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Digital Entrepreneurship Dimensions and Strategies: Crowdsourcing and Digital Financing
Get PDFThis paper aims to investigate an agile, knowledge-based, innovative, and integrated solution for businesses, i.e., “Digital entrepreneurship”, which means creating new ventures and transforming existing businesses by developing novel digital technologies and novel usage of such technologies. On the one hand, financing the projects is unaffordable for the companies, and a crowdsourcing platform is a good way to mitigate the burden of expenditure. The Digital Entrepreneurship process is a multidisciplinary field: developing software is rooted in information systems (IS), conceptualising business models, and formulating strategy. In addition to that, digital entrepreneurship is located at the junction of knowledge, business, and institutional entrepreneurship. This complicated nature of digital entrepreneurship requires a strategy. The type of opportunities they pursue characterises the strategy of formation and sustainability for a new venture; therefore, the entrepreneurs need to select strategies to make the best position according to their resources or the attainable resources through crowdsourcing. We shed light on the importance of crowdsourcing to have a successful state-of-the-art business after reviewing the background of digital entrepreneurship, crowdsourcing, and the digital entrepreneurship strategy
Writing Strategies Used by Indonesian EFL Students with Different English Proficiency
Get PDFThe present study investigates the writing strategies used by 135 Indonesian English Foreign Language undergraduate students with different English proficiency and the relationship between their English proficiency, indicated by students’ receptive vocabulary knowledge, and the quality of text they produced. The writing strategies questionnaire by Petrić and Czárl (2003) was used to analyze participants’ use of strategies in the three stages of writing: pre-writing, drafting, and revising. Each item in the questionnaire was rated on a 5-point Likert scale. The Vocabulary Size Test (Nation & Beglar, 2007) was used as an indicator of participants’ proficiency in English. The participants were also asked to write an essay in English, which was assessed using the ESL Composition Profile of Jacob et al. (1981). The results of the data analysis showed that most of the students applied 15 of the 38 strategies referred to in the questionnaire. Results also indicate no significant differences in the choice of strategies between students with high versus low English proficiency levels. However, participants’ vocabulary size had only a weak positive correlation with their writing quality. The findings aim primarily to inform Writing courses in English Education majors in Indonesia, though they may also be useful for other English learning contexts
Language Bite-by-Bite: The Design of Second Language Learning Application Using Lexical Approach
Get PDFThe ability to use languages to communicate distinguishes humans from other living things. In language production, two sources of information play a crucial role: a conceptual (semantic) message and a sequence of syntactic states mapped onto an ordered sequence of words. This concept of language production applies to both the native language of the speaker and the second language. Therefore, one question arises as to why second language learners cannot equally master both their second language (L2) and first language (L1). In our research, we investigate second language learning within the linguistic and language production framework. We explain language competence by knowledge of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, and we can apply the lexical approach for language learning to reach such competence. With this basis, we have designed an educational web application for second language learning, Bite-sized English, that incorporates the learning of words and phrases hands-in-hands with grammar. Bite-sized English consists of two parts: “Take a Bite”, where users learn lexical chunks from authentic texts, and “Lingua Kitchen”, where learners can build their own lexicon and practice usage in contexts
ESP Student Feedback –A Tool to Develop both Students’ and Teachers’ Competences
Get PDFThe current paper investigates how ESP teachers and learners may benefit from feedback exchange during the learning process. The article is a qualitative analysis of student feedback provided for ESP classes by learners from a Romanian economic university – i.e. the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. Responses refer to: the development of (general and business) English skills, enhancing self- and peer awareness, benefits of peer cooperation. The analysis is undertaken by an interdisciplinary team comprising an English teacher and a psychologist and discusses the relevance of such assignments for the development of students’ and teachers’ competences. We place our analysis against the background of research on (language) teacher competences and (language) learner competences in professional frameworks developed in Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, highlighting the complex teacher and learner/ graduate profiles required across the world, as well as the contribution of feedback exchange skills to this profile
Simulating Work-Family Conflict Impact on Performance among Language Teachers: System Dynamics Modelling
Get PDFThe subject of education has always been considered throughout history, and in the heart of education, a teacher has always been recognized as one of the most determinant and influential members. Many researchers have tried to pay attention to teachers and identify their personal and professional needs. This disquisition was designed and carried out to model the impact of job-family conflict factors on teachers’ performance, specifically in today’s global context where the role and responsibility of teachers is recognized as being more prominent than ever before. According to Young (2019), this conflict affects teachers’ performance and their satisfaction with the profession. The conflict between the job demands and requirements and individual’s roles in the family account for such polarization. The aim of our study was consequently to specify factors causing such conflict among 73 English teachers, to recognize their relationships, and to determine how they affected English teachers’ performance using system dynamics modelling and simulation technique. The sensitivity analysis performed in this study revealed that over a sixty-eight-month period, while teachers’ job burnout and job pressure increased exponentially, their job satisfaction followed an overshoot-and-collapse manner of behaviour. Moreover, during this period, their job performance decreased in a goal-seeking manner
Neuro-linguistic Programming and its Applicability in EFL Classrooms: Perceptions of NLP-Trained English Teachers
Get PDFThe present study is an attempt to examine the applicability of NLP techniques in English Language Teaching (ELT), an under-investigated topic in the literature on EFL contexts. The researcher also attempts to examine the extent to which Iranian EFL instructors in language schools implement NLP techniques in their classrooms. In an effort to achieve the research aims, a sixteen-hour NLP training workshop for 20 conveniently chosen inservice EFL instructors was designed and held by the author. The workshop aimed at helping the participants to achieve a working knowledge of the concept of NLP. Prior to conducting the workshop, in order to gain a better understanding of the participants’ needs and the benefits of the implementation of the training program in teachers’ instructional practices, 60 class sessions of the 20 teachers were observed using a researcher-made observation checklist. To identify any changes in the teachers’ pedagogical skills and to assess any perceived learning outcomes from participating in the workshop, the researcher repeated the observations almost seven months after the last session of the workshop. Subsequently, in-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out to explore the teachers’ perceptions of the topic under investigation. According to the findings of the thematic analysis, almost all the EFL teachers used NLP techniques to varying degrees in their language classes. The results of this study, provided at the end of the article, offer some valuable suggestions for different stakeholders in the field
A Cross-Linguistic Study on the Reflection of Metadiscourse Markers in the Acknowledgements of the Iranian and Native English Dissertations
Get PDFThe acknowledgement section in a thesis or dissertation expresses gratitude for the people who have helped the author in the process of conducting the research and writing the paper. The study sought to explore the extent to which metadiscourse markers have been employed in the dissertation acknowledgements. Excluding the rhetorical moves, emotional tones and cultural backgrounds, the research has primarily contrasted dissertation acknowledgements written by Iranian EFL doctoral graduates and English native speakers at an identical level. Hyland’s metadiscourse model features and his four-tier main obligatory thanking move was applied to determine and interpret the features predominantly used in the thesis acknowledgements. A qualitative analysis of the results revealed that except for a meaningful difference in attitude markers, Iranian acknowledgements were consistent with the model and not any noticeable difference detected in using interactive metadiscourse features between Iranians and native speakers when writing their dissertation acknowledgements
Interactional Metadiscourse Markers in Applied Linguistics Reply Articles
Get PDFA published research article is not the final product in the knowledge dissemination circle. One genre entailing negotiation of academic outcomes is reply articles which seem to carry an evaluative burden (Khosravi & Babaii, 2017) and provide the academics with an opportunity to communicate their comments and criticisms on the published research findings. Nevertheless, it seems to have been underestimated compared to other genres in academic discourse communities. Attempting to fill this void, the current study attempted to investigate the frequency of interactional metadiscourse markers in 19 reply articles published in academic journals in applied linguistics from 2016 to 2021. Coding the interactional resources of Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse revealed that self-mentions were the commonest interactional metadiscourse markers followed by hedges, boosters, engagement markers and attitude markers in the reply articles. The study contributes to the existing literature by corroborating the genre-specific nature of interactional metadiscourse and has implications for the academic reading and writing course designers and material developers
Past vs Previous in EFL Teaching of L1 Slavic Students
Get PDFIn Germanic and Slavic languages, the Verb is the most extensive grammatical item, which causes most of the troubles for second language learners. It has been noticed that Slavic L1 learners of English make mistakes in using verb forms due to the transfer of their L1 grammatical system (grammar concepts) onto the English language. The goal of the paper is to show how the wording of grammatical explanations in English influences the conceptualisation of grammatical items. The paper refers to one of the most probable sources of such misunderstanding – the way grammatical forms are named and explained in frequently used course books and grammars of English, which leads to a corrupted or limited understanding of the functionality of a grammatical form in L1 Slavic learners. The practical clues presented below might be beneficial for authors of course-books, FL language teachers and teacher trainers in solving the dilemma between the implicit vs explicit approach to teaching grammar, in constructing concept questions and formulating clear explanations in class
Compliance Mediation between the Demographic Characteristics of Intermediate Management and the Financial Performance of Banking Branches
Get PDFCorporate scandals that occurred before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act demonstrated weaknesses in the compliance environment, arising from the low level of involvement of the middle management with internal controls. Regarding middle management in the banking sector, which needs to monitor risks and ensure compliance with laws and regulations, no studies were found that correlated managers’ demographic variables with compliance and financial performance. Therefore, the objective of this research is to evaluate whether compliance mediates the effect of the demographic characteristics of intermediary managers on the financial performance of bank branches. We use the Generalised Structural Equation Modeling (gSEM) as a data analysis technique to determine whether compliance mediates managerial demographics on the financial performance of bank branches. The results suggest that compliance mediates managerial demographics on financial performance only for some demographic characteristics