Teaching Writing Right: Scaffolding Writing for EFL/ESL Students Case Study: Algerian EFL Secondary School Students Challenges and Opportunities

The Algerian educational system has put great emphasis on the importance of teaching English and in particular on writing skill so as to prepare competent learners able to interact accurately and fluently with the external world and to cope with the new realities of globalization. However, while 3AS EFL students are expected to have the basic writing skills, they find themselves struggling, unable to produce and develop a piece of writing that meets the writing conventions. Those students confront the same challenge once enrolled in Interpreting and Translation concentration or English as a Foreign Language studies at the faculty of Letters, Human and Social Studies. While this is true, EFL instructors also find it the most challenging skill to teach. The problem, I believe, is due to the fact that the teaching and learning context is not adequate either to teach or to learn the writing skill effectively and appropriately. Many factors (e.g., excessive chronic work demand) hinder the instructors to teach writing adequately, forcing them to follow a “ drill and kill” curriculum. Learners without enough support and guidance, become frustrated, unmotivated and unwilling to produce any piece of writing. The thesis addresses the issue of how instructors can support their students using “scaffolding” strategy. It aims at raising teachers’ awareness about the necessity of using “scaffolding”, as a powerful and effective strategy, to teach writing so as to help students not only overcome the difficulties they face when writing but also regain their selfconfidence as “anyone can write”

Die Generative Grammatik

Generative Grammar In this paper, the current version of generative syntax is treated in its various branches. Thereby, we try to explain the most important concepts of Chomsky like defining "competence", "performance", "surface structure" and "deep structure", then theories like "the standard theory" which introduces the syntax and "the X -Bar-Theory" will be discussed. All syntactic structures of all natural languages may be subject to common construction principles, can be set up parallel to previous generalizations of several rules. Furthermore, we will present the elucidation of generative semantics and the different phases of generative grammar. The most popular direction in linguistics at the moment is generative transformational grammar, the book "Syntactic structures", first published in 1957 by Chomsky. The GTT also had a major impact on the development of structural research in Germany. In the 1960s, numerous generative syntax representations of German and handbooks of transformational grammar for Germanists which applied Chomsky's grammar model to German were published. This article is directed to these theoretical issues with relevance to the German language

Strukturelle Syntax

On Structural syntax The beginnings of structuralism lie with the Geneva linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who is therefore sometimes referred to as the "father" of structuralism. Important terms of structuralism are: langue/parole, synchrony/diachrony, descriptive/prescriptive, syntagmatic/paradigmatic, relevant feature/redundant feature. The concept of signs and the arbitrariness of signs also play an important role in structuralism. The present paper aims at studying the principles of struclturalism. The method of structuralism is initially inductive, even if it can lead to throwing the results, known different corpus, not realized and of which one waits that the results make clear. In other words, structuralism, in one way or another, always aims to read a text according to some grid that reorganizes it

Präteritumschwund

Past tense fading The German language is constantly changing. Examples of language change in New High German include the decline of the subjunctive II in favour of the paraphrase of dignity, the reduction of unstressed endings and the simultaneous construction of new endings on prepositions. An older language change can still be traced in its effects on German today, the so-called Upper German preterit decline. This denotes the omission of the past tense in Early New High German in southern Germany. A phenomenon that continues to spread northward to this day. The present paper aims at studying the German tense system focusing on the fading of the past tense and the reasons behind the phenomenon. The decline in the past tense is one of the most obvious morphological developments in Alemannic (or Upper German). The consequence of giving up this synthetic way of working was the transfer of the past category to syntax. This has led to a strong typological drift of Alemannic in the course of an analytical and additionally bracketed language type. The disappearance of the past tense contrasts in a peculiar way with the preservation, even the secondary expansion, of synthetic subjunctive

The clinical, cytogenetics and molecular characterization of inverted duplication/deletion of chromosome 8p in a boy with mental and motor retardation: Genotype-phenotype correlation in a case report

Background: Rearrangements that occur mainly through the non-allelic homologous recombination (NAHR) during maternal meiosis in short arms of chromosome 8 is relatively associated with various clinical spectrum.Aim: The objective of this study was to report cytogenetics and molecular characterization of a mental and motor retarded boy with short arm of chromosome 8 rearrangements [invdupdel(8p)] in this current case report. Subjects and methods: We report an 11-year-old boy with scoliosis, intellectual disability, mental-motor retardation and characteristic facial features. Agenesis of corpus callosum was detected with brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) analysis. Derivative chromosome 8 structure was identified after conventional cytogenetics – karyotype analysis, Multiplex Ligation-Dependent Probe Amplification (MLPA) and Microarray-based Comparative Genomic Hybridization (aCGH) techniques. Genotype-phenotype correlation in the current proband case will be discussed.Results: Case was diagnosed as 46, XY, der (8), del (8) (p23.1) invdup (8) (p11.1-p23.1) by using advanced comparable techniques. Subtelomeric MLPA analysis showed deletion of FBXO25 gene which is located at 8p23.3 locus and FISH with subtelomeric probes for 8p shows also only deleted region. The microarray- CGH profilling showed 7,9 mb deletion for 8p23.1 and 31 mb duplication for 8p11.1 locuses.Conclusion: Results from the current case emphasized that the cases with clinical manifestations of such disorders extremely need to be examined by combined comparable genetics techniques such as; karyotyping, FISH, MLPA and chromosomal microarray for the accurate phenotype – genotype correlation.Keywords: Chromosomal rearrangement, Corpus callosum, Invdupdel(8p)Array-CGH, MLP

Comparative Assessment Of Hpv, Alcohol And Tobacco Etiological Fractions In Algerian Patients With Laryngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background: Despite the increasing incidence of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) in Algeria, scarce information is available on the importance of the preventable etiological factors which may drive the disease. Remarkably, a significant number of cases occur in nonsmoker and nondrinker patients; hence, suggesting that alternative risk factors, like Human papillomavirus (HPV), might be etiologically involved. To gain more insight on the risk factors associated with the disease in the country, we evaluated the etiological fraction of HPV in comparison to tobacco and alcohol intake in LSCC patients. Methods: To evaluate the etiopathologic fraction (EF) for HPV compared to history of tobacco and alcohol in LSCC, HPV DNA presence in 46 invasive and 3 non-invasive formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded laryngeal tumors was screened using the SPF10-DEIA-LiPA25 Assay. Demographic data and information related to exposure to the risk factors were gathered through interviewer-assisted questionnaires. Results: We observed that 40.8% of all LSCC cases were associated with smoking, 40.8% had combined tobacco and alcohol exposure history, and 14.3% did not show prior exposure to either risk factor. 1 out of 3 in-situ carcinoma cases was positive for HPV-6. HPV prevalence was null in the invasive tumors. HPV DNA was detected in 2.38% for all studied cases. 10.2% of LSCC patients did not associate with any of the studied risk factors. Conclusion: Here we show that HPV etiological fraction in LSCC Algerian patients is low and smoking and alcohol remain the principal etiopathologic risk for LSCC burden in Algeria

Critical Involvement of the ATM-Dependent DNA Damage Response in the Apoptotic Demise of HIV-1-Elicited Syncytia

DNA damage can activate the oncosuppressor protein ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM), which phosphorylates the histone H2AX within characteristic DNA damage foci. Here, we show that ATM undergoes an activating phosphorylation in syncytia elicited by the envelope glycoprotein complex (Env) of human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) in vitro. This was accompanied by aggregation of ATM in discrete nuclear foci that also contained phospho-histone H2AX. DNA damage foci containing phosphorylated ATM and H2AX were detectable in syncytia present in the brain or lymph nodes from patients with HIV-1 infection, as well as in a fraction of blood leukocytes, correlating with viral status. Knockdown of ATM or of its obligate activating factor NBS1 (Nijmegen breakage syndrome 1 protein), as well as pharmacological inhibition of ATM with KU-55933, inhibited H2AX phosphorylation and prevented Env-elicited syncytia from undergoing apoptosis. ATM was found indispensable for the activation of MAP kinase p38, which catalyzes the activating phosphorylation of p53 on serine 46, thereby causing p53 dependent apoptosis. Both wild type HIV-1 and an HIV-1 mutant lacking integrase activity induced syncytial apoptosis, which could be suppressed by inhibiting ATM. HIV-1-infected T lymphoblasts from patients with inactivating ATM or NBS1 mutations also exhibited reduced syncytial apoptosis. Altogether these results indicate that apoptosis induced by a fusogenic HIV-1 Env follows a pro-apoptotic pathway involving the sequential activation of ATM, p38MAPK and p53

Scaffolding Instruction for English Language Learners

Paper / Demonstration Students come to the classroom with such diverse levels of background and literacy proficiency. For content-area teachers with limited experience, making the content accessible to English Language Learners (Ells) may seem daunting. The presenter will provide some strategies that can help and engage the students in learning content area