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This study explored the relationship between how students are taught to write in first-year English composition classes and what they are expected to read as part of the general education requirements at a publically-funded large university in the southeast (PLUS), and then to determine whether a gap exists. If a gap is found to exist between the preparation of students and their ability to read material that has been assigned by the teaching faculty, these students are less likely to be considered information literate by any rubric. This study uses a mixed-methods approach. Content analysis is employed to examine the assigned readings students encounter, and interviews are conducted to explore how students make sense of the academic writings assigned in general education classes. Research questions included (1) What are the overall structures of both (a) instruction composition and (b) scholarly journal articles assigned for reading in subsequent general education classes in the disciplines of psychology and history at PLUS? (2) How can these structures be identified? (3) What are the top-level structural patterns of composition within these two academic disciplines and how do they differ? and (4) Do these differences create contradictions in how students are taught to write in freshmen composition courses and the composition of the journal articles they are expected to read in their required general education classes? Thirty-one texts taken from general education syllabi were analyzed for incidence and placement of specific structural elements such as topic sentences and signal words. This study also explored perceptions of these differences from the standpoint of college students. Interviews of twenty-two students were conducted using Dervin’s Sense Making Methodology. These interviews were analyzed in terms of situations, gaps, bridges, outcomes, as well as thematic concepts that consistently arose during the interviews. Significant differences existed between readings from English Composition classes and assigned scholarly journal articles in history and psychology in incidence and placement of topic sentences, use of signal words or phrases, and readability. In addition, thematic analysis of the interviews of students found that they experienced gaps between their expectations of text composition and their experience reading assigned journal articles.

Denna studie jämför hur kommentarer till nätartiklar på Aftonbladet.se har förändrats från 2010 till 2011 vad gäller innehåll, språk och ton. Mellan dessa år har systemet för kommentering ändrats på Aftonbladet.se, från att det 2010 krävdes registrering och att kommentatorn fick välja ett valfritt alias, till att kommentering sker via ett redan registrerat Facebook-konto med kommentatorns riktiga namn. Studiens syfte är att ta reda på hur diskussionerna och språket i kommentarsfälten påverkas när kommentatorn inte längre får vara anonym. Med kvantitativ innehållsanalys undersöks två artiklars kommentarer per dag under en vecka, 14 till 20 oktober 2010 och 2011, 14 artiklar från varje år. Urvalet av artiklar utgår från vilka artiklar som topplacerats i Aftonbladets pappersupplaga samma dag. Totalt har 1452 kommentarer undersökts med 28 variabler. Variablerna berör bland annat huruvida kommentaren är kritisk, om den svarar på en annan kommentar och om den innehåller stavfel eller andra språkliga misstag. Efter att kodningen genomförts gjordes ett reliabilitetstest där 30 redan undersökta kommentarer analyserades en gång till för att stärka resultatets validitet. Huvudresultatet visar att det 2011 pågår en mer aktiv diskussion mellan de som kommenterar och att kvinnorna har tagit mer plats i kommentarsfälten än tidigare. Detta kan ha sin förklaring i att det är mer lättillgängligt att kommentera via ett Facebook-konto förutsatt att man redan har ett registrerat konto. Språkbruket är i princip det samma båda åren, men kommentarerna har blivit längre och mer sakliga. / This study compares reader comments on articles displayed on Aftonbladet.se, in terms of content and language. Between these years the system for commenting on Aftonbladet.se has changed from a registration, when the user could choose their own alias, to commenting using their already existing Facebook-account with the user’s real name. This study answers the question how and if the reader comments change when the option of being anonymous disappears. This study analyses readers’ comments of two articles every day during two weeks, October 14th to October 20th 2010 and 2011, with a total of 14 articles each year. The selection of articles was based on the articles placement in the printed newspaper Aftonbladet the same day. 1452 comments have been studied through 28 variables. Some of the most important variables were; whether the comment is critical, whether the comment answers another comment and if it contains spelling mistakes. In order to strengthen the validity of the study a test of the reliability was made and 30 comments were re-analysed one more time. The main results of the study indicates that the debate was more active between the users in 2011 than in 2010 and that women to a higher extent started to take place in the commenting area. These results are probably an effect of using the Facebook account for commenting, which is accessible and easy to use.

This study investigated the use of lexical bundles in research articles written in English by Turkish scholars. For the purpose of the study, a corpus of published research articles produced by Turkish scholars in six different academic disciplines was collected. The four-word lexical bundles that appeared at least twenty times in this one million word corpus were identified and further analyzed both structurally and functionally based on the previous taxonomies developed by Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999) and Biber, Conrad and Cortes (2004). The results of this study revealed that the lexical bundles found have structural correlates as well as strong functional features that help to construct discourse in academic writing. The conclusions drawn from this study could be applied to the teaching of academic genres to researchers in English as a Foreign Language context and are expected to provide insights for further corpus-based studies in academic writing.

No description available.

The English translation of the Swedish compound fönsterbräda into windowsill, or the proper noun Danmark into Denmark makes perfect sense. But how about the compound fossilbränslefri as simply fossil fuel or the name Mälaren as Lake?  All four of these translations have been produced with the help of automatic machine translation. The aim of this paper is to present the expanding field of application of machine translation and some issues related to this type of translation. More specifically, the study has looked at Google Translate as one of the most commonly used machine translation systems online, and how it responds to the two linguistic categories that were selected for this small study: compound nouns and proper nouns. Besides analyzing these categories, two different text types were chosen: general information articles from a local authority website (Stockholm City) and patent texts, both of which belong to the expanding field of application of Google Translate. The results of the study show that in terms of compound nouns, neither of the text types proved to be significantly better suited for machine translation than the other and neither had an error rate below 20 %. Most of the errors related to words being erroneously omitted in the English output and words which were incorrectly translated in relation to context. As for proper nouns, the patent texts contained none and subsequently no error analysis could be made, whereas the general information articles included 76 proper nouns (out of a total word count of 810). The most prominent error related to the Swedish version not being maintained in the English output where it should have been, e.g. translating Abrahamsberg as Abraham rock. The errors in both of the linguistic categories had varying impact on the meaning of the texts, some of which distorted the meaning of the word completely, and some which were of minor importance. This factor, along with the fact that the reader of the text influences how the comprehension level of the text is perceived through their language and subject knowledge, makes it difficult to evaluate the full impact of the various errors. It can, however, be said that patent text could pose as a better option for machine translation than general information articles in relation to proper nouns, as this text type is likely to contain no or very few proper nouns.

This dissertation reports on the results of a study into the characteristics of epistemic topoi and the methods of their identification in a corpus of biomedical publications. The study was conceived in response to the need for a systematized description of the organization of argumentative text and discourse. This need is well recognized in knowledge-intensive fields: information processing, storage, and retrieval; corpus analysis and natural language processing; data mining, knowledge management and translation; professional training and education. The study followed the design of a situated study combined with a methodological inquiry. I used inductive methods to describe the features and functions of recurrent patterns of argumentative and linguistic organization. This part of the study consisted in close reading of a corpus of fifty-five NTG papers and rhetorical and linguistic annotation of seventeen clinical studies (45,599 words) selected from the corpus. The data was generated by means of rhetorical and linguistic analysis. Visual annotation played an essential role in the identification and description of the argumentative patterns, complementing the traditional methods of corpus analysis. Forty-eight basic and nine composite epistemic topoi forming the superstructure of the papers were identified in the corpus. The topoi were found to be loosely associated with the IMRD structure and signalled with configurations of lexicogrammatical, semantic, deictic, and coreferential features. The topoi were classified according to the modes of reasoning and textual and discursive functions. The obtained results confirmed earlier insights into the links of linguistic patterning with text and discourse semantics. A significant outcome of the linguistic analysis is a catalogue of linguistic features that were found to have regular links with the topoi in the corpus. The role of linguistic configurations as identifiers of argumentative meanings makes them a valuable medium of text and discourse analysis. By linking the argumentative meanings to the surface features of text and discourse, the analysis of linguistic configurations presents informatics practitioners with an alternative to the current methods of natural language processing and knowledge management. The catalogue of linguistic features and a detailed description of the study design make the presented findings amenable to secondary analysis, extrapolation, and generalization. The auxiliary objectives of this study were a survey of argumentative practices represented in the corpus and a review of the state of epistemic research. The results of the survey and review suggest that agonistic reasoning practices and over-reliance on reductionist models have negative implications for research writing and communication. Specifically, they hamper analysis of argumentative organization of natural text and discourse. As an alternative to agonistic argumentation, I propose an argumentation model based on Aristotle’s and Kneale’s conceptions of situated knowledge and learning. The model of textual and discursive organization that accommodates situated knowledge and learning is political stasis. This model can be used as a heuristic and analytic tool. In this dissertation I use it as an explanatory conception and as a system of reference points for identifying significant research trends both in argumentation studies and in clinical NTG research.

This study investigates the concept of adaptivity in relation to the evolution of software and hence software embedded products. Whilst laying out the benefits of adaptivity in products, it discusses the potential future threats engendered by the actual change observed in the functionality principles of adaptive products. The discussion is based upon cybernetic theory which defines control technology in the 20th century anew. Accordingly, literature survey on cybernetic theory, evolution of software from conventional to adaptive structure is presented. The changes in the functionality principles of adaptive systems and the similarities that these changes show with living autonomous systems is also investigated. The roles of product and user are redefined in relation to changing control mechanisms. Then, the new direction that the conventional product-user relationship has taken with adaptive products is examined. Finally, the potential future threats this new direction might bring is discussed with the help of two control conflict situations.

Early musical experiences are very important for social, cognitive and physical development of children, as well as their future musical competences. Preschools present this environment with various musical materials. However, suitability of these materials in terms of developmental needs of children and educational goals is questionable. The purpose of this study is to transfer knowledge from relevant literature to design considerations of musical toys for preschool children. Literature review was conducted to determine various aspects to be considered while designing musical toys by compiling knowledge from developmental psychology and pedagogy literature / governments

Calif., Univ. of California, Diss.--San Diego, 2004. / Kopie, ersch. im Verl. UMI, Ann Arbor, Mich. - Enth.3 Beitr.