Impact of Peer Review on the ESL Composing Process

One of the distinctive features of the process approach to writing theory is its inclusion of various identifiable stages which composition undergoes, unlike the product approach which treats the act of writing with finality. The persistence of the composing process notion for multiple drafts in text creation has called for active involvement of learners as both reviewers and feedback providers. Despite the growing research in the area of writing processes, little is known about the effects of peer review on L2 writers' perceptions and linguistic development. The present study explores the effects of peer review activities on ESL composing process practice as perceived by the learners and the ways by which these activities affect students' linguistic development. Twenty nine undergraduate matriculation students at the IIUM majoring in English language and literature participated in the study. Sixteen of these students participated in the peer review activities, while the remaining thirteen formed the comparison group. A total of 130 essays (80 essays produced during peer review activities and 50 essays during the pre test and post test stages by both groups) were collected over a period of nine weeks. Peer reviews were conducted over five sessions, and first and revised drafts were produced on five different topics of expository writing genre. The students' first and final drafts, pre test and post test essays were collected and analyzed, and a post interview and a questionnaire survey were conducted. Non-participant observation was carried out to determine the types of negotiation and interaction that occur during peer review sessions. Further, students' errors before and after exposure to peer reviews were analyzed, identified and classified. The findings indicate that the students perceived peer review as useful and effective, and that they maintained social harmony during the process of providing and getting comments and feedback. It was also discovered that the students demonstrated selectivity in incorporating peer comments and suggestions, besides displaying fewer form and content errors after the exposure to peer reviews. Peer reviews were also found to contribute to the development of learners' social skills, awareness as learners and of linguistic as well as rhetorical knowledge The study suggests that L2 learners be given more opportunities to participate in process-based composing activities. The study also suggests that there is a need for error analysis within the context of process-oriented language learning in appreciation of learners' errors as positive learning strategies and signs of learners' current language on the target language

Globalized party-based democracy and Africa: the influence of global party-based democracy networks

In this paper, I intend to explain what we mean by globalized party-based democracy in an African context.1 The paper treats globalized party-based democracy as an extension of African colonial and imperial legacy and probes questions on the influence of today’s global party-based democracy networks on African political parties. Specifically, I compare the accession of the major political parties in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi to global party-based democracy networks, and their influence on their ideologies and policy orientations in an era of neo-liberal globalisation. If some aspects of African party-based democracy have globalized, the next question is what aspects have not (been) globalized. Paradoxically, despite a myriad of global influences, party-based democracies in Africa have retained much of their nascent quasi-polyarchy traits characterised by ethnic, religious and regional divisions, political patronage and weak internal party democracy. This prospect negates the idea that African political parties, indeed African political institutions, are under threat of being “universalised” as consequence of the ascendancy of globalized party-based democracy

Enhancing Peer Review Through Critical Reading: A learner Training Model

The recursive and complex nature of the composing process, centred on peer review, involves multiple steps in the production of a text such as drafting, revision, rewriting, reshaping, and negotiation of meanings. This paper argues that in order for peer review to be an effective feedback delivery system, L2 students of writing need to be trained on critical reading before they embark on reviewing peers’ drafts. The paper further argues that implementation of critical reading can improve the ability of both feedback provider and student writer to work together toward the accomplishment of the process of writing and production of final draft

Big Data Meets Telcos: A Proactive Caching Perspective

Mobile cellular networks are becoming increasingly complex to manage while classical deployment/optimization techniques and current solutions (i.e., cell densification, acquiring more spectrum, etc.) are cost-ineffective and thus seen as stopgaps. This calls for development of novel approaches that leverage recent advances in storage/memory, context-awareness, edge/cloud computing, and falls into framework of big data. However, the big data by itself is yet another complex phenomena to handle and comes with its notorious 4V: velocity, voracity, volume and variety. In this work, we address these issues in optimization of 5G wireless networks via the notion of proactive caching at the base stations. In particular, we investigate the gains of proactive caching in terms of backhaul offloadings and request satisfactions, while tackling the large-amount of available data for content popularity estimation. In order to estimate the content popularity, we first collect users' mobile traffic data from a Turkish telecom operator from several base stations in hours of time interval. Then, an analysis is carried out locally on a big data platform and the gains of proactive caching at the base stations are investigated via numerical simulations. It turns out that several gains are possible depending on the level of available information and storage size. For instance, with 10% of content ratings and 15.4 Gbyte of storage size (87% of total catalog size), proactive caching achieves 100% of request satisfaction and offloads 98% of the backhaul when considering 16 base stations.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Big Data Caching for Networking: Moving from Cloud to Edge

In order to cope with the relentless data tsunami in $5G$ wireless networks, current approaches such as acquiring new spectrum, deploying more base stations (BSs) and increasing nodes in mobile packet core networks are becoming ineffective in terms of scalability, cost and flexibility. In this regard, context-aware $5$G networks with edge/cloud computing and exploitation of \emph{big data} analytics can yield significant gains to mobile operators. In this article, proactive content caching in $5$G wireless networks is investigated in which a big data-enabled architecture is proposed. In this practical architecture, vast amount of data is harnessed for content popularity estimation and strategic contents are cached at the BSs to achieve higher users' satisfaction and backhaul offloading. To validate the proposed solution, we consider a real-world case study where several hours of mobile data traffic is collected from a major telecom operator in Turkey and a big data-enabled analysis is carried out leveraging tools from machine learning. Based on the available information and storage capacity, numerical studies show that several gains are achieved both in terms of users' satisfaction and backhaul offloading. For example, in the case of $16$ BSs with $30\%$ of content ratings and $13$ Gbyte of storage size ($78\%$ of total library size), proactive caching yields $100\%$ of users' satisfaction and offloads $98\%$ of the backhaul.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazine, Special Issue on Communications, Caching, and Computing for Content-Centric Mobile Network

Writing for Publication in English: Challenges and Prospects

This paper attempts to investigate English teachers’ perceptions about the importance of writing for publication in English, and the challenges that they encounter. The subjects were 30 teachers from 3 departments in a public college in Oman. The instrument was a 3-question survey on difficulties and challenges in writing for publication in English faced by the tutors. The respondents’ answers were analysed and classified. The results revealed two types of challenges identified initially: discursive (language-related) and non-discursive (non-language-related) challenges. A third challenge which has been termed others was discovered. The findings also highlighted the importance of the growing popularity of research activity by non-native English speakers in the non-English speaking countries. The study also suggested the key role higher education institutes should play in boosting research contributions by academic staff and curbing the problems of publishing in the English Language from a new standpoint

How to determine Sample Size: the Design of Sample Size in Health Studies

Sample-size determination is often an important step in planning a health study—and it is usually a difficult one. Among the important hurdles to be surpassed, one must obtain an estimate of one or more error variances, and specify an effect size of importance. This paper offers some suggestions for successful and meaningful sample-size determination. Also discussed is the possibility that a sample size may not be the main issue and that the real goal is to design a high-quality study. Finally, criticism is made of some ill-advised shortcuts relating to testing power and sample size

The Effect of Direct and Indirect Boiling on Chemical Composition and Microbial load of Disposed Waste Fish of White Nile State, Sudan

     The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of direct and indirect boiling treatments on disposed fish collected from the White Nile River, South of Eldueim town, for the benefit of being used as local fishmeal. The fish samples were identified and analyzed microbiologically and chemically. Crude protein, fat, ash, and metabolizable energy values for treated and untreated samples were found higher than those of the imported broilers concentrates by 20%, 9.7%, 51%, and 36%, respectively. The levels of calcium for direct and indirect boiling treated and untreated samples were 5.6, 4.9, and 4.82%, while for phosphorus they were 3.49, 3.06, and 3.09%, respectively. Treated and untreated samples were higher in sodium content than that of the imported concentrate by 70%. They also one and a half times higher for the phosphorus content. The total concentrations of amino acids for direct and indirect boiling treated samples were 1.21 and 1.13% for methionine and 3.51 and 3.30% for lysine, respectively. Escherichia coli. was totally eradicated by treatments. The direct and indirect boiling gave large numbers of molds and Salmonella spp., amounting to 1.00 × 106 and 2.00 × 106 and 0.50 × 106 and 0.50 × 106 cfu/g, respectively. The results indicated that disposed fish could replace imported concentrates as feedstuff after direct and indirect boiling for poultry feeding, in Sudan

Capability of Trichoderma viride to Produce Cellulolytic and Pectolytic Enzymes

Background: Species of the genus Trichoderma have been used in the food and textile industries to produce cellulases and other enzymes that degrade complex polysaccharide structures. Trichoderma species have been utilized to make cellulases and other enzymes that break down intricate polysaccharide structures in the food and textile industries. The study investigated the nutritional requirements and the production of enzymes by the fungus Trichoderma viride fungus' ability to produce enzymes).Methods: We used a medium supplemented with cellulolytic and pectic substances for enzyme production.Results: The results of the study proved that. Methionine, Glutamic acid, and leucine effectively enhanced mycelial growth. Findings regarding impact of pH level on the development of the fungus T. viride indicated that the maximum growth was at pH 5.0. However, growth decreased dramatically with increasing pH values. We examined the power of the fungus T. viride to produce cellulolytic and pectolytic enzymes in various substrates in the current study.Conclusion: The findings demonstrated that Pectin was the best substrate for pectolytic enzyme synthesis, whereas Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) was the best substrate for the cellulolytic enzyme