Pleasure reading cures readicide and facilitates academic reading

Vol. 5  Issue 4
Year: 2015
Issue:Oct-Dec
Title:Pleasure reading cures readicide and facilitates academic reading
Author Name:J. Mary Jennifer and R. Joseph Ponniah 
Synopsis:
Pleasure reading is an absolute choice to eradicate readicide, a systematic killing of the love for reading. This paper encompasses the different forms and consequences of readicide which will have negative impact not only on comprehension but also on the prior knowledge of a reader. Reading to score well on tests impedes the desire for reading but in fact it causes the fear of failure, and anxiety towards reading. In order to eradicate readicide, pleasure reading is suggested as a powerful tool because it has the potential to instill love for books by providing pleasant input. Interestingly, pleasure reading promotes both practical and linguistic knowledge and, in fact, it helps readers score high on tests and upholds a lifelong reading habit that will enable them to become literate and well-informed adults.

Second/Foreign Language Lexical Competence: Its Dimensions and Ways of Measuring it

Vol. 5  Issue 3
Year: 2015
Issue:Jul-Sep
Title:Second/Foreign Language Lexical Competence: Its Dimensions and Ways of Measuring it
Author Name:Anindya Syam Choudhury
Synopsis:
Although it is a core component of a language user's overall linguistic competence, vocabulary has traditionally not received the kind of attention it deserved, being usually lumped with other kinds of competence till 1980s and 1990s when researchers started focusing on it with great interest. The present paper discusses what the notion of lexical competence entails, and also attempts to look at how vocabulary researchers have conceptualized its dimensions, especially the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. The paper also discusses the different ways in which these dimensions of lexical competence can possibly be measured, drawing data from an ongoing cross-sectional study on lexical competence in Assam University.

The Impact of Peer Observation and Feedback on Technical Seminar Presentations: A Constructive Model

Vol. 5  Issue 3
Year: 2015
Issue:Jul-Sep
Title:The Impact of Peer Observation and Feedback on Technical Seminar Presentations: A Constructive Model
Author Name:V. Vijaya Vani 
Synopsis:
The present paper attempts to showcase the need and importance of peer observation and feedback in developing technical seminar presentation skills of the students at tertiary level. The paper endeavors to know whether a structured format will help students to know what they have to observe in the seminar presentations to give constructive feedback. Further, the study examines whether peer feedback ensures more involvement of target group in teaching/learning process or not.

A Study on the Developmental Characteristics of Adverbial Conjuncts by Chinese Non-English Majors

Vol. 5  Issue 3
Year: 2015
Issue:Jul-Sep
Title:A Study on the Developmental Characteristics of Adverbial Conjuncts by Chinese Non-English Majors
Author Name:Jiang Junmei
Synopsis:
Based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus, the present study seeks to investigate the developmental characteristics of the use of adverbial conjuncts. And the results show that at different learning stages Non-English majors use all kinds of adverbial conjuncts, but their occurrence frequencies are quite different, the enumerative adverbials are most frequently used, resultative and deductive adverbials come second, transitional adverbials are least used. Chinese learners, especially high school students rely heavily on a small number of adverbial conjuncts, and the use of adverbials lacks diversity. Secondly, the distribution of different semantic categories is roughly the same in the three corpora. In addition, as students learn English more, the use of adverbial conjuncts presents different developmental trends or characteristics, there is an increasing tendency of summative, appositive, contrastive and corroborative adverbials, but the use of resultative and transitional adverbials increases first and then decreases, and it is quite contrary to the use of enumerative adverbials. There is significant difference in the use of adverbial conjuncts between ST2 and ST3, but no significant difference between ST3 and St4

Using Concept Mapping and Paraphrasing for Reading Comprehension

Vol. 5  Issue 3
Year: 2015
Issue:Jul-Sep
Title:Using Concept Mapping and Paraphrasing for Reading Comprehension
Author Name:Hamid Marashi and Nazanin Bagheri
Synopsis:
This study investigated the comparative impact of two types of teaching techniques, namely concept mapping and paraphrasing, on the reading comprehension of EFL learners. For this purpose, 60 learners of a total number of 90 intermediate learners studying at a language school in Karaj, Iran, were chosen through taking a piloted PET for homogenization prior to the study. They were then randomly put into two experimental groups: 30 learners undergoing the concept map teaching, and 30 learners experiencing the paraphrasing teaching treatment. A piloted reading comprehension test was administered as the post-test of the study after each group was exposed to the treatment for 10 sessions in five weeks. The mean scores of the two groups on this post-test were computed through an independent samples of t-test to test the hypothesis raised in the study. The results showed that neither group outperformed the other significantly.

The Role of Language Proficiency in Self-related Personality Traits

Vol. 5  Issue 3
Year: 2015
Issue:Jul-Sep
Title:The Role of Language Proficiency in Self-related Personality Traits
Author Name:Abbas Ali Zarei and Nasrin Zarei 
Synopsis:
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of Iranian EFL learners' proficiency level on their self-related personality traits (self-esteem and self-efficacy). To this end, 141 English major students, male and female, studying at Imam Khomeini International University (IKIU) and Kar Non-profit University in Qazvin, Iran were asked to respond to the Rosenberg Self-esteem Test, the General Self-efficacy Scale, the Academic Self-efficacy Scale, and the Self-efficacy for Self-regulated learning Scale. Also, the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP) was administered to determine their language proficiency level. Kruskal-Wallis procedure was used to analyze the data. Based on the findings, no significant difference was found in the participants' self-esteem and self-efficacy across proficiency levels. The results of this study may have theoretical and pedagogical implications for teachers, learners and syllabus designers.

Unleashing Creativity in Linguistic Discourses through Advertising Skills

Vol. 5  Issue 2
Year: 2015
Issue:Apr-Jun
Title:Unleashing Creativity in Linguistic Discourses through Advertising Skills
Author Name:Y. Suneetha 
Synopsis:
Creative fluency is positively correlated with the quantity and quality of talk as well. The fluency gives an indication of the learner's ability to cope with real-time communication. This paper makes a correlative study on nurturing narrative tasks through advertising skills. English advertising exploits from the high adaptability of the English language. English enables the creators of advertisements to use word puns, figurative language, and to mix individual styles and types of texts. The aim of this paper is to explore what is linguistically creative in everyday interactions by analyzing advertising language. The present study has been done by comparing 100 advertising slogans of Indian Brands and International Brands to analyze language of advertising from linguistic aspects. Further, it provides examples to describe the most commonly used linguistic devices and figures of speech in advertising as a base for creative discourses.