Emotional and behavioural problems in children with language impairments and children with autism spectrum disorders

Background: Although it is well-established that children with language impairment (LI) and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) both show elevated levels of emotional and behavioural problems, the level and types of difficulties across the two groups have not previously been directly compared. Aims: To compare levels of emotional and behavioural problems in children with LI and children with ASD recruited from the same mainstream schools. Methods & Procedures: We measured teacher-reported emotional and behavioural problems using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in a sample of 5-to-13-year old children with LI (N=62) and children with ASD (N=42) attending mainstream school but with identified special educational needs. Outcomes & Results: Both groups showed similarly elevated levels of emotional, conduct and hyperactivity problems. The only differences between the LI and ASD groups were on subscales assessing peer problems (which were higher in the ASD group) and prosocial behaviours (which were higher in the LI group). Overall, there were few associations between emotional and behavioural problems and child characteristics, reflecting the pervasive nature of these difficulties in children with LI and children with ASD, although levels of problems were higher in children with ASD with lower language ability. However, in the ASD group only, a measure of family social economic status was associated with language ability and attenuated the association between language ability and emotional and behavioural problems. Conclusions & Implications: Children with LI and children with ASD in mainstream school show similarly elevated levels of emotional and behavioural problems, which require monitoring and may benefit from intervention. Further work is required to identify the child, family and situational factors that place children with LI and children with ASD at risk of emotional and behavioural problems, and whether these differ between the two groups. This work can then guide the application of evidence-based interventions to these children.

Diversity lessons from Wales: how marketing bilingualism contributes to language shift and language maintenance

Wales is one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. While sharing much of its political and social history with England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, it has retained a distinct cultural identity.In particular, over 560,000 people, a significant minority of the population of 2.2 million, speak Welsh, a member of the Celtic family of languages, and the country is officially bilingual. In this paper, we will look at attempts to maintain and grow the number of speakers of the language and at the relevance of this development for speakers of minority languages in other settings.

Conflicting language ideologies and contradictory language practices in Singaporean bilingual families

Informed by family language policy (FLP) as the theoretical framework, I illustrate in this paper how language ideologies can be incongruous and language policies can be conflicting through three multilingual families in Singapore representing three major ethnic groups – Chinese, Malay and Indian. By studying their family language audits, observing their language practices, and engaging in conversations about their language ideologies, I look at what these families do and do not do and what they claim to do and not to do. Data were collected over a period of 6 months with more than 700 minutes of recording of actual interactions. Analysis of the data reveals that language ideologies are ‘power-inflected’ and tend to become the source of educational and social tensions which in turn shape family language practices. In Singapore these tensions are illustrated by the bilingual policy recognising mother tongues (MTs) and English as official languages, and its educational policy establishing English as the medium of instruction. The view of English as having instrumental values and MTs as having cultural functions reveals that language choices and practices in family domains are value-laden in everyday interactions and explicitly negotiated and established through FLP.

”Potato seeking rice”: language, culture, and identity in gay personal ads in Hong Kong

This paper examines the relationship between language, culture, and identity in a corpus of gay personal ads collected from two publications in Hong Kong in the three years before the 1997 transition of sovereignty. Gay personal ads are seen äs an "island of discourse," whose marginal nature is reflected in the use of language and in turn reflects issues of marginalization in the larger social context. Using Fairclough's (1992, 1993) three- dimensional model for critical discourse analysis, an attempt is made to uncover the relationship between text structure and issues ofpower/ideology in the society that produces the texts. On the level of text, it was found that structural components, particularly the degree of grammatical elaboration, differ according to the stated race or cultural background of the authors and their targets. On the level of discourse practice, authors were found to appropriate a variety of "voices"from the larger culture arena, the use of which amplifies or limits the participation of particular classes of individuals. Finally, on the level of social practice, the ads were found to reflect and re-create both the racial stereotypes and heterosexist ideology found in the dominant culture.

Syntactic complexity in the comprehension of wh-questions and relative clauses in typical language development and autism

This study investigates effects of syntactic complexity operationalised in terms of movement, intervention and (NP) feature similarity in the development of A’ dependencies in 4-, 6-, and 8-year old typically developing (TD) French children and children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Children completed an off-line comprehension task testing eight syntactic structures classified in four levels of complexity: Level 0: No Movement; Level 1: Movement without (configurational) Intervention; Level 2: Movement with Intervention from an element which is maximally different or featurally ‘disjoint’ (mismatched in both lexical NP restriction and number); Level 3: Movement with Intervention from an element similar in one feature or featurally ‘intersecting’ (matched in lexical NP restriction, mismatched in number). The results show that syntactic complexity affects TD children across the three age groups, but also indicate developmental differences between these groups. Movement affected all three groups in a similar way, but intervention effects in intersection cases were stronger in younger than older children, with NP feature similarity affecting only 4-year olds. Complexity effects created by the similarity in lexical restriction of an intervener thus appear to be overcome early in development, arguably thanks to other differences of this intervener (which was mismatched in number). Children with ASD performed less well than the TD children although they were matched on non-verbal reasoning. Overall, syntactic complexity affected their performance in a similar way as in their TD controls, but their performance correlated with non-verbal abilities rather than age, suggesting that their grammatical development does not follow the smooth relation to age that is found in TD children.

The impact of foreign direct investment and openness on Vietnamese economy

This thesis examines the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on Vietnamese economy based on Partial Adjustment Model and time series data from 1976 to 2004. FDI is shown to have not only short run but also long run effect on gross domestic product (GDP) of Vietnam. However, elasticity of GDP with respect to FDI is small and it will take many years to fully manifest itself. The impact of trade openness on GDP has also been examined and it is shown to be stronger than that of FDI. The paper offers a number of explanations and discusses briefly suggestions in order to increase the contribution of FDI to Vietnam’s economic development.

Scanlation - What Fan Translators of Manga Learn in the Informal Learning Environment

The present paper discusses two pilot studies carried out to see the possibility of the fan community of manga (Japanese comics), in which fan translators translate the original Japanese manga into English (which is called scanlation), functioning as an informal learning environment for the Japanese language learning and translator training. Two pilot studies consist of a) comparison of the original Japanese version with the scanlation and official translation, and b) comparison of the original Japanese version with two different versions of scanlation to see the translators’ level of Japanese language and the overall translation quality. The results show that in scanlation versions, there were numbers of inaccuracies which would prevent them to be treated as professional translation. Some of these errors are clearly caused by insufficient understanding of Japanese language by the translator. However, the pilot studies also suggested some interesting features of fan translation, such as the treatment of cultural references. The two pilot studies indicate that it is desirable to conduct further studies with more data, in order to confirm the results of present studies, and to see the possible relationship between the types of trnalsation errors found in scanlation and the particular type of Japanese language (informal, conversational) that could be learned from manga.

Narration in Swedish pre- and primary school : a recourse for language development and multilingualism

Increased immigration in Europe and worldwide has led to more pre- and primary school students being educated through the medium of a second language, and there is considerable research, much of it coming from Australia, to suggest that in order to cope with this situation, children will need to begin to acquire, from their earliest years in pre-school, a variety of knowledge-based language skills that will be sufficient to carry them through the subject-based education they will encounter in their subsequent schooling. This is particularly important for L2-students who are less likely to meet academic language outside the school. In this paper, based on transcripts of oral interactions in the classroom, it is argued that conversational and story-telling skills, oral and written, provide a rich environment for the development of academic school language, while at the same time promoting and making good use of the cultural diversity that is increasingly a feature of pre-primary and primary classrooms.

An analysis of linkage between foreign direct investment and GDP per Capita in Pakistan : A time series analysis

This study aims to investigate the relation between foreign direct investment (FDI) and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in Pakistan. The study is based on a basic Cobb-Douglas production function. Population over age 15 to 64 is used as a proxy for labor in the investigation. The other variables used are gross capital formation, technological gap and a dummy variable measuring among other things political stability. We find positive correlation between GDP per capita in Pakistan and two variables, FDI and population over age 15 to 64. The GDP gap (gap between GDP of USA and GDP of Pakistan) is negatively correlated with GDP per capita as expected. Political instability, economic crisis, wars and polarization in the society have no significant impact on GDP per capita in the long run.

E-learning opens the door to the global community. Novice users experiences of e-learning in a Somali University

E-learning has become one of the primary ways of delivering education around the globe. In Somalia, which is a country torn within and from the global community by a prolonged civil war, University of Hargeisa has in collaboration with Dalarna University in Sweden adopted, for the first time, e-learning. This study explores barriers and facilitators to e-learning usage, experienced by students in Somalia’s higher education, using the University of Hargeisa as case study. Interviews were conducted with students to explore how University of Hargeisa’s novice users perceived elearning, and what factors positively and negatively affected their e-learning experiences. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model was used as a framework for interpreting the results. The findings show that, in general, the students have a very positive attitude towards e-learning, and they perceived that e-learning enhanced their educational experience. The communication aspect was found to be especially important for Somali students, as it facilitated a feeling of belonging to the global community of students and scholars and alleviated the war-torn country’s isolation. However, some socio-cultural aspects of students’ communities negatively affected their e-learning experience. This study ends with recommendations based on the empirical findings to promote the use and enhance the experience of e-learning in post conflict Somali educational institutions