English for Bible and Theology: Understanding and Communicating Theology Across Cultural and Linguistic Barriers

This article introduces English for Bible and Theology (EBT), an inherently interdisciplinary field that merges English language learning with the content of biblical and theological studies in a context that is, by nature, cross‐cultural. Within this collaboration there exists the possibility not only to enable theological study, but also to enhance it through a focus on personal meaning and its communication, both of which are foundational to the communicative language classroom. That is, EBT seeks both to aid students worldwide in attaining the specialized language and cultural proficiency necessary to access English theological resources and to provide a community in which students can connect theological content to their lives. It is this second aim that provides EBT its relevance across a range of theological contexts, as native English‐speaking students likewise stand to benefit from the application of EBT's principles.     

The Familiar Made Strange: An Orientation to Biblical Study in Vancouver

Abstract. This paper originated in a Wabash‐funded colloquium organized by Richard Ascough and Leif Vaage, on the theme: “Teaching the Bible for Leadership in the United Church of Canada.” Professors teaching biblical studies at United Church seminaries and theological schools met over three years to share pedagogy, things that have worked and not worked in the classroom, changes in teaching Bible over the years, and the role of context in shaping teaching. In the final year they presented their philosophy of teaching to one another; this paper arose from that meeting. The paper describes an orientation to teaching New Testament Studies at Vancouver School of Theology, a theologically liberal school in the context of Vancouver, Canada – paradoxically one of the most secular and multi‐religious cities in the world. Guided by Denise Levertov's poem, “Overland to the Islands,” it explores the promises and challenges of biblical study grounded in the material reality of the world, amidst older students who bear the marks of secularity, who are impatient with traditional orthodoxies, and who long more for life before the grave than after it. Adopting ideas from Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur, and Julia Kristeva, it explores teaching the Bible in a way that promotes the polyvalence, strangeness, and irreducibility of biblical texts, in order to move students away from exegetical and hermeneutical theories content with recovering authorial intent and reconstructing historical origins as the primary tasks of biblical study. The paper describes a model of teaching that celebrates the materiality of the New Testament together with its textual, social, theological, and historical complexity, as well as a tradition‐constituted means of apprehending the world, and which treasures students as living texts who in the course of interpretation awaken ever‐fresh meanings relevant to their own communal and personal identities.     

Assessment of the Language Preferences of Five Children with Autism from Spanish-Speaking Homes

Although the number of English Language Learner students is increasing in the US school system, little is known about the preferences of language of instruction, particularly among young students with autism. We implemented a choice assessment with five children with autism to determine preference between English and Spanish instruction using a concurrent-operant design. Participants were allowed to choose between English instruction, Spanish instruction, and a no-language control condition using BIGmack communication devices. We compared choice allocation between previously mastered skills (easy tasks) and targets in the acquisition phase of learning (difficult tasks). None of the participants indicated a preference for language of instruction during easy tasks, while four participants indicated a preference during difficult tasks. Results suggest that the concurrent-operant procedure is an effective method for assessing preference of language of instruction with students with autism.     

JESUS' LANGUAGE‐GAMES: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NOTION OF LANGUAGE‐GAME FOR A REFORMULATION OF ‘NEW TESTAMENT BIBLICAL THEOLOGY’1

Despite the exciting consequences of the later Wittgenstein's notion of language‐game for theology in general, one discipline centered on language – exegesis and biblical theology – has remained largely unaffected by this advance. I here show that describing biblical language as a language‐game not only enhances our understanding of biblical texts; it also explodes a long‐term impasse separating the interpretation from the ‘actualization’ of sacred texts. Insights taken from the notion of a language‐game may, as with form of life and grammar, emerge as central building blocks for reformulating the postulates of biblical theology. 1     

中-英双语者语言理解中非加工语言的自动激活

采用长时重复启动范式探讨母语为汉语的中-英双语者语言理解中非加工语言的激活状况。实验1和实验2使用词汇判断任务, 实验3和实验4使用概念判断任务。在每个实验的第一个小实验中, 非加工语言是英文, 在每个实验的第二个小实验中, 非加工语言是中文。实验1和实验3探讨学习阶段的非加工词在测验阶段呈现时能否出现长时重复启动效应, 从而检验双语者语言理解中非加工语言有没有自动激活; 实验2和实验4探讨学习阶段的非加工词在测验阶段以翻译对等词呈现时能否出现长时重复启动效应, 从而检验双语者语言理解中非加工语言的语义有没有自动激活。总的实验结果表明, 母语为汉语的中-英双语者在语言理解过程中, 加工一种语言(目标语言)时, 非加工语言(要求被试忽略的另一种语言)会自动激活, 但在词汇任务情境中, 非加工语言只在词汇层面上激活, 其语义不会自动激活, 而在概念任务情境中, 非加工语言的词汇层面和语义层面都会自动激活。     

Beyond the “Critical” Curtain: Community‐based Service Learning in an African Context

Abstract. A case of community‐based service learning in the School of Theology at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa is analyzed for what it means to teach biblical studies in an African context where biblical scholarship is partially constituted by ordinary African readers of the Bible and where context is a central pedagogical concept. Reflecting on a series of experiments over the past ten years in two second‐year University level modules, the article analyzes the contours of a partnership between the academy and local communities of the poor, working‐class, and marginalized through community‐based service learning. This partnership provides a form of contextualization that enables students to integrate the forms of engagement with the Bible they bring to their formal theological studies and the forms of critical distance that characterize the discipline of biblical studies.     

Modeling differentiation of cognitive abilities within the higher-order factor model using moderated factor analysis

Receptive foreign language proficiency is usually measured with reading and listening comprehension tasks. A novel approach to assess such proficiencies – viewing comprehension – is based on the presentation of short instructional videos followed by one or more comprehension questions concerning the preceding video stimulus. In order to evaluate a newly developed viewing comprehension test 485 German high school students completed reading, listening, and viewing comprehension tests, all measuring the receptive proficiency in English as a foreign language. Fluid and crystallized intelligence were measured as predictors of performance. Relative to traditional comprehension tasks, the viewing comprehension task has similar psychometric qualities. The three comprehension tests are very highly but not perfectly correlated with each other. Relations with fluid and crystallized intelligence show systematic differences between the three comprehension tasks. The high overlap between foreign language comprehension measures and between crystallized intelligence and language comprehension ability can be taken as support for a uni-dimensional interpretation. Implications for the assessment of language proficiency are discussed.     

Learning Hebrew by Writing in English

This essay explores a midrange teaching and learning issue regarding the teaching of biblical languages and one strategy for addressing the issue. Seminary students do not yield a great enough return in exchange for the investment they are required to make in learning biblical languages. Students invest great time and money, but they do not learn to use the biblical languages to think critically about the Bible. This essay argues that a fruitful strategy for addressing this midrange issue is to require students to write in English about the Hebrew language. This strategy fosters students' ability to think critically about the biblical text. It also fosters their ability to use their budding knowledge of a biblical language to engage questions of meaning and issues of interpretation.     

Bypassing the central bottleneck after single-task practice in the psychological refractory period paradigm: Evidence for task automatization and greedy resource recruitment

In this research, the controversial issue of whether the central bottleneck can be bypassed through task automatization was investigated. To examine this issue, participants received six single-task practice sessions with an auditory-vocal task (low vs. high pitch). We then assessed dual-task performance using the analytically tractable psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, in which the highly practiced auditory-vocal task was presented as Task 2, along with an unpracticed visual-manual Task 1. The results provide evidence of bottleneck bypass for virtually all the participants (17 out of 20). Several converging tests suggest that the bottleneck reemerged, however, in a follow-up experiment with tasks presented in the opposite order (auditory-vocal Task 1 and visual-manual Task 2). One possible explanation is that tasks greedily recruit central resources when available, even though they can operate without central resources when unavailable.     

Secondary students' performance on Piagetian projective and Euclidean spatial tasks

Four tasks involving Piaget's Euclidean and projective space were administered to a total of 99 students in Grades 8, 10, and 12: Task 1, Volumes of Revolution; Task 2, Geometric Sections; Task 3, Folding Patterns; and Task 4, Projection of Shadows. A scalogram analysis indicated that the tasks scaled in increasing order of difficulty in the following order: Task 1, Task 4, Task 2, and Task 3. These results did not support Piaget's position that projective and Euclidean concepts develop concurrently. Also, significant differences between task performance with regard to gender were found for Tasks 3 and 4. Significant differences between task performance and grade level for Tasks 1 and 4 were found. Standardized achievement test performance and task performance relationships were significant in 3 of the 16 analyses.     

Cross-modal correlation of dichotic and tachistoscopic language laterality tasks: the importance of familial sinistrality

Previous studies have found little if any correlation between dichotic and tachistoscopic language laterality task performance asymmetries. Problems with these studies have been that quite dissimilar auditory and visual tasks have often been used, and the reliability of the asymmetry measures has generally been unknown or, when known, relatively poor. We assessed the cross-modal correlation for two tasks, the Bilateral Object Naming Latency Task (BONLT) and the Dichotic Object Naming Latency Task (DONLT). These tasks are highly similar and have demonstrated high reliabilities. A significant, though rather small, cross-modal correlation was found (r = +.28). When cross-modal correlations were computed for FS- and FS+ subjects separately, no correlation was found for FS+ subjects (r = +.02), but the correlation for FS- subjects was highly significant (r = +.54, p less than .004). This led us to reexamine some previously collected data (P.L. Van Eys and W. F. McKeever, 1988, Brain and Cognition, 4, 413-429) which had administered two highly reliable language laterality tasks (the BONLT and the Dichotic Consonant Vowel Task), but had not assessed cross-modal correlation. A significant cross-modal correlation was found for FS- but not for FS+ subjects. The results are consistent with the hypothesis of H. Hecaen, M. De Agnostini, and A. Monzon-Montes (1981, Brain and Language, 12, 261-284) which suggests that one effect of FS+ is to induce a greater heterogeneity of localizations of different language processes.     

Secondary Students' Performance on Piagetian Projective and Euclidean Spatial Tasks

Four tasks involving Piaget's Euclidean and projective space were administered to a total of 99 students in Grades 8, 10, and 12: Task 1, Volumes of Revolution; Task 2, Geometric Sections; Task 3, Folding Patterns; and Task 4, Projection of Shadows. A scalogram analysis indicated that the tasks scaled in increasing order of difficulty in the following order: Task 1, Task 4, Task 2, and Task 3. These results did not support Piaget's position that projective and Euclidean concepts develop concurrently. Also, significant differences between task performance with regard to gender were found for Tasks 3 and 4. Significant differences between task performance and grade level for Tasks 1 and 4 were found. Standardized achievement test performance and task performance relationships were significant in 3 of the 16 analyses.     

Task complexity,student perceptions of vocabulary learning in EFL,and task performance

Background. The study deepened our understanding of how students’ self‐efficacy beliefs contribute to the context of teaching English as a foreign language in the framework of cognitive mediational paradigm at a fine‐tuned task‐specific level. Aim. The aim was to examine the relationship among task complexity, self‐efficacy beliefs, domain‐related prior knowledge, learning strategy use, and task performance as they were applied to English vocabulary learning from reading tasks. Sample. Participants were 120 second‐year university students (mean age 21) from a Chinese university. Method. This experiment had two conditions (simple/complex). A vocabulary level test was first conducted to measure participants’ prior knowledge of English vocabulary. Participants were then randomly assigned to one of the learning tasks. Participants were administered task booklets together with the self‐efficacy scales, measures of learning strategy use, and post‐tests. Data obtained were submitted to multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and path analysis. Results. Results from the MANOVA model showed a significant effect of vocabulary level on self‐efficacy beliefs, learning strategy use, and task performance. Task complexity showed no significant effect; however, an interaction effect between vocabulary level and task complexity emerged. Results from the path analysis showed self‐efficacy beliefs had an indirect effect on performance. Our results highlighted the mediating role of self‐efficacy beliefs and learning strategy use. Conclusions. Our findings indicate that students’ prior knowledge plays a crucial role on both self‐efficacy beliefs and task performance, and the predictive power of self‐efficacy on task performance may lie in its association with learning strategy use.     

A Comparison of Phonological Awareness Skills in Early French Immersion and English Children

This 2-year study examined the effects of early second language exposure on phonological awareness skills. Syllable, onset-rime and phoneme awareness skills of 72 anglophone children attending English or French immersion programs in primary and grade 1 were investigated. Three-way mixed ANOVAS revealed the following effects and interactions. In terms of grade effect, grade 1 students performed significantly better than primary students on phoneme and onset-rime tasks. A stimulus language effect was observed for the three levels of phonological awareness. All children performed better on English tasks than on French ones. Interaction effects of stimulus language by program were revealed for phoneme as well as syllable tasks. Posthoc analyses revealed that French students performed better on English phoneme and syllable tasks than on French, while English students performed better than French immersion students on French syllable tasks. Correlational analyses revealed significant relationships between reading and phoneme and onset-rime phonological awareness tasks regardless of program of instruction (English, French immersion) or language of reading test (English, French). Syllable awareness was only significantly correlated with the French non-word reading task for the French immersion students.     

The current state of research by Polish linguists on the Brest Bible: an overview

Abstract

2013 marked the 450th anniversary of the publication of the Brest Bible (1563), the first Protestant (Reformed) translation of the entire Bible into Polish. This translation coincided with the mature phase of the Polish Renaissance, which was at the same time a key period in the history of Reformed thought. According to researchers, the Brest Bible is characterized by typographical and translational novelty and numerous linguistic qualities which have also gained recognition for it among Catholic theologians and contemporary Bible translators. This article presents the current state of research on various aspects of the language of the Brest Bible as carried out by Polish linguists. It demonstrates the high value of the language of the Brest Bible, its place among Polish biblical translations and the important role it played in the development of Polish language and culture.     

Fostering learner autonomy and critical reflection through digital video-journals in a university foreign language course

Many studies have documented the benefits of incorporating reflective journals into foreign language education at university level, though the pedagogic tendency has been to utilise these valuable learning resources to enhance students’ written language skills. This study focuses on how the production of a digital reflective journal in video format can assist in the improvement of oral language abilities in tertiary students of Spanish as a foreign language. With spoken language as the driving vehicle for this assessment task, the course coordinator and educator in charge aimed to promote the development of learner autonomy and self-reflection. In addition, to foster students’ agency in this process, the task incorporated the use of modern digital technologies, which are part of the repertoire of communication channels used by today’s university language learners. Findings suggest that completing this self-reflection assessment task afforded creative teaching and learning experiences, and generated opportunities for learners to improve critical thinking skills, written language proficiency and oral communication. It also heightened their motivation to engage with language-related cultural knowledge, and minimised feelings of anxiety towards communicating verbally in a foreign language.     

Pupil Dilation as a Measure of Processing Load in Simultaneous Interpretation and Other Language Tasks

The present study tested whether the pupillary response can be applied to study the variation in processing load during simultaneous interpretation. In Experiment 1, the global processing load in simultaneous interpretation as reflected in the average pupil size was compared to that in two other language tasks, listening to and repeating back an auditorily presented text. Experiment 1 showed clear differences between the experimental tasks. In Experiment 2, the task effect was replicated using single words as stimuli. Experiment 2 showed that momentary variations in processing load during a lexical translation task are reflected in pupil size. Words that were chosen to be more difficult to translate induced higher levels of pupil dilation than did easily translatable words. Moreover, repeating back words in a non-native language was accompanied by increased pupil dilations, in comparison to repetition in the subject's native language. In sum, the study lends good support to the use of the pupillary response as an indicator of processing load.     

TRIADIC INSTRUCTION OF CHAINED FOOD PREPARATION RESPONSES: ACQUISITION AND OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING

This research examined whether constant time delay would be effective in teaching students with moderate mental retardation in triads to perform chained tasks and whether observational learning would occur. Three chained snack preparation tasks were identified, and each student was directly taught one task. The other 2 students observed the instruction. The instructed student told the observers to watch and to turn pages of a pictorial recipe book. The teacher provided frequent praise to the instructed student based on performance and to the observers for watching the instruction and turning pages. A multiple probe design across students and tasks was used to evaluate the instruction. The results indicated that each student learned the skill he or she was taught directly, and the observers learned nearly all of the steps of the chains they observed. The implications for classroom instruction and future research in observational learning are discussed.