This study investigates the acquisition of discourse markers by Chinese learners of English in terms of gender, style and individual identity. The subjects of the study are 15 female university students and 15 male university students. The data is collected by means of audio recording in the classroom discussion and in the interviews. The examined…

The study uses ethnographic research from four classes in secondary school as well as from two groups in upper secondary school, to examine everyday racism as an element of the daily institutional lives of students and teachers. The study is based on long-term participant observation and 89 interviews. These were all audio-recorded and…

The purpose of this study was to address the career paths, challenges, and barriers of African American women college or university presidents. In addition, the expectation was to identify the "perceptions" of barriers to acquire the position of president. Using a phenomenological paradigm of inquiry, in-depth semi-structured personal…

Signal generators, oscilloscopes, and data acquisition (DAQ) systems are standard components of the modern experimental physics laboratory. The sound card, a built-in component in the ubiquitous personal computer, can be utilized for all three of these tasks and offers an attractive option for labs in developing countries such as…

The aim of the study discussed in this paper was to link existing research about the argumentation skills of students to the teaching of life-cycle analysis (LCA) in order to promote an evidence-based approach to the teaching of and learning about materials used in consumer products. This case-study is part of a larger design research project that…

Language differences in children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) often lead professionals to believe that children with ASC cannot or should not become bilingual, thus advising parents with a child with ASC raised in a bilingual household to adhere to English only. Emerging studies, however, attest that children with ASC can become…

Background: Critical thinking is one of the very highest orders of cognitive abilities and a key competency in higher education. Asking questions is an important component of rich learning experiences, structurally embedded in the operations of critical thinking. Our clear sense is that critical thinking and, within that, critical questioning, is…

In this paper we discuss perceptions of the benefits of learner-generated podcasts for supporting postgraduate engineering students in a mathematics-intensive course. The course under study had previously been highlighted as one in which students had struggled to attain knowledge that formed an essential underpinning to their degree programme.…

One of the most prevailing difficulties I have faced as an English instructor is students' dependence on teachers even though many language classes have been shifting from teacher-centered to student-centered influenced by the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. Class evaluations and needs analyses often reveal that many students…

Many students of English language find pronunciation difficult to master. This work in progress paper discusses an incremental and iterative approach towards developing requirements for software applications to assist learners with the perception and production of English pronunciation in terms of phonemes and prosody. It was found that prompts…

The provision of timely and constructive feedback is increasingly challenging for busy academics. Ensuring effective student engagement with feedback is equally difficult. Increasingly, studies have explored provision of audio recorded feedback to enhance effectiveness and engagement with feedback. Few, if any, of these focus on purely formative…

Code switching (CS) (or language mixing) generally takes place in bilingual children's utterances, even if their parents adhere to the "one parent-one language" principle. The present case study of a Japanese-Chinese bilingual infant provides both quantitative and qualitative analyses on the impact of input on output, as manifested in CS. The…

In light of a positive research base regarding technology-based self-operating prompting systems (e.g., iPods), yet a concern about the sustainability of such technologies after a research project is completed, this study sought to explore the effectiveness and efficiency of an audio recorder, a low-cost, more commonly accessible technology to…

Instead of focusing on the "stuff" of recording technology, this column explores ideas about the music that comes from the recording studio. Based on the author's experience working with Mark Rubel, four ideas about music are explored--one, the rise of alternatives to performance; two, the "get it done early" school of thought; three, recording as…

Despite the growing use of media in the classroom, the effects of using of audio versus video in pronunciation teaching has been largely ignored. To analyze the impact of the use of audio or video training on aural discrimination of vowels, 61 participants (all students at a large American university) took a pre-test followed by two training…