Description:
As part of an evaluation of a web-based early literacy intervention, ABRACADABRA, a small exploratory study was conducted over one term in three primary schools in the Northern Territory. Of particular concern was the relationship between attendance and the acquisition of early literacy skills of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. Using the GRADE literacy assessment, it was found that students made significant gains in a number of early literacy skills (e.g. phonological awareness skills and vocabulary processing). Classroom attendance was strongly and positively correlated with the acquisition of phonological awareness skills and early literacy skills (e.g. letter recognition, word identification processing). Indigenous children attended class significantly less frequently than non-Indigenous children and performed significantly worse overall, particularly with regard to phonological processing tasks. In light of these findings, it is suggested irregular attendance contributed to the Indigenous students' lowered literacy acquisition.
Description:
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a means of criticising or critiquing the social order of power, inequality and hegemony in language. Within a doctoral study CDA was used to determine if social power, dominance, and inequality are enacted and reproduced through the text and talk of key participants. A reflection of the researcher experiences is provided as the results were analysed and prepared for publication. The discussion highlights there are other also discourses of power and hegemony which may impact researchers and authors themselves as they report and discuss discourse which marginalises those individuals and groups for whom the research is being conducted. As researchers and academics attempt to articulate and discuss discourse which marginalise and stigmatise, they need to acknowledge and recognise the discourse, which impacts their own ability to advocate for change, adjustment and empowerment.
Description:
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a means of criticising or critiquing the social order of power, inequality and hegemony in language. Within a doctoral study CDA was used to determine if social power, dominance, and inequality are enacted and reproduced through the text and talk of key participants. A reflection of the researcher experiences is provided as the results were analysed and prepared for publication. The discussion highlights there are other also discourses of power and hegemony which may impact researchers and authors themselves as they report and discuss discourse which marginalises those individuals and groups for whom the research is being conducted. As researchers and academics attempt to articulate and discuss discourse which marginalise and stigmatise, they need to acknowledge and recognise the discourse, which impacts their own ability to advocate for change, adjustment and empowerment.
Description:
This article outlines the purpose, development and delivery of the English Language Support Service (ELSS), which is offered to international students in their first year of study at a medium-sized university in regional Victoria, Australia. Additionally, this article explains how the support provided is contextualised, timely and appropriate to student needs, allowing students to take on new concepts with meaning and immediate application, in conjunction with their degree coursework. ELSS has been specifically designed to aid international students with their initial exposure and transition to studying in an Australian context. It aims to help international students become more assured in their place at university, and acclimatise to the Australian academic language, culture and landscape enough in order to subsequently engage confidently with their assignments and the remainder of their degree.
Description:
This article outlines the purpose, development and delivery of the English Language Support Service (ELSS), which is offered to international students in their first year of study at a medium-sized university in regional Victoria, Australia. Additionally, this article explains how the support provided is contextualised, timely and appropriate to student needs, allowing students to take on new concepts with meaning and immediate application, in conjunction with their degree coursework. ELSS has been specifically designed to aid international students with their initial exposure and transition to studying in an Australian context. It aims to help international students become more assured in their place at university, and acclimatise to the Australian academic language, culture and landscape enough in order to subsequently engage confidently with their assignments and the remainder of their degree.
Description:
Unsupervised Authorship Analysis (UAA) aims to cluster documents by authorship without knowing the authorship of any documents. An important factor in UAA is the method for calculating the distance between documents. This choice of the authorship distance method is considered more critical to the end result than the choice of cluster analysis algorithm. One method for measuring the correlation between a distance metric and a labelling (such as class values or clusters) is the Silhouette Coefficient (SC). The SC can be leveraged by measuring the correlation between the authorship distance method and the true authorship, evaluating the quality of the distance method. However, we show that the SC can be severely affected by outliers. To address this issue, we introduce the Positive Silhouette Coefficient, given as the proportion of instances with a positive SC value. This metric is not easily altered by outliers and produces a more robust metric. A large number of authorship distance methods are then compared using the PSC, and the findings are presented. This research provides an insight into the efficacy of methods for UAA and presents a framework for testing authorship distance methods.
Description:
Unsupervised Authorship Analysis (UAA) aims to cluster documents by authorship without knowing the authorship of any documents. An important factor in UAA is the method for calculating the distance between documents. This choice of the authorship distance method is considered more critical to the end result than the choice of cluster analysis algorithm. One method for measuring the correlation between a distance metric and a labelling (such as class values or clusters) is the Silhouette Coefficient (SC). The SC can be leveraged by measuring the correlation between the authorship distance method and the true authorship, evaluating the quality of the distance method. However, we show that the SC can be severely affected by outliers. To address this issue, we introduce the Positive Silhouette Coefficient, given as the proportion of instances with a positive SC value. This metric is not easily altered by outliers and produces a more robust metric. A large number of authorship distance methods are then compared using the PSC, and the findings are presented. This research provides an insight into the efficacy of methods for UAA and presents a framework for testing authorship distance methods.
Description:
The word however is an adverb and an adverb alone. The current online Oxford (Oxford English Dictionary Online, n.d.) and Cambridge (Cambridge English Dictionary Online, n.d. a) English dictionaries both have it listed solely as an adverb for British English. At the risk of awakening yet another descriptivist versus prescriptivist war, it must however be acknowledged that however is often used as a conjunction. This can, and frequently does, lead to confusion though, as the reader has to read on before realising that in fact that however was actually being used as a conjunction (or connective' in modern grammatical parlance). However the cat walked down the street ...' surely has the reader thinking something along the lines of In whatever manner the cat walked down the street ...' But a typical case of what I shall in this article call conjunctive howeveritis would reveal a complete (well, incomplete actually) sentence along the lines of, However the cat walked down the street, even though it rarely ventured from the house.' Not only are we now left with a sentence fragment, but in such an instance the reader would have to backtrack and subsequently assume the However was in fact being used as a coordinating conjunction. To me this is inefficient and an enemy of lucid writing. The Cambridge English Dictionary raises the warning flag high with the following example (Cambridge English Dictionary Online, n.d. b): We can't use however as a conjunction instead of but to connect words and phrases: