1,720,954 research outputs found
Progressive reading comprehension trajectories among English-as-an -additional language first-year strategic communication and public relations students in a South African university
No full textA thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Language and Literacy Education School of Education to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2020This study focuses on the academic reading of first-year students at a South African university. Its purpose was to investigate the efficacy and value of translanguaging strategies in educational spaces, to enhance reading comprehension development and critical thinking in linguistically diverse, university students in a firstyear university module. The research explored whether it is reasonable, practicable, and viable to use translanguaging strategies and practices in literacy pedagogy to enhance academic reading comprehension and epistemic access. The focus was on translanguaging strategies that harness the socio-historically shaped cultural and linguistic communicative resources of students to improve academic reading and text engagement. An alternative sociocultural-based translanguaging model to progress the academic reading skills of first-year university students is proposed.
The entire study was conducted among a total sample of 90 first-year students between the ages of 18 and 25 registered for the Communication Management 1 (Comm 1AA1) module in the Faculty of Humanities at a South African urban and multilingual university. The investigation adopted a “Sequential Exploratory Design” of mixed methods, in which the quantitative methods took the form of a quasi-experimental design. The overall results show that the use of translanguaging techniques facilitated by students’ own linguistic, cultural, and multimodal discursive resources in reading processes across languages, created abundant contexts and rich ground for growth and advancement in academic language proficiency improving academic reading comprehension gains. The study contributes to the growing body of knowledge about translanguaging reading pedagogy. It also formulates and provides an alternative translingual reading model for multilinguals, informing academic literacy practitioners on transformative new literacies in this field.TL (2020
Investigating the use of Sepedi and English to initiate students into the discourse of a discipline in a first year university course.
No full textThis research project set out to investigate the use of an African language, in this case,
Sepedi as an academic language of teaching and learning of first year students in the
academic subject of Communication Theory at tertiary education level. Of interest was
how effective Sepedi is as an academic language of learning and instruction. The focus
was on investigating to what extent using a mother-tongue in academia opens up learning
possibilities for learners. The research intended to explore whether it is reasonable and
practicable to use an African language (in this case Sepedi) in the teaching and learning
of Communication Theory in a first year diploma level Communication Skills class. Of
interest therefore was whether Sepedi is useful and is a viable academic language in the
pedagogy of Communication Theory in a higher education Communication Skills course.
The methods used in the research were qualitative and took the form of a teaching
intervention in which a class of Sepedi speaking students voluntarily participated in two
lessons in which Sepedi and English were used respectively as a medium of instruction
for Communication Theory. Both lessons were observed by the researcher. The class
observations were video-recorded and audio-recorded then transcribed for discourse and
thematic analysis of the learning and teaching experiences of the participants. Methods
used also included a focus group interview and individual interviews and artifacts in the
form of an evaluated written formative task and reflective pieces. This was important for
evaluating the extent of learning from the lessons observed. Participants’ language
biographies were also compiled for purposes of writing up each student’s profile. The
purpose of using all these instruments was to use data from one instrument to positively
inform the next and for information to be finally triangulated.
The research findings suggest that the use of Sepedi (African languages) in the
classroom could play a significant role in scaffolding and mediating students who are
struggling at first year level in universities. A mixture of African languages and English
involving code-switching and mixing may have pedagogical advantages. Also, the
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findings suggest that institutions need to support African languages as languages of
accessing academic discourse. However use of English as a Language of Learning and
Teaching (LOLT) is still necessary and as such English remains dominant and
indispensable in academia
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
No full text“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
No full textWe 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
No full textWe 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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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