Go for Broke and Speak Your Mind! Building a Community of Practice with Bilingual Pre-Service Teachers

Despite the popularity of communities of practice (CoP) in education, there is a paucity of research on teacher preparation programs that are deliberately created to build and sustain CoP to help bilingual pre-service teachers’ learning. This qualitative study describes how a community of practice was purposefully developed in a teacher preparation program for bilingual undergraduates in Hawaii. Using multiple forms of qualitative data, such as classroom transcripts, interviews, online discussion posts, and reflection journals, I illustrate how a cohort of pre-service teachers and their instructor created a facilitative and reflective classroom community of practice. Using narrative inquiry and thematic analysis, I identified two overarching contextual conditions that provided a favorable learning environment for student participation: (1) sustained support and rapport within a cohort, and (2) narratives as a process of mutual engagement. Findings suggest teacher educators purposefully create CoP for pre-service teachers around shared narratives in order to foster sustained critical reflections

“I Love this Approach, But Find It Difficult to Jump in with Two Feet!” Teachers’ Perceived Challenges of Employing Critical Literacy

Accompanying myriad definitions of critical literacy is an absence of pedagogical models for implementing critical literacy in teacher education contexts. This action research explores critical literacy with pre-service and in-service teachers in teacher education courses offered in the United States. The primary data sources include online weekly discussions on course readings in the TESOL methods courses I taught in Hawaii and Kansas. First, I propose the working definition of critical literacy in the study (Luke, 2012) and then present course participants’ perceived challenges of employing critical literacy in their current and future classrooms. Findings reveal that despite the differences in the two instructional contexts, both groups recognized that the current standards-based, test-driven educational environment would be the major obstacle for enacting critical literacy in their classroom. In addition, the lack of understanding of critical literacy was addressed by both groups of teachers. I also discuss my struggle and dilemma as a critical teacher educator. Finally, this article concludes with suggestions for introducing critical literacy in teacher education contexts

r-Intrusion in English Non-Rhotic Dialect:Misinterpretation and Coincidence with Phonetic Naturalness

This paper argues that the English non-rhotic dialect is triggered by misinterpretation of the ambiguous status of /r/ as UR or glide, and leads to sound change, for it coincides with the phonetically natural process of glide insertion, evidenced by gestural overlap (Gick 1999). English r-intrusion should be considered both synchronically (phonetic quality) and diachronically (historical origin).Previous studies have focused on only one side while this paper shows historical trigger and synchronic motivation that leads to sound change. Based on Ohala (1993)'s argument, my proposal traces the process of how the phonetic byproduct becomes a legitimate phonological segment. This study supports the view that sound change is not teleological, but subject to unintended events among speakers

Non-universality in Optimality Theory : An Information-based Model

This paper focuses on non-universality in standard OT. Non-universality in OT can be considered in two aspects: language-specific constraints and item-specific constraint ranking. Contrary to the basic assumption of OT, universality of constraints, there are language-specific non-universal constraint. In addition, applicability of the trisyllabic laxing rule implicates that different morphemes require different constraint ranking. Russell's morpheme-constraint model proposes abstract signature of morphemes and gatekeeper which controls different rankings for different morphemic items. This paper expands his idea and proposes a special component, termed Supervisor (SUP). Since operation of SUP is activated based on the information contained in input, information-contained input becomes critical in my proposal. My proposal thus proffers a solution for non-universality issue of standard OT.Supported by the Grant for the Reform of University Education under the BK21 Project of SNU

A weighted-constraint model of F0 movements/

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2010.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 155-159).This dissertation develops a grammar of phonetic implementation of phonologically significant F0 (pitch) events, which is applicable across languages. Through production studies of various languages, we show that phonetic universals exist which govern phonetic realization of the phonological representations of tones. In the previous literature, there have been two conflicting views concerning tonal timing: tones are aligned with respect to segments (the Segmental Anchoring Hypothesis) or tones occur at a fixed interval from other tones (the Constant Duration Hypothesis). In this dissertation, the two hypotheses are tested in languages with various tonal phonologies: Seoul Korean (phrasal boundary tone), Tokyo Japanese (lexical pitch accent), Mandarin (lexical tone), and English (intonational pitch accent). In all languages, both tendencies to maintain segmental alignment and a target duration for pitch rises are simultaneously observed. We thus adopt a weighted-constraint model (Flemming, 2001) where segmental alignment and target duration are interpreted as weighted constraints. In this model, timing of tones is determined to minimize the summed cost of violation of these conflicting constraints. Mixed-effects models were fitted to the data to obtain the actual weights in each language. Relative weights of the constraints reflect cross-linguistic differences in the alignment of tones. The relative weights of constraints in the phonetic realization grammar are not random but systematic, reflecting the phonological nature of tones in each language. The experimental studies in this dissertation show that tonal alignment patterns depend on phonological status and context of tones. Lexically-contrastive tones (Japanese accented words, Mandarin lexical tone) or prominence-lending tones (English pitch accents) are more strictly aligned with respect to their anchoring points than phrasal boundary tones (Seoul Korean, Japanese unaccented words), if other conditions are equal. Tones show different alignment patterns depending on phonological context: tones are more strictly aligned in word-final context than in word-medial context in Japanese accented words, and in lexical-tone context than in neutral-tone context in Mandarin. In addition, languages show different phonetic realization patterns depending on whether contour tones are contrastive in the language (Mandarin and English) or not (Korean and Japanese). These results point to the fact that details of phonetic realization of tones are determined by language-specific phonetic realization grammar, rather than by default universal rules.by Hyesun Cho.Ph.D

Frequency and stress preservation : Encoding Frequency in OT

This paper attempts to show frequency effect on English word stress with corpus-based study, and to incorporate frequency into Optimality Theoretic grammar. I propose the constraint ID-Stress (f≤t) and the hierarchy ID-Stress (f≤t) >> *Clash-Head >> ID-Stress. Even though frequency alone is not the absolute factor in stress assignment in that other factors such as morpheme-specificity are also influential, it is clearly an interesting aspect in English stress phenomena.Supported by the Grant for the Reform of University Education under the BK21 Project of SNU

Encoding Frequency in OT: Frequency effect on stress preservation

Since English stress is involved with various idiosyncratic patterns, it is very difficult to give a complete account despite the volume of studies that have been done so far. The first pioneering work by Chomsky and Halle (1968) explains English stress as a product of interaction between cyclic and non-cyclic rules. This account, however, cannot be applied to all English words; it is not difficult to find apparent exceptions. The rule-based theory like this is destined to fail especially in case of English stress since it has abundant exceptions that cannot be measured by only a set of rules. In this sense, it is not exaggeration that Optimality Theory is more suitable than rule-based approach in explaining English stress pattern. Optimality Theory has succeeded in giving more improved account for, for example, metrical stress by Generalized Alignment (McCarthy and Prince 1993). Nevertheless, English stress is yet far from being fully explained. Since English stress is basically involved with lots of lexical idiosyncrasies, we need a tool to handle these lexical differences

Hard templating synthesis of mesoporous and nanowire SnO2 lithium battery anode materials

Mesoporous and nanowire SnO2 anode materials for lithium batteries were prepared using KIT-6 and SBA-15 SiO2 templates, and their electrochemical properties were compared at different current rates. The as-prepared SnO2 nanowires had a diameter of 6 nm and a length of >3 μm and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of 80 m2 g-1 while mesoporous SnO2 showed a pore size of 3.8 nm and a BET surface area of 160 m2 g-1. The charge capacities of these two anodes were similar to each other at 800 mAh g-1, but mesoporous SnO2 showed much improved cycle life performance and rate capabilities because of its higher surface area than nanowire SnO2. Especially, the capacity retention of the mesoporous SnO2 was 98%, compared with 31% for the SnO2 nanowires at a 10 C rate (= 4000 mA g-1). The improved electrochemical performance of the mesoporous SnO2 was related to the regular porosity which permitted thorough flooding of the electrolyte between the particles, and the mesopores which acted as a buffer zone during the volume contraction and expansion of Sn.close15415

Racism and Sexism in Superhero Movies: Critical Race Media Literacy in the Korean High School Classroom

Past research on critical race media literacy (CRML) in multicultural education has primarily focused on identifying ways of fostering critical awareness of racism in the U.S. educational context. This study aims to present a situated account of a CRML pedagogy in the Korean high school classroom where students critique the racial and gender discrimination perpetuated in films. Using qualitative research data, such as teacher interviews and student presentation videos, the current study depicts ways in which Korean female high school students raise critical awareness of racism and sexism with the help of an English-speaking native teacher.

Compression and truncation: The case of Seoul Korean accentual phrase

Compression and truncation are two general strategies adopted by languages in realizing tonal melodies in the face of time pressure. Compression involves adjustment of the phonetic details of tone realization to fit a tone sequence in the time available, while truncation involves deletion of a phonological tone, reducing a melody to fit the segmental material with which it must be associated. Seoul Korean appears to show truncation of tones in response to time pressure resulting from fast speech rate: the Accentual Phrase (AP) is canonically marked by a rise-fall-rise melody (LHLH), but at fast speech rates, APs can be realized with a rising F0 contour. Categorical tone deletion conditioned by speech rate would be theoretically significant because it would imply that a phonological operation can be conditioned by utterance-specific phonetic detail. However, analysis of the realization of the AP melody across a range of speech rates provides evidence that the apparent deletion of tones is actually the end result of compressing the final HLH sequence into such a short interval that the low tone is completely undershot and the two high tones are effectively merged. This analysis illustrates the general point that it is not possible to determine what phonological representation gave rise to a particular phonetic form without explicit analysis of the process of phonetic implementation