Noticing, exploring and practicing: functional grammar in the ESL classroom

This book introduces six general procedures for teaching grammar to learners of English as a second language. The procedures are designed to encourage learners to notice, explore and practice grammar in context. Each description and discussion of a procedure is followed by two sample lesson plans together with sample texts and worksheets. Teachers can either use these 'as is' or adapt them for their own students. The lessons are suitable for a wide range of students from beginning learners to advanced learners. A final chapter provides examples of lessons in which several procedures are combined. In addition, before each sample lesson plan, the grammar focus of the lesson is briefly explained for the teacher. These procedures all illustrate how grammar can be taught through texts, and they are based on an understanding of the latest research on pedagogical grammar and the role of language awareness and discovery in second language learning and provide teachers with principles they can apply in developing their own teaching materials and activities. The grammar explanations preceding each teaching plan provide a fresh look at English grammar drawing on work in systemic functional linguistics.

Thematic and Situational Features of Chinese BBS Texts

This study adopts the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG; Halliday, 1994/2000; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) to investigate thematic features in messages sent to an electronic bulletin board system (BBS) in mainland China. As a concept derived from the Prague School, theme in SFG has been identified as “the point of departure of the message; it is that which locates and orients the clause within its context” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. 64). Thematic features in the Chinese data are found to relate to the situational features of the BBS, the analysis of which is based on the frameworks of Biber (1988) and Herring (2007). The relevant situational features are further generalized into the three components of context: field, tenor, and mode (Halliday & Hasan, 1985) in order to examine the relation between thematic features and situational features. The study’s findings show that thematic features are more closely related to the field (nature of the activity) than to the mode, contrary to Halliday’s (1978/2001) claim that theme, as a realization of the textual meaning, is determined by the mode (medium). In concluding, this discrepancy is explored.

Para uma pedagogia das literacias: das conceções e práticas docentes aos conceitos e competências discentes. Um estudo da aula de língua portuguesa no 2º ciclo do ensino básico

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Educação (Especialidade em Literacias e Ensino do Português)

"Eu pensei que ia sair daqui falando inglês": um estudo sistêmico-funcional sobre papéis sociais atribuídos por alunos de um curso de Letras/Inglês

Research in the area of teacher training in English as a Foreign Language (CELANI, 2003, 2004, 2010; PAIVA, 2000, 2003, 2005; VIEIRA-ABRAHÃO, 2010) articulates the complexity of beginning teachers classroom contexts aligned with teaching language as a social and professional practice of the teacher in training. To better understand this relationship, the present study is based on a corpus of transcribed interviews and questionnaires applied to 28 undergraduate students majoring in Letters/English emphasis, at a public university located in the interior of the Western Amazon region, soliciting their opinions about the reforms made in the curriculum of this Major. Interviews and questionnaires were used as data collection instruments to trace a profile of the students organized in Group 1, with freshmen and sophomore undergraduates who are following the 2009 curriculum, and Group 2, with junior and senior undergraduates who are following the 2006 curriculum. The objectives are to identify, to characterize and to analyze the types of pronouns, roles and social actors represented in the opinions of these students in relation to their teacher training curriculum. The theoretical support focuses on the challenge of historical and contemporary routes from English teachers initial education programs (MAGALHÃES; LIBERALLI, 2009; PAVAN; SILVA, 2010; ALVAREZ, 2010; VIANA, 2011; PAVAN, 2012). Our theoretical perspective is based on the Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday (1994), Halliday and Hasan (1989), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Eggins (1994; 2004) and Thompson (2004). We focus on the concept of the Interpersonal meaning, specifically regarding the roles articulated in the studies by Delu (1991), Thompson and Thetela (1995), and in the Portuguese language such as Ramos (1997), Silva (2006) and Cabral (2009). Moreover, we ascribe van Leeuwen s (1997; 2003) theory of Representation of Social Actors as a theoretical framework in order to identify the sociological aspect of social actors represented in the students discourse. Within this scenario, the analysis unfolds on three levels: grammatical (pronouns), semantic (roles), and discursive (social actors). For the analysis of interpersonal realizations present in the students opinions, we use the computational program WordSmith Tools (SCOTT, 2010) and its applications Wordlist and Concord to quantify the occurrences of the pronouns I, You and They, which characterize the roles and social actors of the corpus. The results show that the students assigned the following roles to themselves: (i) apprentice to express their initial process of English language learning; (ii) freshman to reveal their choice of Major in Letters/English emphasis; (iii) future teacher to relate their expectations towards a practicing professional. To assign the roles to professors in the major, the students used the metaphor of modality (I think) to indicate the relationship of teacher training, while they are in the role of a student and as a future teacher. From these evidences the representation of the students as social actors emerges in roles such as: (i) active roles; (ii) passive roles and (iii) personalized roles. The social actors represented in the opinions of the students reflect the inclusion of these roles assigned to the actions expressed about their experiences and expectations derived from their teacher training classroom

Parataxe e Tradição Discursiva: orações paratáticas justapostas em sincronias pretéritas do português

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Disciplinary talk:a systemic functional exploration of university seminar discussions

Despite the growth of spoken academic corpora in recent years, relatively little is known about the language of seminar discussions in higher education. This thesis compares seminar discussions across three disciplinary areas. The aim of this thesis is to uncover the functions and patterns of talk used in different disciplinary discussions and to highlight language on a macro and micro level that would be useful for materials design and teaching purposes. A framework for identifying and analysing genres in spoken language based on Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is used. Stretches of talk sharing a similar purpose and predictable functional staging, termed Discussion Macro Genres (DMGs) are identified. Language is compared across DMGs and across disciplines through use of corpus techniques in conjunction with SFL genre theory. Data for the study comprises just over 180,000 tokens and is drawn from the British Academic Spoken English corpus (BASE), recorded at two universities in the UK. The discipline areas investigated are Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Physical Sciences. Findings from this study make theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions to the field of spoken EAP. The empirical findings are firstly, that the majority of the seminar discussion can be assigned to one of the three main DMG in the corpus: Responding, Debating and Problem Solving. Secondly, it characterises each discipline area according to two DMGs. Thirdly, the majority of the discussion is non-oppositional in nature, suggesting that ‘debate’ is not the only form of discussion that students need to be prepared for. Finally, while some characteristics of the discussion are tied to the DMG and common across disciplines, others are discipline specific. On a theoretical level, this study shows that an SFL genre model for investigating spoken discourse can be successfully extended to investigate longer stretches of discourse than have previously been identified. The methodological contribution is to demonstrate how corpus techniques can be combined with SFL genre theory to investigate extended stretches of spoken discussion. The thesis will be of value to those working in the field of teaching spoken EAP/ ESAP as well as to materials developers.

Bridging the gap between stylistic and cognitive approaches to authorship analysis using systemic functional linguistics and multidimensional analysis

In the present state of the art of authorship attribution there seems to be an opposition between two approaches: cognitive and stylistic methodologies. It is proposed in this article that these two approaches are complementary and that the apparent gap between them can be bridged using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and in particular some of its theoretical constructions, such as codal variation. This article deals with the theoretical explanation of why such a theory would solve the debate between the two approaches and shows how these two views of authorship attribution are indeed complementary. Although the article is fundamentally theoretical, two example experimental trials are reported to show how this theory can be developed into a workable methodology of doing authorship attribution. In Trial 1, a SFL analysis was carried out on a small dataset consisting of three 300-word texts collected from three different authors whose socio-demographic background matched across a number of parameters. This trial led to some conclusions about developing a methodology based on SFL and suggested the development of another trial, which might hint at a more accurate and useful methodology. In Trial 2, Biber's (1988) multidimensional framework is employed, and a final methodology of authorship analysis based on this kind of analysis is proposed for future research. © 2013, EQUINOX PUBLISHING.

Health Related Quality of Life Assessment questionnaire for children aged 5 to 11 years with HIV/AIDS: cross-cultural adaptation for the Portuguese language

The objective of this study is to describe preliminary results from the cross-cultural adaptation of the Quality of Life Assessment Questionnaire, used to measure health related quality of life (HRQL) in Brazilian children aged between 5 and 11 with HIV/AIDS. The cross-cultural model evaluated the Concept, Item, Semantic and Measurement Equivalences (internal consistency and intra-observer reliability). Evaluation of the conceptual, item, semantic equivalences showed that the Portuguese version is pertinent for the Brazilian context. Four of seven domains showed internal consistency above 0.70 (α: 0.76-0.90) and five of seven revealed intra-observer reliability (ricc: 0.41-0.70). This first Portuguese version of the HRQL questionnaire can be understood as a valuable tool for assessing children's HRQL, but further studies with large samples and more robust analyses are recommended before use in the Brazilian context.

Sentiment analysis on twitter for the portuguese language

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

The Portuguese language version of social phobia and Anxiety Inventory: analysis of items and internal consistency in a Brazilian sample of 1,014 undergraduate students

OBJECTIVE: Theoretical and empirical analysis of items and internal consistency of the Portuguese-language version of Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI-Portuguese). METHODS: Social phobia experts conducted a 45-item content analysis of the SPAI-Portuguese administered to a sample of 1,014 university students. Item discrimination was evaluated by Student's t test; interitem, mean and item-to-total correlations, by Pearson coefficient; reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha. RESULTS: There was 100% agreement among experts concerning the 45 items. On the SPAI-Portuguese 43 items were discriminative (p < 0.05). A few inter-item correlations between both subscales were below 0.2. The mean inter-item correlations were: 0.41 on social phobia subscale; 0.32 on agoraphobia subscale and 0.32 on the SPAI-Portuguese. Item-to-total correlations were all higher then 0.3 (p < 0.001). Cronbach's alphas were: 0.95 on the SPAI-Portuguese; 0.96 on social phobia subscale; 0.85 on agoraphobia subscale. CONCLUSION: The 45-item content analysis revealed appropriateness concerning the underlying construct of the SPAI-Portuguese (social phobia, agoraphobia) with good discriminative capacity on 43 items. The mean inter-item correlations and reliability coefficients demonstrated the SPAI-Portuguese and subscales internal consistency and multidimensionality. No item was suppressed in the SPAI-Portuguese but the authors suggest that a shortened SPAI, in its different versions, could be an even more useful tool for research settings in social phobia.

Measuring Instruments In Cardiology Adapted Into Portuguese Language Of Brazil: A Systematic Review

This was a systematic review aimed at identifying and characterizing measuring instruments, developed in the context of cardiology, which were adapted into Portuguese language of Brazil. Systematic searches were performed in six databases. Information extracted included cultural adaptation process and measurement properties. To assess the methodological quality of studies, criteria based on international guidelines for cultural adaptation of instruments were used. Among the 114 articles found, 14 were eligible for review. Of these, most evaluated quality of life (35.7%) and health knowledge/learning (28.6%). Most studies followed all stages of the adaptation process recommended in the literature. With respect to measurement properties, internal consistency, verified by Cronbach’s alpha, was the property reported in the majority of the studies, as well as construct and criterion validity. This study is expected to provide to the scientific community a critical evaluation of adapted questionnaires available in the context of cardiology.


Neural correlates of language learning in adults

The human language-learning ability persists throughout life, indicating considerable flexibility at the cognitive and neural level. This ability spans from expanding the vocabulary in the mother tongue to acquisition of a new language with its lexicon and grammar. The present thesis consists of five studies that tap both of these aspects of adult language learning by using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during language processing and language learning tasks. The thesis shows that learning novel phonological word forms, either in the native tongue or when exposed to a foreign phonology, activates the brain in similar ways. The results also show that novel native words readily become integrated in the mental lexicon. Several studies in the thesis highlight the left temporal cortex as an important brain region in learning and accessing phonological forms. Incidental learning of foreign phonological word forms was reflected in functionally distinct temporal lobe areas that, respectively, reflected short-term memory processes and more stable learning that persisted to the next day. In a study where explicitly trained items were tracked for ten months, it was found that enhanced naming-related temporal and frontal activation one week after learning was predictive of good long-term memory. The results suggest that memory maintenance is an active process that depends on mechanisms of reconsolidation, and that these process vary considerably between individuals. The thesis put special emphasis on studying language learning in the context of language production. The neural foundation of language production has been studied considerably less than that of perceptive language, especially on the sentence level. A well-known paradigm in language production studies is picture naming, also used as a clinical tool in neuropsychology. This thesis shows that accessing the meaning and phonological form of a depicted object are subserved by different neural implementations. Moreover, a comparison between action and object naming from identical images indicated that the grammatical class of the retrieved word (verb, noun) is less important than the visual content of the image. In the present thesis, the picture naming was further modified into a novel paradigm in order to probe sentence-level speech production in a newly learned miniature language. Neural activity related to grammatical processing did not differ between the novel language and the mother tongue, but stronger neural activation for the novel language was observed during the planning of the upcoming output, likely related to more demanding lexical retrieval and short-term memory. In sum, the thesis aimed at examining language learning by combining different linguistic domains, such as phonology, semantics, and grammar, in a dynamic description of language processing in the human brain.

Translation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the Lymphoedema Functioning, Disability and Health Questionnaire for Lower Limb Lymphoedema into Portuguese Language

Objective The objective of the study is to describe the process of translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Lymphoedema Functioning, Disability, and Health Questionnaire for Lower Limb Lymphoedema (Lymph-ICF-LL) into (Brazilian) Portuguese. Methods The process was comprised of five steps - translation, back translation, revision by an expert panel, pretest, and final translation. The first translation was performed by two professionals of the healthcare area, and the back translation was performed by two translators. An expert panel assessed the questions for semantics and idiomatic, cultural, and conceptual equivalence. The pretest was conducted on 10 patients with lymphedema. Results Small differences were identified between the translated and back-translated versions, which were revised by the expert panel. The patients included in the pretest found 10 questions difficult to understand; these questions were reassessed by the same expert panel. Conclusion The results of the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Lymph- ICF-LL resulted in a Brazilian Portuguese version, which still requires validation with various samples of the local population.

Adeno-associated virus-8-Mediated intravenous transfer of myostatin propeptide leads to systemic functional improvements of slow but not fast muscle

Myostatin is a member of the transformating growth factor-_ (TGF-_) superfamily of proteins and is produced almost exclusively in skeletal muscle tissue, where it is secreted and circulates as a serum protein. Myostatin acts as a negative regulator of muscle mass through the canonical SMAD2/3/4 signaling pathway. Naturally occurring myostatin mutants exhibit a ‘double muscling’ phenotype in which muscle mass is dramatically increased as a result of both hypertrophy and hyperplasia. Myostatin is naturally inhibited by its own propeptide; therefore, we assessed the impact of adeno associated virus-8 (AAV8) myostatin propeptide vectors when systemically introduced in MF-1 mice. We noted a significant systemic increase in muscle mass in both slow and fast muscle phenotypes, with no evidence of hyperplasia; however, the nuclei-to- cytoplasm ratio in all myofiber types was significantly reduced. An increase in muscle mass in slow (soleus) muscle led to an increase in force output; however, an increase in fast (extensor digitorum longus [EDL]) muscle mass did not increase force output. These results suggest that the use of gene therapeutic regimens of myostatin inhibition for age-related or disease-related muscle loss may have muscle-specific effects.