Rainbows amid Downpours: University Students’ Goals in Learning English during Digital Experiments

University students are susceptible to the constantly shifting online milieu during the pandemic. Linguistic isolation can present more difficulties as students lack authentic social communication in classes online. This study examined the hopes and goals of university students in their English learning course during emergency remote learning. Third Year Pre-Service teachers of a state university in the Philippines served as participants in this study. Through content analysis of 28 student-responses of the English Modules, the research findings demonstrate the significance of hopes and goals of the university students in learning English during the pandemic. Amidst the digital experiments, students portray hopes and goals of developing their pedagogical skills in English and broadening their linguistic skills despite linguistic isolation. Students' goals in the course are to improve their language skills, develop in-depth knowledge in English, achieve better grades, and become effective potential teachers. As they aim to achieve those goals amid metaphorical downpours, university students reflect on the purpose of the course to equip them for lifelong learning that may develop ethical value, morality, and sense of vocation in their chosen profession. Despite having to confront the difficulties of learning online, their hopes and aspirations spark a burning desire to engage in intellectual and linguistic battles in learning English during pandemic and post-pandemic. Academic implications include for teachers to integrate authentic assessments for experiential language learning and for students to sketch a visual career plan outlining how students may achieve their goals as future educators.

Anti-racist Text and Talk: A Critical Discourse Studies Approach to Black Feminism

While racist discourse has received much attention in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), there is a dearth of scholarship on the anti-racist text and talk. A critical observation is that the anti-racist movement, and hence, discourse, often exclude women. With the goal of contributing to this gap in the CDS literature, the current analysis examines Black women's discourses concerning anti-Black racism in general and Black Feminism in particular. Four YouTube videos that feature both conference talks and news programs surrounding the topic of Black Feminism are analysed for recurring themes using thematic analysis and discourse structures from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal that the primary themes that emerged are the inclusion of Black women, Police brutality and unaccountability, and Black Feminism Defined, with various subthemes. In addition, the discourse structures examined are lexical choice, presupposition, pronominal choice, and the use of tag questions, among others. This study serves to further our understanding of the linguistic manifestation of ideologies through discourse concerning anti-racism and Black Feminism.

Simile As An Effective Literary Device in the Vietnamese-English Translation Equivalent

Many Vietnamese writers have recognised the utility of literary devices to beautify the artistic features in written texts. Like other rhetorical devices, simile plays an essential role in bringing meaningful values close to the readers. The research aims at identifying the usage of simile in the translation equivalents between Vietnamese and English in De men phieu luu ky and its translated version Diary of a cricket. From analysing 108 sentences by the descriptive qualitative research, the findings showed that (1) The high frequency of using the complete form of simile to express the figure of speech. (2) The imbalance in the translation rate between two languages and the most popular simile word of like usage in English translated text. (3) The variables of comparative words and themes used in the target text show the same meaning in the source text. Those conclusions shed light on the quality improvement on the target text, especially in both translator's training and further translation education.

Perceptions of English Language Students on the Relevance of ‘EFL’, ‘ESL’ and Other Such Terms in Contemporary Turkish Contexts

Over the years, there has been an ongoing debate on the relevance of certain terms like ESL, EFL. Several linguists have argued that these terms do not represent a wide range of language users under varying circumstances, given their various proficient language competence levels. In a bid to unveil the extent to which this presupposition applies to the use of ESL and EFL terms. A group of 36 participants from a school in North Cyprus was purposively chosen for this quantitative study. Four research questions were to be investigated. Questionnaires were used to collect vital data from the participants on their perceptions on terms like ESL and EFL. After analysis, results were collected, analysed and used to make cases for redefining the concepts of ESL and EFL terms, especially within the Turkish-Cypriot setting. A notable finding of this study was that the participants believed that terms like EFL ESL do not adequately define their language status. They further suggested that more appropriate terms should be used. The study suggested using English as an international and intranational language instead of the former terms, among other suggestions. This study adds to the corpus of research showing that while acronyms like EFL and ESL are relevant in English language education, more emphasis should focus on improving learner's four language skills which directly impacts their performance and production of the target language.

The Effectiveness of Differentiated Instruction in Improving Bahraini EFL Secondary School Students in Reading Comprehension Skills

This study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of Differentiated Instruction (DI) in improving reading comprehension skills in the EFL secondary stage in Bahrain. The study adopted the quasi-experimental research design using thirty-six 2nd year secondary students to be the study participants. The participants were divided into two groups: an experimental group that received the (DI) training and a control group that received the conventional way. A reading comprehension skills questionnaire and a pre-post EFL reading comprehension test was used in the study to collect the data. Results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the EFL reading comprehension test. The findings indicated that the DI strategies helped to develop students’ EFL reading comprehension skills. In addition, it revealed that using various materials for teaching reading comprehension skills to match students' different needs and abilities helped enhance their reading comprehension proficiency. A number of recommendations and suggestions for further research was presented.

Eco-critical Discourse Analysis of the Indonesian President’s Statement at the 21st Conference of the Parties in Paris

This study investigates the representation of the environmental, ecological, and climate change issue in the Indonesian President’s Joko Widodo statement at the COP21, 2015. The data was taken from the transcript published by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry's official website. It is selected according to the popularity of the President and to learn about his ecological view based on the way he represented the country's ecological issue at the global event. The analysis was carried out within an eco-critical discourse analysis framework, which started by investigating the ideology using Fairclough's three-dimensional model. Then, the ideology was judged using the ecolinguistics perspectives proposed by Stibbe (2015a, 2020). The result shows that President Joko Widodo’s ecological-ideology can be regarded as 'prosaic: environmental problem solving', of which this study concludes that his speech can be defined as a 'beneficial discourse' that has to be promoted widely to raise the awareness of language use regarding an environmental issue.

The Teachers’ Roles in Reducing the Interference of L1 in Audio-lingual Classrooms: A Qualitative Case Study in Malaysian Primary School

This research article explores the teachers’ roles in reducing L1 (First Language) interference in audio-lingual classrooms. The main concern of the audio-lingual method is to focus less on grammar and teaching it inductively. There is also an emphasis on pronunciation in this method. Using tapes, visual language aids, and new materials are presented in an interactive model. The teacher presents a new structure using communicative models, and there is less focus on L1. The study applies a qualitative case study and uses observation and interview data collection techniques in a particular primary school of Malaysia during the English language sessions. The thematic analysis technique is performed to categorize the significant findings into three main themes: teacher as a role model, teacher as an orchestra leader, and teacher as a motivator. The data from classroom observation is triangulated to determine how the data is closed to the interview. The finding shows the problematisation of using L1 in teaching L2 (Second Language) since the interference of L1 negatively impacts learning L2. The study contributes to the perspective that English teachers in audio-lingual classrooms are expected to understand their objective roles. The result also implies the teachers' significance to accept that using L1 in maxim spoils learning L2, especially in an audio-lingual classroom.

Clausal-Internal Scrambling in Urdu Language: A Derivation by Phases

Scrambling in Clausal-Internal is accounted for employing minimalist program as a theoretical framework on Urdu Naturalistic data in this study. For empirical evidence, an Urdu corpus has been accumulated in audio-recording forms from 100 competent Urdu speakers within the natural setting, taking Naturalist Inquiry as methodological purposes. Employing minimalist program on Urdu data, this study vehemently postulates that the dislocation of arguments from base to host position only hinges on the phase heads— Co and vo; hence no other external devices essentially necessitate accounting for scrambling. This study highlighted scrambling in clausal-internal specifically within Indo-Aryan Languages is Universal Phase-Based parsimony, and it is only controlled by the exiting mechanism within the phase theory. Moreover, the only merge and move operations linearize the CP in a phase-based fashion while CP is a higher phase and vP is a lower phase. No additional AGRoP necessitates scrambling, but one phase successively and cyclically converges into a higher phase level, i.e. CP and the derivation matches at LF and PF interfaces satisfying Full Interpretation (FI).

Nepalese EFL Teachers’ Digital Literacy for Online Teaching

The face-to-face mode of delivery had significantly been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to its spread, the government had suspended the traditional classroom teaching system, requiring its alternative online teaching instead. Accordingly, English teachers needed to be prepared with the necessary digital literacy skills for effective online teaching. Considering this situation, this study sought to survey the digital literacy skills of secondary school level English teachers of Nepal to check their preparedness for online delivery. A questionnaire was prepared through Google Docs and circulated to English teachers through emails and Messenger. Data was collected using the snowball-sampling method. Altogether, 426 English teachers across the country participated in this study. This study found that secondary school-level English teachers possess the necessary digital literacy skills like word processing, the use of the Internet, downloading, online presentations, and hence, are prepared for an online teaching mode.

Vocabulary Size of University of Aden English Language Students

This research paper tried to evaluate the department of English students' vocabulary size by using Nation Vocabulary size tests (VST). The study used a sample of the third level students at the department of English-Faculty of Education-Aden at the University of Aden in three categories according to their academic achievement in the class (High =80-100, Medium= 70-79.99 and Low =less than 69.99). To measure the vocabulary size, the researcher used on Nation and Beglar (2007) (14000) vocabulary size test. Based on the analysis of students correct answers in the VST, the study found that students' vocabulary size ranges between 1000-8000 words with variant percentages. It was found that (80%) of third level students vocabulary size (high 08-100 and medium 70-79.99) is in the range (1000-3000), (76%) of third level students vocabulary size (high 08-100) is in the range (1000-5000) and (51%) are in the range (1000-8000). The study found that (59%) of third level students (medium 70-79.99) are in the range (1000-5000) and (40%) of them are in the range (1000-8000). The third level students (low, less than 69.99) recorded the lowest size by (50%) in the range (1000-3000), (41%) in the range (1000-5000) and only (21%) are in the range (1000-8000). Considering the total word size of the three categories together, the study found that (70%) are in the range (1000-3000), (59%) range in the range (1000-5000) and (37%) are in the range (1000-8000).