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A Study on the Concept of Third Place in Donald Trump's Speech at Riyadh Summit on May 2017
Get PDFThe current study investigates the concept of third place in the 47 American President Donald Trump’s speech at the Islamic summit held in Riyadh in May 2017. The researcher intends to examine if his speech includes some features of third-place or not. To achieve the study's aims, the researcher investigates the following topics related to Trump's speech in Riyadh if Donald Trump succeeded in using and applying the third place and its approaches to persuade them for pure and seamless reconciliation. The result shows some third-place features, such as the full awareness of the historical roots of tensions between the West and Muslim countries. The use of the first-person pronouns (Agency) refers to Trump’s declaration on several occasions that Islam is the religion of terrorism, and extremism needed to be faced. Moreover, Trump used techniques to approach the Muslim world throughout the third pace, such as logic and avoidance techniques and intertextuality
Promoting Social and Emotional Well-Being of ESL Students through Engaging and Inclusive Environment
Get PDFThis paper aims to describe and highlight different ways and strategies on how language teachers can provide positive learning environment that may promote well-being of students or learners. In the current health and global crisis, more and more students feel stressed and anxious about what is happening around. This dominant emotion impedes their desire to continue learning because their concentration is affected hugely and widely. To achieve the primary goal of this study, the researcher employed qualitative method in the form of phenomenology. Through interview and conversation analysis, this paper pointed out various and helpful tips and insights from the findings. At the end, these tips are recommended to language teachers for inclusion and infusion in their online and offsite classes that can promote social and emotional well-being during times of disruption
Linguistics for TESOL Theory and Practice: A Book Review
Get PDFTo teach students effectively is the main aim of the teachers. To do this, teachers have been looking for many ways to improve their teaching techniques over the past years. Thousands of books are available and claim that inside their books are the answer to address different challenges in the classroom. Although many TESOL books are already published, still, only a few are available, especially for topics like Linguistics and TESOL.
The author, Hannah Valenzuela, is a TESOL module writer who was inspired to create this book since over the past four (4) years, she was not successful in her search for books that discussed linguistics in such a way that trainees and seasoned practitioners alike would be able to take the knowledge straight into classrooms. The hope of this author is to make this a reference book that contains different areas in TESOL and different classroom activities that she gathered from the past twenty-five years (25) of teaching. This book, which was entitled Linguistics for TESOL Theory and Practice, has 214 pages and nine (9) chapters. Each chapter is packed with a straightforward explanation of concepts that are both related to TESOL and linguistics.
Chapter 1 began with the basic and fundamental question, What is Language? In this chapter, the author discussed how language is defined by different authors like McWhorter and Ferdinand de Saussure. This book discussed how language from just merely a system to how language enables students to communicate and express what is on their minds.
Chapter 2, entitled Variation, answers the question What is English, and What is it Not? The author began this chapter by narrating how English in American and Europe spread to other countries and slowly covered up country after country. This may contribute to why many people are eager to study and teach English since many historical events led to English being spoken in many countries around the world, either as a first language, second language, lingua franca, creole, or pidgin. This chapter also discussed how American English and British English are the StandardEnglish to the acceptance of World Englishes from the author Braj Kachru. Kachruu explains how English varies from one country after the other and the use of his circles.
In the following chapter, the author discussed essential topics in English such as phonemes (Chapter 3), pronunciation beyond phonemes (Chapter 4), morphology (Chapter 5), grammar (Chapter 6), semantics (Chapter 7), pragmatics (Chapter 8), and discourse (Chapter 9). Each chapter contains a very comprehensive discussion about its topic. Graphs and tables are provided to give a better understanding of the concepts that are being discussed.
After identifying the book's points, issues, and concepts, the reviewer highly recommends it. This book serves the authors' goal: new teachers and seasoned teachers can share this book, and activities will be used right away. This book is very comprehensible. The author's writing style is very chill, and readers will not find it very intimidating. The reflection and suggested activities are beneficial and practical. Some books gave many activities in which you cannot be used in others, but this book gave activities that both the class and the teacher would enjoy and can also be done right away. Supplementary videos and other reading materials are also very timely and helpful. Pre-service teachers can gain new ideas, and seasoned teachers will also refresh the things they may already know
Discovering and Applying Mindfulness in English Language Teaching: A Book-Review
Get PDFAt the time when students and teachers are experiencing all the negative thoughts and emotions caused by transitions and changes which have come to their lives spontaneously, the power of mindful thinking plays an imperative role. One of the steps in promoting and maintaining social, and emotional well-being of people is to be connected. But a number of people do not know when and how to spark mindfulness and well-being to others. They think there are so many thoughts that linger on their minds and overload of those issues make them feel weary. As teachers handle several issues in the classroom and virtual world, their personal well-being which includes social, emotional, and mental being is pressed also. It is the intention of the reviewer to examine this widely circulated material that aims to inform or orient readers particularly professionals like teachers among others on how they can practice mindfulness to sustain and protect emotional and social well-being.
The book is entitled Mindfulness at Work and was written by Anna Black. The author started to embrace mindfulness as her way of managing general and work-related stress from corporate world. She has professional background in publishing which gives us the thought that for long she has encountered different levels of stress. She has taught mindfulness in the worksite and has been teaching stress reduction using mindfulness since 2006.
Being an evaluator and reviewer of this material, I have my own thoughts and reflections. The tips from the mindfulness practice are more than useful and relevant in the field of teaching and language teaching. Teachers that we are, inevitable changes, pressure, and stress confront our lives.
In promoting the well-being of both teachers and students in the language classroom, a self-practice mindfulness plays a very important role. Through this book, those who can follow the procedures and steps can reduce stress, live in the moment and be more productive and satisfied at work. It is a practice that all educators have to apply and live so that they can carry out even difficult tasks while they handle and manage ESL classes.
The first Chapter is Living in the Moment. This chapter discusses the effects of stress to our life and work. From this point, mindfulness is unwrapped and being introduced as a powerful tool to combat and deal with stressful situations. When we say ‘mindfulness’ we refer to the process of paying attention to your experience as it comes out without judgment. Further, this part highlights mindfulness as a representation of our experience that carries thoughts, physical sensations, and emotions. Not to forget that this part includes the possible and tangible benefits we could get from mindfulness.
Chapter second is You at Work. In this chapter, the simple and basic steps of doing mindfulness are being applied so as to feel the benefits and impact on our lives. It underscores the value of curiosity as an initial step towards embracing the attitude of mindfulness. Paying attention to what is happening now and accepting your strengths, weaknesses are some of the steps that can help you achieve mindfulness. Making friends with others while paying attention to our thoughts is promoted by mindfulness attitude.
Chapter three holds and explains You and Others at Work. This chapter illustrates clearly how work is necessary and valuable when we deal with others. It is indicated in this part that work is about relationships. From this area, people are interconnected with colleagues, customers, clients, service providers, students, and suppliers. When we are aware of our relationships with others, we can provide and do better in our services and transactions. The value and place of listening is also stressed in this chapter. As communicators and professionals, we need to be sensitive and careful on our utterances. The importance of ‘listening’ is also underscored here. Other salient elements such as attention, intention, attitude, and communication are expounded in details for readers to apply and ponder.
The last Chapter is At Home. This part talks about the role of mindfulness at home as we try to lessen or reduce the stress and negativities we catch outside. By using mindfulness, we can become cautious of the role each of us play that contribute to our well-being. The attention we possess is a powerful tool and through mindfulness we can learn to adjust it more wisely both at work and at home. The convenience and peace we have it home can be maintained by the mindfulness practice. In this chapter, it is indicated that mindfulness does not limit its benefits to us who practice it but we can also help others specially our students and colleagues to promote health well-being. In the disruptive time, when almost all classes and transactions are being done at home, mindful practice can help us and our students to stay relaxed, focused, and aware of our responsibilities and duties.
After identifying the points, issues, and concepts of the book, the reviewer highly recommends it. There are plenty of benefits language teachers and other specialists/professions can get from the book. If language teachers have the knowledge on the practices and principles of mindfulness, definitely they are aware of the emotions, barriers, and constraints that ESL students are facing both in online and offline classes. The identification of needs, challenges, and problems in the learning process can aid the language teacher to promote health, social, and emotional well-being of the students. Mindfulness techniques applied to linguistics and language instruction can definitely lift and promote quality education whatever the modalities are. Through incorporation of mindfulness, the language teacher and other workers can establish and create healthy learning atmosphere away from stress, anxiety, and fear. It somehow connects to an old adage in education known to the world as no child is left behind.
As a reviewer, my constructive suggestion on the book is to include a chapter where specific lesson or learning plans are available for the utility and perusal of future readers and researchers.
This book with its enticing and relevant concepts and insights should be read and infused by language teachers and all teachers for that matter. The ideas and theories are essential to the practice of language teaching and applied linguistics. During the time of struggle and stress, when some people feel low and downhearted, mindfulness attitude and technique can guide and uplift their well-being
The Impact of Multilingualism on Global Education and Language Learning: A Book Review
Get PDFIn the rapid changing academic setting, language teachers are facing different issues and realities that require drastic and immediate measures for the improvement of language instruction. Gone are the days when traditional approaches and methods were being employed. Learners follow the trends and developments in technology and their attention spans keep on changing dramatically. It is not enough that language teachers will just provide assessment on grammar and speaking skills to evaluate the performances of the students, rather, they have to explore and uncover different factors that are pivotal in the teaching and learning process. The reviewers have decided to evaluate the book “The Impact of Multilingualism on Global Education and Language Learning” having the belief that in the contemporary period, multilingualism is such a formidable phenomenon that has tremendous impact on the lives of students, global education, and language learning and teaching. The ideas and insights crystalized from this review will help academicians, curriculum developers, language teachers, and educational leaders launch new projects for new directions in the field of education and language teaching. In a bigger world, people can see the effects of multilingualism due to spread of cultures, speedy communication, and diversity of learning climate. At the end of this book, the readers are able to imagine the power and influence of multilingualism and plurilingualism in changing educational landscape.
The First Section is Multilingualism and Plurilingualism. In here, multilingualism is defined and explained. It brings abundant ideas and realities to people on the concepts and events they witness related to multilingualism and plurilingualism. Indeed, the rise of globalism and diffusion has led to interculturalism. Peoples around the globe have embraced common beliefs, fashion, ideas, and culture. Plurilingualism has been defined in this section with relevance to multilingualism. From this part, different ideas and insights are being offered. It brings and connects readers to possible existence of the phenomena such as multilingualism and plurilingualism in a diverse region or country. Also, the attitude of a group of people and community is being examined and described here. Through clear illustration, linguists and language teachers can get a picture of the phenomena and the ways they can do to revise and update their instructional materials and teaching methods. Further, the importance of having a lingua franca is clearly expounded here. Recent studies were explored on how new technologies can help spread English as a lingua franca. The section concludes the fact that because of the prevalence of multilingualism and plurilingualism, there is a great chance that multiculturalism also exists rapidly as it is occurring now.
The Second Section of this book is the multilingual landscape. This section delves on how the concept of multilingualism significantly entered the world of sociolinguistics. It narrates the beginning of multilingualism, and how it was before monolingualism became a norm, from the beginning in the Old Testament to the rise of Roman Empire in the 7th century. The discussion is deemed to be very important for linguistics enthusiasts and researchers as it gives in-depth insights on historical foundation of multilingualism. We can no longer deny the fact that multilingualism is an important consideration in language policies and curriculum development. For instance, here in the Philippines, many linguists claim that learning English effectively is always attributed to the learner’s mother tongue and how it highly influences the learners’ second language acquisition. It is interesting to discover in the narrative that aside from many European nations like India, China, and Africa multilingualism is a norm. Nowadays, different countries have different official languages spoken on the record. We come to think about how these countries develop, plan, and implement their English language policies. The diversity of language all over the world is very evident. The world has 195 countries, but language spoken is several thousands more. Although languages are diverse, it not a hindrance in globalization. In this case, the role of English language plays a very important role in the aspiration of all the nations to globalize their citizens.
The third section is the role of English. English plays an important role in communicating to different places. This section of the book highlights that all languages are mandatory in various places in the world; hence, English language cannot be an exemption. This portion somehow made us realize that proficiency in English is of utmost importance especially if a person wants to land on a high paying job. Moreover, English is already integrated in the various curricula from early childhood education up to high standards of entrance examination in different universities. The author cited different excerpts of several studies as evidences for a notion that English has been becoming more dominant while the world is getting more multilingual. Compared to Latin-Greek languages as discussed in the narrative of the second section, English is not the language of the elites, but an aspirational language for all. Since English plays a very important role in a person’s life, English as a national language is pushed by the government officials. However, lack of preparation for materials is a big problem to teachers. For instance, in a case study by Rwanda, the French Government mandated that a switch from French to English, with only a year of preparation; thus, the proficiency to use English will of course may be compromised and cause a bigger problem, since some teachers are not as well proficient in French let alone another language. The lack of preparedness and English Proficiency will only multiply the problems which will make their life miserable as claimed in the excerpts shown. In addition to that, they claim that it could be more challenging as some students feel embarrassed and failure because of the mistakes they made using the English language. This section is concluded with a realization that English is not really a threat for establishing identity; instead, a powerful tool to enrich one’s cultural uniqueness.
The fourth section is the trends and issues in multilingual education. This portion talks about how English was viewed as just a subject by some, and in reality, is used in the learning process throughout the curriculum. This part scrutinizes reasons why English has been tagged as an important tool in a student’s life. Many believe that students must possess higher order thinking skills such as hypothesizing, evaluating, inferring, generalizing, predicting or classifying. Through this, student’s cognition will be developed and thus, they will not forget English. One example is the Tower Hamlets, a school in London who was reported to be the worst performing schools and now one of the best performing schools in the country. This was evident in their National Curriculum Test. During this test, students’ grades in reading and writing surpasses Kent. This book also mentioned how learning English is not only limited to the educational establishment, but outside it through daily conversations and the use of internet. Since the diversity of the culture of European Union (EU), is very evident, the aim of the EU. To conclude this section, the author clearly explains about EU’s language policy. He states that the main goal of Language Policy is that every European shall be able to speak at least two (2) more languages in addition to their mother tongue. This is due to the fact that in EU acquiring foreign language competence is a basic skill the citizen needs to improve their educational and employment opportunities.
The last section is the recommendations for national systemic change. In this juncture, the author discusses the societal change to support multilingualism and educational change. We believe in the two main propositions made by the author here. The firs one being the overall societal context that is wider in scope than education; and lastly being the specific direction of educational provision and resource allocation. He explains it by mentioning Comenius (1657) and Piaget (1993). The former believed that the society’s fate is dependent in the quality of education, while the latter claimed that education is not dependent to the action of school and family; instead, an essential building block of life in general. Human society is an educational society. The school system is constantly improved throughout the world to accommodate the demands of English proficiency. With this, the researcher suggested to the policy makers three (3) areas that they should consider: Validation, Practical Encouragement, and Specific Planning. This requires different language goals rather than one size fits all. Since each language require different approaches, in addition to that not all languages are learned formally. Anyone can learn language through listening to music, playing games, and watching films and of course communicating electronically. The new integrated language policies have lots of consideration. With this, the magnitude of these effects pale into insignificance compared with class/teacher effects. Since the teacher plays a very important role in the implementation of these policies.
Conclusion
The reviewers recommend this book because of its functional, practical, and authentic value. The sections are extensively and intensively discussed. They offer practical and theoretical examples that are felt and visualized by any reader who has growing interest in the field of linguistics and language education. Through this scholarly work, more language teachers can better understand the complex and dynamic transitions and developments in language teaching and learning. They can better design effective and appropriate materials and books that can address issues, challenges and problems in language education. In the years to come, more and more constructs will be discovered in relation to multilingualism and plurilingualism but language teachers and linguists have to do introspections on how education and stakeholders can remain attuned to global changes
A Contrastive Analysis of Two Approaches in Teaching Basic Grammar in College of Education and Legal Studies, Nguru, Yobe State
Get PDFThis study aims to compare the feasibility of two approaches in teaching basic English in College of Education and Legal Studies Nguru, Yobe State, Nigeria. The study uses sector analysis and grammar translation method. In addition, this paper attempts to discover which one is more relevant to the linguistics and academic needs of the students offering English as a single major in College of Education and Legal Studies, Nguru. The subjects were divided into experimental and control groups. The two groups were exposed to treatment in form of intensive teaching using the ‘sector analysis and grammar translation method’ respectively. A pre-test was administered on the subjects and the result showed that there was no significant difference in their grammatical competence. However, the post-test showed that teaching basic grammar with the sector’. However, the study emphasizes the importance of synchronizing the positive pedagogical attributes of the grammar translation method’ with that of the sector analysis approach in teaching basic grammar (English) in a second language situation
An Overview of the State of Art in Article Acquisition
Get PDFThe process of learning a second or foreign language that is different from one's native language can often be challenging. Among the various difficulties that can arise within this process, one seems to be transversal and occurs very frequently when an adult speaker of an article-less language learns a second language with articles. Articles are among the most commonly used words in many languages, such as English, and the omission or incorrect use of articles can seriously affect communication in many cases. This subject has been approached differently by various scholars, who have proposed different models to explain the phenomenon. The aim of this article, therefore, is therefore to review different perspectives on the acquisition of articles by adult learners speaking L1 article-less languages. After a brief introduction to the key concepts, the twelve main hypotheses on article acquisition by L1 article-less adult learners are presented and discussed in chronological order. Both the most widely accepted hypotheses in the literature at present (e.g. the Fluctuation Hypotehesis) and the various hypotheses that have contributed significantly to the development of the different theories, such as Huebner's preliminary studies, are considered. By means of a chronological digression, it will thus be possible to obtain an overview of the state of the art of theories on the acquisition of L2 articles by native speakers of languages without articles
Highlighting the Sound Shift in Punjabi Language: A Corpus-Based Descriptive Study
Get PDFPunjabi language is most widely spoken language of Pakistan (Abbas, Chohan, Ahmed, & Kaleem, 2016). Punjabi is under developed language because of which, upcoming generations are shifting to other technically and digitally developed languages such as Urdu and English. In result of which, the sound shift is being observed in Punjabi language. Sounds which used to be present in the past in Punjabi language are found missing now. This leads to a problematic situation that this sound shift may result in language extinction and sound loss. This study is about the sound change and it has been studied in Punjabi language. On the basis of observation of speech in surrounding, researcher made a hypothesis that those speakers of Punjabi language who acquired Punjabi as L1 are able to produce few distinctive sounds that are not produced by the speakers who acquired Urdu as a mother tongue. For this purpose, a corpus of 2 million words was collected and the words including the sounds |n|ن and |l| ل were particularly shortlisted from the corpus. The speakers from both origins were asked to pronounce these words, the hypothesis was proved and, in result, variations in the pronunciation of sounds were observed. Sociolinguists and Phonologists need to heed on this issue to save Punjabi language from extinction
The Parametric Variations of English and Kanuri Noun Phrases: A Minimalist Approach
Get PDFThis paper examines the parametric variations of English and Kanuri noun phrases (NPs) within the theoretical framework of Principles and Parameters (P&P), and the study adopts Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist Approach (MA). In conducting the research, the researcher uses his native intuition to collect the data for this study. The secondary sources of data involve the use of three competent native speakers to validate the data. The outcome of the study reveals that there are differences and similarities between the two languages which are genetically different –Kanuri Nilo is a Saharan language while English is an Endo European language. The differences are: Kanuri is a head final language while English is head initial language. On the complement phrases, the two languages share dissimilarities –quantifiers and adjectives occur post head in Kanuri while the quantifiers and adjectives occur pre-head in English. Finally, the two languages share similarities in terms of noun plural formation morphologically suffixed to post head nouns and definiteness and agreement features [-Def] [+PL Num]
The Argument Structure of the Middle Construction and Its Derivation
Get PDFMiddle constructions are a well-studied topic in linguistics. Based on a summary of the features of middle verbs, this paper proposes that middle constructions are composed of two verbs, of which the first verb, serving as the predicate, denotes an action characteristic of conventional property or features, while the second verb, serving as a complement clause, denotes result. The combination of the two verbs denotes a complete event. Based on this, it is argued that all middle constructions must be of this nature in terms of underlying structure. Once this assumption has been accepted, many long-standing puzzles related to middle constructions are solved quite readily