“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players” – Are you ready to play a role?

Among the different methodologies for TEFL, role-plays / simulations have been used as a common way for fostering students’ learning and practicing the use of English, especially students’ oral skills. In Macau, such skills are especially important for college students who are preparing to join the hospitality and tourism industry. These students will need to face different people from varied backgrounds, and when working in the front line, they will need to solve problems for their clients / customers. English, as the lingua franca, will naturally be used during the process. Consequently, students should acquire adequate communicative competence besides bettering their mastery of the English grammar. The objectives of this qualitative study were to find out students’ opinions on the effectiveness of role-plays for practicing oral skills and what the barriers were. Five Year 1 students of the Institute for Tourism Studies in Macau were interviewed. The responses given by these students showed their appreciation of role-play as a language learning activity and at the same time, their reluctance to be actively involved in the activity as a result of cultural and psychological barriers. The findings suggest that ESP instructors could put more thought into creating suitable environments that allow students to take up different roles with ease

Emotion Regulation in Three Cultures: A Multi-contextual and Multi-level Study of Preschool-Age Children in the United States, China and Japan

Emotion regulation (ER) has been studied intensively, yet there are major gaps in research on the critical role of contexts and cultural meanings of these contexts in the development of ER. Moreover, ER involves dynamic regulation at behavioral and neurobiological levels, systems that become sensitive to cultural contexts/priorities for adaptation. However, we know little about how children’s ER systems are sensitive to cultural contexts/priorities, and at which levels of regulatory processing. In my dissertation, using multi-level and multi-contextual assessments of preschoolers in the United States, China and Japan, I will first examine cross-cultural similarities and differences in behavioral aspects of emotion expression and regulation among preschoolers living in three cultures. Second, I will determine whether children’s neurobiological systems of ER are differentially sensitive to contexts. Finally, I will examine how cultural contexts/priorities may shape children’s ER at both behavioral and physiological levels (emotional expressions and cortisol reactivity). I conclude by discussing implications for understanding ER as a complex system in cross-cultural perspectives.PHDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163027/1/kaip_1.pd

Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors of Children of Alcoholics in Heterogeneous Family Structures

Honors (Bachelor's)PsychologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91849/1/kaip.pd

Use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets for children under five years in an urban area of Lagos State, Nigeria

Background: Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) have proven to be one of the most effective means of reducing malaria morbidity and mortality in children and pregnant women. This study is carried out to determine the practice and determinants of ITN use for children under five years among care givers in an urban area of Lagos State.Materials and Methods: A community-based, cross sectional study was carried out in Lagos State in April 2007 among three hundred and forty (340) care givers primarily responsible for child care at home. They were selected by a multistage sampling method using a pre-tested, interviewer-administered, structured questionnaire.Results: ITN use rate for under-fives was high (61.8%) and this was significantly determined by care giver’s marital status (P < 0.001) and the number of children under five years in the household (P = 0.006). Educational level of care giver and occupation of head of the household were not significant determinants.Conclusion: There is need for health campaigns on ITNs targeted at unmarried care givers of young children. In addition, we also recommend social marketing of modern family planning methods to reduce family size, thereby increasing chances of ITN use among children less than five years to reduce malaria burden

Feedforward and feedback consistency in Chinese

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2010."Bidirectional script-sound inconsistency in Chinese""A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2010."Includes bibliographical references (p. 28-30).Old perspective of one-way spelling-to-sound (feedforward) inconsistency was challenged and sound-to-spelling (feedback) inconsistency was highlighted in word recognition recently in alphabetic scripts. However, corresponding data on logographic script is lacking. The current study presented statistical data of a newly established data corpus – Hong Kong Corpus of Feedforward and Feedback Consistency (HKCFFC). The data corpus analysis came up with three major findings: 1). Chinese is more feedforward inconsistent than English and French while all three languages are highly feedback inconsistent. 2). Large proportion of feedforward consistent characters in HKCFFC was found feedback inconsistent 3). Strong correlation was shown between type and token consistency computed. Furthermore, feedback inconsistency computed from type and token consistency values was examined in a writing-to-dictation task on 30 university students. Significant feedback consistency effect was found in error percent rate. It evidenced that frequency-weighted token consistency better represents feedback inconsistency than type consistency.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Effectiveness of road safety education in Nigeria using a quasi-experimental trial: Findings from the Road Safety Intervention Project

Road traffic injuries pose a serious public health problem worldwide, especially in low-income countries. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a post-license road safety education intervention programme in terms of increased knowledge and self-reported behaviour among commercial minibus drivers in Lagos, Nigeria. This was a quasi-experimental study conducted in three phases. Participating motor parks (selected by simple random sampling) were assigned to either the intervention or control group. All eligible minibus drivers were included with no matching. Data analysis was done with Epi-info version 3.5.1. Comparison was done in terms of group driver education versus no education, and pre- versus post-intervention. Out of an estimated 500 male drivers, 407 participated in the study. Most had some form of formal education. For both groups, pre-intervention knowledge scores were poor but improved significantly post-intervention in the intervention group. None of the drivers in the intervention group had good scores but this increased to 66,1% post-intervention. Their mean score increased from 34,4 ± 9,1 to 72,3 ± 10,2. Adherence to speed limits did not improve. The control group showed no significant changes. Post-license road safety education significantly improved knowledge but not self-reported adherence to speed limits. Similar, sustainable programmes should be offered to improve commercial drivers’ poor knowledge. Further studies are needed to determine deterrent factors to behaviour change.Keywords: road safety, intervention, commercial drivers, Nigeri

Early socialization of hostile attribution bias: The roles of parental attributions, parental discipline, and child attributes

The goal of this study was to examine child and parent predictors of children’s hostile attribution bias (HAB) with a particular focus on exploring the associations between parents’ early attribution of child misbehavior and children’s HAB in the transition to school age. Participants were 241 children (118 girls) of middle‐income families who were at risk for school‐age conduct problems. Multi‐method, multi‐informant data were collected on maternal attributions of child misbehavior, parental use of corporal punishment, and child attributes (i.e., verbal IQ, effortful control, theory of mind, and emotional understanding) at 3 years, and child HAB in ambiguous situations at 6 years. Results indicated that mothers’ internal explanations for children’s misconduct may either reduce or increase children’s later HAB depending on the specific content of attributions, such that mothers’ belief that children misbehave because of their internal state (i.e., emotional state or temperament) was associated with lower levels of child HAB, whereas attributing power‐based motives (i.e., manipulative, controlling intentions) in children was associated with higher levels of HAB. The findings are discussed with respect to appreciating the complexity of parents’ explanations for children’s behavior, and considering parental cognition as a potential target for early identification and prevention of child HAB and related problems.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150591/1/sode12349.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150591/2/sode12349_am.pd

Effects of Intensive Late-Season Sheep Grazing Following Early-Season Steer Grazing on Population Dynamics of Sericea Lespedeza in the Kansas Flint Hills

Sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata; SL) is a high-tannin, invasive forb in the Tallgrass Prairie ecosystem. In Kansas, sericea lespedeza infests 980 square miles of pasture, primarily in the Flint Hills region. Sericea lespedeza infestations reduce native grass production by up to 92% through a combination of aggressive growth, prolific reproduction, canopy dominance, and chemical inhibition (allelopathy). Herbicides retard the spread of sericea lespedeza, but application is laborious and expensive; moreover, herbicides are lethal to ecologically-important, non-target plant species. Increased grazing pressure on sericea lespedeza by domestic herbivores may slow its spread and facilitate some measure of biological control. Unfortunately, mature plants contain high levels of condensed tannins, which are a strong deterrent to grazing by beef cattle. Small ruminants have greater tolerance for condensed tannins than beef cattle. Sheep, in particular, appear less susceptible to certain plant toxins than beef cattle and may be useful to selectively pressure noxious weeds like sericea lespedeza. The predominant grazing management practice in the Flint Hills region of Kansas involves annual spring burning followed by intensive grazing with yearling beef cattle from April to August. During seasonal grazing, 40 to 60% of annual graminoid production is removed and pastures remain idle for the remainder of the year. Under this prevailing management practice, invasion by sericea lespedeza into the Tallgrass Prairie biome has steadily increased. Sericea lespedeza flowers and produces seed in late summer from August to September. The absence of grazing pressure during this interval strongly promotes seed production, seed distribution, and continued invasion of the Flint Hills ecoregion by this noxious weed. Therefore, the objective of our study was to evaluate effects of late-season sheep grazing following locally-conventional steer grazing on vigor and reproductive capabilities of sericea lespedeza

Brain bases of morphological processing in young children

How does the developing brain support the transition from spoken language to print? Two spoken language abilities form the initial base of child literacy across languages: knowledge of language sounds (phonology) and knowledge of the smallest units that carry meaning (morphology). While phonology has received much attention from the field, the brain mechanisms that support morphological competence for learning to read remain largely unknown. In the present study, young English‐speaking children completed an auditory morphological awareness task behaviorally (n = 69, ages 6–12) and in fMRI (n = 16). The data revealed two findings: First, children with better morphological abilities showed greater activation in left temporoparietal regions previously thought to be important for supporting phonological reading skills, suggesting that this region supports multiple language abilities for successful reading acquisition. Second, children showed activation in left frontal regions previously found active in young Chinese readers, suggesting morphological processes for reading acquisition might be similar across languages. These findings offer new insights for developing a comprehensive model of how spoken language abilities support children's reading acquisition across languages. Hum Brain Mapp 36:2890–2900, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112232/1/hbm22815.pd