We describe the CoNLL-2003 shared task: language-independent named entity recognition. We give background information on the data sets (English and German) and the evaluation method, present a general overview of the systems that have taken part in the task and discuss their performance.
Speaking is one of the most important skills to be developed and enhanced as means of effective communication. Speaking skill is regarded one of the most difficult aspects of language learning. Many language learners find it difficult to express themselves in spoken language. They are generally facing problems to use the foreign language to express their thoughts effectively. They stop talking because they face psychological obstacles or cannot find the suitable words and expressions. The modern world of media and mass communication requires good knowledge of spoken English. This paper aims at establishing the need to focus on the factors affecting on language learners’ English speaking skill. This review paper traces out the body of research concerning the term speaking, the importance of speaking, characteristics of speaking performance, speaking problems, and factors affecting speaking performance. According to the review of literature, appropriate speaking instruction was found to be the learners’ priority and a field in which they need more attention. This study can be useful to teachers and researchers to consider their language learners’ speaking needs in English language teaching and learning context.
Thomas Davidson, Debasmita Bhattacharya, Ingmar Weber
Technologies for abusive language detection are being developed and applied with little consideration of their potential biases. We examine racial bias in five different sets of Twitter data annotated for hate speech and abusive language. We train classifiers on these datasets and compare the predictions of these classifiers on tweets written in African-American English with those written in Standard American English. The results show evidence of systematic racial bias in all datasets, as classifiers trained on them tend to predict that tweets written in African-American English are abusive at substantially higher rates. If these abusive language detection systems are used in the field they will therefore have a disproportionate negative impact on African-American social media users. Consequently, these systems may discriminate against the groups who are often the targets of the abuse we are trying to detect.
Holger Schwenk, Vishrav Chaudhary, Shuo Sun
et al.
We present an approach based on multilingual sentence embeddings to automatically extract parallel sentences from the content of Wikipedia articles in 96 languages, including several dialects or low-resource languages. We do not limit the extraction process to alignments with English, but we systematically consider all possible language pairs. In total, we are able to extract 135M parallel sentences for 16720 different language pairs, out of which only 34M are aligned with English. This corpus is freely available. To get an indication on the quality of the extracted bitexts, we train neural MT baseline systems on the mined data only for 1886 languages pairs, and evaluate them on the TED corpus, achieving strong BLEU scores for many language pairs. The WikiMatrix bitexts seem to be particularly interesting to train MT systems between distant languages without the need to pivot through English.
B. Nussbaumer-Streit, Irma Klerings, A. Dobrescu
et al.
OBJECTIVE We aimed to assess whether limiting the inclusion criteria solely to English-language publications affected the overall conclusions of evidence syntheses. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING Our analyses used a dataset of a previous methods study that included 59 randomly selected Cochrane intervention reviews with no language restrictions. First, we ascertained the publication language of all 2026 included publications. Next, we excluded studies based on the following criteria: 1) publication solely in non-English language, or 2) main publication (in case of multiple publications of the same study) in non-English language. We then re-calculated meta-analyses for outcomes that were presented in the main summary of findings tables of the Cochrane reports. If the direction of the effect estimate or the statistical significance changed, authors of the respective Cochrane reviews were consulted to assess whether the new evidence base would have changed their conclusions. The primary outcome of our analyses examined the proportion of conclusions that would change with the exclusion of non-English publications. We set the threshold for the approach as non-inferior if the upper limit of the 95% confidence interval of the proportion of changed conclusions did not cross a margin of 10%. RESULTS Across all 59 Cochrane reviews, 29 (49%) included 80 non-English publications. For 16 (27%) of these Cochrane reviews, exclusion of non-English publications resulted in the exclusion of at least one study. In the remaining 13 Cochrane reviews, the non-English publications were not the only or main publication of the study or they did not contribute to the main summary of findings table, so their exclusion did not result in an exclusion of the study. Overall, the exclusion of non-English publications led to the exclusion of 31 studies contributing to 40 outcomes. For 38 of the 40 outcomes, the exclusion of non-English studies did not markedly alter the size or direction of effect estimates or statistical significance. In two outcomes, the statistical significance changed but authors would have still drawn the same conclusion, albeit with less certainty. Thus, the proportion of changed conclusions in our sample was 0.0% (95% CI 0.0 - 0.6) which indicated non-inferiority of the approach. However, the majority of excluded studies were small. CONCLUSION Exclusion of non-English publications from systematic reviews on clinical interventions had a minimal effect on overall conclusions and could be a viable methodological shortcut, especially for rapid reviews.
The use of the flipped classroom has increased in the context of learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). However, only a few studies have reported on how to expand flipped classroom instructional strategies in EFL writing classes. Meanwhile, prior studies have examined the effect of self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) on improving students’ writing performance by applying self-regulation procedures. This study proposes an extension of the classic flipped classroom model by combining it with SRSD. To investigate the effect of SRSD instruction on students’ writing performance in a flipped classroom, we conducted an experimental design study with three classes involving 90 students across 13 weeks. The first group received flipped classroom model (FCM) with SRSD instruction, the second group received the FCM, and the control group received regular classroom writing activities. The results indicated that the first group demonstrated better writing performance and positive student perceptions. Findings suggested that a strong potential effectiveness of flipped classroom combined with SRSD instruction in cultivating students’ writing performance.
Elina Kurkurina, Craig Rothenberg, Katherine Couturier
et al.
Introduction: Clear communication is essential for emergency medical services (EMS) clinicians to assess a situation and make appropriate transport decisions. When barriers are present that impede communication between emergency responders and patients, EMS clinicians report difficulty navigating these encounters. As communication barriers potentially delay definitive care, it remains unclear the amount of time that EMS clinicians spend on scene during these encounters and how often they result in non-transport. In this study we sought to characterize the association between the presence of communication barriers, time spent on scene, and non-transport. Methods: We conducted an observational analysis using 2022 data from the ESO Data Collaborative, a deidentified national prehospital electronic health record dataset. Encounters were restricted to 9-1-1 responses in which the responding ambulance was first on scene, the patient was alive, ≥ 18 year of age, and able to refuse transport. The primary outcomes were time on scene and non-transport. We used logistic regression models to estimate non-transport by communication barrier (including non-English language preference, speech disability, deaf or hard of hearing, and blind or low vision) and control for key patient and encounter characteristics. Results: Of 3,477,008 EMS responses, 233,084 (6.7%) resulted in non-transport and 99,263 (2.9%) had a communication barrier identified. Among encounters with a communication barrier identified, EMS clinicians spent more time on scene with patients who were not transported (21.0 minutes) compared to patients who were transported for definitive care (15.9 minutes). Compared to those without an identified barrier, encounters with a patient who had a non-English language preference (odds ratio [OR] 0.51, confidence interval [CI] 0.49–0.53, P < .001), patients who had a speech disability (OR 0.36, CI 0.33–0.40, P < .001), were deaf or hard of hearing (OR 0.71, CI 0.66–0.76, P < .001), or were blind or had low vision (OR 0.80, CI 0.69–0.92, P < .001) were less likely to result in non-transport, with non-transport rates of 3.6%, 1.9%, 4.0%, and 4.4% respectively. Conclusion: Encounters with communication barriers were less likely to end in non-transport. When communication barriers were identified, EMS clinicians spent 32% (5.1 minutes) longer on scene on encounters that resulted in non-transport, showing that EMS clinicians may be dedicating additional time and resources caring for this population.
Medicine, Medical emergencies. Critical care. Intensive care. First aid
Safety on a psychological level is progressively renowned as fundamental to mental health issues and
psychological well-being. The concept of feeling safe based on polyvagal theory, proposed by Stephen Porges
(2011), has emerged as a comprehensive structure for understanding the autonomic nervous system's role in
regulating social behavior, emotional processing, and physiological reactions. This review aims to explore the
application of polyvagal theory in the understanding of psychiatric disorders, with a focus on how autonomic
nervous system dysregulation influences emotional and behavioral manifestations, thereby contributing to the
development of effective therapeutic interventions aimed at enhancing feelings of safety and well-being in the
patients suffering from psychiatric disorders. The systematic literature review technique based on the PRISMA
model was used for this purpose. Sources were obtained through PubMed, APA PsycArticles, PLOS, Research
Gate, Google Scholar, and PubMed Central (PMC) database, using different keywords as the primary descriptor
and limiting the sources to English-language articles published in the last ten years from 2013 to 2023. The
review synthesized findings from various studies investigating the association between the polyvagal theory
and psychiatric disorders, including anxiety disorders, depression, psychotic disorders, post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder, and childhood disorders including conduct disorder, attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The results exhibit that individual
suffering from these psychiatric disorders frequently displayed autonomic nervous system dysregulation, as
proposed by the polyvagal theory, which seems to be a shared feature in many psychiatric disorders. The
systematic review highlighted the significance of physiological aspects of mental health and indicates that
interventions focusing on autonomic regulation may hold the potential to assuage the basic symptoms relevant
to psychiatric disorders. Additional research work is defensible to clarify the primary mechanisms and improve
the implication of interventions which are based on polyvagal theory for better clinical outcomes.
Abstract Speaking constitutes one of the main goals of learning a second language (L2). Despite the increasing attention on the role of planning and language transfer in L2 learning, the combined effect of using different languages and pre-task planning on language production remains unclear. This study investigated whether the use of different languages in planning affects speaking performance and whether the effect differs by language proficiency. A total of 84 students in Chinese universities learning English as a foreign language participated in several speaking tasks after planning using their first language (L1) Chinese or L2 English. Findings showed that using L1 in planning results in significantly higher syntactic complexity, accuracy, and fluency in speaking performance than using L2 in planning, while the difference in lexical diversity were not statistically significant. Further analysis shows that for speech accuracy, the facilitative effect of L1 was stronger among low-proficient than high-proficient learners. Findings from this study support the use of L2 learners’ entire linguistic repertoire in speaking activities and provides implications on speech production theories as well as translanguaging pedagogies.
Special aspects of education, Language acquisition
L1 use inside EFL classrooms has been a topic of continuous discussion for a considerable period of time, with no prevailing opinion about its impact and extent within L2 (second language) learning environments, particularly within Chinese language institutions. The primary objective is to address the current gap in research and acquire a thorough comprehension of the true effects of L1 use in an EFL classroom. This was achieved through the observation of a specific teaching scenario and conducting an interview with the instructor. Data were classified using Tasçi and Aksu’s nine functions of L1 use. The results suggest that the most often observed functions of L1 in the context of education include imparting instruction, translating new terms, and attracting attention. Additionally, it was found that L1 is most frequently used during the vocabulary section and in the middle of each instructional session. Furthermore, the interviewed teacher expressed the belief that L1 usage in the classroom has positive effects, since it serves many functions and should be tailored differently depending on the students' levels of skill. This study implies that the inclusion and promotion of L2 in the EFL setting is advantageous, as learners can considerably benefit from a language immersion environment. However, L1 can still be used when deemed essential. Furthermore, during instructional sessions, educators have the opportunity to engage in reflective practices to assess the alignment between their pedagogical strategies and their intended instructional objectives.
Mahdi Moeinikia, Shahram Mehravar Giglouu, Salim Kazami
et al.
Background: Today, e-learning has become one of the basic components of education process, especially in higher education. Institutions and universities employ e-learning extensively in their educational operations. In light of this, the goal of the current research was to determine the advantages, disadvantages, possibilities, and dangers associated with e-learning in the Iranian higher education system.Method: The present research is applied in terms of purpose and with a qualitatively exploratory approach. The participants of present study were experts in the field of e-learning in public universities of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in 2021.Using purposive sampling and snowball sampling methods, 16 e-learning experts were selected as the participants. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data and thematic analysis was employed to analyze the obtained data. Results: After analyzing the obtained data from the interview, the total number of 116 free codes were extracted from interviews content was 116 codes, which were classified in 18 concepts and finally were identified strengths (Use of office automation in universities, Establishment of information and communication technology centers in universities, Development of e-learning in universities, Familiarity of faculty members and students with virtual environments, The place of e-learning in upstream documents and university perspectives), weaknesses (Lack of proper infrastructure, equipment and facilities for e-learning, Lack of specialized manpower, Lack of formal regulations for e-learning in the field of higher education, Insufficient knowledge about e-learning), threats (Threats related to cost, facilities and time, Management threats, Threats to change the nature of the university, Threats related to interactions) and training opportunities (Increas access to e-learning, Expanding international and intercultural interactions, Environmental benefits, Providing economic opportunities , Development of educational justice) of e-learning in Iranian higher education system. Conclusion: Considering the research findings, to develop educational justice and the possibility of more population access to the University of the Student community, reviewing existing approaches and educational methods and using e-learning as a new educational strategy for higher education system are necessary
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics
Introduction
The factor of textual coherence and sentence relation are divided into three categories according to Halliday and Hasan:
A) Lexical factor: including repetition, synergy and semantic domains.
B) Grammatical factors: including referral, replacement and deletion.
C) Connective factors: including conjunctions (Yahaghi and Fallahi, 2011, p. 331).
New linguists, in the course of their early studies, have relied only on the description of less linguistic units and have not paid attention to the study and analysis of disciplines beyond such as in the critique of these research approaches (De bougrand and Dressler, 1981, p. 21). Gradually, with the development of linguistic research and the development of new theories, Noam Chamsky's rotational method, became a concept between sentences, and the basic need for study was concentrated within the organization of the text so that the text could be studied by linguists as a larger linguistic unit. (Ibid 104-130).
As a result, it led to the discovery of semantic relationships between elements of language which arise from the function of elements of coherence in the text.
Methodology
Since from the end of 20th century, a more detailed study of speech has been opened especially with patterns such as the pattern of cohesion and on the other hand, Khaghani in Persian poetry is a symbol of the strength and stability of poetic speech in the form of Ode.
One should examine to see if the pattern of coherence confirms the coherence of Khaghani's speech. In the prevalence of some fascinations, it seems necessary to see and explore the magnificent Persian text from new perspectives in order to show their originality' strength and coherence.
Discussion
In 1976 Halliday and Hasan divided English text cohesion tools into three categories: Grammatical tools including “referral”, “substitution” and “deletion”. Link tools including conjunctions; and lexical tools including repetition. In 1985 they expanded this division into another joint work.
It is the coherence consistency and integrity of the text that keeps the components of the text together; That is the meaning of lexical units within each sentence depends on the other units within the same sentence (Taki, 1999, p.73-81).
Text coherence refers to the set of links and relationships that exist between the components of the text. These links and relationships distinguish the text from randomly stacked sentences and turn it into a coherent whole (Lotfipur, 1995, p. 110). Vocabulary coherence based on the relationship that lexical units of language have with each other in terms of the content of their meanings and the text trough these relationships can be continuous and coherent (Mohajer & Nabavi, 2014, p. 64). Word has no meaning in isolation. The meaning of a simple or compound word is related to other words in the language. The main task of semantics is the clarify words and determine these semantic relations (Tarask, 2001, p. 18).
Recursion has the highest value among the elements of other words and increase the musical level of the poem, the stability of the words, the unity of the subject or the embodiment images and poetic emotions and feelings and the single theme and solidarity of the verses and connect them with chains (yavari, 2000). Recursion comes in several forms: repetition, contradiction, semantic inclusion, synonym.
One of the factors of the lexical coherence in the text is the factor for repetition. According to Halliday, repetition is the most obvious type of lexical coherence. The cohesive factor of repetition includes all morphological construction of a word (yavari, 2018, p. 163-192).
In Khaghni's view like the formalists, the word has a special importance to the extent that various literary techniques such as: prosody, repetition of sounds, repetition of syllable in words, etc. As a tool to draw the reader's attentions to the word element (Alavi Moghaddam, 1995). The thirst for word choice is clearly evident in Khaghani's words (Tajlil & Musavi, 2014).
In this Khaghani's poem, 41 words are repeated more than once. The most commonly used word is morning (It is the most frequent word in this poem). Khaghani has been called the poet of morning. Maybe that is why he pays attention to the morning and sunrise in his poems.
Conclusion
Contemporary patterns in literary studies are clearly arguments for commenting on literary topics. One of these models is the model of Halliday and Hasan cohesion, which was reviewed by Hasan sometime after its publication and was finally presented by Halliday and Hasan shortly after. For decades, formal studies based on this model have become increasingly important. On the other hand, the importance and success of Khaghani in Persian has always been raised. In this research, using the evolved theory of coherence of Halliday and Hasan (1985) in role-oriented linguistics; analysis, coherence and continuity in verses of Khaghani's poem have been done to determine how the semantic connection of cohesive chains has been realized in this poem.
According to this theory, the coherence of the relations between elements is the constructor of the text, but it is not enough just to achieve the coherence factors in the texts; rather after showing these factors, it is necessary to examine the coherence of the text, based on coherence coordination. This study, following the achievement of coherence of the factors and coherence of the text of the poem, led to the conclusion that Khaghani's verses have a high coherence according to Halliday model. Although the strength of the structure of Khaghani's poetry does not need to be confirmed by such models but it is a conclusive argument and a valid argument that shows that the patterns favored by modern scholars also confirm the coherence of the words of the greats of Persian literature.
According to the collected analysis materials, the following contents were obtained. Repetition and reference have the highest frequency in the issue of coherence of Khaghni's logic poem. In the topic of repetition, the highest frequency of words, revolved around the following axes:
Topics related to religion: God, Guidance, Baggage, futurity, Clerics.
Topics related to nature: Morning, sky, night, sun, moon.
3.Vocabulary related to war: Cousin, dagger, armor, razor, ring, punch, kidnapping.
4.Topics related to clothing: Cloaks, robes, masks, hats.
It is as if Khaghani wants to sing the epic of the sultan of religion instead of the epic of sultan of the time and show us a deep alternative. In this axis, he combines all the elements of nature to achieve his goal. The method of Haliday and Hasan in the Latin articles that are available and in the Persian articles that have been published in prestigious academic journals in the last 35 years is the first case study- Khaghani's poem- is translated into text and then into words. and are checked. This method is very accurate in this regard and according to this model, we can speak with certainty about the coherence of Khaghani's speech.
Also, in response to the questions of expression of the problem, it was found that new patterns for examining the ancient texts are not prohibited and there is no problem and the firmness of Khaghani's speech, which is clear for Persian literature elites, was proved by this pattern. It was also answered that the use of modern patterns is not a problem for the study of ancient texts. This pattern which has good accuracy and detail, is suitable for the study of Khaghani's poem.
Organizational behaviour, change and effectiveness. Corporate culture, Fine Arts
English is regarded as a key to globalization or internationalization and future success for Taiwan and its people. One of the most extraordinary results of English-as-the-global-language of English teaching and learning in Taiwan is private English language schools are ubiquitous. Research into how private English language schools weld together English-as-the-global-language and English teaching and learning has yet received much attention. This study aims to investigate how Taiwan’s private English language schools’ television commercials market English-as-the-global-language and what the underlying ideologies of English-as-the-global-language are. Exploring the ideology of English-as-the-global-language, Critical Discourse Analysis was employed herein to analyze 106 private English language school television commercials produced from 2000 to 2020 in Taiwan. The results indicate that English as the key to internationalization and future success is an ideology. Moreover, the ideological concept of English-as-the-global-language is central to English teaching and learning ideologies in Taiwan, such as an early start in English learning, English-only as the ideal English teaching method, and native-speaker norms in English teaching and learning.
This study investigated Theology students’ Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA) and the relationship between their FLRA and their reading achievement. A number of 63 Theology students participated in this quantitative study. A questionnaire developed by Saito et al. (1999) was used in obtaining the data for the study. The study was conducted to fill the void in the literature on the scarcity of empirical research on FLRA in the Indonesian English for Specific Purpose (ESP) context, especially among Theology students who were required to read a lot of English text and thus were very likely susceptible to experience reading anxiety. The study found that in general, the students experienced a medium level of FLRA. Low self-perceived reading competence and the unfamiliar topic of reading passages were reported to be attributed to higher FLRA levels whilst the formation of reading habits, reading exposure, and reading strategies were believed to reduce reading anxiety. This study further found a statistically significant negative correlation between the students’ FLRA and their reading achievement, albeit the strength being weak. This finding suggested that students’ FLRA could be a factor hampering learning. The present study’s specific finding on the possible positive impacts of reading strategies and the duration of reading exposure may indicate the urgency to incorporate these two aspects in the instructional design of English reading classes. Based on the findings, contributions, limitations, and suggested future studies were formulated.
For college students, mastering foreign language such as English brings profitable for their career. Producing the language decently such as the ability of writing in English is one of the output in the language acquisition. In this study, non-English students in the end of their study were chosen as they’ve completed English courses. Moreover, the students were finishing their final project, definitely including the English abstract. Based on their learning experience, the writing process of English abstract showed indirectly their language ability. Regarding with, this study aims at finding whether the students have any learning progress during their study in the college. Additionally, not only the learners’ motivation but also their learning habit, their confidence, and the learning facility during learning English were questioned in this study. The students completing their final project at the certain time were interviewed towards their learning language habits particularly in writing. The data collected were transcribed, analyzed and interpreted qualitatively. The results show that 77.3% of the students felt they have more progress during the target language instruction. Furthermore, 50% of the students believe in stating English on text though they confessed they (68.2%) have lack of English practicing at home. The students’ positive attitudes presented due to their motivation in learning the language. The findings also indicated that all students (100%) believed that their teacher or lecturer motivates them to practicing writing English.