One-minute Speeches Research Articles

Pedagogical Paradigms in teaching EFL classroom: evaluating approaches of cognitivism, constructivism, pragmatism, and connectivism

The aim of the teaching-learning process is to transmit knowledge, skills, and values to the student, who is the recipient. This process must be holistic: in its structure and methodology, it must contain various types of training. Separately, any one of these types of training can improve the quality and effectiveness of the others. At the same time, each type has its own distinctive features, which are determined by the psychological peculiarities of the teacher, the general educational goals, and the particular tasks. This study analyzes the teaching-learning process in the English area based on modern approaches in education, which are important theoretical movements that are currently being used: cognitivism, constructivism, pragmatism, and connectivism.
 We used a convenience sample of for groups with a total number of 120 university students at the A2 English level. This case study was developed at the Technical University of Babahoyo. We used the English skills of listening, writing, speaking and writing and ICT platforms to put those approaches into practice. As result, the students get greater grades with the inclusion of each approach, getting average grades between 8.17 and 9.23 in the reading and cognitive approach, between 7.38 and 8.91 in the writing and constructivism approach, between 8.25 and 9.52 in the listening and connectivism approach.
 The speaking activity related to the pragmatism approach was measured in the number of errors where there were between 10 and 16 pronunciation or coherence errors in a one-minute speech. In all the approaches they have a significant evolution since their first activity and also, we have satisfaction levels in all the dynamics above 91%. In conclusion, with adequate strategies, and effective technological and digital resources, multiple changes can be achieved by introducing these pedagogical approaches that allow students to develop their skills through collaborative learning tasks, promoting student autonomy, and fostering their ability to work together to develop their critical thinking and create a community-oriented environment for the students.

The Benefits of Original Notes for English Learners’ Improvisational Speeches: Analysis of Free Descriptive Answers on a Survey

Improving English speaking abilities without sufficient preparation is a long-standing challenge for EFL learners. Japanese junior high school students took six English lessons in which they practiced one-minute speeches and created their own original notes. These notes comprised of a speech, useful words and expressions, common or versatile topics to discuss, and comments for next time. They also updated and revised the notes. After multiple revisions, a survey was conducted to find the effects of writing original notes in making improvisational speeches. The results were then analysed through text mining and the KJ method, often employed in qualitative research as a way to obtain new ideas. The findings indicated that all students had positive impressions on the notes. In addition, the top 20% regarded the notes as a useful method to recall English vocabulary or expressions, whereas the bottom 20% found benefits in how to construct and outline an understandable speech.

Party Messaging in the U.S. House of Representatives

Both Congressional parties compete to promote their own reputations while damaging the opposition party’s brand. This behavior affects both policy-making agendas and the party members’ communications with the media and constituents. While there has been ample study of partisan influence on legislative agenda-setting and roll call voting behavior, much less is known about the parties’ efforts to shape the public debate. This paper analyzes two strategic decisions of parties: the timing of collective efforts to influence the public policy debate and the substantive content of these “party messaging” events. These dynamics are analyzed using a unique dataset of 50,195 one-minute speeches delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 2016. We find a pattern of strategic matching—both parties are more likely to engage in concurrent messaging efforts, often on the same issue.

The Frequency of Use of Legislative and Non-Legislative Tools in Five Countries

This study analyzes the use of legislative and non-legislative tools, which has rarely been done simultaneously. I collected data about the frequency of use of legislative tools (presenting and passing legislation) and non-legislative tools (making one-minute speeches, written and oral parliamentary questions and motions for the agenda) in five countries: the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Israel. The results confirm my three hypotheses. Legislators from Australia, the UK and Canada use fewer legislative tools because their use is more constrained than in the US and Israel. Legislators use more semi or unconstrained tools that involve publicity than those that simply appear on the record. Finally, opposition members use more non-legislative tools while government members use more legislative tools. However, the degree of constraint on the use of the tool moderates this finding. The study provides a comprehensive understanding of the legislators' strategic use of legislative and non-legislative tools. 

Linguistic determinants of formal thought disorder in first episode psychosis.

Thought disorder is a core feature of schizophrenia but assessment of disordered thinking is challenging, which may contribute to the paucity of mechanistic understanding of disorganization in early psychosis. We studied the use of linguistic connectives in relation to clinically quantified dimensions of thought disorder using automated speech analysis in untreated, first episode psychosis (FEPs) and healthy controls (HCs). 39 treatment-naïve, actively psychotic FEPs and 23 group matched HCs were recruited. Three one-minute speech samples were induced in response to photographs from the Thematic Apperception Test and speech was analysed using COH-METRIX software. Five connectives variables from the Coh-Metrix software were reduced using principle component analysis, resulting in two linguistic connectives factors. Thought disorder was assessed using the Thought Language Index (TLI) and the PANSS-8. Connective factors predicted disorganization, but not impoverishment suggesting aberrant use of connectives is specific to positive thought disorder. An independent t test comparing low and high disorganization FEPs showed higher load of acausal temporal connectives in high disorganization FEPs compared to low disorganization FEPs (mean [SD] in high vs low disorganization FEPs = 0.64 (1.1) vs -0.37 (1.02); t = 2.91, P = .006). Acausal-temporal connectives were not correlated with severity of symptoms or cognition suggesting connective use is a specific index of disorganized thinking rather than overall illness status. Clinical assessment of disorganization in psychosis is likely linked to the aberrant use of connectives resulting in an intuitive sense of incoherence. In early psychosis, thought disorder may be reliably quantifiable using automated syntax analysis.

Gender and parliamentary activity

Does gender matter in the daily work in parliaments? Scholars have inconclusive answers to this question. Using fresh data with a recently developed activity scale, I analyze female legislators' activity levels compared to those of men in three democracies: the US, UK and Israel. While legislation exists in all of them, they differ from each other in their electoral system and the availability of other non-legislative tools. The results show that country matters. US legislators are more active than Israeli or UK legislators. Second, gender matters with regard to the use of some parliamentary tools. Unlike their UK and Israeli counterparts, American female representatives are more active than male legislators, and deliver more one-minute speeches. Furthermore, female legislators make more one-minute speeches than male legislators and pass more private member bills. The study makes three contributions to the literature. First, it demonstrates that activity can and should be assessed using both separate measurements and one scale, because each measurement provides insights into different aspect of the legislators' behavior. Second, gender plays a role in the activity of legislators. Third, combining two theoretical fields—representation and activity—shows the connection between descriptive representation and legislators' activity.

Representation by the Minute: The Influence of Ethnicity, Partisanship and District Fit on Legislator One-Minute Floor Speeches

Much of the research on minority representation in the U.S. House has focused on how group preferences are reflected in recorded votes, yet most opportunities for position-taking exist outside the roll call arena. This research explores the conditions under which descriptive representation enhances substantive representation by examining an area where members have a great deal of freedom to register their preferences - speeches on the House floor. Using a novel database of immigration-related one-minute speeches from the 109th-113th Congress, this research explores both the decision to deliver and the position taken in speech on the floor. It finds that not only do Latino members devote a greater share of attention to the issue of immigration than their colleagues, but they take distinct positions that are more reflective of Latino interests, and they are less vulnerable to district pressures than their non-Latino colleagues. These results suggest a clear value in descriptive representation and more diverse legislatures.

A new approach to measuring legislators’ activity

How do we measure the activity of legislators? I argue that, in addition to using measures such as how many bills they pass, we must also consider activities such as parliamentary questions, early day motions, motions for the agenda and one-minute speeches. One means for doing so is Akirav’s activity scale developed in Israel. I use this scale to measure legislators’ activity in two additional political systems – the United States and the United Kingdom. I also identify the characteristics shared by the most active legislators and the least active. The findings indicate that opposition, junior and committee chair legislators are more active than other representatives. While previous studies have investigated the cost–benefit analysis in which legislators engage regarding where and how to invest their time in their legislative work, this study is the first to conduct such an analysis about both their legislative and non-legislative activities. This more complete picture reveals their incentives for engaging fully in parliamentary work.

Interpreting Issues of Metaphors in Official Speech

The article focuses on issues which occur when interpreting metaphors in official speech. Metaphor as a figure of speech and a tool that help to understand a way of thinking is inevitable in official speeches to make them more vivid. However, using metaphors in native language and interpreting them is a different case. In this way, interpreters who are presented with metaphors during relatively short official speeches face quite a lot of difficulties. Even though official speeches have a special subject, intentional topic and consistency, they can be filled by various metaphors as well. Therefore, interpreters should be prepared that the speaker might denominate his/her ideas by various metaphorical expressions. This raises the following questions: Do interpreters during simultaneous interpreting session of official speech manage to interpret all metaphorical expressions that they hear? What specific professional knowledge is required for interpreters who mainly work with official register? The analysis of simultaneous interpreting session of one-minute official speeches provided by the European Parliament members made it possible to conclude that even though interpreters face quite a lot of difficulties, they manage to convey most of the metaphors form original language to target language.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.32.0.19723

Monitoring L-Dopa induced dyskinesias (LID) using speech acoustic measures in patients with Parkinson's disease

More than 90% of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) treated with levodopa for over 5 years will develop motor fluctuations and involuntary movements known as levodopa-induced dyskinesias (LID). Since LID commonly manifested in the head-neck and trunk areas speech is inevitably affected. In this study, eight acoustic speech measures derived from three speech tasks were selected to examine changes in speech acoustics associated with LID. Twenty subjects with PD, ten during the medication-off state without dyskinesia, and ten during the medication-on state with dyskinesia completed the speech tasks. Results revealed that three speech acoustic measures demonstrated sensitivity to changes associated with LID. In order to capture the changes associated with LID throughout medication cycles, ten PD subjects were provided an Android phone with HopkinsPD, an Android phone application, installed. One-minute speech and video samples were simultaneously collected at three time points over a medication cycle (before, peak, and end dose), twice a day (first morning dose and first afternoon dose) and repeated over three days (every other day) at a patient’s home. The results were discussed in light of the long-term goal to develop a reliable at home LID Smart-phone monitoring system that uses speech acoustic measures to monitor LID real-time remotely.

Weapon of the Weak: One-Minute Speeches in the Israeli Parliament

Position taking is an important legislative area that scholars have investigated extensively. Since one of the main roles of the opposition is to present an alternative to the government, the question is, how does the opposition establish its positions? To address this question, we analyze the use of One-Minute Speeches (OMSs) by opposition members in the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) during 2000-2013. There were four Knesset terms during these years, so we have the opportunity to study the opposition’s behavior over a period of time. We decided to analyze OMSs because they are considered an easy tool to use and as such can be considered a weapon of the weak. The study uses mixed research methods, beginning with a statistical analysis (both at the legislator level and at the OMS level) and continuing with a content analysis of the speeches and the interviews conducted with members and leaders of the opposition. The statistical analysis shows that opposition members use OMSs more extensively than coalition members. Among the opposition members, we also found different behavior patterns based on nationality and seniority. In addition, the qualitative analysis of both the OMSs and the interviews shows that opposition members are active in two ways. First, they react to government-initiated proposals. Second, they raise topics for the Knesset’s agenda, a move that the coalition generally does not appreciate. Third, members of the opposition consider OMSs an effective tool in that it allows them to create a relevant debate on current issues. Finally, ministers and other MKs often respond to the opposition’s OMSs that are controversial and provoke debate. Thus, we conclude that the OMS is a weapon of the weak.

1分スピーチに求められる「具体性」とは何か

1分スピーチに求められる「具体性」とは何か

Assessing minority party influence on partisan issue attention in the US House of representatives, 1989–2012

The majority party dominates legislative outputs and throughputs in rule-driven institutions, but these agenda-setting powers may not extend to other facets of the policy process. This article assesses the minority party’s ability to influence majority party issue attention in the US House of Representatives by analyzing one-minute speeches given on the House floor. This new measure of partisan issue attention highlights how the parties focus on the same policy issues in the same relative proportions, rather than crafting divergent issue agendas. Time series analysis indicates gaps between the parties’ level of attention to particular issues result in corresponding changes to majority party attention, which suggests the minority party can influence majority party issue attention by placing more emphasis on specific policy issues.

Discourse and dissonance: religious agendas in the 104th Congress

This paper investigates the religious dimension of Republican legislators’ participation in one-minute speeches during the 104th Congress (1995–1996). Many have characterized the House Republican Conference that emerged after the 1994 elections as a highly cohesive majority party. Even in that context, however, legislators represent varied personal agendas, and in part these are informed by religion. We topically coded a subset of floor speeches to measure the extent to which variation is observed in the issues addressed by Members of Congress. The findings demonstrate that on key policy domains, such as the role of government, culture, and social welfare, speech participation varies systematically on the basis of member religion. This suggests that legislative participation is influenced by genuine personal preferences in additional to strategic political factors.

Catch-22: Arab Members of the Israeli Parliament

We maintain that Arab MKs in the Israeli parliament face a catch-22 in their role as representatives. Both the Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel see the Arab MKs as representing mainly the Palestinians who are not citizens of Israel rather than their Arab constituents. In order to investigate this seeming contradiction, we use qualitative and quantitative data from four databases—one-minute speeches, interviews, video calling cards and the voting records of Arab MKs. The findings show that despite the Arab MKs’ catch-22, they act as true representatives of their constituents by speaking up on behalf of their voters rather than promoting the cause of the Palestinians.

What do representatives produce? Work profiles of representatives

Legislative effectiveness and legislators’ productivity are important issues in parliamentary life. The literature about legislative effectiveness and legislators’ productivity deals mainly with the characteristics of its use, while that on legislation attempts to define and measure the productivity of legislators. The main objective of this research is to develop a new productivity scale, reflecting a new way of looking at productivity. The scale includes various parameters such as private bills, parliamentary questions, motions for the agenda and one-minute speeches, which have never been explored together. As a secondary objective, we determine the characteristics shared by the most productive legislators and those shared by the least productive. We test the scale using data from the Israeli parliament (the Knesset). The findings show that while legislators have a variety of tools available to them, most do not realize the full potential of the tools. Furthermore, party size and gender explained 43.4% of the variance in the productivity level in the 14th Knesset. In the 16th Knesset, we found a similar pattern except that gender was replaced by nationality; the larger the party, the less productive the legislators associated with it. Furthermore, non-Jewish legislators were more productive than Jewish legislators.

Speaking for the Underrepresented in the House of Representatives: Voicing Women's Interests in a Partisan Era

We ask whether women's descriptive representation in Congress enhances women's substantive representation through speechmaking on the House floor. Much of the research on women's substantive representation has focused on members' votes for and sponsorship of “women's issues” legislation. We depart from this research by systematically analyzing how members' gender and partisan identities affect gendered rhetoric in their floor speeches. In an era marked by significant increases in the number of congresswomen and partisan polarization, understanding the interactive effect of gender and partisanship on women's representation is particularly important. In an analysis of more than 30,000 speeches from 1993 to 2008, we find that when members speak about issues of their choosing during one-minute speeches, and during specific legislative debates over the most important policies considered on the House floor, congresswomen in both parties are significantly more likely than men to discuss women, enhancing women's representation.

Promoting Policy in a Mediated Democracy: Congress and the News

Whose interests do major news dailies serve when they report on policy debates in Congress? This study compares what members of the U.S. House of Representatives say about major policy with what is later reported in two news dailies: one liberal (Washington Post) and one conservative (Washington Times). The data include one-minute floor speeches by House members (168) and published stories—news and editorials—in the print media (117). Three high-profile policy initiatives of the 107th Congress (2001-2002) anchor the investigation: No Child Left Behind Act (HR 1), Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (HR 1836), and Airport Security Act (S. 1447). The evidence shows a discrepancy in the perspectives between reporters and officeholders. Where news coverage stresses talk of the president and the process, lawmakers stress the problem and the stakes for the American people. When the debate breaks along party lines, news coverage shows a weak ideological bias that favors Democrats.

Lawmakers and Lobbyists: Policy Outreach through One-Minutes and Press Releases

Elites in Washington behave as if the successful passage of controversial policy rests on their ability to reach the American people with a clear and resonant argument. With an aim toward understanding the strategic nature of this discourse, I examine the themes most repeated by allies and adversaries in five, high profile policy battles of the 107th Congress (2001-2002). The data include one-minute speeches offered by lawmakers on the House floor (274) and press releases (495) posted on the Web pages of the involved interest-groups. The results provide evidence on the determinants of polarized, policy discourse and affirm that no one party, nor interest group-type, dominates policy promotion.

Orchestrating Party Talk: A Party-Based View of One-Minute Speeches in the House of Representatives

Previous studies of House members' speech-giving behavior treat the behavior as a product of members' individual goals. By uncovering leadership memoranda soliciting member participation in one-minute speech giving, I find, first, that parties significantly structure one-minute speech giving, with party-orchestrated message campaigns accounting for about one-third of the speeches given. Second, I find that a party-based explanation illuminates individual members' speech-giving behavior. Ideological proximity to the party leadership and party organizational factors strongly influence a member's willingness to be “on message.” These findings have important implications for studies of both party message politics and members' speech-giving behavior.