written narratives
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Author(s):  
Carly R. Dinnes ◽  
Karen Hux

Purpose: Written expression challenges following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in adults have received little clinical attention but can substantially affect quality of life and the success of reintegration efforts. Assessment tools and procedures are lacking despite the likelihood of post-TBI problems with microstructure (e.g., productivity, spelling accuracy) and macrostructure (e.g., topic adherence, organization) aspects of written language. The lack of standardized procedures forces reliance on informal methods to determine writing strengths and challenges. Method: A combination of assessment procedures allowed for evaluation of the productivity and efficiency, adherence to writing conventions (e.g., spelling, sentence structure, punctuation), and macrostructure organization (e.g., story grammar, topic adherence) of written narratives collected from five adults with TBI. Results: Use of multiple assessment methods revealed disparate writing challenges across the five case examples. The differing writing profiles underscore the necessity of evaluating multiple aspects of written narratives. Conclusions: The described analysis methods can help clinicians determine areas of strength and challenge in written work generated by adults with TBI. Examination of multiple aspects of writing is key to garnering a comprehensive appraisal of post-TBI writing.


Author(s):  
Luke Breland ◽  
Joanna H. Lowenstein ◽  
Susan Nittrouer

Purpose: In spite of improvements in language outcomes for children with hearing loss (HL) arising from cochlear implants (CIs), these children can falter when it comes to academic achievement, especially in higher grades. Given that writing becomes increasingly relevant to educational pursuits as children progress through school, this study explored the hypothesis that one challenge facing students with CIs may be written language. Method: Participants were 98 eighth graders: 52 with normal hearing (NH) and 46 with severe-to-profound HL who used CIs. Oral and written narratives were elicited and analyzed for morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features. Five additional measures were collected and analyzed as possible predictors of morphosyntactic complexity: Sentence Comprehension of Syntax, Grammaticality Judgment, Expressive Vocabulary, Forward Digit Span, and Phonological Awareness. Results: For oral narratives, groups performed similarly on both morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features; for written narratives, critical differences were observed. Compared with adolescents with NH, adolescents with CIs used fewer markers of morphosyntactic complexity and scored lower on several global narrative features in their written narratives. Adolescents with NH outperformed those with CIs on all potential predictor measures, except for Sentence Comprehension of Syntax. Moderately strong relationships were found between predictor variables and individual measures of morphosyntactic complexity, but no comprehensive pattern explained the results. Measures of morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features were not well correlated, suggesting these measures are assessing separate underlying constructs. Conclusions: Adolescents with CIs fail to show writing proficiency at high school entry equivalent to that of their peers with NH, which could constrain their academic achievement. Interventions for children with CIs need to target writing skills, and writing assessments should be incorporated into diagnostic assessments. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17139059


2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110554
Author(s):  
George Zisopoulos ◽  
Sofia Triliva ◽  
Pagona Roussi

Survivors of the intensive care unit (ICU) report an aggregate of burdensome memories. ICU diaries have been proposed to address the psychological impact of ICU treatment. Twenty-six participants wrote about their ICU experiences in three successive sessions, while in the second session, they were presented with a dairy derived from their medical records. Using inductive thematic analysis in the first and third narratives, we explore how participants initially describe their ICU experience and how they process it after the intervention. Participants described a martyrdom experience, including being emotionally distressed, disorientated, and physically trapped that provoked a quest for any available interpersonal support. A vacuum-like state permeated their existence, impacted their sense-making ability, and the proximity to death uniquely characterized this experience. After intervention, participants made small but significant changes in their written narratives. They appeared to reorganize their recollections, reestablish self-continuity by integrating their ICU experiences, and authored restitution narratives.


BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. e051928
Author(s):  
Petronella Bjurling‐Sjöberg ◽  
Camilla Göras ◽  
Malin Lohela-Karlsson ◽  
Lena Nordgren ◽  
Ann-Sofie Källberg ◽  
...  

IntroductionSince early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged societies and revealed the built-in fragility and dependencies in complex adaptive systems, such as healthcare. The pandemic has placed healthcare providers and systems under unprecedented amounts of strain with potential consequences that have not yet been fully elucidated. This multilevel project aims to explore resilient performance with the purpose of improving the understanding of how healthcare has adapted during the pandemic’s rampage, the processes involved and the consequences on working conditions, ethics and patient safety.MethodsAn emerging explorative multilevel design based on grounded theory methodology is applied. Open and theoretical sampling is performed. Empirical data are gathered over time from written narratives and qualitative interviews with staff with different positions in healthcare organisations in two Swedish regions. The participants’ first-person stories are complemented with data from the healthcare organisations’ internal documents and national and international official documents.AnalysisExperiences and expressions of resilient performance at different system levels and times, existing influencing risk and success factors at the microlevels, mesolevels and macrolevels and inter-relationships and consequences in different healthcare contexts, are explored using constant comparative analysis. Finally, the data are complemented with the current literature to develop a substantive theory of resilient performance during the pandemic.Ethics and disseminationThis project is ethically approved and recognises the ongoing strain on the healthcare system when gathering data. The ongoing pandemic provides unique possibilities to study system-wide adaptive capacity across different system levels and times, which can create an important basis for designing interventions focusing on preparedness to manage current and future challenges in healthcare. Feedback is provided to the settings to enable pressing improvements. The findings will also be disseminated through scientific journals and conferences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 78-78
Author(s):  
Raven Weaver ◽  
Cory Bolkan ◽  
Autumn Decker

Abstract For gerontological educators, topics such as mortality, loss, and end-of-life issues often emerge or are central in their courses. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised our awareness of loss and death on a global scale and teaching during the pandemic has raised questions about how educators, communities, or systems of higher education can support students’ learning while simultaneously experiencing losses during intense times of uncertainty. In this mixed-method study of 246 students enrolled in undergraduate thanatology courses, we explored their levels of death anxiety and their experiences with pandemic-related losses. We found that students’ death anxiety increased significantly during the pandemic, in comparison to the years prior (p < .001). We also conducted a content analysis in a subset of students’ written narratives (n = 44) regarding their pandemic experiences. We identified three themes. Participants desired: (a) more flexibility from instructors, no questions asked; (b) more compassion and understanding; and (c) specific, targeted support resources. The voices of students were filtered through the authors’ interpretation as educators to provide several teaching recommendations that support student learning during challenging times. The recommendations align with a trauma-informed approach, given the high rates of death anxiety and ambiguous loss among students, and have immediate implications for educators teaching during the pandemic, and for years to come. Finally, we also advocate for more university and community-based thanatology, and gerontology education offerings in general, to help normalize conversations about death, loss, and bereavement.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swagata Sinha Roy ◽  
◽  
Kavitha Subaramaniam ◽  

If one has not read local English novels like The Garden of Evening Mists and The Night Tiger, one would never be able to imagine the wonders of locales depicted in these two books. One of the reasons the authors here want to visit a said destination is because of the way a certain place is pictured in narratives. Tan Twan Eng brings to life the beauty of Japanese gardens in Cameron Highlands, in the backdrop of postWorld War II while Yangsze Choo takes us into several small towns of Kinta Valley in the state of Perak in her beautifully woven tale of the superstitions and beliefs of the local people in Chinese folklore and myth in war torn Malaysia in the 1930s and after. Many of the places mentioned in these two novels should be considered places to visit by tourists local and international. Although these Malaysian novelists live away from Malaysia, they are clearly ambassadors of the Malaysian cultural and regional heritage. In this paper, a few of the places in the novel will be looked at as potential spots for the coming decade. The research questions considered here are i) what can be done to make written narratives the new trend to pave the way for Visit Malaysia destinations? ii) how could these narratives be promoted as guides to the history and culture of Malaysia? The significant destinations and the relevant cultural history of the regions will be discussed in-depth to come to a relevant conclusion.


Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 191
Author(s):  
Maria Kihlstedt ◽  
Jesús Izquierdo

Previous research has examined the organization of second-language French narratives through discourse or morphological analyses. At the discourse level, the analyses have investigated the foreground/background relationship. Conversely, at the morphological level, the analyses have examined the role played by verbal morphology and verbal predicates. Different methodological caveats have limited the interpretation of findings in both types of analyses. In order to provide new data, this cross-sectional study examined the evolution of discourse and morphological resources in the written narratives of Mexican Spanish-speaking learners of French whose language learning experience is limited to the classroom. The learners in the cross-sectional sample (n = 11) were selected from a population of 88 participants who completed lexical, past-tense and general proficiency tests. They also generated two written narratives during silent-film retelling tasks. The cross-sectional sample selection was based on the learners’ test scores and the results of parametric statistical analyses. The narratives were analyzed for the identification of foreground/background clauses, verbal morphology and verbal predicates. The results reveal that, as learners’ past-tense knowledge increases, the organization of narratives consolidates through a developmental path that involves the interrelated growth of discourse and morphological features.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anu Järvensivu ◽  
Monika E. von Bonsdorff

PurposeThe negative stereotypes concerning late-career workers are found to prevail and lead to negative circulation of narratives and actions between individuals and societies. Using the context of late-career entrepreneurs, the paper aims to find an alternative and a more positive narrative concerning late-career work by focusing on entrepreneurs and the narrative positioning related to them.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a narrative-positioning analysis, cycling through three levels of analysis and then returning to level two, in order to study our sample of seven narratives written by Finnish late-career entrepreneurs. The authors present in detail one story-telling narrative, by Matthew, and then layer the remaining six narratives to present themes, positioning and actions surrounding being a late-career entrepreneur.FindingsA more positive narrative circulation was found, which related to the master narrative of entrepreneurs as continuing “until the end” and taking care of themselves, their enterprises and different stakeholder groups even after exiting the enterprise into so-called “retirement.” The entrepreneurs were found to actively use this positive narrative to position themselves both in the story-telling world and in their local interactions. By positioning themselves as “never ending caretakers,” the entrepreneurs gave a strong account that their reasons to continue working centered on the factors social.Research limitations/implicationsThe research findings and analysis should be interpreted in the context of the Nordic countries and especially Finland.Practical implicationsThe results of this study can inform the ways in which these “never ending caretakers” can transition into retirement and adjust to life spent in retirement.Originality/valueIn the study, entrepreneurs' written answers were analyzed with narrative-positioning analyses. An alternative story of people at work was found, and a more positive narrative circulation was constructed based on their narratives.


Author(s):  
Yulia Zuban ◽  
Maria Martynova ◽  
Sabine Zerbian ◽  
Luka Szucsich ◽  
Natalia Gagarina

AbstractHeritage speakers (HSs) are known to differ from monolingual speakers in various linguistic domains. The present study focuses on the syntactic properties of monolingual and heritage Russian. Using a corpus of semi-spontaneous spoken and written narratives produced by HSs of Russian residing in the US and Germany, we investigate HSs’ word order patterns and compare them to monolingual speakers of Russian from Saint Petersburg. Our results show that the majority language (ML) of HSs as well as the clause type contribute to observed differences in word order patterns between speaker groups. Specifically, HSs in Germany performed similarly to monolingual speakers of Russian while HSs in the US generally produced more SVO and less OVS orders than the speakers of the latter group. Furthermore, HSs in the US produced more SVO orders than both monolingual speakers and HSs in Germany in embedded clauses, but not in main clauses. The results of the study are discussed with the reference to the differences between main and embedded clauses as well as the differences between the MLs of the HSs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 232 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liudmila L. Frolova ◽  
Antoniy Elias Sverdrup ◽  
Harald Ulrik Sverdrup

AbstractThe Kaban Lakes Integrated Assessment Model (KLIAM) was developed for the lake hydrology, chemistry, and plankton dynamics of the Nizhniy Kaban and Sredniy Kaban lakes, Kazan, Russia. KLIAM is able to describe the variations seen in the Kaban lakes chemical and biological states as far seen through measurements available at the moment. KLIAM is able to reconstruct the lake history as it is approximately known from the data and written narratives. KLIAM was used to assess the measures to return the lakes to their original pre-urban status as alkaline and semi-oligotrophic lakes. The Kaban Lakes periodically goes through plankton blooms, as seen in the lake in the last decades since before World War II, which are caused by plankton growth promoted by phosphorus and nitrogen coming to the lakes as pollution from the human environment. In the new plans for development of the area surrounding the Nizhniy Kaban and Sredniy Kaban lakes, we suggest that attention is paid to reducing phosphorus and nitrogen flows to the lakes, as the best way to improve their ecological status. This is based on simulations with KLIAM. We recommend that the monitoring of lake chemistry and lake ecology is improved with reoccurring analysis of samples from the Kaban Lakes.


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