Coming into an inheritance : family support and Chinese heritage language learning

The critical role that family plays in Chinese Heritage Language learning has gained increasing attention from psychological, political and sociological scholarship. Guided by Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’, our mixed methods sociological study firstly addresses the need for quantitative evidence on the relationship between family support and Chinese Heritage Language proficiency through a survey of 230 young Chinese Australians; and then explores the dynamics of family support of Chinese Heritage Language learning through multiple interviews with five participants. The interview data demonstrate ongoing intergenerational reproduction of Chinese Heritage Language through various forms of family inculcation. Learners’ transition from resistance to commitment is a focus of the analysis. Extant research struggles to theorise the reasons behind this transition. We offer a Bourdieusian explanation that construes the transition as ‘habitus realisation’. Our study has implications for Chinese Heritage Language researchers, Chinese immigrant parents and Chinese teachers.

Entrepreneurship and family firms : a case study in growth and survival

Entrepreneurial marketing has gained popularity in both the entrepreneurship and marketing disciplines in recent times. The success of ventures that have pursued what are considered non-traditional marketing approaches has been attributed to entrepreneurial marketing practices. Despite the multitude of marketing concepts and models, there are prominent venture successes that do not conform to these and have thus been put in the ''entrepreneurial'' box. One only has to look to the ''Virgin'' model to put this in context. Branson has proven for example that not ''sticking to the knitting'' can work with the ways the Virgin portfolio has been diversified. Consequently, an entrepreneurial orientation is considered a desirable philosophy and has become prominent in such industries as airlines and information technology. Miles and Arnold (1991) found that entrepreneurial orientation is positively correlated to marketing orientation. They propose that entrepreneurial orientation is a strategic response by firms to turbulence in the environment. While many marketing successes are analysed in hindsight using traditional marketing concepts and strategies, there are those that challenge standard marketing textbook recommendations. Marketing strategy is often viewed as a process of targeting, segmenting and positioning (STP). Academics and consultants advocate this approach along with the marketing and business plans. The reality however is that a number of businesses do not practice these and pursue alternative approaches. Other schools of thought and business models have been developing to explain differences in orientation such as branding (Keller 2001), the service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch 2004) and effectuation logic (Sarasvathy 2001). This indicates that scholars are now looking to cognate fields to explain a given phenomenon beyond their own disciplines. Bucking this trend is a growing number of researchers working at the interface between entrepreneurship and marketing. There is now an emerging body of work dedicated to this interface, hence the development of entrepreneurial marketing as an alternative to the traditional approaches. Hills and Hultman (2008:3) define entrepreneurial marketing as ''a spirit, an orientation as well as a process of passionately pursuing opportunities and launching and growing ventures that create perceived customer value through relationships by employing innovativeness, creativity, selling, market immersion, networking and flexibility.'' Although it started as a special interest group, entrepreneurial marketing is now gaining recognition in mainstream entrepreneurship and marketing literature. For example new marketing textbooks now incorporate an entrepreneurial marketing focus (Grewal and Levy 2008). The purpose of this paper is to explore what entrepreneurial approaches are used by entrepreneurs and their impact on the success of marketing activities. Methodology/Key Propositions In order to investigate this, we employ two cases: 42Below, vodka producers from New Zealand and Penderyn Distillery, whisky distillers from Wales. The cases were chosen based on the following criteria. Firstly, both companies originate from small economies. Secondly, both make products (spirits) from locations that are not traditionally regarded as producers of their flagship products and thirdly, the two companies are different from each other in terms of their age. Penderyn is an old company established in 1882, whereas 42Below was founded only in 1999. Vodka has never been associated with New Zealand. By the same token, whisky has always been associated with Scotland and Ireland but never been with Wales. Both companies defied traditional stereotypes in marketing their flagship products and found international success. Using a comparative a case study approach, we use Covin and Slevin's (1989) set of items that purport to measure entrepreneurial orientation and apply a qualitative lens on the approaches of both companies. These are: 1. cultural emphases on innovation and R&D 2. high rate of new product introduction 3. bold, innovative product development 4. initiator proactive posture 5. first to introduce new technologies and products 6. competitive posture toward competitor 7. strong prolictivity for high risk, high return projects 8. environment requires boldness to achieve objectives 9. when faced with risk, adopts aggressive, bold posture. Results and Implications We find that both companies have employed entrepreneurial marketing approaches but with different intensities. While acknowledging that they are different from the norm, the specifics of their individual approaches are dissimilar. Both companies have positioned their products at the premium end of their product categories and have emphasised quality and awards in their communication strategies. 42Below has carved an image of irreverence and being non-conformist. They have unashamedly utilised viral marketing and entered international markets by training bartenders and hosting unconventional events. They use edgy language such as vodka university, vodka professors and vodka ambassadors. Penderyn Distillery has taken a more traditional approach to marketing its products and portraying romantic images of age-old tradition of distilling as key to their positioning. Both companies enjoy success as evidenced by industry awards and international acclaim.

Literacy, numeracy and learning in school-aged children identified as having speech and language impairment in early childhood

The progress of a nationally representative sample of 3632 children was followed from early childhood through to primary school, using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). The aim was to examine the predictive effects of different aspects of communicative ability, and of early vs. sustained identification of speech and language impairment, on children's achievement and adjustment at school. Four indicators identified speech and language impairment: parent-rated expressive language concern; parent-rated receptive language concern; use of speech-language pathology services; below average scores on the adapted Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III. School outcomes were assessed by teachers' ratings of language/literacy ability, numeracy/mathematical thinking and approaches to learning. Comparison of group differences, using ANOVA, provided clear evidence that children who were identified as having speech and language impairment in their early childhood years did not perform as well at school, two years later, as their non-impaired peers on all three outcomes: Language and Literacy, Mathematical Thinking, and Approaches to Learning. The effects of early speech and language status on literacy, numeracy, and approaches to learning outcomes were similar in magnitude to the effect of family socio-economic factors, after controlling for child characteristics. Additionally, early identification of speech and language impairment (at age 4-5) was found to be a better predictor of school outcomes than sustained identification (at aged 4-5 and 6-7 years). Parent-reports of speech and language impairment in early childhood are useful in foreshadowing later difficulties with school and providing early intervention and targeted support from speech-language pathologists and specialist teachers.

English language study abroad program : an investigation of Hong Kong pre-service teachers’ experiences of a language immersion program

There has been minimal research focused on short-term study abroad language immersion programs, in particular, with home-stay families. The importance of authentic intercultural experience is increasingly clear and was acknowledged as central to the process of language learning (Liddicoat, 2004). In Hong Kong, education programs for pre-service language teachers have significantly emphasised language and intercultural training through short-term study abroad, and these short overseas language immersion courses have become a compulsory component for teacher training (Bodycott & Crew, 2001) in the last decade. This study aims to investigate eight Hong Kong pre-service teachers’ and their home-stay families’ experiences of a short-term (two months) language immersion program in Australia. The focus is on listening to commentaries concerning the development of communicative competence, intercultural competence and professional growth during the out-of-class study abroad experience. The conceptual framework adopted in this study views language and intercultural learning from social constructivist perspectives. Central to this framing is the notion that the internalisation of higher mental functions involves the transfer from the inter-psychological to the intra-psychological plane, that is, a progression process from the socially supported to individually controlled performance. From this perspective, language serves as a way to communicate about, and in relation to, actions and experience. Three research questions were addressed and studied through qualitative methodology. 1. How do the pre-service teachers and their home-stay families perceive the out-of-class component of the program in terms of opportunities for the development of language proficiency and communicative competence? 2. How do the pre-service teachers and their home-stay families perceive the out-of-class component of the program in terms of the development of intercultural competence? 3. How do the pre-service teachers and home-stay families perceive the outof- class component of the program in terms of teachers’ professional growth? Data were generated from multiple data collection methods and analysed through thematic analysis from both a “bottom up” and “top down” approach. The study showed that the pre-service teachers perceived that the immersion program influenced, to varying degrees, their language proficiency, communication and intercultural awareness, as well as their self-awareness and professional growth. These pre-service teachers believed that effective language learning centres on active engagement in the target language community. A mismatch between the views and evaluations of the two groups – the pre-service teachers and the home-stay family members – provides some evidence of misalignments in terms of expectations and perceptions of each other’s roles and responsibilities. The study has highlighted challenges encountered, and provided suggestions for ways of meeting these challenges. The inclusion in the study of the home-stay families’ perceptions and commentaries provided insights, which can inform program development. There is clearly further work to be done in terms of predeparture orientation and preparation, not only for the main participants themselves, the students, but also for the host families.

Query expansion using term relationships in language models for information retrieval

Language Modeling (LM) has been successfully applied to Information Retrieval (IR). However, most of the existing LM approaches only rely on term occurrences in documents, queries and document collections. In traditional unigram based models, terms (or words) are usually considered to be independent. In some recent studies, dependence models have been proposed to incorporate term relationships into LM, so that links can be created between words in the same sentence, and term relationships (e.g. synonymy) can be used to expand the document model. In this study, we further extend this family of dependence models in the following two ways: (1) Term relationships are used to expand query model instead of document model, so that query expansion process can be naturally implemented; (2) We exploit more sophisticated inferential relationships extracted with Information Flow (IF). Information flow relationships are not simply pairwise term relationships as those used in previous studies, but are between a set of terms and another term. They allow for context-dependent query expansion. Our experiments conducted on TREC collections show that we can obtain large and significant improvements with our approach. This study shows that LM is an appropriate framework to implement effective query expansion.

Supporting children's language and literacy skills : the effectiveness of shared book reading intervention strategies with parents

Parents are encouraged to read with their children from an early age because shared book reading helps children to develop their language and early literacy skills. A pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) research design was adopted to investigate the influence of two forms of a shared reading intervention (Dialogic Reading and Dialogic Reading with the addition of Print Referencing) on children’s language and literacy skills. Dialogic reading is a validated shared reading intervention that has been shown to improve children’s oral language skills prior to formal schooling (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). Print referencing is another form of shared reading intervention that has the potential to have effects on children’s print knowledge as they begin school (Justice & Ezell, 2002). However, training parents to use print referencing strategies at home has not been researched extensively although research findings indicate its effectiveness when used by teachers in the early years of school. Eighty parents of Preparatory year children from three Catholic schools in low income areas in the outer suburbs of a metropolitan city were trained to deliver specific shared reading strategies in an eight-week home intervention. Parents read eight books to their children across the period of the intervention. Each book was requested to be read at least three times a week. There were 42 boys and 38 girls ranging in age from 4.92 years to 6.25 years (M=5.53, SD=0.33) in the sample. The families were randomly assigned to three groups: Dialogic Reading (DR); Dialogic Reading with the addition of Print Referencing (DR + PR); and a Control group. Six measures were used to assess children’s language skills at pre and post, and follow-up (three months after the intervention). These measures assessed oral language (receptive and expressive vocabulary), phonological awareness skills (rhyme, word completion), alphabet knowledge, and concepts about print. Results of the intervention showed that there were significant differences from pre to post between the two intervention groups and the control group on three measures: expressive vocabulary, rhyme, and concepts about print. The shared reading strategies delivered by parents of the dialogic reading, and dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing, showed promising results to develop children’s oral language skills in terms of expressive vocabulary and rhyme, as well as understanding of the concepts about print. At follow-up, when the children entered Year 1, the two intervention groups (DR and DR + PR) group had significantly maintained their knowledge of concepts about prints when compared with the control group. Overall, the findings from this intervention study did not show that dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing had stronger effects on children’s early literacy skills than dialogic reading alone. The research also explored if pre-existing family factors impacted on the outcomes of the intervention from pre to post. The relationships between maternal education and home reading practices prior to intervention and child outcomes at post were considered. However, there were no significant effects of maternal education and home literacy activities on child outcomes at post. Additionally, there were no significant effects for the level of compliance of parents with the intervention program in terms of regular weekly reading to children during the intervention period on child outcomes at post. These non-significant findings are attributed to the lack of variability in the recruited sample. Parents participating in the intervention had high levels of education, although they were recruited from schools in low socio-economic areas; parents were already highly engaged in home literacy activities at recruitment; and the parents were highly compliant in reading regularly to their child during the intervention. Findings of the current study did show that training in shared reading strategies enhanced children’s early language and literacy skills. Both dialogic reading and dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing improved children’s expressive vocabulary, rhyme, and concepts about print at post intervention. Further research is needed to identify how, and if, print referencing strategies used by parents at home can be effective over and above the use of dialogic reading strategies. In this research, limitations of sample size and the nature of the intervention to use print referencing strategies at home may have restricted the opportunities for this research study to find more effects on children’s emergent literacy skills or for the effectiveness of combining dialogic reading with print referencing strategies. However, these results did indicate that there was value in teaching parents to implement shared reading strategies at home in order to improve early literacy skills as children begin formal schooling.

Family-based programmes for preventing smoking by children and adolescents (Review)

Background There is evidence that family and friends influence children's decisions to smoke. Objectives To assess the effectiveness of interventions to help families stop children starting smoking. Search methods We searched 14 electronic bibliographic databases, including the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group specialized register, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL unpublished material, and key articles' reference lists. We performed free-text internet searches and targeted searches of appropriate websites, and hand-searched key journals not available electronically. We consulted authors and experts in the field. The most recent search was 3 April 2014. There were no date or language limitations. Selection criteria Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of interventions with children (aged 5-12) or adolescents (aged 13-18) and families to deter tobacco use. The primary outcome was the effect of the intervention on the smoking status of children who reported no use of tobacco at baseline. Included trials had to report outcomes measured at least six months from the start of the intervention. Data collection and analysis We reviewed all potentially relevant citations and retrieved the full text to determine whether the study was an RCT and matched our inclusion criteria. Two authors independently extracted study data for each RCT and assessed them for risk of bias. We pooled risk ratios using a Mantel-Haenszel fixed effect model. Main results Twenty-seven RCTs were included. The interventions were very heterogeneous in the components of the family intervention, the other risk behaviours targeted alongside tobacco, the age of children at baseline and the length of follow-up. Two interventions were tested by two RCTs, one was tested by three RCTs and the remaining 20 distinct interventions were tested only by one RCT. Twenty-three interventions were tested in the USA, two in Europe, one in Australia and one in India. The control conditions fell into two main groups: no intervention or usual care; or school-based interventions provided to all participants. These two groups of studies were considered separately. Most studies had a judgement of 'unclear' for at least one risk of bias criteria, so the quality of evidence was downgraded to moderate. Although there was heterogeneity between studies there was little evidence of statistical heterogeneity in the results. We were unable to extract data from all studies in a format that allowed inclusion in a meta-analysis. There was moderate quality evidence family-based interventions had a positive impact on preventing smoking when compared to a no intervention control. Nine studies (4810 participants) reporting smoking uptake amongst baseline non-smokers could be pooled, but eight studies with about 5000 participants could not be pooled because of insufficient data. The pooled estimate detected a significant reduction in smoking behaviour in the intervention arms (risk ratio [RR] 0.76, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.68 to 0.84). Most of these studies used intensive interventions. Estimates for the medium and low intensity subgroups were similar but confidence intervals were wide. Two studies in which some of the 4487 participants already had smoking experience at baseline did not detect evidence of effect (RR 1.04, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.17). Eight RCTs compared a combined family plus school intervention to a school intervention only. Of the three studies with data, two RCTS with outcomes for 2301 baseline never smokers detected evidence of an effect (RR 0.85, 95% CI 0.75 to 0.96) and one study with data for 1096 participants not restricted to never users at baseline also detected a benefit (RR 0.60, 95% CI 0.38 to 0.94). The other five studies with about 18,500 participants did not report data in a format allowing meta-analysis. One RCT also compared a family intervention to a school 'good behaviour' intervention and did not detect a difference between the two types of programme (RR 1.05, 95% CI 0.80 to 1.38, n = 388). No studies identified any adverse effects of intervention. Authors' conclusions There is moderate quality evidence to suggest that family-based interventions can have a positive effect on preventing children and adolescents from starting to smoke. There were more studies of high intensity programmes compared to a control group receiving no intervention, than there were for other compairsons. The evidence is therefore strongest for high intensity programmes used independently of school interventions. Programmes typically addressed family functioning, and were introduced when children were between 11 and 14 years old. Based on this moderate quality evidence a family intervention might reduce uptake or experimentation with smoking by between 16 and 32%. However, these findings should be interpreted cautiously because effect estimates could not include data from all studies. Our interpretation is that the common feature of the effective high intensity interventions was encouraging authoritative parenting (which is usually defined as showing strong interest in and care for the adolescent, often with rule setting). This is different from authoritarian parenting (do as I say) or neglectful or unsupervised parenting.

Continuity and change in family engagement in home learning activities across the early years

This research utilised data from The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and explored continuity and change in parental engagement in home learning activities with young children. The findings indicated a decrease over time in parental engagement with children, from age to 2-3 years to 6-7 years. Rate of decrease impacted negatively on learning outcomes for language and literacy, and mathematical thinking, in the early years of school, when children were aged 6-7 years. Shared reading with children and interactions around everyday home activities and play, in which children and parents participate together, impact on children's later development.

Multilingualism and speech-language competence in early childhood: Impact on academic and social-emotional outcomes at school

This large-scale longitudinal population study provided a rare opportunity to consider the interface between multilingualism and speech-language competence on children’s academic and social-emotional outcomes and to determine whether differences between groups at 4 to 5 years persist, deepen, or disappear with time and schooling. Four distinct groups were identified from the Kindergarten cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) (1) English-only + typical speech and language (n = 2,012); (2) multilingual + typical speech and language (n = 476); (3) English-only + speech and language concern (n = 643); and (4) multilingual + speech and language concern (n = 109). Two analytic approaches were used to compare these groups. First, a matched case-control design was used to randomly match multilingual children with speech and language concern (group 4, n = 109) to children in groups 1, 2, and 3 on gender, age, and family socio-economic position in a cross-sectional comparison of vocabulary, school readiness, and behavioral adjustment. Next, analyses were applied to the whole sample to determine longitudinal effects of group membership on teachers’ ratings of literacy, numeracy, and behavioral adjustment at ages 6 to 7 and 8 to 9 years. At 4 to 5 years, multilingual children with speech and language concern did equally well or better than English-only children (with or without speech and language concern) on school readiness tests but performed more poorly on measures of English vocabulary and behavior. At ages 6 to 7 and 8 to 9, the early gap between English-only and multilingual children had closed. Multilingualism was not found to contribute to differences in literacy and numeracy outcomes at school; instead, outcomes were more related to concerns about children’s speech and language in early childhood. There were no group differences for socio-emotional outcomes. Early evidence for the combined risks of multilingualism plus speech and language concern was not upheld into the school years.

The Expanded Human Kallikrein (KLK) gene family : genomic organisation, tissue specific expression and potential functions

The tissue kallikreins are serine proteases encoded by highly conserved multigene families. The rodent kallikrein (KLK) families are particularly large, consisting of 13 26 genes clustered in one chromosomal locus. It has been recently recognised that the human KLK gene family is of a similar size (15 genes) with the identification of another 12 related genes (KLK4-KLK15) within and adjacent to the original human KLK locus (KLK1-3) on chromosome 19q13.4. The structural organisation and size of these new genes is similar to that of other KLK genes except for additional exons encoding 5 or 3 untranslated regions. Moreover, many of these genes have multiple mRNA transcripts, a trait not observed with rodent genes. Unlike all other kallikreins, the KLK4-KLK15 encoded proteases are less related (25–44%) and do not contain a conventional kallikrein loop. Clusters of genes exhibit high prostatic (KLK2-4, KLK15) or pancreatic (KLK6-13) expression, suggesting evolutionary conservation of elements conferring tissue specificity. These genes are also expressed, to varying degrees, in a wider range of tissues suggesting a functional involvement of these newer human kallikrein proteases in a diverse range of physiological processes.

Experiences with an Object-Oriented, Multi-Stage Language

Metaphor is a multi-stage programming language extension to an imperative, object-oriented language in the style of C# or Java. This paper discusses some issues we faced when applying multi-stage language design concepts to an imperative base language and run-time environment. The issues range from dealing with pervasive references and open code to garbage collection and implementing cross-stage persistence.