1,720,956 research outputs found
El papel de la competencia pragmática en la enseñanza del idioma inglés
No full textThis article analyzes the role of pragmatics in ELT (English Language Teaching) in the study of how students understand and use language in specific contexts. To become efficient and competent language users, students have to study more than linguistic forms and meanings. Exposure to language is insufficient for the acquisition of pragmatic skills, so observations of language learners show that there is a great need to teach pragmatics. The research focuses on the development of pragmatic competences that incorporate linguistic and cultural knowledge, and different reasons are presented to help students improve their pragmatic competence. This study has an experimental design and its main objective is to improve students\u27 pragmatic competence in English. It was carried out in a mixed group of twenty students studying English at a university. Research results indicate that explicit focus on pragmatics in the classroom leads to improvements in pragmatic development.El presente artículo analiza el papel de la pragmática en el ELT (English Language Teaching) en el estudio de cómo los estudiantes entienden y usan el lenguaje en contextos específicos. Para convertirse en usuarios de idiomas eficientes y competentes, los alumnos tienen que estudiar más que formas y significados lingüísticos. La exposición al lenguaje es insuficiente para la adquisición de habilidades pragmáticas, por lo que las observaciones de los estudiantes de idiomas muestran que existe una gran necesidad de enseñar pragmática. La investigación se centra en el desarrollo de competencias pragmáticas que incorporan conocimientos lingüísticos y culturales, y se presentan diferentes razones para ayudar a los alumnos a mejorar su competencia pragmática. Este estudio tiene un diseño experimental y su objetivo principal es mejorar la competencia pragmática de los estudiantes en inglés. Se llevó a cabo en un grupo mixto de veinte estudiantes que estudian inglés en una universidad. Los resultados de la investigación indican que el enfoque explícito en la pragmática en el aula conduce a mejoras en el desarrollo pragmático
Neural correlates of contrast normalization in the Drosophila visual system
Get PDFThe fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has long become a paramount model organism for research in life sciences. As a result of the fly’s high temporal resolution and its reliable optomotor response - a reflex that helps it compensate for movements of the environment, - Drosophila lends itself exceptionally well to the study of vision and, in particular, the mechanism of motion detection.
In the wild, Drosophila is active throughout the day, with especially high levels of activity at dawn and dusk, the periods of time when the visuals of the environment are changing rapidly. The fruit flies can also be found in a variety of habitats, from the expanse of an open field to the inside of a cluttered kitchen. Altogether, Drosophila encounters a variety of visual statistics it must employ to robustly respond to the outside world and succeed in finding food, escaping predators, and carrying out courtship behavior.
In my thesis, I focused on the effects of visual contrast, i.e., differences in brightness in the environment, on the fly’s motion vision. I studied the impact of the surround contrast on the filtering properties of the visual interneurons within the motion detection circuit, including the first direction-selective T4 and T5 cells and their main inputs, and how the fly compensates for the changes in contrast to faithfully match the direction and speed of its movement to the external motion under various contrast conditions.
Firstly, in Manuscript 1, we established the existence of contrast normalization in the early visual system of Drosophila and demonstrated its suppressive effect on the response amplitude at higher contrasts. We determined where contrast normalization first arises in the optic lobe and identified the main inputs into the T4 and T5 cells that exhibit contrast normalizing properties. We comprehensively characterized the normalization process: namely, it is fast, not dependent on the direction of motion, its effect comes from outside the receptive field of a cell and increases in strength with the size of the visual surround. Additionally, we demonstrated that the normalization relies on neuronal feedback and showed that adding a contrast normalization stage to the existing models of motion detection improves their robustness, matching their performance to the results obtained in behavioral experiments.
In Manuscript 2, we further investigated the effects of contrast normalization on the main inputs to T4 and T5 cells, now focusing on its effect on the filtering properties of the cells. We demonstrated that spatially or temporally dynamic surrounds elicit contrast normalization, while static ones do not. We further showed that, in addition to the suppressive effect on the amplitude, contrast normalization speeds up the kinetics of the response and confirmed that this effect is not due to signal saturation and involves a change in the filtering properties of the cell.
In summary, we elucidated the role of contrast normalization in the motion detection circuit in the early visual system of Drosophila, comprehensively described the characteristics of the normalization process, and outlined its effects on the filtering properties of the cells. We also emphasized the potential role of shunting inhibition and narrowed down the search for the main candidates in the contrast normalization mechanism, paving the way for future studies to further delve into the contrast normalization circuit and implementation mechanism
Multilingualism practices in early language education.
Get PDFEl documento aborda el problema del multilingüismo en la educación temprana de idiomas. El multilingüismo se refiere al uso competente de más de un idioma. El documento describe las formas en que los niños adquieren idiomas y explica por qué es importante la educación multilingüe. Subraya la necesidad de aprender varios idiomas desde temprana edad y más compatibilidad con varios idiomas. El documento también se centra en la importancia de una transición suave entre los idiomas y las formas de preparar a los maestros para lidiar con esto de manera eficiente. Se presentan las oportunidades de introducir el multilingüismo en la enseñanza de la primera infancia. The paper addresses the problem of multilingualism in early language education. Multilingualism refers to using competently more than one language. The paper describes the ways in which children acquire languages and explains why multilingual education is important. It underlines the necessity of learning several languages from early age and further multiple languages support. The paper also focuses on the importance of a soft transition between the languages and the ways to prepare teachers to deal with this efficiently. The opportunities of introducing multilingualism in early childhood instruction are presented. The paper gives examples of instruction that show the peculiarities of multilingual education. Several practical activities for multilingual primary classroom are described
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
- …
