Language-universal Sensory Deficits in Developmental Dyslexia: English, Spanish, and Chinese

Studies in sensory neuroscience reveal the critical importance of accurate sensory perception for cognitive development. There is considerable debate concerning the possible sensory correlates of phonological processing, the primary cognitive risk factor for developmental dyslexia. Across languages, children with dyslexia have a specific difficulty with the neural representation of the phonological structure of speech. The identification of a robust sensory marker of phonological difficulties would enable early identification of risk for developmental dyslexia and early targeted intervention. Here, we explore whether phonological processing difficulties are associated with difficulties in processing acoustic cues to speech rhythm. Speech rhythm is used across languages by infants to segment the speech stream into words and syllables. Early difficulties in perceiving auditory sensory cues to speech rhythm and prosody could lead developmentally to impairments in phonology. We compared matched samples of children with and without dyslexia, learning three very different spoken and written languages, English, Spanish, and Chinese. The key sensory cue measured was rate of onset of the amplitude envelope (rise time), known to be critical for the rhythmic timing of speech. Despite phonological and orthographic differences, for each language, rise time sensitivity was a significant predictor of phonological awareness, and rise time was the only consistent predictor of reading acquisition. The data support a language-universal theory of the neural basis of developmental dyslexia on the basis of rhythmic perception and syllable segmentation. They also suggest that novel remediation strategies on the basis of rhythm and music may offer benefits for phonological and linguistic development.

What is Irish Standard English?

Standard English need not be a matter of prescriptivism or any attempt to ‘create’ a particular standard, but, rather, can be a matter of observation of actual linguistic behaviour. For Hudson (2000), standard English is the kind of English which is written in published work, which is spoken in situations where published writing is most influential – especially in university level education and so in post-university professions – and which is spoken ‘natively’ at home by the ‘professional class’, i.e. people who are most influenced by published writing. In the papers in Bex and Watts (eds, 1999), it is recurrently claimed that, when speaking English, what the ‘social group with highest degree of power, wealth or prestige’ or more neutrally ‘educated people’ or ‘socially admired people’ speak is the variety known as ‘standard English’. However, ‘standard English’ may also mean that shared aspect of English which makes global communication possible. This latter perspective allows for two meanings of ‘standard’: it may refer both to an idealised set of shared features, and also to different sets of national features, reflecting different demographic and political histories and language influences. The methodology adopted in the International Corpus of English (henceforth ICE – cf. Greenbaum, 1996) enables us to observe and investigate each set of features, showing what everybody shares and also what makes each national variety of English different.

Unexpected allies: advancing literacy in a ‘Science-English’ cross-curricular context

Critical reading of science-based media reports is an authentic context in which to explore the mutual interests of teachers of science and English, who want to use science in the media to promote their subject discipline while encouraging cross-curricular learning. This empirical study focused on 90 teachers of science and English to explore their aptitude and capability for critical reading of science-based news reports. The influences of specialist subject culture and the extent of classroom experience contributed to the distinctive nature of the responses. The study revealed features in critical reading that were characteristic of the subject background of the participants. It suggested approaches to initial teacher education and ongoing professional development that would be mutually beneficial to teachers from different disciplines in promoting among pupils a critical approach to science-related news media.

An English Source for a Latin Text? Wind Prognostication in Oxford, Bodleian MSS Hatton 115 and Ashmole 345

This article focuses on a type of prognostication that bases its predictions on the behavior of the wind during the twelve nights of Christmas and in particular on the relationship between the Old English version in Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 115, and a fourteenth/fifteenth-century English text in Latin of the same prognostication, which appears in Oxford, Bodleian, Ashmole 345, fol. 69r. The wind prognostication in Ashmole 345 is remarkably similar to the twelfth-century OE version in Hatton 115, fol. 149v, to the extent that one might be tempted to argue for direct transmission, if it were not for the large temporal gap between the two manuscripts and for the fact that the two texts are being transmitted in two different languages. Interestingly the Latin text in A contains an Old English word that may make us reconsider the relationship between the two manuscripts and may shed light on the reception and transmission of Old English and prognostication by the wind between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries in English monastic centers.

Unravelling the migration decision-making process: English early retirees moving to rural mid-Wales

There are established migrant reasons to explain rural in-migration. These include quality of life, rural idyll and lifestyle motivations. However, such one-dimensional sound bites portray rural in-migration in overly simplistic and stereotypical terms. In contrast, this paper distinguishes the decision to move from the reason for moving and in doing so sheds new light on the interconnections between different domains (family, work, finance, health) of the migrant's life which contribute to migration behaviour. Focussing on early retirees to mid-Wales and adopting a life course perspective the overall decision to move is disaggregated into a series of decisions. Giving voices to the migrants themselves demonstrates the combination of life events necessary to lead to migration behaviour, the variable factors (and often economic dominance) considered in the choice of destination (including that many are reluctant migrants to Wales), and the perceived 'accidental' choice of location and/or property. It is argued that quality of life, rural idyll and lifestyle sound bites offer an inadequate understanding of rural in-migration and associated decision-making processes. Moreover, they disguise the true nature of migrant decision making.

Varieties of Economic Crisis, Varieties of Ideational Change: How and Why Macroeconomic Policy and Financial Regulation Differ

One of the principal tasks facing post-crash academic political economy is to analyse patterns of ideational change and the conditions that produce such change. What has been missing from the existing literature on ideational change at times of crises however, is a sense of how processes of persuasive struggle, and how the success of those ‘norm entrepreneurs’ arguing for ideational change is shaped by two contextual variables: the most immediate material symptoms and problems that a crisis displays (the variety of crisis); and the institutional character of the policy subsystem that agents have to operate within to affect change. Introducing these two variables into our accounts of persuasive struggle and ideational change enables us to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of ideational change at times of crisis. The article identifies that a quite rapid and radical intellectual change has been evident in the field of financial regulation in the form of an embrace of a macroprudential frame. In contrast in the field of macroeconomic policy - both monetary and fiscal policy, many pre-crash beliefs remain prominent, there is evidence of ideational stickiness and inertia, and despite some policy experimentation, overarching policy frameworks and their rationales have not been overhauled. The article applies Peter Hall’s framework of three orders of policy changes to help illuminate and explain the variation in patterns of change in the fields of financial regulation and macroeconomic policy since the financial crash of 2008. The different patterns of ideational change in macroeconomic policy and financial regulation in the post-crash period can be explained by timing and variety of crisis; sequencing of policy change; and institutional political differences between micro policy sub systems and macro policy systems.

Beyond the standard work model? Varieties of flexible working time in European economies

Working time has been among the first aspect of the employment relation to be the object of intense regulation at the national and supra-national level. This standard regulation of working time comprised a number of elements: full-time hours, rigid working schedules, strong employers’ control and clear boundaries around working time In spite of general claims about the erosion of this model, few studies have investigated this process in a comparative and empirical perspective. The aim of this paper is to investigate the diversity of working time arrangements in European economies by applying latent class analysis to data
from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS). This analysis shows the existence of six different types of working time organization highlighting five cross-national patterns: multiple flexibilities, extended flexibility, standard, rigid and fragmented time.

Sarcasm Detection on Czech and English Twitter

This paper presents a machine learning approach to sarcasm detection on Twitter in two languages – English and Czech. Although there has been some research in sarcasm detection in languages other than English (e.g., Dutch, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese), our work is the first attempt at sarcasm detection in the Czech language. We created a large Czech Twitter corpus consisting of 7,000 manually-labeled tweets and provide it to the community. We evaluate two classifiers with various combinations of features on both the Czech and English datasets. Furthermore, we tackle the issues of rich Czech morphology by examining different preprocessing techniques. Experiments show that our language-independent approach significantly outperforms adapted state-of-the-art methods in English (F-measure 0.947) and also represents a strong baseline for further research in Czech (F-measure 0.582).

Plain English: Applying Principles to Home School Written Communication Considering Diverse Families

Schools attempting to engage with the families of all learners, including those with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds recognize the importance of effective oral and written communication. The aim of this study is to determine if school generated written communication created by an urban school district serving a culturally and linguistically diverse population in the Northeast of the US adhered to the principles of plain English. This exploratory research examined exemplar pieces of written school generated communication, using different forms of linguistic analysis to determine whether the communication contained elements recognized to facilitate or impede the comprehensibility of each piece of communication. Additionally, a text assessment tool which can help schools to analyze the written text communication they send to families was developed and refined.

English Language Education at University: Trends and Challenges in Teaching and Learning Academic Discourse in the UK

This chapter discusses English Language Education at university and highlights a number of trends and their associated challenges in teaching and learning academic discourse. Academic discourse refers to the ways in which language is used by participants in academia. It encompasses written discourse, from article and book publishing, PhD theses to course assignments; spoken discourse, from study groups, tutorials, conference presentations to inaugural lectures; and more recently, computer-mediated discourse, from asynchronous text-based conferencing to academic blogs. The role of English language educators in preparing students and academics for successful participation in these academic events, or the academy, in English is not to be underestimated. Academic communication is not only vital to an individual’s success at university, but to the maintenance and creation of academic communities and to scientific progress itself (Hyland, 2009). This chapter presents an overview of academic discourse and discusses recent issues which have an impact on teaching and learning English at university and discusses their associated challenges: first, the increasing internationalisation of universities. Second, the emergence of a mobile academe in its broadest sense, in which students and academics move across traditional geopolitical, institutional and disciplinary boundaries, is discussed. Third, the growth of UK transnational higher education is examined as a trend which sees academics and students vicariously or otherwise involved in English language teaching and learning. Fourth, the chapter delves into the rapid and ongoing development in technology assisted and online learning. While responding to trends can be difficult, they can also inspire ingenuity. Furthermore, such trends and challenges will not emerge in the same manner in different contexts. The discussion in this chapter is illustrated with examples from a UK context but the implications of the trends and challenges are such that they reach beyond borders.

'The Blazing Torch': New Light on English Balladry as a Multi-Media Matrix

This paper investigates the inter-twining histories of two highly successful broadside ballads during the seventeenth century. Neither has been systematically studied before. A set of cultural relationships is opened for consideration by these songs: first, between the two ballads, which are different in several ways but set to the same tune; second, between the selected songs and other ballads on comparable themes; and third, between different editions of the two featured songs. In discussing each of these relationships, attention is paid not only to the texts but to the pictures and the tunes that helped to bring balladry to life for early-modern consumers. It is argued that balladry should be studied as an interconnected web and that individual publications drew significance from the manner in which they associated themselves – through shared pictures, tunes and narratives – with other examples of the genre.

The discrepancy between social isolation and loneliness as a clinically meaningful metric: findings from the Irish and English longitudinal studies of ageing (TILDA and ELSA)

Objective
Scant evidence is available on the discordance between loneliness and social isolation among older adults. We aimed to investigate this discordance and any health implications that it may have.

Method
Using nationally representative datasets from ageing cohorts in Ireland (TILDA) and England (ELSA), we created a metric of discordance between loneliness and social isolation, to which we refer as Social Asymmetry. This metric was the categorised difference between standardised scores on a scale of loneliness and a scale of social isolation, giving categories of: Concordantly Lonely and Isolated, Discordant: Robust to Loneliness, or Discordant: Susceptible to Loneliness. We used regression and multilevel modelling to identify potential relationships between Social Asymmetry and cognitive outcomes.

Results
Social Asymmetry predicted cognitive outcomes cross-sectionally and at a two-year follow-up, such that Discordant: Robust to Loneliness individuals were superior performers, but we failed to find evidence for Social Asymmetry as a predictor of cognitive trajectory over time.

Conclusions
We present a new metric and preliminary evidence of a relationship with clinical outcomes. Further research validating this metric in different populations, and evaluating its relationship with other outcomes, is warranted.

Welcome to the Occupation: Patterns in the Management of the Fourteenth-Century English Landscape

Occupation of the landscape took many different forms and is one of the predominant ways of viewing settlement within the medieval world. Buildings are the most effective method of occupying space, both physically and psychologically. This paper will draw on current research into fourteenth century manorial buildings in England and explore how they were used to occupy both the landscape and the communities associated with them.