Is there a text in this class? - Comentário ao texto de Stanley Fish

Apresenta-se aqui um comentário ao texto de Stanley Fish, cuja tradução aparece nestemesmo número da revista Ma. Utilizando elementos de outros capítulos do mesmo livro, mostra-seque o Autor defende uma doutrina bem menos radical que aquela difundida em nosso meio por algunsintérpretes do famoso crítico literário. Acrescentam-se, porém, algumas considerações e distinçõesque, na opinião do comentarista, tornariam a teoria de Fish menos sujeita a interpretações radicais.

Construction and validation of an instrument to assess the reading comprehension of students from the third to the fifth grades of elementary school

Objetivo:Este estudo teve como objetivo construir e validar um instrumento de avaliação da compreensão de leitura a fim de caracterizar o perfil de leitura e detectar dificuldades de compreensão em escolares do terceiro ao quinto ano do Ensino Fundamental.Métodos:Participaram 378 escolares divididos em trés grupos para avaliação da compreensão de proposições literais e inferenciais de micro e macroestruturas de dois textos expositivos e dois textos narrativos por meio de questões de múltipla escolha.Resultados:Os dados analisados estatisticamente indicaram valores do teste alfa de Cronbach apresentando consisténcia interna nos quatros textos aplicados para os trés grupos.Conclusão:Foi possível constatar que os escolares apresentaram menor número de erros com o aumento da escolarização e que cada tipo de texto apresentou uma dificuldade específica para os escolares.

o ensino de leitura na escola: um olhar sobre as concepções de professores do 1º ciclo do ensino fundamental de uma escola municipal de Bauru - SP

This research is being read, thus rendering text on the pole of understanding, as a practice effective dialogue and therefore responsive through which the reader, author, text and context interact. To this end, the reader must turn their knowledge systems and relate them to the linguistic materiality. Thus, aimed to investigate whether the teaching of reading in the early years of elementary school literacy builds skills related to this cultural practice and its relationship to the conceptions of classroom teachers of reading, as well as the teaching and learning methodologies practiced in class classroom. Therefore, I base this research on the theoretical basis of linguistic studies and expository sociointeractionist redefine that, among other things, the concepts of language, genre and text. As for the methodological framework, this study followed the methodology of literature research and fieldwork. The fieldwork took place from the perspective of observing the pedagogical practice of teaching reading, in order to investigate how the educational activities are conducted in a reading room for the third year of elementary school, part of the municipal education Bauru- SP. Were used as instruments of data collection the questionnaire given to school teachers and the school studied the direct observation of teaching practice of one of these professionals. The results of data analysis indicate that the teachers surveyed know key content for teaching reading, as well as renovations of the theoretical and methodological studies of reading, with the consequence that the practices of reading done in the classroom limit the role of student as a reader and does not guarantee the formation of the reader

Sacredness of the constitutional text and interpretive heresy: the brazilian supreme court decision on same-sex unions

The paper provides a close lecture of the arguments and methods of legal construction, employed in the extensive individual opinions written by the Justices of the Brazilian Supreme Court in the case which authorized the same sex civil union. After tracing an outline of the legal problem and his possible solutions, we analyze the individual opinions, showing their methodological syncretism, the use of legal methods and arguments in a contradictory way as well the deficiencies in the reasoning. The Justices use legal arguments, but do not meet the requirements of rationality in the decision-making. We have a rhetorical attempt that aims to satisfy the public opinion than to offer a comprehensive and coherent solution according the normative elements of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988.

Review of The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation, edited by Peter W. Flint

Review of The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation, edited by Peter W. Flint. Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001. Pp. xv + 266. Price: $22.00. ISBN 0-8028-4630-0. This volume is another contribution to the Eerdmans series Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature. The essays are loosely gathered around the topic "The Bible at Qumran," and the editor has divided the articles into two groups. Part 1, "The Scriptures, the Canon, and the Scrolls," includes articles by J.A. Sanders, B.W. Waltke, E. Ulrich, C.A. Evans, and the editor, P.W. Flint. The contributors to Part 2, "Biblical Interpretation and the Dead Sea Scrolls," are J.C. VanderKam, C.A. Evans, J.E. Bowley, J.M. Scott, M.G. Abegg, and R.W. Wall. Unlike other volumes of collected essays in this series, which have highlighted the work of a single author or published the proceedings of a particular conference, this collection has a more disparate origin. Some contributions were given as papers at the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute of Trinity Western University (Bowley, Ulrich, VanderKam and Wall), one (Waltke) is reprinted from The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), and the rest (Abegg, Evans, Flint, Sanders and Scott) were invited for the volume.

Seeing beyond reading: a survey on visual text analytics

We review recent visualization techniques aimed at supporting tasks that require the analysis of text documents, from approaches targeted at visually summarizing the relevant content of a single document to those aimed at assisting exploratory investigation of whole collections of documents.Techniques are organized considering their target input materialeither single texts or collections of textsand their focus, which may be at displaying content, emphasizing relevant relationships, highlighting the temporal evolution of a document or collection, or helping users to handle results from a query posed to a search engine.We describe the approaches adopted by distinct techniques and briefly review the strategies they employ to obtain meaningful text models, discuss how they extract the information required to produce representative visualizations, the tasks they intend to support and the interaction issues involved, and strengths and limitations. Finally, we show a summary of techniques, highlighting their goals and distinguishing characteristics. We also briefly discuss some open problems and research directions in the fields of visual text mining and text analytics.

Chemistry and Chemical Education Through Text and Image: Analysis of Twentieth Century Textbooks Used in Brazilian Context

Assuming that textbooks give literary expression to cultural and ideological values of a nation or group, we propose the analysis of chemistry textbooks used in Brazilian universities throughout the twentieth century. We analyzed iconographic and textual aspects of 31 textbooks which had significant diffusion in the context of Brazilian universities at that period. As a result of the iconographic analysis, nine categories of images were proposed: (1) laboratory and experimentation, (2) industry and production, (3) graphs and diagrams, (4) illustrations related to daily life, (5) models, (6) illustrations related to the history of science, (7) pictures or diagrams of animal, vegetable or mineral samples, (8) analogies and (9) concepts of physics. The distribution of images among the categories showed a different emphasis in the presentation of chemical content due to a commitment to different conceptions of chemistry over the period. So, we started with chemistry as an experimental science in the early twentieth century, with an emphasis change to the principles of chemistry from the 1950s, culminating in a chemistry of undeniable technological influence. Results showed that reflections not only on the history of science, but on the history of science education, may be useful for the improvement of science education.

Mini-Mental State Examination sentence writing among community-dwelling elderly adults in Brazil: text fluency and grammar complexity

Background: In normal aging, the decrease in the syntactic complexity of written production is usually associated with cognitive deficits. This study was aimed to analyze the quality of older adults' textual production indicated by verbal fluency (number of words) and grammatical complexity (number of ideas) in relation to gender, age, schooling, and cognitive status. Methods: From a probabilistic sample of community-dwelling people aged 65 years and above (n = 900), 577 were selected on basis of their responses to the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) sentence writing, which were submitted to content analysis; 323 were excluded as they left the item blank or performed illegible or not meaningful responses. Education adjusted cut-off scores for the MMSE were used to classify the participants as cognitively impaired or unimpaired. Total and subdomain MMSE scores were computed. Results: 40.56% of participants whose answers to the MMSE sentence were excluded from the analyses had cognitive impairment compared to 13.86% among those whose answers were included. The excluded participants were older and less educated. Women and those older than 80 years had the lowest scores in the MMSE. There was no statistically significant relationship between gender, age, schooling, and textual performance. There was a modest but significant correlation between number of words written and the scores in the Language subdomain. Conclusions: Results suggest the strong influence of schooling and age over MMSE sentence performance. Failing to write a sentence may suggest cognitive impairment, yet, instructions for the MMSE sentence, i.e. to produce a simple sentence, may limit its clinical interpretation.

Preimplantation development regulatory pathway construction through a text-mining approach

Background: The integration of sequencing and gene interaction data and subsequent generation of pathways and networks contained in databases such as KEGG Pathway is essential for the comprehension of complex biological processes. We noticed the absence of a chart or pathway describing the well-studied preimplantation development stages; furthermore, not all genes involved in the process have entries in KEGG Orthology, important information for knowledge application with relation to other organisms. Results: In this work we sought to develop the regulatory pathway for the preimplantation development stage using text-mining tools such as Medline Ranker and PESCADOR to reveal biointeractions among the genes involved in this process. The genes present in the resulting pathway were also used as seeds for software developed by our group called SeedServer to create clusters of homologous genes. These homologues allowed the determination of the last common ancestor for each gene and revealed that the preimplantation development pathway consists of a conserved ancient core of genes with the addition of modern elements. Conclusions: The generation of regulatory pathways through text-mining tools allows the integration of data generated by several studies for a more complete visualization of complex biological processes. Using the genes in this pathway as “seeds” for the generation of clusters of homologues, the pathway can be visualized for other organisms. The clustering of homologous genes together with determination of the ancestry leads to a better understanding of the evolution of such process.