Planejamento de cursos online para professores de alemão: parâmetros em mapa conceitual

Distance-learning language courses are gaining ground because they meet contemporary social demands and expand opportunities for access to new knowledge. They also favor interaction among people with similar goals but who live in places where no live learning arrangements are available. Taking Valente (2002), Garrison and Anderson (2000), and other authors for theoretical bases, this paper reflects on the criteria and aspects to be considered when one plans and ministers online teacher training courses. The data were taken from a distance-based university extension course offered on the Moodle learning platform by a university in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The objective was to encourage German language teachers to further develop their own language skills, reflect on aspects of inter-culturality in teaching the target language, and provide experience with current technological resources. This paper describes the elements that proved to be relevant in the creation and planning of the course, based on authors who deal with characteristics of computer-mediated teaching. The importance of this study is related to the fact that little information is available on the planning of courses in online formats.

A utilização de jogos lúdico-didáticos no ensino de língua inglesa

Nowadays the accelerated development arising from globalization and the interrelation of the nations, the great increase in communication between different countries and the necessity for knowledge in different linguistic structures, the interest in learning a foreign language is crescent, and thinking about it, this work has the scope to verify how young and adult learners of a foreign language, in this case English, behave, that is, how best to develop the four language skills of the language: listening, writing, speaking, and reading and how the use of recreational and educational games can help this dichotomy between teaching-learning. The present research, theoretical and analytical basis, aims to make a study on how fun games can influence the teaching and learning of English in an audience of young and adult people and that includes a study of how human history has evolved, more precisely, as history of education was influenced by the playful and how the human mind also becomes over time. Nowadays, the playful is a tool that has been widely used pedagogically in teaching foreign languages and every day opens new manners and ways of teaching languages, always with its array of spaced more possibilities. Under this assumption, the focus of this research is discover how the use of recreational and educational games may influence grammar greater understanding and language development of young and adults students in learning English, and also what better way to introduce these games, that is, a contextualized content being discussed each time during the school way, so that the games may be, of course, used for relaxation of the students, but also (and especially) for their intellectual growth and language development

Variantes motivacionais de professores de língua Inglesa em um curso de formação inicial

This paper aims at discussing the relevance of student-teachers’ motivational variants in an English as a Foreign Language Teacher Education course whose syllabus proposes, since the beginning of the program, the development of students’ proficiency in the target language aligned to EFL teacher education theories. In addition, this study also intends to comprehend how this course structure has been developed, verifying how prospective teachers react towards its proposal. Results indicated relevant aspects related to motivation, since from all participants, many declared their interest in following the teaching career while others revealed interest in developing their English language skills, which indicates that both needs and expectations of these groups seemed to be attained, favoring their motivation to language learning and teaching.

A universidade no contexto internacional: o relações públicas como mediador intercultural no projeto Brasil de Todo Mundo

The following dissertation aims to propose an institutional and intercultural projecy of reception and integration of foreign students from academic mobility programs for the campus unit of Bauru. Such action is necessary because of the absence of a reception program of these students, the reception and integration into the social and cultural reality of the place in which they live is a fundamental part of international experience. As an example for this institutional proposal, we discuss the extension of project experience Brasil de Todo Mundo, which aims to deepen the reflections on the Brazilian cultural universe for foreign students who are in Brazil over a period, while taking academic mobility in the Universidade Estadual Paulista, Bauru campus. Student leadership project, Brasil de Todo Mundo emerged from the international experience in mobility programs offered by UNESP, from students of campus Bauru, when in the back of their experiences, they realized that they could continue being tourists your own country with the reception of foreign students. In addition, the identification of expectations in social and intercultural skills, in addition to reasons connected with the increase academic and language skills are a form of very strong approach, which helps in creating intercultural dialogue spaces between the students, the main objective of the project

Modulação autonômica cardíaca em crianças com transtorno de linguagem

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A literatura no Ensino Fundamental - anos iniciais: entre o prazer emancipatório e o escolar pragmático

The Children's Literature is an invaluable tool for human formation, ethics, aesthetics and politics, as well as serves as an instrument for the formation of interdiscourse and transforms teaching procedures of text written production. Then, the investigation of how the literature is being worked in school. Therefore, in this work, constitutes the general objective, to investigate how the teaching of Children's Literature is organized in the early years of elementary school and if that organization promotes the development of literary literacy of the student, and language skills written and the reader behavior, making it critical on several topics. The question that served as a north to the research was the following one: is Teaching Children's Literature, in the early years of elementary school, organized to develop the literary literacy while acting as a catalyst tool for learning to read and write? Have been established the following objectives: a) describe how the teaching of children's literature is organized (teaching routine) in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th years of elementary school ; b) identify the literary genres that have worked in each school year, describe how they are worked out, analyze whether this work is related to the teaching of writing and the nature of that relation ship; c) verify if the Children's Literature teaching procedure seeks ways to articulate literary activities with the establishment of the interdiscourse as content for writing the textual production. The methodology that was included was the field research, from a qualitative interpretation approach and it had as direct data source the natural environment in which it was developed the teaching of Children's Literature. The work presents data results analyzed according to the concepts of Aesthetics of Reception (Iser, 1977; Jauss, 1977), and the functions of Literature, according to Candido (2000), Yasuda (2004), among others. From the results were extracted

Vocabulary Instruction as a Tool for Helping Students of Diverse Backgrounds and Ability Levels to Understand Mathematical Concepts

This action research project describes a research project designed and implemented specifically with an emphasis on the instruction of mathematical vocabulary. The targeted population was my second period classroom of sixth grade students. This group of seventeen students represented diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and abilities. The school is located in a community of a population of approximately 5,000 people in the Midwest. My research investigation focused on the use of specific methods of vocabulary instruction and students’ use of precise mathematical vocabulary in writing and speaking. I wanted to see what effects these strategies would have on student performance. My research suggested that students who struggle with retention of mathematical knowledge have inadequate language skills. My research also revealed that students who have a sound knowledge of vocabulary and are engaged in the specific use of content language performed more successfully. Final analysis indicated that students believed the use of specific mathematical language helped them to be more successful and they made moderate progress in their performance on assessments.

A literatura no Ensino Fundamental - anos iniciais: entre o prazer emancipatório e o escolar pragmático

The Children's Literature is an invaluable tool for human formation, ethics, aesthetics and politics, as well as serves as an instrument for the formation of interdiscourse and transforms teaching procedures of text written production. Then, the investigation of how the literature is being worked in school. Therefore, in this work, constitutes the general objective, to investigate how the teaching of Children's Literature is organized in the early years of elementary school and if that organization promotes the development of literary literacy of the student, and language skills written and the reader behavior, making it critical on several topics. The question that served as a north to the research was the following one: is Teaching Children's Literature, in the early years of elementary school, organized to develop the literary literacy while acting as a catalyst tool for learning to read and write? Have been established the following objectives: a) describe how the teaching of children's literature is organized (teaching routine) in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th years of elementary school ; b) identify the literary genres that have worked in each school year, describe how they are worked out, analyze whether this work is related to the teaching of writing and the nature of that relation ship; c) verify if the Children's Literature teaching procedure seeks ways to articulate literary activities with the establishment of the interdiscourse as content for writing the textual production. The methodology that was included was the field research, from a qualitative interpretation approach and it had as direct data source the natural environment in which it was developed the teaching of Children's Literature. The work presents data results analyzed according to the concepts of Aesthetics of Reception (Iser, 1977; Jauss, 1977), and the functions of Literature, according to Candido (2000), Yasuda (2004), among others. From the results were extracted

What percentage of people in the general population satisfies the current clinical at-risk criteria of psychosis?

The clinical validity of at-risk criteria of psychosis had been questioned based on epidemiological studies that have reported much higher prevalence and annual incidence rates of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs as assessed by either self rating questionnaires or layperson interviews) in the general population than of the clinical phenotype of psychotic disorders (van Os et al., 2009). Thus, it is unclear whether “current at-risk criteria reflect behaviors so common among adolescents and young adults that a valid distinction between ill and non-ill persons is difficult” (Carpenter, 2009). We therefore assessed the 3-month prevalence of at-risk criteria by means of telephone interviews in a randomly drawn general population sample from the at-risk age segment (age 16–35 years) in the Canton Bern, Switzerland. Eighty-five of 102 subjects had valid phone numbers, 21 of these subjects refused (although 6 of them signaled willingness to participate at a later time), 4 could not be contacted. Sixty subjects (71% of the enrollment fraction) participated. Two participants met exclusion criteria (one for being psychotic, one for lack of language skills). Twenty-two at-risk symptoms were assessed for their prevalence and severity within the 3 months prior to the interview by trained clinical raters using (i) the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS; Miller et al., 2002) for the evaluation of 5 attenuated psychotic and 3 brief limited intermittent psychotic symptoms (APS, BLIPS) as well as state-trait criteria of the ultra-high-risk (UHR) criteria and (ii) the Schizophrenia Proneness Instrument, Adult version (SPI-A; Schultze-Lutter et al., 2007) for the evaluation of the 14 basic symptoms included in COPER and COGDIS (Schultze-Lutter et al., 2008). Further, psychiatric axis I diagnoses were assessed by means of the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview, M.I.N.I. (Sheehan et al., 1998), and psychosocial functioning by the Scale of Occupational and Functional Assessment (SOFAS; APA, 1994). All interviewees felt ‘rather’ or ‘very’ comfortable with the interview. Of the 58 included subjects, only 1 (2%) fulfilled APS criteria by reporting the attenuated, non-delusional idea of his mind being literally read by others at a frequency of 2–3 times a week that had newly occurred 6 weeks ago. BLIPS, COPER, COGDIS or state-trait UHR criteria were not reported. Yet, twelve subjects (21%) described sub-threshold at-risk symptoms: 7 (12%) reported APS relevant symptoms but did not meet time/frequency criteria of APS, and 9 (16%) reported COPER and/or COGDIS relevant basic symptoms but at an insufficient frequency or as a trait lacking increase in severity; 4 of these 12 subjects reported both sub-threshold APS and sub-threshold basic symptoms. Table 1 displays type and frequency of the sub-threshold at-risk symptoms.

Multilingualism and age:The consequences of retirement on multilingual competence

OBJECTIVES: The research question for this project mainly concentrates on the sociolinguistic aspects of a socalled “language related major life event” (De Bot, 2007): retirement. “Language related major life events” are events in the lifespan that are important for changes happening in the linguistic setting which influence the language development. In my paper I will explore changes happening around retirement in regard to multilingual competence. The focus will be on two groups: Italian migrants living in the city of Berne and Swissgerman-speakers, both at the age around retirement. The above mentioned changes can take place on two levels. (1) On the one hand, people have more time for curricular activities after retirement, which they can use in order to learn new languages or to improve their language skills. In this case we are dealing with the concept of “lifelong learning”. (2) On the other hand, language competence can be lost due to the (partial) loss of the retiree’s social network at their former workplace. METHODS: I will first examine these processes by using quantitative questionnaires in order to obtain general information on demographic data, the social situation, and a self-assessment of linguistic skills. Secondly, I will use qualitative interviews to gain in-depth information on the linguistic changes happening around retirement and their link to different factors, such as social networks, education, gender or the language biography. RESULTS: Since the project is still in its early stages of development, clear results can’t be mentioned yet. By May 2012 I will be able to present results of the quantitative study as well as a first glance into the results of the qualitative part of the project. CONCLUSION: The results of this project are meant to benefit the better insight into different aspects that haven’t been looked at in detail till this point. (1) What is the general and linguistic situation of Italian migrants who decided to remain in Switzerland after retirement and how can their linguistic skills affect their quality of living? (2) Who decides to learn a new language after retirement and how should language courses for older people be designed?

Reading performance is not affected by a prism induced increase of horizontal and vertical vergence demand

PURPOSE Dyslexia is the most common developmental reading disorder that affects language skills. Latent strabismus (heterophoria) has been suspected to be causally involved. Even though phoria correction in dyslexic children is commonly applied, the evidence in support of a benefit is poor. In order to provide experimental evidence on this issue, we simulated phoria in healthy readers by modifying the vergence tone required to maintain binocular alignment. METHODS Vergence tone was altered with prisms that were placed in front of one eye in 16 healthy subjects to induce exophoria, esophoria, or vertical phoria. Subjects were to read one paragraph for each condition, from which reading speed was determined. Text comprehension was tested with a forced multiple choice test. Eye movements were recorded during reading and subsequently analyzed for saccadic amplitudes, saccades per 10 letters, percentage of regressive (backward) saccades, average fixation duration, first fixation duration on a word, and gaze duration. RESULTS Acute change of horizontal and vertical vergence tone does neither significantly affect reading performance nor reading associated eye movements. CONCLUSION Prisms in healthy subjects fail to induce a significant change of reading performance. This finding is not compatible with a role of phoria in dyslexia. Our results contrast the proposal for correcting small angle heterophorias in dyslexic children.

The distinction between real and fictional worlds: Investigating individual differences in fantasy understanding

In this paper, two studies are reported in which children’s ability to distinguish reality from fantasy was investigated. In Experiment 1, children of different ages made pairwise comparisons of 12 pictures of fictional figures and 3 photographs of real people by evaluating on a 6-point scale how easily these figures could meet each other. The results revealed that fantasy/reality distinction develops with age: 7–8-year-old showed a fundamental categorical distinction (comparable to that of adults) whereas 3–4-year-old treated the real world like one of many worlds. In Experiment 2, we took an individual differences approach and tested 116 4–5-year-old who performed the same fantasy task. In addition, they were presented with theory-of-mind tasks and tests measuring non-verbal intelligence and language skills. The results showed that, after statistically controlling for age, non-verbal intelligence, and language skills, theory-of-mind abilities still significantly contributed to the prediction of fantasy understanding.

Comparison of Reading Development Across Socioeconomic Status in the United States

It is well known that higher parental socioeconomic status (SES) predicts better child reading outcomes, but little work has been done to unpack this finding. The main overall question addressed by this project was whether cognitive models of the two main reading outcomes, single word reading (SWR) and reading comprehension (RC), performed similarly across levels of parental SES. The current study predicted a differential relation between parental SES and both predictors and outcomes because of the known large relation between parental SES and child oral language development. Three questions examined the mediating effects of cognitive predictors on the relation between parental SES and reading outcomes, the moderating effects of SES on the developmental trajectories of reading outcomes, and the strength of the relationship between SES and the two reading outcomes. Participants were part of two large and comprehensive datasets: the cross-sectional Colorado Learning Disability Research Center (CLDRC; n=1554) sample, and the International Longitudinal Twin Study (ILTS; n=463 twin pairs) sample. In terms of cognitive predictors, the relation between SES and SWR was disproportionately mediated by two language skills, vocabulary (VOC) and phonological awareness (PA). For the RC models, both SWR and oral listening comprehension (OLC) did not disproportionally mediate the relation between RC and SES; however, full mediation was not exhibited. With regard to the trajectory of reading outcomes, SES moderated the starting values of SWR and RC, and the slopes of SWR development. When performance on the control measures of early reading skills (e.g., print knowledge, vocabulary, and decoding skills) was included the models, the moderating effects of SES were completely accounted for by these measures. In terms of outcomes, SES had a stronger relation to RC than to SWR, especially at later ages. These findings have implications for interventions aimed at improving reading outcomes in children from lower SES families.

Habilidades do desenvolvimento infantil e linguagem de crianças com fissura labiopalatina

A Fissura Labiopalatina (FLP) é uma das malformações mais comuns da infância, apontada por alguns estudos como um risco para o desenvolvimento global, de fala e linguagem. O objetivo desse estudo foi caracterizar as habilidades do desenvolvimento infantil, enfocando a linguagem de crianças de 3 ano a 3 anos e 11 meses com fissura labiopalatina. A amostra foi dividida em grupo amostral (GA) com 30 crianças entre 3 anos a 3 anos e 11 meses com FLP e o grupo comparativo (GC) com 30 crianças sem FLP de 3 anos a 3 anos e 11 meses provenientes de um Banco de dados. Os grupos foram submetidos a avaliação de três instrumentos: Teste de Triagem de Desenvolvimento de Denver II; Escala ELM - Early language Milestone Scale e o Inventário MacArthur de Desenvolvimento Comunicativo (CDI´s). Houve relação entre a alteração no DNPM e nas habilidades de linguagem e a presença da FLP. Alteração nas habilidades Motor Grosso e de Linguagem, nas áreas Auditivo Expressivo (AE) e Auditivo Receptivo (AR), com prejuízo maior na AE, e no vocabulário expressivo, ambos relacionados a linguagem expressiva. Observou-se desempenho abaixo do esperado, com indicadores de risco para o desenvolvimento das habilidades comunicativas e globais, considerando a amostra estudada.

Paracetamol vs ibuprofeno para el dolor de la episiotomía en las 42 horas postparto

Objetivo: Evaluación de la eficacia analgésica para el dolor de la episiotomía entre el paracetamol y el Ibuprofeno, en las primeras 42 horas postparto. Método: Estudio cuasi-experimental (prospectivo y simple ciego) en mujeres que dieron a luz en el HOSPITAL UNIVERSITARIO CENTRAL DE ASTURIAS (OVIEDO), excluyendo alérgicas, patologías asociadas ó aquellas que el idioma impidiese un correcto entendimiento. Dos grupos: 1) Paracetamol 1 gr; 2) Ibuprofeno 600 mg. Tamaño de muestra: 110 por grupo para alcanzar mínimo de 80. Variable principal: grado de dolor según puntuación de escala (0 a 3). Otras variables: edad de paciente, semanas de gestación, peso neonatal, paridad, inicio del parto, anestesia epidural, tipo de parto, desgarro, inflamación y enrojecimiento, hematoma, hemorroides, necesidad de sondaje evacuador, aplicación de hielo y solicitud de analgesia. Tamaño final de la muestra: 88 grupo paracetamol y 97 grupo ibuprofeno. La escala de dolor se midió a las 2 horas postparto (previo al tratamiento) y, posteriormente, cada 8 hasta 42 horas. Se realizó análisis descriptivo y comparación entre grupos. Resultados: No encontramos diferencias significativas en la escala de dolor entre ambos fármacos, ni en los subgrupos analizados, salvo en el subgrupo de partos eutócicos, donde el ibuprofeno fue superior al paracetamol. En el global de la serie, el grupo de paracetamol solicitó hielo y otra medicación con mayor frecuencia que el grupo de ibuprofeno. Conclusiones: El ibuprofeno 600 mg y el paracetamol de 1 gr obtienen una respuesta similar en las primeras 42 horas postparto, si bien el ibuprofeno parece tener algunas ventajas adicionales.