Contextual Clues Research Articles

IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS THROUGH CONTEXT CLUES STRATEGY

The objective of this research is to find out whether the use of Context Clues strategy is effective to improve students’ reading comprehension. The population of this research was the eighth-grade students of SMPN 20 Sigi. The sample was selected by using a purposive sampling technique. There were two groups selected, i.e. class VIII B was the experimental group, and class VIII C was the control group. The data were obtained by using a test of reading comprehension. Both groups were asked to do the test twice as pre-test and post-test. The experimental group got the higher score than the control group after the treatment. To get the deviation score, the researchers calculated each student’s pre-test and post-test scores. From the result of the score deviation, the researchers calculated the mean deviation of both classes to get sum-square deviation score. Then, the researchers continued using the result to find out the tcounted using the ttest formula. After analyzing the data, the result showed that the tcounted (4.3) is higher than the ttable (1.686). It indicates that Context Clues strategy is effective to improve reading comprehension of the eighth grade students of SMPN 20 Sigi.

SPEECH ACTS IN KIRINYAGA COUNTY ANGLICAN CHURCH SERVICES, KENYA

This study is based on a pulpit discourse and aimed at determining the speech acts that are used in sermons. The research is based on the Anglican Churches within Kirinyaga. The study shows how priests use the speech act to influence the hearers or congregation to make decisions. The research was also based on both speech act theory and the cooperative principle to understand the contextual basis deep. The maxims of the speech act are discussed, and recommendations are made on how they are supposed to be embraced for quality purposes. The research used several methods of collecting first-hand information. These methods were both based on qualitative and quantitative data. They include observation, recording, and direct interviews which were later analyzed and recorded for reference in the future. For instance, the recordings were transcribed and recorded in disks that were not prone to attack by malware. The types of speech acts used in the sermons include verdictives, commissives, declarations, representatives, and directives. These speech acts were representing a part of the sermon which conveyed a strong basis of the sermon. Thus, it acted as a strengthening catalyst. The study on the other hand showed how the speaker used the speech acts to inform, congratulate, make promises, and condemn. It is therefore recommended that the Bible Teaching Institutions should make sure before releasing a person for priestly duties is well conformed with the speech acts in such a way that the congregation can rely on them in times of word which is aimed at changing their lives and affecting their decision making. In conclusion, the research is solely concerned with speech acts in Anglican Churches within Kirinyaga and the same should be done in other churches to come up with a contextual distinctive clue on the same subject.
 
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IMPROVING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY THROUGH MAKE A MATCH TECHNIQUE TO THE SEVENTH GRADERS OF SMP NEGERI 40 PALEMBANG

Vocabulary is learned through focused, conscious study, but even more commonly in an indirect manner through listening, reading and using context clues to figure out the meaning. However, this kind of incidental learning is only possible if the amount of unknown words remains low. The purpose of this study was to find out whether or not Make a Match technique was effective to improve students’ vocabulary mastery. In conducting this study, the researchers used quasi experimental research design. Test was used as the technique for collecting data. The data were analyzed by using paired and independent sample t-test. The population was all the seventh graders of SMP Negeri 40 Palembang in the academic 2019/2020. The researchers used purposive sampling technique and took the classes of VII.9 and VII.10 as the sample of the study. The result showed that make a match was effective to improve students’ vocabulary mastery. It was found that the value of t-obtained was higher than the critical value of r-table or the t-obtained was 6.998 then t-table was 1.999. Based on the result of the analysis, it is claimed that make a match technique was effective to improve students’ vocabulary mastery to the seventh graders of SMP Negeri 40 Palembang. Keywords: Make a match technique, vocabulary mastery

Reaching Out: A Publication Trend Analysis of Scholarly Articles Discussing Graphic Novels and Reluctant or Struggling Readers

Graphic novels combine short text and pictures to tell a story or convey information while still engaging the reader visually. This is a potentially useful tool for reaching out to struggling and reluctant readers. Struggling readers have difficulty reading and understanding what it is they are reading. Pictures allow for more context clues than just text alone, allowing for the potential for greater success in comprehension for struggling readers. Reluctant readers, on the other hand, may have more of a distaste for reading. In some cases, they are capable of understanding what they read, but they do not enjoy the activity and tend to avoid it. Graphic novels allow for a more visual experience when reading and potentially grabbing and holding the reluctant readers' interest. The purpose of this study is to analyze the publication trends in library and information (LIS) journal articles as well as educational journal articles that discuss graphic novels and reluctant or struggling readers, specifically publication trend over time, authorship, core journals, and the number of articles that are based on surveys or interviews.

Review: Posed vs. Genuine Facial Emotion Recognition and Expression in Autism and Implications for Intervention.

Different styles of social interaction are one of the core characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Social differences among individuals with ASD often include difficulty in discerning the emotions of neurotypical people based on their facial expressions. This review first covers the rich body of literature studying differences in facial emotion recognition (FER) in those with ASD, including behavioral studies and neurological findings. In particular, we highlight subtle emotion recognition and various factors related to inconsistent findings in behavioral studies of FER in ASD. Then, we discuss the dual problem of FER – namely facial emotion expression (FEE) or the production of facial expressions of emotion. Despite being less studied, social interaction involves both the ability to recognize emotions and to produce appropriate facial expressions. How others perceive facial expressions of emotion in those with ASD has remained an under-researched area. Finally, we propose a method for teaching FER [FER teaching hierarchy (FERTH)] based on recent research investigating FER in ASD, considering the use of posed vs. genuine emotions and static vs. dynamic stimuli. We also propose two possible teaching approaches: (1) a standard method of teaching progressively from simple drawings and cartoon characters to more complex audio-visual video clips of genuine human expressions of emotion with context clues or (2) teaching in a field of images that includes posed and genuine emotions to improve generalizability before progressing to more complex audio-visual stimuli. Lastly, we advocate for autism interventionists to use FER stimuli developed primarily for research purposes to facilitate the incorporation of well-controlled stimuli to teach FER and bridge the gap between intervention and research in this area.

Using Context Clues in Determining Contextual Meaning of Arabic Words

Language context plays an important role in determining the meaning of a word. To understand its meaning, it is imperative that context be considered. Today, many students have difficulty understanding the meaning of Arabic words as they are unable to understand the context. However, words, phrases or sentences in a text can serve as a guide or clue to understand the meaning of unknown words. This is termed as context clues. This study aims to identify how context clues help students determine the contextual meaning of an Arabic word. Their understanding process is analysed from the critical discourse analysis perspective using a three-dimensional model introduced by Fairclough (1989). This study was conducted using a questionnaire and interviews with twenty undergraduates studying Arabic language from five Malaysian universities. Five Arabic words were selected from five news texts quoted from the Arab news portal al-Ra’i (http://alrai.com/); covering sports, economics, politics, social and technology. The words selected have many meanings, depending on the context of the sentence. Students must determine the meaning contextually by stating the context clues in the text that guided them. The findings show that context clues can help students understand the meaning of Arabic words and enhance their understanding based on its sentence context. References

ENGAGING STUDENTS IN ONLINE READING GAMES: A STUDENT-CENTERED LEARNING PERSPECTIVE

2020 might be unforgettable for teachers since they need to face the challenging teaching situation in the ruinous Covid-19 pandemic. To deliver the lesson, teachers need varied online applications to reach their students. Furthermore, they need more online media to ensure the students grasp what they need to achieve as a learning outcome. Online games are used in this study as the supportive learning tool after lecturing session about Reading Strategies. Furthermore, it is the tool to engage students to practice the student-centered learning so that they will be autonomous learners. There are four games used in this study i.e. Main Idea Millionaire, Main Idea Storm, Context Clues, and Scanning Skimming games, which are provided in three different websites. This is a qualitative phenomenological study expecting to capture details and experience of students and then to describe the meaning of the findings based on the subjects’ individual experience. The study was conducted in Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, exactly at Architectural Engineering Department. Based on the findings, students thought that online reading games helped them to visualize the context of particular texts because of its good animation and sound effects. Students, in teacher’s evaluation, became more active in engaging themselves in the class discussion after having several activities of playing the online reading games. They said that they could easily play the games over and over anytime. This study proves that the employed online games can boost students’ confidence and encourage them to be active in the teaching and learning situation.

The problem of using English reading strategies perceived by Thai EFL students

It is recognized that reading ability is essential for Thai EFL students and English reading is perceived as a difficult task among them. To understand the difficulty experienced by the students while reading English text, this study hence aimed at investigating problems of using English reading strategies perceived by Thai EFL students as well as providing suggested reading instructions for Thai lecturers to cope with the emerging problems. This study employed a mixed-method design. The participants of the study were 412 Thai EFL students who, in this study, were also considered as Gen Z students at a large-size university in Bangkok, Thailand. The participants were asked to complete an online questionnaire on 4-point Likert’s scale, which was adapted from Aebersold and Field (1997). Moreover, 10 students were recruited for two focus group interviews. The results revealed that Thai EFL students experience difficulties in using English reading strategies when they have to skip unknown words during the first reading (mean = 2.67, SD = 1.01) followed by varying reading speed rates according to the type of the reading passage (mean = 2.66, SD = 0.97), and guessing the meanings of unknown words by using the context clues (mean = 2.59, SD = 0.92) respectively. Based on both quantitative and qualitative results and personality traits of Thai Gen Z, suggested reading instructions including guided reading, improving student’s vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, technology-blended classroom and critical reading were purposed.

Guessing the Meanings of Words from Context: Why and How

Vocabulary is an indispensable part of a language. It is vitally needed to define the meanings of words used in context for comprehension, clarity of expression, and purpose. Teaching English vocabulary is an important field in language teaching. It is that one ingredient that beautifies the language and makes English learning fun in many amazing ways. Moreover, in order for our students to acquire reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills we need to facilitate students learning by incorporating well-developed techniques to make them learn fast and give them a strong grip on their vocabulary knowledge.
 Vocabulary learning is essential to the development of language skills. There is a considerable emphasis on the importance of vocabulary learning and teaching. One of the most effective ways of vocabulary learning is guessing the meanings of words from context. 
 The purpose of this study is to show why guessing the meaning of unknown words from context clues is a very important learning strategy and how it is done efficiently.

Story Ending Generation with Multi-Level Graph Convolutional Networks over Dependency Trees

As an interesting and challenging task, story ending generation aims at generating a reasonable and coherent ending for a given story context. The key challenge of the task is to comprehend the context sufficiently and capture the hidden logic information effectively, which has not been well explored by most existing generative models. To tackle this issue, we propose a context-aware Multi-level Graph Convolutional Networks over Dependency Parse (MGCN-DP) trees to capture dependency relations and context clues more effectively. We utilize dependency parse trees to facilitate capturing relations and events in the context implicitly, and Multi-level Graph Convolutional Networks to update and deliver the representation crossing levels to obtain richer contextual information. Both automatic and manual evaluations show that our MGCN-DP can achieve comparable performance with state-of-the-art models. Our source code is available at https://github.com/VISLANG-Lab/MLGCN-DP.

The Effect of Reading Comprehension Strategies Instruction on EFL Learners’ Reading Anxiety Level

This experimental study, using pretest-intervention-posttest design, investigated whether or not teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) learners to use comprehension strategies when they read English passages, decreases their English reading anxiety. The participants were 55 EFL learners in Turkey who were at lower-intermediate level based on the results of the Oxford Quick Placement Test. Data were collected via Saito, Garza, and Horwitz’s (1999)Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS). The whole treatment/control period lasted for 11 weeks during a reading course. The experimental group (n = 28) received instruction in reading comprehension strategies (i.e., previewing, scanning for details, skimming, identifying the topic and main idea, finding supporting details, making inferences, understanding the author’s purpose, making predictions, dealing with unfamiliar words, using context clues, and summarizing). The control group (n = 27) received instruction by traditional teaching methods (i.e., reading, paraphrasing, translating, and answering the exercises).The results of the Mann-Whitney U Test indicated that instruction in English reading comprehension strategies had a positive effect on EFL learners in terms of reducing their English reading anxiety.

Instructing Reading Comprehension Strategies: Effects on EFL Learners’ Self-Efficacy in Reading

This experimental study, using pretest-intervention-posttest design, investigated whether or not teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) learners to use comprehension strategies when they read English passages, increases their self-efficacy in reading. The participants were 55 EFL learners in Turkey who were at lower-intermediate level based on the results of the Oxford Quick Placement Test. Data were gathered via a Reading Self-Efficacy Questionnaire. The whole treatment/control period lasted for 11 weeks during a reading course. The experimental group (n = 28) received instruction in reading comprehension strategies (i.e., previewing, scanning for details, skimming, identifying the topic and main idea, finding supporting details, making inferences, understanding the author’s purpose, making predictions, dealing with unfamiliar words, using context clues, and summarizing). The control group (n = 27) received instruction by traditional teaching methods (i.e., reading, paraphrasing, translating, and answering the exercises).The results of the Mann-Whitney U Test indicated that instruction in English reading comprehension strategies had a positive effect on EFL learners in terms of increasing their self-efficacy in reading.

Neighbor-aware review helpfulness prediction

Helpfulness prediction techniques have been widely incorporated into online decision support systems to identify high-quality reviews. Most current studies on helpfulness prediction assume that a review's helpfulness only relies on information from itself. In practice, however, consumers hardly process reviews independently because reviews are displayed in sequence; a review is more likely to be affected by its adjacent neighbors in the sequence, which is largely understudied. In this paper, we proposed the first end-to-end neural architecture to capture the missing interaction between reviews and their neighbors. Our model allows for a total of 12 (three selection × four aggregation) schemes that contextualize a review into the context clues learned from its neighbors. We evaluated our model on six domains of real-world online reviews against a series of state-of-the-art baselines. Experimental results confirm the influence of sequential neighbors on reviews and show that our model significantly outperforms the baselines by 1% to 5%. We further revealed how reviews are influenced by their neighbors during helpfulness perception via extensive analysis. The results and findings of our work provide theoretical contributions to the field of review helpfulness prediction and offer insights into practical decision support system design.

The Implemetation of Contextual Redefinition Strategy for the Improvement of Reading Skill of STMIK STIKOM Indonesia’s Students

One way of improving understanding of English for Specific Purposes is through Contextual Redefinition Strategy (CRS). The implementation of CRS is meant to enhance the understanding of students of STMIK STIKOM Indonesia mostly in computers and business terms. The implementation of CRS is done through Classroom Action Research (CAR) in 3 stages of activities; those are pre-implementation, Middle Test (Cycle I) and Final Test (Cycle II). Besides, questionnaire is used with the purpose to know students’ attitude towards CRS’ implementation. The results of reading test on pre–implementation show that out of 40 students, there were 26 students did not get the lowest score 55 as the passing score of the college. After the explanation of CRS stages, middle and Final Tests tested the topics of reading texts on computers and business through search for clues in nearby words or sentences, and paragraphs of a text. Specific context clues that should be explicitly considered to understand the meaning of the sentences are definition/explanation, synonym/restatement, antonym/contrast, inference/general, and punctuation context. The results of Middle Test show that 22 students could get the score above 55, however most of students made mistakes in making redefinition based on inference/general and punctuation context. The results of Cycle II show that all students can score above 55. Besides, the results show that the students could improve their understanding for inference/general and punctuation context. The questionnaire shows that the students are motivated to acquire more and more vocabularies based on the needs for computer and business terms. The implementation of CRS does not only improve students’ ability to understand English based on its context but also enrich the vocabularies.

48-year-old with Altered Mental Status and Respiratory Failure: A Case Report

IntroductionThe differential diagnosis for altered mental status and respiratory failure is broad. Careful physical examination, appropriate use of diagnostic tools, and accurate interpretation and correlation of test results are important for piecing together the puzzle of a patient with altered mental status that emergency physicians commonly face. In certain cases, such as this one, rapid diagnosis and management is crucial for improving patient morbidity and mortality.Case PresentationA 48-year-old male with altered mental status and respiratory failure presented to the emergency department after being found unconscious on his porch. Vital signs were notable for temperature 105.5 °F, blood pressure 202/102 millimeters of mercury, pulse 126 beats per minute, respiratory rate 30 breaths per minute, and oxygen saturation 91% on room air. Physical examination revealed an obese male lying in bed awake in severe distress with labored breathing and unable to converse. His physical examination was significant for dry mucous membranes, tachycardia, and bilateral lower extremity 1+ pitting edema. He also appeared to have Kussmaul respirations with severe tachypnea, but his breath sounds were clear to auscultation bilaterally. On further examination, the patient appeared to have intravenous (IV) injection markings along his arms suggesting the possibility of IV drug use.DiscussionWith limited history, the only context clues initially available to assist in the diagnosis were abnormal vital signs and physical examination. The patient was tachycardic, hyperthermic, hypertensive, hypoxic, and tachypneic with altered mental status; he eventually required endotracheal intubation for hypoxic respiratory failure. The complexity of his condition prompted a large list for the differential diagnoses. Toxidromes, endocrine abnormalities, infectious process, cardiac and/or renal etiologies, and neurological pathology such as a cerebrovascular accident were considered. In the case of this patient, urgent diagnosis and management was crucial to prevent further decompensation and improve his outcome.

Interpretability Analysis for Named Entity Recognition to Understand System Predictions and How They Can Improve

Abstract Named entity recognition systems achieve remarkable performance on domains such as English news. It is natural to ask: What are these models actually learning to achieve this? Are they merely memorizing the names themselves? Or are they capable of interpreting the text and inferring the correct entity type from the linguistic context? We examine these questions by contrasting the performance of several variants of architectures for named entity recognition, with some provided only representations of the context as features. We experiment with GloVe-based BiLSTM-CRF as well as BERT. We find that context does influence predictions, but the main factor driving high performance is learning the named tokens themselves. Furthermore, we find that BERT is not always better at recognizing predictive contexts compared to a BiLSTM-CRF model. We enlist human annotators to evaluate the feasibility of inferring entity types from context alone and find that humans are also mostly unable to infer entity types for the majority of examples on which the context-only system made errors. However, there is room for improvement: A system should be able to recognize any named entity in a predictive context correctly and our experiments indicate that current systems may be improved by such capability. Our human study also revealed that systems and humans do not always learn the same contextual clues, and context-only systems are sometimes correct even when humans fail to recognize the entity type from the context. Finally, we find that one issue contributing to model errors is the use of “entangled” representations that encode both contextual and local token information into a single vector, which can obscure clues. Our results suggest that designing models that explicitly operate over representations of local inputs and context, respectively, may in some cases improve performance. In light of these and related findings, we highlight directions for future work.

Discursive practice of Chinese criminal adjudication: A genre perspective

Different from ordinary discourse, the institutional nature of courtroom discourse has attracted much scholarly attention in the field of applied linguistics and professional discourse studies. Previous studies have examined the lexico-grammatical features and asymmetric power relations inherent in courtroom communication. However, little research has investigated the hybridizing construction of judges’ discourse and the contextual clues that may shape such discursive construction. Under the framework of Critical Genre Analysis (Bhatia, 2017), this study examines 25 video recordings of criminal court trials in the Chinese mainland. The findings indicate a reciprocal relationship between the interdiscursive mechanism of judges’ discourse in criminal trials and the relevant social, cultural, and institutional background. The study also discusses the constituents of the overall courtroom discourse against the background of the social and political realities of the Chinese mainland

Retention of Inferred L2 Word Meaning Based on Morphological and Contextual Clues

Retention of Inferred L2 Word Meaning Based on Morphological and Contextual Clues

Evidence against emotion inference deficits in children with ADHD.

Inconsistent evidence suggests that pediatric attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be associated with impairments in the ability to use context clues to infer the emotion states of others. However, the evidence base for these impairments is comprised of data from laboratory-based tests of emotion inference that may be confounded by demands on nonaffective cognitive processes that have been linked with ADHD. The current study builds on our previous study of facial affect recognition to address this limitation and investigate a potential mechanism underlying children's ability to infer emotion state from context clues. To do so, we used a fully crossed, counterbalanced experimental design that systematically manipulated emotion inference and working memory demands in 77 carefully phenotyped children ages 8-13 (Mage = 10.46, SD = 1.54; 66% Caucasian/Non-Hispanic; 42% female) with ADHD (n = 42) and without ADHD (n = 35). Results of Bayesian mixed-model ANOVAs indicated that using context clues to infer the emotion state of others competed for neurocognitive resources with the processes involved in rehearsing/maintaining information within working memory (BF₁₀ = 1.57 × 10¹⁹, d = 0.72). Importantly, there was significant evidence against the critical Group × Condition interaction for response times (BF₀₁ = 4.93), and no significant evidence for this interaction for accuracy (BF₀₁ = 2.40). In other words, children with ADHD do not infer emotions more slowly than children without ADHD (d = 0.13), and their small magnitude impairment in accuracy (d = 0.30) was attributable to their generally less accurate performance on choice-response tasks (i.e., across both emotion and control conditions). Taken together, the evidence indicates that emotion inference abilities are likely unimpaired in pediatric ADHD and that working memory is implicated in the ability to infer emotion from context for all children-not just children with ADHD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Global to Local: Clip-LSTM-Based Object Detection From Remote Sensing Images

Object detection from remote sensing images (RSIs) is a basic topic in the area of aviation and satellite image processing, which has great effects on geological disaster detection, agricultural planning, and land utilization. However, it is always faced with several severe difficulties. For instance, the scale of the target spans over a very wide range, and the difference between the target size and the image size is huge, as some targets only account for a dozen pixels compared with the RSI of the megapixel level. In this work, an innovative object detection network (GLNet) is proposed for remote sensing imagery. Our approach integrates global context clues extracted by the multiscale perception (MSP) module and local spatial contextual correlations encoded by Clip long short-term memory (Clip-LSTM). These rich semantic features are further exploited to design a self-adapted anchor (SA) module to alleviate the scale variations in RSIs. Extensive experiments are executed on several public easily accessed benchmarks, including DOTA, NWPU VHR-10, and DIOR. Experimental results have demonstrated that our GLNet outperforms numerous latest methods.