Reading in a foreign language: Strategic variation between readers of differing proficiency

For university language students who are required to deal with literary texts for linguistic or literary purposes, there is hardly any transitional stage between short adapted expository texts, read in the early stages of language learning, and complex literary texts, encountered at university in the literature class. Language readers must then make a substantial mental effort to understand texts intended for a native readership. In challenging reading mode, the quality of reading depends on the efficiency of problem-solving operations, including evaluative and executive strategies, put into place in order to attempt to fill in the comprehension gaps present in complex texts. Although reading strategies used by foreign language learners have been identified and categorised by research, the conditions of their use and their relationships are still unclear. Moreover, to my knowledge, no empirical investigation has focused specifically on comprehension monitoring in the context of foreign language literary texts. Literature instruction would benefit from such a study. Using verbal reports to elicit data, this study proposes to examine how proficient and less proficient university students of French, at intermediate level of instruction, implement problem-solving strategies when reading literary texts. Strategies such as guessing at words, consulting a dictionary, and translating mentally, are studied in relation to their contribution to the overall monitoring cycle. The results obtained indicate that proficient and less proficient readers tend to use the same strategies but with different purposes. The study demonstrates that the major difference between the two groups of respondents resides in ability some readers have to integrate meaning and construct text in a cohesive and synthetic fashion

Social Cohesion and Well-Being in the EU

At European level, social and economic policies are currently ordered and organised around achieving the goals of the Europe 2020 strategy - high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion (1). It is widely recognised, however, that social cohesion is declining or at least under new pressures as a consequence of the economic and employment crisis, but also due to longer-term trends including growing inequality, immigration and increasing cultural diversity (2). A new report on \u27Social justice in the EU\u27 from the Bertelsmann Stiftung shows that social disparities in the EU are increasing in relation to poverty, labour market access, health, equitable education as well as intergenerational justice (3). A t the same time, social cohesion is generally valued in and of itself, as it reflects solidarity and social harmony, while also being regarded as an important resource for economic success and quality of life. In general terms, well-being has become established as a fundamental objective of EU policies; Article 3 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) states that the Union\u27s aim is to promote \u27the well-being of its peoples\u27. Likewise the European Sustainable Development Strategy of 2006 cites the well-being of present and future generations as its central objective. Europe 2020 aims to put people first to create \u27more jobs and better lives\u27. It has adopted a number of targets that go beyond conventional measures of economic performance, with goals to reduce poverty and social exclusion, to promote education and employment. Over the past decade there have been growing demands from politicians, the media and public opinion to develop better approaches to measure economic and social progress and to monitor well-being in a more comprehensive way (4). In particular, the European Commission\u27s (2009) Communication on \u27GDP and beyond\u27 underlined the need for measurement of quality of life and well-being as outcome indicators, and highlighted the importance of more accurate reporting on the distributional aspects and corresponding inequalities. It concluded that ultimately, national and EU policies will be judged on whether they are successful in delivering (social, economic and environmental) goals and improving the well-being of Europeans. (5). This policy brief examines how significant social cohesion is for the well-being of people in Europe. It considers, in particular, how income inequalities are related to social cohesion and well-being. It is based upon existing reports (2,4) and specifically upon the analyses in a report prepared for the Bertelsmann Stiftung (6)

School Sense of Community, Teacher Support, and Students\u2019 School Safety Perceptions

This study examined the association between two characteristics of school climate (sense of community and teacher support, measured both at the individual and at the school level) and students\u2019 feelings of being unsafe at school. The study involved a sample of 49,638 students aged 10\u201318 years who participated in the 2010\u20132012 California Healthy Kids Survey. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), our findings revealed that, at the individual level, students perceiving higher levels of sense of community and teacher support at school were less likely to feel unsafe within the school environment. At the school level, sense of community was negatively associated with unsafe feelings, whereas there was no association between school-level teacher support and feelings of being unsafe at school

Cohesive Devices Used in the Headline News of the Jakarta Post

The study deals with the types of cohesive devices used in Headline News of The Jakarta Post. The objectives of study are to identify and to derive the types of cohesive devices dominantly used in headline news of the Jakarta Post. The data are taken from headline column of The Jakarta Post from online edition. There are seven articles which are analyzed in this study. This research is conducted by using descriptive method. The findings show that there are 162 references, 4 substitutions, 34 Ellipsis, 349 conjunctions, and 36 lexical cohesion occur in this study. The most dominant type of cohesive devices is conjunction because the writer would like to connect ideas within the text to make its readers easy to understand. Then the writer would like to make their news more informative. Keyword : cohesion, cohesive device, The Jakarta Post

Inter-agency adult support and protection practice:a realistic evaluation with police, health and social care professionals

Purpose: Collaborative inter-agency working is of paramount importance for the public protection agenda worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to disseminate the findings from a research study on the inter-agency working within adult support and protection (ASP) roles in the police, health and social care.Design/methodology/approach: This realistic evaluation study with two inter-related phases was funded by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research. This paper reports on Phase 1 which identified existing gaps in the implementation of effective inter-agency practice by reviewing the “state of play” in inter-agency collaboration between the police and health and social care professionals. In total, 13 focus groups comprising representatives from Police Scotland (n¼52), Social Care (n¼31) and Health (n¼18), engaged in single profession and mixed profession groups addressing issues including referral and information exchange.Findings: On analysing context-mechanism-outcome (CMO), gaps in joint working were identified and attributed to the professionals’ own understanding of inter-agency working and the expectations of partner agencies. It recommended the need for further research and inter-agency training on public protection. Research limitations/implications – This unique Scottish study successfully identified the inter-agency practices of health, social services and police. By means of a modified realistic evaluation approach, it provides an in-depth understanding of the challenges that professionals face on a day-to-day basis when safeguarding adults and informed strategic recommendations to overcome the barriers to good practices in organisational working. The methods used to determine CMO could benefit other researchers to develop studies exploring the complexities of multi-causal effects of cross-boundary working. The use of the same case study in each focus group helped to neutralise bias. However, the voluntary nature of participation could have resulted in biased perceptions. The limited numbers of health professionals may have resulted in less representation of health sector views.Practical implications: Collaborative inter-agency working is of paramount importance for public protection worldwide. This paper reports on a Scottish study that focussed on the coordinated and integrated practices amongst the police, health and social services’ professionals who support and protect adult members of society at risk of harm.Social implications: Whilst the focus of this study has been on ASP, the conclusions and recommendations are transferable to public protection issues in many other contexts.Originality/value: Studies on the joint-working practices amongst police and health and social services’ professionals who support and protect adult members of society at risk of harm are uncommon. This  study investigated professionals’ perceptions of gaps and concerns pertaining to integrated working by means of a realistic evaluation approach. It recommended the need for further research and inter-agency training on public protection

The interplay between boundary spanning activities and social cohesion in new product development teams

Team boundary spanning represents a team’s actions to establish links and manage interactions with individuals and groups external to the team with the purpose of coordinating activities and accessing information, resources and political support. Research in NPD has shown that team boundary spanning activity positively influences new product performance. Thus, reaching outside the team and interacting with others can provide teams with valuable resources for NPD projects. However, access to external resources cannot guarantee new product performance if these resources are not considered by the NPD team. In this respect, recent work suggests that team-level psychological characteristics such as social cohesion could undermine team members’ motivation to use resources obtained via boundary spanning efforts. In light of the previous discussion, two important research questions arise: 1) Does social cohesion hinder the impact of team boundary spanning on new product performance? Is the relationship between team boundary spanning and social cohesion contingent on the type of task given to the team? The current study examines these two research questions using data from 140 NPD teams.Consideramos como actividades de expansión de fronteras de un equipo las acciones encaminadas a establecer vínculos y dirigir las interacciones con individuos y grupos externos al mismo realizadas con el propósito de coordinar tareas y acceder a información, recursos y apoyo político. La literatura sobre desarrollo de nuevos productos ha mostrado que ir más allá de los límites del propio equipo e interactuar con otros puede proveer al equipo con recursos valiosos para sus proyectos de innovación. Sin embargo, el merco acceso a recursos externos no garantiza el éxito del nuevo producto; los recursos han de ser utilizados. A este respecto, trabajos recientes sugieran que las características psicológicas a nivel equipo, por ejemplo, la cohesión social, pueden minar la motivación de los miembros del equipo para usar los recursos obtenidos a través de la realización de esfuerzos de expansión de fronteras. A la luz de esta consideración, en esta investigación nos planteamos dos cuestiones: ¿puede la cohesión social ocultar el impacto positivo de las actividades de expansión de fronteras en el resultado del nuevo producto? ¿Es la relación entre las actividades de expansión de fronteras y la cohesión social contingente con el tipo de tarea que realiza el equipo? El presente trabajo en curso examina estas dos cuestiones utilizando datos de 140 proyectos de desarrollo de nuevos productos

Cross-National Differences in Victimization : Disentangling the Impact of Composition and Context

Varying rates of criminal victimization across countries are assumed to be the outcome of countrylevel structural constraints that determine the supply ofmotivated o¡enders, as well as the differential composition within countries of suitable targets and capable guardianship. However, previous empirical tests of these ‘compositional’ and ‘contextual’ explanations of cross-national di¡erences have been performed upon macro-level crime data due to the unavailability of comparable individual-level data across countries. This limitation has had two important consequences for cross-national crime research. First, micro-/meso-level mechanisms underlying cross-national differences cannot be truly inferred from macro-level data. Secondly, the e¡ects of contextual measures (e.g. income inequality) on crime are uncontrolled for compositional heterogeneity. In this paper, these limitations are overcome by analysing individual-level victimization data across 18 countries from the International CrimeVictims Survey. Results from multi-level analyses on theft and violent victimization indicate that the national level of income inequality is positively related to risk, independent of compositional (i.e. micro- and meso-level) di¡erences. Furthermore, crossnational variation in victimization rates is not only shaped by di¡erences in national context, but also by varying composition. More speci¢cally, countries had higher crime rates the more they consisted of urban residents and regions with lowaverage social cohesion.