Reading is currently a great concern in South Africa with most learners reading below their grade level. In order to remedy this problemthe Department of Education (DoE) has launched a number of campaigns to ensure learners are continuously monitored and evaluated. The purpose of this study is to explore how Grade 4 teachers support learners with word recognition problems in an inclusive classroom. Grade 4 is a transitional grade from mother tongue to English as the medium of instruction in most of Gauteng schools. This shift creates a challenging factor when teaching reading. Although the teachers’ in this investigation were professionally trained not all were trained on how to teach reading and such components as word recognition and lack of strategies raised a major concern. The DoE (2005:67) also stressed that in applying teaching methods teachers should bear in mind that there is no single classroom in which all learners will be exactly the same or learn in the same way and same pace. Hence, teachers need to be creative when dealing with word recognition problems in order to be able to accommodate different learners in an inclusive classroom. In addressing the challenges faced this study uses Bronfenbrenners ecological system theory and qualitative research design to examine how teachers support learners with word recognition problem. The interview questions were firstly piloted with one of the neighbouring Grade 4 teacher. After the pilot study six Grade 4 teachers from four different primary schools were interviewed and observed and their documents were also analysed. The analysis used Creswell’s method and the finding highlighted factors which affect Grade 4 teachers when supporting learners with word recognition. The factors include the following: understanding the Grade 4 learner, curriculum changes in Grade 4, teacher training in the teaching of reading, teaching reading in Grade 4, addressing word recognition in Grade 4, insufficient district support, lack of parental involvement, lack of enough resources and time allocation and lesson plans. Based on the findings, recommendations were made on how to support Grade 4 learners with word recognition problems. / Inclusive Education / M. Ed. (Inclusive Education)

Il a été démontré que les mots sont plus faciles à reconnaître lorsque leur moitié inférieure est effacée, laissant leur moitié supérieure intacte, que lorsque leur moitié supérieure est effacée. Si la reconnaissance de lettres sous-tend la reconnaissance de mots tel qu'il est généralement pris pour acquis, alors un tel effet devrait aussi être présent au niveau des lettres, mais ce n'est pas le cas. Le but de ce mémoire a d'abord été d'investiguer cette différence entre lettres et mots et, ensuite, de démontrer que la préférence pour le haut des mots ne peut pas s'expliquer par les lettres. Finalement, nous nous questionnons sur l'existence d'un construit intermédiaire entre lettres et mots et proposons les chaînes lexicales. / It has been demonstrated that words are more readily recognized when their lower half has been erased, leaving the upper half intact, than when the upper half has been erased. If letter recognition subtends word recognition as it is so often assumed, then we would expect to find a similar effect with letters, but it is not the case. The goal of this master's thesis has first been to investigate this difference between words and letters and then to demonstrate that the preference for the upper half of words cannot be accounted for by letters. In the end, we look into the existence of a construct between features and words and propose that lexical strings could be that construct.

Il a été démontré que les mots sont plus faciles à reconnaître lorsque leur moitié inférieure est effacée, laissant leur moitié supérieure intacte, que lorsque leur moitié supérieure est effacée. Si la reconnaissance de lettres sous-tend la reconnaissance de mots tel qu'il est généralement pris pour acquis, alors un tel effet devrait aussi être présent au niveau des lettres, mais ce n'est pas le cas. Le but de ce mémoire a d'abord été d'investiguer cette différence entre lettres et mots et, ensuite, de démontrer que la préférence pour le haut des mots ne peut pas s'expliquer par les lettres. Finalement, nous nous questionnons sur l'existence d'un construit intermédiaire entre lettres et mots et proposons les chaînes lexicales. / It has been demonstrated that words are more readily recognized when their lower half has been erased, leaving the upper half intact, than when the upper half has been erased. If letter recognition subtends word recognition as it is so often assumed, then we would expect to find a similar effect with letters, but it is not the case. The goal of this master's thesis has first been to investigate this difference between words and letters and then to demonstrate that the preference for the upper half of words cannot be accounted for by letters. In the end, we look into the existence of a construct between features and words and propose that lexical strings could be that construct.

Reading is currently a great concern in South Africa with most learners reading below their grade level. In order to remedy this problemthe Department of Education (DoE) has launched a number of campaigns to ensure learners are continuously monitored and evaluated. The purpose of this study is to explore how Grade 4 teachers support learners with word recognition problems in an inclusive classroom. Grade 4 is a transitional grade from mother tongue to English as the medium of instruction in most of Gauteng schools. This shift creates a challenging factor when teaching reading. Although the teachers’ in this investigation were professionally trained not all were trained on how to teach reading and such components as word recognition and lack of strategies raised a major concern. The DoE (2005:67) also stressed that in applying teaching methods teachers should bear in mind that there is no single classroom in which all learners will be exactly the same or learn in the same way and same pace. Hence, teachers need to be creative when dealing with word recognition problems in order to be able to accommodate different learners in an inclusive classroom. In addressing the challenges faced this study uses Bronfenbrenners ecological system theory and qualitative research design to examine how teachers support learners with word recognition problem. The interview questions were firstly piloted with one of the neighbouring Grade 4 teacher. After the pilot study six Grade 4 teachers from four different primary schools were interviewed and observed and their documents were also analysed. The analysis used Creswell’s method and the finding highlighted factors which affect Grade 4 teachers when supporting learners with word recognition. The factors include the following: understanding the Grade 4 learner, curriculum changes in Grade 4, teacher training in the teaching of reading, teaching reading in Grade 4, addressing word recognition in Grade 4, insufficient district support, lack of parental involvement, lack of enough resources and time allocation and lesson plans. Based on the findings, recommendations were made on how to support Grade 4 learners with word recognition problems. / Inclusive Education / M. Ed. (Inclusive Education)

This thesis investigated lexical representations of children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) using a duration-blocked gating task. This thesis tested the hypothesis that children who stutter have underspecified phonological representations for words, are less sensitive to incremental and segmental information for lexical items, and therefore require more acoustic-phonetic information to activate words in their lexicon. Pilot data collected from fourteen children (ages 5;6 to 10;1): 7 CWS and 7 CWNS matched on age were included in this thesis. Results showed that children in both talker groups required relatively equal amounts of acoustic-phonetic information to identify target words. A regression model revealed that age in months predicted performance on the gating task for CWNS, but that age in months did not predict performance on the gating task for CWS suggesting a difference in the developmental maturity of lexical representations in CWS. Possible conclusions from these pilot data are presented along with recommendations for future research. / text

Large variations in writing styles and difficulties in segmenting cursive words are the main reasons for handwritten cursive words recognition for being such a challenging task. An Indian postal document reading system based on a segmentation-free context based stochastic model is presented. The originality of the work resides on a combination of high-level perceptual features with the low-level pixel information considered by the former model and a pruning strategy in the Viterbi decoding to reduce the recognition time. While the low-level information can be easily extracted from the analyzed form, the discriminative power of such information has some limits as describes the shape with less precision. For that reason, we have considered in the framework of an analytical approach, using an implicit segmentation, the implant of high-level information reduced to a lower level. This enrichment can be perceived as a weight at pixel level, assigning an importance to each analyzed pixel based on their perceptual properties. The challenge is to combine the different type of features considering a certain dependence between them. To reduce the decoding time in the Viterbi search, a cumulative threshold mechanism is proposed in a flat lexicon representation. Instead of using a trie representation where the common prefix parts are shared we propose a threshold mechanism in the flat lexicon where based just on a partial Viterbi analysis, we can prune a model and stop the further processing. The cumulative thresholds are based on matching scores calculated at each letter level, allowing a certain dynamic and elasticity to the model. As we are interested in a complete postal address recognition system, we have also focused our attention on digit recognition, proposing different neural and stochastic solutions. To increase the accuracy and robustness of the classifiers a combination scheme is also proposed. The results obtained on different datasets written on Latin and Bengali scripts have shown the interest of the method and the recognition module developed will be integrated in a generic system for the Indian postal automation.

This thesis investigates a subset of the lexical items which appear to be involved in the phenomenon of conversion in English. In its most canonical form, conversion involves pairs or sets of word forms which share both their phonological (and orthographic) form as well as some element of meaning, but which seem to belong to di↵erent word classes. In this study, the focus is on the relationships (or lack thereof) between monosyllabic verbal and nominal forms in conversion pairs. The investigation takes as a starting point the patterns of linguistic behaviour within and across these pairs. The situation which is revealed is complex, but not unsystematic. Instead, it is shown that in many cases, the relationship between the nominal and verbal forms is clearly asymmetrical. In contrast to these clearer patterns, however, there are also a number of cases wherein the relationship appears to be more symmetrical in nature. In view of the complexity of the situation, the question of how to best model the linguistic behaviour of such forms has been a subject of some debate in the literature. A variety of theoretical explanations for these relationships have been proposed, though none has managed to account for the wide range of data. This study therefore suggests a mixed model, in which asymmetrically-related forms are involved in a derivational morphological process, while symmetrical forms represent inflected forms of a single lexeme which lacks a specification of word class. However, given the fertile – and in no way settled – research background, the primary contribution of this study is an experimental exploration of how these forms and the relationships between them might be synchronically represented in the mental grammar of current speakers. To that end, three behavioural experiments are conducted with a view to uncovering how di↵erent types of conversion items are processed, and how information about their processing might inform our theoretical understanding. The results of these experiments suggest that the processing of these forms is indeed in line with the patterns of symmetry and asymmetry found in their linguistic behaviour, and suggests that some conversion pairs may be involved in a derivational process, while others may not be pairs at all but rather a single, underspecified lexical entry. However, in addition to the results concerning the forms which display clearer patterns of behaviour, it is suggested that the patterns across the phenomenon of conversion as a whole may best be understood as a continuum, rather than all suggesting a single underlying pattern of mental representation.

Mo, Deyuan. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-167). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; appendixes includes Chinese.

For Chinese EFL learners, the skill of vocabulary learning is one of the most essential elements in their English learning process. Many Chinese students transfer their familiar character-learning strategies, which include shape identification and rote memorization, in their English word-learning process. As a result, they may spend time and effort associating the shape, the sound, and the meaning of an English word before they learn and memorize it. Since they do not take advantage of the correspondence between the print and the sound, their vocabulary-learning process seems to be less effective.

The purpose of this study was to determine the test-retest reliability of digitally recorded word recognition materials. Word recognition testing is included in a complete audiological evaluation to measure an individual's ability to discriminate what they hear. A phonetically balanced list of 50 monosyllabic words was presented to each participant at four different sensation levels (SL) using the American Speech Language Hearing Association recommended protocol for word recognition score testing. Each participant took a 10 minute break before the test was readministered. Participants included 40 subjects with varying levels of hearing loss, from normal hearing to severe hearing loss. The test and retest scores of all participants were analyzed to estimate the test-retest reliability to be .65 at 10 dB SL, .87 at 20 dB SL, .88 at 30 dB SL, and .95 at 40 dB SL. It was concluded that the word lists have strong test-retest reliability at 20, 30, and 40 dB SL and that the reliability increases as the presentation level increases.