Deep Thought is a logic tutor where students practice constructing deductive logic proofs. Within Deep Thought is a data-driven mastery learning system (DDML), which calculates student proficiency based on rule scores weighted by expert-decided weights in order to assign problem sets of appropriate difficulty. In this study, we designed and tested a data-driven proficiency profiler (DDPP) metho...

This paper addresses the effect of English proficiency on economic growth empirically with Barro-type cross-sectional growth regression. The empirical results provide evidence of positive correlation between initial English proficiency and economic growth only for the countries in the Asia and Europe. Therefore, countries with higher levels of English proficiency among the fraction of its popul...

We investigated the influence of English proficiency on ERPs elicited by lexical semantic violations in English sentences, in both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers who learned English in adulthood. All participants were administered a standardized test of English proficiency, and data were analyzed using linear mixed effects (LME) modeling. Relative to native learners, late l...

This paper studies the effects of English proficiency on employment of U.S. foreign-born immigrants, using data from the 2001 American Community Survey (ACS). It shows that English proficiency plays an important role in immigrants’ employment and its effects on employment patterns across genders are different. Probit regressions show that immigrants with a higher level of English proficiency ar...

In this paper we present a proposal to integrate pragmatic information, both from the preceding discourse and the extra-linguistic context, in the grammar. We provide an analysis of elliptical fragments according to how they are anchored to the context and the kind of resolution they require. We also present an alternative view about the syntax of fragments.

In this article, we highlight the need to create a more Pragmatic Web which would act as an extension of the Semantic Web, where information is not only given a well-defined meaning, but the meaning is understood within the context it is used. Using foundations such as Tolk’s Dynamic Web model, we propose a Trust Model, dealing with the Social Web that we believe, would ‘complete’ the Pragmatic...

this study examined the effect of explicit instruction of hedging on english forspecific academic purposes (esap) reading comprehension performance ofenglish language learning (ell) university students. a reading comprehensiontest was developed and validated as the pretest and the posttest. the test, includingitems for assessing the comprehension of the students in their area of specialization,...

Relative hand preferences as indicated by questionnaire were compared with asymmetries in manual proficiency at three levels of task difficulty (N equal to 63 adults). Correlations between odd/even trial relative hand proficiency scores were .887 and .879 attesting to their stability. Test-retest (6-wk. interval) reliabilities for relative hand proficiency ranged from .831 to .893. Spearman rbo...

Automaticity and real-time aspects of performance are directly relevant to L2 spoken language proficiency. This paper analyzes data from L2 speakers of English and Spanish spread over a range of proficiency levels as identified by traditional holistic, rubric-based human ratings. In spontaneous speech samples from these L2 populations, we studied timed measures of spoken fluency (linguistic uni...

This paper broadly elaborated the concept, significance and main strategy of cross disciplinary proficiency learning as well as the basic structure of cross disciplinary proficiency learning system. By combining several basic ideas of main strategies, great effort are laid on introducing several cross disciplinary proficiency learning methods, such as Memorizing a type of learning, Reason–based...