Digital Commons Network^™

Promoting L2 Reading In Less Commonly Taught Languages With Hypertexts, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study explores the use of hypermedia reading texts for the language classroom and more particularly for less commonly taught languages (LCTLs). In the article, I review relevant research on the use of hypertexts in the foreign language classroom and how they can be used to facilitate the teaching of reading. A qualitative study of the use of these hypertexts with Italian university students was conducted, along with an explanation of what hypertexts are available for LCTL teachers currently, and how teachers can create their own hypertexts and implement them in the classroom. The study suggests that although hypertexts have …

The Role Of Preservice Teachers’ Meaning Perspectives And Schemes In A Study Abroad Experience, Stephanie Wessels, Melissa Holmes, Socorro Herrera,

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This microethnographic case study focuses on patterns of interpretation and decision making of undergraduate preservice teachers as they participated in observations, co-teaching, and teaching in elementary schools in northern Mexico. At the core, this study explores the deeply embedded assumptions preservice teachers may bring to new cross-cultural interactions. Drawing from participant documents, surveys, and interviews, the study seeks to investigate the meaning perspectives and schemes (Mezirow, 1991) that study abroad participants used to make sense of their experiences. Also explored are ways the study abroad experience may have helped to alter or solidify meaning perspectives. Finally, recommendations based on lessons …

And Justice For All: Developing Rule Of Law In The Balkans, Ryan M. Lowry

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The United Nations created the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to bring to justice those who had committed the worst crimes during the conflicts in the Balkans during the 1990s. From the outset, this institution was envisioned to temporarily process indicted war criminals. The domestic courts in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia were seen as being corrupt and ill equipped to handle such cases; rule of law was absent or severely lacking in these countries. As the Tribunal winds down, however, both international and domestic actors have emphasized the need to strengthen their judicial systems that will create a …

Examining Early And Recent Criticism Of The Waste Land: A Reassessment, Tyler E. Anderson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

My thesis will closely examine recent trends in criticism of "The Waste Land," namely the ideological rebuttal against the New Critics proposed by recent historicists such as Lawrence Rainey. I will show that Rainey has unfairly characterized the so-called New Critics as supporting a reading of the poem that only sees it for a work of order and unity while in fact they acknowledged many organizational inconsistencies within the text. A central tenet of my thesis will be that ideological characterizations of earlier critics should never substitute actual close readings of the texts themselves. My findings will lead to broader …

Motivation For Vocabulary Learning Of College Students, Qizhen Deng

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

The purpose of this study is to construct and validate an instrument to measure motivation for vocabulary learning, opening the door to more studies on motivation for vocabulary learning in reading and listening. In the new 34-item questionnaire: Motivation for Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire (MVLQ), eleven subscales were examined within two motivational constructs, namely, self-efficacy and attitude. Participants in this study were 121traditional undergraduate students from a Midwestern research university. Students responded to two self-report questionnaires: the Motivation for Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire (MVLQ), and the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) (Wigfield & Guthrie,1997). The results suggested that MVLQ had good reliability …

A Metrical Analysis And Rebarring Of Paul Creston's Sonata For Alto Saxophone And Piano, Op. 19, Christopher Kyle Sweitzer

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The Sonata For Alto Saxophone and Piano Op. 19 is one of the most popular pieces in the saxophone literature, commonly played by professional saxophonists during their training. It features exciting rhythmic devices like irregular and mixed meter, the notation of which is the main focus of this paper. Although Creston often used irregular and mixed meter in his compositions, he rarely specifically notated them, choosing instead to use accents, beams, slurs, and other phenomenal cues at the musical surface to create the effect of these metric plans. Time signatures often remained constant throughout entire movements. Creston believed this would …

Innovation And Tradition In Lisan Wang’S Piano Suite Other Hill, Rongjie Xu

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

Lisan Wang is one of the most celebrated musical figures in China. His five-movement piano suite Other Hill (1980) is the composer’s response to the “New Wave”, a compositional trend generated in China after the 1977 Cultural Revolution. Gaining fame as a piano composition for showing the application of multiculturalism and syncretism to music, Other Hill is regarded as a prime example of cross-cultural piano composition in China. Wang challenges Chinese traditional piano composition with different artistic media—philosophy, calligraphy, poems, and various folk elements in Other Hill. This document proposes an interdisciplinary study of Lisan Wang’s musical fusion of …

Mathematics For Classical Information Retrieval, Dariush Alimohammadi, Mary Bolin , Editor

Zea E-Books Collection

This book is about Information Retrieval (IR), particularly Classical Information Retrieval (CIR). It looks at these topics through their mathematical roots. The mathematical bases of CIR are briefly reviewed, followed by the most important and interesting models of CIR, including Boolean, Vector Space, and Probabilistic.

Mathematics is a foundation and building block of all areas of knowledge. It particularly affects disciplines concerned with information organization, storage, retrieval, and exchange. Information is manipulated using computers, and computers have a mathematical basis. The word “computer” reveals this relationship. Students and practitioners of computer science, library and information science (LIS), and communications need …

Information Portals: The Next Generation Catalog, Deeann Allison

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Libraries today face an increasing challenge: to provide relevant information to diverse populations with differing needs, while competing with Web search engines like Google. In 2009 the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Libraries joined with other libraries and Innovative Interfaces as development partners to design a new type of discovery tool. Information portals as a concept best supports the research and instructional needs of our communities by organizing and presenting information that incorporates licensed databases, text, multimedia, and other relevant sources. The discovery tool under examination by UNL, Encore, integrates searches of the catalog, locally created full-text and image sources, and …

Spirit Of The Law: A Case Study In The Application Of Nagpra To Collections From Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, A Unit Of The National Park Service, Keely A. Rennie-Tucker

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

This thesis offers a case study in applying the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to collections maintained at the National Park Service’s Hopewell Culture National Historical Park (HOCU) from the perspective of a museum curator. Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, a complex of various burial mound and earthwork sites dating primarily to the Middle Woodland (2,200 BP - AD 400), is located near Chillicothe, Ohio. The collections here have many culturally unidentifiable Native American human remains and funerary objects eligible for repatriation under the provisions of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The archaeological …

Comparison Of Classical Analytic Hierarchy Process (Ahp) Approach And Fuzzy Ahp Approach In Multiple-Criteria Decision Making For Commercial Vehicle Information Systems And Networks (Cvisn) Project, Liyuan Zhang

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has emerged as an important technology with many possible applications in a wide variety of fields. It is said that RFID can perform well in transportation system. Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles (NEDMV) is using this technique to perform an analysis on utilizing RFID license plates to assist with Commercial Vehicle Information Systems and Networks (CVISN) program with the cooperation of many other stakeholders. Previous House of Quality (HOQ) analysis evaluates stakeholders’ needs and provides the pairwise comparison values of six important technical requirements for each stakeholder. Based on these, this research aims to seek for …

Motivation For Vocabulary Learning Of College Students, Qizhen Deng

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

The purpose of this study is to construct and validate an instrument to measure motivation for vocabulary learning, opening the door to more studies on motivation for vocabulary learning in reading and listening. In the new 34-item questionnaire: Motivation for Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire (MVLQ), eleven subscales were examined within two motivational constructs, namely, self-efficacy and attitude. Participants in this study were 121 traditional undergraduate students from a Midwestern research university. Students responded to two self-report questionnaires: the Motivation for Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire (MVLQ), and the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) (Wigfield & Guthrie,1997). The results suggested that MVLQ had good …

Identification Of Sources Of Rhizoctonia Root Rot Resistance In Common Bean And Mapping A New Source Of Bean Rust Resistance From The Tertiary Gene Pool Of Common Bean, Pamela A. Peña-Perdomo

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An efficient screening method was developed and used to identify bean lines resistant to Rhizoctonia Root Rot caused by Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn. Two sets of 163 and 111 lines previously evaluated for drought tolerance at Mitchell, NE and Isabela, PR were evaluated for Rhizoctonia Root Rot resistance under greenhouse conditions. This root rot data was also correlated with yield under drought stress and non stress conditions. In the first set of lines the rhizoctonia mean score ranged from 1.7 to 3.9; and in the second set the rhizoctonia mean score was between 2.6 and 5.7. There was no significant correlation …

Constitutive Discourse Of Turkish Nationalism: Atatürk’S Nutuk And The Rhetorical Construction Of The “Turkish People”, Aysel Morin, Ronald Lee

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This article explores the “Great Speech” Nutuk, delivered in 1927 by Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In analyzing Nutuk and its rhetorical features, we identify the mythic underpinnings Atatürk employed to construct a modern “Turkish people.” We use this case to further our understanding of the constitutive discourses of nationalism. We believe Atatürk’s Nutuk provides a profitable discourse to think with as we attempt to understand Muslim nations and their negotiation of modernity.

Nebraska School Psychologists' Perceptions Regarding The Sufficiency Of Response To Intervention (Rti), Jami Jo L. Thompson

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) provided schools the option of utilizing Response to Intervention (RtI) as part of a comprehensive Multi Disciplinary Team (MDT) Evaluation for Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD). However, there is disparity among educational professionals regarding the components that should be included in the RtI MDT evaluation. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of Nebraska school psychologists regarding the sufficiency of RtI as a comprehensive Multi Disciplinary Team (MDT) evaluation for Specific Learning Disability (SLD) determination and identify the additional components that school psychologists believe are necessary to …

Telling Children’S Stories, Mike Cadden

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

The most accessible approach yet to children’s literature and narrative theory, Telling Children’s Stories is a comprehensive collection of never-before-published essays by an international slate of scholars that offers a broad yet in-depth assessment of narrative strategies unique to children’s literature. The volume is divided into four interrelated sections: “Genre Templates and Transformations,” “Approaches to the Picture Book,” “Narrators and Implied Readers,” and “Narrative Time.” Mike Cadden’s introduction considers the links between the various essays and topics, as well as their connections with such issues as metafiction, narrative ethics, focalization, and plotting. Ranging in focus from picture books to novels …

Paralyses`, John Culbert

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Modernity has long been equated with motion, travel, and change, from Marx’s critical diagnoses of economic instability to the Futurists’ glorification of speed. Likewise, metaphors of travel serve widely in discussions of empire, cultural contact, translation, and globalization, from Deleuze’s “nomadology” to James Clifford’s “traveling cultures.” John Culbert, in contrast, argues that the key texts of modernity and postmodernity may be approached through figures and narratives of paralysis: motion is no more defining of modern travel than fixations, resistance, and impasse; concepts and figures of travel, he posits, must be rethought in this more static light. Focusing on the French …

Four Years In Europe With Buffalo Bill, Charles Eldridge Griffin

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the entertainment industry’s first international celebrity, achieving worldwide stardom with his traveling Wild West show. For three decades he operated and appeared in various incarnations of “the western world’s greatest traveling attraction,” enthralling audiences around the globe. When the show reached Europe it was a sensation, igniting “Wild West fever” by offering what purported to be a genuine experience of the American frontier. By any standard Charles Eldridge Griffin (1859–1914), manager of the Wild West’s European tour, was a remarkable man. Known by the stage names of Monsieur F. Le Costro, Professor Griffin, and …

Daviborshch's Cart, David Fraser

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

In the spring of 1942, Nazi forces occupying the Ukraine launched a wave of executions targeting the region’s remaining Jewish communities. These mass shootings were open, public, and intimate. Although the victims themselves could never testify against their killers, many eyewitnesses could and did identify the perpetrators. Among these communities, three local men from the villages of Serniki, Israylovka, and Gnivan were intimately implicated in such killing operations: Ivan Polyukhovich, a forester in the German-controlled administration; Heinrich Wagner, a Volksdeutscher liaison officer; and Mikolay Berezowsky, a member of the local police force. More than fifty years later, these three men …

Wyoming Folklore, Federal Writers' Project

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

In 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). Out-of-work teachers, writers, and scholars fanned out across the country to collect and document local lore. This book reveals the remarkable results of the FWP in Wyoming at a time when it was still possible to interview Civil War veterans and former slaves, homesteaders and Oregon Trail migrants, soldiers of the Great War and Native Americans who remembered Little Big Horn. The work of the FWP in Wyoming, collected and edited here for the first time, comprises a rich …

Ogimaag, Cary Miller

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Cary Miller’s Ogimaag: Anishinaabeg Leadership, 1760–1845 reexamines Ojibwe leadership practices and processes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the end of the nineteenth century, anthropologists who had studied Ojibwe leadership practices developed theories about human societies and cultures derived from the perceived Ojibwe model. Scholars believed that the Ojibwes typified an anthropological “type” of Native society, one characterized by weak social structures and political institutions. Miller counters those assumptions by looking at the historical record and examining how leadership was distributed and enacted long before scholars arrived on the scene. Miller uses research produced by Ojibwes themselves, …

Sacred Sites, Susan Suntree

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

A history that is equal parts science and mythology, Sacred Sites offers a rare and poetic vision of a world composed of dynamic natural forces and mythic characters. The result is a singular and memorable account of the evolution of the Southern California landscape, reflecting the riches of both Native knowledge and Western scientific thought. Beginning with Western science, poet Susan Suntree carries readers from the Big Bang to the present as she describes the origins of the universe, the shifting of tectonic plates, and an evolving array of plants and animals that give Southern California its unique features today. …

Review Of Between Languages And Cultures: Colonial And Postcolonial Readings Of Gabrielle Roy By Rosemary Chapman, Carol J. Harvey

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Canadian author Gabrielle Roy (1909-1983) is usually recognized as one of Quebec's foremost writers. Although Bonheur d'occasion, the novel that launched her career in 1946, is set in Montreal, much of her subsequent work is set in the Prairies of her youth. Born in the small francophone town of Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, she spoke French at home but was educated in English, since French had lost its status as an official language of the province. This linguistic and cultural duality is fraught with many tensions, as Rosemary Chapman demonstrates in her recent book.

Graduate Connections- August 2010

Graduate Connections: A Newsletter for UNL Graduate Students

In This Issue:

Navigating Graduate School....... 1

Why Are You Here?

Taking the “Resent” out of Presentation

Good Practices in Graduate Education ..............5

Academic Integrity Pledge

Professional Development ..........6

Assessing What Your Students Know

Mistakes to Avoid when Writing a Research Article

Tips for Teamwork

Teaching Tip ................................. 6

Assessment vs. Evaluation

Funding Opportunities ................. 9

The Graduate Writer .................. 11

Writing about Yourself

Events .......................................... 13

New Student Welcome

Campuswide TA Workshops

Graduation Information Sessions

NURAMP

Announcements .......................... 14

Registration and Financial Aid

Graduate Bulletin

Health Insurance

Call for Award Nominations

CLC Opportunities

RCR Training

Interactions …

An Ardent Flame: Witness To Distant Suffering, Human Rights And Unworthy Victims In The Coverage By The New York Times And Two Journals Of The Religious Left Of The 1980s Civil Wars In El Salvador And Nicaragua, Charles A. Flowerday

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Scholars have investigated witness to distant suffering (WTDS) almost entirely in visual media. This study examines it in print. This form of reporting will be examined in two publications of the religious left as contrasted with the New York Times. The thesis is that, more than any technology, WTDS consists of the journalist’s moral commitment and narrative skills and the audience’s analytical resources and trust. In the religious journals, liberation theology provides the moral commitment, the writers and editors the narrative skills and trust and the special vision of the newly empowered poor the analytical foundation. In bearing witness to …

Global Competence: Determination Of Its Importance For Engineers Working In A Global Environment, Gregg M. Warnick

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

We live and work in a world that is even more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. Engineers must now not only develop technical engineering competence, but must also develop additional skills and competencies including global competence to obtain success within a global engineering environment.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether multinational companies considered global competence an important skill in mechanical engineering graduates when making hiring decisions. The study was an exploratory study that utilized an extensive literature review to identify eight global competencies for engineering success within a global environment and also included a survey instrument …

The Perception Of Natural, Cell Phone, And Computer-Synthesized Speech During The Performance Of Simultaneous Visual-Motor Tasks, Nirmal Kumar Srinivasan

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study investigated the influence of top-down and bottom-up information on speech perception in complex listening environments. Specifically, the effects of listening to different types of processed speech were examined on intelligibility and on simultaneous visual-motor performance. The goal was to extend the generalizability of results in speech perception to environments outside of the laboratory. The effect of bottom-up information was evaluated with natural, cell phone and synthetic speech. The effect of simultaneous tasks was evaluated with concurrent visual-motor and memory tasks. Earlier works on the perception of speech during simultaneous visual-motor tasks have shown inconsistent results (Choi, 2004; Strayer …

Attorney General’S Annual Report To Congress And Assessment Of U.S. Government Activities To Combat Trafficking In Persons

United States Department of Justice: Publications

Introduction

The victims of modern slavery have many faces. They are men and women, adults and children. Yet, all are denied basic human dignity and freedom…. We must join together as a Nation and global community to provide [a] safe haven by protecting victims and prosecuting traffickers. With improved victim identification, medical and social services, training for first responders, and increased public awareness, the men, women, and children who have suffered this scourge can overcome the bonds of modern slavery, receive protection and justice, and successfully reclaim their rightful independence.

~ President Barack Obama

Despite [our] achievements, there is much …

Health And Growth: Causality Through Education, Rui Huang, Lilyan E. Fulginiti, E. Wesley Peterson

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Purpose--The paper theoretically and empirically investigates the impact on human capital investment decisions and income growth of lowered life expectancy as a result of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Design/methodology/approach--The theoretical model is a three-period overlapping generations model where individuals go through three stages in their life, namely, young, adult and old. The model extends existing theoretical models by allowing the probability of premature death to differ for individuals at different life stage, and by allowing for stochastic technological advances. The empirical investigation focuses on the effect of HIV/AIDS on life expectancy and on the role of health on educational investments …

Differentiation In The Content-Area Classroom For English Language Learners, Robyn M. Warner

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This paper explores the idea of using differentiation strategies in the content-area classroom to improve reading skills and comprehension. In particular, this thesis explores methods and strategies that can be used in the classroom to help address the individual needs of English language learners (ELLs). A broad range of experts in curriculum, differentiation, and English language acquisition were consulted in the development of this review, which synthesizes the research on ELLs’ needs, differentiation, and differentiation strategies for ELL readers. The models for best teaching practices are then placed within a ninth grade language arts unit.