International Journal of Language and Literary Studies

IMPROVING ENGLISH VOCABULARY FOR STUDENTS THROUGH LISTENING TO ENGLISH NEWS

Yen Tran — 2023-01-31

The major aim of the present research is to investigate the effects of listening to English News on improving the vocabulary of English majors at a university in Vietnam. The researcher called for 60 students to volunteer to take part in the study, 30 of whom were assigned to the experimental group and the other half assigned to the control group. The two groups had to respond to the pre-questionnaire and take the pre-test on vocabulary. The experimental group then entered the experimental process and was asked to listen to English News every day to learn vocabulary. Besides, they did some exercises designed by the researcher related to the English News they heard. Data were collected within ten weeks via the pre-questionnaire, the pre-test, the post-test and the post-questionnaire. The results of the study indicated that the experimental group advanced remarkably in terms of vocabulary compared to the control group. This demonstrated that listening to English News has a positive effect on English majors’ vocabulary. The results of the post-questionnaire also reveal that the students’ feedback on the practice of listening to English News is generally positive.

Phonological Awareness and Word Reading Fluency Among Young Saudi Learners of English

Asma Alzahrani — 2023-03-04

The current study explored the relationship between phonological awareness and word reading fluency among young Saudi English as a Foreign Language (EFL)learners. Two tests were completed by thirty young Saudi EFL learners. The first test comprised 25 questions related to phonological awareness. In the second test, the learners were asked to read a list of English words in one minute, and each student was given a score based on how many words they read per minute. The students scored relatively low on both tests, indicatinga deficiency in phonological awareness and difficulty in word reading. The scores in both tests were significantly correlated, however, a regression analysis showed that only phonological awareness at the phonemic level was a significant predictor of the students’ performance in the word reading fluency test. The results clearly indicate that Saudi EFL learners could benefit from phonemic awareness training, and future studies should empirically examine its potentialfor improving Saudi EFL learners’ reading fluency.

The Impact of Role Play on Enhancing Learners’ Interaction in Speaking

Khalid Lahbibi — 2023-01-31

This practical action research assesses the impact of using role play in developing Moroccan high school students’ English speaking skills. Role play is one way where students can use English in a real life context, and thus they end up improving their English speaking skills or at least transferring the knowledge they are taught to a real life situation. A lot of Moroccan high school English teachers have recently noticed that their students’ English speaking is not really good, and they have then started conducting action research based on different teaching strategies that can be used to help students improve their English speaking skills. We conduct an experiment where we divide students into two groups: a control group (n:20) which is taught without using role play, and the experimental group (n:20) which is taught using role play. The results report role play to have a positive effect on students’ speaking skills in the sense that there is a significant difference in the mean score between the control group and the experimental group.

The Image of Muslim/Arab Women on the Front Covers of Literary Works

Huda Al-Matrafi — 2023-03-04

In several literary works, the images of Muslim/Arab women have increased since the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in art. While exploring the front covers of literary books, one can observe that the ‘Saving Muslim Women’ motif is extremely common. An analysis is made of how popular fiction and non-fiction front covers show Muslim/Arab women's bodies hidden behind veils, most of which focus on a common theme – the social identity of these women. This paper introduces how the representation of these covered women in veils has become a common trend that is used as stigmatization tools to present what is assumed to be the true image of Muslim/Arab women. In fact, that image continues to be stagnated or stereotyped in both Arab and Western literature. A broad range of sources has been examined to critically explore the images of these women on the front covers of literary works and to understand how stereotyped images have been used to represent them.

Big Data Analysis on Features of Wang Jinhua's Chinese Translation of Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Jianxin Zhou — 2023-01-31

The American poetess, Emily Dickinson, whose poems have entered textbooks of Chinese university, primary and middle schools for many years, has become a well-known foreign poet for Chinese public. It is through Chinese translation that most Chinese readers come into contact with Dickinson's poems, yet study on Chinese translation of Dickinson's poetry which will help reveal characteristics of Chinese translation and thus contribute to the development of Dickinson studies and facilitate popularity of Emily Dickinson in China, is obviously insufficient at present. Based on text data of 243 translated poems in Wang Jinhua's collection of Chinese translation,Selected Dickinson’s Poems, and their original poems, programming approach is adopted to make statistics of vocabulary, part of speech, stanza and line, and punctuation of the original and the translated texts, and translation features of Wang's translation is revealed by contrastive analysis. It is found that vocabulary in Wang’s translation is less abundant than the original. Weights of nouns plus verbs in translation and the original text are close, accounting for about 45% respectively, but nouns performance in original text is more prominent, while verbs performance in translation is more significant. There are many additions of verbs in translation, while there are not much changes to original nouns, and sometimes new nouns are added as subjects of clauses, all of which making the translation smooth and easy to understand without lacking of gracefulness. There is little difference in the number of stanzas and verse lines between the original and Wang’s translation. Original dashes and commas have been changed a lot, either by omission or conversion, yet periods undergo little changes. Translation of exclamation marks and question marks is with high faithfulness to the original.

A Pragmatic Analysis of Selected Newspapers' Coverage of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Nigeria

Oluwatomi ADEOTI — 2023-03-07

Language is a pivotal instrument in the hand of journalists; they manipulate language at their disposal for accomplishing numerous goals. Thus, this study explores a pragmatic investigation of how meanings are interpreted in the selected newspapers’ coverage of the Coronavirus Pandemic in Nigeria. Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Acts Theory was used to analyze ten (10) data selected purposively from The Punch and The Vanguard Newspapers between February 2020 and June 2020. The study found out that the pragmatic relevance of the COVID-19 newspapers’ coverage is embedded in its media functions as it serves as an indicator to interpret the messages inherent in the coronavirus newspapers’ coverage and a pract of warning to the citizens of Nigeria to stay safe. The study also revealed that the practs used depend on context, situation and existing shared-knowledge of both the speaker and the reader. It was observed that journalists use the news headlines to perform several acts of warning, sensitising, informing, exposing, etc. to achieve different goals and pass numerous meanings to their listeners/readers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Nigeria. Results indicated that the Nigerian media performed well in terms of covering the pandemic, which in turn created awareness. However, the coverage was not in-depth as most of the reported stories were short and were predominantly straight news. This paper concludes that journalists use contextual language to enhance social relations among the readers.

A Study on the Vocabulary of Filipino- English Bilingual Children Outside the School Setting

Jennifer Tan de Ramos — 2023-03-04

In the field of language learning, language acquisition is an issue that is interesting to investigate since there are a number of theories that explain how language is acquired at an early age. Among early bilinguals, it is important to study the factors that affect their vocabulary. This study explores the word list among Filipino- English bilingual children outside the school setting. The goal was to determine which language, whether Filipino or English, was used predominantly. A second goal was to identify the category the predominant word list belonged to. Two groups of participants were selected randomly and were asked to identify familiar words. The findings revealed that the early bilingual children belonging to the lower-income strata prefer nouns over other English word categories. The findings support the theories of noun bias, stereotyping, and Social Interaction. The results of the study may further improve procedures being done in support of data-driven language learning theory.

THE AFFECTIVE FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE ORAL ENGLISH COMMUNICATION IN NON-MAJOR EFL CLASSROOMS

Thi Thuy Lien Tran — 2023-03-14

Affective factors have been shown to play a crucial role in second language acquisition. However, they seem to be overlooked by most English as a foreign language teachers during classroom practices. Teachers’ oral English is an essential input for EFL students because they are rarely able to use and practice English outside classrooms. Compared with majors, non-English major students can have lower levels of motivation, which may lead to their lack of interest during lessons. Hence, the enhancement of English teaching efficiency in non-major EFL classes seems to be harder. This qualitative study investigates how affective factors are perceived to influence oral English communication in EFL classes where English is taught as a non-major subject at two public colleges in Vietnam. Data were collected via individual interviews with lecturers and focus group interviews with students. Findings reveal that symmetrical relationship, strong sense of belonging, and deep concern and understanding are the three affective factors that support EFL learning. Among these factors, concern and understanding about students influence both lecturers’ pedagogical decisions and students’ learning motivation. Therefore, EFL teachers are suggested to nurture a strongly emotional classroom culture to lower students’ English anxiety and enhance their learning.