Magister Educationis - MEd / The purpose of this study was to investigate parents' and ducators' perceptions of factors influencing high rate of academic failure of learners in Clarke Estate primary schools. A quantitative, descriptive study design was used in this study. A descriptive study is used to gain information about characteristics within a particular field of study. The instrument used was a research questionnaire as it is a quick and cheap instrument to obtain a lot of information covering a large area within a relatively short time. The study population was confined to two schools in Clarke Estate. The participants were randomly selected. The sample from the two selected schools comprised twenty educators and two hundred parents. The sample was heterogeneous, comprising both male and female. / South Africa

Le traumatisme est par excellence ce qui rend compte de la rencontre du sujet avec sa division structurelle. Le discours capitaliste menace de suturer cette division en faisant du sujet, qu’il prétend compléter de son objet, un individu. D’où la tendance de son partenaire, le discours de la science, à faire taire le sujet en le réduisant à son organisme pour en construire un savoir objectif, ou de certaines psychothérapies d’en faire une pure victime qui n’y serait pour rien dans la mauvaise rencontre, entendue comme purement contingente. Qu’est-ce que c’est véritablement le traumatisme ? Quelle est la spécificité de son appréhension par la psychanalyse lacanienne ?, tel est l’enjeu central de notre thèse. Si pour Freud le débordement de l’angoisse est ce qui définit la situation traumatique, pour Lacan l’angoisse est l’index du réel. La psychanalyse lacanienne étant une pratique orientée par le réel, ni l’angoisse, ni le trauma, ni la répétition ne sont des pathologies à guérir, mais des voies d’orientation vers le réel qui constitue la singularité radicale du sujet. Pouvoir loger ce radical de sa singularité dans un « être ensemble » passera pour le sujet par la réinvention de son rapport au lien social. / Trauma is by excellence that which reflects the meeting of the subject with his structural division. The capitalist discourse threatens to suture this division by making of the subject, that it claims to complete of his object, an individual. Hence, the tendency of its partner, the scientific discourse, is to silence the subject by reducing him to his organism, in order to build an objective knowledge, or for certain psychotherapies to make of him a pure victim who would be for nothing in the bad encounter, understood as merely contingent. What truly is trauma? What is the specificity of its apprehension by Lacanian psychoanalysis? ; This is the central issue of our thesis. If for Freud, an overflow anxiety is what defines the traumatic situation, for Lacan, anxiety is the index of real. Since Lacanian psychoanalysis is a practice guided by real, not anxiety nor trauma nor repetition are diseases to cure, but referral pathways to the real, which is the radical singularity of the subject. To lodge his radical singularity in a "being together", the subject will need to reinvent his relation to social ties.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationships between measures ofmaximal isometric force (peak force [PF]), rate of force development (RFD), vertical jump performance (VJ) and 1-repetition maximum (1RM) strength in recreationally trained men. The subjects in this study were 26 men ([mean ± SD]: age 22± 1 years; height 175 ± 7 cm; mass 90 ± 10 kg). They were tested for PF using the isometric midthigh pull exercise. The 1RM for the squat and bench press exercise were determined as a measure of dynamic strength. Explosive strength was measured as RFD from the isometric force-time curve. Correlations between the variables were calculated using Pearson product moment correlation coefficient. There was a nearly perfect correlation between measures of PF and 1RM squat (r = 0.97, p < 0.05) and 1RM bench press (r = 0.99, p < 0.05). The correlations were very strong between VJ and PF (r = 0.72, p < 0.05) and 1RM bench press (r = 0.70, p < 0.05). There were also strong correlations between VJ and 1RM squat (r = 0.69, p < 0.05). There were no significant correlations with RFD. The results showed that isometric maximum strength determined during the isometric midthigh pull test correlated well with 1RM and VJ testing. However, RFD measured during the same test did not appear to correlate as well with other measures. The isometric midthigh pull provides an efficient method for assessing strength in recreationally trained individuals. Practioners wishing to obtain performance data related to maximum strength may wish to consider isometric testing as a less time intensive method of testing.

No description available.

Background: Currently, the majority of learners within the South African education system speak English as an additional language. Many of these children are therefore learning the language of instruction through the language of instruction. Of particular concern for speech-language therapists (SLTs) are those children who have language impairment. In addition, it is important for SLTs to be able to distinguish between the learners who have language impairment, and those who are merely in the process of acquiring English. Additionally, the identification of language impairment among learners who speak English as an additional language is difficult as there are no overt manifestations of language learning difficulties, and, unfortunately, these learners are easily over-looked during the pre-school and school-age years. Furthermore, specifically within the South African context, there are limited tools available that can be used to screen for, and/or diagnose language impairment among EAL learners. Purpose: The main aim of this study was to explore the use of sentence repetition as a screening tool for the identification of language impairment in learners who speak English as an additional language. Method: The research design of this study was non-experimental, quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional in nature, with comparative and correlational components. One hundred and seven grade 2 EAL learners from a mainstream school in Gauteng participated in the study. The learners were evaluated on two sentence repetition tests; the Redmond (2005) Sentence Repetition Test and the Recalling Sentences subtest from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4 (CELF-4) (Semel, Wiig & Secord, 2003). The learners were also evaluated on the Gray Oral Reading Test-4 (GORT-4) (Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001). The results obtained from these measures were correlated in order to determine the internal validity of the two sentence repetition measures, as well as to investigate the extent to which sentence repetition can be used to predict academic literacy. Learners who were identified as being at-risk for language impairment, namely those who fell 1 standard deviation (SD) below the peer group mean on the Redmond (2005) Sentence Repetition test were further evaluated using the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Criterion Referenced edition (DELV-CR) (Seymour, Roeper & de Villiers, 2003), to diagnose language impairment, avoid misdiagnosis, and describe the manifestations of language impairment in the second language. Results and Implications: The results of the Redmond (2005) Sentence Repetition test proved to be a valid measure to identify learners who were at-risk for language impairment, provided that the peer group mean was used as a standard of comparison. Twelve of the 107 (11.2%) learners from the study were identified as being at-risk for language impairment. However, after analysis of the results and using a peer group mean from Jordaan’s (2011) study, only 9/12 (7.5%) of the participants were diagnosed with language impairment. This finding highlights the fact that EAL learners are often over-identified as having language impairment and further assessment is necessary to minimise the risk of misdiagnosis of language impairment. The findings from the DELV-CR (Seymour, Roeper & de Villiers, v 2003), in terms of the manifestations of language impairment in the second language, were consistent with the EAL language impaired learners from Jordaan’s (2011) study, as well as the literature. This finding indicates that sentence repetition is a valid screening tool for the identification of language impairment in EAL learners. Furthermore, 11 of the 12 of the at-risk learners scored below the peer group mean on the reading comprehension measure. Thus, it is evident that, in addition to not being able to use language effectively for academic purposes, most children with language impairment are further disadvantaged by poor reading comprehension skills. An implication for future research would be to explore whether the development of a sentence repetition measure in an African language (e.g. Zulu) would yield similar results as the current study. In this way, EAL learners could be identified in their home language. A secondary finding of the current study was that the grade 2 educators were not able to identify learners who required additional language support within the classroom. This finding has implications for the role of SLTs in mainstream education and the need to support educators in their ability to identify learners with SLI and whose academic language development is not on par with that of their peers.

No description available.

When investigating the perceived similarity of two musical stimuli, systematic asymmetries emerge which depend on the nature of the two elements being compared, relative to the musical context in which they appear. At the level of individual tones, Krumhansl (1979) found that if the order of presentation was diatonic/nondiatonic (relative to a tonal context), similarity ratings were lower than if that order was reversed. She concluded that when a change results in an element becoming less stable in terms of it's position on the tonal hierarchy, similarity perception will be lower than if a change increases it's stability. At the level of melodies, Bartlett and Dowling ( 1988) obtained a similar result, but claimed the asymmetry was due to violations of scalar structure, having little or nothing to do with the tonal hierarchy. To test between these different accounts, a series of experiments was conducted in which pairs of diatonic melodies were presented for similarity ratings. Each melody consisted of a context sequence and a target sequence. The context sequences were designed to promote either a C-major or a D-minor tonal hierarchy. These respective keys share similar notes in their scales, but the tonal hierarchies are inverted with respect to one another. According to Krumhansl's account of the asymmetry, noticeable changes in one key context should not be noticeable in the other, due to the reversal in stability of the component tones of the alteration. According to Bartlett and Dowling, no differential sensitivity should be observed, since all changes were within the scale structure of both contexts. In the first experiment, repetition of the tonic was employed as the key-instantiating stimulus, the result being that strong asymmetrical perception arose, both on the measures of similarity ratings, as well as alteration detection ability. Subsequent experiments employed triadic contexts (suggested by Krumhansl and others to be strongly key-instantiating), and note-frequency controlling contexts (to rule out the possibility of note repetition playing a role in the similarity ratings). The results supported the hypothesis that asymmetric perception is a result of the dynamic tone quality differences between scale degrees in a tonal melody. Two subsequent control studies ruled out the possibility oftarget sequences themselves being responsible for the asymmetries, and confirmed that listeners perceived the melodies in the keys specified in the experiment. A model based loosely on Tversky's explanation of asymmetric perception was put forth to explain these data, as well as those of Bartlett and Dowling. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Recent literature has suggested a link between verbal working memory and language impairment (LI) in children. There is limited research, however, about the link between verbal working memory and social behaviors in children with LI. This study was designed to explore the relationship between social behaviors (measured by the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale; Hart & Robinson, 1996) and verbal working memory abilities (measured by a 3-, 4-, and 5-syllable nonword repetition task) in children with LI. Thirty-six children (18 with LI and 18 typically developing) aged 7 to 11 years participated in the study. Children with LI were rated by teachers as having significantly higher levels of reticence and lower levels of likeability and prosocial behaviors compared to typically developing peers. Children with LI also scored significantly lower on the nonword repetition task at the 3- and 4-syllable levels. Regression analyses revealed that nonword repetition scores were significant predictors of reticence and prosocial behaviors when examining all children as a group, accounting for 22% and 42% of the variance, respectively. As nonword repetition performance increased, reticence ratings decreased and prosocial behavior ratings increased. Nonword repetition did not significantly predict ratings on reticence or prosocial behaviors when examining language groups separately. Nonword repetition was not a significant predictor of likeability for children in this study. These findings indicate a relationship between nonword repetition performance and social behaviors in children with and without LI.

This study examined the effect of two forms of feedback (qualitatitive and quantitative) on the development of the spoken fluency of English language learners. Sixty-five intermediate- high students from 22 countries and 11 native languages enrolled in an intensive English language program at the English Language Center, Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, participated.Throughout the 11-week course, the treatment group (consisting of 33 participants) received feedback on a weekly basis during speaking assessment tasks. The first form of feedback consisted of a quantitative analysis of their spoken fluency. This analysis, performed by PRAAT acoustic analysis software, measured several key features: speech rate (syllables per minute), pause frequency and duration, fillers, false starts, and connectedness of speech (mean length of run). In addition to measurements of their own performance, participants were presented with data on the average performance of their peers, as well as measurements of how closely their performance approximated the fluency measurements of a native speaker.The second form of feedback was qualitative, consisting of written descriptions of the participants` dysfluencies including fillers, high pause frequency and duration, low speech rate and false starts. Participants also received qualitative feedback in the form of self-assessment where they analyzed their own previously made recordings.Following the completion of the treatment, participants completed a survey eliciting their perceptions of the forms and effectiveness of feedback they had received over the course of the treatment. Though participants reported that the feedback (especially the qualitative variety) was useful, through statistical analysis of test and task scores it was found that other than for filler and false starts, feedback was not a significant factor in influencing the students' improvement over the course of the semester, and it is probable that other factors (task repetition) played a larger role.

This dissertation investigates Marcel Proust's observation and depiction of performative discourses and identity in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. The first-person and semi-omniscient narrator's transgression of traditional narrative practices provides him with the unique perspective of both an actor and a spectator in the public and private performances that structure the creation and perception of identity. Accordingly, this analysis explores the methodical confinement of identity to orthodox systems of categorization and considers how these rigid systems affect social, psychological, and sexual economies. I argue that Proust's unique narratological approach and stylistic techniques allow him to expose the conventional codes that define identity as he simultaneously undermines them, thereby proposing new, creative ways for understanding the concept of identity. Chapters 1 and 2 explore the narrator's introspective look at the evolution of his own individuality in relationship to his surroundings and other characters. In chapter 3, the focus shifts from the analysis of the narrator to a consideration of his mise en scène of several similar homoerotic encounters that, when viewed as a whole, combine to form a queer and innovative discourse on sexuality. Chapters 4 and 5 study the construction of social image through the narrator's portrayal of interaction in and among different economic classes in society. The study concludes with a discussion of the aesthetics of performance art as it is compared and contrasted to performative behavior in Proust's novel. My work contributes to the ongoing inquiry into human behavior and identity formation as portrayed in A la Recherche. Looking beyond conventional notions of identity, I resist the temptation to classify characters in specific categories and focus instead on the narrator's representation of identity as a fluid, circumstantial exchange. Combining performativity theory, queer and gender studies, and narratology allows for an original analysis of the narrator's interpretation of the various factors that influence characters' perception of their own identity as well as others'. On a larger scale, my dissertation advances the scholarship on performative discourses and identity insofar as it brings to light one author's revelation, subversion, and replacement of traditional practices of discerning identity.