Reading and Language Commons^™

The Jacket My Gary Soto, Laura E. Mendoza

Humanities

Intermediate level ESOL reading course. Objectives: To improve students’ critical thinking skills by answering questions based on Soto’s story The Jacket. To improve teamwork skills by communicating effectively to decide on a common answer.

Interpretation And Ovidian Myth In Alexander’S Bridge And O Pioneers!, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This essay describes interpretive strategies widely applied to Ovidian mythic materials during the period of Cather’s early career, especially those operative in Alexander’s Bridge and O Pioneers! The article assumes that widely held conventional interpretations of myths, in this case Ovidian myths, in a specific time and area are part of their semantic content, or iconology, and are tools Cather used in communicating with her audience. The essay then looks at a passage in the 1912 Alexander’s Bridge and two disputed passages in the 1913 O Pioneers! along with extended Bacchic themes in the latter novel that employ conventional Ovidian …

Reflections On The Victorian(Ist) Impulse To Totalize Africa, Adrian S. Wisnicki

Department of English: Faculty Publications

IN this essay, I offer some reflections on how Victorianists might understand nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discursive practices for mapping Africa. In doing this, I respond to what Sukanya Banerjee, our panel organizer, asked us to do in determining the focus for our essays—namely, that we direct “attention to topics in Victorian studies that [we] feel might otherwise be overlooked or viewed differently.” In what follows I introduce and problematize a series of Victorian-era maps or, more specifically, problematize what such maps represent conceptually, then offer some alternate means by which Victorianists might critically engage with cultural and social reality …

The Politics Of Tools, Stephen Ramsay

Department of English: Faculty Publications

A consideration of the political meaning of software that tries to add greater philosophical precision to statements about the politics of tools and tool building in the humanities. Using Michael Oakeshott's formulations of the “politics of faith” and the “politics of skepticism,” [Oakeshott 1996] it suggests that while declaring our tools be morally or political neutral may be obvious fallacious, it is equally problematic to suppose that we can predict in advance the political formations that will arise from our tool building. For indeed (as Oakeshott suggests), the tools themselves give rise to what is politically possible.

The Syntax Of Sports Class 5: Rhetorical Repetition, Patrick Barry

Books

Here are some of the words that the people who have attended Patrick Barry's classes and workshops have used to describe his unique, multidisciplinary approach to teaching writing:

"Fantastic"
"Phenomenal"
"Very engaging and informative:
"Incredibly useful
"Full of practical lessons for both my career and life generally"

This fifth book in his Syntax of Sports series gives you a chance to experience his creative (and capacious) mind for yourself. Whether you've already read the previous four books in the series or are trying one out for the very first time, you're in for quite the educational treat.

"Does This Make Sense?": The Effect Of Congruent Guise In Regional Accent On Grammatical Acceptability Judgments, Nour Kayali

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This study seeks to unite sociophonetic speech perception and syntax research by presenting participants with congruent or incongruent social expectations during a structural grammaticality judgement task. Participants completed a between-subjects matched guise survey with place-based grammatical structures spoken in either a congruent place-based, local accent or a nonlocal accent. Place-based structures are consistently rated more acceptable in the local accent than the nonlocal. These results suggest that judgment of grammaticality results from an interplay of sociocultural expectations with accent and sentence structure. Judgement of structural grammaticality is not independent of social expectation.

Querying The Past: Automatic Source Attribution With Language Models, Ryan Muther, Mathew Barber, David Smith

Faculty & Staff Publications

This paper explores new methods for locating the sources used to write a text by 昀椀ne-tuning a variety of language models to rerank candidate sources. These methods promise to shed new light on traditions with complex citational practices, such as in medieval Arabic where citations are ambiguous and boundaries of quotation are poorly defined. After retrieving candidates sources using a baseline BM25 retrieval model, a variety of reranking methods are tested to see how effective they are at the task of source attribution. We conduct experiments on two datasets—English Wikipedia and medieval Arabic historical writing—and employ a variety of retrieval- …

Twitter As Limited Digital Rhetorical Forum – The Reproductive Rights Discourse Online, Jacob L. Longini

Comparative Woman

Rhetorical discourse has long been characterized by patriarchal systems, and this reality has persisted in online spaces. How might today’s scholar dissect and better understand the nature of online communities, specifically those that engage in women’s rights discourses? I argue that using Thomas Farrell’s notion of “rhetorical forum”, James P. Zappen’s outline for digital rhetorical theory, and Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin’s feminist understanding of rhetorical practice, one can account for the current state of such discourses on Twitter. The patriarchal flaws that Foss and Griffin identify in traditional rhetoric can shed light on the negative aspects of …

Clausal Or Phrasal: Variability Of Lexical Bundles In L1 And Turkish L2 English Research Articles, Fatih Güngö, Hacer Hande Uysal

PASAA

This study aimed to compare how native and non-native Turkish authors use four-word lexical bundles in research articles written in English in educational sciences. The two-million-word corpus included 165 research articles in L2 English and 206 in L1 English. Our corpus query resulted in 119 bundles in L2 English and 79 bundles in L1 English with a cut-off point of 20 times per million words and the occurrence in at least 10% of the articles in each corpus. The frequency results reveal that non-native authors dominantly use lexical bundles in their research articles. The classification of bundles revealed considerable structural …

Book Review: A Philosophical Approach To Perceptions Of Academic Writing Practices In Higher Education: Through A Glass Darkly, Harald Kraus

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Revision Of An Academic English Writing Rubric For A Graduate School Admission Test, Chawin Srisawat, Kornwipa Poonpon

PASAA

This study aimed to revise an academic English writing rubric for a university graduate admission test, following the Triangulation Scale Revision Process (Banerjee et al., 2015) and the Mixed-methods Conceptual Design Model (Janssen et al., 2015). The current scale revision was informed by a corpus analysis of writing responses, multi-facet RASCH model (MFRM) analysis, and a rater discussion. The samples of the study were 134 scored writing responses. Each writing response was rated by two raters. Seven raters were recruited in the rating process, and four of them participated in the subsequent raters’ discussion process. Corpus analysis was employed to …

An Exploration Of Salespersons’ Communication Apprehension In English Communication: A Case Of A Private Company In Thailand, Penpitcha Prakaiborisuth

PASAA

Communicating in a foreign language can be a traumatic experience for a large number of language users, and having to use a foreign language can lead to anxiety or communication apprehension. In cases of salespersons, communication apprehension can adversely affect sales performance and the ability to engage customers and close deals. The present study aimed at investigating the levels of communication apprehension among Thai salespersons during oral sales presentations in English, explore the perceived effects of communication apprehension on sales presentations, and identify coping strategies employed by Thai salespersons to manage their communication apprehension. Quantitative data from self-report questionnaires and …

Perspectives On Online Learning And Technostress Experienced By Science And Non-Science First-Year University Students During Covid-19, Teerada Chongkolrattanaporn, Woralan Kongpolphrom

PASAA

This study examined perspectives on online learning, focusing on synchronous and asynchronous modes and technostress experienced by first-year students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a survey of 803 first-year university respondents, the results indicated that both science and nonscience students held different perspectives on synchronous and asynchronous modes of learning. The students from both groups also experienced varying levels of technostress, with techno-overload being the most pronounced. There was a significant difference in attitudes towards online learning modes and in technostress between science and non-science students. Non-science students were more positive toward asynchronous modes and reported higher levels of …

Re-Examining Productive-Skills Anxiety Constructs In Online Instructional Contexts Involving Thai Undergraduates Following The Covid-19 Pandemic, Teaka Sowaprux, Chatraporn Piamsai

PASAA

This study reexamines various foreign language anxiety (FLA) predictors that may be applicable to the Southeast Asian and Thai contexts beyond the dimensions initially validated by Horwitz et al. (1986) and Cheng (2004). This study explores two frameworks, namely, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Horwitz et al., 1986) that measures classroom speaking anxiety, and the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) (Cheng, 2004) that samples writing anxiety across three factors (i.e., somatic anxiety, avoidance behavior, and cognitive anxiety). The present study sought to understand how the online classroom apparatus during the context of the COVID-19 pandemic affected the …

English Proficiency As A Predictor Of Academic Performance In The Context Of Non-English As A Medium Of Instruction, Siti Nurul Azkiyah, Yenny Rahmawati, M. Shohibussirri, Yunita Faela Nisa, Neneng Sunengsih, Amirul Mukminin

PASAA

Many studies acknowledge that English proficiency contributes to academic performance, eventually affecting one’s career. This study, therefore, aimed to investigate whether English proficiency (EPT) could predict students’ academic performance at a state Islamic university in Indonesia. A quantitative approach was used, in which the data of students’ EPT and their Grade Point Averages (GPAs) were collected from 4,959 bachelor’s degree seeking students from various faculties. These data were taken from the university’s information center and then analyze using regression analysis to estimate if EPT significantly predicted GPA, whose finding was statistically significant (R2 = [.016], F (1, 4958) = [82.885], …

Exploring Efl Preservice Teachersʼ Sense Of Self-Efficacy In Teaching: An Indonesian Case, Caecilia Tutyandari

PASAA

A sense of self-efficacy is an essential factor in preservice teachers' professional growth. This paper aims to explore pre-service English language teachers' sense of self-efficacy in teaching, which includes their perceptions of their teaching abilities and concerns during teaching practicum. Accordingly, this study employed a mixed methods approach with a cohort of final year students of the English language education department as the respondents. It was conducted in a university-based teacher education program in Indonesia with an online survey and interview as research instruments to collect the data. The data gathered were examined separately with descriptive statistical analysis and thematic …

Turkish Efl Learnersʼ Receptive Affix Knowledge As A Diagnostic Tool To Predict Their Productive Derivative Vocabulary Knowledge, Mustafa Yildiz

PASAA

The present study sets out to measure Turkish EFL learners' receptive affix knowledge and productive derivative vocabulary knowledge. More specifically, the extent to which Turkish EFL learners recognize written form of affixes, know the meaning of affixes and determine the part of speech of the derivatives produced by means of affixes and how good such learners are at producing derivatives have been investigated. Sasao and Webbʼs (2017) Word Part Levels Test (WPLT) to diagnose learnersʼ receptive affix knowledge and the Contextualized Derivative Recall Test developed by Iwaizumi and Webb (2021) to measure EFL learnersʼ productive derivative vocabulary knowledge have been …

Doing The Work -- Collectively Pursuing Anti-Racist And Equitable Teaching: One High School English Department’S Journey, Sharon Murchie, Anthony Andrus, Pat Brennan, Gina Farnelli, Shelby Fletcher, Dawn Reed, Emily Solomon, Benjamin K. Woodcock

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Our district has long been heralded as a beacon school, one that delivers exceptional education in an exceptional community. Peeling back the layers, however, revealed a district that lurched towards the traditional, even with the hiring of DEI faculty and the step away from an historical indigenous mascot. In a time where teachers are exhausted and afraid of community backlash, our

English department dared to tear off the scabs of old wounds and united to push toward what is best for our changing community and students. Hard conversations, difficult topics, and months of legwork at last successfully provided the impetus …

Phonological Decoding Skill In Braille Readers: Implications For Dyslexia, Lindsay N. Harris, Luis E. Lopez, Ailing Li, Alecia Santuzzi

CISLL Publications

Highly developed phonological decoding ability is essential for leveraging the phonological decoding self-teaching loop to efficiently build a reading lexicon. In the present study we compared the phonological decoding abilities of blind braille-reading (n = 29) and sighted print-reading (n = 22) adults to investigate the possibility that braille’s complexity reduces instances of successful decoding and self-teaching. Such a disturbance of the learning loop would amplify any underlying cognitive deficits in braille readers and contribute to the high rates of learning disability diagnosis observed in blind children. Contrary to expectations, we found that braille readers had a higher …

Bypass Language En Route To Meaning At Your Peril, Lindsay N. Harris, Charles A. Perfetti, Elizabeth Hirshorn

CISLL Publications

The learning account of the puzzle of ideography cannot be dismissed as readily as Morin maintains, and is compatible with the standardization account. The reading difficulties of deaf and dyslexic individuals, who cannot easily form connections between written letter strings and spoken words, suggest limits to our ability to bypass speech and reliably access meaning directly from graphic symbols.