On the Role of Update Constraints and Text-Types in Iterative Learning

Abstract This study aimed to determine as to whether or not the text type and strategy usage affect the EFL learners’ lexical inferencing performance. The participants were comprised of 87 first-year English majors at a technical university. Data were collected from (1) a lexical inferencing test with excerpts of narrative and expository texts, for which both multiple-choice and definition tasks were designed, respectively, and then (2) the responses from the learners’ self-reported strategy usage. The quantitative analyses demonstrated that the text types significantly affected the EFL learners’ lexical inferencing performance, in which the EFL learners performed better for the narrative excerpt than for the expository texts. However, significant coefficients between the strategy use and the lexical inferencing performance were not found in this study. The results further implied that the text structure and the lexical inferencing strategies should be explicitly taught to the EFL learners.

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Integrating CALL and Genre Theory: A proposal to increase students' literacy

ReCALL ◽

10.1017/s095834400800061x ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 67-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

María Martínez Lirola ◽

María Tabuenca Cuevas

Keyword(s):

New Technologies ◽

Genre Theory ◽

Grammatical Awareness ◽

Writing Competency ◽

Writing Students ◽

Text Types ◽

Second Year ◽

The Relationship ◽

Selection Of

AbstractThe use of computer programs that can be used to correct and assess students' written work in the EFL classroom has become more commonplace within the last decade. This paper discusses the role of CALL in the process of data collection, standardisation of assessment criteria and compilation of the number of errors in the areas of grammar learning and its application to L2 writing. Students benefited from the correction process and showed increased grammatical awareness through the corrected feedback. However, the analysis of the results after the first correction phase demonstrated that the students had improved less than expected. For this reason, in the second year, Genre Theory was adopted as a theoretical framework so that students would become aware of the relationship between the structure and shape of texts in order to be effective in a particular context, and to achieve the goals of a particular culture. As proponents of the genre approach, we argue that making the genres explicit and showing how to write them will help students to be aware of how knowledge is structured in different written genres. A careful selection of text types was made at the beginning of the year so that improvement in the students' writing not only depended on the CALL system being used, but also on the different genres or text types used as class material. In this study, we intend to demonstrate that the combination of new technologies in the classroom and Genre Theory helped students to increase their writing competency. Our research highlights the relationship between literacy, new technologies, and effective writing with an emphasis on the educational application.

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Pronominal anaphoric strategies in the West Saxon dialect of Old English

English Language and Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s136067431700020x ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 381-408 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

MARCELLE COLE

Keyword(s):

Old English ◽

Historical Data ◽

Personal Pronoun ◽

The West ◽

Text Type ◽

Demonstrative Pronoun ◽

Text Types ◽

Additional Support ◽

Selection Of

Building on previous studies that have discussed pronominal referencing in Old English (Traugott 1992; van Gelderen 2013; van Kemenade & Los 2017), the present study analyses the pronominal anaphoric strategies of the West Saxon dialect of Old English based on a quantitative and qualitative study of personal and demonstrative pronoun usage across a selection of late (postc. AD 900) Old English prose text types. The historical data discussed in the present study provide important additional support for modern cognitive and psycholinguistic theory. In line with the cognitive/psycholinguistic literature on the distribution of pronouns in Modern German (Bosch & Umbach 2007), the information-structural properties of referents rather than the grammatical role of the pronoun's antecedent most accurately explain the personal pronoun vs demonstrative pronoun contrast in the West Saxon dialect of Old English. The findings also highlight how issues pertaining to style, such as the author–writer relationship, text type, subject matter and the conventionalism propagated by text tradition, influence anaphoric strategies in Old English.

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On the Role of Models in Learning Control: Actor-Critic Iterative Learning Control

IFAC-PapersOnLine ◽

10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.1918 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 53 (2) ◽

pp. 1450-1455

Author(s):

Maurice Poot ◽

Jim Portegies ◽

Tom Oomen

Keyword(s):

Iterative Learning Control ◽

Learning Control ◽

Iterative Learning

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Corpus-based typology: applications, challenges and some solutions

Linguistic Typology ◽

10.1515/lingty-2020-0118 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Natalia Levshina

Keyword(s):

Warning Signs ◽

Text Types ◽

Comparative Concept ◽

Language Description

Abstract Over the last few years, the number of corpora that can be used for language comparison has dramatically increased. The corpora are so diverse in their structure, size and annotation style, that a novice might not know where to start. The present paper charts this new and changing territory, providing a few landmarks, warning signs and safe paths. Although no corpus at present can replace the traditional type of typological data based on language description in reference grammars, corpora can help with diverse tasks, being particularly well suited for investigating probabilistic and gradient properties of languages and for discovering and interpreting cross-linguistic generalizations based on processing and communicative mechanisms. At the same time, the use of corpora for typological purposes has not only advantages and opportunities, but also numerous challenges. This paper also contains an empirical case study addressing two pertinent problems: the role of text types in language comparison and the problem of the word as a comparative concept.

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Historical genre studies and the history of language: The place and role of text types in German and Russian historical linguistic research

Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University Language and Literature ◽

10.21638/spbu09.2021.309 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 569-589

Author(s):

Vladimir I. Karpov ◽

◽

Tatiana V. Toporova ◽

Keyword(s):

Historical Linguistic ◽

Historical Linguistics ◽

Genre Studies ◽

Text Linguistics ◽

Text Type ◽

Language History ◽

Text Types ◽

Text Genre ◽

History Of

The article presents a critical analysis of both domestic and foreign works on text linguistics where researchers try to reveal a minimum classification unit. More specifically, the article focuses on the term “Textsorte”. While it is widely employed in German linguistics, its content is not clearly defined in the works of Russian and foreign scholars. Here, it is shown how the term is approached in different fields of research — in information aesthetics, semiotics, text theory, and historical linguistics. The article is aimed at assessing the potential certain text types, recorded in various periods of the life of language, have for an extended description of language history. The authors analyze texts of oral folklore, and namely charms. Therefore, works on the history and typology of folklore genres are taken into account and thoroughly reviewed. These are mainly linguistic genre studies and scrutinizing them provides an opportunity to touch upon problems pertinent to the research of text genres, to consider the discussion around “text genre” and “text type” in foreign and domestic linguistics, to define the place and role of given text types in historical linguistic and cultural studies, and to reveal both trends in researching folklore texts and the relationship of folklore with text linguistics. The authors come to the conclusion that a comprehensive description of a given text type allows one to formulate general principles of diachronically oriented research and make a significant contribution to the development of historical linguistics.

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Social context and translation of public notices

Babel ◽

10.1075/babel.55.2.03zha ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 55 (2) ◽

pp. 142-152 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Meifang Zhang

Keyword(s):

Social Context ◽

Cultural Values ◽

Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽

Present Writer ◽

Test Case ◽

Language Functions ◽

Single Text ◽

The Social ◽

Text Types

To study the translation of public notice is in effect seeking insights which take us beyond translation itself towards the whole relationship between language activity and the social context in which the translation is intended to function. Social context is an important aspect in the study of language and translation because the three are inextricably linked. This paper attempts to investigate the text types, text functions and the translations of public notices functioning in the social context of Macao SAR of China. It tries to deduce about the contexts in which the ST and TT were produced, the purpose for which they were produced and the target reader for whom they were produced. The study is carried out in the light of Reiss’s theory of text typology (2000) and the Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics. It is hoped that this study will identity differences in public notice translation and explore the reasons behind the differences, and also be a test case for examining the role of functional theories of language in explaining some phenomena of translation.  Texts for the analysis are extracted from the database for a research project undertaken by the present writer, and the analysis is conducted in terms of three text types and functions: informative, expressive and operative. The results of this study reveal that although one of the language functions might be dominant in a single text in a public notice, overlapping or combining functions are very often bestowed upon most texts. They also show that although invariance in the transfer of content could be achieved in the translation of informative texts, and an analogous form in the translation could be found in the transfer of an expressive text, there are more differences than similarities in the translation of texts with operative functions.  Possible reasons behind the differences between the source and target texts are discussed. It is argued that the differences are most possibly caused by differences in cultural values, different religious backgrounds and different expectations between readers of the source and target texts. 

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Skopos translation theory, text-types, and the African postcolonial text in intercultural postcolonial communication

Babel ◽

10.1075/babel.62.3.01eke ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 62 (3) ◽

pp. 349-369 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joseph N. Eke

Keyword(s):

Postcolonial Theory ◽

Translation Theory ◽

Source Text ◽

Functional Theory ◽

Skopos Theory ◽

Text Types ◽

And Function ◽

Communicative Exchange ◽

Single Statement

The Postcolonial text is a political and ideological text that is differentiable in translation. This is because of its location in the dialogic and discursive communicative exchange between former coloniser and former colonised cultures and societies. This communicative exchange takes place in the situation and condition of asymmetrical relations and relations of inequality and involves the contestation of histories, cultures, meanings, identities and representations. The functionality of the postcolonial text with its message is fixated on this dialogue and discourse; and each postcolonial text is a single statement directly and specifically responding to this dialogue and discourse in some way. This paper examines the African postcolonial text* and its communicative location in the light of postcolonial theory and the possibility offered by the skopos functional theory in translation to set aside the purpose and function of the source text intended by the author. Using Chinua Achebe’s texts, It would conclude that the mediatory role of the translator in the dialogic and discursive exchange between former coloniser and former colonised cultures and societies need not become interference in the application of the skopos theory.

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Response to ‘The Aadhaar debate: Where are the sociologists?’

Contributions to Indian Sociology ◽

10.1177/0069966719861759 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 53 (3) ◽

pp. 431-440

Author(s):

Ursula Rao

Keyword(s):

Social Relations ◽

Digital Technologies ◽

Social Contexts ◽

Feedback Loops ◽

Iterative Learning ◽

The Political ◽

Critical Knowledge ◽

Digital Governance ◽

New Infrastructure

At this historical juncture, when digital governance is fundamentally re-forming social relations, we need critical knowledge about the emerging texture of society. This text responds to Reetika Khera’s important intervention about the need for more timely studies of Aadhaar. Building on Angelia Chamuah’s and Lawrence Cohen’s comments, I argue for the need to ask broader questions about the changing character of the political as it emerges in the Aadhaar arena. Today, states respond to the world’s dizzying complexity by inventing new experimental solutions, many of which utilise digital technologies, and often rather than deliver solutions, create new pathways for learning through critical engagement. Aadhaar is a case in point. In their studies, scholars should remain attuned to the open-endedness of the Aadhaar infrastructure and understand its experimental ethos. This would generate knowledge about processes of iterative learning and lead to conclusions about the role of feedback-loops for the evolution of digital governance. From there one can conclude about systems of value, social hierarchy, or justice and fairness that organise the processes of adapting a new infrastructure to multiple social contexts.

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