Teaching English, Language and Literacy

[Review of Teaching English, Language and Literacy - Wyse, D and Jones, R] When David Wray decides to accord to any work the status of “an impressive achievement” (Wyse and Jones 2008: xvi), it bears some serious scrutiny. Written for “all primary education students and their teachers” (Wyse and Jones 2008: xviii), this is the second edition of a book first published in 2001 and its authors can lay claim to some substantial revisions. Having sought to address the National Literacy Strategy in 2001, Dominic Wyse and Russell Jones now offer a critique of the Primary National Strategy Literacy Framework and set that out in a much wider and ambitious context as “an essential guide to the teaching of English” (Wyse and Jones 2008: xviii). I found myself in the interesting position of assessing that claim from a tangential Scottish perspective, hoping to mine some generic gems. With the usual reservations about the inevitable limitations of any such guide, I believe that this book offers a great deal of interest and value, not only to primary teachers but to a wider audience. Without doubt, it has a distinct voice which dissents very audibly from some current practice where that has its roots in reactive policy initiative rather than research evidence

Novices helped by tutors and teachers

A comment piece in The Times Educational Supplement Scotland on research undertaken by the authors into the perceptions of support received by students on initial teacher education school placements

Machine Learning Assisted Gait Analysis for the Determination of Handedness in Able-bodied People

This study has investigated the potential application of machine learning for video analysis, with a view to creating a system which can determine a person’s hand laterality (handedness) from the way that they walk (their gait). To this end, the convolutional neural network model VGG16 underwent transfer learning in order to classify videos under two ‘activities’: “walking left-handed” and “walking right-handed”. This saw varying degrees of success across five transfer learning trained models: Everything – the entire dataset; FiftyFifty – the dataset with enough right-handed samples removed to produce a set with parity between activities; Female – only the female samples; Male – only the male samples; Uninjured – samples declaring no injury within the last year. The initial phase of this study involved a data collection scheme, as a suitable, pre-existing dataset could not be found to be available. This data collection resulted in 45 participants (7 left-handed, and 38 right-handed. 0 identified as ambidextrous), which resulted in 180 sample videos for use in transfer learning and testing the five produced models. The video samples were recorded to obtain the volunteers’ walking pattern, head to toe, in profile rather than head on. This was to allow the models to obtain as much information about arm and leg movement as possible when it came to analysis. The findings of this study showed that accurate models could be produced. However, this varied substantially depending on the specific sub-dataset selected. Using the entire dataset was found to present the least accuracy (as well as the subset which removed any volunteers reporting injury within the last year). This resulted in a system which would classify all samples as ‘Right’. In contrast the models produced observing the female volunteers (the gender which also provided the highest number of left-handed data samples) was consistently accurate, with a mean accuracy of 75.44%. The course of this study has shown that training such a model to give an accurate result is possible, yet difficult to achieve with such a small sample size containing such a iii small population of left-handed individuals. From the results obtained, it appears that a population has a requirement of \u3e~21% being left-handed in order to begin to see accuracy in laterality determination. These limited successes have shown that there is promise to be found in such a study. Although a larger, more wide-spread undertaking would be necessary to definitively show this

New Results from the MINOS Experiment

Abstract. In this paper we present the latest results from the MINOS Experiment. This includes a new measurement of the oscillation parameters (|∆m 2 32 |, sin 2 (2θ23)) based on 3.36 × 10 20 protons-on-target of data and a first analysis of neutral current events in the Far Detector. The prospects for νe appearance measurements in MINOS are also discussed

New Results from the MINOS Experiment

In this paper we present the latest results from the MINOS Experiment. This includes a new measurement of the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters based on 3.36 x 10^20 protons-on-target of data and a first analysis of neutral current events in the Far Detector. The prospects for nu-e appearance measurements in MINOS are also discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, for the Proceedings of the Neutrino 2008 Conference, Christchurch, N

In the loop: a social network approach to the willingness to communicate in the L2 (L2 WTC)

Despite the conceptual importance of investigating the social context(s) in which second-language (L2) learning and use take place, the decade-old “social turn” within the field of second-language acquisition (SLA) has yet to produce a “parsimonious system of valid and generalizable parameters to describe contextual characteristics” (Dörnyei, 2009a, p. 238). Accordingly, investigating social network structure has recently been suggested as a general approach to examining the link between person and environment (Beckner, et al., 2009). In the current thesis, I offer a network approach in which second-language (L2) learning and use is regarded both as purposeful and as constrained by one’s social relationships. Subsequently, in a first-of-its-kind study within SLA, I apply social network analysis – a diverse array of formally-defined measures of social position and other socio-structural features – to conceptualize and empirically test the relationship between social structure and the willingness to communicate in the L2 (L2 WTC), defined as the “readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time with a specific person or persons, using a L2” (MacIntyre, et al., 1998, p. 547). In a study of Chinese-speaking international students at a British university, trait-like L2 WTC is found to predict cross-cultural adjustment, suggesting the role of actively engaging with one’s new cultural surroundings in establishing an adaptive person-environment fit. Subsequently, in the first study to apply modern, graph-theoretic notions of social position to a network of L2 learners, a significant relationship is found between various notions of structural position among a network of international English-for-Academic-Purposes students, and dispositional L2 WTC. Overall, the results support L2 WTC as both purposeful and constrained, learned from one’s past interactions, yet pushing the individual to take advantage of opportunities to communicate in the L2. Implications, limitations, and future directions of a social network approach to L2 learning and use are also discussed

In the loop: a social network approach to the willingness to communicate in the L2 (L2 WTC)

Despite the conceptual importance of investigating the social context(s) in which second-language (L2) learning and use take place, the decade-old “social turn” within the field of second-language acquisition (SLA) has yet to produce a “parsimonious system of valid and generalizable parameters to describe contextual characteristics” (Dörnyei, 2009a, p. 238). Accordingly, investigating social network structure has recently been suggested as a general approach to examining the link between person and environment (Beckner, et al., 2009). In the current thesis, I offer a network approach in which second-language (L2) learning and use is regarded both as purposeful and as constrained by one’s social relationships. Subsequently, in a first-of-its-kind study within SLA, I apply social network analysis – a diverse array of formally-defined measures of social position and other socio-structural features – to conceptualize and empirically test the relationship between social structure and the willingness to communicate in the L2 (L2 WTC), defined as the “readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time with a specific person or persons, using a L2” (MacIntyre, et al., 1998, p. 547). In a study of Chinese-speaking international students at a British university, trait-like L2 WTC is found to predict cross-cultural adjustment, suggesting the role of actively engaging with one’s new cultural surroundings in establishing an adaptive person-environment fit. Subsequently, in the first study to apply modern, graph-theoretic notions of social position to a network of L2 learners, a significant relationship is found between various notions of structural position among a network of international English-for-Academic-Purposes students, and dispositional L2 WTC. Overall, the results support L2 WTC as both purposeful and constrained, learned from one’s past interactions, yet pushing the individual to take advantage of opportunities to communicate in the L2. Implications, limitations, and future directions of a social network approach to L2 learning and use are also discussed