Search

How do individuals escape embarrassing moments in interaction? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and video recordings of weekly street corner ciphers (impromptu rap sessions), this paper expands Goffman's theory of defensive and protective face-work. The findings reveal formulaic and indirect dimensions of face-work. First, this paper shows how individuals use prescripted techniques and other canned resources to overcome embarrassing gaffes in interaction. Specifically, rappers use “writtens” (prewritten rhymes) when they are close to “falling off,” a local term for messing up and stopping abruptly during a “freestyle” (improvised) rap performance. Second, this paper describes how shared pressures to sustain an interaction can lead to collateral face-saving. In the cipher, surrounding peers “jump in” and begin rapping when somebody else falls off. Although this protects the person who is falling off from embarrassment, it is often done to “keep the flow going” in the cipher. At the end, this paper also outlines situations in which individuals withhold face protection from others. These findings point to other social situations in which individuals escape embarrassment with canned resources and through collateral face-saving.

Testing assessments of undergraduate political science students is predictable and stagnant. A missing, yet valuable, testing assessment tool that can contribute to the repertoire of political science is the oral examination. Borrowing this testing tool largely from foreign language departments, oral exams require students to “think on their feet” in order to critically assess and appropriately respond to questions. The ability to engage in this type of activity is a valuable skill that will further prepare students for “real world” situations in which they are asked to participate in exchanges demonstrating their verbal and critical assessment skills in possible impromptu situations. It is the goal of this research project to explore the merits and pitfalls of utilizing oral examinations as an integral testing tool in political science. The authors draw upon their experiences using oral exams in the classroom, the reaction of their students towards the examination process, and how oral examinations are a...

This study investigated the relationships among trait anxiety, audience nonverbal feedback, attributions, and public speaking state anxiety. Fifty-nine (N = 59) undergraduate students randomly assigned to either a positive or negative condition of audience nonverbal feedback delivered an impromptu speech and completed a trait anxiety measure, state anxiety scale, and attributional questionnaire about audience nonverbal feedback. The results provided some support for a path model indicating that negative nonverbal feedback increased external attributions, which, in turn, increased state anxiety. Trait anxiety was not more predictive of state anxiety than nonverbal feedback.

Heckling has rarely been examined in popular music studies. The argument of this piece is that audience members heckle in an attempt to alter the balance of power in live musical performance. To understand this I introduce the idea of the “symbolic economy,” a framework of assumptions and interpretations held by audience members that gives stars their social value. My argument is that each musician's aura is perceived when his or her performance is both recognizably popular and emotionally meaningful to each fan. Heckling can potentially damage the aura by shifting attention away from the star, condemning the content of his or her performance, and forcing him or her to make an impromptu response. Drawing on theory from sociology and literary studies, the article supplies examples to help us understand the potentials of this process by creating a typology of different heckles. Finally, it explores the ways in which musicians have carefully managed any threats posed by cries from the audience.

The disruption of the Dutch premiere of Stockhausen's Stimmung in June 1969 has become an often-told aspect of the piece's early history, but existing accounts—including Stockhausen's own—significantly misrepresent the event. The performance was interrupted, not (as Stockhausen later claimed) by young, politically engaged composers such as Peter Schat and Louis Andriessen, but by a group of composition students who wished to ‘participate’ in the piece. In an impromptu debate following the aborted performance, Schat and Andriessen defended Stockhausen's right to have his music heard in silence. I interpret this clash of young Dutch musicians in terms of the sharp schism that emerged in 1969 between Amsterdam's thriving hippie counterculture, whose communal ‘happenings’ encouraged the dismantling of the performer–audience distinction, and the city's student movement, whose emphasis on political action found reflection in Schat's and Andriessen's growing interest in communism. It is clear, however, that Schat's and Andriessen's stance was also motivated by commitments to musical professionalism and to the ideology of musical progress, commitments that sat as uneasily with the musical preferences of the student movement as they did with the hippie counterculture

I see two scenes in my mind. In the first scene, I stand with my back to the University of Houston's library. In front of me, an expansive green space is covered by a modest crowd. It's a sun-splashed and seasonal spring morning and students and other faculty are collected in an unsanctioned, impromptu teach-in. The United States has just begun bombing Baghdad. I sling the mega phone over my shoulder and read out a speech that begins: "Most of you that are here have been a part of the struggle to keep this devastating event from happening." I speak of powerless Arabs throughout the region whose lives will be made more difficult by U.S. policy. When I come to the part about the U.S. prejudice against the Palestinians in favor of Israel's Likud government, I am moved by an audible affirmation from the gathered students. Behind me, tenured professors in the department where I teach look on approv ingly. A lonely reporter records interviews. After my speech, several listeners approach me saying they want to read the text, which they believe should be published. Another student whose confident manner clashes with his boyish looks walks up to me. He wants to argue, so we talk for twenty minutes. Our exchange lurches incoherently from point to point. Although I give him my card as we part, the gesture feels perfunctory. We are no more connected than before he approached me. We are each locked in our own mindset. In the second scene, it's a new morning. Eight months have passed. This time I am in North Texas, at an airport baggage claim area. Again it is sunny, even though it's winter now, and the light bounces off the byzantine concrete ramps and tunnels outside and fills the corridor. I am surrounded by a battalion of relatives. I am still in Texas and still in a community that I claim as my own. As a family, we are surrounded by a larger crowd of strangers, typical North Texans, mostly in baggy denim skirts or Dockers, but with a few pairs of cowboy boots mixed in. This time journalists abound. The crowd is clap ping, cheering, and whistling. The noise is escalating, building on itself and drowning out tinny pre-recorded patriotic music. Some are waving small American flags picked up at Wal-Mart. And in front of us as the cheers crescendo, in long interminable files that move inexorably through the crowd, all shapes, sizes and colors of American soldiers are passing, passing, passing.

Large-scale writing programs can add value to the traditional timed writing assessment by using aspects of the essays to assess the effectiveness of institutional goals, programs, and curriculums. The “six learning goals” prompt in this study represents an attempt to provide an accurate writing assessment that moves beyond scores. This paper focuses on student challenges to the prompt and testing situation to reveal that many students successfully challenge the task as a deliberate strategy, while less savvy test-takers clearly resist in response to anger, confusion or frustration. While only a small minority of test-takers openly protest the prompt or testing situation, the paper suggests that all students could be better prepared to reflect upon their university experience in timed essays through more coaching and experience with reflective impromptu questions. This finding offers both encouragement and caution for writing programs seeking a single test that can generate both placement scores and valuable feedback.

It is 11 a.m. on no particular Wednesday in spring semester and the “Bull Market” (our campus outdoor venue for student groups to advertise and promote their activities and/or sell their fundraising wares) is just beginning to buzz for the day.1 One student group has set up a mock graveyard with small white crosses marking the “graves” of “unborn babies” “murdered” by abortions. They also have a table handing out professionally pre-printed leaflets. There is purportedly some correlation between the number of crosses and the number of local abortions performed, although the validity of such statistics seems quite suspect given what we know to be the factual inaccuracy of the rhetoric on the fliers. As this event was unexpected until students arrived on campus that day, Feminist Student Alliance (FSA), the undergraduate student group on our campus that is housed and supported by the women’s studies department, is unprepared to counter this rhetoric, but nonetheless, they go into action. Within thirty minutes they have corralled four to five members, created a large sign reading “They do not speak for me,” and set up a table handing out fliers which were created on an impromptu basis but provide more accurate data about abortion taken from reputable, quotable, scientific sources. Following a calm and polite discussion between FSA and the pro-life student group that has formally reserved space for their display, FSA has set up across the sidewalk from the pro-life group, creating a space where students entering campus walk, albeit unhindered, through the gauntlet between the two warring rhetorics. Students seem to shrink as they walk past. Some begin to avoid the sidewalk altogether, crossing on the grass. And thus we have replicated the national debate about abortion in our own campus, perhaps in a more civil and polite manner. But the roles are the same: a few staunch advocates of the “pro-life” side, a few staunch advocates of the “pro-choice” side, and a large public who, while they may or may not hold personal opinions, avoid these settings with great distaste.

Previous research has provided evidence that the need to attain appetitive outcomes positively affects the certainty of winning that outcome in purely chance-based games. Three experiments were conducted to test the notion that the need to avoid an aversive outcome affects winning confidence in the same fashion. In Experiment 1, participants were given the opportunity to avoid having to give an introductory remark (low need) or an impromptu speech (high need) to a group of peers by winning a chance-based card-drawing game. As predicted, confidence-in-winning ratings were found to be a positive function of outcome need. In Experiment 2, participants faced a similar card-drawing procedure but this time could avoid ostensibly having their arms submersed in either room temperature water (low need) or cold water (high need) need. Again as expected, results showed that participants in the high need condition not only displayed greater winning confidence but also believed more skill was involved in playing the purely chance-based game. In Experiment 3, the methodology of Experiment 1 was replicated incorporating a skill measure. The results of this experiment mirrored those of Experiment 2. Results of these investigations are discussed in terms of control theory.

Models of social phobia suggest that socially anxious individuals have critical evaluation expectancies, expecting others to be inherently critical in their appraisal of performance. One potential source for these expectancies is generalization or projection of an individual's own critical evaluation tendencies. We recruited 89 students, informing them that they would be asked to deliver an impromptu speech. Participants were shown three short pre-recorded speeches and asked to rate the performance of the speaker in each. Participants were also asked to rate how well they thought they would perform. While social anxiety symptoms were correlated with predictions of poorer self-performance, the relationship between social anxiety symptoms and a tendency to more critically appraise the performance of others was only observed for speakers who displayed low levels of anxiety symptoms.

(2008). An Impromptu Visit to Rien-a-Faire A Tribute to Bernard Suits. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 111-119.

In John of Ford's vita of the twelfth-century English hermit Wulfric of Haselbury we hear of an unusual problem that confronted the holy man at the height of his ascetic career. After successfully overcoming his carnal impulses, training himself to sleep on a wicker hurdle, and surviving a direct attack by the devil disguised as a huge snake, Wulfric's ascetic regime was almost derailed for want of a good armorer. According to his biographer, the length of Wulfric's coat of mail inter fered with his constant genuflections, and the hermit accordingly consulted Wil liam Fitzwalter, the local nobleman who had given it to him as a gift. Over William's protests that Wulfric ought to send his armor to London, or at least to the nearby town of Exeter, for professional alterations, the hermit insisted they try cutting off several rows of rings with an ordinary pair of shears. Thanks to Wulfric's earnest prayers for divine intervention, the impromptu alteration was a success, and the discarded links were distributed to the people of the neighbor hood, who prized them as holy relics for many years afterwards. Most impor tantly, Wulfric was able to resume wearing "the mail shirt with which he had armed himself to do battle in God's cause."2

This is the second of two papers based on a study of how digital and paper diaries contribute to students’ understanding of the processes of their learning within their academic disciplines. The purpose of the study was to use diary writing as a vehicle by which we would try and comprehend how students both make sense of assessment feedback and how this impacts on their emotional and motivational attitudes toward improving subsequent work. In this paper, samples are provided of diary entries for both digital and paper forms that illustrate the distinctive approaches to prospective but often highly self‐critical and impromptu writing, as often characterized by the digital diary entries, when compared with retrospective and deeply reflective writing, which was common to much of the paper diary writing. The students who preferred the paper diaries seemed to have less mutable self‐concepts, using their entries to craft and re‐script ideas (often quite negative and potentially damaging ones) about themselves a...

Speakers often perform impromptu translations during bilingual interaction. Such translations can hold a wide variety of socio-pragmatic functions including reiteration, emphasis, recasting, and repair. When translations occur in multi-party talk where the interactants are of mixed linguistic proficiencies, they may also serve to include interlocutors who have been excluded from prior talk that was delivered in their weaker language. In this respect, translations re-partition interactants in an inclusive way. Making use of both conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA), this paper examines a collection of such post-exclusionary translations video-recorded among Japanese–English bilingual teenagers at an international school. A detailed sequential analysis of this bilingual practice reveals that the act of translation makes relevant various elements of the speakers' and recipients' identities. When a bilingual speaker offers a translation to someone, he or she casts the recipient in the category of novice (or ‘non-native’), often even despite real-time claims to comprehension from that person. Indeed, the study found that when non-natives offered a receipt token after a turn delivered in a medium that was not assumed to belong to them, it often prompted the speaker to repeat the prior turn in the recipient's preferred medium.

Wi-Fi marries Internet-based networking and radio broadcasting. Although still nascent, the technology is wildly popular. Geography is a central consideration in the functioning of Wi-Fi technology. Yet, its influence is just beginning to be investigated. Examination of the space of Wi-Fi poses problems as wireless data traffic is invisible to the eye and its underlying apparatus is impromptu and veiled to traditional geographic inquiry. A scheme for detecting Wi-Fi infrastructure and transmissions and analyzing their geographic properties is introduced in this article. The application of the scheme to the study of Wi-Fi geography in Salt Lake City, Utah, is described. A dense network of impromptu Wi-Fi infrastructure is found to permeate the city's built environment and the urban area has been blanketed in a fog of Wi-Fi transmissions without any centralized organization. This Wi-Fi cloud is surprisingly resilient to network and physical problems, although the early signs of geographically systematic thr...

In Turkey, creative drama has been incorporated into many fields; in particular, it has been used in training teachers. In learning how to use drama to teach different subjects, trainee teachers have always participated willingly in drama studies. Part of the reason for this is that Turkish people are familiar with drama activities through traditional children's games, rituals that have been performed across Anatolia and impromptu events in the traditional ceremonies. For example, while the women at henna nights (Mendhi) apply henna to the bride's palm, a woman who disguises herself as a man pretends to be drunk and harasses the other women so as to generate a playful atmosphere. Generally during the activities that require female and male students to be close to or touch each other, there are not any difficulties because they have a culture where it is common to hold hands while performing folk dances at weddings and other similar events. That said, strict Muslim students are less comfortable with such a...

While it is important to read the trial scenes in Dion Boucicault’s melodramas as popular entertainment, it would be a serious mistake to allow their political valences to go unexplored. The trial scenes in Arrah-na-Pogue and The Octoroon contain an edge of social critique that, while turning neither play into a political tour-de-force , reveals a far more subtle and perceptive political acumen than Boucicault is generally given credit for. Both scenes reveal judicial systems dangerously poised between two forms of excess that threaten to inhibit their ability to legislate fairly. Legal language becomes a form of institutional excess that, through its failure to translate the experiences of marginalized characters adequately, allows its privileged speakers to abuse their power. At the other extreme, the trial scenes expose the court’s equally dangerous susceptibility to popular opinion, its theatricality suggesting a potential to be swayed unfairly by personal charisma and flashy oratory. In thus staging a nuanced portrayal of the law’s uneasy position between two equally dangerous forms of excess, Boucicault invites his international audiences to consider their own judicial systems, to examine what lies beneath the court’s unique blend of theatricality and political power. While both plays hint at the fallibility of both authoritarian and populist interpretations of justice, Arrah-na-Pogue most explicitly recognizes the danger of a powerful, univocal court, while the impromptu trial in The Octoroon registers the potential for chaos and confusion in a democratic judicial system.

The use of reading-to-write tasks for assessing academic writing in English is increasing, often replacing traditional impromptu writing-only tasks. This shift has led to a number of studies comparing the written products of these two task types. To add to this literature, this article reports on a study comparing test takers’ processes in composing reading-to-write and writing-only test tasks. Ten non-native English-speaking students at a large Midwestern United States university participated in talk-aloud writing sessions and interviews. They wrote on tasks developed for the English placement exam at the university. The data were analyzed qualitatively across tasks and test takers. Differences were found across tasks and writers with the reading-to-write task eliciting a more interactive process for some writers and writing-only tasks requiring more initial and less online planning. Those with more experience and interest in writing reported using a more interactive process. To use the results in choosing between the two tasks, careful consideration of the construct for academic writing is needed. However, the results suggest a more authentic process in reading-to-write tasks, and also reveal test takers’ preference for these tasks.

In her contribution to a recent collection of Beckett criticism, Luce Irigaray seeks to clarify what might be meant by the pervasive and murky term of ethical parlance: “the other.” She wants to preserve its ethical force from a popular, desiccated meaning common in everyday speech that promotes something like interpersonal respect. Too often, Irigaray says, discussions invoking “the other” bypass the sheer difference of another human being and try to shape it into a palatable sameness. This tendency is not simply a bad habit perpetuated for the sake of convenience; rather, it has deep (and not necessarily bad) roots in Western cultures. Irigaray explains that Western cultures, for example, teach that we ought to meet visitors with hospitality, as demonstrated whenever we open our homes to them and even, if need be, offer them a bed in a “guest room.” This offering, Irigaray claims, is entirely on our own terms, and, as magnanimous as it may be, it has little to do with encountering the other: “It corresponds to a kind of space for hospitality, in fact neutral or indifferent with respect to whoever is coming toward us. We are not yet available to the call of the other.” If opening my home to a stranger does not constitute a meeting with the other, then what, if anything, does? Irigaray suspects that we have domesticated otherness in order to avoid risking our secure sense of self. If I, for example, make a point to befriend people whose attitudes differ from my own, they may broaden my own perspective on things (again, not necessarily a bad thing, as such), but I remain entrenched in my own—somewhat enlarged—subjective position. “To recognize the existence of another subjectivity implies recognizing that it belongs to, and constitutes, a proper world, which cannot be substituted for mine, that the subjectivity of the other is irreducible to my subjectivity.” To what extent can there be contact between self and other if our subjectivities are “irreducible”? This is the fundamental question of Irigaray’s essay nominally about Beckett entitled “The Path toward the Other,” and, as a response, she proposes that such contact is a future possibility that will take place outside of one’s own subjective world

During the late 1990s, participants in Freaknic, the annual black college spring break gathering, were greeted by the Atlanta police in riot gear. Defying the police, women gave impromptu performances, sometimes stripping for participants' cameras. Thompson shows how these performances were a response not only to the city's treatment of Freaknic but also to Atlanta's long history of using force to control race, gender, and class.

In India the contemporary city is largely defined by its kinetic condition, that is its movement and the place-making of its residents in the form of festivals, rituals, impromptu bazaars, and events. The kinetic city has largely replaced the static city (its physical architecture) as the primary and most dynamic aspect of urban India. In light of this, conservation students and professionals who work and study in India must look to the kinetic city for their cues when assessing significaixce and developing conservation plans or interventions. Architectural conservation programmes need to broaden their scope of concerns to reach beyond the material fabric to include the expertise of urban planning and the motivation and vision of local community groups. It will only be through the integration of these diverse actors that architectural conservation will bridge the objects of the past with the motion of the present and the direction of the future. If conservation of the built heritage in India is to be relevant (useful) it will need to embrace the kinetic city and accommodate the dance of its residents.

Unlike other biopics about composer Franz Liszt, which are concerned with chronicling his life story, Liszt's Rhapsody (1996) transforms an obscure incident in his life into a parable of political correctness, targeted for younger viewers. The film will be placed within the context of other Liszt biopics, including Charles Vidor's Song without End (1960), James Lapine's Impromptu (1989), and Ken Russell's controversial Lisztomania (1975). Together, they all function in terms of filmic conventions governing historical and documentary truth.

Rania Stephan's nine-minute video Le Pont (The Bridge) follows the movements of a tall, angular man moving through the southern suburbs of Beirut. The camera first catches sight of him copping attitude in the midst of a traffic jam. He steps off his scooter and waves a yellow Hezbollah flag for a clutch of gawking journalists. Swaggering, prancing, putting on an impromptu one-man show—he poses for a photographer who approaches and seems eager, in the vacuum of a war ended, for a more colorful, humorous shot of postwar posturing and the politics of display.

In the aftermath of catastrophic events, when plans for organized and timely response break down, impromptu groups often emerge to provide disaster relief. Much remains to be learned about the internal dynamics of these emergent response groups whose representatives may include members from organizations with relief missions; private sector organizations offering resources; and private citizens with the information, relationships, or physical and mental stamina to help. Organizational theories have the potential to contribute to a better understanding of emergent response groups and how they efficiently coordinate knowledge, people, resources, tasks, and technology, thereby substantially improving disaster response for future catastrophes. We apply one organization science theory toward better understanding of these groups—transactive memory systems theory—which is a theory about knowledge coordination in groups. Our application of this theory to emergent response groups requires extending the theory in three ways: the role of expertise in task assignment, how groups function when credibility in member expertise cannot be validated, and how expertise is coordinated. By demonstrating how transactive memory systems theory can be extended to the unique operating conditions of emergent response groups, we hope to inspire organization science researchers to accept the challenge of adapting their theories to study this important problem of our time.

Pascal Bruckner is a moralist. Not a moralizer. Not a preacher, either. Even less an apostle of good intentions. To him we owe a salacious novel that shocked and scandalized, an extremely rare event in the soft, jaded Europe of the early years of this new century.1 In short, our author is not a practitioner of the edifying genre; he dares to write essays tackling public life that do not fall under the heading of erotic literature either. He does not propose filling the holes in the ozone layer, is not planning out a tax on air travel to save the starving, and neither jogs nor bikes with a view toward preventing the polar icecap from melting. This difficult character with a perpetual smile dispassionately sizes up well-intentioned masquerades, a worthy pupil of the "psychologists" another name for the moralists of the seventeenth century that Nietzsche celebrated in Human, All Too Human, as a French exception: "La Rochefoucauld and the other French masters of the examination of souls are like skillful marksmen who aim with precision at the target and regularly hit the dark center but the dark center of human nature." Except that in our historico-global centuries, the darkness of souls nowadays haunts confessionals, alcoves and antechambers far less than it explodes on the screen during the TV news hour and sets the five continents ablaze. Now a public matter, universal cruelty is shrouded nonetheless in the usual precautions and other deceptive euphemisms that camouflaged individual and private horrors in days gone by: denials, cover-ups, and bad faith take turns to collectively protect our desire to sleep easy and dream sweet dreams. Today's moralist, grappling with the mass media, has a lot on his plate. The France of the late twentieth century was a nice playing field for essayists short on insolence. An impromptu and somewhat domineering "victor" of the Second World War, this country lived through the Cold War in an impassioned but protected manner. A number of her intellectuals treated themselves to participating from afar, painlessly and without sanctions, in the enthusiastic exaltations of dogmatists and the blindness of multiple world revolutions. Sartre, a brilliant mind and nimble writer, sumptuously incarnated this fellow-traveling. Then he threw in the towel

Coming to Minnesota to escape a devastating war, Somali refugees found themselves living in rental units that had little resemblance to the dwellings they left behind. Interviews with eight Somali women in their Minnesota homes reveal the difficult choices they had to make in order to preserve Somali cultural traditions and practices amidst strong American influences. As a way to construct the Somali sense of difference, women appropriated their living environments by relying on all five senses and various forms of cultural expressions that range from burning unsi to adorning the walls with Somali handicrafts. Unwilling to let go of valued Somali institutions, many had to make bounded choices like cooking while veiled in open kitchens, limiting children's play to accommodate formal impromptu visits, and restraining their social gatherings to the bedrooms to continue the tradition of gender separation. By proposing design solutions to the housing problems revealed through the study, this paper hopes to alert those who work with refugees and other immigrant groups that, with a little extra care, a house can be transformed into a home that fosters a sense of belonging and eases the stresses of adjusting to new life circumstances.

According to the systemic perspective, it is possible to view the musical phenomenon in the light of those elements which characterize the dynamic process of Emergence: the non linear dimension, the level of complexity, the logical opening and the element of chaos. The musical event of an impromptu and improvised performance on the time space continuum, may represent the perceptible synaesthetic process which both identifies and defines the observer/listener. The significance of the Emergence process and systemic coherence in the manifestation of an art form so directly linked to the idea of impermanence, finds an ideal representation through the realization of the origins of the creative process. To this end we will refer to the improvisational nature of Baroque music, as found in Ciaccone, Passacagli and Ground, but also to the vocal and instrumental production in closed and codified form with particular regard to the contrapuntal repertoire. Using the essential instruments of the Basso Continuo, the harpsichord and the bass viol, as well as the voice, the musical passages chosen will be reworked and performed in an impromptu manner. The resulting piece of music thereby constituting an original and unrepeatable composition, fruit of the improvisation and interaction between musicians and their synergy with the public.

Participants will learn four techniques using notecards for engaging students in large-lecture classroom STEM courses, to enhance student engagement. The strategies have these approaches: (1) cold-calling students with impromptu questions (putting the student "on the spot"), (2) asking students to bring questions for next class, (3) giving students the option "to be asked" a question or "to ask" the instructor a question, and (4) identifying reporter students to reflect on group discussion or clicker polling questions. During the session, participants will engage with the techniques and consider data from our research to identify how these methods could be used in other courses to counter communication anxiety, improve grades, increase participation, and increase attendance. These notecards also contain student information such as name, major, and past experiences with science, helping the instructor better know the students in the course. Four semesters of student data were collected. Student survey responses about the benefits of these methods were associated with unique student grades, participation, and attendance. The technique was reported to make a substantial positive contribution to the level of engagement in the course. These techniques are applicable across different disciplines and are an easy-to-learn, student-centered teaching strategy., Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference Proceedings, Vol 7 (2015): The Science of Learning: Using Research to Improve Teaching

The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) made a modest but important commitment of a single destroyer to the Vietnam War on a rotational basis between March 1967 and September 1971. The contrast between the deployments of the American-designed and built Charles F. Adams class guided missile destroyers and the British-designed Daring class destroyer, HMAS Vendetta, represented the fruition of a small navy being pulled in two different directions. The RAN was undergoing a transitional period, which saw the service increasingly align with the United States Navy. This was a monumental shift in policy, as the Royal Navy had provided a model for the RAN to emulate since its creation in 1911. The Vietnam War offered a clear test of standardization and demonstrated that common ship designs provided a platform for interoperability, but did not guarantee it. The Australian ships were able to make a worthwhile contribution to a predominantly American naval effort, but they faced a number of challenges in achieving interoperability. The basis for successful co-operation was provided by the existence of common procedures and standardized equipment, but was necessarily supplemented by ad hoc measures and impromptu workarounds.

The development and integration of social networking services and smartphones have made it easy for individuals to organize impromptu social activities anywhere and anytime. Main challenges arising in organizing impromptu activities are mostly due to the requirements of making timely invitations in accordance with the potential activity locations, corresponding to the locations of, and the relationships among the candidate attendees. Various combinations of candidate attendees and activity locations create a large solution space. Thus, in this paper, we propose Multiple Rally-Point Social Spatial Group Query (MRGQ), to select an appropriate activity location for a group of nearby attendees with tight social relationships. We first consider a special case of MRGQ, namely the Socio-Spatial Group Query (SSGQ), to determine a set of socially acquainted attendees while minimizing the total spatial distance to a specific activity location. We prove that SSGQ is NP-hard and formulate an Integer Linear Programming optimization model for SSGQ. We then develop an efficient algorithm, called SSGS, which employs effective pruning techniques to reduce the running time to determine the optimal solution. Moreover, we propose a heuristic algorithm for SSGQ to efficiently produce good solutions. We next consider the more general MRGQ. Although MRGQ is NP-hard, the number of attendees in practice is usually small enough such that an optimal solution can be found efficiently. Therefore, we first propose an Integer Linear Programming optimization model for MRGQ. We then design an efficient algorithm, called MAGS, which employs effective search space exploration and pruning strategies to reduce the running time for finding the optimal solution. We also propose to further optimize efficiency by indexing the potential activity locations. A user study demonstrates the strength of using SSGS and MAGS over manual coordination in terms of both solution quality and efficiency. Experimental results on real datasets show that our algorithms can process SSGQ and MRGQ efficiently and significantly outperform other baseline algorithms, including one based on the commercial parallel optimizer IBM CPLEX.

A man is deep in thought. He is immersed in his book and seemingly unaware of his surroundings. The happy noises of playing children and their laughter, the ebb and flow of the conversations of their parents or caregivers, the shouts of youths kicking a ball, and the exchanges between some grown-ups busily sweeping away yesterdays garbage are all thrown together and fill the place with life. This man has chosen a reading spot on some rather impromptu and makeshift-looking, yet at closer inspection very sturdy and durable wooden structure. His full concentration is devoted to turning the pages. On the cover of his book there appears one single word printed in bold letters. The word is Lenin. Lenin leads us to a time of extreme political and economic turmoil. “ ‘Truth is concrete’— this was the sentence written in big letters over Bertolt Brechts desk in his Danish exile—quoting Lenin quoting Hegel quoting Augustine. In a time of extreme political turbulence it was a constant reminder never to forget the reality around in Europe of the late 1930s.”1 I saw this contemporary reader of Lenin who was fully immersed in his book in El Campo de Cebada in Madrid (Figure 8.1). I came to visit this public urban garden-cum-playground-cum-cultural venue in early spring 2014. Again, it is a time where one is constantly reminded never to forget the reality around, both locally and globally.

In order to communicate effectively, EFL learners require considering a variety of linguistic, contextual, cultural, and interactional aspects of complex communicative process of English learning along with receiving appropriate tasks. The tasks of speaking assessment are of paramount importance in EFL settings. The current study focused on one main factor that has been proposed in TBLT, i.e. topic familiarity to investigate the effect of topic familiarity on EFL oral presentations. The participants were 30 female intermediate participants ranged from 14 to 18 year old studying at one English language institute in Shiraz, Iran. A sample model of Oxford Placement Test was used to determine the participants' level of English proficiency. Then, the participants were asked to give impromptu presentations about unfamiliar topics. Their oral presentations were evaluated as pre-tests. In order to administer post-tests participants were asked to work on a new topic for the subsequent session. All oral presentations were evaluated through Brown and Abeywickrama (2010) checklist. Using SPSS software, paired- sample t -test was used to analyze the collected data. The results indicated that there was significant difference between mean scores of pre-tests and post-tests. The findings of this study indicate that topic familiarity has an influence on learners' oral presentations.

This paper introduces a novel performer-guided style of mixed-reality performance art, which facilitates impromptu performance of the dancers. With this approach, the virtual characters are able to interact with live performers in realtime according to pre-programmed AI. In particular, this concept has been realized as a show called Future Circus. Meanwhile, we also briefly introduce the WISE platform, a full-stack wearable system for supporting performer-guided performance art developed by our research team.

Service robots in public places need to both understand environmental cues and move in ways that people can understand and predict. We developed and tested interactions with a trash barrel robot to better understand the implicit protocols for public interaction. In eight lunch-time sessions spread across two crowded campus dining destinations, we experimented with piloting our robot in Wizard of Oz fashion, initiating and responding to requests for impromptu interactions centered on collecting people's trash. Our studies progressed from open-ended experimentation to testing specific interaction strategies that seemed to evoke clear engagement and responses, both positive and negative. Observations and interviews show that a) people most welcome the robot's presence when they need its services and it actively advertises its intent through movement; b) people create mental models of the trash barrel as having intentions and desires; c) mistakes in navigation are indicators of autonomous control, rather than a remote operator; and d) repeated mistakes and struggling behavior polarized responses as either ignoring or endearing.

Vehicular Ad-hoc system is currently picking up more concern because of inquisitive circumstance of transportation framework. Vehicular interchanges are typically created as a piece of Intelligent transportation System (ITS). VANET is the subclass of versatile specially appointed system (MANET). In VANET'S vehicles go about as hubs and switches which correspond with one another by sending messages. There are existing two sorts of impromptu systems in portable interchanges. One is vehicle to vehicle (V to V) correspondence and second is vehicle to roadside correspondence (V to R). Presently it is more inclined to security assaults. There are different sort of assaults like Denial of Service assault, Fabrication assault, Alteration assault, Sybil assault, Prankster assault, vindictive assault and so forth. In this paper different parts of VANET's are contemplated.

Dynamics is an inherent attribute in nonstationary networks. Topological and interpersonal changes produce network volatilities. Relationships blossom and wither over time producing social networks that ebb and flow over time. Some networks grow while others shrink. A network might split into smaller networks. An example is a nucleus family that spawns offspring networks. It is also possible that networks merge into larger ones. Teaming and cooperative coalition formations are merging mechanisms that might lead to economic monopolies and monopsonies. Some networks such as in the law enforcement are formed impromptu, whereas others reflect volatility in relationships. Time graphs and Markov chains are formal, dynamic network models presented. Exercises emphasize temporal network changes.

Breakthrough innovation increasingly requires intense interaction that involves external parties jointly solving problems or exploring new opportunities. In healthcare, care coordination and transitions of care require coordination of patient care among multiple and often independent care settings that are often completely different systems of care, both professionally and institutionally. Multiparty cloud solutions and infrastructure management services require close collaboration by multiple vendors and the client particularly during times of transition. The aftermath of catastrophic events often involves impromptu groups of individuals from different organizations and backgrounds that collaborate to provide disaster relief. This minitrack explores inter-organizational collaboration, particularly in terms of multi-level dynamics and the role of information and communication technology in such dynamics. We celebrate any acceptable methodology and theory, and encourages any level of analysis and papers that take a cross-level perspective.

Background: Science teachers from multiple kindergartens through twelfth grade (K-12) schools participated in a two-day environmental health training introducing them to newer methods of engagement and interaction adaptable for the classroom environment. This paper describes the use of Liberating Structures (LS) in the two day training for interaction between trainers and K-12 teachers, and the LS structures preferred by these K-12 teachers. These liberating structures are also compared to current engagement and learning techniques or strategies commonly used by teachers in any classroom and to encourage and promote science and health education that could ultimately improve the health and well-being of individuals and families. Results: Teachers describe the selection of liberating structures they felt would be most useful in a classroom environment for teaching science and health related topics, promoting critical thinking and developing ownership of environmental and health science topics. The most popular structure that appealed to teachers was the ‘1-2-4-ALL’ structure. In general, the teachers felt that this structure could be useful to the critical thinking process as students could use this structure to, first, independently think about a science project idea and then develop this idea in a small and then large group, progressively. “Shift and Share” and ‘Impromptu Networking’ were also appealing as structures for the scientific inquiry method, where students could be led through the critical thinking process to develop and test a challenging science or health related project hypothesis. Conclusion: This was a pilot study to look at the potential for use of LS in the classroom and for teaching science and health through improved engagement. Further research is recommended to determine which of these structures are better matched with the scientific method, and education and improved learning in the classroom. Sustained follow-up training for teachers on these strategies is also recommended with more intense training and practice, along with evaluation on using these structures in the classroom. The use and application of these liberating structures in community setting to promote ownership over environmental and health issue is also encouraged.

Since political discourse reflects the close relation between politics and language, it has attracted many scholars’ attention at home and abroad. Therefore, English political public speaking (EPPS for short), the subcategory of political discourse, has been chosen as the subject of the study. Based on the findings of Kenneth Burke’s new rhetoric and classical rhetoric, the identification strategies of EPPS in John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address from the perspectives of rhetorical content and rhetorical form were probed. Since EPPS is always well-prepared rather than impromptu, the identification strategies via rhetorical content and form are always employed by the speaker to accomplish their purposes.

The 1991 film Impromptu (Lapine) might seem an unlikely departure point for approaching nineteenth-century French women writers’ literary humor since its heroine, George Sand, is not particularly known for it. The film does offer, though, a familiar scenario pertinent to the ways in which women are still, following Reginald Blyth, quoted by Regina Barreca, the ‘unlaughing at which men laugh.’ (1998: 2) At the time of its release, feminist scholars hoped that Sand might get her cinematic due, or at least a more nuanced portrait than the one in George Vidor’s 1944 A Song to Remember. However one feels about Judy Davis in the role of Sand, it turned out that Impromptu’s portrait of les enfants du siecle recycles caricatures of literary women perfected in nineteenth-century French print culture. Indeed, what the film does and does not say about writing women is a sign that after years of feminist efforts to question the canon, the audience is still steered to identify with male artists, endowed in this case with the most obvious comic force. In one burlesque scene at a provincial aristocrat’s chateau, to which a host of parasitic Romantic artists and writers have been invited, Sand’s spurned lover of the moment, Mallefille, challenges Alfred de Musset to a duel. Sand’s wine guzzling, bitter ex-lover literally steals the show. Preparing to meet his death in the duel, he drinks himself into a stupor, rides his horse into George’s bedroom, and vainly tries to woo her. When the horse defecates on Sand’s manuscript, Musset erupts into laughter and guffaws, ‘The horse is a critic!’ Of course, the audience is meant to laugh with him and it does. Sand does not. Of course, what is wrong with this picture depends on how and why we look at it, and who the ‘we’ is, since, as Regina Barreca puts it, ‘[c]omedy, out of all the textual territories explored, is the least universal [...] rigidly mapped and

In 1999 the government of Bangladesh forcefully evicted sex workers from a large cluster of brothels just outside Dhaka. Members of the sex worker organisation, Ulka, immediately sought support from Naripokkho, a country-wide women’s NGO. The Naripokkho office was transformed into an impromptu shelter with over 40 women sleeping there, and a few more staying with staff in their homes. This led to a new set of relationships and alliances between the sex workers and staff. Naripokkho and other Bangladeshi women’s organisations supported a campaign for the rights of the sex workers and their struggles to defend themselves against the illegal evictions. This article explores the lessons learnt by these organisations through their involvement. It suggests that these struggles gave a new and more public meaning to discussions on sexuality and sexual rights that had already been taking place within the women’s movement.

Entering an ‘English Impromptu Speech Contest’ intimidates many students who do not have a good command of the English language. Some choose to give up before the contest date while others stand speechless on the stage. This paper identifies a range of problems confronted by contestants from my college, the Yuanpei Institute of Science and Technology in Taiwan. These problems can be categorized into three aspects: (1) language, (2) speaking skills and (3) background knowledge. Language poses many difficulties; many students have a narrow knowledge of English vocabulary, others have a limited understanding of correct word usage, and some make frequent mistakes with their grammar usage. As for speaking skills, students lack public speaking organizational skills and the ability to develop key points, and they have difficulty in controlling the subtle yet important timing of a speech and difficulty with attention-grabbing opening statements. The third problem is the contestants’ limited background knowledge. Many students simply do not have the life experiences necessary to converse on a given topic. A number of ways are probed to remedy these problems confronting speech contestants at the Yuanpei Institute.

In "Les Jeux de la petite Thalie, ou petits drames, dialogues sur des proverbes" (I769), Alexandre-Guillaume Mouslier de Moissy appropriated the proverbe dramatique, a popular pastime in eighteenth-century drawing-rooms, for pedagogical use with the young. This was the first volume in an ambitious three-volume work offering short dramatic pieces for all the different stages in life. Far less well known than the later theâtre d'education of Mme de Genlis and Berquin, Moissy's project of moral instruction through performance in "Les Jeux de la petite Thalie" was typical of the genre in its portrayal of character flaws and transgressive behaviour, but it was also innovative in that it offered the participants opportunities for improvisation, albeit well-controlled, marked by 'Impromptu' passages in the text. Moissy's recommendation was that the young 'actors' should be chosen for their resemblance to the role, so that they were playing themselves in scenarios that ultimately forced them to recognize and acknowledge their faults. This paper draws on modern theories of improvisation in drama to assess Moissy's implementation of his didactic agenda and the implications of involvement for the young participants in performances that were, in effect, rehearsals for their future in society in which the correct fulfilment of their role and the ability to improvise in word and deed from a basic moral script would be essential skills.

This investigation included two studies relating anticipatory public speaking anxiety to the nature of the speech assignment. Based on uncertainty reduction theory, which suggests that communicators are less comfortable in unfamiliar or unpredictable contexts, two hypotheses were advanced on the presumption that various types of assignments in a speech performance course do not produce the same levels of anticipatory anxiety. The hypotheses were supported in both trait and state anxiety studies, where certain differences in narrowband anticipatory speech anxiety were detected among different types of informative speeches: impromptu, extemporaneous, and manuscript reading. These findings extend the tenets of uncertainty reduction theory to the public speaking context and suggest implications for both therapeutic intervention and pedagogical application.

Little is left to tell about "theory." The appearance in 2005 of Theory's Empire: An Anthology ofDissent occurred, its editors tell us, "at a moment when [. . .] theoretical discussions of literature [had] become stagnant [...]."' The current state of "theory" on this account is one of "immobility," an "impasse," a "dead end."'2 In a last attempt to obtain relief-personal, disciplinary, and institutional--we are, perhaps, to stop "doing theory,"' limiting ourselves instead to what would be "doing literature." Our intellectual promenades would henceforth go out and back to where nothing ever shared. But are we to accept the closing of the book, faced with the mantra little is left to tell, which prepares the way for immanent closure: nothing is left to tell? Are we left with only repetitions, "endless reassertions [...] that [we] are still 'doing theory,' understood as a superior and demanding labor,"4 which is to say, as the profounds of mind which have lead to the stasis of immobility, impasse, and death? The editors of Theory's Empire, Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral, are careful "to distinguish between 'a theory' as one approach among many, 'theory' as a system of concepts employed in the humanities

Western philosophy and Chinese wisdom seem incommensurable: one employs dialogue the other impromptu words. It seems as if the very notion of universality is tied to the Western notion of dialogue, and that dialogue between the two cultures necessarily will be on Western terms and put Chinese thought in a subaltern position. I show, on the contrary, that it is possible to develop a non-dialogical notion of universality based on Zhuangzi's impromptu words. I compare Zhuangzi's impromptu words with the function of the word in the later Heidegger, and show that it was on the basis of the universal dimension opened up by the impromptu word that Heidegger was able to encounter Chinese thought.

Research indicates that children do not typically understand the connection between counting and cardinality for several months after learning to count, yet parents speak to 3-year-olds as though they already understood the significance of counting. The present research was designed to investigate mothers’ awareness of the discrepancy between children's procedural and conceptual mastery of counting. In Study 1 mothers of a hundred 3- to 41/2-year-olds completed an anonymous questionnaire asking them to anticipate how their child would respond to a series of real-life vignettes based on widely used experimental measures of cardinal understanding. Most anticipated that their child, irrespective of age, would (1) understand the significance of the last word of a count, and (2) be able accurately to give a specified non-subitizable number of objects. Comparison with the performance of 54 children from the same local population supported the hypothesis that parents overestimate children's understanding of the cardinal significance of counting. Mothers reported a range of impromptu number-related activities in which their child had recently participated at home; most of these involved simple procedural counting. In Study 2, 35 mothers of 3- to 41/2-year-olds completed a modified questionnaire concerning procedural aspects of counting as well as cardinality; their responses were then compared with the performance of their own children. Again, mothers overestimated their children's cardinal understanding, but this was shown not to be a result of a general tendency to overestimate their counting abilities. It is suggested that preschoolers’ counting generally occurs during joint activities in which caregivers may be unaware of the support that they provide, and, provided that the jointly executed count procedures are error-free, parents implicitly assume a ‘common knowledge’ regarding the cardinal significance of counting.