132 resultados para writing skill


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Three methodological limitations in English-Chinese contrastive rhetoric research have been identified in previous research, namely: the failure to control for the quality of L1 data; an inference approach to interpreting the relationship between L1 and L2 writing; and a focus on national cultural factors in interpreting rhetorical differences. Addressing these limitations, the current study examined the presence or absence and placement of thesis statement and topic sentences in four sets of argumentative texts produced by three groups of university students. We found that Chinese students tended to favour a direct/deductive approach in their English and Chinese writing, while native English writers typically adopted an indirect/inductive approach. This study argues for a dynamic and ecological interpretation of rhetorical practices in different languages and cultures.

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This study examines the feedback practices of 110 EFL teachers from five different countries (Cyprus, France, Korea, Spain, and Thailand), working in secondary school contexts. All provided feedback on the same student essay. The coding scheme developed to analyse the feedback operates on two axes: the stance the teachers assumed when providing feedback, and the focus of their feedback. Most teachers reacted as language teachers, rather than as readers of communication. The teachers overwhelmingly focused on grammar in their feedback and assumed what we called a Provider role, providing the correct forms for the student. A second role, Initiator, was also present, in which teachers indicate errors or issues to the learner but expect the learner to pick this up and work on it. This role was associated with a more even spread of feedback focus, where teachers also provided feedback on other areas, such as lexis, style and discourse.

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It is widely assumed that the British are poorer modern foreign language (MFL) learners than their fellow Europeans. Motivation has often been seen as the main cause of this perceived disparity in language learning success. However, there have also been suggestions that curricular and pedagogical factors may play a part. This article reports a research project investigating how German and English 14- to 16-year-old learners of French as a first foreign language compare to one another in their vocabulary knowledge and in the lexical diversity, accuracy and syntactic complexity of their writing. Students from comparable schools in Germany and England were set two writing tasks which were marked by three French native speakers using standardised criteria aligned to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEF). Receptive vocabulary size and lexical diversity were established by the X_lex test and a verb types measure respectively. Syntactic complexity and formal accuracy were respectively assessed using the mean length of T-units (MLTU) and words/error metrics. Students' and teachers' questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to provide information and participants' views on classroom practices, while typical textbooks and feedback samples were analysed to establish differences in materials-related input and feedback in the two countries. The German groups were found to be superior in vocabulary size, and in the accuracy, lexical diversity and overall quality – but not the syntactic complexity – of their writing. The differences in performance outcomes are analysed and discussed with regard to variables related to the educational contexts (e.g. curriculum design and methodology).

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As the Enlightenment drew to a close, translation had gradually acquired an increasingly important role in the international circulation and transmission of scientific knowledge. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the translators responsible for making such accounts accessible in other languages, some of whom were women. In this article I explore how European women cast themselves as intellectually enquiring, knowledgeable and authoritative figures in their translations. Focusing specifically on the genre of scientific travel writing, I investigate the narrative strategies deployed by women translators to mark their involvement in the process of scientific knowledge-making. These strategies ranged from rhetorical near-invisibility, driven by women's modest marginalization of their own public engagement in science, to the active advertisement of themselves as intellectually curious consumers of scientific knowledge. A detailed study of Elizabeth Helme's translation of the French ornithologist Françoise le Vaillant's Voyage dans l'intérieur de l'Afrique [Voyage into the Interior of Africa] (1790) allows me to explore how her reworking of the original text for an Anglophone reading public enabled her to engage cautiously – or sometimes more openly – with questions regarding how scientific knowledge was constructed, for whom and with which aims in mind.

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Extreme variability of the winter- and spring-time stratospheric polar vortex has been shown to affect extratropical tropospheric weather. Therefore, reducing stratospheric forecast error may be one way to improve the skill of tropospheric weather forecasts. In this review, the basis for this idea is examined. A range of studies of different stratospheric extreme vortex events shows that they can be skilfully forecasted beyond five days and into the sub-seasonal range (0-30 days) in some cases. Separate studies show that typical errors in forecasting a stratospheric extreme vortex event can alter tropospheric forecasts skill by 5-7% in the extratropics on sub-seasonal timescales. Thus understanding what limits stratospheric predictability is of significant interest to operational forecasting centres. Both limitations in forecasting tropospheric planetary waves and stratospheric model biases have been shown to be important in this context.

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Although over a hundred thermal indices can be used for assessing thermal health hazards, many ignore the human heat budget, physiology and clothing. The Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) addresses these shortcomings by using an advanced thermo-physiological model. This paper assesses the potential of using the UTCI for forecasting thermal health hazards. Traditionally, such hazard forecasting has had two further limitations: it has been narrowly focused on a particular region or nation and has relied on the use of single ‘deterministic’ forecasts. Here, the UTCI is computed on a global scale,which is essential for international health-hazard warnings and disaster preparedness, and it is provided as a probabilistic forecast. It is shown that probabilistic UTCI forecasts are superior in skill to deterministic forecasts and that despite global variations, the UTCI forecast is skilful for lead times up to 10 days. The paper also demonstrates the utility of probabilistic UTCI forecasts on the example of the 2010 heat wave in Russia.

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This article presents a group of women-authored testimonial texts published between 1959–1989 in revolutionary Cuba. Despite the recent scholarly debates within Latin American Cultural Studies regarding Latin American testimonio, these texts have received little or no critical or theoretical attention within or outside Cuba. The article therefore starts by situating them within the specific context of revolutionary culture, especially with reference to questions of gender, genre and publication. Having established that the texts as a whole privilege the collective revolutionary context and revolutionary experience over gendered or generic aspects, the seven texts are then grouped under a more specific contextual category, as narratives of voluntary work (participation and observation), in order to provide a clearer structure for their description and analysis. Each of the texts is then described within its sub-group, and the article ends by indicating how such texts challenge testimonio paradigms by positing a relational notion of subjectivity.

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