Difficult Text Research Articles

Difficult texts: 2 Kings 6.24—7.20 – Israelite woman cooks her own son?

A mother in Israel invited other mothers to cook and eat their children? The story in full appears in 2 Kings 6.24—7.20. The passage is essentially about the siege of Samaria by the Syrian army. It includes tales about the siege of Samaria, cannibalism, the unbelief of a centurion, and four lepers. Although the section on cannibalism is mentioned only momentarily, it has become controversial and has captured the attention of Bible readers.

Research on Intelligent Mining Algorithm of English Translation Text Big Data Based on Deep Learning

This paper explores the translation of English texts by a deep learning algorithm, which aims to intelligently extract relevant records from a large corpus of English-translated texts, especially its shortcomings in processing difficult texts and dealing with long-term dependencies. This research integrates the modern long short-term memory (LSTM) network framework, with the aim of improving the accuracy and processing efficiency of the translation. Using a large number of experimental facts, these LSTM models are comprehensively learned and rigorously optimized. The traditional approach is to adapt the style to the language-specific properties of the translated text, and then use a bunch of evaluation metrics to evaluate the overall performance of the model across a large number of text types. The results of this study show that the method significantly speeds up the extraction and processing of information while maintaining the integrity at the translation level. In addition, the study reveals deep learning models’ ability to recognize complex contextual nuances and subtle formulations of language expression. The results of this research are multifaceted, bringing great improvements to device translation structures and facilitating the development of state-of-the-art text content analysis tools. These advances apply primarily to sectors of considerable statistical volume and complexity, including the criminal, scientific, and technological fields. Therefore, this study lays a foundation for future exploration of improving device understanding of language and automation of translation methods in various professional fields.

Flight of the Monarch: Interpreting the Enigmatic History of Piedras Negras Throne 1

Reflexivity is a key feature of the development of all disciplines. Following the phonetic revolution, Maya epigraphy reached the point of incorporating this component. In this paper, we present the application of reflexivity through the interpretation of a difficult text, Piedras Negras Throne 1. We do this in addition to our philological approach. Starting from the grammatical elements, this approach then reveals not only the possible drivers of a series of historical events, but also the beliefs around the sacred bundle that were essential to the reign of the king in the Classic Period.

A Quantitative Analysis of Reading Comprehension in University Students

This study was to investigate the correlation between students’ cognitive reading strategies and students’ reading comprehension. The population in this study were overall second-semester students of UMKT from all undergraduate faculty. The total population in the study was 2,362 students. The sampling that was chosen in this study was simple random sampling by selecting representative respondents from each study program. By using a table of sampling size with a confidence level of 95% (margin of error 0.05%), it was found that from N= 2362 total population, the total sample was 428 students. The conducting data found that there was a significant relationship (sign. 0.01) between cognitive strategy and reading comprehension among students at UMKT. It was proved from the result that the significant value was under the p-value (0.05). However, the level of correlation was small, it was because some respondents stated that they didn’t use their mother tongue or read aloud when they got a difficult text, and they used translator apps to get an instant way of understanding the texts. The suggestion for the next researchers and practitioners such as teachers is to use a cognitive strategy to understand English rather than using an instant way likewise using the application or asking someone else to get the answer or comprehension. In other words, cognitive strategies involve active engagement with the activity, which aids in comprehension meanwhile Reading comprehension is a cognitive ability that provides the ability to synchronize text information with background knowledge

Mûsār in Prov 19:27 and Sir 6:22

Abstract The difficult text of Prov 19:27 can be explained with the help of Sir 6:22, where explicit wordplay with the word מוּסָר suggests that this word was interpreted not only as the noun “instruction” from the root יסר, but also as a hophal participle from the root סור that may be translated “what is remote, obscure, rejected.”

Difficult texts: Job 2.9 – the misunderstood Job’s wife

Job’s wife is a figure who is often given a negative image. She is considered an unfaithful wife who wants to tempt her husband to leave God. An exploration of the text of Job 2.9 shows that Job’s wife is a figure who is often misunderstood. She is a figure who is honest about suffering.

Impact of text difficulty and visual emphasis on pediatric neuropsychological evaluation reports: The parent’s perspective

Objective: Despite varying opinions, little research has examined how to best write pediatric neuropsychology reports. Method: This study gathered input from 230 parents on how text difficulty (reading level) and visual emphasis (bullets, underline, italics) affect report readability and utility. We focused on the most-read report section: summary/impressions. Each parent rated the readability and usefulness of a generic summary/impressions section written in four different styles. The four styles crossed text difficulty (high school-vs-collegiate) with use of visual emphasis (absent-vs-present). Results: Parents found versions with easier text to be more clearly written, easier to follow, and easier to find information (p<.001). Parents rated those with harder text to be overly detailed, complex, hard to understand, and hard to read (p<.001). Visual emphasis made it easier to find key information and the text easier to follow and understand – but primarily for versions that were written in difficult text (interaction p≤.026). After rating all four styles, parents picked their preference. They most often picked versions written in easier text with visual emphasis (p<.001). Conclusions: Findings support writing styles that use easier text difficulty and visual emphasis.

Difficult texts: Matthew 6.12b – ‘as we forgive’

This article compares the Matthean and Lukan versions of the Lord’s Prayer in view of what Jesus may have intended. It considers the difficulties some have found in Matthew’s ‘as we forgive’ and suggests that Luke altered his source to avoid them, but – against the weight of scholarly opinion – in a way that some today may find shocking.

Notes on Dialectics: C. L. R. James's Hegel

AbstractHegel's philosophy has been a fundamental reference point for a broad network of mid-twentieth century anticolonial thinkers and activists, a major inspiration for figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Davis, among others. James's Notes on Dialectics (1948) constitutes one of the most significant textual engagements with Hegel from within that internationalist tradition. Even though James considered Notes to be his most important work and one of his lasting contributions to Marxist theory, it remains the least read and studied of his books. In comparison to the abovementioned thinkers, all of whom drew inspiration from Hegel's social and political philosophy, in his monograph, James turns instead to Hegel's most difficult text, the Science of Logic, as the true locus of Hegel's critical theory. Situating James's study within the Marxist philosophical tradition, this essay explores how James interprets, appropriates and makes use of Hegel's dialectic.

Crossing boundaries: reading Mirṣād al-‘Ibad in early modern China (redrawing and straddling borders)

Abstract The history of the accommodation of Najm al-Dīn Dāya's Persian work, Mirṣād al-ʿibād, in China sheds light on an array of social and intellectual forces that redrew and straddled earlier boundaries and definitions of Chinese Islam between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This essay focuses on three main effects that the introduction of Mirṣād al-ʿibād had on the historical trajectory of early modern Chinese Islamic scholarship. It begins by pointing to the ways in which the introduction of the Mirṣād contributed to the reshaping of the Chinese Islamic canon by giving Persian Ṣūfī theology a central place and the heated debate that the process entailed. It then examines the methodological dilemmas surrounding the appropriate methods with which to investigate and scrutinize this difficult text, and the variety of reading practices and methods of translation that scholars have applied to do so. Finally, the essay examines the diverse readings and interpretations that the Chinese translations of this text have generated.

Difficult texts: the author and content of the commandment in 1 John 3.23

Three interpretative problems with 1 John 3.23 are addressed. First, it is suggested that the subject of the verse changes halfway through, from ‘God’ to ‘Jesus Christ’. Second, belief ‘in the name’ of Jesus is taken to mean the acknowledgement of Jesus’ ultimate significance. Third, the single command both to believe and to love one another is suggested to be a way of opening up the life of the disciple to the acceptance of Jesus’ ultimate significance and a way in which such acceptance can be measured or deduced.

Verbal Art in the Heat of the Sinai: Harwerre’s Inscription (IS 90)

Summary Study of Harwerre’s inscription at Serabit el-Khadim (IS 90; year 6 of Amenemhat III). Part 1 offers a philological discussion and new translation of this difficult text. Part 2 shows how the textual composition is patterned throughout on all hierarchical levels. (A proposal for calibration in prosodically patterned Middle Kingdom texts is outlined, differing from both Fechtian “metrics” and Fosterian “thought couplets.”) The patterning extends to deep rhythmical levels, supporting the hypothesis that the text could have been recited on occasions. The overall form of the composition, at once bipartite and concentric, foregrounds the turn to success brought about by the king’s “might” (bȝw). Superimposed on this, a concentric framing, rhythmical patterning, and phonetic echoes concur in celebrating “Hathor” (ḥwt-ḥr) as lady of the “beautiful skin” (ỉnm nfr). Part 3 relates the textual composition to its contexts: the stela on which it is inscribed, the place where that stela stands, and the time of Amenemhat III. This is tightly integrated with the other pictorial and written elements on the stela whose two faces mediate between the powers in the sanctuary (eastern face) and the incoming visitor (western face). On the western face, the turn to success through the king is set in the exact middle lines 13–14 of the 26-line long textual inscription, meeting the incoming visitor at roughly eye’s height. Echoes of Harwerre’s text in neighboring inscriptions of the immediately following years attest to the local reception of an out-of-the-ordinary text and monument. The product of a composer versed in the patterns of contemporary poetry, the text is a token of a productive reception of such during the reign of Amenemhat III.

Difficult texts: pronouns for God in Genesis 1.26, Exodus 20.2 and Isaiah 41.4–21

This article explores using the third-person plural to refer to God as a Trinity. If this proves persuasive, the third-person plural may be an acceptable option to those hesitant about exclusively using male pronouns to refer to God and those wary of the politicization of pronouns.

Religion, Politics, and Historical Approaches to Philosophy

This enormously erudite and original book is the culmination of many years of thinking deeply about difficult texts. Rosen's book explores themes of deep interest and importance to me—about religion, about politics, and about historical approaches to philosophy. My comments and questions will focus on these, and more on Kant than on Hegel.

Teenagers’ Vocabulary Knowledge and Self-Efficacy as Elements in Effective L2 Online Searches

As English dominates the Internet, most education systems need to prepare pupils to perform L2 information searches. Generating efficient search terms and understanding the information retrieved requires good vocabulary knowledge. This study examined the relationship between vocabulary knowledge, L2 online searching, and attitudes towards online searching. A sample of Swedish pupils’ abilities in locating suitably difficult texts and learning words were tested by comparing their Vocabulary Size Test scores with the lexical density of their search results and subsequent text production. Long-term vocabulary recall and self-efficacy for searching online were also tested. The results indicate that pupils tended to read and write texts below their ability level. They were unaware that they could achieve more as their self-efficacy measures indicated high confidence levels despite rather modest skills. The challenge posed by the findings is to enable teenagers to recognize how much more effectively they could use the Internet, without damaging their confidence.

Schwierige Texte in Kritik und Vermittlung

Schwierige Texte in Kritik und Vermittlung

No Correlation Between Articulation Speed and Silent Reading Rate when Adults Read Short Texts.

Silent reading often involves phonological encoding of the text in addition to orthographic processing. The nature of the phonological code is debated, however: Is it an abstract code or does it contain information about the pronunciation of the visual stimulus? To answer this question, we investigated the relationship between articulation speed and reading speed, both for silent reading and reading aloud. We investigated whether people with fast articulation speed read faster than people with slow articulation speed. We recruited 94 participants, who in a Zoom session were asked to read short texts silently or aloud. They were also asked to talk about their lives and say the numbers 1-10 or the months of the year as quickly as possible. Finally, they completed an online vocabulary test and an author recognition test. Multiple regression analysis and cluster analysis showed that although the speed of reading aloud and silent reading correlated to some extent, they belonged to two different clusters. Reading aloud was mainly related to talking fluency and articulation speed, while silent reading was more related to vocabulary and knowledge about fiction authors. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the phonological code in silent reading typically does not contain articulatory information, although our data do not rule out the possibility that this may be the case for a small percentage of people or when people read more difficult texts.

An evaluation of Google Translate for Sanskrit to English translation via sentiment and semantic analysis

Google Translate has been prominent for language translation; however, limited work has been done in evaluating the quality of translation when compared to expert translators. Sanskrit, one of the oldest written languages in the world was added to the Google Translate engine in 2022. Sanskrit is known as the mother of North Indian languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, and Bengali. Sanskrit has been used for composing sacred Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. In this study, we present a framework that evaluates Google Translate for Sanskrit using the Bhagavad Gita. We first published a translation of the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit using Google Translate and then compared it with selected prominent translations by experts. Our framework features a BERT-based language model that implements sentiment and semantic analysis. The results indicate that there is a low level of similarity between the Bhagavad Gita by Google Translate and expert translators in terms of sentiment and semantic analyses. We found major inconsistencies in the translation of philosophical terms and metaphors. We further implemented a qualitative evaluation and found that Google Translate was unsuitable for the translation of certain Sanskrit words and phrases due to the poetic nature, contextual significance, metaphor and imagery. The mistranslations are not surprising since the Bhagavad Gita is known as a difficult text not only to translate but also to interpret since it relies on contextual, philosophical and historical information. It is difficult to distinguish different names and philosophical concepts such as karma and dharma without knowing the context and having a background of Hindu philosophy. Our framework lays the foundation for the automatic evaluation of other languages that can be translated by Google Translate.

The Strategies of the High-performing Non-native English Language Readers with Structurally Difficult Texts

The Strategies of the High-performing Non-native English Language Readers with Structurally Difficult Texts

The effects of background music on English reading comprehension for English foreign language learners: evidence from an eye movement study.

Based on previous literature, the present study examines the effects of background music on English reading comprehension using eye tracking techniques. All the participants, whose first language was Chinese, were selected from a foreign language college and all of them were sophomores who majored in English. The experiment in this study was a 2 (music tempo: fast and slow) × 2 (text difficulty: difficult and easy) × 2 (background music preference: high and low) mixed design. Both musical tempo and English reading passage were within-subjects factors, and the level of music listening preference was a between-subjects factor. The results showed that the main effect of the music tempo was statistically significant, which indicated that participants read texts more quickly in the fast-tempo music condition than in the slow-tempo music condition. Furthermore, the main effect of the text difficulty was statistically significant. Additionally, the interaction between the text difficulty and music tempo was statistically significant. The music tempo had a greater effect on easy texts than on difficult texts. The results of this study reveal that it is beneficial for people who have a stronger preference for music listening to conduct English reading tasks with fast-tempo music. It is detrimental for people who have little preference for background music listening to complete difficult English reading tasks with slow-tempo music.