International Journal Online of Humanities (IJOHMN)
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Investigating Reading Comprehension Problems Encountered by Sudanese Secondary School Students: Teachers Perspective
Get PDFThis study aimed to investigate reading comprehension problems encountered by Sudanese EFL secondary school students. To achieve the purpose of the study, the researcher used an analytical descriptive method and a questionnaire as a tool. The sample of the study consisted of 30 teachers who were randomly selected from Kenana secondary schools in White Nile State, and responded to the items of the questionnaire. The findings of the study showed that Sudanese Secondary School students face problems in reading and answering comprehension questions. The main causes of these problems were attributed to students’ lack of vocabulary and motivation. English language curriculum and lack of teachers’ training were also considered as causes of this difficulty. The researcher suggested some recommendations for both teachers and syllabus designers. As a recommendation for both sides; teachers and students, the researcher recommended that English language teachers should be trained to improve students’ levels in reading comprehension. Teachers should also motivate their students to have more interest in learning English language. In addition to that, they should encourage their students to read extensively so as to improve their level of comprehension, and syllabus designers should provide good reading material with adequate exercises besides English language literature
Decolonising Subalternity through Effective History in Ishmael Reed’s Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down and Sonallah Ibrahim’s Zaat
Get PDFIn Section One of Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, formulating a comprehensive theory of history, contend:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight. (91)
Marx and Engels believe that in any society, history marks a conflict between two struggling opposites; noting that the one in the privileged position oppresses the one who is not. Regretfully, that type of struggle never subsides; it seems to be perpetual as it is, sometimes, ‘open’ and, other times, hidden. The same is applied to colonised and ex-colonised countries. However, theirs is not a \u27history of class struggles\u27 but of a Master-Subaltern struggle. In this struggle, resisting subalternity is achieved through legitimating the existence of the Subalterns, a process that is realised by urging the colonisers or the colonisers\u27 surrogates to recognise the subalterns\u27 Being, which necessitates admitting not only the existence of the Subalterns, but also being conscious of them as individuals1. This is brought about by occupying a powerful position that is attained through heightening the Subaltern\u27s sense of identity in the course of history. The result is, the paper argues, an active process of decolonising the Self, especially when an \u27effective history\u27 comes into existence to pave the way for the Subaltern to achieve self-realisation; as revealed in the Foucauldian thought and, also, the Hegelian and Heideggerian philosophy. The paper aims at analysing the empowerment process of the Subaltern in both Ishmael Reed\u27s Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969) and Sonallah Ibrahim\u27s Zaat (1992) by comparing and contrasting different types of Subalterns as well as colonisers and colonisers\u27 surrogates. The paper also sets out to explore the Subaltern\u27s means of self-projection to acquire a position of power based upon history so as to examine the discourse of history in both African American and Egyptian postcolonial literature.
 
Interpellating Hyphenated Medusas: Pearl Cleage\u27s Chain and Rhodessa Jones\u27 Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women
Get PDFHere they are, returning, arriving over and again, because the unconscious is impregnable. They have wandered around in circles, confined to the narrow room in which they\u27ve been given a deadly brainwashing. You can incarcerate them, slow them down, get away with the old Apartheid routine, but for a time only. As so as they begin to speak, at the same time as they\u27re taught their name, they can be caught that their territory is black.
Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"
1975, p. 877
Monomaniac phallic acculturation aligns femininity with whatever attributes repudiated by the masculine world. A male is deemed to be the locus of power and restraint within the family, as well as, its representative in the outer world. In contradiction, a female is commonly associated with passivity, masochism and narcissism. This phallogocentric notion is originated in a misogynic patriarchal ideology that gives rise to the leitmotif of female otherness. The perception of gender boundaries is necessary for males who promote their logic of dualism through incarcerating females into only two fixed metaphors: Angel or Mad. Pearl Cleage1 and Rhodessa Jones2 in their plays Chain (1991) and Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women (1990), respectively, press against the externally and internally imposed boundaries confining the African American feminine expression. Theirs is a concurrent issue which gives a collective redefinition of sisterhood; they do not only seek helping black females, but also any female to transcend the downgrading destructive oculocentric, patriarchal ideologies deadening females’ spirit and capability of choice. Coinciding with Louis Althusser’s quest of the way ideology functions in society, the article attempts to explore the metaphorised representation of females through an Angel/Mad binary as well as to examine the prejudiced Freudian psychosexual interpretation of females created by patriarchal Ideological State Apparatus in the context of the Althusserian concept of interpellation.
 
July’s People: A Reversed Anticipation and Prediction of the Future Black Domination
Get PDFNadine Gordimer’s July’s People, is a good example of a contemporary novel that reverses the so-called naturel division between black and white people. As a matter of fact, black nation holds power and protection, which they lacked in time of the Apartheid system because it was on the hands of their controversialists -white people. This novel seems to be a prophecy of the decline of this arbitrary system that meant the declined of white people’s privileged life that went from the sub-urban to a non?suburban life. From Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, the reality of white people becomes upside down due to their color, origins and their presence in Africa. Therefore, they lost their position, their wealth, and at worse their powe
The Intoxication of Power in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four (1949) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932)
Get PDFGeorge Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four (1949) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) stand as two powerful works of art that emanated from a mere disorder and fragmentation. To put it differently, this work of art emanated from a world that underwent an extremely rigorous political transformations and cultural seismology. This is a world that has witnessed an overwhelming dislocation. All those upheavals brought into being a new life, that is to say, a reshuffled life. A new life brings forwards a new art. This research, accordingly, attempts to put all its focus on two modernist visionary works of art that have enhanced a completely new system of thought and perceived the past, the present, and even the future with an entirely new consciousness. In the world of Nineteen Eighty Four and Brave New World, power seems to get beyond of what is supposedly politically legitimate. This power has paved the way for the emergence of a totalitarian system; I would rather call it a totalitarian virus. This system has emerged with the ultimate purpose of deadening the spirit of individualism, rendering the classes nothing but “docile masses”. I will be accordingly analysing how power becomes intoxicating. In other words, I will attempt to give a keen picture of how power becomes no longer over things, but rather over men according to Nietzsche’s philosophical perception of “The Will to Power”
Leech and Short’s Checklist of Lexical Features in Style in Fiction: A Theoretical Analysis
Get PDFThis paper aims at investigating Leech and Short\u27s Checklist of Lexical Features in their book Style in Fiction (2007) in order to help students of Stylistics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels to deeply understand the application of such features. Leech and Short put these lexical features in the form of questions that should be answered by students who are conducting a stylistic lexical analysis of any literary work. In this paper, the researcher will mainly highlight how such features can operate in literary texts by providing explanation to these questions and answer them with examples
Lessons from Themes in Professor Johnbull Nigerian Television Drama Season – 4 Episode 9 (Street School) Towards Curtailing Child Abuse in African Societies
Get PDFTelevision is a medium through which society is well informed about social reform, social re-engineering and social orientation because of the tenacious relevance of its audio-visual influence on the viewers. What people think about nearly every issue be it politics, religion, government, fashion, culture, is almost exclusively influenced by television. Thus, this study examines lessons on re-orientation of the African Society towards curtailing Child Abuse from themes in Professor Johnbull Television Drama, Season 4-Episode nine (Street School). The study identifies various themes of child abuse in the television drama episode using qualitative research approach of textual content analysis through Video preview and review of themes in Prof. Johnbull Television Drama. The study applied the social cognitive theory as well as framing theory. Data were gathered using a researcher –designed instrument named “Video Content Analysis Checklist on Social Orientation and Themes and Framings (VCACSOTF)”. Findings from the study revealed that vulnerable children suffer maltreatment such as: Sexual abuse, forced child labour in form of street trading/hawking and child trafficking which is a major setback to the realization of child right act on education in Africa. It recommends that similar Television series and programmes should be produced, identified and sponsored regularly on African Television networks such that social orientation against all forms of child abuse could be spread through various broadcast media just as it is being propagated in Professor Johnbull TV drama episode titled ‘Street School’. Further, government in Africa should assist in giving scholarships to indigent and vulnerable street children and that those who participate in child abuse be prosecuted
Humanly Gods or Godly Humans: Representation and Anthropomorphism of Mythical Characters in Amish Tripathi’s Shiva Trilogy
Get PDFThis paper attempts to analyse the representation of mythical characters in the three novels by Amish Tripathi, namely The immortals of Meluha, The secret of the Nagas and The oath of the Vayuputras. The protagonist is a human being, Shiva, whose bildungsroman through the trilogy transforms him into a God, but without actually changing any of his physical attributes. Thus, at the level of anthropomorphism, this method of representation sheds light on the humane aspect of the divinity. From a perspective of feminist understanding of disability, the character of Kali would be studied, as an initial outcast to an important character in the last two books. Thus, this paper would conclude that Tripathi attempts at a vision of inclusivity, by his clever techniques of the representation of the disabled and the divine alike
Identity Crisis of Lyndall in Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm
Get PDFRetraction Notice
This retracts the article "Identity Crisis of Lyndall in Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm" in Volume 6, Issue 3, June 2020
The paper titled “Identity Crisis of Lyndall in Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm”, authored by Dr. Ramesh Prasad Adhikary, Nepal, published in International Journal Online of Humanities (IJOHMN) Volume 6, Issue 3, June 2020 on page 36-55, is found to be plagiarized.
Examining the Concept of the \u27˜Other\u27 According to Edward W. Said
Get PDFAfter the World War II, the world remarks many changes in every aspect including culture, society, literature and so on. Writers around the world wrote about the effect of colonizer/colonized relationship. Edward Said is one of the pillars who deals with such discourse. Said believes that the legacy of the colonizer still exists in terms of civil wars, corruption and labor exploitation. In other word, Said means that the West creates a wrong image about the Orient and considers it as the “Other” in contrast to the ideal West. Said was the one who deconstructs the western’s thinking about the East. So his books: Orientalism (1978), The Question of Palestine (1979) and Covering Islam (1981) are appropriate to examine the idea of the ‘Other’ and to show how Said decipher the western wrong image about the East. Thus, this paper will emphasis on the concept of the Other according to Said