Academic literature on the topic 'Language use in 5/6 year olds'

Objectives: This study investigates (a) whether child heritage speakers produce more gender mismatches in Spanish ( un piedra “a-masc. stone-fem.”) than monolingual children, (b) whether older child heritage speakers mismatch more than younger ones, and (c) linguistic contexts in which mismatches occur. Methodology: 3893 agreement forms were extracted from corpora of Spanish spoken by six monolingual children, ages 5–6 years, and three groups of US child heritage speakers: ten 5–6-year-olds, fifteen 7–8-year-olds, and twenty-one 9–11-year-olds. Data and analysis: Logistic regressions measured the impact of agreement form type, noun gender, noncanonical noun ending, and noun frequency on gender matching. One regression included 5–6-year-olds only (monolingual and heritage); the second included child heritage speakers only (5–11-year-olds). Findings: There were no significant differences between monolingual and heritage 5–6-year-olds; for these children, adjectives, direct object clitics, noncanonical nouns, and feminine nouns increased the likelihood of mismatches. Among the 5–11-year-old heritage speakers, direct object clitics referring to feminine nouns and noncanonical nouns increased the likelihood of mismatches. The 9–11-year-olds produced more gender mismatches referring to feminine nouns than the younger child heritage speakers, especially with direct object clitics. Originality: This corpus study provides evidence for high rates of gender matching and clarifies the contexts that increase the likelihood that children will mismatch. Implications: Gender matching remains an intact part of child heritage speakers’ Spanish grammars. The distribution of mismatches found provides evidence of a strong article–noun association and a weaker noun–direct object clitic association. The oldest child heritage speakers’ use of masculine clitic lo to refer to feminine nouns may reflect an association between English “it” and Spanish lo. More generally, the finding that mismatches tend to involve masculine forms referring to feminine nouns supports the idea that masculine is the default, unmarked form in Spanish.

This work aims at investigating, from the perspective of experimental linguistics, the use of iconicity as a provisional reading strategy used by children during the pre-literacy phase. In the background, we contrast the recruitment of iconicity with the notion of default arbitrariness in language, as proposed by Saussure. To test the interplay of these cognitions, we propose a role-playing experiment with children from three age groups, 4, 5 and 6, in order to verify if these participants use iconic relations to guide them in a task of pairing figure to written word. Our results show that iconicity is afirst-hand resource used by some children, specially 4 year-olds, who tended to establish a clearer motivational relationship between the size of objects and the size of the word that names them. Nevertheless, iconicity persists as a strategy in a few 6 year-olds, on the brink of attending literacy class. Considering these results, we discuss the implications of choosingaliteracy method, either favoring global reading or grapheme-phoneme decoding, specially for the kids who tend to preserve the iconic strategy longer.

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore how 7-year-olds describe speech in children born with cleft palate in their own words and to investigate whether they perceive signs of velopharyngeal incompetence (VPI) and articulation errors, and if so, which terminology they use. Methods/Participants: Twenty 7-year-olds participated in 6 focus group interviews where they listened to 8 speech samples with different types of cleft speech characteristics and described what they heard. The same speech samples had been assessed by speech-language pathologists and comprised normal speech, different degrees of VPI, oral articulation disorders, and glottal articulation. The interviews were analyzed with qualitative content analysis. Results: The analysis resulted in 4 interlinked categories: descriptions of speech, thoughts on personal traits, consequences for communication, and emotional reactions and associations. Each category contains 4 to 5 subcategories with the children’s descriptions and reflections. Glottal articulation and severe signs of VPI caused the most negative emotional reactions and were described as sounding scary and incomprehensible and the children speculated on the risk of social rejection of the speakers. Retracted oral articulation was also noted and described but with a vocabulary similar to the professionals. Minor signs of VPI were not noted. Conclusions: Seven-year-olds are direct and straightforward in their reactions to cleft palate speech characteristics. More pronounced signs of VPI and articulatory difficulties, also minor ones, are noted. Clinically, articulatory impairments may be more important to treat than minor signs of VPI.

ABSTRACTDefinitions that children provide can be a valuable measure of their syntax, and specifically, of their ability to produce relative clauses. This research explored the acquisition of subject, object, and indirect object relative clauses in 121 Hebrew-speaking children aged 3 years, 5 months to 8 years, 6 months (3;5–8;6). The children were asked to define 14 nouns, and their responses were collected and analyzed for various syntactic aspects. The main results were that children started using relative clauses in their definitions at age 3;8, and their use of relative clause increased consistently until they were 6 years old. Retesting 38 of the 6-year-olds at age 8;6 indicated no differences in several syntactic measures between their production of relative clauses at age 6 and 8;6, suggesting that the ability to produce relative clauses stabilizes around age 6. The participants made almost no grammatical errors at any of the ages, probably because they avoided the use of relative clauses when they had not mastered them yet. In the early stages participants produced mainly headless relatives, and with age the use of a relative head increased. The acquisition of relative clauses was not related to the ability to embed or to the ability to use pronouns: these abilities existed already in the youngest age group and remained constant throughout the age groups.

The effects of bilingualism on child development have been extensively examined in last decades. Research reveals that simultaneous use of two or more languages affects child’s language development, cognitive and social skills. The current study focuses on the so-far understudied theory of emotion understanding in bilingual children. A cohort of 593 bilingual and monolingual 5–6-year-olds took the Russian version of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) that assesses three components of emotion understanding: emotion understanding of external causes of emotions, reflective causes of emotions; and mental causes of emotions. Our results revealed no group differences between overall emotion understanding and understanding of external and reflective causes of emotions. However, monolingual children had a slightly better understanding of mental causes of emotions compared to bilingual children, when controlling for age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence. These results suggest that children growing up in bilingual environments might require more time and/or language/culture exposure to master the ability to understand mental causes of emotions, taking into account cultural differences, as well as the semantic and lexical differences in emotion labelling and emotion expression in each language.

The objective was to explore the effectiveness of a five-minute classroom-based physical activity (5min-Class-PA) to keep student behaviour on task while increasing PA and energy expenditure during school days. The multiple baselines across subjects’ design was implemented to assess on-task behaviour during academic lessons (e.g., Mathematics, Science, Language, Art). Observers were blinded to study condition. A quasi-experimental design was implemented to assess PA volume and energy expenditure using SenseWear Armband body monitor (BodyMedia Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA). A convenience sample of elementary school pupils (aged 6-10 years) was observed. A total of eight class departments or two class departments per grade (first to fourth) were included by random selection. All pupils from the selected class departments were asked to participate (total 149) and 126 (85%) had no health aberrations and returned parent signed informed agreement on participation. Five-minute PA daily was performed in the middle of a 45-min academic lesson by imitating video animations projected on the school board for 12 weeks. The aims were to assess on-task behaviour during academic lessons and physical activity volume and energy expenditure during a school day. When the 5min-Class-PA was implemented, initially high on-task behaviour during the first part of the lesson (91.42% and 94.8% for 6-8- and 8-10-year-olds, respectively) was not significantly changed after the 5min-Class-PA. In contrast, when the 5min-Class-PA was not implemented, on-task behaviour during the second part of the lesson decreased (by 3% and 4% for 6-8- and 8-10-year-olds, respectively). After the 5min-Class-PA was systematically introduced, on-task behaviour systematically improved. The results of the implementation of the classroom-based PA also indicated a small, non-significant increase in PA levels and energy expenditure during the school day, but also a non-significant increase in sedentary time. On-task behaviour during academic lessons and daily in-school PA levels can be improved by implementing a 5min-Class-PA programme.

ABSTRACTThree experimental tasks explored young children's metalinguistic awareness of word boundaries. First, preschool children recited word-by-word pieces which differed in abstractness and familiarity of vocabulary. Second, a teaching task was employed to train and then sample selected items taken from the recited pieces, representing words with cards. The data suggested that several strategies were employed: segment-by-phrase, segment-by-syllable, and segment-by-word. Children were less successful in segmenting the more abstract piece than the concrete one, and they tended to revert to a phrase strategy and/or to change abstract words into more common vocabulary. Error analysis revealed growing awareness of the functors a and the. In a third experiment, preschool and kindergarten children segmented phrases using the functors a, an, my, or and phrases using phonetically similar embedded syllables (e.g., hold my nose; gold miner). Segmentation scores increased with age; even the 4½- to 5-year-olds were highly successful, segmenting with 60% accuracy, and by age 6–6½, they were correctly segmenting 75% of the phrases. Children who had begun to read performed better overall than their same-age peers who had not. Children were more successful with my, or, and word-medial a than with an and word-initial a; embedded syllables tended to be easier than functors, especially for the younger subjects. In conclusion, the years from age 4½- to 6½ appear to be a period of vigorous development of word segmentation skills. During this period, children use increasingly complex strategies – first phrasal, then syllabic, and finally a full word strategy – and they demonstrate a growing knowledge of function words as well as content words. Functors vary in difficulty and developmental sequence due to differences in stress, amount of ambiguity with phonetically similar embedded syllables, semantic complexity, and salience of reference to the young child.

The presented text is a study of interest in ball as an element of formation and perception of childhood. The research project was embedded in the paradigm of qualitative, interpretative research, where the focus was on the language of the preschooler, which becomes a reflection of the world of physical culture present in the mind of the child – the narrator. The problem of research is focused on the question: To what extent is the ball and its meanings an element of material culture located in the area of physical culture, and in what circumstances is it a determinant of child-specific pre-school folklore? The resulting space of the presented analyzes is an element of the phenomenographic method, where the use of a partially structured interview with preschool children (N = 80) provided the basis for the analysis of the perception and use of a ball in the cognitive theory of a child’s language space. The main conclusions from the research are: 1) for younger children, the ball is more often an attribute of spontaneous play than conventional actions (governed by rules and patterns), 2) for 5- and 6-year-olds, the ball is an artifact of attractive motor activity, training complex motor skills and competition. In middle childhood, the ball is a domain of spontaneous emotionality and an attribute of children’s play, which becomes a material for perceiving, interpreting and situating oneself in a specific culture of movement. The research was conducted in ten municipal kindergartens in the city of Slupsk, Poland in 2016–2019.

Happiness with an outcome often depends on whether better or worse outcomes were initially more likely. In five experiments, we found that young children ( N = 620, Experiments 1–4) and adults ( N = 254, Experiment 5) used probability to infer emotions and assess outcome quality. In Experiments 1 and 2, 5- and 6-year-olds (but not 4-year-olds) inferred that an agent would be less happy with an outcome if a better outcome were initially more likely. In Experiment 3, 4- to 6-year-olds used probability to assess quality. These findings suggest a developmental lag between 4-year-olds’ assessments of quality and happiness. We replicated this lag in Experiment 4. In Experiment 5, adults used probability to assess both quality and happiness. We suggest that children and adults may use probability to establish a standard against which actual outcomes are compared. Doing so might allow them to make probability-based inferences of happiness without drawing on counterfactual reasoning.

ABSTRACTThe study explored narrative production and comprehension in typically developing Italian–English sequential bilinguals. Thirty 5- to 6-year-olds and 32 6- to 7-year-olds were presented with story telling and retelling tasks, each followed by comprehension questions in Italian (their first language) and English (their second language). The macrostructure of narratives produced was analyzed, considering total amount of relevant information, story complexity, and mental state terms. Comprehension questions focused on implicit story information (i.e., characters’ mental states and goals). The results indicated that (a) older children outperformed younger ones on all measures; (b) an advantage of first language (Italian) over second language (English) emerged for younger children; and (c) comprehension and production were both more accurate in story retelling than in telling. Theoretical and methodological implications of these results are discussed.

Master of Philosophy in Education
Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development- three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development- three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development-three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten literacy skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

This chapter investigated young children's use of tablets at home and parents' views on tablet benefits and their concerns. A questionnaire was completed by the parents of 100 children aged 4-6. Young children engage in a range of activities such as playing games (76%), watching cartoons (75%), listening to music (65%), watching videos (60%), and using educational apps (54%). Fewer children look at pictures/photos/books or take pictures, while visiting websites and using email are never carried out by most of the children. Gender and age had an occasional isolated impact on children's tablet activities. 4-5 year olds tend to do tablet activities with an adult, while 5.5-6.5 year olds with siblings or alone. Most parents “agree and strongly agree” that tablets “teach basic technology skills” (85%), “teach foreign languages”, and “can make learning fun”. The parents' main concerns included dependence, reduction of communication, and inappropriate content. Implications regarding links between home and kindergarten are discussed.

This chapter investigated young children's use of tablets at home and parents' views on tablet benefits and their concerns. A questionnaire was completed by the parents of 100 children aged 4-6. Young children engage in a range of activities such as playing games (76%), watching cartoons (75%), listening to music (65%), watching videos (60%), and using educational apps (54%). Fewer children look at pictures/photos/books or take pictures, while visiting websites and using email are never carried out by most of the children. Gender and age had an occasional isolated impact on children's tablet activities. 4-5 year olds tend to do tablet activities with an adult, while 5.5-6.5 year olds with siblings or alone. Most parents “agree and strongly agree” that tablets “teach basic technology skills” (85%), “teach foreign languages”, and “can make learning fun”. The parents' main concerns included dependence, reduction of communication, and inappropriate content. Implications regarding links between home and kindergarten are discussed.

This paper presents a Support-Vector Machine (SVM) based method of classification of cross-correlated phoneme segments as part of the development of an automated Speech Sound Disorder (SSD) Screening tool. The pre-processing stage of the algorithm uses cross-correlation to segment the target phoneme and extracts data from the new homogeneously trimmed audio samples. Such data is then fed into the SVM-based classification script which currently achieves an accuracy of 97.5% on a dataset of 132 rows. Given the global context of an increasing trend in the incidence of Speech Sound Disorders (SSDs) amongst early-school aged children (5–6 years old), the constraints imposed by the new Corona virus pandemic, and the (consequent) shortage of professionally trained specialists, an automated screening tool would be of much assistance to Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs).

The purpose of this chapter is the investigation whether human civilization has much of a future on the Earth. This investigation is partially based upon research by members of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (Krakow), conducted in 1998-2002. The discoveries and applications of technology which led to our civilization are impressive. Archaeology and history teach us about it. However, in the Age of information-communication technology, it is apparent that technology may no longer merely support civilization but conquer it. In the past, civilization’s progress was slow. Centuries elapsed with no events meaningful to modern questions. Nowadays, civilization faces an impact from technology so tremendous as to disturb the fragile equilibrium between humans and the ecosystem. This raises many questions in respect of the future of civilization and its ability to survive despite many threats. Therefore, it is worthy to reflect on its future and duration. Can or even must it vanish due to the inevitable end of the solar system? In the short run, let us look at current problems of civilization, a very complex system composed of three components (Figure 17-1): • Human entities • Culture • Infrastructure The development of human civilization, as defined in this study1, has been proceeding as long as humans have lived in organized societies in favorable environments. According to accepted estimates, hominids began to live in the Earth about 6-5 million years ago. The development of more skillful mankind began about 200,000- 150,000 years ago, when modern man, Homo sapiens, was living in South-Eastern Africa2. From this location, Homo sapiens began to move to: South-Western Asia (50,000 years ago), Australia (50,000), Europe (40,000), New Guinea (40,000), Siberia (25,000), and North America (12,000) (Burenhult, 2003a). Modern men began to be more social first as hunter-gatherers, then when the Ice Age ended (-10,000) as farmers and town-dwellers (-9,000). Recorded historic civilization is about 6,000 years old (Burenhult, 2003b) and is associated with the rise of Mesopotamian civilization (includes Sumerian and Semitic people) (4,000 B.C.), followed by Egyptian (3,100 B.C.), Indus (2,500 B.C.), Sinic (1,500 B.C.), and so forth. At the beginning of the 21st century, humans (applying electronic information-communication tools based on unlimited memories and on friendly graphic user interfaces that require huge memories and processing speed) improve their symbols processing capability as humans were 60,000 years ago, when language was formed and decided about human socialization and organization through the rapid development of brain/mind as Homo verbalis2. The next leap took place in about 4,000 B.C. when Homo scriba applied INFOCO- 2 (manuscripts). Nowadays, we deal with the information-communication revolution or INFOCO revolution (Homo electronicus), which is the next challenge for civilization. It leads to the faster development of knowledge and wisdom; on the other hand, it may support projects which may first conquer and later destroy civilization. Does civilization, as a short cosmologic instance, have any chance of survival? Let us reflect on this possibility in the next sections.

A child’s future perceptions and expectations are likely to be conditioned by early experiences of dental treatment. Just under half of all children report low to moderate general dental anxiety, and 10–20% report high levels of dental anxiety. Montiero et al. (2014) indicate that the prevalence of needle phobia may be as high as 19% in 4- to 6-year-olds. Davidovich et al. (2015) reflected that, for general practitioners and specialists alike, Local anaesthetic (LA) injection for an anxious child was the most stressful procedure regardless of the operator’s age, gender, or years of professional experience. Despite impressive reductions in caries in children in recent years, there still exists a social gradient with inequalities in experience of dental disease, and there remains a significant cohort of children for whom extractions and restoration of teeth are necessary. Aside from emerging restorative strategies that do not require LA (e.g. atraumatic restorative technique or placement of preformed metal crowns using the Hall technique), effective and acceptable delivery of LA remains an important tool to enable successful operative dental treatment to be carried out comfortably for child patients. Effective surface anaesthesia prior to injection is very important as a child’s initial experience of LA techniques may influence their future perceptions and help in establishing trust. Cooling tissues prior to injection has been described but is rarely used, and surface anaesthesia is generally achieved with intra-oral topical agents. Although the main use of topical agents is as a pre-injection treatment, they have been used as the sole means of anaesthesia for some procedures including the extraction of mobile primary teeth. It is possible to achieve a depth of 2–3mm of anaesthesia if topical agents are used correctly: • the area of application should be dried • topical anaesthetic agent should be applied over a limited area • the anaesthetic agent should be applied for sufficient time. In the UK 5% lidocaine (lignocaine) and 18–20% (17.9%) benzocaine gels are the most commonly used agents. Benzocaine topical anaesthetic gel is not recommended for use on children under 2 years old because of an increased risk of methaemoglobinaemia.

This article summarizes the methods and materials for promoting literacy skills for 6 to 7 year old children. It is essential to promote reading literacy as the ability to read is one of the basic needs in modern society. It has been proved that the ability to read is correlated with one’s cognitive development, in particular with the ability to distinguish phonemes. These methods and materials are aimed at the improvement of the phonological awareness and they seek to raise a child’s interest to read. A total of 33 children, 12 parents, 5 teachers and 4 speech and language therapists participated in this study. The research included 26 training lessons. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the developed material as a reading literacy promotion tool for 6 to 7 year old children. The following research methods were used: the analysis of the scientific literature and the evaluation of the children’s reading performance. During the research the following observation was made: the most significant improvement in the reading performance was demonstrated by the first grade children as compared to kindergarten children with a linear improvement results. When interpreting the results, the following aspects should be taken into consideration: a child’s overall cognitive development, the school’s curriculum and the child’s environment.

In recent years, loneliness has appeared in lives for both young and old individuals. As cases of the COVID-19 virus are going up people have dealt more with loneliness and depression especially the seniors [5]. Some have even changed their whole lifestyle because they feel empty and isolated. Others will either try to isolate themselves more or use dangerous ways to quickly get rid of the feeling.To solve this major problem, I have created a digital online communication app which young individuals can have long chats with seniors who are alone and lonely. My application uses real time communication systems which can directly be sent to other users without any issues [6]. Our main goal is to have users have their own way of communicating, using familiar designs of applications we all have used before. By using new features we have created a more user-friendly based user experience which can be experienced throughout our application. Using immersive layouts of applications designs, advanced network connections, visual and data based analytic we are able to solve this major problem.

The purpose of this research is to explore the patterns of journalistic treatments for issues of Arab Language in Al Arab Qatari newspaper during the year of 2017. It also seeks to understand the degree to which this journalistic behavior enhances Qatar National identity. The importance of this research, which is funded by Qatar National Research Fund, No. UREP21-095-5-009 is to test the relationship between journalistic practices in relation to coverage of Arabic language issues and national identity. As interdisciplinary research combining Arabic language and journalism studies, its data were gathered by students of Arabic and Mass Communication Departments. The study adopted the descriptive and analytical approach to explore a sample of 841 publications that covered 10 linguistic forms including folk literature, translation, sermon, thought, novel, narration, poetry, story, drama and others as well as 6 editorial forms including investigative report, news report, dialogue, news, article, feature story and others. We analyze both the editorial content and the layout treatment. The results showed a statistical significance in the use of different editorial forms to demonstrate the Arabic language topics in Al Arab Qatari newspaper as well as the use of different layout techniques such as positioning, size, headline style and the accompanying visual elements. Future studies can compare the influence of different journalistic practices on national identity.

"Current reforms in education have emphasized shifting learning environments from a traditional replicative framework to be much more aligned to knowledge generation environments. These environments are focused on promoting student engagement with the epistemic practices of the discipline, which are the argumentative practices used to generate disciplinary knowledge. Helping teachers to shift from their more traditional pedagogical approaches requires professional development programs that enable them to not only experience learning within a generative environment but to also engage with the theoretical underpinning of such environments. To better understand the complexity involved in helping promote teacher change, the researchers implemented a professional development program that focused on asking teachers to examine their orientation to learning and how this influenced their pedagogical approaches. The knowledge generation approach, Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach, was the focus of the professional development as the work was centered on improving science teaching and learning. The professional development program focused on examining cognitive learning theory, the use of epistemic tools of argument, language and dialogue, the development of pedagogical approaches and development of teaching units that aligned with school curricula. The K-5 teachers were drawn from two states and were involved in 10 days of professional development – 6 during the summer and 4 during the academic year. To study teacher transition to these environments the researchers developed three new survey instruments focus on epistemic tools that are utilized in these environments: argument, dialogue and language. The teachers also completed an epistemic orientation for generative environments survey. Teachers completed these survey instruments every six months across the three years of the project. This presentation focuses on the first year of participation in the project as this represents the critical transition time for teachers in moving to implement the SWH approach within their classrooms. Using Latent Transition Analysis the 95 participating teachers were classified into three initial profiles. During the first six months there were transitions from both low to medium, and medium to high implementation. However, the reasons for the transitions were different. Low to medium transition was around improvements in orientation and dialogue, while for medium to high the transition was around understanding argument. The transitions during the second six months shifted to be centered much more on orientation, than epistemic tools. Once teachers transition to a new profile, they remain at that level or potentially move to the highest profile."

Background: Every year, around 14 million women and girls aged 15 to 19 (both married and unmarried) give birth. This age group might lead to negative outcomes of pregnancy and childbirth. This scoping review aimed to identify the outcomes of adolescent pregnancy and its contributing factors. Subjects and Method: A scoping review method was conducted in eight stages including (1) Identification of study problems; (2) Determining priority problem and study question; (3) Determining framework; (4) Literature searching; (5) Article selec­tion; (6) Critical appraisal; (7) Data extraction; and (8) Mapping. The research question was identified using population, exposure, and outcome(s) (PEOS) framework. The search included Wiley Online Library, EBSCO, ProQuest, and PubMed databases. The inclusion criteria were English-language and full-text articles published between 2009 and 2019. A total of 307 articles were obtained by the searched database. After the review process, seven articles were eligible for this review. The data were reported by the PRISMA flow chart. Results: Six articles from developing countries (Brazil, Mexico, Zambia, Malawi, and Romania) and one report from developed countries (Australia) met the inclusion criteria with qualitative, quantitative (cross-sectional), and descriptive studies. The existing studies stated that adolescent pregnancy had adverse effects on both mother and babies’ health and well-being. Young maternal age is associated with low parity, lack of prenatal care, premature, and low birth weight. Factors contributed to the increased adolescent pregnancy rate were early sexual initiation, low use of contraception, low educational level, low socioeconomic status, inadequate knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, and gender disparity. Conclusion: Young maternal age contributes to adverse pregnancy outcomes of both mothers and babies. Early sexual health education and health promotion on teenage girls may reduce the risk of adolescent pregnancy rates. Keywords: adolescent pregnancy, birth outcome, maternal age Correspondence: Sumarni. Universitas ‘Aisyiyah Yogyakarta. Jl. Siliwangi (Ringroad Barat) No. 63, Nogotirto, Gamping, Sleman, Yogyakarta, 55292. Email: sumarnipino21@gmail.com. Mobile: +6282346354512. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26911/the7thicph.02.28

Background: COVID-19 had a huge impact on the wellbeing of healthcare workers (HCWs). This is well documented during the first peak of the pandemic. With cases in the UK rising for a third peak, hospitalisations and deaths surpassing the first, there is very little known about the mental health of HCWs during this time. Methods: Using a questionnaire, data was collected from patient-facing staff at Barking, Havering, and Redbridge University Trust to quantify and compare the period prevalence of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD during the first peak (P1: March-May 2020) and third peak (P3: December 2020-Feburary 2021) of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as wellbeing service use, demographics of responders and what they found most difficult during the peaks. Results: Of 158 responders, only 22·4% felt they had enough access to wellbeing services during P1 and 21·5% in P3. Of those who used wellbeing services 34·4% found them useful in P1 and 34·6% in P3. 70·3% of responders felt that not enough was done for staff wellbeing. The median anxiety score decreased from P1 (10(range 5-17)) to P3 (8(range 4-16)) p=0·031. Under 30-year-olds’ depression and PTSD scores increased from P1 to P3 (depression: P1 7(1-11), P3 8(3-14), p=0·048, PTSD: P1 4(0-7) peak 3 5(2-9), p=0·037). Several groups showed a decrease in anxiety scores from P1 to P3 including; over 30-year-olds (P1 10(5-17), P3 7(3-15) p=0·002), BME responders (P1 8(3·75-15) P3 6·5(1-12) p=0·006), AHP (P1 14(7-19), P3 11(5-19) p=0·005), ITU workers (P1 15(8-18·25) P3 12(5·75-18·25) p=0·004), and those who were redeployed (P1 8(5-18·25), P3 5(2-14·75), p=0·032). Conclusion: We have observed changes in mental health symptoms within the study population as the peaks of the pandemic continue. With the majority of responders reporting they felt not enough had been done for their wellbeing support - and of those who used the wellbeing services only around 1/3 felt they were useful - we hope that this paper can help inform wellbeing provision and identify groups at higher risk of developing mental health symptoms.

A panel of 32 reviewers analyzed the Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) of same sample of 29 districts for the second year of implementation of the 2013 California Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Using the same four questions as the Year 1 report, the Year 2 analysis also addresses the key differences between first and second-year LCAPs. Key findings from the Year 2 LCAPs review include: (1) similarly weak responses to the needs of ELs by LEAs in Year 2; (2) some improvement in clarity about services provided to ELs in some areas, though most evidence was weak; (3) minimal attention to the new English Language Development Standards; (4) minimal investment in teacher capacity building to address EL needs; (5) lack of attention to coherent programs, services and supports for ELs and failure to address issues of program and curriculum access; (6) weak engagement of ELs’ parents in LCAP process and content of LCAP plans; (7) poor employment of EL data to inform LCAP goals and weak use of EL indicators as an LCAP accountability component; (8) lack of specificity in describing district services and site allocations for supplemental and concentration funding; and (9) difficulty identifying the coherence of responses of EL needs in year 2 LCAPs. Overall, the analysis of the 29 LCAPs continue to signal a weak response to EL needs. The authors reassert the urgency of the recommendations in the Year 1 report, offer additional specific recommendations for the state, county offices of education, and districts, and call upon the state to reaffirm the equity commitment in the LCFF design.

As California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) came into effect in 2013, districts were given more flexibility to use state resources and create a new school finance system to improve/increase services for students with greater needs for support, including English Learners (ELs), students from low-income backgrounds, and foster youth. Local Education Agencies (LEAs) were tasked with preparing the Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) to describe how districts use their plans to meet their annual goals for all students. To aid LEAs in their design and implementation of programs to address the needs of ELs, Californians Together, the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), and the Center for Equity for English Learners (CEEL) collaboratively developed the rubrics with 10 focus areas that have a high impact on ELs. These areas include: (1) English Language Development, (2) Parent Engagement, (3) Professional Development, (4) Programs and Course Access, (5) Expenditures, (6) District Wide Use of Concentration and Supplemental Grant Funds, (7) School Wide Use of Concentration and Supplemental Grant Funds, (8) Actions and Services, (9) Proportionality, and (10) English Learner Data to Inform Goals. These 10 rubrics and their corresponding indicators are based on research-based principles and practices for English Learners. These rubrics were first employed in the review of first-year LCAPs by the above-mentioned organizations and remain an important analytical instrument for district leaders to gain insights into the planning for and improving programs and services for ELs.