Structured Input

This new text in the McGraw-Hill Second Language Professional series brings together theory, research, and practice on structured input, an instructional technique that first emerged in the early 1990s in association with processing instruction. The author skillfully makes theoretical concepts and research accessible to the uninitiated reader while offering an abundance of examples of structured input activities in various languages. Researchers and instructors looking for more examples and clarification on structured input activities will welcome this new title.

This user-friendly, engaging textbook makes the material accessible to graduate students and new researchers who wish to study the rapidly exploding area of computations with structured matrices and polynomials. The book goes beyond research frontiers and, apart from very recent research articles, includes previously unpublished results.

This volume bridges the gap between theory and practice by bringing together well-known and new authors to discuss a topic of mutual interest to second language researchers and teachers alike: input. Reader-friendly chapters offer a range of existing and new perspectives on input in morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology.

Structured singular light is an ubiquitous phenomenon. It is not only created when light refracts at a water surface but can also be found in the blue daytime sky. Such light fields include a spatially varying amplitude, phase, or polarization, enabling the occurrence of optical singularities. As structurally stable units of the light field, these singularities are particularly interesting since they determine its topology. In this excellent book, the author presents a pioneering study of structured singular light, thereby contributing many original approaches. Especially in the field of polarization and its rich number of different types of singularities the book defines and drives a completely new field. The work demonstrates how to control complex polarization singularity networks and their propagation. Additionally, the author pioneers tightly focusing vectorial beams, also developing an urgently needed detection scheme for three-dimensional nanoscale polarization structures. She also studies classical spatial entanglement using structured light, introducing entanglement beating and paraxial spin-orbit-coupling. The book is hallmarked by its comprehensive and thorough way of describing a plethora of different approaches to structure light by amplitude, phase and polarization, as well as the important role of optical singularities.

The view of exemplar-based second language learning emphasizes the importance of frequency in learning grammar. According to this view, type frequency rather than token frequency contributes to learning generalized knowledge beyond item-based constructions. This book investigates how frequency in experiencing exemplars affects the learning of the English primary verb be by junior high school students in Japan. The study consists of a quasi-experiment and stimulated-recall analysis of the data. The quasi-experiment compares three kinds of output practice: practice with increased type frequency, practice with increased token frequency, and practice without increased frequency. The experiment also explores how the frequency effects relate to the extent of explicit knowledge about the target structures. In the stimulated-recall analysis, learners engaging in the type frequency practice and those engaging in the token frequency practice are compared in terms of thought processes employed while practicing. The book discusses how frequency promotes classroom second language learning by taking the role of awareness of form-meaning connections into consideration.

This book outlines the creative process of making environmental management decisions using the approach called Structured Decision Making. It is a short introductory guide to this popular form of decision making and is aimed at environmental managers and scientists. This is a distinctly pragmatic label given to ways for helping individuals and groups think through tough multidimensional choices characterized by uncertain science, diverse stakeholders, and difficult tradeoffs. This is the everyday reality of environmental management, yet many important decisions currently are made on an ad hoc basis that lacks a solid value-based foundation, ignores key information, and results in selection of an inferior alternative. Making progress – in a way that is rigorous, inclusive, defensible and transparent – requires combining analytical methods drawn from the decision sciences and applied ecology with deliberative insights from cognitive psychology, facilitation and negotiation. The authors review key methods and discuss case-study examples based in their experiences in communities, boardrooms, and stakeholder meetings. The goal of this book is to lay out a compelling guide that will change how you think about making environmental decisions. Visit www.wiley.com/go/gregory/ to access the figures and tables from the book.

System identification is a powerful tool in engineering. Its various methods in the frequency and in the time domain have been extensively discussed in earlier CISM courses. The aim of this course is to describe the state of the art in specific application areas, such as estimation of eigenquantities (in the aerospace industry, in civil engineering, in naval engineering etc.), noise source detection, fault detection by investigation of dynamic properties, such as machine sound characteristics, and the identification of the dynamic behaviour of flow induced systems (e.g. aerolastic problems). Geotechnical applications are also among the fields of interest. The lecture notes contain demonstrations of several methods and include a valuation by combining various kinds of experience. Such complex information includes not only theoretical aspects of identification but also advice on practical handling, for example concerning testing effort and data handling.

Despite the key role played by second language acquisition (SLA) courses in linguistics, teacher education and language teaching degrees, participants often struggle to bridge the gap between SLA theories and their many applications in the classroom. In order to overcome the 'transfer' problem from theory to practice, Andrea Nava and Luciana Pedrazzini present SLA principles through the actions and words of teachers and learners. Second Language Acquisition in Action identifies eight important SLA principles and involves readers in an 'experiential' approach which enables them to explore these principles 'in action'. Each chapter is structured around three stages: experience and reflection; conceptualisation; and restructuring and planning. Discussion questions and tasks represent the core of the book. These help readers in the process of 'experiencing' SLA research and provide them with opportunities to try their hands at different areas of language teachers' professional expertise. Aimed at those on applied linguistics MA courses, TESOL/EFL trainees and in-service teachers, Second Language Acquisition in Action features: · Key Questions at the start of each chapter · Data-based tasks to foster reflection and to help bridge the gap between theory and practice · Audiovisual extracts of lessons on an accompanying website · Further Reading suggestions at the end of each chapter

Benati provides clarity about the characteristics and notion of language proficiency in the field of second language acquisition. He looks at four areas of research paradigmatically related to the role of proficiency: theorizing and measuring second language proficiency; the dimensions of L2 proficiency; factors contributing to the attainment of L2 proficiency and attaining L2 proficiency in the classroom. It also contains a variety of research accounts about the specific factors which have an effect on proficiency together with a theorised measurement of proficiency in second language research. It will be required reading for researchers in applied linguistics and second language acquisition.

This Festschrift, dedicated to Reiner Hähnle on the occasion of his 60th birthday, contains papers written by many of his closest collaborators. After positions at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Chalmers University of Technology, since 2011 Reiner has been the chaired professor of Software Engineering at Technische Universität Darmstadt, where his team focuses on the formal verification of object-oriented software, the formal modeling and specification of highly adaptive software systems, and formal modeling and analysis in domains such as biological systems and railroad operations. His work is characterized by achievements in theory and in practical implementations, significant collaborations include the KeY project and the development of the ABS language. He has served as chair and editor of important related academic conferences, and coauthored almost 200 academic publications. The contributions in this volume reflect Reiner’s main research focus: formal methods, in particular applied to software verification.