Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Theses and Dissertations

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication Year

Articles 4051 - 4080 of 6043

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Communication: The Lost Art, Mary Zenyuk Jun 2013

Communication: The Lost Art, Mary Zenyuk

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if technology, specifically text messaging, has an affect on young adult's face-to-face communication. Technology is improving on a daily basis. This continuous evolution and advancement in technology has paved the way for numerous methods of communication such as texting and social media. Not only has the methods of communication increased, so has the access to these methods become unlimited. This study is important to analyze how individuals are adapting their communication habits to conform with changing technology. A survey was developed and consisted of questions such as the student's age, major, preferred …

Go to article

The Effectiveness Of Using Electropalatography To Remediate A Developmental Speech Sound Disorder In A School-Aged Child With Hearing Impairment, Kristina Lynne Pickett Jun 2013

The Effectiveness Of Using Electropalatography To Remediate A Developmental Speech Sound Disorder In A School-Aged Child With Hearing Impairment, Kristina Lynne Pickett

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in instrumentation and computer technology such as electropalatography (EPG) have offered additional types of feedback to more traditional therapy for individuals with speech disorders, specifically those with hearing impairment. The purpose of this study was to document whether therapeutic integration of EPG visual feedback in combination with traditional articulation therapy for a school-aged child with an articulation disorder secondary to hearing impairment was more effective than traditional therapy alone. One participant received five sessions of each therapy approach. Six adult listeners rated the quality of the participant's production of /r/ in words recorded during the therapy sessions. The EPG …

Go to article

Understanding Chinese Language And Culture: A Guidebook For Teachers Of English In China, Austin Cody Pack Jun 2013

Understanding Chinese Language And Culture: A Guidebook For Teachers Of English In China, Austin Cody Pack

Theses and Dissertations

Many experts on English teaching in China argue that native-English-speaking teachers are too unfamiliar with Chinese culture and the Chinese language. Many of the resources available for these teachers do not address these issues and are not adequately tailored to the native-English-speaking teachers' specific needs. This 35 page guidebook in printable pdf form addresses three key issues with English teaching in China. First, the guidebook helps teachers understand how to bridge the gap that exists between their teaching styles and their Chinese students' learning styles. Second, the guidebook provides explanations of common errors Chinese students make in English because of …

Go to article

Six Principles Of Self-Regulated Learning: Developing Self-Regulated Language Learners, Andrea Michelle Gonzalez Jun 2013

Six Principles Of Self-Regulated Learning: Developing Self-Regulated Language Learners, Andrea Michelle Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Self-regulation is an important aspect of learning, and all teachers want to instill this ability in their students. However, students often feel confused or inadequate when it comes to being in charge of their own learning. This is especially true in intensive English programs where students expect the teacher to provide them with the information they need to pass tests and advance to higher levels. While the teacher's role cannot be overlooked, encouraging self-regulated learning is also vital to students' success in learning. The author saw a need for this in the intensive English program where she is teaching. She …

Go to article

The Effect Of Using The Ipad To Enhance Sight Word Acquisition Of Students With Autism, Jeffrey Emerson Jun 2013

The Effect Of Using The Ipad To Enhance Sight Word Acquisition Of Students With Autism, Jeffrey Emerson

Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to (a) investigate the effectiveness of the Apple iPad as an assistive technology device to support students with autism spectrum disorders in their acquisition of sight words and (b) examine the social validity of using the iPad in the classroom. The participants were two 2nd and two 3rd graders diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Baseline data was collected by evaluating student progress of sight word acquisition at the end of each week for three weeks. A multiple baseline across students with AB phases was used in this study. During Intervention, the iPad was integrated …

Go to article

The Development And Validation Of A Spanish Elicited Imitation Test Of Oral Language Proficiency For The Missionary Training Center, Carrie A. Thompson Jun 2013

The Development And Validation Of A Spanish Elicited Imitation Test Of Oral Language Proficiency For The Missionary Training Center, Carrie A. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The Missionary Training Center (MTC), affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, needs a reliable and cost effective way to measure the oral language proficiency of missionaries learning Spanish. The MTC needed to measure incoming missionaries' Spanish language proficiency for training and classroom assignment as well as to provide exit measures of institutional progress. Oral proficiency interviews and semi-direct assessments require highly trained raters, which is costly and time-consuming. The Elicited Imitation (EI) test is a computerized, automated test that measures oral language proficiency by having the participant hear and repeat utterances of varying syllable length in …

Go to article

Negotiating The Double Mandate: Mapping Ethical Conflict Experienced By Practicing Educational Leaders, Jeffrey Mcgee Jun 2013

Negotiating The Double Mandate: Mapping Ethical Conflict Experienced By Practicing Educational Leaders, Jeffrey Mcgee

Theses and Dissertations

The qualitative approach used in this study captured and described ethical conflict experienced by a sample of practicing educational leaders. Narrative inquiry data were collected from 42 former and current doctoral students and additional data were captured through follow-up interviews with selected participants. The major findings of the study suggest that ethical conflict is inherent in the practice of educational leadership. Such conflict is most often experienced in relation to colleagues when the ethics of justice and care collide. Leaders’ ability to mitigate conflict that is often the result of institutional and external factors is promoted by varied background and …

Go to article

On The Demand To Incorporate Shari'a Law Into Uk Law, Mayada Serageldin Jun 2013

On The Demand To Incorporate Shari'a Law Into Uk Law, Mayada Serageldin

Theses and Dissertations

The origin of this thesis lay in the emergence of a minority group of ‘religious’ activists in London, England. The purpose of this group was to establish “Shari’a Zones” in pockets of Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets, wherein certain acts would be prohibited and Shari’a law would be enforced. This led to an examination of the theological and religious beliefs of this small and much marginalized section of the British Muslim community. What became apparent is that this group prescribed to a view of Islam, and shariah law in particular, which is incongruent with the provisions of human rights law. …

Go to article

Contemporary Mosque Architecture In Turkey, Samaa Moustafa Jun 2013

Contemporary Mosque Architecture In Turkey, Samaa Moustafa

Theses and Dissertations

Early in the twentieth century in a quest for national identity and a need for modernity - both are products of the west - Turkey among many other Islamic countries embarked on a massive building project as part of its broader process of modernization. While new forms and styles were incorporated to mirror the modern and civilized vision of the new nation-state, the architecture of the mosque remained condservative with a few exceptions which started to appear only in the last quarter of the same century. The architecture of the medieval mosque has enriched our minds with knowledge about Islamic …

Go to article

Law And Other-Spaces: Legal Geographies Of The Sinai Peninsula, Tracy Allison Young Jun 2013

Law And Other-Spaces: Legal Geographies Of The Sinai Peninsula, Tracy Allison Young

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has joined an unfortunate category of what I call ‘Outlaw spaces’: spaces that are characterized and understood as being shaped by crisis, chaos and collapse. Outlaw spaces –which include the “black holes,” the “breeding grounds,” the “security vacuums” and the “no man’s lands” that have proliferated in the post-9/11 era—are constructed through the interplay of both legal and imaginative geographies. Mapping and labeling certain zones as lawless, chaotic and dangerous is deceptive. There is nothing natural about Outlaw spaces and it is not always clear where they begin and where they end. While Outlaw …

Go to article

Determining Code Choice: Written Slogans During Egyptian Revolution-January 2011, Hanzada Hesham Amin Jun 2013

Determining Code Choice: Written Slogans During Egyptian Revolution-January 2011, Hanzada Hesham Amin

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study aims at depicting the phenomenon of the written code switching between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Egyptian colloquial Arabic (ECA) in the written slogans during the Egyptian revolution January 2011. Findings show that ECA clauses comprise a significant percentage as observed from the survey done through the questionnaire and application of Myers-Scotton's (1993) theoretical framework of Matrix Language Frame (MLF). These findings shed light on 1) Merging between MSA and ECA is a distinctive feature in Arabic in many domains 2)The best ways to benefit from this phenomenon in AFL teaching 3)The importance of the event in …

Go to article

The Effect Of Input-Based And Output-Based Feedback On The Short-Term Development Of Afl Learners' Inter-Language, Heba Mohamed Said El Ramly Jun 2013

The Effect Of Input-Based And Output-Based Feedback On The Short-Term Development Of Afl Learners' Inter-Language, Heba Mohamed Said El Ramly

Theses and Dissertations

This quasi-experimental study was designed to investigate the role and value of two major interactional feedback techniques: recasts and elicitations in communicative Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) classrooms. A preliminary pilot study based on observing 20 AFL classes suggested to the author of this paper that both recasts and elicitations are widely used in correcting learners' grammatical mistakes, especially subject-verb agreement errors (50%, and 30% for recasts and elicitations, respectively). Accordingly, the purpose of the current classroom-based study is to investigate which of the two feedback strategies, under investigation, could lead to substantial changes in Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL) …

Go to article

Ambiguity In Literature: Recovering The Life Of Reading, Eden Unger Bowditch Jun 2013

Ambiguity In Literature: Recovering The Life Of Reading, Eden Unger Bowditch

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contends that ambiguity in meaning performs an essential role in the reader’s response to literature. Ambiguity is not simply an incidental or marginal feature of literary texts but relates in basic ways to the reader’s experience of literature. It is the still point around which a literary text revolves. In examining the function of ambiguity in literary texts, I will show how ambiguity both defines a text as literary and allows it to live and grow through time. The notion of a text is meaningless apart from the reading of it, and, ambiguity, in the unchanging presence of …

Go to article

Ethnicity Homegrown: How The Lebanese-Argentines In Buenos Aires Construct Ethnicity, Bianca Kemp Jun 2013

Ethnicity Homegrown: How The Lebanese-Argentines In Buenos Aires Construct Ethnicity, Bianca Kemp

Theses and Dissertations

This work explores the construction of ethnicity among the Lebanese-Argentine population of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Although exact figures for the Lebanese population of Argentina are unknown, estimates hover around one and a half million (the national census does not require specification of ethnicity). The majority of these third-, fourth- and fifth-generation Lebanese-Argentines are descendents of early Syro-Lebanese immigrants. These migrants from Greater Syria culturally assimilated to their new “home” at the insistence of the Argentine government and xenophobic elite of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Consequently, constructing a Lebanese-Argentine ethnic identity today means doing so when distance and …

Go to article

The Language Of Contemporary Egyptian Newspapers: Re-Visiting Badawi's Model, Yasser Elshami Jun 2013

The Language Of Contemporary Egyptian Newspapers: Re-Visiting Badawi's Model, Yasser Elshami

Theses and Dissertations

It is believed that the language of newspapers plays a major role in developing and reflecting the reality of the contemporary language in Egypt, where the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) have become much closer and the gap between them has shrunk (Badawi, 2012). The linguistic reality described in Badawi's model (1973) demonstrates the structure of the contemporary Egyptian community. He gives a horizontal picture of the spoken language used in Egypt at that time. This study aims at re-visiting Badawi's model and focusing on the language used in opinion articles in the current Egyptian newspapers. …

Go to article

Language Used By Egyptians On Facebook: A Descriptive Study, Sept. 2010- Sept. 2011, Randa Muhammed Jun 2013

Language Used By Egyptians On Facebook: A Descriptive Study, Sept. 2010- Sept. 2011, Randa Muhammed

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the language used by Egyptians online before, during and after January 25th revolution in Egypt. In that regard, the study explores top trends in Facebook status updates in the period between September 2010 and September 2011. It also looks at the writing script use at that specific time period. Finally, it presents a description of lexicon and deixis in the data. The study tries to answer the following research questions: 1- What are the top trends in Facebook status updates in the period between September 2010 and September 2011? 2- What is the most prominent writing script …

Go to article

Corpus-Based Analysis Of Three Arabic Adversative Conjunctions In Current Egyptian Newspapers, Shaemaa Essa Jun 2013

Corpus-Based Analysis Of Three Arabic Adversative Conjunctions In Current Egyptian Newspapers, Shaemaa Essa

Theses and Dissertations

Conjunctions function as cohesive and text building elements in Modern Standard Arabic. They play various semantic and discursive roles at different textual levels: phrase, clause, sentence, paragraph and discourse (Al-Batal, 1990). This study investigates the linguistic behavior of three Arabic adversative conjunctions, namely "innam", baynam, and bal. It draws its data mainly from the sub-corpus of Shruq Columns (2,067,137 words) in the Arabicourpus. A random sample has been collected for "innam" and bal, covering 50% of their instances in the corpus. On the other hand, all the instances of baynam with the adversative meaning have been analyzed due to the …

Go to article

Arabic Sentence-Level Sentiment Analysis, Amira Magdy Shoukry Jun 2013

Arabic Sentence-Level Sentiment Analysis, Amira Magdy Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

Sentiment analysis has recently become one of the growing areas of research related to text mining and natural language processing. The increasing availability of online resources and popularity of rich and fast resources for opinion sharing like news, online review sites and personal blogs, caused several parties such as customers, companies, and governments to start analyzing and exploring these opinions. The main task of sentiment classification is to classify a sentence (i.e. review, blog, comment, news, etc.) as holding an overall positive, negative or neutral sentiment. Most of the current studies related to this topic focus mainly on English texts …

Go to article

Educational Services For Tibetan Students With Disabilities In India: A Case Study, Britany Anne Barnes May 2013

Educational Services For Tibetan Students With Disabilities In India: A Case Study, Britany Anne Barnes

Theses and Dissertations

This case study describes services for students with disabilities at Karuna Home in Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India. Karuna Home is a residential rehabilitation center for students with cognitive or physical disabilities whose parents are Tibetan refugees. The study triangulated data from interviews, observations, and school documents to describe educational policies and procedures, and cultural attitudes toward disability. Results show that the Karuna Home program is undergirded by Buddhist thought and theology regarding care and concern for those in difficult circumstances. The school serves students with a range of mild to severe disabilities and is fully staffed, but teachers and other service …

Go to article

The Effect Of Project Read On The Reading Fluency And Comprehension Of Third Grade Students With Special Needs, Andrea Derringer May 2013

The Effect Of Project Read On The Reading Fluency And Comprehension Of Third Grade Students With Special Needs, Andrea Derringer

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect Project Read has on the reading fluency and comprehension of third grade students with special needs. This study implemented a two group, pretest-posttest design. The participants were six students with special needs from a third grade inclusion classroom who scored about two grade levels below grade three. A pretest, intervention mid-test, and intervention posttest were utilized to collect data. The independent variables were the use of the Project Read Story Form Literature Connection materials. The dependent variable was the measure of the participants reading fluency and comprehension using the Developmental …

Go to article

A Novice Teacher's Shoebox: A Volunteer Efl Teacher Training Curriculum, Piret Luik May 2013

A Novice Teacher's Shoebox: A Volunteer Efl Teacher Training Curriculum, Piret Luik

Theses and Dissertations

This MA thesis presents the development of an online Pre-Missionary Training Centre (MTC) Teacher Training curriculum for missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints going to Mongolia to teach English. The thesis summarizes relevant literature on curriculum development and teacher preparation including a comparison of three prevalent curriculum development models - the ADDIE, Richards' principles, and Nation and Macalister. Thereafter, the process through which the online Pre-MTC Teacher Training was developed is outlined followed by the presentation of the curriculum. The implications, limitations and suggestions for improvement are then discussed.

Go to article

Modular Envelops, Rotem Tamir May 2013

Modular Envelops, Rotem Tamir

Theses and Dissertations

This texts in about my thesis show; Modular envelopes which was presented in the Anderson gallery at may 2013. The text speaks about my individual process of making both this particular work and art in general.

Go to article

Relationships Between A Social-Emotional Learning Program And Emotional Intelligence In Middle School Students, Katherine M. Brown May 2013

Relationships Between A Social-Emotional Learning Program And Emotional Intelligence In Middle School Students, Katherine M. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationships between a social-emotional learning program and the 5 dimensions of emotional intelligence and whether the relationships were moderated by gender. The problem addressed in the study was the lack of research focused on the development of emotional intelligence at the middle school level. The participants included 28 middle school students from a southeastern state who engaged in a 36 hour social-emotional learning program facilitated by a public university. The BarOn EQ-i:YV was administered pre and post. Demographic data including age, gender, race, and school type were also gathered. Data were analyzed using a one-way repeated …

Go to article

Instructional Approaches In Social Studies: A Comparison Of The Impact On Student Achievement And Attitude, Carolyn Gaye Tucker May 2013

Instructional Approaches In Social Studies: A Comparison Of The Impact On Student Achievement And Attitude, Carolyn Gaye Tucker

Theses and Dissertations

Many students feel that studying social studies is boring and not relevant to their lives. In social studies, the most common method of instruction is the transmission model in which the textbook becomes the curriculum and the teacher transmits knowledge through lecture. In the participatory model of instruction, the teacher facilitates student-led literature discussion groups utilizing narrative and expository trade books with the textbook as a resource. Previous research has indicated that instructional methods may affect student attitude and achievement; however, there is limited empirical research that is definitive on which instructional method is significantly better for students. The purpose …

Go to article

Student And Instructor Perceptions Of The Use Of Online Translators In English Composition, Caroline L. Baker May 2013

Student And Instructor Perceptions Of The Use Of Online Translators In English Composition, Caroline L. Baker

Theses and Dissertations

Given recent calls for university composition policies that are informed by the actual practices and populations of students at a given institution (Tardy, 2011), this study investigated student and instructor perceptions and attitudes toward using online translators (e.g., Google Translate or Babelfish) for composition assignments. The study analyzed interview data from four international students and three English composition instructors to understand how the use of online translators was explained, justified, and contextualized by these two groups. This study revealed that although both students and instructors believed that online translators afforded an opportunity for language learning, the participants still aligned with …

Go to article

Neural Protection In The Central Nervous System Against Nerve Agent Surrogates Using Novel Pyridinium Oximes, Ronald B. Pringle May 2013

Neural Protection In The Central Nervous System Against Nerve Agent Surrogates Using Novel Pyridinium Oximes, Ronald B. Pringle

Theses and Dissertations

Organophosphates (OPs), including nerve agents, target the cholinergic system via inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), with subsequent overstimulation resulting in neural damage and potential detrimental long-term effects. The efficacy of novel pyridinium oxime reactivators, created with moieties to increase blood-brain barrier penetration, was tested using highly relevant sarin and VX surrogates. Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP; an indicator of neural damage) and monoamines (dopamine, serotonin, and their metabolites) were measured in select brain regions via immunohistochemistry and HPLC, respectively. Adult male rats were treated ip with high, sub-lethal doses of surrogates for sarin or VX, nitrophenyl isopropyl methylphosphonate (NIMP) or nitrophenyl …

Go to article

The Effects Of Intervention Involving A Robot On Compliance Of Four Children With Autism To Requests Produced By Their Mothers, Holly Jeanne Nelson May 2013

The Effects Of Intervention Involving A Robot On Compliance Of Four Children With Autism To Requests Produced By Their Mothers, Holly Jeanne Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

The current study presents the use of a humanoid robot to facilitate compliant behaviors to two types of directives in four children with autism. The children participated in a three-month intervention program that incorporated core components of the SCERTS model in order to facilitate social communication (Prizant, Wetherby, Rubin, & Laurent, 2003). Treatment sessions were comprised of 40 minutes of traditional treatment and 10 minutes of interaction with a humanoid robot. Pre- and post-intervention assessment were conducted, each involving a 5 minute interaction with the child's mother, in which they were presented with directives in the form of physical manipulation …

Go to article

The Effects Of Ipads On The Independent Reading Of High School Students With Learning Disabilities, Jaime Macewen May 2013

The Effects Of Ipads On The Independent Reading Of High School Students With Learning Disabilities, Jaime Macewen

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not the use of iPads for independent reading would enhance the reading motivation of ninth grade students with learning disabilities as measured by number of pages read and students' self-reported interest in reading in response to a survey. Its purpose is also to determine whether they would prefer reading on an iPad over reading traditional books. This study used a pretest-posttest group design. The participants were nineteen students in ninth grade. The participants all receive special education services in the resource center classroom. They are enrolled in an intensive reading …

Go to article

Narrowing The Gap Between Imaginary And Real Artifacts: A Process For Making And Filming Diegetic Prototypes, Al Hussein Wanas May 2013

Narrowing The Gap Between Imaginary And Real Artifacts: A Process For Making And Filming Diegetic Prototypes, Al Hussein Wanas

Theses and Dissertations

Critical Design uses designed artifacts as a critique of consumer culture. However, the complex nature of these artifacts prompted designers to focus on the artifact and present it in an informative, but relatively isolated fashion.The theoretical framework for this thesis is drawn from a similar, yet more recent, design criterion called Design Fiction. The artifacts of Design Fiction are called Diegetic Prototypes: fictional prototypes that function in the social sphere of a film’s structure. This research develops a method for analyzing and creating artifacts, in reference to psychoanalysis theories on the human psyche and perception of objects. It then explores …

Go to article

The Use Of Relation Valued Attributes In Support Of Fuzzy Data, Larry Ritchie Williams Jr. May 2013

The Use Of Relation Valued Attributes In Support Of Fuzzy Data, Larry Ritchie Williams Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

In his paper introducing fuzzy sets, L.A. Zadeh describes the difficulty of assigning some real-world objects to a particular class when the notion of class membership is ambiguous. If exact classification is not obvious, most people approximate using intuition and may reach agreement by placing an object in more than one class. Numbers or ‘degrees of membership’ within these classes are used to provide an approximation that supports this intuitive process. This results in a ‘fuzzy set’. This fuzzy set consists any number of ordered pairs to represent both the class and the class’s degree of membership to provide a …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last