Modern Perspectives in Language, Literature and Education Vol. 6

This article discussed the persistence of examination malpractice in Nigerian higher education systems in conjunction with the dysfunctionality of family and educational institutions. The study engaged information collected from a secondary source and content analysis as its methodology. Drawing from the concept of dysfunctionality as expressed by R. K. Merton, the route of the persistence of examination misconduct was traced to several factors out of which poor parenting, lack of proper upbringing in the family and corruption in educational institutions play active roles. The paper in its concluding remarks argued that if the family and education institutions could perform their expected sociological roles actively, the rate at which escalation of examination misconduct is escalating in tertiary institutions could be reduced drastically.

Metadiscourse markers are considered useful for conveying ideas to the audience;  producing and organizing persuasive writing based on expectations and norms of individuals involved; communicating effectively to readers; signaling the speaker’s or writer’s attitude, engage the  audience and organize the discourse. This study compared the use of metadiscourse markers in English research articles by native English writers and non-native English researchers. Metadiscourse markers were identified based on the metadiscourse model as interactive and interactional markers. The researcher read all the forty (40) English applied linguistic research articles carefully and undertook a search for interactional markers in the introduction, material & methods, result & discussion, and conclusion sections. The articles were obtained from Arabic Journals of Humanities and International Academic Journals. Data analysis was undertaken using an independent sample two-tailed t-test. Results revealed that native English writers differ from non-native English writers in their use of interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers. Non-native English writers should master the use of metadiscourse devices in order to write appealing and high-quality research articles, convey ideas to the audience;  produce and organize persuasive  writing based on expectations and norms of individual involved; communicate effectively to readers; signal the speaker’s attitude, engage the audience and organize the discourse research articles.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the various linguistic reasons that cause Mauritian students to experience difficulties while learning English. As Mauritius is a former British and French colony, most Mauritians are bilinguals. Both English and French are compulsory subjects up to Cambridge O’Level. English is the official language and also the language of instruction but French is much more widely used and spoken. Also Mauritian Creole is the mother-tongue of the majority of Mauritians. This linguistic situation impacts heavily on the teaching and learning of English both at primary and secondary level.  Often, students encounter a number of problems at the vocabulary and grammatical level; these are due to the linguistic specificities of both English and Mauritian Creole. Today, the different types of ‘Englishes’ emerging around the world, are making it increasingly confusing for teachers to teach this language and for learners to learn it. Young learners are finding it increasingly difficult to overcome such differences while teachers are struggling to make English more appealing and contextual despite curriculum constraints.

The purpose of this study is to improve students' ability to understand English discourse through effective interpretation of word meanings where students do not need to continually open dictionaries but by using analysis through interpretation of basic sentences in English. The method used in this study is by comparison. Data were collected through questionnaires, observations, interviews, and student progress sheets. The results of this study indicate that the intelligent guessing method can increase the percentage of student's mastery of English vocabulary by 17%. So this method makes it easier for students to understand English discourse.

The GM5 game is designed to help children overcome the challenges of computational thinking and decision making. Thinking, calculation, and finding ways to avoid defeat by opponents can be deeply systemically configured in the minds of students through step-by-step analysis.  There are five time-limited steps in this game: Selecting cards, analysing card combinations' risk vectors, assessing opponents, planning allocations, and tricking opponents. The game's chain reaction of logic analysis, mathematical operations, and strategic/tactical moves is quite complicated. As a result, this game has the potential to significantly improve the player's analytical strategic thinking and decision-making abilities. Nonetheless, a systematic learning scheme and assistance tools are required to achieve more profound educational goals.

As a result, this research develops an AI program to assist students to continuously rethink and improve their game strategies in a reflexive loop and adopts a 5-E learning cycle for students to develop systemic game-playing abilities, experiences and mindsets. For those teachers who want to train students to learn independently, this will be a very good teaching method.

Survival and Identity are intertwined gestures of human existence. Being the most important stratum of consciousness or existential struggle, survival and identity crisis, delves within the structures of a constructed mind of the human being. A human being is very much constructed through the realms of the societal and the cultural standards and the consciousness of a human being is decided by the way the being reacts to certain situations in life. Through the characters of Woolf, the survival and identity of the human beings with reference to post feminism and existential feminism, is dealt with precision, as to bring in the ideologies of balance in absurdity, existence in wilderness and intelligence through power, eliminating the power struggle. The anatomy of the human brain is sought to understand the dearth of the human mind and the existing structures of the same. Behavioural psychology, being the intended philosophy, the societal struggle to live and the behaviour changes are expressed through the characters in the novels taken for consideration.

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that determine the intention to adopt e-learning in Jordanian universities. Two models of e-learning are observed among adopting institutions: E-learning as a supplement to traditional classroom mode, and total electronic learning. The respondents in this research have just been introduced to the first model. The paper takes a social, and technical approach in its investigation by using a research model based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to identify the factors that affect intention to adopt e-learning. The model identifies specific salient beliefs that may influence technology usage, such as instructors' attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, perceived usefulness, ease of use, Normative beliefs, Internet Self-efficacy, Perceived Accessibility, and university support. A stratified random sampling method was used to select instructors. Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analysis was used to assess the relationships in the constructs. The paper presents some findings on e-learning adoption intention determinants. It also discusses some of the implications of the findings on theory and practice.

In The Good Lord Bird, gender passing and performance of the protagonist, Onion, are presented as fluid and transparent. Performance, mobility, and constant change are themes throughout the novel. The dramatic narrative feeds off tensions arising from race and gender and the ways in which related identities are experienced and performed. The current paper examines factors relating to performativity and identity in terms of race; in the case of Onion’s narrative, these aspects of identity inform a specific kind of understanding of a social and geographical situation that requires subversion. Through humor and satire, McBride creates a powerful work with contemporary resonances. The drama of the novel is based on concepts of performativity and identity, and the understanding represented by the symbol of the “Good Lord” bird in the novel. McBride wrote the novel for a contemporary audience, knowing that they would be attuned to such issues surrounding racial performance and racial identity. In a way, the unusual literary depiction of a self-identified male who inhabits a female performed identity throughout the novel can be seen as McBride’s comment on the ridiculousness of a binary system of racial categorization as used since the slavery era. Drawing upon theories from Lacan, Butler and Bhabha, the current work examines the plurality and hybridity of performed identities in The Good Lord Bird as they relate to understanding.

James McBride’s memoir The Color of Water provides a rich and nuanced history of the author, who is an African American and details his relationship with his white mother. Using the theories of Bhabha regarding hybridity, ambivalence and a Third Space between varied cultures, this work demonstrates that racial and personal identities are a historical construction, and continually evolve as flexible and mobile entities in this memoir. The linking of narratives and voices across several decades demonstrates the Third Space in the relationship between McBride and his mother, and the relationship of each individual to a broader multiracial culture. Lacan’s theories regarding rhetoric and signification are also used to underpin an exploration of the ways in which McBride portrays his own changing understanding of biracial identity in America.

Aim: This study measured and assessed the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and nutritional deficiency amongst learners in a public school in Durban Central, South Africa.

Methods: Ninety learners in Grade 8 were assessed before and after an intervention of nutrition education regarding their body mass index (BMI) and food intake. Two of the instruments used for data collection were the 24-hour food recall questionnaire and the Quantified Food Frequency Questionnaire (QFFQ), designed by the South African Medical Research Council and compiled by Steyn & Senekal (1991) to gain data on food intake over a period. Nutrient intake was determined using the South African Food Data System (SAFOODS) Food Composition Database [1]. ANOVA tests were used to determine significant differences in food intake between the first and second set of measurements.

Results: The prevalence of underweight, overweight, and obesity during session one was 23.3%, 14.5%, and 12.2%, with no significant change in session two. The daily kilojoule intake dropped from 17209.24 kJ in session one to 13455.39 kJ in session two for the QFFQ (p = 0.0002). The total amount of carbohydrates decreased from session one to session two, from 517.82 to 405.38 (p = 0.0003). Although the intervention successfully reduced the kilojoule intake of the participants, the kilojoule intake remains higher than the recommended Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) of 8665 kJ for the age group of the participants.

Conclusion: The study provides evidence that the school environment is ideal for trained teachers to provide unbiased, objective, and appropriate information that learners can relate to and apply in daily life. The nutrition programme in this study was based on scientific evidence and proved to be phenomenally successful in that a stable balance in the number of obese and overweight learners in session one and two was maintained, despite the challenges and changes that the grade eight learners were exposed to in a new environment. Based on this study, recommendations are made for revising the national curriculum as it applies to nutrition education at all levels.

The aspect hypothesis has been proposed to interpret morphological markings for verbs [1]; however little research has examined how the suffixes of verbs are marked in the context of narrative writing for a real audience. This study investigated tense-aspect markings in written narratives by native English speakers and English learners at intermediate or advanced levels. The participants and the researcher saw the silent film Modern Times in a classroom, but the latter left at the midpoint. Upon the end of the film, they were told to describe to the researcher by writing down the second half of the film. The findings seem to support the hypothesis partially. The progressive form was found attached to dynamic verbs, but never with state verbs. The frequency of the –ing form occurring with activity verbs embodying the durative feature was higher. However, the occurrence of present or past tense did not bear a strong relationship with any specific lexical aspect. The proficiency levels seem to have a relationship with tense-aspect markings: (1) the native English speakers wrote narratives mainly in the present tense, (2) the advanced learners were in favor of the past tense, and (3) the intermediate learners displayed divergent performance.

This study investigated the attitude of students and student-teachers towards the teaching profession in Minna, Niger State. A fifteen item questionnaire and a structured interview schedule were used to collect data from a sample of 250 respondents who were randomly selected from public and private schools within the Minna metropolis. The data collected were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages and means. The results revealed that participants held positive attitude towards the teaching profession but at different levels of significance. The implication of findings for school administration is that the attitude of students and student-teachers to teaching profession is a reflection of the attitudes of school personnel towards their career.

Rabindranath Tagore began painting relatively late in his career when he was in his sixties. Nevertheless he produced thousands of works and was the first Indian artist to exhibit his works across Europe, Russia and the United States in 1930. His painting style was very individual, characterized by simple bold forms and a rhythmic quality, and later served to inspire many modern Indian artists. Tagore painted landscapes, animal figures and human faces. The human faces are a prominent constant in his artistic works. This motif shows his infinite interest in human persona. He turned the faces into a mask or a hieratic symbol of a social type in his paintings. His faces are varied in appearance and social stature and they encompass within their own lineaments of vast human experience.

Mass media’s educative function has had a considerable influence in Kenya since the colonial period. The impact of mass media in shaping the contemporary worldviews—how people see and live in the world—has led to the transformation in the society. The influence of mass media especially in reinforcing commodification and economic rationalism presuppositions is profound because human beings are fundamentally creatures of habit and mass media contents are characteristically repetitive and unreflecting. Since mass media’s images and messages are embedded on philosophical ideas and principles which do not simply develop under spontaneous historical, social and cultural influences, but are products of a fundamental and directing commitment at the core of human thinking, they should be subjected to an authentic critique. From the premise that there is no neutrality in mass media. The objective of this study is to explore the role of the educational function of mass media in shaping consumer’s core assumptions. In particular, the study examines the role of mass media in disseminating undesirable economic rationalism and commodification narratives. The author calls for a deliberate, thought-out, philosophically consistent approach for reflecting, critiquing and responding to the processes through which  mass media uses to educate its audience.

The goal of this study was to see how mental training affected the increase in attention and motor response in certain athletes (skiers).The samples of subjects tested are aged 12±5 and 16±1. Athletes are components of ski groups within School sports clubs. Athletes from Gheorgheni and Baia-Sprie compete in the experimental group, while athletes from Toplita, Sibiu, Predeal, and Sinaia compete in the control group.We investigated the effect of mental training on the increase in focused attention and manual reaction in skiers in this study.Knocking the poles is known to be very significant in alpine skiing. The ACRM (focused attention with manual response) test, which is specialized to alpine skiing, gives information on the capacity to focus attention in activities with an imposed pace and dynamic field of observations. These tests were carried out after the experimental group had received mental training and the results were compared to those of the control group. The analysis was performed using SPSS 15.0. For the comparison of means between the groups of subjects, we applied ANOVA for the VP, EP and EX pretest measurements in order to assess whether the (control and experimental) groups are similar before the intervention. The intervention consists using mental imagery techniques to improve specific aspects of alpine skiing technique that rely on hand-eye synchronization. In addition, we calculated a t test for dependent samples, both pretest and posttest, for VP, EP, and EX to see if the intervention had any effect. Findings indicate a statistically different modification following the intervention, in the scores for VP, EP and EX: p=.000 < 0.05 and p=.001<0.05. Among the indicators recorded through this test, it is worth noting the following: VP – perception speed = number of omissions, EP – perception accuracy = number of errors, EX – focused attention = correct answers /150+ wrong answers. Conclusion: Based on the statistical significance of the results of the tests administered to the groups in our study, it can be concluded that mental training through mental imagery improved outcomes in focused attention and manual reaction in the experimental group. These findings determine, in their turn, increased athletic performance in the groups studied, as it is clear through an analysis of tournaments held in January 2015.