Digital Commons Network^™

Constructing Community From Corpses In Medieval English And Icelandic Literature, Erin C Kissick

Open Access Dissertations

I argue that the bodies of the dead interred within medieval texts are used as focal points for the communities created within those texts. The most famous textual medieval corpses are the relics of saints as described in hagiographies, relics which, outside of these texts, became the centerpieces of many medieval communities, both religious and secular, as demonstrated by Patrick Geary and Carolyn Walker Bynum. More broadly, material culture scholars such as Howard Williams have shown that the graves of nonsaints played a significant role in the preservation of communal memory. In medieval communities, ancestors and other long-gone ancient communities …

Acquisition, Retention And Transfer Of Heavy Equipment Operator Skills Through Simulator Training, Chung Yin So

Open Access Dissertations

Initiatives and collaborations among heavy construction equipment manufacturing companies and training technology firms to develop and employ simulators for varied training purposes are becoming commonplace. However, human factors research on simulator training for operators of construction equipment is still sparse. For simulator training to be effective, it is necessary to understand how skills are learned using the simulator, how those skills are transferred to other tasks, devices, and real scenarios, and how well skills are retained after simulator training. ^ This research is on skill development, specifically as it applies to operator training for two specific types of heavy construction …

An Exploratory Factor Analysis And Reliability Analysis Of The Student Online Learning Readiness (Solr) Instrument, Taeho Yu

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to develop an effective instrument to measure student readiness in online learning with reliable predictors of online learning success factors such as learning outcomes and learner satisfaction. The validity and reliability of the Student Online Learning Readiness (SOLR) instrument were tested using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis. Twenty items from three competencies, i.e. social competencies, communication competencies, and technical competencies, were designated for the initial instrument based on the Student Online Learning Readiness (SOLR) Model as a new conceptual model. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed that four factor-structures of the instrument …

Relationships Between Lexical Proficiency And L2 Oral Proficiency, Yunjung You

Open Access Dissertations

Lexical proficiency is strongly correlated with L2 productive language ability (Crossley, Salsbury, & McNamara, 2011; Laufer & Nation, 1995). While many studies have investigated the relationship between lexical proficiency and L2 writing ability, not many studies have been conducted in terms of spoken language. Also, few studies have focused on how non-native English speakers with different L1 backgrounds differently or similarly develop lexical proficiency in L2 speaking. Based on this background, the present study is conducted with three purposes: 1) to compare the effectiveness of measures of lexical proficiency in terms of their ability to predict the quality of L2 …

A Sociosemantic Examination Of Secondary English Teacher Written Feedback, Ryan Angus

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to provide a functional linguistic based description of teacher writing comments in secondary ELA classrooms. Based within a case study methodology, this study used analytical tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) in order to discover the various meanings that teachers make through their commenting practices. The findings of the study show that teacher comments focus on the content of the student writing, but also, significantly, help teachers to discursively realize various teacher identities. It was also found that teacher comments tended to either be concrete in their reference to …

Exploring Literacy And Technology With Middle School English Teachers: Articulating Understandings Of Knowledge And Teaching Practices, Benjamin A. Boche

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate five middle school English teachers' understandings of literacy and technology. In particular, how do they define literacy, view literacy and technology learning and teaching, and how do they use (or not use) technology to enact their views of literacy in their classrooms. This narrative inquiry qualitative study consisted of three open-ended interviews, written literacy narratives, and multiple classroom observations with each participant as well as the collection of various teacher documents, such as lesson plans, presentation notes, rubrics, and student handouts. Narrative methods were used in the data analysis. ^ Findings were …

Disentangling Fluency, Comprehensibility And Coherence: Toward A Better Understanding Of Oral Proficiency Profiles, Haiying Cao

Open Access Dissertations

This study is an empirical attempt to examine how removal of all possible disfluency markers can help disentangle proficiency components assessed by the Oral English Proficiency Test (OEPT) in order to help build empirical foundations for establishing OEPT profiles. Silent and filled pauses, false starts and repetitions were removed from 50 test recordings in WAVEPAD SOUND EDITOR. Five trained OEPT raters rated the original and edited speeches. Statistical analyses addressed three research questions: 1) do fluency, comprehensibility and coherence ratings significantly change after the disfluency manipulation; 2) do correlations between fluency, comprehensibility, coherence and coherence subcomponents change after the disfluency …

Mo Yan In Context: Nobel Laureate And Global Storyteller, Angelica Duran, Yuhan Huang

Purdue University Press Books

In 2012 the Swedish Academy announced that Mo Yan had received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work that “with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary.” The announcement marked the first time a resident of mainland China had ever received the award. This is the first English-language study of the Chinese writer’s work and influence, featuring essays from scholars in a range of disciplines, from both China and the United States. Its introduction, twelve articles, and epilogue aim to deepen and widen critical discussions of both a specific literary author and the globalization of Chinese literature …

Conscience's De Leeuw Van Vlaanderen (The Lion Of Flanders) And Its Adaptation To Film By Claus, Gertjan Willems

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Conscience's De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders) and Its Adaptation to Film by Claus" Gertjan Willems discusses Hugo Claus's 1984 filmic adaptation of Hendrik Conscience's 1838 historical novel, a landmark in the history of the Flemish Movement. Willems's analysis is executed by means of a textual film analysis and archival research. Willems pays special attention to the Flemish-Dutch coproduction's complex relations with the national question. Despite various difficulties concerning Flemish nationalist sensitivities of the project, the producers wanted the film to be as faithful as possible to Conscience's novel. This resulted in an …

Translation As Relation And Glissant's Work, Sandra Bermann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Translation as Relation and Glissant's Work" Sandra Bermann proposes that in today's complex world of migration, war, and globalization, translation among languages and cultures is everywhere evident. Indeed, as citizens of the twenty-first century, we inevitably think in and through translation. Yet we have only begun to explore its contemporary modes of operation, its challenges, and its promise for study. Bermann suggests ways to think about translation — its difficulties, as well as its promise. Looking first to some traditional views of translation, Bermann then turns to particular ways in which it might be recast in terms …

New Work About Reading Poetry: A Book Review Article On Stafford's And Bohn's Work, Martyna Markowska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Arab Women Writers As Revolutionary Orators And Catalytic Agents Of Emancipation, Safaa S. Nasser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Contemporary Egyptian and Palestinian Women's Writing as 'Committed Literature'" Safaa S. Nasser discusses the role of Arab women writers whose works were harbingers of the Arab Spring of 2011. Nasser's analysis demonstrate that the majority of Arab women writers acted as agents of feminist action and social change through their critique of patriarchal, phallocentric domi-nation and through their call for a secular sensibility. Their works demonstrate the symbiotic relation-ship between political, national, and feminist struggle for equality between genders. To exemplify this revolutionary perspective, Nasser analyzes texts by Nawal El Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif, Salwa Bakr, Saki-na Fuad, …

Postcolonial Studies In The Twenty-First Century: A Book Review Article About New Work By Ashcroft, Mendis, Mcgonegal, Mukerjee And Carrera Suárez, Durán Almarza, Menéndez Tarrazo, Alejandra Moreno

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Temporal Spaces In García Márquez's, Salih's, And Rushdie's Novels, Adrienne D. Vivian

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Temporal Spaces in García Márquez's, Salih's, and Rushdie's Novels" Adrienne D. Vivian discusses the significance of time in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. While culturally distinct to one another, in each novel temporal space is narrated as a means to express and explore postcolonial identity. Vivian examines the connections between time and memory, history, and nation in each of the novels and the ways postcolonial authors use time as a device to mark the crossroads of precolonial past …

Review Article About U.S. Comparative Literature Journals Published In 2013, Miaomiao Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Greenberg's Prose And Poetry About World War I, Chanita Goodblatt

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Greenberg's Prose and Poetry about World War I" Chanita Goodblatt analyzes the literary response of Uri Zvi Greenberg to the war. His volume of poetry Krieg oyf der Erd— largely untranslated to English — can be read as part of a multicultural literary response to World War I, particularly in juxtaposition with the poems of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Goodblatt posits that a study of shared esthetic strategies and literary traditions underlines the way in which Greenberg created an "alienated wanderer" who witnesses and stands helpless in the face of the violence and destruction of …

Marriage In The Short Stories Of Chekhov, Mark Richard Purves

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Marriage in the Short Stories of Chekhov" Mark Richard Purves explores Anton Chekhov's often occurring depiction of marriage. Purves posits that Chekhov's depiction of the experience of marriage raises important ontological questions about the core features of family life such as what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a wife, and the degree of relatedness between them. Chekhov elaborates on what he sees as matrimony's central antinomy, namely that the wedding of one individual to another produces loneliness, an absence of intimacy, and a kind of alienation so acute it causes love …

Increasing Participation In The Pilot Weather Reporting (Pirep) System Through User Interface Design, Stephen M. Casner

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

Although pilots regard pilot weather reports (PIREPs) as valuable flight planning resources, the number of PIREPs that pilots submit is relatively small. In a previous survey, pilots indicated that submitting PIREPs sometimes requires too much effort, and that they are often unable to recall the information fields required to complete a report. Pilots also indicated that the idea of submitting a PIREP often does not occur to them, and that they feel that other pilots are mainly interested in receiving reports about severe weather. In this study the authors attempt to address obstacles to submitting PIREPs by proposing two alternative …

Back Matter

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

No abstract provided.

Community Involvement At An Elementary School: Cultural Differences And Their Effect On Education, Tanner Givens

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The objective of this service-learning research project was to link Purdue University, a local elementary school, and the Greater Lafayette community to enhance K–12 students’ academic involvement. The participants involved were 36 preservice teachers from Purdue University, 12 faculty members from a local elementary school, and the students and parents affi liated with the elementary school. To answer the research question of how to bridge the cultural gap between students and teachers and using critical theory as the theoretical paradigm, the following methods were employed: interviews, classroom observations, involvement in an after-school program, and reflections of the experience. The preservice …

Editorial, Margaret Shu-Mei Sass

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

No abstract provided.

Infants' Speech Segmentation: The Impact Of Mother-Infant Facial Synchrony, Allison Kish, Katie Courtaney, Adi Dilger, Tori Gallo, Lauren King, Amy Jarvis, Ambry Roberson, Meredith Smith, Serina Thottichira

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Various measures of infant responsiveness have been shown to predict child outcomes. Despite this extensive research, there is no work examining links between infant responsiveness during caregiver-infant interactions with infants' ability to perform basic linguistic tasks. One key task in early linguistic development is word segmentation, an achievement that allows infants to build their mental dictionaries. We hypothesized that infants' responsiveness to caregiver facial expressions might be related to their word segmentation ability.

In order to test this hypothesis, mothers came into the lab and were videotaped reading books containing target words to their 5-month-old children. After the infants were …

Hybridity And Dynamics Of An Individual’S Learning Styles, Quintana Marie Clark

Open Access Theses

Based on Kolb Learning Style Inventory 4.0, the objectives of this research were to demonstrate the existence of hybrid learning styles and demonstrate the existence of dynamic learning styles between subject matters (mathematics and English). Understanding an individual's dynamic distribution of learning styles might be used to further improve the quality of instruction, learning, and educational materials. Optimizing the quality of instruction, learning, and educational materials is important because careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are increasingly needed. Personalized learning has been identified as an area that could improve the quality of STEM education. Exploiting individuals learning …

Relationship Between Holistic Rating Of Chinese Esl Speakers' Monologue Responses To Question Prompts In Placement Testing And Their Lexical Frequency Profiles, Xiao Yang

Open Access Theses

The study examines the relation between the holistic scores of three groups of Chinese ESL speakers and their lexical frequency profiles, based on their monologue responses to testing prompts. The theoretical framework of vocabulary acquisition and word frequency in vocabulary testing are discussed, and several previous studies that use VocabProfile to assess second language vocabulary are analyzed. These serve as the theoretical and methodological basis for conducting the current study, which adopts two schema in VocabProfile to first profile the word frequency in the speakers' monologue responses, and then look into the offlist words that are not captured by the …

Perceptual Compensation In Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Elizabeth Anne Langston

Open Access Theses

Compensation for coarticulation is the extent in which an individual perceives the contextual variations of speech. When presented with an ambiguous consonant-vowel segment (e.g., a consonant halfway between /sa/ and /∫a/) research illustrates that a listener is likely to compensate for coarticulation with the following vowel. Therefore, a listener will be more likely to report an ambiguous speech sound as /s/ when it occurs before [u] than before [a]. Previous results have suggested that, within neurotypical individuals, the degree to which individuals compensate for coarticulation may be related to their Autism Quotient (AQ; Yu, 2010). However, this research did not …

Optimal Control Of Unknown Nonlinear System From Inputoutput Data, Xin Jin

Open Access Theses

Optimal control designers usually require a plant model to design a controller. The problem is the controller's performance heavily depends on the accuracy of the plant model. However, in many situations, it is very time-consuming to implement the system identification procedure and an accurate structure of a plant model is very difficult to obtain. On the other hand, neuro-fuzzy models with product inference engine, singleton fuzzifier, center average defuzzifier, and Gaussian membership functions can be easily trained by many well-established learning algorithms based on given input-output data pairs. Therefore, this kind of model is used in the current optimal controller …

Is Maternal Touch Used Referentially?, Rana Abu-Zhaya

Open Access Theses

Early social interactions are highly multimodal and include a wealth of cues (e.g., speech, facial expressions, motion, gestures and touch). Infant-directed speech (IDS) by itself may aid in language development. Touch by itself has been also shown to play an important role in dyadic interactions affecting both the infant and the caregiver. However, little is known about the impact of the combination of these two modes of communication on infant language development. In this thesis, I hypothesize that caregiver touch is provided in synchrony with speech, providing the language-learning infant with cues that may not only help her to find …

Computer Vision Aided Lip Movement Correction To Improve English Pronunciation, Shuang Wei

Open Access Theses

This paper explored the possibility of improving the pronunciation of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners by correcting their mouth-lip movement through visual feedback methods. As an EFL learner, I noticed that while learning pronunciation, for some words, the mouth-lip movement (e.g., opening size and duration) will affect the final pronunciation. A prototype system was developed to compare the standard pronunciation mouth shape movement with a user's pronunciation mouth shape movement and give visual feedback to users. Using computer vision technology, the mouth shape movement of standard pronunciation is extracted into moving contours. The user's mouth movement is video …

Italian Art In Yugoslavia From 1961 To 1967: An Overlooked Chronicle, Giovanni Rubino

Artl@s Bulletin

In the 1950s and 1960s, the relationship between Italy and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia improved despite the Cold War. For the Italian artists involved in the New Tendencies, this new situation provided opportunities for recognition as an alternative to Art Informel, the dominant style in the international art market. Getulio Alviani, Enzo Mari and Eugenio Carmi, are three of the key Italian artists in this period who exhibited in Yugoslavian museums and galleries. Using new archival material, this paper sheds light on a unique postwar revival of Constructivism within a peripheral artist network far from New York and …

To Each His Own Reality: How The Analysis Of Artistic Exchanges In Cold War Europe Challenges Categories, Mathilde Arnoux

Artl@s Bulletin

How to reconstruct artistic relationships among four European countries, situated on both sides of the Iron Curtain, during the period that commenced post-Stalin and lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall? This is one of the questions that faces the research program To Each His Own Reality: The notion of the real in the art of France, West Germany, East Germany and Poland between 1960 and 1989, which was initiated in January 2011. The paper discusses syntheses of the questions that the research team is facing, descriptions of its methodology, an analysis of preliminary results and what they allow …