Language and mobility : unexpected places [Book Review]

Language and Mobility is the latest monograph by Alastair Pennycook. It is part of the series, Critical Language and Literacy Studies. Co-edited by Pennycook, along with Brian Morgan and Ryuko Kubota, the series looks at relations of power in diverse worlds of language and literacy. As the title indicates, Pennycook’s own volume explores the idea of language turning up in ‘unexpected’ places, for example, Cornish in Moonta, South Australia, a century or two after it supposedly died with its last speaker. Why is it, Pennycook asks, that we expect to find a (particular form of a) language in a particular place? This question is generated by a critical project that seeks to leverage the educational potential of everyday moments of language use...

Spiritual wisdom of Taoism in business : through the lens of interpretation realism in a Cisco end-to-end case study

This paper explores how the amalgamated wisdom of East and West can instigate a wisdombased renaissance of humanistic epistemology (Rooney & McKenna, 2005) to provide a platform of harmony in managing knowledge-worker productivity, one of the biggest management challenges of the 21st century (Drucker, 1999). The paper invites further discussions from the social and business research communities on the significance of "interpretation realism" technique in comprehending philosophies of Lao Tzu Confucius and Sun Tzu (Lao/Confucius/Sun] written in "Classical Chinese." This paper concludes with a call to build prudent, responsible practices in management which affects the daily lives of many (Rooney & McKenna, 2005) in today's knowledgebased economy. Interpretation Realism will be applied to an analysis of three Chinese classics of Lao/Confucius/Sun which have been embodied in the Chinese culture for over 2,500 years. Comprehending Lao/Confucius/Sun's philosophies is the first step towards understanding Classical Chinese culture. However, interpreting Chinese subtlety in language and the yin and yang circular synthesis in their mode of thinking is very different to understanding Western thought with its open communication and its linear, analytical pattern of Aristotelian/Platonic wisdom (Zuo, 2012). Furthermore, Eastern ways of communication are relatively indirect and mediatory in culture. Western ways of communication are relatively direct and litigious in culture (Goh, 2002). Furthermore, Lao/Confucius/Sun's philosophies are difficult to comprehend as there are four written Chinese formats and over 250 dialects: Pre-classical Chinese Classical Chinese Literary Chinese and modern Vernacular Chinese Because Classical Chinese is poetic, comprehension requires a mixed approach of interpretation realism combining logical reasoning behind "word splitting word occurrences", "empathetic metaphor" and "poetic appreciation of word.

Learner autonomy in language learning : teachers' beliefs

This case study research investigated the extent to which Vietnamese teachers understood the concept of learner autonomy and how their beliefs about this concept were applied in their teaching practices. Data were collected through two phases of the study and revealed that teachers generally lacked understanding about learner autonomy; there was an alignment between this lack of understanding and teachers' actual teaching practices regarding learner autonomy. The findings of this study will provide teachers and policy-makers new insights into learner autonomy against the backdrop of educational reforms in Vietnam.

Book Review: "Language, literacy, and pedagogy in postindustrial societies : the case of black academic underachievement"

Mocombe and Tomlin’s Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Postindustrial Societies: The Case of Black Academic Underachievement is part of the Routledge Research in Education series. The purpose of the work is to set out a theoretical framework for understanding the black/white academic achievement gap in the age of globalisation and post-industrialism. The authors use each chapter to develop an explanation for the persistent black/white academic achievement gap, by theorising that the gap is an epiphenomenon of global capitalist, post-industrial structures, reinforced by education as an apparatus of the system...

The Language : Rationale and Fundamentals

The Business Process Management domain has evolved at a dramatic pace over the past two decades and the notion of the business process has become a ubiquitous part of the modern business enterprise. Most organizations now view their operations in terms of business processes and manage these business processes in the same way as other corporate assets. In recent years, an increasingly broad range of generic technology has become available for automating business processes. This is part of a growing trend in the software engineering field throughout the past 40 years, where aspects of functionality that are potentially reusable on a widespread basis have coalesced into generic software components. Figure 2.1 illustrates this trend and shows how software systems have evolved from the monolithic applications of the 1960s developed in their entirety often by a single development team to today’s offerings that are based on the integration of a range of generic technologies with only a small component of the application actually being developed from scratch. In the 1990s, generic functionality for the automation of business processes first became commercially available in the form of workflow technology and subsequently evolved in the broader field of business process management systems (BPMS). This technology alleviated the necessity to develop process support within applications from scratch and provided a variety of off-the-shelf options on which these requirements could be based. The demand for this technology was significant and it is estimated that by 2000 there were well over 200 distinct workflow offerings in the market, each with a distinct conceptual foundation. Anticipating the difficulties that would be experienced by organizations seeking to utilize and integrate distinct workflow offerings, the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), an industry group formed to advance technology in this area, proposed a standard reference model for workflow technology with an express desire to seek a common platform for achieving workflow interoperation.

Generating natural language texts from business process models

Process Modeling is a widely used concept for understanding, documenting and also redesigning the operations of organizations. The validation and usage of process models is however affected by the fact that only business analysts fully understand them in detail. This is in particular a problem because they are typically not domain experts. In this paper, we investigate in how far the concept of verbalization can be adapted from object-role modeling to process models. To this end, we define an approach which automatically transforms BPMN process models into natural language texts and combines different techniques from linguistics and graph decomposition in a flexible and accurate manner. The evaluation of the technique is based on a prototypical implementation and involves a test set of 53 BPMN process models showing that natural language texts can be generated in a reliable fashion.

No more 'Ants on the Apple' please : busting the phoneme/alphabet myth

Let’s face it, English is a complex language! I’m stating the obvious when I say that reading and writing (spelling) English is no walk in the park. The main source of difficulty comes from the fact that the English language uses 26 alphabet letters to make 40+ sounds (phonemes) represented via 120+ different written combinations. I’ve been rather vague about the number of phonemes and written combinations, for they keep growing as foreign language words are adopted and adapted into the English language.

Broken gates and leaky graves : spectral language and Australia's ghost stories

Ghost stories are unusual amongst supernatural literatures in their modelling of a recognisable, mimetic reality interrupted or infiltrated by immaterial forces. In its discussion of Australian ghost stories, this thesis advances a new approach to ghost narratives which seeks to model and articulate the mechanics of ghosts and hauntings as something reliant on and engaged with the material and the mundane.

Written in code : diversity and the new genetics

Modern genetic research holds out the promise of a bold new future in which humanity has identified and conquered the genetic roots of many diseases. Genetic science also promises to shed light on who we are, what it is that makes us tick, what it is that makes us the way we are — in short, what it is that makes us human. Yet while genetics are a potential saviour (saving us from disease), it also appears as a threat that at the extremes appears to be the stuff of our worst nightmares, such as the prospect, probably more imagined than real, of rows of cloned individuals. The new genetics hold out the promise that through genetics we will be able to determine what we are, a promise that is simultaneously appealing and terrifying. This chapter discusses the cloning of people and parts, the law’s response to cloning, genetics and diversity, a framework for law reform.

Understanding the information literacy experiences of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students

This thesis investigated the information literacy experiences of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students in a higher education institution in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Phenomenography was used to investigate how EFL students' 'used information to learn' (ie. information literacy). The study revealed that EFL students' experienced information literacy across four categories and had varying experiences of information and learning. The research also showed that EFL students' faced a number of challenges and barriers due to language that impacted on their experiences of reading, understanding, accessing and translating information.

Facilitating query decomposition in query language modeling by association rule mining using multiple sliding windows

This paper presents a novel framework to further advance the recent trend of using query decomposition and high-order term relationships in query language modeling, which takes into account terms implicitly associated with different subsets of query terms. Existing approaches, most remarkably the language model based on the Information Flow method are however unable to capture multiple levels of associations and also suffer from a high computational overhead. In this paper, we propose to compute association rules from pseudo feedback documents that are segmented into variable length chunks via multiple sliding windows of different sizes. Extensive experiments have been conducted on various TREC collections and our approach significantly outperforms a baseline Query Likelihood language model, the Relevance Model and the Information Flow model.

Design of a garment for data collection of toddler language and physical activity

Design process phases of development, evaluation and implementation were used to create a garment to simultaneously collect reliable data of speech production and intensity of movement of toddlers (18-36 months). A series of prototypes were developed and evaluated that housed accelerometer-based motion sensors and a digital transmitter with microphone. The approved test garment was a top constructed from loop-faced fabric with interior pockets to house devices. Extended side panels allowed for sizing. In total, 56 toddlers (28 male; 28 female; 16-36 months of age) participated in the study providing pilot and baseline data. The test garment was effective in collecting data as evaluated for accuracy and reliability using ANOVA for accelerometer data, transcription of video for type of movement, and number and length of utterances for speech production. The data collection garment has been implemented in various studies across disciplines.