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Positive psychology can combat the pernicious native speaker ideology
Get PDFThe world of applied linguistics and the profession of foreign language teaching needs to finally sweep away the notion of “Native Speaker” (NS) and the deficit perspective surrounding foreign language learners. We argue that Positive Psychology is a source of inspiration for a new and more positive perspective on foreign language learners and users. Rather than obsessing about negative aspects of life, Positive Psychologists defend a more holistic perspective. By transforming the view of learners as failed “NS” of the target language to that of increasingly competent and happy users of a foreign language would lift a huge burden from the shoulders of foreign language learners and their teachers alike. We argue that the unexpected longevity and ubiquity of the NS in the foreign language teaching profession have deep historical roots in linguistics and culture, and that only a radical paradigm shift can dislodge it
Affective experiments: card games, blind dates and dinner parties
Get PDFThis chapter introduces a practice-based methodology that uses convivial methods for researching histories, politics and economics of socially engaged art: dinner parties, blind dates and a card game. This approach to research is positioned in a broader conceptual framework of conviviality, embodied criticality, intersubjectivity and performativity. The chapter focuses on the methods, the way we listen to each other and understand not only what people think has happened, but how it has made us feel and the different ways this is expressed. Framing the research as performative and playful draws attention to the construction of the research, creating space for difficult conversations and diverse experiences and agendas to coalesce
Current trends in research in language education and applied linguistics
Get PDFI would like to start by thanking the editors of the European Educational Researcher for inviting me to provide the first editorial in their journal. I collaborated with Dr.NuriBalta (executive editor) and colleagues on a project on the acquisition of Turkish by Kazakh learners. The resulting paper (Dewaele, Özdemir, Karci, Uysal, Özdemir & Balta, 2019) offered a new language combination in a field where a large majority of papers focus on English as a Foreign Language. It is notoriously difficult to pick up new trends in language education and applied linguistics. It is a little bit like trying to distinguish a network of footpaths in misty conditions in order to find the one that leads to the mountain top. The view is always incomplete, the ones that seem to be pointing in the right direction might veer off behind the next boulder, and the largest path with most walkers might be interrupted by a landslide, forcing people to scatter and find alternative paths. There is inevitably a belief of researchers that the path they are on is trendy and original. Only years later will this belief be dis/confirmed when a tally can be made through citation indexes of the popularity of that particular path
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No full textNote: report should be available from this URL before end 2022: https://ukandeu.ac.uk/all-events
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Interaction of negatively and positively capped gold nanoparticle with different lipid model membranes
Get PDFThe use of functionalised gold nanoparticles in biomedical applications is expanding. Here we explore the interaction of gold nanoparticles with lipid membranes using readily available equipment and basic techniques to explore how the charge on the nanoparticles, and the nature of the lipid, influences the interaction. Gold nanoparticles were synthesised with two different surface functionalisations, negatively charged citrate groups and positively charged cetyltrimethylammonium groups from CTAB, to determine how surface charge affects the interaction of the nanoparticles with the Zwitterionic lipid POPC and the anionic lipid POPG. It was observed that the surface pressure/area isotherms of POPG monolayers on exposure to citrate capped nanoparticles were not shifted to higher molecular areas as much as those of POPC, suggesting that the anionic headgroups of the POPG lipid repel the anionic surface charge of the citrate capped nanoparticles to some extent limiting inclusion. In contrast, the surface pressure/area isotherms of the POPG monolayers exposed to CTAB capped nanoparticles are shifted to higher molecular areas more than for the POPC monolayers. The interaction of anionic nanoparticles with lipid bilayers was measured by the mass change of the bilayer deposited on the surface of a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) exposed to nanoparticles in an aqueous phase flow. The QCM frequency changes show that bilayers of unsaturated phosophocholine lipids readily took up particles, whereas for the saturated lipid DPPC significant uptake was only observed when the bilayer was warmed to above its gel-to-fluid transition temperature, Tm. This is possibly due to an increase in the molecular mobility and bilayer bending modulus, κ, of the bilayer
The world of Frankenstein: a jigsaw puzzle by Adam Simpson
No full textLuckhurst provided the textual material for this jigsaw, based on Mary Shelley's Gothic novel.
Publisher's description: Packed with characters from the story, the illustration covers all the key scenes in incredible detail so that every piece has something to capture the imagination. This richly rewarding puzzle is accompanied by an illustrated poster and explanatory text detailing who’s who in the grisly world of Victor Frankenstein and his monster
My story, whose memory: notes on the autonomy and heteronomy of Law
Get PDFReflecting on the myriad instances where juridical recognition demands a story, confession, testimony on suffering, or evidence of trauma – this essay considers the role of storytelling and narrative in constituting the legal person, their persona, and relationship they have to a community or the state. What are the forces that drive the demand to give an account of oneself? What are the reasons for, and implications of, resisting the injunction to reveal all? Going beyond the usual bounds of juridically recognized testimony and evidence – I consider how memory moves across time and space in human and non-human material formations. These questions are posed to open discussion of a wider concern about the autonomy and heteronomy of law. Looking beyond the separation of law and morality in positivist jurisprudence – the autonomy/heteronomy distinction is a means of getting at the co-constitution of the human and non-human. The discussion thus ranges across the philosophies of history that constitute autonomy/heteronomy – examining the tension between confidential stories of those who have suffered abuse, and the state’s archival drive to preserve such material; literary and metaphorical devices for narrating the past; and a consideration of nature and destruction where the human plays an infinitesimal part in making history
Successful second language pronunciation learning is linked to domain-general auditory processing rather than music aptitude
Get PDFLearning a second language (L2) after puberty is well-known to be subject to a great
deal of individual variation. Even if two individuals spend the same amount of time
practicing a target language, their final outcomes may differ greatly. This could be in part due
to the fact that certain individuals are perceptually and cognitively adept at making the most
of every practice opportunity (i.e., they possess higher L2 learning aptitude), resulting in
more advanced L2 proficiency (Doughty, 2019). Whereas scholars have extensively
examined which perceptual-cognitive abilities relate to successful L2 learning, most of the
existing literature has been exclusively concerned with lexicogrammar aspects of language
learning (Li, 2016). In light of the ongoing discussion regarding the similarities between
speech, music and language learning (Tierney, Krizman, & Kraus, 2015), we highlight two
overlapping abilities, music aptitude and auditory processing, as a framework of aptitude
relevant to successful L2 pronunciation learning. Music aptitude is defined as a set of
composite, domain-specific abilities to remember and reproduce music phrases that are no
longer physically present, generally measured through standardized tests, and found to relate
to L2 pronunciation development to some degree (Slevc & Miyake, 2006). More specifically,
scholars have been interested in domain-general sensitivity to more fine-grained properties of
acoustic signals (formants, pitch, duration, amplitude), which we refer to here collectively as
auditory processing. The ability has been linked to first language (L1) acquisition (e.g.,
Goswami, 2015), and to L2 acquisition (e.g., Kachlicka, Saito, & Tierney, 2019). To test
whether music aptitude and auditory processing abilities explain variation in adult L2
pronunciation learning, we investigated the complex relationship between music aptitude,
auditory processing, and biographical profiles of 48 Chinese learners of English in the UK
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