"Kun mittään ei maha" : sairauden kulttuuristen merkitysten jäljillä

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Kun keväällä tuntuu

Soitinnus: lauluääni, piano.

Java-kieleen perustuvien www-sovellusten suorituskyvyn testaus ja parantaminen

Testauksesta on tullut oleellinen, yhä tärkeämpi sovelluskehitysprojektien osa. Sovelluksilta vaaditaan luotettavuutta kaikilla niiden toiminnan osa-alueilla. Suorituskykyyn liittyvät asiat ovat keskeinen osa näitä vaatimuksia erityisesti, kun kyse on Internetissä toimivista www-sovelluksista. Aluksi työssä esitellään erilaisia sovellusten testausmenetelmiä. Siinä kerrotaan yleisimmistä menetelmistä, joiden avulla pyritään sovelluksista löytämään vääränlaiset toimintatavat suhteessa niiden määriteltyihin toimintatapoihin. Testauksen tulosten avulla pystytään keskittymään oikeisiin kohtiin sovellusten toiminnan korjaamisessa. Työssä analysoidaan www-sovellusten rakennetta yleisen kerrosarkkitehtuurin eri kerrosten ominaisuuksia ja niihin sisältyviä keskeisimpiä sovellusten suorituskykyyn vaikuttavia tekijöitä kuvaillen. Näiden, www-sovellusten eri osien suorituskykyyn vaikuttavien ominaisuuksien perusteella esitellään esimerkkejä, kuinka Java-kieleen perustuvien www-sovellusten suorituskykyä voidaan parantaa. Lisäksi työssä kuvataan, kuinka erityisesti ilmaisella Apache JMeter-sovelluksella voidaan Java-kieleen perustuvien www-sovellusten suorituskykyä mitata. Työn tuloksena esitellään lopuksi suorituskyvyn testaus- ja parannusprosessi. Sen tarkoitus on selkeyttää erityisesti Java-kieleen perustuvien www-sovellusten suorituskyvyn testauksessa ja parannuksessa huomioon otettavia asioita.

Kielikeskuksissa toimivien kieltenopettajien käsityksiä ja kokemuksia massayliopiston luomista haasteista

Challenges of mass university conceived and experienced by university language centre language teachers The massification of the university involved not only an expansion but also a transition from one period to another, from elite higher education to mass higher education. Massification cannot be viewed as expansion and structural change but it has to be viewed in a context of a number of changes involving universities, state, economy, society and culture as well as science, technology, education and research. In the Finnish academic context, massification is often associated with negative development and it may be used as an excuse for poor teaching. The objective of the present study is to find out how the mass context is manifested in the work of university language centre language teachers. The data were collected by means of semi-structured questionnaires from 32 language teachers working at language centres at the universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Tampere and Turku in Finland. Both Finnish and native speakers, 6 male and 26 female teachers, were included. All the teachers in the study had taught more than 10 years. The data were complemented by interviews of four teachers and email data from one teacher. Phenomenographic analysis of the informants’ conceptions enabled a description of their experiences of students at a mass university, conceptions of teaching and learning and of issues related to work health. Some conceptions were consonant with earlier results. The conceptions revealed differences between two teacher groups, teachers of subject-specific language, or language for specific purposes (LSP), and teachers of elementary and advanced language courses (general language teachers). For the first, the conceptions of the investigated teachers provided a picture of the students as a member of a mass university. The students were seen as customers who demanded special services to facilitate their studies or were selective about the contents of the course. The finding that appeared only in the LSP teachers’ data was the unengaged attitude towards language study, which appeared as mere hunt for credits. On the other hand, the students were also seen as language learning individuals, but a clear picture of a truly interested language learner was evident in the data of general language teachers. The teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning revealed a picture of experienced teachers with a long background of teaching, reflecting experiences from different time periods and influences from their own education and illustrating the increasing problems with organizing individual tutoring due to large, heterogeneous groups. It seemed, however, that in spite of the large student groups, general language teachers were able to support the students’ learning processes and to use learner-centred methods, whereas LSP teachers were frequently compelled to resort to knowledge transmission type of teaching. The conditions of the mass university were clearly manifested in the respondents’ conceptions about work satisfaction: there were a number of factors related to administration, teaching arrangements and the status of the language centres that were likely to add to the teachers’ work stress, whereas traditional characteristics of academic work were viewed as promoting work satisfaction. On the basis of the teachers’ conceptions, it is safe to assume that academic mass context and students’ orientations have an effect on the teacher’s approach to teaching, while there is no unequivocal association between mass university teaching and poor teaching.

Benjamin's conception of language and Adorno's aesthetic theory

According to the theory of language of the young Benjamin, the primary task of language isn't the communication of contents, but to express itself as a "spiritual essence" in which also men take part. That conception according to which language would be a medium to signification of something outside it leads to a necessary decrease of its original strength and is thus denominated by Benjamin bürgerlich. The names of human language are remainders of an archaic state, in which things weren't yet mute and had their own language. Benjamin suggests also that all the arts remind the original language of things, as they make objects "speak" in form of sounds, colors, shapes etc. That relationship between arts as reminders of the "language of things" and the possible reconciliation of mankind with itself and with nature has been developed by Theodor Adorno in several of his writings, specially in the Aesthetic Theory, where the artwork is ultimately conceived as a construct pervaded by "language" in the widest meaning - not in the "bourgeois" sense.

Kun saaresta tuli niemimaa

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

The destinal question of language

How can we think the destinal place of language in the essentially historical condition of our existence if such historicity cannot be understood on the basis of the labor of negativity alone? The attempt is made here to think language in a more originary manner, as non-negative finitude, that affirms what is outside dialectical-speculative closure, what is to come. The notion of 'destinal' itself is thus transformed. No longer being merely a categorical grasp of "entities presently given", language is an originary exposure to the event of arrival in its lightning flash. Destiny appears as that of the messianic arrival of the 'not yet' which is not a telos that the immanent movement of historical reason reaches by an irresistible force of the negative. This essay reads Schelling, Heidegger and Kierkegaard to think language as a "place" of exposure to the non-teleological destiny that may erupt even today, here and now, without any given conditionality.