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Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common cause of anovulatory infertility. Obesity exacerbates the reproductive complications of PCOS; however, the management of obesity in women with PCOS remains a large unmet clinical need. Observational studies have indicated that bariatric surgery could improve the rates of ovulatory cycles and prospects of fertility; however, the efficacy of surgery on ovulation rates has not yet been compared with behavioural modifications and medical therapy in a randomised trial. The aim of this study was to compare the safety and efficacy of bariatric surgery versus medical care on ovulation rates in women with PCOS, obesity, and oligomenorrhoea or amenorrhoea.

City University of New York students come from such varied backgrounds that it often seems the English language is the only thing they have in common. This article discusses how a course in the history of English can provide stories with which all such students can identify. The focus is on English speakers through the ages, considered in three main phases: European, Neo-European, and Non-European. The European begins with the ancient Germans and tells how some of them became the English, eventually achieving political dominance in Britain and a strong literary culture; but it also includes stories of subordinated working class and Celtic people. The Neo-European covers English-speaking expansion in North America and Australasia, emphasizing how diverse ordinary people developed new communities and new forms of speech. The Non-European includes indigenous peoples of the Neo-Europes, immigrants who came to the Americas under coercion from Africa, and peoples of the Anglophone colonies of exploitation. All these had to come to terms with English as a language of both oppression and opportunity – as do their modern successors, including our students. This course is designed to help them do so, while helping more “traditional” students understand the linguistic dilemmas their fellow citizens face.

Sugar has been an important engine of social, economic, and linguistic change. It developed from a rare spice to an upper class luxury, to a common foodstuff, and these changes affected the growth of social institutions. Initially part of the display that symbolized royal authority, sugar contributed, through the London coffeehouse, to intellectual development and to linguistic standardization and codification. Later, it became essential to the new urban proletariat, whose sugar-laden tea made a new pattern of work and new forms of speech possible. It also became a cause and symbol of oppression for the slaves that produced it in the Caribbean. These changes are reflected in English vocabulary and in the development and distribution of varieties of English. Sugar became an English commercial interest with the acquisition of Barbados and Jamaica, resulting in West Indian plantation agriculture, the English-speaking slave trade, and the creation of new English-speaking populations and new English languages. When slavery was abolished, the continuing demand for sugar led to further population transfer, of workers from British India to the Caribbean, Fiji, and South Africa, and hence to yet more varieties of English. Thus sugar played an important role in structuring the present-day English language complex.

Background Although education in Africa is expanding, little is being done to support learners’ literacy outside the school. Rural people have little access to books and so cannot develop their reading skills.Purpose of Study The project described here has both an educational and a research purpose: to complement formal schooling by making reading material available to students and others, and to document the development of new literacy practices by investigating and recording readers’ preferences.Setting The site is near the trading center of Kitengesa in Masaka District in Uganda. It is a rural area where most people depend on subsistence farming and the sale of food and cash crops. Many have been to school, however, and basic literacy is widespread.Intervention The project has consisted of the establishment and development of a community library, in cooperation with a local private secondary school. It is supported by funds that the author and other supporters raise in the United States and Canada.Research Design The research is a case study that follows an action research model. The intervention was initially based on observational research together with consultation with representatives of the community; it was carefully documented from the outset and the findings used to inform the project's further development.Data Collection and Analysis The data consist primarily of the library's records of members joining, books borrowed, and users’ declared purposes in coming to the building. The written records are supplemented by observations of behavior in the library and interviews with users.Results Local responses indicate that there is considerable potential for developing a reading culture in the area. Story books have proved to be most popular, but school textbooks and newspapers are also much in demand. The project has attracted interest from foreign visitors, who have used the library as a base for initiating other development projects.Conclusions The Kitengesa experience demonstrates that a community library is a cost-effective way of supporting literacy development and enabling research on literacy practices. It also provides a base for other grassroots development projects. The suggested way forward is to build on this experience by encouraging the growth of similar libraries throughout Uganda.

AbstractThis article presents an overview of the history of English language literacy in England and relates it to concerns with regard to literacy in Africa. A series of English texts is examined, each representing a key innovation in English literacy practices: the written expression of oral creativity represented by Caedmon's composition of poetry in the seventh century; the use of literacy for bureaucratic purposes exemplified in the Peterborough Chronicle's account of Domesday Book; the growth of domestic literacy among the educated gentry in the seventeenth century; and the adoption of political and domestic literacy practices by members of the working class in the nineteenth. The central argument is that each innovation in literacy builds on already established practices, and in the final section this argument is used to make recommendations for the promotion of literacy in African environments.

Most African countries are notoriously multilingual: they also have notoriously high rates of illiteracy. These two issues and the relationship between them will be examined with particular reference to two widely different African contexts: a remote region of northern Nigeria, and a rural but central area of Uganda. It will be argued that if socially constructive literacy practices are to be developed in such contexts, multilingualism must not only be lived with but should also be embraced. Practical suggestions will be made as to what linguists can do to help in the process.

This paper reports a series of longitudinal case studies designed to address the question of how language learners build their vocabularies. Students who were enrolled in an anthropology class were asked to record the words that caused them difficulty as they read their anthropology texts, and to write down, if they could, what they thought the words meant. The resulting lists are analyzed in terms of the kinds of words listed, the accuracy of the glosses, and the probable reasons for misinterpretation; the analysis is considered in relation to data collected in protocols and a translation task. The conclusions are that a range of strategies may be used for learning vocabulary, each involving liabilities as well as assets. Students need to be aware of the range so as to develop flexibility in their responses to unfamiliar words.

For many students throughout the world, success depends not only on the ability to read in English but on the demonstration of that ability through publicly recognized examinations. These exams are based on two separate traditions, one originating in Britain, the other in the United States; they vary considerably in form, yet there is a fundamental similarity in the demands they make and in the kind of reading they effectively teach. We describe this similarity with respect to what Street (1984) calls the autonomous model of literacy, one which assumes that text, reader, and the skill of reading itself can be viewed as autonomous entities. In criticizing this view, we present an alternative approach, described as a pragmatic model of literacy, which treats text as social instrument, readers and writers as embodying social identities, and the skill of reading as extending beyond decoding and use of relevant knowledge to socially structured negotiation of meaning. We utilize these contrasting models of literacy to describe the limitations of reading tests and argue for an alternative approach to assessment that reflects the social dimension of literacy activities. Within such pragmatically oriented assessment, reading and writing are viewed as inseparable.

This article examines the relationship between cultural membership and individual language learning behavior, a relationship that has so far been addressed chiefly through questionnaire research aimed at documenting the learning styles of different cultural groups. Because such an approach does not illuminate the mechanisms by which culture influences learning, this article suggests an alternative approach that focuses on a narrower range of behavior—namely, L2 reading strategies—and a defined set of cultural practices having to do with literacy. The article reviews briefly the research on these two areas and then presents data on the strategies for English academic reading tasks used by two quite different groups of students: secondary school students in northern Nigeria and university graduates in China. The strategies that the two groups of students used were strikingly difference whereas the Nigerian students showed a marked preference for top‐down methods of solving comprehension problems, the Chinese students reported a strong tendency to use bottom‐up ones. These differing strategies are then related to the different language backgrounds of the two groups of students and to their different experiences of literacy. The article concludes that cultural background is an important factor in the formation of individual reading strategies but that this fact should not lead to a simple cultural determinism; individual variation must always be acknowledged, and so must the fact that both individuals and cultures may change in the very process of L2 learning.