scholarly journals STANCE MARKERS: AN UNDERDEVELOPED ASPECT OF SERBIAN EFL WRITERS’ COMPETENCE

Author(s):  
Marta Velickovic ◽  
◽  
Jelena Danilović-Jeremić ◽  

The topic of the current study is the interactional dimension of metadiscourse, as expressed through lexico-grammatical devices in beginner L2 writing of L1 Serbian/L2 English learners. The participants’ use of metadiscourse devices was chosen due to its particular relevance for the beginner L2 writing process at the tertiary level. The sample of participants included a total of 70 English language majors attending the University of Niš. The corpus consisted of the students’ expository paragraphs collected over a period of nine weeks during the 2019/2020 schoolyear. The taxonomy used in this particular study was that of Biber (2006) and Min et al. (2019), with a particular focus of hedges, stance adjectives, stance adverbs, and stance verbs. The results obtained imply that stance markers deserve a more prominent place in the EFL classroom.

Author(s):  
Herland Franley Manalu ◽  
Diana Anggraeni ◽  
Asrul Munazar

The increment of concern in the use of online learning tools into English Language Teaching to adopt the Industrial Revolution 4.0 has inspired this study to examine students’ thoughts on Edmodo, as one of the online learning tools, at the English Literature department within the University of Bangka Belitung. Edmodo is used by the researchers to discuss the students’ attitude in improving their English skills. Data were collected by means of questionnaires and interview. A Likert scale questionnaire was administered and open-ended interviews were conducted to get more information from the students. Data were qualitatively and quantitatively analysed by using SPSS v.22 Software. The results reveal that the Edmodo usage is aiding students’ cooperation in small group discussions, reflecting that teaching and learning activities established on the ground of communicative teaching method were able to improve cooperation and communication, raising students’ motivation to take part and involve in various learning and also empowering them to be self-determining and be more responsible for their own learning. This study is an endeavor to attract more researchers to do further investigations on this area within the Indonesian English learners at the university level.


2021 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 03006
Author(s):  
Oksana Marunevich ◽  
Olga Bessarabova ◽  
Elmira Shefieva ◽  
Victoria Razhina

We strongly believe that within the next few years, podcasting is destined to become an important component in the learning environment of the university since educators are trying to integrate the best use of advanced technologies in their courses and remain vigilant to the ever-changing technological landscape. The study aims to validate the idea that podcasts offer teachers a platform to supplement their materials. Despite the potential benefits of podcasts for university education, few researchers have addressed the problem of the influence of podcasting on English learners’ motivation. Based on a survey with 211 students of Rostov State Transport University, this paper focuses on motivational factors for using podcasts when taking an English language course. We found two dimensions of motivating factors (entertainment and convenience) to be prominent for active podcasts use.


Author(s):  
Amy Correia

English learners (ELs) in the United States are viewed as deficits based on their lack of the English language and their performance on standardized assessments. To improve education for ELs, practitioners need to be trained to value a student's multilingualism and culture, leverage native language to build content knowledge and English language acquisition, and embrace Arthur Pearl's vision of democratic education for ELs. The building of language and content will allow ELs to be able to participate with and contribute to society. The University of Rhode Island has developed a teacher training program to meet this need.


2018 ◽  
Vol III (I) ◽  
pp. 389-401
Author(s):  
Saira Maqbool ◽  
Lubna Umar ◽  
Umaima Kamran

English is not more the language of few countries it has become an international phenomenon. Thats why many types of research all over the world are exploring the attitude of these non-native English learners towards it. The current study explores the attitude of Arab students (studding in Malaysia) towards learning English. This study adopted the methods of descriptive research design. In this approach, quantitative data from questionnaires of 49 respondents, Arab countries students studying at the University of Science Malaysia was collected. For data analysis, Pearson correlation and multiple recreations were conducted and it was found out that the Arab students with the attitude towards English had a significant correlation with English learning and importance and English language Policy of their country.


1966 ◽  
Vol 05 (03) ◽  
pp. 142-146
Author(s):  
A. Kent ◽  
P. J. Vinken

A joint center has been established by the University of Pittsburgh and the Excerpta Medica Foundation. The basic objective of the Center is to seek ways in which the health sciences community may achieve increasingly convenient and economical access to scientific findings. The research center will make use of facilities and resources of both participating institutions. Cooperating from the University of Pittsburgh will be the School of Medicine, the Computation and Data Processing Center, and the Knowledge Availability Systems (KAS) Center. The KAS Center is an interdisciplinary organization engaging in research, operations, and teaching in the information sciences.Excerpta Medica Foundation, which is the largest international medical abstracting service in the world, with offices in Amsterdam, New York, London, Milan, Tokyo and Buenos Aires, will draw on its permanent medical staff of 54 specialists in charge of the 35 abstracting journals and other reference works prepared and published by the Foundation, the 700 eminent clinicians and researchers represented on its International Editorial Boards, and the 6,000 physicians who participate in its abstracting programs throughout the world. Excerpta Medica will also make available to the Center its long experience in the field, as well as its extensive resources of medical information accumulated during the Foundation’s twenty years of existence. These consist of over 1,300,000 English-language _abstract of the world’s biomedical literature, indexes to its abstracting journals, and the microfilm library in which complete original texts of all the 3,000 primary biomedical journals, monitored by Excerpta Medica in Amsterdam are stored since 1960.The objectives of the program of the combined Center include: (1) establishing a firm base of user relevance data; (2) developing improved vocabulary control mechanisms; (3) developing means of determining confidence limits of vocabulary control mechanisms in terms of user relevance data; 4. developing and field testing of new or improved media for providing medical literature to users; 5. developing methods for determining the relationship between learning and relevance in medical information storage and retrieval systems’; and (6) exploring automatic methods for retrospective searching of the specialized indexes of Excerpta Medica.The priority projects to be undertaken by the Center are (1) the investigation of the information needs of medical scientists, and (2) the development of a highly detailed Master List of Biomedical Indexing Terms. Excerpta Medica has already been at work on the latter project for several years.


Accurate pronunciation has a vital role in English language learning as it can help learners to avoid misunderstanding in communication. However, EFL learners in many contexts, especially at the University of Phan Thiet, still encounter many difficulties in pronouncing English correctly. Therefore, this study endeavors to explore English-majored students’ perceptions towards the role of pronunciation in English language learning and examine their pronunciation practicing strategies (PPS). It involved 155 English-majored students at the University of Phan Thiet who answered closed-ended questionnaires and 18 English-majored students who participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that students strongly believed in the important role of pronunciation in English language learning; however, they sometimes employed PPS for their pronunciation improvement. Furthermore, the results showed that participants tended to use naturalistic practicing strategies and formal practicing strategies with sounds, but they overlooked strategies such as asking for help and cooperating with peers. Such findings could contribute further to the understanding of how students perceive the role of pronunciation and their PPS use in the research’s context and other similar ones. Received 10th June 2019; Revised 12th March 2020; Accepted 12th April 2020


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (07) ◽  
pp. 20484-20491
Author(s):  
Dr. Ishag Adam Hassan Ahmed

This paper is devoted to presenting the methods in English communicating skills for Learners of English in general and the problems specific to University of Bahri. English language major’s graduates then; it discusses the notion of communicative competence, and defines strategic competence. It also briefly deals with the various definitions of communication strategies and taxonomies of conversation strategies. Also, I give brief definition of the word conversation, that is the act of talking together or exchange ideas, opinions, skills, and information. As accustomed, speaking is natural and automatic but communication is an art which must be learned and practiced. Also the aim of this paper is to present you with suitable suggestions about how you can solve problems while reading English? In order to comply with this objective: we considered two variables. The first one is that within our daily practice at the university we have students with different abilities while reading English. Therefore, we need to help them increase the ability in reading comprehension. However, we don’t have enough teachers and needed resources to supply them with the help they need. The second variable is related to the fact that at University there are different centers where the students’ skills can improve and their reading comprehension skills deficiencies could be overcome by getting help from the teachers. This study is small component of a larger curriculum review exercise. The findings of study in general suggest that both students and English language lecturers were in agreement that Sudanese students had a problem in writing and speaking English and due to that the conversational problems are raised.      Finally, the paper concludes by representing the pedagogical implications of conversation strategies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Tony Burke

Scholars interested in the Christian Apocrypha (CA) typically appeal to CA collections when in need of primary sources. But many of these collections limit themselves to material believed to have been written within the first to fourth centuries CE. As a result a large amount of non-canonical Christian texts important for the study of ancient and medieval Christianity have been neglected. The More Christian Apocrypha Project will address this neglect by providing a collection of new editions (some for the first time) of these texts for English readers. The project is inspired by the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project headed by Richard Bauckham and Jim Davila from the University of Edinburgh. Like the MOTP, the MCAP is envisioned as a supplement to an earlier collection of texts—in this case J. K. Elliott’s The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1991), the most recent English-language CA collection (but now almost two decades old). The texts to be included are either absent in Elliott or require significant revision. Many of the texts have scarcely been examined in over a century and are in dire need of new examination. One of the goals of the project is to spotlight the abilities and achievements of English (i.e., British and North American) scholars of the CA, so that English readers have access to material that has achieved some exposure in French, German, and Italian collections.


Author(s):  
Erda Wati Bakar

The Common European Framework of Reference for Language (CEFR) has become the standard used to describe and evaluate students’ command of a second or foreign language. It is an internationally acknowledged standard language proficiency framework which many countries have adopted such as China, Thailand, Japan and Taiwan. Malaysia Ministry of Education is aware and realise the need for the current English language curriculum to be validated as to reach the international standard as prescribed by the CEFR. The implementation of CEFR has begun at primary and secondary level since 2017 and now higher education institutions are urged to align their English Language Curriculum to CEFR as part of preparation in receiving students who have been taught using CEFR-aligned curriculum at schools by year 2022. This critical reflection article elucidates the meticulous processes that we have embarked on in re-aligning our English Language Curriculum to the standard and requirements of CEFR. The paper concludes with a remark that the alignment of the English curriculum at the university needs full support from the management in ensuring that all the stakeholders are fully prepared, informed and familiar with the framework.


Author(s):  
Esmira Mehdiyev ◽  
Celal Teyyar Uğurlu ◽  
Gonca Usta

This study aims to determine the university students’ level of motivation in terms of different variables. A study group of this research has been designed through one of the non-random sampling methods, Using appropriate sampling, 606 students from Faculty of Education of C.U. have been involved in this study. Motivation scale in English Language Learning developed by Mehdiyev,Usta,Uğurlu (2015) was used as an instrument of data collection. T-test and one - way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to resolve problems of this research. As a result of the research the motivation level of university students hasn’t been revealed significantly different regarding to the gender variable. However, considering the t-test results of motivation scale dimensions, confidence, attitude and personal use, significant difference is seen in favour of women in personal use dimension. The level of language learning motivation of female students is higher than men’s regarding to personal use dimension. However, men’s and women’s views don’t differ significantly in attitude and confidence dimensions. University students don’t present significant differences in terms of birth place, parent’s education level, total motivation scores and confident, attitude and personal dimensions. Students’ motivation levels are seen not to be influenced by the places such as village, provision or city where they have spent the most of their lifetime. At the same time the findings revealed that parental status variable in terms of primary, secondary and university graduates has no effects on students’ motivation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document