BRAIN vol. 3, issue 2

You can download now the entire second issue of BRAIN vol. 3, May 2012. In one week, you will find separate files for papers.

Table of Contents

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Here you can find the entire issue 2 (May 2012) of the third volume of our journal. In one week, you will find here all the articles, published as separate fe files.

You are welcome to download the current issue of the journal and read it.

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BRAIN vol. 3, issue 2, first pages

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Authors must submit their papers via email to brain@edusoft.ro or they can create an account and submit their papers online, at www.brain.edusoft.ro. Submited papers must be written in DOC format (Microsoft Word document), in as clear and as simple as possible English. Preferred maximum paper length for the papers is 20 pages, including figures. The template for the paper is at this address: http://www.edusoft.ro/Template_for_BRAIN.doc

BRAINStorming

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Authors:
Jérôme Leboeuf-Pasquier , Eduardo José González Pacheco Oceguera
Abstract:

The present paper illustrates the design process for the Growing Functional Modules (GFM) learning based controller. GFM controllers are elaborated interconnecting four kinds of components: Global Goals, Acting Modules, Sensations and Sensing Modules. Global Goals trigger intrinsic motivations, Acting and Sensing Modules develop specific functionalities and Sensations provide the controlled system's feedback. GFM controllers learn to satisfy some predefined goals while interacting with the environment and thus should be considered as artificial brains. An example of the design process of a simple controller is provided herein to explain the inherent methodology, to exhibit the components' interconnections and to demonstrate the control process.

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Authors:
Rintaro Sato
Abstract:
In Japanese high school English classes, students are often left to have interactions or perform communicative activities not with a teacher but with other students due to a large class size. In the situation, students are ideally notice their own insufficient utterances in order to carry out
self-initiated self-repair. This study investigated self-initiated self-repair attempts and their effects on Japanese high school learners. Thirty-two Japanese high school students with low-intermediate English ability and a native speaker of English participated in the study, with the native speaker
interviewing the students. The students’ utterances were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed, and it was found that: self-initiated self-repair occurred frequently and, in general, successfully; error repair was most frequently recorded; the success rate of lexical repair was the lowest. Findings observed during the students’ self-initiated self-repair attempts are discussed, followed by discussion of their possible effects. Finally, suggestions are given based on the pedagogical implications from the study.

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Authors:
Mohammad Hashamdar
Abstract:
This study is intended to investigate the teacher-student communication patterns in an upperintermediate English class. There are major questions in this study; (a) what the nature of interaction is in a foreign language classroom, (b) what the characteristics of teacher-student turn taking are, (c) what type of feedback is taken by the teacher, (d) how the teacher's competence and performance are. The participants of the study are female adult students and a female teacher majoring English literature at MA level that has had five years of teaching experience. Five partial
sessions of the class are recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. According to the findings, the type of discourse is teacher-initiated one and the question type is both WH-questions and questions with auxiliaries. The way of student's reply is brief and limited to one teacher-student turn-taking. The type of interaction is based on the questions posed by the teacher and long interaction such as discussing, debating, and challenging could rarely be seen in the classroom in question. The type of
feedback depending on the skill and tasks dealt with, ranging from recast to direct correction. The teacher's competence and performance are satisfactory with correct pronunciation and near native accent.

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Authors:
Parviz Maftoon , Somayyeh Sabah
Abstract:
The phenomenon of affect and its relationship to second language learning is well-known and has been experienced by most language learners. One of the main debates that has recently appeared in the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) literature is related to the status of affective factors in this domain. The present paper attempts at mulling over the current controversies over affect with a special attention to Vygotsky’s account of the matter.

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Authors:
Hassan Soleimani , Fateme Sharifi Matin
Abstract:
A tremendous amount of works have been conducted by psycholinguistics to identify hemisphere processing during second/ foreign language learning, or in other words to investigate the role of the brain hemisphere dominance in language performance of learners. Most of these researches have focused on single words and word pairs (e.g., Anaki et al., 1998; Arzouan et. al., 2007; Faust & Mahal, 2007) or simple sentences (Rapp et al., 2007; Kacinik & Chiarello, 2007), and it has been discovered that there is an advantage of right hemisphere for metaphors and an
advantage of left hemisphere for literal text. But the present research was designed to study Iranian EFL learners' performance in different reading tasks, so there could be differences between the consequences of the former research and the results of the present study due to the context. Here left-brain and right-brain dominance was investigated in 60 individuals (20 right-handed and 10 left-handed male, 20 right-handed and 10 left-handed female) via the Edinburg Handedness Questionnaire (EHQ). The research results suggested that the right-handed learners who are supposed to be left-brain outperformed the left-handed ones; and regarding participant's gender, male learners outperformed female learners on reading comprehension test tasks.

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Authors:
Bagher Azarmi , Ali Jahangard , Hossein Movassagh
Abstract:
Although decisions and inferences made based on test scores depend both on the characteristics of test takers and testing environment, the former seems to have the most overriding importance. The present study which was conducted in a bilingual environment is in line with this assumption and is aimed at investigating intelligence as one of the test taker characteristics. First, it aimed at finding the possible correlation between any of the eight types of intelligences in Gardner`s MI theory and EAP test performance. Second, it intended to survey the intercorrelation
among the eight types of intelligences themselves. To that end, 122 male bilingual EFL learners who were all sophomore university students were chosen as the participants of the study. They sat for the final EAP exam and filled the questionnaire on multiple intelligence. The test takers' scores on EAP exam were correlated with their multiple intelligences. The result did not demonstrate any statistically significant go-togetherness between EAP test performance and any types of intelligence; however, a significantly positive correlation was observed among the eight types of
intelligences themselves showing that all types of intelligences are equally important and ought to be equally dealt with in EFL context.

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Authors:
Mehrdad Rezaee , Majid Farahian , Ali Morad Ahmadi
Abstract:
Success in adult life and effective functioning in education depends among other things on critical thinking. The present study consisted of two parts. First, critical thinking (CT) skill of a group of 68 students majoring in education in Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah Branch was evaluated. The participants, divided into two experimental and control groups, received California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) which is a 34 item Multiple-Choice test. The students in the control group were freshmen and the experimental group, junior students. To the researchers’ dismay, junior education students did not perform significantly better than did the freshman students. Using a qualitative method of research, another study was conducted to see whether the university instructors in the education department who had the responsibility of teaching different courses to the same students were aware of the principles of CT. A semi-structured interview was conducted and eight volunteering faculty members in the department of education took part in the interview. Result revealed that, although these instructors highly valued CT and were aware of its tenets, there were some constraints which did provide a situation to let the students practice CT in their classrooms, and much had to be done to help instructors implement CT in their classrooms.