An Exploratory Study of How Technology Supports Communication in Multilingual Groups

Author(s):  
Milam Aiken ◽  
Jianfeng Wang ◽  
Linwu Gu ◽  
Joseph Paolillo

In this paper, the authors study how new technology can support multilingual groups. Their results show that no significant difference was found between group members’ comprehension of contributed comments and their stated minimum acceptable understanding. However, comprehension of relevant comments was higher than that for off-topic text, indicating that the sharing of important information was achieved. Further, reading comprehension tests of translations from Chinese, German, Hindi, Korean, Malay, and Spanish to English show that, except for Hindi, the automatic translations achieve accuracies that are acceptable for graduate studies at a university in the United States.

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milam Aiken ◽  
Jianfeng Wang ◽  
Linwu Gu ◽  
Joseph Paolillo

In this paper, the authors study how new technology can support multilingual groups. Their results show that no significant difference was found between group members’ comprehension of contributed comments and their stated minimum acceptable understanding. However, comprehension of relevant comments was higher than that for off-topic text, indicating that the sharing of important information was achieved. Further, reading comprehension tests of translations from Chinese, German, Hindi, Korean, Malay, and Spanish to English show that, except for Hindi, the automatic translations achieve accuracies that are acceptable for graduate studies at a university in the United States.


1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-366
Author(s):  
Eugene Jongsma

A random sample of passages was drawn from standardized reading comprehension tests for fourth grade students. The number and types of language patterns found in the test passages were determined through a method of linguistic analysis. The patterns identified on the tests did not reflect the patterns used most frequently in the oral language of fourth grade children. When the test passages were rewritten using a larger percentage of high frequency oral language patterns, and administered to comparable groups of students, no significant difference in comprehension performance was observed between those students taking the revised test and those taking the intact standardized test passages.


Author(s):  
Jerryk Comawas Alico

This causal-comparative research investigated whether reading comprehension performance differs if students read two different texts one that is related to their chosen field of study while the other is not. It also took interest in determining the influence of demographic and academic profile information on reading comprehension. Thirty students enrolled in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Strand of the Mindanao State University-Marawi Senior High School took two sets of reading comprehension tests for four times. The first set used texts whose topics are related to STEM while the second set used texts whose topics are taken from other fields of study like social sciences and economics. Findings revealed that in all four sessions of reading comprehension tests, there was a consistent significant difference between the performances of students in STEM-related and STEM-unrelated texts. Specifically, students performed better in test sets that used STEM-related texts. Moreover, there was no difference in the students’ performance when they were classified according to their gender and age. Interestingly, the curriculum they undertook in junior high school mattered in their reading comprehension performance on STEM-unrelated texts, which showed that students who were trained in science high schools performed better than other students did. These findings forward significant pedagogical implications for the effective teaching of English as well as other subject areas to Senior High School students with respect to instructional and reading materials used.


2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 1532-1538
Author(s):  
Cedar Mitchell ◽  
Megan Dyer ◽  
Feng-Chang Lin ◽  
Natalie Bowman ◽  
Thomas Mather ◽  
...  

Abstract Tick-borne diseases are a growing threat to public health in the United States, especially among outdoor workers who experience high occupational exposure to ticks. Long-lasting permethrin-impregnated clothing has demonstrated high initial protection against bites from blacklegged ticks, Ixodes scapularis Say (Acari: Ixodidae), in laboratory settings, and sustained protection against bites from the lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum (L.) (Acari: Ixodidae), in field tests. However, long-lasting permethrin impregnation of clothing has not been field tested among outdoor workers who are frequently exposed to blacklegged ticks. We conducted a 2-yr randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded trial among 82 outdoor workers in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. Participants in the treatment arm wore factory-impregnated permethrin clothing, and the control group wore sham-treated clothing. Outdoor working hours, tick encounters, and bites were recorded weekly to assess protective effectiveness of long-lasting permethrin-impregnated garments. Factory-impregnated clothing significantly reduced tick bites by 65% in the first study year and by 50% in the second year for a 2-yr protective effect of 58%. No significant difference in other tick bite prevention method utilization occurred between treatment and control groups, and no treatment-related adverse outcomes were reported. Factory permethrin impregnation of clothing is safe and effective for the prevention of tick bites among outdoor workers whose primary exposure is to blacklegged ticks in the northeastern United States.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026553222199113
Author(s):  
Sarah Sok ◽  
Hye Won Shin ◽  
Juhyun Do

Test-taker characteristics (TTCs), or individual difference variables, are known to be a systematic source of variance in language test performance. Although previous research has documented the impact of a range of TTCs on second language (L2) learners’ test performance, few of these studies have involved young learners. Given that young L2 learners undergo rapid maturational changes in their cognitive abilities, are susceptible to affective factors in unique ways, and have little autonomy with respect to the context of L2 acquisition, the relationship between their personal attributes and their test performance merit separate research attention. To fill this gap, we investigated the extent to which sixth-grade, Korean-L1, EFL learners’ ( n = 107) TTCs predicted their performance on tests of L2 listening and reading comprehension. The TTCs under investigation included three cognitive characteristics (aptitude, phonological working memory, L1 competence), one affective factor (motivation), and two demographic variables (socioeconomic status and gender). Results showed that aptitude and phonological working memory significantly predicted participants’ performance on both L2 listening and reading comprehension tests, whereas motivation predicted performance on the L2 listening comprehension test only. These findings suggest that higher aptitude, phonological working memory, and motivation contribute positively to young learners’ L2 outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 3055-3055
Author(s):  
Yuntao Song ◽  
Jie Liu ◽  
Weiran Wang ◽  
Tonghui Ma

3055 Background: Ultrasound and ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (US-FNA) are the first choice for judging benign and malignant thyroid nodules. This study will report on the differences of US-FNA BSRTC class, postoperative pathology and mutation landscape of thyroid nodules between China and other countries. Methods: We conducted a prospective study containing 383 FNA samples of thyroid nodules. For most of these FNA samples, genomic DNA and RNA were extracted and sequenced with FSZ-Thyroid NGS Panel V1, and postoperative pathology were followed up. Moreover, we also compared results of this study with those of West China Hospital in China, Yamashita Thyroid Hospital in Japan, and Cleveland Clinic in the United States. Results: Among the 383 FNA samples, the proportions of BSRTC class I to VI were 10.7%, 6.3%, 18.8%, 3.7%, 12.3%, and 48.3% respectively. Compared with study in other countries, the proportion of class II was significantly lower than that in Japan and the United States. Meanwhile, the proportion of class V and VI were significantly higher than the above two countries. Subsequently, 232 thyroid nodules were surgically removed. Postoperative pathology showed that the proportion of malignant tumors (85.3%) was also significantly higher than reported in Japan and the United States. But compared with other studies in China, there was no significant difference. Most of the malignant tumors were papillary thyroid cancer (PTC, 96%), accompanied with 2 follicular thyroid cancer (FTC), 3 medullary cancer (MTC) and 3 anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC). Compared with study in the United States, the proportion of PTC and FTC were elevated (96% vs. 85.3%) and reduced (1% vs. 9.3%) respectively. At last, we also analysis the mutation landscape of 180 malignant tumors. Compared with TCGA study, the frequency of BRAF V600E in PTC in our study was significantly higher than that of TCGA (73.3% vs. 58%), and the frequency of RAS mutation was significantly lower (1.2% vs. 12.6%). And compared with an institutional experience of ThyroSeq v3 for Bethesda III and IV at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the frequency of BRAF V600E and RAS mutation in Bethesda III-IV malignant tumors was also significantly higher (45.8% vs. 1.4%) and lower (8.3% vs. 47.1%). Conclusions: There were significant differences in BSRTC class and postoperative pathology between China and other countries, such as Japan and the United States. The possible reasons included that the indications for FNA in China were different. For example, most of patients who underwent FNA in this study had suspicious clinical/ultrasound features. So the proportion of BSRTC class V and VI as well as the malignant rate were elevated. On the other hand, more BRAF V600E and less RAS mutations were detected in malignant tumors in this study which might result from racial differentiation and discrepancy in proportion of PTC and FTC.


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