Search results for: second language processing

Authors: Hashem A. Alsamadani

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Identifying the level of job satisfaction has many positive benefits for both the worker and employer. The purpose of the study was to examine the overall level of job satisfaction among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructors. During the past years, multiple methods were utilized to collect data to determine the level of job satisfaction among teachers. This study was conducted using survey research method. A questionnaire was coded and analyzed using the SPSS. The findings revealed that the overall level of job satisfaction among EFL instructors is high. The study recommended improving conditions of instructors working at public universities so as to gain a high level of job satisfaction and improve outcomes of the teaching-learning process.

Keywords: job satisfaction, EFL teachers, Saudi Arabia, instruction

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Authors: Hoa Pham

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The literature on language teaching and second language acquisition has been largely driven by monolingual ideology with a common assumption that a second language (L2) is best taught and learned in the L2 only. The current study challenges this assumption by reporting learners' positive perceptions of tertiary level teachers' code switching practices in Vietnam. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of code switching practices in language classrooms from a learners' perspective. Data were collected from student participants who were working towards a Bachelor degree in English within the English for Business Communication stream through the use of focus group interviews. The literature has documented that this method of interviewing has a number of distinct advantages over individual student interviews. For instance, group interactions generated by focus groups create a more natural environment than that of an individual interview because they include a range of communicative processes in which each individual may influence or be influenced by others - as they are in their real life. The process of interaction provides the opportunity to obtain the meanings and answers to a problem that are "socially constructed rather than individually created" leading to the capture of real-life data. The distinct feature of group interaction offered by this technique makes it a powerful means of obtaining deeper and richer data than those from individual interviews. The data generated through this study were analysed using a constant comparative approach. Overall, the students expressed positive views of this practice indicating that it is a useful teaching strategy. Teacher code switching was seen as a learning resource and a source supporting language output. This practice was perceived to promote student comprehension and to aid the learning of content and target language knowledge. This practice was also believed to scaffold the students' language production in different contexts. However, the students indicated their preference for teacher code switching to be constrained, as extensive use was believed to negatively impact on their L2 learning and trigger cognitive reliance on the L1 for L2 learning. The students also perceived that when the L1 was used to a great extent, their ability to develop as autonomous learners was negatively impacted. This study found that teacher code switching was supported in certain contexts by learners, thus suggesting that there is a need for the widespread assumption about the monolingual teaching approach to be re-considered.

Keywords: codeswitching, L1 use, L2 teaching, learners’ perception

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Authors: W. H. El Garaihy, A. Nassef, S. Samy

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Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) of commercial Al-Mg-Si alloy was conducted using two strain rates. The ECAP processing was conducted at room temperature and at 250 °C. Route A was adopted up to a total number of four passes in the present work. Structural evolution of the aluminum alloy discs was investigated before and after ECAP processing using optical microscopy (OM). Following ECAP, simple compression tests and Vicker’s hardness were performed. OM micrographs showed that, the average grain size of the as-received Al-Mg-Si disc tends to be larger than the size of the ECAP processed discs. Moreover, significant difference in the grain morphologies of the as-received and processed discs was observed. Intensity of deformation was observed via the alignment of the Al-Mg-Si consolidated particles (grains) in the direction of shear, which increased with increasing the number of passes via ECAP. Increasing the number of passes up to 4 resulted in increasing the grains aspect ratio up to ~5. It was found that the pressing temperature has a significant influence on the microstructure, Hv-values, and compressive strength of the processed discs. Hardness measurements demonstrated that 1-pass resulted in increase of Hv-value by 42% compared to that of the as-received alloy. 4-passes of ECAP processing resulted in additional increase in the Hv-value. A similar trend was observed for the yield and compressive strength. Experimental data of the Hv-values demonstrated that there is a lack of any significant dependence on the processing strain rate.

Keywords: Al-Mg-Si alloy, equal channel angular pressing, grain refinement, severe plastic deformation

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Authors: Sadeq Al Yaari, Ayman Al Yaari, Adham Al Yaari, Montaha Al Yaari, Aayah Al Yaari, Sajedah Al Yaari

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Background: Validation of communication activities of daily living-second edition (CADL-2) and assessment of language-related functional activities (ALFA) tests is a critical investment decision, and activities related to language impairments often are underestimated. Literature indicates that age factors, and gender differences may affect the performance of the aphasics. Thus, understanding these influential factors is highly important to neuropsycholinguists and speech language pathologists (SLPs). Purpose: The goal of this study is twofold: (1) to in/validate CADL-2 and ALFA tests, and (2) to investigate whether or not the two assessment tests are reliable. Design: A comparative study is made between the results obtained from the analyses of the Arabic versions of CADL-2 and ALFA tests. Participants: The communication activities of daily-living and language-related functional activities were assessed from the obtained results of 100 adult aphasics (50 males, 50 females; ages 16 to 65). Procedures: Firstly, the two translated and standardized Arabic versions of CADL-2 and ALFA tests were introduced to the Arab aphasics under investigation. Armed with the new two versions of the tests, one of the researchers assessed the language-related functional communication and activities. Outcomes drawn from the obtained analysis of the comparative studies were then qualitatively and statistically analyzed. Main outcomes and Results: Regarding the validity of CADL-2 and ALFA, it is found that …. Is more valid in both pre-and posttests. Concerning the reliability of the two tests, it is found that ….is more reliable in both pre-and-posttests which undoubtedly means that …..is more trustable. Nor must we forget to indicate here that the relationship between age and gender was very weak due to that no remarkable gender differences between the two in both CADL-2 and ALFA pre-and-posttests. Conclusions & Implications: CADL-2 and ALFA tests were found to be valid and reliable tests. In contrast to previous studies, age and gender were not significantly associated with the results of validity and reliability of the two assessment tests. In clearer terms, age and gender patterns do not affect the validation of these two tests. Future studies might focus on complex questions including the use of CADL-2 and ALFA functionally; how gender and puberty influence the results in case the sample is large; the effects of each type of aphasia on the final outcomes, and measurements’ results of imaging techniques.

Keywords: CADL-2, ALFA, comparison, language test, arab aphasics, validity, reliability, neuropsycholinguistics, comparison

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Authors: Mohammed Zahid Akter

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In the studies of language change, mental factors including analogy, reanalysis, and frequency have received considerable attention as possible catalysts for language change. In comparison, relatively little is known regarding which functional domains or construction types are more amenable to these mental factors than others. In this regard, this paper will show with data from South Central (Kuki-Chin) Tibeto-Burman languages how language change interacts with certain functional domains or construction types. These construction types include transitivity, person marking, and polarity distinctions. Thus, it will be shown that transitive clauses are more prone to change than intransitive and ditransitive clauses, clauses with 1st person argument marking are more prone to change than clauses with 2nd and 3rd person argument marking, non-copular clauses are more prone to change than copular clauses, affirmative clauses are more prone to change than negative clauses, and standard negatives are more prone to change than negative imperatives. The following schematic structure can summarize these findings: transitive>intransitive, ditransitive; 1st person>2nd person, 3rd person; non-copular>copular; and affirmative>negative; and standard negative>negative imperatives. In the interest of space, here only one of these findings is illustrated: affirmative>negative. In Hyow (South Central, Bangladesh), the innovative and preverbal 1st person subject k(V)- occurs in an affirmative construction, and the archaic and postverbal 1st person subject -ŋ occurs in a negative construction. Similarly, in Purum (South Central, Northeast India), the innovative and preverbal 1st person subject k(V)- occurs in an affirmative construction, and the archaic and postverbal 1st person subject *-ŋ occurs in a negative construction. Like 1st person subject, we also see that in Anal (South Central, Northeast India), the innovative and preverbal 2nd person subject V- occurs in an affirmative construction, and the archaic and postverbal 2nd person subject -t(V) in a negative construction. To conclude, data from South Central Tibeto-Burman languages suggest that language change interacts with functional domains as some construction types are more susceptible to change than others.

Keywords: functional domains, Kuki-Chin, language change, south-central, Tibeto-Burman

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Authors: Elizaveta Startseva, Elena Notina, Irina Bykova, Valentina Ulyumdzhieva, Natallia Zhabo

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With the various existing models of intercultural communication that contain a vast number of stages for foreign language acquisition, there is a need for conscious perception of the foreign culture. Such a process is associated with the emergence of linguistic conflict with the consistent students’ desire to solve the problem of the language differences, along with cultural discrepancies. The aim of this study is to present the modern ways and methods of removing psycholinguistic conflict through skills development in professional translation and intercultural communication. The study was conducted in groups of 1-4-year students of Medical Institute and Agro-Technological Institute RUDN university. In the course of training, students got knowledge in such disciplines as basic grammar and vocabulary of the English language, phonetics, lexicology, introduction to linguistics, theory of translation, annotating and referencing media texts and texts in specialty. The students learned to present their research work, participated in the University and exit conferences with their reports and presentations. Common strategies of removing linguistic and cultural conflict can be attributed to the development of such abilities of a language personality as a commitment to communication and cooperation, the formation of cultural awareness and empathy of other cultures of the individual, realistic self-esteem, emotional stability, tolerance, etc. The process of mastering a foreign language and culture of the target language leads to a reduplication of linguistic identity, which leads to successive formation of the so-called 'secondary linguistic personality.' In our study, we tried to approach the problem comprehensively, focusing on the translation gaps for technical and non-technical language still missing such a typology which could classify all of the lacunas on the same principle. When obtaining the background knowledge, students learn to overcome the difficulties posed by the national-specific and linguistic differences of cultures in contact, i.e., to eliminate the gaps (to fill in and compensate). Compensation gaps is a means of fixing it, the initial phase of elimination, followed in some cases and some not is filling semantic voids (plenus). The concept of plenus occurs in most cases of translation gaps, for example in the transcription and transliteration of (intercultural and exoticism), the replication (reproduction of the morphemic structure of words or idioms. In all the above cases the task of the translator is to ensure an identical response of the receptors of the original and translated texts, since any statement is created with the goal of obtaining communicative effect, and hence pragmatic potential is the most important part of its contents. The practical value of our work lies in improving the methodology of teaching English for specific purposes on the basis of psycholinguistic concept of the secondary language personality.

Keywords: lacuna, language barrier, plenus, secondary language personality

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Authors: Gani Pllana

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In the conditions of the rapid development of technics and technology in recent years, the cooperation of the scientific-technical language with the standard Albanian language is continuing with a higher intensity than before. We notice a vigor of enrichment in the vocabulary of technical terminology, due to the birth and formation of new fields and subfields of technics, technology, as computing, mechatronics, telemetry, a multitude of concepts many of which, on the one hand, are marked with names of the languages they come from, mainly from English, but on the other hand, they meet their needs with the lexical mother tongue composition (by common words being raised to terms) and with the activation of other layers, such as compound word terms. Thus, for example, in the field of computing, we notice in it the inclusion of the ordinary vocabulary for reproductive reasons, like mi, dritare, flamur, adresë, skedar (Engl: mouse, window, flag, address, file), and along with them, the compound word terms, serving to differentiate relevant concepts, like, adresë e hiperlidhjes, adresë e uebit, adresë relative, adresë virtuale (Engl. address hyperlink, web address, relative address, virtual address) etc.

Keywords: common words, Albanian language, technical terminology, standardization

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Authors: Hsi Wei

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Does the language we speak affect the way we think? This question has been discussed for a long time from different aspects. In this article, the issue is examined with an experiment on how speakers of different languages tend to do different sequencing when it comes to the size of general objects. An essential difference between the usage of English and Mandarin is the way we sequence the size of places or objects. In English, when describing the location of something we may say, for example, ‘The pen is inside the trashcan next to the tree at the park.’ In Mandarin, however, we would say, ‘The pen is at the park next to the tree inside the trashcan.’ It’s clear that generally English use the sequence of small to big while Mandarin the opposite. Therefore, the experiment was conducted to test if the difference of the languages affects the speakers’ ability to do the different sequencing. There were two groups of subjects; one consisted of English native speakers, another of Mandarin native speakers. Within the experiment, three nouns were showed as a group to the subjects as their native languages. Before they saw the nouns, they would first get an instruction of ‘big to small’, ‘small to big’, or ‘repeat’. Therefore, the subjects had to sequence the following group of nouns as the instruction they get or simply repeat the nouns. After completing every sequencing and repetition in their minds, they pushed a button as reaction. The repetition design was to gather the mere reading time of the person. As the result of the experiment showed, English native speakers reacted more quickly to the sequencing of ‘small to big’; on the other hand, Mandarin native speakers reacted more quickly to the sequence ‘big to small’. To conclude, this study may be of importance as a support for linguistic relativism that the language we speak do shape the way we think.

Keywords: language, linguistic relativism, size, sequencing

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Authors: Thapasya J., Rajesh Kumar

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Language plays complex roles in society. The previous studies on language and society explain their interconnected, complementary and complex interactions and, those studies were primarily focused on the variations in the language. Variation being the fundamental nature of languages, the question of personal and social identity navigated through language variation and established that there is an interconnection between language variation and identity. This paper analyses the sociolinguistic variation in language at the lexical level and how the lexical choice of the speaker(s) affects in shaping their identity. It obtains primary data from the lexicon of the Mappila dialect of Malayalam spoken by the members of Mappila (Muslim) community of Kerala. The variation in the lexical choice is analysed by collecting data from the speech samples of 15 minutes from four different age groups of Mappila dialect speakers. Various contexts were analysed and the frequency of borrowed words in each instance is calculated to reach a conclusion on how the variation is happening in the speech community. The paper shows how the lexical choice of the speakers could be socially motivated and involve in shaping and changing identities. Lexical items or vocabulary clearly signal the group identity and personal identity. Mappila dialect of Malayalam was rich in frequent use of borrowed words from Arabic, Persian and Urdu. There was a deliberate attempt to show their identity as a Mappila community member, which was derived from the socio-political situation during those days. This made a clear variation between the Mappila dialect and other dialects of Malayalam at the surface level, which was motivated to create and establish the identity of a person as the member of Mappila community. Historically, these kinds of linguistic variation were highly motivated because of the socio-political factors and, intertwined with the historical facts about the origin and spread of Islamism in the region; people from the Mappila community highly motivated to project their identity as a Mappila because of the social insecurities they had to face before accepting that religion. Thus the deliberate inclusion of Arabic, Persian and Urdu words in their speech helped in showing their identity. However, the socio-political situations and factors at the origin of Mappila community have been changed over a period of time. The social motivation for indicating their identity as a Mappila no longer exist and thus the frequency of borrowed words from Arabic, Persian and Urdu have been reduced from their speech. Apart from the religious terms, the borrowed words from these languages are very few at present. The analysis is carried out by the changes in the language of the people according to their age and found to have significant variations between generations and literacy plays a major role in this variation process. The need of projecting a specific identity of an individual would vary according to the change in the socio-political scenario and a variation in language can shape the identity in order to go with the varying socio-political situation in any language.

Keywords: borrowings, dialect, identity, lexical choice, literacy, variation

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Authors: Sopio Totibadze

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Although the legal framework of Georgia reflects the main principles of gender equality and is in line with the international situation, Georgia remains a male-dominated society. This means that men prevail in many areas of social, economic, and political life, which frequently gives women a subordinate status in society and the family. According to the latest studies, “violence against women and girls in Georgia is also recognized as a public problem, and it is necessary to focus on it”. Moreover, the Public Defender's report (2019) reveals that “in the last five years, 151 women were killed in Georgia due to gender and family violence”. Unfortunately, there are frequent cases of crimes based on gender-based oppression in Georgia, which pose a threat not only to women but also to people of any gender whose desires and aspirations do not correspond to the gender norms and roles prevailing in society. It is well-known that language is often used as a tool for gender oppression. Therefore, feminist and gender studies in linguistics ultimately serve to represent the problem, reflect on it, and propose ways to solve it. Together with technical advancement in communication, a new form of discrimination has arisen- hate language against women in electronic media discourse. Due to the nature of social media and the internet, messages containing hate language can spread in seconds and reach millions of people. However, only a few know about the detrimental effects they may have on the addressee and society. This paper aims to analyse the hateful comments directed at women on various media platforms to determine the linguistic strategies used while attacking women and the reasons why women may fall victim to this type of hate language. The data have been collected over six months, and overall, 500 comments will be examined for the paper. Qualitative and quantitative analysis was chosen for the methodology of the study. The comments posted on various media platforms have been selected manually due to several reasons, the most important being the problem of identifying hate speech as it can disguise itself in different ways- humour, memes, etc. The comments on the articles, posts, pictures, and videos selected for sociolinguistic analysis depict a woman, a taboo topic, or a scandalous event centred on a woman that triggered hate language towards the person to whom the post/article was dedicated. The study has revealed that a woman can become a victim of hatred directed at them if they do something considered to be a deviation from a societal norm, namely, get a divorce, be sexually active, be vocal about feministic values, and talk about taboos. Interestingly, people who utilize hate language are not only men trying to “normalize” the prejudiced patriarchal values but also women who are equally active in bringing down a "strong" woman. The paper also aims to raise awareness about the hate language directed at women, as being knowledgeable about the issue at hand is the first step to tackling it.

Keywords: femicide, hate language, media discourse, sociolinguistics

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Authors: Weldeabrha Kiros Kidanemaryam, DepaTesfay Kelali Gidey, Yikaalo Welu Kidanemariam

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Dairy services are considered as sources of income, employment, nutrition and health for smallholder rural and urban farmers. The main objective of this study is to assess the interlinkage of dairy farms and small-scale dairy processing in Mekelle, Tigray. To achieve the stated objective, a descriptive research approach was employed where data was collected from 45 dairy farmers and 40 small-scale processors and analyzed by calculating the mean values and percentages. Findings show that the dairy business in the study area is characterized by a shortage of feed and water for the farm. The dairy farm is dominated by breeds of hybrid type, followed by the so called ‘begait’. Though the farms have access to medication and vaccination for the cattle, they fell short of hygiene practices, reliable shade for the cattle and separate space for the claves. The value chain at the milk production stage is characterized by a low production rate, selling raw milk without adding value and a very meager traditional processing practice. Furthermore, small-scale milk processors are characterized by collecting milk from farmers and producing cheese, butter, ghee and sour milk. They do not engage in modern milk processing like pasteurized milk, yogurt and table butter. Most small-scale milk processors are engaged in traditional production systems. Additionally, the milk consumption and marketing part of the chain is dominated by the informal market (channel), where market problems, lack of skill and technology, shortage of loans and weak policy support are being faced as the main challenges. Based on the findings, recommendations and future research areas are forwarded.

Keywords: value-chain, dairy, milk production, milk processing

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Authors: S. Pesina, T. Solonchak

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An analysis of word semantics focusing on the invariance of advanced imagery in several pressing problems. Interest in the language of imagery is caused by the introduction, in the linguistics sphere, of a new paradigm, the center of which is the personality of the speaker (the subject of the language). Particularly noteworthy is the question of the place of the image when discussing the lexical, phraseological values and the relationship of imagery and metaphors. In part, the formation of a metaphor, as an interaction between two intellective entities, occurs at a cognitive level, and it is the category of the image, having cognitive roots, which aides in the correct interpretation of the results of this process on the lexical-semantic level.

Keywords: image, metaphor, concept, creation of a metaphor, cognitive linguistics, erased image, vivid image

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Authors: Shuo Liu, Dan Liu

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In the field of named entity recognition, most of the research has been conducted around simple entities. However, for nested named entities, which still contain entities within entities, it has been difficult to identify them accurately due to their boundary ambiguity. In this paper, a hierarchical recognition model is constructed based on the grammatical structure and semantic features of Chinese text for boundary calculation based on lexical features. The analysis is carried out at different levels in terms of granularity, semantics, and lexicality, respectively, avoiding repetitive work to reduce computational effort and using the semantic features of words to calculate the boundaries of entities to improve the accuracy of the recognition work. The results of the experiments carried out on web-based microblogging data show that the model achieves an accuracy of 86.33% and an F1 value of 89.27% in recognizing nested named entities, making up for the shortcomings of some previous recognition models and improving the efficiency of recognition of nested named entities.

Keywords: coarse-grained, nested named entity, Chinese natural language processing, word embedding, T-SNE dimensionality reduction algorithm

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Authors: Kaaryn M. Cater

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Students with sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), Meares-Irlen Syndrome (MIS) and dyslexia can become overwhelmed and struggle to thrive in traditional tertiary learning environments. An estimated 50% of tertiary students who disclose learning related issues are dyslexic. This study explores the relationship between SPS, MIS and dyslexia. Baseline measures will be analysed to establish any correlation between these three minority methods of information processing. SPS is an innate sensitivity trait found in 15-20% of the population and has been identified in over 100 species of animals. Humans with SPS are referred to as Highly Sensitive People (HSP) and the measure of HSP is a 27 point self-test known as the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (HSPS). A 2016 study conducted by the author established base-line data for HSP students in a tertiary institution in New Zealand. The results of the study showed that all participating HSP students believed the knowledge of SPS to be life-changing and useful in managing life and study, in addition, they believed that all tutors and in-coming students should be given information on SPS. MIS is a visual processing and perception disorder that is found in approximately 10% of the population and has a variety of symptoms including visual fatigue, headaches and nausea. One way to ease some of these symptoms is through the use of colored lenses or overlays. Dyslexia is a complex phonological based information processing variation present in approximately 10% of the population. An estimated 50% of dyslexics are thought to have MIS. The study exploring possible correlations between these minority forms of information processing is due to begin in February 2017. An invitation will be extended to all first year students enrolled in degree programmes across all faculties and schools within the institution. An estimated 900 students will be eligible to participate in the study. Participants will be asked to complete a battery of on-line questionnaires including the Highly Sensitive Person Scale, the International Dyslexia Association adult self-assessment and the adapted Irlen indicator. All three scales have been used extensively in literature and have been validated among many populations. All participants whose score on any (or some) of the three questionnaires suggest a minority method of information processing will receive an invitation to meet with a learning advisor, and given access to counselling services if they choose. Meeting with a learning advisor is not mandatory, and some participants may choose not to receive help. Data will be collected using the Question Pro platform and base-line data will be analysed using correlation and regression analysis to identify relationships and predictors between SPS, MIS and dyslexia. This study forms part of a larger three year longitudinal study and participants will be required to complete questionnaires at annual intervals in subsequent years of the study until completion of (or withdrawal from) their degree. At these data collection points, participants will be questioned on any additional support received relating to their minority method(s) of information processing. Data from this study will be available by April 2017.

Keywords: dyslexia, highly sensitive person (HSP), Meares-Irlen Syndrome (MIS), minority forms of information processing, sensory processing sensitivity (SPS)

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Authors: Barzan Hadi Hama Karim

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In recent years, an increasing number of faculties and colleges of basic education are established by the universities and ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Iraqi Kurdistan to graduate English teachers to teach in the basic and high schools. One central consideration of this study is to what extent graduate teachers receive adequate preparation from these faculties and college of basic education. An important program which is offered in the department of English language in these colleges and faculties is Viewing and Practicing. The purpose of this research is to explore how students of basic education colleges and faculties are using the program of Viewing and Practicing to support the educational process. This study provides a general framework about educational uses of the program as a pedagogical tool to teach English Language in the basic schools and describes the different perceptions of the students at the final stage of their education. A survey is used to collect responses from a group of students to determine their expectations and perceptions about the program. The results display that the program has several aspects of strengths, such as improving English teaching and speaking proficiency, cultivating subject knowledge related to applied linguistics and promoting research engagement. The findings of the study address the following questions: Is Viewing and Practicing Program beneficial for students to experience English language for future career at schools? To what extent do the students prefer teaching English Language in the schools?

Keywords: teaching experience, viewing and practicing, perception, expectation

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Authors: Christine H. Cubelo

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This study consists of 2-parts: a systematic review of current publications on the therapeutic use of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) and a within-subjects auditory training trial using ASMR videos. The main intent is to explore ASMR as potentially therapeutically beneficial for those with atypical sensory processing. Many hearing-related disorders and mood or anxiety symptoms overlap with symptoms of sensory processing issues. For this reason, inclusion and exclusion criteria of the systematic review were generated in an effort to produce optimal search outcomes and avoid overly confined criteria that would limit yielded results. Criteria for inclusion in the review for Part 1 are (1) adult participants diagnosed with hearing loss or atypical sensory processing, (2) inclusion of measures related to ASMR as a treatment method, and (3) published between 2000 and 2022. A total of 1,088 publications were found in the preliminary search, and a total of 13 articles met the inclusion criteria. A total of 14 participants completed the trial and post-trial questionnaire. Of all responses, 64.29% agreed that the duration of auditory training sessions was reasonable. In addition, 71.43% agreed that the training improved their perception of music. Lastly, 64.29% agreed that the training improved their perception of a primary talker when there are other talkers or background noises present.

Keywords: autonomous sensory meridian response, auditory training, atypical sensory processing, hearing loss, hearing aids

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Authors: Sarah Smail

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Algeria has been subject to countless conquests and invasions that resulted in having a diverse linguistic repertoire. The sociolinguistic situation of the country made linguistic landscape analysis pertinent. This in fact, has led to the growth of diverse linguistic landscape studies that mainly focused on identifying the sociolinguistic situation of the country through shop names analysis. The present research adds to the existing literature by offering another perspective to the analysis of signs by combining the physical and digital semiotic landscape. The powerful oil, gas and agri-food industries in Algeria make it interesting to focus on the commodification of natural resources for the sake of identifying the language and semiotic resources deployed in the Algerian public scene in addition to the identification of the visibility of linguistic inequalities and minorities in the business domain. The study discusses the semiotic landscape of three trade cities: Bejaia, Setif and Hassi-Messaoud. In addition to interviews conducted with business owners and graphic designers and questionnaires with business employees. Withal, the study relies on Gorter’s multilingual inequalities in public space (MIPS) model (2021) and Irvine and Gal’s language ideology and linguistic differentiation (2000). The preliminary results demonstrate the sociolinguistic injustice existing in the business domain, e.g., the exclusion of the official languages, the dominance of foreign languages, and the excessive use of the roman script.

Keywords: semiotic landscaping, digital scapes, language commodification, linguistic inequalities, business signage

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Authors: A. Tahar Djebbar

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Modern technologies have penetrated all spheres of human life, education being one of them. This paper focuses the attention on the integration of technology-based education in the Algerian classroom in teaching foreign languages. It sheds light on a specific area of ICT application: ICT in English learning and teaching. Some Algerian teachers or tutors of English face many challenges among which the lack of teaching materials which are indispensable for transmitting knowledge to learners. Thus, they find themselves compelled to use online e-books or download them in PDF form to support their lessons. Teachers even download such teaching materials like pictures, videos, audios, podcasts, and flash cards from the internet and store them in their Flash USBs to shape up the teaching-learning conditions. They use computers, data shows, and the internet so as to facilitate the teaching–learning process in the classroom. Hence, technology has become a must in the Algerian classroom especially in teaching English which has become a very important language in a national and an international level. This study aims at showing that Algerian tutors/teachers who take up the challenge of getting involved in the technology-enhanced language learning and teaching in the Algerian schools and universities face many obstacles.

Keywords: computer, communication, English, internet, learners, language acquisition, teaching, technology

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Authors: Arburim Iseni, Afrim Aliti, Nagri Rexhepi

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This paper focuses mainly on an important aspect of student-linguistic errors. It aims to explore the nature of Albanian intermediate level or B1 students’ language errors and mistakes and attempts to trace the possible sources or causes by classifying the error samples into both inter lingual and intra lingual errors. The hypothesis that intra lingua errors may be determined or induced somehow by the native language influence seems to be confirmed by the significant number of errors found in Albanian EFL students in the Study Program of the English Language and Literature at the State University of Tetova. Findings of this study have revealed that L1 interference first and then ignorance of the English Language grammar rules constitute the main sources or causes of errors, even though carelessness cannot be ruled out. Although we have conducted our study with 300 students of intermediate or B1 level, we believe that this hypothesis would need to be confirmed by further research, maybe with a larger number of students with different levels in order to draw more steady and accurate conclusions. The analysis of the questionnaires was done according to quantitative and qualitative research methods. This study was also conducted by taking written samples on different topics from our students and then distributing them with comments to the students and University teachers as well. These questionnaires were designed to gather information among 300 students and 48 EFL teachers, all of whom teach in the Study Program of English Language and Literature at the State University of Tetova. From the analyzed written samples of the students and face-to-face interviews, we could get useful insights into some important aspects of students’ error-making and error-correction. These different research methodologies were used in order to comprise a holistic research and the findings of the questionnaires helped us to come up with some more steady solutions in order to minimize the potential gap between students and teachers.

Keywords: L1 & L2, Linguistics, Applied linguistics, SLA, Albanian EFL students and teachers, Errors and Mistakes, Students’ Assessment and Self-Assessment

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Authors: D. Sankara Reddy, T. Kranthi Kumar, K. Sreevani

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This paper investigates the impact of carrier frequency offset (CFO) on the performance of different MIMO-OFDM schemes with high spectral efficiency for next generation of terrestrial digital TV. We show that all studied MIMO-OFDM schemes are sensitive to CFO when it is greater than 1% of intercarrier spacing. We show also that the Alamouti scheme is the most sensitive MIMO scheme to CFO.

Keywords: modulation and multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM), signal processing for transmission carrier frequency offset, future digital TV, imaging and signal processing

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Authors: Ana C. Sanchez

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This paper will discuss some of the bilingual practices of Heritage Spanish speakers caused by living within two cultures and two languages, Spanish, the heritage language, and English, the dominant language. When two languages remain in contact for long periods, such as the case of Spanish and English, it is common that both languages can be affected by bilingual practices such as Spanglish, code-switching, borrowing, anglicisms and calques. Examples of these translingual practices will be provided, as well as HS speaker’s linguistic dialects, and the challenges they encounter with the standard variety used in the Spanish classroom.

Keywords: heritage, practices, Spanish, speakers translingual

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Authors: Ibode Osa Felix

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The use of e-Learning is presently intensified in the academic world following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. Hitherto, e-learning had made its debut in teaching and learning many years ago when it emerged as an aspect of Computer Based Teaching, but never before has its patronage become so important and popular as currently obtains. Previous studies revealed that there is an ongoing debate among researchers on the efficacy of the E-learning mode of instruction over the traditional teaching method. Therefore, the study examined the effect of E-learning and Conventional Mode of Instruction on Students Achievement in the English Language. The study is a quasi-experimental study in which 230 students, from three public secondary schools, were selected through a simple random sampling technique. Three instruments were developed, namely, E-learning Instructional Guide (ELIG), Conventional Method of Instructional Guide (CMIG), and English Language Achievement Test (ELAT). The result revealed that students taught through the conventional method had better results than students taught online. The result also shows that girls taught with the conventional method of teaching performed better than boys in the English Language. The study, therefore, recommended that effort should be made by the educational authorities in Nigeria to provide internet facilities to enhance practices among learners and provide electricity to power e-learning equipment in the secondary schools. This will boost e-learning practices among teachers and students and consequently overtake conventional method of teaching in due course.

Keywords: e-learning, conventional method of teaching, achievement in english, electricity

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Authors: Pingping Lin, Xudong Luo, Yifan Fan

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Sentiment analysis is a very active research topic. Every day, Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, and other social media, as well as significant e-commerce websites, generate a massive amount of comments, which can be used to analyse peoples opinions or emotions. The existing methods for sentiment analysis are based mainly on sentiment dictionaries, machine learning, and deep learning. The first two kinds of methods rely on heavily sentiment dictionaries or large amounts of labelled data. The third one overcomes these two problems. So, in this paper, we focus on the third one. Specifically, we survey various sentiment analysis methods based on convolutional neural network, recurrent neural network, long short-term memory, deep neural network, deep belief network, and memory network. We compare their futures, advantages, and disadvantages. Also, we point out the main problems of these methods, which may be worthy of careful studies in the future. Finally, we also examine the application of deep learning in multimodal sentiment analysis and aspect-level sentiment analysis.

Keywords: document analysis, deep learning, multimodal sentiment analysis, natural language processing

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Authors: Supannee Pinmanee

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This article focuses on the strategies in the translation of terms of address for both referential and vocative functions from Thai to English from a cultural perspective. The discussion concerns the culture-specific ways in which Thai people use address terms that depend largely on social and conventional contexts, including pragmatic factors, for example, relationships between people, levels of formality, and attitudes. Examples used to illustrate the problems and proposed solutions were drawn from the media, the internet, the novels and the language used by Thai native speakers in expressing Thai address terms. The terms used in this area show very well not only the differences in language but also the different cultures and world views of the speakers of Thai and those of English. Thai has developed its own set of address terms, particularly kinship terms for non-relatives and the Thai royal terms. Some of Newmark’s procedures (1995) are used in the article to illustrate the task of translating Thai terms into English, a language that embodies a very different culture with its own set of address terms. However, no one strategy can be applied to serve all purposes and to translate all the intended senses. One particular term can be translated by several strategies, and which strategy to choose depends largely on one’s purposes and what requirement one needs to fulfill.

Keywords: translation, terms of address, Thai-English translation, Thai culture-specific terms of address, translation strategies

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Authors: Abdulkader Helwan

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Iris cancer, so called intraocular melanoma is a cancer that starts in the iris; the colored part of the eye that surrounds the pupil. There is a need for an accurate and cost-effective iris cancer detection system since the available techniques used currently are still not efficient. The combination of the image processing and artificial neural networks has a great efficiency for the diagnosis and detection of the iris cancer. Image processing techniques improve the diagnosis of the cancer by enhancing the quality of the images, so the physicians diagnose properly. However, neural networks can help in making decision; whether the eye is cancerous or not. This paper aims to develop an intelligent system that stimulates a human visual detection of the intraocular melanoma, so called iris cancer. The suggested system combines both image processing techniques and neural networks. The images are first converted to grayscale, filtered, and then segmented using prewitt edge detection algorithm to detect the iris, sclera circles and the cancer. The principal component analysis is used to reduce the image size and for extracting features. Those features are considered then as inputs for a neural network which is capable of deciding if the eye is cancerous or not, throughout its experience adopted by many training iterations of different normal and abnormal eye images during the training phase. Normal images are obtained from a public database available on the internet, “Mile Research”, while the abnormal ones are obtained from another database which is the “eyecancer”. The experimental results for the proposed system show high accuracy 100% for detecting cancer and making the right decision.

Keywords: iris cancer, intraocular melanoma, cancerous, prewitt edge detection algorithm, sclera

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Authors: Regita P. Permata, Ulfa S. Nuraini

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Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is the most studied problem in combinatorial optimization. In simple language, TSP can be described as a problem of finding a minimum distance tour to a city, starting and ending in the same city, and exactly visiting another city. In product distribution, companies often get problems in determining the minimum distance that affects the time allocation. In this research, we aim to apply TSP heuristic methods to simulate nodes as city coordinates in product distribution. The heuristics used are sub tour reversal, nearest neighbor, farthest insertion, cheapest insertion, nearest insertion, and arbitrary insertion. We have done simulation nodes using Euclidean distances to compare the number of cities and processing time, thus we get optimum heuristic method. The results show that the optimum heuristic methods are farthest insertion and nearest insertion. These two methods can be recommended to solve product distribution problems in certain companies.

Keywords: Euclidean, heuristics, simulation, TSP

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Authors: Anna Bohers, Emília Hroncová, Juraj Ladomerský

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Oil sludge with its main characteristic of high acidity is a waste product generated from the operation of refinery and petrochemical plants. Former refinery and petrochemical plant - Petrochema Dubová is present in Slovakia as well. Its activities was to process the crude oil through sulfonation and adsorption technology for production of lubricating and special oils, synthetic detergents and special white oils for cosmetic and medical purposes. Seventy years ago – period, when this historical acid sludge burden has been created – comparing to the environmental awareness the production was in preference. That is the reason why, as in many countries, also in Slovakia a historical environmental burden is present until now – 229 211 m3 of oil sludge in the middle of the National Park of Nízke Tatry mountain chain. Neither one of tried treatment methods – bio or non-biologic one - was proved as suitable for processing or for recovery in the reason of different factors admission: i.e. strong aggressivity, difficulty with handling because of its sludgy and liquid state et sim. As a potential solution, also incineration was tested, but it was not proven as a suitable method, as the concentration of SO2 in combustion gases was too high, and it was not possible to decrease it under the acceptable value of 2000 mg.mn-3. That is the reason why the operation of incineration plant has been terminated, and the acid sludge landfills are present until nowadays. The objective of this paper is to present a new possibility of processing and valorization of acid sludgy-waste. The processing of oil sludge was performed through the effective separation - thermal desorption technology, through which it is possible to split the sludgy material into the matrix (soil, sediments) and organic contaminants. In order to boost the efficiency in the processing of acid sludge through thermal desorption, the work will present the possibility of application of an original technology – Method of Blowing Decomposition for recovering of organic matter into technological lubricating oil.

Keywords: hazardous waste, oil sludge, remediation, thermal desorption

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Authors: Raghad A. Altowairgi

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With the wide spread of social media platforms, young people tend to use them extensively as the first means of communication due to their ease and modernity. But these platforms often create a fertile ground for bullies to practice their aggressive behavior against their victims. Platform usage cannot be reduced, but intelligent mechanisms can be implemented to reduce the abuse. This is where machine learning comes in. Understanding and classifying text can be helpful in order to minimize the act of cyberbullying. Artificial intelligence techniques have expanded to formulate an applied tool to address the phenomenon of cyberbullying. In this research, machine learning models are built to classify text into two classes; cyberbullying and non-cyberbullying. After preprocessing the data in 4 stages; removing characters that do not provide meaningful information to the models, tokenization, removing stop words, and lowering text. BoW and TF-IDF are used as the main features for the five classifiers, which are; logistic regression, Naïve Bayes, Random Forest, XGboost, and Catboost classifiers. Each of them scores 92%, 90%, 92%, 91%, 86% respectively.

Keywords: cyberbullying, machine learning, Bag-of-Words, term frequency-inverse document frequency, natural language processing, Catboost

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Authors: Yesha Devi Mahadeo-Doorgakant

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The Mauritian landscape is well-known for its multilingualism with the daily interaction of the number of languages that are used in the island; namely Kreol Morisien, the European languages (English and French) and the Oriental/Asian languages (Hindi, Arabic/Urdu, Tamil, Telegu, Marathi, Mandarin, etc.). However, within Mauritius’ multilingual educational system, English is the official medium of instruction while French is taught as compulsory subject till upper secondary and oriental languages are offered as optional languages at primary level. Usually, Mauritians choose one oriental language based on their ethnic/religious identity, when they start their primary schooling as an additional language to learn. In January 2012, Kreol Morisien, which is the considered the language of daily interaction of the majority of Mauritians, was introduced as an optional subject at primary level, taught at the same time as the oriental languages. The introduction of Kreol Morisien has spurred linguistic debates about the issue of multilingualism within the curriculum. Taking this into account, researchers have started pondering on the multilingual educational system of the country and questioning whether the current language curriculum caters for the complex everyday linguistic reality of the multilingual Mauritian learner, given most learners are embedded within an environment where the different languages interact with each other daily. This paper, therefore, proposes translanguaging as being a more befitting theoretical lens through which the multilingualism and the linguistic repertoire of Mauritian learners’ can best be understood.

Keywords: multilingualism, translanguaging, multilingual learner, linguistic ethnography

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Authors: Amadou Fall Dia, Maurras Ulbricht Togbe, Aliou Boly, Zakia Kazi Aoul, Elisabeth Metais

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Existing RDF (Resource Description Framework) Stream Processing (RSP) systems allow continuous processing of RDF data issued from different application domains such as weather station measuring phenomena, geolocation, IoT applications, drinking water distribution management, and so on. However, processing window phase often expires before finishing the entire session and RSP systems immediately delete data streams after each processed window. Such mechanism does not allow optimized exploitation of the RDF data streams as the most relevant and pertinent information of the data is often not used in a due time and almost impossible to be exploited for further analyzes. It should be better to keep the most informative part of data within streams while minimizing the memory storage space. In this work, we propose an RDF graph summarization system based on an explicit and implicit expressed needs through three main approaches: (1) an approach for user queries (SPARQL) in order to extract their needs and group them into a more global query, (2) an extension of the closeness centrality measure issued from Social Network Analysis (SNA) to determine the most informative parts of the graph and (3) an RDF graph summarization technique combining extracted user query needs and the extended centrality measure. Experiments and evaluations show efficient results in terms of memory space storage and the most expected approximate query results on summarized graphs compared to the source ones.

Keywords: centrality measures, RDF graphs summary, RDF graphs stream, SPARQL query

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