The wordless picturebook: challenging attitudes about literacy and language learning in multilingual contexts

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Validation of Satellite Rainfall Products for Western Uganda.

Central equatorial Africa is deficient in long-term, ground-based measurements of rainfall; therefore, the aim of this study is to assess the accuracy of three high-resolution, satellite-based rainfall products in western Uganda for the 2001–10 period. The three products are African Rainfall Climatology, version 2 (ARC2); African Rainfall Estimation Algorithm, version 2 (RFE2); and 3B42 from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, version 7 (i.e., 3B42v7). Daily rainfall totals from six gauges were used to assess the accuracy of satellite-based rainfall estimates of rainfall days, daily rainfall totals, 10-day rainfall totals, monthly rainfall totals, and seasonal rainfall totals. The northern stations had a mean annual rainfall total of 1390 mm, while the southern stations had a mean annual rainfall total of 900 mm. 3B42v7 was the only product that did not underestimate boreal-summer rainfall at the northern stations, which had ~3 times as much rainfall during boreal summer than did the southern stations. The three products tended to overestimate rainfall days at all stations and were borderline satisfactory at identifying rainfall days at the northern stations; the products did not perform satisfactorily at the southern stations. At the northern stations, 3B42v7 performed satisfactorily at estimating monthly and seasonal rainfall totals, ARC2 was only satisfactory at estimating seasonal rainfall totals, and RFE2 did not perform satisfactorily at any time step. The satellite products performed worst at the two stations located in rain shadows, and 3B42v7 had substantial overestimates at those stations

Trends and Variability in Localized Precipitation Around Kibale National Park, Uganda, Africa

Our objective was to understand and describe local spatial and temporal variability in precipitation around Kibale National Park, a tropical forest area of high conservation value. Continental or regional-scale trends are often relied upon to make policy and management decisions, but these analyses are often at too coarse a resolution to capture important variability at a finer scale where management actions operate. Monthly rainfall data derived from ten long-term station records (1941-1975) were used to evaluate local spatiotemporal variability in seasonal and annual rainfall for the area surrounding Kibale National Park. The magnitude, direction and significance of trends in seasonal and annual rainfall within the area surrounding the park were identified using the Mann-Kendall trend test and Sen’s slope estimator. The standardized precipitation index was calculated at 3- and 12-month periods to identify areas of relative wetness or dryness. Analysis of annual trends and precipitation indices indicated that patterns in annual time series do not reflect the direction and magnitude of seasonal trends nor the spatial variability in intra-annual rainfall at the local scale. Significant negative trends in the seasonal long rains, following dry season and short rains were identified at stations west of Kibale, while significant positive trends in the seasonal short rains occurred at stations north of the park. Stations along the western park boundary tended to have more years in which the two dry seasons were abnormally dry than those stations located further from the park

‘Cin u get aff my facebook hen?’: variation and identity marking in adolescent Glaswegian girls

Chambers asserts that "adolescence requires a purposeful divergence from adult norms in favour of alternative norms instituted and reinforced by age-mates" (2009:184). Adolescents need to distinguish themselves from children and from adults. This manifests itself in language use which "differs from their parents in the frequency of certain variants" (ibid:187). I look for evidence of divergence from adult norms in the spontaneous spoken interactions of adolescent females in dance classes and youth club sessions; does this pattern of divergence emerge in the data observed? I also supplement my quantitative analysis of this spoken data with a qualitative analysis of the participants' writing on Facebook, in order to further investigate how variables are used in marking adolescent identity. The literature shows evidence of the use of certain types of variable in identity marking (e.g. phonetic variables in Stuart-Smith et al. 2007), but there is also evidence that some types of variable do not participate (e.g. morphosyntactic variables in Macafee 1994). This may be because variables from different levels of the grammar exist at different levels of speaker awareness (Trudgill 1986, Cutler 1999, Kerswill and Williams 2002). To test this, I analyse a range of variables from different levels of the grammar. I find evidence that the adolescents are diverging from the adult norms of their speech community at the lexical level, at the morphophonological level and at the phonetic level. The morphosyntactic variable which I analyse does not appear to participate in this pattern of divergence. I suggest that this may be because it is below the level of consciousness for these speakers. Although all of the speakers show a pattern of divergence from adult norms, their language use is not homogenous; there is evidence of individual stylistic choices being made both in the spoken data and the written data

Language, migration and identity at school: a sociolinguistic study with Polish adolescents in Glasgow

When young migrants enter a new community, are they able to acquire the community’s sociolinguistic norms? In this thesis, I examine the speech of 14 adolescents who were born in Poland, and who now attend a high school in the East End of Glasgow. I spend two years in this high school, conducting ethnographic analysis and collecting speech recordings. The linguistic behaviour of these young migrants is compared to that of a matched group of seven of their classmates who were born in Glasgow. Focusing on several sociolinguistic variables from different levels of the grammar, I use quantitative analysis to ask whether the Polish speakers are matching the local patterns of use shown by their Glaswegian peers. I use quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore why some individuals are matching these patterns to a greater extent than others. The results show that as a group, the Polish speakers come close to matching the rates of use shown by the Glaswegian speakers. They have successfully replicated some of the native constraints on the variation, although not all. They have also innovated some constraints on use which are not significant for the Glaswegian speakers. I suggest that these innovations represent a type of hypercorrection in some cases, and a lexical diffusion effect in others. I find that the individual learners are not all acquiring sociolinguistic variation to the same extent or in the same way. The individual differences observed are not explained by the length of time an individual has spent in Glasgow. Neither are they explained by the age at which an individual arrived in Glasgow, or by an individual’s gender. Instead, I suggest that friendship networks may play a role in the acquisition of more highly-constrained, ‘under-the-counter’ variables, and individual speaker agency and identity may play a role in the acquisition of the variables which are higher in speaker awareness

“I just sound Sco[ʔ]ish now”: The acquisition of word-medial glottal replacement by Polish adolescents in Glasgow

This article investigates the speech of adolescents who have moved directly from Poland to Glasgow, using data from a range of social contexts and comparing their speech to that of their locally-born peer-group. Focusing on the acquisition of word-medial glottal replacement, I find that the Polish participants have replicated one of the constraints shown by their locally-born peers (number of syllables), have come close to replicating another (following segment), and have three which are not significant for the Glaswegians: lexical frequency, preceding segment and speech context. The emergence of the speech context constraint for the Polish group (and not for the Glaswegians) is a novel finding, and sheds light on how learners come to understand and negotiate style in the L2. I suggest that as they are going through the acquisition process, the Polish group use speech context as an interpretive framework around which they structure their stylistic variation

Population pressure and global markets drive a decade of forest cover change in Africa\u27s Albertine Rift

Africa\u27s Albertine Rift region faces a juxtaposition of rapid human population growth and protected areas, making it one of the world\u27s most vulnerable biodiversity hotspots. Using satellite-derived estimates of forest cover change, we examined national socioeconomic, demographic, agricultural production, and local demographic and geographic variables, to assess multilevel forces driving local forest cover loss and gain outside protected areas during the first decade of this century. Because the processes that drive forest cover loss and gain are expected to be different, and both are of interest, we constructed models of significant change in each direction. Although rates of forest cover change varied by country, national population change was the strongest driver of forest loss for all countries – with a population doubling predicted to cause 2.06% annual cover loss, while doubling tea production predicted to cause 1.90%. The rate of forest cover gain was associated positively with increased production of the local staple crop cassava, but negatively with local population density and meat production, suggesting production drivers at multiple levels affect reforestation. We found a small but significant decrease in loss rate as distance from protected areas increased, supporting studies suggesting higher rates of landscape change near protected areas. While local population density mitigated the rate of forest cover gain, loss was also correlated with lower local population density, an apparent paradox, but consistent with findings that larger scale forces outweigh local drivers of deforestation. This implicates demographic and market forces at national and international scales as critical drivers of change, calling into question the necessary scales of forest protection policy in this biodiversity hotspot. Using a satellite derived estimate of forest cover change for both loss and gain added a dynamic component to more traditionally static and unidirectional studies, significantly improving our understanding of landscape processes and drivers at work