1,720,959 research outputs found
Improving English Language Skills and Methods through Short Term Trainings: Bridging High School and University Teachers
Full text linkThe purpose of this article was to show how universities can make interventions in improving the classroom practices of high schools and preparatory schools English language teachers. The data gathering instrument was questionnaire and interview from secondary and preparatory school teachers of Tabor cluster that include Tabor Secondary and Preparatory school, Alamura High School Gemeto-Gale Secondary School, and Tula Secondary and Preparatory school and two school principals. The teachers received short term English language trainings from university teachers. It was, therefore, reflections of the teachers on improvements the training brought on their teaching skills on one hand and their attitudes on “the-to-be” links between the university instructors and high school teachers on the other hand. The link and the interventions envisaged to bring continuous improvements in the English language skills of secondary school English language teachers and thereby the skills of their students who ultimately and continuously join universities. As the study was based on the teachers and the principals who took part in the training, the sample size considered was the whole population, 40. Since the data was obtained qualitatively through interview and quantitatively through questionnaire, the analysis method also followed mixed methods. The quantitative data was analyzed descriptively with SPSS version 20, and the data obtained through interview was grouped into themes with open-code 3.6 and then described textually. The study showed that the short term trainings, which were based on the trainees’ pre-identified areas of English language skill gaps, helped to alleviate the gaps of the teachers to a greater extent. It also showed that there are other areas of English language skill gaps that need further trainings. Regarding the teachers’ attitude on the high schools and University teachers’ professional link, it was found out that high school teachers need supports from universities to improve their own and their students’ English language skills. It was also discovered that the link among school and university teachers so far is very weak. The trainees suggested areas of their special concerns to improve their English language skills, and areas university teachers may benefit from high schools
Efficacy of English Taught in Lower-Primary to be Used as a Medium in Upper-Primary
Full text linkThe purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of primary one English lesson in enabling students to use English as a medium of instruction in upper primary schools in Ethiopia. The participants of the study were grade five students and their English language teachers. Cross sectional and descriptive research design was chosen. Classroom observation check list, teacher made tests and interview were used as main data gathering tools. The study showed that, the students' comprehension level was very low; about 70% of them scored less than the average. In the listening skill test, 84.3% of the students scored below the average, and 39.8% of them scored zero. Though the students performed relatively better in note taking, their scores were still less than the average; about 54.5% of them scored below the average. A correlation statistics showed that there was significant difference r = -0.48 in the note taking skills of the students in the three sample schools, but the variation in reading and listening comprehension was not significant. There was no significant variation between gender and language skills. The students’ scores, however, significantly varied in different language skills: reading*listening (r = 0.62), reading*note taking (r = 0.59) and listening*note taking (r = 0.56). A classroom practice observation showed that majority (83.33%) of the teachers were using English as a medium of instruction, but 100% of the observed teachers often shifted from English medium to Amharic, which actually is not the mother tongue to most of the students. In a similar observation of students performances in classroom activities, it was found out that majority of the students could not reasonably use English as a medium. The effectiveness of English language taught as a subject in grades 1-4 is highly questionable since majority of the students had difficulties when the language was used as a medium in grade five
Social and Pragmatic Rules of Cursing and Other Routine Formulas in Gurage and Norwegian Culture
No full textThe Gurage are South Ethiosemitic speakers living in the Gurage Zone in Ethiopia. In the Gurage culture, cursing expressions have differing sociological significance. They are used both literally and pragmatically. Although the cursing expressions are endangered due to modern religions, they are not well studied and documented. The objective of this article is to describe the sociolinguistic and pragmatic meanings and the structural patterns of cursing expressions in the Gurage culture, and then to compare the expressions with Nordic countries’ cursing to uncover if there are universal tendencies in the rules and routines of cursing. The study follows qualitative research methodology. The cursing expressions were partly collected from literature and largely elicited from key informants. For the cursing in Gurage, the Gumer variety, from among other 12 dialect clusters of Guragina, was chosen to maintain uniformity in description. The findings showed that self-cursing in Gurage is used to express regret, encouragement, admiration, congratulation, condolence and politeness. Alter cursing is used to cause fear, to express emotions and negative attitude towards others. Age and gender determine cursing practice. Only elder men can take part in formal group alter cursing. Women generally curse themselves and individuals in informal situations. Formal alter cursing in Gurage is graded by elders for its severity. Cursing in the Nordic countries of today is more restricted to psychological functions and a kind of identity construction. In the past, however, several of its functions were similar to the ones in Gurage
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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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