Alternative Identities and Foreign Language Learning

My D-essay has the working title “Alternative Identities and Foreign Language Learning”. I have chosen this area because I have noticed a certain reluctance among Swedish students to use the foreign language English in English classes. They often seem embarrassed to express themselves in a language which is not their mother tongue, but they seem less embarrassed when they are allowed to act somebody else. These two observations converge into a focus of discussion on the matter, which will be supported by a minor study of my own, by extracts from other people’s essays on the matter, and by an overview of current litterature on language, identity and drama.The aim of my essay is to compare Swedish students’ willingness to use the foreign language English when acting minor plays in school, as themselves and as a chosen character, and to investigate the possibility of improving students’ willingness to use a foreign language, when given the opportunity to do so through acting somebody else.

The Relationship between Transport Infrastructure and EconomicGrowth: An Empirical Analysis Comparing Developing and DevelopedCountries

Gross domestic product (GDP) is generally considered as the most important index and comprehensive measure of the size of economy. This paper investigates empirically the relationship between transport infrastructure (focus on highways) and GDP growth based on a production function approach. The physical stocks of transport infrastructure were used instead of monetary data to measure public capital together with several other variables (labor and private capital) that were hypothesized to affect economic growth. Then we explore a number of subsequent studies that use panel data covering the period between 1992 and 2004. An investigation was done to compare developed countries and developing countries. Results indicate that physical units are positively and significantly related to economic growth. Furthermore there was an interesting finding that the output elasticity with respect to physical units for developed countries is higher than developing countries.

Visuell Perception : En studie av visuella faktorer kring ett musikaliskt framträdande

The essay investigates the visual element as seen by the audience and artist to be of greatest importance to a musicalperformance. The study was conducted in the form of a field work which included doing interviews with artists, surveys of the audience and interpretive observations of live performance. The fieldwork was conducted in three different environments in which I found myself on the spot and performed the various stages included in the field work. It was done to create a surface that could be used in an essay, and through that use this material to compare and analyze my results and in the end be able to answer my questions. I started from eight different factors which all could beexperienced visually on stage. The factors were light / colors, costumes, props, effects, stage presence, attitude / image, nervousness and dance / body language. Those factors would then be examined in the various musical performances and to be answered by the audience and performers which of those factors they considered to be of great importance or small importance when it comes to visual perception in a musical context. The result was a clear statement where two factors were considered to be most crucial for a musical performance, and a clear statement in which two factors were considered by the majority to be less important. The results demonstrate a common understanding what the artist and the audience thinks is important. A result that can act as a template for what an artist should think about regarding the visual elements before an performance. My theory is my assumption that the visual elements of musical performances can play an important or decisive role, an assumption that was strengthened by my empirical experiences at a concert visit. I wanted in this essay explore and give a clear picture of what it is that artists and audiences consider to be visually crucial for a musical context

Percepción y aceptación de contenidos del libro Caminando de Nuevo 3 para la enseñanza de español

This work presents an investigation done on the book Caminando de nuevo 3 that is adopted in some Swedish schools for the Spanish course they offer. The hypothesis explored whether the content of the book could create wrong stereotypes based on incorrect used of didactic content.Other related worked in line with this investigation were investigated. Furthermore, twenty students that had used this book were surveyed. The data collected was analyzed. This analysis is in line with the hypothesis of this work. A great majority of the students reported not to be motivated, they were not particularly enthusiastic toward the book, and were surprised by the content of the book related to the exercises, the text itself and the pictures used in the book.In conclusion this work suggests that this type of textbooks should be revised and present a better alternative for its text, visual and grammatical content.Finally, some recommendations are given both to teachers and students in order to reach the goals that have been defined by their curriculum.

Language Dominance in Early and Late Bilinguals

The proposed presentation is a progress report from a project which is aimed at establishing some phonetic correlates of language dominance in various kinds of bilingual situations. The current object of study is Swedish students starting in classes which prepare for the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme. The IB classes in Sweden are taught in English, except for classes in Swedish and foreign languages. This means that after they enter the programme the students are exposed to and speak a good deal more English than previously.The assumption made by many students that they will, on the one hand not “damage” their Swedish, and on the other will dramatically improve their English simply by attending an English-medium school will be tested. The linguistic background of the students studied and their reasons for choosing the IB programme will be established. Their English and Swedish proficiency will be tested according to various parameters (native-like syntax, perceived foreign accent, the timing of vowels and consonants in VC sequences, vocabulary mobilisation) on arrival at the school, and again after one and three years at the school. The initial recordings are now underway.In a preliminary study involving just three young people who were bilingual in Swedish and English, the timing of the pronunciation of (C)VC syllables in Swedish and English was studied. The results of this investigation indicate that it may be possible to establish language dominance in bilingual speakers using timing data. It was found that the three subjects differed systematically in their pronunciation of the target words. One subject (15 years old), who was apparently native-like in both languages, had the V-C timing of both Swedish and English words of a native speaker of English. His brother (17 years old), who had a noticeable Swedish accent in English, pronounced both Swedish and English words in this respect like a native speaker of Swedish. The boys’ sister (9 years old) apparently had native-like timing in both languages.

Kommunikation bortom orden : En etnografisk studie om hur lärares actio och ickeverbala kommunikation påverkar elevers motivation

Syftet med detta examensarbete är att få insikt i hur lärarens ickeverbala kommunikation och actio påverkar elevers motivation. Utifrån en etnografisk arbetsmetod observerades en svensklärare på en gymnasieskola under fyra lektionstimmar för att undersöka hur läraren kommunicerade med sina elever ickeverbalt. Parallellt med observationerna intervjuades både läraren och eleverna som deltog i undersökningen. Undersökningen visade att lärares ickeverbala kommunikation och actio har en stor påverkan på elevernas motivation, att denna påverkan sker omedelbart och att den kan förändras under en pågående lektion. När en lärare medvetandegör hur hon eller han kommunicerar med sina elever ickeverbalt kan aspekter som oavsiktlig och intuitiv kommunikation få en mindre påverkan på undervisningen. Detta bidrar i sin tur till att utveckla lärarens ickeverbala kompetens och på så sätt sin förmåga att motivera sina elever under hela lektionen.

PANA V : Evaluation of a Literacy Project

PANA V Evaluation of a Literacy ProjectSUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONSThis evaluation set out to explore the impact of the literacy work carried out through PANA V. It focussed on clarifying effects such as empowerment and poverty reduction in relation to the civil society. Two specific objectives were to evaluate the methodological approach and the didactic materials and to evaluate the sustainability of the project.Although the focus of the evaluation has been PANA V, the project has been evaluated in its context, as one in a series of five projects located in Rwanda ten years after the war and genocide. The conclusion will consider future plans in this field.The evaluator has striven to create a holistic picture of the effects of the project, although the given time for the evaluation was short. Only three weeks were spent in the field study and only ten days in the actual field. Although there were some organisational and logistic problems, as is common when carrying out a study like this in a poor country, many literacy sites were visited and quite many participators were interviewed. The overall impression from the study is overwhelmingly positive. So many people commit themselves in this task of teaching Rwandans reading, writing and numeracy. Despite harsh conditions learners strive to learn and group leaders devote themselves to the task. Many leaders on different levels try their very best to manage their difficult and demanding task. The main objective was to explore the impact of the project on poverty reduction, particularly on empowerment and strategies for everyday life. Women were to be regarded particularly. From the results it is clear that the project has a strong, positive impact both on poverty reduction and empowerment of marginalised groups. Among those who have benefited from the alphabetisation are mainly women. Unfortunately, when it comes to leaders in PANA, who may also be said to have benefited from the project, only a small minority is women. This is something that is recommended that it be reconsidered inside the organisation. As a majority of the targeted learners are women, and as the economic and social situation of women in Rwanda is generally weak, this is a question that I recommend the Pentesostal church and ADEPR to look particularly into. With many women being single breadwinners of their households, it is important that also women get access to positions that may bring benefits of different kind.It is also clear that the project has positive effects for the civil society. In the present situation in Rwanda, during the process of reconciliation and rapid progress, basic education for the poor majority is a democratic issue. In a country with a plethora of internet-cafés in the capital and a small minority that use cars and mobile-telephones to communicate nation-wide, it is of outmost importance that the majority acquires basic education, of which literacy is a central part. To strengthen the civil society in Rwanda literacy is important. One central issue is then that Rwanda develops toward becoming a country where literacy is used for the benefit of the citizens and it is a democratic issue that all citizens get an opportunity to participate. Crucial for this is that strong efforts are put into primary schools nation-wide. Literacy projects for adults, like PANA, may only complement these efforts, but they constitute important and necessary complements. Other relevant ways to promote literacy are campaigns in Radio and TV and through cultural events such as festivals, music and theatre. News papers, magazines and books are natural parts of such campaigns as well as adult education. As stated under the results not much can be said about the didactics in this evaluation. On the whole the methodology and the materials fill their function well and receive a high reputation. As people learn to read and write under very simple conditions, obviously the approach is appropriate. A few suggestions may be given from the study:•Focus groups leaders’ attention on clearness, that they show very clearly what is to be read. Good structuring is probably of great importance for many learners.•Make clear what is tested in the tests and consider the possibility to use a holistic test that would be more congruent with the methodology. The possibility to use only one grade, pass, would enable a more practical test, such as reading a short, relevant text, writing something relevant and solving practical mathematic problems. Avoid tests that demand school knowledge.•Avoid using methaphors such as “fight against illiteracy” and connections between illiteracy/literacy and darkness/light. It is not true that illiteracy causes bad things and that literacy only brings good. •Be prepared that it may be more difficult in the future to achieve the goals as it may be the case that the early learners where the ones who achieved easily. The goal of “literacy in six month” in PANA will probably hold only for some learners but also those who do not manage in six months need literacy skills.A third objective was to secure sustainability. As for sustainability of the project in itself, and of the literacy process, the main conclusion is that there is a good potential. The commitment and devotedness among many involved in PANA proves good. One weakness is individual leaders in ADEPR who do not see this as an important task for the Pentecostal church in Rwanda. Other weaknesses are the unwillingness to mention explicitly the wish, for example among group leaders, to get some kind of incentive and the fear of loosing believers by cooperation with other organisations. A higher degree of transparency in this issue would probably solve some irritations and tensions.As for the sustainability of the literacy skills much may be done to improve. The acquired skills seem to be comparably relevant. The level achieved, and the level tested, may be defined as basic literacy skills, consisting of basic reading, writing and numeracy skills. However, these skills are very restricted and there is a high risk that the skills will decline, which means that there is a high risk that people will forget how to read and write because of lack of exercising. From these conclusions a few suggestions for future development will be given.

A Gradient-Type Method For Real-Time State Estimation Of Water Distribution Networks

Drinking water distribution networks risk exposure to malicious or accidental contamination. Several levels of responses are conceivable. One of them consists to install a sensor network to monitor the system on real time. Once a contamination has been detected, this is also important to take appropriate counter-measures. In the SMaRT-OnlineWDN project, this relies on modeling to predict both hydraulics and water quality. An online model use makes identification of the contaminant source and simulation of the contaminated area possible. The objective of this paper is to present SMaRT-OnlineWDN experience and research results for hydraulic state estimation with sampling frequency of few minutes. A least squares problem with bound constraints is formulated to adjust demand class coefficient to best fit the observed values at a given time. The criterion is a Huber function to limit the influence of outliers. A Tikhonov regularization is introduced for consideration of prior information on the parameter vector. Then the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is applied that use derivative information for limiting the number of iterations. Confidence intervals for the state prediction are also given. The results are presented and discussed on real networks in France and Germany.

Exchange rate: fix, float, or manage it?

The Exchange Rate is the Most Strategic of the Four Macroeconomic Prices. it Determines not Only Exports and Imports, But Also Real Wages, Consumption and the Savings Rate. Conventional Theory Holds That it is Impossible to Manage It, and That the Only Alternatives are to Fix or to Float It. the Experience of the East Asian Countries, That Use it Strategically, Demonstrates That This Claim is False.

Reuse-based test planning for core-based systems-on-chip

Electronic applications are currently developed under the reuse-based paradigm. This design methodology presents several advantages for the reduction of the design complexity, but brings new challenges for the test of the final circuit. The access to embedded cores, the integration of several test methods, and the optimization of the several cost factors are just a few of the several problems that need to be tackled during test planning. Within this context, this thesis proposes two test planning approaches that aim at reducing the test costs of a core-based system by means of hardware reuse and integration of the test planning into the design flow. The first approach considers systems whose cores are connected directly or through a functional bus. The test planning method consists of a comprehensive model that includes the definition of a multi-mode access mechanism inside the chip and a search algorithm for the exploration of the design space. The access mechanism model considers the reuse of functional connections as well as partial test buses, cores transparency, and other bypass modes. The test schedule is defined in conjunction with the access mechanism so that good trade-offs among the costs of pins, area, and test time can be sought. Furthermore, system power constraints are also considered. This expansion of concerns makes it possible an efficient, yet fine-grained search, in the huge design space of a reuse-based environment. Experimental results clearly show the variety of trade-offs that can be explored using the proposed model, and its effectiveness on optimizing the system test plan. Networks-on-chip are likely to become the main communication platform of systemson- chip. Thus, the second approach presented in this work proposes the reuse of the on-chip network for the test of the cores embedded into the systems that use this communication platform. A power-aware test scheduling algorithm aiming at exploiting the network characteristics to minimize the system test time is presented. The reuse strategy is evaluated considering a number of system configurations, such as different positions of the cores in the network, power consumption constraints and number of interfaces with the tester. Experimental results show that the parallelization capability of the network can be exploited to reduce the system test time, whereas area and pin overhead are strongly minimized. In this manuscript, the main problems of the test of core-based systems are firstly identified and the current solutions are discussed. The problems being tackled by this thesis are then listed and the test planning approaches are detailed. Both test planning techniques are validated for the recently released ITC’02 SoC Test Benchmarks, and further compared to other test planning methods of the literature. This comparison confirms the efficiency of the proposed methods.

Taylor principle and inflation stability in emerging market countriesw

The goal of this paper is to evaluate the validity of the Taylor principle for inflation control in 12 developing countries that use inflation targeting regimes: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey. The test is based on a state-space model to determine when each country has followed the principle; then a threshold unit root test is used to verify if the stationarity of the deviation of the expected inflation from its target depends on compliance with the Taylor principle. The results show that such compliance leads to the stationarity of the deviation of the expected inflation from its target in all cases. Furthermore, in most cases, non-compliance with the Taylor principle leads to nonstationary deviation of the expected inflation.

Efeitos da estabilização e da abertura comercial sobre a distribuição de salários

Entre 1990 e 1995 observou-se uma melhora significativa na distribuição da renda pessoal brasileira. Enquanto a renda dos 10% mais ricos cresceu menos de 10%, a dos 20% mais pobres aumentou quase 30%. Este trabalho procurou analisar as causas dessa melhora. Entre os diversos fatores analisados um forte cnadidato foi a abertura da economia que provocou um aumento nas exportações líquidas de bens relativamente intensivos em trabalho pouco qualificado e um aumento nas importações líquidas de bens relativamente intensivos em trabalho qualificado. Estas alterações de demandas podem ter provocado estes aumentos diferenciados de salários.

Enfoque gerencial dos benefícios e desafios da tecnologia de informação para o desempenho empresarial

A Tecnologia de Informação tem sido considerada como um dos componentes mais importantes do ambiente empresarial atual, sendo que as organizações brasileiras têm utilizado ampla e intensamente esta tecnologia, tanto em nível estratégico como operacional. Este nível de utilização oferece grandes oportunidades para as empresas que têm sucesso no aproveitamento dos benefícios oferecidos por este uso. Ao mesmo tempo, ele também oferece desafios para a administração deste recurso do qual as empresas passam a ter grande dependência e que apresenta particularidades de gerenciamento. Neste cenário complexo, outro desafio é identificar o nível de contribuição que esta tecnologia oferece aos resultados das empresas. Por fim, as atitudes dos executivos de negócio e de Tecnologia de Informação interferem de forma significativa na administração desta tecnologia. Este projeto tem como objetivo principal identificar os benefícios efetivos da utilização de Tecnologia de Informação, os desafios de sua administração, o desempenho das empresas que utilizam intensamente esta tecnologia e as atitudes dos principais executivos neste ambiente, bem como a relação que existe entre estas dimensões. O foco do projeto será os principais executivos de negócio e de tecnologia. A sua contribuição é aprofundar o conhecimento da administração de Tecnologia de Informação, nas dimensões de utilização, administração e contribuição, além das atitudes dos executivos, bem como a relação entre elas, permitindo criar uma estrutura de análise da situação desta tecnologia nas empresas que ofereça subsídios para a sua administração bem sucedida.

O uso de derivativos e gerenciamento de riscos em empresas brasileiras não-financeiras

Este artigo apresenta os resultados de uma pesquisa sobre uso de derivativos junto a 50 empresas não-financeiras brasileiras. A proporção de empresas que usam derivativos no Brasil não é significativamente diferente da de outros países que foram objeto de pesquisa, com exceção dos EUA. A exemplo do que foi verificado internacionalmente, as evidências sugerem que os gestores de empresas não-financeiras brasileiras usam derivativos principalmente com o propósito de gerenciar risco, e não com fins especulativos. O uso de derivativos por classes de risco no Brasil segue os padrões internacionais, ou seja, o tipo de exposição mais comumente gerenciada com derivativos é a cambial, seguido pelo risco de taxas de juros, de commodities e de patrimônio. Apesar da alta volatilidade dos mercados brasileiros, as preocupações principais dos gestores de risco brasileiros parecem estar mais ligadas às questões do arcabouço legal e institucional do que aos aspectos econômico-financeiros diferentemente do encontrado em outros países.

Benefício do uso de tecnologia de informação no desempenho empresarial

A Tecnologia de Informação tem sido considerada como um dos componentes mais importantes do ambiente empresarial atual, sendo que as organizações brasileiras têm utilizado ampla e intensamente esta tecnologia tanto em nível estratégico como operacional. Este nível de utilização oferece grandes oportunidades para as empresas que têm sucesso no aproveitamento dos benefícios oferecidos por este uso. Ao mesmo tempo, ele também oferece o desafio de identificar o nível de contribuição que esta tecnologia oferece aos resultados das empresas. Este projeto tem como objetivo principal identificar os benefícios efetivos da utilização de Tecnologia de Informação, por meio da identificação dos vínculos dos benefícios oferecidos pelos projetos e infra-estrutura desta tecnologia com o desempenho empresarial, expressados em indicadores e métricas, mesmo que intangíveis e indiretos. O foco do projeto será um caso de empresa com gastos e investimentos significativos em Tecnologia de Informação. A sua contribuição é aprofundar o conhecimento da administração de Tecnologia de Informação, em especial na sua relação com os resultados empresariais, permitindo criar uma estrutura de análise dos gastos e investimentos nesta tecnologia nas empresas que ofereça subsídios para a sua administração bem sucedida. Este projeto está inserido na linha de pesquisa Administração, Análise e Tecnologia de Informação, nos projetos de pesquisa do Centro de Informática Aplicada (CIA) e está relacionado com outros projetos recentemente desenvolvidos com o apoio do Núcleo de Pesquisa e Publicação (NPP) da FGV-EAESP.