Chengyu in Chinese Language Teaching: A preliminary analysis of Italian learners’ data

Chengyu, also known as Chinese four-character idioms, are a type of traditional Chinese idiom, mostly consisting of four characters. They commonly derive from classic Chinese literary sources, including those of the three great philosophical and religious traditions that influenced the entire East Asia cultural sphere: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. Chengyu, therefore, possess a wide range of cultural references, and, from Chinese, spread to the languages of the other countries of the sinosphere, such as Japan and Korea. Although many scholars have emphasized the importance of the acquisition of chengyu, not much attention has been paid to chengyu learning in Chinese Language Teaching research so far. As a preliminary attempt to address this gap, this paper reports the results of two small-scale, exploratory experiments, aimed at investigating Italian learners’ general knowledge of chengyu and their main interpretation strategies, as well as comparing the effectiveness of direct and indirect instruction in chengyu teaching. The experiments involved participants from Bachelor and Master programs of Roma Tre University. The results show a predominant effect of negative transfer from Italian, as well as a better performance of the participants who received indirect instruction

Phase field approximation of cohesive fracture models

We obtain a cohesive fracture model as a $\Gamma$-limit of scalar damage models in which the elastic coefficient is computed from the damage variable $v$ through a function $f_k$ of the form $f_k(v)=min\{1,\varepsilon_k^{1/2} f(v)\}$, with $f$ diverging for $v$ close to the value describing undamaged material. The resulting fracture energy can be determined by solving a one-dimensional vectorial optimal profile problem. It is linear in the opening $s$ at small values of $s$ and has a finite limit as $s\to\infty$. If the function $f$ is allowed to depend on the index $k$, for specific choices we recover in the limit Dugdale's and Griffith's fracture models, and models with surface energy density having a power-law growth at small openings

Modeling of dislocations and relaxation of functionals on 1-currents with discrete multiplicity

In the modeling of dislocations one is lead naturally to energies concentrated on lines, where the integrand depends on the orientation and on the Burgers vector of the dislocation, which belongs to a discrete lattice. The dislocations may be identified with divergence-free matrix-valued measures supported on curves or with 1-currents with multiplicity in a lattice. In this paper we develop the theory of relaxation for these energies and provide one physically motivated example in which the relaxation for some Burgers vectors is nontrivial and can be determined explicitly. From a technical viewpoint the key ingredients are an approximation and a structure theorem for 1-currents with multiplicity in a lattice

Concurrent Multiscale Computing of Deformation Microstructure by Relaxation and Local Enrichment with Application to Single-Crystal Plasticity

This paper is concerned with the effective modeling of deformation microstructures within a concurrent multiscale computing framework. We present a rigorous formulation of concurrent multiscale computing based on relaxation; we establish the connection between concurrent multiscale computing and enhanced-strain elements; and we illustrate the approach in an important area of application, namely, single-crystal plasticity, for which the explicit relaxation of the problem is derived analytically. This example demonstrates the vast effect of microstructure formation on the macroscopic behavior of the sample, e.g., on the force/travel curve of a rigid indentor. Thus, whereas the unrelaxed model results in an overly stiff response, the relaxed model exhibits a proper limit load, as expected. Our numerical examples additionally illustrate that ad hoc element enhancements, e.g., based on polynomial, trigonometric, or similar representations, are unlikely to result in any significant relaxation in general