Demotivation: Understanding Resistance to English Language Learning - The Case of Vietnamese Students

Demotivation in English language learning was investigated, using Vietnam as a case study, with three main foci: (i) the reasons (i.e., the demotives) underlying demotivation; (ii) the degree of influence of different demotives; and (iii) students’ experiences in overcoming demotivation. Using stimulated recall essays from 100 university students of their foreign language learning experiences, the findings indicated that demotivation was a significant issue for EFL learning, and a framework for discussing the different sources of demotives was developed. While some categories of demotives occurred more frequent than others, no category appeared to be more or less difficult to overcome. Rather, students’ awareness of the role of English language and their determination to succeed were critical factors in overcoming demotivation.

Acquisition of the English article system in SLA and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis

This paper examines the article system in interlanguage grammar focusing on Japanese learners of English, whose native language lacks articles. It will be demonstrated that for the acquisition of the English article system, count/mass distinctions and definiteness are the crucial factors. Although Japanese does not employ the article system to encode these aspects, it will be argued that they are nevertheless syntactically encoded through its classifier system. Hence, the problem for these learners must be to map these features onto the appropriate surface forms as the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis predicts (Prévost & White 2000). This suggestion will further be supported empirically by a fill-in-the article task. It will be concluded that these Japanese learners understand the English article system fairly well, possibly due to their native language, yet have problems with realizing the relevant features (i.e. count/mass distinctions and definiteness) in the target language.

Hypercapitalism: New media, language, and social perceptions of value

Every day trillions of dollars circulate the globe in a digital data space and new forms of property and ownership emerge. Massive corporate entities with a global reach are formed and disappear with breathtaking speed, making and breaking personal fortunes the size of which defy imagination. Fictitious commodities abound. The genomes of entire nations have become corporately owned. Relationships have become the overt basis of economic wealth and political power. Hypercapitalism explores the problems of understanding this emergent form of global political economic organization by focusing on the internal relations between language, new media networks, and social perceptions of value. Taking an historical approach informed by Marx, Phil Graham draws upon writings in political economy, media studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, and critical social science to understand the development, roots, and trajectory of the global system in which every possible aspect of human existence, including imagined futures, has become a commodity form.

A promoter from sugarcane bacilliform badnavirus drives transgene expression in banana and other monocot and dicot plants

A 1369 bp DNA fragment (Sc) was isolated from a full-length clone of sugarcane bacilliform badnavirus (ScBV) and was shown to have promoter activity in transient expression assays using monocot (banana, maize, millet and sorghum) and dicot plant species (tobacco, sunflower, canola and Nicotiana benthamiana). This promoter was also tested for stable expression in transgenic banana and tobacco plants. These experiments showed that this promoter could drive high-level expression of the beta-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter gene in most plant cells. The expression level was comparable to the maize ubiquitin promoter in standardised transient assays in maize. In transgenic banana plants the expression levels were variable for different transgenic lines but was generally comparable with the activities of both the maize ubiquitin promoter and the enhanced cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S promoter. The Sc promoter appears to express in a near-constitutive manner in transgenic banana and tobacco plants. The promoter from sugarcane bacilliform virus represents a useful tool for the high-level expression of foreign genes in both monocot and dicot transgenic plants that could be used similarly to the CaMV 35S or maize polyubiquitin promoter.

Modern Society and Culture in Brazil The Sociology of Florestan Fernandes

The establishment of modern sociology in Brazil was part of a thoroughgoing modernization of the country that began in the 1930s and the years immediately following World War II. The founding of the University of Sao Paulo made possible the systematic training of scientists devoted to teaching and research and broadened the way learning was understood. Florestan Fernandes was the outstanding personality among the first social scientists that the university produced, and the picture of the Brazilian sociologist today is largely inspired by his career. Enthusiasm and scientific rigor were the hallmarks of his approach. His early work reflects intellectuals` shared belief in the power of ideas to regenerate the nation, freeing it from a past that they condemned. The mature reflection of his later works retreats from this optimistic view, recognizing the emergence of modern society in Brazil as a complex process with mixed results.

Frequency of HLA-B27 and its alleles in patients with Reiter syndrome: comparison with the frequency in other spondyloarthropathies and a healthy control population

This retrospective study analyzed the HLA-B*27 alleles in a group of 20 consecutive patients with the diagnosis of Reiter syndrome (RS) followed in a tertiary referral university hospital in Brazil, during the period 1990-2006, and compared the data with that observed in other patients with spondyloarthropathies followed at the same institution. Eight cases were associated to gastrointestinal infection, eight cases to previous urethritis, and four cases presented no established preceding infection. HLA-B*27 alleles were typed by polymerase chain reaction-amplified DNA hybridized with sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes (HLA-B*2701 to HLA-B*2721). They were compared to a group of 108 patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), 40 with undifferentiated spondyloarthropathy (uSpA) and 111 healthy controls. Among the 20 patients, 17 were HLA-B*27 positive (85%). Two HLA-B*27 alleles were observed: HLA-B*2705 (65%) and HLA-B*2702 (35%). In the other spondyloarthropathies, the observed alleles were HLA-B*2705 (90% in AS and 92.5% in uSpA), HLA-B*2702 (8% in AS and 5% in uSpA), HLA-B*2704 (1% in AS and 2.5% in uSpA) and HLA-B*2713 (1% in AS). Among the 111 healthy controls, 80% presented HLA-B*2705, followed by HLA-B*2702 in 10%, HLA-B*2703 in 6%, HLA-B*2707 in 3% and HLA-B*2713 in 1%. Concluding, in the HLA-B*27 positive patients with RS in this study there was predominance of HLA-B*2705 allele, in a lower frequency than that observed in patients with other spondyloarthropathies and healthy controls.

Characterization of language and reading skills in familial polymicrogyria

Polymicrogyria (PMG) is a malformation of cortical development characterized by an excessive number of small gyri and abnormal cortical lamination, giving the cortical surface an irregular and gross appearance. The severity of clinical manifestations correlates with the extent of cortical involvement. The objective of the present study was to describe three families with linguistic features of developmental language disorder and reading impairment, and to establish a neuroanatomic correlation through neuroimaging. Subjects have been submitted to a comprehensive protocol including psychological assessment, language evaluation, neurological examination, and neuroimaging investigation. In our families, children usually had the diagnosis of developmental language disorder while adults had the diagnosis of reading impairment. MRI showed perisylvian polymicrogyria in several subjects of each family. Our data support the idea that there is a co-occurrence of developmental language disorder and reading impairment and both conditions may be associated with polymicrogyria. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.