Precise Mathematical Language: Exploring the Relationship Between Student Vocabulary Understanding and Student Achievement

In this action research study of my classroom of fifth grade mathematics, I investigate the relationship between student understanding of precise mathematics vocabulary and student achievement in mathematics. Specifically, I focused on students’ understanding of written mathematics problems and on their ability to use precise mathematical language in their written solutions of critical thinking problems. I discovered that students are resistant to change; they prefer to do what comes naturally to them. Since they have not been previously taught to use precise mathematical language in their communication about math, they have great difficulty in adapting to this new requirement. However, with teaching modeling and ample opportunities to use the language of mathematics, students’ understanding and use of specific mathematical vocabulary is increased.

Vocabulary Instruction as a Tool for Helping Students of Diverse Backgrounds and Ability Levels to Understand Mathematical Concepts

This action research project describes a research project designed and implemented specifically with an emphasis on the instruction of mathematical vocabulary. The targeted population was my second period classroom of sixth grade students. This group of seventeen students represented diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and abilities. The school is located in a community of a population of approximately 5,000 people in the Midwest. My research investigation focused on the use of specific methods of vocabulary instruction and students’ use of precise mathematical vocabulary in writing and speaking. I wanted to see what effects these strategies would have on student performance. My research suggested that students who struggle with retention of mathematical knowledge have inadequate language skills. My research also revealed that students who have a sound knowledge of vocabulary and are engaged in the specific use of content language performed more successfully. Final analysis indicated that students believed the use of specific mathematical language helped them to be more successful and they made moderate progress in their performance on assessments.

All the World's a Stage: Reaching English Language Learners through Drama

The use of drama with language instruction has long been considered a legitimate practice. A recent survey of the literature shows that English Language Learners (ELLs) may have even more to benefit from the use of drama in the classroom. Studies showed an increase in language and problem-solving ability, as well as student self-efficacy that was transferrable across activities. Following an analysis of the literature is a proposed curriculum based on the findings of the researchers cited. This unit is centered on dramatic activities that make use of all four language domains and includes the examination of plays in writing, on the stage, and as a playwright. In the end, students will be asked to combine all of their skills to put on a completely student-created production. An analysis of the factors surrounding the implementation of such a unit follows the unit itself.

Desempenho de pré-escolares com queixa de Distúrbios da Comunicação no Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (Plai-2)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Complex networks analysis of language complexity

Methods from statistical physics, such as those involving complex networks, have been increasingly used in the quantitative analysis of linguistic phenomena. In this paper, we represented pieces of text with different levels of simplification in co-occurrence networks and found that topological regularity correlated negatively with textual complexity. Furthermore, in less complex texts the distance between concepts, represented as nodes, tended to decrease. The complex networks metrics were treated with multivariate pattern recognition techniques, which allowed us to distinguish between original texts and their simplified versions. For each original text, two simplified versions were generated manually with increasing number of simplification operations. As expected, distinction was easier for the strongly simplified versions, where the most relevant metrics were node strength, shortest paths and diversity. Also, the discrimination of complex texts was improved with higher hierarchical network metrics, thus pointing to the usefulness of considering wider contexts around the concepts. Though the accuracy rate in the distinction was not as high as in methods using deep linguistic knowledge, the complex network approach is still useful for a rapid screening of texts whenever assessing complexity is essential to guarantee accessibility to readers with limited reading ability. Copyright (c) EPLA, 2012

Using Smalltalk as a Reflective Executable Meta-Language

Object-oriented meta-languages such as MOF or EMOF are often used to specify domain specific languages. However, these meta-languages lack the ability to describe behavior or operational semantics. Several approaches used a subset of Java mixed with OCL as executable meta-languages. In this paper, we report our experience of using Smalltalk as an executable and integrated meta-language. We validated this approach in incrementally building over the last decade, Moose, a meta-described reengineering environment. The reflective capabilities of Smalltalk support a uniform way of letting the base developer focus on his tasks while at the same time allowing him to meta-describe his domain model. The advantage of our this approach is that the developer uses the same tools and environment

Meta-Environment and Executable Meta-Language using Smalltalk: an Experience Report

Object-oriented modelling languages such as EMOF are often used to specify domain specific meta-models. However, these modelling languages lack the ability to describe behavior or operational semantics. Several approaches have used a subset of Java mixed with OCL as executable meta-languages. In this experience report we show how we use Smalltalk as an executable meta-language in the context of the Moose reengineering environment. We present how we implemented EMOF and its behavioral aspects. Over the last decade we validated this approach through incrementally building a meta-described reengineering environment. Such an approach bridges the gap between a code-oriented view and a meta-model driven one. It avoids the creation of yet another language and reuses the infrastructure and run-time of the underlying implementation language. It offers an uniform way of letting developers focus on their tasks while at the same time allowing them to meta-describe their domain model. The advantage of our approach is that developers use the same tools and environment they use for their regular tasks. Still the approach is not Smalltalk specific but can be applied to language offering an introspective API such as Ruby, Python, CLOS, Java and C#.

Language use at home and performance in English composition in multilingual Ghana

Ghana has witnessed a recurrent debate on the usefulness of indigenous Ghanaian languages in childhood education. It is assumed that using the mother tongue as a Medium of Instruction (MOI) during the early years improves children’s ability to acquire knowledge and other languages. Not everybody subscribes to this view though. There are those who feel that a solid start in English offers children a better chance of succeeding in school and in their careers. Presently, some parents who subscribe to the latter view have taken the extra step of stopping the use of indigenous Ghanaian languages at home. This paper presents the results of our investigation into whether the home language practices of Ghanaian students have any impact on their performance in English written argumentative discourse. The results are based on an analysis of an assigned essay of 92 students from one of Ghana’s best senior high schools. We then correlated their per¬formance with responses they gave to a questionnaire interrogating their background and language use at home. While some speak the native language at home, others grew up speaking exclusively English. We show that students who combine English and native Ghanaian languages at home performed better than those who used only English or only Ghanaian languages.

BIOMEDICAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING AND EXTRACTION (BLUE-TEXT): A MINIMAL SYNTACTIC, SEMANTIC METHOD

Clinical text understanding (CTU) is of interest to health informatics because critical clinical information frequently represented as unconstrained text in electronic health records are extensively used by human experts to guide clinical practice, decision making, and to document delivery of care, but are largely unusable by information systems for queries and computations. Recent initiatives advocating for translational research call for generation of technologies that can integrate structured clinical data with unstructured data, provide a unified interface to all data, and contextualize clinical information for reuse in multidisciplinary and collaborative environment envisioned by CTSA program. This implies that technologies for the processing and interpretation of clinical text should be evaluated not only in terms of their validity and reliability in their intended environment, but also in light of their interoperability, and ability to support information integration and contextualization in a distributed and dynamic environment. This vision adds a new layer of information representation requirements that needs to be accounted for when conceptualizing implementation or acquisition of clinical text processing tools and technologies for multidisciplinary research. On the other hand, electronic health records frequently contain unconstrained clinical text with high variability in use of terms and documentation practices, and without commitmentto grammatical or syntactic structure of the language (e.g. Triage notes, physician and nurse notes, chief complaints, etc). This hinders performance of natural language processing technologies which typically rely heavily on the syntax of language and grammatical structure of the text. This document introduces our method to transform unconstrained clinical text found in electronic health information systems to a formal (computationally understandable) representation that is suitable for querying, integration, contextualization and reuse, and is resilient to the grammatical and syntactic irregularities of the clinical text. We present our design rationale, method, and results of evaluation in processing chief complaints and triage notes from 8 different emergency departments in Houston Texas. At the end, we will discuss significance of our contribution in enabling use of clinical text in a practical bio-surveillance setting.

Automatic compile-time parallelization of CLP programs by analysis and transformation to a concurrent constraint language.

The concept of independence has been recently generalized to the constraint logic programming (CLP) paradigm. Also, several abstract domains specifically designed for CLP languages, and whose information can be used to detect the generalized independence conditions, have been recently defined. As a result we are now in a position where automatic parallelization of CLP programs is feasible. In this paper we study the task of automatically parallelizing CLP programs based on such analyses, by transforming them to explicitly concurrent programs in our parallel CC platform (CIAO) as well as to AKL. We describe the analysis and transformation process, and study its efficiency, accuracy, and effectiveness in program parallelization. The information gathered by the analyzers is evaluated not only in terms of its accuracy, i.e. its ability to determine the actual dependencies among the program variables, but also of its effectiveness, measured in terms of code reduction in the resulting parallelized programs. Given that only a few abstract domains have been already defined for CLP, and that none of them were specifically designed for dependency detection, the aim of the evaluation is not only to asses the effectiveness of the available domains, but also to study what additional information it would be desirable to infer, and what domains would be appropriate for further improving the parallelization process.

Autonomous Acquisition of Natural Language

An important part of human intelligence is the ability to use language. Humans learn how to use language in a society of language users, which is probably the most effective way to learn a language from the ground up. Principles that might allow an artificial agents to learn language this way are not known at present. Here we present a framework which begins to address this challenge. Our auto-catalytic, endogenous, reflective architecture (AERA) supports the creation of agents that can learn natural language by observation. We present results from two experiments where our S1 agent learns human communication by observing two humans interacting in a realtime mock television interview, using gesture and situated language. Results show that S1 can learn multimodal complex language and multimodal communicative acts, using a vocabulary of 100 words with numerous sentence formats, by observing unscripted interaction between the humans, with no grammar being provided to it a priori, and only high-level information about the format of the human interaction in the form of high-level goals of the interviewer and interviewee and a small ontology. The agent learns both the pragmatics, semantics, and syntax of complex sentences spoken by the human subjects on the topic of recycling of objects such as aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic, and wood, as well as use of manual deictic reference and anaphora.

Do first-year university students understand the language of mathematics?

The aim of the project is to determine if the understanding of the language of Mathematics of students starting university is propitious to the development of an appropriate cognitive structure. The objective of this current work was to analyse the ability of first-year university students to translate the registers of verbal or written expressions and their representations to the registers of algebraic language. Results indicate that students do not understand the basic elements of the language of Mathematics and this causes them to make numerous errors of construction and interpretation. The students were not able to associate concepts with definitions and were unable to offer examples.

The relationship between non-orthographic language abilities and reading performance: An exploration of the primary systems hypothesis in chronic aphasia

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum: Electronic discussion and foreign language learning

Amongst the opportunities for cross-cultural contact created by the burgeoning use of the Internet are those provided by electronic discussion lists. This study looks at what happens when language students venture out of the classroom (virtual or otherwise) to participate in on-line discussion groups with native speakers. Responses to messages and commentary by moderators and other participants on the (in) appropriateness of contributions allow us to determine what constitutes successful participation and to make suggestions regarding effective teaching strategies for this medium. A case study examines the threads started by four anglophone students of French when they post messages to a forum on the Web site of the French newspaper Le Monde. Investigation of these examples points to the ways in which electronic discussion inflects and is inflected by cultural and generic expectations. We suggest that successful participation on Internet fora depends on awareness of such cultural and generic mores and an ability to work within and/or with them. Teachers therefore need to find ways in which students can be sensitized to such issues so that their participation in such electronic discussion is no longer seen as linguistic training, but as engagement with a cultural practice.

Spelling in adults: The combined influences of language skills and reading experience

One hundred and twelve university students completed 7 tests assessing word-reading accuracy, print exposure, phonological sensitivity, phonological coding and knowledge of English morphology as predictors of spelling accuracy. Together the tests accounted for 71% of the variance in spelling, with phonological skills and morphological knowledge emerging as strong predictors of spelling accuracy for words with both regular and irregular sound-spelling correspondences. The pattern of relationships was consistent with a model in which, as a function of the learning opportunities that are provided by reading experience, phonological skills promote the learning of individual word orthographies and structural relationships among words.