Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Literature: Dynamics and Advances
Volume:4 Issue: 1, Winter - Spring 2016

My article addresses the qualities of “good” literature and how an understanding of the nature of literary devices, so-called “literariness”, can enhance the reading experience. Focusing on Hans Rosling’s Factfulness (2018), I discuss some of the most important features of good writing. Six literary devices have been selected for special attention: point of view, tone, amplification, anecdotes, flashbacks, and parallelism. Factfulness is not only good writing, it carries an important message: “[w]hen we have a fact-based window, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems – and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better” (p. 255). Rosling emphasises the importance of knowing the facts about our planet, and relying on these rather than primitive instincts to make assessments and decisions. The elegance of Rosling’s language makes the message not only convincing but also palatable.
the importance of knowing the facts about our planet, and relying on these rather than primitive instincts to make assessments and decisions. The elegance of Rosling’s language makes the message not only convincing but also palatable.

Peer assessment has gained growing popularity in education and teaching. Being a learning tool, evaluating their peers can equip learners with skills to develop judgments about what forms high-quality work. There have been however research gaps in the literature showing a lack of adequate work on the investigation of peer assessment in a group-oriented classroom context. The present study intended to compare the effectiveness of group work with peer assessment and scaffolding with lack of it on learners’ oral accuracy. For this purpose, the regular past tense –ed grammatical target structure as a challenging feature was selected. A total of 34 low-intermediate Iranian EFL learners in two intact classes took part in the study. Although one class was exposed to group work enhanced by peer assessment and scaffolding, the control class did not receive any such instruction. Participants provided answers to pre- and post- grammar tests and their performance was subjected to statistical data analysis by means of ANCOVA. The results indicated the superiority of the experimental group in comparison to the control group. The findings were therefore in line with the cognitive elaboration hypothesis and the sociocultural theory. The findings were discussed with relation to implications for language teachers.

Style and strategies in EFL learning contexts and the effects of task types were explored to enhance language learning strategies. Using a quantitative pre-test, post-test design and interviews, this study investigated the effects of procedural and declarative learning strategies on EFL learners’ acquisition of English past tense performing narrative tasks. The participants were 396 male and female Thai students enrolled in a general English course (intermediate level) in Walailak University in Thailand. The main data was the interview which took 12 weeks of total 24 hours. Participants completed a timed and untimed grammaticality judgement test (GJT) as a pre-test, and were then randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions of dictation, individual reconstruction, or collaborative reconstruction activity. Analysis of performance in the oral test indicated that learners who applied procedural strategy benefited more than those who carried out the oral test with declarative one. This study may contribute to a deeper insight in teaching and evaluation of learning strategies, performing narrative tasks, and highlighting careful selection of tasks. The focus on procedural and declarative strategies for one task could lead to the learners’ use of appropriate learning strategies, enabling the learners to become more independent, creative, and dynamic. amic.

Euphemism is a communicative strategy used to frame a polite or less offensive language and to save people’s public face in communication. This study investigated the euphemistic strategies used by Persian speakers in situations associated with death and lying. Warren’s model of euphemism was drawn on as the analytic model guiding the study. To conduct the study, 60 male and female university students were randomly selected. The data were gathered through copies of an open-ended questionnaire and then analyzed. It was found that “figurative expression”, “implication”, “overstatement”, “understatement”, and “particularization” were the most frequently used euphemistic strategies among the participants in the contexts of death and lying. The study also revealed that there was no relationship between gender and the choice of euphemistic strategies. The findings implied that euphemistic strategies might reflect cultural and religious values.

This article is a comparative study of similar experiences in the American short story collection, Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Ghalagher and the Persian short story collection, A Vital Killing by Ahmad Dehghan as they belong to two different languages, different cultures, and different worldviews. It is an exploration of an overwhelmed psychology in the American short story collection, Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Ghalagher and the Persian short story collection, A Vital Killing by Ahmad Dehghan translated recently into English by Caroline Croskery, and examines the concept of memory within trauma criticism. From amongst the short stores of each collection, three have been selected: “Tips For a Smooth Transition”, “The Train”, and “Big Two-Hearted Hunting Creek” from the first and “The Passenger”, “Stamps”, and “A Vital Killing” from the second. The article shows that characters have undergone traumatic losses; therefore, they suffer a painful psychic traumatic wound that keeps haunting them repeatedly.

The study investigated differences in the use of multiple-choice test-taking strategies by Iranian EFL learners regarding reading comprehension ability. Reading is the most important academic language skill that receives the particular focus in second or foreign language teaching; tests are also regularly applied to assess academic performance. This paper sought to investigate differences in the use of multiple-choice test-taking strategies by Iranian EFL learners regarding reading comprehension ability. The participants comprised 122 EFL learners, 61 females and 61 males, who answered a reading comprehension test while they were answering a test-taking strategy questionnaire. A number of one-way chi-square analyses were used to analyze the data. The findings manifested that there was a statistically significant difference between participants in the use of different types of test-taking strategies in answering multiple-choice reading comprehension test. The results of this study have pedagogical implications for teaching test-taking strategies to low-proficiency EFL learners.

The purpose of the present study was to compare the PhD dissertations written by native and nonnative English writers in the field of Applied Linguistics with regard to the use of self-mentions. To this end, 40 Applied Linguistics PhD dissertations (20 written by native English writers and 20 by non-native English writers), were selected randomly among academic texts written in 2007-2017. The present study analyzed only the introduction and discussion sections of these PhD dissertations. The results of the chi-square analyses revealed that native English writers used more self-mentions in the introduction and discussion sections of Applied Linguistics PhD dissertations than their non-native counterparts. In the light of the findings of the study, it was recommended that Iranian writers in general and PhD candidates in particular have to move away from positivist impersonalized writing presentation towards more socialist performance of knowledge claims and authors’ voice and stance.

Health Humanities written by Paul Crawford, Brian Brown, Charley Baker, Victoria Tischler, and Brian Adams was first published in 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan, UK. The book is a result of many years of experience of work in the field and comes at a right time after the successful organisation of some international conferences on health humanities by Professor Paul Crawford, et al. in the preceding years. Structurally, it includes the following chapters: 1) “Health Humanities”, 2) “Anthropology and the Study of Culture”, 3) “Applied Literature”, 4) “Narrative and Applied Linguistics”, 5) “Performing Arts and the Aesthetics of Health”, 6) “Visual Art and Transformation”, 7) “Practice Based Evidence: Delivering Humanities into Healthcare”, 8) “Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery”, and finally “Concluding Remarks”. The book also contains, amongst other things, three important entries: “List of Figures and Tables”, “References”, and an “Index”, which add to the attraction of the book and make it an authentic read. In the “Acknowledgements” section of the book, the authors thank many health-related organisations in the UK, specially the Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery consortium for practically helping them with their “Mutual Recovery”, a subject that has duly and frequently been dealt with in chapter eight.