ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Exploring Change in Preservice Teachers' Beliefs about English Language Learning and Teaching
Author: Clark-Goff, Kylah
Date: 2016-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Preservice Teachers,Beliefs,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,Second Language Learning,Student Teacher Attitudes,Student Surveys,Pretests Posttests,Attitude Change,Likert Scales,Focus Groups,Qualitative Research,Teacher Responsibility,Foreign Countries,Factor Analysis,Statistical Analysis,Statistical Significance

The beliefs a teacher carries into the classroom are a strong predictor of behaviour and, thus, have educational implications. With more English Language Learners (ELLs) worldwide, in mainstream classrooms in English speaking countries and in content-based classes in other countries around the globe than ever before, it is essential that pre-service teachers' beliefs about these students are understood and, when possible, altered to ensure positive and productive educational experiences. This study examined the initial language learning beliefs and attitudes toward ELLs among 354 pre-service teachers in a large public university and compared it to their beliefs after their ESL related coursework. The findings demonstrate beliefs about ELLs can be changed, influencing pre-service teachers' practices in future classrooms. Survey data collected before and after specific coursework revealed a significant shift in preservice teachers' beliefs, indicating more alignment with current research and sound educational practice. Semi-structured focus-group interviews provided supporting evidence. These findings suggest pre-service teachers need evidence-based coursework in language development and language learning processes to overcome misconceptions regarding ELLs.
Cultural Conceptualisations in Learning English as an L2: Examples from Persian-Speaking Learners
Author: Sharifian, Farzad
Date: 2013-01-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Second Language Learning,English (Second Language),Indo European Languages,Cultural Influences,Language Usage,Code Switching (Language),Emotional Response,Family (Sociological Unit),Social Influences,Figurative Language,Foreign Countries

Traditionally, many studies of second language acquisition (SLA) were based on the assumption that learning a new language mainly involves learning a set of grammatical rules, lexical items, and certain new sounds and sound combinations. However, for many second language learners, learning a second language may involve contact and interactions with new systems of conceptualising experience. Many learners bring the conceptual system that they have developed while learning their L1 into the learning of an L2, assuming that every single unit of conceptualisation in their repertoire has an equivalent in the conceptual system associated with the L2. This is never the case. In this paper, I will explicate some cultural conceptualisations that speakers of Persian may bring into the task of learning English as an L2 and discuss some possible implications of this process for intercultural sense making. The chapter begins with a background on the notion of &quot;cultural conceptualisation&quot; and then moves into the discussion of Persian cultural conceptualisations in L2 learning.
Twitter Fiction: A New Creative Literary Landscape
Author: Al Sharaqi, Laila
Date: 2016-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Social Media,Telecommunications,Handheld Devices,Fiction,Language Usage,Story Telling,Creative Writing

Twitter, synonymous with social networking, has become a successful social platform for the exchange of ideas, news, and information. It has also emerged as an experimental platform through which users explore creative realms of poetic and narrative content, albeit in 140 characters. The real-time tweets are fundamentally unique and increasingly sophisticated. The attention deficit generation of the fast-paced contemporary world has little time on its hands for extended discourse. Brief stories have been told throughout human history, however, the popularity of short stories skyrocketed with the advent of digital story telling. Twitter has now become a frontier medium that allows a unique mode of digital storytelling that facilitates creative literary experimentation. Twitter offers a unique freedom to writers insofar as a tweet can be an entire bite-sized story or even a snapshot of a story that requires readers' active imagination to complete. Twitter fiction signifies stylistic word economy, compactness, symbolic structure, and implied narrative. Fragmentariness of the story is a marker of Twitter fiction. The proponents of Twitter fiction enjoy the originality, freedom, and diversity of perspectives offered by the Twitter fiction. Critics, however, argue that the mandated 140 character limitation stunts story development and strangulates creativity. This paper examines Twitter fiction and proposes that limited characters' stories are the evolutionary answer to the reduced attention span of the tech-savvy generation.
Native and Nonnative English Teachers' Perceptions of Their Professional Identity: Convergent or Divergent?
Author: Tajeddin, Zia
Date: 2016-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Language Teachers,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,Native Speakers,Teacher Attitudes,Questionnaires,Semi Structured Interviews,Foreign Countries,Language Proficiency,Pronunciation,Self Esteem,Teacher Role,Teacher Competencies,Interviews,Likert Scales,Teacher Qualifications,Statistical Analysis

There is still a preference for native speaker teachers in the language teaching profession, which is supposed to influence the self-perceptions of native and nonnative teachers. However, the status of English as a globalized language is changing the legitimacy of native/nonnative teacher dichotomy. This study sought to investigate native and nonnative English-speaking teachers' perceptions about native and nonnative teachers' status and the advantages and disadvantages of being a native or nonnative teacher. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. A total of 200 native and nonnative teachers of English from the UK and the US, i.e. the inner circle, and Turkey and Iran, the expanding circle, participated in this study. A significant majority of nonnative teachers believed that native speaker teachers have better speaking proficiency, better pronunciation, and greater self-confidence. The findings also showed nonnative teachers' lack of self-confidence and awareness of their role and status compared with native-speaker teachers, which could be the result of existing inequities between native and nonnative English-speaking teachers in ELT. The findings also revealed that native teachers disagreed more strongly with the concept of native teachers' superiority over nonnative teachers. Native teachers argued that nonnative teachers have a good understanding of teaching methodology whereas native teachers are more competent in correct language. It can be concluded that teacher education programs in the expanding-circle countries should include materials for teachers to raise their awareness of their own professional status and role and to remove their misconception about native speaker fallacy.
Dissemination of English Culture in Chinua Achebe's &quot;No Longer at Ease&quot;
Author: Zarrinjooee, Bahman
Date: 2016-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Culture,Cultural Context,Cultural Influences,Stereotypes,Literary Styles,Literary Devices,Literary Criticism,Literature Appreciation,African Culture,Culture Conflict,Novels,Foreign Countries

This paper deals with Chinua Achebe's (1930-2013) &quot;No Longer at Ease&quot; (1960) which depicts the dissemination of English culture in Nigeria and its effects on the life and identity of Obi Okonkwo, the Western educated male protagonist. The focus of this paper is on the dissemination of English culture and submission of Nigerian culture in order to represent the inferiority of Nigerians. Edward Said's (1935-2003) attempts regarding Orientalism and Frantz Fanon's (1925-1961) issues relating inferiority of the indigenous people caused by colonization are used in this paper. The colonisers affect the life, mind, culture, and identity of the colonized through various ways such as education, religion, and language. Such effects cause some cultural transformation and changes in language of the colonized people. Moreover, the colonizer through stereotyping the colonized people assumes them as other. Indeed, the colonizer imposes his/her superiority on the natives who try to assimilate themselves with the colonizer. Achebe in his novel shows how this effort causes some binary relation among the characters. The novel shows the difference between two cultures, and Achebe puts emphasis on the superiority of English culture and depicts how colonialism and Western orientalism produce stereotyped images of Nigerians and Obi as corrupt. Consequently, such features have great impressions on the mind of Nigerians, which results in inferiority complex. Such characteristic invites the Nigerians to follow European's value and forget their own culture, which is resulted in the rejection of native values.
Rhetorical Moves in Problem Statement Section of Iranian EFL Postgraduate Students' Theses
Author: Nimehchisalem, Vahid
Date: 2016-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Graduate Students,Masters Theses,Rhetoric,Academic Discourse,Second Language Instruction,English (Second Language),Content Analysis,Student Writing Models,Problem Solving,Failure,Writing Evaluation,Language Usage,Qualitative Research

The Problem Statement (PS) section of a thesis, usually a subsection of the first chapter, is supposed to justify the objectives of the study. Postgraduate students are often ignorant of the rhetorical moves that they are expected to make in their PS. This descriptive study aimed to explore the rhetorical moves of the PS in Iranian master's (MA) degree theses. The study focused on 30 PSs written by MA Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) students. The samples were analyzed based on Swales' (1990) Create-a-research-space (CARS) model. The findings revealed the students' flaws in writing the PS where they typically presented the significance of their study. The results of the analysis of their written samples also showed that some of the students failed to address a problem as an academic issue based on the existing gap in the previous studies and failed to recommend ways to solve the problem. Students' awareness of the rhetorical structure of the PS may help them create higher-quality works in academic settings. This study has theoretical and pedagogical implications, a discussion of which concludes the paper.
The Word (&quot;Qara'a&quot;) (Read) in the Holy Koran and Pre-Islamic Poetry
Author: Al Deeky, Mahmoud
Date: 2016-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Poetry,Verbs,Semitic Languages,Discourse Analysis,Religion,Correlation,Islam,Dictionaries,Language Research,Diachronic Linguistics,Semantics

This research deals with the verb &quot;qara'a&quot; (read) and with what is derived from or built on in Qur'an and pre Islam poetry. The research stems from the assumption that this item (read) did not appear in pre-Islam Arabic in the meaning agreed upon regarding the concept of reading a written text, and what is stated in the Qur'an regarding the use of this item (the verb read) is the development of the connotation of a language item related to a common Semitic origin. The connotation is linked with religious text, in the first place, in Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew; its impact extended to Arabic with the revelation of Qur'an . The researcher concludes that the meanings and connotations stated in Arabic dictionaries of this language item are late, which Arab linguists tried to arbitrarily gear them to suit the new developed connotations.
Suggestions toward Some Discourse-Analytic Approaches to Text Difficulty: With Special Reference to &quot;T-Unit Configuration&quot; in the Textual Unfolding
Author: Lotfipour-Saedi, Kazem
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Discourse Analysis,Difficulty Level,Correlation,Cognitive Ability,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Academic Discourse,Reading Comprehension,Intellectual Disciplines,Literary Genres,Readability,Text Structure,Context Effect,Nouns,Semantics,Phrase Structure,Language Styles,Language Usage

This paper represents some suggestions towards discourse-analytic approaches for ESL/EFL education, with the focus on identifying the textual forms which can contribute to the textual difficulty. Textual difficulty/comprehensibility, rather than being purely text-based or reader-dependent, is certainly a matter of interaction between text and reader. The paper will look at some of the textual factors which can be argued to make a text more or less readable for the same reader. The main focus here will be on academic texts. The high cognitive load and low readability of the expository texts in various academic disciplines will be argued to belong to certain textual strategies as well as variations in the configurations of the T-units as the prime scaffolding for the textualization process. Different categories of these variations to be discussed here will be exemplified from a few academic and expository registers. More extensive textual analyses will, of course, be necessary in order to be able to make evidential suggestions for possible correlations between certain types and clusters of T-unit configurations on the one hand, and cognitive load and readability indices on the other, across various academic registers, genres and disciplines.
On the Accessibility of Phonological, Orthographic, and Semantic Aspects of Second Language Vocabulary Learning and Their Relationship with Spatial and Linguistic Intelligences
Author: Zarei, Abbas Ali
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Second Language Learning,Vocabulary Development,Phonology,Phonological Awareness,Semantics,Orthographic Symbols,Spatial Ability,Multiple Intelligences,Institutes (Training Programs),Private Schools,Language Tests,Questionnaires,Statistical Analysis,Lexicology,Correlation,English (Second Language),Language Proficiency,Pretests Posttests,Comparative Analysis

The present study was an attempt to investigate the differences in the accessibility of phonological, semantic, and orthographic aspects of words in L2 vocabulary learning. For this purpose, a sample of 119 Iranian intermediate level EFL students in a private language institute in Karaj was selected. All of the participants received the same instructional treatment. At the end of the experimental period, three tests were administered based on the previously-taught words. A subset of Gardner's' (1983) Multiple Intelligences questionnaire was also used for data collection. A repeated measures one-way ANOVA procedure was used to analyze the obtained data. The results showed significant differences in the accessibility of phonological, semantic, and orthographic aspects of words in second language vocabulary learning. Moreover, to investigate the relationships between spatial and linguistic intelligences and the afore-mentioned aspects of lexical knowledge, a correlational analysis was used. No significant relationships were found between spatial and linguistic intelligences and the three aspects of lexical knowledge. These findings may have theoretical and pedagogical implications for researchers, teachers, and learners.
A Comparative Analysis of Interactional Metadiscourse Markers in the Introduction and Conclusion Sections of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Research Papers
Author: Estaji, Masoomeh
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Comparative Analysis,Research Reports,Computational Linguistics,Academic Discourse,Preferences,Higher Education,English,Native Speakers,Periodicals,Statistical Analysis,Teaching Methods,English for Special Purposes,Models,Discourse Analysis,Journal Articles,Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Engineering

Academic writing, particularly writing research articles, is an indispensable part of every major in higher education. Hyland (2004) argued that a valuable means of exploring academic writing, and comparing the rhetorical features and preferences of different discourse communities, is through the metadiscourse analysis of the text. The present study examines the differences in the use, type, and frequency of interactional metadiscourse markers in the introduction and conclusion sections of research papers across the two disciplines of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. To this end, 42 research articles (21 Mechanical and 21 Electrical Engineering) written by English native speakers were randomly selected from two major international journals. The current study made use of Hyland's (2005) model for analyzing the interactional metadiscourse markers used in the selected corpus, consisting of 41484 words. To analyze the data, the frequency, patterns of use, and type of interactional metadiscourse markers were elicited both through a manual corpus analysis and concordance package. Furthermore, to examine whether there is any significant difference in the use of metadiscourse markers in the introduction and conclusion sections of these papers, a Chi-square analysis was run. The results of the quantitative analysis revealed that although there were some minor differences in the frequency and type of these metadiscourse markers, there was no statistically significant difference across the disciplines, which can be attributed to the close nature of these fields. The findings of this study may render some pedagogical implications for ESP courses and especially writing research papers.
Initiating an Action Research Programme for University EFL Teachers: Early Experiences and Responses
Author: Burns, Anne
Date: 2016-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: College Faculty,Language Teachers,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,Action Research,Foreign Countries,Program Development,Workshops,Meetings,Observation,Questionnaires,Teacher Attitudes,Teacher Collaboration,Time Factors (Learning),Student Participation,Faculty Development

Accounts of how teacher educators begin to plan, develop, and support action research programmes for language teachers are rare, as are descriptions of the responses of the teachers who participate. This article documents and analyses the initial processes of introducing and supporting a new programme of action research for language teachers at the Universidad Chileno-Británica de Cultura (UCBC) in Santiago, Chile. To evaluate the setting up of the programme and how the teachers have perceived it in its early stages, the authors, who are the programme facilitators, have conducted a meta-study. Data include workshop and meeting recordings, workshop observation notes, a reflective account, and a teacher questionnaire. The findings indicate that the teachers value the input and collaboration provided by an initial workshop, and subsequent meetings and discussions, very highly, but that issues of time, student involvement, and academic literature are areas for further debate and development. The article ends by drawing out the broader implications for UCBC and for others wishing to initiate similar action research programmes.
The Role of Teachers' Classroom Discipline in Their Teaching Effectiveness and Students' Language Learning Motivation and Achievement: A Path Method
Author: Rahimi, Mehrak
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Junior High School Students,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,Language Teachers,Discipline,Classroom Techniques,Teacher Effectiveness,Student Motivation,Academic Achievement,Punishment,Recognition (Achievement),Rewards,Discussion,Participation,Aggression,Teacher Behavior,Student Attitudes,Questionnaires,Path Analysis,Grades (Scholastic),Factor Analysis,Likert Scales

This study investigated the role of EFL teachers' classroom discipline strategies in their teaching effectiveness and their students' motivation and achievement in learning English as a foreign language. 1408 junior high-school students expressed their perceptions of the strategies their English teachers used (punishment, recognition/reward, discussion, involvement, and aggression) to discipline the classroom. The students evaluated their teachers' teaching effectiveness by completing effective Iranian EFL teacher questionnaire (Moafian, &amp; Pishghadam, 2009). They also filled in Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (GhorbanDordinejad &amp; ImamJomeh, 2011) that assessed their motivation towards learning English as a foreign language. Achievement in English was established based on formal grades students received at the end of the academic year. The results showed that EFL teachers reward and praise students for good behavior and they are not very authoritarian. Further, teaching effectiveness, motivation and achievement in learning English were all found to be related to discipline strategies. The results of path analysis showed that those teachers who used involvement and recognition strategies more frequently were perceived to be more effective teachers; however, students perceived teachers who used punitive strategies as being less effective in their teaching. It was also revealed that in classes where teachers managed disruptive behaviors by using punitive strategies, students had problems in learning as punitive strategies lowered students' motivation. Teaching effectiveness was found to mediate the effect of punishment on motivation while motivation mediated the effect of punitive strategies on achievement. Motivation was found to have the strongest effect on achievement.
English Teachers' Research Engagement: Level of Engagement and Motivation
Author: Mehrani, Mehdi B.
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Language Teachers,Second Language Instruction,English (Second Language),Teacher Researchers,Educational Researchers,Educational Research,Theory Practice Relationship,Teacher Motivation,Semi Structured Interviews,Faculty Development,Incentives,Expectation,Public School Teachers,Private Schools,Qualitative Research

The gap between research and practice has been an endemic feature of the Iranian English language teaching profession. This concern has recently received major attention by the call for empirical investigations to be conducted in order to improve the relationship between research and practice. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which Iranian English teachers engage in doing and reading research. The study also aimed at exploring the motivations that can promote teachers' research engagement. Data were collected through conducting qualitative interviews with 24 teachers with various teaching backgrounds. Analysis of the data revealed moderate level of research engagement. The results also showed a wide range of motivations, including teachers' professional development, instrumental incentives, institutional expectations and pedagogical concerns that can promote teachers' research engagement. Further analyses demonstrated that teachers' professional development and pedagogical concerns remain their main motivations for research engagement. Instrumental incentives and organizational expectations comprise other potential motivations that can be profitably used to encourage teachers' research engagement. However, this is not likely to happen unless working conditions in Iranian schools and policy conditions in national education system are altered.