Brigham Young University–Hawaii

Abstract While online peer review’s impact on EFL argumentative writing has been widely studied, its role in shaping narrative writing remains underexplored. This study investigated changes in cohesion and coherence in EFL learners’ narrative writing following online peer review. Thirty first-year English majors in China completed a two-round narrative writing task on the Peerceptiv platform. Subjective peer ratings and objective Coh-Metrix indices were analyzed. Due to non-normal data distribution, bootstrapped paired-samples t -tests with 10,000 resamples were employed to compare writing drafts. Results revealed selective changes in cohesion and coherence indices. Subjective Peerceptiv ratings showed significant gains in Topic Sentence and Organization (cohesion), and in Emotion and Concluding Part (coherence), suggesting improvements in local and meaning-focused aspects in narrative writing. However, Focus and Transition remained unchanged, indicating EFL learners’ difficulty with text-level control. Objective Coh-Metrix analysis revealed increased use of overall (CNCALL) and causal connectives (CNCCaus), and decreased adjacent sentence stem overlap (CRFSO1) under cohesion indices, suggesting more lexical variety. Only causal cohesion (SMCAUSr) improved among coherence indices; Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and other situation model measures remained stable, reflecting limited influence on deeper semantic integration. These findings suggest that peer review may support cohesion and coherence development in EFL narrative writing, especially when supported by rubrics that balance local and global features. Given the limited change in deeper semantic coherence and the study’s exploratory design, future research with extended interventions and comparison groups is recommended.

Lesson planning for effective language instruction is a combination of science and art. The science of lesson planning provides direction on the preparation of lesson plans that include three essential components: (1) a clear learning outcome (LO), (2) learning opportunities that lead to accomplishment of the LO, and (3) an appropriate formative assessment that provides tangible evidence of the achievement of the LO. The art of lesson planning occurs as teachers learn to make appropriate deviations from the plan during instruction to adjust to real‐time needs in the classroom.

ABSTRACT This study explores the ways 17 Fijian college students at one U.S.-based university in Hawaii describe the role of languages in constructing identity and promoting belonging. Focus group interviews revealed the importance of language for students’ lives at the university as well as in their previous schooling experiences in Fiji. Analysis was grounded in post-structural perspectives of identity and belonging. Students described native language proficiency as reinforcing kinship relationships and fostering participation in cultural traditions and practices with their Fijian communities. Students noted the affordances of speaking English to participating in academic and professional discourses. The Oceanic notion of vā, which encompasses identity and belonging, was used to discuss findings. Implications highlight the need for educational practices and pedagogies that empower Fijian students to be successful in academic and public spaces, while helping them maintain connection to their ethnic communities and identities—to maintain their positions in the vā.

This study examines predictors of life satisfaction in Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NH/PI) college students, who form an underrepresented group in well-being research. In a sample of 128 NH/PI students from a public university in Hawaii, self-report measures of life satisfaction, affect, stress, and mood were analyzed. The results indicate that positive affect and mood are significant positive predictors for life satisfaction, while negative affect predicts lower satisfaction. By contrast with other racial/ethnic groups, perceived stress did not significantly impact life satisfaction in NH/PI students. These findings suggest that emotional well-being is a key determinant for life satisfaction in NH/PI students, and stress is not. Culturally responsive interventions that focus on positive emotions and community support can enhance well-being and academic success in this population. This study contributes to the understanding of unique cultural influences on well-being in NH/PI students and provides implications for targeted interventions.

A self-study of International Journal of Exercise Science (IJES) publications from 2008 through 2021 revealed a sex-data gap in participant and corresponding author representation. This finding prompted the creation of the IJES Working Group for Opportunity, Representation, and Diverse Perspectives. We are a collaborative team of authors, reviewers, and editors, spanning both rural and urban teaching- and research-focused institutions, who assembled regularly starting in September 2023. The goal was to contemplate potential challenges and opportunities around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), elicit discourse, and broaden inclusion and representation in exercise science research. Our group identified six main challenges/opportunities: 1) Mixed Definitions and Applications of DEI Principles; 2) Competing Lifeviews and Worldviews; 3) Oversight and Enforcement of DEI Principles in IJES; 4) Oversight and Enforcement of DEI Principles in the Broader Field; 5) IJES is a Home for Developing Scholars; and 6) Lag Time for Creating Change in IJES. As a growing international journal, we depend on a diverse group of authors, reviewers, editors, and readers to achieve our mission. Accordingly, the Working Group encourages impactful, inclusive research that broadens representation within exercise science.

Using second languages beyond the classroom is both a means and an end for university-based foreign language programs: language use outside of the classroom facilitates language learning, and using the target language to engage with speakers and cultures is a valued outcome of language learning. While much is known about proficiency outcomes for foreign language students in US universities, less is known about how often such students actually engage in various activities using their target languages. To better understand students’ out-of-class target language activity and investigate likely influences on engagement, we descriptively analyzed large-scale (N = 2560) questionnaire and proficiency test data collected from three public universities in the US. Findings indicate that typical students use the target language outside of the classroom infrequently; among activities surveyed the median response was most commonly ‘once a month or less’. Students with higher levels of proficiency, as measured by ACTFL exams, and with more extensive experience abroad reported more frequent engagement in a range of activities. Finally, several interesting patterns in activity engagement were observed across languages, with learners of Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese showing more frequent engagement with target language videos and social media.

The paper explores the symbiotic relation between the Navier-Stokes equations and the associated stochastic cascades. Specifically, we examine how some well-known existence and uniqueness results for the Navier-Stokes equations can inform about the probabilistic features of the associated stochastic cascades, and how some probabilistic features of the stochastic cascades can, in turn, inform about the existence and uniqueness (or the lack thereof) of solutions. Our method of incorporating the stochastic explosion gives a simpler and more natural method to construct the solution compared to the original construction by Le Jan and Sznitman. This new stochastic construction is then used to show the finite-time blowup, non-existence of minimal blowup data, and non-uniqueness of the initial value problem for the Montgomery-Smith equation. We exploit symmetry properties inherent in our construction to give a simple proof of the global well-posedness results for small initial data in scale-critical Fourier-Besov spaces. We also obtain the pointwise convergence of the Picard iteration associated with the Fourier-transformed Navier-Stokes equations.

Background: Eccentric exercise often results in Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) which causes decreases in muscle strength and power with accompanying prolonged pain. Objectives: The study examined the effectiveness of Pneumatic Compression Massage (PCM) on changes in leg power following DOMS-inducing eccentric hamstring exercises. Pain levels and perceived efficacy of PCM as a recovery method for exercise-induced DOMS was also examined. Methods: Twenty-one active college-aged female volunteers were randomly assigned to PCM or control groups after performing 4-rounds of eccentric Nordic hamstring exercises to failure after which control subjects sat quietly for 10 minutes while the PCM-assigned subjects wore pneumatic compression massage (PCM) leggings for 10 minutes. All variables were evaluated at baseline and at 1-, 24-, 48-, and 72-hours after the exercise sets. Results: Movement economy was significantly greater as PCM had significantly faster ground contact time (GCT) at 24-hrs (p=0.01), 48-hrs (p=0.04), and 72-hrs (p=0.03) compared to control subjects. Leg muscle power output was significantly higher in PCM at 24-hrs (p=0.04), 48-hrs (p=0.05), and 72-hrs (p=0.01), while control subjects had significantly more pain at 72-hrs (p=0.02). Conclusion: PCM applied for 10-minutes every 24-hours following DOMS-inducing eccentric exercise resulted in greater improvements in movement economy, reaction time, jump height, lower limb power, pain, and other DOMS-related symptoms.