Language and Student Performance in Junior Secondary Science Examinations: The Case of Second Language Learners in Botswana

Teaching and testing in science in junior secondary schools in Botswana, takes place in English which is a second language for the majority of Batswana (Citizens of Botswana are called Batswana [sing. Motswana] and the national language is Setswana.) students and a third language for many. The understanding of textual material in science has been shown to be problematic for first language speakers, which means that difficulties in comprehension are likely to be even greater for second language readers. This study set out to test the hypothesis that improving the readability of junior certificate science examination questions would improve student achievement. Results show that changing certain readability factors, such as sentence length, simplified vocabulary and the removal of obscure information, brought about an improvement in achievement. The conclusion considers the implications of the study for the writers of examinations and other texts in science.     

Linguistic Features of Middle School Environmental Education Texts

The language used in environmental education texts has linguistic features that affect students' comprehension of concepts and their ability to envision solutions to environmental education problems. This paper shows what 143 middle school students focused on and what they failed to focus on when reading texts about biodiversity issues and identifies linguistic features of the texts that can account for this. Since much evaluation of students' knowledge of academic subjects, including environmental education, is done through reading and writing assignments, it is important to examine how environmental education texts present issues to students and what students write after reading environmental education texts. We suggest that features of texts such as abstract nouns and lack of explicit agents impede students' full comprehension of complex issues and obscure the causes and solutions to environmental problems. We present guidelines for teachers and materials writers to make abstract concepts more accessible to middle school students.     

Educational Policy for the Transnational Dominican Community

The increasingly transnational character of many immigrant communities necessitates changes in educational policy. We use the Dominican neighborhoods in New York City as our local case, examining the economic, political, social, cultural, and linguistic evidence of the transnationalism of this community. Many Dominicans maintain close ties to their native country through global networks that facilitate language and cultural maintenance. In spite of discrimination, Dominicans in the United States need to maintain their Spanish and want their children to develop fluent Spanish. Neglecting the language needs of transnational children leads to serious academic and social problems. Enriched bilingual bicultural programs would promote parallel development in both languages, providing cultural as well as linguistic instruction so that students can succeed in either country.     

20世纪西方语言批评视域下的话语分析

随着语言研究与文学理论、文化研究的不断发展与深入。话语分析在20世纪西方文论、文学批评及文化研究中的地位日益突出．并最终成为当今文学、文化批评和历史解读的最重要的理论武器之一。话语分析作为一种文学批评方法的发展历程与特征。展示了其与20世纪前期西方语言形式批评的关系。自20世纪西方文学研究’出现“语言学转向”以来,语言批评经历了一个从前期对“语言形式”的关注转变到后期关注“语言文化”的发展变化过程。     

Application of Language Transfer Rules to Foreign Language Teaching in College

Discourse analysis is the examination of language use by members of a speech community. It involves looking at both language form and language functions and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. It i-dentifies linguistic features that characterize different genres as well as social and cultural factors that aid in our inter-pretation and understanding of different texts and types of talk. A discourse analysis of written texts might include a study of topic development and cohesion across the sentences, while an analysis of spoken language might focus on these aspects plus turn-taking practices, opening and closing sequences of social encounters, or narrative structure.     

英语文化教学在小教大专教学中的重要作用及途径

如何进行小教大专英语教学是五年制师范专科教学中的一个重要问题。由于语言与文化之间独特的相互依存关系,要求教师在进行语言教学的同时也要进行该语言的民族文化教学,使学生能通过蕴涵在语言中的文化加强领会词义、运用句型、理解语篇以增强语言应用能力和交际能力。英语文化教学在小教大专英语教学中有着重要作用,为了更好地把英语文化教学运用到英语教学中,其实现途径显得尤为重要。     

高校网页英文翻译研究

高校英文网页较之其中文网页不仅内容滞后,而且翻译质量良莠不齐,存在问题颇多,通过调查国内12所高校的英文网页,发现其翻译问题突出体现于译者在翻译实践中忽视中西方语言与文化的差异,以及传播媒介的特殊性,致使文本的预期功能不能很好的实现,影响高校信息的传播与形象的提升;在收集语料的基础上着重从语言与文化的视角分析了英文网页中存在的翻译失误,并给出修改建议,以期提高翻译质量,并为同类文本的翻译提供借鉴作用。     

Intertextuality and sense production in the learning of algebraic methods

In studies carried out in the 1980s the algebraic symbols and expressions are revealed through prealgebraic readers as non-independent texts, as texts that relate to other texts that in some cases belong to the reader’s native language or to the arithmetic sign system. Such outcomes suggest that the act of reading algebraic texts submerges the reader into a network of intertextual relations derived from that reader’s prior mathematics and linguistic experiences. In this article we propose an analytical perspective of algebraic activity that is based on intertextuality and that makes it possible to advance our knowledge concerning the production of sense in said activity. In particular, we resort to the notion of intertextuality as a means of theoretically describing and explaining sense production processes in the learning of two algebraic methods: the Cartesian Method (for the algebraic solution of word problems) and the Substitution Method (for the solution of systems of two linear equations with two unknowns). We support our arguments via a series of episodes of empirical study interviews with secondary school students, in order to demonstrate the pertinence and relevance of carrying out their analysis from the perspective proposed.     

现行高中英语教材中的文化内容初探

语言作为一种符号系统在其具体应用中,因不同的情景和文化而产生不同的言语行为,具有不同的文化意义。在现行高中英语教材中,“大文化”语篇多于“小文化”语篇,目标语（英语）文化语篇多于中国文化语篇。因此,培养学生在语言学习中的跨文化意识及其对中外文化的学得途径应该是：在教材中增加“小文化”和中国文化的内容;文化内容应纳入考试范围;补充有关文化内容的阅读材料,观看影片,听专题讲座。     

教学中数学语言问题的现状分析

数学教学是数学语言的教学。数学教学中的语言问题其实就是教师的数学观和数学教学观的具体反映,教学中从学生的实际出发加强数学语言练习是学生数学语言的发展关键,数学交流是数学语言实践的重要平台。正确、熟练地运用数学语言教学除了需要教师的学科教学知识外,还需要教师有丰厚的学科知识作支撑。     

Multicultural Children’s Literature as a Context for Teaching Mathematics for Cultural Relevance in Urban Schools

This article reports on a teacher-research study that used multicultural texts as a context for teaching mathematics for cultural relevance during an elementary mathematics methods course. The results of the study reveal that 28 % (5 out of 18) of the teacher candidates (TCs) chose books that were culturally contextual or culturally amenable. However, 89 % (16 out of 18) of the TCs chose texts that were mathematically robust or mathematically peripheral. Four focal TCs were selected to examine how they used the texts with children to teach mathematics concepts. Math lessons fostered academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Overall, the results of the study are mixed. We conclude that some TCs’ choice of texts may reflect indifference, passive resistance, low self-efficacy, school culture, and mixed messages from the teacher–researcher. Additional studies that include follow-up interviews and classroom observations are needed to determine the factors that influence TCs’ selections of multicultural texts and their implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy with students.     

Does immigration background matter? How teachers’ predictions of students’ performance relate to student background

Accurate teacher evaluations of student performance are crucial for effective teaching. This study examined whether students’ immigration and language background affect teachers’ evaluations. Multilevel analyses tested whether teachers overestimate the performance of immigrant relative to that of non-immigrant students. As part of the German PISA 2003 assessment, 305 teachers predicted the performance of seven of their students on two mathematics problems of different linguistic complexity. Results revealed an interaction effect of students’ language background and linguistic complexity of the problem on teachers’ predictions. Teachers overestimated the performance of bilingual students more than the performance of monolingual immigrant or non-immigrant students on a linguistically complex problem. Teachers need to consider both students’ language background and linguistic demands of the material used to appropriately support bilingual students.     

Teaching and Assessing Writing: an Australian Perspective

This article examines issues of writing instruction and assessment as they relate to an approach to English language education that has been developed in Australia. The approach, put forward by proponents of genre theory, is underpinned by the argument that it is essential for all teachers, and especially English teachers, to have a ‘metalanguage’ about language education. The expectation is that such a metalanguage makes it possible for teachers and students to develop shared understandings of how written and spoken language works in their various forms. The related argument is that the teacher represents an authoritative (as distinct from authoritarian) language user in the classroom and is responsible for teaching the linguistic characteristics of texts as well as the relationship between texts and the cultural and social contexts in which they are produced and received. In this article I examine the ‘genre’ position and consider its relevance to the business of teaching, learning and assessing in the English classroom.     

Teaching Mathematics in Multilingual Classrooms

In this paper we present the way in which language issues have become a relevant factor in research which aims to study the socio-cultural aspects of mathematics education in classrooms with a high percentage of immigrant students. Our research on language issues focuses on two aspects, namely the language as a social tool within the mathematics classroom and the language as a vehicle in the construction of mathematical knowledge. We introduce our problem within this area and provide a rationale for our research methodology, not avoiding its drawbacks,but rather giving examples of the kinds of difficulties we encountered. The paper highlights the integrated nature of the social, cultural and linguistic aspects of mathematics teaching and learning, and illustrates the fact that, even if the mathematical language can be considered universal, the language of ‘doing mathematics within the classroom’ is far from being universal. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

中英立法文本语言特点对比及英汉翻译

中文立法文本与英文立法文本在篇章结构、句法、词法等方面存在大量相似的语言特征,表现在:二者均遵守法律语言的语用原则;都体现了高度程式化的语篇特点;都属于冷冻体语篇,具有极强的权威性、庄严性;都大量使用结构紧密、说理完整的长句;都存在大量法律专业术语。但二者亦存在着显著的差别化语言特色,如二者在法律专业术语的词源、构成方式、理解的难易程度等方面均存在较大差异;在句子的长度、引导法律规范行为模式的语言标记以及名词化的表现形式等方面也存在明显不同之处。在立法文本英译汉的过程中,译文的表达应尽量符合中文法律语言的表达习惯,符合中文读者的阅读习惯,以更好地实现原文具有的规范功能和提供信息功能,避免读者对译文产生歧义和费解,保证译文的准确性交际目的。     

A study of readability of texts in Bangla through machine learning approaches

In this work, we have investigated text readability in Bangla language. Text readability is an indicator of the suitability of a given document with respect to a target reader group. Therefore, text readability has huge impact on educational content preparation. The advances in the field of natural language processing have enabled the automatic identification of reading difficulty of texts and contributed in the design and development of suitable educational materials. In spite of the fact that, Bangla is one of the major languages in India and the official language of Bangladesh, the research of text readability in Bangla is still in its nascent stage. In this paper, we have presented computational models to determine the readability of Bangla text documents based on syntactic properties. Since Bangla is a digital resource poor language, therefore, we were required to develop a novel dataset suitable for automatic identification of text properties. Our initial experiments have shown that existing English readability metrics are inapplicable for Bangla. Accordingly, we have proceeded towards new models for analyzing text readability in Bangla. We have considered language specific syntactic features of Bangla text in this work. We have identified major structural contributors responsible for text comprehensibility and subsequently developed readability models for Bangla texts. We have used different machine-learning methods such as regression, support vector machines (SVM) and support vector regression (SVR) to achieve our aim. The performance of the individual models has been compared against one another. We have conducted detailed user survey for data preparation, identification of important structural parameters of texts and validation of our proposed models. The work posses further implications in the field of educational research and in matching text to readers.     

留学生跨文化适应中的压力与影响因素研究

留学生的跨文化教育适应是一个动态的发展过程,留学生因为各种不同因素的影响而经历各种跨文化适应压力。文章从留学生的跨文化适应阶段入手,从语言和学术适应、教育适应和社会文化等方面讨论留学生所面临的主要跨文化适应压力,从母语文化、自我效能、动机和社会距离等方面分析影响留学生跨文化社会适应的主要因素,以期为高校留学生跨文化适应培训带来启示。     

Literacy education and diversity: Toward equity in the teaching of reading and writing

The school-age population in North America is characterized by increasing linguistic, cultural, and ethnic diversity. The authors argue that non-mainstream students do not perform as well in schools as mainstream students (predominantly whilte, middle-class English speakers) because they are not equitably served by the educational system. They explore some of the complexities of educational equity and consider equity issues in the literacy education of language minority students from four different perspectives: individual student characteristics, sociocultural factors, language issues, and instructional issues. In support of their position, they examine each of these areas in turn, providing illustrations and analysis. They conclude with several principles upon which to build practices to make literacy education more equitable for all students.     

Characterizing Reading Comprehension of Mathematical Texts

This study compares reading comprehension of three different texts: two mathematical texts and one historical text. The two mathematical texts both present basic concepts of group theory, but one does it using mathematical symbols and the other only uses natural language. A total of 95 upper secondary and university students read one of the mathematical texts and the historical text. Before reading the texts, a test of prior knowledge for both mathematics and history was given and after reading each text, a test of reading comprehension was given. The results reveal a similarity in reading comprehension between the mathematical text without symbols and the historical text, and also a difference in reading comprehension between the two mathematical texts. This result suggests that mathematics in itself is not the most dominant aspect affecting the reading comprehension process, but the use of symbols in the text is a more relevant factor. Although the university students had studied more mathematics courses than the upper secondary students, there was only a small and insignificant difference between these groups regarding reading comprehension of the mathematical text with symbols. This finding suggests that there is a need for more explicit teaching of reading comprehension for texts including symbols.