Learning Languages as Expressions of Cultures

This paper considers how ideas about language and culture influence language learning. The methodology for the study is a comparison of the tasks involved in learning introductory Hindi and Japanese. The paper was written after 132 hours of study of Japanese. Through comparing how Japanese and Hindi are taught I demonstrate that integral to the learning of these languages is the need to understand linguistic forms as expressions of distinctive cultural practices. This is prefaced by a discussion of standards being advocated for language teaching in the Common European Framework (CEFR) and in the American Council for the Teaching of foreign languages (ACTFL). I argue that further work needs to be done examining how Asian cultures influence language usage and how standards might be set for understanding the relationship between languages and cultures. The conclusion which I draw from this is that the adoption of neither CEFR nor ACFTL standards will not have beneficial impact on learners without further studies of the relationship between socio- cultural and communicative approaches to language teaching

Innovative Assessment in Hindi

In this article, I will examine the challenge facing Hindi language teaching in Australia due to the development of distinct cohorts of learners covering a spectrum from heritage to non-heritage learners of Hindi. I shall situate this examination in the interaction between language teaching styles and assessment, which has been a feature of Hindi teaching in Australian universities since its establishment in he 1970s. Following the typology of Cook (2008), I shall consider how a succession of teaching styles has impacted Hindi teaching during this period and how the development of Hindi teaching styles has impacted Hindi teaching then argue that, in response to the contemporary challenges presented by diverse student cohorts and the extensive use of online text based translation tools by students , there is a need to adopt a new comprehensive approach to assessment, incorporating real time activities based on task based learning activities

The Crystal and Molecular Structure of Dimethyl Ketene Dimer and Acedianthrone, Aceanthrono-(2'.1':1.2)-Aceanthrone

The research work described in this thesis has been separated into two parts and an appendix. These contain reports on the crystal and molecular structures of dimethyl ketene dimer and acedianthrone, determined by X-ray diffraction methods. The appendix describes a further analysis of the results of the three dimensional investigation of naphthalene, undertaken to obtain more information on the positions of the hydrogen atoms and on the effect of the pi electrons on bond length. The unit cell dimensions and space group of fluoranthene have also been determined. Part I. The crystal and molecular structure of dimethyl ketene dimer has been determined by the X-ray method. The crystals were found to have the unusual space group C3 2h C 2/m with 2 molecules per unit cell. The cell dimensions are, a = 6.55+/-0.02A., b = 10.26+/-0.03A., c = 6.43+/-0.02A., beta = 10

Reassessing Religion and Politics in the Life of Jagjivan Ram

Jagjivan Ram (1908-1986) was, for more than four decades, the leading figure from India's Dalit communities in the Indian National Congress party. In this paper, I argue that the relationship between religion and politics in Jagjivan Ram's career needs to be reassessed. This is because the common perception of him as a secular politician has overlooked the role that his religious beliefs played in forming his political views. Instead, I argue that his faith in a Dalit Hindu poet-saint called Ravid?s was fundamental to his political career. Acknowledging the role that religion played in Jagjivan Ram's life also allows us to situate discussions of his life in the context of contemporary debates about religion and politics. Jeffrey Haynes has suggested that these often now focus on whether religion is a cause of conflict or a path to the peaceful resolution of conflict. In this paper, I examine Jagjivan Ram's political life and his belief in the Ravid?s? religious tradition. Through this, I argue that Jagjivan Ram's career shows how political and religious beliefs led to him favoring a non-confrontational approach to conflict resolution in order to promote Dalit rights

The life and works of Sant Raidas.

This thesis examines the life and works of the 15th century Indian Saint known as Raidas by Hindi speakers and as Ravidas by Panjabi speakers. The first chapter surveys the sources for the study of his life and investigates what is known of his life and the development of his hagiography. The second chapter describes the manuscript sources for the vani of Raidas. The third chapter examines the original form of Raidas's works and how their transmission within oral traditions influenced their content prior to their being set down in manuscript form. The fourth chapter is a study of the teachings of Raidas as found in this critical edition of his works. The fifth chapter is an examination of the differences between the DSdQ PanthT, Sikh, and Nath recensions of the vani. In this chapter it is argued that it is those portions of the vani which are found in most, or all, the recensions of the vani which are most likely to represent original compositions of Raidas himself and the early Raidas tradition. The sixth chapter is a critical edition of 111 padas and 6 sakhis based on twelve sources which predate AD 1700, accompanied by an annotated translation of the text. The seventh and eighth chapters contain a full etymological glossary of the text and brief descriptive grammar of the vani and its prosody

Generic effective source for scalar self-force calculations

A leading approach to the modelling of extreme mass ratio inspirals involves the treatment of the smaller mass as a point particle and the computation of a regularized self-force acting on that particle. In turn, this computation requires knowledge of the regularized retarded field generated by the particle. A direct calculation of this regularized field may be achieved by replacing the point particle with an effective source and solving directly a wave equation for the regularized field. This has the advantage that all quantities are finite and require no further regularization. In this work, we present a method for computing an effective source which is finite and continuous everywhere, and which is valid for a scalar point particle in arbitrary geodesic motion in an arbitrary background spacetime. We explain in detail various technical and practical considerations that underlie its use in several numerical self-force calculations. We consider as examples the cases of a particle in a circular orbit about Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes, and also the case of a particle following a generic time-like geodesic about a highly spinning Kerr black hole. We provide numerical C code for computing an effective source for various orbital configurations about Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, final published versio

Lower Bounds for Heights in Relative Galois Extensions

The goal of this paper is to obtain lower bounds on the height of an algebraic number in a relative setting, extending previous work of Amoroso and Masser. Specifically, in our first theorem we obtain an effective bound for the height of an algebraic number $\alpha$ when the base field $\mathbb{K}$ is a number field and $\mathbb{K}(\alpha)/\mathbb{K}$ is Galois. Our second result establishes an explicit height bound for any non-zero element $\alpha$ which is not a root of unity in a Galois extension $\mathbb{F}/\mathbb{K}$, depending on the degree of $\mathbb{K}/\mathbb{Q}$ and the number of conjugates of $\alpha$ which are multiplicatively independent over $\mathbb{K}$. As a consequence, we obtain a height bound for such $\alpha$ that is independent of the multiplicative independence condition

Crystal constructions in Number Theory

Weyl group multiple Dirichlet series and metaplectic Whittaker functions can be described in terms of crystal graphs. We present crystals as parameterized by Littelmann patterns and we give a survey of purely combinatorial constructions of prime power coefficients of Weyl group multiple Dirichlet series and metaplectic Whittaker functions using the language of crystal graphs. We explore how the branching structure of crystals manifests in these constructions, and how it allows access to some intricate objects in number theory and related open questions using tools of algebraic combinatorics