English Language Essays Research Articles

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MEASUREMENT ERRORS AND PRAGMATIC ERRORS ON ESSAY WRITING SKILLS AMONG JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ IN KOGI STATE, NIGERIA

The study investigated comparative analysis of measurement errors and pragmatic errors on essay writing skills among sunior Secondary School Students’ in Kogi State, Nigeria. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Population comprises of all 8,351 students offering English Language from 17 public junior secondary school in Kogi State, Nigeria and 384 students offering English Language were used as sample size. Observation Protocol English Language Essay Writing Skills Questionnaire/Checklist (OPELEWTQC)’’was used as an instrument, it was validated and pilot tested which yielded the of 0.74 validity index and of 0.75 reliability index. Mean and standard deviation was used to answer research questions while t-test of independent samples was used for testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significant. Findings of this study reveal a significant difference in the impact of measurement errors and pragmatic errors on essay writing skills among junior secondary school students in Kogi State. It was established that pragmatic errors exert a more substantial influence on the students' essay writing skills compared to measurement errors. This highlights the critical role of pragmatic competence in improving students' overall writing performance and effective communication in essays. The study recommends incorporating pragmatic skill development into junior secondary school English language curricula, such as real-life language use activities and context-based writing exercises, as well as establishing teacher training programs to identify and correct pragmatic faults in students' writing.

ANALYSIS OF PRAGMATIC ERRORS ON ESSAY WRITING PERFORMANCE OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ IN NASARAWA STATE, NIGERIA

The study investigated Analysis of Pragmatic Errors on Essay Writing Performance of Senior Secondary School Students’ in Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Population comprises of all 12,333 students offering English Language from 17 public senior secondary school in Nasarawa State, Nigeria and 384 students offering English Language were used as sample size. English Language Essay Performance Writing Test (ELEPWT) was used as an instrument, it was validated and pilot tested which yielded the of 0.71 validity index and of 0.72 reliability index. Descriptive statistics was to answer research questions while t-test of independent samples was used for testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significant. The findings reveals significant differences in the types and rank order of pragmatic errors committed by SSII students in essay writing tests in Nasarawa State, Nigeria. However, no significant difference was found between male and female students, suggesting that gender does not influence the occurrence of these errors. This suggests that the nature and frequency of these errors are not influenced by gender. It recommended that, English language teachers should prioritize teaching pragmatic competence, including appropriate language use, context understanding, and writing application. Schools should provide workshops and specialized training to enhance teaching effectiveness. Contextual writing exercises and peer-review sessions can help students understand and apply pragmatic norms accurately. This approach encourages active learning and critical writing skills.

A turning point for Telemann scholarship?

While scholarship on Georg Philipp Telemann has steadily gained momentum in Germany since the ‘Telemann renaissance’ of the early 1900s, Anglophone research into this most prolific of composers has, until recently, remained the purview of a small handful of scholars. Still, I was surprised to read, in the preface of Telemann studies, that the first English-language conference dedicated to the life and music of Telemann did not take place until the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. And it was at this conference, entitled ‘Georg Philipp Telemann: Enlightenment and Postmodern Perspectives’ (hosted by Temple University, Philadelphia in 2017) that the present volume began life. Fittingly, given its important status as the first English-language essay collection on Telemann, Telemann studies goes well beyond what might be expected from a book of conference proceedings (valuable as these can be) in terms of overall polish and coherence. Its 16 chapters (contributed not only by Telemann specialists, but also by leading scholars best known for research into C. P. E. and J. S. Bach) have been grouped by editors Wolfgang Hirschmann and Steven Zohn into five parts: ‘Enlightenment Perspectives’, ‘Urban and Courtly Contexts’, ‘Nature (and) Theology in the Late Vocal Works’, ‘Bach Family Connections’ and ‘Cantata Cycles in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Beyond’.

Private Law Theory: The State of the Art

This essay reviews four recent English-language essay collections, each of which proposes a vision of private law theory – that is, of how private law appears in the light of a wider understanding of the world. It concentrates on how each collection gives some sort of shape to the emerging discipline. Discussion of the shape, meaning and significance of private law is of course nothing new; but the recent massive outpouring of theory, and the issues which have been treated as important, require some discussion of the intellectual climate which has led us to this place. For the most part, this essay argues, the discussion has been governed by the increasing obsolescence of classical private law concepts, which the more progressive writers have taken as a call to develop new concepts, and the more traditional writers have taken as a call to defend what is valuable about them; over time, this has increasingly pushed the traditionalists to a position where they can describe some (though hardly all) of what we all see, but which is largely impotent in justifying it – that is, in explaining why it is worth retaining. Meanwhile, the terms of debate have become increasingly narrow, as continuity is privileged over change, the lawyer’s point of view privileged over that of other community members, and national court-based law is emphasised over the many other forms of social ordering. Yet there are now also welcome signs of a broader approach, by which different perspectives are seen as complementing one another rather than as rivals, and there is (sometimes at least) genuine enquiry into what is really universal and what is merely a local present-day peculiarity. And we might be approaching – to put it no higher– the time when private law theory is a genuine conversation rather than as a mere cacophony of voices.

Apocalypse and Politics

Apokalypse und Politik collects essays, reviews, and shorter writings of Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes, making several of his English-language essays available for the first time in German translation and adding to a body of work that already includes the collection From Cult to Culture and the lectures contained in The Political Theology of Paul. Divided into four sections—essays and lectures, 1942–1962, essays and lectures 1963–1987, reviews, and public lectures and tributes—the volume spans Taubes's career and includes several texts that will be of interest to the readers of Telos. For example, Apokalypse und Politik makes available in German translation Taubes's…

The effect of social media on English second language essay writing with special reference to WhatsApp

Background: The Eastern Cape province in South Africa is a multilingual province where isiXhosa is the most widely spoken indigenous language. Learners seldom use English at home, and it remains, largely, the language of learning and teaching used at school. With the advent of dynamic technology, learners are widely exposed to social media, and those who use the language of social media networks tend to include it in their academic activities at school. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to report on the orthographic errors in English Second Language Grade 10 essay writing caused by the use of social media, particularly WhatsApp. Method: The study was carried out at three randomly selected high schools in one district in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa. The study used a quantitative approach to data analysis, but with a survey research design. Random sampling techniques were used to select 180 learners from three schools. The data collection instrument consisted of learners’ narrative essays. The data were analysed quantitatively and are presented using tables and graphs. The orthographic errors in the essays were identified and quantified. Results: The findings of this investigation shed light on the influence of social media on learners’ writing. Some of the findings included use of abbreviations, unnecessarily shortened words, and use of numbers instead of the complete word form. Conclusion: Recommendations are made on how teachers can help learners avoid this erroneous use of language in their writing. Suggestions are also made on how textbook writers and the Department of Basic Education can assist and support teachers in this process.

Transference of National Rhetorical Strategies and Argumentation Patterns Evidence From an Advanced English Class of L1 Russian Speakers

The past decade has seen a powerful trend in Russian tertiary education towards soft skills development among university students, favouring them over hard skills. The traditional Russian higher education model is characterised by focusing primarily, if not exclusively, on hard skills. However, with the pressing need to internationalise Russian universities so that they fit into the global education and research landscape, there emerged a need for a shift. An immediate response to the challenge consisted in ‘‘importing’’ British and American curricula to introduce classes of Academic Writing and, later, Academic Public Speaking in Russian universities. However, the attempts to blindly transplant a foreign rhetorical tradition have proved to be misguided. Although both the Anglo-Saxon and Russian academic rhetorics are rooted in the Greek culture, their evolution over the centuries resulted in two separate and non-identical rhetorical traditions. The differences are particularly striking when a student, an instructor or a researcher who was raised in a Russian academic environment is taught or forced to adopt Anglo-Saxon conventions. The resulting tension can be most efficiently addressed by an adjustment of the existing ‘‘domestic’’ conventions and creation of a customised rather than one-size-fits-all curriculum. To be able to take into account the ‘‘domestic’’ conventions, there has to be an inventory of them. The present paper reflects research conducted within the framework of contrastive rhetoric, as proposed by R. Kaplan in his seminal ‘‘doodle paper’’ (Kaplan 1966) which threw into spotlight a need to identify national patterns and build on them when teaching academic writing in English to international students. We start on the premise that before tackling the language issues, the course should address rhetorical strategies and argumentation patterns, as errors in these areas often prove to be a bigger barrier to understanding than purely linguistic mistakes. We analyse a sampling of English-language argumentative essays written by an advanced English class of Russian L1 speakers before they received any instruction in academic writing. We then identify the emergent rhetorical patterns and argumentation chosen by the students. We hypothesise that students will transfer the accepted Russian argumentation patterns and rhetorical strategies into their English language essay.

STUDENT-WRITERS� CLAIMS IN HORTATORY ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS: AN APPRAISAL STUDY IN CONVENIENCE WRITING

Working on writing argumentative essay instructions has been practices in a non-formal language learning settings. Yet, its students pursued claims are not fully explored as an evaluativion of how student-writers interact as conveying arguments with the readers. Investigating the linguistic resources on which they develop and evaluate these, two selected English Language essays were looked into regarding to exploitation of macrostructures in them. Subsequently, they were captured within the framework of appraisal theory as to emerge various trends relative to the employment of engagement resource types, combined with the other resources in confirming claims: graduation and attitudinal ones. It was pinpointed that the essays were low-graded notifying substantial numbers of monoglossic resources with low-considered attitudinal items. They failed to recognise other voices and alternative positions. Their construction of evaluative meanings provided feedbacks, enhancing classroom teachers awareness of typical features in genre-based instructions.DOI:doi.org/10.24071/llt.2018.210205

Computer Supported Collaborative Writing: Does it Work among ESL Learners?

This study examines the effectiveness of using Wiki as a platform to enhance EL learners’ writing skill in English language. In particular, the aim of this research is to examine learners’ performance in composing English language essays as well as to identify the challenges which the students faced throughout the process of writing through Wiki. This study involved the respondents from secondary school who were in Form 2 and it consists of three levels of language proficiency which the researchers have identified. Specifically, the research data is collected through writing assessments (pre-test and post-test). For pre-test and post-test, the website selected as a platform was ZOHO Wiki which is a free user friendly online server designed for collaborative writing. The data from pre-test and post-test was analysed according to the marks obtained. Particularly, the research findings showed that students positively show an encouraging improvement in their English language essays and writing skill. Besides, some challenges on the Wiki website and technological related issues that occurred during the process of Wiki mediated writing have also been identified such as difficulties in terms of Wiki tools software, technological related problem, collaborative writing issues, and other relevant challenges related to the research topic. In addition, the pedagogical implications, limitations as well as recommendations on the future research which are relevant to the present study are discussed and elaborated. In short, collaborative learning through Wiki provides learners with an interactive platform for writing English language composition.

Ernst Walter Zeeden (1916–2011) als Historiker der Reformation, Konfessionsbildung und "deutschen Kultur." Relektüren eines geschichtswissenschaftlichen Vordenkers ed. by Markus Gerstmeier and Anton Schindling

Reviewed by: Ernst Walter Zeeden (1916–2011) als Historiker der Reformation, Konfessionsbildung und "deutschen Kultur." Relektüren eines geschichtswissenschaftlichen Vordenkers ed. by Markus Gerstmeier and Anton Schindling Robert Kolb Ernst Walter Zeeden (1916–2011) als Historiker der Reformation, Konfessionsbildung und "deutschen Kultur." Relektüren eines geschichtswissenschaftlichen Vordenkers. Edited by Markus Gerstmeier and Anton Schindling. Katholisches Leben und Kirchenreform im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung 76. Münster: Aschendorff, 2016. 250 pp. Ernst Walter Zeeden converted from his "bourgeois Cultural Protestantism" to the Roman Catholic Church as a university student during the Third Reich. This may have stimulated his interest as a professor of secular history at the University of Tübingen in the development of the Konfessionen, the institutional groupings of Christians that arose in the sixteenth century that have borne the label "confessions" since the nineteenth century even though confessional documents played different roles within the Lutheran, Reformed, and Roman Catholic Konfessionen in Germany. Zeeden pioneered the comparison of the cultures of these groups in their German context under the banner of Konfessionsbildung, the construction of the three churches within German-speaking lands. His approach has proved to have staying power as the attempt to study the process of the development of these cultural constellations within German society labeled "confessionalization" arose under the leadership of Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard, underwent the revisionary process that such paradigmatic theories always experience, and now seems to fade. Zeeden was remarkable not only because of his acuity as a scholar but also because of his humane and generous way of fulfilling his task as university professor. Both aspects of his impact and influence are reflected in this collection of essays by those who studied with him and who have carried on his approach to charting early modern history in central Europe. The volume is a record of a conference honoring Zeeden at the University of Tübingen in 2014, including the introductory address at the conference by Wilhelm Borth. One group of essays appraises Zeeden's own research on the personalities of the period, noting his great respect for them, particularly Luther, and his development of new methods and procedures of researching and writing cultural history. Richard J. Ninness's essay on "the past [End Page 229] and future interpretations of the formation of confessions in North America," the only English language essay in the volume, offers a valuable assessment of Zeeden's all-too-meager influence in North American scholarship and a critical evaluation of the "confessionalization" model. Unfortunately, as is true in other essays, research into the actual confessional documents of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions and into the role of piety in the "confessional" culture is hardly noted here. The volume includes a gathering of recollections of Zeeden as academic friend and advisor as well as lecturer; a review of his role alongside Heiko Oberman in Tübingen's research institution for the Late Middle Ages and Reformation; and seven photographs from key stations of Zeeden's life. A bibliography of his published works completes the volume and is in itself a valuable tool for further research. These reflections of Zeeden's lively personality and of his meticulous scholarship not only present the historical record of an important aspect of the development of modern Reformation scholarship. They also aid readers in appreciating the current debates and the future possibilities of research in the ongoing attempts to interpret the critical developments in Western life and thought that took place in the German-speaking lands in the sixteenth century. Robert Kolb Concordia Seminary Saint Louis, Missouri Copyright © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Fernando Pessoa's Modernity without Frontiers: Influences, Dialogues and Responses

Reviews 237 Mariana Gray de Castro (editor), Fernando Pessoa’s Modernity without Frontiers: Influences, Dialogues and Responses (Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2013). 264 pages. Print and e-book. Reviewed by Duarte Drumond Braga (University of São Paulo/Fapesp)1 Fernando Pessoa’s Modernity without Frontiers (2013) is the result of the encounter between some key ‘pessoanos’, and those ‘pessoanos’ who, young or not so young, are now working for the most part in the UK and the United States. As the editor, Mariana Gray de Castro, points out (p. 3), this book is the latest in a series of volumes of English-language essays on Pessoa, which began with George Monteiro in the 1980s. In fact, most of the essays deal with Pessoa’s decisive interaction with English-speaking authors, being dialogues — explicit or implicit — with Shakespeare, Carlyle, Whitman and Yeats, but also with Dowson, Crowley, FitzGerald and Meynell. One of the principal merits of this book is to show clearly that such dialogues, though having Pessoa as their point of arrival, work in both directions. Thus, the essays also contribute to re-interpreting authors such as Yeats, or even Whitman, whose image is necessarily affected by the reading that Campos, Caeiro or Pessoa in toto make of him, which only makes the strength of the Portuguese author even more outstanding. This also makes clear — and this would be the second merit of the book — that Pessoa is engaged not only with his historical present, but also with his past and his future (see Helena Buescu’s text) in a kind of absolute contemporaneity, typical of his work as regards chronological relations. However, in spite of this, the book’s tripartite structure (influences, dialogues and responses) is more reminiscent of the so-called ‘sources and influences’ school than of ‘world literature’ (p. 3) or other more recent critical developments in the field of Comparative Literature. What the essays propose goes far beyond this organizational principle, as justifiable for practical or editorial reasons as it may be. An author who receives from the past in order to give something back to the present and to the future is a definition of Fernando Pessoa that does not account for the nature of his work which, in a radical manner, situates that past and future as if they were present. Several of the essays aim to discuss this prominent feature of Pessoa’s work by insisting on a conceptual apparatus that works in myriad directions, accounting for the nature of these interactions: theft, rereading, distortion, anguish, correction, etc. All of these tropes can be taken as being central to the idea of a ‘modernity without borders’ in time and space. Akin to this is the idea present in various essays (Klobucka, Sabine, Dix) that certain Pessoan texts or positions are better understood within certain circles and coteries of intellectuals, also trans-national and trans-temporal in their nature, which goes to show the broad chronological sweep of his textual game, involving at the same time the ancients, the contemporaries, and even 1 The research for this review was funded by Fapesp, proc. no. 2014/00829-8. Reviews 238 the heteronymical texts and characters. On the other hand, several recent streams of Pessoan studies appear in this volume as if they were perfectly consolidated, as if they had always been like that. Thus it is necessary to draw the English reader’s attention to what this book reveals in terms of the history of Pessoan studies and contextualize two recent trends to whose canonization this book contributes. The first is the idea of the intrinsically plural Pessoa, from whom it is not possible to obtain any kind of unity (as opposed to the Pessoa from whom researchers in the 60s or 70s still sought a unity that would explain his multifarious nature). Several essays choose to work with a particular moment or particular aspect of Pessoa, and show a sceptical attitude towards identifying a unit of analysis that always proves unattainable. Texts like those by Pizarro and Zenith construct their arguments based on material proof such as documents from the estate, analysing Pessoa’s work as a heteroclite set of cycles...

The Female Voice of Myanmar: Khin Myo Chit to Aung San Suu Kyi

The Female Voice of Myanmar: Khin Myo Chit to Aung San Suu Kyi Nilanjana Sengupta Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 407p.The female voice of the title of Nilanjana Sengupta's book belongs to four twentieth century women writers and activists: Khin Myo Chit, Ludu Daw Amar, Ma Thida, and Aung San Suu Kyi. The Female Voice of Myanmar: Khin Myo Chit to Aung San Suu Kyi traces the course of each of these women's lives and works, identifying the democracy movement of 1988 as the point at which their four stories converge. Sengupta's juxtaposition of these four narratives illuminates the changing political landscape of twentieth century Myanmar from a specifically female perspective.Sengupta opens her analysis with the story of Supaya-Lat, the last queen of independent Burma. Supaya-Lat was villainized by the generations who came after her as an ambitious and ruthless woman, blamed for the British conquest. She became a frequently invoked example of the catastrophic consequences of undue female influence. By placing this story at the start of her analysis, Sengupta emphasizes the gendered challenges that have existed for any woman in Myanmar who chooses to work actively for political change. The recurring question of how women can negotiate the fraught realm of politics is one of the threads that Sengupta uses to bind together her narrative.Dividing her work into four main chapters, each devoted to one woman, Sengupta draws extensively on each of these women's published writings in English and Burmese. Writing about women whose life stories at times overlapped in time and space, she also identifies parallels and connections in the way that these women wrote about and experienced gender politics and national politics. This work is a hybrid: literary biography and political analysis. While the title may suggest that this work is a broad survey of twentieth century Burmese women's writing, this is not the case. Sengupta's exploration is finely focused and richly detailed.The first chapter focuses on Khin Myo Chit, born in 1915 when Burma was still under British rule. In her description of Khin Myo Chit's childhood, Sengupta introduces one of the themes that will recur throughout the book: the challenges facing women who deviated from prescribed feminine expectations. Khin Myo Chit is described as a girl who picked up boyish habits to survive in a male-dominated world (p. 17). She was driven to seek a secondary education, leaving her family's home near Mandalay for Rangoon University in 1933. There she joined the emerging student nationalist movement, and carved out a niche for herself writing for various magazines and papers, though she found her choice of subject matter somewhat constrained by her gender. Khin Myo Chit's involvement with nationalist politics continued during the Second World War and the Japanese occupation of Burma. Her literary career straddled the colonial and postcolonial eras, and after the military coup of 1962, she wrote for the government paper Working People's Daily, walking what Sengupta describes as a tightrope in the face of enhanced government press scrutiny. Khin Myo Chit deployed wit and irony to indirectly express her criticism of an increasingly repressive government regime. When her association with Working People's Daily ended in 1968, she continued to write, exploring Burmese history and culture in fiction and non-fiction. She was particularly interested in the role of women in society: she translated a selection of Englishlanguage essays on the subject that would be published posthumously in 2006. Khin Myo Chit advocated for democracy in the revolution of 1988, and in the last decade of her life her path intersected with Aung San Suu Kyi, whom she hosted after her first release from house arrest.Born in the same year as Khin Myo Chit, Ludu Daw Amar also attended Rangoon University, and joined the nationalist movement. …

The Influence of Self-editing on Micro Skills Development in Academic Writing in English as a Second Language

Self-editing skills are extremely important in foreign language learning; without them university students tend not to write appropriately in academic contexts. These skills are, however, often less developed in school graduates and it is thus essential to understand the challenges faced by university students. The present study was conducted to answer the research question: whether self-editing as a final component of written production can boost the writing micro skills of learners. It analyzes English-language essays written by 50 second-year ESL students in the Faculty of Economics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, and reports on the most frequent errors committed in their formal writing. The aim of this study is to focus on the stage of self-editing and identify the role of self-editing in micro skills development. Findings reveal that students are most often weak at producing coherent and cohesive paragraphs; they also lack appropriate argumentation and are often inaccurate in using grammatical structures and lexis. Results also suggest, however, that L2 writing students can improve their own writing by transferring micro skills they learn when editing texts. The present study may contribute to teachers’ views on developing micro skills of student writers.

Spelling Errors: Causes, Influence on Students' Performance in English Language Essay Writing and Strategies for Correcting Them

Spelling Errors: Causes, Influence on Students' Performance in English Language Essay Writing and Strategies for Correcting Them

The Outcomes of Multiple-Draft Method on the Performance of Secondary School Students in Continuous Writing

This study employed the Multiple-draft Method in the teaching of Continuous Writing in English<br />Language. The intent was to determine if there could be significant difference in the performance of a<br />group of students taught with the conventional method of Reading-Writing (a type of controlled writing)<br />and another group taught with Multi-drafts method of writing. The study employed the pre-test and<br />post-test controls and quasi-experimental research design. The sample consisted of 80 senior secondary<br />school students. The instrument which was used to gather data which was the West African<br />Examinations Council’s (WAEC) English Language Essay Questions. The data generated were<br />subjected to statistical analysis and the results of the analysis showed that at take-off the two groups<br />were homogenous. There was significant difference in the post-test scores of the experimental<br />outweighing the control group which came about as a result of treatment of the experimental group.<br />There was no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the students in the<br />control group. As evident from the out-come of the research, the Multiple- draft method (which allows<br />students to practice with many drafts before the final writing) had significant effect on students’<br />performance in Continuous Writing. Hence, the Multiple- draft Method was recommended for<br />Continuous Writing.

The Influence of Process Approach on English as Second Language Students’ Performances in Essay Writing

This study examined the influence of Process Approach on English as second language Students’ performances in essay writing. The purpose was to determine how far this current global approach could be of assistance to the writing skill development of these bilingual speakers of English language. The study employed the pre-test post-test control quasi-experimental research design. The sample consisted of 80 senior secondary school final year students. The research material included the senior secondary school English Language recommended textbook, National Examination Council (NECO) and West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC) English Language Syllabi, Federal Ministry of Education English Language Curriculum, English-Language Teachers’ Lesson Notes and Students Essay Writing Exercise books. The West African Examinations Council’s (WAEC) English Language Essay Question as an adapted instrument was used to gather data. The data generated were subjected to statistical analysis and the results of the analysis showed that there was no significant difference between the pre-test scores of both the Control and the Experimental group which indicated the homogenous state of both Control and Experimental groups. There was significant difference in the post-test scores of the Experimental and the Control groups. There was no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the students in Control group. As evident from the out-come of the research, the Process Approach (which presents writing in multiple drafts before the final writing) had significant effect on students’ overall performance in essay writing.

The Hauntings of Fernando Pessoa

The Hauntings of Fernando Pessoa Jerome Boyd Maunsell (bio) The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was inhabited by so many conflicting voices that his only solution was to turn himself into an entire school of different writers. One of the most individual of writers, he also contained a host of individuals within himself. Of his time and place—mostly Lisbon in the early decades of the 20th century, after a crucially formative education in Durban, South Africa—but also eerily beyond it, he was a one-man Modernist movement or series of movements, who aimed not merely to write individual books, but to "convert himself into a literature,"1 creating an ever-increasing constellation of personas that is said to number at least 75 different imaginary writers or "heteronyms." Pessoa also helped invent at least three movements—Paulismo, Sensationism, and Intersectionism—taken up by other writer friends in Lisbon, all of which, as his editor and translator Richard Zenith writes, became "the instruments by which Pessoa and his compeers brought Modernism to Portugal."2 Unusually, Pessoa's heteronyms also commented on each others' work, and engaged in promoting and criticising each other in ways reminiscent of other Modernist movements. But Pessoa also wanted to engage with the wider sphere of Modernism outside Portugal, and despite his relative isolation from the currents of Modernism elsewhere in Europe and America, his work resounds with extraordinarily close unconscious echoes and prefigurings of other contemporary writers. In sum, his oeuvre reconfigures the given narratives of international Modernism, as well as providing ghost or shadow Modernisms of its own. Because he published little in his own lifetime, however, and because translations of his work have only emerged in English [End Page 115] relatively long after his death, Pessoa has not yet been fully integrated into the story of Modernism outside Portugal. The relatively sparse corpus of English-language criticism of his work continually notes this neglect. In a 2007 collection of English-language essays on Pessoa, Anna M. Klobucka and Mark Sabine remark on how Pessoa's body of work has been well covered by Portuguese and Brazilian scholars, and has an internationally acclaimed standing, "even as it remains relatively underrecognized in English-speaking countries, where the limited scope of Pessoa's work available in English translation could, until recently, be blamed for this lack of acknowledgment."3 Klobucka and Sabine refer to Pessoa's "ghost-like presence on the contemporary canonical scene of modern Western literature,"4 and the image of Pessoa as a phantom presence is indeed apt. The moments they refer to when Pessoa took "occasional centre-stage prominence on the Anglo-American scene"5—a New Yorker piece by George Steiner of 8 January 1996, and Harold Bloom's inclusion of Pessoa in The Western Canon (1994) and Genius (2002) —offer glimpses rather than full-bodied assessments of his work. In her much more sustained English-language monograph on Pessoa, from 2003, Irene Ramalho Santos traces Pessoa's international presence in English in more depth, beginning with a 1955 essay about him in Poetry, while noting that "substantial Pessoan scholarship and critical interpretation in English are not yet abundant."6 "This is surprising," Santos writes, because "the Anglo-American poetic tradition could actually claim Pessoa as one of its finest poets... Furthermore, the roots of his poetic theory and practice reach almost equally into Portuguese literature and the Anglo-American literary tradition."7 Santos argues that an understanding of Pessoa's work is essential for a wider understanding of Anglo-American Modernism in general, and that Pessoa's strongest links are with Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and Emily Dickinson in particular. George Monteiro, meanwhile, has traced many of Pessoa's earlier influences up to the 20th century, persuasively situating him within an English poetic tradition leading from Shakespeare and the metaphysicals through to the Romantics and Robert Browning,8 all of whom Pessoa read in English and often studied in great depth. Darlene Sadlier has analyzed the heteronymic poetry in terms of Barthes's and Foucault's ideas of authorship.9 A recent study of Pessoa from 2010 by Patrícia Silva McNeill traces Pessoa's affinities with and differences...

Validating onscreen marking in Hong Kong

This paper details an investigation into onscreen marking (OSM) in Hong Kong—where paper-based marking is being phased out, being completely superseded by OSM. The study described involved 30 raters who had previously rated English language essay scripts on screen in the 2007 Hong Kong Certificate of Education examination. In the current study, the 30 raters re-rated (unbeknown to them) 100 scripts they had rated in the 2007 examination. Using multi-faceted Rasch measurement, a five-faceted design was employed, modelling raters, test takers, input prompt materials, rating scales, and, especially, the marking medium. Results showed that all factors generally exhibited good data fit. With the method of marking, the major facet for investigation, logit values emerged which were both very close to zero. The hypothesis that the method of marking does not intrude on scores awarded to test takers when scripts are marked on screen or on paper was therefore accepted. Given that in 2012, all public examinations in Hong Kong will be marked solely on screen, results from the current study suggest that the scores returned from the OSM marking system will be able to be considered as reliable as those obtained from paper-based marking.

A comparison of onscreen and paper-based marking in the Hong Kong public examination system

This paper describes a study comparing paper-based marking (PBM) and onscreen marking (OSM) in Hong Kong utilising English language essay scripts drawn from the live 2007 Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) Year 11 English Language Writing Paper. In the study, 30 raters from the 2007 HKCEE Writing Paper marked on paper 100 scripts that they had marked on screen 9 months previously. Subsequent to the rating, they completed a questionnaire, from which it was concluded that, technologically, raters had no problems with OSM. Statistical results indicated no bias favouring either form of rating. Attitudinal differences surfaced, however, between new raters who had solely rated on screen as against veteran raters, whose previous rating experiences had only been with paper-based rating. The paper concludes with the prediction that as OSM becomes more prevalent, it will be accepted as the norm, with prejudice about fairness or convenience gradually fading.

Jüdische Kunstmusik im 20. Jahrhundert: Quellenlage, Entstehungsgeschichte, Stilanalysen (review)

Reviewed by: Jüdische Kunstmusik im 20. Jahrhundert: Quellenlage, Entstehungsgeschichte, Stilanalysen Joshua Walden Jüdische Kunstmusik im 20. Jahrhundert: Quellenlage, Entstehungsgeschichte, Stilanalysen. Edited by Jascha Nemtsov. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006. Cloth €68. ISBN 3447052937. The year 2008 marks the centennial of the founding of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg by a group of composers, performers, and ethnographers of music that musicologist Leonid Sabaneev called the "Jewish National School" in a 1924 essay. These musicians shared the goals of promoting the ethnographic study of Jewish secular and religious traditional music in rural areas and urban centers, and of creating an art music style that would represent Jewish national identity. The society lasted only a decade and a half, folding in the early 1920s due to a lack of adequate financial support and the emigration of many of its most important members in the face of growing anti-Semitism and restrictions on Jewish culture in Russia. During its brief existence, however, the society was hugely influential. It inspired the formation of satellite groups and other similar associations and provoked interest throughout the Jewish Diaspora in Jewish traditional and art music. Jüdische Kunstmusik im 20. Jahrhundert is based on the proceedings of the 2. Potsdamer Tage jüdischer Musik, the second of a series of two conferences held in Potsdam, Germany in 2002 and 2004. Edited by Jascha Nemtsov, it brings together a collection of English and German language essays by an international body of scholars, and covers a broad range of subjects relating to the Society for Jewish Folk Music and its legacy through the twentieth century and to the present day. The book is divided into five sections. The first of these combines articles that summarize the history and contents of international archives' collections of manuscripts and papers belonging to composers Joachim Stutschewsky, Solomon Rosowsky, Lazare Saminsky, and the father and son Grigory and Yulian Krejn. These articles provide critical background information for scholars of the "Jewish National School" who wish to view primary sources. Gina Genova's description of the holdings of the Lazare Saminsky papers is particularly lucid in its presentation. Genova opens her essay with essential biographical information about Saminsky's important work as an ethnographer, essayist, and composer, followed by a clear outline of the collection's holdings, and descriptions of some of its most salient contents. Her essay provides a useful roadmap for researchers, and alerts readers to the vital work being done by the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, which maintains the estates of Saminsky and a number of other Jewish musicians. The second section of this book addresses the compositional and performance activities of the "Jewish National School" in the first half of the 20th century. What emerges from these three articles is the international nature of [End Page 159] this musical movement throughout the Diaspora. In addition to essays on Jewish composers in Russia and Poland, this section includes an article by Neil W. Levin that provides an illuminating history of the Palestine Chamber Music Ensemble, or Zimro. This group was founded by Russian musicians who aspired to give recitals of works by Jewish composers alongside canonical Western works in concert venues around the globe, in order to raise funds to build a "Temple of Jewish Art." Zimro performed compositions by members of the Society for Jewish Folk Music internationally, around Europe, Asia, and the United States. Its members spread awareness of Jewish art and traditional music and associated this music with the cause of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The book's third section offers three case studies that examine closely the work of individual Jewish composers. Section four contains a particularly compelling set of essays that describe how art music by composers in the "Jewish National School" relates to traditional music, and discuss the influence on these composers of newly developed early twentieth century ethnographic methodologies and sound recording technologies. Lyudmila Sholokhova provides in her essay an informative discussion of the history of Jewish musical ethnography between 1898 and 1914. The chief proponents of this movement included Joel Engel, Shlomo An-sky, and Susman Kiselgof, who, as Sholokhova makes clear, viewed the...