scholarly journals Understanding Cultural Context in Responding to Literature: Researching the Teaching of Literature in EFL Classroom Context

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Ali Mustofa ◽  
Jonnie Lynn Hill

This paper shares some insights into the notion of having EFL students collectively respond to literature. Understanding and appreciating a piece of literature is determined by how one can convey the concepts and words to new situations. During this process, several types of interaction happen: interaction between experience and the text, interaction between author’s culture and reader, and interaction of the reader with other readers. In order to interpret a text in the way the author has intended, readers need to develop knowledge of the author’s cultural and historical contexts. This paper describes several innovative, interactive methods that will help students make connections between life experiences and literary texts, between the author’s culture and their own, and between their ideas and those of other readers.

Author(s):  
Kameran N. Abdullah

Knowing about the linguistic and stylistic features of any literary texts in general and the aspect of lexical pattern in particular, concerning the way through which the author uses adjectives, verbs, nouns and adverbs provide us with precious information that can be helpful in judging about the appropriateness of the text to be used for a specific purpose such as teaching to EFL students in a specific level. Therefore, according to the importance of this issue, and based on the checklist of linguistic and stylistic categories proposed by Leech and Short (2000), the stylistic analysis of the short story entitled “Eleven” written by Sandra Cisneros was performed in this study from the lexical category dimension. In the end, the results and findings of the study are elaborated and discussed, with the conclusion that the author was successful in using the appropriate diction and linguistic features to express her main points from the tongue of an Eleven-year-old kid who is also ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, two and one year old. Key words: Lexical category, Eleven, Stylistic analysis, EFL, Short story


1988 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-305
Author(s):  
Jerome Roche

It is perhaps still true that research into sacred types of music in early seventeenth-century Italy lags behind that into madrigal, monody and opera; it is certainly the case that the textual aspects of sacred music, themselves closely bound up with liturgical questions, have not so far received the kind of study that has been taken for granted with regard to the literary texts of opera and of secular vocal music. This is hardly to be wondered at: unlike great madrigal poetry or the work of the best librettists, sacred texts do not include much that can be valued as art in its own right. Nevertheless, if we are to understand better the context of the motet – as distinct from the musical setting of liturgical entities such as Mass, Vespers or Compline – we need a clearer view of the types of text that were set, the way in which composers exercised their choice, and the way such taste was itself changing in relation to the development of musical styles. For the motet was the one form of sacred music in which an Italian composer of the early decades of the seventeenth century could combine a certain freedom of textual choice with an adventurousness of musical idiom.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Hirschkop

In this introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin, Ken Hirschkop presents a compact, readable, detailed, and sophisticated exposition of all of Bakhtin's important works. Using the most up-to-date sources and the new, scholarly editions of Bakhtin's texts, Hirschkop explains Bakhtin's influential ideas, demonstrates their relevance and usefulness for literary and cultural analysis, and sets them in their historical context. In clear and concise language, Hirschkop shows how Bakhtin's ideas have changed the way we understand language and literary texts. Authoritative and accessible, this Cambridge Introduction is the most comprehensive and reliable account of Bakhtin and his work yet available.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 134-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Bush

Purpose The No Harm Done films provide hope and give support to those affected by self-harm. The accompanying digital packs dispel myths, answer frequently asked questions, provide practical advice and signpost to further help and support. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach YoungMinds employed its sector-leading expertise in youth and parent engagement. Both the films and digital packs were co-created with young people, parents and professionals, reflecting their real-life experiences of self-harm. Findings The project responded to young people who self-harm telling us they feel isolated, alone, in need of hope and help to counteract the negative and frightening messages widely available online. Parents confided they also feel isolated and that it is their fault their child is harming themselves. Teachers told us they see the signs but cannot bring themselves to say anything, and even if they want to, they cannot find the words to reach out to young people. Originality/value Quote from a professional “I personally found the No Harm Done short films to be incredibly valuable resources for my practice with young people. The way the films have been produced will make it a lot harder for young people that I work with to judge the action of self-harm given that there are no graphic harming words/stories and the films themselves do not come across as triggering. I feel enthusiastic that these films will encourage understanding and empathy from peers and spark conversation enabling those who have no knowledge around self-harm to be more accepting, open and supportive of those who have issues with self-harm.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-33
Author(s):  
Bilal Asmat Cheema

This article utilizes Anthony Giddens' concept of 'the reflexivity of modernity' to account for the dichotomy of traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge in the Pakistani context during the outbreak of COVID-19. It analyzes the concept of reflexivity as a form of criticism of irrationality and critiques notions of certainty. This article analyzes the concept of modernity endorsed by tradition in general, and by society in particular. Modernity is a constant process of interpreting and reinterpreting tradition in the light of knowledge at any given point of time. It also argues that pre-modern society refuses to reflect upon the nature of reflection itself. Self-reflexivity is the most crucial feature of modernity. The article views Pakistan as a society where reflexivity is not a part of contemporary culture, and it struggles to accept modernity. The article argues that modernity is intrinsically sociological, and contemporary Pakistani society shows resistance to modernity.  It also states that the appropriation of scientific knowledge is not made homogeneously in contemporary Pakistan during COVID-19. Pakistani society is predominantly influenced by religious discourse, which does not believe in self-reflexivity. The study will pave the way to employ the theory of reflexivity to analyze and interpret literary texts in terms of sociological perspectives.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Van Teijlingen ◽  
Cecilia Benoit ◽  
Ivy Bourgeault ◽  
Raymond DeVries ◽  
Jane Sandall ◽  
...  

It is widely accepted that policy-makers (in Nepal and elsewhere) can learn valuable lessons from the way other countries run their health and social services. We highlight some of the specific contributions the discipline of sociology can make to cross-national comparative research in the public health field. Sociologists call attention to often unnoticed social and cultural factors that influence the way national reproductive health care systems are created and operated. In this paper we address questions such as: ‘Why do these health services appear to be operating successfully in one country, but not another?’; ‘What is it in one country that makes a particular public health intervention successful and how is the cultural context different in a neighbouring country?’ The key examples in this paper focus on maternity care and sex education in the Netherlands and the UK, as examples to highlight the power of cross-national research. Our key messages are: a) Cross-national comparative research can help us to understand the design and running of health services in one country, say Nepal, by learning from a comparison with other countries, for example Sri Lanka or India. b) Cultural factors unique to a country affect the way that reproductive health care systems operate. c) Therefore,we need to understand why and how services work in a certain cultural context before we start trying to implement them in another cultural context.


Author(s):  
María Belén Castro ◽  

The aim of this paper is to analyze the attestations of the “beautiful day” (hrw nfr) in literary texts of the Ramesside period, which are written in the late Egyptian language, in order to develop their understanding framed by their historical and cultural context of production. Attention will be focused on the examination of the expression in the stories of The Two Brothers (Papyrus d’Orbiney), The Doomed Prince (Papyrus Harris 500) and The Contendings of Horus and Seth (Papyrus Chester Beatty I), with the general purpose of exploring the sense of their incorporation into the plots, as well as the narrative effects. Furthermore, characters and features involved in the “beautiful day” situation will be singled out. It is also expected to reflect on the comparison with other discourses, such as the funerary one.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syayid Sandi Sukandi ◽  
Dian Noviani Syafar

This research presents the responses from Indonesian EFL students to teaching-learning basic reading and writing skills in the context of Indonesian higher education. The 120 respondents, who completed questionnaires, were students enrolled in Writing 1 and Reading 2 courses in the English Education Study Program of the Teachers Academy in West Sumatra [STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat]. There were four findings from the survey, namely: 1) EFL students preferred studying reading (37%) more than writing (27%), 2) EFL students read about the same amount of literary texts (25%) as they did popular texts (23%) and academic texts (22%), 3) grammar and spelling are the most difficult aspects for EFL students to learn with 33% having difficulty with basic reading skills, and 53% with basic writing skills, and finally 4) EFL students prefer to open a dictionary when they encounter difficult words in reading a text (62%) and do the same when they have difficulties in expressing their thoughts in writing English (38%). These findings show that EFL students have a variety of responses in terms of learning basic reading and writing in EFL English. In addition, the findings show that the tendency of EFL students to prefer reading to writing is relatively high.


Author(s):  
Khalid Shakir Hussein

This paper presents an attempt to explore the analytical potential of five corpus-based techniques: concordances, frequency lists, keyword lists, collocate lists, and dispersion plots. The basic question addressed is related to the contribution that these techniques make to gain more objective and insightful knowledge of the way literary meanings are encoded and of the way the literary language is organized. Three sizable English novels (Joyc's Ulysses, Woolf's The Waves, and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying) are laid to corpus linguistic analysis. It is only by virtue of corpus-based techniques that huge amounts of literary data are analyzable. Otherwise, the data will keep on to be not more than several lines of poetry or short excerpts of narrative. The corpus-based techniques presented throughout this paper contribute more or less to a sort of rigorous interpretation of literary texts far from the intuitive approaches usually utilized in traditional stylistics.


Author(s):  
Teresa Yanitska-Panek

Literary education is very important in the process of forming the personality of the individual. It is necessary to implement a number of conditions in order to student’s contact with literature was a great experience. Reading can be seen as a way of man’s existence in the world of symbols and information. Reading can also be a medium through which cultural content reaches to the recipient and enrich and improve his language and engage him emotionally. Reading is an act of great importance, austerity and effort, and at the same time it is an act of preparing the reader and the recipient to the reflection.Many authors emphasize the value of reading, inspired many motives. The authors draw attention to the different attitudes towards reading of the text which have been described by Lech Witkowski, philosopher and pedagogue in 2007. Eight status of the text in the course of reading are specific hints for teachers and non-pedagogical readers how to treat the text. The philosopher’s look on the function of reading puts this ability in a variety of contexts and makes that people interested in reading can become seekers and creative.The reading is determined the following learning outcomes: student reads fluently, correctly, fluently and expressively aloud texts consisting of words discussed during classes. These texts relate to real-life experiences of children and cognitive expectations. A student also understands short texts read silently; student correctly reads aloud texts written own in a notebook and texts stored on a PC. The student working with text by searching for the most beautiful piece. He is also able to distinguish in literary texts the forms such as narrative, description and dialogue.


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