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Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you my Linguistics presentation for tomorrow: A decent chunk of it anyway, or at the very least as much as I can bestir myself to do before I get bored again

Ok, so these guys, Csizer and Dornyei did a study in Hungary. They got about 8500 students 13 to 14 years old on two different occasions, one in 1993 and then in 1999.
They used a technique called structural equation modelling to interpret the relationship between several variables in a large framework.

They decided to measure motivational factors by using hte criterion of the student's choice for their second language and the amount of effort they intended to exert in learning that language

DISCUSSION: Why use intended effort rather than direct results of language learning

They identified 7 different components that make up motivation:

Integrativeness: The learner wants to become part of the L2 community and become like speakers of L2.
Instrumentality: THe pragmatic benefits of being proficient in L2. They recognise that it is the perceived usefulness of proficiency in L2 that provides the most motivation

Attitudes towards the L2 speakers/community: Refers in this study to the learner's attitudes towards direct contact with the L2 native speakers and community

Cultural interest: Appreciation of cultural products associated with L2 such as films, tv programs, music and so forth

Vitality of hte L2 community: THe perceived importance and wealth of the L2 community. The perceived importance is considered to be made up of 3 sociocultural factors: status factors, demographic factors and institutional support factors

Linguistic self-confidence: Reflects a confident, anxiety-free belief that the learner is capable of mastering the L2. Obviously this includes their beliefs about their ability to reach goals successfully and about their own coping potential in general

Milieu: Can be summarised as peer pressure, aka the perceived influence of significant others such as parents, family, and friends. It specifically doesn't cover education specific motives such as the role of teachers.

Csizer and Dornyei measured the relationship of these components to their two criterion measures, language choice and intended effort. They got their results by getting the students to answer a questionnaire, which asked them to answer questions such as "people around me think it is good to know a second language" and "I would feel anxious to speak a second language"

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So I managed to survive my linguistics presentation. I was really nervous while just speaking to the class but strangely enough once I hit the discussion questions I calmed right down, this despite the fact that for the first part I was just reading off a sheet while for the second I was actually making stuff up on the spot. Also, I don't think I did the best job ever at summarising but I figure my essay mark should balance out the crap presentation mark.

Also, this came up at work today: If I were to pretend that my particular brand of English was in fact a dialect of it's own (in line with Heinese), it would be called Jenglish :D

And now I try to find something constructive to do and tell my adrenaline-fired nerves to shut the hell up.

Searching sites/blogs

A while back I read a funny story. I would like to find it again. Here is the situation:

I know the main site it came from. The story was contained in a comment to a post. I don't remember what the original post was about, nor do I remember the exact wording for the story, so googling is out. I don't even remember the exact timeframe I read the story in, nor did I talk about it online with anyone at the time (in case I could search chat logs to get a better idea of the date).

So.. is there any way to find this comment short of checking every post within the last 6 months or so?

EDIT: David has awesome Googling skills that I can only envy. Thank you!

And here's the story:
A developer was going on vacation for a few weeks, but knew that his contribution to the upcoming product would be scheduled while he was gone. So he put a tray outside his office holding two six-sided dice and a note reading “To estimate the development time required for any features I am developing, please roll the dice. The total is the number of weeks the feature will take to code and test.” The project manager went ballistic and called him in and said “you can’t do this!” The developer replied, “this is what I’ve been doing for the past five years when people asked me to predict development times, and my estimates have been just as good as anyone else’s.”

For an interesting analysis of project management and the skills required, here's the link to read the surrounding comments: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1087