International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation
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Effect of Topic Familiarity on Summary Writing of Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners
No full textOne of the most typical and crucial academic writing skills for L2 learners is
summary writing. It is a complex activity that requires students’ deep
engagement with a text through reading, understanding, paraphrasing and
reorganizing and finally constructing a summary in their own words. This study
intends to investigate the effect of topic familiarity on Iranian foreign language
learners’ summary writing. Its aim is to find out whether there was any significant
effect on learners’ summary writing performance with regard to topic familiarity.
The participants of the study were 40 female intermediate Iranian EFL learners,
who were given instructions for different processes used in summary writing.
After each session of instruction, four passages with two different topics familiar
and unfamiliar were given to learners in order to be summarized. Two passages
had familiar topics; they were related to Iranian culture, so the learners had
sufficient background knowledge about them. The two other unfamiliar passages
were related to foreign culture, with no preexisting knowledge on the part of the
learners. Finally, according to the statistics analysis, it was revealed that learners’
summary writings were significantly affected by topic familiarity. Familiar topics
by the activation of learners’ schemata facilitated their understanding and helped
them to outperform in summarizing familiar topics than unfamiliar ones. In other
words, learners’ familiarity with Iranian culture and their prior knowledge of the
content facilitated learners’ reading comprehension as well as their summary
writing performance. The result can provide second language teachers with
appropriate criteria so that they can improve learners’ writing skills by providing
various writing strategies according to learners’ needs and being flexible in
selecting teaching techniques, as adhering rigidly to a specific approach will not
solve all the forthcoming problems of the learners
L2 English Pronunciation errors by Kenyan University Students: A Case of L1 Ekegusii and L1 Kimeru Speakers
Get PDFPronunciation is a factor of two processes: the production and perception of human individual sounds (segments), referred to as phonetics and the combination of these segments in a speech, and referred to as phonology. Ekegusii and Kimeru are Bantu languages spoken in western and central parts of Kenya respectively. University students from the two language groups studying English and Literature in their year one to year four in the university setting formed the population for the study because the intonation and phonetic inventory for both languages are similar to the extent that a non-native speaker of the two languages may not draw a distinction between them. Some prosodic features of these languages such as vowel insertion to break consonant clusters are different from English and when speakers of these languages insert vowels in some English words with consonant clusters, this results in error, sometimes impeding their intelligibility. A study was needed to examine pronunciation errors among the Ekegusii L1 and Kimeru L1 university students so as to document the gravity of the problem. The study was a qualitative description of students’ pronunciation errors in English language committed while the students were participating in university activities. The objectives of the study were to examine the most common mispronounced English phonemes produced by the students and to explore the possible sources of the errors. The study adopted a descriptive study design guided by Corder’s (1974) error analysis model. A purposive sample of 50 students selected on the basis of first encountered first recorded was used for data generation. The data was in the form of notes from listening to the students’ natural talk and audio recordings of their conversations. The study involved describing, analyzing, and interpreting common pronunciation errors. Based on the results of data analysis it was revealed that students made a multiple of pronunciation errors attributable to mainly interlingual and intralingual sources. From the findings, the researchers recommend that the best way to learn the pronunciation of a second language is by listening to good role model speakers of English language and by practising it regularly
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Medical Discourse: Analyzing Patients’ Speech
Get PDFThis paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach to medical discourse and aims to analyze patients’ speech. The paper investigates the case of subclinical hypothyroidism and attempts to build bridges between the disciplines of medicine and linguistics. It is suggested that the way patients think of this disease and utilize language in order to express its symptoms is affected by the abnormal TSH level and the normal levels in T3 and T4 thyroid hormones. The article further attempts to propose that human thought and language use are shaped by environmental factors such as chronic diseases. The paper discusses how patients of subclinical hypothyroidism, whose mother tongue is Modern Greek, use language figuratively by means of metaphor and metonymy
Insights Regarding the Assimilation of Technology in the Learning Process of Learners in Higher Education in Morocco
Get PDFThe use of technology has become an important part of the learning process in and out of the class. Every language class usually uses a form of technology. It has been used to both help and improve language learning. This study focuses on the important role of using new technologies in the process of learning a foreign language. The participants were 20 university professors of English, who teach in various Moroccan private and public institutions. The instruments used in the present study was a questionnaire. It also tackles different attitudes, which support learners of English to substantially increase their learning skills through using technologies. It aims at emphasizing the significance of the integration of technology in learners’ language learning strategies. It summarizes the background of language learning strategies, in addition to defining the concept of a language learning strategy and outlining the taxonomy of language learning strategies proposed by several researchers. It also takes into account the teachers’ role in strategy training while providing a number of questions for further research on language strategies and stating certain recommendations for the most convenient use of those technologies, which are likely to assist learners in enhancing their learning skills. The Findings of the study are clearly noteworthy; for instance, passion and motivation are two fundamental keys to lift students’ learning process. Besides, it is very significant to consider a cherished element in the research and that is “motivation” without which no learning could take place. Learners would not learn anything if they are not encircled by inspiring teachers who are ready to help, who encourage their students to do their utmost while enjoying learning. Teachers do not have to be perfect teachers who know how to use technology, they have to be human beings and love their noble job
Post-Colonial Reading of Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover
Get PDFThis research will explore the result of studying different aspects of identity seeking and establishing it as a liminal-prone one in a hybridized atmosphere among the colonized in terms of post-colonial discourse, based on Bhabha’s theories in his book, The Location of Culture, and on Isabel Allende’s novel, The Japanese Lover (2015). This study strives to expose the way through which the colonized characters’ identities in the novel undergo radical transformation through the third space which is heavily laced with qualities like ambivalence, stereotype, mimicry, and unhomeliness. Isabel Allende is an author whose novels mostly are an attempt to delineate the process of identity shaping particularly in the USA, since identity has always been an obsession for human which is defined based on different properties, one of which refers to the nation, culture and the territories based on Bhabha’s notion of hybridity which stems from confrontation of the cultures of the oppressor and the oppressed in the process of colonization. Generally, subject of identity in post-colonialism discourse is one in which people especially the colonized seeks for attachment. It will be divulged through this analysis that how liminal quality which is created as the consequence of colonial discourses will result in creating a space in which the oppressed one undergo radical changes in forming identity and how their identities are susceptible to alteration and likely to be unstable and fugitive
The Capitalist “Dystopia” in Robert Kirkman's Picture Novel The Walking Dead
No full textCapitalism is an economic system wherein a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. By the early 21st century, the capitalist world system has entered into a structural crisis, and relentless capitalist accumulation on a worldwide scale is presently in essential clash with the survival of human civilization. Karl Marx (1818-1883) is the author of The Communist Manifesto (1848) and his critique became a prominent perception of capitalism during the mid-19th century. Looking back at the history of the “zombie” in American culture, it is a form of political commentary. The top of “zombiedom” today is The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman which centers around former deputy sheriff Rick Grimes who wakes from a coma to find the world invade with “zombies” and in a condition of aggregate social and economic crumple. Since Marx’s theory is based on capitalism and its running amok, the walkers can be used to symbolize capitalism in the story. They walk around doing nothing more than consuming any living thing that gets in their way. Marx's theories about society, economics and politics known as Marxism, hold that human societies expand via class struggle. So analyzing the representational fluidity of Kirkman's “zombies” in The Walking Dead by placing them in two disparate Marxian positions and a class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are highlighted in this study
A Pragmatic Study of Newspaper Headlines in Media Discourse: Iraq as a Case Study
Get PDFThis study investigates the pragmatic aspects that are used in media discourse especially newspaper headlines. It aims to analyze Searle’s Taxonomy of speech acts (1979) that are employed to Iraqi newspaper headlines. Fifty headlines were collected from the Iraqi official newspaper (ALSABAH NEWSPAPER). They were translated and classified based on the classifications of Searle’s speech acts Taxonomy. The sampled headlines focus on the events that happened in Iraq from March to December 2017 covering the Iraqi – ISIS conflict. The findings reveal that the writers of these headlines employed all the speech acts as means to perform the intended meanings and convey the message behind using these classifications. In addition, the findings reveal that the expressives and declaratives are the most prominent and common speech acts employed to the sampled headlines. Finally, the data analysis shows how all these categories of speech act were employed explicitly and implicitly. To sum up, the employment of these such speech acts to Alsabah Newspaper headlines addressed the feelings of the readers to express the achievement of victory and liberation
Telegraphic Literature, Artificial Subjectivity and the Challenges to Communication Technology in Ella Cheever Thayer’s Wired Love (1889)
Get PDFAmerican literature at the turn of the 20th century has always been responsive to progress through the recurrent trope of men and machines. Narratives on female subjectivity became quite popular as well. However, the literary production on the usage of technology and the construction of a “wired self” has received quite little attention. The objective of this study is twofold. First, to look at the complex alteration of identity through one of the first examples of communication technologies, the Telegraph, in Ella Cheever Thayer’s autofictional novel Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes (1889). Second, is to illustrate female subjectivity through an extremely topical narrative that anticipates the problematic relationship between women and machines in American literature. Through the lens of literature, the researcher will investigate the roots of one of the first means of communication and its ability to change the way in which women began to communicate with bodies and machines in the Nineteenth Century, thus challenging the concept of personal identity anticipating the age of computer networks and digitalization. This analysis will narrow down the scope onto the projection of the female Self through the ability of technology to challenge the traditional notion of a bounded individual. In this way, we will discuss how Thayer’s narrative offers an example of technology and the public self in a “performance of identity” torn between reality and virtuality. Thayer’s (unfortunately) little-known novel, Wired Love, can be considered as an example of autofiction, which portrays one of the first problematic challenges of identity through technology at the dawn of the 1900s. Telegraphist and then novelist, Ella Cheever Thayer used her own story as a telegraph operator to illustrate the challenges of communication in a romantic love affair between two telegraph operators who mistakenly intercept each other over the wire and start exchanging messages as modern online dating. In a twist of ambiguities, through “identity mixups”, the novel offers a first literary example of the complex dynamics between identity and technology
Pragma-Linguistic Analysis of Assertion in May's and Trump's Inaugural Addresses
No full textBritish Prime Ministers and American Presidents are often observed to make use of assertive speech acts (realized in different syntactic forms with different rates) to attain various purposes associated with their future plans, such as clarifying, asserting and signifying the main critical points in their political speeches. Thus, this paper aims at investigating how the speech act of assertion is used in May's (2016) and Trump's (2017) Inaugural Addresses, focusing on the ways of realizing assertives pragmatically and linguistically, highlighting the purposes behind manipulating these asseretives by using a mixed method of descriptive- qualitative and quantitative processes. The paper concludes that both May and Trump exploits various syntactic forms to execute assertive speech acts which are utilized to confirm the main themes of their inaugural addresses and to assert the truthfulness of the messages they convey associated with their governmental agendas and programs
Code- switching in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL): Teachers and Students’ Attitudes
Get PDFCode-switching (CS) is the shifting from one language to another in conversation. It could be done within parts of a sentence as words and phrases. It is always looked upon with suspicion and not encouraged in EFL learning. This study aims to investigate the attitudes of both teachers and students towards teacher’s codeswitching and to identify the functions of code-switching. The data is collected through observations and interviews. Three female teachers are observed. The observations are recorded, transcribed and analyzed. The interviews are done with the teachers and 10 students from the sixth grade. The results show positive attitudes towards code-switching as it is mainly used for clarifications, giving instructions and transferring the knowledge to the students in an efficient way