The impact of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) listening comprehension through first language (L1) listening strategy training

Listening is the basic and complementary skill in second language learning. The term listening is used in language teaching to refer to a complex process that allows us to understand spoken language. Listening, the most widely used language skill, is often used in conjunction with the other skills of speaking, reading and writing. Listening is not only a skill area in primary language performance (L1), but is also a critical means of acquiring a second language (L2). Listening is the channel in which we process language in real time – employing pacing, units of encoding and decoding (the 2 processes are central to interpretation and meaning making) and pausing (allows for reflection) that are unique to spoken language. Despite the wide range of areas investigated in listening strategies during training, there is a lack of research looking specifically at how effectively L1 listening strategy training may transfer to L2. To investigate the development of any such transfer patterns the instructional design and implementation of listening strategy of L1 will be critical.

Pregnancy losses in young Australian women : findings from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health

INTRODUCTION: Little research has examined recognized pregnancy losses in a general population. Data from an Australian cohort study provide an opportunity to quantify this aspect of fecundity at a population level. METHOD: Participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health who were aged 28-33 years in 2006 (n = 9,145) completed up to 4 mailed surveys over 10 years. Participants were categorized according to the recognized outcome of their pregnancies, including live birth, miscarriage/stillbirth, termination/ectopic, or no pregnancy. RESULTS: At age 18-23, more women reported terminations (7%) than miscarriages (4%). By 28-33 years, the cumulative frequency of miscarriage (15%) was as common as termination (16%). For women aged 28-33 years who had ever been pregnant (n = 5,343), pregnancy outcomes were as follows: birth only (50%); loss only (18%); and birth and loss (32%), of which half (16%) were birth and miscarriage. A comparison between first miscarriage and first birth (no miscarriage) showed that most first miscarriages occurred in women aged 18-23 years who also reported a first birth at the same survey (15%). Half (51%) of all first births and first miscarriages in women aged 18-19 ended in miscarriage. Early childbearers (<28 years) often had miscarriages around the same time period as their first live birth, suggesting proactive family formation. Delayed childbearers (32-33 years) had more first births than first miscarriages. CONCLUSION: Recognized pregnancy losses are an important measure of fecundity in the general population because they indicate successful conception and maintenance of pregnancy to varying reproductive endpoints.

Seeking inclusion : views from ‘vulnerable’ communities about reporting by the Australian news media

This conference paper reports on the findings of the 'Vulnerability and the News Media’ project about news reporting on communities that are commonly regarded as ‘vulnerable’ by virtue of their issues or circumstances. The project focuses on news reporting of Indigenous and ethnically diverse communities, as well as people affected by mental health issues, people with disabilities, and survivors of crime and traumatic events. Numerous educational initiatives have tried to improve the quality of media reports about these communities and their issues. Despite this, the project’s research with stakeholders from those communities has found that they continue to raise the same concerns that have been expressed about the news media since the 1970s. In focus group research, stakeholders from these communities expressed concern about their continuing under-representation or omission from the news media. They felt that voices, experiences, perspectives and issues from their communities rarely appeared, or if they did appear, it was in limited contexts – often in circumstances that portrayed them as vulnerable or disruptive. They also pointed to ongoing media misrepresentation, such as stereotyping, inappropriate framing, and over-reliance on ‘usual suspects’ to talk about their communities. A common theme that they voiced was their need for greater inclusiveness in the media. Participants wished that journalists would better represent the diversity of life experiences and perspectives within their communities. Stakeholders also wanted an increased in representation of their political frameworks, such as stories about the difficulties they encountered in dealing with social and bureaucratic systems, and their understandings of causes and potential solutions for issues affecting their communities.

Embedding information and communication technologies in the early childhood classroom

New technologies and the pace of change in modern society mean changes for classroom teaching and learning. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) feature in everyday life and provide ample opportunities for enhancing classroom programs. This article outlines how ICTs complement curriculum implementation in one year two classroom. It suggests practical strategies demonstrating how teachers can make ICTs work for them and progressively teach children how to make ICTs work for them.

Caught on camera

The emergence of shopping malls in Europe, the UK and Australia over the last thirty years or so, raises questions about the disruptive effects of such capital intensive developments on local area shopping facilities, transport and other infrastructures and the maintenance of artificially high prices for goods, whereby the promised greater choice of shops and prices is rarely a genuine free market of competition leading to lower prices. A central question to be addressed is whom these centres represent and belong to. While many claim to exist to ‘serve the community’ almost all malls and centres are private property and the community of shoppers has few, if any rights compared with the conventional high street, which is a public thoroughfare. This permits the management of the centres through their own private security staff, to observe, follow, eject and refuse further admission to anyone considered to be ‘undesirable’. What is different about the newest shopping centres is the routine use of increasingly sophisticated CCTV surveillance equipment to observe and record, for later evidential and entry restriction use, the movements of centre visitors.

A preliminary analysis of convective windstorm environments across Australia

This manuscript documents a preliminary analysis of convective windstorm environments across Australia. It combines radiosonde, reanalysis and severe weather observations to achieve this objective. Severe weather observations across Australia are revealed to have significant issues with stationarity, even when only the past thirty years are considered. Radiosonde and reanalysis observations are shown to agree relatively well for several cities in Australia. In addition, significantly different environments are documented to generate severe wind and tornado events in a sub-tropical environment such as Brisbane compared with a more mid-latitude-like environment such as Perth. The potential to extend this analysis for the remainder of Australia is also briefly discussed.

How do you ‘teach’ sustainability to engineers? introducing the engineering sustainable solutions program

Environmental engineers are increasingly being required to have knowledge about sustainability in their professional careers. Accreditation mechanisms for including sustainability in degree program requirements exist and are gradually being implemented by Engineers Australia. However, true integration of sustainability material into higher and vocational education curricula is still low, particularly outside the environmental engineering degree programs. In addition to environmental engineering, it is crucial for engineering across the specialisations, to be exposed to sustainability concepts and theories. This paper will demonstrate how sustainability as a ‘critical literacy’ can be designed for teaching within mainstream engineering education, using a current Australian project as a case study. The project demonstrates that sustainability education for all engineers is not only possible, but that there is international interest in collaborating in such an educational initiative. A pilot trial of the Introductory Module was undertaken in Semester 1 2004 and Version 2 trials are now proceeding with a number of universities and organisations nationally and internationally. Further modules are currently being developed in collaboration with Engineers Australia and UNESCO. The program is a finalist in the 2005 Banksia Awards (Category 11, Environmental Leadership Education and Training).

Wind speed measurements of land-falling tropical cyclones using SWIRLnet, a portable anemometer network

Wind speed measurement systems are sparse in the tropical regions of Australia. Given this, tropical cyclone wind speeds impacting communities are seldom measured and often only ‘guestimated’ by analysing the extent of damage to structures. In an attempt to overcome this dearth of data, a re-locatable network of anemometers to be deployed prior to tropical cyclone landfall is currently being developed. This paper discusses design criteria of the network’s tripods and tie down system, proposed deployment of the anemometers, instrumentation and data logging. Preliminary assessment of the anemometer response indicates a reliable system for measuring the spectral component of wind with frequencies of approximately 1 Hz. This system limitation highlights an important difference between the capabilities of modern instrumentation and that of the Dines anemometer (around 0.2 seconds) that was used to develop much of the design criteria within the Australian building code and wind loading standard.

Keynote address : aligning HR with a changing business landscape

"Firstly, I thank you sincerely for your kind invitation and warm welcome to Sri Lanka and to this national HR conference, I particularly acknowledge the initiative of Chairman of the Technical Committee, Dr Asoka Jinadasa in making it possible for me to be here, and to offer this contribution to your conference. I congratulate you on assembling such an impressive array of talent to aid your discussions. I hope I can add usefully to your conversations. In particular I congratulate you on developing such a good definition of HRM: “A strategic and integrated approach in acquisition, development and engagement of talent using relevant tools, with proper policies, products and processes in creating a conducive climate towards achieving organizational excellence and societal well-being” To me, that means that HR has to add value to the organisation, through an integrated set of tools, competencies, and policies, which are all consistent with the business model..."

Community arts in early childhood

Community arts can take many forms, including murals, installations, festivals and performances. The work can be produced by artists solely, by artists working with community groups, or by community groups. Community arts can be on a grand-scale covering whole streets, parks or even towns, or small- scale, such as a mosaic in the corner of a play area. It can be extremely impacting and a permanent fixture, or fragile and small and designed to blow away in the wind. But, common to all these different forms of community arts are the criteria that community arts are made in, for and/or by, the local community.

Cartels – What are they and how to avoid being part of one : the implications of University fee deregulation

Universities supply a range of services to students. These include most obviously, tuition services in relation to undergraduate and postgraduate courses; research supervision services in relation to research degrees; as well as consultancy services in relation to Government and industry work. For the purposes of the CCA, universities are trading corporations. They engage in trade or commerce through the provision of a range of services for reward. As such Universities are subject to the same rules and regulations that govern the conduct of other trading corporations, such Coles and Woolworths. As senior officers and managers of a trading corporation you need to acquire some basic understanding of the rules that govern competition in the education sector. In other sectors, companies generally undertake a risk assessment of those areas where they are most at risk of contravening the CCA; to ascertain in advance how problems might arise so that they can put in place strategies to mitigate the risk of inadvertent contraventions.

Using the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire to predict crashes and demerit point loss : does it get better with larger sample sizes?

The Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) continues to be the most widely utilised self-report scale globally to assess crash risk and aberrant driving behaviours among motorists. However, the scale also attracts criticism regarding its perceived limited ability to accurately identify those most at risk of crash involvement. This study reports on the utilisation of the DBQ to examine the self-reported driving behaviours (and crash outcomes) of drivers in three separate Australian fleet samples (N = 443, N = 3414, & N = 4792), and whether combining the samples increases the tool’s predictive ability. Either on-line or paper versions of the questionnaire were completed by fleet employees in three organisations. Factor analytic techniques identified either three or four factor solutions (in each of the separate studies) and the combined sample produced expected factors of: (a) errors, (b) highway-code violations and (c) aggressive driving violations. Highway code violations (and mean scores) were comparable across the studies. However, across the three samples, multivariate analyses revealed that exposure to the road was the best predictor of crash involvement at work, rather than DBQ constructs. Furthermore, combining the scores to produce a sample of 8649 drivers did not improve the predictive ability of the tool for identifying crashes (e.g., 0.4% correctly identified) or for demerit point loss (0.3%). The paper outlines the major findings of this comparative sample study in regards to utilising self-report measurement tools to identify “at risk” drivers as well as the application of such data to future research endeavours.