Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

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This essay seeks to illustrate how critical literacy and source criticism can be incorporated in argumentative thinking and reasoning in an assignment based on authentic materials constructed for students studying English 6 in Swedish upper-secondary school. The assignment seeks to, grounded in critical literacy theory, increase the students’ source criticism and improve their argumentative thinking and reasoning. These goals are directly connected to the aims presented in the syllabus for the English subject in Swedish upper-secondary school. The essay will state why authentic texts are suitable when teaching critical literacy skills. The essay will also present different theories to critical literacy and conclude that "the four resources model" (Luke & Freebody, 1990) can be considered most suitable for students assigned to produce argumentative texts. The authentic materials chosen for this assignment consist of three themes identified in the critical documentaries Bowling for Columbine (2002), directed by Michael Moore, and Michael Moore hates America (2004), directed by Mike Wilson. The three themes that are selected for the assignment, and presented in this essay are: The NRA, The 2 nd amendment and Is Michael Moore anti-American? The students will get a theme assigned to them and are supposed to, through instructions based on critical literacy theory, develop an argumentative text about their specific theme. Subsequently, the students are supposed to present their argumentative text in front of the class. Additionally, the goals stated in the curriculum for the English subject and the aims from the syllabus for English 6 in Swedish upper-secondary school will be presented and explained in relation to the assignment constructed for this essay and how the assignment will make them to achieve those goals.

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Wan Zhang. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-103). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Introduction to Classification --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Problem Definition --- p.4 / Chapter 1.3 --- Major Contributions --- p.6 / Chapter 1.4 --- Thesis Organization --- p.7 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- Fisher's Linear Discriminant --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Radial Basis Function Networks --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3 --- Decision Tree --- p.10 / Chapter 2.4 --- Nearest Neighbor --- p.12 / Chapter 2.5 --- Support Vector Machine --- p.13 / Chapter 2.5.1 --- Linear Separable Case --- p.14 / Chapter 2.5.2 --- Non Linear-separable Case --- p.15 / Chapter 2.5.3 --- Nonlinear Case --- p.18 / Chapter 2.5.4 --- Multi-class SVM --- p.19 / Chapter 2.5.5 --- RSVM --- p.21 / Chapter 2.6 --- Summary --- p.23 / Chapter 3 --- Computational Geometry --- p.25 / Chapter 3.1 --- Convex hull --- p.26 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Separable Case --- p.26 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Inseparable Case --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2 --- Proximity Graph --- p.32 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Voronoi Diagram and Delaunay Triangulation --- p.32 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Gabriel Graph and Relative Neighborhood Graph --- p.34 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- β-skeleton --- p.36 / Chapter 4 --- Data Editing --- p.39 / Chapter 4.1 --- Hart's Condensed Rule and Its Relatives --- p.39 / Chapter 4.2 --- Order-independent Subsets --- p.40 / Chapter 4.3 --- Minimal Size Training-set Consistent Subsets --- p.40 / Chapter 4.4 --- Proximity Graph Methods --- p.41 / Chapter 4.5 --- Comparing Results of Different Classifiers with Edited Dataset as the Training Set --- p.42 / Chapter 4.5.1 --- Time Complexity --- p.47 / Chapter 4.5.2 --- Editing Size of Training Data --- p.48 / Chapter 4.5.3 --- Accuracy --- p.50 / Chapter 4.5.4 --- Efficiency --- p.54 / Chapter 4.5.5 --- Summary --- p.58 / Chapter 5 --- Techniques Speeding Up Data Editing --- p.60 / Chapter 5.1 --- Parallel Computing --- p.61 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Basic Idea of Parallel --- p.61 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Details of Parallel Technique --- p.63 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Comparing Effects of the Choice of Number of Threads on Efficiency --- p.64 / Chapter 5.2 --- Tree Indexing Structure --- p.67 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- R-tree and R*-tree --- p.67 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- SS-tree --- p.69 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- SR-tvee --- p.70 / Chapter 5.2.4 --- β-neighbor Algorithm Based on SR-tree Structure --- p.71 / Chapter 5.2.5 --- Pruning Search Space for β-neighbor Algorithm --- p.72 / Chapter 5.2.6 --- Comparing Results of Non-index Methods with Those of Methods with Indexing --- p.80 / Chapter 5.3 --- Combination of Parallelism and SR-tree Indexing Structure --- p.83 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Comparing Results of Both Techniques Applied --- p.84 / Chapter 5.4 --- Summary --- p.87 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.89 / Bibliography --- p.91

E-learning has found its way into various areas of our lives and, as technology has developed, the ways in which e-learning has been delivered have become more varied. Researchers and e-learning developers can become captivated by new technologies and the facilities that these technologies can offer. However, increased availability does not necessarily mean better facilities or results. In the early days of e-learning, materials were generally just text-based and the use of multimedia elements such as audio was very limited, whilst current materials generally incorporate much multimedia and often result in materials that are ‘all singing all dancing’. However, there has been little research into the benefits of such ‘entertaining’ learning materials over the older-style text-based learning materials. The research described in this thesis explored the use of music and animation within an e-learning environment and the effects it might have upon a learner - in particular how music and animation might affect a learner’s emotional state and learning attainment. The model of flow was used to determine the emotional state of the learner. Flow can be used to describe focused motivation, when a person is fully immersed in a task. Several experiments were designed and carried out to determine the effects of including music and animation in an e-learning application. It was found that while the learning attainment was unaffected by the inclusion of the music and animation, learners’ flow experiences were negatively affected. These findings highlighted the importance of the design phase of learning material and it should also be considered that adding more multimedia elements does not necessarily lead to improved learning or enhanced learner satisfaction.

Liu, Yang. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-188). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 25, October, 2016).

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Using a foreign or second language in class can be a harrowing experience for some students. They may fear negative evaluation from teachers and peers, doubting their own ability to successfully communicate their intended meaning in a language less familiar than their mother tongue, and consequently resort to using less risky vocabulary and grammatical constructions in their output – or simply remain silent. If debilitating language anxiety causes students to hold back in discussion, their motivation could be at risk, possibly adversely affecting their attitudes towards language and learning as well as their notions of themselves as potentially successful learners. The purpose of this qualitative field study was to explore teachers’ perceptions and experiences of Foreign language anxiety, FLA, among students participating in oral discussion activities in the Swedish upper-secondary school subject of English, and how they adapt their teaching to help reduce the perceived anxiety among their students. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two teachers from one school. The results indicated that speaking alone in front of the class is considered the most anxiety-provoking situation to students, and that classroom interactions with teachers and peers could plausibly either increase or reduce FLA, depending on their characteristics. Furthermore, getting students used to talking in a supportive and friendly atmosphere may help students relax and reduce their levels of FLA in the classroom. Finally, this study suggests that an increased awareness of FLA is needed, since it appears to be hard to notice in class and rarely discussed among teachers.