AIMS: The aim of this study was to obtain normative nasalance values for typically developing Ugandan English-speaking children as a reference point for clinical practice and further research. METHODS: Sixty-nine typically developing Ugandan children (35 males and 34 females, 2.7-13.5 years of age) participated in the study. Nasalance scores were obtained with the Nasometer while children repeated 4 sustained sounds, 14 repeated syllables, 15 sentences (12 oral, 3 nasal) and 2 texts ('Rainbow Passage' and 'Zoo Passage'). Data were analyzed for gender and age dependence. RESULTS: No significant effects of age or gender on nasalance values were obtained; hence, normative values for the overall group were reported. The average nasalance scores for Ugandan English-speaking children were 17 and 64% for the oral and nasal sentences and 33 and 14% for the oronasal and oral text, respectively. CONCLUSION: The normative values are important as a reference point to assess the impact of several surgical procedures and several surgical timing strategies on speech in Uganda.
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In response to globalisation and internationalisation of both higher education and the job market, The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) has seen a considerable increase in English-medium courses, i.e. non-language subjects taught through English. Internationally, the rise of English-medium instruction (EMI) has led to research on, and discussion about the possible side-effects of a change in instructional language. More specifically, whether using a foreign language as the medium of instruction has a negative impact on teaching and learning. This paper reports the findings of a pilot research project into the implications of English-medium instruction (EMI) as perceived by students and teachers of the bachelor program Commercial Economics at the Faculty of Business, Finance and Administration at THUAS. Research methods used to collect data include face-to-face interviews with both students and lecturers involved in EMI subject courses, a student questionnaire, and lesson observations. Despite regular exposure to English and an adequate self-perceived English proficiency, results show that a considerable number of students, as well as teaching staff are experiencing difficulties with English-medium instruction and that for many EMI is not as efficient in transferring academic content as instruction in the mother tongue.
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Among other things, learning to write entails learning how to use complex sentences effectively in discourse. Some research has therefore focused on relating measures of syntactic complexity to text quality. Apart from the fact that the existing research on this topic appears inconclusive, most of it has been conducted in English L1 contexts. This is potentially problematic, since relevant syntactic indices may not be the same across languages. The current study is the first to explore which syntactic features predict text quality in Dutch secondary school students’ argumentative writing. In order to do so, the quality of 125 argumentative essays written by students was rated and the syntactic features of the texts were analyzed. A multilevel regression analysis was then used to investigate which features contribute to text quality. The resulting model (explaining 14.5% of the variance in text quality) shows that the relative number of finite clauses and the ratio between the number of relative clauses and the number of finite clauses positively predict text quality. Discrepancies between our findings and those of previous studies indicate that the relations between syntactic features and text quality may vary based on factors such as language and genre. Additional (cross-linguistic) research is needed to gain a more complete understanding of the relationships between syntactic constructions and text quality and the potential moderating role of language and genre.
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