National English Research Articles

The Searching Peace through War: The Presentation of Pakistan Govt Talks with Therik Taliban Pakistan in National Press

After over two decades of violence, loss of thousands of civilians, displacement of tens of thousands of people, and damages to key infrastructure in Pakistan by Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the central government decided to talk with them in 2014. These peace talks were as vital as their failure could lead inevitably to a longer war. This study is about the coverage given by the Pakistani national press on these peace talks and the military operation followed by it. It is evaluated that how far print media played their role either in initiating peace or instigating war. With this intention, Johan Galtung's theory of Peace Journalism was applied. Analyzing the contents of four elite national English and Urdu dailies the study concluded that the mainstream press portrayed the peace talks with a considerable difference throughout peace talks, which had undermined the government approach of bringing peace. War-oriented coverage of the operation tells that whatever would be the situation media would sensationalize it. Within the news stories, mixed expressions were seen towards both peace and war but the overall coverage remained war-oriented.

English Loanwords in Tamil: Fix Illicit Consonant Clusters

Loanword adaptation has long proved field as an intriguing object of study. Loanword borrowing often takes place within languages to fill the glossary of the new terminology. The direction of borrowing is primarily linked to the sociolinguistic status of a language in a community. In the scenario of Malaysia, Malay as a national language and English as a global language plays an essential role in the process of loanword adaptation, technologically, culturally and politically. English and Tamil languages have two disparate grammatical elements. Some grammatical rules accepted in English is illicit in Tamil. In particular, consonant clusters in the English language are prohibited in Tamil. Therefore, words borrowed from English into Tamil are subject to choose one of these two contradictory rules, whether adapt the consonant cluster in its authenticity or repairing to satisfy the grammar of the recipient language. The study results show that some borrowed English loan words obey Tamil grammar, while others violate the rules. This raises questions about the adaptation process's possible representational versus phonetic underpinnings. This paper examines the phonetic adaptation of English loanwords in Tamil adaptation, focusing primarily on the process of vowel epenthesis. It finds that the place features of the epenthetic vowel overcome illegal consonant clusters. The paper concludes that the language-specific phonological phenomena are central to this process. Data for this research were obtained from Tamil short stories (2000-2016). Many studies have been conducted to examine loanword adaptation in Malaysian Tamil. However, this study explores the repairing process of phonetic variations in the adapted words.

Creating the culture of saving: Framing a life without excess in the Emirati media

This article assesses how the concept of saving has been portrayed in the Emirati media in recent years and how media coverage serves to raise awareness about the need to save energy, water and money for the future of the UAE and the future well-being of individuals, whether Emirati or foreign residents. The concept of sustainability in relation to lifestyle is an important one in this country that has been associated with exuberance, luxury and overspending. Emirati citizens and expatriates alike, according to surveys, lead consumerist lifestyles characterized by above the limits spending on luxury products, which, for some, led to falling into permanent debts. A sustainable lifestyle requires a shift in mentality and media have recently opened a dialogue about the necessity of such a change. From tips for how to change spending patterns to reporting real-life stories, both negative and positive, media engage the Emirati citizens and residents in this topic. This first of its kind research is based on qualitative content and discourse analysis of the national English and Arabic language Emirati daily newspapers collected in 2019. In the process of analysis, frames, which are the cognitive structures that we use to make sense of the world around us, were extracted from a total of 258 articles in the sample. The analysis established the context and the meaning given to the concept of sustainable lifestyle produced by the news structure and the choice of words. The results of this study testify that local newspapers in the UAE play an important role in spreading financial literacy, sustainable lifestyle and tips for saving money among their readers and were doing so already ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic that highlighted the necessity of savings among audiences worldwide. The results highlight the maturity of the Emirati press in this regard.

Complementing Readers and Cultivating Cross-cultural Competence: A Case Study of Sudan National English Curriculum

Complementing Readers and Cultivating Cross-cultural Competence: A Case Study of Sudan National English Curriculum

CLIL in use: perceptions and experiences of English teachers in public schools

This study analyzes the perceptions and experiences that English teachers who work This study analyzes the perceptions and experiences of English teachers working in public institutions in the province of El Oro about the CLIL methodology, from its knowledge to its application. We worked with a descriptive type of research. It was determined that CLIL is not widely known or used among English teachers in the province of El Oro, despite being included in the National English Curriculum, which could be due to the lack of adequate training. Participating teachers who reported applying CLIL in the classroom recognized the innovative nature of the methodology. Therefore, they recommend CLIL as the most appropriate methodology for teaching English, although considering adaptations that could improve it, both in the materials used and in the use of additional resources, especially technological tools.

Women’s Articles in National English Dailies: Coverage Priority and Issues Diversity

This study explores diversities, issues and priorities of women's articles in four broadsheet dailies in Nepal. The study has analyzed the ratio of national and foreign writers. It shoves into the number of women's writers and their areas/issues of writing. The study employs a content analysis research approach. It has extracted 351 articles of one month each national dailies of the year 2018. The articles have been encoded into appropriate fields and grouped under the eight different fields/areas. Then an analysis has been made on gender, issues, priorities and diversities of the articles. The findings are different in each newspaper. The Himalayan Times daily has been found more inclusive in terms of areas and gender priorities. The Kathmandu Post daily has been found to have been given least priority to national writers, regardless of women's writing. Similarly, the finding showed the largest variations in the Kathmandu Post in gender, issues and coverage. The Rising Nepal is found to have given more priority to national writers. Finally, the Republica daily has the second largest variations after the Kathmandu Post; however, the areas of writing have a great discrepancy. This study recommends for the positive discrimination to the women as stated in the gender related policies. The government, media and other stakeholders should play the facilitating role to monitor the media organizations for gender inclusivity in all the areas of work. Future studies focus on the wages, work flexibilities and responsibilities in media to promote peace, prosperity and holistic development of the nation. Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 9, Issue-1: 27-40.

Training Kuwaiti Teachers to Lead: A Case Study of Competitive Debate at the Basic Education College

This paper presents a case study of a competitive debate program designed for teachers-in-training at the Basic Education College in Kuwait. Stakeholders at different levels have expressed an interest in introducing more constructivist-based pedagogies into the Kuwaiti national education system, but institutional and ideological challenges have hindered implementation. Teachers at the college designed and implemented a debate program based on constructivist principles of authenticity, student meaning-making, collaboration, and high performance expectations. Survey data suggest that participants experienced debate as a transformative experience, changing their perception of themselves, of the world, and of their ability to effect change in it. Participants came to imagine themselves as future system leaders preparing future generations with higher-order skills involving complex solving, which an increasingly complex social reality demanded. From 2015 to 2018, a group of professors formed debate teams at the Kuwait University National English Debate League. This endeavour formed the empirical research presented here as evidence to support a move from instructivist teaching to constructivist learning for future teachers in Kuwait.

Study on the Correlation between Linguistic Complexity and Audience Recognition in College English Speech Contests

From the perspective of linguistic complexity, this paper explores the correlation between linguistic complexity and audience recognition in college English speech contests. By adopting the corpus construction and computer visualized data analysis, this study analyzes the speech of contestants at different levels in FLTRP Cup National English peaking Contest 2019-2020, the most authoritative college English speech contest in China. The study shows that: 1) In college English speech contests, the lexical complexity of the speech is negatively correlated with the recognition degree of the audience (i.e. the final ranking of the competition or the success of the speech). 2) The syntactic complexity of the speech exists reasonable interval to ensure good audience recognition. 3) In college English speech contests, the correlation between the lexical complexity and syntactic complexity of speeches and audience recognition is similar to the correlation between the rhetoric and audience recognition in political speeches which is obtained by previous researchers in the field of political speeches. Therefore, we think this study has a certain practical value. It provides evidence of linguistic complexity for predicting the winner of college English speech contests and helping contestants prepare for the contest better.

Policy in Practice: Teachers’ Conceptualizations of L2 English Oral Proficiency as Operationalized in High-Stakes Test Assessment

Assessment of foreign/second language (L2) oral proficiency is known to be complex and influenced by the local context. In Sweden, extensive assessment guidelines for the National English Speaking Test (NEST) are offered to teachers, who act as raters of their own students’ performances on this high-stakes L2 English oral proficiency (OP) test. Despite guidelines, teachers commonly construct their own NEST scoring rubric. The present study aims to unveil teachers-as-raters’ conceptualizations, as these emerge from the self-made scoring rubrics, and possible transformations of policy. Data consist of 20 teacher-generated scoring rubrics used for assessing NEST (years 6 and 9). Rubrics were collected via personal networks and online teacher membership groups. Employing content analysis, data were analysed qualitatively to examine (i) what OP sub-skills were in focus for assessment, (ii) how sub-skills were conceptualized, and (iii) scoring rubric design. Results showed that the content and design of rubrics were heavily influenced by the official assessment guidelines, which led to broad consensus about what to assess—but not about how to assess. Lack of consensus was particularly salient for interactive skills. Analysis of policy transformations revealed that teachers’ self-made templates, in fact, lead to an analytic rather than a holistic assessment practice.

FEATURES OF THE FORMATION AND BECOMING OF PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS A REFLECTION OF CARDINAL CHANGES IN SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

This article is aimed at a historical and linguistic analysis of the formation of English philosophical terms. The process of the formation of the English nation, which was intensively continuing during the analyzed period, proceeded in parallel with the spread of both oral and written national English. During the analyzed period, the vocabulary of the English language includes a significant number of new words; at the same time, both the process of borrowing words from ancient and modern languages and the entire system of word production are activated. The article also makes an attempt at the author's interpretation of the problem of the peculiarities of the formation and development of the English philosophy of the Renaissance (XYI-XYII centuries) in the aspect of the categorical-conceptual language from the point of view of philosophy.

A Study of High School Students’ English Learning Enjoyment (ELE) in China

English Learning Enjoyment (ELE) potentially sustains students’ motivation of English learning, especially under China’s fresh context where National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools issued in 2017 has directed teachers to cultivate students’ core competencies of English as a subject. Its theoretical framework was established by Dewaele and MacIntyre (2014) on Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) and then subcategorized by Li Chengchen et al. (2018) into ELE-Private, ELE-Teacher, and ELE-Atmosphere. The three dimensions have thus made it possible for the following quantitative research, where an enormous space remains on senior high school students in China, despite exhaustive studies beforehand with either overseas background or distinctive educational contexts. This quantitative study will concentrate on the general levels of ELE, both overall and for each dimension. Thus with Li Chengchen et al.’s (2018) ELE Scale came the investigations of 351 senior high school students of all grades with diverse academic levels, whose data were analyzed through SPSS in terms of general levels (both mean values and standard differentiations). The results have looked at an intermediate and converging level of Overall ELE with a more prominent level of ELE-Teacher than ELE-Private and ELE-Atmosphere. Inspired by the results comes a disclosure of students’ positivity in English learning under the guise of their inclination to teachers’ efforts instead of automatic drive or constructive environment for authentic language development. Thus an integrated approach is recommended by dint of an elaborate picture of ELE-Private and ELE-Atmosphere to reclaim the lost authentic “self” of senior high school students.

L2 English Reading Fluency in Korean Elementary Schools : Analyses of National English Curriculum and Textbooks

L2 English Reading Fluency in Korean Elementary Schools : Analyses of National English Curriculum and Textbooks

The Role of Achievement Standards in 2022 National English Curriculum

This study investigates some of the implications for developing Achievement Standards (ASs) in 2022 national English curriculum by analyzing the perception of elementary and middle school teachers on the role of ASs in the 2015 national English curriculum. The major research areas were categorized into clarity, practical usability, and AS level and amount in the national English curriculum. Based on a survey of both descriptive and inferential statistics, the results of the current study demonstrated group differences in specific subtopic questions. Teachers did not have positive perceptions regarding practical application and clarity, while they exhibited positive perceptions regarding the level and the amount of ASs. The survey also suggested alternative ways to improve clarity and practical application of ASs by strengthening the linkage between elements in the curriculum such as assessment methods and instructions and supplementary comments of Ass beyond clear presentation of the ASs.

2015 개정 영어과 선택 중심 교육과정 개선 방안 탐색

This study aims to explore ways to improve the elective-centered curriculum in the 2015 Revised National English Curriculum. To do so, first, the study analyzed the appropriateness of electives in terms of differentiation. Newly introduced in the curriculum, career-related electives were not clearly defined regarding topic, achievement standards, and level. Second, to investigate the current status of course completion, the study analyzed the number of elective courses which were mainly selected and identified which courses were highly utilized and its reasons. The results showed that out of the eight elective courses offered by the curriculum, general electives were mainly selected at schools. It was also found that career-related electives were not differentiated clearly enough, which caused difficulties in teaching and evaluation. Finally, considering the purpose of the high school credit system, which strengthens students’ rights to choose subjects according to their career paths, level, and interests, it would be necessary to secure the differentiation of subjects and to systematize course completion to establish clear guidelines for course selection.

Towards a Global Englishes-aware National English Curriculum of China

Abstract Although researchers and practitioners have discussed the concept of Global Englishes (GE), the degree of GE’s influence in the practical use of English is much wider and deeper in the real world than in the field of education. Mainstream ELT practices tend to adhere to native and fixed norms, which are regarded as the central problems in ELT from the perspective of the GE paradigm. Although a GE-oriented pedagogy has been discussed, studies on curriculum in the Chinese ELT context from the GE perspective are relatively rare. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which the National English Curriculum (NEC) in China reflects GE-oriented phonology and cultural learning. The study adopted a content analysis in which the NEC statements on phonology and cultural aspects were identified and discussed. After reporting the findings, the paper further discusses some pedagogic implications about curriculum and language teaching from the GE perspective.

An Evaluation of the National English Language Exam in Jordan for Postgraduate Studies: Validity and Reliability

This paper aims to evaluate the validity and reliability of the National English Language Exam (NELE) in Jordan for postgraduate studies. According to reviewing the most related studies using the review method, it was found that the NELE is valid and reliable depending on the evaluation of the Commission for Accreditation and Quality Assurance (CAQA) in Jordan. However, it was indicated that no studies discussed the validity and reliability of the NELE in Jordan. Otherwise, few studies evaluated the English language courses like Action Pack and Petra used by the Ministry of Education in Jordan to teach English as a foreign language. These studies found that these courses are valid and reliable. As well as, it was concluded that an enormous shortage in the literature that discussed the validity and reliability of the NELE in more depth and details. Therefore, this paper recommends more studies to evaluation the reliability and validity of the NELE in Jordan.

The Washback of the Ethiopian National English Examination (ENEE) for Grade 10 on Students’ Practice: Debre Markos Secondary Schools on Focus

This study was intended to examine the washback of the General Secondary School English Exam on students’ practice. The study was conducted at three secondary schools in Debre Markos Town. 270 Grades 9 and 10 students were included. Questionnaire, focus group discussion (FGD), exam paper analysis and classroom observation were employed. The questionnaire data were analysed with mean per cent and multiple regression analysis. Whereas, the FGD data and observation data collected with field notes were analysed qualitatively. The content of two years national exam was analysed with percentage. The result revealed students were found practising mainly grammar and technical aspects of writing and speaking disregarding using their textbook in their practice. The factors mediated were students’ ambition for success in the exam, awareness of the exam and teachers’ exam-oriented teaching. Therefore, the washback of the exam negatively affected the successful implementation of the communicative syllabi.

Trends in Research about “Paralympic Education” in the National English Literature

Trends in Research about “Paralympic Education” in the National English Literature

The Application of Activity-based Method in English Reading Teaching in Senior High School

Activity-based method in English reading teaching in senior high school is put forward in the new National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School (NECS). With the development of the times, the demand for hundreds of thousands of senior high school English teachers is changing, because educators stress a great attention to the application of the modern information technology and activity-based method. Therefore, around how to apply English activity-based method in the reading teaching in high school, this paper designs three learning activities to address the problems of the traditional teacher-centered teaching and the knowledge-orientated leaning. The result of this study can penetrate the consciousness of practical meaning into the frontline teachers by fully understanding the new conception and implementing it based on their own teaching needs.

Effects of raters, scoring rubric, and tasks on English writing assessment for Korean high school students

The current research was designed to provide implications for future development of English writing assessment by investigating characteristics of factors such as raters, scoring methods, and tasks affecting variability in the resulting scores of writing items of the National English Ability Test (NEAT). In addition, the interplay between raters and other factors was investigated to pinpoint potential problems confronting the NEAT. Korean high school students made use of a concordancer in English writing activities for about one month. Pre- and post-tests were administered to the students, and their performance was analyzed by means of the multi-faceted Rasch measurement. The results showed that two Korean raters and one native English speaker rater performed with fair consistency, and yet the native rater without rater training showed significant biases unlike the Korean raters who received intensive rater training and was certified as raters. As for the scoring method, the students had the most difficulty with language use, and task completion and content seemed to have overlapping characteristics in the construct definition. In addition, the writing task should be reconsidered for sound validity in terms of type.