Escrita colaborativa com google docs: flash fiction, noticing e aprendizagem de inglês como L2

Google Docs (GD) is an online word processor with which multiple authors can work on the same document, in a synchronous or asynchronous manner, which can help develop the ability of writing in English (WEISSHEIMER; SOARES, 2012). As they write collaboratively, learners find more opportunities to notice the gaps in their written production, since they are exposed to more input from the fellow co-authors (WEISSHEIMER; BERGSLEITHNER; LEANDRO, 2012) and prioritize the process of text (re)construction instead of the concern with the final product, i.e., the final version of the text (LEANDRO; WEISSHEIMER; COOPER, 2013). Moreover, when it comes to second language (L2) learning, producing language enables the consolidation of existing knowledge as well as the internalization of new knowledge (SWAIN, 1985; 1993). Taking this into consideration, this mixed-method (DÖRNYEI, 2007) quasi-experimental (NUNAN, 1999) study aims at investigating the impact of collaborative writing through GD on the development of the writing skill in English and on the noticing of syntactic structures (SCHMIDT, 1990). Thirtyfour university students of English integrated the cohort of the study: twenty-five were assigned to the experimental group and nine were assigned to the control group. All learners went through a pre-test and a post-test so that we could measure their noticing of syntactic structures. Learners in the experimental group were exposed to a blended learning experience, in which they took reading and writing classes at the university and collaboratively wrote three pieces of flash fiction (a complete story told in a hundred words), outside the classroom, online through GD, during eleven weeks. Learners in the control group took reading and writing classes at the university but did not practice collaborative writing. The first and last stories produced by the learners in the experimental group were analysed in terms of grammatical accuracy, operationalized as the number of grammar errors per hundred words (SOUSA, 2014), and lexical density, which refers to the relationship between the number of words produced with lexical properties and the number of words produced with grammatical properties (WEISSHEIMER, 2007; MEHNERT, 1998). Additionally, learners in the experimental group answered an online questionnaire on the blended learning experience they were exposed to. The quantitative results showed that the collaborative task led to the production of more lexically dense texts over the 11 weeks. The noticing and grammatical accuracy results were different from what we expected; however, they provide us with insights on measurement issues, in the case of noticing, and on the participants‟ positive attitude towards collaborative writing with flash fiction. The qualitative results also shed light on the usefulness of computer-mediated collaborative writing in L2 learning.

A escrita da escrita em (d)enunciação no espaço sócio-escolar: um espaço (em vão) para a (cri)atividade escrita

This thesis is a writing of (d)enunciation because it reveals the language experiencies of those individuals who take, in social school space, the social role of the teacher and of the student, for some reason, they feel restrained by a demand which prevents them of teaching and learning how to write – and, even, their own writing. On this basis, we consider some questions concerning Benveniste‘s theory of enunciation and the teaching and learning process in Portuguese from the triad among teacher – teaching of writing/ knowledge – student, making this theoretical area closer to the pedagogical one. We support in the working hypothesis that is based on the position of the loosening of this triad has its effects in the process of intervention-interference to the point where it does not leave a scar which can remain working on productive effects on the student‘s writing. As a consequence, we show two findings which allow us to think the teaching of writing in Portuguese is a space for writing creativity in such a way it reveals itself as a sine qua non condition for the institutionalized and subjective writing. The first finding is that taking genre as a model has some implications in the teaching and learning process of writing according to the instructions of the official documents. The second finding, as a result of the first one, is the assumption that genre is at the same time a model and a transgression and taking it as a (ex)sample opens space for writing creativity which ―is a transposition of the interior language‖ (BENVENISTE, 2014 [1968-1969], p. 132) in a way this creativity makes it intelligible and highlights what is a model (interactiveness) and a transgression (inventiveness). From such findings, we organize our heterogeneous corpus according to these procedures: recording the classes in audio; recording the interviews we made with teachers and students in audio; and constituting an archive with the students‘ writing production. From this corpus, we analyzed the (d)enunciative mo(ve)ments in the teacher – teaching of writing/ knowledge – student triad and the history of (d)enunciations, of language experiences. Besides, we analyzed the teacher‘s discourse in relation to the way he plans his classes based on the knowledge that must be taught and his own way of managing this knowledge in order to understand his interference in his students‘ writings. Our analyses (re)affirm that when the loosening of the triad happens, the students become lost, what makes them unable of working upon their own writing epilinguisticaly. Because of it, schools have lost their specificity as a place for teaching students how to read and write as they open space for training, only. On this basis, we consider that the effect of such a loosening generates complaints and denunciations. Therefore, based on such (d)enunciations, we present the Primary sketches of a proposition for intervention-interference in teaching how to write and we aim at introducing much knowledge to teachers and students in order to allow them to think about possible ways out.

Ampliação vocabular: glossário de textos do livro didático de língua portuguesa "Vontade de saber português" do 9º ano

This research aimed to verify the vocabulary difficulties faced by 9th year students while understanding the didactic book of Portuguese Language (DBPL) “Vontade de Saber Português”, used at the Municipal School Sebastião Rangel. We noticed the students had some doubts concerning the unknown vocabulary in the texts and, therefore, in text comprehension. The hypothesis is that one “difficult” word and the lexicon used by DBPL author can disturb student comprehension. We adopted some action which could simplify the little vocabulary understanding and contributed to extend it. For that reason, the job was theoretically based on Biderman (1999), Barbosa (1989), Dias (2004), Krieger (2012), Coelho (1993) and on National Curriculum Parameters of Portuguese Language, aiming to ally theory and practice. The application methodology of the proposal was done in order to the students understand that the word needs to be adapted to its context. At the begging of the job, the students read the texts and took notes of the “difficult” words, selecting, corpus. We analyzed the doubts, registering them. Then, we showed to the students the classification of abbreviated words after each entry. The students separated the words for grammar classes – lexical words” (KRIEGER, 2012). Such words have a very significant meaning to the comprehension of the read texts, being interesting to take a look in online dictionaries. In the creative glossary, done by the students, the words were spread in alphabetical order. They transcript the part where was the word and copied again, substituting the word to a clearer word. Finally, we asked the students a writing production using five words from the glossary; we showed them that the meaning of the words is not found only in the dictionary, but they can be used in different contexts. In the analyzes, was discovered that there is one necessity of a pedagogic didactic work more effective with elementary school lexicon. Thus, this proposal is not a closed receipt, but the infield location allowed a reflexive pedagogic practice about lexicon education.

The English language used by the Chinese: A new variety of English?

The topic was chosen because of a simple fact that there are more Chinese studying English in China than U.S. Americans who speak English. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the unique linguistic features that make the Chinese use English in a particular style. First, it shows the development of the English language used by the Chinese: Chinese Pidgin English, Chinglish, Chinese English and China English. Second, it takes a deeper look into certain linguistic features regarding the English language used by the Chinese: lexical features morphosyntactic features and pragmatic features

The development of a semantic model for the interpretation of mathematics including the use of technology

The semantic model developed in this research was in response to the difficulty a group of mathematics learners had with conventional mathematical language and their interpretation of mathematical constructs. In order to develop the model ideas from linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, formal languages and natural language processing were investigated. This investigation led to the identification of four main processes: the parsing process, syntactic processing, semantic processing and conceptual processing. The model showed the complex interdependency between these four processes and provided a theoretical framework in which the behaviour of the mathematics learner could be analysed. The model was then extended to include the use of technological artefacts into the learning process. To facilitate this aspect of the research, the theory of instrumentation was incorporated into the semantic model. The conclusion of this research was that although the cognitive processes were interdependent, they could develop at different rates until mastery of a topic was achieved. It also found that the introduction of a technological artefact into the learning environment introduced another layer of complexity, both in terms of the learning process and the underlying relationship between the four cognitive processes.

Investigating relative clauses in children with specific language impairment

Background: It is well documented that children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) experience significant grammatical deficits. While much of the focus in the past has been on their morphosyntactic difficulties, less is known about their acquisition of complex syntactic structures such as relative clauses. The role of memory in language performance has also become increasingly prominent in the literature. Aims: This study aims to investigate the control of an important complex syntactic structure, the relative clause, by school age children with SLI in Ireland, using a newly devised sentence recall task. It also aims to explore the role of verbal and short-termworking memory in the performance of children with SLI on the sentence recall task, using a standardized battery of tests based on Baddeley’s model of working memory. Methods and Procedures: Thirty two children with SLI, thirty two age matched typically developing children (AM-TD) between the ages of 6 and 7,11 years and twenty younger typically developing (YTD) children between 4,7 and 5 years, completed the task. The sentence recall (SR) task included 52 complex sentences and 17 fillers. It included relative clauses that are used in natural discourse and that reflect a developmental hierarchy. The relative clauses were also controlled for length and varied in syntactic complexity, representing the full range of syntactic roles. There were seven different relative clause types attached to either the predicate nominal of a copular clause (Pn), or to the direct object of a transitive clause (Do). Responses were recorded, transcribed and entered into a database for analysis. TheWorkingMemory Test Battery for children (WMTB-C—Pickering & Gathercole, 2001) was administered in order to explore the role of short-term memory and working memory on the children’s performance on the SR task. Outcomes and Results: The children with SLI showed significantly greater difficulty than the AM-TD group and the YTD group. With the exception of the genitive subject clauses, the children with SLI scored significantly higher on all sentences containing a Pn main clause than those containing a transitive main clause. Analysis of error types revealed the frequent production of a different type of relative clause than that presented in the task—with a strong word order preference in the NVN direction indicated for the children with SLI. The SR performance for the children with SLI was most highly correlated with expressive language skills and digit recall. Conclusions and Implications: Children with SLI have significantly greater difficulty with relative clauses than YTD children who are on average two years younger—relative clauses are a delay within a delay. Unlike the YTD children they show a tendency to simplify relative clauses in the noun verb noun (NVN) direction. They show a developmental hierarchy in their production of relative clause constructions and are highly influenced by the frequency distribution of the relative clauses in the ambient language.

Language, Logos, and Social Ontology: Naturalist and Post-Naturalist Narratives of Human Rationality and Social Reality

I distinguish two ways that philosophers have approached and explained the reality and status of human social institutions. I call these approaches “naturalist” and “post-naturalist”. Common to both approaches is an understanding that the status of mind and its relation to the world or “nature” has implications on a conception of the status of institutional reality. Naturalists hold that mind is explicable within a scientific frame that conceives of mind as a fundamentally material process. By proxy, social reality is also materially explicable. Post-naturalists critique this view, holding instead that naturalism is parasitic on contemporary science—it therefore is non-compulsory and distorts how we ought to understand mind and social reality. A comparison of naturalism and post-naturalism will comprise the content of the first chapter. The second chapter turns to tracing out the dimensions of a post-naturalist narrative of mind and social reality. Post-naturalists conceive of mind and its activity of thought as sui generis, and it transpires from this that social institutions are better understood as a rational mind’s mode of the expression in the world. Post-naturalism conceives of social reality as a necessary dimension of thought. Thought requires a second person and thereby a tradition or context of norms that come to both structure its expression and become the products of expression. This is in contrast to the idea that social reality is a production of minds, and thereby derivative. Social reality, self-conscious thought, and thought of the second person are therefore three dimensions of a greater unity.

Production and presence in the countries of Central America in Scopus on the theme of Documentation in Social Communication (1986-2013)

Describes and analyzes the results obtained after analysis of the publications present in Scopus data base and used that tool rankings generated by the research group Scimago on the production of the different countries of Central America on the issue of documentation the means of mass communication. Performed a comparative about different countries in the region and the scientific analyzes. Finally, and given and data analysis, a number of recommendations are made to improve the production and the presence in indexed database.

Les verbes causatifs dans les textes scientifiques : essai de typologie

La causalité est une des notions les plus fondamentales de la vie humaine. La vulgarisation scientifique se base sur l’établissement fréquent de relations causales par le truchement d'indices linguistiques. Ainsi, la causalité y est perceptible à l'aide de marques explicites, se manifestant au niveau lexical. Dans de nombreuses situations, afin de valider la relation causale, il faut récupérer des termes plus ou moins explicites qui apparaissent au niveau morphosyntaxique. Viennent enfin les procédés implicites d’expression de la cause ou "la causalité non marquée" linguistiquement.  

Legal Translation from English to Spanish in the Classroom: Problems when Translating Standard Formulas of Expression

The purpose of this paper is to identify problems when translating standard formulas of expression in English to Spanish legal translation. To achieve the goal, a total of 250 Spanish translations were analyzed of 10 sentences from legal texts in English. The degree of difficulty posed by the translation of these formulas is confirmed by the results obtained, which is related not so much to the intrinsic meaning of the words that compose them, but to their contextual meaning. An eclectic approach that combines discourse analysis with contrastive linguistics is proposed, and some specific didactic guidelines are indicated to facilitate the translation teaching of these standard formulas of expression. Lexical interpretation and contextual recreation allow the apprentice translator to make progress with the translation of these phrases and to improve his/her attitude when facing them to achieve a successful semantic and contextual interpretation, that is to say, getting the closest natural equivalent while respecting the genius of the language.

Multilingualism and conceptual modelling

One of the leading motivations behind the multilingual semantic web is to make resources accessible digitally in an online global multilingual context. Consequently, it is fundamental for knowledge bases to find a way to manage multilingualism and thus be equipped with those procedures for its conceptual modelling. In this context, the goal of this paper is to discuss how common-sense knowledge and cultural knowledge are modelled in a multilingual framework. More particularly, multilingualism and conceptual modelling are dealt with from the perspective of FunGramKB, a lexico-conceptual knowledge base for natural language understanding. This project argues for a clear division between the lexical and the conceptual dimensions of knowledge. Moreover, the conceptual layer is organized into three modules, which result from a strong commitment towards capturing semantic knowledge (Ontology), procedural knowledge (Cognicon) and episodic knowledge (Onomasticon). Cultural mismatches are discussed and formally represented at the three conceptual levels of FunGramKB.

Grammar in dictionaries revisited: the case of verbs with se

This paper is a study about the way in which se structures are represented in 20 verb entries of nine dictionaries of Spanish language. There is a large number of these structures and they are problematic for native and non native speakers. Verbs of the analysis are middle-high frequency and, in the most part of the cases, very polysemous, and this allows to observe interconnections between the different se structures and the different meanings of each verb. Data of the lexicographic analysis are cross-checked with corpus analysis of the same units. As a result, it is observed that there is a large variety in the data which are offered in each dictionary and in the way they are offered, inter and intradictionary. The reasons range from the theoretical overall of each Project to practical performance. This leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to further progress in the dictionary model it is being handled, in order to offer lexico-grammatical phenomenon such as se verbs in an accurate, clear and exhaustive way.

Motivation and Vocabulary Breadth in CLIL and EFL Contexts. Different age, Same Time of Exposure

Numerous studies have found a positive connection between learners’ motivation towards foreign language and foreign language achievement. The present study examines the role of motivation in receptive vocabulary breadth (size) of two groups of Spanish learners of different ages, but all with 734 hours of instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL): a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) group in primary education and a non-CLIL (or EFL) group in secondary education. Most students in both groups were found to be highly motivated. The primary CLIL group slightly overcame the secondary non-CLIL group with respect to the mean general motivation but this is a non-significant difference. The secondary group surpass significantly the primary group in receptive vocabulary size. No relationship between the receptive vocabulary knowledge and general motivation is found in the primary CLIL group. On the other hand, a positive significant connection, although a very small one, is identified for the secondary non-CLIL group. We will discuss on the type of test, the age of students and the type of instruction as variables that could be influencing the results.

Receptive Vocabulary of CLIL and Non-CLIL Primary and Secondary School Learners

CLIL instruction has been reported to be beneficial for foreign language vocabulary learning since CLIL students show higher vocabulary profiles than students of their same age in traditional EFL contexts. However, to our knowledge, the receptive vocabulary knowledge of CLIL and non-CLIL learners at the end of primary and secondary education has not been examined yet. Hence, this study aims at comparing the receptive vocabulary size 79 CLIL primary learners with the receptive vocabulary knowledge of 331 non-CLIL learners at the end of primary and secondary school. Sex-based differences were also analysed. The 2k Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) was used for the purposes of the study. Results revealed that learners’ receptive vocabulary sizes lie within the most frequent 1000 words, non-CLIL secondary school students throw better results than primary students but the differences between the secondary group and the CLIL group are not statistically significant. As for sex-based differences, we found no significant differences among the groups. These findings led us to believe that the CLIL approach offers a benefit for vocabulary acquisition since CLIL learners have been exposed to the foreign language for a shorter period of time and the results are quite similar to their non-CLIL secondary school partners.

ReaderBench goes Online: A Comprehension-Centered Framework for Educational Purposes

In this paper we introduce the online version of our ReaderBench framework, which includes multi-lingual comprehension-centered web services designed to address a wide range of individual and collaborative learning scenarios, as follows. First, students can be engaged in reading a course material, then eliciting their understanding of it; the reading strategies component provides an in-depth perspective of comprehension processes. Second, students can write an essay or a summary; the automated essay grading component provides them access to more than 200 textual complexity indices covering lexical, syntax, semantics and discourse structure measurements. Third, students can start discussing in a chat or a forum; the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) component provides indepth conversation analysis in terms of evaluating each member’s involvement in the CSCL environments. Eventually, the sentiment analysis, as well as the semantic models and topic mining components enable a clearer perspective in terms of learner’s points of view and of underlying interests.