Sla

Abstract : 1. What are we doing when we do grammar ? / 2. So what is grammar?/ 3. Where do the rules in book grammars come from ? / 4. So is grammar just about the links between words ? / 5.Language grammar always happens at the same time as lots of other things in your brain / 6. What should grammar teachers teach ? / 7. Do students learn useful language control from studying grammar books? / 8. Can teachers teach grammar? / 9. How can language teachers be most useful? / 10. Do grammar mistakes matter? / 11. Is accuracy more important than fluency?

This is the outline of a seminar on grammar teaching given as a teacher inservice for Chinese English teachers in Zhengzhou, Henan, China, on 13 May 2008. Thor May has been teaching language and linguistics since 1976.

Expression and activity of nitrate reductase (NR; EC 1.6.6.1) and glutamine synthetase (GS; EC 6.3.1.2) were analysed in relation to the rate of CO2 assimilation in cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) leaves. Intact plants were exposed to different atmospheric CO2 concentrations (100, 400 and 1200 μL L−1) for 14 days. A correlation between the in vivo rates of net CO2 assimilation and the atmospheric CO2 concentrations was observed. Transpiration rate and stomatal conductance remained unaffected by CO2 levels. The exposure of the cucumber plants to rising CO2 concentrations led to a concomitant increase in the contents of starch and soluble sugars, and a decrease in the nitrate content in leaves. At very low CO2, NR and GS expression decreased, in spite of high nitrate contents, whereas at normal and elevated CO2 expression and activity were high although the nitrate content was very low. Thus, in cucumber, NR and GS expression appear to be dominated by sugar levels, rather than by nitrate contents.

These are notes on English stress, rhythm and intonation.

Part A is for students and Part B is for teachers.

The treatment here is “technical”, as by a linguist, but in very plain language. Even with poor formal English, L2 speakers who “sound right” will gain social acceptance, and this in turn will greatly accelerate their learning.

Firstly the concept of “the music of a language” is introduced. It is noted that languages are on a scale of “syllable timed” to “stress timed” (though this is not a simple matter). English is a stress-timed language. Both word stress and sentence stress are essential in English. However, proper word liaison and elision marks native speakers from non-native speakers. Some advice is given on how to practice privately and in a classroom. The importance of teacher talk as a model is noted.

Research in L2 motivation has evolved since Gardner and Lambert introduced the socio- educational model and highlighted the importance of attitudes and affect to the SLA process. Though the field expanded focus, little work has been done into L2 teacher motivation; instead, most studies have focused on student attitudes and motivation. This paper highlights the need for research into teacher attitudes and L2 teacher motivation in the ESL/EFL classroom.

Abstract
Nowadays authentic reading matter is extensively used in the teaching of English for academic purposes. However choosing and deploying such materials is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. In this paper, the pros and cons of authentic materials are assessed and difficulties in their deployment are discussed, together with suggestions for their successful utilisation.

Listening to and processing the pronunciation of speakers of different native and non-native varieties of English presents a challenge for many learners. The general consensus among authors of ELT handbooks is that teachers need to use listening material that will help learners become aware of different accents of English (i.e. Harmer, 2007; Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000)

In order to discover if teachers of English share this view and if this is reflected in their teaching practices, a questionnaire was completed by a representative sample of 47 English language teachers in Thessaloniki, Greece. The mean response for each questionnaire item was calculated and the paired-samples t-test was undertaken in order to determine if any differences in the scores were statistically significant.

The questionnaire results indicate that the perceived importance of learners' exposure to a standard British or American variety is greater compared to the learners' exposure to standard regional, non-standard regional, or non-native varieties of English. A similar pattern emerged in terms of the teachers' responses to the question addressing the frequency of learners' exposure to various accents of English through the listening material of the course. Conversations among non-native (but fluent) speakers of English received the lowest rating of all questionnaire items; this is disappointing since nowadays English is primarily used for communication among non-native speakers of English (Jenkins, 2000). This study suggests that the views expressed in ELT handbooks in this area have had little impact on teachers' practices and the reasons why this is the case will be revealed.

This presentation helps teachers think about second language acquisition perspectives on classroom instruction. It describes some of the research and literature on SLA, and how insights into second language learning can improve ESL/EFL classes. Examples focus on thinking about SLA and how an understanding of learning can inform one’s teaching.

Intertextuality in its broadest sense—the relationship between two texts—is a pervasive feature of academic writing, as manifested by features such as citations to earlier texts and the sets of features such as structure and organisation which are shared by texts in a given genre and/or academic discipline.

Many of the intertextual features of academic writing, such as the choice of reporting verb and verb form, have been thoroughly researched and described (e.g., Charles, 2006; Shaw, 1992). Much is also know about a specific, highly problematic form of intertextuality: plagiarism (e.g., Pecorari & Shaw, 2012). However, less attention has been given to the ways in which novice academic writers become aware of conventional intertextual practices, and less still to the transferability of this feature to writing in the workplace.

This paper will present the results of a corpus-based investigation of intertextuality in two domains: the leisure-time reading which lower-division undergraduates do, and a common workplace genre.  By triangulating the results from these two corpora with existing findings about the intertextual features of academic texts it will be possible to describe the extent to which these features overlap with, or diverge from, each other.  This will thus provide an indication of the features which can reasonably be expected to transfer from one domain to another, and which cannot, and should therefore be the subject of explicit instruction in the English for Specific Academic Purposes classroom.

References
Charles, M. (2006). The Construction of Stance in Reporting Clauses: A Cross-disciplinary Study of Theses. Applied Linguistics, 27, 492–518.
Pecorari, D. & Shaw, P. (2012). Types of student intertextuality and faculty attitudes. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21, 149–164.
Shaw, P. (1992). Reasons for the correlation of voice, tense and sentence function in reporting verbs. Applied Linguistics, 13, 302–319.

Most teachers and students of singing are not aware that all vocal exercises taught to singers derive from the “Italian School” of singing. Fewer still understand that this school derived its principals from speech and used the expression, “Si canta come si parla” (lit. you sing as you speak). Yet the Italian and English languages are rather different. Each possesses its own features. Adopting Italian singing elements directly into English song performance produces odd results. This lecture will define the gross features of both the Italian and English languages. Once this is accomplished, common singing errors can then be identified and corrected, new vocal exercises can be created, and a deeper understanding of declamation and legato can be achieved.

Bu çalışma bankacılık sektöründeki hizmetlerin sürekliliği açısından önemli bir husus olan hizmet seviyelerine yönelik olarak hazırlanmıştır. Söz konusu çalışma ile ilgili sektördeki hizmet seviyelerine ilişkin çerçevenin ortaya konması amaçlanmıştır. Belirtilen hususların yanı sıra, bu çalışmada hizmet seviyelerinin teorik çerçevesine ek olarak hizmet seviyesi anlaşması (SLA) örneklerine de yer verilmiştir. Çalışmada hizmet seviyeleri tüm yönleriyle ele alınmış olup bankaların hizmet seviyesi yönetiminde dikkat etmesi gereken kritik hususlar vurgulanmıştır. Sonuç olarak, hizmet seviyesi yönetimi ve izlenmesine yönelik bankaların Bilgi Teknoloji (BT) birimleri içinde hizmet seviyesi yönetimi bölümleri kurulması önerilmiştir. Ayrıca detaylı analizler ve karşılaştırmalar içeren akademik çalışmalar yapılabilmesi için bankaların hizmet seviyesine ilişkin verilerini kamuya açılması yerinde olacaktır. Türkiye'de hizmet seviyelerine yönelik çalışma bulunmadığından dolayı yapılan çalışma bu yönüyle öncü bir çalışma olma özelliği taşımaktadır.

In order to improve the attractiveness and drive the commercial uptake of Grid technologies, the establishment of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is required. The AssessGrid project contributes to this aim by introducing risk-aware Grid architectural components. Grid service users, brokers and providers benefit from risk assessment functionalities in all phases of service provisioning and utilisation. This paper focuses on the economic issues which result from this new risk-aware approach to Grid computing. Multiple open economic research questions are discussed from the perspective of users, brokers and providers, which point out the potential impact of AssessGrid in this area.

This study investigates kanji learning (the memorization of Japanese written characters) of university students of Japanese, in order to evaluate their use of mnemonic strategies. The study applies in-depth qualitative methods to broaden the understanding of how foreign language learners use mnemonics when learning kanji. Data were collected over the duration of a year in the form of interviews, stimulated recall sessions, and a questionnaire on mnemonic usage. The study found that while mnemonics are useful to memorize kanji and kanji components when applied in a meaningful way, an over-reliance on this strategy can have negative effects for the learner. The study highlighted numerous accounts of the meaning of a kanji being lost in overly complex mnemonic strategies. Another limitation of mnemonic strategies was associations being made with the meaning of kanji and not with how it was read, causing an inability to read kanji in Japanese.

There has been a growth in students with dyslexia attending university. These students commonly rate writing as one of their greatest problem areas. Our research set out to describe the effects of dyslexia on the writing skills of students compared to
age-matched peers and a spelling-skill-matched group. Generally, the texts of the students with dyslexia were poorer than age controls but not poorer than the spelling- skill controls. However, there were no major differences in “higher order” skills
such as ideas and organization with the chronological age controls, only in “lower order” transcription skills such as spelling and handwriting fluency. The students with dyslexia made more spelling errors in their essays than one would predict given their
dictated spelling skills.

RESUMEN: Covacha de los Zarpazos (TZ) es una cavidad perteneciente al Complejo Galería. Está formado por tres Unidades TZ-TG-TN, situados en la Trinchera del Ferrocarril, en la Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos).Contamos con una datación por las series del Uranio para la estalagmita terminal de la cueva de 135 ± 13 Ka. Entre sus restos óseos cabe destacar la presencia humana, adscritos al Homo heidelbergensis. La industria lítica recuperada en este yacimiento ha sido estudiada mediante el SLA, siendo posible su adscripción a lo considerado como Modo 2 o Achelense. A partir de estos análisis, se han obtenido rasgos comportamentales y de movilidad de estos individuos, no solo en lo que re refiere a TZ, sino también al conjunto de Galería.
ABSTRACT: Covacha de los Zarpazos site is a cave belonging to the Galeria Complex. This karstic complex is makes up by three units TZ-TG-TN and it is located in the Trinchera del Ferrocarril, at La Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos). A stalagmite breccia in the top of the sedimentary fill has been dated to 135 ± 13Ka. Among its archaeological remains we have to remark two human bones belonging to Homo heidelbergeinsis. The lithic assemblage yielded in this site has been studied using the SLA and it can be related to the Modo 2 technology or Achelense. From the analysis of lithic material we have inferred technological behaviours and strategies of mobility of this hominid groups that are valid for TZ and for the rest of Galeria as well.

Uptake is believed to be an indication of the effectiveness of focus on form
practices and a possible facilitator for language acquisition.  All the accounts of uptake in the literature have been based on the observational data derived from the audio-recordings of the meaning-focused classes. The present study is a novel attempt to account for instances of uptake in 18 hours of meaning-focused instruction in an intact EFL class through  an elicitation instrument called  uptake sheet. To this end, all instances of teacher- and learner-initiated preemptive Focus on Form Episodes (FFES) and uptake moves following them were identified and coded in the audio-recorded data. Then, the researchers cross-checked the audiodata findings with the ones in the  uptake sheets.  Compared to the oral uptake moves captured through the audio-data, the analyses revealed a significantly higher frequency of uptake moves in the uptake sheets following teacher-initiated FFEs, but a lower frequency of uptake moves was found in the case of learner-initiated FFEs. The findings would, hopefully, further clarify our conception of the nature and rate of uptake and would pave  the way for further research on  exploring
multiple instances of uptake not accounted for so far in the literature.