Difficult Words Research Articles

Design, implementation, and evaluation of an online flipped classroom with collaborative learning model in an undergraduate chemical engineering course

Active learning methods are known to improve motivation, engagement, and student performance in traditional classrooms. However, the COVID-19 pandemic compelled students to continue their studies through an online setting wherein teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. In this study, the design and implementation of flipped classrooms supported with collaborative learning was evaluated for the remote instruction of Analytical Chemistry. The flipped classroom was designed to include pre-recorded lectures, individual self-assessment questions and in-class group activities (polls and quiz bee). Word problems were given as collaborative tasks to improve the students’ interactions on the learning content. The impact on learning of these instructional practices was evaluated based on students’ learning experience and academic performance, and the instructors’ reflection. The survey at the end of the term gathered quantitative and qualitative data regarding students’ experiences with flipped classroom and peer collaboration methods. The students’ feedback indicated that participation in group collaborative activities had a positive impact on their comprehension of Analytical Chemistry concepts and calculations. Majority of the students indicated that group collaboration was immensely helpful in enhancing communication skills and improving their ability to apply what they had learned in class to solving difficult word problems. In addition, students underscored the importance of pre-recorded videos for their self-paced learning, and synchronous sessions to increase their engagement and motivation. On the other hand, several students perceived flipped classrooms as very demanding and challenging in terms of the required output submissions given the short 6-week term. Overall, the combination of these active-learning methods had a positive impact on the remote-learning environment, but potential drawbacks of online active learning interventions on student attitudes were also present. Therefore, careful integration of these instructional practices into online courses will help improve the students’ learning experience.

The Problems Encountered by Non-English Department Students in Speaking English

Speaking is one of the difficult English skills for non-English department students. This is because students must understand how to produce good and correct sentences to pronounce. To produce a sentence, they must master a lot of vocabulary and master how to pronounce it. In addition, to be able to master speaking skills, students must also have self-confidence. This research aimed to know the problems encountered by Non-English Department students in speaking English and their causes and to find out the problem-solving encountered by non-English majoring students in speaking English. The researcher used descriptive qualitative research with a questionnaire and an interview to collect the data. The results of this study indicate that almost all students find problems (linguistic and nonlinguistic) in speaking English. Linguistic problems that are often found are a lack of grammar, poor pronunciation, and the last is lack of vocabulary. The non-linguistics are anxiety, shyness & lack of confidence. The factors causing the problem of speaking English in this study were low motivation, habits & mother tongue, lack of practice & opportunity, and fear of making mistakes. To solve the problem of speaking English is to improve vocabulary and pronunciation skills. Some ways to improve it are by listening and singing English songs, watching English movies to understand English sentences, and using Google Translate to look up the meaning of difficult words and how to pronounce them. In addition, to improve their speaking skills, sometimes students also practice speaking in English with their friends or independently.

A REFLECTION ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE ENJOYMENT DURING VOCABULARY LEARNING WITH ACTIVELY LEARN IN A LOW-ANXIETY LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Research on effective vocabulary learning has been vastly related to the enforcement of extensive reading in or outside the class. Somehow, the idea of bringing extensive reading to Indonesian EFL context seems like quite a challenge considering the literacy level of the country. This research focuses on the reflection on foreign language enjoyment students’ experience during vocabulary learning through extensive reading in Actively Learn which was done a low-anxiety learning environment. The data were taken from 43 freshmen’s and the teacher’s written reflections during and after 8-week meetings. The data were analyzed using semantic-deductive thematic analysis. The results show that students struggled at first due to reading long texts, but later they enjoyed the learning process and reading materials due to 1) enjoyable and fun atmosphere, 2) getting lots of knowledge about phrasal verbs, collocations, and idioms, 3) mistakes being tolerated as part of learning process, 4) variations of activities, and 5) meanings of difficult words are discussed and described in gestures and depictions.

Assessing the Functional Accessibility, Actionability, and Quality of Patient Education Materials from Canadian Cancer Agencies.

Patient education materials (PEM)s were extracted from provincial cancer agencies to determine their organizational health literacy by evaluating the quality, actionability, and functional accessibility (e.g., readability and understandability) of their PEMs. PEMs from 10 provincial agencies were assessed for their grade reading level (GRL), using eight numerical and two graphical readability scales, and underwent a difficult word analysis. The agencies were assessed for PEM quality using two methods (JAMA benchmarks and DISCERN), while actionability and understandability were assessed using the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT). Seven hundred and eighty-six PEMs were analyzed. The overall average GRL was 9.3 ± 2.1, which is above the recommended 7th GRL for health information. The difficult word analysis showed that 15.4% ± 5.1% of texts contained complex words, 35.8% ± 6.8% of texts contained long words, and 24.2% ± 6.6% of texts contained unfamiliar words. Additionally, there was high overlap between the most frequently identified difficult words in the PEMs and the most frequently misunderstood words by cancer patients identified in the literature. Regarding quality indicators, no agency displayed all four indicators according to the JAMA benchmarks and DISCERN scores ranged between 38 (poor) to 66 (excellent). PEMAT scores ranged between 68% to 88% for understandability and 57% to 88% for actionability. PEMs continue to be written at a level above the recommended GRL across all provinces, and there was overall high variability in the quality, understandability, and actionability of PEMs among provincial agencies. This represents an opportunity to optimize materials, thus ensuring understanding by a wider audience and improving health literacy among Canadian cancer patients.

A Novel Approach to Identify Difficult Words in English to Promote Vocabulary Acquisition of Children Dually Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Hearing Loss

Usage of complex words causes significant problems not only in reading but in writing as well and eventually leads to poor academic achievement of students, poorer particularly for hearing impaired children. The dual diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and hearing impairment pose additional challenges mainly due to the difficulties that come with making accurate decisions. Hence, parents must be provided with the information about the signs and symptoms of ASD and deafness or partial hearing loss, as well as appropriate intervention strategies. Although different learning activities can be used to enlarge such children’s vocabulary, if the presented words are difficult to learn, it will be very hard to realize this. Identifying difficult words and replacing them with simple ones both make the readability of a text easier and help such children enhance their vocabulary knowledge in a shorter period of time. Therefore, in this study we propose a classification approach that identifies difficult words among a given set of words in English. The lexical and semantic features of the words in the dataset were extracted based on the language rules specific to hearing impaired children. In the classification approach, five popular classification algorithms were used and the algorithms' performance in identifying difficult words was evaluated using various performance metrics. As the results show, the K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm is the most suitable algorithm for identifying difficult words in English for the target group.

Using Russian proverbs to improve pronunciation skills for Russian-majored students

In the process of learning the Russian language as a foreign language, Russian-majored students at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Viet Nam National University Ho Chi Minh City are found to have problems in the Russian pronunciation. These problems are mainly related to the pronunciation of difficult sounds, tail consonants, consonant combinations, word stress, and intonation stress of sentences. In this study, the author identifies the common Russian pronunciation errors of Russian- majored students and offers the solutions to use Russian proverbs in the form of phonetic exercises to overcome the above-mentioned pronunciation errors. The Russian proverbs with phonetic rhetoric, including alliteration, rhythm, resonance, etc., not only help improve pronunciation, but also contribute to expanding students' knowledge about Russian culture and people. In this article, the author has provided more than 50 Russian proverbs classified by their purpose of use and equivalent Vietnamese proverbs in terms of meaning or context of use. This is also a valuable reference source for research in the field of comparative linguistics. The research methods used in this article consist of the theoretical document research method on the Russian and Vietnamese phonetics; the descriptive and comparative methods to clarify the negative movement trends of Vietnamese people when learning the Russian phonetics; the methods of testing, observation and analysis to identify the common pronunciation errors of Russian-majored students; and the methods of search, comparison, and illustration to provide linguistic resources and techniques for using Russian proverbs to improve learners' Russian pronunciation.

A Necessary Redefinition of Lexicography in the Digital Age: Glossography, Dictionography and Implications for the Future

his paper deals with developments in the field of lexicography that resulted in the need for a new definition of this term. The paper offers a brief look at the origin, use and develop­ment of the term lexicography and at the use of glosses in former and current times. It is shown how the digital era enables the use of certain lexicographical features in other sources than dictionaries. This leads to an expansion of the scope of the term lexicography. A strong focus is on the use of glosses, originally inserted by scribes as snippets into manuscripts to help with the understanding of difficult words and expressions. The use of glosses has increased, and they are currently com­monly used in a variety of environments. In digital products glosses play an innovative, productive and significant role to present new types of lexicographical data. This demands the recognition of glosses as lexicographical entries and leads to a redefinition of the term lexicography that includes two major sub-fields, namely dictionography and glossography. Keywords: artificial intelligence, digital era, gloss, glossography, lexi­co­graphical data, scribe, dictionography, interdisciplinary col­labo­ration, reading assistant, writing assistant

Quantitative Research on Readability Formula of Texts for Chinese Heritage Language

The compilation of Chinese heritage textbooks has always adopted the standards of teaching Chinese as mother language or as second language. The difficulty level of the texts is mostly measured separately from the aspects of Chinese characters, vocabulary, and grammar. There is no comprehensive quantitative evaluation standard. Readability formula is one of the methods to comprehensively measure the difficulty of text. The present study made use of Chinese heritage textbooks as the source of data and constructed readability formula by the method of multiple regression analysis. The formula includes four language features, i.e., proportion of difficult words, number of different characters, average sentence length, and proportion of function words, which could explain 72.9% of the variation of text difficulty level. Limitations and future works of the formula are discussed.

A Clustering Algorithm for Polygonal Data Applied to Scientific Journal Profiles.

Millions of papers are submitted and published every year, but researchers often do not have much information about the journals that interest them. In this paper, we introduced the first dynamical clustering algorithm for symbolic polygonal data and this was applied to build scientific journals profiles. Dynamic clustering algorithms are a family of iterative two-step relocation algorithms involving the construction of clusters at each iteration and the identification of a suitable representation or prototype (means, axes, probability laws, groups of elements, etc.) for each cluster by locally optimizing an adequacy criterion that measures the fitting between clusters and their corresponding prototypes The application gives a powerful vision to understand the main variables that describe journals. Symbolic polygonal data can represent summarized extensive datasets taking into account variability. In addition, we developed cluster and partition interpretation indices for polygonal data that have the ability to extract insights about clustering results. From these indices, we discovered, e.g., that the number of difficult words in abstract is fundamental to building journal profiles.

Assessment of online patient education material for eye cancers: A cross-sectional study.

The objective of this study was to assess online American patient education material (PEM) related to eye cancers in order to determine the quality of the content and appropriateness of the contents' reading level as it relates to the American population. PEMs were extracted from fifteen American cancer and ophthalmology associations and evaluated for their reading level using ten validated readability scales. PEMs then had all words extracted and evaluated for their difficulty and familiarity. The quality of the PEMS were assessed according to DISCERN, Heath On the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONCode), and JAMA benchmarks. Overall, online PEMs from the associations were written at a 11th grade reading level, which is above the recommended 6th grade reading level. The difficult word analysis identified that 26% of words were unfamiliar. Only one of the fifteen association held a HONCode certification while no organization met the standards of all four JAMA benchmarks. The average score for DISCERN was 2.4 out of a total of 5 for the fifteen questions related to treatment option information quality. Consideration should be made to create PEMs at an appropriate grade reading level to encourage health literacy and ultimately promote health outcomes. Associations should also focus on incorporating easily identifiable quality indicators to allow patients to better identify reputable resources.

Adaptation, Translation and Psychometric Properties of Gaslight Questionnaire in Urdu Language

Translation and adaptation of an instrument measuring a certain construct in a specific culture has a scope in the field of psychological testing. To measure a psychological construct, a standardized test is used. Native language inventories produce effective and valid results as compared to foreign inventories. Gaslighting Questionnaire for measuring emotional abuse among married individuals was translated into Urdu language for use with the Pakistani population. The study was comprised of two phases, one is cross language validation and second is establishing psychometric properties of translated scale. For cross language validation, sample of n=40; males= 5, females= 35, bilingual married males and females through purposive sampling technique, was drawn from different cities of Pakistan. A sample of n= 316 of married males, n= 104; and females, n= 212, age ranged from 18 to 64 years, was drawn through snowball sampling technique for establishing the psychometric properties. Correlation between Urdu to Urdu, English to English, Urdu to English and English to Urdu indicated that the cross-language validation was highly significant (p<.01). Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFI = .92; ?2 = 303.50) indicated the good and acceptable model fit indices. The translated version is exactly alike the original version in conceptual equivalence. It is a reliable and valid instrument to measure the gaslighting phenomenon in married population of Pakistan as Urdu is native language and more easily comprehendible. Most of the Pakistani population is not very literate and use of difficult words from English language would influence the measurement of the phenomenon.

Błędy pisowniowe w wiadomościach przesyłanych na kartach pocztowych

The aim of the article is to characterise the spelling errors observed in Polish postcard messages. The analysis of the source literature shows that so far little attention has been paid to errors occurring in unsupervised communication. For this reason, nearly 700 errors from around 3,000 texts sent via postcards in the second half of the 20th century were examined. The author discusses individual errors and presents their typology, concluding that the most common mistakes concern the conventional and historical principles of Polish spelling. This conclusion to a large extent confirms the results of previousresearch on the spelling practice of Polish speakers and the so-called “difficult words”.

Why and How Non-English Department Students Learn Vocabulary in Using Realia

Background: Vocabulary is the most basic thing to be mastered in learning English; learning vocabulary should start with real things. Purpose: Research to interpret and provide an in-depth understanding of why and how non-English department students learn vocabulary using realia and why they learn the way they do. Method: This research is a classroom action research that aims to improve students' communicative competence in English. Results and Discussion: The results showed that lecturers could motivate students in communicative competence by using realia teaching materials. This can be seen in the results of research that has experienced a significant increase. This can be evidenced by the increased ability of students to describe things and communicate well and smoothly during the teaching and learning process. Students easily draw what is happening around them due to acquired or events in their area. Conclusions and Implications: By using realia teaching materials, lecturers can motivate students in communicative competence, which can be seen from the research results that have experienced a significant increase. This can be evidenced by the increasing ability of students to describe things and communicate well and smoothly during the teaching and learning process. The implication of this research is to motivate students to communicate, and it must start with what exists and happens in the environment where they live so that they can easily find difficult words.

The Role of Semantics and Etymology in Promoting Insightful Learning

The difficult meaning of many unfamiliar and new words is‘motivated’ by their original and semantic meaning. In an EFL context, thisoffers the possibility of presenting a number of difficult words in ways thatpromote insightful learning rather than blind memorization. Associating aword with its semantic change and etymology has been shown to enhancecomprehending and then remembering. This effect seems in accordancewith dual coding theory, as the etymological association is likely to call upa mental image of a concrete scene which can be stored in memoryalongside the verbal form. The present study explores the possibility oftaking this technique beyond mere mnemonics. A series of tests that are setup with the participation of students who study English in their higherstudy are reported. The results show that knowledge of the origin andsemantic changes of these new and unfamiliar words can effectively helplearners comprehend their meaning and then ease their retention. Not onlydoes the task of knowing word meaning on the basis of etymologicalinformation appear practical, it seems to facilitate recall, too. Finally, theresults suggest that knowledge of the origin of unfamiliar words can helplearners estimate whether they might have more than one meaning.
 Failing to remember previously encountered words is one of thecommonly reported complaints of EFL learners. Among the variety ofcommonly used vocabulary reinforcing techniques, making students awareof etymological accounts of words is a relatively under researched area inthe literature. The present study, therefore, aims at exploring the effect ofpresenting etymological accounts of 20 unfamiliar words on short- andlong-term vocabulary retention of EFL learners. The participants (20) aremembers of two higher studies classes randomly assigned to experimentaland control groups. While both groups are asked to look up the meaning ofthe words in their dictionaries, the participants in the experimental groupreceived a short instruction on the etymologies of the words. The results of

An Annotated Translation of Canvas

In this study, the writers discussed difficulties, solutions, and strategies used to translate poems of Canvas by doing an annotated translation. The data was taken from the book entitled ‘Canvas’ by Beni Wego. The strategies that the writers used were four strategies by Lefevere (1975), eight strategies by Baker (2018) and two strategies by Newmark (1988). Then, there were two most suitable strategies used which were translation by paraphrase using a related word and free translation. From the analysis, the difficulties were dealing with words that have similar meaning, difficult words to be translated in the TL, length of words, literal meaning, non-equivalent words, words that have multiple meanings, words that cannot be lexicalized, unimportant words, information, words that need more explanation, and idiom structure. From this study, it could be concluded that doing annotated translation help the process of finding out difficulties and solutions.

Cultural and contextual adaptation of mental health measures in Kenya: An adolescent-centered transcultural adaptation of measures study.

There is paucity of culturally adapted tools for assessing depression and anxiety in children and adolescents in low-and middle-income countries. This hinders early detection, provision of appropriate and culturally acceptable interventions. In a partnership with the University of Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenyatta National Hospital, and UNICEF, a rapid cultural adaptation of three adolescent mental health scales was done, i.e., Revised Children's Anxiety and Depression Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and additional scales in the UNICEF mental health module for adolescents. Using a qualitative approach, we explored adolescent participants' views on cultural acceptability, comprehensibility, relevance, and completeness of specific items in these tools through an adolescent-centered approach to understand their psychosocial needs, focusing on gender and age-differentiated nuances around expression of distress. Forty-two adolescents and 20 caregivers participated in the study carried out in two primary care centers where we conducted cognitive interviews and focused group discussions assessing mental health knowledge, literacy, access to services, community, and family-level stigma. We reflect on process and findings of adaptations of the tools, including systematic identification of words adolescents did not understand in English and Kiswahili translations of these scales. Some translated words could not be understood and were not used in routine conversations. Response options were changed to increase comprehensibility; some statements were qualified by adding extra words to avoid ambiguity. Participants suggested alternative words that replaced difficult ones and arrived at culturally adapted tools. Study noted difficult words, phrases, dynamics in understanding words translated from one language to another, and differences in comprehension in adolescents ages 10-19 years. There is a critical need to consider cultural adaptation of depression and anxiety tools for adolescents. Results informed a set of culturally adapted scales. The process was community-driven and adhered to the principles of cultural adaptation for assessment tools.

The Alfaẓ al-Mishnah Commentary by R. Saadiah Gaon

Abstract This article presents a commentary on the Mishna composed by R. Saadiah Gaon, who served as head of the Sura yeshivah in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th century. The commentary is a Hebrew-Arabic glossary defining difficult words in the Mishnah. The commentary is well referenced in writings from early periods, and a large portion of the manuscript was recently identified in the Cairo Genizah. I present a number of proofs that R. Saadiah Gaon authored the commentary and show that many adaptions were made to this commentary in several manuscripts. This unpublished commentary is the earliest systematic commentary on rabbinic literature.

Validating Four Hmong Word Recognition Tests With Normal-Hearing Bilingual Hmong Individuals

The purpose of this study was to validate four digitally recorded and phonetically balanced 50-word recognition lists in the White Hmong dialect with normal-hearing bilingual Hmong adults. Using a randomized, incomplete-block design, each participant listened to and repeated four unique Hmong lists delivered by a female and a male talker. Participants were also tested with an English word list-List 1A of the Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6. Participants' correct pronunciation of each word was scored. A nonparametric Mann-Whitney U Location Difference Test for Equivalence using two one-sided tests equivalence hypothesis: -0.02 < [(List_1) - (List_2)] < 0.02 was conducted to assess equivalence among all four Hmong and the English lists. Seventy Hmong speakers participated in this study (35 women, 35 men; M age = 29.5 years, SD = 7.1). In all four Hmong lists, 93.5% (187/200) words met the validation criteria for ≥ 92% correct pronunciation. The 13 difficult words were deemed adequate by a Hmong panel and, therefore, were included to maintain four unique, balanced word lists. The test revealed that the Hmong and English word lists were considered equivalent at the 2% bound. The four Hmong word lists were validated to ensure an equal range of word difficulty across the lists.

Association of Hurried Communication and Low Patient Self-Efficacy With Persistent Nonadherence to Lupus Medications.

Medication nonadherence is common among patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and adherence often fluctuates with time. Underrepresented racial minorities have disproportionately lower rates of medication adherence and more severe SLE manifestations. We aimed to identify modifiable factors associated with persistent medication nonadherence. Patients taking ≥1 SLE medication were enrolled. Adherence data were obtained at baseline and at follow-up roughly 1 year later using both self-reported adherence and pharmacy refill data. Covariates included patient-provider interaction, patient self-efficacy, and clinical factors. We compared characteristics of patients in 3 groups using the Kruskal-Wallis H test: persistent nonadherence (low adherence by self-report and refill rates at both time points); persistent adherence (high adherence by self-report and refill rates at both time points); and inconsistent adherence (the remainder). Among 77 patients (median age 44 years, 53% Black, 96% female), 48% had persistent nonadherence. Compared with other adherence groups, patients with persistent nonadherence were younger and more likely to be Black, have lower income, take ≥2 SLE medications, have higher SLE-related damage at baseline, and have higher physician global assessment of disease activity at follow-up. Persistently nonadherent patients also rated more hurried communication with providers (particularly fast speech and difficult word choice) and had lower self-efficacy in managing medications. Potential avenues to improve medication adherence include optimizing patient-provider communication, specifically avoiding difficult vocabulary and fast speech, and enhancing patient self-efficacy, particularly among younger Black patients with lower income who are at higher risk for nonadherence.

Educational dictionaries of writers’ language

The article deals with a range of issues related to such a type of dictionaries as educational dictionaries of writers’ language, or educational author’s dictionaries. The relevance of the research is determined by the factors which researchers define through the concepts of "reading culture crisis", "a decrease in students’ vocabulary size", and others. The material for the analysis was a corpus of educational dictionaries of writers’ language, including editions of the se cond half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century. The research relied on the methodology of lexicographic criticism based on the description, scientific evaluation, and a comparative study of dictionaries. The content and structural analysis of educational author’s dictionaries has shown that the main purpose of such dictionaries (namely to "explain the unclear") determines their strong affinity with defining and not other types of dictionaries. In terms of genre, they are complete explanatory dictionaries, dictionaries of difficult words (i. e. incomplete, similar to glossaries) as well as commentary dictionaries arranged as endnotes or in alphabetical order. At the same time, their word lists, dictionary entries, and description language generally correspond to the principles of educational lexicography although the specificity of the material being described relativises these principles. The study has shown that the general development of educational author’s lexicography started with dictionaries of difficult words which are now usually called dictiona ries of rare, obsolete words and the like and resulted in complete dictionaries of the language of one work. Moreover, an incomplete, as a rule of minuscule volume, educational author’s dictionary is most convenient to obtain information regarding the meaning of an unclear word and its main linguistic characteristics. A complete educational author’s dictionary is valuable when working with a literary text in its entirety. Russianists of different generations have contributed to the development of educational author’s lexicography. N. M. Shansky is one of them. For instance, he proposed a method for compiling line-by-line linguistic dictionary-type commentaries for particular works in the school syllabus. Commentary dictiona ries constitute an integral part of the modern corpus of educational author’s dictionaries.