Technological Applications for Language Teaching

This paper suggests resources for teaching language for general or specific purposes with web-based technology. The authors review the most widely spread technological terms, options, and pedagogical uses

Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication – A Signature Center Initiative

poster abstractThe Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) is a university-based research and service organization created to enhance links between the city of Indianapolis, the state of Indiana, and cultures/nations throughout the world. The center is part of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts in the Department of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). ICIC conducts internationally-recognized research on language and intercultural communication; provides practical training in language and culture for specific purposes that is informed by its research; and applies its expertise to benefit the wider community. Research Current research is on health discourse/health literacy and intercultural rhetoric/discourse through quantitative and qualitative analyses in several areas, to identify factors and forms of interaction and communication, that impact medication adherence, risk comprehension, patient decision-making, and successful self-management of diseases. Training ICIC offers group training programs and individualized tutoring in language and intercultural communication to students, faculty, medical residents and postdoctoral researchers, as well as business professionals in the community. Students from around the world come to Indianapolis to participate in our specialized language training programs. ICIC also offers training to instructors of language and intercultural communication. Our goal is to provide training tailored to learners’ needs and learning situations

The CoMac DescriptorTM and Psychosociolinguistic Tailored Communication to Promote Self-Management (TCPS) in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

poster abstractAbstract: Estimates show that between 35-50% of patients with chronic conditions do not adhere to medical prescriptions. Lack of adherence to treatment plans results in poor clinical/patient outcomes, higher healthcare costs, and lost productivity. Adherence is connected to health literacy and health communication. Health literacy includes the ability to comprehend medical information and make decisions about healthy behaviors. Much of the focus on health literacy has been on reading and numeracy; however, in the clinic setting, health information is most often exchanged through provider-patient verbal communication. Verbal exchange of information includes speaking and listening. Linguistic tactics can be used to draw individuals’ attention to messages, selecting specific words, phrases, and style of communicating, informed by linguistics, can create a psychological closeness between the message and the audience. Increasing attention to oral messages should be a key strategy in health communication to promote adherence and self-management. This presentation describes the effectiveness and the practicality of an innovative psychosociolinguistic intervention tool, based on previous research in linguistic analysis of patient talk, the CoMac DescriptorTM and the subsequent psychosociolinguistically informed communication (Connor et al., 2012; Connor & Lauten 2014). As an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the International Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) at IUPUI, we have used the CoMac DescriptorTM, a 12-question survey, to identify and segment patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) based on patients’ psychosociolinguistic characteristics. We have then offered healthcare providers psychosociolinguistically informed communication, matching the linguistic styles of patients. We will share the key findings such as 1) patients’ and healthcare professionals’ overall satisfaction with the CoMac DescriptorTM and psychosociolinguistically informed communication; and 2) statistically significant relationship between the health behaviors and health outcomes of patients using the CoMac Descriptor and psychosociolinguistically informed communication

Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication: Translating Health Discourse Research into Action

poster abstractThe Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) is a university-based research and service organization created to enhance links between the city of Indianapolis, the state of Indiana, and cultures/nations throughout the world. ICIC conducts internationally recognized research on language and intercultural communication and applies its expertise to benefit the wider community. The Center also offers group training programs and individualized tutoring in language for specific purposes and intercultural communication to students, faculty, medical residents, postdoctoral researchers, and business professionals in the community as well as international language educators. ICIC’s research focuses on health discourse from the perspective of intercultural rhetoric. The Center’s strong linguistic background provides a unique multimodal approach to the study of factors and forms of interaction and communication that impact medication adherence, risk comprehension, and patient disease management and decision-making. In keeping with the Signature Center Initiative mandate to conduct research that translates into practice, the results of ICIC’s research translate into action in the form of training to healthcare providers and guidelines for patient-tailored language and communication strategies. This poster features results from recent ICIC research projects, among them a study of linguistic indicators related to diabetes patient self-management and an intercultural analysis of sources of medical information in Spanish-speaking diabetes patients. Also featured are ongoing and future projects: a psychosociolinguistic study of patient voices to be applied to the development of patient-tailored messaging and the health-literacy oriented redesign of the Walther Cancer Center information portal for patients

New directions in contrastive rhetoric

Contrastive rhetoric examines differences and similarities in writing across cultures. Although mainly concerned with student essay writing in its rst 30 years, the area of study today contributes to knowledge about preferred patterns of writing in many English for speci c purposes situations. This article discusses some of the new directions contrastive rhetoric has taken. Following a brief review of the goals, methods, and accomplishments of research in contrastive rhetoric during the past 30 years, the article examines how contrastive rhetoric has been pursued with varying aims and methods in a variety of EFL situations involving academic and professional writing. Recent criticisms of contrastive rhetoric and their effects on changing directions are then surveyed. C ontrastive rhetoric examines differences and similarities in ESL and EFL writing across languages and cultures as well as across such different contexts as education and commerce. Hence, it considers texts not merely as static products but as functional parts of dynamic cultural contexts. Although largely restricted throughout much of its rst 30 years to a fairly rigid form, student essay writing, the eld today contributes to knowledge about preferred patterns of writing in many English for speci c purposes situations. Undeniably, it has had an appreciable impact on the understanding of cultural differences in writing, and it has had, and will continue to have, an effect on the teaching of ESL and EFL writing. Despite many developments in contrastive rhetoric in the past 30 years and its contribution to ESL and EFL teaching, its focus on the study of contrast or difference has laid the area open to criticism

Die Mühlen der Zivilisation 2: Gefangen in den Echokammern des Staates?

James C. Scott: Die Mühlen der Zivilisation: Eine Tiefengeschichte der frühesten Staaten. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2019. 978-3-518-58729-

Using Computerized Corpus Analysis To Investigate The Textlinguistic Discourse Moves Of a Genre

This post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of the article submitted to IUPUI ScholarWorks as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner’s website or through direct contact with copyright owner.Recently there has been a growing interest in and recognition of the value of specialized corpora, such as learner corpora [Granger, S. (1998). The computer learner corpus: a versatile new source of data for SLA research. In S. Granger, Learner English on computer (pp. 3–18). New York: Longman], in facilitating discourse analysis. Despite this trend, most corpus-based analyses have centered on the lexico–grammatical patterning of texts with less regard for functional and rhetorical, textlinguistic aspects [Flowerdew, L. (1998). Corpus linguistic techniques applied to textlinguistics. System, 26, 541–552]. The goals of this study were: (1) to demonstrate the efficacy of a multi-level analysis of a genre-specific learner corpus that included both a hand-tagged moves-analysis coupled with a computerized analysis of lexico-grammatical features of texts; and (2) to show how a pragmatic concept such as politeness can be operationalized to allow for computer generated counts of linguistic features related to that concept. In this study of politeness strategies used by Americans, Finns, and Belgians in a learner corpus of letters of application, we found that Americans as a group tended to be much more patterned, even formulaic, in their politeness strategies. The Belgians, on the other hand, showed more individuality in their letters with the Finns exhibiting both traits to lesser degrees. In this paper we argue for a textlinguistic approach that considers the special features of genre-specific corpora

Development of patient-centric linguistically tailored psychoeducational messages to support nutrition and medication self-management in type 2 diabetes: a feasibility study

Purpose: This study evaluated the feasibility of developing linguistically tailored educational messages designed to match the linguistic styles of patients segmented into types with the Descriptor™, and to determine patient preferences for tailored or standard messages based on their segments. Patients and methods: Twenty patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) were recruited from a diabetes health clinic. Participants were segmented using the Descriptor™, a language-based questionnaire, to identify patient types based on their control orientation (internal/external), agency (high/low), and affect (positive/negative), which are well studied constructs related to T2DM self-management. Two of the seven self-care behaviors described by the American Association of Diabetes Educators (healthy eating and taking medication) were used to develop standard messages and then linguistically tailored using features of the six different construct segment types of the Descriptor™. A subset of seven participants each provided feedback on their preference for standard or linguistically tailored messages; 12 comparisons between standard and tailored messages were made. Results: Overall, the tailored messages were preferred to the standard messages. When the messages were matched to specific construct segment types, the tailored messages were preferred over the standard messages, although this was not statistically significant. Conclusion: Linguistically tailoring messages based on construct segments is feasible. Further - more, tailored messages were more often preferred over standard messages. This study provides some preliminary evidence for tailoring messages based on the linguistic features of control orientation, agency, and affect. The messages developed in this study should be tested in a larger more representative sample. The present study did not explore whether tailored messages were better understood. This research will serve as preliminary evidence to develop future studies with the ultimate goal to design intervention studies to investigate if linguistically tailoring com - munication within the context of patient education influences patient knowledge, motivation, and activation toward making healthy behavior changes in T2DM self-management

An intercultural analysis of sources of medical information in Spanish-speaking diabetes patients

Understanding and improving health literacy have become important goals in health communication. Research has shown that limited health literacy is associated with poor health outcomes and that it is more prevalent in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. The goals of this study are to describe English-speaking (ES) and Spanish-speaking (SS) diabetic patients’ perceptions of sources of health information, to identify the actions patients report taking in seeking that information, and to test reading comprehension of medical information among SS patients. Data for this study were based on semi-structured interviews, life-story narratives, and a reading comprehension test with diabetic patients (43 native ES patients and 22 native SS patients with limited English proficiency) collected at a bilingual clinic and at an English-speaking clinic in the Midwestern United States (Indianapolis, Indiana). The results showed that the three approaches to the assessment of health literacy revealed disparities in access and use of sources of information as well as disparities in reading comprehension of health information. In view of the results, we argue that understanding and assessing health literacy, particularly in the case of ethnic minorities, requires complementary approaches of study. Emphasis should be placed on addressing the disparities SS patients face. Interventions should aim at maximizing the role of oral sources of information, training patients to use a wider variety of sources, and designing linguistically and culturally appropriate sources of health information for patients with limited English proficiency

An Intercultural Analysis of Sources of Medical Information in Spanish-Speaking Diabetes Patients

Understanding and improving health literacy have become important goals in health communication. Research has shown that limited health literacy is associated with poor health outcomes and that it is more prevalent in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. The goals of this study are to describe English-speaking (ES) and Spanish-speaking (SS) diabetic patients’ perceptions of sources of health information, to identify the actions patients report taking in seeking that information, and to test reading comprehension of medical information among SS patients. Data for this study were based on semi-structured interviews, life-story narratives, and a reading comprehension test with diabetic patients (43 native ES patients and 22 native SS patients with limited English proficiency) collected at a bilingual clinic and at an English-speaking clinic in the Midwestern United States (Indianapolis, Indiana). The results showed that the three approaches to the assessment of health literacy revealed disparities in access and use of sources of information as well as disparities in reading comprehension of health information. In view of the results, we argue that understanding and assessing health literacy, particularly in the case of ethnic minorities, requires complementary approaches of study. Emphasis should be placed on addressing the disparities SS patients face. Interventions should aim at maximizing the role of oral sources of information, training patients to use a wider variety of sources, and designing linguistically and culturally appropriate sources of health information for patients with limited English proficiency