Modern Languages Commons^™

Writing Women’S Mythology: The Poetry Of Eavan Boland And Louise Erdrich, Colleen Taylor Fcrh '12

The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal

Eavan Boland and Louise Erdrich are authors who write from very different cultures. Boland’s poetry explores Irish history while Erdrich’s traverses Native American culture and the Catholic religion. This polarity, however, is not so crucial when compared to the two poets’ striking similarities in voice and in subject. As women writers aligned with feminism, both Boland and Erdrich seek to express the female perspective and reverse centuries of women’s silence, and even more strikingly, they use the same medium to do so. Mythology is their instrument of choice, with Boland exploring Celtic folklore and Erdrich Native American legend. But these …

The Use Of Email Attachments To Increase Reading Compliance In Foreign Language Classes., Juan Rodríguez Prieto

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This is the first quantitative research on reading compliance in foreign language courses. It investigated the effect of email attachments with the assigned readings to promote read­ing compliance of the textbook. Their effect on learning gains was measured by 16 grammar or vocabulary quizzes during a semester. 31 intermediate L2 Spanish students assigned to two group conditions, those receiving the emails and those who did not, also completed a questionnaire at the end of the semester about their preparedness for the quizzes and about their opinions about the email attachments. Results indicated that participants in the email group prepared more …

Un Debate De Las Corridas De Toros, Raizel M. Brenton

Spanish Model Lesson Plans

No abstract provided.

Bilingual And Esl Pre-Service Teachers Learn About Effective Instruction For Ells Through Meaningful Collaboration, Alma D. Rodríguez

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This article presents the results of a study conducted to identify the perceptions of bilingual and ESL pre-service teachers regarding the integration of a collaborative service learning project in a key course of their teacher preparation program. Pre-, process, and final reflective essays were written by participants as they engaged in the development of an ESL unit to teach language through content to ELLs. The analysis of participants’ reflections revealed that preservice teachers connect the learning they acquire in their teacher education program with their life experiences, which contributes to their identity formation as prospective teachers of ELLs. In addition, …

Review Essay: Multimodality In Local And Disciplinary Praxes, Randall W. Monty

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Medieval Forms And Meanings Of Francois: The Political And Cultural Vicissitudes Of An Ethnonym, Levilson C. Reis

Modern Languages & Cultures Faculty Scholarship

The article looks at the evolution of the ethnonym Francois in the Middle Ages and its significance to Germanic peoples known as Franks in the context of their cross-cultural relations with Muslim, Byzantine and British people. The author analyzes chronicles of the First Crusade and examines the use of Francois as an exonym and an autonym, and its role in the development of the French identity.

Transference Vol. 1, Summer 2013

Transference

Transference is published by the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Western Michigan University. Dedicated to the celebration of poetry in translation, the journal publishes translations from Arabic, Chinese, French and Old French, German, Classical Greek and Latin, Japanese, and Russian into English verse. Transference contains translations as well as commentaries on the art and process of translating.

Improving Student Performance On The Cultural Comparison, Brian G. Kennelly

World Languages and Cultures

No abstract provided.

Improving Student Performance On The Persuasive Essay, Brian G. Kennelly

World Languages and Cultures

No abstract provided.

Pedagogía De Hablantes De Herencia: Implicaciones Para El Entrenamiento De Instructores Al Nivel Universitario, Lina M. Reznicek-Parrado

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study researches the differences in pedagogical needs between learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (FL learners) and learners of Spanish as a Heritage Language (HL learners) at the university level. By using the UNL Modern Languages and Literatures Department as an illustrative case and based on an analysis of the Heritage Language student profile in the context of the United States, this study seeks to explore arguments in favor of providing training for university-level instructors of Spanish that responds to the specific pedagogical needs of Heritage Language Learners.

The relevancy of this study is not only based on …

Requests For Money On Public Transportation: Saving Face For Speaker And Hearers, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper examines the verbal mitigators present in requests uttered by twenty panhandlers on the New York City subway. The research questions were: (1) What types of external and internal verbal mitigators characterize panhandlers’ requests on the New York City subway? (2) Are there any requests without verbal mitigation? (3) What patterns do reasons given for the requests follow? (4) How do panhandlers use words to mitigate the threat to their own face that begging occasions? By observing norms for showing respect for one’s interlocutors, the panhandler creates an image of a self-respecting individual who believes that hearers also owe …

El Poder De La Tutoría En Pares Bilingües Durante La Enseñanza De Ciencia: Diseñando Oportunidades Para Explicar, María G. Arreguín-Anderson, Zulmaris Diaz, Jose A. Ruiz-Escalante

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

En este artículo se propone la utilización de la tutoría en pares como estrategia para facilitar la elaboración de explicaciones mientras se aprende la ciencia. Los autores argumentan que, sistemáticamente incluida dentro de la instrucción, la tutoría en pares permite que un estudiante con mayor dominio de la materia auxilie a un compañero en el aprendizaje de la ciencia al mismo tiempo que ambos se involucran en la práctica de todas las destrezas del lenguaje. A manera de ilustración, los autores narran cómo una lección de ciencias naturales se enriqueció con dos estrategias de tutoría: parejas de discusión guiada y …

La Posthibdridez Fronteriza En La Narrativa De Heriberto Yépez, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

No abstract provided.

La Barbe: Feminine Beards And Other Mysteries Of French Grammatical Gender, Robin F. Keller

Senior Honors Projects

Grammatical gender in French language is one of the biggest guessing games for a native English speaker. Why a table is feminine and a book is masculine is a question that plagues those learning French as a second language. In French, all nouns have gender, masculine and feminine. The complication: only a small percentage of the nouns are assigned gender semantically leaving the remaining which are assigned gender seemingly arbitrarily. For English native speakers, the distinction of these basic parts in a foreign language is not a natural skill. The simple fact that nouns are either feminine or masculine is …

The Death Of The River And The River Of Death: The Magdalena River In El Amor En Los Tiempos Del Cólera And La Novia Oscura, Ana María Mutis

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

This essay focuses on two of these works: El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera) by Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez (hereinafter Amor) and La novia oscura (The Dark Bride) by Laura Restrepo (hereinafter Novia). Though it is true that these novels coincide in presenting the Magdalena as the scene of Colombia's deterioration and destruction, the river of Novia explores the connections between natural space, individual conscience, and national reality, all the while commenting on, and questioning, the message the Magdalena is made to convey in Amor. The analysis that follows seeks to …

The Line Of Then And Now: A Novella And Other Stories, Brittany Clark

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis is a final portfolio of several short literary fiction stories and a novella written as a final Master’s of Arts in English project.

Making Connections: Applying The Ap French Language And Culture Scoring Guidelines To Student Samples, Brian Kennelly

World Languages and Cultures

No abstract provided.

Entretien Avec Fabienne Kanor, Jason Herbeck

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

D’origine martiniquaise, Fabienne Kanor est devenue romancière etréalisatrice après une première carrière dans le journalisme. Dans cet entretien, elle parle surtout de son deuxième roman, Humus(2007), qui raconte à voix multiples les récits de quatorze femmes qui se trouvent à bord d’un bateau négrier à destination des Antilles et décident de se jeter à l’eau. Kanor se penche surl’histoire de la traite négrière et surl’acte d’écriture, ainsi que sur sa propre identité en tant qu’écrivain de la “diaspora”, ayant grandi en Métropole dans une famille d’origine antillaise.

I Would Rather Not Lie, Eider Rodriguez, Nere Lete

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

The man shakes her hand. The woman takes a seat in front of him while placing her purse between her legs and leaving her heels exposed in her flat hoes. The man looks at her from over his glasses.

The Development Of Differential Object Marking In Spanish-English Bilingual Children, Mariluz Ortiz Vergara

Open Access Theses

In monolingual development, the acquisition of differential object marking (DOM) is completed by three years of age (Rodríguez- Mondoñedo, 2008). However, among bilingual speakers, the development and use of the marker at a young age is less predictable. Spanish marks animate and specific direct objects with the preposition-a; English in contrast does not. Based on previous studies documenting transfer in areas where Spanish and English differ, it was predicted that bilingual children would experience difficulties with the use of the preposition both in matrix and left dislocated sentences (CLLD) (Montrul, 2004, Montrul & Bowles, 2009). This study tested 14 simultaneous …

Blood In The Water: Salvadoran Rivers Of Testimony And Resistance, Adrian Taylor Kane

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

From the 1970s to the early 1990s the dominant forms of literary production in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua were testimonial literature and literature of resistance. During this time period, all three of these Central American countries were embroiled in bloody civil wars, and the written word was employed on the cultural front as a means of denouncing and resisting various forms of oppression. For both historical and artistic reasons, rivers frequently play an important role in cultural production from and about this era and have thus become embedded in the complex web of ideological signifiers that comprises the discursive …

Phonological Adaptations Of English Loanwords In Turkish, Rachel Beel, Jennifer Felder

Other Undergraduate Scholarship

When trying to understand the phonological system of a language (the sounds used in speech), what are some of the ways to figure out the patterns of an unfamiliar language? The way that borrowed or loanwords (words taken from one language and used in another) are pronounced in a language reveals much about the language’s phonology. The phonological system of Turkish has accommodated for starkly different syllable structures when incorporating modern English words into this contrasting language.

A personal survey of Turkish syllable structure has revealed how native speakers of Turkish cope with the phonological features of borrowed English words …

Latino/A Student (Efficacy) Expectations: Reacting And Adjusting To A Writing-About-Writing Curriculum Change At An Hispanic Serving Institution, I. Moriah Mccracken, Valerie A. Ortiz

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Using data from two surveys and end-of-semester reflections, researchers learned that students enrolled in writing-about-writing (WAW) courses are initially intimidated by the demands of a WAW curriculum, but the students’ perceived inability to complete the requirements contradicted survey data and final written reflections. Ongoing public conversations surrounding WAW curriculum and movement may lead faculty working with high at-risk populations, including but not limited to Latino/as, hesitant to adapt this approach, but the researchers challenge these perceptions and call for additional research to confirm that students who complete WAW courses have an increased sense of self-efficacy towards academic writing.

Infanticide And The Anxious Silence Of “Language As Such”, Kevin Godbout

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

No abstract provided.

How Do You Build A Discipline From The Ground Up?, Robert H. Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the keynote address delivered to the 21^st Annual WV undergraduate literary symposium, hosted by Marshall University on March 2, 2013. It presents a kind of "wish list" for scholars in sermon studies: we still need "a clear sense of the canon," places to "interact and network" with colleagues, and a dedicated journal "where scholars can publish their work." People working in other fields are fortunate in that they can usually take these things for granted, but sermon scholars still have some work to do to bring them to fruition.

Memoirs, Isabel Alvarez-Borland

Spanish Department Faculty Scholarship

The works included in this bibliography offer overviews related to Latino/a autobiographical literature.

Bibliography For Work In Digital Humanities And (Inter)Mediality Studies, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

¡Viva La Vida!, Javier Villarreal

NACCS Annual Conference Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Movie Review De Biutiful Por González Iñárritu, Ana M. López-Aguilera

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

En Biutiful, el director mexicano Alejandro González Iñárritu, presenta las dificultades de tres padres de familia para cuidar de sus hijos en un contexto de marginación y pobreza. La historia principal es la de Uxbal, enfermo de cáncer terminal, con dos hijos a su cargo, separado de una esposa bipolar, sin recursos económicos excepto lo que consigue como mediador en el negocio de inmigrantes ilegales y como medium entre los espíritus de los recién fallecidos y sus familiares. Con esta historia confluyen la de Hin y la de Edweme. El primero, colaborador de Uxbal en el tráfico de inmigrantes …

Taiwanese Language Medical School Curriculum: A Case Study Of Symbolic Resistance Through The Promotion Of Alternative Literacy And Language Domain Norms, Philip John Sweeney

Dissertations and Theses

In contemporary Taiwan, Mandarin language proficiency and literacy in Han characters are not only key skills needed for success in academic institutions and employment markets, but they also carry meaning as symbolic markers of national and supranational Chinese identity. This study examines how Taiwanese-language medical studies curriculum planners are promoting alternative linguistic practices as a means of resisting the influence of Chinese nationalism in Taiwan and striving to replace it with a rival Taiwanese nationalism. I conducted research for this study during the 2010-2011 school year in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I collected data for this study by engaging in participant observation …