Library Treasure Hunt

FYS Discipline: Liberal Arts: Social Sciences and Humanities Objectives of the Assignment: Introduce students to the Library’s catalog and some of the more useful subscription databases in a practical, hands-on exercise. Included are an introduction to translating database articles, instructions on accessing The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times free of charge, and how to access the databases from home. Amount of Time to Complete the Assignment: The assignment is most effective when it follows several previous Library assignments: An introduction to the Library’s website in a computer classroom that guides students in exploring the Library’s resources A Library Orientation conducted by a librarian An oral introduction to the catalog, subscription databases, translating articles, and access to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Once these preliminary steps have been taken, the Library Treasure Hunt itself can be done in an hour. Have students work together so they can share, collaborate, and learn from each other. Percentage of the Final Grade: This low-stakes assignment is one of about fifteen in-class assignments all of equal worth

The relationship between lexical and non-lexical processes in spelling

Research into children's spelling difficulties has generally focussed on the kind of errors children make, categorising them as 'phonetic' or 'non-phonetic'. These errors are then interpreted within the framework of the 'dual-route' model of spelling. Although this model can account for phonetic errors, the explanation of non-phonetic errors is inadequate. The first half of this thesis investigates the hypothesis that children use non-phonetic phoneme-grapheme mappings to produce non-phonetic spellings. In order to examine these mappings, three studies were carried out to look at children's spelling of nonwords. The first compares the spelling of vowel phonemes in nonwords and real words; the second compares the spelling of vowel phonemes by children with and without spelling difficulties and the third shows how a corpus of nonword spellings can be used to identify problematic phonemegrapheme mappings.In the second half of the thesis, it is suggested that nonwords are not simply spelt using phoneme-grapheme mappings, but that lexical information in the form of morphemes may also be used. Three experiments are described. The first is a phoneme-classification task used to test for the activation of morphemes in the lexicon; in the second and third experiments (carried out on adults and children respectively) nonwords are presented in priming and non-priming contexts to test for the effect of higher level information on the use of morphemes in nonword spelling. The results suggest that not only can morphemes be used in spelling nonwords, but their use can be influenced by the context in which the nonword is presented. It is proposed that the dual-route model should be modified in order to allow for interaction between the lexical and non-lexical routes in nonword spelling, and to allow for the influence of syntactic information on this interaction

Language Awareness and the Library

FYS Discipline: Liberal Arts: Social Sciences and Humanities Objectives of the Assignment: Introduce students to the Library’s collection of books in languages other than English, to Queens Library and the public library system, and to the Library of Congress call number system for books in the stacks. Amount of Time to Complete the Assignment: The assignment is most effective when it follows several previous Library assignments: An introduction to the Library’s website in a computer classroom that guides students in exploring the Library’s resources A Library Orientation conducted by a librarian A Library Treasure Hunt for sources in the card catalog and subscription databases An oral introduction to the foreign language resources available to students. Then introduce LaGuardia Library’s card catalog and its Advanced Search function they will use in Part I and the Queens Library website they access in Part II Once these preliminary steps have been taken, the assignment itself can be done in an hour. Have students work together so they can share, collaborate and learn from each other. Percentage of the Final Grade: This low-stakes assignment is one of about fifteen in-class assignments all of equal worth

The New World of Corporate Lawyering in Japan

Tokyo used to be a sleepy little legal market for most US law firms. There were exceptions of course, but the Tokyo presence of a number of international firms with a Tokyo office amounted to a single partner. In fact, while firms may have made grander claims as to the number of resident lawyers, some Tokyo offices of major international firms comprised nothing more than an ill-attended fax machine and a skeletal secretarial staff supplemented, on an as-rarely-needed basis, by visiting lawyers from other offices. Many of the lawyers that did reside full-time in Tokyo offices spent a significant portion of their time knocking on doors in Japan and other countries in Asia, or assisting with overflow work from deals originating in Hong Kong and elsewhere. That has all changed. Despite a prolonged economic recession in Japan-or perhaps more correctly because of it-and a downturn in the world economy, the Japanese offices of many major international law firms have been busier in recent years in terms of average hours worked per lawyer than any other office in their global networks. [CONT

Language Awareness and About Me

Objectives of the Assignment: Showcase students’ skills or interests in languages other than Standard English as part of the About Me statement in the ePortfolio. The assignment addresses many students in a typical FYS classroom at LaGuardia Community College. It encourages: Students with a native ability in another language to see it not as a stumbling block to learning but as a resource to develop academically and professionally Native English speakers to explore other world languages and cultures, and to consider using their interest professionally All students to consider whether they have experience with a dialect or slang, texting language and emojis, professional or technical language, or other specialized vocabulary, and whether this experience is (or should be) part of their emerging identity that they should cultivate In addition, the assignment encourages students to use their own judgment in deciding how to integrate it with the rest of their statement so it increases its overall impact and their own investment in the assignment. Amount of Time to Complete the Assignment: The assignment unfolds over several weeks and follows the steps below: Week 1: Introduce the About Me assignment. Work with students in brainstorming, planning, writing, and revising the statement so they find a compelling “story” to tell. Three paragraphs are a good length to aim for, perhaps present, past, and future. Also make a separate email exercise one of the first assignments you do in class (or Studio Hour), so students know how to access their LaGuardia email and can contact you by email. It is a good idea to incorporate this with instruction and practice in email etiquette. Week 2: Students should have posted their statement to their ePortfolio. Review the statement and use the Pages icon on it to write a response to statement with suggestions for revising. Email the student that the response is waiting and they should open their portfolio, read the response, and follow the directions. Week 3: Reserve a computer room for the day they are going to find the email, access the response in the ePortfolio, and begin revising. Tell students to email you when they have finished revising. They will then receive full credit for the assignment. Week 4: Return to the revised statement for Language Awareness assignment. Distribute Part I of the assignment to introduce the project and generate discussion. This will take an hour or a little more. Part II can then be completed in the remainder of the second hour. Students can also finish Part II at home by an assigned date. Percentage of the Final Grade: The original About Me statement is worth slightly more than the Language Awareness project building on it because of the additional work involved (composing, revising, emailing, etc.). However, both are relatively low-stakes assignments included among about fifteen to twenty ePortfolio assignments and roughly the same number of in-class assignments