A structural model of cognitive-motivational variables as explanatory factors of academic achievement in Spanish Language and Mathematics

In recent years, several explanatory models have been developed which attempt to analyse the predictive worth of various factors in relation to academic achievement, as well as the direct and indirect effects that they produce. The aim of this study was to examine a structural model incorporating various cognitive and motivational variables which influence student achievement in the two basic core skills in the Spanish curriculum: Spanish Language and Mathematics. These variables included differential aptitudes, specific self-concept, goal orientations, effort and learning strategies. The sample comprised 341 Spanish students in their first year of Compulsory Secondary Education. Various tests and questionnaires were used to assess each student, and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was employed to study the relationships in the initial model. The proposed model obtained a satisfactory fit for the two subjects studied, and all the relationships hypothesised were significant. The variable with the most explanatory power regarding academic achievement was mathematical and verbal aptitude. Also notable was the direct influence of specific self-concept on achievement, goal-orientation and effort, as was the mediatory effect that effort and learning strategies had between academic goals and final achievement.

False anglicisms in the Spanish language of fashion and beauty

Many works have already dealt with anglicisms in Spanish, especially in science and information technologies. However, despite the high and growing number of English terms incorporated daily by the language of fashion, it has received comparative less attention in lexicographic and terminological studies than that of other areas, such as science or business. For several reasons, which include prestige or peer pressure, Spanish has not only adopted English words with new meanings and usage, but also contains other forms based on English patterns which users seem to consider more accurate or expressive. This paper concentrates on false anglicisms as indicators of some of the special relationships and influences between languages arising from the pervasive presence of English. We shall look at the Spanish language of fashion, which, in addition to genuine anglicisms, has for some time been using English words with different meanings, or even created items of its own (or imported them from other languages) with the appearance of English words. These false anglicisms, which have proven extremely popular in receiving languages (not only in Spanish) have frequently been disseminated by youth magazines and the new digital media, both in general spheres and in fashion-specific contexts.

All Is not English that Glitters: False Anglicisms in the Spanish Language of Sports

Over the past decades, many studies have dealt with Anglicisms in Spanish, not only in science and technology, but also in other areas such as business, fashion and even sports. However, in spite of the large number of works on Spanish Anglicisms in sports, these have often disregarded the distinction between Anglicisms and false Anglicisms. Given their importance as evidence of the particular relationships between languages, this article focuses on the use of false Anglicisms in the Spanish language of sports, which has not only adopted English words giving them new meanings and usage, but has also either imported items with an English appearance from other languages or created its own forms based on English patterns. Although these false Anglicisms, which have proven extremely popular in various European languages (not only Spanish), have frequently been used and disseminated, as some examples will prove, little attention has been paid to their differences with the English term or their non-English origin.

Spanish Nursing Students' Practical Experience of Computer Applications in Nursing

This study aimed to determine the level of computer practical experience in a sample of Spanish nursing students. Each student was given a Spanish language questionnaire, modified from an original used previously with medical students at the Medical School of North Carolina University (USA) and also at the Education Unit of Hospital General Universitario del Mar (Spain). The 10-item self-report questionnaire probed for information about practical experience with computers. A total of 126 students made up the sample. The majority were female (80.2%; n=101). The results showed that just over half (57.1%, n=72) of the students had used a computer game (three or more times before), and that only one third (37.3%, n=47) had the experience of using a word processing package. Moreover, other applications and IT-based facilities (e.g. statistical packages, e-mail, databases, CD-ROM searches, programming languages and computer-assisted learning) had never been used by the majority of students. The student nurses' practical experience was less than that reported for medical students in previous studies.

Recognizing and tagging temporal expressions in Spanish

This paper shows a system about the recognition of temporal expressions in Spanish and the resolution of their temporal reference. For the identification and recognition of temporal expressions we have based on a temporal expression grammar and for the resolution on an inference engine, where we have the information necessary to do the date operation based on the recognized expressions. For further information treatment, the output is proposed by means of XML tags in order to add standard information of the resolution obtained. Different kinds of annotation of temporal expressions are explained in another articles [WILSON2001][KATZ2001]. In the evaluation of our proposal we have obtained successful results.

AliQAn, Spanish QA system at multilingual QA@CLEF-2008

Comunicación presentada en Cross-Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2008), Aarhus, Denmark, September 17-19, 2008.

When Spanish owns English words

The English language and the Internet, both separately and taken together, are nowadays well-acknowledged as powerful forces which influence and affect the lexico-grammatical characteristics of other languages world-wide. In fact, many authors like Crystal (2004) have pointed out the emergence of the so-called Netspeak, that is, the language used in the Net or World Wide Web; as Crystal himself (2004: 19) puts it, ‘a type of language displaying features that are unique to the Internet […] arising out of its character as a medium which is electronic, global and interactive’. This ‘language’, however, may be differently understood: either as an adaptation of the English language proper to internet requirements and purposes, or as a new and rapidly-changing and developing language as a result of a rapid evolution or adaptation to Internet requirements of almost all world languages, for whom English is a trendsetter. If the second and probably most plausible interpretation is adopted, there are three salient features of ‘Netspeak’: (a) the rapid expansion of all its new linguistic developments thanks to the Internet itself, which may lead to the generalization and widespread acceptance of new words, coinages, or meanings, hundreds of times faster than was the case with the printed media. As said above, (b) the visible influence of English, the most prevalent language on the Internet. Consequently, (c) this new language tends to reduce the ‘distance’ between English and other languages as well as the ignorance of the former by speakers of other languages, since the ‘Netspeak’ version of the latter adopts grammatical, syntactic and lexical features of English. Thus, linguistic differences may even disappear when code-switching and/or borrowing occurs, as whole fragments of English appear in other language contexts. As a consequence of the new situation, an ideal context appears for interlanguage or multilingual word formation to thrive: puns, blends, compounds and word creativity in general find in the web the ideal place to gain rapid acceptance world-wide, as a result of fashion, coincidence, or sheer merit of the new linguistic proposals.

Estigma social y adopción internacional en España. ¿Es la familia adoptiva un modelo familiar menos «auténtico» que los basados en lazos biológicos?

En España, el fenómeno de las adopciones internacionales irrumpe en la década de 1990. En 2004, se convirtió en el segundo país del mundo que las llevaba a cabo. Con el objetivo de incrementar el conocimiento sociológico sobre la familia adoptiva internacional española, se realizó la encuesta a través de web titulada Las familias adoptivas y sus estilos de vida. A partir de las respuestas ofrecidas por 230 madres y padres adoptivos, se dibuja el perfil sociodemográfico de sus hogares. Estos se caracterizarían por contar con progenitores con elevado nivel formativo, no adscritos a ninguna religión, que defienden políticas de izquierdas y que comparten un sistema de valores posmodernos respecto a la institución familiar. La identificación de la estructura doméstica según su tipo de alianza (biparental o monoparental) y su tipo de filiación (adoptiva o mixta) nos permite situar a la adopción contemporánea como una opción de filiación elegida y no, exclusivamente, como alternativa ante la imposibilidad de tener hijos biológicos. Adicionalmente, los resultados arrojados por la encuesta nos permiten adentrarnos en uno de los aspectos menos abordados en el estudio sociológico de la familia adoptiva: el papel de las actitudes sociales hacia la adopción y su impacto en aquella. La mayoría de los encuestados perciben el estigma social del que es objeto su familia adoptiva, pues, desde su punto de vista, la sociedad las considera como una forma de hogar menos satisfactoria que la basada en lazos biológicos.

Innovative education networking aimed at multimedia tools for geometrical optics learning

We present a purposeful initiative to open new grounds for teaching Geometrical Optics. It is based on the creation of an innovative education networking involving academic staff from three Spanish universities linked together around Optics. Nowadays, students demand online resources such as innovative multimedia tools for complementing the understanding of their studies. Geometrical Optics relies on basics of light phenomena like reflection and refraction and the use of simple optical elements such as mirrors, prisms, lenses, and fibers. The mathematical treatment is simple and the equations are not too complicated. But from our long time experience in teaching to undergraduate students, we realize that important concepts are missed by these students because they do not work ray tracing as they should do. Moreover, Geometrical Optics laboratory is crucial by providing many short Optics experiments and thus stimulating students interest in the study of such a topic. Multimedia applications help teachers to cover those student demands. In that sense, our educational networking shares and develops online materials based on 1) video-tutorials of laboratory experiences and of ray tracing exercises, 2) different online platforms for student self-examinations and 3) computer assisted geometrical optics exercises. That will result in interesting educational synergies and promote student autonomy for learning Optics.

The influence of English on Spanish fashion terminology: -ing forms

As has been the case with other European languages, Spanish has welcomed the arrival of English words, in spite of all purist efforts to the contrary. Moreover, it has not only adopted and adapted true Anglicisms but it has also created other forms based on English patterns, such mechanisms particularly visible in the fashion jargon in Spanish. In this paper we focus on -ing forms in the Spanish language of fashion, which may at times be genuine Anglicisms (formal or semantic ones) or false Anglicisms (analogical creations, that is, English-looking lexical elements), found in Spanish editions of fashion magazines such as Vogue, Elle, InStyle, Grazia, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan. The main aim of this study is to qualitatively analyse and classify -ing Anglicisms and false Anglicisms in the aforementioned jargon in order to establish whether the impact of English in the Spanish fashion jargon is so important as to replace native words and expressions.