article, the author describes the process she used to create a tutoring program with her English as a foreign language…

  2. "What Do I Teach for 90 Minutes?" Creating a Successful Block-Scheduled English Classroom.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Porter, Carol

    The story of the process that Mundelein High School (located in a northwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois) as it moved from a traditional schedule to a block schedule is described throughout this book as a way to blend theory with practice. The book addresses types of block schedules; key issues for effective preparation; professional development…

  3. The Quebec Sleep Questionnaire on quality of life in patients with obstructive sleep apnea: translation into Portuguese and cross-cultural adaptation for use in Brazil.

    PubMed

    Melo, José Tavares de; Maurici, Rosemeri; Tavares, Michelle Gonçalves de Souza; Pizzichini, Marcia Margareth Menezes; Pizzichini, Emilio

    2017-01-01

    To translate the Quebec Sleep Questionnaire (QSQ), a specific instrument for the assessment of quality of life in patients with sleep obstructive apnea, into Portuguese and to create a version that is cross-culturally adapted for use in Brazil. The Portuguese-language version was developed according to a rigorous methodology, which included the following steps: preparation; translation from English into Portuguese in three versions; reconciliation to a single version; back-translation of that version into English; comparison and harmonization of the back-translation with the original version; review of the Portuguese-language version; cognitive debriefing; text review; and arrival at the final version. The Portuguese-language version of the QSQ for use in Brazil had a clarity score, as measured by cognitive debriefing, ranging from 0.81 to 0.99, demonstrating the consistency of translation and cross-cultural adaptation processes. The process of translating the QSQ into Portuguese and creating a version that is cross-culturally adapted for use in Brazil produced a valid instrument to assess the quality of life in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

  4. The Quebec Sleep Questionnaire on quality of life in patients with obstructive sleep apnea: translation into Portuguese and cross-cultural adaptation for use in Brazil

    PubMed Central

    de Melo, José Tavares; Maurici, Rosemeri; Tavares, Michelle Gonçalves de Souza; Pizzichini, Marcia Margareth Menezes; Pizzichini, Emilio

    2017-01-01

    ABSTRACT Objective: To translate the Quebec Sleep Questionnaire (QSQ), a specific instrument for the assessment of quality of life in patients with sleep obstructive apnea, into Portuguese and to create a version that is cross-culturally adapted for use in Brazil. Methods: The Portuguese-language version was developed according to a rigorous methodology, which included the following steps: preparation; translation from English into Portuguese in three versions; reconciliation to a single version; back-translation of that version into English; comparison and harmonization of the back-translation with the original version; review of the Portuguese-language version; cognitive debriefing; text review; and arrival at the final version. Results: The Portuguese-language version of the QSQ for use in Brazil had a clarity score, as measured by cognitive debriefing, ranging from 0.81 to 0.99, demonstrating the consistency of translation and cross-cultural adaptation processes. Conclusions: The process of translating the QSQ into Portuguese and creating a version that is cross-culturally adapted for use in Brazil produced a valid instrument to assess the quality of life in patients with obstructive sleep apnea. PMID:28767769

  5. "Have You, My Little Serpents, a New Skin?" Transforming English Studies and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Easton, Lee; Hewson, Kelly

    2012-01-01

    King and Knight (2010) argue that English Studies' instructors must "articulate and develop their tacit assumptions [about English teaching] and create a discipline-grounded idiom for pedagogical research and reflection" (p. 323). We suggest that the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) invites English educators to reflect more…

  6. Community-Based English Clubs: English Practice and Social Change outside the Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Malu, Kathleen F.; Smedley, Bryce

    2016-01-01

    This article defines and provides a rationale for the creation of community-based English clubs. We offer strategies that individuals can use to create and sustain English clubs, and we suggest meeting activities that will engage members in conversations and potential community action on a range of topics such as democracy, gender equality, and…

  7. Redefining the "English" Major: Adding Strength to Strength

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Isip, J. D.

    2012-01-01

    Harvard served as a model for English Departments in the past and, with its 2008-2009 changes, it seems to take the mantle in providing yet another model. However, I propose a much more radical approach to creating an undergraduate "English" curriculum that does more than push the boundaries of traditional study of English literatures. I…

  8. A Case Study of Chinese College Students' Attitudes toward Only English-Medium Teaching in EFL Classrooms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yue, Sun; Ying, Wang; Jingxia, Liu

    2015-01-01

    Facing the current situation that Chinese students are poor in English productive ability, the mode of only English-medium teaching is put forward to completely improve students' English abilities and comprehensive competence by creating second language acquisition atmosphere. Since few studies have been conducted on students' attitudes toward…

  9. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Children: A Multinational Survey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vroom, Sara J.; Seaman, Alan A.

    2014-01-01

    One of the most significant trends in contemporary English language teaching is the dramatic increase in English as a foreign language (EFL) programs for younger children (ages 3-12) in school systems throughout the world. These programs have created special challenges for teachers who are nonnative English speakers (NNES). To document the…

  10. Implementing Oral English Language Acquisition Policy in Career and Technical Education Classes: Changing to a Social Pedagogy Paradigm

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crockett, Kelley E.

    2010-01-01

    Federal and state policies have long sought to address the social inequities faced by limited English proficient (LEP) students through the improvement of English language acquisition. English language acquisition policy has focused on access to resources, qualified teachers, and instructional methodologies (e.g. pedagogy) that create a learning…

  11. English Education Program Assessment: Creating Standards and Guidelines to Advance English Teacher Preparation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zancanella, Don; Alsup, Janet

    2010-01-01

    When someone uses the term "standards," one tends to assume the topic under discussion is K-12 education, but standards for teacher preparation have their own parallel history. In English teacher education, that history has two strands: the NCTE Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of English Language Arts, which predate the "standards…

  12. Selecting and Creating a Word List for English Language Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kwary, Deny A.; Jurianto

    2017-01-01

    Since the introduction of the General Service List (GSL) in 1953, a number of studies have confirmed the significant role of a word list, particularly GSL, in helping ESL students learn English. Given the recent development in technology, several researchers have created word lists, each of them claims to provide a better coverage of a text and a…

  13. Iconic Native Culture Cues Inhibit Second Language Production in a Non-immigrant Population: Evidence from Bengali-English Bilinguals.

    PubMed

    Roychoudhuri, Kesaban S; Prasad, Seema G; Mishra, Ramesh K

    2016-01-01

    We examined if iconic pictures belonging to one's native culture interfere with second language production in bilinguals in an object naming task. Bengali-English bilinguals named pictures in both L1 and L2 against iconic cultural images representing Bengali culture or neutral images. Participants named in both "Blocked" and "Mixed" language conditions. In both conditions, participants were significantly slower in naming in English when the background was an iconic Bengali culture picture than a neutral image. These data suggest that native language culture cues lead to activation of the L1 lexicon that competed against L2 words creating an interference. These results provide further support to earlier observations where such culture related interference has been observed in bilingual language production. We discuss the results in the context of cultural influence on the psycholinguistic processes in bilingual object naming.

  14. Supporting English-medium pedagogy through an online corpus of science and engineering lectures

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kunioshi, Nílson; Noguchi, Judy; Tojo, Kazuko; Hayashi, Hiroko

    2016-05-01

    As English-medium instruction (EMI) spreads around the world, university teachers and students who are non-native speakers of English (NNS) need to put much effort into the delivery or reception of content. Construction of scientific meaning in the process of learning is already complex when instruction is delivered in the first language of the teachers and students, and may become even more challenging in a second language, because science education depends greatly on language. In order to identify important pedagogical functions that teachers use to deliver content and to present different ways to realise each function, a corpus of lectures related to science and engineering courses was created and analysed. NNS teachers and students in science and engineering involved in EMI higher education can obtain insights for delivering and listening to lectures from the Online Corpus of Academic Lectures (OnCAL).

  15. Talker and accent variability effects on spoken word recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nyang, Edna E.; Rogers, Catherine L.; Nishi, Kanae

    2003-04-01

    A number of studies have shown that words in a list are recognized less accurately in noise and with longer response latencies when they are spoken by multiple talkers, rather than a single talker. These results have been interpreted as support for an exemplar-based model of speech perception, in which it is assumed that detailed information regarding the speaker's voice is preserved in memory and used in recognition, rather than being eliminated via normalization. In the present study, the effects of varying both accent and talker are investigated using lists of words spoken by (a) a single native English speaker, (b) six native English speakers, (c) three native English speakers and three Japanese-accented English speakers. Twelve /hVd/ words were mixed with multi-speaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios (+10, +5, and 0 dB) to create the word lists. Native English-speaking listeners' percent-correct recognition for words produced by native English speakers across the three talker conditions (single talker native, multi-talker native, and multi-talker mixed native and non-native) and three signal-to-noise ratios will be compared to determine whether sources of speaker variability other than voice alone add to the processing demands imposed by simple (i.e., single accent) speaker variability in spoken word recognition.

  16. Help! They Don't Speak English: Partnering Preservice Teachers with Adult English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hooks, Laura M.

    2008-01-01

    It is well documented that parent and family involvement in children's education correlates with success in school. The increasing number of English Language Learners in public schools has created a need for teacher educators to prepare preservice teachers to be able to work with families who have limited English. This study examined the outcomes…

  17. Let Social Interaction Flourish

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Case, Anny Fritzen

    2016-01-01

    The author describes lessons learned--through a high school project that grouped English language learners with native speakers to create a video--about ways to foster respectful, productive interaction among English learners and peers who are native speakers. The potential benefits of students who are just learning English interacting socially…

  18. Optimization of Multimedia English Teaching in Context Creation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yang, Weiyan; Fang, Fan

    2008-01-01

    Using multimedia to create a context to teach English has its unique advantages. This paper explores the characteristics of multimedia and integrates how to use multimedia to optimize the context of English teaching as its purpose. In this paper, eight principles, specifically Systematization, Authenticity, Appropriateness, Interactivity,…

  19. Project Activities as a Form of English Language Teaching Based on the Interdisciplinary Approach to Form Intercultural Communicative Competence

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Redchenko, Nadezhda N.

    2016-01-01

    The authors of this article suggest a thesis about the purpose of teaching a foreign language--it is student's communicative activities, i.e. learning a foreign language in practice. The teacher's task is to encourage activities of every student and to create situations to develop their creative activities in a learning process. New information…

  20. Cued Speech and the Development of Reading in English: Examining the Evidence

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Trezek, Beverly J.

    2017-01-01

    Even though Cued Speech has been a communication option for 50 years, it has not been widely adopted among users of English or in the country where it was created (i.e., the United States). This situation has led scholars and practitioners in the field of deafness to question whether the original intent of creating this system has been realized…

  1. The Oxford English Dictionary: A Brief History.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fritze, Ronald H.

    1989-01-01

    Reviews the development of English dictionaries in general and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in particular. The discussion covers the decision by the Philological Society to create the dictionary, the principles that guided its development, the involvement of James Augustus Henry Murray, the magnitude and progress of the project, and the…

  2. Creating Culturally Relevant Instructional Materials: A Swaziland Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Titone, Connie; Plummer, Emily C.; Kielar, Melissa A.

    2012-01-01

    In the field of English language learning, research proves that culturally relevant reading materials improve students' language acquisition, learning motivation, self-esteem, and identity formation. Since English is the language of instruction in many distant countries, such as Swaziland, even when English is not the native language of those…

  3. Learning the Language of Statistics: Challenges and Teaching Approaches

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dunn, Peter K.; Carey, Michael D.; Richardson, Alice M.; McDonald, Christine

    2016-01-01

    Learning statistics requires learning the language of statistics. Statistics draws upon words from general English, mathematical English, discipline-specific English and words used primarily in statistics. This leads to many linguistic challenges in teaching statistics and the way in which the language is used in statistics creates an extra layer…

  4. The Differences among Three-, Four-, and Five-Option-Item Formats in the Context of a High-Stakes English-Language Listening Test

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, HyeSun; Winke, Paula

    2013-01-01

    We adapted three practice College Scholastic Ability Tests (CSAT) of English listening, each with five-option items, to create four- and three-option versions by asking 73 Korean speakers or learners of English to eliminate the least plausible options in two rounds. Two hundred and sixty-four Korean high school English-language learners formed…

  5. "I'm Not Teaching English, I'm Teaching Something Else!": How New Teachers Create Curriculum under Mandates of Educational Reform

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Costigan, Arthur

    2018-01-01

    This study presents how beginning teachers create and teach an English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum in urban schools in the context of an educational reform movement driven by mandates such as Common Core State Standards (CCSS), high stakes tests, and prescribed curricula. They serve in schools with each using unique and individual curricula due…

  6. Application of Games in College English Teaching in China

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yang, Qiaoyan; Dixon, Virginia L.

    2015-01-01

    Games are an activity with rules, goals, and create fun (Hadfield, 2007). Games can stimulate learning and motivation, and students get very absorbed in games, some of which are suitable for college students in studying English as their second language. Appropriate use of games in college English teaching could help students eliminate the…

  7. Developing Visual Novel Game of English Conversation for DEP EEPIS

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Agusalim, Imam Dui

    2015-01-01

    English subjects become a big part of education curriculum in Indonesia taught from the elementary level, intermediate, and high included the Distance Learning (DEP). To meet the needs of the importance of English will require learning media can be: 1. Creating Independence learning; 2. Increase the motivation to learn; and 3. Improving the…

  8. Prosodic Transfer: From Chinese Lexical Tone to English Pitch Accent

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ploquin, Marie

    2013-01-01

    Chinese tones are associated with a syllable to convey meaning, English pitch accents are prominence markers associated with stressed syllables. As both are created by pitch modulation, their pitch contours can be quite similar. The experiment reported here examines whether native speakers of Chinese produce, when speaking English, the Chinese…

  9. A Framework for International Student Participation in Postsecondary U.S. English Language Programs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Colón, Valeriana

    2016-01-01

    Postsecondary English language education is a growing field in the United States. While there has been considerable research on international student mobility in higher education, there is limited research on the population's participation in U.S. English language programs (ELPs). This study examined literature in related fields to create a…

  10. Learning Sociolinguistically Appropriate Language through the Video Drama "Connect with English"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hwang, Caroline C.

    2005-01-01

    Video provides (1) simultaneous audio/visual input, and (2) complete and contextualized conversations, and thus proves to be a rich vehicle in foreign language instruction. The video drama "Connect with English" (a.k.a. "Rebecca's Dream"), created to promote English language learning, is particularly outstanding in that it contains an captivating…

  11. On Improving Text Readability by Creating a Personal Writing Style

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shen, Yuru

    2017-01-01

    English writing is one of the four indispensable skills that English learners need to master, but unfortunately, many Chinese college students have much difficulty composing clear, concise and coherent essays although they have studied English for at least over six years. To address the problem, the researchers and teachers in China have tried…

  12. Exploring problem solving strategies on multiple-choice science items: Comparing native Spanish-speaking English Language Learners and mainstream monolinguals

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kachchaf, Rachel Rae

    The purpose of this study was to compare how English language learners (ELLs) and monolingual English speakers solved multiple-choice items administered with and without a new form of testing accommodation---vignette illustration (VI). By incorporating theories from second language acquisition, bilingualism, and sociolinguistics, this study was able to gain more accurate and comprehensive input into the ways students interacted with items. This mixed methods study used verbal protocols to elicit the thinking processes of thirty-six native Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs), and 36 native-English speaking non-ELLs when solving multiple-choice science items. Results from both qualitative and quantitative analyses show that ELLs used a wider variety of actions oriented to making sense of the items than non-ELLs. In contrast, non-ELLs used more problem solving strategies than ELLs. There were no statistically significant differences in student performance based on the interaction of presence of illustration and linguistic status or the main effect of presence of illustration. However, there were significant differences based on the main effect of linguistic status. An interaction between the characteristics of the students, the items, and the illustrations indicates considerable heterogeneity in the ways in which students from both linguistic groups think about and respond to science test items. The results of this study speak to the need for more research involving ELLs in the process of test development to create test items that do not require ELLs to carry out significantly more actions to make sense of the item than monolingual students.

  13. Framework for Quality Professional Development for Practitioners Working with Adult English Language Learners. Revised

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Center for Adult English Language Acquisition, 2010

    2010-01-01

    The Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) Network, under contract with the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE), has created a framework that can be used to plan, implement, and evaluate professional development for practitioners working with adult English language learners at the state, regional, and program levels. The…

  14. Pilot Study on the Feasibility and Indicator Effects of Collaborative Online Projects on Science Learning for English Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Terrazas-Arellanes, Fatima E.; Knox, Carolyn; Walden, Emily

    2015-01-01

    The 2006 National Science Board called for new strategies and instructional materials for teachers to better serve English Learners' (EL) needs. Bilingual Collaborative Online Projects in science were created to assist ELs' construction of science knowledge, facilitate academic English acquisition, and improve science learning. Two bilingual…

  15. The Teachers' Choices Cognate Database for K-3 Teachers of Latino English Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Montelongo, José A.; Hernández, Anita C.

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of the present paper is to introduce the Teachers' Choices Cognate Database. English-Spanish cognates are words that are orthographically and semantically identical or nearly identical in both English and Spanish. To create this free online database, the cognates from every one of the 146 International Reading Association's…

  16. Discourse Functions and Vocabulary Use in English Language Learners' Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rabab'ah, Ghaleb

    2013-01-01

    This study explores the discourse generated by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners using synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) as an approach to help English language learners to create social interaction in the classroom. It investigates the impact of synchronous CMC mode on the quantity of total words, lexical range and…

  17. The Teaching of English in Public Primary Schools in Mexico: More Heat than Light?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ramírez-Romero, José Luis; Sayer, Peter

    2016-01-01

    The national English program in Mexico was formally launched in 2009. The new program supplanted various state programs, and aimed to create a coherent, uniform curriculum that extended English instruction to all public school students across the country. The article describes the development, evolution, and changes as the program was piloted and…

  18. The Short Readings Project: A CALL Reading Activity Utilizing Vocabulary Recycling

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Andrew; Heffernan, Neil

    2006-01-01

    In 2003 multimedia-based English Trailers (www.english-trailers.com) joined the vast array of web sites dedicated to language learning enabling students, either autonomously or in a CALL classroom, to study English via movie commercials. To assist students in comprehending 10 trailers found on the site, the authors created the Short Readings…

  19. Language Attitudes of Urban Disadvantaged Female Students in India: An Ethnographic Approach

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vaish, Viniti

    2008-01-01

    This paper qualitatively documents and analyses the attitudes and identities of female students from the urban disadvantaged social class towards English and Hindi in the city of New Delhi. These attitudes include not only instrumental views of English but also the impression that it creates a new personality for an individual. English is part of…

  20. Perspectives of Nurses on Patients With Limited English Proficiency and Their Call Light Use.

    PubMed

    Galinato, Jose; Montie, Mary; Shuman, Clayton; Patak, Lance; Titler, Marita

    2016-08-12

    Patients use call light systems to initiate communication with their health care team. Little is known how this process is affected when language barriers exist between an English-speaking nurse and a patient with limited English proficiency (LEP). The aims of this study are to describe (a) the perceptions of nurses regarding their communication with patients with LEP, (b) how call lights affect their communication with patients with LEP, and (c) the perceptions of nurses on the impact of advancement in call light technology on patients with LEP. Using focus groups, nurses were asked about their interactions with patients with LEP. The following themes emerged: barriers to communication, formal tools for communication, gestures and charades, reliance on family, creating a better call light system, and acceptability of Eloquence™. This results show that call lights affect the interaction of nurses with patients with LEP and complex issues arise in the subsequent communication that is initiated by the call light.

  1. Perspectives of Nurses on Patients With Limited English Proficiency and Their Call Light Use

    PubMed Central

    Galinato, Jose; Montie, Mary; Shuman, Clayton; Patak, Lance; Titler, Marita

    2016-01-01

    Patients use call light systems to initiate communication with their health care team. Little is known how this process is affected when language barriers exist between an English-speaking nurse and a patient with limited English proficiency (LEP). The aims of this study are to describe (a) the perceptions of nurses regarding their communication with patients with LEP, (b) how call lights affect their communication with patients with LEP, and (c) the perceptions of nurses on the impact of advancement in call light technology on patients with LEP. Using focus groups, nurses were asked about their interactions with patients with LEP. The following themes emerged: barriers to communication, formal tools for communication, gestures and charades, reliance on family, creating a better call light system, and acceptability of Eloquence™. This results show that call lights affect the interaction of nurses with patients with LEP and complex issues arise in the subsequent communication that is initiated by the call light. PMID:28393085

  2. The Creation of the English Hippocrates

    PubMed Central

    Anstey, Peter

    2011-01-01

    This article examines the process by which the London physician Thomas Sydenham (1624–89) rose to fame as the English Hippocrates in the late seventeenth century. It provides a survey of the evidence for the establishment of Sydenham’s reputation from his own writings, his professional relations, and the writings of his supporters and detractors. These sources reveal that in the first decades of his career Sydenham had few supporters and faced much opposition. However, by the end of the seventeenth century, Sydenham was the object of extraordinary outbursts of adulation and had become renowned for his decrying of hypotheses and speculative theory, his promotion of natural histories of disease, and the purported similarities between his medical method and that of Hippocrates. It is argued that Sydenham’s positive reputation owed little to his achievements in medicine: it was almost entirely the result of his promotion by the philosopher John Locke and a small group of sympathetic physicians. It was they who created the English Hippocrates. PMID:22025796

  3. The P3C2R+GIRD Paradigm of Creating a Reading Comprehension Lesson for EFL Students: From Conceptual Model to Model Lesson

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Karanjakwut, Chalermsup

    2017-01-01

    This academic article is aiming at creating a reading comprehension lesson with a new paradigm called the P3C2R+GIRD model developed by a 9-year-experience author in teaching English reading skill who always found that one of the problems of EFL students in learning English language is the lack of reading comprehension which is an important skill…

  4. An Evaluation of the English Immersion Approach in the Teaching of Finance in China

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zhou, Ruiqi

    2008-01-01

    The English immersion teaching approach adopted by SEIB of GDUFS in China was developed on the basis of the immersion theory which was originally developed in North America. Its purpose is to create a learning environment in which the students acquire knowledge in business with English as the main carrier. The adoption of this approach aims to…

  5. Using the SIOP Model to Promote the Acquisition of Language and Science Concepts with English Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Echevarria, Jana; Richards-Tutor, Catherine; Canges, Rebecca; Francis, David

    2011-01-01

    In this article we report findings from research through the Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE), a National Research and Development Center. In our study we examined the efficacy of a model of instruction for English learners, the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)…

  6. The Linguistic Landscape of International Students in English-Medium Master's Programmes at the University of Helsinki: Student Perceptions on the Use of English and Plurilingualism

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pitkänen, Kari K.; Siddall, Roy; Lehtonen, Tuula

    2013-01-01

    The internationalization of European higher education and the corresponding proliferation of international Master's degree programmes are creating plurilingual educational environments that potentially enhance linguistic diversity. However, there is concern that the focus on English as the sole medium of instruction in such programmes could have…

  7. A Blended-Learning Pedagogical Model for Teaching and Learning EFL Successfully through an Online Interactive Multimedia Environment

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Banados, Emerita

    2006-01-01

    Faced with the need to teach English to a large number of students, the "Universidad de Concepcion," Chile, has created an innovative Communicative English Program using ICT, which is made up of four modules covered in four academic terms. The English program aims to develop integrated linguistic skills with a focus on learning for…

  8. The Use of Prepositions in English as Lingua Franca Interactions: Corpus IST-Erasmus

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Önen, Serap

    2015-01-01

    The growth of English into a lingua franca has inevitably created linguistic deviations and innovations in the use of English. These emerging uses that result from the needs and preferences of speakers whose mother tongues are all different can be broadly identified as lexico-grammatical and pronunciation features and they compose one of the main…

  9. Creating Curriculum of English for Conservative Tourism for Junior Guides to Promote Tourist Attractions in Thailand

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wimontham, Onsiri

    2018-01-01

    This research was supported the research fund of 2017 by Office of the Higher Education Commission of Thailand. The objectives of this research are listed: (1) To form the model of teaching and learning English for local development by English curriculum (B. Ed.) students' participation in training on out-of-classroom learning management, which…

  10. Preparing English Learners for College and Career: Lessons from Successful High Schools. Language and Literacy Series

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Santos, Maria; Palacios, Martha Castellón; Cheuk, Tina; Greene, Rebecca; Mercado-Garcia, Diana; Zerkel, Lisa; Hakuta, Kenji; Skarin, Renae

    2018-01-01

    How do school communities create environments that fully prepare both English learners and dual-language learners for colleges and careers? This valuable book profiles six high-performing high schools that had a singular focus on improving the educational outcomes of English learners. The authors use these case studies to identify a comprehensive…

  11. Creating a Next-Generation System of K-12 English Learner Language Proficiency Assessments. Research Report. ETS RR-16-06

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hauck, Maurice Cogan; Wolf, Mikyung Kim; Mislevy, Robert

    2016-01-01

    This paper is the first in a series from Educational Testing Service (ETS) concerning English language proficiency (ELP) assessments for K-12 English learners (ELs). The goal of this paper, and the series, is to present research-based ideas, principles, and recommendations for consideration by those who are conceptualizing, developing, and…

  12. Creating an Avatar to Become a "Spect-Actor" of One's Learning of English for Specific Purposes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Privas-Bréauté, Virginie

    2016-01-01

    In this article, we shall examine why the creation of avatars in virtual worlds facilitates the learning of business English. We are committed to determining the factors that enable students in a French business school to consolidate their skills in English (from linguistic, socio-linguistic and pragmatic standpoints) and to develop more general…

  13. Semi-supervised word polarity identification in resource-lean languages.

    PubMed

    Dehdarbehbahani, Iman; Shakery, Azadeh; Faili, Heshaam

    2014-10-01

    Sentiment words, as fundamental constitutive parts of subjective sentences, have a substantial effect on analysis of opinions, emotions and beliefs. Most of the proposed methods for identifying the semantic orientations of words exploit rich linguistic resources such as WordNet, subjectivity corpora, or polarity tagged words. Shortage of such linguistic resources in resource-lean languages affects the performance of word polarity identification in these languages. In this paper, we present a method which exploits a language with rich subjectivity analysis resources (English) to identify the polarity of words in a resource-lean foreign language. The English WordNet and a sparse foreign WordNet infrastructure are used to create a heterogeneous, multilingual and weighted semantic network. To identify the semantic orientation of foreign words, a random walk based method is applied to the semantic network along with a set of automatically weighted English positive and negative seeds. In a post-processing phase, synonym and antonym relations in the foreign WordNet are used to filter the random walk results. Our experiments on English and Persian languages show that the proposed method can outperform state-of-the-art word polarity identification methods in both languages. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Shaving Bridges and Tuning Kitaraa: The Effect of Language Switching on Semantic Processing

    PubMed Central

    Hut, Suzanne C. A.; Leminen, Alina

    2017-01-01

    Language switching has been repeatedly found to be costly. Yet, there are reasons to believe that switches in language might benefit language comprehension in some groups of people, such as less proficient language learners. This study therefore investigated the interplay between language switching and semantic processing in groups with varying language proficiency. EEG was recorded while L2 learners of English with intermediate and high proficiency levels read semantically congruent or incongruent sentences in L2. Translations of congruent and incongruent target words were additionally presented in L1 to create intrasentential language switches. A control group of English native speakers was tested in order to compare responses to non-switched stimuli with those of L2 learners. An omnibus ANOVA including all groups revealed larger N400 responses for non-switched incongruent stimuli compared to congruent stimuli. Additionally, despite switches to L1 at target word position, semantic N400 responses were still elicited in both L2 learner groups. Further switching effects were reflected by an N400-like effect and a late positivity complex, pointing to possible parsing efforts after language switches. Our results therefore show that although language switches are associated with increased mental effort, switches may not necessarily be costly on the semantic level. This finding contributes to the ongoing discussion on language inhibition processes, and shows that, in these intermediate and high proficient L2 learners, semantic processes look similar to those of native speakers of English. PMID:28900402

  15. In a different voice: promises and trials of non-English medium journals

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Yew-Jin

    2015-12-01

    Various issues confronting science education publications that cater for non-English speaking audiences are explored. With reference to an English-medium journal that the author co-edits, two main conundrums are discussed: (1) How to serve local school practitioners in concrete ways while fulfilling the institutional goals of academia, and (2) the struggle to promote research from non-English speaking contexts against the hegemony of the English language. It is suggested that valuing difference can create much educational value and thereby allow one's science teaching to be interrogated, evolve, and maintain its relevancy.

  16. Development and initial validation of a computer-administered health literacy assessment in Spanish and English: FLIGHT/VIDAS.

    PubMed

    Ownby, Raymond L; Acevedo, Amarilis; Waldrop-Valverde, Drenna; Jacobs, Robin J; Caballero, Joshua; Davenport, Rosemary; Homs, Ana-Maria; Czaja, Sara J; Loewenstein, David

    2013-01-01

    Current measures of health literacy have been criticized on a number of grounds, including use of a limited range of content, development on small and atypical patient groups, and poor psychometric characteristics. In this paper, we report the development and preliminary validation of a new computer-administered and -scored health literacy measure addressing these limitations. Items in the measure reflect a wide range of content related to health promotion and maintenance as well as care for diseases. The development process has focused on creating a measure that will be useful in both Spanish and English, while not requiring substantial time for clinician training and individual administration and scoring. The items incorporate several formats, including questions based on brief videos, which allow for the assessment of listening comprehension and the skills related to obtaining information on the Internet. In this paper, we report the interim analyses detailing the initial development and pilot testing of the items (phase 1 of the project) in groups of Spanish and English speakers. We then describe phase 2, which included a second round of testing of the items, in new groups of Spanish and English speakers, and evaluation of the new measure's reliability and validity in relation to other measures. Data are presented that show that four scales (general health literacy, numeracy, conceptual knowledge, and listening comprehension), developed through a process of item and factor analyses, have significant relations to existing measures of health literacy.

  17. Factors that May Contribute to the Placement of Latino English Language Learners in Special Education: Perceptions of Directors of Special Education in California

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Alvarez, Dante

    2010-01-01

    The problem: Research indicates that Latino English language learners in California are placed in special education classes at a higher rate than other states. The factors that determine placement of Latino English learners such as language barriers, transiency, poverty, and teacher training may create challenges for Directors of Special…

  18. Teachers' Language Use in University Foreign Language Classrooms: A Qualitative Analysis of English and Target Language Alternation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Polio, Charlene G.; Duff, Patricia A.

    1994-01-01

    In a follow-up project, this study examined how and when six university language teachers actually used English and the target language in the classroom. Results suggest that switches to English may be made to help maintain classroom order, to create solidarity or empathy, to cover lack of experience or strategies, or to rephrase or modify their…

  19. Questioning the Long-Term English Learner Label: How Categorization Can Blind Us to Students' Abilities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Thompson, Karen D.

    2015-01-01

    Background/Context: The label long-term English learner (LTEL) is increasingly used to describe students who have been educated in the United States for many years but have not met criteria to be considered proficient in English. Though created to draw awareness to the unique needs of a particular group of students, the LTEL label has acquired…

  20. Thinking differently: working together for better care.

    PubMed

    Bolton, Patrick; Crilly, Hilary; Rivas, Ketty

    2015-06-01

    This paper describes the development and outcomes from 'joint working' between Prince of Wales Hospital and BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) in Australia. 'Joint working' is a term used within the English National Health Service to describe health system and industry partners working together to create novel service models which benefit patients. The joint working process broadened the perspective of both parties through learning from each other and so enhanced the range of tools they each bring to their work.

  1. Managing ISR sharing policies at the network edge using Controlled English

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Parizas, Christos; Pizzocaro, Diego; Preece, Alun; Zerfos, Petros

    2013-05-01

    In domains such as emergency response and military operations the sharing of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets among different coalition partners is regulated through policies. Traditionally, poli­ cies are created at the center of a coalitions network by high-level decision makers and expressed in low-level policy languages (e.g. Common Information Model SPL) by technical personnel, which makes them difficult to be understood by non-technical users at the edge of the network. Moreover, policies must often be modified by negotiation among coalition partners, typically in rapid response to the changing operational situation. Com­ monly, the users who must cope first with situational changes are those on the edge, so it would be very effective if they were able to create and negotiate policies themselves. We investigate the use of Controlled English (CE) as a means to define a policy representation that is both human-friendly and machine processable. We show how a CE model can capture a variety of policy types, including those based on a traditional asset ownership model, and those defining team-based asset sharing across a coalition. The use of CE is intended to benefit coalition networks by bridging the gap between technical and non-technical users in terms of policy creation and negoti­ ation, while at the same time being directly processable by a policy-checking system without transformation to any other technical representation.

  2. Talking Shop with Moira Runcie.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bowers, Rogers

    1998-01-01

    Presents an interview with Moira Runcie, Editorial Director for ELT (English Language Teaching) dictionaries at Oxford University Press. The interview focuses on the work of A.S. Hornby in creating the first learners dictionary of English and shows how modern dictionaries draw on his work. (Author/JL)

  3. Mandarin-English Bilinguals Process Lexical Tones in Newly Learned Words in Accordance with the Language Context.

    PubMed

    Quam, Carolyn; Creel, Sarah C

    2017-01-01

    Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like-not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context.

  4. Vygotskyan Theory Applied to Japanese-English Lexicography.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McCreary, Don R.

    This paper discusses and demonstrates the use of Vygotskyan psycholinguistic theory in creating lexical translations and exemplifying sentences for a bilingual dictionary. The dictionary is a Japanese-English scientific and technical reference. The use of one Vygotskyan concept, definition of situation, relies on the users' expectations, given…

  5. Mandarin-English Bilinguals Process Lexical Tones in Newly Learned Words in Accordance with the Language Context

    PubMed Central

    Quam, Carolyn; Creel, Sarah C.

    2017-01-01

    Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like—not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context. PMID:28076400

  6. Native language change during early stages of second language learning.

    PubMed

    Bice, Kinsey; Kroll, Judith F

    2015-11-11

    Research on proficient bilinguals has demonstrated that both languages are always active, even when only one is required. The coactivation of the two languages creates both competition and convergence, facilitating the processing of cognate words, but slowing lexical access when there is a requirement to engage control mechanisms to select the target language. Critically, these consequences are evident in the native language (L1) as well as in the second language (L2). The present study questioned whether L1 changes can be detected at early stages of L2 learning and how they are modulated by L2 proficiency. Native English speakers learning Spanish performed an English (L1) lexical decision task that included cognates while event-related potentials were recorded. They also performed verbal fluency, working memory, and inhibitory control tasks. A group of matched monolinguals performed the same tasks in English only. The results revealed that intermediate learners demonstrate a reduced N400 for cognates compared with noncognates in English (L1), and an emerging effect is visually present in beginning learners as well; however, no behavioral cognate effect was present for either group. In addition, slower reaction times in English (L1) are related to a larger cognate N400 magnitude in English (L1) and Spanish (L2), and to better inhibitory control for learners but not for monolinguals. The results suggest that contrary to the claim that L2 affects L1 only when L2 speakers are highly proficient, L2 learning begins to impact L1 early in the development of the L2 skill.

  7. Making the Most of Your Tutorial Session.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Barboza, Vicki Carter

    This document reports on a materials development project created for volunteer tutors in the English-In-Action (EIA) program of the Bechtel International Center at Stanford University. EIA provides foreign students, visiting scholars, and their spouses with the opportunity to improve their English language skills in an informal, conversational…

  8. A Professional Learning Community Approach to Improving English/Language Arts Instructional Planning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kotsko, Adrienne

    2017-01-01

    Simply defined, effective English Language Arts (ELA) instruction is cohesive, integrated, and requires students to think deeply. Creating such instruction is difficult, however, because of insufficient training in instructional planning and the numerous types of curricula teachers must navigate that may not align well. Therefore, new secondary…

  9. Developing an English Language Textbook Evaluation Checklist

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mukundan, Jayakaran; Hajimohammadi, Reza; Nimehchisalem, Vahid

    2011-01-01

    The paper describes the considerations that were taken into account in the development of a tentative English language textbook evaluation checklist. A brief review of the related literature precedes the crucial issues that should be considered in developing checklists. In the light of the previous evaluation checklists the developers created a…

  10. Model for Characterizing and Creating Certificate Programs in Technology-Specific Areas,

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1996-05-01

    the TOEFL for applicants whose first language is not English. • GRE general and subject test. • Demonstrated competency in <prerequisites for...least 2.75 • English competency as demonstrated by TOEFL • Competence in data structures • Introductory level course in software engineering Course

  11. A University Post-Entry English Language Assessment: Charting the Changes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Read, John; von Randow, Janet

    2013-01-01

    The increasingly diverse language backgrounds of their students are creating new challenges for English-medium universities. One response in Australian and New Zealand institutions has been to introduce post-entry language assessment (PELA) to identify incoming students who need to enhance their academic language ability. One successful example of…

  12. Competency Testing for Limited-English-Proficient Students.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gold, Norman C.

    The competency testing movement will yield few improvements in the schools and will create arbitrary barriers to progress for some students. Although it may stimulate educational improvement for limited-English-proficient (LEP) students, as for other students, by giving cohesion to the curriculum, guiding scarce resources for remediation,…

  13. Fostering Foreign Language Learning through Technology-Enhanced Intercultural Projects

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chen, Jen Jun; Yang, Shu Ching

    2014-01-01

    The main aim of learning English as an international language is to effectively communicate with people from other cultures. In Taiwan, learners have few opportunities to experience cross-cultural communication in English. To create an authentic EFL classroom, this one-year action research study carried out three collaborative intercultural…

  14. "Harry Potter" and the English Language Learner.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Coatney, Kathy

    2001-01-01

    Describes one teacher's success with using "Harry Potter" in a program to teach elementary school English language learners. Provides comprehension strategies incorporated to help learners understand the story. Highlights the importance of creating a classroom environment with a low level of anxiety, the implications of the program, and the value…

  15. Nigel: A Systemic Grammar for Text Generation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mann, William C.; Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M.

    This three-paper report describes Nigel, a large, programmed grammar of English which has been created in the framework of systemic linguistics begun by Halliday, and which, in addition to specifying functions and structures of English, has a novel semantic stratum which specifies the situations for use of each grammatical feature. The…

  16. Factors Underlying Second Language Reading Motivation of Adult EAP Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Komiyama, Reiko

    2013-01-01

    Characteristics of English for Academic Purposes students' second language (L2) motivation were examined by identifying underlying motivational factors. Using the motivation constructs created by first language reading researchers, a survey was developed and administered to 2,018 students from 53 English language programs in the U.S. Survey…

  17. Creating Bilingual Books to Facilitate Second Language Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Glazer, Morgan; Harris, Kara; Ost, Dottie; Gower, Mariah; Ceprano, Maria

    2017-01-01

    This article describes a pilot study conducted by teacher candidates (TCs) at an elementary level charter school in Buffalo, New York. The TCs, undergraduate and graduate level college students, enrolled in an English Language Arts/Social Studies methods course block, wrote bilingual English/Spanish information texts and used them in conjunction…

  18. Homepages: Built-in Motivation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McKenzie, Cheryl

    2000-01-01

    Describes a Web-building class aimed at motivating English-as-a-Foreign-Language students to improve their English writing and editing skills while building a homepage. All students had a basic or better knowledge of keyboarding and Internet search techniques, two had advanced computer skills, but none had ever created a homepage. (Author/VWL)

  19. An Examination of ESL Taiwanese University Students' Multimodal Reading Responses

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Hsiao-Chien

    2013-01-01

    This article reports an empirical study conducted in a Taiwanese English as a second language university class. Reader response theory is the theoretical framework guiding the study. Fifty-nine university students were encouraged to collaboratively create multimodal responses to a classic English reading. Taking an aesthetic reading stance, the…

  20. PC-assisted translation of photogrammetric papers

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Güthner, Karlheinz; Peipe, Jürgen

    A PC-based system for machine translation of photogrammetric papers from the English into the German language and vice versa is described. The computer-assisted translating process is not intended to create a perfect interpretation of a text but to produce a rough rendering of the content of a paper. Starting with the original text, a continuous data flow is effected into the translated version by means of hardware (scanner, personal computer, printer) and software (OCR, translation, word processing, DTP). An essential component of the system is a photogrammetric microdictionary which is being established at present. It is based on several sources, including e.g. the ISPRS Multilingual Dictionary.

  1. Cultural and linguistic adaptation of a multimedia colorectal cancer screening decision aid for Spanish-speaking Latinos.

    PubMed

    Ko, Linda K; Reuland, Daniel; Jolles, Monica; Clay, Rebecca; Pignone, Michael

    2014-01-01

    As the United States becomes more linguistically and culturally diverse, there is a need for effective health communication interventions that target diverse, vulnerable populations, including Latinos. To address such disparities, health communication interventionists often face the challenge to adapt existing interventions from English into Spanish in a way that retains essential elements of the original intervention while also addressing the linguistic needs and cultural perspectives of the target population. The authors describe the conceptual framework, context, rationale, methods, and findings of a formative research process used in creating a Spanish-language version of an evidence-based (English language) multimedia colorectal cancer screening decision aid. The multistep process included identification of essential elements of the existing intervention, literature review, assessment of the regional context and engagement of key stakeholders, and solicitation of direct input from target population. The authors integrated these findings in the creation of the new adapted intervention. They describe how they used this process to identify and integrate sociocultural themes such as personalism (personalismo), familism (familismo), fear (miedo), embarrassment (verguenza), power distance (respeto), machismo, and trust (confianza) into the Spanish-language decision aid.

  2. [Japanese learners' processing time for reading English relative clauses analyzed in relation to their English listening proficiency].

    PubMed

    Oyama, Yoshinori

    2011-06-01

    The present study examined Japanese university students' processing time for English subject and object relative clauses in relation to their English listening proficiency. In Analysis 1, the relation between English listening proficiency and reading span test scores was analyzed. The results showed that the high and low listening comprehension groups' reading span test scores do not differ. Analysis 2 investigated English listening proficiency and processing time for sentences with subject and object relative clauses. The results showed that reading the relative clause ending and the main verb section of a sentence with an object relative clause (such as "attacked" and "admitted" in the sentence "The reporter that the senator attacked admitted the error") takes less time for learners with high English listening scores than for learners with low English listening scores. In Analysis 3, English listening proficiency and comprehension accuracy for sentences with subject and object relative clauses were examined. The results showed no significant difference in comprehension accuracy between the high and low listening-comprehension groups. These results indicate that processing time for English relative clauses is related to the cognitive processes involved in listening comprehension, which requires immediate processing of syntactically complex audio information.

  3. Denudation of the continental shelf between Britain and France at the glacial–interglacial timescale

    PubMed Central

    Mellett, Claire L.; Hodgson, David M.; Plater, Andrew J.; Mauz, Barbara; Selby, Ian; Lang, Andreas

    2013-01-01

    The erosional morphology preserved at the sea bed in the eastern English Channel dominantly records denudation of the continental shelf by fluvial processes over multiple glacial–interglacial sea-level cycles rather than by catastrophic flooding through the Straits of Dover during the mid-Quaternary. Here, through the integration of multibeam bathymetry and shallow sub-bottom 2D seismic reflection profiles calibrated with vibrocore records, the first stratigraphic model of erosion and deposition on the eastern English Channel continental shelf is presented. Published Optical Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) and 14C ages were used to chronometrically constrain the stratigraphy and allow correlation of the continental shelf record with major climatic/sea-level periods. Five major erosion surfaces overlain by discrete sediment packages have been identified. The continental shelf in the eastern English Channel preserves a record of processes operating from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 to MIS 1. Planar and channelised erosion surfaces were formed by fluvial incision during lowstands or relative sea-level fall. The depth and lateral extent of incision was partly conditioned by underlying geology (rock type and tectonic structure), climatic conditions and changes in water and sediment discharge coupled to ice sheet dynamics and the drainage configuration of major rivers in Northwest Europe. Evidence for major erosion during or prior to MIS 6 is preserved. Fluvial sediments of MIS 2 age were identified within the Northern Palaeovalley, providing insights into the scale of erosion by normal fluvial regimes. Seismic and sedimentary facies indicate that deposition predominantly occurred during transgression when accommodation was created in palaeovalleys to allow discrete sediment bodies to form. Sediment reworking over multiple sea-level cycles (Saalian–Eemian–early Weichselian) by fluvial, coastal and marine processes created a multi-lateral, multi-storey succession of palaeovalley-fills that are preserved as a strath terrace. The data presented here reveal a composite erosional and depositional record that has undergone a high degree of reworking over multiple sea-level cycles leading to the preferential preservation of sediments associated with the most recent glacial–interglacial period. PMID:24748702

  4. Denudation of the continental shelf between Britain and France at the glacial-interglacial timescale.

    PubMed

    Mellett, Claire L; Hodgson, David M; Plater, Andrew J; Mauz, Barbara; Selby, Ian; Lang, Andreas

    2013-12-01

    The erosional morphology preserved at the sea bed in the eastern English Channel dominantly records denudation of the continental shelf by fluvial processes over multiple glacial-interglacial sea-level cycles rather than by catastrophic flooding through the Straits of Dover during the mid-Quaternary. Here, through the integration of multibeam bathymetry and shallow sub-bottom 2D seismic reflection profiles calibrated with vibrocore records, the first stratigraphic model of erosion and deposition on the eastern English Channel continental shelf is presented. Published Optical Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) and 14 C ages were used to chronometrically constrain the stratigraphy and allow correlation of the continental shelf record with major climatic/sea-level periods. Five major erosion surfaces overlain by discrete sediment packages have been identified. The continental shelf in the eastern English Channel preserves a record of processes operating from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 to MIS 1. Planar and channelised erosion surfaces were formed by fluvial incision during lowstands or relative sea-level fall. The depth and lateral extent of incision was partly conditioned by underlying geology (rock type and tectonic structure), climatic conditions and changes in water and sediment discharge coupled to ice sheet dynamics and the drainage configuration of major rivers in Northwest Europe. Evidence for major erosion during or prior to MIS 6 is preserved. Fluvial sediments of MIS 2 age were identified within the Northern Palaeovalley, providing insights into the scale of erosion by normal fluvial regimes. Seismic and sedimentary facies indicate that deposition predominantly occurred during transgression when accommodation was created in palaeovalleys to allow discrete sediment bodies to form. Sediment reworking over multiple sea-level cycles (Saalian-Eemian-early Weichselian) by fluvial, coastal and marine processes created a multi-lateral, multi-storey succession of palaeovalley-fills that are preserved as a strath terrace. The data presented here reveal a composite erosional and depositional record that has undergone a high degree of reworking over multiple sea-level cycles leading to the preferential preservation of sediments associated with the most recent glacial-interglacial period.

  5. Seattle to Spokane: Mapping Perceptions of English in Washington State

    PubMed Central

    Evans, Betsy E.

    2015-01-01

    This research explores perceptions of linguistic variation in English in Washington state (WA). Respondents marked on a map of WA the places where they believe people’s English sounds “different” and provided a label for that type of English. The analysis of the results used digital tools to create composite maps consisting of (1) respondents’ spatial perceptions of English in WA, (2) spatial perceptions of English in WA according to different demographic groups, and (3) affective values associated with regions identified by respondents. The results suggest that Washingtonians perceive that urban areas and eastern WA are places where English is different. The results also demonstrate that when respondents are surveyed about variation within their own state rather than variation across the country, local types of organizational categories, such as an urban/rural dichotomy or belief in a regional standard, can emerge. PMID:25892828

  6. Music reading expertise modulates hemispheric lateralization in English word processing but not in Chinese character processing.

    PubMed

    Li, Sara Tze Kwan; Hsiao, Janet Hui-Wen

    2018-07-01

    Music notation and English word reading both involve mapping horizontally arranged visual components to components in sound, in contrast to reading in logographic languages such as Chinese. Accordingly, music-reading expertise may influence English word processing more than Chinese character processing. Here we showed that musicians named English words significantly faster than non-musicians when words were presented in the left visual field/right hemisphere (RH) or the center position, suggesting an advantage of RH processing due to music reading experience. This effect was not observed in Chinese character naming. A follow-up ERP study showed that in a sequential matching task, musicians had reduced RH N170 responses to English non-words under the processing of musical segments as compared with non-musicians, suggesting a shared visual processing mechanism in the RH between music notation and English non-word reading. This shared mechanism may be related to the letter-by-letter, serial visual processing that characterizes RH English word recognition (e.g., Lavidor & Ellis, 2001), which may consequently facilitate English word processing in the RH in musicians. Thus, music reading experience may have differential influences on the processing of different languages, depending on their similarities in the cognitive processes involved. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  7. Pausing, Preceding and Following "That" in English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bada, Erdogan

    2006-01-01

    While reading or speaking, individuals break up sentences into "meaningful chunks." This is true of any individual with any language background. Failure to do so, in an L2 context, leads to idiosyncrasies, and may possibly create some comprehensibility problems. In this study, native and non-native speakers of English read an authentic text into a…

  8. Unveiling Pre-Service Language Teachers' Conceptualizations of Teachers of English through Metaphors

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kavanoz, Suzan

    2016-01-01

    The present research aimed at conducting an analysis of metaphors Turkish pre-service language teachers generated about English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers. This study also examined whether and how the metaphors created by teacher candidates at different phases of their education demonstrated variation. The data gathered from 94…

  9. Reaching a Culturally Diverse Immigrant Population of Adult English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Joan; Owen, Linda

    2013-01-01

    Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) is a framework to help adult English as a second language (ESL) educators renovate their practices into effective, culturally responsive programs, readily accessible to adult learners. Four CRT strategies that can be used include (a) validation through caring, (b) valuing cultural experiences, (c) creating a…

  10. CLIL Teacher Professional Development for Content Teachers in Thailand

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kewara, Punwalai; Prabjandee, Denchai

    2018-01-01

    In Thailand, the new educational policy is mandated to encourage content teachers to integrate English in content classrooms. The policy has created tensions and misconceptions among content teachers, who must change the medium of instruction from Thai to English. This paper presents an attempt to foster teacher knowledge about the Content and…

  11. Creating and Sustaining Inclusive Instructional Settings for English Language Learners: Why, What, and How

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    López, Francesca; Iribarren, Jacqueline

    2014-01-01

    In this article, we provide an empirically based framework for school leaders to support the replacement of separate means of providing services for English learners (ELs) with more inclusive learning supports. The framework encompasses evidence on cultivating language proficiency, ensuring access to a high-quality curriculum, and promoting…

  12. Educating English Language Learners: Instructional Approaches and Teacher Collaboration in Philadelphia Public Schools. PERC Research Brief

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reumann-Moore, Rebecca; Rowland, Jeannette; Hughes, Rosemary; Lin, Joshua

    2016-01-01

    Districts, charter management organizations, and individual schools can learn a great deal from each other about strategies for creating robust and supportive learning environments for English Language Learners (ELLS). This brief highlights key findings about how Philadelphia public schools were crafting instructional approaches to serve their…

  13. "Lunch Keeps People Apart": The Role of English for Social Interaction in a Multilingual Academic Workplace

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Negretti, Raffaella; Garcia-Yeste, Miguel

    2015-01-01

    Research on the role of language in multilingual workplaces, where English is often adopted as a lingua franca (ELF), shows that language practices influence socialization and interpersonal communication, frequently creating issues such as asymmetrical sharing of information, language clusters, or thin communication. Similarly to other…

  14. Swedish or English? Migrants' Experiences of the Exchangeability of Language Resources

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Henry, Alastair

    2016-01-01

    Patterns of transmigration emerging as a consequence of globalization are creating new and complex markets for communicative resources in which languages and language varieties are differently valued. In a Swedish context, where lingua franca English can facilitate communication but where monolingual norms prevail and Swedish is positioned as the…

  15. A Mandarin/English Two-Way Immersion Program: Language Proficiency and Academic Achievement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Padilla, Amado M.; Fan, Lorraine; Xu, Xiaoqiu; Silva, Duarte

    2013-01-01

    A Mandarin/English two-way immersion elementary program is described from its inception and implementation through the fifth grade, the culminating year of the program. All students in all grades were assessed on their oral/listening, reading, and writing performance in Mandarin using program-created assessment measures. Fifth-grade students also…

  16. Spanish Picture Books: An Annotated Bibliography with Activities for Teaching Writing.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ritter, Melissa G.

    With the growing numbers of English language learners in the schools, more and more educators are creating bilingual programs and opportunities for students to learn in their native languages while also perfecting their English skills. Writing is integral to these approaches, and learning to write well in Spanish often contributes to academic…

  17. Beyond Standards: Excellence in the High School English Classroom.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jago, Carol

    Each student is capable of achieving excellence, but it requires a nurturing, vigorous classroom environment. To help current and future high school English teachers create and maintain this kind of environment, this book offers concrete ways to reconceive what it means to foster excellent performance in the classroom and vivid examples of student…

  18. Beginning Generalist Teacher Self-Efficacy for Music Compared with Maths and English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garvis, Susanne

    2013-01-01

    In 2008, 201 beginning generalist teachers throughout Queensland, Australia, responded to a questionnaire intended to create a snapshot of current self-efficacy beliefs towards teaching music. Beginning teachers were asked to rank their perceived level of teacher self-efficacy for music, English and maths. Results were analysed through a series of…

  19. Teacher Education and Teacher Autonomy: Creating Spaces for Experimentation in Secondary School English Language Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Benson, Phil

    2010-01-01

    This article reports on a collective case study of four Hong Kong secondary school teachers' experiences of constraints on teacher autonomy in English language teaching, and their implications for teacher education. Findings suggested that the constraints were systemic and mainly organized around "Schemes of Work" and school-based…

  20. Culturally Inclusive Dance: Working with Chinese English Language Learners in the Dance Technique Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Jamie A.

    2018-01-01

    Higher education is experiencing rapidly shifting demographics brought about by the expanding global economy. The influx of English Language Learners (ELLs) into U.S. dance classrooms is creating a shifting paradigm for students and instructors. According to Beth McMurtrie (2012), universities with increasing international enrollments recognize…

  1. Sociological Implications of English as an International Language in Music Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kertz-Welzel, Alexandra

    2016-01-01

    Internationalization and globalization have created a global music education community which is not only linked by similar ideas, but also shares a common language. English functions as a global language and facilitates the international discourse in music education. While it is good to have a common language supporting international dialogue, it…

  2. Staff Development Workshops for High School Science Teachers of Limited English Proficient Students 1988-89.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Berney, Tomi D.; Cantalupo, Denise

    The staff development workshops for high school science teachers of Limited English Proficient (LEP) Students program are described. The project provided services which involved: creating a resource library, collecting videotaped records of the staff development workshops for future training sessions, disseminating information and materials, and…

  3. Assessment and Accommodations for English Language Learners: Issues and Recommendations. CRESST Policy Brief 4, Summer 2001.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Abedi, Jamal

    This policy brief addresses the inclusion of English language learners (ELLs) in large-scale assessments and ELL assessment accommodations. The inclusion of ELL students creates specific accountability policy challenges. States differ in the students they include and their inclusion policies and accommodation practices, and, at present, inclusion…

  4. Exploration of Open Educational Resources in Non-English Speaking Communities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cobo, Cristobal

    2013-01-01

    Over the last decade, open educational resources (OER) initiatives have created new possibilities for knowledge-sharing practices. This research examines how, where, and when OER are attracting attention in the higher education sector and explores to what extent the OER discussion has moved beyond the English-speaking world. This study analysed…

  5. Creating Inclusive Learning Communities through English Language Arts: From "Chanclas" to "Canicas."

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Franquiz, Maria E.; Reyes, Maria de la Luz

    1998-01-01

    Offers examples of exemplary classroom practice to address the issue of whether English language arts teachers can teach effectively if they are not fluent in the languages students speak. Discusses acts of inclusion (such as raising language status, and having flexible language boundaries), codeswitching as a resource, language choice and…

  6. Setting the Standard for Challenge: Teaching English in Dimen, China

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Weick, Cynthia W.; Costigan, Samuel J.; Cunningham, Lindsey J.; Zeiser, Shelly R.; Camp-Bell, Jackson A.; Feliz, Michael C.; Iversen, Jennifer. M.; Kobayashi, Alison L.; Matej, Madelaine A.; Motoyasu, Colleen T.; Teague, Kathryn E.; Wong, Sarah A.

    2015-01-01

    Travelling from Hong Kong to Dimen, China, requires a full day. Creating and implementing an original course to teach English as a foreign language in rural China offered to some of the university's most talented undergraduates the opportunity to integrate hands-on learning with scholarship, cross-cultural understanding, and community service. At…

  7. Providing Guided Practice in Discourse Synthesis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Numrich, Carol; Kennedy, Alan S.

    2017-01-01

    In this article, the authors discuss the importance of the skill of synthesis in university-level writing. They outline specific challenges faced by students of English as a second language with synthesis as a writing skill. They then describe a lesson that they created for an English for academic purposes class for graduate students in the field…

  8. Improving Learners' Vocabulary through Strategy Training and Recycling the Target Words

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Akin, Ayse; Seferoglu, Golge

    2004-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine whether an approach combining creating strategy awareness and recycling words will result in better vocabulary learning (delayed recall) of selected words than teaching vocabulary following the course book alone, for intermediate level English language learners. Two English language classes, a total of 51…

  9. An Uncommon Language: The Multicultural Making of American English.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carnes, Jim

    1994-01-01

    This article explains the use of the origins of American English and the dictionary to teach multiculturalism to elementary school students. It suggests classroom activities that help students explore the cultural roots behind words and appreciate the ways words have been created. Esperanto and the development of an international language are also…

  10. The Causes and Effects of English Teachers' Turnover: A Case from Afghanistan

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Khawary, Omidullah; Ali, Sajid

    2015-01-01

    One of the challenging issues that educational organizations in developing countries face in staffing classrooms with qualified teachers is the high rate of teachers' turnover. It creates problems for schools, which eventually leads to substandard instruction and low student achievement. This research explores the causes of English teachers'…

  11. Race and TESOL: Introduction to Concepts and Theories

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kubota, Ryuko; Lin, Angel

    2006-01-01

    The field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) brings people from various racialized backgrounds together in teaching, learning, and research. The idea of race, racialization, and racism are inescapable topics that arise in the contact zones created by teaching English worldwide and thus are valid topics to explore in the…

  12. Multiliteracies Pedagogy: Creating Claymations with Adolescent, Post-Beginner English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hepple, Erika; Sockhill, Margaret; Tan, Ashley; Alford, Jennifer

    2014-01-01

    In addressing literacy in high school education, it is important to foreground the particular issues faced by growing numbers of English Language Learners (ELLs). In our increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, this is a matter for all literacy teachers, as well as ELL specialists. In Australia, teachers of ELLs are…

  13. Invited Colloquium: Inclusivity in French Second Language Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kennedy, Sara

    2015-01-01

    The aim of this bilingual (French/English) symposium was to inform researchers and teacher educators about the specific challenges faced by second language (L2) students and teachers in creating an inclusive L2 classroom in order to encourage plurilingual, non-English-dominant students and students with learning difficulties to succeed. In the…

  14. Making Sense of Critical Pedagogy in L2 Education through a Collaborative Study Group (Dándole sentido a la pedagogía crítica en la educación en L2 a través de un grupo de estudio colaborativo)

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Echeverri Sucerquia, Paula Andrea; Pérez Restrepo, Sebastián

    2014-01-01

    In this article we discuss our experiences in the process of understanding critical pedagogy within an English teachers' study group which was created for the purpose of learning how to teach language from a critical perspective. We particularly focus on the challenges of meaning making around critical pedagogy, as we realized that we were not all…

  15. Resisting Assimilation: Deliberate Acculturation by the American English Language Learner

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schultz, Lyndsie

    2016-01-01

    Education policy has historically been viewed as having an influential part in crafting the roles of immigrants in American society. However, while policy makers continue to push their own agendas on English language learners (ELLs), ELLs continue to push back to create their own sense of what it means be an American. This article analyzes how…

  16. Mainstream Teachers' Implicit Beliefs about English Language Learners: An Implicit Association Test Study of Teacher Beliefs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harrison, Jamie; Lakin, Joni

    2018-01-01

    Teacher attitudes toward inclusion of English Learners (ELs) in the mainstream classroom have primarily focused on explicit beliefs as accessed through observation, case studies, and self-report surveys. The authors explore implicit mainstream teacher beliefs about ELs using the newly created Implicit Association Test-EL, with correlations to…

  17. Development and Use of an EFL Reading Practice Application for an Android Tablet Computer

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ishikawa, Yasushige; Smith, Craig; Kondo, Mutsumi; Akano, Ichiro; Maher, Kate; Wada, Norihisa

    2014-01-01

    This paper reports on the use of an English-language reading practice application for an Android tablet computer with students who are not native speakers of English. The application materials for vocabulary learning in reading-passage contexts were created to include words from a database of low-frequency and technical noun-verb collocations…

  18. Teachers as Designers: Social Design Experiments as Vehicles for Developing Antideficit English Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fowler-Amato, Michelle; Warrington, Amber

    2017-01-01

    In this article, we explore data from two studies that demonstrate how inviting teachers to take on the role of codesigners of interventions in social design experiments created opportunities for them to consider their own positionality and privilege as well as negotiate deficit and antideficit discourses underlying and shaping English-language…

  19. Study of Sinhalizations in Sinhala-English Mixed Discourse

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Senaratne, Chamindi Dilkushi

    2014-01-01

    Pronunciation plays a vital role in creating a language acceptable to all. This is also true in the case of Sri Lankan English (hereafter SLE). This study concentrates mainly on the phonological features of non-standard SLE, identified mainly by deviations in pronunciation of a few vowels and consonants. The objective of this paper is to analyze…

  20. What School Leaders Need to Know about English Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dormer, Jan Edwards

    2016-01-01

    School leaders have the unique opportunity and responsibility to play a crucial role in creating a culture of high expectations and an environment of support so that ELLs can succeed and continue to enrich the fabric of our country. "What School Leaders Need to Know About English Learners" offers school leaders the foundation, the ideas,…

  1. Learning Together: Creating a Community of Practice to Support English Language Learner Literacy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Peercy, Megan Madigan; Martin-Beltran, Melinda; Daniel, Shannon M.

    2013-01-01

    This qualitative case study examines an after-school, bilingual family literacy programme that brought together several groups to form a community of practice (CoP) that worked to support the literacy development of English language learners and their families. We explored the following question: How do parents, teachers, students, and other…

  2. Designing Bilingual Scenarios to Promote English Language Learning at a Public School in Monteria

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Romero, Yanilis; Manjarres, Milton Pájaro

    2016-01-01

    This research study examines the assumptions of creating bilingual scenarios to promote English language learning for 384 students of ninth, tenth and eleventh grade of a public school in Monteria Colombia. An action research methodology was carried out in this study. The findings of this research suggested that the creation of bilingual scenarios…

  3. Informed Choice? The New English Student Funding System and Widening Participation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Adnett, Nick; Tlupova, Diana

    2008-01-01

    The new English system of student finance seeks to resolve a higher education policy trilemma created by government's desire to switch more of the costs on to students, whilst seeking to promote both increased and widening participation. The rationale for this new funding system is based upon orthodox economic analysis which, the authors argue,…

  4. Computer-Assisted Detection of 90% of EFL Student Errors

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harvey-Scholes, Calum

    2018-01-01

    Software can facilitate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' self-correction of their free-form writing by detecting errors; this article examines the proportion of errors which software can detect. A corpus of 13,644 words of written English was created, comprising 90 compositions written by Spanish-speaking students at levels A2-B2…

  5. Internet Technology-Based Projects in Learning and Teaching English as a Foreign Language at Yakutsk State University

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zamorshchikova, Lena; Egorova, Olga; Popova, Marina

    2011-01-01

    This paper discusses recent uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in fostering Internet-based projects for learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at the Faculty of Foreign Languages in Yakutsk State University, Russia. It covers the authors' experiences integrating distance education and creating educational resources…

  6. Effects of a Transnational Teaching Program in the Development of Cultural Critical Consciousness

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garcia-Paine, Jose M.

    2011-01-01

    The United States has been experiencing an ever-growing increase in the last few decades of English Language Learner students (ELLs) whose primary language is Spanish and who are of Mexican descent. At the same time, the teaching force in the country remains strongly homogeneously White, English-speaking, and female. This creates an inequitable…

  7. Answering the Knock of Opportunity: Addressing the Data Needs for California's English Learners. Policy Brief

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Perez, Maria; Shambaugh, Larisa S.; Parrish, Tom

    2008-01-01

    California currently faces an opportunity to develop an effective data system that can assist in improving the state's future understanding of the educational progress of English learners (ELs). This policy brief outlines the needs for good data on ELs and makes recommendations for creating an effective longitudinal data system for ELs. It…

  8. The Power of the Sketch(Book): Reflections from High School English Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Leigh, S. Rebecca

    2012-01-01

    This paper explores the potential of sketchbooks as a pathway for developing ideas for writing in high school English classrooms. This paper examines how shifting between drawing and writing impacts students' ability to develop ideas for writing and create meaningful texts. Specifically, this paper explores four types of visual sign making that…

  9. Foreign Language Learning in Primary School: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wiggins, Meg; Parrao, Constanza Gonzalez; Austerberry, Helen; Ingold, Anne

    2017-01-01

    The Foreign Language Learning (FLL) programme aimed to improve the English language attainment of Year 3 and 4 pupils through a detailed curriculum of weekly French classes with linked activity in English lessons. The programme, created by the Education Development Trust (formerly CfBT), lasted for three half-terms. French classes were 45 minutes…

  10. Iranian English Language Teachers' Views of Research: Implications for Policy and Practice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sadeghi, Karim; Abutorabi, Parviz

    2017-01-01

    Understanding teachers' conceptions of research is fundamental to creating opportunities for teachers to be research-engaged and to take a more leading role in policy and curriculum development. This study investigated the views of Iranian English language teachers towards research by examining their conceptions of what research is, how often they…

  11. "Promiscuous Crowd of English Smatterers": The "Poor" in the Colonial and Nationalist Discourse on Education in India, 1835-1912

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rao, Parimala V.

    2013-01-01

    The encounter between the pre-colonial education system in India, dominated by poor teachers and students, and the British education system, which defended and perpetuated the "English class system", created a complex and problematic relationship. This article explores this problematic relationship between poverty and education in the…

  12. Comparing Ease-of-Processing Values of the Same Set of Words for Native English Speakers and Japanese Learners of English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Takashima, Hiroomi

    2009-01-01

    Ease of processing of 3,969 English words for native speakers and Japanese learners was investigated using lexical decision and naming latencies taken from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al. The English Lexicon Project: A web-based repository of descriptive and behavioral measures for 40,481 English words and nonwords, 2002) and accuracy…

  13. Vascular surgical data registries for small computers.

    PubMed

    Kaufman, J L; Rosenberg, N

    1984-08-01

    Recent designs for computer-based vascular surgical registries and clinical data bases have employed large centralized systems with formal programming and mass storage. Small computers, of the types created for office use or for word processing, now contain sufficient speed and memory storage capacity to allow construction of decentralized office-based registries. Using a standardized dictionary of terms and a method of data organization adapted to word processing, we have created a new vascular surgery data registry, "VASREG." Data files are organized without programming, and a limited number of powerful logical statements in English are used for sorting. The capacity is 25,000 records with current inexpensive memory technology. VASREG is adaptable to computers made by a variety of manufacturers, and interface programs are available for conversion of the word processor formated registry data into forms suitable for analysis by programs written in a standard programming language. This is a low-cost clinical data registry available to any physician. With a standardized dictionary, preparation of regional and national statistical summaries may be facilitated.

  14. Perspective: publication ethics and the emerging scientific workforce: understanding "plagiarism" in a global context.

    PubMed

    Cameron, Carrie; Zhao, Hui; McHugh, Michelle K

    2012-01-01

    English has long been the dominant language of scientific publication, and it is rapidly approaching near-complete hegemony. The majority of the scientists publishing in English-language journals are not native English speakers, however. This imbalance has important implications for training concerning ethics and enforcement of publication standards, particularly with respect to plagiarism. The authors suggest that lack of understanding of what constitutes plagiarism and the use of a linguistic support strategy known as "patchwriting" can lead to inadvertent misuse of source material by nonnative speakers writing in English as well as to unfounded accusations of intentional scientific misconduct on the part of these authors. They propose that a rational and well-informed dialogue about this issue is needed among editors, educators, administrators, and both native-English-speaking and nonnative-English-speaking writers. They offer recommendations for creating environments in which such dialogue and training can occur.

  15. Evaluation and comparison of epidural analgesia in labour related information on French and English-speaking websites.

    PubMed

    Espitalier, Fabien; De Lamer, Sabine; Barbaz, Mathilde; Laffon, Marc; Remérand, Francis

    2018-01-31

    The medical information on the Internet is better in English than in other languages. The information about Epidural Analgesia In Labour (EAIL) available on French-speaking websites is of poor quality. The quality of the information about EAIL should be better in English, but there is no comparison available. This study has assessed and compared the quality of the information about EAIL available on French and English-speaking websites. Keywords "epidural", "épidurale" and/or "péridurale" were used in the French, Canadian and American Google ® and Yahoo ® search engines. Two independent assessors assessed the 20 first websites for each engine search. They used an evaluation form created from French, Canadian and American recommendations. This form assessed the structure quality (Structure Score/25) and the medical information quality (Medical Information Score/30) of the websites. The addition of both scores gives the Global Score (/55). Seventy-one websites were assessed, 39 French-speaking and 32 English-speaking websites. Structure, Medical Information and Global Scores (expressed as mean (SD)) were respectively 11 (4), 13 (5), 24 (8) for the French-speaking websites and 11 (4), 12 (4), 23 (7) for the English-speaking websites. There was no statistical significant difference between both languages. Information about EAIL available on French and English-speaking websites is of poor quality and there is no difference in the information quality, whatever the language. A consideration on Internet medical information improvement is needed. A high quality dedicated website should be created and broadcasted. Copyright © 2018 Société française d'anesthésie et de réanimation (Sfar). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  16. Parent Involvement: "The Key to Quality Education."

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Martinez, Jesus

    The paper briefly describes Project PADRES (Parents and Auxiliary Development Resources in Education Services), a program designed to create a partnership between parents and school representatives in order to improve educational services to limited English proficient students; and discusses parent involvement with the school. To create the…

  17. Development and Use of an EFL Reading Practice Application for an Android Tablet Computer

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ishikawa, Yasushige; Smith, Craig; Kondo, Mutsumi; Akano, Ichiro; Maher, Kate; Wada, Norihisa

    2013-01-01

    This paper reports on the use of an English-language reading practice application for an android tablet computer operating system with students who are not native speakers of English. The application materials for vocabulary learning in reading-passage contexts were created to include words from a database of low-frequency and technical noun-verb…

  18. The Placement of Secondary School Students with Statements of Special Educational Needs in the More Diversified System of English Secondary Schooling

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Norwich, Brahm; Black, Alison

    2015-01-01

    This article examines the pattern of placement of students with significant special educational needs at Statement and School Action Plus levels in English secondary schools, comparing sponsored and converter academies, maintained schools and the newly created free schools, studio schools and university technical colleges for 2013 and 2014. The…

  19. The Effect of Context on Iranian EFL Students' Amount of Speech Production of English Language and Their Ways of Using Hedging Devices

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mostofee, Saheb; Pour, Samane Raeis

    2016-01-01

    Socioculturally and sociolinguistically, gender can have a profound effect on learning and teaching English language as a foreign language. Also learning cooperatively in which both female and male students are involved seems to play a constructive role in creating and enhancing students' performance, achievement and competence of a foreign…

  20. The Bilingual Program in Auxiliary Services for High Schools, 1982-1983. O.E.E. Evaluation Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lehman, Sheila; Schulman, Robert

    In 1982-83, this program provided instruction in English as a Second Language and bilingual instruction in four content areas to 1,690 Spanish, Chinese, Haitian, Greek, and Italian students of limited English proficiency (LEP) at eight daytime and eight evening learning centers located at 15 different sites throughout New York City. Created in…

  1. Using Collaborative Filtering to Support College Students' Use of Online Forum for English Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wang, Pei-Yu; Yang, Hui-Chun

    2012-01-01

    This study examined the impact of collaborative filtering (the so-called recommender) on college students' use of an online forum for English learning. The forum was created with an open-source software, Drupal, and its extended recommender module. This study was guided by three main questions: 1) Is there any difference in online behaviors…

  2. Rights in Education and Self-Identity: Education and Language of Instruction in Namibia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chavez, Andres

    2016-01-01

    In 1992, the Ministry of Education and Culture in Namibia created a new language policy for schools that presented the possibility of using English as the sole medium of instruction for students starting in Grade 1. The resulting increase in schools that offer only English instruction has been detrimental to education. In order to improve the…

  3. The Power of Story: Using Personal Narrative, Computer Technology and Podcasting with Young Adult English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pierson, Susan Jacques

    2014-01-01

    One way to ensure a high quality, personalized literacy program for English language learners is to use the learners' own lives and experiences as curriculum. Creating spaces for students to compose and share stories results in a strong sense of community facilitates the development of authentic literacy skills and increases student motivation and…

  4. Great Beginnings: Reflections and Advice for New English Language Arts Teachers and the People Who Mentor Them. Conference on English Leadership Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hayes, Ira, Ed.

    Intended for teacher educators, beginning teachers, classroom leaders, and administrators, this essay collection offers practical advice on topics such as evaluating student writing and creating support systems for beginning teachers. The essays discuss how the "real world" of teaching matches--or fails to match--novice teachers'…

  5. Automated Scoring of Speaking Tasks in the Test of English-for-Teaching ("TEFT"™). Research Report. ETS RR-15-31

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zechner, Klaus; Chen, Lei; Davis, Larry; Evanini, Keelan; Lee, Chong Min; Leong, Chee Wee; Wang, Xinhao; Yoon, Su-Youn

    2015-01-01

    This research report presents a summary of research and development efforts devoted to creating scoring models for automatically scoring spoken item responses of a pilot administration of the Test of English-for-Teaching ("TEFT"™) within the "ELTeach"™ framework.The test consists of items for all four language modalities:…

  6. Composing a Narrative Story in a Third Language: Multilinguals' Reliance on Multiple Languages in an L3 Linguistic Task

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pap, Emese Boksay

    2016-01-01

    This paper reports on the results of an exploratory study that employed the concurrent think-aloud method to investigate narrative text-creating strategies of multilingual Transylvanian-Hungarians in English, their third language. The study explored the participants' reliance on their different languages as they composed a story in English based…

  7. College Students' Attitude toward the Medium of Instruction: Arabic versus English Dilemma

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ellili-Cherif, Maha; Alkhateeb, Haitham

    2015-01-01

    In 2012, the Supreme Education Council of the State of Qatar decreed a change from English to Arabic as a medium of instruction in four of the colleges of Qatar University. This surprise move created much controversy, especially among the students, the first stakeholders to be affected by this decision, related to the impact this change would have…

  8. EFL Teachers' Perceptions, Evaluations and Expectations about English Language Courses as EFL in Saudi Universities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Liton, Hussain Ahmed

    2013-01-01

    The focus of this study is to explore EFL teachers' perceptions, evaluations and expectations about English language courses as EFL in Saudi tertiary level. In other words, this article aims at creating a new avenue for effective EFL teaching-learning curriculum techniques and syllabus in the Saudi tertiary context. Saudi universities offer credit…

  9. Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010

    2010-01-01

    The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects ("the Standards") are the culmination of an extended, broad-based effort to fulfill the charge issued by the states to create the next generation of K-12 standards in order to help ensure that all students…

  10. Managing the Student Experience in English Higher Education: Differing Responses to Market Pressures

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Temple, Paul; Callender, Claire; Grove, Lyn; Kersh, Natasha

    2016-01-01

    This paper reports on recent research aimed at assessing how the management of the undergraduate student experience in English higher education is changing in the light of the new tuition fee regime introduced in 2012, as well as other government policies aimed at creating market-type pressures within the higher education sector. A distinction was…

  11. TEACHING LITERATURE IN GRADES SEVEN THROUGH NINE. INDIANA UNIVERSITY ENGLISH CURRICULUM STUDY SERIES.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    HAWLEY, JANE STOUDER; JENKINSON, EDWARD B.

    THE INDIANA UNIVERSITY ENGLISH CURRICULUM STUDY CENTER CREATED A SEQUENTIAL COURSE OF STUDY IN LITERATURE FOR GRADES SEVEN THROUGH NINE. A BASIC POETRY SEQUENCE, FOCUSING ON STUDENT RESPONSE TO POETRY, EMPHASIZES SOUND AND STORY IN GRADE SEVEN, IMAGE OR PICTURE IN GRADE EIGHT, AND METAPHOR AND TONE IN GRADE NINE. A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE DRAMA…

  12. Outcomes of a Partnership for College and Career Readiness and a Senior English Transition Course

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Creech, Kimberly Kaye; Clouse, Pamela Jane

    2013-01-01

    This article discusses the outcomes of a partnership between four high schools and one university to reduce the need for remediation in reading and writing. The purpose of the partnership was to build relationships between secondary and postsecondary faculty and to create a senior year English Transition course for students who did not meet ACT…

  13. Cultural and Linguistic Adaptation of a Multimedia Colorectal Cancer Screening Decision Aid for Spanish Speaking Latinos

    PubMed Central

    Ko, Linda K.; Reuland, Daniel; Jolles, Monica; Clay, Rebecca; Pignone, Michael

    2014-01-01

    As the United States becomes more linguistically and culturally diverse, there is a need for effective health communication interventions that target diverse and most vulnerable populations. Latinos also have the lowest colorectal (CRC) screening rates of any ethnic group in the U.S. To address such disparities, health communication interventionists are often faced with the challenge to adapt existing interventions from English into Spanish in a way that retains essential elements of the original intervention while also addressing the linguistic needs and cultural perspectives of the target population. We describe the conceptual framework, context, rationale, methods, and findings of a formative research process used in creating a Spanish language version of an evidenced-based (English language) multimedia CRC screening decision aid. Our multi-step process included identification of essential elements of the existing intervention, literature review, assessment of the regional context and engagement of key stakeholders, and solicitation of direct input from target population. We integrated these findings in the creation of the new adapted intervention. We describe how we used this process to identify and integrate socio-cultural themes such as personalism (personalismo), familism (familismo), fear (miedo), embarrassment (verguenza), power distance (respeto), machismo, and trust (confianza) into the Spanish language decision aid. PMID:24328496

  14. "Nomadic Knowledge": Men Writing Zines for Content Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Guzzetti, Barbara J.; Foley, Leslie M.; Lesley, Mellinee

    2015-01-01

    Adult men create zines (self-publications written as alternative to commercial magazines) that advance content learning and knowledge. We describe three of these zine writers who created five zines on topics related to the disciplines of science, social studies, and English/language arts. We collected their zines, interviewed the authors, and…

  15. Crossover of Phonological Processing Skills: A Study of Spanish-Speaking Students in Two Instructional Settings

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Leafstedt, Jill M.; Gerber, Michael M.

    2005-01-01

    This study investigated three questions: Do phonological processes show cross-linguistic transfer? How does the language of instruction influence the relationship between phonological processes and decoding? Does performance on Spanish and English phonological processing tasks similarly predict English decoding for the same English learners (ELs)?…

  16. Blues for Elle - Microbial Bebop

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Larsen, Peter

    This musical composition was created from data of microbes - bacteria, algae and other microorganisms - sampled in the English Channel. (Above, the USS Winston S. Churchill traverses the English Channel.) Argonne National Laboratory biologist Peter Larsen created the songs as a unique way to present and comprehend large datasets. Some marine microbial taxa are most often present in the L4 Station community at very low abundance, but occasionally become highly dominant community members. To link these microbial blooms to relevant physical parameters, the chords in this composition are derived from changes in chlorophyll A concentrations and salinity. The melodymore » for each measure is derived from the relative abundances of typically rare taxa that were observed to occasionally bloom to higher abundance in the following order: Cyanobacteria, Vibrionales, Opitulates, Pseudomondales, Rhizobiales, Bacillales, Oceanospirallales, and Sphingomonadales. More information at http://www.anl.gov/articles/songs-key... Photo: USS Winston S. Churchill and Royal Navy HMS Cumberland transit the English Channel, courtesy U.S. Navy (http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnavy/5...)« less

  17. Literature and Language Teaching: Exploring Literary Texts with the Language Learner and Re-Creating Literature in the ESL Classroom.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lazar, Gillian; Heath, Shirley Brice

    1996-01-01

    Two educators discuss the role literature plays in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom. One emphasizes that literary texts are a source for classroom activities that can motivate learners. The other points out that the English writings of ESL students about their travels and friends published in newsletters and journals generate…

  18. Distributing the Future Evenly: English as the Lingua Franca in the Saudi Arabian Higher Education Sector

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Onsman, Andrys

    2012-01-01

    The dichotomous interpretation of the assumed growth and normalisation of English as the lingua franca (ELF) of the international academy is most often polarised into a marginalisation of non-native speakers by the hegemony of native speakers on the one hand and the empowerment and upward mobility created by its potential to afford access to the…

  19. A Possible Literary Canon in Upper School English Literature in Various Australian States, 1945-2005

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yiannakis, John

    2014-01-01

    Using information gathered from a specifically created database, ALIAS, this paper sets out to examine the variations and changes to the works that appeared on the English reading lists of the different Australian states in their literature course(s) between 1945 and 2005. All those states which offered a set of public examinations at the end of…

  20. Engaging Adolescents' Interests, Literacy Practices, and Identities: Digital Collaborative Writing of Fantasy Fiction in a High School English Elective Class

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rish, Ryan M.

    2011-01-01

    This study investigates an elective English class, in which students in grades 10-12 collectively read and collaboratively wrote fantasy fiction in four groups. The purpose of the class was to have students consider the choices fantasy and science fictions writers, directors, and video game designers make when creating a fictional world. The…

  1. Talking about Americans: The Image of the United States in English-Canadian Schools, 1900-1965

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    von Heyking, Amy

    2006-01-01

    At the beginning of the twentieth century, English-Canadian schools have attempted to create citizens of good character who were loyal to a Canadian nation defined by its role in the British Empire. Because of the country's experience in World War I, Canadians refined their identity in the 1920s, keeping it distinct from its relationship with…

  2. Putting Education in Its Place: Mapping the Observations of Danish and English Architects on 1950s School Design

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Burke, Catherine

    2010-01-01

    During the years following the Second World War, there were efforts in several European countries to grasp the opportunity to re-imagine "school" created through the need to rebuild on a mass scale. This article examines in detail an episode in the exchange of knowledge between English and Danish architects and educators during a period…

  3. Creating Spaces for the Development of Critical Awareness through Literature: The Methodological Anatomy of "Literary Texts in English"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Aceituno, Yolanda Caballero

    2011-01-01

    Most students of the joint degree in "English Philology and Tourism," taught at the University of Jaén (Spain), usually complain about the fact that the teaching of literature is sometimes reduced to the theoretical study of literary periods and bio-bibliographical data about authors. This approach overlooks one of the main functions of…

  4. Increasing Students' Perceptions of Being Valued through the Study of Multicultural Literature and Analysis of Diversity Related Issues in a Regular Level Sophomore English Class

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goughnour, Martha Jean

    2013-01-01

    The action research project report was created to remedy a lack of multicultural literature within the regular level sophomore English class and to assist regular level sophomore students' connection to their reading. The teacher-researcher also examined her students' own ethnic backgrounds, cultures, religions, economic status, gender, and/or…

  5. Using Parent and Teacher Voices in the Creation of a Western-Based Early Childhood English-Language Program in China

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shimpi, Priya M.; Paik, Jae H.; Wanerman, Todd; Johnson, Rebecca; Li, Hui; Duh, Shinchieh

    2015-01-01

    The current English-language research and educational program was driven by an initiative to create a more interactive, theme-based bilingual language education model for preschools in Chengdu, China. During a 2-week teacher education program centered at the Experimental Kindergarten of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Chengdu, China, a team of…

  6. Taiwanese College Students' Motivation and Engagement for English Learning in the Context of Internationalization at Home: A Comparison of Students in EMI and Non-EMI Programs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chen, Yih-Lan Ellen; Kraklow, Deborah

    2015-01-01

    To promote internationalization in Taiwan's higher education system, one initiative is to create international programs that accommodate both international and domestic students and that use English as the medium of instruction (EMI). Most EMI studies have focused on program results; however, the current study investigates the factors that lead…

  7. Metacognitive Strategies to Chinese College English Learners: A Real Gold or Only with a Golden Cover

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gao, Li

    2013-01-01

    With the advent of computer-assisted autonomous learning, English listening has become more challenging to Chinese college English learners. Metacognitive strategies, often adopted in process-based approach emphasizes more on the listening process. This paper discusses the feasibility of metacognitive strategies in English listening instruction in…

  8. The Experience in Personal Social Systems Questionnaire (EXIS.pers): Development and Psychometric Properties.

    PubMed

    Hunger, Christina; Bornhäuser, Annette; Link, Leoni; Geigges, Julian; Voss, Andreas; Weinhold, Jan; Schweitzer, Jochen

    2017-03-01

    This study presents the theoretical background, development, and psychometric properties of the German and English versions of the Experience in Personal Social Systems Questionnaire (EXIS.pers). It assesses how the members of a personal social system experience their situation within that system. It is designed as a research tool for interventions in which only one member of the system participates (e.g., Family Constellation Seminars). The EXIS.pers was created to measure change on the individual level relating to one's own important personal social system. In Study 1, we used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for latent variable identification of the original German EXIS.pers (n = 179). In Studies 2 and 3, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the dimensionality of the German (n = 634) and English (n = 310) EXIS.pers. Internal consistencies and cross-cultural structural equivalence were assessed. EFA indicated that a four-factor model provided best fit for the German EXIS.pers. For both the German and English EXIS.pers, CFA provided the best fit for a five-factor bi-level model that included a general factor (Experience In Personal Social Systems) and four dimensions (Belonging, Autonomy, Accord, Confidence). Good internal consistencies, external associations, and cross-cultural structural equivalence were demonstrated. This study provides first evidence for the German and English EXIS.pers as an economical and reliable measure of an individual's experience within his or her personal social systems. © 2016 Family Process Institute.

  9. realfriends: A Student Social Action Project

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Van Zoost, Steven

    2012-01-01

    "realfriends" is a social action project created by Grade 12 English students in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Its purpose was to create a face-to-face social network that would help change the school climate into a more social space. Interest in socializing is nothing new for teenagers, but these students articulated a worry that people their…

  10. Making Connections: Language Activities for Creating Interpersonal Tolerance in the Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Renaud, Susan; Tannenbaum, Elizabeth

    2013-01-01

    Using communicative activities with learners from diverse cultures can create excitement and empathy while promoting the acquisition of English. This article offers ESL/EFL activities that foster interpersonal tolerance among students who have experienced intergroup conflict. The activities are based on the idea that there are four levels of…

  11. Education and the Environment: Creating Standards-Based Programs in Schools and Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lieberman, Gerald A.

    2013-01-01

    In this timely book, curriculum expert Gerald A. Lieberman provides an innovative guide to creating and implementing a new type of environmental education that combines standards-based lessons on English language arts, math, history, and science with community investigations and service learning projects. By connecting academic content with local…

  12. Creating a Culture of Thinking. Project Plan. English II Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fluellen, Jerry E., Jr.; Fluellen, Ingrid

    2006-01-01

    150 students at McKinley Technology High School in Washington, DC have engaged the Harvard Model for creating a culture of thinking. This Tishman, Perkins, and Jay framework introduced them to four forces of enculturation and six dimensions of a thinking classroom in combination with African American Literature and Future Studies as specific…

  13. [A study on English loan words in French plastic surgery].

    PubMed

    Hansson, E; Tegelberg, E

    2014-10-01

    The French language is less and less used as an international scientific language and many French researchers publish their work in English. Nowadays, Annales de Chirurgie Plastique Esthétique is the only international plastic surgical journal published completely in French. The use of English loan words in French plastic surgery has never been studied. The aim of this study was to describe the frequency and types of English loan words in French plastic surgery. A corpus consisting of all the articles in a number of Annales de Chirurgie Plastique Esthethique, chosen by default, was created. The frequency of English loan words was calculated and the types of words were analysed. The corpus contains 367 (0.8%) English loan words. Most of them are non-integrated loan words and calques. The majority of the plastic surgical loan words describe surgical techniques. The French plastic surgical language seems to be influenced by English. The usage of loan words does not always follow the recommendations and the usage is sometimes ambiguous. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  14. Axiological Role of English Adjectives in English Language Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zerkina, Natalya N.; Kostina, Nataliia N.; Urazayeva, Nailya R.; Lomakina, Yekaterina A.; Emets, Tatiana V.; Gallyamova, Maria S.; Melnikova, Elena P.; Trutnev, Alexey Yu.; Lukina, Oksana A.

    2016-01-01

    The article focuses on peculiarities of English adjective teaching as one of main and important lexicological basis. As the English language nowadays is important and universal as a native language of worldwide society, exactly that's why process of learning must include wide range of techniques not only as a process of learning theories but also…

  15. Electrophysiological correlates of brand names.

    PubMed

    Cheung, Mei-chun; Chan, Agnes S; Sze, Sophia L

    2010-11-26

    EEG coherence has been used extensively in the investigation of language processing of different words categories. In contrast, relatively less is known about EEG coherence pattern of processing brand names. The present study aimed to investigate EEG coherence pattern associated with brand names in English and Chinese. EEG coherence of 32 healthy normal participants during 4 reading conditions, including concrete English words, concrete Chinese characters, English brand names and their translated Chinese brand names, were computed and compared. Regardless whether it was in English or Chinese, brand names were generally associated with higher intrahemispheric beta coherence in both the left and right hemispheres than concrete words or characters. Compared to English brand names, Chinese brand names demonstrated increased interhemispheric theta coherence in the frontal and temporal cortical regions. These results suggest that brand names tend to be processed through semantic routes. Similar to proper names and nonwords, they are represented in the lexical systems of both hemispheres. In addition, English and Chinese brand names are processed similarly at the semantic level and the difference in EEG coherence patterns associated with English and Chinese brand names is more likely due to phonological and orthographic processing that are associated with English and Chinese, respectively. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Transformation of the System of Values of Autonomous Learning for English Acquisition in Blended E-Studies for Adults: A Holistic Fractal Model

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bojare, Inara; Skrinda, Astrida

    2016-01-01

    The present study is aimed at creating a holistic fractal model (HFM) of autonomous learning for English acquisition in a blended environment of e-studies in adult non-formal education on the basis of the theories and paradigms of philosophy, psychology and education for sustainable development to promote the development of adult learners'…

  17. Creating Schools That Support Success for English Language Learners. Lessons Learned. Volume 1, Issue 2

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stepanek, Jennifer; Raphael, Jacqueline

    2010-01-01

    The past two decades have brought the second largest wave of immigration in U.S. history. This has led to a rapid and unprecedented influx of immigrants to the Pacific Northwest as well as a rise in the number of English language learners (ELLs) in schools. Between 2002-2003 and 2007-2008, the Northwest's annual growth in ELL enrollment was nearly…

  18. Internationally educated nurses' reflections on nursing communication in Canada.

    PubMed

    Lum, L; Dowedoff, P; Englander, K

    2016-09-01

    The overall goal of this study was to explore internationally educated nurses' perceptions of the English language and nursing communication skill requirements in a Canadian bridging education program. The increased global mobility of nurses creates a need to address the educational needs of migrating nurses. A large percentage of these nurses require additional language and professional education. New research is needed that would represent an in-depth analysis of their educational experiences associated with learning academic English and Canadian nursing communication. Developing proficiency with a new language has been documented as posing challenges for new immigrants. Since language proficiency is a key requirement of Canadian nursing regulatory bodies, previously unrecognized barriers such as attitudes and beliefs about required English language and nursing communication competency which may hinder their ability to meet local practice standards need to be explored. Using a grounded theory study design, narratives from 22 participants from the Philippines, Nigeria and Europe enrolled in bridging education were collected and analysed. The participants identified the incongruence in professional norms between Canada and their home country as a major challenge. The major themes identified included cultural dissonance, academic literacy challenges and skepticism regarding unexpected communication competency requirements. The participants possessed varying degrees of comprehension and acceptance of new educational and professional regulatory requirements. A certain degree of culture shock, which may be associated with frustration and disillusionment, is a typical and anticipated aspect of the immigration process. Their perceptions need to be recognized and accommodated when assisting internationally educated nurses to integrate into the Canadian practice culture. Any generalizations to other host countries need to be made cautiously. Clear communication from regulators about English language and nursing communication requirements during the pre-arrival period is recommended. If bridging education is required, these programs need to be designed to address English language competency and nursing communication skills of non-native English speakers. © 2016 International Council of Nurses.

  19. Prereferral Process with Latino English Language Learners with Specific Learning Disabilities: Perceptions of English-as-a-Second-Language Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ferlis, Emily; Xu, Yaoying

    2016-01-01

    This study explored perceptions of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers on the prereferral process for Latino English language learners (ELLs). Using Colaizzi's (1978) phenomenological approach, qualitative data were collected through interviews with four ESL teachers. Analyses of the data indicated that the ESL teachers used research-based…

  20. KSC-04pd0681

    NASA Image and Video Library

    2004-04-03

    KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- John J. “Tip” Talone (left) talks to George English, former director of KSC’s Executive Management Office, during the annual National Space Club Debus Award Banquet. Talone received the award that was created to recognize significant achievements made in Florida to American aerospace efforts. The event was held at the Dr. Kurt H. Debus Conference Facility in the Visitor Complex. Talone is director of the International Space Station/Payloads Processing directorate at KSC that is responsible for prelaunch and launch preparations for all Shuttle payloads. He was honored for his outstanding personal and professional efforts in supporting the U.S. space program, especially in his current role. The award was created by the National Space Club Florida Committee to recognize significant achievements and contributions made in Florida to American aerospace efforts. It is named for Dr. Kurt H. Debus, first director of KSC, from 1962 to 1974.

  1. KSC-04PD-0681

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    2004-01-01

    KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- John J. Tip Talone (left) talks to George English, former director of KSCs Executive Management Office, during the annual National Space Club Debus Award Banquet. Talone received the award that was created to recognize significant achievements made in Florida to American aerospace efforts. The event was held at the Dr. Kurt H. Debus Conference Facility in the Visitor Complex. Talone is director of the International Space Station/Payloads Processing directorate at KSC that is responsible for prelaunch and launch preparations for all Shuttle payloads. He was honored for his outstanding personal and professional efforts in supporting the U.S. space program, especially in his current role. The award was created by the National Space Club Florida Committee to recognize significant achievements and contributions made in Florida to American aerospace efforts. It is named for Dr. Kurt H. Debus, first director of KSC, from 1962 to 1974.

  2. Foreign Subtitles Help but Native-Language Subtitles Harm Foreign Speech Perception

    PubMed Central

    Mitterer, Holger; McQueen, James M.

    2009-01-01

    Understanding foreign speech is difficult, in part because of unusual mappings between sounds and words. It is known that listeners in their native language can use lexical knowledge (about how words ought to sound) to learn how to interpret unusual speech-sounds. We therefore investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical information, support perceptual learning about foreign speech. Dutch participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents of English, watched Scottish or Australian English videos with Dutch, English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both accents. Repetition of novel fragments was worse after Dutch-subtitle exposure but better after English-subtitle exposure. Native-language subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language subtitles assist speech learning by indicating which words (and hence sounds) are being spoken. PMID:19918371

  3. Latin Revived: Source-Based Vocabulary Lessons Courtesy of Harry Potter

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nilsen, Alleen Pace; Nilsen, Don L. F.

    2006-01-01

    Teachers can build on students' familiarity with and respect for the Harry Potter books to create source-based vocabulary lessons. The idea is to work with the Latin roots that J. K. Rowling uses to create original names for places, people, and magical charms and then to extend students' knowledge through exploration of additional English words…

  4. The Transformation of Ms. Corazon: Creating Humanizing Spaces for Mexican Immigrant Students in Secondary ESL Classrooms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Salazar, Maria del Carmen; Franquiz, Maria E.

    2008-01-01

    This article explores the journey of one English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher who held rigid boundaries that negatively impacted the academic resiliency of her Mexican immigrant students. As she transformed her pedagogical orientation, she created permeability in her curricular practices. With the elements of "respeto" (respect), "confianza"…

  5. Why Should We Have All the Fun? Encouraging Colleagues to Read YA Novels across the Curriculum

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Roberts, Mike

    2012-01-01

    Recently, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) helped create the National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE) to help support literacy across all disciplines. NCLE Director Kent Williamson notes, "Schools that sustain progress in literacy learning pay attention to the little things and the big things. They create organizational…

  6. Learning Computers, Speaking English: Cooperative Activities for Learning English and Basic Word Processing.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Quann, Steve; Satin, Diana

    This textbook leads high-beginning and intermediate English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students through cooperative computer-based activities that combine language learning with training in basic computer skills and word processing. Each unit concentrates on a basic concept of word processing while also focusing on a grammar topic. Skills are…

  7. The linguistic roots of Modern English anatomical terminology.

    PubMed

    Turmezei, Tom D

    2012-11-01

    Previous research focusing on Classical Latin and Greek roots has shown that understanding the etymology of English anatomical terms may be beneficial for students of human anatomy. However, not all anatomical terms are derived from Classical origins. This study aims to explore the linguistic roots of the Modern English terminology used in human gross anatomy. By reference to the Oxford English Dictionary, etymologies were determined for a lexicon of 798 Modern English gross anatomical terms from the 40(th) edition of Gray's Anatomy. Earliest traceable language of origin was determined for all 798 terms; language of acquisition was determined for 747 terms. Earliest traceable languages of origin were: Classical Latin (62%), Classical Greek (24%), Old English (7%), Post-Classical Latin (3%), and other (4%). Languages of acquisition were: Classical Latin (42%), Post-Classical Latin (29%), Old English (8%), Modern French (6%), Classical Greek (5%), Middle English (3%), and other (7%). While the roots of Modern English anatomical terminology mostly lie in Classical languages (accounting for the origin of 86% of terms), the anatomical lexicon of Modern English is actually much more diverse. Interesting and perhaps less familiar examples from these languages and the methods by which such terms have been created and absorbed are discussed. The author suggests that awareness of anatomical etymologies may enhance the enjoyment and understanding of human anatomy for students and teachers alike. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  8. Rational Deletion Cloze Processing Strategies: ESL and Native English.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Markham, Paul L.

    1987-01-01

    Explores cloze sensitivity to global comprehension by means of retrospective interview techniques. No significant differences were found between English as a second language (ESL) college students (N=14) and native English-speaking students (N=14) in their processing strategies. (Author/CB)

  9. Drug policy constellations: A Habermasian approach for understanding English drug policy.

    PubMed

    Stevens, Alex; Zampini, Giulia Federica

    2018-07-01

    It is increasingly accepted that a view of policy as a rational process of fitting evidence-based means to rationally justified ends is inadequate for understanding the actual processes of drug policy making. We aim to provide a better description and explanation of recent English drug policy decisions. We develop the policy constellation concept from the work of Habermas, in dialogue with data from two contemporary debates in English policy; on decriminalisation of drug possession and on recovery in drug treatment. We collect data on these debates through long-term participant observation, stakeholder interviews (n = 15) and documentary analysis. We show the importance of social asymmetries in power in enabling structurally advantaged groups to achieve the institutionalisation of their moral preferences as well as the reproduction of their social and economic power through the deployment of policies that reflect their material interests and normative beliefs. The most influential actors in English drug policy come together in a 'medico-penal constellation', in which the aims and practices of public health and social control overlap. Formal decriminalisation of possession has not occurred, despite the efforts of members of a challenging constellation which supports it. Recovery was put forward as the aim of drug treatment by members of a more powerfully connected constellation. It has been absorbed into the practice of 'recovery-oriented' drug treatment in a way that maintains the power of public health professionals to determine the form of treatment. Actors who share interests and norms come together in policy constellations. Strategic action within and between constellations creates policies that may not take the form that was intended by any individual actor. These policies do not result from purely rational deliberation, but are produced through 'systematically distorted communication'. They enable the most structurally favoured actors to institutionalise their own normative preferences and structural positions. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  10. Pitch expertise is not created equal: Cross-domain effects of musicianship and tone language experience on neural and behavioural discrimination of speech and music.

    PubMed

    Hutka, Stefanie; Bidelman, Gavin M; Moreno, Sylvain

    2015-05-01

    Psychophysiological evidence supports a music-language association, such that experience in one domain can impact processing required in the other domain. We investigated the bidirectionality of this association by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) in native English-speaking musicians, native tone language (Cantonese) nonmusicians, and native English-speaking nonmusician controls. We tested the degree to which pitch expertise stemming from musicianship or tone language experience similarly enhances the neural encoding of auditory information necessary for speech and music processing. Early cortical discriminatory processing for music and speech sounds was characterized using the mismatch negativity (MMN). Stimuli included 'large deviant' and 'small deviant' pairs of sounds that differed minimally in pitch (fundamental frequency, F0; contrastive musical tones) or timbre (first formant, F1; contrastive speech vowels). Behavioural F0 and F1 difference limen tasks probed listeners' perceptual acuity for these same acoustic features. Musicians and Cantonese speakers performed comparably in pitch discrimination; only musicians showed an additional advantage on timbre discrimination performance and an enhanced MMN responses to both music and speech. Cantonese language experience was not associated with enhancements on neural measures, despite enhanced behavioural pitch acuity. These data suggest that while both musicianship and tone language experience enhance some aspects of auditory acuity (behavioural pitch discrimination), musicianship confers farther-reaching enhancements to auditory function, tuning both pitch and timbre-related brain processes. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. Tasking and sharing sensing assets using controlled natural language

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Preece, Alun; Pizzocaro, Diego; Braines, David; Mott, David

    2012-06-01

    We introduce an approach to representing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks at a relatively high level in controlled natural language. We demonstrate that this facilitates both human interpretation and machine processing of tasks. More specically, it allows the automatic assignment of sensing assets to tasks, and the informed sharing of tasks between collaborating users in a coalition environment. To enable automatic matching of sensor types to tasks, we created a machine-processable knowledge representation based on the Military Missions and Means Framework (MMF), and implemented a semantic reasoner to match task types to sensor types. We combined this mechanism with a sensor-task assignment procedure based on a well-known distributed protocol for resource allocation. In this paper, we re-formulate the MMF ontology in Controlled English (CE), a type of controlled natural language designed to be readable by a native English speaker whilst representing information in a structured, unambiguous form to facilitate machine processing. We show how CE can be used to describe both ISR tasks (for example, detection, localization, or identication of particular kinds of object) and sensing assets (for example, acoustic, visual, or seismic sensors, mounted on motes or unmanned vehicles). We show how these representations enable an automatic sensor-task assignment process. Where a group of users are cooperating in a coalition, we show how CE task summaries give users in the eld a high-level picture of ISR coverage of an area of interest. This allows them to make ecient use of sensing resources by sharing tasks.

  12. Caudal articular process dysplasia of thoracic vertebrae in neurologically normal French bulldogs, English bulldogs, and Pugs: Prevalence and characteristics.

    PubMed

    Bertram, Simon; Ter Haar, Gert; De Decker, Steven

    2018-02-20

    The aims of this study were to evaluate the prevalence and anatomical characteristics of thoracic caudal articular process dysplasia in French bulldogs, English bulldogs and Pugs presenting for problems unrelated to spinal disease. In this retrospective cross-sectional study, computed tomography scans of the thoracic vertebral column of these three breeds were reviewed for the presence and location of caudal articular process hypoplasia and aplasia, and compared between breeds. A total of 271 dogs met the inclusion criteria: 108 French bulldogs, 63 English bulldogs, and 100 Pugs. A total of 70.4% of French bulldogs, 84.1% of English bulldogs, and 97.0% of Pugs showed evidence of caudal articular process dysplasia. Compared to French and English bulldogs, Pugs showed a significantly higher prevalence of caudal articular process aplasia, but also a lower prevalence of caudal articular process hypoplasia, a higher number of affected vertebrae per dog and demonstrated a generalized and bilateral spatial pattern more frequently. Furthermore, Pugs showed a significantly different anatomical distribution of caudal articular process dysplasia along the vertebral column, with a high prevalence of caudal articular process aplasia between T10 and T13. This area was almost completely spared in French and English bulldogs. As previously suggested, caudal articular process dysplasia is a common finding in neurologically normal Pugs but this also seems to apply to French and English bulldogs. The predisposition of clinically relevant caudal articular process dysplasia in Pugs is possibly not only caused by the higher prevalence of caudal articular process dysplasia, but also by breed specific anatomical characteristics. © 2018 American College of Veterinary Radiology.

  13. Syntactic Representations of English in Second Language Learners: An Investigation of the Process of English Sentence Production by Bilingual Speakers Using a Within-Language (L2) Structural Priming Paradigm

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kim, Sunfa

    2010-01-01

    This dissertation reports the results of within-English structural priming experiments in language production which investigated the syntactic representations of English syntactic structures in three different bilingual groups: Japanese-English, Korean-English, and Mandarin Chinese-English bilinguals. Specifically, my dissertation research…

  14. Acquiring Orthographic Processing through Word Reading: Evidence from Children Learning to Read French and English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pasquarella, Adrian; Deacon, Helene; Chen, Becky X.; Commissaire, Eva; Au-Yeung, Karen

    2014-01-01

    This study examined the within-language and cross-language relationships between orthographic processing and word reading in French and English across Grades 1 and 2. Seventy-three children in French Immersion completed measures of orthographic processing and word reading in French and English in Grade 1 and Grade 2, as well as a series of control…

  15. Data-management and information system

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Long, J. J.; Hatfield, J. N.; Diethelm, M. R.; Masters, G.

    1977-01-01

    User command language consists of unabbreviated English words. System allows user to create, delete, sort, merge, update, punch, or transfer all or portion of any file in system without programmer assistance.

  16. Impact of Spanish-language information sessions on Spanish-speaking patients seeking bariatric surgery.

    PubMed

    Martin, Allison N; Marino, Miguel; Killerby, Marie; Rosselli-Risal, Liliana; Isom, Kellene A; Robinson, Malcolm K

    2017-06-01

    Bariatric centers frequently provide preoperative educational programs to inform patients about the risks and benefits of weight loss surgery. However, most programs are conducted in English, which may create barriers to effective treatment and access to care for non-English speaking populations. To address this concern, we instituted a comprehensive Spanish-language education program consisting of preoperative information and group nutrition classes conducted entirely in, and supported with Spanish-language materials. The primary aim was to examine the effect of this intervention on Spanish-speaking patients' decision to undergo surgery in a pilot study. University Hospital/Community Health Center, United States. Three cohorts of patients seeking bariatric surgery between January 1, 2011 and March 31, 2012 were identified: 1) primary English speakers attending English-language programs ("English-English"); 2) primary Spanish speakers attending Spanish-language programs ("Spanish-Spanish"); and 3) primary Spanish speakers attending English-speaking programs with the assistance of a Spanish-to-English translator ("Spanish-English"). 26% of the English-English cohort ultimately underwent surgery compared with only 12% of the Spanish-Spanish cohort (P = .009). Compared with the English-English group, time to surgery was 35 days longer for the Spanish-Spanish and 185 days longer for the Spanish-English group (both P< .001). Spanish-speaking patients were less likely to undergo bariatric surgery regardless of the language in which educational sessions are provided. For those choosing surgery, providing Spanish-language sessions can shorten time to surgery. A barrier to effective obesity treatment may exist for Spanish speakers, which may be only partially overcome by providing support in Spanish. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  17. Importance of Phonological and Orthographic Skills for English Reading and Spelling: A Comparison of English Monolingual and Mandarin-English Bilingual Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yeong, Stephanie H. M.; Fletcher, Janet; Bayliss, Donna M.

    2014-01-01

    This cross-sectional study examines the importance of English phonological and orthographic processing skills to English word reading and spelling in 3 groups of younger (8-9 years) and older (11-12 years) children from different language backgrounds: English monolingual, English first language (L1)-Mandarin second language (L2), and Mandarin…

  18. Using Folk Songs as a Source for Dialect Change? The Pervasive Effects of Attitudes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Watts, Richard J.

    2010-01-01

    The present article argues that the social category of "standardisation" has been instrumental in creating a Foucaultian discourse archive governing what may and what may not be stated on the subject of the history of English. It analyses the question of how language attitudes have been instrumental in creating the myths that have driven…

  19. A Curriculum for ASL: Empowering Students by Giving Them Ownership of Their Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Herzig, Melissa P.

    2017-01-01

    In response to the need for deaf and hard of hearing students to facilitate literacy in American Sign Language (ASL) and to put as much focus on developing students' ASL skills as they usually do on developing their English skills, Melissa Herzig has created a curriculum entitled "Creating the Narrative Stories: The Development of the…

  20. Finding and Evaluating Adult ESL Resources on the World Wide Web. ERIC Q & A.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Florez, MaryAnn Cunningham

    One of the challenges often mentioned by users of the World Wide Web is creating and implementing successful searches on topics of interest. This article provides background information about adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) resources available on the Web. It describes various search tools, explains how to create search strategies and how…

  1. Creating Inclusive EAL Classrooms: How Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) Instructors Understand and Mitigate Barriers for Students Who Have Experienced Trauma

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilbur, Amea

    2016-01-01

    This article draws on my dissertation, "Creating Inclusive EAL Classrooms: How LINC Instructors Understand and Mitigate Barriers for Students Who Have Experienced Trauma." The article explores some assumptions and understandings that English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers bring to teaching students believed to have experienced…

  2. "Don't Worry, You Know More than They Do": The Autoethnography of an Accidental English Professor

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Akst, Leslie Anne

    2016-01-01

    This dissertation is a qualitative study of a curriculum I designed for composition students in the Fall of 2012. The curriculum I created is informed by the Freirean edict that a self-generated desire to "create knowledge" is far more likely to result in meaningful, holistic learning than simply "banking" information. In the…

  3. English(es) in Urban Contexts: Politics, Pluralism, and Possibilities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kirkland, David E.

    2010-01-01

    English as taught in city schools does not always reflect the Englishes city students travel with. Their urban English landscape is enriched by a procession of many voices that march in various directions in, around, and through the monuments of the city. These languages--Englishes, in this case--which have been traded on through various public…

  4. Long-Term Experience with Chinese Language Shapes the Fusiform Asymmetry of English Reading

    PubMed Central

    Mei, Leilei; Xue, Gui; Lu, Zhong-Lin; Chen, Chuansheng; Wei, Miao; He, Qinghua; Dong, Qi

    2015-01-01

    Previous studies have suggested differential engagement of the bilateral fusiform gyrus in the processing of Chinese and English. The present study tested the possibility that long-term experience with Chinese language affects the fusiform laterality of English reading by comparing three samples: Chinese speakers, English speakers with Chinese experience, and English speakers without Chinese experience. We found that, when reading words in their respective native language, Chinese and English speakers without Chinese experience differed in functional laterality of the posterior fusiform region (right laterality for Chinese speakers, but left laterality for English speakers). More importantly, compared with English speakers without Chinese experience, English speakers with Chinese experience showed more recruitment of the right posterior fusiform cortex for English words and pseudowords, which is similar to how Chinese speakers processed Chinese. These results suggest that long-term experience with Chinese shapes the fusiform laterality of English reading and have important implications for our understanding of the cross-language influences in terms of neural organization and of the functions of different fusiform subregions in reading. PMID:25598049

  5. Language Learning Strategies and English Proficiency: Interpretations from Information-Processing Theory

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rao, Zhenhui

    2016-01-01

    The research reported here investigated the relationship between students' use of language learning strategies and their English proficiency, and then interpreted the data from two models in information-processing theory. Results showed that the students' English proficiency significantly affected their use of learning strategies, with high-level…

  6. Comprehension Process of Second Language Indirect Requests.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Takahashi, Satomi; Roitblat, Herbert L.

    1994-01-01

    Examines the comprehension of English conventional indirect requests by native English speakers and Japanese learners of English. Subjects read stories inducing either a conventional or a literal interpretation of a priming sentence. Results suggest that both native and nonnative speakers process both meanings of an ambiguous conventional request.…

  7. Race/Ethnicity and Primary Language: Health Beliefs about Colorectal Cancer Screening in a Diverse, Low-Income Population.

    PubMed

    Brenner, Alison Tytell; Ko, Linda K; Janz, Nancy; Gupta, Shivani; Inadomi, John

    2015-08-01

    Colorectal cancer (CRC) is an important cause of cancer death in adults in the U.S.; screening is effective but underutilized, particularly among minorities. The purpose of this paper was to explore whether health belief model (HBM) constructs pertaining to CRC screening differ by race/ethnicity and primary language. Data were from the baseline surveys of 933 participants (93.5%) in a randomized trial promoting CRC screening in San Francisco. Composite scores for each construct were created from multiple items, dichotomized for analysis, and analyzed using multivariate logistic regression. Most participants were Asian (29.7%) or Hispanic (34.3%), and many were non-English speakers. Non-English speaking Hispanics (p<.001) and English-speaking Asians (p=.002) reported lower perceived susceptibility than non-Hispanic Whites (NHW). Non-English speaking Hispanics reported more and non-English speaking Asians fewer perceived barriers (psychological and structural) than NHW. Understanding how different populations think about CRC screening may be critical in promoting screening in diverse populations.

  8. Dutch and English toddlers' use of linguistic cues in predicting upcoming turn transitions

    PubMed Central

    Lammertink, Imme; Casillas, Marisa; Benders, Titia; Post, Brechtje; Fikkert, Paula

    2015-01-01

    Adults achieve successful coordination during conversation by using prosodic and lexicosyntactic cues to predict upcoming changes in speakership. We examined the relative weight of these linguistic cues in the prediction of upcoming turn structure by toddlers learning Dutch (Experiment 1; N = 21) and British English (Experiment 2; N = 20) and adult control participants (Dutch: N = 16; English: N = 20). We tracked participants' anticipatory eye movements as they watched videos of dyadic puppet conversation. We controlled the prosodic and lexicosyntactic cues to turn completion for a subset of the utterances in each conversation to create four types of target utterances (fully incomplete, incomplete syntax, incomplete prosody, and fully complete). All participants (Dutch and English toddlers and adults) used both prosodic and lexicosyntactic cues to anticipate upcoming speaker changes, but weighed lexicosyntactic cues over prosodic ones when the two were pitted against each other. The results suggest that Dutch and English toddlers are already nearly adult-like in their use of prosodic and lexicosyntactic cues in anticipating upcoming turn transitions. PMID:25964772

  9. The Processing of English Derived Words by Chinese-English Bilinguals

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Li, Junmin; Taft, Marcus; Xu, Joe

    2017-01-01

    This study examined the sensitivity of Chinese-English bilinguals to derivational word structure in English. In the first experiment, English monolinguals showed masked priming effects for prime-target pairs related both transparently (e.g., "hunter-HUNT") and opaquely (e.g., "corner-CORN") but not for those related purely in…

  10. Shifting the balance of power? Culture change and identity in an English health-care setting.

    PubMed

    McDonald, Ruth

    2005-01-01

    A recurring theme in Government policy documents has been the need to change the culture of the NHS in order to deliver a service "fit for the twenty-first century". However, very little is said about what constitutes "culture" or how this culture change is to be brought about. This paper seeks to focus on an initiative aimed ostensibly at "empowering" staff in an English Primary Care Trust as a means of changing organisational culture. It presents findings from an ethnographic study which suggests that this attempt at "culture change" is aimed at manipulating the behaviour and values of individual employees and may be interpreted as a process of changing employee identity. Employees reacted in different ways to the empowerment initiative, with some resisting attempts to shape their identity and others actively engaging in projects to bring their unruly self into line with the ideal self to which they were encouraged to aspire. The challenges presented by the need to respond to conflicting Government policies created tensions between individuals and conflicts of allegiance and identity within individual members of staff. Alternative forms of self-hood did not merely replace existing identities, but interacted with them, often uncomfortably. The irony is that, whilst Government seeks to promote culture change, the frustrations created by its top-down target-driven regime acted to mitigate the transformational and reconstitutive effects of a discourse of empowerment aimed at achieving this change.

  11. Influence of Second Language Proficiency and Syntactic Structure Similarities on the Sensitivity and Processing of English Passive Sentence in Late Chinese-English Bilinguists: An ERP Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chang, Xin; Wang, Pei

    2016-01-01

    To investigate the influence of L2 proficiency and syntactic similarity on English passive sentence processing, the present ERP study asked 40 late Chinese-English bilinguals (27 females and 13 males, mean age = 23.88) with high or intermediate L2 proficiency to read the sentences carefully and to indicate for each sentence whether or not it was…

  12. Dynamic spatial organization of the occipito-temporal word form area for second language processing.

    PubMed

    Gao, Yue; Sun, Yafeng; Lu, Chunming; Ding, Guosheng; Guo, Taomei; Malins, Jeffrey G; Booth, James R; Peng, Danling; Liu, Li

    2017-08-01

    Despite the left occipito-temporal region having shown consistent activation in visual word form processing across numerous studies in different languages, the mechanisms by which word forms of second languages are processed in this region remain unclear. To examine this more closely, 16 Chinese-English and 14 English-Chinese late bilinguals were recruited to perform lexical decision tasks to visually presented words in both their native and second languages (L1 and L2) during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Here we demonstrate that visual word form processing for L1 versus L2 engaged different spatial areas of the left occipito-temporal region. Namely, the spatial organization of the visual word form processing in the left occipito-temporal region is more medial and posterior for L2 than L1 processing in Chinese-English bilinguals, whereas activation is more lateral and anterior for L2 in English-Chinese bilinguals. In addition, for Chinese-English bilinguals, more lateral recruitment of the occipito-temporal region was correlated with higher L2 proficiency, suggesting higher L2 proficiency is associated with greater involvement of L1-preferred mechanisms. For English-Chinese bilinguals, higher L2 proficiency was correlated with more lateral and anterior activation of the occipito-temporal region, suggesting higher L2 proficiency is associated with greater involvement of L2-preferred mechanisms. Taken together, our results indicate that L1 and L2 recruit spatially different areas of the occipito-temporal region in visual word processing when the two scripts belong to different writing systems, and that the spatial organization of this region for L2 visual word processing is dynamically modulated by L2 proficiency. Specifically, proficiency in L2 in Chinese-English is associated with assimilation to the native language mechanisms, whereas L2 in English-Chinese is associated with accommodation to second language mechanisms. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  13. Illustrated glossary of process equipment. Chinese/English/French edition

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Paruit, B.

    1984-01-01

    Here is a volume of process equipment and terms in standard Mandarin Chinese, English, and French. As with the English/French/Spanish edition, each page illustrates a particular piece of equipment, with captions identifying the key components. Glossaries at the end of each major section include the Romanized pronunciation of the Chinese.

  14. The Utility of Chinese Tone Processing Skill in Detecting Children with English Reading Disabilities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anderson, Alida; Wang, Min

    2012-01-01

    The utility of Chinese tone processing skill in detecting children with English reading difficulties was examined through differences in a Chinese tone experimental task between a group of native English-speaking children with reading disabilities (RD) and a comparison group of children with normal reading development (NRD). General auditory…

  15. Bilingual Processing of ASL-English Code-Blends: The Consequences of Accessing Two Lexical Representations Simultaneously

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Emmorey, Karen; Petrich, Jennifer A. F.; Gollan, Tamar H.

    2012-01-01

    Bilinguals who are fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and English often produce "code-blends"--simultaneously articulating a sign and a word while conversing with other ASL-English bilinguals. To investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying code-blend processing, we compared picture-naming times (Experiment 1) and semantic categorization…

  16. Effects of Speed of Word Processing on Semantic Access: The Case of Bilingualism

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Martin, Clara D.; Costa, Albert; Dering, Benjamin; Hoshino, Noriko; Wu, Yan Jing; Thierry, Guillaume

    2012-01-01

    Bilingual speakers generally manifest slower word recognition than monolinguals. We investigated the consequences of the word processing speed on semantic access in bilinguals. The paradigm involved a stream of English words and pseudowords presented in succession at a constant rate. English-Welsh bilinguals and English monolinguals were asked to…

  17. Corpora Processing and Computational Scaffolding for a Web-Based English Learning Environment: The CANDLE Project

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Liou, Hsien-Chin; Chang, Jason S; Chen, Hao-Jan; Lin, Chih-Cheng; Liaw, Meei-Ling; Gao, Zhao-Ming; Jang, Jyh-Shing Roger; Yeh, Yuli; Chuang, Thomas C.; You, Geeng-Neng

    2006-01-01

    This paper describes the development of an innovative web-based environment for English language learning with advanced data-driven and statistical approaches. The project uses various corpora, including a Chinese-English parallel corpus ("Sinorama") and various natural language processing (NLP) tools to construct effective English…

  18. Language Processing in Arabic-English Bilinguals: A Mixed Methods Investigation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Alsaigh, Tahani N.

    2017-01-01

    This study examines second language activation in Arabic-English bilinguals for whom Arabic was the first language. Modeling its design on Colome (2001), the research compared processing in a picture-phoneme matching task for Arabic-English bilinguals tested in the United States or in Saudi Arabia to determine whether activation of English…

  19. Contribution to terminology internationalization by word alignment in parallel corpora.

    PubMed

    Deléger, Louise; Merkel, Magnus; Zweigenbaum, Pierre

    2006-01-01

    Creating a complete translation of a large vocabulary is a time-consuming task, which requires skilled and knowledgeable medical translators. Our goal is to examine to which extent such a task can be alleviated by a specific natural language processing technique, word alignment in parallel corpora. We experiment with translation from English to French. Build a large corpus of parallel, English-French documents, and automatically align it at the document, sentence and word levels using state-of-the-art alignment methods and tools. Then project English terms from existing controlled vocabularies to the aligned word pairs, and examine the number and quality of the putative French translations obtained thereby. We considered three American vocabularies present in the UMLS with three different translation statuses: the MeSH, SNOMED CT, and the MedlinePlus Health Topics. We obtained several thousand new translations of our input terms, this number being closely linked to the number of terms in the input vocabularies. Our study shows that alignment methods can extract a number of new term translations from large bodies of text with a moderate human reviewing effort, and thus contribute to help a human translator obtain better translation coverage of an input vocabulary. Short-term perspectives include their application to a corpus 20 times larger than that used here, together with more focused methods for term extraction.

  20. Contribution to Terminology Internationalization by Word Alignment in Parallel Corpora

    PubMed Central

    Deléger, Louise; Merkel, Magnus; Zweigenbaum, Pierre

    2006-01-01

    Background and objectives Creating a complete translation of a large vocabulary is a time-consuming task, which requires skilled and knowledgeable medical translators. Our goal is to examine to which extent such a task can be alleviated by a specific natural language processing technique, word alignment in parallel corpora. We experiment with translation from English to French. Methods Build a large corpus of parallel, English-French documents, and automatically align it at the document, sentence and word levels using state-of-the-art alignment methods and tools. Then project English terms from existing controlled vocabularies to the aligned word pairs, and examine the number and quality of the putative French translations obtained thereby. We considered three American vocabularies present in the UMLS with three different translation statuses: the MeSH, SNOMED CT, and the MedlinePlus Health Topics. Results We obtained several thousand new translations of our input terms, this number being closely linked to the number of terms in the input vocabularies. Conclusion Our study shows that alignment methods can extract a number of new term translations from large bodies of text with a moderate human reviewing effort, and thus contribute to help a human translator obtain better translation coverage of an input vocabulary. Short-term perspectives include their application to a corpus 20 times larger than that used here, together with more focused methods for term extraction. PMID:17238328

  1. Application of statistical machine translation to public health information: a feasibility study.

    PubMed

    Kirchhoff, Katrin; Turner, Anne M; Axelrod, Amittai; Saavedra, Francisco

    2011-01-01

    Accurate, understandable public health information is important for ensuring the health of the nation. The large portion of the US population with Limited English Proficiency is best served by translations of public-health information into other languages. However, a large number of health departments and primary care clinics face significant barriers to fulfilling federal mandates to provide multilingual materials to Limited English Proficiency individuals. This article presents a pilot study on the feasibility of using freely available statistical machine translation technology to translate health promotion materials. The authors gathered health-promotion materials in English from local and national public-health websites. Spanish versions were created by translating the documents using a freely available machine-translation website. Translations were rated for adequacy and fluency, analyzed for errors, manually corrected by a human posteditor, and compared with exclusively manual translations. Machine translation plus postediting took 15-53 min per document, compared to the reported days or even weeks for the standard translation process. A blind comparison of machine-assisted and human translations of six documents revealed overall equivalency between machine-translated and manually translated materials. The analysis of translation errors indicated that the most important errors were word-sense errors. The results indicate that machine translation plus postediting may be an effective method of producing multilingual health materials with equivalent quality but lower cost compared to manual translations.

  2. Application of statistical machine translation to public health information: a feasibility study

    PubMed Central

    Turner, Anne M; Axelrod, Amittai; Saavedra, Francisco

    2011-01-01

    Objective Accurate, understandable public health information is important for ensuring the health of the nation. The large portion of the US population with Limited English Proficiency is best served by translations of public-health information into other languages. However, a large number of health departments and primary care clinics face significant barriers to fulfilling federal mandates to provide multilingual materials to Limited English Proficiency individuals. This article presents a pilot study on the feasibility of using freely available statistical machine translation technology to translate health promotion materials. Design The authors gathered health-promotion materials in English from local and national public-health websites. Spanish versions were created by translating the documents using a freely available machine-translation website. Translations were rated for adequacy and fluency, analyzed for errors, manually corrected by a human posteditor, and compared with exclusively manual translations. Results Machine translation plus postediting took 15–53 min per document, compared to the reported days or even weeks for the standard translation process. A blind comparison of machine-assisted and human translations of six documents revealed overall equivalency between machine-translated and manually translated materials. The analysis of translation errors indicated that the most important errors were word-sense errors. Conclusion The results indicate that machine translation plus postediting may be an effective method of producing multilingual health materials with equivalent quality but lower cost compared to manual translations. PMID:21498805

  3. Cultural adaptation of a pediatric functional assessment for rehabilitation outcomes research.

    PubMed

    Arestad, Kristen E; MacPhee, David; Lim, Chun Y; Khetani, Mary A

    2017-09-15

    Significant racial and ethnic health care disparities experienced by Hispanic children with special health care needs (CSHCN) create barriers to enacting culturally competent rehabilitation services. One way to minimize the impact of disparities in rehabilitation is to equip practitioners with culturally relevant functional assessments to accurately determine service needs. Current approaches to culturally adapting assessments have three major limitations: use of inconsistent translation processes; current processes assess for some, but not all, elements of cultural equivalence; and limited evidence to guide decision making about whether to undertake cultural adaptation with and without language translation. The aims of this observational study are (a) to examine similarities and differences of culturally adapting a pediatric functional assessment with and without language translation, and (b) to examine the feasibility of cultural adaptation processes. The Young Children's Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM), a pediatric functional assessment, underwent cultural adaptation (i.e., language translation and cognitive testing) to establish Spanish and English pilot versions for use by caregivers of young CSHCN of Mexican descent. Following language translation to develop a Spanish YC-PEM pilot version, 7 caregivers (4 Spanish-speaking; 3 English-speaking) completed cognitive testing to inform decisions regarding content revisions to English and Spanish YC-PEM versions. Participant responses were content coded to established cultural equivalencies. Coded data were summed to draw comparisons on the number of revisions needed to achieve cultural equivalence between the two versions. Feasibility was assessed according to process data and data quality. Results suggest more revisions are required to achieve cultural equivalence for the translated (Spanish) version of the YC-PEM. However, issues around how the participation outcome is conceptualized were identified in both versions. Feasibility results indicate that language translation processes require high resource investment, but may increase translation quality. However, use of questionnaires versus interview methods for cognitive testing may have limited data saturation. Results lend preliminary support to the need for and feasibility of cultural adaptation with and without language translation. Results inform decisions surrounding cultural adaptations with and without language translation and thereby enhance cultural competence and quality assessment of healthcare need within pediatric rehabilitation.

  4. English Transitivity Alternation in Second Language Acquisition: An Attentional Approach. China Perspectives

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wang, Yuxia

    2017-01-01

    The correct use of English verb argument structure is crucial for foreign learners of the English language. Based on an experimental study recruiting 162 Chinese English learners at different proficiency levels, this book suggests that the acquisition of English transitivity alternation follows as a consequence of the cognitive processing of…

  5. Study on Correlation of English Pronunciation Self-Concept to English Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tang, Xin; Zhang, Shengqi; Li, Yucong; Zhao, Miqiang

    2013-01-01

    English pronunciation self-concept is formed in the process of pronunciation learning, which refers to the learners' self-conception and assessment of one's English pronunciation proficiency and pronunciation (Gimson, A. C. 1980). This paper reports an investigation on 237 non-English major college students into the relationship between English…

  6. "We've Come a Long Way Baby." A Student Created Magazine by the ESL Classes of Local 155 ILGWU.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, New York, NY.

    This student magazine, created by the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes of a local unit of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) is a collection of personal opinions, reports, and creative writing with illustrations. Compositions are by both individual students and groups. Selections include the account of a field trip,…

  7. Challenging, Eye-Opening, and Changing U.S. Teacher Training in Korea: Creating Experiences That Will Enhance Global Perspectives

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Oh, Kevin; Nussli, Natalie

    2014-01-01

    This case study explored the short-term international experience of pre-service teachers to create and enhance global perspectives. These teachers (n = 5), all female graduate students at a university in the U.S., were fully immersed in a foreign culture for three weeks while teaching English to primary and secondary students in Korea. Pre-,…

  8. Cross-Language Transfer of Word Reading Accuracy and Word Reading Fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English Bilinguals: Script-Universal and Script-Specific Processes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pasquarella, Adrian; Chen, Xi; Gottardo, Alexandra; Geva, Esther

    2015-01-01

    This study examined cross-language transfer of word reading accuracy and word reading fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Participants included 51 Spanish-English and 64 Chinese-English bilinguals. Both groups of children completed parallel measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy,…

  9. Information retrieval and terminology extraction in online resources for patients with diabetes.

    PubMed

    Seljan, Sanja; Baretić, Maja; Kucis, Vlasta

    2014-06-01

    Terminology use, as a mean for information retrieval or document indexing, plays an important role in health literacy. Specific types of users, i.e. patients with diabetes need access to various online resources (on foreign and/or native language) searching for information on self-education of basic diabetic knowledge, on self-care activities regarding importance of dietetic food, medications, physical exercises and on self-management of insulin pumps. Automatic extraction of corpus-based terminology from online texts, manuals or professional papers, can help in building terminology lists or list of "browsing phrases" useful in information retrieval or in document indexing. Specific terminology lists represent an intermediate step between free text search and controlled vocabulary, between user's demands and existing online resources in native and foreign language. The research aiming to detect the role of terminology in online resources, is conducted on English and Croatian manuals and Croatian online texts, and divided into three interrelated parts: i) comparison of professional and popular terminology use ii) evaluation of automatic statistically-based terminology extraction on English and Croatian texts iii) comparison and evaluation of extracted terminology performed on English manual using statistical and hybrid approaches. Extracted terminology candidates are evaluated by comparison with three types of reference lists: list created by professional medical person, list of highly professional vocabulary contained in MeSH and list created by non-medical persons, made as intersection of 15 lists. Results report on use of popular and professional terminology in online diabetes resources, on evaluation of automatically extracted terminology candidates in English and Croatian texts and on comparison of statistical and hybrid extraction methods in English text. Evaluation of automatic and semi-automatic terminology extraction methods is performed by recall, precision and f-measure.

  10. Reflections on a Primary School Teacher Professional Development Programme on Learning English through Process Drama

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    To, Lai-wa Dora; Chan, Yuk-lan Phoebe; Lam, Yin Krissy; Tsang, Shuk-kuen Yvonne

    2011-01-01

    This article documents the authors' reflections on a teacher professional development programme conducted in 38 Hong Kong primary schools on the teaching of English through Process Drama. The authors draw upon the views of school principals, subject panel head teachers, English teachers, students and parents in focus group interviews to examine…

  11. Auditory Processing, Linguistic Prosody Awareness, and Word Reading in Mandarin-Speaking Children Learning English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chung, Wei-Lun; Jarmulowicz, Linda; Bidelman, Gavin M.

    2017-01-01

    This study examined language-specific links among auditory processing, linguistic prosody awareness, and Mandarin (L1) and English (L2) word reading in 61 Mandarin-speaking, English-learning children. Three auditory discrimination abilities were measured: pitch contour, pitch interval, and rise time (rate of intensity change at tone onset).…

  12. Improving Students' Expertise and Attitudes during the Postwriting Stage of the Writing Process through Collaborative Revision.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wells, Mary C.

    A practicum addressed the problem of students' lack of fluency in standard English despite the traditional paradigm for formal grammar instruction and the emphasis on process writing in most English classrooms. Nineteen (English 2) high school students participated in peer editing groups in a collaborative learning environment. The solution…

  13. The Processing of Singular and Plural Nouns in French and English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    New, Boris; Brysbaert, Marc; Segui, Juan; Ferrand, Ludovic; Rastle, Kathleen

    2004-01-01

    Contradictory data have been obtained about the processing of singular and plural nouns in Dutch and English. Whereas the Dutch findings point to an influence of the base frequency of the singular and the plural word forms on lexical decision times (Baayen, Dijkstra, & Schreuder, 1997), the English reaction times depend on the surface frequency of…

  14. English Medium Instruction and Idiomaticity in English as a Lingua Franca

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Briggs, Jessica G.; Smith, Sarah Ashley

    2017-01-01

    This paper critically considers the implications of the growth of English-medium instruction (EMI) globally for idiomaticity in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). We first make the case for idiomaticity in English in terms of its contribution to language processing and use and regarding the challenges and affordances it presents to users of English…

  15. Can An Evolutionary Process Create English Text?

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Bailey, David H.

    Critics of the conventional theory of biological evolution have asserted that while natural processes might result in some limited diversity, nothing fundamentally new can arise from 'random' evolution. In response, biologists such as Richard Dawkins have demonstrated that a computer program can generate a specific short phrase via evolution-like iterations starting with random gibberish. While such demonstrations are intriguing, they are flawed in that they have a fixed, pre-specified future target, whereas in real biological evolution there is no fixed future target, but only a complicated 'fitness landscape'. In this study, a significantly more sophisticated evolutionary scheme is employed tomore » produce text segments reminiscent of a Charles Dickens novel. The aggregate size of these segments is larger than the computer program and the input Dickens text, even when comparing compressed data (as a measure of information content).« less

  16. Non-Selective Lexical Access in Late Arabic-English Bilinguals: Evidence from Gating.

    PubMed

    Boudelaa, Sami

    2018-02-07

    Previous research suggests that late bilinguals who speak typologically distant languages are the least likely to show evidence of non-selective lexical access processes. This study puts this claim to test by using the gating task to determine whether words beginning with speech sounds that are phonetically similar in Arabic and English (e.g., [b,d,m,n]) give rise to selective or non-selective lexical access processes in late Arabic-English bilinguals. The results show that an acoustic-phonetic input (e.g., [bæ]) that is consistent with words in Arabic (e.g., [bædrun] "moon") and English (e.g., [bæd] "bad") activates lexical representations in both languages of the bilingual. This non-selective activation holds equally well for mixed lists with words from both Arabic and English and blocked lists consisting only of Arabic or English words. These results suggest that non-selective lexical access processes are the default mechanism even in late bilinguals of typologically distant languages.

  17. Workplace ESL: Effective Adaptations To Fill a Growing Need.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gerdes, Carla; Wilberschied, Lee

    2003-01-01

    Using a cooperative and situated learning approach, two vocational English-as-a-Second-Language instructors created a linguistic community of practice among nonnative speaking immigrant restaurant employees and their native speaking coworkers. (Author/VWL)

  18. The Manchester Respiratory Activities of Daily Living questionnaire for use in COPD patients: translation into Portuguese and cross-cultural adaptation for use in Brazil

    PubMed Central

    Junkes-Cunha, Maíra; Mayer, Anamaria Fleig; Reis, Cardine; Yohannes, Abebaw M.; Maurici, Rosemeri

    2016-01-01

    Objective : To translate The Manchester Respiratory Activities of Daily Living (MRADL) questionnaire into Portuguese and to create a version of the MRADL that is cross-culturally adapted for use in Brazil. Methods : The English-language version of the MRADL was translated into Portuguese by two health care researchers who were fluent in English. A consensus version was obtained by other two researchers and a pulmonologist. That version was back-translated into English by another translator who was a native speaker of English and fluent in Portuguese. The cognitive debriefing process consisted in having 10 COPD patients complete the translated questionnaire in order to test its understandability, clarity, and acceptability in the target population. On the basis of the results, the final Portuguese-language version of the MRADL was produced and approved by the committee and one of the authors of the original questionnaire. Results : The author of the MRADL questioned only a few items in the translated version, and some changes were made to the mobility and personal hygiene domains. Cultural differences regarding the domestic activities domain were found, in particular regarding the item "Do you have the ability to do a full clothes wash and hang them out to dry?", due to socioeconomic and climatic issues. The item "Do you take care of your garden?" was questioned by the participants who lived in apartments, being modified to "Do you take care of your garden or plants in your apartment?" Conclusions : The final Portuguese-language version of the MRADL adapted for use in Brazil was found to be easy to understand and easily applied. PMID:26982036

  19. Research Article Abstracts and Introductions: A Comparative Genre-Based Study of Arabic and English in the Fields of Educational Psychology and Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Alotaibi, Hmoud

    2013-01-01

    The genre of the research article has attracted the attention of researchers, particularly after the research conducted by Swales (1981). In 1990, Swales introduced the Create a Research Space (CARS) model which consists of three rhetorical moves (i.e. units): Move 1: creating a research territory, Move 2: establishing a niche, and Move 3:…

  20. The Influence of Process Approach on English as Second Language Students' Performances in Essay Writing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Akinwamide, Timothy Kolade

    2012-01-01

    This study examined the influence of Process Approach on English as second language Students' performances in essay writing. The purpose was to determine how far this current global approach could be of assistance to the writing skill development of these bilingual speakers of English language. The study employed the pre-test post-test control…

  1. The Effect of Processing Instruction and Dictogloss Tasks on Acquisition of the English Passive Voice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Qin, Jingjing

    2008-01-01

    This study was intended to compare processing instruction (VanPatten, 1993, 1996, 2000), an input-based focus on form technique, to dictogloss tasks, an output-oriented focus-on-form type of instruction to assess their effects in helping beginning-EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners acquire the simple English passive voice. Two intact…

  2. Learning through Engaging in Retrospective Reflection on a Change Process in an English Course on Workplace Communication

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lu, Yi-Ling

    2017-01-01

    This study describes a change process of implementing role-plays in a course on workplace communication in English, and of engaging in retrospective reflection. Considering that English education for nursing students in Taiwan has focused on the development of medical terminology and that students' communicative competence is the main deficiency,…

  3. The effect of first written language on the acquisition of English literacy.

    PubMed

    Holm, A; Dodd, B

    1996-05-01

    The relationship between first and second language literacy was examined by identifying the skills and processes developed in the first language that were transferred to the second language. The performance of 40 university students from The People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Australia were compared on a series of tasks that assessed phonological awareness and reading and spelling skills in English. The results indicated that the Hong Kong students (with non-alphabetic first language literacy) had limited phonological awareness compared to those students with alphabetic first language literacy. The reading and spelling tasks showed no differences between the groups on real word processing. However, the students from Hong Kong had difficulty processing nonwords because of their poor phonological awareness. The results supported the hypothesis that people learning English as a second language (ESL) transfer their literacy processing skills from their first language to English. When the phonological awareness required in English had not been developed in the first language, ESL students were limited to a whole-word, visual strategy. The findings indicate that students from non-alphabetic written language backgrounds might have difficulties with new, or unfamiliar words when attending universities where English is the medium of instruction.

  4. Sub-Syllabic Processing in Young Korean-English Bilinguals: Semivowel Placement Differences between Korean and English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baek, Seunghyun

    2014-01-01

    This study investigated the sub-syllabic awareness of two groups of 86 Korean kindergarteners learning English as a foreign language (EFL) or English as a second language (ESL). In addition, it explored the cross-language transfer of sub-syllabic units between Korean and English by taking into account their lexical abilities with respect to the…

  5. 37 CFR 7.3 - Correspondence must be in English.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... English. 7.3 Section 7.3 Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE... English. International applications and registrations, requests for extension of protection and all other related correspondence with the Office must be in English. The Office will not process correspondence that...

  6. Toward a Cosmopolitan Vision of English Education in Singapore

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Choo, Suzanne S.

    2014-01-01

    English education has played a vital role in facilitating Singapore's global city ambitions since the country's independence. While the state has prioritized English education's cognitive objective emphasizing information processing and effective communication skills, it has given insufficient attention to the role of English in equipping students…

  7. On Writing Behavioral Objectives for English.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maxwell, John, Ed.; Tovatt, Anthony, Ed.

    This book presents the results of the examination, during 1969, of the behavioral objectives movement in English instruction by the NCTE Commission on the English Curriculum. It points out that, although some major benefits may eventually arise from the writing of English behavioral objectives, "the process bristles with problems in semantics,…

  8. Limited English Speakers and the Miranda Rights

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Briere, Eugene J.

    1978-01-01

    This paper describes the process used to determine if a Thai individual, of a limited English speaking background, seemed to have enough proficiency in English to understand the "Miranda Rights," designed to inform him of his rights to an attorney. These Rights should be simplified for limited English speakers. (CFM)

  9. Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners' Experiences in High School Chemistry Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Flores, Annette; Smith, K. Christopher

    2013-01-01

    This article reports on the experiences of Spanish-speaking English language learners in high school chemistry courses, focusing largely on experiences in learning the English language, experiences learning chemistry, and experiences learning chemistry in the English language. The findings illustrate the cognitive processes the students undertake…

  10. 7 CFR 253.5 - State agency requirements.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... households which speak the same non-English language and which do not contain adults(s) fluent in English as a second language. If the non-English language is spoken but not written, the State agency shall... sufficient bilingual staff for the timely processing of non-English speaking applicants. (3) The State agency...

  11. The Development of English Language Teaching Skills for Graduate Students through the Process of Learning by Doing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Likitrattanaporn, Wannakarn

    2017-01-01

    The purposes of this investigation were (1) to examine the findings of effectiveness of the process of learning-by-doing; (2) to develop students' skill of designing English teaching materials and teaching English language; and (3) to determine an efficient format of learning-by-doing used for training student-teachers in the skill of teaching…

  12. The Comparative Effects of Processing Instruction and Dictogloss on the Acquisition of the English Passive by Speakers of Turkish

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Uludag, Onur; Vanpatten, Bill

    2012-01-01

    The current study presents the results of an experiment investigating the effects of processing instruction (PI) and dictogloss (DG) on the acquisition of the English passive voice. Sixty speakers of Turkish studying English at university level were assigned to three groups: one receiving PI, the other receiving DG and the third serving as a…

  13. Lagging behind Writing Pedagogical Developments: The Impact of Implementing Process-Based Approach on Learners' Writing in a Vietnamese Secondary Education Context

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ngo, Chau M.; Trinh, Lap Q.

    2011-01-01

    The field of English language education has seen developments in writing pedagogy, moving from product-based to process-based and then to genre-based approaches. In Vietnam, teaching secondary school students how to write in English is still lagging behind these growing developments. Product-based approach is commonly seen in English writing…

  14. Responding to the Language Challenge: Kaiser Permanente's Approach

    PubMed Central

    Meyers, Kate; Tang, Gayle; Fernandez, Alicia

    2009-01-01

    Objective: To inform current debates on improving health care quality for patients with limited English proficiency by identifying the drivers and processes for one large health care delivery system's implementation of particular models, key success factors, and remaining challenges for the field. Study Design: A qualitative case study of the Kaiser Permanente (KP) San Francisco Medical Center's approach to developing linguistic access services and subsequent organizationwide initiatives. Methods: We conducted semistructured interviews with eight current and former clinical and administrative leaders from the KP San Francisco Medical Center and national headquarters. Interviews were analyzed for key themes. Results: KP San Francisco Medical Center developed linguistic and cultural services in response to a confluence of external and internal factors, including changing demographics, care quality challenges, and patient and clinician satisfaction issues. Early strategies included development of language-specific care modules focused on Chinese- and Spanish-speaking members while meeting broader linguistic access and cultural-competency needs through a centralized Multicultural Services Center. Additional approaches across KP regions have focused on improving interpreter services, optimizing use of bilingual staff, and creating a translation infrastructure to improve quality and reduce redundancy in written translation efforts. Conclusions: KP's experiences developing linguistic and cultural care and services since the 1990s provide lessons about decision-making processes and approaches that may guide other health systems, insurers, and policy makers striving to improve care quality and safety for patients with limited English proficiency. PMID:20740094

  15. Education reform for the expansion of mother-tongue education in Ghana

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rosekrans, Kristin; Sherris, Arieh; Chatry-Komarek, Marie

    2012-10-01

    In 1957 Ghana was the first sub-Saharan colonial nation-state to achieve independence from British rule. The language of literacy instruction, however, remained English throughout most of Ghana's independence, effectively thwarting reading and writing in 11 major and 67 minor indigenous languages in use today. After years of policy shifts, including the intermittent of mother tongue in early childhood schooling to facilitate English language and literacy instruction, prospects for a bold move towards multilingual education have emerged from a coalescence of forces inside and outside of Ghanaian education policy circles. This article discusses how the inertia of a dated language policy and a historic disregard for Ghana's multilingual landscape by the country's own policy makers are being overcome, at least partially, by progressive powers of change, albeit not without challenge. It undertakes an analysis of how a policy environment that supports bilingual education was created in order to implement a comprehensive and innovative multilingual programme, the National Literacy Acceleration Program (NALAP), which was rolled out across the nation's schools in early 2010. Having been involved in the process of designing NALAP, the authors describe the development of standards of learning and materials, as well as innovative aspects of a constructivist teacher education approach. The paper concludes with recommendations for further research, including combining a change process for key stakeholders and randomised language and literacy assessment with social marketing research in a unified approach.

  16. Why do general practitioners from France choose to work in London practices? A qualitative study.

    PubMed

    Ballard, Karen D; Robinson, Susan I; Laurence, Priscilla B

    2004-10-01

    Growing concerns about the ability to maintain and increase the general practitioner (GP) workforce has led to active recruitment of GPs from overseas. However, little is known about why these GPs choose to leave their countries and come to work in London. To investigate the motivations and expectations of French GPs migrating to work in general practices in London. A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. General practice induction programme in southeast London. Individual interviews with 31 French GPs, who attended an induction programme for international recruits, were taped, transcribed, and analysed using a categorical approach. Three factors led to the process of migration: instigating factors, creating the stimulus for migration; activating factors, based on the perception that English general practice offered greater opportunities; and facilitating factors, which make migration possible. Particular emphasis was placed on personal and professional instigating factors, with a desire for new cultural experiences and a widespread discontent surrounding the infrastructure of French general practice, playing crucial roles in the stimulus to migrate. Ease of travel and a paid induction programme facilitated the move to their chosen destination. French GPs' decisions were part of a process of migration influenced by a series of integrated factors. Consideration of these factors will not only enhance recruitment to English general practice, but will also facilitate foreign GPs' transition to work in the National Health Service (NHS) and, ultimately, maximise their retention.

  17. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Learning Processes: Why Japanese Can't Speak English.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kamada, Laurel Diane

    Motivation towards English learning in Japanese schools today is analyzed according to John Condry and James Chambers' process-of-learning paradigm. The four stages of learning (initial engagement, process, disengagement, and re-engagement) are shown to emit different processes of learning in students based on whether learning is intrinsically or…

  18. Product and Process Perspectives: an Empirical Study of Explicitation in Chinese-English Translation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fan, Zhewei

    2012-01-01

    Product-and process-oriented, this dissertation focuses on both the explicitness in translated texts and the implementation of explicitation in Chinese-English translation. In doing so, it provides a new cognitive framework for understanding explicitation as a strategic process. A specially designed study of the translation process facilitates the…

  19. Cross-cultural differences in mental representations of time: evidence from an implicit nonlinguistic task.

    PubMed

    Fuhrman, Orly; Boroditsky, Lera

    2010-11-01

    Across cultures people construct spatial representations of time. However, the particular spatial layouts created to represent time may differ across cultures. This paper examines whether people automatically access and use culturally specific spatial representations when reasoning about time. In Experiment 1, we asked Hebrew and English speakers to arrange pictures depicting temporal sequences of natural events, and to point to the hypothesized location of events relative to a reference point. In both tasks, English speakers (who read left to right) arranged temporal sequences to progress from left to right, whereas Hebrew speakers (who read right to left) arranged them from right to left, replicating previous work. In Experiments 2 and 3, we asked the participants to make rapid temporal order judgments about pairs of pictures presented one after the other (i.e., to decide whether the second picture showed a conceptually earlier or later time-point of an event than the first picture). Participants made responses using two adjacent keyboard keys. English speakers were faster to make "earlier" judgments when the "earlier" response needed to be made with the left response key than with the right response key. Hebrew speakers showed exactly the reverse pattern. Asking participants to use a space-time mapping inconsistent with the one suggested by writing direction in their language created interference, suggesting that participants were automatically creating writing-direction consistent spatial representations in the course of their normal temporal reasoning. It appears that people automatically access culturally specific spatial representations when making temporal judgments even in nonlinguistic tasks. Copyright © 2010 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

  20. A Systematic Translation and Cultural Adaptation Process for Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ-R21).

    PubMed

    Rosnah, I; Noor Hassim, I; Shafizah, A S

    2013-10-01

    The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire was first constructed to measure eating behavior in an English population in the United States. It has been validated and translated for various populations in different languages. The aim of this article is to describe a systematic process for translating the questionnaire from English to Malay language. The report of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcome Research (ISPOR) Task Force was used as the basis for the systematic translation process. The process began with preparation; followed by forward translation (2 independent translators), reconciliation, back translation (2 independent translators), back translation review, harmonization, cognitive debriefing, review of cognitive debriefing results and finalization, proofreading; and ended with the final report. Four independent Malay translators who fluent in English and reside in Malaysia were involved in the process. A team of health care researchers had assisted the review of the new translated questionnaires. Majority of the TFEQ-R21 items were experiencing, conceptually and semantically equivalence between original English and translated English. However, certain phrase such as "feels like bottomless pit" was difficult to translate by forward translators. Cognitive debriefing was a very helpful process to ensure the TFEQ-R21 Malay version was appropriate in term of wording and culturally accepted. A total of four redundant comments in regards to response scale wording, word confusion and wording arrangement. The systematic translation process is a way to reduce the linguistic discrepancies between the English and Malay language in order to promote equivalence and culturally adapted TFEQ-R21 questionnaire.

  1. Improving advance care planning for English-speaking and Spanish-speaking older adults: study protocol for the PREPARE randomised controlled trial

    PubMed Central

    Sudore, Rebecca L; Barnes, Deborah E; Le, Gem M; Ramos, Roberto; Osua, Stacy J; Richardson, Sarah A; Boscardin, John; Schillinger, Dean

    2016-01-01

    Introduction Advance care planning (ACP) is a process that allows patients to identify their goals for medical care. Traditionally, ACP has focused on completing advance directives; however, we have expanded the ACP paradigm to also prepare patients to communicate their wishes and make informed decisions. To this end, we created an ACP website called PREPARE (http://www.prepareforyourcare.org) to prepare diverse English-speaking and Spanish-speaking older adults for medical decision-making. Here, we describe the study protocol for a randomised controlled efficacy trial of PREPARE in a safety-net setting. The goal is to determine the efficacy of PREPARE to engage diverse English-speaking and Spanish-speaking older adults in a full spectrum of ACP behaviours. Methods and analysis We include English-speaking and Spanish-speaking adults from an urban public hospital who are ≥55 years old, have ≥2 chronic medical conditions and have seen a primary care physician ≥2 times in the last year. Participants are randomised to the PREPARE intervention (review PREPARE and an easy-to-read advance directive) or the control arm (only the easy-to-read advance directive). The primary outcome is documentation of an advance directive and/or ACP discussion. Secondary outcomes include ACP behaviour change processes measured with validated surveys (eg, self-efficacy, readiness) and a broad range of ACP actions (eg, choosing a surrogate, identifying goals for care, discussing ACP with clinicians and/or surrogates). Using blinded outcome ascertainment, outcomes will be measured at 1 week and at 3, 6 and 12 months, and compared between study arms using mixed-effects logistic regression and mixed-effects linear, Poisson or negative binomial regression. Ethics and dissemination This study has been approved by the appropriate Institutional Review Boards and is guided by input from patient and clinical advisory boards and a data safety monitoring board. The results of this study will be disseminated to academic and community stakeholders. Trial registration numbers NCT01990235; NCT02072941; Pre-results. PMID:27401363

  2. Improving advance care planning for English-speaking and Spanish-speaking older adults: study protocol for the PREPARE randomised controlled trial.

    PubMed

    Sudore, Rebecca L; Barnes, Deborah E; Le, Gem M; Ramos, Roberto; Osua, Stacy J; Richardson, Sarah A; Boscardin, John; Schillinger, Dean

    2016-07-11

    Advance care planning (ACP) is a process that allows patients to identify their goals for medical care. Traditionally, ACP has focused on completing advance directives; however, we have expanded the ACP paradigm to also prepare patients to communicate their wishes and make informed decisions. To this end, we created an ACP website called PREPARE (http://www.prepareforyourcare.org) to prepare diverse English-speaking and Spanish-speaking older adults for medical decision-making. Here, we describe the study protocol for a randomised controlled efficacy trial of PREPARE in a safety-net setting. The goal is to determine the efficacy of PREPARE to engage diverse English-speaking and Spanish-speaking older adults in a full spectrum of ACP behaviours. We include English-speaking and Spanish-speaking adults from an urban public hospital who are ≥55 years old, have ≥2 chronic medical conditions and have seen a primary care physician ≥2 times in the last year. Participants are randomised to the PREPARE intervention (review PREPARE and an easy-to-read advance directive) or the control arm (only the easy-to-read advance directive). The primary outcome is documentation of an advance directive and/or ACP discussion. Secondary outcomes include ACP behaviour change processes measured with validated surveys (eg, self-efficacy, readiness) and a broad range of ACP actions (eg, choosing a surrogate, identifying goals for care, discussing ACP with clinicians and/or surrogates). Using blinded outcome ascertainment, outcomes will be measured at 1 week and at 3, 6 and 12 months, and compared between study arms using mixed-effects logistic regression and mixed-effects linear, Poisson or negative binomial regression. This study has been approved by the appropriate Institutional Review Boards and is guided by input from patient and clinical advisory boards and a data safety monitoring board. The results of this study will be disseminated to academic and community stakeholders. NCT01990235; NCT02072941; Pre-results. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

  3. Learning English as a Foreign Language in Taiwan: Students' Experiences and Beyond

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hsieh, Ming Fang

    2011-01-01

    In Taiwan, earlier English instruction has become prevalent in response to the trend of English as an international language. Current studies are interested in investigating the outcomes or developmental process of learning English from a linguistic perspective. However, this article aims to reveal children's subjective experiences of learning…

  4. Searching Jobs through Vocabulary. English-Vietnamese Version.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Manning, Angella D., Comp.

    This English-Vietnamese glossary, which is intended for use in career exploration, special education, and English as a second language courses, consists of side-by-side English and Vietnamese definitions of terms related to the job search process. A wide range of terms that are likely to be encountered in a career awareness/exploration class is…

  5. Challenges and Instructional Approaches Impacting the Literacy Performance of English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Markham, Paul L.; Gordon, Karen E.

    2007-01-01

    For English Language Learners (ELLs), the process of becoming literate in English is daunting. Not only are these students faced with the same literacy challenges faced by native English-speaking students, but they are also challenged with extensive diversity issues relating to substantial differences in linguistic, cultural, and academic…

  6. Brain Bases of Morphological Processing in Chinese-English Bilingual Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ip, Ka I; Hsu, Lucy Shih-Ju; Arredondo, Maria M.; Tardif, Twila; Kovelman, Ioulia

    2017-01-01

    Can bilingual exposure impact children's neural circuitry for learning to read? To answer this question, we investigated the brain bases of morphological awareness, one of the key spoken language abilities for learning to read in English and Chinese. Bilingual Chinese-English and monolingual English children (N = 22, ages 7-12) completed…

  7. Engineering English and the High-Tech Industry: A Case Study of an English Needs Analysis of Process Integration Engineers at a Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in Taiwan

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Spence, Paul; Liu, Gi-Zen

    2013-01-01

    The global high-tech industry is characterized by extreme competitiveness, innovation, and widespread use of English. Consequently, Taiwanese high-tech companies require engineers that are talented in both their engineering and English abilities. In response to the lack of knowledge regarding the English skills needed by engineers in Taiwan's…

  8. Reading of American Children Whose Language is a Stable Rural Dialect of English or a Language Other Than English. Final Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goodman, Kenneth S.; Goodman, Yetta M.

    Research conducted to refine and perfect a theory and model of the reading process is presented in this report. Specifically, studies of the reading miscues of 96 students who were either speakers of English as a second language or of stable, rural dialects are detailed. Chapters deal with the following topics: methodology, the reading process,…

  9. Au pairs are rarely male: norms on the gender perception of role names across English, French, and German.

    PubMed

    Gabriel, Ute; Gygax, Pascal; Sarrasin, Oriane; Garnham, Alan; Oakhill, Jane

    2008-02-01

    A list of role names for future use in research on gender stereotyping was created and evaluated. In two studies, 126 role names were rated with reference to their gender stereotypicality by English-, French-, and German-speaking students of universities in Switzerland (French and German) and in the U.K. (English). Role names were either presented in specific feminine and masculine forms (Study 1) or in the masculine form (generic masculine) only (Study 2). The rankings of the stereotypicality ratings were highly reliable across languages and questionnaire versions, but the overall mean of the ratings was less strongly male if participants were also presented with the female versions of the role names and if the latter were presented on the left side of the questionnaires.

  10. Characteristics of number transcoding errors of Chinese- versus English-speaking Alzheimer's disease patients.

    PubMed

    Ting, Simon Kang Seng; Chia, Pei Shi; Kwek, Kevin; Tan, Wilnard; Hameed, Shahul

    2016-10-01

    Number processing disorder is an acquired deficit in mathematical skills commonly observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD), usually as a consequence of neurological dysfunction. Common impairments include syntactic errors (800012 instead of 8012) and intrusion errors (8 thousand and 12 instead of eight thousand and twelve) in number transcoding tasks. This study aimed to understand the characterization of AD-related number processing disorder within an alphabetic language (English) and ideographical language (Chinese), and to investigate the differences between alphabetic and ideographic language processing. Chinese-speaking AD patients were hypothesized to make significantly more intrusion errors than English-speaking ones, due to the ideographical nature of both Chinese characters and Arabic numbers. A simplified number transcoding test derived from EC301 battery was administered to AD patients. Chinese-speaking AD patients made significantly more intrusion errors (p = 0.001) than English speakers. This demonstrates that number processing in an alphabetic language such as English does not function in the same manner as in Chinese. The impaired inhibition capability likely contributes to such observations due to its competitive lexical representation in brain for Chinese speakers.

  11. Clinical Natural Language Processing in languages other than English: opportunities and challenges.

    PubMed

    Névéol, Aurélie; Dalianis, Hercules; Velupillai, Sumithra; Savova, Guergana; Zweigenbaum, Pierre

    2018-03-30

    Natural language processing applied to clinical text or aimed at a clinical outcome has been thriving in recent years. This paper offers the first broad overview of clinical Natural Language Processing (NLP) for languages other than English. Recent studies are summarized to offer insights and outline opportunities in this area. We envision three groups of intended readers: (1) NLP researchers leveraging experience gained in other languages, (2) NLP researchers faced with establishing clinical text processing in a language other than English, and (3) clinical informatics researchers and practitioners looking for resources in their languages in order to apply NLP techniques and tools to clinical practice and/or investigation. We review work in clinical NLP in languages other than English. We classify these studies into three groups: (i) studies describing the development of new NLP systems or components de novo, (ii) studies describing the adaptation of NLP architectures developed for English to another language, and (iii) studies focusing on a particular clinical application. We show the advantages and drawbacks of each method, and highlight the appropriate application context. Finally, we identify major challenges and opportunities that will affect the impact of NLP on clinical practice and public health studies in a context that encompasses English as well as other languages.

  12. Tone Attrition in Mandarin Speakers of Varying English Proficiency

    PubMed Central

    Creel, Sarah C.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine whether the degree of dominance of Mandarin–English bilinguals' languages affects phonetic processing of tone content in their native language, Mandarin. Method We tested 72 Mandarin–English bilingual college students with a range of language-dominance profiles in the 2 languages and ages of acquisition of English. Participants viewed 2 photographs at a time while hearing a familiar Mandarin word referring to 1 photograph. The names of the 2 photographs diverged in tone, vowels, or both. Word recognition was evaluated using clicking accuracy, reaction times, and an online recognition measure (gaze) and was compared in the 3 conditions. Results Relative proficiency in English was correlated with reduced word recognition success in tone-disambiguated trials, but not in vowel-disambiguated trials, across all 3 dependent measures. This selective attrition for tone content emerged even though all bilinguals had learned Mandarin from birth. Lengthy experience with English thus weakened tone use. Conclusions This finding has implications for the question of the extent to which bilinguals' 2 phonetic systems interact. It suggests that bilinguals may not process pitch information language-specifically and that processing strategies from the dominant language may affect phonetic processing in the nondominant language—even when the latter was learned natively. PMID:28124064

  13. [Comments on Nigel Wiseman's A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine: on the use of Western medical terms in English glossary of Chinese medicine].

    PubMed

    Xie, Zhu-fan; Liu, Gan-zhong; Lu, Wei-bo

    2005-11-01

    Mr. Wiseman believes that Western medical terms chosen as equivalents of Chinese medical terms should be the words known to all speakers and not requiring any specialist knowledge or instrumentation to understand or identify, and strictly technical Western medical terms should be avoided regardless of their conceptual conformity to the Chinese terms. According to such criteria, many inappropriate Western medical terms are selected as English equivalents by the authors of the Dictionary, and on the other hand, many ready-made appropriate Western medical terms are replaced by loan English terms with the Chinese style of word formation. The experience obtained by translating Western medical terms into Chinese when Western medicine was first introduced to China should be helpful for developing English equivalents at present. However, the authors of the Dictionary adhere to their own opinions and reject others' experience. The English terms thus created do not reflect the genuine meaning of the Chinese terms, but make the English glossary in chaos. The so-called true face of traditional Chinese revealed by such terms is merely the Chinese custom of word formation and metaphoric rhetoric. In other words, traditional Chinese medicine is not regarded as a system of medicine but merely some Oriental folklore.

  14. Hebrew Brain vs. English Brain: Language Modulates the Way It Is Processed

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bick, Atira S.; Goelman, Gadi; Frost, Ram

    2011-01-01

    Is language processing universal? How do the specific properties of each language influence the way it is processed? In this study, we compare the neural correlates of morphological processing in Hebrew--a Semitic language with a rich and systematic morphology, to those revealed in English--an Indo-European language with a linear morphology. Using…

  15. Higher acceptance rates for abstracts written in English at a national research student meeting in a non-English speaking country.

    PubMed

    Khani, Afshin; Zarghami, Amin; Izadpanah, Fatemeh; Mahdizadeh, Hamid; Golestanifar, Leila

    2015-01-01

    The rate of English-written submissions is increasing in local meetings of non-English speaking countries. However, it seems that the quality of research and methodology of the studies has not progressed. This study aimed to evaluate the association of English writing and the acceptance for presentation following the peer-review process in the 13th Annual Research Congress of Iran's Medical Sciences Students (ARCIMSS). All 1817 complete abstracts submitted to the meeting were included in this cross-sectional study. Each was evaluated for the language of the text (English or Persian), final decision after peer review (accepted vs. rejected), presentation type (oral, poster discussion and poster) and the scores of reviewing process. There were 395 (21.7%) abstracts written in English and 1422 (78.3%) in Persian. The acceptance rate for English abstracts was 33.7% and for Persian 24.6% (OR = 1.56, 95% CI: 1.22-1.98). The rate of abstracts' acceptance for presentation in oral panels was significantly higher for English abstracts than for those in Persian (25.6% versus 15.7%, OR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.14-2.99). By contrast, Persian abstracts were more likely to be accepted as poster panels than were English abstracts (74.9% versus 63.9%, OR = 1.68, 95% CI: 1.10-2.58). English-written abstracts have higher chance of acceptation in a non-English speaker country like Iran.

  16. Development and validation of a smartphone-based digits-in-noise hearing test in South African English.

    PubMed

    Potgieter, Jenni-Marí; Swanepoel, De Wet; Myburgh, Hermanus Carel; Hopper, Thomas Christopher; Smits, Cas

    2015-07-01

    The objective of this study was to develop and validate a smartphone-based digits-in-noise hearing test for South African English. Single digits (0-9) were recorded and spoken by a first language English female speaker. Level corrections were applied to create a set of homogeneous digits with steep speech recognition functions. A smartphone application was created to utilize 120 digit-triplets in noise as test material. An adaptive test procedure determined the speech reception threshold (SRT). Experiments were performed to determine headphones effects on the SRT and to establish normative data. Participants consisted of 40 normal-hearing subjects with thresholds ≤15 dB across the frequency spectrum (250-8000 Hz) and 186 subjects with normal-hearing in both ears, or normal-hearing in the better ear. The results show steep speech recognition functions with a slope of 20%/dB for digit-triplets presented in noise using the smartphone application. The results of five headphone types indicate that the smartphone-based hearing test is reliable and can be conducted using standard Android smartphone headphones or clinical headphones. A digits-in-noise hearing test was developed and validated for South Africa. The mean SRT and speech recognition functions correspond to previous developed telephone-based digits-in-noise tests.

  17. Getting the Cows on Their Feet

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Patnode, Norman

    2004-01-01

    A while back, I was working on a team to reengineering the Air Force's logistic process for all the reparable items in the inventory, everything from engines to oxygen regulators to electronic circuit cards. After doing some analysis, some experimenting, and some prototyping, we were ready to implement our changes. IN simple english. we were trying to put a process in place where, like Wal-Mart, every customer purchase provides the tug that causes a replacement to be shipped overnight from the warehouse to fill the hole on the shelf before the store opens the next morning. Then, in response to the hole that's just been created in the warehouse, the depot either buys or repairs a unit and quickly ships it to the warehouse. By implementing this "Wal-Mart solution" we were sure we could make the whole system respond quickly to the needs of the war- fighters using the items. Although most people understand this process today, at the time it was revolutionary.

  18. Constructing Meaning: Think-Aloud Protocols of ELLs on English and Spanish Word Problems.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Celedon-Pattichis, Sylvia

    This one-year qualitative study analyzed how nine middle school English language learners (ELLs) of Mexican descent constructed meaning on think-aloud protocols of Spanish and English word problems. Strategies used by these students to process information from English to their native language included translating to Spanish, reading the problem at…

  19. The Role of Native-Language Phonology in the Auditory Word Identification and Visual Word Recognition of Russian-English Bilinguals

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shafiro, Valeriy; Kharkhurin, Anatoliy V.

    2009-01-01

    Abstract Does native language phonology influence visual word processing in a second language? This question was investigated in two experiments with two groups of Russian-English bilinguals, differing in their English experience, and a monolingual English control group. Experiment 1 tested visual word recognition following semantic…

  20. The Roles of Semantic and Phonological Information in Word Production: Evidence from Spanish-English Bilinguals

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kennison, Shelia M.; Fernandez, Elaine C.; Bowers, J. Michael

    2014-01-01

    The research investigated the roles of semantic and phonological processing in word production. Spanish-English bilingual individuals produced English target words when cued with definitions that were also written in English. When the correct word was not produced, a secondary task was performed in which participants rated the ease of…

  1. Research and Practice on College English Oral Test--A Case Study of Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yan, Jiaolan; Zhang, Weiran; Yu, Yuan; Chang, Jie; Ding, Guangwei

    2015-01-01

    Based on the description of implementation of College English oral test from the points of the necessity, feasibility, and implementation process, this study analyzed the current situation of university students' oral English, oral English ability, the college entrance examination results, and a band-4 written test and established their…

  2. Do U Txt? Event-Related Potentials to Semantic Anomalies in Standard and Texted English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Berger, Natalie I.; Coch, Donna

    2010-01-01

    Texted English is a hybrid, technology-based language derived from standard English modified to facilitate ease of communication via instant and text messaging. We compared semantic processing of texted and standard English sentences by recording event-related potentials in a classic semantic incongruity paradigm designed to elicit an N400 effect.…

  3. English Word Reading Difficulties and Orthographic Processing Weaknesses in Chinese English Bilingual Adolescents with Dyslexia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tong, Xiuhong; McBride, Catherine

    2017-01-01

    Is dyslexia in Chinese for Chinese-English bilinguals associated with difficulties in reading English, given differences in L1 and L2 orthographies? Among 11 Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with dyslexia, who were diagnosed by professional psychologists using the diagnostic criteria set out in a standardized test, and 14 adolescents without…

  4. Searching Jobs through Vocabulary. English-Spanish Version.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Manning, Angella D., Comp.

    This English-Spanish glossary, which is intended for use in career exploration, special education, and English-as-a-second-language courses, consists of side-by-side English and Spanish definitions of terms related to the job search process. A wide range of terms that are likely to be encountered in a career awareness/exploration class is covered,…

  5. A Report of the Center for English as a Lingua Franca (CELF) for Academic Year 2014-2015

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Okada, Tricia; Milliner, Brett; Ogane, Ethel; Leichsenring, Andrew; Imai, Mitsuko; Cote, Travis; McBride, Paul

    2015-01-01

    English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the use of English as a contact language between people who have different first languages, including native English speakers (Jenkins, 2014). "ELF is simultaneously the consequence and the principal language medium of globalizing processes" (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011, p. 303). In…

  6. On Processing Chinese Ideographs and English Words: Some Implications from Stroop-Test Results.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Biederman, Irving; Tsao, Yao-Chung

    1979-01-01

    When Chinese adults tried to name the color of characters which represented conflicting color words, they showed greater interference than did English speaking readers of the same task in English. This effect cannot be attributed to bilingualism. There may be fundamental differences in the perceptual demands of reading Chinese and English.…

  7. Effects of orthographic consistency on eye movement behavior: German and English children and adults process the same words differently.

    PubMed

    Rau, Anne K; Moll, Kristina; Snowling, Margaret J; Landerl, Karin

    2015-02-01

    The current study investigated the time course of cross-linguistic differences in word recognition. We recorded eye movements of German and English children and adults while reading closely matched sentences, each including a target word manipulated for length and frequency. Results showed differential word recognition processes for both developing and skilled readers. Children of the two orthographies did not differ in terms of total word processing time, but this equal outcome was achieved quite differently. Whereas German children relied on small-unit processing early in word recognition, English children applied small-unit decoding only upon rereading-possibly when experiencing difficulties in integrating an unfamiliar word into the sentence context. Rather unexpectedly, cross-linguistic differences were also found in adults in that English adults showed longer processing times than German adults for nonwords. Thus, although orthographic consistency does play a major role in reading development, cross-linguistic differences are detectable even in skilled adult readers. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Japanese and English sentence reading comprehension and writing systems: An fMRI study of first and second language effects on brain activation.

    PubMed

    Buchweitz, Augusto; Mason, Robert A; Hasegawa, Mihoko; Just, Marcel A

    2009-01-28

    Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activation from Japanese readers reading hiragana (syllabic) and kanji (logographic) sentences, and English as a second language (L2). Kanji showed more activation than hiragana in right-hemisphere occipito-temporal lobe areas associated with visuospatial processing; hiragana, in turn, showed more activation than kanji in areas of the brain associated with phonological processing. L1 results underscore the difference in visuospatial and phonological processing demands between the systems. Reading in English as compared to either of the Japanese systems showed more activation in inferior frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, and angular gyrus. The additional activation in English in these areas may have been associated with an increased cognitive demand for phonological processing and verbal working memory. More generally, L2 results suggest more effortful reading comprehension processes. The study contributes to the understanding of differential brain responses to different writing systems and to reading comprehension in a second language.

  9. How vocabulary size in two languages relates to efficiency in spoken word recognition by young Spanish-English bilinguals

    PubMed Central

    Marchman, Virginia A.; Fernald, Anne; Hurtado, Nereyda

    2010-01-01

    Research using online comprehension measures with monolingual children shows that speed and accuracy of spoken word recognition are correlated with lexical development. Here we examined speech processing efficiency in relation to vocabulary development in bilingual children learning both Spanish and English (n=26; 2;6 yrs). Between-language associations were weak: vocabulary size in Spanish was uncorrelated with vocabulary in English, and children’s facility in online comprehension in Spanish was unrelated to their facility in English. Instead, efficiency of online processing in one language was significantly related to vocabulary size in that language, after controlling for processing speed and vocabulary size in the other language. These links between efficiency of lexical access and vocabulary knowledge in bilinguals parallel those previously reported for Spanish and English monolinguals, suggesting that children’s ability to abstract information from the input in building a working lexicon relates fundamentally to mechanisms underlying the construction of language. PMID:19726000

  10. Greek-English Word Processing on the Macintosh.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rusten, Jeffrey

    1986-01-01

    Discusses the complete Greek-English word processing system of the Apple Macintosh computer. Describes the features of its operating system, shows how the Greek fonts look and work, and enumerates both the advantages and drawbacks of the Macintosh. (SED)

  11. The MP (Materialization Pattern) Model for Representing Math Educational Standards

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Choi, Namyoun; Song, Il-Yeol; An, Yuan

    Representing natural languages with UML has been an important research issue for various reasons. Little work has been done for modeling imperative mood sentences which are the sentence structure of math educational standard statements. In this paper, we propose the MP (Materialization Pattern) model that captures the semantics of English sentences used in math educational standards. The MP model is based on the Reed-Kellogg sentence diagrams and creates MP schemas with the UML notation. The MP model explicitly represents the semantics of the sentences by extracting math concepts and the cognitive process of math concepts from math educational standard statements, and simplifies modeling. This MP model is also developed to be used for aligning math educational standard statements via schema matching.

  12. A Pathway to National Guidelines for Laboratory Diagnostics of Chronic Kidney Disease – Examples from Diverse European Countries

    PubMed Central

    Aakre, Kristin Moberg; Yucel, Dogan; Bargnoux, Anne-Sophie; Cristol, Jean-Paul; Piéroni, Laurence

    2017-01-01

    The principal benefit of guidelines is to improve the quality of care received by patients. In the 2012 Clinical Practice Guideline for the Evaluation and Management of Chronic Kidney Disease (KDIGO) was released and it is designed to provide information and assist decision making. This review gives a brief overview of a various national CKD guidelines that rely on the newly released KDIGO guidelines. All of the included countries (France, Turkey, Norway and Croatia) are non-English speaking countries and they differ in population and socio economic aspects. Examples shown in this review may provide valuable experience for countries that are in process of creating their national CKD guidelines. PMID:29333148

  13. Processability Theory and the Role of Morphology in English as a Second Language Development: A Longitudinal Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dyson, Bronwen

    2009-01-01

    This article tests a prediction made by Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998; 2005) that morphological acquisition is the driving force in English as a second language (ESL) development. It first outlines the model of psycholinguistic processing assumed by Processability Theory and shows how stages fall out from it. It then presents the…

  14. Applying SF-Based Genre Approaches to English Writing Class

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wu, Yan; Dong, Hailin

    2009-01-01

    By exploring genre approaches in systemic functional linguistics and examining the analytic tools that can be applied to the process of English learning and teaching, this paper seeks to find a way of applying genre approaches to English writing class.

  15. Flexibility in Young Second-Language Learners: Examining the Language Specificity of Orthographic Processing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Deacon, S. Helene; Wade-Woolley, Lesly; Kirby, John R.

    2009-01-01

    This study examines whether orthographic processing transfers across languages to reading when the writing systems under acquisition are sufficiently related. We conducted a study with 76 7-year-old English-first-language children in French immersion. Measures of English and French orthographic processing (orthographic choice tasks) and…

  16. Inside English: Journal of the English Council of California Two Year Colleges, Volume 17, Numbers 1-4, October 1989-May 1990.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Woodruff, Barbara Bilson, Ed.; And Others

    1990-01-01

    With each issue focusing on different themes, volume 17 of "Inside English" looks at the writing process, literature and literacy, composition and creativity, and pedagogical alternatives and classroom writing. In addition to regular columns on the English Council of California Two-Year Colleges (ECCTYC) and legislative concerns, the following…

  17. The Arizona Home Language Survey: The Under-Identification of Students for English Language Services

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goldenberg, Claude; Rutherford-Quach, Sara

    2012-01-01

    Assuring that English learners (ELs) receive the support services to which they are entitled requires accurately identifying students who are limited in their English proficiency. As a first step in the identification process, students' parents fill out a home language survey. If the survey indicates a language other than English is spoken in the…

  18. Research on Demand Analysis of the Users of the Senior English Diagnostic System

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Guo, Chen; Zhang, Hui; Yao, Qian; Wu, Min

    2013-01-01

    As the significance of learning English is becoming increasingly apparent, more and more English online practice systems are used by English learners. However, a thorough process of research and detailed analysis of user demand have not fully implemented before the design of these systems. As a result, these systems may suffer the defects of low…

  19. Experiencing Different Identity Prototypes in Learning and Teaching English: A Chinese Learner's Autoethnography

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ai, Bin

    2016-01-01

    In this paper, I narrate highlights of my long process of learning and teaching English as a foreign language in mainland China and Australia, presenting a picture of the practices of learning and teaching English in mainland China from the bottom up. Over the past 50 years, English learners in mainland China, as Gao Yihong has written, have…

  20. Cooperative Learning and Second Language Acquisition in First-Year Composition: Opportunities for Authentic Communication among English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mason, Katherine

    2006-01-01

    In an environment, in which English is a second or other language for every student, fear and anxiety affect students' learning and engagement. Yet, in spite of these concerns, students welcomed the chance to practice their spoken English in cooperative structures while learning about and engaging in their composing processes. English language…

  1. Basic English Writing: An Experimental Course Structure against Semantic Misinterpretation in Undergraduate Student Writing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    In, Fan-yu; Liao, Hui-Chuan

    2008-01-01

    Course designs for Basic English Writing classes vary from one course to another. The objective of this study was to investigate the semantic misinterpretation of English words found in the English compositions written by native-Chinese-speaking undergraduate students and to overcome if such a barrier occurred in the process of writing. First,…

  2. Impact of translation on named-entity recognition in radiology texts

    PubMed Central

    Pedro, Vasco

    2017-01-01

    Abstract Radiology reports describe the results of radiography procedures and have the potential of being a useful source of information which can bring benefits to health care systems around the world. One way to automatically extract information from the reports is by using Text Mining tools. The problem is that these tools are mostly developed for English and reports are usually written in the native language of the radiologist, which is not necessarily English. This creates an obstacle to the sharing of Radiology information between different communities. This work explores the solution of translating the reports to English before applying the Text Mining tools, probing the question of what translation approach should be used. We created MRRAD (Multilingual Radiology Research Articles Dataset), a parallel corpus of Portuguese research articles related to Radiology and a number of alternative translations (human, automatic and semi-automatic) to English. This is a novel corpus which can be used to move forward the research on this topic. Using MRRAD we studied which kind of automatic or semi-automatic translation approach is more effective on the Named-entity recognition task of finding RadLex terms in the English version of the articles. Considering the terms extracted from human translations as our gold standard, we calculated how similar to this standard were the terms extracted using other translations. We found that a completely automatic translation approach using Google leads to F-scores (between 0.861 and 0.868, depending on the extraction approach) similar to the ones obtained through a more expensive semi-automatic translation approach using Unbabel (between 0.862 and 0.870). To better understand the results we also performed a qualitative analysis of the type of errors found in the automatic and semi-automatic translations. Database URL: https://github.com/lasigeBioTM/MRRAD PMID:29220455

  3. Creating a medical dictionary using word alignment: the influence of sources and resources.

    PubMed

    Nyström, Mikael; Merkel, Magnus; Petersson, Håkan; Ahlfeldt, Hans

    2007-11-23

    Automatic word alignment of parallel texts with the same content in different languages is among other things used to generate dictionaries for new translations. The quality of the generated word alignment depends on the quality of the input resources. In this paper we report on automatic word alignment of the English and Swedish versions of the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, NCSP, KSH97-P and parts of MeSH and how the terminology systems and type of resources influence the quality. We automatically word aligned the terminology systems using static resources, like dictionaries, statistical resources, like statistically derived dictionaries, and training resources, which were generated from manual word alignment. We varied which part of the terminology systems that we used to generate the resources, which parts that we word aligned and which types of resources we used in the alignment process to explore the influence the different terminology systems and resources have on the recall and precision. After the analysis, we used the best configuration of the automatic word alignment for generation of candidate term pairs. We then manually verified the candidate term pairs and included the correct pairs in an English-Swedish dictionary. The results indicate that more resources and resource types give better results but the size of the parts used to generate the resources only partly affects the quality. The most generally useful resources were generated from ICD-10 and resources generated from MeSH were not as general as other resources. Systematic inter-language differences in the structure of the terminology system rubrics make the rubrics harder to align. Manually created training resources give nearly as good results as a union of static resources, statistical resources and training resources and noticeably better results than a union of static resources and statistical resources. The verified English-Swedish dictionary contains 24,000 term pairs in base forms. More resources give better results in the automatic word alignment, but some resources only give small improvements. The most important type of resource is training and the most general resources were generated from ICD-10.

  4. Creating a medical dictionary using word alignment: The influence of sources and resources

    PubMed Central

    Nyström, Mikael; Merkel, Magnus; Petersson, Håkan; Åhlfeldt, Hans

    2007-01-01

    Background Automatic word alignment of parallel texts with the same content in different languages is among other things used to generate dictionaries for new translations. The quality of the generated word alignment depends on the quality of the input resources. In this paper we report on automatic word alignment of the English and Swedish versions of the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, NCSP, KSH97-P and parts of MeSH and how the terminology systems and type of resources influence the quality. Methods We automatically word aligned the terminology systems using static resources, like dictionaries, statistical resources, like statistically derived dictionaries, and training resources, which were generated from manual word alignment. We varied which part of the terminology systems that we used to generate the resources, which parts that we word aligned and which types of resources we used in the alignment process to explore the influence the different terminology systems and resources have on the recall and precision. After the analysis, we used the best configuration of the automatic word alignment for generation of candidate term pairs. We then manually verified the candidate term pairs and included the correct pairs in an English-Swedish dictionary. Results The results indicate that more resources and resource types give better results but the size of the parts used to generate the resources only partly affects the quality. The most generally useful resources were generated from ICD-10 and resources generated from MeSH were not as general as other resources. Systematic inter-language differences in the structure of the terminology system rubrics make the rubrics harder to align. Manually created training resources give nearly as good results as a union of static resources, statistical resources and training resources and noticeably better results than a union of static resources and statistical resources. The verified English-Swedish dictionary contains 24,000 term pairs in base forms. Conclusion More resources give better results in the automatic word alignment, but some resources only give small improvements. The most important type of resource is training and the most general resources were generated from ICD-10. PMID:18036221

  5. Language and culture modulate online semantic processing.

    PubMed

    Ellis, Ceri; Kuipers, Jan R; Thierry, Guillaume; Lovett, Victoria; Turnbull, Oliver; Jones, Manon W

    2015-10-01

    Language has been shown to influence non-linguistic cognitive operations such as colour perception, object categorization and motion event perception. Here, we show that language also modulates higher level processing, such as semantic knowledge. Using event-related brain potentials, we show that highly fluent Welsh-English bilinguals require significantly less processing effort when reading sentences in Welsh which contain factually correct information about Wales, than when reading sentences containing the same information presented in English. Crucially, culturally irrelevant information was processed similarly in both Welsh and English. Our findings show that even in highly proficient bilinguals, language interacts with factors associated with personal identity, such as culture, to modulate online semantic processing. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press.

  6. American Language Review, 2001.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ward, Ben, Ed.

    2001-01-01

    These eight journals include articles on such topics as the following: adult literacy; incorporating song lyrics and music into the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classroom; using poetry with adult ESL learners; reading "Time" and "Newsweek" in ESL classrooms; teaching intuitively; teacher-created materials; New England…

  7. The brain adapts to orthography with experience: Evidence from English and Chinese

    PubMed Central

    Cao, Fan; Brennan, Christine; Booth, James R.

    2016-01-01

    Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined the process of language specialization in the brain by comparing developmental changes in two contrastive orthographies: Chinese and English. In a visual word rhyming judgment task, we found a significant interaction between age and language in left inferior parietal lobule and left superior temporal gyrus, which was due to greater developmental increases in English than in Chinese. Moreover, we found that higher skill only in English children was correlated with greater activation in left inferior parietal lobule. These findings suggest that the regions associated with phonological processing are essential in English reading development. We also found greater developmental increases in English than in Chinese in left inferior temporal gyrus, suggesting refinement of this region for fine-grained word form recognition. In contrast, greater developmental increases in Chinese than in English were found in right middle occipital gyrus, suggesting the importance of holistic visual-orthographic analysis in Chinese reading acquisition. Our results suggest that the brain adapts to the special features of the orthography by engaging relevant brain regions to a greater degree over development. PMID:25444089

  8. Psychometric Evaluation of the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 in Hispanic Americans.

    PubMed

    Mills, Sarah D; Fox, Rina S; Pan, Tonya M; Malcarne, Vanessa L; Roesch, Scott C; Sadler, Georgia Robins

    2015-11-01

    The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4), a screener of psychological distress, in English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanic Americans. Hispanic American adults ( N = 436) completed the PHQ-4, which yields two subscales (anxiety and depression) that can be summed to create a total score. Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate structural validity. The two-factor structure was the best fit to the data for both English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanic Americans and items loaded equivalently across groups, demonstrating measurement invariance. Internal consistency reliability was good as measured by coefficient alpha. Construct validity was evidenced by significant expected relationships with perceived stress. These findings provide support for the reliability and validity of the PHQ-4 as a brief measure of psychological distress for English- or Spanish-speaking Hispanic Americans.

  9. Bilingual approach to online cancer genetics education for deaf American Sign Language users produces greater knowledge and confidence than English text only: A randomized study

    PubMed Central

    Palmer, Christina G.S.; Boudreault, Patrick; Berman, Barbara A.; Wolfson, Alicia; Duarte, Lionel; Venne, Vickie L.; Sinsheimer, Janet S.

    2016-01-01

    Introduction Deaf American Sign Language-users (ASL) have limited access to cancer genetics information they can readily understand, increasing risk for health disparities. We compared effectiveness of online cancer genetics information presented using a bilingual approach (ASL with English closed captioning) and a monolingual approach (English text). Hypothesis Bilingual modality would increase cancer genetics knowledge and confidence to create a family tree; education would interact with modality. Methods We used a block 2:1 randomized pre-post study design stratified on education. 150 Deaf ASL-users ≥18 years old with computer and internet access participated online; 100 (70 high, 30 low education) and 50 (35 high, 15 low education) were randomized to the bilingual and monolingual modalities. Modalities provide virtually identical content on creating a family tree, using the family tree to identify inherited cancer risk factors, understanding how cancer predisposition can be inherited, and the role of genetic counseling and testing for prevention or treatment. 25 True/False items assessed knowledge; a Likert scale item assessed confidence. Data were collected within 2 weeks before and after viewing the information. Results Significant interaction of language modality, education, and change in knowledge scores was observed (p=.01). High education group increased knowledge regardless of modality (Bilingual: p<.001; d=.56; Monolingual: p<.001; d=1.08). Low education group increased knowledge with bilingual (p<.001; d=.85), but not monolingual (p=.79; d=.08) modality. Bilingual modality yielded greater confidence creating a family tree (p=.03). Conclusions Bilingual approach provides a better opportunity for lower educated Deaf ASL-users to access cancer genetics information than a monolingual approach. PMID:27594054

  10. Linguistic measures of the referential process in psychodynamic treatment: the English and Italian versions.

    PubMed

    Mariani, Rachele; Maskit, Bernard; Bucci, Wilma; De Coro, Alessandra

    2013-01-01

    The referential process is defined in the context of Bucci's multiple code theory as the process by which nonverbal experience is connected to language. The English computerized measures of the referential process, which have been applied in psychotherapy research, include the Weighted Referential Activity Dictionary (WRAD), and measures of Reflection, Affect and Disfluency. This paper presents the development of the Italian version of the IWRAD by modeling Italian texts scored by judges, and shows the application of the IWRAD and other Italian measures in three psychodynamic treatments evaluated for personality change using the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP-200). Clinical predictions based on applications of the English measures were supported.

  11. Words and pictures: An electrophysiological investigation of domain specific processing in native Chinese and English speakers

    PubMed Central

    Yum, Yen Na; Holcomb, Phillip J.; Grainger, Jonathan

    2011-01-01

    Comparisons of word and picture processing using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are contaminated by gross physical differences between the two types of stimuli. In the present study, we tackle this problem by comparing picture processing with word processing in an alphabetic and a logographic script, that are also characterized by gross physical differences. Native Mandarin Chinese speakers viewed pictures (line drawings) and Chinese characters (Experiment 1), native English speakers viewed pictures and English words (Experiment 2), and naïve Chinese readers (native English speakers) viewed pictures and Chinese characters (Experiment 3) in a semantic categorization task. The varying pattern of differences in the ERPs elicited by pictures and words across the three experiments provided evidence for i) script-specific processing arising between 150–200 ms post-stimulus onset, ii) domain-specific but script-independent processing arising between 200–300 ms post-stimulus onset, and iii) processing that depended on stimulus meaningfulness in the N400 time window. The results are interpreted in terms of differences in the way visual features are mapped onto higher-level representations for pictures and words in alphabetic and logographic writing systems. PMID:21439991

  12. Developing Students' Intelligent Character through Linguistic Politeness: The Case of English as a Foreign Language for Indonesian Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mariani, Nanik

    2016-01-01

    English is a foreign language that must be taught at school, particularly in secondary school. Based on a preliminary observation of several secondary schools in Banjarmasin, it appears that the English taught focuses most on concepts or language formulas. Most of the students who interact in English during the learning process do not use…

  13. Assessing Preschoolers' Emergent Literacy Skills in English and Spanish with the "Get Ready to Read!" Screening Tool

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Farver, JoAnn M.; Nakamoto, Jonathan; Lonigan, Christopher J.

    2007-01-01

    This study investigated the ability of the English and Spanish versions of the "Get Ready to Read!" Screener (E-GRTR and S-GRTR) administered at the beginning of the preschool year to predict the oral language and phonological and print processing skills of Spanish-speaking English-language learners (ELLs) and English-only speaking children (EO)…

  14. Investigating Auditory Processing of Syntactic Gaps with L2 Speakers Using Pupillometry

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fernandez, Leigh; Höhle, Barbara; Brock, Jon; Nickels, Lyndsey

    2018-01-01

    According to the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH), second language (L2) speakers, unlike native speakers, build shallow syntactic representations during sentence processing. In order to test the SSH, this study investigated the processing of a syntactic movement in both native speakers of English and proficient late L2 speakers of English using…

  15. Drama Integration: Training Teachers to Use Process Drama in English Language Arts, Social Studies, and World Languages

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jones, Jonathan P.

    2014-01-01

    This research study documents and analyzes the experience of teachers who participated in a professional development program to integrate process drama into the teaching of English language arts, social studies, and world languages and cultures. The study addresses and builds upon extant literature in process drama, arts integration, drama…

  16. Toward a Dynamic Interactive Model of Non-Native Chinese Character Processing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tong, Xiuli; Kwan, Joyce Lok Yin; Wong, Denise Wai Man; Lee, Stephen Man Kit; Yip, Joanna Hew Yan

    2016-01-01

    Previous studies have suggested that word processing in English as a second language (L2) is affected by first language (L1) orthographic features. However, little is known about what affects L2 Chinese character processing in adult Chinese learners with different L1 orthographies such as Japanese, Korean, and English. With a picture-character…

  17. Benefits and Costs of Lexical Decomposition and Semantic Integration during the Processing of Transparent and Opaque English Compounds

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ji, Hongbo; Gagne, Christina L.; Spalding, Thomas L.

    2011-01-01

    Six lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the influence of complex structure on the processing speed of English compounds. All experiments revealed that semantically transparent compounds (e.g., "rosebud") were processed more quickly than matched monomorphemic words (e.g., "giraffe"). Opaque compounds (e.g., "hogwash") were also…

  18. Reading and Spelling Processes in Welsh-English Bilinguals: Differential Effects of Concurrent Vocalisation Tasks

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mayer, Peter; Crowley, Kevin; Kaminska, Zofia

    2007-01-01

    Theories of literacy acquisition, developed mostly with reference to English, have characterised this process as passing through a series of stages. The culmination of this process is a strategy which takes account of the complex relationship between graphemes and phonemes within a deep orthography (Frith (1985). In K. Patterson, & M. Coltheart,…

  19. "Dieu a cree la femelle, l'homme a fait la femme." En rekognoscering i dansk og undenlandsk konssprogsforskning ("God Created the Female, Man Created Woman." A Reconnaissance in Danish and Foreign Research on Sex Differences and Language). ROLIG papir 32.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bennicke, Annette

    Research on sex differences and language includes the following (many titles are English translations): "Language--The Child, the Women, the Family"; "Woman and Man"; "In Society's Words"; "The Life of Words"; "Verbs and Women"; "Lines from a Ladies Luncheon"; "The History of the Danish Language"; "How Sex Roles Are Represented and Conserved in…

  20. Making Teaching Lexis and Structures to Adult EFL Learners More Effective through Creating a Learning Community and Fostering Some Specific Learning Skills: A Curriculum for a Short-Term Development Course for Non-Native Speaker EFL Teachers.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Klyevanov, Oleksandr

    This paper is an attempt to design a curriculum for a short-term development course for a non-native speaker English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers. The purpose is to share experiences in the effective teaching of lexis and structures; to make its participants aware of the importance of such necessities and creating a learning community and…

  1. Teaching Writing through Communicative Approach in Military English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Likaj, Manjola

    2015-01-01

    The paper speaks about teaching writing through communicative approach in English for Specific Purposes, especially in Military English. There are presented three different approaches regarding writing in ESP: product, process and social-constructionist approach. The recent developments in ESP writing consider the social-constructionist approach…

  2. Exploring Intercultural Competence in a Victorian Novel

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Malgesini, Frank

    2012-01-01

    Although the characters speak English, Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" explores interactions among representatives of different speech communities. The protagonist, Helen Graham, moves through communities differing enough from hers to create misunderstandings. Her difficulties can be clarified through Hymes' model of the speech…

  3. Created Creative?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Paffard, Michael

    1968-01-01

    The primary concern of the English teacher should be to develop the unique potential every student has for imaginative thinking and creative expression. The ability to think creatively stimulates the student's intellectual curiosity, frees him from the rigidity of social class values, religious dogma, and historical precedent, and enables him to…

  4. Initial Air Traffic Control Training at Tartu Aviation College.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kulbas, Tanel

    1997-01-01

    Development of an air traffic control (ATC) training course at Tartu Aviation College in Estonia had to start at ground zero, creating new rules and regulations for ATC, writing special study materials, building simulators, and finding enough applicants with sufficient English skills. (SK)

  5. Co-creating a Peer Education program to improve skin health in older people from diverse communities: An innovation in health promotion.

    PubMed

    Ogrin, Rajna; Brasher, Kathleen; Occleston, Jessica; Byrne, Jennifer

    2017-06-01

    Chronic wounds, debilitating and costly to manage, are more common in older people. Prevention is possible through improving skin health. We developed, implemented and evaluated an innovative health promotion program to improve skin health of older adults. A one-hour, peer education program was co-created and delivered to culturally diverse community-dwelling older people. A mixed-methods evaluation approach comprised objective measures of skin health and barrier function at commencement and six weeks posteducation, and focus groups posteducation. Seventy-three participants participated in the study (mean age 74.38 ± 11.80 years). Hydration significantly improved at follow-up for English speaking participants (t(27) = -2.90, P = 0.007). The majority of participants reported the education to be informative and useful in supporting behaviour changes. The peer education program improved skin hydration in older English speaking individuals. Peer education may effectively deliver health promotion information in some groups. © 2017 AJA Inc.

  6. Japanese and English sentence reading comprehension and writing systems: An fMRI study of first and second language effects on brain activation

    PubMed Central

    Buchweitz, Augusto; Mason, Robert A.; Hasegawa, Mihoko; Just, Marcel A.

    2009-01-01

    Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activation from Japanese readers reading hiragana (syllabic) and kanji (logographic) sentences, and English as a second language (L2). Kanji showed more activation than hiragana in right-hemisphere occipito-temporal lobe areas associated with visuospatial processing; hiragana, in turn, showed more activation than kanji in areas of the brain associated with phonological processing. L1 results underscore the difference in visuospatial and phonological processing demands between the systems. Reading in English as compared to either of the Japanese systems showed more activation in inferior frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, and angular gyrus. The additional activation in English in these areas may have been associated with an increased cognitive demand for phonological processing and verbal working memory. More generally, L2 results suggest more effortful reading comprehension processes. The study contributes to the understanding of differential brain responses to different writing systems and to reading comprehension in a second language. PMID:19946611

  7. The Central Asian Journal of Global Health to Increase Scientific Productivity.

    PubMed

    Freese, Kyle; Shubnikov, Eugene; LaPorte, Ron; Adambekov, Shalkar; Askarova, Sholpan; Zhumadilov, Zhaxybay; Linkov, Faina

    2013-01-01

    The WHO Collaborating Center at the University of Pittsburgh, USA partnering with Nazarbayev University, developed the Central Asian Journal of Global Health (CAJGH, cajgh.pitt.edu) in order to increase scientific productivity in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Scientists in this region often have difficulty publishing in upper tier English language scientific journals due to language barriers, high publication fees, and a lack of access to mentoring services. CAJGH seeks to help scientists overcome these challenges by providing peer-reviewed publication free of change with English and research mentoring services available to selected authors. CAJGH began as a way to expand the Supercourse scientific network (www.pitt.edu/~super1) in the Central Asian region in order to rapidly disseminate educational materials. The network began with approximately 60 individuals in five Central Asian countries and has grown to over 1,300 in a few short years. The CAJGH website receives nearly 900 visits per month. The University of Pittsburgh's "open access publishing system" was utilized to create CAJGH in 2012. There are two branches of the CAJGH editorial board: Astana (at the Center for Life Sciences, Nazarbayev University) and Pittsburgh (WHO Collaborating Center). Both are comprised of leading scientists and expert staff who work together throughout the review and publication process. Two complete issues have been published since 2012 and a third is now underway. Even though CAJGH is a new journal, the editorial board uses a rigorous review process; fewer than 50% of all submitted articles are forwarded to peer review or accepted for publication. Furthermore, in 2014, CAJGH will apply to be cross referenced in PubMed and Scopes. CAJGH is one of the first English language journals in the Central Asian region that reaches a large number of scientists. This journal fills a unique niche that will assist scientists in Kazakhstan and Central Asia publish their research findings and share their knowledge with others around the region and the world.

  8. On Literal Translation of English Idioms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chen, Linli

    2009-01-01

    There are six translation tactics in translating English idioms into Chinese: literal translation, compensatory translation, free translation, explanational translation, borrowing, integrated approach. Each tactic should be reasonably employed in the process of translating, so as to keep the flavor of the original English idioms as well as to…

  9. Consciousness-Raising and Prepositions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hendricks, Monica

    2010-01-01

    For a variety of reasons, learning English prepositions is notoriously difficult and a slow, gradual process for English as a Second Language (ESL) students. To begin, English prepositions typically are short, single-syllable or two-syllable words that are seldom stressed when speaking and therefore often not articulated clearly or heard…

  10. Tackling health literacy: adaptation of public hypertension educational materials for an Indo-Asian population in Canada

    PubMed Central

    2011-01-01

    Background Indo-Asians in Canada are at increased risk for cardiovascular diseases. There is a need for cultural and language specific educational materials relating to this risk. During this project we developed and field tested the acceptability of a hypertension public education pamphlet tailored to fit the needs of an at risk local Indo-Asian population, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Methods A community health board representing Calgary's Indo-Asian communities identified the culturally specific educational needs and language preferences of the local population. An adaptation of an existing English language Canadian Public Hypertension Recommendations pamphlet was created considering the literacy and translation challenges. The adapted pamphlet was translated into four Indo-Asian languages. The adapted pamphlets were disseminated as part of the initial educational component of a community-based culturally and language-sensitive cardiovascular risk factor screening and management program. Field testing of the materials was undertaken when participants returned for program follow-up seven to 12 months later. Results Fifty-nine English-speaking participants evaluated and confirmed the concept validity of the English adapted version. 28 non-English speaking participants evaluated the Gujarati (N = 13) and Punjabi (N = 15) translated versions of the adapted pamphlets. All participants found the pamphlets acceptable and felt they had improved their understanding of hypertension. Conclusions Involving the target community to identify health issues as well as help to create culturally, language and literacy sensitive health education materials ensures resources are highly acceptable to that community. Minor changes to the materials will be needed prior to formal testing of hypertension knowledge and health decision-making on a larger scale within this at risk community. PMID:21223580

  11. Tackling health literacy: adaptation of public hypertension educational materials for an Indo-Asian population in Canada.

    PubMed

    Jones, Charlotte A; Mawani, Shefina; King, Kathryn M; Allu, Selina Omar; Smith, Megan; Mohan, Sailesh; Campbell, Norman R C

    2011-01-11

    Indo-Asians in Canada are at increased risk for cardiovascular diseases. There is a need for cultural and language specific educational materials relating to this risk. During this project we developed and field tested the acceptability of a hypertension public education pamphlet tailored to fit the needs of an at risk local Indo-Asian population, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. A community health board representing Calgary's Indo-Asian communities identified the culturally specific educational needs and language preferences of the local population. An adaptation of an existing English language Canadian Public Hypertension Recommendations pamphlet was created considering the literacy and translation challenges. The adapted pamphlet was translated into four Indo-Asian languages. The adapted pamphlets were disseminated as part of the initial educational component of a community-based culturally and language-sensitive cardiovascular risk factor screening and management program. Field testing of the materials was undertaken when participants returned for program follow-up seven to 12 months later. Fifty-nine English-speaking participants evaluated and confirmed the concept validity of the English adapted version. 28 non-English speaking participants evaluated the Gujarati (N = 13) and Punjabi (N = 15) translated versions of the adapted pamphlets. All participants found the pamphlets acceptable and felt they had improved their understanding of hypertension. Involving the target community to identify health issues as well as help to create culturally, language and literacy sensitive health education materials ensures resources are highly acceptable to that community. Minor changes to the materials will be needed prior to formal testing of hypertension knowledge and health decision-making on a larger scale within this at risk community.

  12. Some linguistic and pragmatic considerations affecting science reporting in English by non-native speakers of the language

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Approximately 50% of publications in English peer reviewed journals are contributed by non-native speakers (NNS) of the language. Basic thought processes are considered to be universal yet there are differences in thought patterns and particularly in discourse management of writers with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The study highlights some areas of potential incompatibility in native and NNS processing of English scientific papers. Principles and conventions in generating academic discourse are considered in terms of frequently occurring failures of NNS to meet expectations of editors, reviewers, and readers. Major problem areas concern organization and flow of information, principles of cohesion and clarity, cultural constraints, especially those of politeness and negotiability of ideas, and the complicated area of English modality pragmatics. The aim of the paper is to sensitize NN authors of English academic reports to problem areas of discourse processing which are stumbling blocks, often affecting acceptance of manuscripts. The problems discussed are essential for acquiring pragmalinguistic and sociocultural competence in producing effective communication. PMID:23118596

  13. Modeling the relationship between rapid automatized naming and literacy skills across languages varying in orthographic consistency.

    PubMed

    Georgiou, George K; Aro, Mikko; Liao, Chen-Huei; Parrila, Rauno

    2016-03-01

    The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to contrast the prominent theoretical explanations of the rapid automatized naming (RAN)-reading relationship across languages varying in orthographic consistency (Chinese, English, and Finnish) and (b) to examine whether the same accounts can explain the RAN-spelling relationship. In total, 304 Grade 4 children (102 Chinese-speaking Taiwanese children, 117 English-speaking Canadian children, and 85 Finnish-speaking children) were assessed on measures of RAN, speed of processing, phonological processing, orthographic processing, reading fluency, and spelling. The results of path analysis indicated that RAN had a strong direct effect on reading fluency that was of the same size across languages and that only in English was a small proportion of its predictive variance mediated by orthographic processing. In contrast, RAN did not exert a significant direct effect on spelling, and a substantial proportion of its predictive variance was mediated by phonological processing (in Chinese and Finnish) and orthographic processing (in English). Given that RAN predicted reading fluency equally well across languages and that phonological/orthographic processing had very little to do with this relationship, we argue that the reason why RAN is related to reading fluency should be sought in domain-general factors such as serial processing and articulation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. Beyond Phonological and Morphological Processing: Pure Copying as a Marker of Dyslexia in Chinese but Not Poor Reading of English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kalindi, Sylvia Chanda; McBride, Catherine; Tong, Xiuhong; Wong, Natalie Lok Lee; Chung, Kien Hoa Kevin; Lee, Chia-Ying

    2015-01-01

    To examine cognitive correlates of dyslexia in Chinese and reading difficulties in English as a foreign language, a total of 14 Chinese dyslexic children (DG), 16 poor readers of English (PE), and 17 poor readers of both Chinese and English (PB) were compared to a control sample (C) of 17 children, drawn from a statistically representative sample…

  15. Exploring the Writing Process of Indonesian EFL Students: The Effectiveness of Think-Aloud Protocol

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Abas, Imelda Hermilinda; Aziz, Noor Hashima Abd

    2016-01-01

    The objectives of this study were to explore the writing process of the Indonesian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students and to find out the effectiveness of using think-aloud protocol to understand the writing process. The data were obtained from six proficient EFL students who were doing Postgraduate English Language Studies Program in…

  16. An Evaluation on English Language Education Process in Turkey from the Viewpoints of University Preparatory School Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dincer, Ali; Takkac, Mehmet; Akahn, Suna

    2010-01-01

    Many studies on effective language teaching process draw attention to the importance of teacher roles in this process, and give advice teachers to have prior knowledge about what their students know before beginning the instruction. This study is intended to draw an effective English language teacher profile by taking into consideration first year…

  17. Native-language N400 and P600 predict dissociable language-learning abilities in adults

    PubMed Central

    Qi, Zhenghan; Beach, Sara D.; Finn, Amy S.; Minas, Jennifer; Goetz, Calvin; Chan, Brian; Gabrieli, John D.E.

    2018-01-01

    Language learning aptitude during adulthood varies markedly across individuals. An individual’s native-language ability has been associated with success in learning a new language as an adult. However, little is known about how native-language processing affects learning success and what neural markers of native-language processing, if any, are related to success in learning. We therefore related variation in electrophysiology during native-language processing to success in learning a novel artificial language. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while native English speakers judged the acceptability of English sentences prior to learning an artificial language. There was a trend towards a double dissociation between native-language ERPs and their relationships to novel syntax and vocabulary learning. Individuals who exhibited a greater N400 effect when processing English semantics showed better future learning of the artificial language overall. The N400 effect was related to syntax learning via its specific relationship to vocabulary learning. In contrast, the P600 effect size when processing English syntax predicted future syntax learning but not vocabulary learning. These findings show that distinct neural signatures of native-language processing relate to dissociable abilities for learning novel semantic and syntactic information. PMID:27737775

  18. College Bound Seniors, 1974-75.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    College Entrance Examination Board, New York, NY.

    Some one million college bound students, who were high school seniors during 1974-75 previously participated in the College Board's Admissions Testing Program (ATP), which included the Scholarship Aptitude Test (SAT), the Test of Standard Written English, the Student Descriptive Questionnaire, and the ATP Achievement Tests. These tests created a…

  19. DIY Materials: A Consciousness-Raising Exercise Prepared in Response to a Textbook "GAP."

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maddalena, Sean R.

    2003-01-01

    Presents one teacher's evaluation of his own English-as-a-Second/Foreign-Language teaching materials produced in response to a textbook "gap" in Japan. Focuses on a consciousness-raising exercise created to elucidate clearly the difference between two grammatical forms. (Author/VWL)

  20. Indecent Proposals: Teachers in the Movies.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bauer, Dale M.

    1998-01-01

    Focuses on images of teachers (particularly English teachers) in films. Argues that understanding how society views teachers through the prism of cultural imagination can productively challenge the profession to create its own pedagogical images. Suggests that, although these films depict the teacher's sexuality to define its proper limits, the…

  1. A Cognitive Study of English Loan Words in Japanese Discourse.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hayashi, Takuo; Hayashi, Reiko

    1995-01-01

    Discusses the use of English loanwords in Japanese discourse from a cognitive perspective and reveals how the world knowledge of English loanwords is applied to a text and constitutes an integral component of the discourse production process both within and beyond the sentence level. (40 references) (MDM)

  2. Developing Oral Language Skills in Middle School English Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fisher, Douglas; Frey, Nancy

    2018-01-01

    Oral language development can help English learners develop academic proficiency with the English language. In this investigation, at one middle school, teachers focused on improving oral language skills. Using a formative experiment process, the teachers developed an intervention to accomplish their pedagogical goal and then tracked data to see…

  3. What a Nonnative Speaker of English Needs to Learn through Listening.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bohlken, Robert; Macias, Lori

    Teaching nonnative speakers of English to listen for the discriminating nuances of the language is an important but neglected aspect of American English language training. A discriminating listening process follows a sequence of distinguishing phonemes, supra segmental phonemes, morphemes, and syntax. Certain phonetic differences can be noted…

  4. Welsh Bilinguals' English Spelling: An Error Analysis.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    James, Carl; And Others

    1993-01-01

    The extent to which the second-language English spelling of young Welsh-English bilinguals is systematically idiosyncratic was examined from free compositions written by 10- to 11-year-old children. A model is presented of the second-language spelling process in the form of a "decision tree." (Contains 29 references.) (Author/LB)

  5. Morphophonemic Transfer in English Second Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ping, Sze Wei; Rickard Liow, Susan J.

    2011-01-01

    Malay (Rumi) is alphabetic and has a transparent, agglutinative system of affixation. We manipulated language-specific junctural phonetics in Malay and English to investigate whether morphophonemic L1-knowledge influences L2-processing. A morpheme decision task, "Does this "nonword" sound like a mono- or bi-morphemic English word?", was developed…

  6. Quantification Scope Ambiguity Resolution: Evidence from Persian and English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Asadollahfam, Hassan; Lotfi, Ahmad Reza

    2010-01-01

    This study investigates the interpretation of scopally ambiguous sentences containing noun phrases with double quantified constituents from a processing perspective. The questions this study tried to answer were: whether or not the preferred interpretation for doubly quantified ambiguous sentences in English was influenced by English learners' L1…

  7. English/Japanese Professional Interpretation: Its Linguistic and Conceptual Problems.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ishikawa, Luli

    1995-01-01

    A study of simultaneous interpretation from Japanese to English focused on problems inherent in simultaneous language processing. Data were drawn from a discussion session at an international conference of physicians concerning nuclear war. Transcription of the Japanese source text (romanized), English product, and a gloss of lexical equivalents…

  8. Research in Automatic Russian-English Scientific and Technical Lexicography. Final Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wayne State Univ., Detroit, MI.

    Techniques of reversing English-Russian scientific and technical dictionaries into Russian-English versions through semi-automated compilation are described. Sections on manual and automatic processing discuss pre- and post-editing, the task program, updater (correction of errors and revision by specialist in a given field), the system employed…

  9. The Influence of English-Korean Bilingualism in Solving Mathematics Word Problems.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Whang, Woo-Hyung

    1996-01-01

    Purposeful sampling was used to select six English-Korean bilingual students to investigate language difficulties and cognitive processes in solving mathematics word problems. These six case studies revealed distinct patterns of difficulties in solving problems written in English and Korean, especially for students in transition stage. (Author/KMC)

  10. Student Disengagement in English-Speaking Montréal

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vallée, Daniel; Ruglis, Jessica

    2017-01-01

    This article discusses how student disengagement is conceptualized by English-speaking youth attending English urban public schools in Montreal, Quebec. School dropout is theorized as being a culminating event in a process of school disengagement (Rumberger, 2011). Using 2 qualitative methods (maps and interviews) in a grounded theory approach…

  11. Individual Differences in Inhibitory Control Relate to Bilingual Spoken Word Processing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mercier, Julie; Pivneva, Irina; Titone, Debra

    2014-01-01

    We investigated whether individual differences in inhibitory control relate to bilingual spoken word recognition. While their eye movements were monitored, native English and native French English-French bilinguals listened to English words (e.g., "field") and looked at pictures corresponding to the target, a within-language competitor…

  12. Redesigning nursing tutorials for ESL students: a pilot study.

    PubMed

    San Miguel, Caroline; Townsend, Lisa; Waters, Cheryl

    2013-04-01

    Increased enrolments of Bachelor of Nursing (BN) students who speak English as a second language (ESL) can help create a multilingual and culturally diverse workforce that is better prepared to meet the needs of increasingly diverse health populations. However, although ESL enrolments are increasing, attrition rates for ESL students tend to be higher than those of native speakers of English, partly due to academic failure. At the same time, concerns have been expressed in some quarters about the low levels of English language of entering students. As it is unlikely that language entry levels to university will be raised, sustainable programmes that help ESL students better meet the academic challenges they may face need to be developed. So far, models of ESL support have been mostly an adjunct to their degree, voluntary and not well attended. This paper discusses a model using tutorials integrated into the first year nursing curriculum that were specifically designed for ESL students with low levels of English language proficiency. The paper also examines students' perceptions of such tutorials, which they found beneficial to their learning.

  13. Exploring the Cause of English Pronoun Gender Errors by Chinese Learners of English: Evidence from the Self-paced Reading Paradigm.

    PubMed

    Dong, Yanping; Wen, Yun; Zeng, Xiaomeng; Ji, Yifei

    2015-12-01

    To locate the underlying cause of biological gender errors of oral English pronouns by proficient Chinese-English learners, two self-paced reading experiments were conducted to explore whether the reading time for each 'he' or 'she' that matched its antecedent was shorter than that in the corresponding mismatch situation, as with native speakers of English. The critical manipulation was to see whether highlighting the gender information of an antecedent with a human picture would make a difference. The results indicate that such manipulation did make a difference. Since oral Chinese does not distinguish 'he' and 'she', the findings suggest that Chinese speakers probably do not usually process biological gender for linguistic purposes and the mixed use of 'he' and 'she' is probably a result of deficient processing of gender information in the conceptualizer. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

  14. Predictors of Reading Comprehension for Struggling Readers: The Case of Spanish-speaking Language Minority Learners.

    PubMed

    Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette; Lesaux, Nonie K

    2010-08-01

    This longitudinal study examined the process of English reading comprehension at age 11 for 173 low achieving Spanish-speaking children. The influence of growth rates, from early childhood (age 4.5) to pre-adolescence (age 11), in vocabulary and word reading skills on this complex process were evaluated using structural equation modeling. Standardized measures of word reading accuracy and productive vocabulary were administered annually, in English and Spanish, and English reading comprehension measures were administered at age 11. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that English skills accounted for all unique variance in English reading comprehension outcomes. Further, expected developmental shifts in the influence of word reading and vocabulary skills over time were not shown, likely on account of students' below grade level reading comprehension achievement. This work underscores the need for theoretical models of comprehension to account for students' skill profiles and abilities.

  15. Predictors of Reading Comprehension for Struggling Readers: The Case of Spanish-speaking Language Minority Learners

    PubMed Central

    Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette; Lesaux, Nonie K.

    2010-01-01

    This longitudinal study examined the process of English reading comprehension at age 11 for 173 low achieving Spanish-speaking children. The influence of growth rates, from early childhood (age 4.5) to pre-adolescence (age 11), in vocabulary and word reading skills on this complex process were evaluated using structural equation modeling. Standardized measures of word reading accuracy and productive vocabulary were administered annually, in English and Spanish, and English reading comprehension measures were administered at age 11. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that English skills accounted for all unique variance in English reading comprehension outcomes. Further, expected developmental shifts in the influence of word reading and vocabulary skills over time were not shown, likely on account of students’ below grade level reading comprehension achievement. This work underscores the need for theoretical models of comprehension to account for students’ skill profiles and abilities. PMID:20856691

  16. Dynamic assessment of narrative ability in English accurately identifies language impairment in English language learners.

    PubMed

    Peña, Elizabeth D; Gillam, Ronald B; Bedore, Lisa M

    2014-12-01

    To assess the identification accuracy of dynamic assessment (DA) of narrative ability in English for children learning English as a 2nd language. A DA task was administered to 54 children: 18 Spanish-English-speaking children with language impairment (LI); 18 age-, sex-, IQ- and language experience-matched typical control children; and an additional 18 age- and language experience-matched comparison children. A variety of quantitative and qualitative measures were collected in the pretest phase, the mediation phase, and the posttest phase of the study. Exploratory discriminant analysis was used to determine the set of measures that best differentiated among this group of children with and without LI. A combination of examiner ratings of modifiability (compliance, metacognition, and task orientation), DA story scores (setting, dialogue, and complexity of vocabulary), and ungrammaticality (derived from the posttest narrative sample) classified children with 80.6% to 97.2% accuracy. DA conducted in English provides a systematic means for measuring learning processes and learning outcomes, resulting in a clinically useful procedure for identifying LIs in bilingual children who are in the process of learning English as a second language.

  17. Psychometric Evaluation of the Patient Health Questionnaire–4 in Hispanic Americans

    PubMed Central

    Mills, Sarah D.; Fox, Rina S.; Pan, Tonya M.; Malcarne, Vanessa L.; Roesch, Scott C.; Sadler, Georgia Robins

    2017-01-01

    The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4), a screener of psychological distress, in English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanic Americans. Hispanic American adults (N = 436) completed the PHQ-4, which yields two subscales (anxiety and depression) that can be summed to create a total score. Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate structural validity. The two-factor structure was the best fit to the data for both English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanic Americans and items loaded equivalently across groups, demonstrating measurement invariance. Internal consistency reliability was good as measured by coefficient alpha. Construct validity was evidenced by significant expected relationships with perceived stress. These findings provide support for the reliability and validity of the PHQ-4 as a brief measure of psychological distress for English- or Spanish-speaking Hispanic Americans. PMID:29097834

  18. Teaching the Process Approach in Poland.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carter, Ronnie D.

    Members of the Polish faculty at the English Institute (Poland) primarily use English as a second language (ESL) techniques to teach writing, with grammar and idiom drills, and little writing beyond the sentence level. An American professor, on the other hand, used a process approach to teach writing by providing specific instructions about…

  19. Up the Down Spiral with English: Guidelines, Project Insight.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Catholic Board of Education, Diocese of Cleveland, OH.

    This curriculum guide presents the philosophy, objectives, and processes which unify a student-centered English program based on Jerome Bruner's concept of the spiral curriculum. To illustrate the spiraling of the learning process (i.e., engagement, perception, interpretation, evaluation, and personal integration), the theme of "hero" is traced…

  20. Scaffolding for Second Language Writers: Producing an Academic Essay.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cotterall, Sara; Cohen, Robin

    2003-01-01

    Describes how a group of intermediate learners of English were guided through the process of producing their first academic essays in English. The approach applied the concept of scaffolding to the academic writing process by proving flexible support for the learners throughout the writing of their essays. (Author/VWL)

  1. Using Processing Instruction for the Acquisition of English Present Perfect of Filipinos

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Erfe, Jonathan P.; Lintao, Rachelle B.

    2012-01-01

    This is an experimental study on the relative effects of Van Patten's Processing Instruction (PI) (1996, 2002), a "psycholinguistically-motivated" intervention in teaching second-language (L2) grammar, on young-adult Filipino learners of English. A growing body of research on this methodological alternative, which establishes…

  2. Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices in Psychoeducational Reports for English Language Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harris, Bryn; Sullivan, Amanda L.; Oades-Sese, Geraldine V.; Sotelo-Dynega, Marlene

    2015-01-01

    Past researchers suggested there are a number of shortcomings in the psychoeducational evaluation process and practices used with English language learners (ELLs). In the present exploratory study, the authors descriptively examined the assessment practices used in the special education eligibility determination process for ELLs as documented in…

  3. An Investigation of Comprehension Processes among Adolescent English Learners with Reading Difficulties

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lesaux, Nonie K.; Harris, Julie Russ

    2017-01-01

    This mixed-methods study examines the reading skills and processes of early adolescent Latino English learners demonstrating below-average reading comprehension performance (N = 41, mean age = 13 years). Standardized measures were used to estimate participants' word reading and vocabulary knowledge, and interviews were conducted to examine reading…

  4. Sentence Processing in High Proficient Kannada--English Bilinguals: A Reaction Time Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ravi, Sunil Kumar; Chengappa, Shyamala K.

    2015-01-01

    The present study aimed at exploring the semantic and syntactic processing differences between native and second languages in 20 early high proficient Kannada--English bilingual adults through accuracy and reaction time (RT) measurements. Subjects participated in a semantic judgement task (using 50 semantically correct and 50 semantically…

  5. The Processing of Derivational Morphology in Korean-English Bilingual Readers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kim, Say Young; Wang, Min; Ko, In Yeong

    2011-01-01

    Three experiments using a priming lexical decision paradigm were conducted to examine whether cross-language activation occurs via decomposition during the processing of derived words in Korean-English bilingual readers. In Experiment 1, when participants were given a real derived word and an interpretable derived pseudoword (i.e., illegal…

  6. Design and Assessment of Online, Interactive Tutorials That Teach Science Process Skills.

    PubMed

    Kramer, Maxwell; Olson, Dalay; Walker, J D

    2018-06-01

    Explicit emphasis on teaching science process skills leads to both gains in the skills themselves and, strikingly, deeper understanding of content. Here, we created and tested a series of online, interactive tutorials with the goal of helping undergraduate students develop science process skills. We designed the tutorials in accordance with evidence-based multimedia design principles and student feedback from usability testing. We then tested the efficacy of the tutorials in an introductory undergraduate biology class. On the basis of a multivariate ordinary least-squares regression model, students who received the tutorials are predicted to score 0.82 points higher on a 15-point science process skill assessment than their peers who received traditional textbook instruction on the same topic. This moderate but significant impact indicates that well-designed online tutorials can be more effective than traditional ways of teaching science process skills to undergraduate students. We also found trends that suggest the tutorials are especially effective for nonnative English-speaking students. However, due to a limited sample size, we were unable to confirm that these trends occurred due to more than just variation in the student group sampled.

  7. Clinicians' Obligations to Use Qualified Medical Interpreters When Caring for Patients with Limited English Proficiency.

    PubMed

    Basu, Gaurab; Costa, Vonessa Phillips; Jain, Priyank

    2017-03-01

    Access to language services is a required and foundational component of care for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP). National standards for medical interpreting set by the US Department of Health and Human Services and by the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care establish the role of qualified medical interpreters in the provision of care in the United States. In the vignette, the attending physician infringes upon the patient's right to appropriate language services and renders unethical care. Clinicians are obliged to create systems and a culture that ensure quality care for patients with LEP. © 2017 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved.

  8. What Are HyperCard? (Part 2).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Marcus, Stephen

    1989-01-01

    Presents the second article in a two-part series on HyperCard materials (computer software used to build structures that create patterns and connections) designed for English and language arts classes. Suggests assignments for use with early HyperCard software that can be adapted to a variety of nonverbal "stackware." (MM)

  9. Using Freewriting to Make Sense of Literature

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Salas, Spencer; Garson, Kyra; Khanna, Shweta; Murray, Beth

    2016-01-01

    In this article, the authors describe the outcomes of a workshop of pre- and in-service secondary school English teachers in New Delhi, India, working with a literature-based curriculum that required striking a balance between teaching the text or series of texts and creating opportunities for communicative interaction. The authors describe…

  10. Faith in the Word: Examining Religious Right Attitudes about Texts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brinkley, Ellen H.

    1995-01-01

    Describes theological views about written texts, related attitudes exhibited by current protestors, and problems such views and attitudes create for English language arts teachers. Suggests that such an awareness of the religious perspective might help to lead to more constructive outcomes to conflicts between teachers and individual students and…

  11. Teaching Classic Literature with Comic Books and Virtual Lit Trips

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sardone, Nancy B.

    2012-01-01

    This article describes the assignments the author created to engage preservice teachers in designing instructional materials that befit today's students to help them overcome hurdles sometimes present when learning classic literature. Secondary and middle school English teachers may find these assignments useful as well so their students, too,…

  12. From Labels to Opportunities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wolter, Deborah

    2017-01-01

    The author argues that to truly help young students who struggle with reading and writing--including those with identified disabilities or conditions that effect building literacy--teachers should avoid the approach of focusing on a student's deficits and creating labels for him or her (dyslexic, English language learner, and so on). A rush to…

  13. Creating Positive Attitudes towards English as a Foreign Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Elyildirim, Selma; Ashton, Sally

    2006-01-01

    The author reviews research on the connections between attitudes and language learning, and between attitudes and motivation. The article suggests that language learners' motivation and attitudes can influence learning outcomes, and that effective teaching can change negative attitudes. It describes a classroom action research project that was…

  14. Conflict and Consensus in Teacher Candidates' Discussion of Ethnic Autobiography.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Florio-Ruane, Susan; deTar, Julie

    1995-01-01

    Provides a report of the attempt to create an "autobiography club" among beginning English teachers in order to foster ongoing discussion of experiences and problems. Analyzes club discussions and the lessons being learned through the club's activities. Discusses methods for undertaking ethnographic research in education. (HB)

  15. Internationally Yours: Writing and Communicating Successfully in Today's Global Marketplace.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    De Vries, Mary A.

    Intended to help international business people create business documents of style and substance for correspondents in many different cultures (correspondents whose second or even third language is English), this guide is extremely useful for the millions who travel internationally, work abroad, and correspond with business people in other…

  16. For Teachers, by Teachers: An Exploration of Teacher-Generated Online Professional Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rodesiler, Luke

    2017-01-01

    Participatory online professional development opportunities created for teachers by teachers have emerged with the proliferation of social media. This article presents an investigation of a voluntary, participant-driven, 5-week online professional development offering in which two high school English teachers invited colleagues at a distance to…

  17. Compilation of Action Research Papers in English Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sherman, Thomas F.; Lundquist, Margaret

    This action research compilation contains two research projects: "Increasing Student Appreciation of Poetry through the Use of Contemporary Music" by Paul G. Senjem and "Are Men and Women Created Equal? Gender in the Classroom" by Jennifer Joyce Plitzuweit. The researcher/author of the first paper states that his goal was to…

  18. Issues of Qualification Assessment for Nurses in a Global Market.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wickett, Diane; McCutcheon, Helen

    2002-01-01

    Nursing shortages are creating a global market for nurses. However, assessment of qualifications varies widely among nations. In Australia, for example, overseas nurses must pass English language and nursing competency assessments. Issues of equivalence, cost, and time are involved. (Includes commentaries by Paula Kay Hancock and Abigail…

  19. Creating Participatory Photonovels: A Classroom Guide

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nimmon, Laura; Begoray, Deborah

    2008-01-01

    Photonovels look like comic books but contain photographs instead of drawings. Because photonovels combine pictures and everyday language, adult ESL learners can use them to communicate their thoughts and ideas. Photonovels can also be an aid in learning spoken and written English. This article describes a photonovel project that one of the…

  20. Cross Currents: Communication/Language/Cross-Cultural Skills. Volume 5, Number 1.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Matreyek, Deborah B., Ed.

    1978-01-01

    This issue of "Cross Currents" includes the following articles: "More About Drama for the Classroom" by Richard A. Via; "Student-Created Media: One Approach to ESL Instruction" by Kathy Campbell; "Some Advice for Japanese Students Learning English" by Yoshi-Mitsu Shimazu; "Patterns of Oral Communication…

  1. Questioning and Oracy in a Reading Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vaish, Viniti

    2013-01-01

    This paper is about the questioning patterns of teachers in an early intervention reading program and the exceptions to this typical interactional pattern. Literacy experts recommend a rich diet of oral language for young learners of English literacy. Teachers offer this rich diet by creating an appropriate learning environment in the classroom…

  2. Creating Tension in Writing.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Folta, Bernarr

    This paper discusses the rationale and teaching methods for a six-week unit, for a high school freshman English Class, on perception, semantics, and writing, which places special focus on developing tension in student writing. The first four objectives of the course focus on perception and the next two focus on semantics. The seventh…

  3. Bullying Reconsidered: Educating for Emotional Literacy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mack, Nancy, Ed.

    2012-01-01

    Emotional literacy has an important place in the English curriculum because emotions cannot be separated from reading, writing, and thinking critically with language. Teachers can use the study of literature, writing, and language to reframe emotion from being something that creates victims and victimizers into feelings that can be critically…

  4. Creating Inclusive Classrooms through the Arts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Henderson, C. Miki; Lasley, Elizabeth

    2014-01-01

    Art, drama, music, dance and literature activities are part of the basic components of an early childhood curriculum. They do not rely heavily on oral language or English proficiency, and this makes them accessible to all children regardless of language differences or language abilities. Teachers can use creative expression and art to practice…

  5. Sketching to Create Meaning: The Story of a Second-Language Learner

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Altman, Chris

    2008-01-01

    Chris Altman stresses the importance of helping English language learners ascertain the medium they best work with in interpreting information presented in class. Altman reminds us that meaning does not come directly from teachers giving students information, but from students productively making meaning and clarifying understanding through a…

  6. Integrating the Use of Interdisciplinary Learning Activity Task in Creating Students' Mathematical Knowledge

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mahanin, Hajah Umisuzimah Haji; Shahrill, Masitah; Tan, Abby; Mahadi, Mar Aswandi

    2017-01-01

    This study investigated the use of interdisciplinary learning activity task to construct students' knowledge in Mathematics, specifically on the topic of scale drawing application. The learning activity task involved more than one academic discipline, which is Mathematics, English Language, Art, Geography and integrating the Brunei Darussalam…

  7. Retention of Idioms Following One-Time Exposure

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reuterskiold, Christina; Van Lancker Sidtis, Diana

    2013-01-01

    This study explored retention of idioms and novel (i.e. newly created or grammatically generated) expressions in English-speaking girls following exposure only once during a conversation. Our hypothesis was that idioms, because of their inherent holistic, nonliteral and social characteristics, are acquired differently and more rapidly than novel…

  8. Creating a Culture of Language Awareness in Content-Based Contexts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lindahl, Kristen; Watkins, Naomi M.

    2015-01-01

    A "toolkit" approach to professional development is frequently used to assist teachers of English language learners (ELLs), wherein teachers are provided a grab bag of activities and strategies to implement in their classrooms. However, today's heightened language demands call for teachers to develop teacher language awareness (TLA), a…

  9. Phonological Phrase Boundaries Constrain the Online Syntactic Analysis of Spoken Sentences

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Millotte, Severine; Rene, Alice; Wales, Roger; Christophe, Anne

    2008-01-01

    Two experiments tested whether phonological phrase boundaries constrain online syntactic analysis in French. Pairs of homophones belonging to different syntactic categories (verb and adjective) were used to create sentences with a local syntactic ambiguity (e.g., [le petit chien "mort"], in English, the "dead" little dog, vs.…

  10. Fostering 21st Century Learning with Geospatial Technologies

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hagevik, Rita A.

    2011-01-01

    Global positioning systems (GPS) receivers and other geospatial tools can help teachers create engaging, hands-on activities in all content areas. This article provides a rationale for using geospatial technologies in the middle grades and describes classroom-tested activities in English language arts, science, mathematics, and social studies.…

  11. A case study of culturally appropriate conservation education

    Treesearch

    David N. Bengston; Michele Schermann

    2016-01-01

    Create culturally appropriate conservation education materials for Hmong Americans, including new refugees and elders with little proficiency in English, as well as the broader, multigenerational Hmong community. This case study discusses an organizational response from the USDA Forest Service, in partnership with others, to better serve the Hmong American community....

  12. Creating a successful culturally sensitive home care program.

    PubMed

    Blanter, R; Page, P M

    1995-12-01

    Providing quality home care services to immigrants requires an integrated, holistic approach that genuinely addresses language and cultural differences. One home care agency in Massachusetts developed a team-oriented, culturally sensitive outreach program that ensures non-English-speaking patients the same level of service that the general population receives.

  13. Equalizing Educational Opportunity: In Defense of Bilingual Education--A California Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wang, Hao

    2016-01-01

    Under critical examination, the English language and its use in daily interactions carry with them symbolic values in our social world, including social mobility, educational achievement, and employment. Its representations in government bodies, mass media, education, and legal documents have further increased those values and subtly created a…

  14. From Spanish to Portuguese.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ulsh, Jack L.

    This text is designed for native speakers of American English who have a good command of Spanish and want to acquire a knowledge of Portuguese. The manual focuses on features of Portuguese pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary that have similar but not always identical counterparts in Spanish. Correspondences which often create interference for…

  15. Constructing and Engaging Biography: Considerations for High School English Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Edmondson, Jacqueline

    2012-01-01

    In contemporary contexts, young people are accustomed to life story; indeed, their lives are saturated with constructions of their stories and those of others, whether created by themselves or their "friends" on social networks. Multimedia outlets convey often detailed stories of more-famous others, whether celebrities or those experiencing…

  16. Inadvertent Exemplars: Life History Portraits of Two Socially Just Principals

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Scanlan, Martin

    2012-01-01

    This study creates life history portraits of two White middle-class native-English-speaking principals demonstrating commitments to social justice in their work in public elementary schools serving disproportionately high populations of students who are marginalized by poverty, race, and linguistic heritage. Through self-reported life histories of…

  17. The Word Part Levels Test

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sasao, Yosuke; Webb, Stuart

    2017-01-01

    Knowledge of English affixes plays a significant role in increasing knowledge of words. However, few attempts have been made to create a valid and reliable measure of affix knowledge. The Word Part Levels Test (WPLT) was developed to measure three aspects of affix knowledge: form (recognition of written affix forms), meaning (knowledge of affix…

  18. Why I Study Spanish.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Uchmanowicz, Pauline

    English teachers together with multilingual and multidialect students can create new standards for language use and learning in the classroom. A teacher of writing and ethnic studies finds herself telling her students "I still have time to learn Spanish." Many to whom she speaks these words are native speakers of Spanish, struggling in classroom…

  19. Poems by Computer: Introducing Poetry in a High-Tech Society.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Styne, Marlys M.

    Poetry was used in a college English class to teach figurative language, connotation, denotation, and the need for close attention to vocabulary. However, students were often bored by traditional poetry. Using computer programs like "Compupoem,""Poetrywriter,""Lifesongs," and "Haikuku," students were introduced to computer poetry and created their…

  20. Latina/o Academics' Resilient Qualities in Their Linguistically Diverse Practices

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cavazos, Alyssa G.

    2016-01-01

    Emphasis placed on academic writing in English may create challenges for multilingual academics as they negotiate diverse languages. Based on personal interviews with bilingual Latina/o academics in rhetoric and composition, this study reveals that their language practices reflect diverse resilient qualities at various stages in their academic…

  1. Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric: An Inquiry into the Art of Legal Language.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ranney, Frances J.

    1999-01-01

    Describes research creating a feminist, rhetorical analysis of legal language by examining in detail both the "Plain English" and the "Law and Literature" movements. Examines legal texts that construct the "reasonable woman," asking how that hypothetical legal subject is construed by judicial discourse and what its…

  2. On Observing Student Silence

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Amundrud, Thomas

    2011-01-01

    This article uses conversation analysis (CA) to look at how students in an advanced EGAP (English for general academic purposes) course discussion test create and manage the silence of a group member during the 7-min session. This is combined with a personal narrative inquiry, coinspired by autoethnography, on the author's participation in the…

  3. Bilingual Education: An Analytical Assessment.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mendoza, Agapito

    Bilingual education has had great impact on education in the United States. Bilingual education programs have existed since 1845. Between 1854-1877, eight states enacted laws stipulating that local school boards had the power to require English-German bilingual programs. Many bilingual education programs were created, thrived, and eventually died;…

  4. RPA Data Wiz users guide, version 1.0

    Treesearch

    Scott A. Pugh

    2004-01-01

    RPA Data Wiz is a computer application use to create summary tables, graphs, and maps of Resource Planning Act (RPA) Assessment forest information (English or metric units). Volumes for growing stock, live cull, dead salvable, netgrowth, and mortality can be estimated. Acreage, biomass, and tree count estimates are also available.

  5. Mountain Roads, Lonely Mesas: A Career Program for Northern New Mexico.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Strong, Kathryn Ringhand

    Educational outreach programs of Los Alamos National Laboratory assist rural educators in strengthening science curricula; encourage students to take science, math, and English courses; and create a good neighbor policy between the laboratory and rural communities/schools in predominantly Hispanic/American Indian northern New Mexico. The program,…

  6. Creating a Storytelling Classroom for a Storytelling World

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jones, Robert E.

    2012-01-01

    This article explores the value of storytelling in English language learning. Strong emphasis is placed on the role that stories of personal experience play in human interaction and how these natural conversations foster a better language learning experience. The author outlines a four-step approach to help students develop conversational skills…

  7. Shaping the Air Force Operational Environment in Cyberspace

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2009-02-12

    the Internet. The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by English scientist Tim Berners - Lee , working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research...www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123013440 Goldsmith, Jack L. and Wu, Tim . Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World. New York

  8. Japanese "Warabeuta": Nursery Rhymes of Body, Mind, and Soul

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Morrone, Michelle Henault; Matsuyama, Yumi

    2012-01-01

    Throughout the world, young children are introduced to some form of nursery rhymes. In Japan, the first type of rhyme a child encounters is called "warabeuta"--songs created through play. The English translation fails to accurately capture the degree to which "warabeuta" include body movement, touch, and interaction with other…

  9. Cross-Language Transfer of Orthographic Processing Skills: A Study of French Children Who Learn English at School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Commissaire, Eva; Duncan, Lynne G.; Casalis, Severine

    2011-01-01

    This study explores the nature of orthographic processing skills among French-speaking children in Grades 6 and 8 who are learning English at school as a second language (L2). Two aspects of orthographic processing skills are thought to form a convergent construct in monolingual beginning readers: word-specific knowledge (e.g. "rain-rane") and…

  10. Working Memory Effects on L1 and L2 Processing of Ambiguous Relative Clauses by Korean L2 Learners of English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kim, Ji Hyon; Christianson, Kiel

    2017-01-01

    In this study, we report the results of two self-paced reading experiments that investigated working memory capacity effects on the processing of globally ambiguous relative clauses by advanced Korean second language (L2) learners of English. Consistent with previous monolingual literature on the processing of temporary ambiguity, we found that…

  11. Processing of Regular and Irregular Past Tense Morphology in Highly Proficient Second Language Learners of English: A Self-Paced Reading Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pliatsikas, Christos; Marinis, Theodoros

    2013-01-01

    Dual-system models suggest that English past tense morphology involves two processing routes: rule application for regular verbs and memory retrieval for irregular verbs. In second language (L2) processing research, Ullman suggested that both verb types are retrieved from memory, but more recently Clahsen and Felser and Ullman argued that past…

  12. Wrong-site nerve blocks: A systematic literature review to guide principles for prevention.

    PubMed

    Deutsch, Ellen S; Yonash, Robert A; Martin, Donald E; Atkins, Joshua H; Arnold, Theresa V; Hunt, Christina M

    2018-05-01

    Wrong-site nerve blocks (WSBs) are a significant, though rare, source of perioperative morbidity. WSBs constitute the most common type of perioperative wrong-site procedure reported to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority. This systematic literature review aggregates information about the incidence, patient consequences, and conditions that contribute to WSBs, as well as evidence-based methods to prevent them. A systematic search of English-language publications was performed, using the PRISMA process. Seventy English-language publications were identified. Analysis of four publications reporting on at least 10,000 blocks provides a rate of 0.52 to 5.07 WSB per 10,000 blocks, unilateral blocks, or "at risk" procedures. The most commonly mentioned potential consequence was local anesthetic toxicity. The most commonly mentioned contributory factors were time pressure, personnel factors, and lack of site-mark visibility (including no site mark placed). Components of the block process that were addressed include preoperative nerve-block verification, nerve-block site marking, time-outs, and the healthcare facility's structure and culture of safety. A lack of uniform reporting criteria and divergence in the data and theories presented may reflect the variety of circumstances affecting when and how nerve blocks are performed, as well as the infrequency of a WSB. However, multiple authors suggest three procedural steps that may help to prevent WSBs: (1) verify the nerve-block procedure using multiple sources of information, including the patient; (2) identify the nerve-block site with a visible mark; and (3) perform time-outs immediately prior to injection or instillation of the anesthetic. Hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, and anesthesiology practices should consider creating site-verification processes with clinician input and support to develop sustainable WSB-prevention practices. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  13. "'Knowledge Growth": A Multiple Case Study of English Literature Graduates' Learning Experiences for Teaching Composition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Richards, Kathleen A.

    2013-01-01

    This multiple case study investigates the learning processes of postsecondary English literature graduates who teach composition to diverse student groups. Since the context of study in English literature graduate programs concentrates on literature and literary theory, the interest of this study examines how teachers learn to teach composition…

  14. Drama in English: An Enriching Experience.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Geffen, Mitzi

    1998-01-01

    Examines the rationale behind using musical drama in English-as-a-Second-Language classes, explaining that it is an enjoyable experience that enriches students' English while they are relaxed, working as a team, and having fun with their imaginations. The article explains the process of putting on a play and evaluates the effect such a project had…

  15. English Loanwords in Spanish Computer Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cabanillas, Isabel de la Cruz; Martinez, Cristina Tejedor; Prados, Mercedes Diez; Redondo, Esperanza Cerda

    2007-01-01

    Contact with the English language, especially from the 20th century onwards, has had as a consequence an increase in the number of words that are borrowed from English into Spanish. This process is particularly noticeable in Spanish for Specific Purposes, and, more specifically, in the case of Spanish computer language. Although sociocultural and…

  16. A Comparison of Abstract Writing Style between English and Chinese

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zhou, Xiaoying; Liao, Hangjie

    2018-01-01

    In this paper the authors conducted a comprehensive study on English abstract writing style. Abstraction is the process of forming a theoretical concept based on the observation and classification of object things. This concept has no definite denotation. However in specific situation it can be clearly understood. In English, writing an abstract…

  17. Vocational English as a Second Language: A Partnership with Industry.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilde, Cindy

    This monograph offers a process model developed by the Fremont Union High School District (California) for the implementation of Vocational English as a Second Language (VESL) at industry sites for minority employees who have limited English proficiency and are unable to continue classes in a traditional manner. The following areas are covered:…

  18. Answering the Call: Reflections on Professional Learning and English Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Curwood, Jen Scott; O'Grady, Alison

    2015-01-01

    Research in English involves understanding the complex process of professional learning, which begins in teacher education programs. In this special issue of "English in Australia," we draw on our experiences as researchers and teacher educators at the University of Sydney. We take a sociocultural and situated perspective in order to…

  19. Supporting English Language Learners' Writing Abilities: Exploring Third Spaces

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Assaf, Lori Czop

    2014-01-01

    Research on the sociocultural processes of writing and its impact on writing instruction in the middle grades has gained increased attention in educational research. Less attention has been devoted to research on writing with middle grade English learners (ELs) who are mainstreamed into English only classrooms. National assessment data, reports,…

  20. The Influence of Topics on Listening Strategy Use for English for Academic Purposes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chou, Mu-hsuan

    2015-01-01

    Listening is an essential skill for English as a Foreign Language learners studying in English-speaking universities to succeed in various fields of study. To comprehend subject material and improve listening effectiveness, learners are generally advised to develop strategies which help them process the target language in specific contexts.…

  1. Using Translation Exercises in the Communicative EFL Writing Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kim, Eun-Young

    2011-01-01

    Implementing process pedagogy in an L2 writing classroom has its own limits for students with low English proficiency. Although L1 writers commonly benefit from writing multiple drafts, most of the low English level Korean college students in my English composition class did not benefit from the revisions. This article introduces an innovative…

  2. Teachers and Students' Stereotypes about the Teaching and Learning of English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Roberto Flórez, Eliana Edith; Arias Rodríguez, Gladis Leonor

    2016-01-01

    This article is the result of a research study that examined teachers and undergraduate students' stereotypes about English teaching and learning processes at a private university in Tunja, Colombia. The research was carried out with six English teachers and twenty undergraduate students from first and second semesters. The instruments used to…

  3. American Sign Language-English Interpreting Program Faculty: Characteristics, Tenure Perceptions, and Productivity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hale, Kimberly J.

    2012-01-01

    American Sign Language (ASL)-English interpreting education, which began as a community apprenticeship and vetting process, has within the last several decades moved into higher education. Most recently, the number of baccalaureate-granting ASL-English interpreting programs have continued to increase while the number of associate's degree…

  4. The Role of Culture in English Language Education: Key Challenges

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holliday, Adrian

    2009-01-01

    English language education is in the process of change regarding teacher identity and the ownership of English. Cultural issues are implicated in this change. Critical cosmopolitan approaches in the social sciences are critiquing the primacy of national cultures which they consider a Western imposition on the emergent identities of the Periphery.…

  5. Improving Comprehension and Assessment of English Language Learners Using MMIO

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carrier, Karen A.

    2006-01-01

    Many mainstream content teachers are encountering, for the first time, K-12 students who are in the process of learning English as a second language (English language learners or ELLs), and this new population presents a significant challenge. Teachers are already familiar with many of the techniques available to help their ELLs comprehend…

  6. Management and Accounting in English Higher Education Influenced by Environmental and Academia-Specific Factors

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    von Alberti-Alhtaybat, Larissa; Al-Htaybat, Khaldoon; Hutaibat, Khaled

    2012-01-01

    This article originates from a longitudinal study of management and accounting practices in the English higher education sector. The processes of strategic management and strategic management accounting in several English higher education institutions were investigated, from planning to assessment, and their meaning to members of staff. The study…

  7. Developmental Dyslexia in Chinese and English Populations: Dissociating the Effect of Dyslexia from Language Differences

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hu, Wei; Lee, Hwee Ling; Zhang, Qiang; Liu, Tao; Geng, Li Bo; Seghier, Mohamed L.; Shakeshaft, Clare; Twomey, Tae; Green, David W.; Yang, Yi Ming; Price, Cathy J.

    2010-01-01

    Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested that developmental dyslexia has a different neural basis in Chinese and English populations because of known differences in the processing demands of the Chinese and English writing systems. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we provide the first direct statistically based investigation…

  8. The Impacts of Language Background and Language-Related Disorders in Auditory Processing Assessment

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Loo, Jenny Hooi Yin; Bamiou, Doris-Eva; Rosen, Stuart

    2013-01-01

    Purpose: To examine the impact of language background and language-related disorders (LRDs--dyslexia and/or language impairment) on performance in English speech and nonspeech tests of auditory processing (AP) commonly used in the clinic. Method: A clinical database concerning 133 multilingual children (mostly with English as an additional…

  9. The Time Course of Morphological Processing in a Second Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Clahsen, Harald; Balkhair, Loay; Schutter, John-Sebastian; Cunnings, Ian

    2013-01-01

    We report findings from psycholinguistic experiments investigating the detailed timing of processing morphologically complex words by proficient adult second (L2) language learners of English in comparison to adult native (L1) speakers of English. The first study employed the masked priming technique to investigate "-ed" forms with a group of…

  10. The Process and the Product: Two English Classes Develop Materials.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nettle, Mary Ellen

    1982-01-01

    English classes conducted for two groups of women, garment factory workers and building cleaners, are compared. The garment workers interviewed each other and produced a slide-tape program. The cleaners produced a song about their work and in the process, developed awareness of the work situation, and a sense of cooperation. (MSE)

  11. General Auditory Processing, Speech Perception and Phonological Awareness Skills in Chinese-English Biliteracy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chung, Kevin K. H.; McBride-Chang, Catherine; Cheung, Him; Wong, Simpson W. L.

    2013-01-01

    This study focused on the associations of general auditory processing, speech perception, phonological awareness and word reading in Cantonese-speaking children from Hong Kong learning to read both Chinese (first language [L1]) and English (second language [L2]). Children in Grades 2--4 ("N" = 133) participated and were administered…

  12. Theoretical Review of Phonics Instruction for Struggling/Beginning Readers of English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sitthitikul, Pragasit

    2014-01-01

    Learning to read is a complex task for beginners of English. They must coordinate many cognitive processes to read accurately and fluently, including recognizing words, constructing the meanings of sentences and text, and retaining the information read in memory. An essential part of the process for beginners involves learning the alphabetic…

  13. Using an e-Portfolio System to Improve the Academic Writing Performance of ESL Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Alshahrani, Ali; Windeatt, Scott

    2012-01-01

    Many intensive English language programmes that English second language (ESL) students enrol in adopt a process approach to writing, interpreting writing as a cognitive process that is highly private or individualistic (Atkinson, 2003), where writers use specific cognitive phases, such as pre-writing, drafting, and revising, to generate their…

  14. English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. 2nd Edition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Birch, Barbara M.

    2007-01-01

    This book remains a comprehensive, myth-debunking examination of how L1 features (orthographic system, phonology, morphology) can influence English L2 reading at the "bottom" of the reading process. It provides a thorough but very accessible linguistic/psycholinguistic examination of the lowest levels of the reading process. It is both theoretical…

  15. Global Language Identities and Ideologies in an Indonesian University Context

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zentz, Lauren

    2012-01-01

    This ethnographic study of language use and English language learners in Central Java, Indonesia examines globalization processes within and beyond language; processes of language shift and change in language ecologies; and critical and comprehensive approaches to the teaching of English around the world. From my position as teacher-researcher and…

  16. Improving the Students' Spiritual Intelligence in English Writing through Whole Brain Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Santoso, Didik

    2016-01-01

    The objective of this research was to improve the students' spiritual intelligence in English writing through Whole Brain Learning strategy. Therefore, this study was conducted as a classroom action research. The research pocedure followed the cyclonic process of planning, action, observation, and reflection. This process was preceeded by…

  17. An Investigation of How ESL Students Write.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Raimes, Ann

    A study is described which investigated the differences between English-as-a-second-language (ESL) writers and native-English-speaking writers and examined closely a range of ESL writers and their composing processes. The procedures used were those used by Sondra Perl in a study of the composing processes of unskilled college writers (1979).…

  18. Children's Processing of Reflexives and Pronouns in English: Evidence from Eye-Movements during Listening

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Clackson, Kaili; Felser, Claudia; Clahsen, Harald

    2011-01-01

    This study examined how 6-9 year-old English-speaking children and adults establish anaphoric dependencies during auditory sentence comprehension. Using eye-movement monitoring during listening and a corresponding sentence-picture judgment task, we investigated both the ultimate interpretation and the online processing of reflexives in comparison…

  19. "Coherence at Last": Percival Gurrey's Contribution to English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hardcastle, John

    2014-01-01

    Reacting to incoherent English teaching in the 1930s, Percival Gurrey probed the psychological processes involved in literary appreciation. He sought ways of teaching poetry that avoided lifeless tasks such as labelling "poetic devices." Later, in the 1950s, he wrote about the processes involved in learning to write. At a time when…

  20. L2 Processing of Plural Inflection in English

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Song, Yoonsang

    2015-01-01

    This study investigates (1) whether late second language (L2) learners can attain native-like knowledge of English plural inflection even when their first language (L1) lacks an equivalent and (2) whether they construct hierarchically structured representations during online sentence processing like native speakers. In a self-paced reading task,…

  1. Young Learners' Response Processes When Taking Computerized Tasks for Speaking Assessment

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Shinhye; Winke, Paula

    2018-01-01

    We investigated how young language learners process their responses on and perceive a computer-mediated, timed speaking test. Twenty 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old non-native English-speaking children (NNSs) and eight same-aged, native English-speaking children (NSs) completed seven computerized sample TOEFL® Primary™ speaking test tasks. We investigated…

  2. Perceptions of the Pediatric Hospice Experience among English- and Spanish-Speaking Families

    PubMed Central

    Marks, Emily; Funes, Maria; Martinez-Puente, Louizza Maria; Winick, Naomi; Lee, Simon Craddock

    2016-01-01

    Abstract Objective: Many children who die are eligible for hospice enrollment but little is known about parental perceptions of the hospice experience, the benefits, and disappointments. The objective of this study was to explore parental perspectives of the hospice experience in children with cancer, and to explore how race/ethnicity impacts this experience. Study Design: We held 20 semistructured interviews with 34 caregivers of children who died of cancer and used hospice. Interviews were conducted in the caregivers' primary language: 12 in English and 8 in Spanish. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using accepted qualitative methods. Results: Both English and Spanish speakers described the importance of honest, direct communication by medical providers, and anxieties surrounding the expectation of the moment of death. Five English-speaking families returned to the hospital because of unsatisfactory symptom management and the need for additional supportive services. Alternatively, Spanish speakers commonly stressed the importance of being at home and did not focus on symptom management. Both groups invoked themes of caregiver appraisal, but English-speaking caregivers more commonly discussed themes of financial hardship and fear of insurance loss, while Spanish-speakers focused on difficulties of bedside caregiving and geographic separation from family. Conclusions: The intense grief associated with the loss of a child creates shared experiences, but Spanish- and English-speaking parents describe their hospice experiences in different ways. Additional studies in pediatric hospice care are warranted to improve the care we provide to children at the end of life. PMID:26618809

  3. The Stroop effect in English-Japanese bilinguals: the effect of phonological similarity.

    PubMed

    Sumiya, Hiromi; Healy, Alice F

    2008-01-01

    English-Japanese bilinguals performed a Stroop color-word interference task with both English and Japanese stimuli and responded in both English and Japanese. The Japanese stimuli were either the traditional color terms (TCTs) written in Hiragana or loanwords (LWs) from English written in Katakana. Both within-language and between-language interference were found for all combinations of stimuli and responses. The between-language interference was larger for Katakana LWs (phonologically similar to English) than for Hiragana TCTs, especially with Japanese responses. The magnitude of this phonological effect increased with self-rated reading fluency in Japanese. Overall responding was slower and the Stroop effect larger with English than with Japanese stimuli. These results suggest that unintentional lexical access elicits automatic phonological processing even with intermediate-level reading proficiency.

  4. Bilingual processing of ASL-English code-blends: The consequences of accessing two lexical representations simultaneously

    PubMed Central

    Emmorey, Karen; Petrich, Jennifer; Gollan, Tamar H.

    2012-01-01

    Bilinguals who are fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and English often produce code-blends - simultaneously articulating a sign and a word while conversing with other ASL-English bilinguals. To investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying code-blend processing, we compared picture-naming times (Experiment 1) and semantic categorization times (Experiment 2) for code-blends versus ASL signs and English words produced alone. In production, code-blending did not slow lexical retrieval for ASL and actually facilitated access to low-frequency signs. However, code-blending delayed speech production because bimodal bilinguals synchronized English and ASL lexical onsets. In comprehension, code-blending speeded access to both languages. Bimodal bilinguals’ ability to produce code-blends without any cost to ASL implies that the language system either has (or can develop) a mechanism for switching off competition to allow simultaneous production of close competitors. Code-blend facilitation effects during comprehension likely reflect cross-linguistic (and cross-modal) integration at the phonological and/or semantic levels. The absence of any consistent processing costs for code-blending illustrates a surprising limitation on dual-task costs and may explain why bimodal bilinguals code-blend more often than they code-switch. PMID:22773886

  5. Reliability and validity analysis of the open-source Chinese Foot and Ankle Outcome Score (FAOS).

    PubMed

    Ling, Samuel K K; Chan, Vincent; Ho, Karen; Ling, Fona; Lui, T H

    2017-12-21

    Develop the first reliable and validated open-source outcome scoring system in the Chinese language for foot and ankle problems. Translation of the English FAOS into Chinese following regular protocols. First, two forward-translations were created separately, these were then combined into a preliminary version by an expert committee, and was subsequently back-translated into English. The process was repeated until the original and back translations were congruent. This version was then field tested on actual patients who provided feedback for modification. The final Chinese FAOS version was then tested for reliability and validity. Reliability analysis was performed on 20 subjects while validity analysis was performed on 50 subjects. Tools used to validate the Chinese FAOS were the SF36 and Pain Numeric Rating Scale (NRS). Internal consistency between the FAOS subgroups was measured using Cronbach's alpha. Spearman's correlation was calculated between each subgroup in the FAOS, SF36 and NRS. The Chinese FAOS passed both reliability and validity testing; meaning it is reliable, internally consistent and correlates positively with the SF36 and the NRS. The Chinese FAOS is a free, open-source scoring system that can be used to provide a relatively standardised outcome measure for foot and ankle studies. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. Preparing teachers to create a mainstream science classroom conducive to the needs of English-language learners: A feminist action research project

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Buck, Gayle; Mast, Colette; Ehlers, Nancy; Franklin, Elizabeth

    2005-11-01

    A feminist action research team, which consisted of a science educator, an English-language learner (ELL) educator, a first-year science teacher, and a graduate assistant, set a goal to work together to explore the process a beginning teacher goes through to establish a classroom conducive to the needs of middle-level ELL learners. The guiding questions of the study were answered by gathering a wealth of data over the course of 5 months and taken from the classroom, planning sessions, and researchers and students. These data were collected by observations, semistructured interviews, and written document reviews. The progressive analysis ultimately revealed that: (a) successful strategies a beginning teacher must utilize for teaching middle-level ELL children in a mainstream classroom involve complex structural considerations that are not part of the teacher's preparation; (b) learning increases for all children, but there are differences in learning achievement between ELL and non-ELL children; and (c) student and peer feedback proved to be an effective means of enhancing the growth of a beginning teacher seeking to increase her skills in teaching ELL learners. The experiences and findings from this project have implications for teacher preparation programs committed to preparing educators to teach science to all children.

  7. Development of the Migrant Friendly Maternity Care Questionnaire (MFMCQ) for migrants to Western societies: an international Delphi consensus process.

    PubMed

    Gagnon, Anita J; DeBruyn, Rebecca; Essén, Birgitta; Gissler, Mika; Heaman, Maureen; Jeambey, Zeinab; Korfker, Dineke; McCourt, Christine; Roth, Carolyn; Zeitlin, Jennifer; Small, Rhonda

    2014-06-10

    Through the World Health Assembly Resolution, 'Health of Migrants', the international community has identified migrant health as a priority. Recommendations for general hospital care for international migrants in receiving-countries have been put forward by the Migrant Friendly Hospital Initiative; adaptations of these recommendations specific to maternity care have yet to be elucidated and validated. We aimed to develop a questionnaire measuring migrant-friendly maternity care (MFMC) which could be used in a range of maternity care settings and countries. This study was conducted in four stages. First, questions related to migrant friendly maternity care were identified from existing questionnaires including the Migrant Friendliness Quality Questionnaire, developed in Europe to capture recommended general hospital care for migrants, and the Mothers In a New Country (MINC) Questionnaire, developed in Australia and revised for use in Canada to capture the maternity care experiences of migrant women, and combined to create an initial MFMC questionnaire. Second, a Delphi consensus process in three rounds with a panel of 89 experts in perinatal health and migration from 17 countries was undertaken to identify priority themes and questions as well as to clarify wording and format. Third, the draft questionnaire was translated from English to French and Spanish and back-translated and subsequently culturally validated (assessed for cultural appropriateness) by migrant women. Fourth, the questionnaire was piloted with migrant women who had recently given birth in Montreal, Canada. A 112-item questionnaire on maternity care from pregnancy, through labour and birth, to postpartum care, and including items on maternal socio-demographic, migration and obstetrical characteristics, and perceptions of care, has been created--the Migrant Friendly Maternity Care Questionnaire (MFMCQ)--in three languages (English, French and Spanish). It is completed in 45 minutes via interview administration several months post-birth. A 4-stage process of questionnaire development with international experts in migrant reproductive health and research resulted in the MFMCQ, a questionnaire measuring key aspects of migrant-sensitive maternity care. The MFMCQ is available for further translation and use to examine and compare care and perceptions of care within and across countries, and by key socio-demographic, migration, and obstetrical characteristics of migrant women.

  8. Development of the Migrant Friendly Maternity Care Questionnaire (MFMCQ) for migrants to Western societies: an international Delphi consensus process

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Through the World Health Assembly Resolution, ‘Health of Migrants’, the international community has identified migrant health as a priority. Recommendations for general hospital care for international migrants in receiving-countries have been put forward by the Migrant Friendly Hospital Initiative; adaptations of these recommendations specific to maternity care have yet to be elucidated and validated. We aimed to develop a questionnaire measuring migrant-friendly maternity care (MFMC) which could be used in a range of maternity care settings and countries. Methods This study was conducted in four stages. First, questions related to migrant friendly maternity care were identified from existing questionnaires including the Migrant Friendliness Quality Questionnaire, developed in Europe to capture recommended general hospital care for migrants, and the Mothers In a New Country (MINC) Questionnaire, developed in Australia and revised for use in Canada to capture the maternity care experiences of migrant women, and combined to create an initial MFMC questionnaire. Second, a Delphi consensus process in three rounds with a panel of 89 experts in perinatal health and migration from 17 countries was undertaken to identify priority themes and questions as well as to clarify wording and format. Third, the draft questionnaire was translated from English to French and Spanish and back-translated and subsequently culturally validated (assessed for cultural appropriateness) by migrant women. Fourth, the questionnaire was piloted with migrant women who had recently given birth in Montreal, Canada. Results A 112-item questionnaire on maternity care from pregnancy, through labour and birth, to postpartum care, and including items on maternal socio-demographic, migration and obstetrical characteristics, and perceptions of care, has been created - the Migrant Friendly Maternity Care Questionnaire (MFMCQ) – in three languages (English, French and Spanish). It is completed in 45 minutes via interview administration several months post-birth. Conclusions A 4-stage process of questionnaire development with international experts in migrant reproductive health and research resulted in the MFMCQ, a questionnaire measuring key aspects of migrant-sensitive maternity care. The MFMCQ is available for further translation and use to examine and compare care and perceptions of care within and across countries, and by key socio-demographic, migration, and obstetrical characteristics of migrant women. PMID:24916892

  9. Native-language N400 and P600 predict dissociable language-learning abilities in adults.

    PubMed

    Qi, Zhenghan; Beach, Sara D; Finn, Amy S; Minas, Jennifer; Goetz, Calvin; Chan, Brian; Gabrieli, John D E

    2017-04-01

    Language learning aptitude during adulthood varies markedly across individuals. An individual's native-language ability has been associated with success in learning a new language as an adult. However, little is known about how native-language processing affects learning success and what neural markers of native-language processing, if any, are related to success in learning. We therefore related variation in electrophysiology during native-language processing to success in learning a novel artificial language. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while native English speakers judged the acceptability of English sentences prior to learning an artificial language. There was a trend towards a double dissociation between native-language ERPs and their relationships to novel syntax and vocabulary learning. Individuals who exhibited a greater N400 effect when processing English semantics showed better future learning of the artificial language overall. The N400 effect was related to syntax learning via its specific relationship to vocabulary learning. In contrast, the P600 effect size when processing English syntax predicted future syntax learning but not vocabulary learning. These findings show that distinct neural signatures of native-language processing relate to dissociable abilities for learning novel semantic and syntactic information. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Chinese Character and English Word processing in children's ventral occipitotemporal cortex: fMRI evidence for script invariance.

    PubMed

    Krafnick, Anthony J; Tan, Li-Hai; Flowers, D Lynn; Luetje, Megan M; Napoliello, Eileen M; Siok, Wai-Ting; Perfetti, Charles; Eden, Guinevere F

    2016-06-01

    Learning to read is thought to involve the recruitment of left hemisphere ventral occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) by a process of "neuronal recycling", whereby object processing mechanisms are co-opted for reading. Under the same theoretical framework, it has been proposed that the visual word form area (VWFA) within OTC processes orthographic stimuli independent of culture and writing systems, suggesting that it is universally involved in written language. However, this "script invariance" has yet to be demonstrated in monolingual readers of two different writing systems studied under the same experimental conditions. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined activity in response to English Words and Chinese Characters in 1st graders in the United States and China, respectively. We examined each group separately and found the readers of English as well as the readers of Chinese to activate the left ventral OTC for their respective native writing systems (using both a whole-brain and a bilateral OTC-restricted analysis). Critically, a conjunction analysis of the two groups revealed significant overlap between them for native writing system processing, located in the VWFA and therefore supporting the hypothesis of script invariance. In the second part of the study, we further examined the left OTC region responsive to each group's native writing system and found that it responded equally to Object stimuli (line drawings) in the Chinese-reading children. In English-reading children, the OTC responded much more to Objects than to English Words. Together, these results support the script invariant role of the VWFA and also support the idea that the areas recruited for character or word processing are rooted in object processing mechanisms of the left OTC. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. Chinese Character and English Word processing in children’s ventral occipitotemporal cortex: fMRI evidence for script invariance

    PubMed Central

    Krafnick, Anthony J.; Tan, Li-Hai; Flowers, D. Lynn; Luetje, Megan M.; Napoliello, Eileen M.; Siok, Wai-Ting; Perfetti, Charles; Eden, Guinevere F.

    2016-01-01

    Learning to read is thought to involve the recruitment of left hemisphere ventral occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) by a process of “neuronal recycling”, whereby object processing mechanisms are co-opted for reading. Under the same theoretical framework, it has been proposed that the visual word form area (VWFA) within the OTC processes orthographic stimuli independent of culture and writing systems, suggesting that it is universally involved in written language. However, this “script invariance” has yet to be demonstrated in monolingual readers of two different writing systems studied under the same experimental conditions. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined activity in response to English Words and Chinese Characters in 1st graders in the United States and China, respectively. We examined each group separately and found the readers of English as well as the readers of Chinese to activate the left ventral OTC for their respective native writing systems (using both a whole-brain and a bilateral OTC-restricted analysis). Critically, a conjunction analysis of the two groups revealed significant overlap between them for native writing system processing, located in the VWFA and therefore supporting the hypothesis of script invariance. In the second part of the study, we further examined the left OTC region responsive to each group’s native writing system and found it responded equally to Object stimuli (line drawings) in the Chinese-reading children. In English-reading children, the OTC responded much more to Objects than to English Words. Together, these results support the script invariant role of the VWFA and also support the idea that the areas recruited for character or word processing are rooted in object processing mechanisms of the left OTC. PMID:27012502

  12. The Integration of English Language Development and Science Instruction in Elementary Classrooms

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zwiep, Susan Gomez; Straits, William J.; Stone, Kristin R.; Beltran, Dolores D.; Furtado, Leena

    2011-12-01

    This paper explores one district's attempt to implement a blended science and English Language Development (ELD) elementary program, designed to provide English language learners opportunities to develop proficiency in English through participation in inquiry-based science. This process resulted in blended program that utilized a combined science/ELD lesson plan format to structure and guide teachers' efforts to use science as the context for language development. Data, collected throughout the first 2 years of the program, include teacher-generated lesson plans, observation notes, and interviews with teachers and principals. The process by which the blended program was developed, the initial implementation of the program, the resulting science/ELD lesson plan format, and teachers' perceptions about the program and its impact on their students are described.

  13. Exploring Construction of College English Writing Course from the Perspective of Output-Driven Hypothesis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ying, Zhang

    2018-01-01

    English writing is regarded as the most difficult task by Chinese EFL learners. Due to the existing problems in present college English writing instruction, teachers fail to provide effective guidance in students' writing process and students report a low level of motivation and confidence in writing tasks. Through purposeful reading discussions…

  14. Perception of Non-Native Consonant Length Contrast: The Role of Attention in Phonetic Processing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Porretta, Vincent J.; Tucker, Benjamin V.

    2015-01-01

    The present investigation examines English speakers' ability to identify and discriminate non-native consonant length contrast. Three groups (L1 English No-Instruction, L1 English Instruction, and L1 Finnish control) performed a speeded forced-choice identification task and a speeded AX discrimination task on Finnish non-words (e.g.…

  15. Assessing University Students: Searching for an English Language Exit Test

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Qian, David D.

    2007-01-01

    In order to motivate university students to improve their English proficiency, the Hong Kong government decided to adopt a common exit English language test for all graduating students. In the process of selecting a suitable measure for this purpose, an empirical study with a sample of over 240 students was conducted to compare two English…

  16. Brain Activity of Regular and Dyslexic Readers while Reading Hebrew as Compared to English Sentences

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Breznitz, Zvia; Oren, Revital; Shaul, Shelley

    2004-01-01

    The aim of the present study was to examine differences among "regular" and dyslexic adult bilingual readers when processing reading and reading related skills in their first (L1 Hebrew) and second (L2 English) languages. Brain activity during reading Hebrew and English unexpected sentence endings was also studied. Behavioral and…

  17. Processing English Compounds in the First and Second Language: The Influence of the Middle Morpheme

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Murphy, Victoria A.; Hayes, Jennifer

    2010-01-01

    Native English speakers tend to exclude regular plural inflection when producing English noun-noun compounds (e.g., "rat-eater" not "rats-eater") while allowing irregular plural inflection within compounds (e.g., "mice-eater") (Clahsen, 1995; Gordon, 1985; Hayes, Smith & Murphy, 2005; Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000). Exposure to the input alone has…

  18. The Acquisition of English Restrictive Relative Clauses by Arab Adult EFL Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Alroudhan, Hayat Eid

    2016-01-01

    This study investigates the challenges faced by Arab adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in acquiring English restrictive relative clauses (RRCs), as well as the factors that affect the process of acquisition. This issue has received considerable attention in second language (L2) research. The present study discusses the…

  19. Suppression and Working Memory in Auditory Comprehension of L2 Narratives: Evidence from Cross-Modal Priming

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wu, Shiyu; Ma, Zheng

    2016-01-01

    Using a cross-modal priming task, the present study explores whether Chinese-English bilinguals process goal related information during auditory comprehension of English narratives like native speakers. Results indicate that English native speakers adopted both mechanisms of suppression and enhancement to modulate the activation of goals and keep…

  20. The Construction of English: Culture, Consumerism and Promotion in the ELT Global Coursebook

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gray, John

    2010-01-01

    This book takes the view that ELT global coursebooks, in addition to being curriculum artefacts, are also highly wrought cultural artefacts which seek to make English mean in highly selective ways and it argues that the textual construction (and imaging) of English parallels the processes of commodity promotion more generally. This book contains…

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