Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Education.
Importance Of Acoustic Products To Tackle Common Noise Problems in Schools
Today, our educational environment has many distracting noises ranging from mild chatter to high-pitched voices. And how often do we notice a sound problem until it's unbearable to the ears? Not quite.
By Giselle Shira5 years ago in Education
Education, Deconstruction and Inspiration.
As most educators have already understood, teaching is a pretty demanding job. You may get students who don’t perform up to their performance ceilings; you may get disruptive students who don’t like to pay attention in class; and you’re swamped with a ton of administrative work such as lesson planning and setting various assessments for them.
By Dr Joel Yong5 years ago in Education
History of English in multilingual India: A study in language contact and spread
The linguistic and cultural diversity among Homo sapiens is remarkable and difficult to fathom. Socio-linguistic identities are also very strong. At present there are thousands of languages and dialects spoken around the world. I strongly believe that languages are like biological species, they originate, evolve, and constantly change for a certain time and eventually becoming extinct. Traditionally people have lived in communities that were spread over limited geographical boundaries and had their own language for communication. The problem of inter-communal communication must have been quite severe in the past due to lack of a common language, and most probably was the source of misunderstandings, mistrust and conflicts.
By Arun Kumar Ph. D.5 years ago in Education
Institutional ethnography: A tool for sociological inquiry
Institutional ethnography as a method of sociological inquiry has its origin in the feminist movement of the 1970s in North America. This concept was developed by a Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith. She describes a ‘line of fault’ that working women traverse between their professional and domestic life daily. These two work situations are radically different modes of consciousness that cannot co-exist. Until 1970s sociological literature was mainly written by men that excluded women’s experiences and concerns from the discourse. Smith (1974) was a pioneer in making sociology feminist. She redefined sociological inquiry in which women’s every day and every night worlds would be rediscovered as they are organized by social relations not wholly visible within them (Smith 1997). She called this ‘making the everyday world a sociological problematic’ (Smith 1979,1987).
By Arun Kumar Ph. D.5 years ago in Education
Ecology of a long-term health care institution: An institutional ethnographic inquiry
The use of scientific terms in social sciences and language studies is quite frequent, but such terms usually lose their original meaning when they are used by sociologists or linguists. Farmer (1996) uses weather as a metaphor for the organizational climate of nursing homes and compares meteorological features of climate systems to the physical features of nursing homes. Likewise, Cooper (1986) uses the biological concept of ecology to explore how writers interact to form systems. Environmentalism as a socio-political movement uses phrases like “deep ecology” and “ecological thought” in a very different context (McKenzie, 2002).
By Arun Kumar Ph. D.5 years ago in Education
The genre of the matrimonial advertisements
This article discusses various rhetorical and linguistic aspects of matrimonial advertisements from a weekly newspaper published from the USA. The language of such ads is studied under different theoretical frameworks. The notions of Russell (1998) and Winsor (1999) about relationship between text and context is used to demonstrate influence of context over text in the language used in matrimonial ads. Since the genre of matrimonial ads has never been studied, such genre was analyzed following Bhatia’s (1993) approach to analyzing unfamiliar genres and move structure in ads by Bhatia (2004). These ads were also examined in the light of Cook’s (2001) notion of discourse and genre of advertisement, and finally a look at whether the readers and writers form a “Discourse Community” of Swales (1990).
By Arun Kumar Ph. D.5 years ago in Education
A philosophical discussion on grammar pedagogy
It is imperative to understand the meaning of grammar and its relationship with the language before discussing grammar pedagogy. Although several grammarians have defined and described grammar in diverse ways, I think my understanding of grammar is best conveyed by Thornbury (2004). He defines grammar as ‘a description of the rules for forming sentences, including an account of the meanings that these forms convey’. He says that grammar enables us to use language in terms of how, where and when things happen, and it also facilitates the way we interact with each other. However, not only grammar but contextual information also plays an important role in the interpretation and understanding of various forms of communication. He discusses strong arguments both in favour of and against teaching grammar.
By Arun Kumar Ph. D.5 years ago in Education
OFF TO SCHOOL
Students! It's been a long time since class was in session in person. Perchance some of you are meeting new peers. For some of you, college is new to you. Worry not, younglings (and, to those of you who would have joined a campus community for the first time last year, welcome to THIS year; we are still so happy to have you); "Professor" Kent (GV class of 08; student from 05 to 10) is here with some hand helpful advice. Maybe some older "students" would wish to help you out too.
By Kent Brindley5 years ago in Education
My College Friends Didn't Know What an HBCU Was
At my university, I was in a conversation with some of my American college friends. I forget exactly what the conversation was about, but at some point, I said the acronym "HBCU." Not long after, one of my friends stopped me and asked what it meant, the four-letter acronym.
By Aysia Conner5 years ago in Education
