Orthographic facilitation in oral vocabulary acquisition

An experiment investigated whether exposure to orthography facilitates oral vocabulary learning. A total of 58 typically developing children aged 8-9 years were taught 12 nonwords. Children were trained to associate novel phonological forms with pictures of novel objects. Pictures were used as referents to represent novel word meanings. For half of the nonwords children were additionally exposed to orthography, although they were not alerted to its presence, nor were they instructed to use it. After this training phase a nonword-picture matching posttest was used to assess learning of nonword meaning, and a spelling posttest was used to assess learning of nonword orthography. Children showed robust learning for novel spelling patterns after incidental exposure to orthography. Further, we observed stronger learning for nonword-referent pairings trained with orthography. The degree of orthographic facilitation observed in posttests was related to children's reading levels, with more advanced readers showing more benefit from the presence of orthography

Phonics: assessment and tracking guidance

"Systematic daily phonics teaching is a key element of the CLLD [Communication, Language and Literacy Development] approach to the teaching of early literacy. These guidance materials will support teachers and practitioners in making judgements about children's progress through phonic phases. Guidance and suggested possible links between Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) scale points and Assessing Pupils' Progress (APP) guidelines are also given." - National Strategies website

ANIMATION VIDEO TO IMPROVE STUDENTS' VOCABULARY MASTERY

Abstract: This research aims to identify whether or not and to what extent animation video can improve students' vocabulary mastery. This is a Classroom Action Research conducted at the sixth grade students of MIN Nglungge, Polanharjo. There were 2 cycles and each cycle consists of five steps, namely; (1) planning the action, (2) implementing the action, (3) observing the action, (4) reflecting the result of the observation, (5) revising of the action. The result of the research shows that animation video can improve the students' vocabulary mastery. It could be seen from these indicators: (a) students could spell the vocabularies; (b) most students were able to pronounce words correctly; (c) students could grasp the meaning well; and (d) students could recognize vocabularies. In line with the result, the writer suggests that animation video is one of the effective techniques in presentations as to increase the students' enthusiasm and their achievement in learning vocabulary. This result hopefully will motivate teachers to use animation video in teaching vocabulary to young learners. Key words: animation video, teaching vocabulary, vocabulary master

Teaching World English

[INTRODUCTION] Once learners of English have achieved some basic skill in English, they will begin to learn from sources outside the classroom. Students will either come across or actively seek out English in its written and spoken forms. Any teacher will want to encourage this and reward students for what they learn outside the classroom. The students’ desire to hear and read English will be recognised as a sign of commitment. But all teachers need to give some thought to the kinds of English their students may bring back to the classroom, and need to anticipate some of the difficulties that exposure to the complex world of real English can bring about. (Continues..

A comparison of standard spell checking algorithms and a novel binary neural approach

In this paper, we propose a simple, flexible, and efficient hybrid spell checking methodology based upon phonetic matching, supervised learning, and associative matching in the AURA neural system. We integrate Hamming Distance and n-gram algorithms that have high recall for typing errors and a phonetic spell-checking algorithm in a single novel architecture. Our approach is suitable for any spell checking application though aimed toward isolated word error correction, particularly spell checking user queries in a search engine. We use a novel scoring scheme to integrate the retrieved words from each spelling approach and calculate an overall score for each matched word. From the overall scores, we can rank the possible matches. In this paper, we evaluate our approach against several benchmark spellchecking algorithms for recall accuracy. Our proposed hybrid methodology has the highest recall rate of the techniques evaluated. The method has a high recall rate and low-computational cost

Shakespeare and Language

Written by a team of leading international scholars, this Companion is designed to illuminate Shakespeare's works through discussion of the key topics of Shakespeare studies. Twenty-one brand new essays provide lively and authoritative approaches to recent scholarship and criticism for readers keen to expand their knowledge and appreciation of Shakespeare. The book contains stimulating chapters on traditional topics such as Shakespeare's biography and the transmission of his texts. Individual readings of the plays are given in the context of genre as well as through the cultural and historical perspectives of race, sexuality and gender, and politics and religion. Essays on performance survey the latest digital media as well as stage and film. Throughout the volume, contributors discuss Shakespeare in a global as well as a national context, a dramatist with a long and constantly mutating history of reception and performance. (All chapters are completely new for this second edition and include contributions from some of the world's pre-eminent Shakespeareans.