An Intonational Description of African American Language in Princeville, NC

This thesis uses data from the Princeville, NC section of the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL) in order to address two topics concerning language: first, what the intonation of the Princeville participants of the CORAAL looks like acoustically; and second, if intonation is the salient feature that categorizes a speaker as Black or non-Black. The acoustic analysis software, Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2019), is used to take average, minimum, and maximum f0 measurements for 16 participants (9 women and 7 men) across three age groups. From these measurements, the rate of change is calculated in Hz/second to determine the fluctuations in pitch within the pitch range across an utterance. Results in response to the first question suggest that female participants followed a more identifiable average f0 pattern than their male counterparts. Additionally, female participants tended to have higher minimum and maximum f0 measurements, as well as higher rates of change. In response to the second question, the ethicality and morality of asking certain research questions is examined. It is suggested that, rather than potentially essentializing individual linguistic features which belong to a broader social system of meaning, we instead turn towards a critical examination of the field\u27s practices, methods, and theories, and how these in turn fit within broader systems of domination like white supremacy

The Impact of Prosodic Reading Instruction on Adolescents’ Silent Reading Comprehension

Research has established a strong relationship between silent reading comprehension and prosodic reading fluency among young readers, but much remains unknown about this relationship among older readers (Breen, Kaswer, Van Dyke, Krivokapic, & Landi, 2016; Cypert & Petro, 2019). The goal of this study was to determine the impact of prosodic reading instruction on adolescents’ silent reading comprehension. Conducted in a classroom setting in two different school districts, this study included three certified English teachers and a total of 52 students in grades 8, 9, and 10 for a period of nine to twelve weeks with a total of 810 instructional minutes. The Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) (Kuhn, Rasinski, & Zimmerman, 2014; Morrison & Wilcox, 2020) structure provided the format of instruction for the treatment variable, prosodic reading instruction. District-selected digital standardized assessments provided pre- and post-treatment silent reading comprehension scores to assess the impact of the treatment on silent reading. Using SAS software, the researcher used a repeated measure analysis of variance (RMANOVA) to test the impact of the treatment. Regarding silent reading comprehension, analysis revealed an effect size of 2.3%, indicating that the treatment produced no significant impact. To assess students’ prosodic reading, the EARS rubric (Rasinski & Cheesman-Smith, 2018), a multidimensional fluency scale, provided pre- and post-scores for which analysis showed an effect size of 36%, a significant impact. The results of this study are inconsistent with recent research which shows that as prosodic reading scores increase, silent reading scores increase (Wolters, Kim, & Szura, 2020). This inconsistency may be attributed to the lack of clarity involved in measuring specific aspects of prosody (Morrison & Wilcox, 2020; Wolters, Kim, & Szura, 2020)

A literary exploration of the second ‘’Ecological Conscience’’, 1960s – 1970s

This thesis explores how literature during the 1960s and 1970s helped to develop a postmodern or second-wave ‘’ecological conscience’’, and how these new modes of ecological meditation were represented in three essential texts. Silent Spring, Desert Solitaire, and Turtle Island are all milestones of a new, ‘radical’ environmentalism that awakened the public to the ongoing global environmental crisis. Although environmental concerns attracted significant criticism at the time, ‘ecocriticism’ provides the project’s theoretical basis for advocating literature’s importance in enlightening and reconnecting an ecologically unconscious audience to the natural world. These writers search for innovative societal models capable of establishing an updated ecological conscience, displacing the anthropocentric mindset that inhibits both humans and non-humans. Through prose and poetry, this collection investigates the collective ecological conscience during this era, and the authors’ critical roles in the healing of a postmodern ecology rather than the Romantic restoring of a lost, organic world. After much deliberation on the environmental impacts induced by modern industrial societies, a variety of expressions are brought together to articulate how society must learn to embrace the unexplainable and unrepresentable aspects of nature, and how literature can serve as a guideline towards a renewed and ecologically sensitive lifestyle on Earth

Accounting and Money Laundering

This study sheds light on some aspects of money laundering and the role of accounting by examining how does money laundering persist and continue to increase or go undetected for extended periods of time given the institutional settings of increasing regulation, increasing monitoring and control systems at financial institutions, and increasing attention by accounting professionals. The study consists of three individual papers all connected to the common theme of accounting and money laundering. This area of research is important for several reasons. First, the problem of money laundering is a global problem, it occurs in both developed and developing countries, and in some cases, money is moved across borders to be laundered. The propagation of money laundering facilities furthers criminal activity. One of the aims of this research program is to help shed light on the mechanisms and practices used to facilitate money laundering, with a focus on accounting techniques. Second, the research seeks to understand what happens within financial institutions, and how their systems and processes, given the tight controls, allow money to be laundered. Third, does anti-money-laundering regulation deter money laundering activity? This research agenda has implications beyond the research community. By understanding how money laundering strategies work, how accounting is implicated, and the impact of regulators and regulation, the research can be used to help prevent and detect money being launderedwhich can then lead to a reduction in the crimes that generate the proceeds to be laundered

Anxiety in Relation to Narrative Deficits in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with Autism are known to present with language delays that affect their ability to relate their thoughts, ideas, feelings and emotions to others. These difficulties in turn reduce their chances in having successful interactions with their peers and may result in elevated anxiety. The main aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship between narrative skills and anxiety in children with Autism. Three studies were conducted, the first sought to confirm the narrative differences between 19 children with ASD and 20 children who are TD on narrative generation production. Results indicate that children with ASD use fewer story grammar elements, have more difficulty with referential accuracy and deviate more form the main story line by adding irrelevant information. Using data from the same groups, the second study evaluated whether the above three narrative measures are correlated to parent-reported anxiety and whether they may be used to predict anxiety. Collectively, having poorer language skills, poorer SG and RA scores, and increased deviation all indicate a child is more likely to experience anxiety. Results also show that AQ, deviation and the interaction variable between AQ and deviation, are significant predictors of anxiety, explaining the variance seen in parent-reported anxiety. The final study involved 3 children with ASD participating in a narrative intervention to determine whether improving narrative abilities would result in an improvement of theory of mind skills and a reduction in anxiety symptoms. The intervention was successful in improving narrative generation performance which coincided with an improvement on social cognitive tasks and a reduction in parent-reported anxiety post intervention. These results support a link between narrative abilities and the presentation of anxiety symptoms in individuals with autism that may be explained by deficits in neurocognitive functioning. The findings also have clinical implications towards improving assessment and treatment protocols by way of language for people with ASD and comorbid anxiety disorders

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages in Two Sociocultural Contexts

This research study examined two teachers teaching English to speakers of other languages in two different sociocultural instructional contexts. Specifically, the purpose of the study was to determine the teachers' definitions of what makes an English language learner communicatively competent in the English language, their beliefs about what knowledge they consider important to teach in order to achieve the communicative competence for their students and what role the different sociocultural context plays.A qualitative design of a comparative case study was used as the method to explore and compare a teacher, who was an American citizen teaching English to speakers of other languages in the USA and a teacher, who was a Slovak citizen, teaching English to speakers of Slovak language in Slovakia. Data were collected from several data sources in each country, including semi-structured interviews, class observations with field notes during both fall school term and spring school term, short clarifying post observation interviews, and online demographic and short concept surveys. All data were analyzed using thematic qualitative analysis tools and a matrix for each participant was developed. Once the coding and the matrices were finished, themes were identified that allowed the address of the research questions.The findings of the study showcased that the teachers who teach English to speakers of other languages in different sociocultural context are influenced in the way they organize their instruction by the requirements placed on them by their respective school districts. However, it is each teacher's personal belief of what constitutes a communicatively competent speaker that ultimately provides the structure for the instruction and the curriculum

EG-ICE 2021 Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering

The 28th EG-ICE International Workshop 2021 brings together international experts working at the interface between advanced computing and modern engineering challenges. Many engineering tasks require open-world resolutions to support multi-actor collaboration, coping with approximate models, providing effective engineer-computer interaction, search in multi-dimensional solution spaces, accommodating uncertainty, including specialist domain knowledge, performing sensor-data interpretation and dealing with incomplete knowledge. While results from computer science provide much initial support for resolution, adaptation is unavoidable and most importantly, feedback from addressing engineering challenges drives fundamental computer-science research. Competence and knowledge transfer goes both ways