Choice of address terms in conversational setting

A choice of an address term signals the relationship between language and society and how a person imagines his/her relationship with the addressee within this society. Address terms, therefore, provides sociolinguistic information about the interlocutors as well as pragmatic aspect of the situation. Previous research have focused on the effect of power and solidarity in the choice of address terms. This study, on the other hand, focuses on the address terms used during spontaneous conversation taking place in a no-power situation. The primary concern of the study is to identify the potential effects of a bilingual situation and a different culture. This study investigated the address terms school children use in a reciprocal situation, which are further analyzed regarding the potential effect of age, gender and being monolingual or bilingual in this issue. For this purpose, the group conversations of 56 monolingual Turkish speaking and 48 monolingual Turkish-Danish speaking children were analyzed. The address terms are coded and classified as emerged from the data. The results have shown that monolingual children use a great variety of address terms while bilingual children dwell on first names more frequently. Choice of address forms are governed by politeness, and positive and negative face. The results will lead to awareness-raising on pragmatic aspects of conversations and social relationship and will have implications on educational context especially in bilingual settings

Needs Analysis in Curriculum Design: Language Needs of Tourism Students*

In this study, the main aim was to reveal English language needs of tourism students for their future profession. Regarding the obtained needs from students, graduates, content experts and employers in tourism sector, goals and objectives of Vocational English Course were set. The data were collected through needs analysis questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. 70 students in the school where the researcher works, 112 graduates of Tourism and Hotel Management program, 9 content experts and 51 employers working in tourism sector answered the questionnaire. 8 students, 11 graduates, 2 content experts and 5 employers took part in semi-structured interviews voluntarily. After the questionnaire was administered to four groups of participants, the obtained data were analyzed through SPSS 20. On the other hand, while analyzing the qualitative data, the recordings were transcribed for the analysis of data by the researcher. Then, a list of codes developed by Wen (2010) was drawn on for coding. The results indicated that 4 language skills (reading, listening, speaking and writing) were important for tourism students, but particularly listening and speaking language skills for their future profession were emphasized

How does family socioeconomic status affect home and mainstream language?

While considerable numbers of studies have investigated the language processes of bilingual children from various angles, there is little research focusing on the family characteristics in detail. In this study, we concentrate on the family-related variables, such as socioeconomic status and family structure, through a corpus collected in a project that investigates young Turkish-Dutch bilinguals’ early lexical development. Turning our attention in this project to the data collection tools “The Family Information Form“ and “The Inventory of Home Language Use”, we analysed the language-use patterns and family composition in detail in line with family socioeconomic status. Analyses reveal that young Turkish-Dutch bilinguals originate in very heterogeneous families from different perspectives. Socio-demographically diverse families observed in this study highlight the importance of a family-language policy-based approach

The Impact of CoronaVac Vaccination on 28-day Mortality Rate of Critically Ill Patients with COVID-19 in Türkiye

Background:Vaccines against coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) have been effective in preventing symptomatic diseases, hospitalizations, and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions. However, data regarding the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in reducing mortality among critically ill patients with COVID-19 remains unclear.Aims:To determine the vaccination status and investigate the impact of the COVID-19 vaccine on the 28-day mortality in critically ill patients with COVID-19.Study Design:Multicenter prospective observational clinical study.Methods:This study was conducted in 60 hospitals with ICUs managing critically ill patients with COVID-19. Patients aged ≥ 18 years with confirmed COVID-19 who were admitted to the ICU were included. The present study had two phases. The first phase was designed as a one-day point prevalence study, and demographic and clinical findings were evaluated. In the second phase, the 28-day mortality was evaluated.Results:As of August 11, 2021, 921 patients were enrolled in the study. The mean age of the patients was 65.42 ± 16.74 years, and 48.6% (n = 448) were female. Among the critically ill patients with COVID-19, 52.6% (n = 484) were unvaccinated, 7.7% (n = 71) were incompletely vaccinated, and 39.8% (n = 366) were fully vaccinated. A subgroup analysis of 817 patients who were unvaccinated (n = 484) or who had received two doses of the CoronaVac vaccine (n = 333) was performed. The 28-day mortality rate was 56.8% (n = 275) and 57.4% (n = 191) in the unvaccinated and two-dose CoronaVac groups, respectively. The 28-day mortality was associated with age, hypertension, the number of comorbidities, type of respiratory support, and APACHE II and sequential organ failure assessment scores (p < 0.05). The odds ratio for the 28-day mortality among those who had received two doses of CoronaVac was 0.591 (95% confidence interval: 0.413-0.848) (p = 0.004).Conclusion:Vaccination with at least two doses of CoronaVac within six months significantly decreased mortality in vaccinated patients than in unvaccinated patients