• Title/Summary/Keyword: reading difficulty

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Effects on the Use of Two Textbooks for Four Types of Classes in a South Korean University

  • Ramos, Ian Done D.
    • International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.24-32
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    • 2013
  • This paper determined students' ranks of difficulty on the use of materials in terms of 1) understanding the layout of the learning materials, 2) reading comprehension of the learning materials, and 3) realization on relevance to needs of the learning materials. It also determined students' 4) rank and frequency of attitude on the materials. With the data gathered through 128 survey questionnaires, 7 focused group discussions, and 10 interviews, the results were found out that there was an inappropriate assessment procedure set by this particular university. The researcher concludes that: 1) design of four types of classes by just using the two textbooks with their respective workbooks is grammar-based with limited conversation activities; 2) placement for these students in one big class size was implemented without considering their common interest and motivation and language levels; and, 3) qualification of teachers teaching these EFL students did not support students' real needs and the language program itself. Content professors who were made to teach may have the ability to input learning, but their teaching styles may differ from the ones who are real English teachers. This paper then recommends that teachers and school administration should have an appropriate placement exam before students attend the class, especially in a big class size. There could only be a few problems among students in one big class size when students' level of competence is proportioned. With this, topics and conversation activities can even be more flexible with the maneuver of art of questioning, various dimensions of thinking, strategic competence, learning attitude or behavior, etc. to ensure sustenance of communicative mode and level of interest and motivation in the classroom. Grammar-based instruction can only be taught when a need arises. Thus, the course description of each class will be able to transact the objectives ready for developing students' communication competence. Moreover, proper measurement can be utilized to validly assess the amount of students' learning and the progress of language curriculum design in terms of materials selection and teaching approach.

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An Analysis of Factors Related to Changes in the Visual Acuity of Primary School Children Over One Year (초등학생의 1년간 시력변화와 관련된 요인 분석)

  • Lee, Kyu Young
    • Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.179-192
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    • 1997
  • The main purpose of this study was to analyze and identify factors related to changes in visual acuity of primary school students over one year period. The data for this study were collected from 980 students in the first to fifth grades of one elementary school located in Koyang City, Kyungki Province. The visual acuity tests of students and self reported questionnaires for the students and their parents were administered in 1995 and 1996. The data were analyzed by using SAS PC. The results of the study were as follows. 1. Visual acuity in both eyes is significantly lower in girls than in boys. 2. Overall visual acuity of the students decreased over the one year. Notably, decreases in visual acuity were statistically significant during the transition from the first to the second grade and from the third to the fourth grade. 3. Students with visual acuity ranging from 0.4 to 0.7 and those above 1.0 in 1995 showed a significantly lower acuity in 1996 than other students. 4. Students who needed glasses in 1995 showed significantly lower visual acuity in 1996 than those without glasses. 5. Other factors related to visual acuity are lights in the classroom, difficulty reading a blackboard, posture of children while watching TV, and distance from the TV set. Some of these factors may be the result of students' already poor visual acuity rather than causes of the decrease. In conclusion, many elementary school children experience significant decrease in visual acuity and need special intervention to maintain or improve their visual acuity.

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A Study of Apology Strategies between Genders in EFL College Students

  • Shim, Jae-Hwang
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.225-243
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    • 2009
  • This study investigates the use of different speech act of apology strategies between male and female EFL college students by comparing the components of intensity, stylistic competence, and semantic formulas. The data was collected from 37 participants who were studying freshmen English reading course at the Department of English Education of C University in Seoul. Most students were English majors taking pre-teacher course of teaching English for secondary school students. The participants were divided into two gender groups of male and female. The discourse completion test (DCT) which was revised from the speech act of apology by Olshtain and Cohen (1990) was provided with the participants after the researcher explained the speech act of apology in ten situations. The speech act of apology depends on situation variables: social solidarity, severity of offense, and social status. The results show that in the preference of intensity, male and female have almost the similar ratio in high (female: 24.7%, male 24%) and low intensity (female: 75.3%, male: 76%). In the use of stylistic competence, male group (21%) expresses more diversely formal features than female group (12%), while female (87%) use more informal features than male (66%). Most of participants show a limitation in the use of speaking four types of semantic formulas: expression of apology (APOL), acknowledgment of responsibility (RESP), offer of repair (REPR), and promise of forbearance (FORB). As nonnative speakers, the participants cannot conduct the semantic formula in some situations regardless of the tasks provided. The results suggest that English teachers should recognize pragmatic variations in which students feel difficulty in appropriate speaking strategies on apology. This study also contributes to teaching learners the strategies and speaking patterns in the course of various apology situations.

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A Study on oblique spatial expansion through Henry Ciriani's 4 Logements Studio (앙리 시리아니의 4 Logements Studio를 통한 사선적 공간확장성에 대한 연구)

  • Jun, In-Mok
    • Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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    • v.8 no.6
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    • pp.227-235
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    • 2017
  • The essence of architecture is space acquired as a result of architect's design act, but the object of the design is not the space and it is the physical elements to construct it. The masters of modern architecture have described the types of spaces that can be composed of these elements, but there is a difficulty in constructing the space because they does not mention how to construct it. From this point of view, if architecture is the techniques for human behavior and the art of building space, it is recognized that there is a need for concrete research on how to construct a space with ambiguous substance. Therefore, I conducted research on the extensibility of diagonal spaces through '4 Logements Studio' by Henri Ciriani, a representative architect of Neo Corbusian. The 'network for identity' method proposed by Ciriani was examined as a methode to realize spatial expansion and the furniture should be designed as an element of reading space and 3 optimal alternatives for 4 housing arrangements were obtained based on the Equivalence, Lighting, View, and Community life.

Design and Implementation of Efficient Seat Resource Management System Driven User (사용자 중심의 효율적인 좌석 자원 관리 시스템 설계 및 구현)

  • Kang, Min-Sung;Lee, Sang-Joon;An, Gi-Joong;Kim, Jang-Hyung;Kim, Do-Hyeun
    • Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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    • v.11 no.12
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    • pp.2319-2326
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    • 2007
  • Recently, various systems are being developed for efficiently assignment and management of such resources as seats of airplane, train, bus, theater, and library. If it occurs the exceed demand for the limited seat resource, the system has much difficulty for the seat resource management and assignment efficiently. The existed allocation and management methods were processed using the centralization management of the limited seat resource. But these methods cannot consider the preference of each user, and these not support the fairness of usage for each person. Accordingly, we design and implement the seat assignment system based on the customer-driven for the seat management in the reading room of library, customer selects directly for the fairness of seat.

Representative Batch Normalization for Scene Text Recognition

  • Sun, Yajie;Cao, Xiaoling;Sun, Yingying
    • KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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    • v.16 no.7
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    • pp.2390-2406
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    • 2022
  • Scene text recognition has important application value and attracted the interest of plenty of researchers. At present, many methods have achieved good results, but most of the existing approaches attempt to improve the performance of scene text recognition from the image level. They have a good effect on reading regular scene texts. However, there are still many obstacles to recognizing text on low-quality images such as curved, occlusion, and blur. This exacerbates the difficulty of feature extraction because the image quality is uneven. In addition, the results of model testing are highly dependent on training data, so there is still room for improvement in scene text recognition methods. In this work, we present a natural scene text recognizer to improve the recognition performance from the feature level, which contains feature representation and feature enhancement. In terms of feature representation, we propose an efficient feature extractor combined with Representative Batch Normalization and ResNet. It reduces the dependence of the model on training data and improves the feature representation ability of different instances. In terms of feature enhancement, we use a feature enhancement network to expand the receptive field of feature maps, so that feature maps contain rich feature information. Enhanced feature representation capability helps to improve the recognition performance of the model. We conducted experiments on 7 benchmarks, which shows that this method is highly competitive in recognizing both regular and irregular texts. The method achieved top1 recognition accuracy on four benchmarks of IC03, IC13, IC15, and SVTP.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON AUDITORY ATTENTION AND PHONEME DIFFERENTIAL ABILITY AMONG CHILDREN WITH READING DISABILITY AND WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY (읽기 장애와 주의력 결핍/과잉 운동 장애아동의 주의력 과제와 음소 변별 과제 수행 비교 - 청각 과제를 중심으로 -)

  • Lee, Kyung-Hee;Shin, Min-Sup;Kim, Boong-Nyun;Cho, Soo-Churl
    • Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.197-208
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    • 2003
  • Objective:In this study, we hypothesized that deficit in processing rapid linguistic stimuli is at the heart of Reading Disability(RD) and deficit in response inhibition is at the heart of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity(ADHD). We conducted experiments to identify the core cognitive characteristics of children either with RD or with ADHD or with both, using attentional tasks and phoneme differential tests. Method:In the study 1, 28 children with ADHD, 16 children with RD+ADHD were individually administered visual/auditory performance tests. Then, the differences of performance on attentional tasks between two groups were compared while IQs of two groups were controlled. In the study 2, 13 children with RD+ADHD/RD, 13 children with ADHD, and 13 normal children were administered computerized phoneme differential tests. Result:Visual attentional tasks did not distinguish an ADHD group from a RD+ADHD group. With auditory attentional tasks, however, the comorbid group showed significantly more difficulties, causing a large variance in reaction time. RD, RD+ADHD, and ADHD groups showed more errors in phoneme differential tests than a normal control group, and each group showed distinctive performance patterns. Discussion:An ADHD group had difficulty in response inhibition and sustained attention, and children who also had RD along with ADHD magnified the auditory attentional difficulties. Even though children with RD had more trouble with responding correctly to target stimuli, their responses were not significantly different from those of children with ADHD.

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Study on $Ch{\acute{e}}n$ $Xiuyu\acute{a}n$ by analysing $Y\bar{i}xues\bar{a}nz\grave{i}j\bar{i}ng$ (의학삼자경(醫學三字經)에 나타난 진수원(陳修園) 의학 사상에 대한 문헌적 연구 I)

  • Kim, Jai-Eun;Choi, Dall-Yeong
    • Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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    • v.22 no.4
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    • pp.709-717
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    • 2008
  • $Ch\acute{e}n\;Xiuyu\acute{a}n$(陳修園) was a famous doctor and educator of the late Tang Dynasty. He was well known both for his books for beginners, and for his unique medical theories based on his profound research of <$Sh\bar{a}ngh\acute{a}nl\grave{u}n$(傷寒論)> and <$J\bar{i}nku\grave{i}y\grave{a}ol\ddot{u}e$>. He wrote <$Y\bar{i}xues\bar{a}nz\grave{i}j\bar{i}ng$(醫學三字經)> to establish the basic textbook for the beginners to set up right principles in pursuing their medical career. <$Y\bar{i}xues\bar{a}nz\grave{i}j\bar{i}ng$> was written in rhyme form, so that it can be easily memorized and used in future practices. There are quite many medical books in rhyme form, but this book is very unique as $Ch\acute{e}n\;Xiuyu\acute{a}n$ annotated his own notes, which is rare in this form of books. This feature makes <$Y\bar{i}xues\bar{a}nz\grave{i}j\bar{i}ng$> very outstanding, also with the fact that $Ch\acute{e}n\;Xiuyu\acute{a}n$ was the one with profound understanding and original theories based on medical bibles such as <$N\grave{e}ij\bar{i}ng$(內經)> and <$Sh\bar{a}ngh\acute{a}nl\grave{u}n$(傷寒論)>. We have translated this precious educational material into korean, hoping that this work could be of any help to students of korean medicine. And while doing this work, we have found followings: <$Y\bar{i}xues\bar{a}nz\grave{i}j\bar{i}ng$> covers the entire fields of medicine from theoretical discussions to practical clinical information. Nevertheless, as this is written in rhyme form, there are few phrases that are not easily understood for the sake of rhyme. Beginners probably may have difficulties in reading this book. To make this difficulty alleviated, and to develop our own educational material, we need to study further on the notes that $Ch\acute{e}n\;Xiuyu\acute{a}n$ annotated himself.

Eating habits, obesity related behaviors, and effects of Danhak exercise in elderly Koreans

  • Ha, Ae-Wha;Kim, Jong-Hyun;Shin, Dong-Joo;Choi, Dal-Woong;Park, Soo-Jin;Kang, Nam-E;Kim, Young-Soon
    • Nutrition Research and Practice
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    • v.4 no.4
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    • pp.295-302
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    • 2010
  • The aims of this study were to evaluate obesity-related dietary behaviors and to determine long-term exercise effects on obesity and blood lipid profiles in elderly Korean subjects. A total of 120 subjects, aged 60-75 yr, were recruited, and obesity-related dietary behaviors were determined. An exercise intervention was conducted with 35 qualified elderly females for 6 months, and body composition and blood lipids were measured 6 times at 4 week intervals. At baseline, mean BMI ($kg/m^2$) was 24.8 for males and 23.1 for females. The females had better eating habits than the males and were more concerned with reading nutrition labels on food products (P < 0.001); they also preferred convenience foods less than the male subjects (P < 0.05). Obese individuals were more likely than overweight or normal weight individuals to misperceive their weight (P < 0.001). Those with a high BMI responded feeling more depressed (P < 0.01), lacking self-confidence (P < 0.01), and feeling isolated (P < 0.01) as well as having more difficulty doing outdoor activities (P < 0.01). After exercise, body fat (%) and WHR were significantly reduced (P < 0.05), while body weight and BMI were also decreased without statistical significance. Total cholesterol and blood HDL were significantly improved (207.1 mg/dl vs. 182.6 mg/dl, HDL: 45.6 mg/dl vs. 50.6 mg/dl, P < 0.05). Other benefits obtained from exercise were improvements in self-confidence (26.4%), movement (22.6%), stress-relief (18.9%), and depression (13.2%). In conclusion, elderly females had better eating habits and were more concerned with nutrition information and healthy diets compared to elderly males. However, misperceptions of weight and obesity-related stress tended to be very high in females who were overweight and obese, which can be a barrier to maintain normal weight. Long-term Danhak practice, a traditional Korean exercise, was effective at reducing body fat (%) and abdominal obesity, and improved lipid profiles, self-confidence, and stress.

Genenation of structural diversity in polyketides by combinatorial biosynthesis of polyketides: Part I. Generation of multiple bioactive macrolides by hybrid modular polyketide synthases in Streptomyces venezuelae, Part II. Production of novel rifamycins by combinatorial biosynthesis

  • Yoon, Yeo-Joon
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society for Applied Microbiology Conference
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    • 2002.10a
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    • pp.18-25
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    • 2002
  • The pikromycin biosynthetic system in Streptomyces venezuleae is unique for its ability to produce two groups of antibiotics that include the 12-membered ring macrolides methymycin and neomethymycin, and the 14-membered ring macrolides narbomycin and pikromycin. The metabolic pathway also contains two post polyketide-modification enzymes, a glycosyltransferase and P450 hydroxylase that have unusually broad substrate specificities. In order to explore further the substrate flexibility of these enzymes a series of hybrid polyketide synthases were constructed and their metabolic products characterized. The plasmid-based replacement of the multifunctional protein subunits of the pikromycin PKS in S. venezuelae by the corresponding subunits from heterologous modular PKSs resulted in recombinant strains that produce both 12- and 14-membered ring macrolactones with predicted structural alterations. In all cases, novel macrolactones were produced and further modified by the DesVII glycosyltransferase and PikC hydroxylase leading to biologically active macrolide structures. These results demonstrate that hybrid PKSs in S. venezuelae can produce a multiplicity of new macrolactones that are modified further by the highly flexible DesVII glycosyltransferase and PikC hydroxylase tailoring enzymes. This work demonstrates the unique capacity of the S. venezuelae pikromycin pathway to expand the toolbox of combinatorial biosynthesis and to accelerate the creation of novel biologically active natural products. The polyketide backbone of rifamycin B is assembled through successive condensation and ${\beta}$-carbonyl processing of the extender units by the modular rifamycin PKS. The eighth module, in the RifD protein, contains nonfunctional DH domain and functional KR domain, which specify the reduction of the ${\beta}$-carbonyl group resulting in the C-21 bydroxyl of rifamycin B. A four amino acid substitution and one amino acid deletion were introduced in the putative NADPH binding motif in the proposed KR domain encoded by rifD. This strategy of mutation was based on the amino acid sequences of the corresponding motif of the KR domain of module 3 in the RifA protein, which is believed dysfunctional, so as to introduce a minimum alteration and retain the reading frame intact, yet ensure loss of function. The resulting strain produces linear polyketides, from tetraketide to octaketide, which are also produced by a rifD disrupted mutant as a consequence of premature termination of polyketide assembly. Much of the structural diversity within the polyketide superfamily of natural products is due to the ability of PKSs to vary the reduction level of every other alternate carbon atom in the backbone. Thus, the ability to introduce heterologous reductive segments such as ketoreductase (KR), dehydratase (DH), and enoylreductase (ER) into modules that naturally lack these activities would increase the power of the combinatorial biosynthetic toolbox. The dehydratase domain of module 7 of the rifamycin PKS, which is predicted to be nonfunctional in view of the sequence of the apparent active site, was replaced with its functional homolog from module 7 of rapamycin-producing polyketide synthase. The resulting mutant strain behaved like a rifC disrupted mutant, i.e., it accumulated the heptaketide intermediate and its precursors. This result points out a major difficulty we have encountered with all the Amycolatopsis mediterranei strain containing hybrid polyketide synthases: all the engineered strains prepared so far accumulate a plethora of products derived from the polyketide chain assembly intermediates as major products instead of just analogs of rifamycin B or its ansamycin precursors.

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