Digital Commons Network^™

The Potential Of Flipped Learning To Prepare Esl Students For Peer Review, Catherine E. Showalter, Ilka Kostka

Journal of Response to Writing

Peer review is frequently used in both first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) writing courses to help students develop reading and writing skills and foster interaction and collaboration. To maximize these benefits in the L2 classroom, instructors should train their students to provide feedback to their peers (Lam, 2010; Rahimi, 2013; Rollinson, 2005). However, sufficient training and practice can require considerable class time. In this teaching article, we detail how we used a flipped learning approach to prepare undergraduate international students to conduct peer review in a university-level English as a Second Language reading and writing course. First, we discuss how …

Confronting And Condemning “Hard Doctrine,” 1978–2013, Matthew L. Harris

Mormon Studies Review

Although Spencer W. Kimball’s 1978 revelation in the Salt Lake Temple ended the 126-year-old priesthood and temple ban affecting persons of African descent, questions about racial teachings in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lingered. The revelation, canonized as “Official Declaration 2” in Latter-day Saint scripture, failed to repudiate the theology justifying the ban.1 Some members, consequently, continued to assert that black people were cursed, equating their dark skin with misdeeds they allegedly committed in a pre-earth life.2 Anguished over these microaggressions, black Latter-day Saints petitioned church officials to condemn racism within the church as well as remove …

Full Issue

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Informal Training On Graduate Teaching Assistants’ Response Beliefs, Andrew Thomas-James Moos

Journal of Response to Writing

As recent studies have shown (Ferris, 2014; Reid, Estrem, & Belcheir, 2012), formalized types of pedagogical instruction may be less effective for new instructors than previously thought. As new instructors form beliefs about responding to student writing through their first years of teaching and training, they may continue to rely heavily on knowledge from various communities of practice (Wenger, 2000) outside of their current programs while shaping their beliefs about feedback. This study examines these informal influences on the feedback beliefs of first-year writing instructors. Specifically, this study uses both surveys and interviews with teachers in their first 2 years …

The Brass Plates Version Of Genesis, Noel B. Reynolds

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The Book of Mormon peoples repeatedly indicated that they were descendants of Joseph, the son of Jacob who was sold into Egypt by his brothers. The plates of brass that they took with them from Jerusalem c. 600 bce provided them with a version of many Old Testament books and others not included in our Hebrew Bible. Sometime after publishing his translation of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith undertook an inspired revision of the Bible. The opening chapters of his version of Genesis contain a lot of material not included in the Hebrew Bible. But intriguingly, distinctive phraseology in …

An Approach To Isaiah Studies, Donald W. Parry

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

This review makes a case, briefly, for the unmistakable presence of Jesus Christ in Isaiah’s text, which case is based on a corpus linguistic-based description of the Hebrew Bible, equivalent designations of deific names, self-identification declarations by the Lord, and more. And, importantly, one can never set aside the multiple teachings and testimonies of our modern prophets and apostles regarding Isaiah’s prophecies of Jesus Christ. Moreover, in my view, a knowledge of biblical Hebrew helps us to penetrate the very depths and heights of Isaiah’s text.

An American Indian Language Family With Middle Eastern Loanwords: Responding To A Recent Critique, John Robertson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In 2015 Brian Stubbs published a landmark book, demonstrating that Uto-Aztecan, an American Indian language family, contains a vast number of Northwest Semitic and Egyptian loanwords spoken in the first millennium bc. Unlike other similar claims — absurd, eccentric, and without substance — Stubbs’s book is a serious, linguistically based study that deserves serious consideration. In the scholarly world, any claim of Old World influence in the New World languages is met with critical, often hostile skepticism. This essay is written in response to one such criticism.

Section 2: Nephi The Writer Chapter 7: Nephi Preparing, Brant Gardner

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

We have the Book of Mormon people because of Lehi. Nephi began the tradition that eventually allowed Mormon to create the Book of Mormon. Lehi led his family to the New World, but Nephi defined his descendants as a record-keeping people. The Nephites were a people of the Book both because Nephi (and his brothers) preserved a record-keeping tradition (the brass plates) and because he began a new one after arriving in the New World. Mormon may be most directly responsible for the Book of Mormon, but the records Mormon used (and many of the organizational structures that Mormon used) …

Chapter 10: Final Considerations About Writing, Brant Gardner

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Neither the extant original manuscript nor the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon have any indication of punctuation. The dictation was written as it was heard, with no attempt to add the literary niceties of paragraphs and punctuation. The nature of the dictation in English cannot tell us whether the Nephite language had visual clues that helped divide ideas. Based on many early texts, it is safest to assume that it did not.

Chapter 11: Book Of 1 Nephi, Brant Gardner

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Nephi begins his book according to traditions he learned in his scribal training.277 He adds a colophon,278 which had two functions: describe the contents of the book and to identify that author. The synoptic header prior to chapter I provides the outline of the events to be covered in Nephi’s first book: the departure of the family from Jerusalem, the journey into the wilderness, the return to Jerusalem for the brass plates, the acquisition of wives from Ishmael’s family, the arrival at Bountiful, the building of a ship, and the journey to the new world. Evidence from Mormon’s use of …

Becoming Men And Women Of Understanding: Wordplay On Benjamin — An Addendum, Matthew L. Bowen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Royal and divine sonship/daughterhood (bānîm = “children”/“sons,” bānôt = “daughters”) is a prevalent theme throughout the Book of Mosiah. “Understanding” (Hebrew noun, bînâ or tĕbûnâ; verb, bîn) is also a key theme in that book. The initial juxtaposition of “sons” and “understanding” with the name “Benjamin” (binyāmîn, “son of the right hand”) in Mosiah 1:2–7 suggests the narrator’s association of the underlying terms with the name Benjamin likely on the basis of homophony. King Benjamin repeatedly invokes “understand” in his speech (forms of “understand” were derived from the root *byn in Hebrew; Mosiah 2:9, 40; 4:4; cf. 3:15) — a …

Full Issue

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Other Approach To Isaiah Studies, Joshua M. Sears

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

A recent review of Joseph M. Spencer’s book The Vision of All: Twenty-Five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record made the case that the book contains several challenges and problems, in particular that it advocates a theologically deficient interpretation of Isaiah that denies Isaiah’s witness of Jesus Christ. This response provides an alternative reading of Spencer’s work and suggests these assertions are often based on misunderstanding. At stake in this conversation is the question of whether or not there is more than one valid way to read Isaiah that draws upon a faithful, Restoration perspective. While Spencer may interpret and …

Pitfalls Of The Ngram Viewer, Standford Carmack

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Google’s Ngram Viewer often gives a distorted view of the popularity of cultural/religious phrases during the early 19th century and before. Other larger textual sources can provide a truer picture of relevant usage patterns of various content-rich phrases that occur in the Book of Mormon. Such an approach suggests that almost all of its phraseology fits comfortably within its syntactic framework, which is mostly early modern in character.

Proper Names From The Small Plates: Some Notes On The Personal Names Zoram, Jarom, Omni, And Mosiah, Stephen D. Ricks

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

With a selection of a few notable examples (Zoram, Jarom, Omni, and Mosiah) that have been analyzed by the ongoing Book of Mormon names project, Stephen Ricks argues that “proper names in the Book of Mormon are demonstrably ancient.”

“We May Not Understand Our Words”: The Book Of Abraham And The Concept Of Translation In The Pearl Of Greatest Price, John S. Thompson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In recent years there has been an effort among some scholars to make sense of the historical sources surrounding Joseph Smith’s claims to be a translator of ancient records. Terryl Givens, with some assistance from Brian Hauglid, has explored the evidence surrounding the Book of Abraham and suggests that, in this case, Joseph Smith may not have translated an ancient record of Abraham’s writings into English as typically believed in the Latter-day Saint community. Consequently, Givens provides four alternative ways the work of “translating” may have been understood or practiced by the Prophet and his scribes. This essay highlights some …

Chapter 7: Applied Rhetoric As Disciplinary Umbrella: Community, Connections, And Identity, Jacob D. Rawlins

Faculty Publications

: This chapter argues that many of the existing names and boundaries in use around professional communication create artificial separations among research, pedagogy, theory, and action related to the practice of rhetoric in contemporary society. Scholars working in this area teach and conduct research across a variety of disciplines, but we share a rhetorical foundation and a concern for the practical application of that theory. This combination of classical rhetoric and public action provides a way to move our work beyond the confines of the academy and actively engage in rhetorical work within the communities where we work, live, and …

Student-Led Feedback On Writing: Requests Made And Feedback Received, Rachael Ruegg

Journal of Response to Writing

It has been suggested that students experience more autonomy in the feedback process when they communicate feedback preferences to their teacher or peers. However, little is known about what kinds of feedback students request when given this autonomy. Furthermore, when student writers supply feedback requests, it is unknown to what extent readers act in accordance with such feedback requests while providing feedback. In this study, Japanese university students made feedback requests to teacher and peer reviewers, and I evaluated the feedback requests and the feedback subsequently received. The findings indicate that the most common feedback requests were about the content …

Table Rules: A Response To Americanist Approaches To The Book Of Mormon, Kevin Christensen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon is an ambitious collection of essays published by Oxford University Press. By “Americanist” the editors refer to their preferred mode of contextualization: to situate the Book of Mormon as a response to various currents of nineteenth- century American thought. The “table rules” in this case determine who gets invited to the table and what topics can be discussed, using what types of evidence. The approach is legitimate, and the contributors offer a range of interesting perspectives and observations. Several essays base their arguments on the notion that the Book of Mormon adapts itself …

Race And The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints In India, Taunalyn Rutherford, Joe Chelladurai, Vinna Chintaram

Mormon Studies Review

Paul Reeve has argued that the Book of Mormon’s imperative, “all are alike unto God,” “met its match in an American religious and racial culture which insisted otherwise.”1 The complexity of race and its construction in “Indian culture” over the course of a much longer history has created a formidable match for a Mormonism characterized at times by its “whiteness” and “Americanness.”2 Race in India is a multifarious and changing phenomenon. Contemporary scholars claim that India is facing “a race problem made up of a combination of ignorance and denial.”3 The policy of geographic boundaries rather than self-selection creates diverse …

Bad Grammar In The Book Of Mormon Found In Early English Bibles, Standford Carmack

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

This study describes ten types of grammatical usage found in early modern Bibles with correlates in the original text of the Book of Mormon. In some cases Joseph Smith’s own language could have produced the matching grammar, but in other cases his own linguistic preferences were unlikely to have produced the patterns or usage found in the original text. Comparative linguistic research indicates that this grammatical correspondence shouldn’t be a surprise, since plenty of Book of Mormon syntax matches structures and patterns found in Early Modern English.

The Mobility Of Race: An Indigenous Feminist View From Aotearoa/New Zealand, Gina Colvin

Mormon Studies Review

This paper provides a commentary on how race and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints intersect in Aotearoa/New Zealand and will include an exploration of the mobility of race through an analysis of hermeneutics in the LDS Church. I will argue that while the interpretative lens of sacred texts, including the four standards works of the LDS Church, is shaped by and enforced by an American patriarchal leadership, the redemptive power of scripture will be lost to a population who can least afford another spiritual deprivation.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The Transcendence Of Flesh, Divine And Human, James E. Faulconer

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In this essay, James E Faulconer confronts an age-old issue that seems to divide Latter-day Saint Christians from other Christians, namely, “what it means to say that God is transcendent and embodied.” Early Christians also believed that God is embodied and transcendent, but with important differences in how that seemingly paradoxical combination of assertions can be explained. In his brilliant analysis, Faulconer shows how God “transcends us because He is embodied.”

The Language Flagship Program And Multilingualism In Overseas Language Immersion, Samuel Eisen

Russian Language Journal

The relocation of the overseas Arabic and Russian Language Flagship programs to Morocco and Kazakhstan created challenges and also opportunities for advanced students of Arabic and Russian to develop greater intercultural understanding as they negotiate the cultural underpinnings of these multilingual environments. These students will bring in more nuanced understanding of complex international environments as they move into positions in government or other international fields. The Language Flagship program is designed to meet the need for professional language proficiency and intercultural skill in federal service. In both Morocco and Kazakhstan, the local language is undergoing revitalization while the post-colonial language …

Emerging Trends In The Study Of Russian In The Us: K-16 Enrollments 2007 To 2016, Dan E. Davidson, Nadra Garas

Russian Language Journal

Based on the American Councils-administered K-16 National Survey of Foreign Language Enrollments (2017), the present study examines emerging trends in enrollments and the availability of Russian language instruction at the state and national levels. K-12 and tertiary institutional data are examined in light of comparable information collected in 2007. The study found a continued close association between the geographical location of Russian K-12 offerings and the distribution of Russian-speaking households reported in the US Census. Nationally, Russian language enrollments increased by 20% between 2007 and 2016 among K-12 institutions to 14,876 with 31 states and the District of Columbia reporting …

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The History Of The Book Of Mormon Text, Royal Skousen

BYU Studies

In this paper, I will provide an overview of the two latest published books in the Book of Mormon critical text project:

Part 5: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon

Part 6: Spelling in the Manuscripts and Editions

As the numbers indicate, these two books form a part of a much larger publishing project. The fundamental work in the project is The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, published in 2009 by Yale University Press and now in its fourth printing. Supporting this single volume of the text are the volumes of the critical text project …

Writing For Arts Education Policy Review, Mark Graham, Sharon Chappell, Tracie Constantino, Pam Musil, Lawrence Scripp

Faculty Publications

This article provides readers with suggestions as to how to prepare manuscripts for publication in Arts Education Policy Review. It is presented in a question-and-answer format and includes references to model policy articles.

Преподавание Русской Грамматики На Продвинутом Этапе (Методические Заметки), Ирина Сапронова, Людмила Екшембеева

Russian Language Journal

The article Teaching Russian Grammar to Advanced Students (Instructional Observations) discusses current issues in the development of control of grammatical structures by American students of Russian who have achieved Level B2 and are training to Level C1 (ILR-3/3/3) in preparation for the TRKI-3 and Flagship certification exams. Particular attention is paid to the use of a functional-communicative grammar (FCG) and the functioning of language tools at various levels, taking into account the principles of pedagogical consistency and linguistic complexity.

Examples are presented of the algorithms used to organize the presentation and sequencing of course content material with the goal of …