Old English intensifiers

While many studies have employed variationist methods to examine longitudinal changes in the English intensifier system, to date, no variationist studies have tackled the intensifier system of Old English. By providing a critical view of this system at an earlier stage in the history of the English language, the present study adds to the long tradition of scholarship on intensifiers while providing new insight into their diachronic development. Despite its antiquity, several parallels can be drawn with the intensifier system at later stages in the language. Both internal and external factors are found to constrain this system, with predicative adjectives favoring intensification over attributive adjectives, prose texts having higher intensification rates than verse texts, Latin-based texts having higher intensification rates than vernacular texts, and the rate of intensification increasing over time. The quantitative analysis of the Old English system also increases the time depth necessary for a more detailed reflection on the diachronic recycling, replacement, and renewal of intensifiers. Language contact and borrowing are also postulated as driving forces of innovation and replacement in earlier stages of the English language.

Contemporary methodology of teaching English punctuation: problems and new vistas

The article outlines the way the English system of punctuation marks is presented in contemporary ELT research and practice. The following types of sources are considered and analyzed in the article: grammar books for teaching English as the first, second or foreign language; reference books and web-sites aimed at preparing students for IELTS and TOEFL; books belonging to the genre known as popular science; purely scientific works on punctuation in general and the semicolon in particular. The main goals of the research are to reveal the central tendencies in teaching English punctuation on the example of the so-called weighty stops of vertical segmentation, namely the semicolon, and to see whether they manage to present a certain norm of using the stop. Thus, the present paper focuses on the semicolon one of the most controversial stops in the system, which has been proved to function both at the syntactic and stylistic levels. It is shown that a formal / grammatical approach is the most common way to treat punctuation in ELT literature; however, it does not take into account stylistic and prosodic peculiarities of the stops and thus fails to show the whole spectrum of its usage, as well as its phonetic and stylistic potential. Consequently, such an approach should not be applied to English one of the languages exhibiting a semantic-stylistic type of punctuation. It is proposed that the approach to be used in teaching English punctuation most effectively is pragmalinguistics, since it exploits a wide range of methods and means of analyzing a text, and also considers and highlights all the aspects of using the stops (their syntactic function, stylistic capacities and prosodic characteristics). Moreover, the article poses the question that the current methodology of the approach has to be further developed.

Insertion of vowels in English syllabic consonantal clusters pronounced by L1 Polish speakers

The aim of this study was an attempt to verify whether Polish speakers of English insert a vowel in the word-final clusters containing a consonant and a syllabic /l/ or /n/ due to the L1–L2 transfer. L1 Polish speakers are mostly unaware of the existence of syllabic consonants; hence, they use the Polish phonotactics and articulate a vocalic sound before a final sonorant which is deprived of its syllabicity. This phenomenon was examined among L1 Polish speakers, 1-year students of English studies, and the recording sessions were repeated a year later. Since, over that time, they were instructed with regard to phonetics and phonology but also the overall practical language learning, the results demonstrated the occurrence of the phenomenon of vowel insertion on different levels of advanced command of English. If the vowels were inserted, their quality and length were monitored and analysed. With regard to the English system, pronouncing vowel /ə/ before a syllabic consonant is possible, yet not usual. That is why another aim of this study is to examine to what extent the vowels articulated by the subjects differ from the standard pronunciation of non-final /ə/. The quality differences between the vowels articulated in the words ending with /l/ and /n/ were examined as well as the potential influence from the difference between /l/ and /n/ on the occurrence of vowel reduction. Even though Polish phonotactics permit numerous consonantal combinations in all word positions, it proved to be challenging for L1 Polish speakers to pronounce word-final consonantal clusters containing both syllabic sonorants. This result carries practical implications for the teaching methodology of English phonetics.

Pedagogical Reform at Primary Schools in Nepal: Examining the Child Centred Teaching

In the history of Nepalese education, 1853 AD marked the entry of the English system of education by the establishment of Durbar Elementary School by Jung Bahadur Rana after his return from his visit to Great Britain. The English type followed the British model of India, which was at one time accredited based on the Oxford and Cambridge examinations. Several other types of education, such as Buddhist Bihar, Hindu Ashram, and Gandhian Basic Education, existed side by side. Present-day, Nepalese school education has been facing two major enduring challenges: increasing access to education and improving the quality of education, which has now been put together as quality education for all. Explicitly or implicitly, Nepalese education documents forward learner-centered education (LCT) to improve the quality of education. Indented quality needs to be implemented at the classroom level, which yet seems not been materializing in the Nepalese context. It is, therefore, essential to analyze various facets of the LCT in the Nepalese context to weave different aspects together to achieve LCT in the Nepalese school classrooms. The major objective of the present article is to analyze the pedagogical reform at primary school from LCT perspectives in Nepal. Thus the present study wasdescriptive. Library documents and online documents were used as tools for the collection of data. The results of the present study indicated that what has been intended LCT practices have not been implemented. Still, there is a need to clarify envisioned LCT pedagogical approaches and its effective implementation. It will be worthwhile to plan a step by step implementation and development plan and execute it incrementally with emphasis on building upon successes and expanding.

A Study of Written Errors of Iranian Learners: A Systematic Review

The collection of this systematic article was an attempt to show a survey of current activities in the field of error analysis in English language from 2012 to 2018 in Iran. In the country, English is being taught as Foreign Language from middle school. Khansir and Gholami Dashti (2014) mentioned that English accepted as language to pass in the examination. However, English system in this country often put on formal accuracy and teachers focus on the teaching of English grammar in their classes. Error analysis approach has been a widely discussed topic for more than 60 years over the world. However, all the findings of this paper from previous research works on error analysis can be good reasons in order to guide and help reduce such errors in the written language of Iranian students in EFL setting and the results of this work can also be used to as a guide for English learners over the world. This article identifies and presents the major reasons leading to the English written errors among the Iranian learners. Finally, it reports the effective strategies and suggestions for helping the students to improve their English language. The researchers of this study studied 178 papers in this process and 37 of the papers were relevant.