Raising Greek high-school students’ awareness of conversational implicatures with the use of corpora

Τα τελευταία χρόνια ιδιαίτερη έμφαση έχει δοθεί στην διδασκαλία της πραγματολογίας γενικά (Kasper, 1997; Rose and Kasper, 2001; Rose, 2005) και ειδικότερα στην αξία της διδασκαλίας της πραγματολογίας κατά την εκμάθηση της Αγγλικής ως ξένη γλώσσα (Tanaka, 1997; Lee, 2002; Taguchi, 2002; Alcón Soler, 2005; Taguchi, 2005; Aksoyalp and Toprak, 2015). Ωστόσο, παρόλο που οι Έλληνες μαθητές διδάσκονται αγγλικά από πολύ νεαρή ηλικία, αυτό που στην πραγματικότητα δημιουργείται είναι μια γενιά ικανών χρηστών της Αγγλικής που αντιμετωπίζουν πρόβλημα ανεπαρκούς κατανόησης όταν επικοινωνούν διαπολιτισμικά λόγω της έλλειψης πραγματολογικών γνώσεων. Η παρούσα μελέτη στοχεύει να διερευνήσει την εξοικείωση των Ελλήνων μαθητών λυκείου με την έννοια των ‘implicatures’ (υπονοούμενα) και να καλύψει ένα σημαντικό κενό στον τομέα της διδασκαλίας τους κατά το μάθημα των αγγλικών σε τάξεις ελληνικών σχολείων με αποτελέσματα που μπορούν να αποδειχθούν καθολικά για τη διδασκαλία των ‘implicatures’ στα αγγλικά αλλά και σε άλλες γλώσσες. Οι κύριοι στόχοι μου ήταν η αξιολόγηση της επίδρασης της διδασκαλίας των ‘implicatures’ με τη χρήση αυθεντικών κειμένων που ανακτήθηκαν από σώματα κειμένων (corpora) και η ανάπτυξη διδακτικού υλικού που μπορεί να αποδειχθεί χρήσιμο για την βελτίωση και την αξιολόγηση της πραγματολογικής επίγνωσης των μαθητών. Η μελέτη μου είχε ως στόχο να προσφέρει μια ολοκληρωμένη προσέγγιση για την αύξηση της πραγματολογικής ευαισθητοποίησης (Ifantidou, 2014) των μαθητών, καθώς περιλάμβανε υλικό βασισμένο σε παραδείγματα της πραγματικής ζωής (Boulton and Landure, 2016). Επιπλέον, επικεντρώθηκε σε πιο δημιουργικά ‘implicatures’ παρά σε συμβατικά, τα οποία είναι τυποποιημένα και, επομένως, μπορούν να επεξεργαστούν πιο εύκολα από τους μαθητές χωρίς να προκαλέσουν σοβαρά επικοινωνιακά προβλήματα (Vega, 2007). Προς αυτή την κατεύθυνση, υιοθετήθηκε το θεωρητικό πλαίσιο της Relevance Theory (Θεωρία Συνάφειας) (Carston, 2001; Wilson and Sperber, 2004; Wilson, 2009) και ακολουθήθηκε η διαδικασία ‘pre-test – teaching sessions on implicature—post-test’ τόσο για την πιλοτική όσο και για την κύρια μελέτη. Μετά την ποσοτική και ποιοτική αξιολόγηση των ευρημάτων, συνήχθη το συμπέρασμα ότι αυτό που καθιστά τo συγκεκριμένo υλικό κατάλληλο για διδασκαλία είναι το γεγονός ότι βασίστηκε αποκλειστικά σε αυθεντικές πηγές και όχι σε παραδοσιακά, μη αυθεντικά κείμενα που δεν εκθέτουν οι μαθητές στην πραγματική χρήση της γλώσσας. Επιβεβαιώθηκε επίσης ότι η διαδικασία ανάκτησης των ‘implicatures’ μπορεί να είναι ένας σημαντικός παράγοντας για τους μαθητές προκειμένου να επεξεργάζονται τη γλώσσα μόνοι τους. Τέλος, επαληθεύτηκε ότι η Relevance Theory για την προσέγγιση των ‘implicatures’ είναι πιο ακριβής και σαφέστερη όταν πρόκειται για τον ορισμό τους και είναι ιδιαίτερα ωφέλιμη για τους εκπαιδευτικούς που θέλουν να δώσουν έμφαση στα συμφραζόμενα (context).Over recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the teaching of pragmatics in general (Kasper, 1997; Rose and Kasper, 2001; Rose, 2005) and to the value of explicit teaching of pragmatics in an EFL classroom in particular (Tanaka, 1997; Lee, 2002; Taguchi, 2002; Alcón Soler, 2005; Taguchi, 2005; Aksoyalp and Toprak, 2015). In the Greek EFL context, although English is taught from a very young age, proficient Greek speakers of English are confronted with several misunderstandings when communicating cross-culturally. The present research aimed to investigate the familiarity of Greek high-school students with the concept of implicature and fill in a considerable gap within the field of teaching pragmatics in the EFL classroom of Greek schools, hoping that it may influence the teaching of implicatures in English, and possibly also in other languages. My main purpose was, on the one hand, to evaluate the effect of explicit teaching of implicatures with the use of authentic texts retrieved from corpora and, on the other hand, to develop teaching and testing materials with a view to raising and assessing learners’ pragmatic awareness. My research aimed to offer a complete approach to raising learners’ pragmatic awareness (as defined in Ifantidou, 2014) as it encompassed both teaching and testing materials based on real-life examples retrieved from corpora (Boulton and Landure, 2016). Moreover, it focused on creative conversational implicatures rather than conventional ones, since conventionalized implicatures are formulaic and patterned and can, thus, be processed more easily by EFL learners without causing serious communicational breakdowns (Vega, 2007). Towards that direction, the relevance-theoretic framework was adopted (Carston, 2001; Wilson and Sperber, 2004; Wilson, 2009) and the process of pre-test, teaching sessions on implicatures, post-test was followed both during the pilot and the main studies. After the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the findings, it was concluded that what made particularized conversational implicatures amenable to teaching is the fact that they appeared in contexts retrieved from authentic resources instead of traditional, expository and non-authentic texts, which fail to expose learners to real-life language. It was also confirmed that the process of implicature retrieval may be a crucial factor for induction, and advantageous for learners to process language on their own. Finally, it was verified that the relevance-theoretic approach to implicatures is more adequate when it comes to defining what an implicature is and provides the most plausible approach for teachers who intend to assign prominence to the role of context in implicature retrieval

Neutron Inelastic Scattering Cross Section Measurements for 23Na

In March 2011 the final data from measurements for the 23Na(n,n'gamma) reaction were delivered to the CEA - Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, Cadarache, France in the context of the EURATOM-CEA collaboration agreement. This report documents that deliverable. The measurement campaign was initiated in response to a request expressed by the CEA at a meeting of the Joint Evaluated Fission and Fusion nuclear data library project in 2007. This meeting took place under the auspices of the Nuclear Energy Agency (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). The CEA supports research for the advanced, Generation-IV type, sodium cooled fast reactor and is engaged in a project to develop a prototype: ASTRID - the advanced sodium test reactor for industrial development. Inelastic scattering cross sections for sodium are of interest to the development of sodium cooled fast reactors. A recent OECD-NEA subgroup analysed the sensitivity of reactor parameters to cross sections and accordingly determined target uncertainties for the nuclear data [1]. Comparing these target uncertainties with the current status of nuclear data uncertainties and covariance data resulted in a list of target priorities. Among these features sodium inelastic scattering for which a target uncertainty of 4% was established for the average cross section in the energy range from threshold to 1.35 MeV. This is approximately seven times as good as the uncertainty for current evaluated data files for this isotope (see OECD-NEA High Priority Request List [2]). At IRMM, the GAINS gamma-array for inelastic neutron scattering was developed with the purpose of measuring cross sections with uncertainties at or below the target uncertainties for nuclides like 23Na using the (n, n'g)-technique [3,4]. In response to the request, a measurement campaign of the 23Na(n,n¿g) reaction was conducted with the GAINS array during 2009-2010, using metallic Na discs of 99.8% purity. The sample and the measurements were made at the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements in Geel making use of GELINA, the Geel linear electron accelerator that drives a pulsed white neutron source allowing measurements by the neutron time-of-flight technique. A preliminary report of this work was presented earlier [5]. For the experimental work a careful review was made of the gamma-efficiency calibrations and the flux normalization in order to investigate in detail the corrections and the final uncertainties that may realistically be achieved.JRC.DG.D.5-Nuclear physic

Electron impact ionization loading of a surface electrode ion trap

We demonstrate a method for loading surface electrode ion traps by electron impact ionization. The method relies on the property of surface electrode geometries that the trap depth can be increased at the cost of more micromotion. By introducing a buffer gas, we can counteract the rf heating assocated with the micromotion and benefit from the larger trap depth. After an initial loading of the trap, standard compensation techniques can be used to cancel the stray fields resulting from charged dielectric and allow for the loading of the trap at ultra-high vacuum.Comment: 4 pages, 5 eps figures. Shift in focus, minor correction

Search for the Production of Element 112 in the 48Ca + 238U Reaction

We have searched for the production of element 112 in the reaction of 231 MeV 48Ca with 238U. We have not observed any events with a "one event" upper limit cross section of 1.6 pb for EVR-fission events and 1.8 pb for EVR-alpha events.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Study of (n,xng) reactions on 238U

Prompt-gamma spectroscopy and time-of-flight techniques were used to measure (n,xn gamma) cross-sections on several nuclei of interest for nuclear reactors. Experiments were performed at the GELINA facility which provides a pulsed white neutron beam of maximum energy about 20 MeV. Preliminary results concerning 238U will be presented. This work was supported by PACEN/GEDEPEONand by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme through I3-EFNUDAT (EURATOMcontract no. 036434) and NUDAME (Contract FP6-516487), and within the Seventh Framework Programme through EUFRAT (EURATOM contract no. FP7-211499) and through ANDES (EURATOM contract no. FP7-249671).JRC.D.4-Standards for Nuclear Safety, Security and Safeguard

Recent cross-section measurements of neutron-induced reactions of importance for background estimates in 0νββ

We report on cross-section measurements for the reactions 76Ge(n,2n)75Ge, 76Ge(n,n′γ)76Ge, 126,127,128Te(n,γ)127,129,131Te, and 136Xe(n,n′γ)136Xe in the neutron energy range between 0.5 MeV and 15 MeV

Unveiling Pragmatic Proficiency: Harnessing Corpus Pragmatics for Effective Implicature Assessment in High School Language Learning

<p>This research delves into the realm of second language acquisition and pragmatic competence, with a specific focus on the intricate domain of conversational implicatures. The aim of this study was to design an effective assessment tool for implicature comprehension by harnessing the power of corpus pragmatics. Utilizing the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) corpus, Ι crafted a comprehensive test on conversational implicatures. This test was administered to first-grade high school students, with the objective of evaluating both their comprehension and production abilities within pragmatic contexts. The study reveals the synergistic relationship between corpus pragmatics and digital technology, showcasing the seamless integration of authentic language use through online corpora. The results obtained from the test underscore the efficacy of this approach, with overwhelmingly positive outcomes observed among the participants. By illuminating the intersection of corpus pragmatics, technology, and language acquisition, this research not only contributes to the advancement of language pedagogy but also highlights a promising avenue for future language assessment methodologies.</p&gt