Critique of a Language-Learning Website

Listening plays a crucial part in the learning of overseas students in the United Kingdom. Students can never follow a lecture or discussion in English without listening. Traditional classroom teaching in listening limits students＇ time and space. However, the Web-based listening course accommodates listeners a great deal, enabling them to access the Internet at their own pace. In this paper, the author would like to study on a language learning Website for developing learners＇ listening skills, designed by the CELE （Centre for English Language Education） at the University of Nottingham. In the first part, the author will review the issues concerning listening, conventional materials design, CALL （computer assisted language learning） and actual Websites established for EAP （English academic purposes）. Through analysis, the author would develop a set of evaluation criteria in order to evaluate the CELE listening Website. These guidelines should also be helpful for teachers and students to select suitable online listening materials. By using these criteria and comparing with other Websites for similar purposes, the author would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the CELE Website and offer suggestions for its improvement. In the last section, the author would consider the generalisability of the Website in respect of design principles, exercise types and tools, to check whether it is appropriate for teaching listening in a specific context and whether it is applicable for creating a parallel site developing reading skills.     

Test of Moral Values: Its Development and Try-out

The need for a more vigorous and organized Moral Education programme in Singapore schools is emphatically made in the Report on the Ministry of Education, 1979 (Goh et al., 1980). It recommended that Moral Education be formally taught as a subject in the school curriculum throughout primary and secondary schools. The concern for Moral Education manifested itself in yet another attempt by a group of parliamentarians, resulting in the publication of the Report on Moral Education (Ong et al., 1979). This report serves as a common frame of reference for all Moral Education programmes currently implemented in Singapore schools. The state of Moral Education in Singapore schools was systematically documented and relevant issues were objectively studied in 1981 by a committee appointed by the Ministry of Education (Eng et al., 1981). Subsequently, exising programmes were improved on and new programmes introduced. At present, there are no less than six moral education programmes, both secular and religious, in Singapore schools.     

The seven deadly sins of world university ranking: a summary from several papers

World university rankings use the weight-and-sum approach to process data. Although this seems to pass the common sense test, it has statistical problems. In recent years, seven such problems have been uncovered: spurious precision, weight discrepancies, assumed mutual compensation, indictor redundancy, inter-system discrepancy, negligence of indicator scores and inconsistency between changes in ranking and ‘Overall’. These issues render the validity of ranking results suspect. Moreover, discussion on problems in world university ranking has been conducted mostly at the verbal level with little substantiation of supporting statistics. It is argued that discussion on ranking issues needs statistical evidential support. Modifications to the approach of processing ranking data are suggested.     

Profiles of Motivated Self-Regulation in College Computer Science Courses: Differences in Major versus Required Non-Major Courses

The goal of the present study was to utilize a profiling approach to understand differences in motivation and strategic self-regulation among post-secondary STEM students in major versus required non-major computer science courses. Participants were 233 students from required introductory computer science courses (194 men; 35 women; 4 unknown) at a large Midwestern state university. Cluster analysis identified five profiles: (1) a strategic profile of a highly motivated by-any-means good strategy user; (2) a knowledge-building profile of an intrinsically motivated autonomous, mastery-oriented student; (3) a surface learning profile of a utility motivated minimally engaged student; (4) an apathetic profile of an amotivational disengaged student; and (5) a learned helpless profile of a motivated but unable to effectively self-regulate student. Among CS majors and students in courses in their major field, the strategic and knowledge-building profiles were the most prevalent. Among non-CS majors and students in required non-major courses, the learned helpless, surface learning, and apathetic profiles were the most prevalent. Students in the strategic and knowledge-building profiles had significantly higher retention of computational thinking knowledge than students in other profiles. Students in the apathetic and surface learning profiles saw little instrumentality of the course for their future academic and career objectives. Findings show that students in STEM fields taking required computer science courses exhibit the same constellation of motivated strategic self-regulation profiles found in other post-secondary and K-12 settings.     

Measuring Motivation to Learn Chinese and English Through Self-Reported Feelings and Behaviours

The socio-educational approach to measuring language motivation has its focus on social attitude rather than language-relevant feelings and behaviours in the classroom context. The development of two scales for measuring elementary students' motivation to learn Chinese and English reported here is an exploration of a psychology-based approach which may be more meaningful to language teachers. The scales share common items and cover both affective and behavioural aspects of language learning. Very high internal consistency was found for both scales. Discriminant validity was established with reference to student backgrounds, including overall academic performance, gender, language examination grade, home language, and self-evaluation of language ability.     

Two-dimensional characterization of three-dimensional magnetic bubbles in Fe3Sn2 nanostructures

We report differential phase contrast scanning transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of nanoscale magnetic objects in Kagome ferromagnet Fe₃Sn₂ nanostructures. This technique can directly detect the deflection angle of a focused electron beam, thus allowing clear identification of the real magnetic structures of two magnetic objects including three-ring and complex arch-shaped vortices in Fe₃Sn₂ by Lorentz-TEM imaging. Numerical calculations based on real material-specific parameters well reproduced the experimental results, showing that the magnetic objects can be attributed to integral magnetizations of two types of complex three-dimensional (3D) magnetic bubbles with depth-modulated spin twisting. Magnetic configurations obtained using the high-resolution TEM are generally considered as two-dimensional (2D) magnetic objects previously. Our results imply the importance of the integral magnetizations of underestimated 3D magnetic structures in 2D TEM magnetic characterizations.     

Language Motivation,Use and Achievement

“How is it that some people can learn a second or foreign language so easily and so well while others, given what seem to be same opportunities to learn, find it almost impossible?” (Gardner and Lambert, 1972: 131). This seemingly simple question triggered off a series of studies which has kept researchers rather busy since 1960.     

Engagement@web 2.0 between the government and citizens in Singapore: dialogic communication on Facebook?

Responding to the rapid adoption of new technologies, political parties, both incumbent parties and minor ones, have been quick to leverage web 2.0 technologies for party communication and mobilization. A coterie of work addressed how social media such as Facebook are used as political tools for the promotion of candidate and party campaign platforms. However, a present bias is observed as current literature focus on western democracies. To bridge the gap, this study examines the gradual, yet significant, evolution in technology deployment by the ruling elite in Singapore. This paper traces the developments in e-engagement to bridge the affective gap between the ruling elite and an increasingly IT-savvy population, one which has demonstrated its astuteness in using new media to articulate its disenchantment. Developments in the last five years indicate that the government's earlier endeavor to centralize and streamline its political engagement via a single portal, REACH, is insufficient to say the least. Between the general election in 2006 and the watershed election in May 2011, the repertoire of media tools deployed by the political elite has broadened, with the inclusion of personal blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. In this paper, we apply Kent and Taylor's public relations dialogic communication framework to examine how Facebook fosters greater mutuality, propinquity, and empathy between the government and the electorate. However, problems arising from new technologies themselves inadvertently create risks and challenge the government's ability to commit to dialogic communication.     

A tale of two cities’ university rankings: comparing Hong Kong and Singapore

Hong Kong and Singapore were former British colonies, have a predominant Chinese population and value. They began to develop quickly in the late 1960s, become financial hubs of the world in the 21st century. This paper reviews the tertiary education development of the two cities, particularly on the perspective of university rankings. It first elaborates about the emergence of university rankings, and the reason why it becomes a growing exercise, and who would be the benefactors of these exercises. Then it examines the performance of universities of the two cities in the international university ranking systems, makes a general assessment about the relative merits of the higher education systems in both cities. The paper requests ranking comparisons on the detailed items rather than just the sums, and argues that universities in the two cities are on par.     

Finland and Singapore in PISA 2009: similarities and differences in achievements and school management

In PISA 2009, Finland and Singapore were both ranked high among the participating nations and have caught much attention internationally. However, a secondary analysis of the means for Reading achievement show that the differences are rather small and are attributable to spurious precision. Hence, the two nations should be considered as being on par with each other in achievements and be assigned the same rank. Spurious precision as a problem of interpreting and reporting research findings has caught the attention of researchers in several other disciplines, though not in the field of education, and this needs to be rectified. In spite of the finding of no differences in PISA Reading achievement, principals in Finland and Singapore differ somewhat in school management and involvement in school matters. It is suggested that some intervening variables (e.g., teachers’ quality and instruction) are needed to explain the correlation (or the lack of it) between principals’ management styles and student Reading achievement. It is also suggested that school principals’ management styles might have been influenced by the cultural milieus of the countries and have influenced students’ social-emotional development, which is not measured by PISA.