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Paraphrasing, or restating information using different words, is critical to successful writing. However, EFL learners have difficulty in making paraphrases to meet their writing demands, and there has been little research on developing automatic reference tools to assist these learners' paraphrasing skills for better writing quality. In this study, we developed PREFER, an online corpus-based paraphrasing assistance system. Allowing multi-word input and returning promptly with a list of paraphrases in English and Chinese, along with usage patterns and example sentences, "PREFER" provides substantial support for EFL learners to vary their expressions during writing. An assessment study of the effectiveness of "PREFER" was conducted with 55 Chinese-speaking EFL college freshmen in an Asian country. The results indicated that "PREFER" offered the most benefits to students' writing performance (with an after-use improvement of 38.2%), compared with an online dictionary and an online thesaurus (-31.6% and -6.2%, respectively). Further investigation revealed that the less proficient, more motivated, and more conservative students showed more significant progress in the paraphrasing task with the help of "PREFER." In the meantime, nearly 90% of the students expressed satisfaction with the paraphrases generated by "PREFER," and its functions, and another 75% of them acknowledged that "PREFER" benefits their writing task.

Various writing assistance tools have been developed through efforts in the areas of natural language processing with different degrees of success of curriculum integration depending on their functional rigor and pedagogical designs. In this paper, we developed a system, WriteAhead, that provides six types of suggestions when non-native graduate students of English from different disciplines are composing journal abstracts, and assessed its effectiveness. The method involved automatically building domain-specific corpora of abstracts from the Web via domain names and related keywords as query expansions, and automatically extracting vocabulary and n-grams from the corpora in order to offer writing suggestions. At runtime, learners' input in the writing area of the system actively triggered a set of corresponding writing suggestions. This abstract writing assistant system facilitates interactions between learners and the system for writing abstracts in an effective and contextualized way, by providing suggestions such as collocations or transitional words. For assessment of WriteAhead, we compared the writing performance of two groups of students with or without using the system, and adopted student perception data. Findings show that the experiment group wrote better, and most students were satisfied with the system concerning most suggestion types, as they can effectively compose quality abstracts through provided language supports from WriteAhead.

Provides a description of preservice English-as-a-foreign-language teachers' reflective practice by examining 20 student teachers' observation reports and 20 practice teaching reports over a 6-week period while they were taking a practice teaching course. Topics, types, and development of their reflective practice as shown in the reports were analyzed. (Author/VWL)

Paraphrasing, or restating information using different words, is critical to successful writing. However, EFL learners have difficulty in making paraphrases to meet their writing demands, and there has been little research on developing automatic reference tools to assist these learners' paraphrasing skills for better writing quality. In this study, we developed PREFER, an online corpus-based paraphrasing assistance system. Allowing multi-word input and returning promptly with a list of paraphrases in English and Chinese, along with usage patterns and example sentences, PREFER provides substantial support for EFL learners to vary their expressions during writing. An assessment study of the effectiveness of PREFER was conducted with 55 Chinese-speaking EFL college freshmen in an Asian country. The results indicated that PREFER offered the most benefits to students' writing performance (with an after-use improvement of 38.2%), compared with an online dictionary and an online thesaurus (−31.6% and −6.2%, respectively). Further investigation revealed that the less proficient, more motivated, and more conservative students showed more significant progress in the paraphrasing task with the help of PREFER. In the meantime, nearly 90% of the students expressed satisfaction with the paraphrases generated by PREFER, and its functions, and another 75% of them acknowledged that PREFER benefits their writing task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various writing assistance tools have been developed through efforts in the areas of natural language processing with different degrees of success of curriculum integration depending on their functional rigor and pedagogical designs. In this paper, we developed a system, WriteAhead, that provides six types of suggestions when non-native graduate students of English from different disciplines are composing journal abstracts, and assessed its effectiveness. The method involved automatically building domain-specific corpora of abstracts from the Web via domain names and related keywords as query expansions, and automatically extracting vocabulary and n-grams from the corpora in order to offer writing suggestions. At runtime, learners' input in the writing area of the system actively triggered a set of corresponding writing suggestions. This abstract writing assistant system facilitates interactions between learners and the system for writing abstracts in an effective and contextualized way, by providing suggestions such as collocations or transitional words. For assessment of WriteAhead, we compared the writing performance of two groups of students with or without using the system, and adopted student perception data. Findings show that the experiment group wrote better, and most students were satisfied with the system concerning most suggestion types, as they can effectively compose quality abstracts through provided language supports from WriteAhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The TCR signals are essential for T cell activation and proliferation, primarily through the induction of cytokine and cytokine receptors. Several transcription factor families, including NF-κB/Rel, have been implicated in the regulation of cytokine gene expression in T cells in response to antigen, cytokine and mitogenic stimulation. In this study, we show that the mice with a null mutation in the lymphoid-specific c-Rel gene have normal development of lymphoid tissues and T cell compartment. However, T cells derived from the c-Rel knockout mice have several functional abnormalities. The c-Rel-deficient T lymphocytes fail to respond to activation and proliferation signals mediated by the TCR and mitogens in vitro. This is attributed to an impaired production of cytokines IL-2, IL-3 and granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor. In addition, the induction of IL-2Rα chain is impaired in the c-Rel-/- T cells. The poor expression of cytokines and IL-2Rα chain correlates with a reduced nuclear translocation of NF-κB components in c-Rel-/- T cells. Since activation is prerequisite for differentiation into effector cells, c-Rel-/- T cells failed to differentiate into cytotoxic T cells or Th cells without rescuing cytokines. However, upon supplement with exogenous IL-2, the c-Rel-/- cytotoxic T lymphocytes are able to execute cytotoxicity and the c-Rel-/- Th cells are capable of providing help to normal B cells. These data suggest that c-Rel is important for inducible cytokine and cytokine receptor expression, and a key regulator of early activation and proliferation in T cells. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]