Teaching of Pragmatics: Issues in a Global Age

This article reviews literature on pragmatic teaching in three domains: (1) instructional methods in interpragmatics (2) pragmatic teaching resources (3) test and assessment of pragmatic ability .It aims at providing a comprehensive perspective of the available choices for pragmatics teaching and the ways that second language learners’ pragmatic development can be enhanced in the classroom. In the area of instructional methods, this article reviews researches under the theoretical SLA framework of explicit versus implicit instruction, input processing instruction, and skill acquisition and practice. In the domain of pragmatic teaching resources, two types of pedagogical resources are reviewed: textbooks development and the possibility of the application of CA based research material and electronic corpora to the classroom pragmatics teaching and learning. In the discussion of test and assessment of pragmatic ability, two categories are reviewed. The first is the comparative study of the six types of instruments to test second language learners’ pragmatic ability which is aimed to provide statistical and practical aspects for the test developers and test users. The second reviews the teacher assessment and its related assessment instruments in the application of pragmatic teaching .Finally, this article discusses unique challenges and opportunities pragmatics teaching faces in the current era

Woman Language: Features and Historic Change

This paper first briefly looks at the previous studies done on female language from 1970s till now. Then it makes a brief analysis of some of the distinctive features of female language. Explanations about the reasons as to why these feature exist are offered from the physiological, psychological, social historical and social cultural standpoint. Finally, some changes about the woman language in recent years are expounded

Inhibition of Intestinal Thiamin Transport in Rat Model of Sepsis.

ObjectivesThiamin deficiency is highly prevalent in patients with sepsis, but the mechanism by which sepsis induces thiamin deficiency is unknown. This study aimed to determine the influence of various severity of sepsis on carrier-mediated intestinal thiamin uptake, level of expressions of thiamin transporters (thiamin transporter-1 and thiamin transporter-2), and mitochondrial thiamin pyrophosphate transporter.DesignRandomized controlled study.SettingResearch laboratory at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center.SubjectsTwenty-four Sprague-Dawley rats were randomized into controls, mild, moderate, and severe sepsis with equal number of animals in each group.InterventionsSepsis was induced by cecal ligation and puncture with the cecum ligated below the cecal valve at 25%, 50%, and 75% of cecal length, defined as severe, moderate, and mild sepsis, respectively. Control animals underwent laparotomy only.Measurements and main resultsAfter 2 days of induced sepsis, carrier-mediated intestinal thiamin uptake was measured using [H]thiamin. Expressions of thiamin transporter-1, thiamin transporter-2, and mitochondrial thiamin pyrophosphate transporter proteins and messenger RNA were measured. Proinflammatory cytokines (interleukin-1β and interleukin-6) and adenosine triphosphate were also measured. Sepsis inhibited [H]thiamin uptake, and the inhibition was a function of sepsis severity. Both cell membrane thiamin transporters and mitochondrial thiamin pyrophosphate transporter expression levels were suppressed; also levels of adenosine triphosphate in the intestine of animals with moderate and severe sepsis were significantly lower than that of sham-operated controls.ConclusionsFor the first time, we demonstrated that sepsis inhibited carrier-mediated intestinal thiamin uptake as a function of sepsis severity, suppressed thiamin transporters and mitochondrial thiamin pyrophosphate transporter, leading to adenosine triphosphate depletion

Values migration: The influence of Christianity and traditional Chinese values on the cross-cultural adaptation of Chinese migrants in Irish society

This study examines the migration experiences of Chinese migrants in Ireland. In particular, the study explores the changing values and religions during their cross-cultural adaptation, including the interactive influences between their Chinese traditional values, Christianity and their daily life. This study follows a grounded theory approach, where 22 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with Chinese migrants recruited by a snowball sampling strategy. Data analysis used the grounded theory process of systematic coding, categorisation and memoing with findings grounded in participants’ lived experience. Findings suggest that personal values and religion have a fundamental influence on a migrant’s life, such as migration motivation, attitudes towards discrimination experiences and engagement with Irish mainstream society. This study revealed both three patterns of value migration: retaining traditional values, changing and transforming at a deep level to a different value system. Either conflict, compatibility or tolerance during values migration takes place to various extents. In turn, the new values impact on individuals in their reported behaviours, attitudes and interaction with the Irish host society. Fresh perspectives on Chinese migrants also emerge in the findings, such as non-economic migration motivation and conversion to Christianity, a foreign religion in Chinese culture. Particularly, it sheds light on ‘Bible lens’ takers, who are transformed in their personal religion during cross-cultural adaptation in this study. From a values perspective, findings indicate that the migrants, experiences are multifaceted and their experiences relate to discrimination, homesickness, loneliness, cultural barriers, and language difficulties encountered in the acculturation process. Finally, research participants pursue the meaning of life, and this orientation leads towards two ends: to satisfy personal life needs at a pragmatic level and life goals at a spiritual level. Overall, this study is opportune as it meets the call for in-depth migrant research in Ireland at a time when Ireland is transforming into a more diverse society, as well as contributing to paradigm shifting in acculturation research

A Validation Approach to Over-parameterized Matrix and Image Recovery

In this paper, we study the problem of recovering a low-rank matrix from a number of noisy random linear measurements. We consider the setting where the rank of the ground-truth matrix is unknown a prior and use an overspecified factored representation of the matrix variable, where the global optimal solutions overfit and do not correspond to the underlying ground-truth. We then solve the associated nonconvex problem using gradient descent with small random initialization. We show that as long as the measurement operators satisfy the restricted isometry property (RIP) with its rank parameter scaling with the rank of ground-truth matrix rather than scaling with the overspecified matrix variable, gradient descent iterations are on a particular trajectory towards the ground-truth matrix and achieve nearly information-theoretically optimal recovery when stop appropriately. We then propose an efficient early stopping strategy based on the common hold-out method and show that it detects nearly optimal estimator provably. Moreover, experiments show that the proposed validation approach can also be efficiently used for image restoration with deep image prior which over-parameterizes an image with a deep network.Comment: 29 pages and 9 figure