Modern Perspectives in Language, Literature and Education Vol. 4

This paper examines the interaction between an English language communication skills intervention programme and the medium of instruction used in B.Ed. students' schools on their attitudes toward English. For this reason, a 40-hour intervention programme focusing on English language communication skills has been established for B.Ed. students. Students' attitudes about English were assessed using a researcher-created rating scale. The researcher created a personal data sheet for B.Ed. students to collect information about student-teachers' medium of instruction at school. The study included 70 B.Ed. students in each of the experimental and control groups.  The experimental group was given an intervention programme, while the control group was not given any. ANCOVA was used to analyse the data. The educational approach was successful in improving B.Ed students' attitudes toward English. The effect size of the intervention programme on attitudes towards English language is 2.21 which is high in magnitude.

Humor is the quality of being amusing or comic in literature and speech. It is sometimes used to enhance the utterances so as to make them more comfortable since it is considered a common element of human interaction. That is why it has been given a considerable attention by many scholars from different fields of knowledge such as linguistics, psychology and sociology. In linguistics, many scholars have tried to define humor and to show its functions and the factors that enable the humor act to be adequate and interesting. This led many theories and approaches to be formulated in order to study humor from different perspectives among which the incongruity theory by Kant (1790) and the relief theory by Morreall [1]. In addition, the non-observance of Grice’s conversational maxims [2] can be used as a means of creating humor. As such, the present study is intended with the aims of pragmatically analyzing humor as a strategic means by which participants achieve their goals in interpersonal interaction, in particular in TV talk shows, namely, Oprah Winfrey Show and Piers Morgan Show. It also aims to investigate the way by which participants shift the topic of interaction whenever they try to avoid a certain topic by adopting a humorous style. The study has come to the conclusion that there are many factors that affect humor in TV talk shows including the personality of the host and his/her interviewees, the topic of interaction and the way through which a character deals with a certain topic.

International travel, mass media, immigration, and the world economy, have made bilingualism mandatory. Baker [1] argues that bilinguals exist in all countries, all social classes, and communities of all ages. Bilingualism may be a challenge to learn English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia. The research explored the views of students on the subject of bilingual English teaching materials for education technology. The experience of the students to enhance the future education program. The findings indicate that most students had a strong outlook on using bilingual materials in their English courses and felt that the materials were suitable and easily understood.

The study aims to highlight the evaluative strategies associated with the Biblical modes of speech and thought presentation. An eclectic pragma-stylistic model of analysis is developed to test the validity of the hypotheses that the targeted modes of discourse are almost always internally and/or externally evaluated by the narrator, and that the reportive modes of speech and thought are evaluative in respect to the quotative modes. The study arrived to the conclusion that different modes of speech and thought are exploited in building narrative genres. These modes form two interrelated types of discourse: quotative and reportive. Four modes contribute to the occurrence of the quotative discourse which are direct speech, free direct speech, direct thought, and free direct thought. The reportive discourse occurs when using one of the reportive modes which include indirect speech, free indirect speech, narrative report of speech act, narrator’s representation of voice, indirect thought, free indirect thought, narrative report of thought act, and internal narration. When employed in the targeted Biblical discourse, the quotative and reportive modes are often evaluated by the Biblical narrator. Evaluations of this kind implicate additional meanings and affect reader’s interpretation of the represented speeches or thoughts. The Biblical reportive modes are often evaluative in respect to the quotative ones. The Biblical narrator’s internal, external, and interactional evaluative strategies contribute to the occurrence of the Biblical evaluative discourse of speech and thought presentation. It has been concluded that different modes of speech and thought are exploited in building narrative genres.  

Every society relies heavily on its culture. Different cultural groupings have different ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Europeans have always thought of themselves as superior to others in terms of culture. They've used their self-proclaimed cultural superiority to oppress other cultures. Native Americans have been exploited and marginalised by colonial powers because of their culture and race.

European invaders used a variety of discursive agencies to spread false information and preconceptions about the Indians and their culture.

Their clandestine political goal was to make the indigenous people feel inadequate about their own culture and way of life, so that they would adapt to European customs and accept colonial rule as a benevolent civilising gesture. Native writers are increasingly attempting to reclaim their culture, restore its role in society, and deconstruct the misconceptions imposed by Europeans.

They have selected literature as a weapon against the invaders because they recognise the potential of writing to influence people. Leslie Marmon Silko is one of such Native American woman writer, who employs the influence of various literary genres like novel and poetry to uphold the voice of Native Americans and to deconstruct the wrong notions created by white settlers about native culture and society. Silko attempts to resist the various colonial discursive agents that strive to exploit and oppress Native Americans culturally, politically, and economically in her novel Gardens in the Dunes. Discourses played a key influence in the propagation of such inferior notions about Native American culture and traditions.

Teachers’ job satisfaction and creativity in the teaching process are very important to the continuous growth of educational systems around the world. Satisfaction and creation at work are very essential in teachers’ lives because they form the fundamental reasons to vitalize the teaching and learning atmosphere. This study investigated the effect of job satisfaction on teachers’ creativity in using subsidiary materials among EFL teachers in English institutes. To this end, 50 teachers who were teaching EFL at “Adib”, “Alborz” and “Rouyesh No” English Institutes in Rasht, Iran were selected. They were selected based on their job experiences and their availabilities. Their English teaching experiences varied from 5 to 20 years. Their ages ranged from 20 to 50 years. They were invited to fill out a researcher-developed questionnaire. It was a questionnaire, which included 20 items and there were two parts. The first part of the questionnaire asked about job satisfaction among the teachers, and the second part asked about their creative use of subsidiary materials in classroom. The findings suggested that the teachers hold different views regarding job satisfaction and teachers with high level of job satisfaction are more creative in using subsidiary materials. Besides, job satisfaction increases creativity in using material in EFL classrooms. Furthermore, if the teachers are satisfied with their job, they develop and maintain a high level of performance and learning process would be more efficient and effective.

Spoken political discourse in the UK Houses of Parliament is recorded and transcribed through the Hansard proceedings. This method of transcription and representation captures the oral debates during the weekly parliamentary sessions of Prime Minister’s questions. This paper looks at three areas of representation to see how faithfully the spoken discourse is recorded. These areas are: lexical and grammatical fidelity, performance characteristics and interruptions from the audience. The paper also considers how speakers in the House quote from Hansard and how accurate these quotes are to the originals. The findings suggest that overall Hansard is a fairly robust method for representation of spoken political discourse but that modern transcription and digital methods could be employed to augment the system. We argue that a more representational system that uses a multi-tool approach should be employed.

The goal of this research was to find techniques for fostering collaboration between the industry and the physical education academy. Participants from the business and academic worlds were interviewed in depth.  The Innovation Portal of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC) and the representativeness of Brazil's GDP were utilised to pick the research subjects, with preference given to enterprises that were among the top fifty in terms of value. Four significant categories emerged in the analysis of the interviews: Mandatory society, addictive state, decontextualized formation, and synergy.  According to the respondents, the most important strategy is to listen to the people and combine the efforts of all institutions to deliver what society expects. However, in practice, there is a more traditional behavior. This behaviour is a reflection of a mindset that ignores societal expectations and takes a tactical rather than strategic approach.

Translating is a complex and fascinating task. Idioms are the crystallization of language. It is difficult task to translate idioms because language and cultural differences mean that not all English idioms have equivalents in Chinese idioms. Literal translation, free translation, explanational translation, borrowing, compensating translation, and integrated approach are the six translation tactics for translating English idioms into Chinese, according to research.  It is believed that a reasonable choice and the quality of interpretation are decided by the translator’s cultural awareness and creativity. This paper aims to propose the integrated translation approach, one indispensable and essential tactic to Chinese translation of English idioms in the perspective of culture based on Nida’s dynamic equivalence, hoping to cast some enlightenment on further research in this field.

Interaction, especially dialogic interaction in EMI classes, is considered important for understanding the content and developing the language. Although the importance of dialogic interaction is well realized, the studies that focused on interaction in tertiary level EMI classes are rare in Sri Lanka, while they are limited in number in Asia. Moreover, there is no mechanism to identify the lecture delivery in terms of interactivity in EMI classrooms that contextually focuses on Asian EMI classes where most of the lecture deliveries are presumed to be monologic. Hence, this study focuses on developing a framework to identify dialogic interaction in English-medium science lectures in a small faculty of a Sri Lankan university. In Sri Lanka, just like other countries where English is used as a second language, English-medium instruction was introduced with an objective of developing language proficiency of students through the content delivery. It is asserted that the lecture delivery style, along with other reasons, affects students’ language development in English-medium classes.  This study develops a framework by analysing the lectures given at the faculty in a method that contextually suits the lecture delivery style in Asian countries. Data were collected from transcribed recordings of 12 hours of lectures, involving four lecturers. The interactional episodes in the lectures were the basis of developing the analytical framework. This framework, which refines and extends the MICASE corpus interactivity rating in a contextually-focused way, was especially designed to categorise the lecture discourse along a monologic-interactive/dialogic continuum. This study also suggests how this framework could be adopted to analyse the lecture deliveries from a practitioner’s point of view. Within the scope of this study, it is explained how this framework was designed focusing attention on interactional episodes. It can be envisaged that the proposed framework can make a concrete contribution to teaching and learning in higher education, mainly to the concept of developing language through dialogic lecture delivery at tertiary level ESL content classes.

This paper investigates the online presence of Low German, a minority language spoken in northern Germany, as well as several other European regional and minority languages. In particular, this article presents the results of a study that investigated how well or not these languages are represented in the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The article argues that minority and regional languages are not only underrepresented online due to a combination of historical, linguistic, sociological, and demographic reasons, but that the overall architecture of the World Wide Web and its most visited websites is such that smaller languages do not stand a chance to gain a meaningful online presence.