Sanjeev Upreti’s Hansa: An Ecocritical Quest

This article explores the idea of symbiosis; the notion of survival and letting nature and other organisms survive. The idea of 'back to nature' has been explored in the novel through the role of Anuj Pandey who makes a journey from East to West at first and from West to East in the end. Prem represents local citizen whereas Anuj Pandey attempts to look cosmopolitan. However, Anuj Pandey’s mission fails. The novelist assumes a person cannot be a true transcendentalist unless he/she experiences materialism through senses. In order to make a true flight, a person needs to move from the world of human to the world of nature. This all is possible through the activation of the sixth sense. The novel depicts the problems of both local and global homes. The locals desire to fly in the global and again the globalized ones desire to fly somewhere else. The novel shows that they intend to fly beyond anthropocentric world which is neither local nor global, but it is the world that is ruled or governed by the presence of nature. A person may feel as a complete man only in the vastness of nature. The article brings theoretical insights from romanticism, transcendentalism, narrative epistemology, anthropocentrism, ecocriticism and biocentrism as the tool or method of analysis.

Trainee Teachers' Perspectives on Microteaching

Microteaching is one of the most recent innovations in teacher training programme. It is used as a professional developmental tool for pre-service or in-service teacher training courses. Microteaching seems a good technique to train trainee teachers, when he/she has to perform his/her teaching either in practice or real life. The objective of this research was to explore perspective of trainee teachers towards microteaching. The sample size of the study consisted of 40 trainee teachers of B.Ed. from Prithvi Narayan campus, Pokhara. The informants were selected purposively. By taking their consent, I visited the school and distributed the questionnaire, where the student-teachers were practising in practice teaching. A set of close-ended questionnaire was used as the data collection tool. The data were presented in percentage and analyzed and interpreted descriptively. The results reveal that microteaching plays a vital role to improve the trainee teachers’ pedagogical skills, competencies, build self-confidence, make positive attitudes towards teaching life by limited sources and within minimum available facilities, provide valuable teaching experiences, and make them aware of the benefits. Further, microteaching deals with the emerging challenges that will happen in the real teaching career of the trainee teachers. All the respondents put their positive perspectives on microteaching although microteaching is not seriously taken by the practitioners. This study implies that microteaching is necessary for trainee teachers to prepare themselves in a better way for upcoming teaching career.

Formal Email Writing Convention: Differences Between Native and Non-native Students

The use of emails in student-faculty communication is a regulated process. The regulations are formulated in order to ensure that the correspondences are in line with the institutional requirements and to maintain professionalism. There is limited information about such regulations amongst native students (NS) and non-native students (NNS) regarding formal email writing conventions. This study examines the formal email writing conventions of NNS under a regulated environment. A purposive non-probability sampling of 10 non-native students from a British university was collected. The findings indicate that language prowess, request letter acts, and use of formality have positive impacts on the formal email writing among NNS students. It can be concluded from the above findings that teachers of ESL should pay attention to how students formulate the structure and content of emails as they directly impact their writing capability.

Content Analysis: Pop-Songs in the English Language Teaching Classes

Along with Hindi, English is given a status of an official language in India as per the Official Language Act, 1963.(Dept. of Official Language, India). English is studied in India as a Second Language and so English is the most sought after language in India. There are many university students who aspire to obtain a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in English. With a view to make the process of teaching English language interesting as well as enriching, some popular English songs were selected for the class of postgraduate students of English Language. It was realised, during and after the activity, that pop songs can be effectively used in an English Language class. Songs and music have a natural quality to induce interest and enthusiasm to the listeners/learners and so it was aimed to redirect the students’ attention to the linguistic varieties present in the songs. As the songs are easy to memorise, they effortlessly develop English vocabulary of the students. These songs are selected to learn the use of adjectives, figures of speech and idioms. The whole process of learning English Language through popular songs also helped students to improve their listening comprehension. The present paper is an attempt to study how content analysis of the selected pop songs is proved effective and impactful in the postgraduate class of English Language. The songs for the present study are selected from a popular album named Imagined Dragon.

A Rasa Reading of Prayer on a Clear Morning in the Month of Magh

The study examines how the persona perpetually searches tranquility in the poem entitled “Prayer on a Clear Morning in the Month of Magh” by Laxmi Prasad Devkota. For the study, I have entered into rasa reading to explore the sovereignty of śānta rasa, which is pervasively dominant in the poem. As the nature of śānta rasa, all emotions merge out of śānta and finally in the end, submerge into it. Primarily, the determinant, consequent, and transitory emotions are identified and further analyzed to illustrate how they conjoin. Through the discussion, it appears that any sensitive readers of the poem could identify themselves to the persona’s emotion as one involves in prayer. It stands as the devotion and celebration of the God and nature in the month of Magh; that represents creation and clarity. It happens there suspending ‘I’, surpassing ego, and searching metamorphosis of the lustrous desires, fabric beauty, and worldly pain for overcoming both life and death enjoying the elixir of the Sun and learning the lesson from the God. As a result, the persona believes in the dying down of the worldly dream to achieve delight and disillusionment eliminating shiny lacy veils entrapping humanity. Thus, the poem searches tranquility as a state of pure peace relishing utmost and absolute aesthetic pleasure, sama. Finally, it expands the scope of the Eastern aesthetics, especially unfolding and widening the area of śānta rasa, which is usually overlooked even in the Eastern literature.

Towards the Development of an Exhaustive Translation Theory

Systematic studies on translation began only after its introduction as a separate discipline in the 1970s. The movements of the mid-twentieth century established translation theories like functional, post-colonial, and systems and proved relevance for translation works. Thus, a brief survey of translation theories that were developed and applied in the Western countries is significant, rational, and timely. In this context, the present paper focuses on the delineations of the translation theories developed in the West. Further, these theories have been included within applied linguistics and English language teaching courses. Since the wholistic expansion of all of them is impossible and unnecessary in such a small-scale study, this article presents a brief survey of only contemporary theories, which have been developed from the 1970s to the present date. A survey of these theories exhibits that none of them is exhaustive enough within itself and therefore, a new theory that is intelligible, practical and relevant is yet to be developed The implication of this study in English language teaching is that the translation and the transtlation theories offer insights into the sensitivities of language and culture for language teachers while teaching.

Students' Views on Shadowing in English Language Learning

This article is a part of a mini-research conducted in Rupandehi district, Tilottama municipality to find out the situation of shadowing in education and its effect in English language learning. It focuses on the students' views towards shadowing to learn English. Though the study was conducted there in two private schools of the municipality, the participants were from various districts and have passed SEE from different government and private schools of Lumbini region and outside. The results found include that the students are spellbound in taking part in shadow activities of education and they believe that whatever they achieved was due to shadowing not due to the regular classes. The study also reveals some unwanted activities of the teachers involved in shadow activities like giving clues of questions to prepare the exams, helping students in exam halls and so on.

Blending Online Digital Tools in Low Resourced Classrooms in Nepal

The wider uses of digital online tools have been explicitly practised in the educational spheres including access and use of technology in Nepal during the pandemic situation, like COVID 19. This article focuses on the use of six different digital online tools which could be effectively blended in face-to-face and distance classroom teaching by teacher educators to reshape the way they teach. It links the idea of tech integration along technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) model in the use of technology. The data elicited from the narratives of ten experienced teacher educators relate the grassroots challenges in the use of tech tools to foster the professional identity of teachers. It further discusses the effective use of digital online tools even in the difficult circumstances minimizing the challenges and digital divide.

Students’ Beliefs on Learner Autonomy in English Language Classroom

This study tries to explore the students' beliefs on learner autonomy in English language class at the secondary level. I, as a researcher, collected first hand data from the students of secondary level of government aided school. The students of school A are interpreted on the basis of ethnographic research. This study analyses students’ beliefs and reflections on learner autonomy. Moreover, the present study relates and connects two theories in the process of developing and shaping of it. It emphasizes the students’ perceptions toward learning autonomy and the researcher has anticipated mentioning the students’ perceptions on English language teaching learning in the government aided schools. The findings of this study reveal that learner autonomy is necessary for the learners' encouragement, the opportunity of learning language and learner’s development, and for responsibility of the learners.

Socio-economic and Psychological Impact of COVID-19 on English Learners

The COVID-19 crisis has brought up unprecedented and complex issues for us all. COVID-19 crisis has made global impact in most of the sectors, including socio-economic and psychological impacts. Therefore, this study designed to address socio-economic and psychological impacts of COVID-19 on English learners. For this purpose, a sample of 50 students and 4 teachers were selected from two schools following random sampling procedures. Similarly, two key tools for collecting data were used, namely questionnaires and interviews. After analyzing the data collected through the online questionnaire and interview sheet, it has been found that COVID-19 has affected on socio-economic and psychological factors. Most of the students do not always take online class because of lack of money. During COVID-19, students sell fruits on the way. Psychologically, students are weak. So, they try to commit suicide and students do not enjoy online classes because of the lack of creativity in online. Furthermore, almost all the teachers opined that the presences of students are very low in online classes because of poor economic condition. Thus, COVID-19 directly impacts English learners' all aspects of life.