Digital Commons Network^™

How The Bbc Served West Indian Literature, Glyne Griffith

Campus Conversations in Standish

Dr. Griffith joins the University Libraries for a presentation on the connection between BBC radio broadcasts to the Caribbean during the 1940s and '50s and the ways in which these broadcasts influenced the development of literature in the English speaking Caribbean.

A ;-) At The Past And Future Of English, Tiffany Li

Faculty Scholarship

It is always with a certain amount of wry, knowing amusement that we turn to the thoughts of people from the past remarking on the future (that is, our present). It is similar to how slightly older children view slightly younger children. They were so innocent then, those thinkers of the past! Look at what they thought computers could do, what language could be! How adorably naïve! Not like us, we who have put away our childish things.

Of course, the science fiction of our present may someday seem as pathetically misconceived as that of the past. So, too, will …

Swarbrick Works, Studies Environmental Humanities, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“I had the experience of finding a particular professor who really got me to think long and hard about texts like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Those were the experiences that really ignited something for me, and there was no going back. I became really obsessed with literature as a whole. It was much later that I came around to being a specialist in early modern literature.”

That’s the way Dr. Steven Swarbrick explains how he became interested in literature. A native of San Jose, California, he got his bachelor’s from San Francisco State University and his doctorate from Brown University, both …

An Analysis On English Comprehension, Samuel Black, Jerry Rylance, Matthew Sielaff, Aaron Gorman

Math 365 Class Projects

Books and Buddies is a program run by Spread the Word Nevada (StWN) designed to help students who struggle with reading. As part of the program, students are given pre and post tests which measure comprehension, accuracy, and words correct per minute (WCPM).

A data set was provided that included students' scores on the pre and post test, as well as some general demographic information. A Python program was created to perform linear regressions on subsets of the data, measured on the three attributes listed above. The data was also divided into various categories for the sake of the regressions. …

Kolb Studies, Teaches Shakespeare And His Times, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Laura Kolb was not sure what she wanted to major in when she went to college at Columbia University, but at some point she decided in favor of English. This was not surprising, given her upbringing. “Ever since I was really small my parents read to me, and I loved to read,” she says.

A native of South Bend, Indiana, she grew up in Floyd, Virginia, went on to do her masters in Humanities and her doctorate in English at the University of Chicago, and today she is an assistant professor in the Department of English in the Weissman School …

Hentzi Looks At Literature And Its Circumstances., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

English is a well-known subject, but what most

people don’t know is that English scholars do a lot

of different things. One of these scholars is Dr. Gary

Hentzi, whose interest in culture dates from a very

early age. “I guess I always knew that I was interested

in the arts and culture. I started out more interested in

music than anything else, but it quickly branched out

into an interest in literature,” he says.

As a young professor, he specialized in one of the

founders of the novel as a literary genre in the early

18th century: Daniel Defoe. …

Mcglynn Studies, Teaches Different Forms Of The English Language., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Although English is spoken around the world and is considered the main means of communication in commerce, science, and many other fields, the language has humble origins and a complicated story.

With roots in the southern part of England, drawing from French, German, and Scandinavian languages, English began to spread around the world as the British began colonizing. First it was Wales, then Scotland, Ireland, Australia, the United States, South Africa, India, and elsewhere around the globe.

Technology Usage Versus Technology Integration In Esl Classrooms: Drivers And Barriers, Ayman Serag

Capstone and Graduation Projects

Technology integration is a significant aspect of teaching and learning in the 21st century. This study examines faculty technology integration in the Department of English Language Instruction (ELI) at the American University in Cairo (AUC). It also explores the factors that facilitate or inhibit their computer usage, and also their perceptions about the professional development opportunities in technology that are available to them. Using a case-study design, the researcher used semi-structured interviews conducted with 19 ELI instructors to understand the phenomenon at hand. Eight of the 19 instructors also served dual administrative roles as department chair, committee and program coordinators. …

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Designing A High School Or Middle School Course (Or Unit) In Professional Writing, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article offers information on the development of professional writing course in English middle school or high school classroom. It mentions that a good syllabus not only provide answers to basic questions, but also to questions that Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins have pertained to as the essential questions. It notes that students learn from writing activities and assessments including how to write in genres, evaluate the settings of professional tools, and manage their writing processes.

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Professional Collaborative Writing: Teaching, Writing, And Learning -- Together, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article discusses the significance of writing professionally and collaboratively in English learning. It states that if people consider writing as just an individual act, they miss the big part of the value of professional writing. It says that oftentimes, professional writing explicitly represents an organization. It adds that collaborative writing involves the work of two or more members of a team.

To Txt, Or Not To Txt: Shkspr.Mobi And Academia, Bella Victoria Smith, Ed Nagelhout

McNair Poster Presentations

This essay combats elitist academic attitudes assuming that all online content is not reputable and that online com­munication, specifically txtspk, defiles English. By exploring the tenants of open source and open access, particularly the benefits of free redistribution, online editions of Shakespeare’s plays prove to promote intellectual excellence and trans­parency, benefitting academics most. Similarly, the belief that txtspk is destroying the English language is a myth because modernizing and shortening words exist in all languages, including the first printed editions of Shakespeare’s canon. Finally, this essay addresses future concerns for online editions such as the copyright barriers over intellectual and …

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Let's Get Real: Using Usability To Connect Writers, Readers, And Texts, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article discusses the application of the concept of usability and user-centered design in the interaction between the writers and the readers in the English classroom. It is inferred that the interaction with readers is essential during the process of writing. The elements of effective lessons on usability and user-centered design are highlighted.

Teachers’ Professional Development Through Integrating Ict In English Language Education: A Case From Pakistan, Ayesha Bashiruddin

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Professional Writing: What You Already Know, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article offers the authors' insights on professional writing that are taught in the English classroom, in which it is defined as writing within professional context with genres such as formal reports, directives, and proposals. They state that many teachers learn professional writing not only from advice, but also from experience and practice. They also mention that professional writing can be integrated in all fields of English language arts classrooms that can be taught to students.

Gartner, Michael G., B. 1938 (Fa 367), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 367. Copies of Michael G. Gartner's newspaper column "Words, Words, Words" that appeared in the Louisville "Courier-Journal."

Language As Mediation In Tolkien's Mythology, Katherine Hyon

Graduate English Association New Voices Conference 2007

In his detailed accounts concerning Middle-earth and its inhabitants throughout various Ages of existence, Tolkien made his desire to write a mythology for England a reality. Although his work has delighted readers of all ages for decades, to dismiss Tolkien as a mere writer of children‟s fantasy or escapist science fiction would be to do him a great disservice. Tolkien was, above all, a philologist; his great love and obsession with language is obvious in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and especially The Silmarillion. Tolkien was also a product of his time; he was a lover and a …

Currents And Eddies In The Discourse Of Assessment: A Learning-Focused Interpretation, Pauline Rea-Dickins

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

This article explores processes of classroom assessment, in particular ways in which learners using English as an additional language engage in formative assessment within a primary school setting. Transcript evidence of teacher and learner interactions during activities viewed by teachers as formative or summative assessment opportunities are presented as the basis for an analysis of teacher feedback, learner responses to this feedback, as well as learner-initiated talk. The analyses suggest that there are different teacher orientations within assessment and highlight the potential that assessment dialogues might offer for assessment as a resource for language learning, thus situating this work at …

Multimodality And English Education In Ugandan Schools, Maureen Kendrick, Shelley Jones, Harriet Mutonyi, Bonny Norton

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

In this article, we have made the case that multimodal pedagogies that include drawing, photography and drama have significant potential for enhancing teachers’ understanding of the way English is incorporated into students’ lives and how students can improve their understanding and use of the English language. In many ways, multimodal pedagogies represent a hybridization of indigenous and contemporary forms of communication. Drawings, as Vygotsky (1 12-1 13) notes, are children’s earliest representations of experience and stimulate their narrative impulse to create stories. By complementing such drawings with written narratives, teachers might encourage younger children to experiment not only with diverse …

Reading As A Criminal In Early Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Gary Dyer

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

So What's Your Point? Relevancy In Conversation, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Every rare once in a while, I find myself caught in a conversation where the person I'm talking to goes off on a tangent. And I don't mean a little aside. I mean a "What the hell are you talking about!?" tangent.

Luckily, for the other 99% of conversations, there are some general guidelines for engagement that help us avoid making mistakes like this one. H. Paul Grice, a language philosopher, is the scholar credited with first writing about these rules in a widespread way. Grice theorized that participants in conversation operate by an overarching approach that we now call …

A Different Kind Of Bilingüismo, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In last month's column, I wrote about the presence of Spanish in Omaha, attested by its occasional appearances in the broader English-speaking market. I also mentioned the phenomenon of people speaking two or more languages, called bilingualism. When a person has command of two languages, then that person is considered bilingual.

Considering that one language (like Swahili) might be called a code, and another language (Arabic) is another code, and a third language (like English) is another code, then conceivably a person who lives in Tanzania might carry on a conversation with another speaker from Tanzania in three different languages …

What Part English, What Part Spanish?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Back in July, I was sitting in my office at school, working on a syllabus for a new sophomore- level class on language and society. I was exploring the U.S. Census Bureau website to get a sense of the most current information we have about language communities in the United States. I had the radio on, too, and while I was browsing census data about Nebraska, I heard an advertisement on one of the FM stations. The ad was primarily an English-language ad, but it also had a few Spanish words. It turned out to be a job advertisement for …

What Are Functional Shifts?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In last month's column, I wrote about variety in word formation processes, the phenomenon of having more than one word form lo represent the same concept, illustrated by word pairs like analysis/analyzation, summary/ summarization, and intensity/intenseness. There is, of course, the other side of the coin. We also use single word forms to represent an array of meanings.

What Really Makes A Word, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

On the 2003 season finale of the HBO drama "Six Feet Under," viewers are left wondering whether Keith and David will be able to stay together as a couple. They were sitting at the kitchen table and eating cake, getting into one of their ritualized tiffs where David feels Keith picks on him. The substance of their conversation, though, turned to the silly when David said 'adjacently." Keith said, "Adjacently is not a word." They soon realized how petty they sounded and sort of laughed it all off.

Often, people can get very worked up about whether something is …

Y'All Better Ask Somebody, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

One of the ways that linguists think about language is through geographical distribution, commonly known as dialects. It's very easy to think about geography because of the wide range of locales in which English is spoken. Due to conquest and colonization, English is now a world language. There's British English, Australian English, and Nigerian English, among many others. In the continental U.S., most people readily identify a number of regional dialects: “Midwestern," "New England," "Southern." While some people might call them accents, linguists distinguish between dialect and accent. The term accent refers solely to the way words are …

Sentence Forms' And Corporate Responsibility, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

On Monday 10 March, National Public Radio aired a story by Jack Speer about corporate America’s financial situation. Speer said that since some companies have had cl difficult time with their profit margins, they reduced retiree benefits - in other worth, people who had worked for many years and had retired from the company lost some of their hard-earned benefits to ensure healthy stock performance.

Lately, we have heard several of these stories. A CEO/CFO takes home a record-setting multimillion dollar paycheck because he fired workers for profit, a practice epitomized by ENRON and WorldCom. What caught my attention, though, …

What Are Conversation Systems?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

The study of conversation as a serious field of inquiry began in the1970s when sociologists Harvey Sacks, Emmanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson first turned our attention to the way people talk to each other. Interestingly, they began looking at talk not for the sake of talk itself but instead as a way to understand social interactions. They collected samples of conversations and analyzed them to help answer questions that sociologists (not necessarily linguists) are interested in answering. For instance, how do people manage their daily lives through talk? How do people establish, maintain, improve and end relationships with each other …

Name Trouble - Part Two, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

While Shakespeare was busy with names in Romeo and Juliet, Europeans began exploring and settling the New World and immediately ran into the problem of naming. For instance, what should they call those enormous mammals that look sort of like cows but are larger, stronger, and furrier? Buflalo? Bison? Tatanka? And what should they call all the people they kept running into? Tradition holds that Christopher Columbus started it. He was confused because of geography; he thought he had found India, so he called the native people he met by the Spanish word indios, the English …

Name Trouble - Part One, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

I hereby re-christen thee ..

The slate of Nebraska recently witnessed a controversy surrounding the names of several geophysical features, like rivers or creeks. According to a February 191 2001, Omaha World-Herald article by Todd von Kampen and Nichole Aksamit, the push was to change all the place names that contain the word "squaw" to more appropriate, less offensive names. The movement was strictly voluntary; no law required the changes. However, there was a good deal of resistance, even from some lawmakers. According to the article, Bellevue City Councilman John Stacey said, “I don’t have any problem with the name …

Cartoons And Pronoun Trouble, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In a relatively famous linguistic exchange, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd are trying lo determine who is going to be shot. First, the question of whether it's duck season or rabbit season has to be answered. Second, Elmer has to suffer through a barrage of claims and counter-claims in which Bugs and Daffy try to avoid being Elmer's target.

Although I couldn't find a copy of this video, I believe it is Chuck Jones's "Rabbit Seasoning" (1952), and the premise is very similar to 1951's "Rabbit Fire" which I was able to rent on video. At any rate, …