To Read or Not to Read: A Qualitative Study of Students’ Justifications for Document Selection in Task-Oriented Reading

When navigating through the vast amount of information that we encounter in our everyday lives, we constantly make decisions concerning what information to read more closely and what information to disregard. Consideration of the relevance and trustworthiness of information sources facilitates those decisions. In the present study, we interviewed 25 upper-secondary students after they had selected documents to use in completing a task, and we asked them to justify their selections. A qualitative analysis of the interview data showed that students’ justifications could be related to (1) content relevance, (2) source features, and (3) prior topic knowledge. The results demonstrate that students are able to evaluate content relevance and source features as part of their document selection strategies but that perceived prior knowledge seems to influence both selections and justifications.     

The contribution of orthographic and phonological processes to word reading in young Norwegian readers

The dissociation between phonological and orthographic processes in word reading was investigated in a study involving 147 children in grade 3. The criterion measure was a timed word reading test. Two tasks assessed phonological skills and two tasks assessed orthographical skills. Orthographic ability accounted for variance in word reading even after phonological ability had been controlled. Poor readers differed from skilled readers in the way phonological and orthographic factors were balanced. The relationship between the two factors was fairly strong among poor readers, whereas the correlation was low for more skilled readers. Furthermore, phonological factors played a much stronger role in explaining the variance in word reading among poor readers, while on the other hand, orthographic factors were more powerful among skilled readers.     

Early language development and kindergarten phonological awareness as predictors of reading problems: from 3 to 11 years of age

At the end of Grade 4, 481 children on the Danish island of Bornholm were screened using group tests for sentence reading. For 205 of these children, language and speech data from the speech therapist's screening at age 3 were available, as well as language comprehension and linguistic awareness data from the kindergarten year (age 6) and word decoding measures in Grades 2 and 3. A path analysis revealed significant paths from early language abilities at age 3 through expressive and receptive language in kindergarten via language awareness in kindergarten and word decoding in Grade 2 to sentence reading in Grades 3 and 4. The subgroup of children with parents who had reported a history of reading problems at school entry scored significantly below average on sentence reading in Grade 4. The subgroup of children that were reported to show a very low interest in books and story reading before age 5 also scored low on sentence reading in Grade 4. Statistically significant but weak relationships were also found between parents' educational background, parents' library visits, and number of books at home and the child's reading ability in Grade 4.     

中国学生英语写作中的母语负迁移及对策

母语迁移对二语或外语学习的影响历来是语言学家们研究的重点 ,也是引起争论的焦点之一。母语迁移 ,特别是母语的负迁移涉及到二语或外语学习的方方面面 :从词汇到句法 ;从句子到篇章 ;从思维到文化 ,都将对中国学生英语写作产生影响     

WhatsApp as a Tool for Participation on Spanish Radio: A Preliminary Study of the Program Las Mañanas on RNE

This study was conducted in an environment of widespread use of social media and mobile applications in the mass media. The general goal of the study was to analyze the use of WhatsApp in cybermedia, specifically in radio. A case study was proposed to examine the use of WhatsApp on the program Las mañanas de RNE, broadcast by Spanish National Radio. It was found that the public was very accepting of the program’s initiative to solicit WhatsApp voice messages, beginning in November 2015. The case study used audio files of a direct broadcast that included specific times for audience participation. The use of WhatsApp was accepted by the audience, in addition to the use of the conventional telephone, as a tool well-suited to listener participation in radio programming. Finally, the study highlights the importance of interactive, participatory spaces in broadcasts through the creation of synergies with new forms of online participation.     

Free kick goals in football: an unlikely success between failure and embarrassment

We develop and use a numerical model to investigate the window of opportunity of free kicks in association football. The planar multibody forward dynamics model comprises a two segment leg model with joint actuations, a football, a wall and the turf. Contact mechanics is defined to model the impact of the foot and the ball’s interaction with the different elements in the environment. The optimum kick is determined using the global optimization algorithm differential evolution, requiring millions of kick simulations. The sensitivity of various solutions to parameter perturbation is investigated. It is concluded that toe kicks are theoretically superior to instep kicks, but are difficult to perform reliably. The results also show that small perturbations in parameters can lead to embarrassingly failed kicks.