Voices from Within-Homemakers as Agents for Social Change

This study is to document how Taiwanese women learned from participating in social action. The focus is on homemakers who are socially marginalized but are involved in private as well as public spheres and speak out on various issues which relate to their everyday lives. The findings suggest that ordinary people can be agents for social change via social movement learning

Effects of Cooperative Learning on Motivation, Learning Strategy Utilization, and Grammar Achievement of English Language Learners in Taiwan

To examine the effects of cooperative learning on EFL students in Taiwan, a 12-week quasi-experimental pretest-posttest comparison group research study was designed. Two college classes (42 students each) in Taiwan participated in the study, one receiving grammar instruction through cooperative learning and the other through whole-class teaching. Three specific research questions guided the study. The first looked at effects of cooperative learning on motivation, the second on out-of-class strategy use, and the third on grammar achievement. Additional exploratory questions examined these results across subgroups within each class as well as the relationships between the dependent variables. Data were collected via learners\u27 pretest and posttest scores on the dependent variables. The data were analyzed with MANCOVAs, one- and two-way ANCOVAs, simple effects, and Pearson correlations. Cooperative learning was found to have large positive effects on motivation and strategy use, and medium-to-large positive effects on grammar achievement. Overall, the findings indicated a consistent pattern in favor of cooperative learning over whole-class instruction in teaching the Taiwanese learners English grammar. The results of the exploratory questions indicated that cooperative learning facilitated motivation and strategy use of learners across all subgroups, but more so with those performing at higher and lower levels. Grammar achievement of learners at higher and lower levels was affected positively. Additional analyses also indicated cooperative learning positively affected learning at higher cognitive levels. Implications for future research and for curriculum and instruction are addressed

A Pure Test for the Elasticity of Yield Spreads

The correlation between interest rates and corporate bond yield spreads is a well-known feature of structural bond pricing models. Duffee (1998) argues that this correlation is weak once the effects of call options are removed from the data; a conclusion that contradicts the negative correlation expected by Longstaff and Schwartz (1995). However, Elton et al. (2001) point out that Duffee's analysis ignores the effects of the tax differential between U.S. Treasury and corporate bonds. Canadian bonds have no such tax differential, yet, after controlling for callability, we find that the correlation between interest rates and corporate bond spreads remains negligible. We also find a significant negative relationship for callable bonds with this relationship increasing with the moneyness of the call provision. These results are robust under alternate empirical specifications.Bond Yield Spread, Default Risk, Callable Bonds, Corporate Bonds

A Brief Syntactic Typology of Philippine Languages

This paper is a brief statement of the typological characteristics of the syntactic structures of Philippine languages. It utilizes a lexicalist theoretical framework to provide comparability among the examples cited. The word order of both verbal and non-verbal predicational sentences is examined, with pronominal and nonpronominal complements, topicalization, and auxiliary verbs. Philippine languages are analyzed as morphologically ergative. The morphological criteria for determining the syntactic transitivity of verbal sentences is examined, concluding that verbal affixation alone is an insufficient criterion. Attention is paid to the notion of "focus", with rejection of the concept of "voice” as an explanation for the phenomenon. The various forms of syntactically transitive verbs that have been described by others, for example, as signaling agreement with the Nominative NP, are here described as carrying semantic features, marking the manner of their instantiation with reference to the Nominative NP. The structure of noun phrases is examined. Morphological case marking of NPs by Determiners is claimed for Genitive, Locative, and for some languages, Oblique NPs, but it is claimed that for most languages, Nominative full NPs are case marked only by word order. Semantic agreement features distinguishing forms of Determiners for common vs. personal, definiteness, specificity, spatial reference, and plurality of their head nouns are described. Relative clause formation strategies are described. Most are head-initial, with gapping of the Nominative NP. "Adjectives” in NP’s are typically relative clauses having stative verbs as predicates

Basic English Writing: An Experimental Course Structure Against Semantic Misinterpretation In Undergraduate Student Writing

Course designs for Basic English Writing classes vary from one course to another. The objective of this study was to investigate the semantic misinterpretation of English words found in the English compositions written by native-Chinese-speaking undergraduate students and to overcome if such a barrier occurred in the process of writing. First, this study made use of both linguistic and literary theories in an attempt of exemplifying the existence of the translation and semantic misinterpretation adopted by undergraduate students when writing in English. This hypothesis could be proved by the detached relation between the sign and the referent, or in Saussure’s terminology, between the signifier and the signified, in particular in translating from Chinese into English. This study included an experimental course structure, which consisted of some feasible teaching methods. These methods were applied to Basic English Writing classes investigated in the present study. They were dictionary-consulting activities, team discussions (brainstorming as a team), sentence-making activities in which signal words were used, and team writing activities, in order to improve the student’s writing skills and his or her vocabulary size. Test instruments included a pretest (pre-class questionnaires) and a posttest (a midterm writing test). Targeted students were Chinese non-English majors taking Basic English Writing (BEW) classes. The students in the treatment group performed better in the posttest than those in the control group. Moreover, the students, who failed to get into the habit of consulting English dictionaries, did not perform better than those consistently consulting English dictionaries. It seems that the experimental course structure may facilitate university students’ learning of how to write in English.