Vernacular English Research Articles

"You Can't Be Too Skinny. You Can't Be Too Fat. I Don't Know What You Are Supposed To Be.": A qualitative focus group study exploring body image experiences of South Asian women in the UK

British South Asian women may experience unique appearance pressures associated with their intersecting (racialised and gendered) identities; yet qualitative investigations of intersectional understandings of their body image are scarce. The aim of this study was to explore sociocultural factors influencing British South Asian women’s body image using an intersectional framework. Seven focus groups were conducted with 22 women of South Asian heritage living in the UK between the age of 18 and 48 years old who were comfortable speaking in English. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. We generated four themes (1) navigating (often marriage-related) appearance pressures from South Asian elders and aunties (2) negotiating cultural and societal standards across different aspects of one’s identity (3) representation of South Asian women in the wider context and (4) forms of healing from the pressures imposed on South Asian women. The findings have important implications for the body image experiences of South Asian women by acknowledging the need for tailored and nuanced responses to their complex needs in the sociocultural, political and relational context such as family, peers, education, health, media and the wider consumer landscape.

ELICITATION TECHNIQUE EMPLOYED BY EFL TEACHERS IN MOTIVATING JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO SPEAK

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>This study was inspired by the lack of teaching techniques that could accommodate students’ speaking skills as the main indicator determining students’ success in learning English. The elicitation technique could be used by teachers to initiate students to speak during the learning process. A descriptive qualitative method was employed which aimed to investigate the types of elicitation techniques used, the way to implement them, and students’ responses to the elicitation techniques employed by the English teachers in motivating students to speak. There were two English teachers and ten students consisting of seventh and eighth grades involved as the participants in this study. Checklist, classroom observation, interview, and video audio recordings were conducted as the methods of data collection by means of observation checklist, observation sheet, interview guide, as well as video-audio recorders. The data were analyzed based on the category of elicitation techniques proposed by Cross (1992). The findings showed that there were 10 types of elicitation techniques used. Speech Prompts 44.5 (28.7%), WH Short-Answer Question 42.5 (27.4%), dan Yes-No Question 37 (23.9%) were the most frequent types used by the teachers in eliciting students to speak. In addition, it was also revealed that the elicitation techniques were employed by the teachers in all the teaching segments. Eight out of ten students positively responded by feeling motivated to speak in English. This indicated that the elicitation techniques used by the teachers could motivate students to speak in English.<br /></span></p></div></div></div>

“English Ramadhan Camp” Meningkatkan Keilmuan Bahasa Inggris Dan Keislaman Di Bulan Ramadhan

ABSTRACT: The aim of the program is to design English learning combined with the religious lesson namely Fiqh. The program was conducted in Ramadhan month. The materials of the programs are specialized for public speaking skill improvement such as Speech and Master of ceremony and Fiqh which focuses on sexual health and reproduction for teenagers. The program was implemented in SMK Ibnu Sina Genteng district, Banyuwangi Regency. Through this program, it is hoped to provide opportunities for practice teaching method for IAI Darussalam students assisted by lectures, and to build a tight corporation between IAI Darussalam and community. The result of the program is the students are very enthusiast and having adequate knowledge about public speaking in English as well as a proper knowledge about Fiqh.
 
 Keyword: Ramadhan Camp, English Learning, Public Speaking

Factors Associated With Speaking English as a Foreign Language Effectively in Higher Education

This study aimed to investigate the factors that influence the effective speaking of English as a foreign language (EFL) in higher education. Data were collected through an open-ended, in-depth interview with seven interviewees and analyzed using the thematic analysis (TA) technique. The results showed six significant themes related to effective student speaking: aptitude, motivation, opportunity, learning media, learning strategy, and language function. Future research must collect more diverse instances of effective speaking functions and components. Multiple examples of speaking in many genres developed by demographically diverse students in natural settings will provide more realistic and complete views of schoolchildren’s increasing ability to use nominal expressions to construct and communicate meaning for academic objectives.
 Keywords: Aptitude, EFL, Higher Education, Speaking Skills

Print Internationalism's Uneasy Adjacencies

Print Internationalism's Uneasy Adjacencies

An Analysis of African American Vernacular English Grammatical Features in Shark Tale Film

An Analysis of African American Vernacular English Grammatical Features in Shark Tale Film

African-American Vernacular English as Hip-Hop Artist Identity in Indonesian Rapper Ramengvrl's Songs

This study aimed to investigate and identify the grammatical features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) used in the song lyrics of the Indonesian Rapper Ramengvrl’s album, Can’t Speak English, and understand the underlying reasons for this AAVE use by applying the language and society of sociolinguistics approach. The data was analyzed using Wolfram’s theory of classification of grammatical features of AAVE in Ramengvrl’s songs to elaborate on the purpose of its use. The data analyzed were qualitatively collected by closely and thoroughly listening to the songs and reading the transcribed lyrics. The results are as follows: Ramengvrl employs 8 out of 13 grammatical features of AAVE. Those are copula/auxiliary absence, specialized auxiliary, subject-verb agreement, negation, remote “been,” nominals, non-standard pronouns, and question formation. Furthermore, this AAVE use by Ramengvrl is because of (1) the influences of Hip-hop artists, (2) the authenticity of Hip-Hop culture, and (3) as an anti-language to represent herself.
 Keywords: African-American Vernacular English, AAVE, hip-hop, identity

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF CONVERGENT THINKING ABILITY ON ENGLISH SPEAKING PROFICIENCY

Speaking in English is an important skill to master to gain an upper hand in a person’s academic and professional life. Different countries, where English is considered to be a foreign language, are emphasizing developing English language learning and teaching strategies to gain the status of globalization. To achieve this goal, English speaking skills play a crucial role as it is an effective mode of communication to connect with the world. This created an immense need to research how to develop the speaking skills of students studying at the university level. Therefore, this study researched the impact of convergent thinking ability to enhance English speaking proficiency among students. The instrument used to obtain the results are—Remote Associates Test (RAT) and Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit (SPEAK). At the end of the research, it was determined that if the education sector focuses on developing students' convergent thinking ability then the process of enhancing English speaking proficiency becomes easier.

Communication Strategy Used by The Students of Vocational School on Speaking Class

Some problems usually are faced by the students when learning speaking in English as a foreign language. That difficulties also faced by the students of vocational school when they learn in speaking class. In their presentation or talk as performance, they have lack for delivering idea in their speaking. All of them are faced by them since there are difficulty of the target language owing to their hesitation and unfamiliar of vocabulary. Meanwhile, they have to present their idea in the talk as performance in speaking class to the audiences or their friends. Whereas, as students of vocational school majoring tourism, they are expected to have good ability on speaking English. Thus, when facing that problem, it is needed a strategy which can solve their difficulty in speaking. Communication strategy can be used by the students when they faced some difficulties in their speaking. It is students’ attempts involving some strategies in communication which can make the utterances can be understandable and meaningful for achieving communication goal. In addition, the communication strategy is crucial way which can be implemented in the teaching speaking since it can help the students for learning speaking. This paper concerns on the kinds of communication strategies used by the students of vocational school and the process of communication strategy on the speaking class. The qualitative study is conducted in this study since the data are collected are in the form of word. Finally, the result of this study can give new insight for the teachers that communication strategy can be used not only for daily communication but also for teaching speaking.

Developing STAD Model in Virtual Class in English Tadris Islamic State Institute of Pontianak

Speaking in English is a scary thing for students. This is influenced by psychological effects, namely fear of making mistakes in pronunciation and grammar or using the right words. An unsupportive environment also causes students to be afraid to speak. It is therefore necessary to create a pleasant classroom atmosphere for the learning objectives to succeed. This research uses research and development methods adapted from the development of 4D models that consists of 4 stages, namely define, design, develop, and disseminate.The STAD type learning model used in this study was applied in a virtual classroom using an online learning system to bring the atmosphere of a real classroom into the virtual classroom. In virtual classrooms, students cannot meet face to face with other students so that it will reduce the interaction process and cause individualismThe development of a Cooperative Learning learning model type Student Team Achievement Division (STAD) can help lecturers in teaching English speaking pleasantly in virtual classes. The results of expert team tests and product trials show that the learning model is feasible to develop.

Analysis on Developing English Speaking Through Reading in Junior Middle Schools

In terms of English education, much research has been done on the combination of reading and writing, but there are relatively few studies on the combination of reading and speaking. In this study, the combination of reading and speaking in English through activities was expounded. The effect of this teaching mode was studied based on students’ understanding of the subject, practical application, and transfer of knowledge. The goal of this teaching mode is to develop students’ core literacy and to enable them to interpret and utilize text resources. With these as objectives, teachers can design lessons and evaluations that require students to verbally explain what they understand after reading lessons and guide students in a stepwise manner, from superficial text understanding to in-depth understanding and eventually to thinking beyond text learning, so as to promote the integration and development of students’ language skills, cultural awareness, thinking, and learning ability.

Voices of Black Folk: The Sermons of Rev. A. W. Nix, by Terri Brinegar

Voices of Black Folk: The Sermons of Rev. A. W. Nix, by Terri Brinegar

Our Language Belongs in Our Learning

Millions of Black Americans speak a version of English not reflected in the American education system. This version of English—African American Vernacular English—is rule-governed, oral, and systematically different from the “standard” form of English (referred to as Mainstream American English from hereon) used in academic spaces. Though many young Black students enter the education system knowing African American Vernacular English, classroom instruction occurs in Mainstream American English. Black students are instructed in a language that is radically different from the one they use at home yet are expected to perform at levels similar to those of students who already speak mainstream English. This expectation contributes to the achievement gap, wherein Black students, on average, perform at lower levels than white students on evaluations in education.
 This research, as a community-centered attempt to examine differences in literacy and achievement rates between Black and white students in America, seeks to address the achievement gap in two West Philadelphia elementary schools by leveraging the University of Pennsylvania’s resources. This paper describes my problem-solving learning research, using the Penn Reading Initiative as a vehicle for change in order to support students’ cultural and sociolinguistic backgrounds in the classroom, ideally improving literacy rates through culturally responsive pedagogy. This article lays out the problem of dialectical miscomprehension and details a solution developed alongside community members in West Philadelphia. This article also reflects on the progress made in the two years since the original research took place. It highlights the development of the Netter Center’s Professional Development Associates team and the Anti-Racism Working Group—both having been influenced by work done in this problem-solving learning framework.

Anxiety about English Public Speaking in the Students of English Education Department

Speaking in spoken English is the act of conveying information or expressing thoughts and feelings. This study described how to analyze students' speaking fear in English Public Speaking at eighth semester Muslim Nusantara University Al-Washliyah Medan English Education Department. The qualitative research method was applied in this study. The researcher employed observation, interview, and questionnaire to gather the data. Three main stages of data analysis were used by the researcher: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing verification. Following a study of the data, the researcher came to the following conclusions about speaking fear among students at eighth semester Muslim Nusantara Al-Washliyah Medan English Education Department: First, the researcher discovered that the following factors contributed to students' speaking anxiety in English Public Speaking: self-prediction of fear, illogical faith, oversensitivity to threat, anxiety sensitivity, incorrect attribution of body signal, and low self-efficacy. Second, students' lack of speaking confidence in English, fear of making mistakes when speaking, nervousness when the teacher asks them to speak up, and shyness to perform in front of the class are the causes of students' speaking anxiety.

Effect of Speaker Age on Listener Perceptions of Word-Final /l/.

This study investigated an effect of speaker age on listeners' perception of word-final /l/ produced by child and adult speakers of Southern White Vernacular English, a dialect that shows higher rates of word-final /l/ vocalization than other dialects of English. Stimuli included children and adults' word-final /l/ embedded in monosyllabic words in two vowel contexts (/i, ɪ/ and /ɔ, ɑ/). A total of 25 monolingual adult listeners listened to each word and were asked to judge the /l/-likeness using a visual analog scale. Average listener ratings and three acoustic measures (F2 transition rate [F2 TR] and F2-F1 [Hz] values at 20% and 80% time points along the vowel-/l/ duration) were analyzed. Adult productions were rated more as correct /l/ than those of children in both vowel contexts, despite the similarity in their F2 TR and F2-F1 values at the 80% time point. Correlation between the acoustic measures and the average listener ratings were weak for all three measures for adults' productions. For children's productions, while the correlation with F2 TR values were weak, moderate significant correlations were found for F2-F1 values at the 20% and 80% time points. In terms of vowel context, word-final /l/ in the high front vowel context was rated more as /l/ than those in low back vowel context. Findings suggest that listeners are more likely to accept word-final /l/ as being correct when produced by adult speakers, regardless of their acoustic characteristics, but more likely to perceive an error when produced by a child and attend more to acoustic information for their perceptual judgment. This highlights the importance of considering children's dialectal background when judging word-final /l/, which is more likely to be vocalized in certain dialects and certain vowel contexts, and thus can be misjudged without such consideration.

Sustainability motives, values and communication of slow fashion business owners

AbstractResearch on sustainable consumption is increasing however, it mostly focuses on commercial products. Fashion industry in general remains understudied especially small size business in sustainable fashion. Even this segment continues to be neglected in research, it creates a significant impact on sustainability. The study is carried in Lithuania. While sustainability is regarded as the business standard in neighboring countries, especially Scandinavia, Lithuania is still learning how to become more conscious and sustainable. Although the country has the capacity to lead sustainability in the region, there is inadequate education on this matter. Regardless, several local businesses and governments agree that incorporating sustainability is a single clear route to economic growth. The paper aims to understand motives and values of Lithuanian sustainable clothing business owners and explore how they communicate these motives and values. The study employs a qualitative approach of in‐depth semi‐structured interviews. The analysis is guided by the framework of grounded theory, which leads to the conception of four themes: (1) Initiating a Change; (2) Respectful and Responsible Approach; (3) Slowness; (4) Personal and Purposeful Communication. A possible limitation of this study is the language barrier. Participants could choose whether they wished to speak in English or Lithuanian. Three out of seven chose to speak their native language, while four agreed to speak in English. Although English‐speaking participants did not show any difficulty expressing themselves, their interviews turned out to be shorter than those conducted in Lithuanian. Findings indicate that the motives, values, and communication procedures of the owners are reflected in bringing about a change in consumers' minds and actions, taking responsibility to show respect to stakeholders and the environment, slowing down in every step from design to shipping, and building a conscious and educated community. The paper has defined relevant terms and put forward the ground values of the sustainable fashion industry by giving a voice to sustainable clothing business owners, their experiences, and insights.

The Role of Teachers' Motivation in Developing EFL Students' Speaking Skill at University of Salahaddin

This study aims to investigate the role of motivated EFL teachers on developing students' speaking skill and boosting their confidence to speak in English at two colleges of Salahaddin University (Viz. College of Basic Education and College of Languages). To do so, a quantitative approach is adopted in the study. To find out the effect of teacher motivation on improving students' speaking skill, a survey questionnaire is distributed to 87 students. The results show that motivated teachers improve students' speaking skill since they give feedback on correct pronunciation of words, correct use of grammatical tenses and the use of appropriate vocabularies. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that motivated teachers boost students' confidence to speak in English in class since they use praising words to encourage students to speak in English, build a good rapport with them, use innovative methods of teaching, and make sure nobody laughs when students make mistakes. The findings will improve all the EFL teachers who would like to know how important teacher motivation is in improving students' speaking skill and building their confidence.

Preface: Shakespeare and Milton

Preface: Shakespeare and Milton

The Problems Encountered by Non-English Department Students in Speaking English

Speaking is one of the difficult English skills for non-English department students. This is because students must understand how to produce good and correct sentences to pronounce. To produce a sentence, they must master a lot of vocabulary and master how to pronounce it. In addition, to be able to master speaking skills, students must also have self-confidence. This research aimed to know the problems encountered by Non-English Department students in speaking English and their causes and to find out the problem-solving encountered by non-English majoring students in speaking English. The researcher used descriptive qualitative research with a questionnaire and an interview to collect the data. The results of this study indicate that almost all students find problems (linguistic and nonlinguistic) in speaking English. Linguistic problems that are often found are a lack of grammar, poor pronunciation, and the last is lack of vocabulary. The non-linguistics are anxiety, shyness & lack of confidence. The factors causing the problem of speaking English in this study were low motivation, habits & mother tongue, lack of practice & opportunity, and fear of making mistakes. To solve the problem of speaking English is to improve vocabulary and pronunciation skills. Some ways to improve it are by listening and singing English songs, watching English movies to understand English sentences, and using Google Translate to look up the meaning of difficult words and how to pronounce them. In addition, to improve their speaking skills, sometimes students also practice speaking in English with their friends or independently.

Topicalization as a practice for facilitating L2 discussion in video-mediated extensive reading book club meetings

Conversation analytic work on video-mediated interaction is already well-established, but how teaching is done online remains relatively underresearched. This paper aims to expand our understanding of effective teaching practices in online contexts by examining interactions in an extensive reading (ER) book club implemented via the online videoconferencing tool Zoom at a university in South Korea. The book club met once a week for 10 weeks as an extracurricular program of the university with the goal of creating opportunities for students to read and practice speaking in English as a second language (L2). The study focuses on the book club facilitator's topicalization as a practice for facilitating L2 discussion. By using multimodal conversation analysis, the study shows how the facilitator topicalizes a specific part of a primary speaker's book talk and makes use of that topicalized part of the talk to facilitate discussion. The findings contribute to a growing body of research on L2 teaching in general, and teachers' practices of managing participation in video-mediated teaching contexts specifically. The study also offers pedagogical implications for facilitating L2 discussion online.