Teaching Quality and Students' EFL Achievements in Ethiopia: Analysis From the Perspective of the Basic Dimensions of Teaching Quality

Teaching quality is important for students’ English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Achievements. The three basic dimensions of teaching quality (student support, classroom management, and cognitive activation) showed effectiveness in some subjects in developed countries, but there is very little investigation on its effectiveness in developing ones. Using hierarchical linear modeling and re-centered influence function regression, this study investigates the extent to which the three basic dimensions of teaching quality affect students’ EFL achievements and how much the effect varies across achievement distributions in the context of Ethiopia. Findings reveal that classroom management does not affect students’ EFL achievements and this is consistent across achievement distributions. However, cognitive activation positively affects students’ EFL learning achievements and the effect is consistent across the distribution of achievements. Similarly, student support affects students’ EFL achievements positively, but its effect is higher for high-achieving students. Implications of the findings were discussed.

Resonance in dialogue: the interplay between intersubjective motivations and cognitive facilitation

abstract Dialogic resonance, when speakers reproduce constructions from prior turns, is a compelling type of coordination in everyday conversation. This study takes its starting point in resonance in stance-taking sequences with the aim to account for the interplay between intersubjective motivations and cognitive facilitation in resonance production. It analyzes stance-taking sequences in the London–Lund Corpus 2, determining (i) the type of stance alignment (agreement or disagreement), and (ii) the time lapse between the stance-taking turns. The main findings are, firstly, that resonance is more likely than non-resonance to be used by speakers who express disagreement than agreement, which we interpret as a mitigating function of resonance, and, secondly, that the turn transitions are faster in resonating sequences due to cognitive activation in the prior turn. We propose that the face-saving intersubjective motivation of resonance combines with its facilitating cognitive effect to promote appeasing communication.

Exploration of the Dynamics of Neuro-Cognition During TRIZ

The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) method and toolkit provides a well-structured approach to support engineering design with pre-defined steps: interpret and define the problem, search for standard engineering parameters, search for inventive principles to adapt, and generate final solutions. The research presented in this paper explores the neuro-cognitive differences of each of these steps. We measured the neuro-cognitive activation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of 30 engineering students. Neuro-cognitive activation was recorded while students completed an engineering design task. The results show a varying activation pattern. When interpreting and defining the problem, higher activation is found in the left PFC, generally associated with goal directed planning and making analytical. Neuro-cognitive activation shifts to the right PFC during the search process, a region usually involved in exploring the problem space. During solution generation more activation occurs in the medial PFC, a region generally related to making associations. The findings offer new insights and evidence explaining the dynamic neuro-cognitive activations when using TRIZ in engineering design.

Psychosocial Features of Shift Work Disorder

To better understand Shift Work Disorder (SWD), this study investigates insomnia, sleepiness, and psychosocial features of night workers. The study compares night workers with or without SWD to day workers with or without insomnia. Seventy-nine night workers and 40 day workers underwent diagnostic interviews for sleep disorders and for psychopathologies. They completed questionnaires and a sleep diary for 14 days. The design was observatory upon two factors: Work schedule (night, day work) and sleep (good sleep, SWD/insomnia). Two-way ANCOVAs were conducted on psychosocial variables, and effect size were calculated. The clinical approach chosen led to distinct groups of workers. Night workers slept several periods (main sleep period after work, naps, nights on days off). High total wake time and low total sleep time characterized sleep in SWD. Most night workers with SWD still complained of sleepiness after main sleep. Cognitive activation distinguished groups of night workers. All other differences in psychosocial variables between night workers groups were similar to, but smaller than, the ones between day workers. The evaluation of SWD should consider all sleep periods of night workers with particular attention to self-reported total wake time, state sleepiness, and level of cognitive activation.

Recognition of Stress Activation by Unobtrusive Multi Sensing Setup

It is recognized that stress conditions play an important role in the definition of individual wellness and represent a major risk factor for most non-communicable diseases. Most studies focus on the evaluation of response to maximal stress conditions while a few of them reports results about the detection/monitoring of response to mild stimulations. In this study, we investigate the capability of some physiological signs and indicators (including Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, Respiratory Rate, Galvanic Skin Response) to recognize stress in response to moderate cognitive activation in daily life settings. To achieve this goal, we built up an unobtrusive platform to collect signals from healthy volunteers (10 subjects) undergoing cognitive activation via Stroop Color Word Test. We integrated our dataset with data from the Stress Recognition in the Automobile Drivers dataset. Following data harmonization, signal recordings in both datasets were split into five-minute blocks and a set of 12 features was extracted from each block. A feature selection was implemented by two complementary approaches: Sequential Forward Feature Selection (SFFS) and Auto-Encoder (AE) neural networks. Finally, we explored the use of Self-Organizing Map (SOM) to provide a flexible representation of an individual status. From the initial feature set we have determined, by SFFS analysis, that 2 of them (median Respiratory Rate and number peaks in Galvanic Skin Response signals) can discriminate activation statuses from resting ones. In addition, AE experiments also support that two features can suffice for recognition. Finally, we showed that SOM can provide a comprehensive but compact description of activation statuses allowing a fine prototypical representation of individual status.

Cognitive Activation Strategy as an Innovative Teaching Trend to EFL Students in Writing Skill

Teaching is a difficult task. It requires a leader teacher to build an effective classroom environment. To be an efficient teacher in class, it requires him to create efficient teaching strategies which consider successful ingredients to improve the goodness of education .Successful teaching builds a rational thinking for competent based innovative education. Cognitive activation strategy is one of 21st century teaching strategies which stimulate the process of learning opportunities for students to be educated. This strategy generates successful learning environment where students can grasp a range of meanings. It determines what is happened in high –goodness teaching to prepare teachers innovate this strategy .In addition, teachers can plan for improving the quality of education to guarantee students successful achievement and attain their aims. A good teacher tries to take many roles and presents effective strategies to students to enable them participating in classroom activities and practices. A proficient teacher applies felicitous strategy with learners through sets of intellectual processes thus teaching is considered as processes where one person mediates between another person and the substance of this world to facilitate learning. This is one of the innovative trends of teacher roles. The present study aims at finding out the effect of CA strategy on Iraqi EFL university students' achievement in writing skill at one of Baghdad private university, namely Al-Sadiq in the academic year 2019/2020.The population of the study were 2nd year college students, male and female, and samples (80 students) were selected as two classes for the experimental groups and one for the control group. The study used quasi-experimental design. Data collection method was taken through testing the students to write well-organized paragraphs in English according to teacher selected topics. The results showed that EFL students face difficulties and commit errors in writing paragraphs in English .Moreover ,they need more training on the mechanics of writing to get rid these problems.