A Socio Semiotic Approach to Multimodal Discourse of Selected Nollywood Film Advertisement Posters

Film posters are complex forms of visual communication basically employed to promote films so as to seek for patronage from prospective viewers. Nollywood film poster designers or marketers employ a complex system of modes of multimodal communication to achieve their intended objectives. This study therefore investigates how these semiotic resources reveal the intention of the film poster designers and how other contextual variables influence the ability of the viewers to comprehend the messages embedded in film posters. The objectives of the study are to uncover the visual and linguistic semiotic resources in the film advertisement posters and their interaction. The study adopts a qualitative approach to the analyses of six randomly selected Nollywood film advertisement posters of three genres, namely: drama, thriller and comedy. Yuen’s Generic Structure Potential and Royce’s Ideational Intersemiotic Complementarity serve as the basis for the analysis of the selected texts. The study reveals that visual modes are more salient and frequently employed in the advertisement posters than the linguistic modes. However, both the visual and the linguistic modes offer complementary relationship for effective meaning-making in the selected Nollywood advertisement posters. The meanings derived are often contextual which appeal to the audience reasoning and sustain their interests. The study concludes by emphasizing the importance of the synergy of both linguistic and visual multimodal resources or modes of signification in the successful meaning-making and meaning-comprehension in the study of visual communication.

Generic structure of descriptive text written English language learner and teachers

The objective of this research is to describe the appropriateness and inappropriateness of participants in formulating identification in descriptive text. The researcher applies the theory of Gerot and Wignel (1994) from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics. To achieve the aim of this research, the researcher used a descriptive qualitative research design. The participants of this research come from three different groups (students at junior high school, English department students, and English teachers). It was chosen since the whole group is familiar with this kind of genre. Since the pandemic situation, the researcher used WhatsUp as a supporting instrument to collect the data. After analyzing the data (interactive data analysis) through the implementation of the systemic functional linguistics perspective, the researcher got the result. This research shows that 50% of junior high school students categorized appropriately in writing identification, 20% of English department students categorized appropriately, and 60% of English teachers categorized appropriately. Based on the results above, it can be concluded that the participants have a poor ability to write identification. It suggests that the English teachers' training program and English teachers have a better pedagogical plan and knowledge of the genre before teaching descriptive text.

Modelling of hardfacing layers deposition parameters using robust machine learning algorithms

The study presents a data-driven framework for modelling parameters of hardfacing deposits by GMAW using neural models to estimate the influence of process parameters without the need of creating experimental samples of the material and detailed measurements. The process of GAS Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) hardfacing does sometimes create non-homogenous structures in the material not only in deposited material, but also in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) and base material. Those structures are not fully deterministic, so the modelling method should account for this unpredictable component and only learn the generic structure of the hardness of the resulting material. Artificial neural networks (ANN) were used to create a model of the process using only measured samples without any knowledge of equations governing the process. Robust learning was used to decrease the influence of outliers and noise in the measured data on the neural model performance. The proposed method relies on modification of the loss function and several of them are compared and evaluated as an attempt to construct general framework for analysing the hardness as a function of electric current and arc velocity. The proposed method can create robust models of the hardfacing layers deposition or other welding processes and predict the properties of resulting materials even for unseen parameters based on experimental data. This modelling framework is not typically used for metallurgy, and it requires further case studies to verify its generalisability.

A GENRE ANALYSIS ON THE DISCUSSION SECTION OF QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ARTICLES IN ELT ANDLINGUISTICS

This study aimed at: 1) investigating the move and steps found in quantitative and qualitative research articles discussion; 2) investigating the rhetoric structure patterns of quantitative and qualitative research article discussion. This study is a qualitative-research focusing on genre analysis on qualitative and quantitative RA discussions. There were 20 qualitative and 20 quantitative research article discussions of EFL and applied linguistics journals were investigated in this research. Using Yang & Allison’s (2003) framework to analyze the data, it is found that all moves in the framework were employed in RA discussion of both qualitative and quantitative research. However, the number of occurrences of each move were different between discussion section of these two different approaches. Furthermore, the patterns of both qualitative and quantitative RA discussion was not significantly different. There were two types of patterns in RA discussion both in qualitative and quantitative, repetitive pattern and organized pattern. although there were some variations in each of those patterns. The present study provides more evidence of generic structure of RA discussion section as well as proposes some useful insights related to move analysis on research article discussion in ELT and Linguistics area. Limitations and recommendations are discussed in this study.

Supporting hierarchical soil biogeochemical modeling: Version 2 of the Biogeochemical Transport and Reaction model (BeTR-v2)

Reliable soil biogeochemical modeling is a prerequisite for credible projections of climate change and associated ecosystem feedbacks. This recognition has called for frameworks that can support flexible and efficient development and application of new or alternative soil biogeochemical modules in earth system models (ESMs). The BeTR-v1 code (i.e., CLM4-BeTR) is one such framework designed to accelerate the development and integration of new soil biogeochemistry formulations into ESMs, and to analyze structural uncertainty in ESM simulations. With a generic reactive transport capability, BeTR-v1 can represent multi-phase (e.g., gaseous, aqueous, and solid), multi-tracer (e.g., nitrate and organic carbon), and multi-organism (e.g., plants, bacteria and fungi) dynamics. Here, we describe the new version BeTR-v2, which adopts more robust numerical algorithms and improves on structural design over BeTR-v1. BeTR-v2 better supports different mathematical formulations in a hierarchical manner by allowing the resultant model be run either for a single topsoil layer, a vertically resolved soil column, or fully coupled with the land component of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). We demonstrate the BeTR-v2 capability with benchmark cases and example soil BGC implementations. By taking advantage of BeTR-v2’s generic structure integrated in E3SM, we then found that calibration could not resolve biases introduced by different numerical coupling strategies of plant-soil biogeochemistry. These results highlight the importance of numerically robust implementation of soil biogeochemistry and coupling with hydrology, thermal dynamics, and plants— capabilities that the open-source BeTR-v2 provides.

Generic structure and APPRAISAL resources in the editorial article Free money

Editorial is one of news genres aiming for opinion making and persuading. These functions determine that there are abundant evaluative resources in this genre. Exploring evaluative resources in the editorial could be conducive to understanding editorial text better and providing sensible suggestions for English learners to produce effectively persuasive writings. In view of this, the present study sets out to analyze the generic structure of the editorial Free money, then examine usage patterns of APPRAISAL resources in this text, and finally explore variations of APPRAISAL resources at different stages of the genre of this text. All APPRAISAL resources were coded based on APPRAISAL system and analyzed from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. It shows that Free money employed discussion genre with exposition and challenge embedded in the Background stage. An investigation into the usage of APPRAISAL resources found that negative ATTITUDE resources were mainly used to form the prosody of the text; more negation and concession resources within ENGAGEMENT were deployed to contract the dialogue; far more force raising GRADUATION resources were applied to amplify the evaluation. The APPRAISAL resources used at different stages of the editorial demonstrate distinct features with the aim of serving specific function of each stage. For instance, attribution resources were used in Issue stage to expand the dialogue and engage the readers; invoked resources were primarily employed in Background stage to make the statement objective; far more negative impressions in Side stage indicated the author’s concern, and more inscribed resources in Resolution stage manifested author’s attitude and made the conclusion impressive.

PENINGKATAN PEMAHAMAN DAN KEMAMPUAN PESERTA DIDIK PADA MATERI NEWS ITEM TEXT SELAMA PEMBELAJARAN DARING DENGAN METODE DISCOVERY LEARNING DI SMAN 1 MALINAU

Best Practice ini disusun untuk mengetahui peningkatan pemahaman dan kemampuan peserta didik dalam pembelajaran daring mata pelajaran Bahasa Inggris Kelas XII SMA Negeri 1 Malinau selama masa Pandemi Covid-19. Best Practice ini dilaksanakan pada semester ganjil tahun pelajaran 2020/2021 yaitu bulan Juli-Agustus 2020. Best Practice ini menggambarkan tentang proses pembelajaran dengan menggunakan metode Discovery Learning melalui media pembelajaran antara lain: Google Meet dan Google Classroom. Diharapkan siswa dapat memahami materi News ItemText berdasarkan generic structure, language feature dari teks tersebut. Dengan menggunakan metode dan media pembelajaran tersebut ternyata peserta didik sangat tertarik. Dari tidak tahu menjadi tahu dari tidak mengerti menjadi paham tentang materi News Item Text.

Developing English Reading Material for the Second Grade of Vocational High School

The purpose of this study are to describe how to develop English reading materials for the second grade of Vocational High School and to explain the advantages and disadvantages of developing English reading materials for the second grade of vocational high school. Using English reading material for developing the students’ ability of the second grade of vocational high school is one of the ways to make the students interested in learning English. In teaching English reading materials, this paper applies two phases (planning phase, implementing phase, evaluating phase) and PQRST (Preview, Question, Read, Summarize, Test) method. The advantages of developing English reading material for the second grade of vocational high school are: It can develop their vocabulary and grammar mastery. It is described that using reading materials in developing the students’ proficiency of English is very beneficial. The students get the systematic, effective, and efficient learning method, and also they can enjoy the teaching learning process. Encourage the student to improve their previous background knowledge of fundamental concepts. It can motivate the Students to actively reflect upon the material being studied prior to its presentation in class and to search for explanations or solutions on their own. While, the disadvantages are: It cannot develop the listening skill directly; It may happen that the students did not understand clearly about the generic structure and language feature of the text if they just pay attention with the meaning of each word. The writer hopes that this paper can be used as a reference for the teachers who want to improve their students’ ability, especially in reading ability. Furthermore, it can be a reference for the students of English department who want to write a paper or a thesis. Keywords: English Language, Reading, Vocational High School