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Shiwilu (Jebero), Pilar Valenzuela, Carlos Gussenhoven

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Shiwilu (a.k.a. Jebero) is a critically endangered language from Peruvian Amazonia and one of the two members of the Kawapanan linguistic family. Most of its nearly 30 remaining fluent speakers live in and around the village of Jeberos (District of Jeberos, Province of Alto Amazonas, Loreto Region), at approximately 5° S, 75° W. The documentation of Shiwilu is scarce and no survey grammar is available. Until very recently, the only trained linguist who had worked on Shiwilu was John Bendor- Samuel, who carried out fieldwork in 1955–1956 and completed a doctoral thesis in 1958 (see Bendor-Samuel 1981 [1958]). An abridged …

Syllabic Patterns In The Early Vocalizations Of Quichua Children, Christina E. Gildersleeve-Neumann, Barbara L. Davis, Peter F. Macneilage

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

To understand the interactions between production patterns common to children regardless of language environment and the early appearance of production effects based on perceptual learning from the ambient language requires the study of languages with diverse phonological properties. Few studies have evaluated early phonological acquisition patterns of children in non-Indo-European language environments. In the current study, across- and within-syllable consonant-vowel co-occurrence patterns in babbling were analyzed for a 6-month period for seven Ecuadorean Quichua learning children who were between 9 and 17 months of age at study onset. Their babbling utterances were compared to the babbling of six English-learning children …

Beyond The Trauma Of War: Iraqi Literature, Yasmeen S. Hanoosh

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

A decade after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, we cannot approach Iraqi literature today without recognizing the multiple shifts and varieties in its expression. In a matter of ten years, the post-Ba'thist era has witnessed the sudden fall of a long-lasting dictatorship, an encounter with Western occupation, and an unprecedented upsurge in sectarian discourses, to name only the most prominent events. In addition to these influences, the development of contemporary Iraqi literature is the product of several fluctuations in cultural expression that span the bulk of the twentieth century. The abrupt transitions from the Hashemite monarchy (1932–58) to 'Abd al-Karim …

"Es Hora De Que Aprendamos A Leer Entre Líneas":Discurso Patriarcal, Género Y Autoritarismo En Cola De Lagartija De Luisa Valenzuela Y Para Que No Me Olvides De Marcela Serrno, Laura Rose Colaneri

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Honors Program

In this analysis of Cola de lagartija by Luisa Valenzuela and Para que no me olvides by Marcela Serrano, I seek to explore common themes in how gender is represented and its relation with the authoritative discourse of dictatorship. A historic and political review of the rhetoric used by the Argentine and Chilean dictatorships in the 1970s to solidify their totalitarian power and of the strategic reactions of the various women’s organizations that contributed to movements against the dictatorships will reveal various tactics that are also used by Valenzuela and Serrano in their novels in order to dismantle and disarm …

Social Supports For Multilingual Students In The University Setting, Max Badesheim

McNair Scholars Research Journal

Research suggests that students’ social engagement, both on and off campus, plays a significant role in their academic performance. This research has been conducted in various settings including institutionally provided social programs (Browne, M. N., & Minnick, K. J., 2005), student organizations (Nunan, D., 1992), as well as interpersonal relationships (Cumming, A. H., 2006). These social supports are especially essential for multilingual students who potentially lack some of the interconnecting support networks of students raised in the United States in English speaking households. Despite the established connection between social engagement and academic performance, social programs on campus are often under-utilized. …

Cultivating Bilingual Learners’ Language Arts Knowledge: A Framework For Successful Teaching, Isela Almaguer, J. Joy Esquierdo

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

It is essential to support bilingual learners’ language and academic development; however, teaching second language learners English has taken precedence over teaching content area knowledge and vocabulary, specifically for language arts. The focus has shifted from content area instruction to primarily second language instruction due to an increasingly diverse population and an increasing number of bilingual learners in formal school settings. This article introduces a framework for accomplishing both linguistic and content literacy simultaneously. The framework takes into account the four elements of the principles of learning, learner appropriate pedagogy, contextual interaction theory, student language (L1/L2) proficiency level, and a …

Why Did I Ask That Question? Bilingual/Esl Pre-Service Teachers’ Insights, Zulmaris Diaz, Michael Whitacre, J. Joy Esquierdo, Jose A. Ruiz-Escalante

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Questioning techniques have historically been considered the measurement by which teachers challenge and gauge student learning. Much has been said about questioning strategies used by teachers; yet little is known about the strategies used by pre-service teachers, especially those that are working with English language learners. This study presents findings from a qualitative study that explored what types of questions pre-service teachers use and their reflections on the use of such strategies. Eight bilingual/ESL pre-service teachers in South Texas were videotaped during a math and a language arts lesson, attended focus groups, and participated in an exit interview. The findings …

Promising Pedagogical Practices For Emergent Bilinguals In Kindergarten: Towards A Mathematics Discourse Community, Sandra I. Musanti, Sylvia Celedón-Pattichis

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

In the current U.S. context, it is relevant to disseminate research that portrays in detail how bilingual teachers create challenging and safe mathematics learning environments for emergent bilinguals. It is critical to identify pedagogical approaches that foster emergent bilinguals’ participation in mathematics conversations and discourse practices where language is considered a pedagogical resource. This is possible when teachers understand that young Latino/a students come to school with a wide range of cognitive and linguistic tools, which they can use to help them make sense of problems posed in the classroom. Using case study methodology, we define and provide a detailed …

Treatment For Children With High Functioning Autism: A Comparison Of Social Stories To Musically Adapted Social Stories, Veronica M. Torres

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The incorporation of music and social stories has been seldom tested, thus a study which uses a single-subject, alternating treatment design assesses the effects of standard social stories versus musically adapted social stories on the pragmatic abilities of an individual with high-functioning autism is presented. The goal of this project was to determine whether read social stories versus musically adapted social stories would be more beneficial in reducing problem behaviors in a child with high-functioning autism. Both types of social stories were implemented with the participant and the data supported the effectiveness of both treatments. Though the musically adapted social …

Bilingual Adult Nonword Repetition Performance Patterns In English And Spanish, Gabriela Villaneda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nonword repetition (NWR) is known to assess phonological working memory. During NWR, the individual listens to made-up words and repeats them back. This study evaluated NWR performance patterns, and the relationship between NWR and language recall tasks among forty English and Spanish bilingual adults. Bilingual adults' ages ranged from 18-67 years. Four language recall tasks were administered, including NWR tasks (assessed by PPC), language questionnaire to assess participants' language usage in English and Spanish, sentence repetition task (assessed by raw score), and a story retell (assessed by NDW). All recall measures were administered in a counterbalanced manner across English and …

The Use Of A Virtual Guest Speaker As A Catalyst For Deep Learning, Alcione N. Ostorga, Peter Farruggio

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Teaching undergraduate students as they prepare to become bilingual teachers is often a challenge due to their maturational development and the logistical limitations of college courses. Nevertheless, teacher educators must foster preservice teachers’ understanding of factors that impact learning and academic success. This article analyses the use of a virtual guest speaker in an asynchronous discussion as a way to promote critical analysis of policy issues which superseded the memorization of concepts taught in the course. Analysis reveals that the virtual guest speaker served as a catalyst for critical thought about the course content.

Tribalism And Democratic Transition In Libya: Lessons From Iraq, Christine N. Myers

Global Tides

This paper explores the historic role of tribalism in colonial Iraq and Libya as well as its prevalence and role in the countries today and its effects on democratic state-formation. It discusses the ideology and actions of the Ba’athist Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and the Jamahiriya under Muahmmar Gaddafi including the regimes' attempts to exploit tribal loyalties to bolster their power. The paper also explores the role of the tribe in the governments of Libya and Iraq after Hussein and Gaddafi were removed from power. It explores problems tribalism poses to democratization in modern-day Libya and Iraq. These threats …

The Ethiopian Conception Of Time And Modernity, Messay Kebede

Philosophy Faculty Publications

If there is one thing that philosophers agree upon, it is that the meaning of time is a central philosophical question. If we take the Western world as an example, there is no famous philosopher who has not investigated time. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger, to indicate the centrality of time, writes: “all ontology is rooted in the phenomenon of time correctly viewed and correctly explained.”

Likewise, according to the French philosopher Henri Bergson, the main reason that philosophical questions are difficult is because “we do not think about real time.” The fact that the question of time is very …

Humanitarian Aid In Question: The Case Of Rice Imports To Haiti, Madeleine R. Potter

Scripps Senior Theses

The instance of rice aid in Haiti definitively demands a reevaluation of humanitarian aid in today's world. In this thesis, I will outline the effects of rice aid on Haitian society and theoretically analyze humanitarian aid’s presence in “developing” countries. In addition to ruining many Haitian farmers' livelihoods, rice imports have aggravated Haiti's economic situation and national stability, the consequences of which have fallen primarily on the poor woman. I focus on the effects on the peasant woman in this thesis. Food insecurity remains a crisis. Throughout my thesis, I draw from the texts of scholars Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Rancière, …

Acoustic Analysis Of The Allophones Of The Mid-Front Spanish Vowel /E/, Raquel Gonzalez De Anda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the Spanish phoneme /e/ and its open allophone(s). Current literature shows that there is no complete agreement with regards to the specific phonetic environments that trigger the opening of /e/, nor if "open" is the best term to describe the allophone(s). Examining /e/ allophones in Spanish monolinguals clarifies current literature inconsistencies; and therefore, creates a baseline for future studies related to this particular vowel. In this study, the speech of ten Spanish monolingual university students was recorded. Participants read a list of words that contained /e/ in certain phonetic contexts. Each instance of /e/ was acoustically analyzed …

Rewriting Revision: A Case Study Of First Year Composition Students, Myshie M. Pagel

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study focuses on the revision practices of seven first year composition students at a U.S./Mexico border community college. The analysis of revision practices is framed by the negotiation of dissonance between gist and intention. Three types of data were collected: screen captured writing sessions, instructor comments, and participant interviews. The data was analyzed through a grid based on Faigley and Witte's taxonomy grid of revision changes. This included three major categories: surface level, meaning preserving, and text base level changes. As in past studies on revision, the participants in this case study followed a similar trend. A majority …

Event Related Potential Changes In A Two-Stimulus Auditory Oddball Task In Concussed College Athletes: A Linguistic Component, Paola G. Sanchez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Return to Play" decisions are done based on cognitive-communicative testing and clinical assessments; concussed athletes may benefit from electrophysiological testing for a more accurate representation of their recovery. The purpose of this study is to investigate the electrophysiological performance post-concussion analyzing the attentional differences using the traditional "oddball" paradigm with a CV linguistic component. Participants for this study were 6 male college athletes with a history of concussion and 10 participants with no history of concussion (controls). Athletes were evaluated using event-related potentials (ERPs) that were recorded during a consonant-vowel (CV) auditory oddball task. Both the P300a and P300b components …

Destroy Or Be Destroyed: Contending With Toxic Social Structures In Naguib Mahfouz’S Midaq Alley, Stephanie Hasenfus

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Coptic Scriptorium, Caroline T. Schroeder, Amir Zeldes

Department of Religious Studies Faculty Digital Projects

Coptic SCRIPTORIUM is a platform for interdisciplinary and computational research in texts in the Coptic language, particularly the Sahidic dialect. As an open-source, open-access initiative, our technologies and corpus facilitate a collaborative environment for digital research for all scholars working in Coptic. We provide:

• tools to process Coptic texts
• a searchable, richly-annotated corpus of texts using the ANNIS search and visualization architecture
• visualizations of Coptic texts
• a collaborative platform for scholars to use and contribute to the project research results generated from the tools and corpus

Coptic SCRIPTORIUM is a collaborative, digital project created by Caroline T. Schroeder (University of …

Pre-Service Teachers: An Analysis Of Reading Instruction In High Needs Districts Dual Language Classrooms, Michael Whitacre, Zulmaris Diaz, J. Joy Esquierdo

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Pre-service teachers need opportunities to apply theory and connect to best practices as they teach in classroom settings be it, whole or small group. For many pre-service teachers often times their experience is limited to simply watching instruction or working with small groups of students (Pryor & Kuhn, 2004). The student teaching experience is a critical component of the teacher preparation program. Through the use of the English Language Learner Classroom Observation Instrument (ELLCOI), and researcher observation the hope is that these will aid in bringing to light the instructional activities used by pre-service teachers during reading instruction with ELLs. …