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Policy Impacts on Qualitative and Quantitative Aspects of Indian Education: Special Emphasis On Punjab (India Studies in Business and Economics)
by Jatinder S. BediThe book focuses on the state of education and on the levels of inequality among gender, rural–urban and social groups. Taking into account the various findings from existing literature on the qualitative and quantitative aspects of education, it uses empirical findings based on a revised methodology to draw new conclusions. This revised method was devised to define the size of population eligible for enrollment and was then employed to estimate the Gross Enrollment Rate (GER) and Gross Literacy Rate (GLR) at various completed education levels, using age-wise data from the Population Census, 2011. This methodology is based on the concept that among those eligible for enrollment/literacy, a few never get chance to enrol and others achieve various levels of literacy by remaining engaged in formal or informal education up to various ages. The book comes up with findings that have deep significance so far as policy making is concerned towards improving the state of education in India. There are fourteen hypotheses that the book proposes based on the study and each hypothesis is accompanied with policy suggestions. Interestingly, one of the hypotheses is that arbitrariness of government policies creates more problems and, as such, before proposing a policy change the government needs to put in more effort and time in planning and come up with carefully chalked out processes. In addition to being a valuable resource for researchers working in this area, the book has huge policy implications and think tanks working towards improving education in India.
Cognitively Inspired Natural Language Processing: An Investigation Based on Eye-tracking (Cognitive Intelligence and Robotics)
by Abhijit Mishra Pushpak BhattacharyyaThis book shows ways of augmenting the capabilities of Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems by means of cognitive-mode language processing. The authors employ eye-tracking technology to record and analyze shallow cognitive information in the form of gaze patterns of readers/annotators who perform language processing tasks. The insights gained from such measures are subsequently translated into systems that help us (1) assess the actual cognitive load in text annotation, with resulting increase in human text-annotation efficiency, and (2) extract cognitive features that, when added to traditional features, can improve the accuracy of text classifiers. In sum, the authors’ work successfully demonstrates that cognitive information gleaned from human eye-movement data can benefit modern NLP. Currently available Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems are weak AI systems: they seek to capture the functionality of human language processing, without worrying about how this processing is realized in human beings’ hardware. In other words, these systems are oblivious to the actual cognitive processes involved in human language processing. This ignorance, however, is NOT bliss! The accuracy figures of all non-toy NLP systems saturate beyond a certain point, making it abundantly clear that “something different should be done.”
English Studies in India: Contemporary And Evolving Paradigms
by Banibrata Mahanta Rajesh Babu SharmaThis volume is a collection of scholarly papers that explore the complex issues concerning English Studies in the present Indian context. The discussions in this volume range from historical perspectives to classroom-specific pedagogies, from sociological and political hierarchies to the dynamics of intellectual development in the English language environment. Interrogating both policy and practice pertaining to English Studies in the context of Indian society, culture, history, literature and governance, the chapters seek to formulate contemporary perspectives to these debates and envision alternative possibilities. Since the introduction of English to India more than 2 centuries ago, the language has transmuted the very fabric of Indian society, culture, history, literature and governance. The idea of India cannot be conceived in its entirety without taking into consideration the epistemological role that English has played in its formation. The present globalized world order has added dimensions to English Studies which are radically different from those of India’s colonial and postcolonial past. It is therefore imperative that the multitudinous shades and shadows of the discipline be re-examined with inputs drawn from the present context. This volume is for scholars and researchers of English literature and language studies, linguistics, and culture studies, and others interested in exploring new paradigms of engagement with the disciplinary formulation of English Studies in India.
Utility and Application of Language Corpora
by Niladri Sekhar Dash L. RamamoorthyThis book discusses some of the basic issues relating to corpus generation and the methods normally used to generate a corpus. Since corpus-related research goes beyond corpus generation, the book also addresses other major topics connected with the use and application of language corpora, namely, corpus readiness in the context of corpus sanitation and pre-editing of corpus texts; the application of statistical methods; and various text processing techniques. Importantly, it explores how corpora can be used as a primary or secondary resource in English language teaching, in creating dictionaries, in word sense disambiguation, in various language technologies, and in other branches of linguistics. Lastly, the book sheds light on the status quo of corpus generation in Indian languages and identifies current and future needs.Discussing various technical issues in the field in a lucid manner, providing extensive new diagrams and charts for easy comprehension, and using simplified English, the book is an ideal resource for non-native English readers. Written by academics with many years of experience teaching and researching corpus linguistics, its focus on Indian languages and on English corpora makes it applicable to graduate and postgraduate students of applied linguistics, computational linguistics and language processing in South Asia and across countries where English is spoken as a first or second language.
The Diachrony of Tone Sandhi: Evidence from Southern Min Chinese (Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics #6)
by Qing LinThis book investigates the diachronic change of the tone sandhi of Southern Min Chinese, which is known for its synchronic arbitrariness and opacity. It argues that in final-prominent tone sandhi, the change of final tones and the change of non-final tones can be highly independent and essentially different from each other. Accordingly, it proposes a new position-based diachronic approach to study the separate evolution of tones occurring at different positions. This book is the first study to rigorously and systematically explore the diachrony of Southern Min tone sandhi.
A Study on the Washback Effects of the Test for English Majors (TEM): Implications for Testing and Teaching Reforms
by Qian Xu Jun LiuThis book adopts a multi-method and multi-phase approach to investigate the washback effects of Test for English Majors (TEM) on program administrators, teachers and students, shedding new light on TEM reform and the reform of English teaching and learning in China. TEM, a nationwide test used to measure the language proficiency of undergraduate English majors in China, is a major standardized test taken by nearly 400,000 students every year. The book’s key features include: an in-depth discussion of the nature of washback and a framework for investigating it; a multi-method and multi-phase approach, employing both the quantitative method of questionnaire surveys and the qualitative methods of interviews and classroom observations; large-scale questionnaire surveys conducted among experts, program administrators, teachers and students, and involving over 30,000 participants; detailed assessments of TEM’s washback effects on stakeholders’ perceptions, classroom teaching practice, students learning activities, etc.; and essential insights into testing and teaching reforms.
Researching Cognitive Processes of Translation (New Frontiers in Translation Studies)
by Defeng Li Victoria Lai Lei Yuanjian HeThis edited volume covers an array of the most relevant topics in translation cognition, taking different approaches and using different research tools. It explores theoretical and methodological issues using case studies and examining their practical and pedagogical implications. It is a valuable resource for translation studies scholars, graduate students and those interested in translation and translation training, enabling them to conceptualize translation cognition, in order to enhance their research methods and designs, manage innovations in their translation training or simply understand their own translation behaviours.
Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese Pronunciation: The Mainstream Pronunciation of Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, From Sound Segments to Speech Melodies (Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics)
by Antônio Roberto SimõesThis book contrasts variations in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation, using as a reference for discussion the mainstream careful speech of news anchors at the national level or the equivalent type of speech: a well-educated style that nonetheless sounds natural. Pursuing an innovative approach, the book uses this view of language as a cornerstone to describe and discuss other social and regional variants relative to that speaking register. It is aimed at speakers of Spanish interested in learning Portuguese and speakers of Portuguese who want to learn Spanish, as well as language specialists interested in bilingualism, heritage languages, in the teaching of typologically similar languages in contrast, and readers with interest in Phonetics and Phonology. The book employs a variety of innovative approaches, especially the reinterpretation of some of the traditional concept in Phonetics, and the use of speech prosodies and speech melodies, a user-friendly strategy to describe speech prosody in languages and speech melody in music through musical notation.
Writing with Deleuze in the Academy: Creating Monsters
by Stewart Riddle David Bright Eileen HonanIn this book, authors working with Deleuzean theories in educational research in Australia and the United Kingdom grapple with how the academic-writing machine might become less contained and bounded, and instead be used to free impulses to generate different creations and connections. The authors experiment with forms of writing that challenge the boundaries of academic language, moving beyond the strictures of the scientific method that governs and controls what works and what counts to make language vibrate with a new intensity.The authors construct monstrous creations, full of vitality and fervor, hybrid texts, part academic part creative assemblages, almost-but-perhaps-not-quite recognisable as research. Stories that blur the lines between true and untrue, re-presentation and invention.The contributors to this book hope that something might happen in its reading; that some new connections might be made, but also acknowledge the contingency of the encounter between text and reader, and the impossibility of presuming to know what may be.
Essays in Literary Aesthetics (SpringerBriefs in Philosophy)
by Ranjan K. GhoshThe book deals with philosophical issues concerning the understanding of the literary text and its distinctive nature, meaning, and relevance to life. It also provides an occasion to revisit many of the seminal ideas towards these ends by contextualizing them in the current ongoing philosophical discourse on art, in general, and literary art, in particular. Some of the questions addressed in this book are: What is a literary text? What do we understand by the concept of intention in the context of literary arts? Are the feelings experienced in a literary text real? What then is the sense of “truth” in literature which is fictional in character? What relevance do moral concerns and perceptions have in appreciation of the literary text? These are some of the seminal questions that are dealt with by critically responding to views of contemporary thinkers. In short, the book makes an attempt to provide a critical overview of contemporary debates and discussions of literary aesthetics mainly from a Western analytical perspective. The author argues that understanding a literary text is not a purely cognitive exercise; on the contrary, we experience aesthetic meaning or truth in terms of valuable insights that play a role in our understanding of life and emotions. This book is useful for scholars, researchers and students of philosophy and literature interested in aesthetics.
Conferencing and Presentation English for Young Academics (Springer Texts in Education)
by Michael GuestThis book discusses and demonstrates the types of English discourse used at academic conferences and offers guidance to prospective conference participants from multiple perspectives. It is a combination of research taken from numerous academic conferences attended and observations made by the author, based on well-established research methods in applied linguistics, as well as a guidebook aimed at students, ESP teachers, and young academics and professionals wishing to upgrade their skills to participate fruitfully in, and contribute to, academic conferences. It offers academic novices and non-native speakers of English in particular much that is new and practical, far beyond the realm of simple ‘presentation tips’. It addresses various topics, such as chairing discussions, poster management, discussion sessions, the TED phenomenon, workshops, and the emerging field of English as a lingua franca. The style alternates between the accessible and practical, and the analysis of the linguistic categories underpinning the discourse: genre analysis, the nature of the specialist discourse community, features of academic spoken discourse, and the presentation as multimodal narrative are all explored. The book includes authentic samples of model speech discourse throughout, along with questions and exercises for deliberation or practice in each chapter.
English Learning in the Digital Age: Agency, Technology and Context
by Shuang ZengMoving beyond the ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘digital native’ rhetoric, this book addresses the complex experiences of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in a world embedded with interactive and participatory technologies. Adopting a sociocultural perspective, it investigates EFL learners’ behaviours concerning digital technology, and guides exploration into their contextually mediated choices and learning practices in the ‘2.0’ era.The argument is developed on the basis of the findings of a mixed sequential study that focused on 1485 Chinese undergraduates’ use and non-use of online tools and applications outside the English classroom. Particular attention is paid to the role of context and agency when understanding their learning choices and behaviours in the context of digital technology. In particular, the book acknowledges the explanatory power of agency in the minority instances of ‘good practices’ among these EFL learners. At the same time it demonstrates that for most learners, use of the current web is limited and mostly non-interactive. The barriers to ‘2.0’ transfer are largely contextual and the so-called ‘communicative opportunities’ and ‘participatory culture’ in particular did not fit into the learners’ sociocultural context of (language) learning.Overall, the compelling argument proposes that the technology-facilitated changes in EFL practices are a ‘bottom up’ process that is taking place in day-to-day situations and constrained by the learning context within which the learner is situated. Based on these arguments, the book provides a framework that challenges the existing beliefs about (language) learning with online technology, and that contributes to our understanding of how context mediates EFL learners’ behaviours surrounding digital technologies. It is a valuable resource for teachers, researchers and policy makers, providing them with insights into using digital technology to stimulate ‘good learning practices’ outside the classroom.
The Englishized Subject: Postcolonial Writings in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia
by Kwok-Kan TamThis book addresses issues of how the cultures in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia have been Englishized in postcolonial and globcalized contexts, not just in terms of language, but also in writers’/people’s subjectivity. Taking a cultural-literary approach to the study of Englishized subjectivity, the book offers a unique study of hybridized literary/language forms by relating them to bilingual thinking and bicultural sensibility. Poets, novelists and playwrights have different strategies to cope with new images and new forms of expression that can capture their sense of hybridized identity, and as a result, hybridity becomes creativity.
Promoting Language and STEAM as Human Rights in Education: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts And Mathematics
by Zehlia Babaci-WilhiteThis book argues that integrating artistic contributions – with an emphasis on culture and language – can make Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects more accessible, and therefore promote creativity and innovation in teaching and learning at all levels of education. It provides tools and strategies for managing interdisciplinary learning and teaching based on successful collaborations between researchers, practitioners and artists in the fields of the Arts and STEM subjects. Based on contributions by educators, scientists, scholars, linguists and artists from around the globe, the book highlights how we can demonstrate teamwork and collaboration for innovation and creativity in STEAM subjects in the classroom and beyond.The book reflects the core of human rights education, using local languages and local knowledge through art as a tool for teaching human rights at school, and bringing to light questions on diversity, ecology, climate change, environmental issues, health and the future of human beings, as well as power relations between non-dominant (minorities) and dominant (the majority) groups in society.
Linguistic Decision Making: Numerical Scale Model And Consistency-driven Methodology
by Yucheng Dong Jiuping XuThis book proposes a novel CWW model to personalize individual semantics in linguistic decision making, based on two new concepts: numerical scale and consistency-driven methodology. The numerical scale model provides a unified framework to connect different linguistic symbolic computational models for CWW, and the consistency-driven methodology customizes individuals’ semantics to support linguistic group decision making by setting personalized numerical scales. The book is a valuable resource for researchers and postgraduates who are interested in CWW in linguistic decision making.
British Romanticism in Asia: The Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Romantic Literature in India and East Asia (Asia-Pacific and Literature in English)
by Alex Watson Laurence WilliamsThis book examines the reception of British Romanticism in India and East Asia (including China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan). Building on recent scholarship on “Global Romanticism”, it develops a reciprocal, cross-cultural model of scholarship, in which “Asian Romanticism” is recognized as itself an important part of the Romantic literary tradition. It explores the connections between canonical British Romantic authors (including Austen, Blake, Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth) and prominent Asian writers (including Natsume Sōseki, Rabindranath Tagore, and Xu Zhimo). The essays also challenge Eurocentric assumptions about reception and periodization, exploring how, since the early nineteenth century, British Romanticism has been creatively adapted and transformed by Asian writers.
Referent Similarity and Nominal Syntax in Task-Based Language Teaching
by Craig LambertThis volume addresses an important gap in the literature on task design and second language use. Building on insights from over 50 years of research on the relationship between task demands and language use, it examines how referent similarity relates to developmentally-relevant variation in the use of nominal structures, comparative structures and abstract lexis among first and second language speakers of English. In addition to providing an empirical basis for future research on tasks, it shares both theoretical and practical information on task design, which will greatly benefit curriculum and material developers.
Education, Ethnicity and Equity in the Multilingual Asian Context (Multilingual Education #32)
by Jan Gube Fang GaoThe book addresses issues related to the education of ethnic minority individuals in the multilingual Asian region. It features recent research and practices of scholars aiming to rethink educational policy and practice surrounding the education of ethnic minority students with a variety of language scenarios in Hong Kong and other Asian contexts. It documents how ethnicity and inequality are played out at policy, school, and individual levels, and how these affect the education of ethnic minorities in their host societies. Using a range of methods, from surveys to interviews and document analysis, this book describes the links between language, identity and educational inequality related to ethnic minorities in Asian contexts.
Restructuring Translation Education: Implications from China for the Rest of the World
by Feng Yue Youlan Tao Huashu Wang Qiliang Cui Bin XuThis book offers data-based insights into the problems of translation education and their causes in the context of localization and globalization in the era of big data. By examining language services around the globe, illustrating applications of big-data technology and their future development, and describing crowdsourcing and online collaborative translations, speech-to-speech translation and cloud-based translation, it makes readers aware of the important changes taking place in the professional translation market and consequently recognize the insufficiency of translation education and the need for it to be restructured accordingly. Furthermore, the book includes data-based analyses of translation education problems, such as teaching philosophy, curriculum design and faculty development of both undergraduate and postgraduate education in China. More importantly, it proposes solutions that have already been successful in experiments in a number of universities in China for other institutions of higher education to imitate in restructuring translation education. The discussion is of interest for current and future translation policy makers, translation educators, translators and learners.
Al Jazeera in the Gulf and in the World: Is It Redefining Global Communication Ethics? (Contemporary Gulf Studies)
by Haydar Badawi SadigThis book examines the deeper meaning of the advent of the Al Jazeera Media Network with regard to ongoing debates on global communication ethics, not only in the global public sphere but also in terms of its influence on new non-Western approaches to media ethics. Rather than simply calling for international perspectives on media ethic is a unique and significant addition to the literature on the topic. The book investigates whether Al Jazeera’s vision, mission, and operations are actually inspired by the New World Information Order debates over contra-flow and hegemony. Further, the book identifies ways of developing new non-Western approaches to global communication ethics, as it suggests injecting more cosmopolitanism in global news reporting and commentary.
Heinrich Heine and the World Literary Map: Redressing the Canon (Canon and World Literature)
by Azade SeyhanThis text provides a key reassessment of the German author Heinrich Heine’s literary status, arguing for his inclusion in the Canon of World Literature. It examines a cross section of Heine’s work in light of this debate, highlighting the elusive and ironic tenor of his many faceted prose works, from his philosophical and political satire to his reassessment of Romantic idealism in Germany and the unique self-reflexivity of his work. It notably focuses on the impact of exile, belonging, exclusion, and censorship in Heine’s work and analyzes his legacy in a world literary context, comparing his poetry and prose with those of major modern writers, such as Pablo Neruda, Nazım Hikmet, or Walter Benjamin, who have all been persecuted and exiled yet used their art as resistance against oppression and silencing. At a time when a premium is placed on the value of world literatures and transnational writing, Heine emerges once again as a writer ahead of his time and of timeless appeal.
Substantive Bias and Natural Classes: An Empirical Approach (Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics #8)
by Yu-Leng LinThis book offers a laboratory phonological analysis of the sonority hierarchy and natural classes in nasal harmony using an artificial grammar-learning paradigm. It is aimed at postgraduate students and linguists in general whose research interests lie in phonology, phonetics, and/or psycholinguistics. It is useful for linguists who are struggling to figure out how to effectively design an artificial phonological grammar and those who have not designed experiments on their own but would like to do so as an additional means to testing linguistic theories. This book is also a valuable resource for anyone building crosslinguistic artificial grammar paradigm resources.
Redefining Chinese Literature and Art (Key Concepts in Chinese Thought and Culture)
by Jixi YuanThis Key Concepts pivot discusses the significance of the ancient Chinese concept of xìng or ‘Association’ in defining Chinese civilization and thought through the centuries. An approach unique to literary creation in China, xìng highlights the importance Chinese civilization sets by the integration of intellect, emotion and will into a highly consistent concept across its personal and public spheres. The book explores how the concept has been a widely used creative technique even in the earliest collections of Chinese poems, using metaphor and symbolism to set the scene and indicate thoughts and emotions invested in the vehicle of metaphor, as well as its impact on Chinese literature and philosophy as a domain of multiple meanings in classical Chinese aesthetics.
Computational and Corpus Approaches to Chinese Language Learning (Chinese Language Learning Sciences)
by Xiaofei Lu Berlin ChenThis book presents a collection of original research articles that showcase the state of the art of research in corpus and computational linguistic approaches to Chinese language teaching, learning and assessment. It offers a comprehensive set of corpus resources and natural language processing tools that are useful for teaching, learning and assessing Chinese as a second or foreign language; methods for implementing such resources and techniques in Chinese pedagogy and assessment; as well as research findings on the effectiveness of using such resources and techniques in various aspects of Chinese pedagogy and assessment.
Advances in Graphic Communication, Printing and Packaging: Proceedings of 2018 9th China Academic Conference on Printing and Packaging (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering #543)
by Pengfei Zhao Yun Ouyang Min Xu Li Yang Yuhui RenThis book includes a selection of reviewed papers presented at the 9th China Academic Conference on Printing and Packaging, which was held in November 2018 in Shandong, China. The conference was jointly organized by the China Academy of Printing Technology and Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences). With 8 keynote talks and over 200 presented papers on graphic communication and packaging technologies, the conference attracted more than 300 scientists.The proceedings cover the recent findings in color science and technology, image processing technology, digital media technology, mechanical engineering and numerical control, materials and detection, digital process management technology in printing and packaging, and other technologies. As such, the book is of interest to university researchers, R&D engineers and graduate students in the field of graphic arts, packaging, color science, image science, material science, computer science, digital media, and network technology.