Search

In this paper the author examines the self-reported aspects of vulnerability of children in Estonia. The study is based on the data of four focus groups with 12-year-old children, conducted in Estonian schools in 2018–2019. The author gives an overview of the most important findings and compares those to a broader framework and understanding of vulnerability in childhood research. For example, the article describes the importance of secure relations between a child and the family or a child and other close persons. The article exemplifies that material resources are important to children but not more important than a secure home, good relations, and free-time activities. According to the opinions of the respondents, too many duties, poor online security, global environmental problems, international conflicts, hierarchical relations with teachers and negative messages of the mass media are the most worrying aspects.

Essee on oma olemuselt terviklik kirjatöö, arvamuse või suhtumise sügavuti väljendus mingil kindlal teemal. Kõrgkoolipedagoogikas on akadeemilist ehk Inglise stiilis esseed kasutatud enamasti individuaalse hindelise kirjutamisülesandena, mis võimaldab subjektiivseid vaatenurki siduda filosoofiliste või teaduslike seisukohtadega. Siinse artikli eesmärk on käsitleda akadeemilise essee kui arutleva tekstitüübi kirjutamisega seotud metodoloogilisi probleeme kirjutamisõpetuse vaatenurgast. Artikkel tugineb tegevusuuringule, mis hõlmab Tartu Ülikooli kultuuriteaduste instituudi eesti kirjanduse eriala bakalaureuseastme kursuse "Proosateksti analüüs" viimase nelja aasta arendustööd. Eri aastakäikude kursustelt kogutud andmete kvalitatiivsest analüüsist selgub, et peamised raskused essee kirjutamisel puudutavad mitmesuguseid tekstiloomeoskusi, nt sobiva analüüsitasandi ja -meetodi valimist, tervikteksti ülesehitust, lõigu struktuuri ja sidusust, argumentide sõnastust. Samas aitasid mitmed ainedidaktilised muudatused – individuaalne konsultatsioon, essee etapiviisiline kirjutamine, nii esma- kui ka lõppvariandi tagasisidestamine – esseede kvaliteeti ja lõpphinnet oluliselt parandada. Artiklis antakse mitmeid didaktilisi soovitusi ja jagatakse veendumust, et essee kirjutamist on võimalik alati tõhusamalt õpetada. Summary

Copyright of Ajalooline Ajakiri is the property of Ajalookirjanduse Sihtastutus Kleio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

When a book enters the market, its first task is to attract the reader's attention immediately, taking effect in but a few moments. Therefore publishers usually attach special attention to cover texts. From the publisher's point of view, the blurb is part of marketing - it works like consumer advertising, which lures the reader's eye and gives the necessary confidence to make a decision. This is why any paper book can be seen as a luxury item requiring sophisticated advertising techniques, including attention given to the blurb content as a special genre. The article approaches cover texts with techniques of structural and linguistic analysis in order to find out the influencing techniques aimed at exciting the prospective reader's interest in original Estonian prose. As revealed by an analysis of the 61 prose books nominated for the Estonian Cultural Endowment Award during 2009-2019, the cover texts use a six-step system including the title, plot and subject matter of the book, as well as an author introduction and a few testimonials about the book and the author. Although the blurb structure can vary a lot, all blurbs are meant both to inform and advertise. Those aims are achieved not only by blurb contents, but also by linguistic and stylistic choices using peculiar verbs, enticing adjectives and labeling nouns, as well as other arousers of curiosity like epithet, metaphor, simile, rhetorical question, elliptic clause, antithesis and hyperbole, sometimes adding allusions and intertextual references. Either directly or indirectly, those literary devices also serve to convey values characteristic of the Estonian cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies on Art & Architecture / Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi is the property of Estonian Society of Art Historians and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Philosophica Estonica is the property of University of Tartu (Tartu Ulikool) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Writing academic texts is an inevitable component of contemporary higher education; writing in a more specific sense is an indispensable method when teaching a particular subject (Blau, 2003). As a species of text, essay-form is an integral piece of writing in which one expresses in depth his/her opinions or feelings on a particular subject. In higher education teaching, essay-form has been used mainly as an individually graded writing task, which enables students to align their own subjective points of view to more general philosophical or scientific perspectives. For this type of academic or English style essay, it is common to have a rather personal discursive overall mood, critical and argumentative perspective, and stylistic comprehension. While the essay, in its traditional form, involves logic, dialectics, and rhetoric, it still enables students to put forward their own personal views as well as to interpret the variety of generic features of the essay-form in a more general manner. Whilst essay writing is indeed a highly popular genre in higher education practises, it has not gained substantial prestige in the hierarchy of scientific texts, probably due to the fact that, as a genre, its limits and inner attributes are often unclear (Wingate, 2012). Writing a good quality essay demands both knowledge and experience, which fledgling writers often lack (Hounsell, 1997). Since students' views and expectations vary considerably from that of their tutors' in regards to the essay genre (Andrews, 2003; McEwan, 2017; Wingate, 2012), the task of academic essay writing should not be considered as obvious or self-explanatory in any university course but, instead, should be integrated to those disciplines, which expect and require academic text writing (Wingate et al., 2011). When enrolling in a new course, young students expect clearly laid out rules and precise tutor guidance (McEwan, 2017), which, as involving and supporting measures, should bring the whole writing process into focus and shape all writing competences integrally. The aim of this article is to focus on the methodological problems arising from academic essay writing as a piece of discursive reasoning from the perspective of teaching writing. The article is based on action research conducted at the Cultural Institute of the University of Tartu. The research involves the BA course of Estonian literature, entitled "Analysing Prose" and its developmental work over the last four years (2015-2018), which was strongly motivated by the Good Teaching grant from the University of Tartu. The main problem that needed addressing with the "Analysing Prose" course had to do with the quality of essay writing as a specimen of academic text. Since the students experienced great methodological and subject driven difficulties in writing their essays, the teacher had to make several changes in the didactics of the subject. In addition, a variety of questions arose concerning teaching writing, to which we sought answers in this action research: 1) what are the main methodological problems in essay writing; 2) what particular subject didactic measures could help to support essay writing; 3) in what ways could we develop academic essay writing skills even further? The aim of the action research was to establish ways in which university teachers could more effectively assist students in their essay writing and improve the quality of their supervision. This is unavoidable if we are determined to improve the academic writing skills and eliminate common shortcomings and mistakes in the writing process. In order to get a more comprehensive overview, we had to cover both students' and tutors' perspectives in analysing the problems of essay writing. At first we examined the tutor's feedback to 78 essays, and it became clear that the main difficulties in academic essay writing concern various text creation skills: a) choosing appropriate levels of analysis and method; b) overall construction of the text, structure and coherence of particular text segments; c) development of themes, finding arguments, building connections between ideas; d) citing and referencing primary sources, connecting them to one's own ideas; e) phrasing ideas clearly; choosing appropriate and correct language skills. After this stage, we gathered information from the students as to how they perceive the requirements of academic essay writing and what difficulties they have personally experienced in the essay writing process. In examining their replies, it became apparent that the students' views on academic essay writing are relatively eclectic. The main gulf or dissonance between the tutors' comments and students' views surrounds the argumentation in the essay format: tutors' feedback emphasises the central role of argumentation in the essay, where as students' perspective does not stress this at all: they do not construe their writing predominantly as argument-based. The difficulties that students have encountered in essay writing are, in their view, mainly to do with, a) creative skills of a writer, b) analysing and interpreting primary sources, c) limiting and developing the subject of the essay, d) choosing appropriate styles of form, expression and language use. In order to achieve a clear and mutually comprehensive view, the differences need to be discussed thoroughly in seminars and the methodological principles and requirements of essay writing repeatedly voiced. In the development process of the course, we applied two didactic intervening methods, which support essay writing: 15 min. individual consultation/tutorial and written feedback to the first drafts of the essays. Both of these methods attempted to give an objective view of certain individual shortcomings and possibilities in order to improve the writing craft. Decisive action from tutors helped to strengthen the educational dialogue between teachers and students and, at the same time, shaped students as self-directed learners. This article directly discusses the positive impact and effectiveness of such intervening methods. The post-questionnaire of student's views showed that both the above mentioned methods did indeed help students to understand the essay assessment criteria and the tutors' expectations of an academic essay. According to students, the verbal tutorials and written feedback to first drafts of the essays helped to form a clearer understanding of the requirements for specialist academic texts and improved writing skills in all areas and competences. These positive changes were also further confirmed in the tutor's feedback to the last version of the essay, which convinced us that all learners had, to a certain degree, taken into account the suggestions and corrections of their tutors and had been made aware of their progress. Students found that these two intervening measures improved the quality of the course and, in turn, had increased the median of their final grades for the course. The action research showed that individual writing should be approached at a more complex level taking into account, among other things, the students' previous writing experiences as well as their understanding of the requirements of the genre. The article suggests several didactic approaches on how to make the academic essay writing process more effective. It is evident that the teaching process could be enhance by dividing the subject into smaller phases, consisting of logically ordered actions. Importantly, the phases of essay writing should be thoroughly discussed with students. It is the tutor's task to support the writing process, and offer a sufficient and clear overview of the attributes and the requirements of the essay form. It goes without saying, that the guidelines of the essays and criteria for assessment must be discussed together in seminars in order to avoid misunderstandings and false expectations. In addition to the guidelines, some of the core principles and stages of essay writing should be assisted by summarising figures and schema, which is particularly suitable for students prone to a more visual learning style. Poster presentation is also beneficial to this approach in which visual presentation is preferred to a verbal description. In order to avoid certain anticipated problems, it is recommended to draw up and discuss together with students some methodological test questions, which help to bring attention to needed areas. Also, a list of common mistakes would be helpful for students, where each type of mistake is given a full description. In addition, different stages of essay writing could be, of course, practised with students by giving them smaller writing tasks. It also pays off to read and figuratively assess fellow students' essays in order to understand genre traditions and notice common mistakes. A written reflection task, i.e. an intermediary report to the tutor could also be incorporated into the essay writing process, which should give students an opportunity to reflect their experiences of writing while still in the process of writing their essays. Since writing is a social act requiring dialogue with an estranging thought and a relation to the expected reader, it may well be worthwhile attempting to prepare essay writing in pairs. To sum up, it should be said that the necessary didactic changes in the course work, as well as tutor's more hands-on approach to guiding students, did indeed help to improve the academic essay writing skills of the students of Estonian literature and hopefully contributed to the overall prestige of the essay genre in higher education settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Maetagused is the property of Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folkloristics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the losses suffered by the opposing side during the Red Army offensive operation in the vicinity of Narva in Northeastern Estonia from 24 July to 7 august 1944 on the basis of archival material. These battles have been considered the bloodiest in Estonian history in historical literature. Based on Red Army documents, the losses of the Leningrad Front 2nd Shock Army and 8th Army can be considered to be approximately 35 000 killed, wounded and missing in action. The losses of the German Army Detachment Narva at the same time were approximately 10 000 in total, of which nearly 3200 were losses from military units manned primarily by Estonians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Horizontal visibility v in hemiboreal forest transects was measured in the field and then predicted, both from forest inventory (FI) data and from airborne laser scanning (ALS) data. Stand density N and mean diameter at breast height D were used as arguments in an FI predictive model assuming Poisson distribution of trees on a horizontal plane. It was found that a lack of FI data on forest regrowth and understorey trees caused v to be overestimated. Point cloud metrics of sparse ALS data from summer 2017 and spring 2019 were used as predictive variables for v in regression models. The best models were based on three variables: the 10th percentile of the point cloud height distribution, relative density of returns in a horizontal layer ranging 0.7–2.2 m above the ground, and canopy cover. The models had a coefficient of determination of up to 67% and a residual standard error of less than 25 m. In forests in which fertile soil produces rapid height growth of understorey woody vegetation after recent thinning, visibility was found to be substantially overestimated because the understorey was not detected by the lidar measurements.