Digital Commons Network^™

Demographic Data For Development: Ghana, Kofi Awusabo-Asare, Wendy Baldwin, Sarah Engebretsen

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

The attempts of African countries to develop their economies and to democratize their political systems have led to a renewed interest in the use of demographic and socioeconomic data for decision-making and planning. This new direction calls for clear, timely, reliable, and relevant data. At the international level, initiatives such as the African Charter on Statistics, PARIS 21, and the Health Metrics Network have emerged to provide direction and technical support for strengthening initiatives and activities that harmonize measures and improve data collection processes. This report on Ghana is part of a four-country study involving Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, and Uganda. …

Adolescent Girls Programming And Capacity-Building Workshop, Nairobi, Kenya, November 10-14, 2008: Workshop Report, Population Council

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Around the world, adolescent girls are disadvantaged by age and gender. Many are denied the skills and resources to protect and advance themselves. Adolescent girls are even more vulnerable to exploitive work, abuse, and limiting life options if they are poor. Adolescent girls are marginalized or entirely invisible in development policy, yet their role in communities and populations make them a critical asset to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). International donors and development partners have started to recognize the critical role adolescent girls play in achieving the MDGs. The purpose of the Adolescent Girls Programming and Capacity-building Workshop was …

Arresting Beauty, Framing Evidence: An Inquiry Into Photography And The Teaching Of Writing, Kuhio Walters

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the uses and conceptualizations of photography in college Composition. Composition has long been conflicted over the relation between form and content---and since the 1970s, between aesthetics and politics. Today, this disciplinary tension manifests in how the visual is brought into pedagogy: either it is approached aesthetically, as something to beautify a text, or politically, as a source of cultural critique. The field's uses of photography have been positioned within this aesthetics/politics binary, but to understand the medium as only one or the other is to miss its full practical and theoretical potential.

Theoretically, photography is powerful and …

Demographic Data For Development: Uganda, Richard Kibombo, Wendy Baldwin, Sarah Engebretsen

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

A recent increase in decentralization and democratization in developing countries has expanded the role that data plays in informing policies and measuring program results. Increasingly, programs and policies are being assessed by their ability to reach goals that have evidence-based indicators. This growing focus on evidence places greater and greater demand on those who generate clear, timely, reliable, and relevant data. In an effort to strengthen data, initiatives around the globe, such as PARIS21 and Health Metrics Network, have been designed to increase access to and use of data by harmonizing measures, providing technical support in data collection, and increasing …

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Change Is Possible, Frontiers In Reproductive Health

Reproductive Health

Changing long-standing cultural practices—even when such practices are harmful—is difficult, but the impressive success in reducing the acceptability and incidence of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in several settings shows it is possible. Research by FRONTIERS in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, and Senegal has provided insight into the sociocultural and religious underpinnings of FGM/C and has identified approaches that, over time, have contributed to individual and community decisions to abandon the practice. This information can help reduce the risk of undergoing FGM/C faced by three million girls and women every year. This is one of eight Legacy Papers synthesizing …

Machine Translation In A Multilingual Electronic Meeting, Milam Aiken, Mina Park

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Electronic meetings can be more efficient and effective than traditional, oral discussions, but until only recently, groups with no common language could not benefit from machine translation. Although it is possible for linguists or other staff members using machines to translate comments during a multilingual discussion, the research presented here shows that this is not feasible for large groups speaking many languages. As a solution, we propose a fully automated multilingual meeting system, and an example of its use in a meeting with Chinese, Korean, and English comments shows its potential to reduce multinational communication barriers.

Mind The Gap: English L2 Learners Of Russian And The Null Possessive Pronoun, William Comer

Russian Language Journal

The personal possessive pronouns in Russian (мой, твой, наш, ваш, его, её, их) are taught very early in virtually all elementary textbooks of the language. At the point of their introduction, the problems that they most often pose for English‐speaking L2 learners are their morphology and the rules for agreement with the nouns they modify. For L2 learners, the usage and frequency of these pronouns at this stage in language study seem virtually to mirror English patterns. When introduced to simple sentences with finite verbs and complements as well as the “у кого есть что” construction, learners may (or may …

Examining The Effects Of Linguistic Accommodations On The Colorado Student Assessment Program—Mathematics, Marisol Enriquez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act changed assessment for English Language Learners (ELLs). Under the law, states must validly assess ELLs' English Language Proficiency (ELP) and content knowledge. The law shed light on the achievement of ELLs while also creating challenges for states in validating state assessment and accountability systems. Test accommodations are used for ELLs to reduce threats to test score validity and measure academic achievement as accurately and fairly as possible. Since ELLs are working towards proficiency in English, they face linguistic and socio-cultural barriers under the confines of large scale assessment. A limited body of research …

Eng 5091-001: Studies In Language And Linguistics, Buck

Fall 2008

No abstract provided.

Eng 2901-002: The Structure Of English, Buck

Fall 2008

No abstract provided.

Eng 3704-002: Ends Of The Road?, John Martone

Fall 2008

No abstract provided.

Eng 4775-001: Literary And Cultural Criticism And Theory, C Wharram

Fall 2008

No abstract provided.

Eng 4901-001, Timothy Shonk

Fall 2008

No abstract provided.

Acoustic Characteristics Of English Lexical Stress Produced By Native Mandarin Speakers, Shawn L. Nissen, Yanhong Zhang, Alexander L. Francis

Faculty Publications

Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese have difficulty producing native-like English stress contrasts. Acoustically, English lexical stress is multidimensional, involving manipulation of fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity and vowel quality. Errors in any or all of these correlates could interfere with perception of the stress contrast, but it is unknown which correlates are most problematic for Mandarin speakers. This study compares the use of these correlates in the production of lexical stress contrasts by 10 Mandarin and 10 native English speakers. Results showed that Mandarin speakers produced significantly less native-like stress patterns, although they did use all four acoustic correlates to …

Subject Relatives By Children With And Without Sli Across Different Dialects Of English, Janna B. Oetting, Brandi L. Newkirk

Faculty Publications

This study examined whether children's use of subject relative clauses differs as a function of their English dialect (African American English, AAE vs. Southern White English, SWE vs. Mainstream American English, MAE) and clinical diagnosis (specific language impairment, SLI vs. typically developing, TD). The data were spontaneous language samples from 87 AAE- and 53 SWE-speaking children, aged 3 to 6 years. Data on MAE came from previously published studies. Results were that the TD child speakers of AAE and SWE presented similar rates and types of subject relative clauses within their samples, but the rates at which they supplied the …

Eng 5011-001: Studies In Composition And Rhetoric: The Practice And Politics Of Evaluating Student Writing, Terri Fredrick

Spring 2008

No abstract provided.

Eng 2901-001: The Structure Of English, Buck

Spring 2008

No abstract provided.

Eng 5502-001: Mentored Teaching, Christopher Wixson

Spring 2008

No abstract provided.

Eng 3901-001: Language And Linguistics, Buck

Spring 2008

No abstract provided.

Patterns Of Migration/Mobility And Hiv Risk Among Female Sex Workers: Maharashtra 2007-08, Niranjan Saggurti, Vaishali Sharma Mahendra, Rajendra Singh, Saumya Ramarao, Suvakanta N. Swain, Ajay Kumar Singh, Anrudh K. Jain, Ravi K. Verma

HIV and AIDS

According to recent estimates, Maharashtra, India recorded high HIV prevalence among female sex workers, however there is a dearth of research documenting the migration patterns of sex workers and the linkages between their mobility and vulnerability to HIV. This Population Council study attempts to answer some of the questions on mobility and migration of female sex workers in Maharashtra as they relate to the HIV epidemic. Findings show an association between degree of mobility and the indicators of HIV risk such as consistent condom use with different types of partners, STI symptoms reported, sexual violence, and self-perception of risk for …

Study Of Sexually Transmitted Infections Among Urban Men In Pakistan: Identifying The Bridging Population, Ali M. Mir, Laura Reichenbach, Abdul Wajid, Mumraiz Khan

Reproductive Health

Pakistan currently has low levels of HIV infection, however the country is considered at high potential risk for an HIV epidemic. In major cities there are large concentrations of individuals whose behaviors make them extremely vulnerable to the rapid spread of HIV and of classical sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including male and female sex workers, men who have sex with men, and injecting drug users. HIV can spread to the general population through individuals who have contact with both high-risk groups and the general heterosexual population (the “bridging population”). Identifying the bridging population and bridging behaviors among urban men and …

An Initial Exploration Of The Undergraduate English Major Curricula Issued By The 2000-2001 Member Schools Of The Council For Christian Colleges And Universities, Maralee Sue Crandon

Dissertations

Problem

This study made the initial exploration of English major curricula among 101 members of the 2000-2001 Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), describing their nature and state and discerning evidence of Christian thought.

Method

Stewart’s (1989) Modified Categories of English Majors and Eisner’s (1991) education criticism provided frameworks to categorize all curricula and to describe a purposeful sampling of 20 selected by region, religious, and enrollment.

Results

Types 1.0 Straight Literature and 1.5 Primarily Literature majors represented 78% of the population and 75% of the sampling; Type 2.0 More Flexible majors represented 18% of the population and 25% …

Phonological Facilitation Through Translation In A Bilingual Picture-Naming Task, Paul Amrhein, Aimee Knupsky

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We present a critical examination of phonological effects in a picture-word interference task. Using a methodology minimizing stimulus repetition, English/Spanish and Spanish/English bilinguals named pictures in either L1 or L2 (blocked contexts) or in both (mixed contexts) while ignoring word distractors in L1 or L2. Distractors were either phonologically related to the picture name (direct; FISH–fist), or related through translation to the picture name (TT; LEG–milk–leche), or they were unrelated (bear–peach). Results demonstrate robust activation of phonological representations by translation equivalents of word distractors. Although both direct and TT distractors facilitated naming, TT facilitation was more consistent in L2 naming …

Eng 4901-001: History Of The English Language, Buck

Fall 2007

No abstract provided.

Eng 2901-002-004: The Structures Of English, Buck

Fall 2007

No abstract provided.

Neurophysiologic And Behavioral Measures Of Phonetic Perception In Adult Second Language Speakers Of Spanish, Jaden D. Hellewell

Theses and Dissertations

Infants 6-8 months old are able to identify nearly every speech sound contrast on which they have been tested, regardless of whether that contrast represents an across-category (two different phonemes) phonetic change in their native language or not. A child's ability to identify non-native consonant contrasts greatly diminishes by 11-12 months of age. The present study examined speech sound discrimination in three groups of listeners. Adult second language (L2) listeners of Spanish were compared with native English listeners with no knowledge of Spanish and native Mexican listeners to determine if they would show the ability to discriminate phonetic distinctions that …

Eng 3901-001: Language And Linguistics, Buck

Spring 2007

No abstract provided.

Eng 2901-001-003: The Structure Of English, Buck

Spring 2007

No abstract provided.

Error Feedback In Second Language Writing, Carol Ann Miller-Cornell

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis follows five second language (L2) students in an introductory composition class at California State University, San Bernardino. The study investigates their perceptions and responses to grammatical coded feedback provided by their writing instructor. The results showed that students wanted, expected, appreciated and understood the coded feedback that was given to them.

Reducing The Social Exclusion Of Girls, Kelly Hallman, Eva Roca

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Across the globe, girls are systematically excluded from participation in social, economic, and political life. The absence of girls in these arenas has implications not only for the young women themselves but also for society as a whole, exacerbating poverty and perpetuating disparities in health, education, and economic achievement. Internationally, this marginalization makes it difficult or impossible for some countries to achieve society-wide goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals identified by the United Nations as benchmarks to reduce poverty. For a number of years, the Population Council has been studying the causes and effects of girls’ social exclusion in …