Search results for: teaching English as a foreign language

Authors: Ozgul Kartal, Wade Tillett, Lyn D. English

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Despite its global significance in curricula, mathematical modeling encounters persistent disparities in recognition and emphasis within regular mathematics classrooms and teacher education across countries with diverse educational and cultural traditions, including variations in the perceived role of mathematical modeling. Over the past two decades, increased attention has been given to the integration of mathematical modeling into national curriculum standards in the U.S. and other countries. Therefore, the mathematics education research community has dedicated significant efforts to investigate various aspects associated with the teaching and learning of mathematical modeling, primarily focusing on exploring the applicability of modeling in schools and assessing students', teachers', and preservice teachers' (PTs) competencies and engagement in modeling cycles and processes. However, limited attention has been directed toward examining potential resistance hindering teachers and PTs from effectively implementing mathematical modeling. This study focuses on how PTs, without prior modeling experience, resist and/or embrace mathematical modeling and its pedagogy as they learn about models and modeling perspectives, navigate the modeling process, design and implement their modeling activities and lesson plans, and experience the pedagogy enabling modeling. Model eliciting activities (MEAs) were employed due to their high potential to support the development of mathematical modeling pedagogy. The mathematical modeling module was integrated into a mathematics methods course to explore how PTs embraced or resisted mathematical modeling and its pedagogy. The module design included reading, reflecting, engaging in modeling, assessing models, creating a modeling task (MEA), and designing a modeling lesson employing an MEA. Twelve senior undergraduate students participated, and data collection involved video recordings, written prompts, lesson plans, and reflections. An open coding analysis revealed acceptance and resistance toward teaching mathematical modeling. The study identified four overarching themes, including both acceptance and resistance: pedagogy, affordance of modeling (tasks), modeling actions, and adjusting modeling. In the category of pedagogy, PTs displayed acceptance based on potential pedagogical benefits and resistance due to various concerns. The affordance of modeling (tasks) category emerged from instances when PTs showed acceptance or resistance while discussing the nature and quality of modeling tasks, often debating whether modeling is considered mathematics. PTs demonstrated both acceptance and resistance in their modeling actions, engaging in modeling cycles as students and designing/implementing MEAs as teachers. The adjusting modeling category captured instances where PTs accepted or resisted maintaining the qualities and nature of the modeling experience or converted modeling into a typical structured mathematics experience for students. While PTs displayed a mix of acceptance and resistance in their modeling actions, limitations were observed in embracing complexity and adhering to model principles. The study provides valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities of integrating mathematical modeling into teacher education, emphasizing the importance of addressing pedagogical concerns and providing support for effective implementation. In conclusion, this research offers a comprehensive understanding of PTs' engagement with modeling, advocating for a more focused discussion on the distinct nature and significance of mathematical modeling in the broader curriculum to establish a foundation for effective teacher education programs.

Keywords: mathematical modeling, model eliciting activities, modeling pedagogy, secondary teacher education

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Authors: Sofia Sutera

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Despite the introduction of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda in 2000, thanks to the UNSCR 1325 and subsequent resolutions, and the clear stance of the UN towards the support of increased participation of women in peace and security processes, women’s leadership in this context remains very low. Considering specifically the framework of peacekeeping operations, the aim of this paper is to analyze the way women’s leadership is constructed in the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF). In the context of the WPS Agenda, Sweden has been chosen as a case study because of the relevance of its singular feminist policies (the statement in 2014 from Wallström, previous and current Minister for Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister, that Sweden is pursuing a feminist foreign policy is a clear example). Moreover, the SAF adopted in 2016 the Handbok Gender. This policy addresses explicitly the gender perspective embraced by the Swedish military institution, a sui-generis organization even in the Scandinavian reality. Indeed, the SAF has assumed a clear commitment to represent its institution as gender aware and gender equal. The theoretical perspective utilized in this research, which focuses specifically on women, is feminism and particularly a feminist constructivist approach, with an institutional focus on the military institution, has been chosen. Taking into account the specificity of the feminist research, the above-mentioned gender policy has been examined by means of a critical discourse analysis (CDA) whose main aim is to investigate the social structures of discourse and the power relationships inherent to it. Thus, CDA appears to be quite relevant in order to understand the construction of women’s leadership in the Handbok Gender. Nevertheless, even in a country which officially identifies as feminist and which is characterized by a peculiar military institution, the conclusions of this analysis revealed that women’s leadership in peacekeeping operations remains very low.

Keywords: feminism, peacekeeping operations, swedish armed forces, UNSCR 1325, women's leadership, WPS agenda

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Authors: Adi Gielgun-Katz, Alina S. Rusu

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In the last two decades, education systems worldwide have integrated new pedagogical methods and strategies in lesson plans, such as innovative technologies, social-emotional learning (SEL), gamification, mixed learning, multiple literacies, and many others. Visual language, such as photographs, is known to transcend cultures and languages, and it is commonly used by youth to express positions and affective states in social networks. Therefore, visual language needs more educational attention as a linguistic and communicative component that can create connectedness among the students and their teachers. Nowadays, when SEL is gaining more and more space and meaning in the area of academic improvement in relation to social well-being, and taking and sharing pictures is part of the everyday life of the majority of people, it becomes natural to add the visual language to SEL approach as a reinforcement strategy for connecting education to the contemporary culture and language of the youth. This article presents a program conducted in a high school class in Israel, which combines the five SEL with photography techniques, i.e., Social-Emotional Learning Visual Empowerments (SELVEs) program (experimental group). Another class of students from the same institution represents the control group, which is participating in the SEL program without the photography component. The SEL component of the programs addresses skills such as: troubleshooting, uncertainty, personal strengths and collaboration, accepting others, control of impulses, communication, self-perception, and conflict resolution. The aim of the study is to examine the effects of programs on the level of the five SEL aspects in the two groups of high school students: Self-Awareness, Social Awareness, Self-Management, Responsible Decision Making, and Relationship Skills. The study presents a quantitative assessment of the SEL programs’ impact on the students. The main hypothesis is that the students’ questionnaires' analysis will reveal a better understanding and improvement of the five aspects of the SEL in the group of students involved in the photography-enhanced SEL program.

Keywords: social-emotional learning, photography, education program, adolescents

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Authors: Indira Sinha

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According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's English Dictionary of Current English, environment is the complex of physical, chemical and biotic factors that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determines its form and survival. It is defined as conditions and circumstances which are affecting people's lives. The meaning of environmental degradation is the degradation of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil and the destruction of ecosystems and extinction of wildlife. Globalization is a significant feature of recent world history. The aim of this phenomenon is to integrate societies, economies and cultures through a common link of trading policies, technology and communication. Undoubtedly it has opened up the world economy at a very high speed but at the same time it has an adverse impact on the environment. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the impact of globalization on the environmental conditions. An overview of what the forces of globalization have in store for the environment with constructing large number of industries and destroying large forests lands will be given in this paper. The forces of globalization have created many serious environmental problems like high temperature, extinction of many species of plant and animal and outlet of poisonous chemicals from industries. The revelation of this study is that in case of developing economics these problems are more critical. In developing countries like India many factories are built with less environmental regulations, while developed economies maintain positive environmental practices. The present study is a micro level study which aims to employ a combination of theoretical, descriptive, empirical and analytical approach in addition to the time tested case method.

Keywords: globalization, trade policies, environmental degradation, developing economies, large industries

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Authors: Ahmed Hariri

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E-Learning has become a necessity in the advanced education. It is easier for the student and teacher communication also it speed up the process with less time and less effort. With the progress and the enormous development of distance education must keep up with this age of making a website that allows students and teachers to take all the advantages of advanced education. In this regards, we developed University Short courses web application which is specially designed for Faculty of computing and information technology, Rabigh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. After an elaborate review of the current state-of-the-art methods of teaching and learning, we found that instructors deliver extra short courses and workshop to students to enhance the knowledge of students. Moreover, this process is completely manual. The prevailing methods of teaching and learning consume a lot of time; therefore in this context, University Short courses web application will help to make process easy and user friendly. The site allows for students can view and register short courses online conducted by instructor also they can see courses starting dates, finishing date and locations. It also allows the instructor to put things on his courses on the site and see the students enrolled in the study material. Finally, student can print the certificate after finished the course online. ASP.NET, SQLSERVER, JavaScript SQL SERVER Database will use to develop the University Short Courses web application.

Keywords: e-learning, short courses, ASP.NET, SQL SERVER

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Authors: Lani Fraizer

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Increasingly, individuals from diverse professional and academic backgrounds are making a conscious choice to pursue careers related to social change; a sophisticated understanding of social entrepreneur education is becoming ever more important. Social entrepreneurs are impassioned change makers who characteristically combine leadership and entrepreneurial spirits to problem solve social ills affecting our planet. Generating partnership opportunities and nurturing them is an important part of their change-making work. Faced with the complexities of these partnerships, social entrepreneurs and people who work with them need to be well prepared to tackle new and unforeseen challenges faced. As partnerships become even more critical to advance initiatives at scale, for example, understanding the partnership brokering role is even more important for educators who prepare these leaders to establish and sustain multi-stakeholder partnerships. This paper aims to provide practitioners in social entrepreneurship with enhanced knowledge of partnership brokering and identify directions for future research. A literature review search from January 1977 to May 2015 was conducted using the combined keywords ‘partnership brokering’ and ‘social entrepreneurship’ via WorldCat, one of the largest database catalogs in the world with collections of more than 10,000 worldwide. This query focused on literature written in the English language and analyzed solely the role of partnership brokering in social entrepreneurship. The synthesis of the literature review found three main themes emerging: the need for more professional awareness of partnership brokering and its value add in systems change-making work, the need for more knowledge on developing partnership brokering competencies, and the need for more applied research in the area of partnership brokering and how it is practiced by practitioners in social entrepreneurship. The results of the review serve to emphasize and reiterate the importance of partnership brokers in social entrepreneurship work, and act as a reminder of the need for further scholarly research in this area to bridge the gap between practice and research.

Keywords: partnership brokering, leadership, social entrepreneurship, systems changemaking

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Authors: Marie Alexandre, Jean Bernatchez

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This paper focuses on the complexity of the face-to-face-to-distance learning transition process. Our research action aims to support the process of transition from classroom to distance learning for teachers in higher education with regard to pedagogical practices that can meet the various needs of students using digital learning environments. In Quebec and elsewhere in the world, the advent of digital education is helping to transform teaching, which is significantly changing the role of teachers. While distance education implies a dissociation of teaching and learning to a variable degree in space and time, distance education (DE) is becoming more and increasingly becoming a preferred option for maintaining the delivery of certain programs and providing access to programs and to provide access to quality activities throughout Quebec. Given the impact of teaching practices on educational success, this paper reports on the results of three research objectives: 1) To document teachers' knowledge of teaching in distance education through the design, experimentation and production of a repertoire of the determinants of pedagogical practices in response to students' needs. 2) Explain, according to a gendered logic, the adequacy between the pedagogical practices implemented in distance learning and the response to the profiles and needs expressed by students using digital learning environments; 3) Produce a model of a support approach during the process of transition from classroom to distance learning at the college level. A mixed methodology, i.e., a quantitative component (questionnaire survey) and a qualitative component (explanatory interviews and living lab) was used in cycles that were part of an ongoing validation process. The intervention includes the establishment of a professional collaboration group, webinars training webinars for the participating teachers on the didactic issue of knowledge-teaching in FAD, the didactic use of technologies, and the differentiated socialization models of educational success in college education. All of the tools developed will be used by partners in the target environment as well as by all teacher educators, students in initial teacher training, practicing teachers, and the general public. The results show that access to training leading to qualifications and commitment to educational success reflects the existing links between the people in the educational community. The relational stakes of being present in distance education take on multiple configurations and different dimensions of learning testify to needs and realities that are sometimes distinct depending on the life cycle. This project will be of interest to partners in the targeted field as well as to all teacher trainers, students in initial teacher training, practicing college teachers, and to university professors. The entire educational community will benefit from digital resources in education. The scientific knowledge resulting from this action research will benefit researchers in the fields of pedagogy, didactics, teacher training and pedagogy in higher education in a digital context.

Keywords: action research, didactics, digital learning environment, distance learning, higher education, pedagogy technological, pedagogical content knowledge

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Authors: Amy Atkinson

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Teacher burnout and dissatisfaction is a concerning challenge for visual art (VA) programs within the western (Canadian) educational context, however VA programs who offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum within international schools are thriving. The purpose of this research was to investigate the experiences of Canadian-educated seasoned VA teachers within a range of curriculums, administrative systems and locations focusing on issues related to the VA teaching experience such as viability of the artist-teacher relationship, teaching satisfaction and teacher burnout. Research was conducted using an auto-ethnography approach coupled with a comparative case study method using in-depth interviews. Insights were uncovered into VA teacher’s lived experience, values and decisions, occupational ideology, cultural knowledge, and perspectives. Research for creation methods were explored to develop a creative narrative to amplify teacher voice; endeavouring to make the obscure vivid, empathy possible, direct attention to individuality and locate the universal. Case study results sustain ethnographic observations revealing that VA teachers are experiencing more efficacy, satisfaction and success, with less burn out within the international school/IB context.

Keywords: international baccalaureate, autoethnography, teacher voice, visual arts

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Authors: Eyibo Ebengeobong Eddie, Halil Zafer Alibaba

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The neglect of classroom acoustics is dominant in most educational facilities, meanwhile, hearing and listening is the learning process in this kind of facilities. A classroom should therefore be an environment that encourages listening, without an obstacles to understanding what is being taught. Although different studies have shown teachers to complain that noise is the everyday factor that causes stress in classroom, the capacity of individuals to understand speech is further affected by Echoes, Reverberation, and room modes. It is therefore necessary for classrooms to have an ideal acoustics to aid the intelligibility of students in the learning process. The influence of these acoustical parameters on learning and teaching in schools needs to be further researched upon to enhance the teaching and learning capacity of both teacher and student. For this reason, there is a strong need to provide and collect data to analyse and define the suitable quality of classrooms needed for a learning environment. Research has shown that acoustical problems are still experienced in both newer and older schools. However, recently, principle of acoustics has been analysed and room acoustics can now be measured with various technologies and sound systems to improve and solve the problem of acoustics in classrooms. These acoustic solutions, materials, construction methods and integration processes would be discussed in this paper.

Keywords: classroom, acoustics, materials, integration, speech intelligibility

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Authors: Roseline Unoma Chidobi

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The purpose of this study is to identify the extent of Information Communication Technology (ICT) application in record management and some factors militating against the utilization of e-learning in the universities in Enugu state. The study was a survey research the quantitative data were collected through a 30 – item questionnaire title extent of ICT Application in Record management and militating Factors in the utilization of e-learning (EIARMMFUE). This was administered on a population of 603 respondents made up of university academic staff and senior administrative staff. The data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test statistics on a modified 4 point rating scale. Findings of the study revealed among others that ICT are not adequately applied in the management of records in the Universities in Nigeria. Factors like wrong notion or superstitious believe hinder the effective utilization of e – learning approach. The study recommended that the use of ICT in record management should be enhanced in order to achieve effective school management. All the factors militating against the effective utilization of e-learning approach should be addressed for the maximum realization of teaching and learning.

Keywords: e-learning, information communication, teaching, technology, tertiary institution

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Authors: Siew Ming Thang, Wong Hoo Keat, Chee Hao Sue, Fung Lan Loo, Ahju Rosalind

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There are numerous studies that explored young learners’ literacy skills in Malaysia but none that uses the eye-tracking device to track their cognitive processes when reading picture storybooks. This study used this method to investigate two groups of prereaders’ cognitive processes in four conditions. (1) A congruent picture was presented, and a matching narration was read aloud by a recorder; (2) Children heard a narration telling about the same characters in the picture but involves a different scene; (3) Only a picture with matching text was present; (4) Students only heard the reading aloud of the text on the screen. The two main objectives of this project are to test which content of pictures helps the prereaders (i.e., young children who have not received any formal reading instruction) understand the narration and whether children try to create a coherent mental representation from the oral narration and the pictures. The study compares two groups of children from two different kindergartens. Group1: 15 Chinese children; Group2: 17 Malay children. The medium of instruction was English. An eye-tracker were used to identify Areas of Interest (AOI) of each picture and the five target elements and calculate number of fixations and total time spent on fixation of pictures and written texts. Two mixed factorial ANOVAs with the storytelling performance (good, average, or weak) and vocabulary level (low, medium, high) as between-subject variables, and the Areas of Interests (AOIs) and display conditions as the within-subject variables were performedon the variables.

Keywords: eye-tracking, cognitive processes, literacy skills, prereaders, visual attention

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Authors: Farouk A. N. Bouhadiba

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This work addresses the issue of the LMD(Licence, Master, Doctorat) in Algeria and the impact it has had on education quality in terms of educational affect and effect. It starts with a brief introduction to the financial means, the educational settings, and the social environment in place when the LMD was institutionalized in Algeria (2003-2004). Some factors for the success or failure of this top-down institutional endeavor are examined and analyzed. These include – among other factors - the teacher/student attitudes, apprehensions, and motivations on the one hand and the institutional euphoria for the LMD in Algeria on the other hand. Some issues at stake are discussed. More specifically, the professional versus the student affect on today’s attitudes, interests, and values is examined as a result of nearly two decades of LMD teaching and learning in Algerian universities. We shall then present some official curricula that, in terms of content, reflect the spirit, principles, and architectures of the LMD but which, in reality, are partially, if not fully, set aside when it comes to teaching practices, learning behaviors, motivation, and evaluation. The discussion on effect highlights attitudinal, developmental, and social markers that are indicative of the extent to which Education Quality in Algeria has been positively or negatively affected by the implementation of the LMD.

Keywords: LMD bachelor's masters doctorat, affects and effects, education quality, Algeria

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Authors: A. Shoiynbek, K. Kozhakhmet, P. Menezes, D. Kuanyshbay, D. Bayazitov

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Speech emotion recognition has received increasing research interest all through current years. There was used emotional speech that was collected under controlled conditions in most research work. Actors imitating and artificially producing emotions in front of a microphone noted those records. There are four issues related to that approach, namely, (1) emotions are not natural, and it means that machines are learning to recognize fake emotions. (2) Emotions are very limited by quantity and poor in their variety of speaking. (3) There is language dependency on SER. (4) Consequently, each time when researchers want to start work with SER, they need to find a good emotional database on their language. In this paper, we propose the approach to create an automatic tool for speech emotion extraction based on facial emotion recognition and describe the sequence of actions of the proposed approach. One of the first objectives of the sequence of actions is a speech detection issue. The paper gives a detailed description of the speech detection model based on a fully connected deep neural network for Kazakh and Russian languages. Despite the high results in speech detection for Kazakh and Russian, the described process is suitable for any language. To illustrate the working capacity of the developed model, we have performed an analysis of speech detection and extraction from real tasks.

Keywords: deep neural networks, speech detection, speech emotion recognition, Mel-frequency cepstrum coefficients, collecting speech emotion corpus, collecting speech emotion dataset, Kazakh speech dataset

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Authors: Saleem Abuleil, Khalid S. Alsamara

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Events represent a significant source of information on the web; they deliver information about events that occurred around the world in all kind of subjects and areas. These events can be collected and organized to provide valuable and useful information for decision makers, researchers, as well as any person seeking knowledge. In this paper, we discuss an ongoing research to target stock markets domain to observe and record changes (events) when they happen, collect them, understand the meaning of each one of them, and organize the information along with meaning in a well-structured format. By using Semantic Role Labeling (SRL) technique, we identified four factors for each event in this paper: verb of action and three roles associated with it, entity name, attribute, and attribute value. We have generated a set of rules and techniques to support our approach to analyze and understand the meaning of the events taking place in stock markets.

Keywords: natuaral language processing, Arabic language, event extraction and understanding, sematic role labeling, stock market

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Authors: Priyadarshini Kiran, Gulshan Kumar

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: Social media are becoming the most important tools for interaction among learners, pedagogues and parents where everybody can share, exchange, comment, discuss and create information and knowledge in a collaborative way. The present case study attempts to highlight the role of social media (WhatsApp) in nurturing learning habits in toddlers with the help of parents in primary education. The Case study is based on primary data collected from a primary school situated in a small town in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India. In research methodology, survey and structured interviews have been used as a tool collected from parents and pedagogues. The findings Suggest: - To nurture learning habits in toddlers, parents and pedagogues use social media site (WhatsApp) in real-time and that too is convenient and handy; - Skill enhancement on the part of Pedagogues as a result of employing innovative teaching-learning techniques; - Social media sites serve as a social connectivity tool to ward off negativity and monotony on the part of parents and pedagogues in the wake of COVID- 19

Keywords: innovative teaching-learning techniques, pedagogues, social media, nurture, toddlers

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Authors: Maryvone Cunha de Morais, Lilian Cristine Hübner

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Based on a translanguaging theoretical approach, which considers language not as separate entities but as an entire repertoire available to bilingual individuals, this systematic review aimed at analyzing the methods (aims, samples investigated, type of stimuli, and analyses) adopted by studies on translanguaging practices associated with written and oral tasks (separately or integrated) in bilingual education. The PRISMA criteria for systematic reviews were adopted, with the descriptors "translanguaging", "bilingual education" and/or “written and oral tasks" to search in Pubmed/Medline, Lilacs, Eric, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases for articles published between 2017 and 2021. 280 registers were found, and after following the inclusion/exclusion criteria, 24 articles were considered for this analysis. The results showed that translanguaging practices were investigated on four studies focused on written production analyses, ten focused on oral production analysis, whereas ten studies focused on both written and oral production analyses. The majority of the studies followed a qualitative approach, while five studies have attempted to study translanguaging with quantitative statistical measures. Several types of methods were used to investigate translanguaging practices in written and oral production, with different approaches and tools indicating that the methods are still in development. Moreover, the findings showed that students’ interactions have received significant attention, and studies have been developed not just in language classes in bilingual education, but also including diverse educational and theoretical contexts such as Content and Language Integrated Learning, task repetition, Science classes, collaborative writing, storytelling, peer feedback, Speech Act theory and collective thinking, language ideologies, conversational analysis, and discourse analyses. The studies, whether focused either on writing or oral tasks or in both, have portrayed significant research and pedagogical implications, grounded on the view of integrated languages in bi-and multilinguals.

Keywords: bilingual education, oral production, translanguaging, written production

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Authors: Rufus Olufemi Adebayo, Sylvia Phiwani Zulu

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Interpreting in the setting of diverse language and multicultural congregants, is often understood as integrating the content of the message. Preaching, similar to any communication, takes seriously people’s multiple contexts. The one who provides the best insight into understanding “the other”, traditionally speaking could be an interpreter in a multilingual context. Nonetheless, there are reflections in the loss of spiritual communication, translation and interpretive dialogue. No matter how eloquent the preacher is, an interpreter can make or mere the sermon (speech). The sermon that the preacher preaches is not always the one the congregation hears from the interpreter. In other occurrences, however, interpreting can lead not only to distort messages but also to dissatisfied audiences and preacher being overshadowed by the pranks of the interpreter. Using qualitative methodology, this paper explores the challenges and the conventional assumptions about preachers’ interpreter as influenced by spirituality, culture, and language in empirical and theoretical perspectives. An emphasis on the bias translation and the basis of reality that suppresses or devalues the spiritual communication is examined. The result indicates that interpretation of the declaration of guilt, history of congregation, spirituality, attitudes, morals, customs, specific practices of a preacher, education, and the environment form an entangled and misinterpretation. The article concludes by re-examining these qualities and rearticulating them into a preliminary theory for practice, as distinguished from theory, which could possibly enhance the development of more sustainable multilingual interpretation in the South African Pentecostal churches.

Keywords: congregants, divergences, interpreting/translation, language & communication, sermon/preaching

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Authors: John Lorenzo Bautista, Yoon-Joong Kim

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This paper presents the development of a Filipino speech recognition tool using the HTK System. The system was trained from a subset of the Filipino Speech Corpus developed by the DSP Laboratory of the University of the Philippines-Diliman. The speech corpus was both used in training and testing the system by estimating the parameters for phonetic HMM-based (Hidden-Markov Model) acoustic models. Experiments on different mixture-weights were incorporated in the study. The phoneme-level word-based recognition of a 5-state HMM resulted in an average accuracy rate of 80.13 for a single-Gaussian mixture model, 81.13 after implementing a phoneme-alignment, and 87.19 for the increased Gaussian-mixture weight model. The highest accuracy rate of 88.70% was obtained from a 5-state model with 6 Gaussian mixtures.

Keywords: Filipino language, Hidden Markov Model, HTK system, speech recognition

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Authors: Chuyu Huang, Itsuki Minemi, Kuanlin Chen, Yuki Hirose

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It remains unclear how language speakers are able to perceive phonological contrasts that do not exist on their own. This experiment uses the vowel-length distinction in Japanese, which is phonologically contrastive and co-occurs with tonal change in some cases. For speakers whose first language does not distinguish vowel length, contrastive duration is usually misperceived, e.g., Mandarin speakers. Two alternative hypotheses for how Mandarin speakers would perceive a phonological contrast that does not exist in their language make different predictions. The stress parameter model does not have a clear prediction about the impact of tonal type. Mandarin speakers will likely be not able to perceive vowel length as well as Japanese native speakers do, but the performance might not correlate to tonal type because the prosody of their language is distinctive, which requires users to encode lexical prosody and notice subtle differences in word prosody. By contrast, cue-based phonetic models predict that Mandarin speakers may rely on pitch differences, a secondary cue, to perceive vowel length. Two groups of Mandarin speakers, including naive non-Japanese speakers and beginner learners, were recruited to participate in an AX discrimination task involving two Japanese sound stimuli that contain a phonologically contrastive environment. Participants were asked to indicate whether the two stimuli containing a vowel-length contrast (e.g., maapero vs. mapero) sound the same. The experiment was bifactorial. The first factor contrasted three syllabic positions (syllable position; initial/medial/final), as it would be likely to affect the perceptual difficulty, as seen in previous studies, and the second factor contrasted two pitch types (accent type): one with accentual change that could be distinguished with the lexical tones in Mandarin (the different condition), with the other group having no tonal distinction but only differing in vowel length (the same condition). The overall results showed that a significant main effect of accent type by applying a linear mixed-effects model (β = 1.48, SE = 0.35, p < 0.05), which implies that Mandarin speakers tend to more successfully recognize vowel-length differences when the long vowel counterpart takes on a tone that exists in Mandarin. The interaction between the accent type and the syllabic position is also significant (β = 2.30, SE = 0.91, p < 0.05), showing that vowel lengths in the different conditions are more difficult to recognize in the word-final case relative to the initial condition. The second statistical model, which compares naive speakers to beginners, was conducted with logistic regression to test the effects of the participant group. A significant difference was found between the two groups (β = 1.06, 95% CI = [0.36, 2.03], p < 0.05). This study shows that: (1) Mandarin speakers are likely to use pitch cues to perceive vowel length in a non-native language, which is consistent with the cue-based approaches; (2) an exposure effect was observed: the beginner group achieved a higher accuracy for long vowel perception, which implied the exposure effect despite the short period of language learning experience.

Keywords: cue-based perception, exposure effect, prosodic perception, vowel duration

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Authors: Viet-Hung Truong, Seung-Eock Kim

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This paper presents a robust software package for practical advanced analysis of space steel framed structures. The pre- and post-processors of the presented software package are coded in the C++ programming language while the solver is written by using the FORTRAN programming language. A user-friendly graphical interface of the presented software is developed to facilitate the modeling process and result interpretation of the problem. The solver employs the stability functions for capturing the second-order effects to minimize modeling and computational time. Both the plastic-hinge and fiber-hinge beam-column elements are available in the presented software. The generalized displacement control method is adopted to solve the nonlinear equilibrium equations.

Keywords: advanced analysis, beam-column, fiber-hinge, plastic hinge, steel frame

Procedia PDF Downloads 307

Authors: Abdessamad Dali-Ali, Houaria Beldjillali, Fouzia Agag, Asmaa Oukebdane, Ramzi Tidjani, Arslane Bettayeb, Khadidja Meddeber, Radia Dali-Yahia, Nori Midoun

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Healthcare-associated infections are a real public health problem, especially in intensive care units. The aim of our study was to describe the epidemiological profile and to estimate the incidence of these infections at the intensive care unit of our teaching hospital. A prospective study was conducted, from June 2012 to December 2013. During this period, 305 patients having a duration of hospitalization equal or more than 48 hours were included in the study. In terms of the incidence of healthcare associated infections, nosocomial pneumonia occupied the first position with a cumulative incidence rate of 20.0%, followed by bacteremia (5.6%), central venous catheter infections (4%), and urinary tract infections (3%). In the case of isolated microorganisms, Gram-negative bacilli not enterobacteriaceae occupied the first place with 48.5%, followed by enterobacteria (32.1%). Acinetobacter baumannii was the most common germ (27.6%). Our study showed that the rate of health-care-associated infections was relatively high in the intensive care unit. A control program to reduce all infections is a priority for the Infection Control Associated Committee.

Keywords: epidemiological profile, healthcare associated infections, intensive care units, teaching hospital of Oran, Algeria

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Authors: Nawel Mansouri

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Weblog as a form of internet-based resources has become popular as an authentic and constructive learning tool, especially in the language classroom. This research explores the use of weblog storytelling as a pedagogical tool to develop Algerian EFL students’ creative writing. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of weblog- writing and the attitudes of both Algerian EFL students and teachers towards weblog storytelling. It also seeks to explore the potential benefits and problems that may affect the use of weblog and investigate the possible solutions to overcome the problems encountered. The research work relies on a mixed-method approach which combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. A questionnaire will be applied to both EFL teachers and students as a means to obtain preliminary data. Interviews will be integrated in accordance with the primary data that will be gathered from the questionnaire with the aim of validating its accuracy or as a strategy to follow up any unexpected results. An intervention will take place on the integration of weblog- writing among 15 Algerian EFL students for a period of two months where students are required to write five narrative essays about their personal experiences, give feedback through the use of a rubric to two or three of their peers, and edit their work based on the feedback. After completion, questionnaires and interviews will also take place as a medium to obtain both the students’ perspectives towards the use of weblog as an innovative teaching approach. This study is interesting because weblog storytelling has recently been emerged as a new form of digital communication and it is a new concept within Algerian context. Furthermore, the students will not just develop their writing skill through weblog storytelling but it can also serve as a tool to develop students’ critical thinking, creativity, and autonomy.

Keywords: Weblog writing, EFL writing, EFL learners' attitudes, EFL teachers' views

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Authors: Seyedali Seyedkavoosi, Mohammad Obadat, Seantorrion Boyle

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The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a nontraditional experiential learning strategy in improving the success and interest of mechanical engineering students, using the Kinematics/Dynamics of Machine course as a case study. This upper-division technical course covers a wide range of topics, including mechanism and machine system analysis and synthesis, yet the complexities of ideas like acceleration, motion, and machine component relationships are hard to explain using standard teaching techniques. To solve this problem, a thorough design project was created that gave students hands-on experience developing, manufacturing, and testing their inventions. The main goals of the project were to improve students' grasp of machine design and kinematics, to develop problem-solving and presenting abilities, and to familiarize them with professional software. A questionnaire survey was done to evaluate the effect of this technique on students' performance and interest in mechanical engineering. The outcomes of the study shed light on the usefulness of nontraditional experiential learning approaches in engineering education.

Keywords: experiential learning, nontraditional teaching, hands-on design project, engineering education

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Authors: Mohammad Hadi Mahmoodi, Soroor Zekrati

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The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between hemispheric dominance and intonation learning of Iranian EFL students. In order to gain this goal, 52 female students from three levels of beginner, elementary and intermediate in Paradise Institute, and 18 male university students at Bu-Ali Sina University constituted the sample. In order to assist students learn the correct way of applying intonation to their everyday speech, the study proposed an interactive approach and provided students with visual aid through which they were able to see the intonation pattern on computer screen using 'Speech Analyzer' software. This software was also used to record subjects’ voice and compare them with the original intonation pattern. Edinburg Handedness Questionnaire (EHD), which ranges from –100 for strong left-handedness to +100 for strong right-handedness was used to indicate the hemispheric dominance of each student. The result of an independent sample t-test indicated that girls learned intonation pattern better than boys, and that right brained students significantly outperformed the left brained ones. Using one-way ANOVA, a significant difference between three proficiency levels was also found. The posthoc Scheffer test showed that the exact difference was between intermediate and elementary, and intermediate and beginner levels, but no significant difference was observed between elementary and beginner levels. The findings of the study might provide researchers with some helpful implications and useful directions for future investigation into the domain of the relationship between mind and second language learning.

Keywords: intonation, hemispheric dominance, visual aid, language learning, second language learning

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Authors: Kavitha Thamadharan, Nurazean Maarop

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The implementation of e-assessment as tool to support the process of teaching and learning in university has become a popular technological means in universities. E-Assessment provides many advantages to the users especially the flexibility in teaching and learning. The e-assessment system has the capability to improve its quality of delivering education. However, there still exists a drawback in terms of security which limits the user acceptance of the online learning system. Even though there are studies providing solutions for identified security threats in e-learning usage, there is no particular model which addresses the factors that influences the acceptance of e-assessment system by lecturers from security perspective. The aim of this study is to explore security aspects of e-assessment in regard to the acceptance of the technology. As a result a conceptual model of secure acceptance of e-assessment is proposed. Both human and security factors are considered in formulation of this conceptual model. In order to increase understanding of critical issues related to the subject of this study, interpretive approach involving convergent mixed method research method is proposed to be used to execute the research. This study will be useful in providing more insightful understanding regarding the factors that influence the user acceptance of e-assessment system from security perspective.

Keywords: secure technology acceptance, e-assessment security, e-assessment, education technology

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Authors: Samhani Ismail, Tahamina Begum, Faruque Reza, Zamzuri Idris, Hafizan Juahir, Jafri Malin Abdullah

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Holy Quran, a rhymed prosed scripture has a complete literary structure that exemplifies the peak of literary beauty. Memorizing of its verses could enhance one’s memory capacity and cognition while those who are listening to its recitation it is also believed that the Holy Quran alter brainwave producing neuronal excitation engaging with cognitive processes. 28 normal healthy subjects (male =14 & female = 14) were recruited and EEG recording was done using 128-electrode sensor net (Electrical Geosics, Inc.) with the impedance of ≤ 50kΩ. They listened to Sura Fatiha recited by Sheikh Qari Abdul Basit bin Abdus Samad. Arabic news and no sound were chosen as positive and negative control, respectively. The waveform was analysed by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to get the power in frequency bands. Bilateral frontal (F7, F8) and temporal region (T7, T8) showed decreased power significantly in alpha wave band in respondent stimulated by Sura Fatihah recitation reflects acoustic attention processing. However, decreased in alpha power in selective attention to memorized, and in familial but not memorized language, reveals the memorial processing in long-term memory. As a conclusion, Quranic recitation relates both cognitive element of memory and language in its listeners and memorizers.

Keywords: auditory stimulation, cognition, EEG, linguistic, memory, Quranic recitation

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Authors: Gianpaolo Ghiani, Emanuela Guerriero, Emanuele Manni, Alessandro Romano

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In this article, we deal with a variant of the classical course timetabling problem that has a practical application in many areas of education. In particular, in this paper we are interested in high schools remedial courses. The purpose of such courses is to provide under-prepared students with the skills necessary to succeed in their studies. In particular, a student might be under prepared in an entire course, or only in a part of it. The limited availability of funds, as well as the limited amount of time and teachers at disposal, often requires schools to choose which courses and/or which teaching units to activate. Thus, schools need to model the training offer and the related timetabling, with the goal of ensuring the highest possible teaching quality, by meeting the above-mentioned financial, time and resources constraints. Moreover, there are some prerequisites between the teaching units that must be satisfied. We first present a Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) model to solve this problem to optimality. However, the presence of many peculiar constraints contributes inevitably in increasing the complexity of the mathematical model. Thus, solving it through a general purpose solver may be performed for small instances only, while solving real-life-sized instances of such model requires specific techniques or heuristic approaches. For this purpose, we also propose a heuristic approach, in which we make use of a fast constructive procedure to obtain a feasible solution. To assess our exact and heuristic approaches we perform extensive computational results on both real-life instances (obtained from a high school in Lecce, Italy) and randomly generated instances. Our tests show that the MIP model is never solved to optimality, with an average optimality gap of 57%. On the other hand, the heuristic algorithm is much faster (in about the 50% of the considered instances it converges in approximately half of the time limit) and in many cases allows achieving an improvement on the objective function value obtained by the MIP model. Such an improvement ranges between 18% and 66%.

Keywords: heuristic, MIP model, remedial course, school, timetabling

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Authors: Samson Olasunkanmi Oluga, Teh Chee Send, Gerard Sagaya Raj Rajo

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It is ironical that the national anthems of many nations that are in the forefront of the global condemnation of violence of all forms have portions or expressions that propagate various forms of linguistic violence which advocate attacking opponents, going to war, shedding blood and sacrificing lives. These diametrically contradict contemporary yearnings for global tranquility and the ideals of the United Nations established for the maintenance of international peace and harmony aimed at making the world a safe haven for all and sundry. The linguistic violence of many national anthems is manipulatively constructed /presented via the instrumentality of the figurative or rhetorical language. This helps to linguistically embellish the violent ideas communicated and makes them sound somehow better or logical to the target audience with the intention of cognitively manipulating them to accept or rationalize such violent ideas. This paper, therefore, presents the outcome of a linguistic exploration/examination of national anthems which reveals elements or cases manipulative figurative linguistic violence in the anthems of twenty-one (21) nations. The paper details a Socio-Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis of the manipulative figures of comparison, contrast, indirectness, association and sound used to convey the linguistic violence of the identified national anthems. Finally, the paper advocates the need for linguistic overhaul of affected anthems so that the language of anthems which epitomize nations can be pacific and in tandem with contemporary global trends.

Keywords: national anthems, linguistic violence, figurative language, cognitive, manipulation, CDA

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Authors: Xuan Hua Huang, Shu Fen Wu, Yi Ting Huang, Pi Yueh Lee

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Background: In Taiwan, the Taiwan healthcare care Indicator Series regards the rate of hospital readmission as an important indicator of healthcare quality. Unplanned readmission not only effects patient’s condition but also increase healthcare utilization rate and healthcare costs. Purpose: The purpose of this study was explored the effects of adult unplanned readmission within 14 days of discharge at a regional teaching hospital in South Taiwan. Methods: The retrospectively review design was used. A total 495 participants of unplanned readmissions and 878 of non-readmissions within 14 days recruited from a regional teaching hospital in Southern Taiwan. The instruments used included the Charlson Comorbidity Index, and demographic characteristics, and disease-related variables. Statistical analyses were performed with SPSS version 22.0. The descriptive statistics were used (means, standard deviations, and percentage) and the inferential statistics were used T-test, Chi-square test and Logistic regression. Results: The unplanned readmissions within 14 days rate was 36%. The majorities were 268 males (54.1%), aged >65 were 318 (64.2%), and mean age was 68.8±14.65 years (23-98years). The mean score for the comorbidities was 3.77±2.73. The top three diagnosed of the readmission were digestive diseases (32.7%), respiratory diseases (15.2%), and genitourinary diseases (10.5%). There were significant relationships among the gender, age, marriage, comorbidity status, and discharge planning services (χ2: 3.816-16.474, p: 0.051~0.000). Logistic regression analysis showed that old age (OR = 1.012, 95% CI: 1.003, 1.021), had the multi-morbidity (OR = 0.712~4.040, 95% CI: 0.559~8.522), had been consult with discharge planning services (OR = 1.696, 95% CI: 1.105, 2.061) have a higher risk of readmission. Conclusions: This study finds that multi-morbidity was independent risk factor for unplanned readmissions at 14 days, recommended that the interventional treatment of the medical team be provided to provide integrated care for multi-morbidity to improve the patient's self-care ability and reduce the 14-day unplanned readmission rate.

Keywords: unplanned readmission, comorbidities, Charlson comorbidity index, logistic regression

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Authors: Mahawish Masud, Muhammad Iqbal, M. U. Khan, Farooque Azam

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Manual writing of test cases from functional requirements is a time-consuming task. Such test cases are not only difficult to write but are also challenging to maintain. Test cases can be drawn from the functional requirements that are expressed in natural language. However, manual test case generation is inefficient and subject to errors.  In this paper, we have presented a systematic procedure that could automatically derive test cases from user stories. The user stories are specified in a restricted natural language using a well-defined template.  We have also presented a detailed methodology for writing our test ready user stories. Our tool “Test-o-Matic” automatically generates the test cases by processing the restricted user stories. The generated test cases are executed by using open source Selenium IDE.  We evaluate our approach on a case study, which is an open source web based application. Effectiveness of our approach is evaluated by seeding faults in the open source case study using known mutation operators.  Results show that the test case generation from restricted user stories is a viable approach for automated testing of web applications.

Keywords: automated testing, natural language, restricted user story modeling, software engineering, software testing, test case specification, transformation and automation, user story, web application testing

Procedia PDF Downloads 387