Words as anchors: known words facilitate statistical learning

Can even a handful of newly learned words help to find further word candidates in a novel spoken language? This study shows that the statistical segmentation of words from speech stream by adults is facilitated by the presence of known words in the stream. This facilitatory effect is immediate as the known words were acquired only minutes before the onset of the speech stream. Our results demonstrate an interplay between top-down lexical segmentation and bottom-up statistical learning, in line with infant research suggesting that integration of multiple cues facilitates early language learning. The ability to simultaneously benefit from both types of word segmentation cues appears to be present through adulthood and can thus contribute to second language learning

Using Graphic Novels to Teach English and American Culture in Japanese Middle Schools

English proficiency in Japan has historically been lower than other Asian countries despite students learning English as a core subject beginning in elementary school. To help address this, Japan has brought thousands of assistant language teachers (ALTs) from native English-speaking countries through both government and private companies to help teach English and promote foreign cultural exchange. These teachers often experience cultural misunderstandings and microaggressions from both colleagues and students yet must continue to respectfully teach culture as cultural ambassadors. The purpose of this project is to design a handbook that guides ALTs working with middle school students in how to incorporate graphic novels, or comic books, in the classroom to practice speaking, listening, reading and writing, as well as to touch on aspects of American culture. The project is intended to provide interesting, fun, and authentic materials for Japanese English learners by using activities and graphic novels of various genres. The project provides example lessons plans that can be immediately implemented or adapted, including the necessary materials, and resources such as a rubric for evaluating the usefulness of graphic novels and a list of recommended graphic novels to use in order to help teachers navigate the potentially overwhelming world of comics and graphic novels. Each lesson integrates the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in ways that support the lessons found in Japanese English textbooks used in Japan. The lessons also address grammar patterns from the textbook and introduce new vocabulary. Overall, graphic novels are authentic, engaging materials that can help Japanese students improve their English abilities and potentially improve motivation by giving them comprehensible input and a connection to their own popular culture

Computational Approaches to Measuring the Similarity of Short Contexts : A Review of Applications and Methods

Measuring the similarity of short written contexts is a fundamental problem in Natural Language Processing. This article provides a unifying framework by which short context problems can be categorized both by their intended application and proposed solution. The goal is to show that various problems and methodologies that appear quite different on the surface are in fact very closely related. The axes by which these categorizations are made include the format of the contexts (headed versus headless), the way in which the contexts are to be measured (first-order versus second-order similarity), and the information used to represent the features in the contexts (micro versus macro views). The unifying thread that binds together many short context applications and methods is the fact that similarity decisions must be made between contexts that share few (if any) words in common.Comment: 23 page

Read-Aloud in Arab American Families' Homes Knowledge Chain and Identity Maintenance

Read-aloud is a common literacy practice utilized at early childhood and elementary levels to foster children’s language and literacy skills. It is an effective way to promote children’s readiness for school due to its extensive advantages. Teachers provide Arab Americanmultilingual students (MLL) with books to read at home to enhance their reading abilities. However, teachers may lack sufficient understanding of the reading aloud practices and perceptions within Arab American households. This study investigates the practices surrounding the act of reading aloud to preschool and elementary children among Arab American households residing in the United States. The study employed a qualitative methodology, namely a case study design, to investigate the topic. The study used interviews, observation, and document analysis as research methodologies. The study revealed two findings pertaining to practices and perceptions of the read-aloud practice in Arab American households. The themes explored in this study are the reading aloud knowledge chain among Arab American families and identity maintenance through read-aloud. A key implication is that teachers of Arab American students and educators interested in family literacy practices in diverse households should provide adequate support to these families to foster lifelong bilingual readers

Official Proceedings of the One Thousand Three Hundred and Forty-Third Meeting of the Board of Trustees, Columbus, Ohio, June 5, 1998

This item is the meeting minutes of the Board of Trustees of The Ohio State University held on Friday, June 5, 1998, at the Ohio State University Fawcett Center for Tomorrow, Columbus, Ohio. Topics discussed at the meeting included the introduction of new trustees, the president's report, the consent agenda, appointment/reappointments to the Marion campus board, renaming of department, appointments to the Engineering Experiment Station Advisory Council, the amendments to the rules of the University faculty, honorary degrees, personnel actions, resolutions in memoriam, report of research contracts and grants, the University development report, the employment of architects/engineers and request for construction bids, the adoption of the University Transportation and Parking plan, the authorization to fund the Ohio Health Alliance for administrative services associated with Medicare Extra, interim budget, the adoption of the Ohio State University share option plan and grant of options under the plan, OSU Student Health Insurance plan year 1998-99, easements, foundation board and student government reports, update on the enrollment management report, the presentation of the distinguished University professors awards, and the presentation on 1998-99 tuition increase

A unified coding strategy for processing faces and voices

Both faces and voices are rich in socially-relevant information, which humans are remarkably adept at extracting, including a person's identity, age, gender, affective state, personality, etc. Here, we review accumulating evidence from behavioral, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies which suggest that the cognitive and neural processing mechanisms engaged by perceiving faces or voices are highly similar, despite the very different nature of their sensory input. The similarity between the two mechanisms likely facilitates the multi-modal integration of facial and vocal information during everyday social interactions. These findings emphasize a parsimonious principle of cerebral organization, where similar computational problems in different modalities are solved using similar solutions

Edukacja dzieci w zakresie nauk ścisłych – idee Jana Amosa Komeńskiego

The article attempts to synthetically present the thought of John Amos Comenius, as a precursor of preschool pedagogy. An attempt has been made to determine what makes his thought still current in theory and pedagogical practice in kindergarten. These findings make it possible to compare what we know and what we are guided by at present. The analysis of Comenius’ whole life is a combination of the value of the work itself, the format of research, organizational and journalistic activities, and the features of the times in which we live today.W artykule podjęto próbę ukazania w sposób syntetyczny myśli Jana Amosa Komeńskiego jako prekursora pedagogiki przedszkolnej, a także określenia, co sprawia, że jego myśl jest ciągle aktualna zarówno w teorii, jak i w praktyce pedagogicznej przedszkola. Te ustalenia pozwalają dokonać porównania z tym, co wiemy i czym kierujemy się aktualnie. Analiza całego życia Komeńskiego to połączenie wartości samego dorobku, formatu działań badawczych, organizatorskich i publicystycznych oraz cech czasów, w jakich przyszło nam współcześnie żyć