CHALLENGES IN OVERCOMING THE USE OF TOPIC FRONTING AMONG TESL TRAINEES IN MALAYSIA

Communication strategies include the use of nonverbal or paralinguistic communication strategies such as the use of mime, gestures, facial expressions and eye contact as well as the use of pauses for emphatic expressions could be assimilated. Communication strategies also include the use of verbal communication strategies which need to be learned and developed. One of the verbal communication strategies is a Malaysian classified variety, topic fronting. The issue is that, despite being an achievement communication strategy, topic fronting does not abide by the English language grammatical rule. Thus, a high use of this strategy among ESL learners might affect them adversely especially in academic discourse. This study looked into this strategy among the TESL trainees in two universities from two states in Malaysia. The findings obtained from their focus group discussions (FGD) identified the utilisation of topic fronting in online interactions and methods of overcoming it as well as the inculcation of suitable communication strategies. This study’s findings show a low utilisation of topic fronting (1.142 per thousand words) with the highest theme on the “concession of topic fronting in teaching” at 2.20% average. In the effort to inculcate the TESL trainees’ awareness of their use of topic fronting communication strategy, they need to be involved in active FGDs and be provided with communication strategy trainings on alternative strategies, specifically linguistic strategies like exemplification, circumlocution and paraphrasing.

Modelling and Analysis of Facial Expressions Using Optical Flow Derived Divergence and Curl Templates

Facial expressions are integral part of non-verbal paralinguistic communication as they provide cues significant in perceiving one’s emotional state. Assessment of emotions through expressions is an active research domain in computer vision due to its potential applications in multi-faceted domains. In this work, an approach is presented where facial expressions are modelled and analyzed with dense optical flow derived divergence and curl templates that embody the ideal motion pattern of facial features pertaining to unfolding of an expression on the face. Two types of classification schemes based on multi-class support vector machine and k-nearest neighbour are employed for evaluation. Promising results obtained from comparative analysis of the proposed approach with state-of-the-art techniques on the Extended Cohn Kanade database and with human cognition and pre-trained Microsoft face application programming interface on the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database validate the efficiency of the approach.

STORIES OF TRAUMA AND RECONCILIATION OF WORLD WAR II VETERANS

The present qualitative study examined the reconciliation of trauma experienced by 55 World War II veterans (22 aeronautical crew members, 27 non-pilot combatants, and 6 veterans with dementia) demonstrated via testimonial language within a semi-structured interview. The research team considered themes of language coherence as they relate to veteran experiences of trauma and reconciliation. Trauma literature documents the importance of personal narratives in both identifying and reconciling traumatic experiences. This study examined morals and values of participants, traumatic experiences either lived or witnessed, and reconciliation of trauma as demonstrated by the coherence of participants’ linguistic and paralinguistic communication. Linguistic analysis included the use of evaluative and emotional language; linguistic devices such as crowding, topic maintenance, and humor; and lessons learned from trauma and the reconciliation process. Prosody was analyzed as a paralinguistic indicator of trauma and reconciliation using audio recordings of semi-structured interviews. The primary findings revealed that highly coherent language is present among participants with distinct content when comparing episodes from youth and reflections of experience in old age. The unique differences demonstrated overall strength of veterans’ narrative identity throughout their lives. Strength of identity and coherence of language indicated adequate reconciliation of traumatic events. Reconciliation of trauma was also evident in veterans’ participation in the study and generative behavior described in testimonial language.