Vocabulary learning through listening: comparing L2 explanations, teacher codeswitching, contrastive focus-on form and incidental learning

This study explored the teaching and learning of vocabulary through listening among 137 senior high-school EFL learners in China. It compared different types of Lexical Focus-on-Form delivered to four treatment groups: post-listening vocabulary explanations in the L2; codeswitched explanations; explanations providing additional crosslinguistic information (Contrastive Focus-on-Form, CFoF); and no explanations (NE). It also investigated the impact of the intervention on learners’ listening comprehension. Learners completed aural vocabulary tests at pre-, post- and delayed post-test and listening assessments at pre- and post-test. For short and long-term vocabulary acquisition, the three groups receiving explanations significantly outperformed the NE group. Gains for the CFoF group were significantly greater than for the L2 and Codeswitching groups, for both short-term and long-term learning. For listening comprehension, only the NE group made significant improvement from the pre-test to the post-test, as well as making significantly greater pre to post-test improvement than the CFoF and the L2 groups did. The paper concludes by discussing these findings in relation to theories of vocabulary acquisition and listening comprehension, as well as their pedagogical implications

Modeling the Subsurface Structure of Sunspots

While sunspots are easily observed at the solar surface, determining their subsurface structure is not trivial. There are two main hypotheses for the subsurface structure of sunspots: the monolithic model and the cluster model. Local helioseismology is the only means by which we can investigate subphotospheric structure. However, as current linear inversion techniques do not yet allow helioseismology to probe the internal structure with sufficient confidence to distinguish between the monolith and cluster models, the development of physically realistic sunspot models are a priority for helioseismologists. This is because they are not only important indicators of the variety of physical effects that may influence helioseismic inferences in active regions, but they also enable detailed assessments of the validity of helioseismic interpretations through numerical forward modeling. In this paper, we provide a critical review of the existing sunspot models and an overview of numerical methods employed to model wave propagation through model sunspots. We then carry out an helioseismic analysis of the sunspot in Active Region 9787 and address the serious inconsistencies uncovered by \citeauthor{gizonetal2009}~(\citeyear{gizonetal2009,gizonetal2009a}). We find that this sunspot is most probably associated with a shallow, positive wave-speed perturbation (unlike the traditional two-layer model) and that travel-time measurements are consistent with a horizontal outflow in the surrounding moat.Comment: 73 pages, 19 figures, accepted by Solar Physic

Changing balances in Dutch higher education

Like many other higher education systems in the Western world, Dutch higher education underwent profound changes during the last decade. In this article we will present an overview of these changes, and try to formulate an analytical framework that might be suited to analyze this process. In order to set the stage, we will begin with an overview of the Dutch higher education system, in which the broad structure is described, and some trends are presented. Next, an overview is given of the retrenchment and restructuring operations with which Dutch higher education was confronted during the last decade. Drawing, mainly, on public administration and political theory, we then attempt to formulate a framework for analysis. In this we focus on the Dutch higher education system as a policy network, and address the relationships that exist between the various key actors in the network: between government and higher education, among higher education institutions themselves, and among the different actors within the institutions, especially administrators and academics. In doing so, we hope to demonstrate that at all these levels some identical basic processes operate which to a large extent determine the outcomes of governmental policies aimed at changing the higher education system. Time and again the modern state stumbles over the academic system (Clark 1983: 137