University Students’ Preferable Types of Teacher Humor in English Classes

The current study aimed to explore what types of teacher humor EFL students prefer in their classes. The study was designed as a mixed-method approach, using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data in two different Vietnamese universities. One hundred fifty-eight university students responded to the survey, and eight out of them were recruited as the participants for the interviews. The study results revealed that the types of jokes (M=4.41), riddles (M=4.08), and language play (M=4.15) were most favored. Besides, the participants' demographic information, including their gender and majors, affected their preferable types of teacher humor. Specifically, males showed more positive attitudes towards teacher humor than their counterparts. In terms of students’ majors, there were differences between non-English majors and English-majored students’ perceptions of irony, teasing, language play, visual and physical humor. Regarding the students’ positive attitudes towards teacher humor, EFL teachers should learn more about valuable strategies for using teacher humor in their classes due to the fact that they do not need to have a sense of humor to use it effectively

Resource rent in aquaculture

Publisher's web site for this book at https://www.fagbokforlaget.no/Contributions-in-natural-resource-economics/I9788245024715.Resource rent in aquaculture (RRA) is any payment to a farm and site owner, on land or sea, in excess of the costs needed to bring that farm into production. For analytic and policy purposes it may be useful to distinguish among different types of RRA. Three types will be discussed: rent associated with the classical economists Ricardo (1821) and Faustmann (1849), as well as oligopoly rent from access regulation (licensing) and hampered output. The latter can arise in the case of downward sloping demand for a particular type of seafood from an aquaculture country. The similarities and differences among these types of rent are discussed and the distinctions between business economics indicators and RRA are clarified. The theory is applied to the case of Atlantic salmon in Norway and white leg shrimp in Vietnam. Based on cost and revenue data for 2016 from 84 firms from the Directorate of Fisheries in Norway; and for 2014 from 318 farms and for 2016 for 120 farms from two surveys in Vietnam, both business economics and RRA indicators are calculated, after revealing the cost structure of the farms. In theory, the RRA rate may be higher or lower than the profit rate, depending on the capital structure and intensity of the firms. The analysis demonstrates very high profit and rent margins in the Norwegian salmon industry, and lower, but positive ones in Vietnam. However, the profit and rent rates are much higher in Vietnam due to the low capital intensity of the shrimp industry

The Contributions of Teacher Humor in EFL Classes in Vietnam: University Students’ Perspectives

According to several studies on English teaching and learning, English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers tend to avoid humor in their classrooms. However, many studies have shown that teachers’ sense of humor plays an essential role in EFL students’ learning process. Therefore, this study utilizing a mixed-method design was conducted to determine students’ perceptions of the impact of teachers’ humor (TH) on their learning. Data were collected through a questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale comprising twenty-one items and semi-structured interviews. The study involved 158 university students in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Quantitative data from the questionnaire were analyzed by using SPSS 20.0, and data from the interviews were analyzed according to themes. The survey results revealed that the students showed positive attitudes toward the effects of TH in EFL classrooms, especially reducing boredom (M=4.59), strengthening teacher-student rapport (M=4.53), decreasing sleepiness (M=4.47), promoting students’ cheerfulness (M=4.47), increasing students’ consciousness (M=4.46), and solving conflicts in classrooms (M=4.42). Additionally, non-majored students were appreciated for TH more than their counterparts. Moreover, students’ perceptions positively correlated with their gender. The interviews also showed that cultural factors affected the effectiveness of TH in EFL classes. EFL teachers are encouraged to use TH in their classes in order to foster its benefits. However, careful consideration should be taken before using TH in teaching different students with different learning styles or characteristics

The Contributions of Teacher Humor in EFL Classes in Vietnam: University Students’ Perspectives

According to several studies on English teaching and learning, English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers tend to avoid humor in their classrooms. However, many studies have shown that teachers’ sense of humor plays an essential role in EFL students’ learning process. Therefore, this study utilizing a mixed-method design was conducted to determine students’ perceptions of the impact of teachers’ humor (TH) on their learning. Data were collected through a questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale comprising twenty-one items and semi-structured interviews. The study involved 158 university students in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Quantitative data from the questionnaire were analyzed by using SPSS 20.0, and data from the interviews were analyzed according to themes. The survey results revealed that the students showed positive attitudes toward the effects of TH in EFL classrooms, especially reducing boredom (M=4.59), strengthening teacher-student rapport (M=4.53), decreasing sleepiness (M=4.47), promoting students’ cheerfulness (M=4.47), increasing students’ consciousness (M=4.46), and solving conflicts in classrooms (M=4.42). Additionally, non-majored students were appreciated for TH more than their counterparts. Moreover, students’ perceptions positively correlated with their gender. The interviews also showed that cultural factors affected the effectiveness of TH in EFL classes. EFL teachers are encouraged to use TH in their classes in order to foster its benefits. However, careful consideration should be taken before using TH in teaching different students with different learning styles or characteristics

Impacts of Payment for Forest Ecosystem Services on Local livelihoods in A Luoi District, Thua Thien Hue Province, Viet Nam

This paper analyses the impacts of the national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) policy in A Luoi district, Thua Thien Hue province, Viet Nam. There are mixed impacts of PFES in A Luoi district. While some surveyed households have experienced increases in income since PFES, for many other incomes have fallen. Our findings show PFES impacts on local communities and individuals are limited because most forest areas are managed by state agencies, leaving only 17.9% of PFES payments being channeled to these groups, while the rest goes to state government agencies and commune people’s committees. This disparity in PFES payments has further widened the income gap between state agencies and local households.  PFES payments currently contribute little to household incomes, averaging only 2.64% of total earnings. PFES has little impact and additionality in advancing land tenure security and reducing natural forest product exploitation for generating income as impacts are similar to those found in non-PFES villages. PFES poverty reduction impacts vary from village to village, but in general, percentages of poor households receiving PFES payments range from 1% to 59%

THE DETERMINANTS OF POVERTY IN THE MEKONG RIVER DELTA KEY ECONOMIC ZONE IN VIETNAM

This paper investigates the determinants of poverty in Mekong River Delta Key Economic Zone in Vietnam for a sample of 604 households in Can Tho province, An Giang province, KienGiang province and Ca Mau province in 2012. Explanatory variables include demographic, nature, region, finance and physical. Using Binary Logistics regression, results show the complexity of the issues, wherein the financial variable has been the most important influence of poverty in this area

Do Open Access Inshore Fisheries Create Rent? The Case of Anchovy Fisheries, Vietnam

From the view point of several policy makers, open access inshore fishery is bad and needed to build up a new management plan. This study proves that the vessel owners‚ surplus still exist even under open access equilibrium, by looking at the level of rent being generated in the fishery. The anchovy fisheries in Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam are used as a study case with time series data collected from 220 fishing households in 2005, 2008 and 2011. The findings demonstrate that if we take account the heterogeneous vessels into the consideration, some of fishermen will benefit intra- marginal rent. In addition, open access fisheries also create considerably employment and food for poor people like fishermen.Keywords: Special Topics, Fisheries Economics, Posters and Game Demonstration Session and ReceptionKeywords: Special Topics, Fisheries Economics, Posters and Game Demonstration Session and Receptio

Middlemen: good for resources and fishermen?

Submitted manuscript version. Published version available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355770X19000196. This paper studies the role of middlemen in open-access fisheries and how the organization of the supply chains affects resource exploitation and the level and distribution of economic rent. Imperfect competition among middlemen can help ensure that fish stocks are not depleted, which is typically the case in open-access fisheries with competitive markets. Middlemen with market power can also induce higher economic rent for the supply chain in total, but these rents mainly benefit the middlemen. The supply chains of inshore anchovy and offshore skipjack tuna fisheries in Vietnam are used as empirical examples. The analysis shows that in the anchovy supply chain, the middlemen have insignificant market power and the stock is being overexploited. In the skipjack tuna supply chain, the middlemen have oligopsony power and the stock is higher than the level that produces maximum sustainable yield

Online Load Balancing for Network Functions Virtualization

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) aims to support service providers to deploy various services in a more agile and cost-effective way. However, the softwarization and cloudification of network functions can result in severe congestion and low network performance. In this paper, we propose a solution to address this issue. We analyze and solve the online load balancing problem using multipath routing in NFV to optimize network performance in response to the dynamic changes of user demands. In particular, we first formulate the optimization problem of load balancing as a mixed integer linear program for achieving the optimal solution. We then develop the ORBIT algorithm that solves the online load balancing problem. The performance guarantee of ORBIT is analytically proved in comparison with the optimal offline solution. The experiment results on real-world datasets show that ORBIT performs very well for distributing traffic of each service demand across multipaths without knowledge of future demands, especially under high-load conditions

Considerations in Developing Blockchain-enabled Food Supply Chain Solutions: A Developer Perspective

There is currently considerable interest and activity in the adoption of blockchains in food supply chains (FSC) by both researchers and industry. Blockchain developers have to satisfy the requirements of multiple users and stakeholders as well as handle technical requirements from the underlying blockchain platform. Many prior studies are conceptual and theoretical and there is a need for both a deeper understanding of the problem space and also a need for insights from real-world perspectives, particularly in the FSC context. This study interviewed 14 experts from FSC blockchain application provider companies. The interviews were analysed using a Grounded Theory approach. The preliminary findings presented in this research-in-progress paper show that developers are concerned with: Technical aspects, cost-benefit aspects, management and operational aspects, end-user issues and societal aspects. These findings provide a deeper understanding of the issues involved in developing blockchain applications in FSC