Learning to write in a foreign language is a complex cognitive process. The process-genre approach is a common instructional practice adopted by language teachers to develop learners’ writing abilities. However, the interacting elements of procedural knowledge, linguistic knowledge, and generic knowledge in this approach may exceed the capacity of an individual learner’s working memory, thus actually hindering the acquisition of writing skills. According to the collective working memory effect, it was hypothesized that teaching writing skills of English as a foreign (...) language by adopting a process-genre approach in collaborative conditions could lead to better writing performance, lower cognitive load, and higher instructional efficiency. The reported experiment compared learning writing skills of English as a foreign language in individual and collaborative instructional conditions from a cognitive load perspective, a rarely adopted approach in this field. The results indicated that the collaborative instructional condition was more effective and efficient than the individual instructional condition in improving the quality of written products as well as in optimizing the cognitive load experienced by the learners. Measures of cognitive load were used to support the cognitive load theory’s interpretation of the results, which is the unique contribution of this research study to the field. (shrink)

RésuméJe me penche sur un aspect de la philosophie sociale de Popper, à savoir les principes d'évaluation des interprétations historiques. Ma thèse globale est que suivant la perspective poppèrienne, notre choix parmi des interprétations historiques doit user d'au moins deux des critères qu'applique Popper au choix parmi diverses théories scientifiques : une interprétation devrait logiquement se prêter à une réfutation et elle devrait être consistante. Afin de montrer la pertinence et la fécondité de cette approche, je me concentre sur l'interprétation (...) historique des causes de la montée du nazisme que propose Erich Fromm, en particulier dansEscape from Freedom.Je montrerai que l'application de notions psychanalytiques dans le cadre de son interprétation historique a une valeur explicative faible, voire nulle. Son échec à expliquer certaines questions sociales tient à plusieurs raisons. Premièrement, l'auteur ne fournit pas, quoi qu'il en dise, d'explication causale convaincante. Ensuite, les concepts et les multiples hypotheèsesad hocauxquels il a recours tendent è rendre son interprétation irréfutable. Enfin, Fromm s'appuie sur des assomptions théoriques contradictoires. Mon analyse est basée sur la notion fondamentale de Popper voulant que la connaissance scientifique empirique exige au strict minimum une ouverture des interprétations historiques à la critique intersubjective. C'est cette exigence qui permet de les critiquer — c'est-à-dire les accepter, les réfuter et les corriger — sur une base rationnelle. (shrink)

Freedom to Believe is a powerful collection of philosophical and religious essays by a modern poet of distinction. It introduces a highly original and controversial thinker to the Western reader. Olga Sedakova's central philosophical thought lies in the notion of existential freedom in its association with the liberating power of the arts, especially poetry. These convictions place her firmly in the Russian and European classical cultural traditions, which, in turn, have deep roots in Christianity. Devoutly Orthodox yet fiercely independent in (...) her thinking, Sedakova's ecumenical humanism places her in opposition to both the "new left" and modern fundamentalism. Indeed, Sedakova's "conservatism" is more genuinely new than the so-called radicalism of the postmodernists, as she castigates "old totalitarianism" and new commercialism alike, in the name of a new cultural poetics and politics. (shrink)

The present paper contains some technical results on a many-valued logic with truth values from the interval of real numbers [0; 1]. This logic, discussed originally in [1], latter in [2] and [3], was called the logic of fuzzy concepts. Our aim is to give an algebraic axiomatics for fuzzy propositional logic. For this purpose the variety of L-algebras with signature en- riched with a unary operation { involution is stud- ied. A one-to-one correspondence between congruences on an LI-algebra and (...) lters of a special kind is used to prove the representation theorem for LI-algebras. By this theorem every LI-algebra is isomorphic to a subdirect product of chains. The full characteristic of the subdirectly irreducible LI-algebras is given . It turns out that the variety of all L-algebras, as well as any of its subvarieties, is generated by its nite algebras. (shrink)

The two books reviewed here are different efforts to embrace the vast subject called “social thought.” The second edition of The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought, edited by William Outhwaite with Alain Touraine, contains numerous updates; yet it also has some disadvantages compared to the first edition. Social Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Present, edited by Alan Sica, is a bold but controversial attempt at gathering in one anthology as many social thinkers as possible.

The four sections of this article are reactions to a few interconnected problems that Mario Bunge addresses in his The Sociology-Philosophy Connection , which can be seen as a continuation and summary of his two recent major volumes Finding Philosophy in Social Science and Social Science under Debate: A Philosophical Perspective . Bunge’s contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences has been sufficiently acclaimed. (See in particular two special issues of this journal dedicated to his social philosophy: "Systems and (...) Mechanisms. A Symposium on Mario Bunge’s Philosophy of Social Science," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34, nos. 2 and 3.) The author discusses therefore only those solutions in Bunge’s book that seem most problematic, namely, Bunge’s proposal to expel charlatans from universities; his treatment of social laws; his notions of mechanisms, "mechanismic explanation," and systemism; and his reading of Popper’s social philosophy. Key Words: theory • laws • mechanism • explanation • Popper. (shrink)

McLaughlin’s case for the theoretical relevance of either "Escape" or of Freudian social theory generally proves counter-productive. He offers very weak criteria for theory acceptance and often takes mere labels to be explanatory theories. He does so particularly in his promotion of the con- cept of ambivalence. I will engage the proposed case study and explain why the use of “ambivalence” in psychoanalysis (especially by Bleuler or Freud) and sociology (by Smelser and his followers) is untenable. I point to a (...) notable conflict between McLaughlin’s rationalist and other inten- tions, and will show how he shares the approach to social theories that makes for the state of affairs in the humanities which he deplores. (shrink)

The four sections of this article are reactions to a few interconnected problems that Mario Bunge addresses in his The Sociology-Philosophy Connection, which can be seen as a continuation and summary of his two recent major volumes Finding Philosophy in Social Science and Social Science under Debate: A Philosophical Perspective. Bunge’s contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences has been sufficiently acclaimed. The author discusses therefore only those solutions in Bunge’s book that seem most problematic, namely, Bunge’s proposal to (...) expel charlatans from universities; his treatment of social laws; his notions of mechanisms, “mechanismic explanation,” and systemism; and his reading of Popper’s social philosophy. (shrink)

ArgumentEvery new level achieved by technology attracted the attention of physiologists and turned their thoughts in a new direction; they often unwittingly modeled life processes in the image of contemporary engineering achievements.–This article reinterprets the debate between orthodox followers of the Pavlovian reflex theory and Soviet “cybernetic physiologists” in the 1950s and 60s as a clash of opposing man-machine metaphors. While both sides accused each other of “mechanistic,” reductionist methodology, they did not see anything “mechanistic” about their own central metaphors: (...) the telephone switchboard metaphor for nervous activity, and the analogies between the human body and a servomechanism and between the human brain and a computer. I argue that the scientific utility of machine analogies was closely intertwined with their philosophical and political meanings and that new interpretations of these metaphors emerged as a result of political conflicts and a realignment of forces within the scientific community and in society at large. I suggest that the constant travel of man-machine analogies back and forth between physiology and technology has blurred the traditional categories of the “mechanistic” and the “organic” in Soviet neurophysiology, as perhaps in the history of physiology in general. (shrink)

On comprend aisément pourquoi Slava Liszek, qui fut l’une des rédactrices d’Antoinette - le journal féminin de la CGT - a été touchée par Marie Guillot, au point de lui consacrer plusieurs années de recherche et, finalement, une biographie. À l’évidence, il s’agit d’un hommage rendu à une militante lucide et « incorruptible ». Le style trahit une profonde sympathie pour « Marie », qui pourra, selon les goûts, charmer, ou agacer. De toutes façons, le redoutable défi d’une biographie (...) de Marie G... (shrink)

Tento text se zabývá rozborem pojmu sláva, jak je k nalezení ve filosofických pracích pruského krále Fridricha Velikého (1712-1786), jmenovitě pak v Rozpravě o posměváčcích (Discours sur les satiriques) a Rozpravě o hanopisech (Discours sur les libelles) z roku 1759. Fridrich v obou pracích odlišuje falešnou a opravdovou slávu, přičemž falešná sláva je pouhou pozorností davů bez hlubší podstaty, jde o slávu celebrit. Fridrich ji popisuje jako slávu Herostratovu, výjimečně pro ni používá slovo célébrité. Pravá sláva je pak popisována slovem (...) gloire a jde o etickou kategorii, o slávu, která je motorem činnosti velkých lidí a jejímž soudcem bude historie. Obě slávy jsou sice v obou rozpravách cílem pisatelů satiry a hanopisů, avšak ti místo pravé slávy dosahují pouhé známosti svého jména, pouhé pozornosti davů. Satira a hanopisy jsou v rozpravách odsouzeny proto, že nedosahují pravé slávy, o kterou by měly usilovat, ale pouze slávy falešné, jež je však eticky bezcenná. Klíčová slova: sláva, Fridrich Veliký, hanopisy, filosofie osvícenství, satira. (shrink)

On comprend aisément pourquoi Slava Liszek, qui fut l’une des rédactrices d’Antoinette - le journal féminin de la CGT - a été touchée par Marie Guillot, au point de lui consacrer plusieurs années de recherche et, finalement, une biographie. À l’évidence, il s’agit d’un hommage rendu à une militante lucide et « incorruptible ». Le style trahit une profonde sympathie pour « Marie », qui pourra, selon les goûts, charmer, ou agacer. De toutes façons, le redoutable défi d’une biographie (...) de Marie G... (shrink)

On comprend aisément pourquoi Slava Liszek, qui fut l’une des rédactrices d’Antoinette - le journal féminin de la CGT - a été touchée par Marie Guillot, au point de lui consacrer plusieurs années de recherche et, finalement, une biographie. À l’évidence, il s’agit d’un hommage rendu à une militante lucide et « incorruptible ». Le style trahit une profonde sympathie pour « Marie », qui pourra, selon les goûts, charmer, ou agacer. De toutes façons, le redoutable défi d’une biographie (...) de Marie G... (shrink)

La letteratura slava ecclesiastica durante l'intero arco della sua storia vive in primo luogo di traduzioni, eseguite soprattutto, seppure non esclusivamente, a partire da modelli greci. Mentre tuttavia sul piano storico-letterario l'attenzione si concentra per ovvie ragioni sulla produzione originale, in sede di analisi linguistica le opere di traduzione mantengono, o almeno dovrebbero mantenere, un ruolo fondamentale. A questo proposito ci si può addirittura spingere ad affermare che uno dei motivi per i quali a tutt'oggi mancano una storia complessiva (...) e un grande dizionario storico della lingua slava ecclesiastica risiede verosimilmente proprio nella carenza di ricerche approfondite intorno a molte traduzioni slave ecclesiastiche. Su tale sfondo va letto il libro che qui si recensisce, incentrato sul lessico delle versioni di cinque cronache bizantine, composte in ordine cronologico da Giovanni Malala, Giorgio Amartolo, Simeone Logoteta, Costantino Manasse e Giovanni Zonara, e tradotte in slavo ecclesiastico in tempi e luoghi diversi. Come si ricava dalla breve premessa di A. Guillou (p. 3), lo studio di Katia Tchérémissinoff è approdato alle stampe solo dopo un lungo intervallo dalla sua composizione; un intervallo che la bibliografia usufruita, ferma in buona sostanza al 1980, permette di quantificare in vent'anni. Prima di esaminare il volume più da vicino, il recensore purtroppo non potrà non registrare (e lamentare) il numero esorbitante di errori di stampa che coinvolgono anzitutto i nomi degli autori e i titoli delle opere citate, come per es. Bujuklev in luogo di Bujukliev (p. 19, n. 29), Sandelf per Sandfeld (p. 24, n. 37), Aitzemuller invece di Aitzetmüller (p. 30, n. 52); M. A. Meščeskij per N. A. Meščerskij (p. 42, n. 72; e vd. anche p. 98, n. 157); e quindi, “Das slavische Zort für Kirsche” (in luogo di “Das slavische Wort für Kirche”, a p. 149, n. 240), “Costantinopple byzantine” (p. 186, nn. 303 e 304, e passim), “Byzantinische Uhrkundenlehre. I. Die Kaiser Uhrkunden” (p. 196, n. 310), e così via. Dove però deve essere stato il diavolo in persona a metterci lo zampino, è nelle citazioni slave ecclesiastiche nelle quali, nonostante la revisione cui è stato sottoposto il volume (vd. p. 3), gli errori, grandi e piccoli, semplicemente non si contano: il che di certo non agevola il compito del lettore, sia egli più o meno esperto di slavo ecclesiastico. (shrink)

Yetta Howard's queer-radical monograph Ugly Differences: Queer Female Sexuality in the Underground presents in its four chapters and conclusion a critical discussion of queer radicality in underground art productions. The chapters engage with Slava Tsukerman's camp cult movie Liquid Sky, Sapphire's poetry, Roberta Gregory's and Erika Lopez's comics, A. L. Steiner and Narcissister's collaborative art installation Winter/Spring Collection, and New Queer Cinema's High Art. In this volume, Howard unearths a spectrum of aesthetic pleasure derived from survival and self-destruction, to (...) tragic romance and kink intimacies. In all the material that Howard chooses for her discussions, “ugliness” enacts a powerful, political premise, which makes this book not only a captivating manifesto of queer punk aesthetics but also a thoughtful exploration of the importance of subcultural, queer-feminist politics antagonizing the norms of mainstream LGBT inclusion politics and homonormative pink-washing tendencies. Ultimately, as the key term of this volume, “ugliness” unfolds in the chapters, specifically in the analogy of three textual elements: as the “disagreeable and pejorative traits” conventionally attributed to queerness (2); a critique of the abjection and stigmatization of all bodies outside of the Western norms of white, able-bodied, cis masculinity (2); and third, as the angry, creative, punk, and anti-aesthetic textual practices of subcultural queer life (2). (shrink)

M.H.L. is a theatrical production dedicated to the first Slovak professional female director Magda Husáková-Lokvencová, which combines documentary theatre and performance. Sláva Daubnerová wrote the script and scene concept and is director and plays the sole character in the play. She portrays the private and professional life of M.H.L. in a chronologically sequenced and mosaic-like fashion. M.H.L. is portrayed as an educated, broad-minded and intelligent woman who knows her own mind. She graduated in law and then took up theatre direction. (...) Her private and professional life represented a series of ups and downs. Initially happy at the side of her husband, Gustáv Husák—successful early on as a politician, and flourishing in the theatre, she later had to struggle to survive and make a comeback to the theatre. Performer Daubnerová, enhanced the performance by using video art and sound design as important elements in the production. (shrink)