Autonomy in English language learning: a case study

The main goal of this study was to analyse the development of a pedagogy for autonomy tuned to the current situation in which Higher Education finds itself, namely of implementation of the Bologna Process in Europe, and in particular at the Escola Superior Agrária of the Polytechnic School at Coimbra. For this purpose new course units were created, new descriptors written, new materials developed and new methodologies tried. A case study was undertaken to observe and analyse the changes the institution was undergoing and to assess the impact of the new methodologies, particularly regarding the development of student autonomy. The target population for this study were the first year students on the Biotechnology degree in the year 2007/2008, to whom a battery of tests were applied, namely proficiency tests, belief tests, metacognitive tests, as well as methods of ethnographic research. The study relied on the European Framework of Reference for Languages and the European Language Portfolio to establish recognised levels and competences, and employed the portfolio as its main tool for measuring student autonomy. This portfolio was simultaneously biographical and descriptive and was organised by the students in their own time. Great incentive was given to this independent work. The ethnographic component of the study was of significant importance being given to students learning histories and to the collection of students’ reflections. This component aimed in particular to allow students the opportunity to express their thoughts on the experience they underwent during 20 weeks. From the analysis of the data, a significant improvement in self-confidence and motivation for lifelong learning is observable in the development of multiple tasks. Regarding the students’ progression towards proficiency, this improvement is less clear, but the final results of educational success were generally of great relevance.

English picturebook illustrations and language development in early years education

Este estudo investiga a influência da interação imagem-texto de três álbuns ilustrados de língua inglesa no desenvolvimento do repertório linguístico de crianças pré-leitoras. Numa metodologia de estudo de caso, adotando uma abordagem qualitativa e socio construtivista num contexto real de educação pré-escolar, três grupos de crianças portuguesas foram filmados ao longo de várias sessões de leitura repetida em voz alta e em inglês, e de sessões de recontos trabalhados em pequenos grupos. Após a transcrição das gravações, o corpus resultante foi analisado com base numa teoria fundamentada de compreensão literária e em escalas de leitura emergente. Os resultados mostraram que as crianças adotaram uma postura fortemente analítica face aos álbuns, direcionando as suas respostas para as ilustrações e usando-as como apoio na construção de significados. Os resultados mostraram também que cada interanimação visual e verbal ofereceu diversas oportunidades para o uso das línguas em presença, o português e o inglês, tendo o formato e a estrutura inerentes a cada álbum contribuído de forma muito relevante para as respostas das crianças. Contudo, os álbuns com uma dinâmica imagem-texto mais complexa proporcionaram um maior envolvimento das crianças, provocando mais discussão em torno das ilustrações e criando mais oportunidades para mediação do uso da segunda língua. Os resultados revelaram ainda a importância da interação durante as leituras repetidas, na compreensão e na análise narrativa, num processo de desenvolvimento da linguagem. Com base nestes resultados, apontam-se conclusões, com implicações para os contextos educativos, quer ao nível da língua materna, quer ao nível da segunda língua, nomeadamente em relação: à seleção de álbuns e à valorização das ilustrações e ainda à importância de leituras repetidas em voz alta e à discussão realizada pelas crianças.

Integrated approach to teaching English in primary and preschool

O presente trabalho de investigação apresenta um estudo que procurou observar comportamentos de literacia emergente numa língua estrangeira (Inglês) em contexto da educação pré-escolar. Procedeu-se à conceção e implementação de uma abordagem integrada ao ensino da língua inglesa, através numa abordagem metodológica inspirada no paradigma investigação-ação, percecionada como oportunidade de inovação pedagógica e de formação de professores. O estudo foi desenvolvido em simultâneo no 1ºCEB, tendo como principal objetivo comparar os comportamentos e atitudes dos alunos de outra faixa etária relativamente aos comportamentos de literacia em língua estrangeira. Os dados foram recolhidos através da observação, gravação de aulas, posteriormente transcritas, diários do investigador, questionários, portfolios dos alunos e entrevistas semi-estruturadas a especialistas na área da pedagogia de línguas estrangeiras, analisados através da aplicação de técnicas de análise de conteúdo como procedimento de análise do corpus. Os resultados demonstram a relevância de abordagens integradas de cariz lúdico na promoção de comportamentos de leitura e escrita emergente, estimulando assim motivação intrínseca nas crianças pela aprendizagem da língua e cultura-alvo. Por conseguinte, os comportamentos observados de literacia emergente em língua estrangeira permitem estabelecer uma analogia com as crianças bilingues, na medida em que ao aprenderem uma outra língua desenvolvem em sincronia a sua flexibilidade mental e estratégias de auto-regulação em diversas áreas de conhecimento. Os resultados permitem ainda concluir que estratégias promotoras de motivação intrínseca como o lúdico e o storytelling são vitais na sensibilização à diversidade linguística e cultural, por oposição aos resultados evidenciados pela estratégia nacional para o ensino de línguas estrangeiras no 1.ºCEB. As principais implicações deste estudo sugerem a possibilidade de generalização da língua estrangeira na educação pré-escolar, sendo esta etapa compreendida como um período privilegiado na prevenção de insucesso na leitura e escrita na aprendizagem de uma língua estrangeira. Deste modo, a educação pré-escolar pode ser considerada como um tempo fundador do futuro linguístico das crianças, numa perspetiva de educação linguística ao longo da vida.

The militarisation of English schools: Troops to Teaching and the implications for Initial Teacher Education and race equality

This article considers the implications of the Troops to Teaching (TtT) programme, to be introduced in England in autumn 2013, for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and race equality. TtT will fast-track ex-armed service members to teach in schools, without necessarily the requirement of a university degree. Employing theories of white supremacy, and Althusser’s (1971) concept of Ideological and Repressive State Apparatus, I argue that this initiative both stems from, and contributes to, a system of social privilege and oppression in education. Despite appearing to be aimed at all young people, the planned TtT initiative is actually aimed at poor and racially subordinated youth. This is likely to further entrench polarisation in a system which already provides two tier educational provision: TtT will be a programme for the inner-city disadvantaged, whilst wealthier, whiter schools will mostly continue to get highly qualified teachers. Moreover, TtT contributes to a wider devaluing of current ITE; ITE itself is rendered virtually irrelevant, as it seems TtT teachers will not be subject specialists, rather will be expected to provide military-style discipline, the skills for which they will be expected to bring with them. More sinister, I argue that TtT is part of the wider militarisation of education. This military-industrial-education complex seeks to contain and police young people who are marginalised along lines of race and class, and contributes to a wider move to increase ideological support for foreign wars - both aims ultimately in the service of neoliberal objectives which will feed social inequalities.

A Race to the bottom – Prison Education and the English and Welsh Policy Context

This article examines prison education in England and Wales arguing that a disjuncture exists between the policy rhetoric of entitlement to education in prison at the European level and the playing out of that entitlement in English and Welsh prisons. Caught between conflicting discourses around a need to combat recidivism and a need for incarceration, prison education in England exists within a policy context informed, in part, by an international human rights agenda on the one hand and global recession, financial cutbacks, and a moral panic about crime on the other. The European Commission has highlighted a number of challenges facing prison education in Europe including over‐crowded institutions, increasing diversity in prison populations, the need to keep pace with pedagogical changes in mainstream education and the adoption of new technologies for learning (Hawley et al., 2013). These are challenges confronting all policy makers involved in prison education in England and Wales in a policy context that is messy, contradictory and fiercely contested. The article argues that this policy context, exacerbated by socio‐economic discourses around neo‐liberalism, is leading to a race‐to‐the‐bottom in the standards of educational provision for prisoners in England and Wales.

Conspicuous by their abstinence: the limited engagement of heroin users in English and Welsh Drug Recovery Wings

Background In recent years, an abstinence-focused, ‘recovery’ agenda has emerged in UK drug policy, largely in response to the perception that many opioid users had been ‘parked indefinitely’ on Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST). The introduction of ten pilot ‘Drug Recovery Wings’ (DRWs) in 2011 represents the application of this recovery agenda to prisons. This paper describes the DRWs’ operational models, the place of opiate dependent prisoners within them, and the challenges of delivering ‘recovery’ in prison. Methods In 2013, the implementation and operational models of all ten pilot DRWs were rapidly assessed. Up to three days were spent in each DRW, undertaking semi-structured interviews with a sample of 94 DRW staff and 102 DRW residents. Interviews were fully transcribed, and coded using grounded theory. Findings from the nine adult prisons are presented here. Results Four types of DRW were identified, distinguished by their size and selection criteria. Strikingly, no mid- or large-sized units regularly supported OST recipients through detoxification. Type A were large units whose residents were mostly on OST with long criminal records and few social or personal resources. Detoxification was rare, and medication reduction slow. Type B's mid-sized DRW was developed as a psychosocial support service for OST clients seeking detoxification. However, staff struggled to find such prisoners, and detoxification again proved rare. Type C DRWs focused on abstinence from all drugs, including OST. Though OST clients were not intentionally excluded, very few applied to these wings. Only Type D DRWs, offering intensive treatment on very small wings, regularly recruited OST recipients into abstinence-focused interventions. Conclusion Prison units wishing to support OST recipients in making greater progress towards abstinence may need to be small, intensive and take a stepped approach based on preparatory motivational work and extensive preparation for release. However, concerns about post-release deaths will remain.

A corpus-based translation study on english-persian verb phrase ellipsis

Dissertação de mest., Natural Language Processing & Human Language Technology, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Univ. do Algarve, 2011

The rise and demise of a book-review magazine interpreting the cultural work of Books in Canada (1971-2008)

This interdisciplinary study examines the contribution that a book-review magazine makes to the cultural identity of its readers. It is the result of reflections on the cultural work of Books in Canada , on whether or not this periodical was a cultural worksite and if that is the case how it performed that cultural work. In addition, it interrogates factors that may have contributed to the magazine's demise. The study affirms that Books in Canada, a cultural enterprise from 1971 to 2008, mirrored and helped to shape book and literary culture in Canada through its circulation, through the personalities of its editors, through its front covers and through its reviewers and their reviews. Furthermore, it proposes that the demise of the enterprise was due to a combination of factors. The study begins with an introduction to book reviewing and special-interest magazines. Chapter I examines the interplay between selected visual and textual contents published in Books in Canada in its founding years. These components reflected and helped to fuel the cultural nationalism that was sweeping Canada subsequent to the 1967 World's Fair in Montreal. There were also persistent rumours and comments about the magazine that caused certain"cracks in the foundation" to appear. Chapter II compares the aims and editorial challenges of Val Clery, founder of Books in Canada , with those of Adrien Thério, founder of Lettres québécoises, and of the editors of the magazines' twentieth-anniversary issues, Paul Stuewe in the case of the former and André Vanasse in the case of the latter. Evidence in the content of the magazine, editorial and otherwise, indicated that the"contracts" that the editors made with their readers over the years were similar, to reflect and shape a cultural identity, but the result of their"projects," that is, the nature of those identities, was distinctly different. Evidently then, personal aims, preferences and political leanings of editors can have a major impact on the content of a book-review magazine and thus on the cultural work that it does. Therefore, in Chapter III, I focus on selected contents published during the tenures of two of Books in Canada 's key editors, Paul Stuewe and Olga Stein, in order to understand ways that their choices constituted a form of cultural work. The second part of this chapter moves from an analysis of the cultural work of editors to an examination of the cultural work of reviewers. Here, through a close-reading of a selection of reviews published in Books in Canada, and in other periodicals, I argue that reviewers do cultural work in the way that they negotiate their presence in a review, and in how they signal that presence through lexical choices and through the degree of intellectual interaction that they invite. Intellectual interaction is at the core of Chapter IV.This chapter consists of close readings of some of the"billboards" of the enterprise, that is, the front covers of Books in Canada , in order to show how these important components do cultural work by requiring readers to make an intellectual leap from image to text. Chapter V suggests that book reviews, the company's"bills of goods," do cultural work in much the same way as the paratexts of a book. One of my own reviews is offered as a case-study along with a number of other reviews of how central components of a book-review magazine do cultural work through the illocutionary force of their sentences. The first part of Chapter VI, the final chapter, measures the legacy of the magazine, in particular, the annual Books in Canada First Novel Award. Created in 1976, this prize is awarded to the author of the novel judged by a Books in Canada prize committee to be the best first novel in English of the year. The second part of Chapter VI sheds light on factors that may have contributed to the closure of the enterprise, including the copyright uproar that accompanied the agreement that Adrian Stein, publisher of Books in Canada and Olga Stein's husband, made in 2001 with the online book merchant, Amazon.com. Furthermore, this penultimate section of the study suggests that one of the most important factors in the magazine's demise was the decision by the Steins to exploit their position as owners, publisher, and editor of a book-review periodical, a government-subsidized one at that, to publish their own lengthy pre-trial defense of Conrad Black. The chapter then zooms back from the particular to the general with a broader consideration of the impact of technology and globalization on the book industry and on the ability of Books in Canada to survive in any form, print or digital.

Consistent Feedback for a Constructivist Pedagogy : a Study of Feedback on written Assessments in Cegep English Courses.

In order to determine how consistent feedback is within the English Cégep system, this study explores three key aspects of feedback provided to students: the amount of feedback provided, the nature of the feedback according to the defined criteria, and the relative importance of the three categories. Twenty-three teachers in four English departments participated in the study. Data was collected from a detailed questionnaire to give some context in terms of teacher training, experience, and assessment practices. Respondents were then asked to provide written feedback on a sample student essay. Their comments werw analysed in terms of the nature of the feedback, how consistent that feedback was between teachers, and how closely the feedback reflected the stated instructional objectives.

The perception of woman on the example of the Odyssey of Homer and its english translation by James Huddleston and portuguese translation by Frederico Lourenço

Dissertação de mestrado, Estudos Literários e Artísticos, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade do Algarve, 2015

E news

The South Carolina Board of Landscape Architectural Examiners publishes a newsletter with program information and news.

PowerSource

Santee Cooper publishes PowerSource, a corporate quarterly magazine that profiles the many ways Santee Cooper and employees work to full the mission of improving the quality of life for South Carolinians.

ENews

The South Carolina Board of Landscape Architectural Examiners publishes a newsletter with program information and news.

PowerSource

Santee Cooper publishes PowerSource, a corporate quarterly magazine that profiles the many ways Santee Cooper and employees work to full the mission of improving the quality of life for South Carolinians.

PowerSource

Santee Cooper publishes PowerSource, a corporate quarterly magazine that profiles the many ways Santee Cooper and employees work to full the mission of improving the quality of life for South Carolinians.