Standard setting in specific-purpose language testing: what can a qualitative study add?

This paper explores the views of nursing and medical domain experts in considering the standards for a specific-purpose English language screening test, the Occupational English Test (OET), for professional registration for immigrant health professionals. Since individuals who score performances in the test setting are often language experts rather than domain experts, there are possible tensions between what is being measured by a language test and what is deemed important by domain experts. Another concern is a lack of qualitative research on the process of the standard setting. To date, no published qualitative work has been identified about the contributions of domain experts in the standard setting for healthcare communication. In this study, a standard-setting exercise was conducted for the speaking component of the OET, using judgements of nursing and medical clinical educators and supervisors. In all, 13 medical and 18 nursing clinical educators and supervisors rated medical and nursing candidate performances respectively. These performances were audio-recorded OET role-plays that were selected across a range of proficiency levels. Domain experts were invited to comment on the basis of their decisions and the extent of alignment between these decisions and the criteria used to assess performance on the OET. Nursing and medical domain experts showed that they attended to all of the OET criteria in making their decisions about standards. However, clinical scenario simulation also invited judgements of clinical competence from participants, even where they knew that clinical competence should be excluded from their decision-making. Another concern related to the authenticity limitations of the role-play tasks as evidence of readiness to handle communication in the workplace. Overall, findings support the value of qualitative evidence from the standard setting in providing insight into the factors informing and impeding decision-making.

English language learners and standardized testing in an urban senior high school

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the influences of literacy variables on high-stakes test performance including: (a) student achievement on the Metropolitan Achievement Test, Seventh Edition (MAT-7) as correlated to the high-stakes test such as the FCAT examination and (b) the English language proficiency attained by English Language Learners (ELL) students when participating in, or exiting from English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program as determined by the Limited English Proficient (LEP) committee. ^ Two one-sample Chi-square tests were conducted to investigate the relationship between passing the MAT-7 Reading and Language examinations and the FCAT-SSS Reading Comprehension and FCAT-NRT examinations. In addition, 2x2 Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) were conducted to address the relationship between the time ELL students spent in the ESOL program and the level of achievement on MAT-7 Reading and Language examinations and the FCAT-SSS Reading Comprehension and FCAT-NRT. ^ Findings of this study indicated that more ELL students exit the program based on the LEP committee decisions than by passing the MAT-7. The majority of ELL students failed the 10th grade FCAT, the passing of which is needed for graduation. A significant number of ELL students failed, even when passing the MAT-7 or being duly exited through the decision of the LEP committee. The data also indicated that ELL students who exited the ESOL program in six semesters or fewer had higher FCAT scores than those who exited the program in seven semesters or more. The MAT-7 and the decision of the LEP committee were shown to be ineffective as predictors of success on the FCAT. ^ Further research to determine the length of time a student in the ESOL program uses English to read, write, and speak should be conducted. Additionally, the development of a new assessment instrument to better predict student success should be considered. However, it should be noted that the results of this study are limited to the context in which it was conducted and does not warrant generalizations beyond that context. ^

Transitioning from university to the workplace: Stakeholder perceptions of academic and professional writing demands

This study provides a detailed insight into the changing writing demands from the last year of university study to the first year in the workforce of engineering and accounting professionals. The study relates these to the demands of the writing component of IELTS, which is increasingly used for exit testing. The number of international and local students whose first language is not English and who are studying in English-medium universities has increased significantly in the past decade. Many of these students aim to start working in the country they studied in; however, some employers have suggested that graduates seeking employment have insufficient language skills. This study provides a detailed insight into the changing writing demands from the last year of university study to the first year in the workforce of engineering and accounting professionals (our two case study professions). It relates these to the demands of the writing component of IELTS, which is increasingly used for exit or professional entry testing, although not expressly designed for this purpose. Data include interviews with final year students, lecturers, employers and new graduates in their first few years in the workforce, as well as professional board members. Employers also reviewed both final year assignments, as well as IELTS writing samples at different levels. Most stakeholders agreed that graduates entering the workforce are underprepared for the writing demands in their professions. When compared with the university writing tasks, the workplace writing expected of new graduates was perceived as different in terms of genre, the tailoring of a text for a specific audience, and processes of review and editing involved. Stakeholders expressed a range of views on the suitability of the use of academic proficiency tests (such as IELTS) as university exit tests and for entry into the professions. With regard to IELTS, while some saw the relevance of the two writing tasks, particularly in relation to academic writing, others questioned the extent to which two timed tasks representing limited genres could elicit a representative sample of the professional writing required, particularly in the context of engineering. The findings are discussed in relation to different test purposes, the intersection between academic and specific purpose testing and the role of domain experts in test validation.

A DSWN-based specific-purpose neural computing system

The Double Synapse Weighted Neuron (DSWN) is a kind of general-purpose neuron model, which with the ability of configuring Hyper-sausage neuron (HSN). After introducing the design method of hardware DSWN synapse, this paper proposed a DSWN-based specific purpose neural computing device-CASSANN-IIspr. As its application, a rigid body recognition system was developed on CASSANN-IIspr, which achieved better performance than RIBF-SVMs system.

Factors influencing Nigerian men's decision to undergo prostate specific antigen testing.

Background: Prostate cancer is a major cause of cancer death in Nigerian men. Attempts to reduce mortality from prostate cancer have focused mainly on early detection of the disease by the use of PSA testing. As a result of the increased incidence of prostate cancer in Nigeria despite the widespread availability of testing facilities, it became pertinent to understand the salient factors that prompt Nigerian men to go for prostate cancer testing. Objective: This study explores the factors that influence a group of Nigerian men’s decision to go for Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) testing. Methods: Following ethical approval, semi structured interviews were conducted with a group of 10 men who had PSA test following consultation with their doctor with signs and symptoms at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital from July to August, 2010. Interview transcripts were analysed by employing steps proposed by Collaizi (1978). Results: Five themes were identified: the symptoms experienced, the influence of friends and relatives, older age associated with increased awareness, accessibility to testing services and the knowledge of the PSA test. Conclusion: The study revealed that there continues to be a considerable lack of awareness and knowledge about prostate cancer and screening.

Métaphores conceptuelles en traduction médicale et cohérence

Département de linguistique et de traduction

Lingua della moda: Proposta di traduzione tecnico-scientifica dall'italiano al russo

Fashion is a mighty social phenomenon, therefore its linguistic representation, like many other aspects, serves as an opportunity to study the bonds between two languages. The first chapter of this thesis examines both the technical jargon of dress makers and the richer, more creative language used in glossy magazines, in an attempt to determine whether the language of fashion should be considered a language for specific purpose (LSP) or not. The second chapter provides a theoretical framework for translating a technical text and contributions of different scholars are taken into account. The third chapter delves deeper into the core of the work, the technical translation itself. It analyses the different strategies, the translation transformations, that proved to be necessary in the transition from Italian into Russian. Since the lexicon of special languages is their most obvious distinguishing characteristic, the commentary focuses on what are considered the most effective ways of enriching the Russian vocabulary of fashion, international words, calques and loanwords, especially form English and French. Overall, this influence has greatly accelerated in the last past decades because of dramatic changes in society and economy.

Listening skill requires a further look into second/foreign language learning

Current English-as-a-second and foreign-language (ESL/EFL) research has encouraged to treat each communicative macroskill separately due to space constraint, but the interrelationship among these skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) is not paid due attention. This study attempts to examine first the existing relationship among the four dominant skills, second the potential impact of reading background on the overall language proficiency, and finally the relationship between listening and overall language proficiency as listening is considered an overlooked/passive skill in the pedagogy of the second/foreign language classroom. However, the literature in language learning has revealed that listening skill has salient importance in both first and second language learning. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of each of four skills in EFL learning and their existing interrelationships in an EFL setting. The outcome of 701 Iranian applicants undertaking International English Language Testing System (IELTS) in Tehran demonstrates that all communicative macroskills have varied correlations from moderate (reading and writing) to high (listening and reading). The findings also show that the applicants’ reading history assisted them in better performing at high stakes tests, and what is more, listening skill was strongly correlated with the overall language proficiency.

Playing with Grammar in the Early Years : Learning about Language in the Australian Curriculum : English

As teacher/researchers interested in the pursuit of socially-just outcomes in early childhood education, the form and function of language occupies a special position in our work. We believe that mastering a range of literacy competences includes not only the technical skills for learning, but also the resources for viewing and constructing the world (Freire and Macdeo, 1987). Rather than seeing knowledge about language as the accumulation of technical skills alone, the viewpoint to which we subscribe treats knowledge about language as a dialectic that evolves from, is situated in, and contributes to a social arena (Halliday, 1978). We do not shy away from this position just because children are in the early years of schooling. In ‘Playing with Grammar’, we focus on the Foundation to Year 2 grouping, in line with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (hereafter ACARA) advice on the ‘nature of learners’ (ACARA, 2013). With our focus on the early years of schooling comes our acknowledgement of the importance and complexity of play. At a time where accountability in education has moved many teachers to a sense of urgency to prove language and literacy achievement (Genishi and Dyson, 2009), we encourage space to revisit what we know about literature choices and learning experiences and bring these together to facilitate language learning. We can neither ignore, nor overemphasise, the importance of play for the development of language through: the opportunities presented for creative use and practice; social interactions for real purposes; and, identifying and solving problems in the lives of young children (Marsh and Hallet, 2008). We argue that by engaging young children in opportunities to play with language we are ultimately empowering them to be active in their language learning and in the process fostering a love of language and the intricacies it holds. Our goal in this publication is to provide a range of highly practical strategies for scaffolding young children through some of the Content Descriptions from the Australian Curriculum English Version 5.0, hereafter AC:E V5.0 (ACARA, 2013). This recently released curriculum offers a new theoretical approach to building children’s knowledge about language. The AC:E V5.0 uses selected traditional terms through an approach developed in systemic functional linguistics (see Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) to highlight the dynamic forms and functions of multimodal language in texts. For example, the following statement, taken from the ‘Language: Knowing about the English language’ strand states: English uses standard grammatical terminology within a contextual framework, in which language choices are seen to vary according to the topics at hand, the nature and proximity of the relationships between the language users, and the modalities or channels of communication available (ACARA, 2013). Put simply, traditional grammar terms are used within a functional framework made up of field, tenor, and mode. An understanding of genre is noted with the reference to a ‘contextual framework’. The ‘topics at hand’ concern the field or subject matter of the text. The ‘relationships between the language users’ is a description of tenor. There is reference to ‘modalities’, such as spoken, written or visual text. We posit that this innovative approach is necessary for working with contemporary multimodal and cross-cultural texts (see Exley and Mills, 2012). We believe there is enormous power in using literature to expose children to the richness of language and in turn develop language and literacy skills. Taking time to look at language patterns within actual literature is a pathway to ‘…capture interest, stir the imagination and absorb the [child]’ into the world of language and literacy (Saxby, 1993, p. 55). In the following three sections, we have tried to remain faithful to our interpretation of the AC:E V5.0 Content Descriptions without giving an exhaustive explanation of the grammatical terms. Other excellent tomes, such as Derewianka (2011), Humphrey, Droga and Feez (2012), and Rossbridge and Rushton (2011) provide these more comprehensive explanations as does the AC:E V5.0 Glossary. We’ve reproduced some of the AC:E V5.0 glossary at the end of this publication. Our focus is on the structure and unfolding of the learning experiences. We outline strategies for working with children in Foundation, Year 1 and Year 2 by providing some demonstration learning experiences based on texts we’ve selected, but maintain that the affordances of these strategies will only be realised when teaching and learning is purposively tied to authentic projects in local contexts. We strongly encourage you not to use only the resource texts we’ve selected, but to capitalise upon your skill for identifying the language features in the texts you and the children are studying and adapt some of the strategies we have outlined. Each learning experience is connected to one of the Content Descriptions from the AC:E V5.0 and contains an experience specific purpose, a suggested resource text and a sequence for the experience that always commences with an orientation to text followed by an examination of a particular grammatical resource. We expect that each of these learning experiences will take a couple if not a few teaching episodes to work through, especially if children are meeting a concept for the first time. We hope you use as much, or as little, of each experience as is needed. Our plans allow for focused discussion, shared exploration and opportunities to revisit the same text for the purpose of enhancing meaning making. We do not want the teaching of grammar to slip into a crisis of irrelevance or to be seen as a series of worksheet drills with finite answers. Strategies for effective practice, however, have much portability. We are both very keen to hear from teachers who are adopting and adapting these learning experiences in their classrooms. Please email us on b.exley@qut.edu.au or lkervin@uow.edu.au. We’d love to continue the conversation with you over time.

Developing and testing readability measurements for second language learners

This research constructed a readability measurement for French speakers who view English as a second language. It identified the true cognates, which are the similar words from these two languages, as an indicator of the difficulty of an English text for French people. A multilingual lexical resource is used to detect true cognates in text, and Statistical Language Modelling to predict the predict the readability level. The proposed enhanced statistical language model is making a step in the right direction by improving the accuracy of readability predictions for French speakers by up to 10% compared to state of the art approaches. The outcome of this study could accelerate the learning process for French speakers who are studying English. More importantly, this study also benefits the readability estimation research community, presenting an approach and evaluation at sentence level as well as innovating with the use of cognates as a new text feature.

Procedural and declarative memory in children with and without specific language impairment

Background: Much evidence has accumulated to indicate memory deficits in children with specific language impairment. However, most research has focused on working memory impairments in these children. Less is known about the functioning of other memory systems in this population.

Aims: This study examined procedural and declarative memory in young children with and without specific language impairment.

Methods & Procedures: A total of 15 children with specific language impairment and 15 non-impaired children of comparable age, gender and handedness were presented with measures of procedural and declarative memory. Procedural memory was assessed using a Serial Reaction Time (SRT) Task in which children implicitly learnt a ten-item sequence pattern. Declarative memory for verbal and visual information was assessed using paired associative learning tasks.

Outcomes & Results: The results from the SRT Task showed the children with specific language impairment did not learn the sequence at levels comparable with the non-impaired children. On the measures of declarative memory, differences between the groups were observed on the verbal but not the visual task. The differences on the verbal declarative memory task were found after statistically controlling for differences in vocabulary and phonological short-term memory.

Conclusions & Implications: The results were interpreted to suggest an uneven profile of memory functioning in specific language impairment. On measures of declarative memory, specific language impairment appears to be associated with difficulties learning verbal information. At the same time, procedural memory is also appears to be impaired. Collectively, this study indicates multiple memory impairments in specific language impairment.

Review of The Search for a Common Language: Environmental Writing and Education Edited by Melody Graulich and Paul Crumbley

This edited collection grew out of a symposium held at Utah State University in Logan in 2002. According to the editors, the symposium's purpose was to "publicly explore the particular ways environmental writing educates the public through a fusion of science and literary expression." The Search for a Common Language achieves that purpose by including short prose pieces-ranging from memoirs, essays on specific locations, and scientific papers - as well as poetry on natural themes. The range of topics and genres and the inclusion of poetry provide a variety of ways to talk about the environment and reach out to different audiences to educate them about the natural world.

Teaching English : some remarks on the emergence of the sympathetic teacher in the English classroom

The chapter explores the concept of the teacher-student relationship within the English classroom and proposes that this relationship has a specific purpose in building a civil society by inculcating practices of self-reflection, empathy and ethics. The topic is explored through the example of teaching Australian literature, specifically, Tim Winton’s Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo to secondary school students. Ian Hunter’s work on literature education and the construction of socio-ethical practices provides a conceptual framework for the chapter.

Teoria geral da gramaticalização: introdução ao jogo e a suas regras

Esta tese de doutorado parte da perspectiva inicial de que a gramaticalização se restringe a tratado sobre itens lexicais ou discursivos que se tornam itens gramaticais (o que a enquadraria dentro da Teoria da Variação, inserta esta dentro da Pesquisa Sociolinguística), mas segue em direção a um salto epistemológico que remodele aquela perspectiva, ampliando-a a patamar do qual ela pode ser observada como teoria autônoma, investigativa de fenômenos limítrofes e nem sempre discretos entre linguagem e língua, discurso e texto, descrição e prescrição, oralidade e escrita, léxico e gramática. Desse modo, propugna-se pela visão epistemológica do tema, conduzido, até aqui, de modo puramente ontológico, circunscrito a um (e apenas um) dos muitos espectros que se podem alcançar com a aludida ampliação àquele que vem sendo perquirido como tratado, porém que, segundo se pretende demonstrar, pode e deve ser expandido à malha de uma teoria geral, qual seja a Teoria Geral da Gramaticalização: trata-se, aqui, de seu objetivo geral. Para esse propósito, vale-se a tese de filósofos da linguagem que atuaram sobre essa faculdade ou capacidade humana de forma direta ou indireta desde os seus primórdios ocidentais (como Sócrates, Platão e Aristóteles), passando pelos pensadores mais incisivamente preocupados com os aspectos cognitivos e interativos da linguagem e da língua (como Hegel, Husserl, Saussure, Sapir, Bloomfield, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Chomsky, Labov, Charaudeau, Maingueneau, Ducrot, Coseriu), além de ser necessária a incursão à Gramaticografia mais estrita (como a empreendida por Dionísio da Trácia, Varrão, Arnault e Lancelot, Nebrija, Jerônimo Soares Barbosa, Eduardo Carlos Pereira, Said Ali, Bechara), e, naturalmente, a contribuição filosófica dos pesquisadores sobre a gramaticalização (como Meillet, Vendryès, Bréal, Kurilowicz, Traugott, Heine, Hopper, Lehmann). Uma vez que se tenha mostrado ser verossímil aceitar-se a gramaticalização como teoria autônoma, esta tese pretende legar-lhe o papel instrumental de metodologia auxiliar a muitas entre as que ora se empreendem quando se trata de pesquisas em campos cuja ocupação é a linguagem e a língua: trata-se, aqui, de seu objetivo específico. Para essa duplicidade de metas ou objetivos, será necessário compreender conceitos, categorias e protótipos oriundos da Filosofia da Ciência (Epistemologia), do contraste entre ciências da linguagem e outros ramos do saber, da imersão em Gramaticologia e Gramaticografia (e, em alguns aspectos, em Gramatização e Gramatologia) referentes à Língua Portuguesa, da defesa, enfim, de que o ensino da Gramática Formal (ou Normativa) do idioma privilegia a acepção reflexiva e ativa (plena) dos usos ou atos a que a linguagem só pode chegar por meio do domínio da língua em toda a sua tessitura epistemológica, que gera comunicação e expressividade, raciocínio e emotividade, indo da concretude do discurso ou da oralidade à abstração da entidade pouco ou nada material, que, por sua vez, é mais nitidamente representada pela escrita, seu estágio por assim dizer de forma ainda mais pura, conquanto não excludente da substancialidade com que dialoga de modo incessante no seu constante e dialético passado-futuro ou diversidade-homogeneidade (tese e antítese) de onde emerge o seu presente ou a sua unidade (síntese)