This study investigates the effectiveness of interactive methodologies, specifically games and YouTube videos, in enhancing English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction at universities in Jordan. The research examines their impact on student engagement, motivation, and language proficiency, particularly in speaking and listening, compared to traditional methods. Data were collected from 238 undergraduate students through pre- and post-surveys, classroom observations, and a comparative analysis of mid-term and final grades. Students were divided into two groups: one received traditional instruction, while the other engaged in gamified activities and YouTube-based learning. Statistical analyses, including paired-sample t-tests, assessed changes in student attitudes, performance, and classroom challenges. Findings reveal that interactive tools significantly enhance student engagement and reduce challenges like boredom and anxiety, fostering a dynamic learning environment. However, no significant differences in exam performance were observed between the two groups. The study concludes that while interactive tools like games and videos improve engagement, their impact on academic outcomes requires further refinement. A balanced approach that combines traditional and interactive methodologies is recommended to optimize student engagement and achievement. Faculty training and gradual integration of these tools are suggested to align interactive methods with academic goals effectively.

Flow is a psychological state characterized by deep immersion and focus, where individuals experience heightened engagement in a task and suppress external distractions. This cross-sectional survey study investigates the flow experiences of pre-service EFL teachers participating in a digital escape room game over a four-week period. A total of twenty-four pre-service teachers, aged between twenty and thirty-six, were involved in the study. Data were collected using the eGame Flow Scale, which measures seven key dimensions of flow: concentration, goal clarity, feedback, challenge, autonomy, immersion, social interaction, and knowledge improvement. Upon completion of the game sessions, participants assessed their flow experiences through the scale. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were employed to interpret the data. The findings indicate that participants perceived digital escape room games as highly effective in fostering concentration, clear goals, timely feedback, appropriate challenges, autonomy, immersion, and social interaction, all of which contributed to knowledge acquisition. Correlation analysis further revealed that knowledge improvement had significant associations with concentration, feedback, challenge, and autonomy. These results underscore the pivotal role of feedback, challenge, and autonomy in enhancing knowledge and sustaining engagement in digital escape room games.

The present research examines the deviations from standard grammar that appear throughout Bob Dylan’s lyrics. The study applies qualitative and quantitative analysis to analyse eleven types of errors, such as subject-verb agreement, double negation, noun followed by a personal pronoun, omission, using an adjectival form instead of adverbial form, etc., that appear in his lyrics and to determine their possible purpose and impact. The analysis reveals that being one of the most influential and innovative songwriters in history, Dylan has frequently challenged traditional language structures, often bending grammatical rules to enhance the artistic impact of his music.

This study examines Netflix and Google Translate’s renditions of English scatological taboo expressions into Arabic. The corpus consists of 110 items extracted from the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. The findings reveal that Netflix prioritizes cultural sensitivity and appropriateness by employing understatement (58.18%), explicitation (27.27%), and omission (14.55%) as subtitling procedures to either tone down or eliminate scatological offending language. For its part, GT proves to be even more attentive to using understatement (90.91%), albeit it is far less competent than Netflix in terms of language fluency (64% vs. 100%). GT is also less prone to employing omission (6.36%), a Netflix mishap (14.55%) which adversely affects discursive tone and emphasis. The findings also show that Netflix, in contrast with GT, effectively utilizes explicitation and does not produce instances of incomprehensible transliteration. On the one hand, the study concludes that the omission of some scatological terms by Netflix, which can be readily captured by non-flagrant Arabic counterparts, can mar the tone of dialogic discourse. On the other hand, GT, while it is adequately trained to detect scatological terms and tone them down, it seriously falters in terms of linguistic accuracy.

Research on the integration of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and gamification faces critical gaps, notably the lack of comprehensive exploration into learning needs and preferences in this amalgamation. This study aims to address these gaps by conducting a needs analysis and informing the design of a gamification-based MOOC for ESP. To address its aim, we conducted a comprehensive investigation into the learning needs and preferences of 43 Informatics Engineering students at Universitas Negeri Malang. Our survey encompasses four critical dimensions: Learning Needs and Preferences (LNP), Challenges in ESP Learning (CiESP), Learning Approaches and Preferences (LAP), and Integrating Gamification Elements (IGE). Our findings not only provide valuable insights into the students’ specific educational needs and challenges in ESP learning but also illuminate their preferred learning approaches and the effective integration of gamification elements. These insights are pivotal for the design and development of a gamified-MOOC for ESP course, ensuring they align with students’ individual preferences and requirements. By doing so, this study contributes significantly to the ongoing discourse on ESP education enhancement, ultimately augmenting the effectiveness of MOOCs in ESP instruction, and facilitating more engaging and tailored learning experiences for students.

Given that the United Kingdom (the UK) is seen as a world leader in addressing, mitigating, and prioritising the issue of climate change (Albanese et al., 2025), climate change appears to be a frequent theme in British political discourse. In particular, all major political actors on the UK, inclusive of the Conservative and Labour Parties, have their own agendas associated with the issue of climate change. Currently, however, there are no published studies on climate change discourse by Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party and the incumbent British prime minister. In this light, the article presents a quantitative study whose purpose is to identify, quantify, and discuss discourse markers (henceforth – DMs) in a corpus of speeches on climate change by Keir Starmer. The corpus is analysed in the computer program AntConc (Anthony, 2022) in order to compute the frequency of the occurrence of DMs. The results of the quantitative corpus analysis indicate that the most frequent DMs in the corpus are (i) and, (ii) as, (iii) but, (iv) also, (v) so, and (vi) because. The findings are further discussed and illustrated in the article.

The current paper presents an empirical research that studies the approaches governing the process of transformation from English into Bulgarian of elements in the source text which are heavily loaded with culture, symbolism and meaning. More precisely, the article pays attention to the transformation of personal names, titles, names of fantastic beasts (animals), names of objects and institutions, as well as geographical names excerpted from a beloved companion book of the Harry Potter series. The study examines the source text of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and its Bulgarian translation mapping and describing the translator’s treatment of these items, discussing the effectiveness of the different procedures and the motivation for their application. In the pursuit of a leading approach which governed the translator’s decisions (to domesticate or to foreignize), the study reaches to the conclusion that in the majority of the cases it is not the decision to read the text as an original or as a translation that governs the choice of translation techniques but the function and the role of the different denominations in the text.

Food studies is rapidly gaining ground as a multidisciplinary area of research. Within it, literary food studies brings an interdisciplinary perspective as works of literature are viewed through the lens of food that is informed by frameworks and concepts that are rooted in a variety of fields including cultural anthropology, sociology, and more. One such concept that is in focus here is that of commensality that is associated with food and food practices. Commensality, drawing from notions of conviviality, refers to the practice of sharing a table and consuming food together. Deeper meanings of communal identities come to the fore in this social practice, leading it to shape how identities are understood and projected. Commensality can be a complex site of belonging and alienation depending on the context, and this paper seeks to explore the representation of the same in Anne Cherian’s A Good Indian Wife (2008). Leila, the titular Indian wife in the novel, moves to the US from India after her marriage to Neel and grapples with finding her place in the foreign land. With this displacement comes the endeavor to reaffirm her new identity, which now includes the role of being a wife and the aspect of being an immigrant. Neel also deals with complicated feelings towards the projection of his identity. With food playing a crucial role in the everyday experiences of their lives, commensality becomes a point of enquiry into how they see themselves and how their relationships with each other and themselves evolve through the course of the narrative.

Translation of culture-specific references (CSRs) is challenging and results in cultural compromises and even untranslatability, especially when cultures are different. The aim of this study is to identify strategies for translating CSRs from Lithuanian into English in tourist-related promotional texts. CSRs were categorised according to their types and translation strategies. The distribution of CSRs was almost proportional in all categories: organisations, material culture, social culture, names, and ecology. The translation strategies included literal translation (dominant), globalisation, preservation, addition, descriptive equivalent, omission and orthographic adaptation. The study contributes to the understanding of intercultural communication in the context of Lithuanian culture.

A book review of Identity theory (2023) by Peter J. Burke and Jan E. Stets