Automating question generation and marking of language learning exercises for isiZulu

Increase in isiZulu language learning is hampered by the predominantly manual approach to creating and marking homework and test exercises. Extant computer-assisted language learning platforms cannot handle the intricacies of agglutination in isiZulu and related languages. We seek to address this by designing a controlled natural language-based exercise generator and marker for isiZulu. This consists of question and answer sentence templates for exercise types, reusable algorithm snippets as grammar library, a small corpus of words and sentences to be used by the system, a constrained sentence generator to combine the right type of words, and finally the exercise creation and automated marking system. The preliminary evaluation shows encouraging results

A classification of grammar-infused templates for ontology and model verbalisation

Involving domain-experts in the development, maintenance, and use of knowledge organisation systems can be made easier through the introduction of easy-to-use interfaces that are based on natural language. Well resourced languages make use of natural language generation techniques to provide such interfaces. In particular, they often make use of templates combined with computational grammar rules to generate grammatically complex text. However, there is no model of pairing templates and computational grammar rules to ensure suitability for less-resourced languages. These languages require a modular design that ensures grammar detachability so as to allow grammar re-use across domains and applications. In this paper, we present a model and classification scheme for grammar-infused templates suited for less-resourced languages and classify existing systems that make use of them. We have found that of the 15 systems that pair templates and grammar rules, and their 11 distinct template types, 13 have support for detachable grammars

Multilingual Knowledge Graphs and Low-Resource Languages: A Review

There is a lack of multilingual data to support applications in a large number of languages, especially for low-resource languages. Knowledge graphs (KG) could contribute to closing the gap of language support by providing easily accessible, machine-readable, multilingual linked data, which can be reused across applications. In this paper, we provide an overview of work in the domain of multilingual KGs with a focus on low-resource languages. We review the current state of multilingual KGs along with the different aspects that are crucial for creating KGs with language coverage in mind. Special consideration is given to challenges particular to low-resource languages in KGs. We further provide an overview of applications that yield multilingual KG information as well as downstream applications reusing such multilingual data. Finally, we explore open problems regarding multilingual KGs with a focus on low-resource languages

The impact of Siswati L1 on the acquisition of academic english by tertiary students in Swaziland

Research has pointed to the influence of the first language (L1) in the acquisition of the second (L2). In this study I investigate the interface between siSwati as an L1 and the acquisition of Academic English by students of the tertiary institutions of Swaziland. I examine five theoretical frameworks which are germane to L2 acquisition – error analysis, interdependency, transfer, interlanguage and fossilization. I discuss how these frameworks can help explain the low levels of proficiency in Academic English among learners in tertiary institution in Swaziland. In my research I employ qualitative research methods – questionnaires with both students and lecturers on initial and subsequent encounters with reading and writing both in the L1 (siSwati) and the L2 (English) – as well as quantitative research methods including statistical analyses of demographic and biographic data. In addition, in order to gauge the impact of the L1 on the L2 I analyse written texts of first and final year students at a number of tertiary institutions in Swaziland. Findings reveal that the students' L1 does, to some extent, interfere with their ability to properly acquire Academic English but cannot entirely explain the students' failure to acquire competency or near native proficiency in Academic English. Other militating factors include early educational environments which were not conducive to stimulating bilingualism, poor supply of text resources in both the L1 and the L2, the lack of a culture of reading in either the L1 or L2, the remoteness of English mother-tongue contexts, peripheral normativity practices in the institutions and indeed the emergence and development of a new variety of English in Swaziland. My own assessment criteria were critiqued during the course of this study and suggestions were made as to the validity of some of my assumptions about what constitutes "correct English". This insight should necessitate a new study on how English competency is assessed in Swaziland and to what it extent it is in line with contemporary views of what constitutes Standard English. It is hoped that the findings of this study will inform current debates on language teaching and assessment in tertiary institutions in Swaziland and also highlight areas of concern for academic programmes that focus on developing language and writing skills. Finally, I recommend that it is literacy in the L1 that needs to be addressed at the grass-roots route level in order for transfer to the L2 to occur successfully. Ultimately I conclude that efficient acquisition of Academic English can only be achieved when cognitive abilities have been properly developed in the L1

Descriptive and comparative approaches

Synopsis: The approximately 500 Bantu languages spoken across vast areas of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa are united by the presence of a number of broad typological similarities, including, for example, complex noun class system and agglutinative verbal morphology. However, the languages also exhibit a high degree of micro-variation. Recent work has demonstrated fine-grained morphosyntactic variation across many Bantu languages focusing on grammatical topics such as double object constructions, inversion constructions, or object marking, adopting formal, comparative and typological perspectives. Continuing in this vein, this volume builds on the momentum of the dynamic field of morphosyntactic variation in Bantu and contributes to the growing body of work which examines morphosyntactic variation, with a regional focus on the Bantu languages of East Africa. The East African region is characterized by high linguistic complexity in terms of the number of languages spoken, in terms of the four different linguistic phyla present, and in terms of the inherent sociolinguistic dynamics. The current volume explores this complexity further by bringing together studies which investigate features of morphosyntax of an individual language as well as those which develop an in-depth examination of a single morphosyntactic phenomena in a small sample of languages. The book seeks also to add to the descriptive status of the languages under examination, as well as raising questions relating to language, language contact, language change, and micro-variation in related languages spoken in close geographic proximity

Development of tourism diploma in IsiXhosa-speaking students' academic literacies : a multilingual intervention

In this study, it is argued that a bi/multilingual instruction is extremely beneficial for bi/multilingual students in higher education in South Africa. Since the adoption of democracy in 1994, cultural and linguistic diversity has become the norm in classrooms at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. The testing of bi/multilingual strategies in this study (i.e. translation and development of multilingual glossaries; code-switching by tutor and students during teaching and learning; code-meshing by students online; and reading, speaking and writing bilingually), is an attempt to pedagogically adapt the curriculum to students’ needs. The data was collected from students in their Tourism Communication tutorial. The study was conducted in order to demonstrate that students benefit from bilingual pedagogies, which mobilise isiXhosa and English as languages of learning. Data was collected from tests, a questionnaire and interview, summaries, online discussions, written assignments and reflective journals in order to determine to what extent students’ performance was enhanced by bilingual tuition

Development of tourism diploma in IsiXhosa-speaking students' academic literacies : a multilingual intervention

In this study, it is argued that a bi/multilingual instruction is extremely beneficial for bi/multilingual students in higher education in South Africa. Since the adoption of democracy in 1994, cultural and linguistic diversity has become the norm in classrooms at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. The testing of bi/multilingual strategies in this study (i.e. translation and development of multilingual glossaries; code-switching by tutor and students during teaching and learning; code-meshing by students online; and reading, speaking and writing bilingually), is an attempt to pedagogically adapt the curriculum to students’ needs. The data was collected from students in their Tourism Communication tutorial. The study was conducted in order to demonstrate that students benefit from bilingual pedagogies, which mobilise isiXhosa and English as languages of learning. Data was collected from tests, a questionnaire and interview, summaries, online discussions, written assignments and reflective journals in order to determine to what extent students’ performance was enhanced by bilingual tuition

A critical analysis of colonial and postcolonial discourses and representations of the people of Mozambique in the Portuguese newspaper ‘O Século de Joanesburgo’ from 1970-1980

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDThe aim of this thesis is to probe how Mozambican people were represented or constructed in the colonial and post-colonial periods through the columns of the Portuguese newspaper, ‘O Século de Joanesburgo’. The study examines a corpus of 58, 070 tokens (consisting of 100 articles, 50 for colonial and 50 for postcolonial periods), which were systematically selected from the political, sport, letters to the reader and editorial domains published from 1970 to 1980. The analytical framework for this study is threefold. It is informed by corpus linguistics (CL) as described by, amongst others, McEnery and Wilson (1996/2001) and Bennett (2010); critical discourse analysis (CDA), in particular the work of Van Dijk (1996; 2003), Wodak (1995; 2011) and Wodak and Meyer (2009) and multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) as used by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996; 1998; 2006), Kress (2010) and Machin and Mayr (2012

Pedagogical benefits, ideological and practical challenges and implementational spaces of a translanguaging education policy: the case of Bangladeshi higher education

Abu Saleh Mohammad Rafi explored translanguaging pedagogies in Bangladeshi tertiary education. The findings demonstrated affordances that could be utilised to construct a more accessible medium of instruction policy based on translanguaging pedagogies that can enhance quality content acquisition while addressing the English language proficiency gap between pre-tertiary and tertiary education

Zimbabwean women online: an investigation of how gendered identities are negotiated in Zimbabwean women’s online spaces

This study is concerned with the construction of Zimbabwean women’s identities in this contemporary internet age. Two Facebook groups are of particular interest here due to the vibrant conversations that take place on a daily basis, that is, Makhox Women’s League and Baking & Cooking: ZW Women’s Diaries. Conceiving these internet sites as discursive spaces, I unpack the contesting discourses and tensions in the different narratives offered by Zimbabwean women and identify and critique the competing sets of feminine subjectivities. I achieve this by drawing on poststructuralist and postcolonialist feminist theories in order to situate these groups as cultural sites that are particularly identity defining. I particularly draw on Foucauldian theories of discourse, power and the subject to conceptualise the formation of particular discursive gendered subjectivities. With an understanding that discourse is constitutive of power relations and contestations, and that discourse should be historically contextualised in order to take into account particular conditions of existence; I draw on Mamdani’s (1996) conceptualisation of how power is organised in Africa within a historical and institutional context, and identify the bifurcated nature of the postcolonial Zimbabwean state as a colonial residue as necessitating a particular kind of subjectivity. To this end, one can understand the different femininities on Makhox Women’s League and Baking & Cooking: ZW Women’s Diaries as constituted within, and complexly negotiating, a traditional/customary discourse and a rights-based modern one. This qualitative inquiry is informed by an eclectic approach that combines methods of textual analysis that complements both critical linguistics and media studies and attends to lexical structure as well as narrative and rhetorical analysis respectively. Combined with an online ethnographic approach I employ these tools to analyse these particular Facebook groups with the understanding that as women converse daily on these platforms, they ‘govern’ each other’s conduct and thought processes in interesting ways. I argue that these conversations discursively constitute the performances of different femininities on both sites that also take into account the diasporic condition of Zimbabwean women. I show how they negotiate and mediate feminine performance and in so doing propose and contest certain ‘truths’ that are frequently validated