MLU, Process, and Theme Analysis in Written Discourse of Mentally Retarded Students (a functional approach)
Atoosa
Rostambeik Tafreshi
Assistant Professor, Linguistics Department, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies.
author
text
article
2014
per
This study aims at investigating the structure of the written discourse of mentally retarded students at prevocational level, according to MLU, different types of processes, and themes. The theoretical framework of the study is the experiential and textual meta-functions introduced in Systematic Functional Grammar. The informants are 120 mentally retarded students in Tehran, who have been chosen through a stratified random sampling. A test including 4 picture stories was administered, and as a result 120 writing samples including 1110 clauses were collected. The number of clauses increases as the grades increase. MLU in first, second and third grades of prevocational level, is reported to be 4.33, 4.79 and 4.66. The distribution of different processes and different themes are as follows: material (56%), behavioral (13%), relational (10%), verbal and mental (9%), and existential (less than 1%). Subject theme (43%), Null Subject theme(30%), textual theme(23%), circumstantial theme(2%) , and other types less than 2%. The frequency of material, relational and verbal decreases as the grade increases while for mental and behavioral, increase in frequency is observed. In the second grade, the highest MLU and textual theme frequency is reported. Complex theme is observed in about 30 percent of clauses.
Pazand Quarterly
Fatemeh Naeimi H.
1735-2290
10
v.
36
no.
2014
5
21
https://www.pazand.ir/article_142302_29374eef02be573c094ce804ff7af002.pdf
The Use of Cohesive Devices in the Written Narratives of Persian Speaking Students with and without Specific Learning Disorders in grade5
Ahmad
Ramezani
Assistant professor, linguistics department, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies
author
text
article
2014
per
In this research, writings of students with/without specific learning disorders in Tehran is investigated and compared regarding the use of cohesive devices. The research method is Ex Post Facto or Causal Comparative. Halliday and Matthiessen's (2004) systemic functional approach was applied for analyzing the data. 13 boys with learning disorder and 13 boys without learning disorders were selected through random sampling. The informants were 10:6 to 12:00 (year: month) old 5th graders who were chosen among students enrolled in learning diability centeres and public schools in Tehran. Three researcher-made subtests (reading, visual, and listening) were administered for gathering the written data. Descriptive statistics (maximum and minimum, mean, frequency, and frequency percentage) were used to describe the data. Then, Multi Analysis of Variation (MANOVA) was used to analyze the significance between the differences of frequencies of cohesive devices. Results showed that only for reading subtest, the difference of frequency of usage in the written narratives between students with and without learning disorder is significant if =α0/05.
Pazand Quarterly
Fatemeh Naeimi H.
1735-2290
10
v.
36
no.
2014
23
37
https://www.pazand.ir/article_142304_83dc33d53ab4ea8f2ca45ea069d7b96b.pdf
The Use of Gricean Maxims in the Speech Production of Boys with Autism and Typically Developing boys
Rahimeh
Ruhparvar
Assistant Professor, linguistics department, shahid Bahonar university, Kerman
author
Mahdieh
Karami
M.A. graduate in linguistics, shahid Bahonar university, Kerman
author
text
article
2014
per
Autism is a complex neuro-developmental disorder thatone of its main characteristics is deficits in speech and language. In the present studywhich is a descriptive-analytic and cross-sectional one,by recording the everyday speech of children, the degree of obeying Gricean maxims in the speech production of 20 boys with autism(6-11 years old)from Kerman rehabilitation centerswere compared with that of 20 typically developing boys(6-11 years old)from elementary and guidance schools of Kerman. The results were analyzed by using Fisher Exact Test in SPSS software, version 19. The results showed that there were significant differences in obeying maxims of quality, relation and manner between the two groups. In this way, the speech of children with autism seems meaningless and irrelevant to the situation and linguistic context. The reason thatchildren with autism have problem in obeying Grice’s maxims can be that these children have problem with theory of mind.
Pazand Quarterly
Fatemeh Naeimi H.
1735-2290
10
v.
36
no.
2014
39
48
https://www.pazand.ir/article_142306_0f3a55620fc10c2e02d7c8ed53db56ab.pdf
Post-posing in the Speech of Hearing Impaired Children and Autistic Children
Ameneh
Zare
Assistant Professor, linguistics department, Islamic Azad University, Fars Science and Research Branch
author
Fariba
Keshavarzi
M.A. student in linguistics, , Islamic Azad University, Fars Science and Research Branch
author
text
article
2014
per
The investigation of syntactical characteristics of hearing impaired children and autistic children is one of the main fields that speech and language pathologists focuses on it .This study compared the speech of impaired hearing children and autistic children with the normal children in Postposing according to their gender. This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on 20 hearing impaired children, 20 autistic children and 20 normal children at the same age. The linguistic data for descriptive samples was collected by describing a picture, and data for free speech was from complementary questions. Quantitative and qualitative analysis was done on tape recorded. Speech Samples included identifying different types of nouns, counting the, identifying the number of occurred postposing nouns and mean them and t-test was performed. Data analysis demonstrated significant difference in Mean of postposing occurrence between three groups in both free and descriptive speech, Not only there was significant difference between total mean of postposing in free speech and descriptive speech but also with regard to gender there was significant difference in each group. Hearing impaired children had the most postposing occurrence in their speech in comparison with two other groups, and normal children had more postposing occurrences than autistic children.
Pazand Quarterly
Fatemeh Naeimi H.
1735-2290
10
v.
36
no.
2014
49
65
https://www.pazand.ir/article_142308_63ab261940b6cfbd0cdd981e4a29453c.pdf
Language Skills and Investigating their Occurrences in Male and Female Mentally Retarded Students Based on TOLD-P:3
Ali
Arbani Dana
Ph.D. student in linguistics, Isfahan university
author
text
article
2014
per
This study is aimed to compare language skills and find their occurrences in male and female mentally retarded students based on TOLD-P:3. 14 students ( 8 male ones and 6 female ones) aged from 6 to 9 years old were selected and TOLD-P:3 was administered to them. The design of the study is comparative. To analyze data, the Multivariate Analysis of variance was used. The results showed that there was not a significant difference between male and female mentally retarded students based on TOLD-P:3. The students had the highest score on picture vocabulary and the lowest score on relational vocabulary.
Pazand Quarterly
Fatemeh Naeimi H.
1735-2290
10
v.
36
no.
2014
67
73
https://www.pazand.ir/article_142311_ff08ea1ebc31d31ad0de08dcf5786f75.pdf
The Effect of Visual Input Enhancement on English Reading Comprehension among Deaf High school Students
Farzin
Fahimnia
Ph.D. in linguistics, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies
author
Zahra
Haghani Mobarake
M.A. in English language teaching
author
text
article
2014
per
This study set out to investigate whether Visual Input Enhancement (VIE) as a pedagogical intervention increases the comprehensibility of reading text of students’ course book. To accomplish this study 10 female deaf students in first grade of Nezam Mafi High School, special for deaf and hard of hearing impairments, were chosen nonrandomly due to their few numbers. The materials exploited during treatment sessions were four reading texts from students’ course book. After considering difficulty and readability of the texts through software named “Text Analyzer”, two out of four texts were enhanced via supportive colored pictures. Also new vocabularies were manipulated through typographical cues such as boldfacing, italicizing, and highlighting. After teaching period, two reliable and validated post-tests were administered, one test for the two enhanced texts and the other one based on the two unenhanced reading texts. The collected and analyzed data via “Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test” revealed that the differences between the two posttests was significant enough (p= 0.002<0.05) to reject the null hypothesis and it is proved that using Visual Input Enhancement in English reading texts for deaf students has a significant effect on their reading comprehension.
Pazand Quarterly
Fatemeh Naeimi H.
1735-2290
10
v.
36
no.
2014
75
87
https://www.pazand.ir/article_142310_cba148e7c41aa3bafc4e63b1fae9856f.pdf