1,720,959 research outputs found
Development of a Culturally Responsive Book Reading Intervention for Latina Mothers and their Head Stat Children
Get PDFParents are encouraged to read books to their young children because of the impact book reading can have on later language and literacy development. However, few book-reading programs are designed for parents of culturally diverse backgrounds. The purpose of this article is to: (a) describe a book-reading intervention that was created for Latina mothers and their Head Start children, (b) provide an overview of the results, and (c) discuss the implications for teachers. In general, we found that the intervention had an effect on children’s language abilities. Children who received the intervention used more vocabulary words and produced longer utterances in language samples than children who were in the control group. Participating mothers appreciated that the program allowed them to share their culture with their children as well as to learn how to use interactive book reading strategies. Implications for practitioners are discussed
Effects of a Culturally Responsive Interactive Book-Reading Intervention on the Language Abilities of Preschool Dual Language Learners: A Pilot Study
Get PDFDespite evidence that interactive book-reading is a way to promote children\u27s language skills, few book reading interventions exist for Latino dual language learners (DLLs). The aims of this pilot study were to (a) examine the effects of participation in a culturally responsive interactive book-reading intervention on the language abilities of preschool DLLs and (b) investigate the social and cultural validity of the intervention. With 73 mother-child dyads (35 intervention and 38 control), we examined the effectiveness of the intervention on children\u27s language skills, as measured by standardized assessment and language samples. Children in the intervention group made significantly greater gains in number of different words and mean length of utterance in words than children in the control group. No intervention effects were found for the standardized language measures. Mothers reported the intervention had strong social and culturally validity. Future directions for refinement and further testing of this intervention are discussed
Language Dominance and the Language, Literacy, and Early Math of Spanish-English Bilingual Preschoolers
Get PDFThere is a growing need for more information regarding the early academic development of preschool-age children who are learning to speak Spanish and English. To achieve this, studies are needed that acknowledge the heterogeneity of language abilities within bilingual preschool children, and that these variations in language abilities may impact children’s early academic skills. This two-study dissertation investigated how four foundational skills: narrative production, phonological awareness, letter-word identification, and early math, differed depending on the language dominance Spanish-English bilingual children possessed at preschool entry. The studies used data from a larger language, literacy, and self-regulation project entitled Tools of the Mind: Promoting ELLs’ Language, Self-Regulation & School-Readiness. Participants were typically-developing children of Latino heritage recruited from early childhood centers with primarily English instruction. Performance on a standardized language battery given in English and Spanish was used to assign children to one of three language-dominance groups (i.e., stronger-English, balanced abilities, stronger-Spanish). Both studies yielded several findings that make unique contributions to research on bilingual preschoolers. The first study underscored the important relations of both lexical diversity and grammatical production abilities to bilingual preschoolers’ narrative macrostructure. The second study identified specific areas of school readiness strengths for each language dominance group and identified areas that may need additional support. Implications of interest to speech-language pathologists and other early childhood professionals are discussed, including implications for assessment and differential instruction.Communication Science
Early Language Learning and Teaching of Toddlers from Mexican Immigrant Homes
Get PDFThis two-part dissertation investigated the home language experiences and language development of 35 toddler-aged children from low-income Mexican immigrant families. These children represent a rapidly growing demographic in the United States. Because early language abilities are closely linked to later academic success, understanding the characteristics of the early language learning experiences provided in the homes of Mexican immigrant children is a foundational step to supporting their strengths and needs prior to formal school entry. In the first study of this dissertation, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the children’s mothers regarding the everyday activity settings of their young children. Degree of maternal acculturation was also assessed. Commonalities and variations in mothers’ values, beliefs, and practices regarding language teaching and learning were revealed. The commonalities included attention towards children’s early behavior and social skills, collective child-rearing practices, emphasis on the family unit and Mexican identity, and support for Spanish-English language learning and educational success, among others. A limited number of variations were also found to be associated with mothers’ affiliation with Anglo-American culture. In the second study, naturalistic recordings of the toddlers' language input in the home were analyzed in-depth to describe features of the quantity and quality of the input to which children were exposed. A wide range of variability in children’s quantity and quality was found. In addition, the relative amount of Spanish and English spoken to children was determined. Spanish was the primary language used with children, although English was also used in most homes. Children’s productive vocabulary in both languages was further measured contemporaneously; total vocabulary size ranged widely across children. There were no associations revealed between the characteristics of children’s language input quantity and quality and their productive vocabulary, although quantity and quality were related to one another. Implications of both studies to early childhood researchers and practitioners focused on early language development, including speech-language pathologists, are discussed.Communication Science
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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