Unraveling Contradictions: Which Glosses Facilitate Reading Comprehension Among ELLs, and Why?

This critical literature review provides study details for 36 studies examining the effect of glossing for language acquisition among English language learners (ELLs). Useful tables include specificity of participants, gloss types, target vocabulary items and text information about all studies. An analysis of these studies reveals that glossing is an effective means to enhance reading comprehension among ELLs. However, gloss language—whether L1 or English, may depend on learner factors. Other findings include the importance of proximity of gloss to text and the need for glosses that do not require readers to leave the text to access meaning. Considerations such as text genre, text length, targeted items for glossing, number of items to gloss, and gloss presentation are also examined and discussed, including which gloss types may result in trade-offs when glossing is used as a means to promote incidental vocabulary acquisition through independent reading. Several recommendations for further research are offered.

Contrastive and Degenerative Transitivity as Thematic Reinforcement in Selected J. P. Clark Poetry

This article examines the stylistic implications of transitivity in selected poems by J.P. Clark, a foremost Nigerian poet. Transitivity is engaged from the perspective of Halliday’s ideational meta-function of language use, with attention paid to the participants and the processes. Twelve randomly selected poems from Clark’s (2010) Full Tide are analyzed. It is observed that, in some of these poems, there is deliberate foregrounding of the sequence or location of lexical forms, especially those pertaining to participants and processes. This foregrounding is established in what manifests as a negative shift in lexico-semantic forms that suggests degenerative essence. The placement of words as well as the sequence of these words evokes a secondary reading beyond what the text ordinarily expresses.

Revitalizing Local Wisdom in Balinese Simile: An Effort to Enhance Balinese Youth Character

The moral message in local languages is often referred to as local wisdom. Local wisdom plays a very important role in people's lives since it is used as a means and basis for solving their encountered various problems. As one of the big local languages in Indonesia, the Balinese language contains many figurative languages that are rich in local wisdom values. The values have proven to be a shield to protect the Balinese people and their culture from the globalization attack. For this reason, local wisdom found in Balinese figurative language needs to be revitalized to be understood and implemented by the younger generation of Bali. One of the figurative languages studied in this study is the simile. Similes of the Balinese language are studied by combining three approaches, namely ecolinguistic, pragmatic, and cultural approaches, to reach detailed analysis results. Simile as part of a metaphor is an expression or discourse conveyed by the speaker indirectly to the interlocutor with certain aims and objectives. The ecolinguistic approach examines the form, function, and meaning or ideology contained in metaphorical language. Meanwhile, a pragmatic approach and a cultural approach are used to assist the ecolinguistic approach in uncovering the functions of figurative language in society and explaining the meaning or ideology existing in Balinese society. The values were reviewed for relevance to the current people's lives contaminated by information technology and tourism development.

The Act of Slavery in 20th Century as Reflected in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

This study aims to analyze the act of slavery that happened in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The characters that are involved are Pozzo as the master and Lucky as his slave. By analyzing how Pozzo oppresses Lucky, it reflects the act of slavery that also happened in reality in the 20th century when the story was written. This study is a qualitative descriptive method using the sociology of literature approach to reveal the connection between the situations in the play with the situations of the world in the 20th century. The data of this research are collected from the utterances and dialogues of the characters in the text play Waiting for Godot. The result showed that the act of slavery acted by Pozzo and Lucky also happened in the 20th century before, during, and after World War II in the 1940s. An upper-class society would enslave and oppress a lower-class society at the time because they had power and money.

EFL Teachers’ Perceptions on the Implementation of Mobile-Assisted Language Learning in Saudi Arabia During COVID-19: Challenges and Affordances

This study aimed to explore EFL teachers’ perceptions regarding mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) in elementary schools in Saudi Arabia, including their attitudes, levels of proficiency, and challenges they experienced regarding the use of MALL. The study also sought to investigate whether EFL teachers’ backgrounds have any significant impact on their perceptions of MALL. To this end, survey data were collected from 123 EFL teachers who have worked in elementary schools in Saudi Arabia. The results revealed teachers’ positive perceptions of MALL, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, participants stated that mobile learning is beneficial and has the potential to support and enhance EFL teaching. Most EFL teachers reported that they did not have a sufficient level of skills/abilities required to develop MALL activities and cited some challenges they faced. The results also indicate a significant difference among participants’ perceptions of MALL based on their professional development and teaching experience, but no difference based on their gender was found. These results indicate that placing a greater emphasis on offering professional development in MALL for Saudi EFL teachers could cultivate both greater proficiency and the ability to overcome challenges. This study concludes by providing recommendations on how to improve MALL implementation as well as directions for future research.

A Comparative Study of Dari Persian and English Language Consonant Sounds

This research article compares the consonant sounds of English and Dari Persian language in terms of state of larynx, place and manner of articulation. This research article aims to determine similarities and differences between the consonant systems of English and Dari Persian language which can be useful for teachers and learners of both languages, especially in listening and speaking skills. In this research article, the qualitative method has been used to find similar and different consonant sounds. In this research article, it was found out that eighteen consonants are similar in between, two consonant sounds are slightly similar, 4 English consonants are not present in Dari Persian, and 3 Dari Persian consonants are not present in English language. It is believed that one’s mother tongue obviously has influence on second or foreign language. That is, one’s own language pronunciation habits are so strong that they are extremely difficult to break. On the other hand, mispronouncing the sounds in spoken language can cause miscommunication or misunderstanding. Therefore, this research article can help teachers and learners of English with Dari Persian as the first language and vice versa to maintain effective and meaningful communication while listening and speaking with more focus on the sounds which are different between the first and the second or foreign language.

Analysis of Fallacies in Below-Average Chinese Debaters’ Speech From Judges’ Oral Feedback

This study aims to explore and analyze the common characteristics of fallacies made by below-average Chinese debaters and identify the criteria used by judges in evaluating those fallacies that determine the ranking of debaters. The 20 pieces of oral feedback from judges on the total fallacies made by five teams of below-average debaters from one tournament of the FLTRP CUP debate competition were selected. A direct link to the cause of faulty reasoning in the group of lower ranked teams was found between relevance-related and structural-related fallacies. Additional contributory fallacies which prevented debaters from winning if not necessarily losing were those related to acceptability and refutation, finally, the most prevalent fallacy was found to be that related to sufficiency which occurred in varying degrees and at different levels of the team.

The Effect of Using Simulation Strategy in Developing English as a Foreign Language Speaking Skill

Speaking skill acquisition is a necessity for communication. However, speaking English as a foreign language is not as easy as speaking English as a first language since practice opportunities are limited. This study tried to find out a technique of reinforcement that can help students; who study English as a foreign language; develop their speaking skills. This study investigated the effect of using simulation strategy in developing EFL speaking skills, with the assistance of using a telegram channel "Oxford Bookworms Collection" for PDF books with an audio version, to stimulate pronunciation, intonation and enrich vocabulary. The researchers used a quantitative approach with an experimental design to conduct this study by involving 50 students divided into two groups. 25 students as a control group and 25 students as an experimental group; both groups were from level 3 who were learning Listening and Speaking-3 course, major English, at College of Science and Arts (Muhayil), King Khalid University. Pretest and posttest were used to collect data, results of the tests were analyzed using SPSS, Pearson correlation coefficient. The results revealed that using the simulation strategy helped the students of the experimental group to develop speaking skills and affected speaking micro-skills in terms of body language, fluency, pronunciation, intonation, grammar, and vocabulary usage positively. Moreover, students became motivated to speak spontaneously.

Foreign Language Enjoyment and Classroom Anxiety of Chinese EFL Learners With Intermediate and Low English Proficiency

Driven by Positive Psychology, research on emotions in second language acquisition has moved from The Anxiety-Prevailing Phase to Positive and Negative Emotions Phase (Dewaele & Li, 2020). A growing number of scholars begin to study learners’ emotions from a more holistic perspective. The present study investigated the levels and sources of foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) of 231 Chinese EFL undergraduates with intermediate and low English proficiency. The study found moderate levels of both FLE and FLCA among participants. However, the level of FLE was much lower than the international and domestic samples, while the level of FLCA showed the opposite pattern. There was no significant gender difference emerged for FLE, while female participants reported more FLCA than their male counterparts. Moreover, no significant difference was found in the levels of both FLE and FLCA between intermediate and low English proficiency students. Qualitative data analysis confirmed that FLE was closely related to teacher factors while FLCA was more related to learners themselves. Based on these findings, pedagogical implications were provided for EFL teaching in China.

Research on the Ethnic Minority English Teachers in Middle Schools’ Perplexity of Professional Development and Its Solution

This study makes an empirical study on the professional development of ethnic minority English teachers in middle school. Four ethnic minority English teachers of different ages who volunteer to participate in qualitative interviews are selected to conduct the in-depth interviews to analyze their professional development. According to the analysis of research results, it is found that the main puzzles of ethnic minority English teachers’ professional development are how to balance the gap between the content of teaching materials and the actual teaching situation; how to avoid the emergence of teaching tendency in teaching; how to realize the positive transfer of professional development in mother tongue cultural environment. Finally, the solutions are put forward to solve the confusion from the social level and personal level.