Development of an international written communication audit

Although localization, internationalization, and globalization efforts to meet international customers\u27 product and information needs are accepted strategies in the US computer industry, the needs of second language (L2) English speakers are less directly addressed in the international workplace. Application of strategies similar to these three technical communication strategies may benefit international workplace communication;The international writing approaches represented by these three communication strategies are related to the global management strategies of organizations (e.g., ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric). This categorization, based on Perlmutter and Hedlund, considers organizations\u27 strategic missions and can be used to align management strategies with international writing approaches and individual rhetorical strategies. For example, an ethnocentric organization, entering the international market from a broad national base, instead of immediately changing its communication approach, might continue to use its source-localized information to communicate internationally. An organization might enter the global arena with an ethnocentric strategy, and, in reaction to emerging problems, focus on localization for each market and rely heavily on translation and translators, becoming more polycentric in its approach. A geocentric organization, balancing between ethnocentric and polycentric management strategies, is in constant communication across national and language borders, and might use both internationalization and globalization approaches in communication. Organizations\u27 global management strategies should align with their international communication practices, both for customers and in the workplace. An organization seeking a larger role in international ventures, yet with ethnocentric, localized communication strategies, might be less successful than one with similar goals and a more geocentric, globalized communication;In recognition of the diverse needs of organizations and individuals, an assessment method, an International Written Communication Audit (IWCA), is developed in this dissertation. The IWCA, based on linguistic and contrastive rhetoric research, focuses on cultural, pragmatic, and translation issues important to international workplace writing in US-English. The basic IWCA combines internationalization and globalization approaches. A localization module for the PRC is offered as an example of tailoring the audit methodology to the needs of L2 English readers from a specific language group. The construction of a workplace sampling frame and the analysis of the IWCA data are discussed

Information Preserving Processing of Noisy Handwritten Document Images

Many pre-processing techniques that normalize artifacts and clean noise induce anomalies due to discretization of the document image. Important information that could be used at later stages may be lost. A proposed composite-model framework takes into account pre-printed information, user-added data, and digitization characteristics. Its benefits are demonstrated by experiments with statistically significant results. Separating pre-printed ruling lines from user-added handwriting shows how ruling lines impact people\u27s handwriting and how they can be exploited for identifying writers. Ruling line detection based on multi-line linear regression reduces the mean error of counting them from 0.10 to 0.03, 6.70 to 0.06, and 0.13 to 0.02, com- pared to an HMM-based approach on three standard test datasets, thereby reducing human correction time by 50%, 83%, and 72% on average. On 61 page images from 16 rule-form templates, the precision and recall of form cell recognition are increased by 2.7% and 3.7%, compared to a cross-matrix approach. Compensating for and exploiting ruling lines during feature extraction rather than pre-processing raises the writer identification accuracy from 61.2% to 67.7% on a 61-writer noisy Arabic dataset. Similarly, counteracting page-wise skew by subtracting it or transforming contours in a continuous coordinate system during feature extraction improves the writer identification accuracy. An implementation study of contour-hinge features reveals that utilizing the full probabilistic probability distribution function matrix improves the writer identification accuracy from 74.9% to 79.5%

Young Adult Saudi Learners with Low-Level Literacy

The guiding question addressed in this curriculum project was, how should phonics be used to improve the English acquisition success rate of Saudi military students? It documents the design and creation of a specialized unit that takes into account all aspects of student learning based on prior knowledge, educational background, cultural values, interest, and motivation. The author integrates newly developed, modified, and existing curriculum, based on relevant research into the methods. The author documents the details of the unit and uses related research literature to construct meaning and validate the curriculum. He describes both success and struggles in implementing the unit and concludes that: 1) differentiation, while time consuming and hard to implement, is a valuable strategy to use in the classroom to boost motivation and achievement for all learners; 2) struggling learners and special education students showed the greatest growth under this teaching model

NBS monograph

From Introduction: "This report is the first of a series intended to provide a selective overview of research and development efforts and requirements in the somewhat overlapping fields of the computer and information sciences and technologies. The projected series of reports will attempt to outline the probable range of R & D activities in the computer and information sciences and technologies through selective reviews of the literature and to develop a reasonable consensus with respect to the opinions of workers in these and potentially related fields as to areas of continuing R & D concern for research program planning or review in these areas.

Mandarin Chinese Teacher Education Issues and solutions

Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, and in a rapidly globalizing environment, speaking it is an increasingly important skill for young people in the UK. 'Mandarin Chinese Teacher Education' stems from the work of the UCL Institute of Education Confucius Institute, which supports the development of Mandarin Chinese as a language on offer in schools as part of the mainstream curriculum. This edited collection brings together researchers, teachers involved in action research and student-teachers, in an effort to address the current lack of literature specifically aimed at supporting Chinese language teachers. It features: • practical ideas for teachers of Chinese to implement in their own classrooms • evaluation of differing strategies and approaches unique to teaching Chinese • examples of using action research to help teachers reflect on their own practice while informing practice across the discipline. The book will be useful for PGCE Mandarin students, teacher trainers and those involved in the development of Mandarin Chinese in schools across the UK and further afield

THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE KATAKANA WORD RECOGNITION TRAINING AMONG NOVICE LEARNERS OF JAPANESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Because word recognition processes differ depending on orthographic systems, second language learners with different orthographic backgrounds need to acquire new word recognition strategies suitable to the orthography in their second language. Japanese is a multi-script language and one of the scripts, katakana, is mainly used to transcribe Western loanwords. Due to the sound alternations resulting from the process of borrowing, learners of Japanese often experience difficulties in reading and writing katakana loanwords. Thus, this study investigates the effectiveness of online katakana word recognition training among novice learners of Japanese. Thirty-one students from a first-semester Japanese course at a large research university in the Midwest were randomly divided into three groups and assigned different online training programs outside of the class for four weeks designed to establish sound-letter correspondences of katakana. The first experimental group (Scrambler Group) put the randomly scrambled letters in the right order to form a target katakana loanword by listening to the vocalized word, while the second experimental group (Reading Group) practiced with the same set of the words solely by enunciating and listening to the model reading. The participants took pre- and post-tests before and after the training so that the improvement resulting from the training was observed. The test was composed of two tasks, naming and providing the English meanings of katakana words. The number of correct answers was counted and the response time for a participant to process each word was measured. The test included words practiced in the training and unpracticed words in order to test whether the training effects was transferred to processing unpracticed words

Advances in Character Recognition

This book presents advances in character recognition, and it consists of 12 chapters that cover wide range of topics on different aspects of character recognition. Hopefully, this book will serve as a reference source for academic research, for professionals working in the character recognition field and for all interested in the subject

Embodied language performance: Mediational affordances of dramatic activity for second language learning

This qualitative study examines the unique mediational affordances a drama based approach to second language learning provides. From the perspective of Sociocultural theory, the nature of learning is greatly determined by the mediational means employed and this study revealed the importance of modeling and imitation and multiple perspective taking that arose from the recursive process of rehearsal to be instrumental in the students\u27 understanding and growing mastery of English. This recursion process occurs within instructional conversations which serve to level the relations of power between teacher and learner, resulting in a more authentic learning environment. In short, drama introduces alterity into the learning environment in ways that serve to encourage autonomy for the learners as they slowly move from other regulated activity to self regulation; The study examines how the participants interacted within the unique learning environment created by the drama workshops and the activities. Activity theory posits that each participant arrives with a unique set of motives and goals and this study discusses how drama creates a learning environment and types of activity systems that accommodate these varying goals and facilitates an authentic dialogic interplay between everyone involved. Dramatic activity affords the co-construction of meaning between participants as they engage in language performance; The study further examines the pedagogical implications for utilizing drama in second language learning. Arguing that learning is first and foremost an activity, language learning will be examined as performance. Viewing language as performance serves to demonstrate how language is highly contextual to sociocultural and institutional circumstances. The role of the language teacher is crucial to provide the necessary interventions and the learning environments that foster and extend the learners use of the target language. A drama approach to second language learning provides a number of highly unique mediational affordances which can be actively manipulated in a seemingly endless variety of ways. It is argued that viewing teaching and learning from the perspective of social activity opens a space for drama based learning in which language performance and language learning become a dialectical interplay that cannot be separated. Language learning is embodied as the learner enacting a scenario becomes a subject within a contextually situated activity system in pursuit of specific goals. This results in a highly authentic use of language for communicative purposes which in turn enhance language acquisition