Melina Aparici
Biographic Data
| ID | 6490144 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melina Aparici |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melina |
| FAMILY NAME | Aparici |
| SIGNATURE | APARICI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9015-0974 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
La evaluación de la escritura académica en Educación Primaria, Secundaria y Educación Superior
Dominar las habilidades lingüísticas requeridas en escritura académica es un desafío en todas las etapas educativas. Este estudio analiza la relación entre el uso de recursos lingüísticos y la calidad percibida en textos académicos con el objetivo de desarrollar instrumentos válidos de evaluación de la calidad textual. Se analizaron 212 textos analíticos de 65 alumnos de Educación Primaria, 78 de Secundaria y 69 universitarios. En un primer análi…
Multilingual use assessment questionnaire
The linguistic profile of multilingual individuals can vary significantly due to diversity in linguistic experience. This poses challenges for language researchers, educators, and clinical practitioners. We developed a Multilingual Use Assessment Questionnaire (MUAQ) to capture the heterogeneous nature of multilinguals profiles integrating three dimensions: self-assessment of language(s) competence, language(s) use for mental operations, and lang…
Understanding burnout among special education teachers
Purpose The present study was intended to investigate the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy, sentiments and concerns toward disability and burnout in pre-service special education teachers. Design/methodology/approach Three hundred seventy-two special education teachers participated in the study. Participants were administered the following self-reports: Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practices, Sentiments and Concerns Scale and Maslac…
Internal and external appraisals of analytical writing. A proposal for assessing development and potential improvement
This paper introduces Developing analytical writing (DAW), a model of text analysis aimed at capturing how social expectancies of analytical writing become part of students’ linguistic literacy. DAW proposes a multilayer analysis of text features on repeated text production prompted by the same and different topics, control for pedagogical input, and researcher- and reader-based evaluations of text quality. We revise DAW previous implementations …
The influence of students' linguistic condition, school level, and pedagogical input on analytical essay features
Introduction Analytical essays are a fundamental discourse practice within educational settings. These essays are topic-oriented texts that aim to inform readers about a specific matter while persuading them of the writer's perspective. This study investigates how students' linguistic condition (monolingual vs. bilingual) affects their ability to meet the social and discursive expectations of analytical essays. This is examined both over a broad …
Macro- and micro-developmental changes in analytical writing of bilinguals from elementary to higher education
Analytical writing serves to learn and communicate learning. Our goal was to determine the impact of students’ bilingual profile, defined by self-evaluated bilingual competence, use of language(s) for mental operations and language(s) use across different contexts, on their developing analytical writing abilities. Catalan/Spanish bilinguals – in 6th and 10th grade and university students – produced three texts on the same topic along a set of cla…
Linguistic indicators of text quality in analytical texts
Mastering analytical writing involves the proficient use of varied later-acquired grammatical, lexical and discourse forms and functions. Developmental studies have identified specific linguistic features as diagnostic of increasing proficiency. This study examines how these features change throughout educational levels and before and after the implementation of a set of classroom activities aimed at homogenizing participants’ pedagogical input w…
“El nen s'ha menjat una aranya”
The production of a well-constructed narrative is the culmination of several years of language acquisition and is an important milestone in children's development. There is no current description of narrative development for Catalan speaking children. This study collected elicited narratives in Catalan from 118 children aged 4;0–10;11. Narratives were scored for macrostructure and microstructure. Narrative scores improved with age with maximum pe…
Adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (Main) to Catalan
The adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS- MAIN; Gagarina, et al., 2019) to Catalan contributes to advancing our knowledge of the development of children’s narrative skills in a diversity of languages using the same protocol, making it possible to evaluate narratives also in Catalan-speakers. The adaptation of MAIN will be very useful in Catalonia, because it is a region where two official languages (Catalan …
Your Morals Depend on Language
Should you sacrifice one man to save five? Whatever your answer, it should not depend on whether you were asked the question in your native language or a foreign tongue so long as you understood the problem. And yet here we report evidence that people using a foreign language make substantially more utilitarian decisions when faced with such moral dilemmas. We argue that this stems from the reduced emotional response elicited by the foreign langu…
“Piensa” twice
Adapting to the circumstances
To characterize the discourse competence of second language (L2) Spanish speakers, we examine the narrative and expository texts produced by Korean and Moroccan Arabic learners of Spanish considering (1) whether the discourse connectivity patterns and the detachment devices used by these learners can be compared with those observed in the L1; and (2) whether non-native patterns are determined by L2 proficiency level.Results show that the use of d…
Production and judgment of linguistic devices for attaining a detached stance in Spanish and Catalan
Verbal structure and content in written discourse
This paper forms a bridge between the article on noun phrase patterning by Ravid et al. 2002 and that on passive voice constructions by Jisa et al. 2002. The study reports on a cross-linguistic, developmental study of verbal structures and verb types used in two genres of written discourse: personal narratives and expository texts. The study is aimed at (a) establishing the profile of linguistic features that characterize and differentiate these …
Clause packaging in writing and speech
This article analyses clause packaging in the written narrative and expository texts in Dutch, English, French, Hebrew, and Spanish by grade-school children and adults. A “clause package” is defined as a text unit consisting of clauses linked by syntactic, thematic, and discursive criteria. Our study attempts to arrive at an understanding of cross-linguistic universals in the distribution of clause-package types as a function of Genre and Modalit…
Verbal structure and content in written discourse
This paper forms a bridge between the article on noun phrase patterning by Ravid et al. 2002 and that on passive voice constructions by Jisa et al. 2002. The study reports on a cross-linguistic, developmental study of verbal structures and verb types used in two genres of written discourse: personal narratives and expository texts. The study is aimed at (a) establishing the profile of linguistic features that characterize and differentiate these …
Clause packaging in writing and speech
This article analyses clause packaging in the written narrative and expository texts in Dutch, English, French, Hebrew, and Spanish by grade-school children and adults. A “clause package” is defined as a text unit consisting of clauses linked by syntactic, thematic, and discursive criteria. Our study attempts to arrive at an understanding of cross-linguistic universals in the distribution of clause-package types as a function of Genre and Modalit…
Production and judgment of linguistic devices for attaining a detached stance in Spanish and Catalan
Your Morals Depend on Language
Should you sacrifice one man to save five? Whatever your answer, it should not depend on whether you were asked the question in your native language or a foreign tongue so long as you understood the problem. And yet here we report evidence that people using a foreign language make substantially more utilitarian decisions when faced with such moral dilemmas. We argue that this stems from the reduced emotional response elicited by the foreign langu…
“Piensa” twice
Adapting to the circumstances
To characterize the discourse competence of second language (L2) Spanish speakers, we examine the narrative and expository texts produced by Korean and Moroccan Arabic learners of Spanish considering (1) whether the discourse connectivity patterns and the detachment devices used by these learners can be compared with those observed in the L1; and (2) whether non-native patterns are determined by L2 proficiency level.Results show that the use of d…
“El nen s'ha menjat una aranya”
The production of a well-constructed narrative is the culmination of several years of language acquisition and is an important milestone in children's development. There is no current description of narrative development for Catalan speaking children. This study collected elicited narratives in Catalan from 118 children aged 4;0–10;11. Narratives were scored for macrostructure and microstructure. Narrative scores improved with age with maximum pe…
Adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (Main) to Catalan
The adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS- MAIN; Gagarina, et al., 2019) to Catalan contributes to advancing our knowledge of the development of children’s narrative skills in a diversity of languages using the same protocol, making it possible to evaluate narratives also in Catalan-speakers. The adaptation of MAIN will be very useful in Catalonia, because it is a region where two official languages (Catalan …
Linguistic indicators of text quality in analytical texts
Mastering analytical writing involves the proficient use of varied later-acquired grammatical, lexical and discourse forms and functions. Developmental studies have identified specific linguistic features as diagnostic of increasing proficiency. This study examines how these features change throughout educational levels and before and after the implementation of a set of classroom activities aimed at homogenizing participants’ pedagogical input w…
Macro- and micro-developmental changes in analytical writing of bilinguals from elementary to higher education
Analytical writing serves to learn and communicate learning. Our goal was to determine the impact of students’ bilingual profile, defined by self-evaluated bilingual competence, use of language(s) for mental operations and language(s) use across different contexts, on their developing analytical writing abilities. Catalan/Spanish bilinguals – in 6th and 10th grade and university students – produced three texts on the same topic along a set of cla…
Multilingual use assessment questionnaire
The linguistic profile of multilingual individuals can vary significantly due to diversity in linguistic experience. This poses challenges for language researchers, educators, and clinical practitioners. We developed a Multilingual Use Assessment Questionnaire (MUAQ) to capture the heterogeneous nature of multilinguals profiles integrating three dimensions: self-assessment of language(s) competence, language(s) use for mental operations, and lang…
Understanding burnout among special education teachers
Purpose The present study was intended to investigate the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy, sentiments and concerns toward disability and burnout in pre-service special education teachers. Design/methodology/approach Three hundred seventy-two special education teachers participated in the study. Participants were administered the following self-reports: Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practices, Sentiments and Concerns Scale and Maslac…
Internal and external appraisals of analytical writing. A proposal for assessing development and potential improvement
This paper introduces Developing analytical writing (DAW), a model of text analysis aimed at capturing how social expectancies of analytical writing become part of students’ linguistic literacy. DAW proposes a multilayer analysis of text features on repeated text production prompted by the same and different topics, control for pedagogical input, and researcher- and reader-based evaluations of text quality. We revise DAW previous implementations …
The influence of students' linguistic condition, school level, and pedagogical input on analytical essay features
Introduction Analytical essays are a fundamental discourse practice within educational settings. These essays are topic-oriented texts that aim to inform readers about a specific matter while persuading them of the writer's perspective. This study investigates how students' linguistic condition (monolingual vs. bilingual) affects their ability to meet the social and discursive expectations of analytical essays. This is examined both over a broad …
La evaluación de la escritura académica en Educación Primaria, Secundaria y Educación Superior
Dominar las habilidades lingüísticas requeridas en escritura académica es un desafío en todas las etapas educativas. Este estudio analiza la relación entre el uso de recursos lingüísticos y la calidad percibida en textos académicos con el objetivo de desarrollar instrumentos válidos de evaluación de la calidad textual. Se analizaron 212 textos analíticos de 65 alumnos de Educación Primaria, 78 de Secundaria y 69 universitarios. En un primer análi…
Psychology (14 works) · Linguistics (12 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Writing and Handwriting Education (8 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (7 works) · Mathematics education (6 works) · Narrative (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (4 works) · Pedagogy (4 works)