Journal of Language Horizons
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Spring and Summer 2017

One of the key elements in the organization of any piece of writing is its coherence. To date, many propositions have been given regarding the definition, analysis, and evaluation of text coherence. In the current study, Mann and Thompson's (1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) was adopted as the method of text analysis to detect the coherence breaks in writing samples. In order to see what problems Iranian EFL learners have with regard to text coherence, 64 essays in descriptive and argumentative genres written by male students of a language institute in Shiraz were analyzed. The essays were analyzed for discourse errors using RST. The findings indicated that Iranian EFL learners committed eight different types of coherence errors, namely irrelevant content, violation of completedness, violation of connectedness, incorrect place, incorrect relation, crossed dependency, scattered units, and topic. The reason behind these errors partly came from the learners' tendency to write in an inductive order, and partly from their inability to coherently connect the constituent parts of their texts together. Genre difference was also proved to be significant in the number of coherence relations and in the type and number of coherence errors. In general, descriptive writing samples were more coherent than argumentative ones.

This Article investigates John Maxwell Coetzee’s three well known novels, Foe (1986), Disgrace (1999) and Life and Times of Michael K (1983) to analyze the colonial pattern of the marginal characters. The theoretical framework is based on Bhabha and Spivak concentrating on the economy of the male identity in post-colonial context. From Bhabha, notions like mimicry, hybridity and change and from Spivak the subaltern’s inaudibility of voice are appropriated. Derrida’s idea of iterability is also applied. The intention is to follow the instances of mimicry and examine if Coetzee’s literature manages to have political and ethical significance, as Spivak believes. It was concluded that resistance in Coetzee’s novels is an iterative moment signifying through recurring role reversions in the colonial discourse. Coetzee’s novels do not conclude with actualization of political betterment, yet the iterative quality of his significations invites us to reread his novels and reconsider the political and ethical questions. The ultimate meanings of his novels in the mind of the reader is inviting him to make political decisions, though seemingly metaphorical and apolitical.

A lot of attention has been recently devoted to critical thinking (CT) and reading comprehension as  part of the goals of language pedagogy. This study examined the effects of rhetorical analysis and self-regulated strategies on EFL learners’ CT and reading comprehension of argumentative texts. To this end, three groups (one control and twoexperimental groups), each consisting of 20 high intermediate female EFL learners, were selected conveniently from an English language institute. To collect the data, three instruments were used: Oxford Placement Test (OPT), California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST), and reading summary tests. OPT was used to ensure the homogeneity of the participants; CCTST and two reading summary tests were used as the pretests and posttests to assess the participants’ CT and reading comprehension skills, respectively. The first experimental group was taught rhetorical analysis strategies of argument mapping and Socratic questioning and the second group received self-regulated strategy instruction. In the control group, no explicit instructional strategies were taught. Analysis of covariance and mutivariate anlsysis indicated the positive effects of rhetorical analysis and self-regulated strategies on the participants’ CT and reading comprehension skills. Nevertheless, no significant differential effect was found between the effects of the two strategies. Findings provide pedagogical implications for L2 instructors and learners.

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) program constitutes a significant part of university curricula in most countries. Iran is no exception. To aid students to succeed in their academic studies and later in their future job, ESP courses should be based on their academic and professional language needs. Therefore, this study intended to investigate the English language needs of Electrical Engineering (EE) students and graduates from their own perspectives, along with the English language expectations of Electrical companies from the employers’ point of view. To fulfill this end, a questionnaire was administered to three different groups of stakeholders, including 97 EE students, 62 EE graduates, and 39 EE employers from 15 well-reputed Electrical companies in Iran. Moreover, semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted. Having collected the required data, the researchers did content analysis and ran independent sample t-test for doing the statistical analyses. The results indicated that different aspects of ‘reading’, ‘speaking’, ‘listening’, ‘writing’, and ‘study skills’ with different degrees of emphasis were important for each group of stakeholders. Moreover, the findings revealed that EE companies expected their prospective EE graduates to be more proficient in ‘reading’, ‘study skills’, and ‘speaking’. The findings have some implications for ESP curriculum developers so that they would consider the English requirements of relevant companies.

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel to Charoltte Bronte’s famous novel Jane Eyre. It is the story of Antoinette Cosway, a white but Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in Jamaica to her unhappy marriage to a certain English gentleman who is never named by the author. This English gentleman soon renames her Bertha; declares her mad; seizes her property and then forces her to come to England. Arresting an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor to the black Jamaicans, Rhys’s novel re-imagines Bronte’s devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation. According to Linda Hutcheon any adaptation must be examined in its context of creation. John Duigan’s 1993 film adaption of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is in fact an appropriation re-canonizing Rhys’s novel as an extension of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Duigan’s intentions become more manifest in the light of Australia’s problems and anxieties over its native population of aborigines. By introducing very conspicuous changes and deviating from the original text, the movie re-silences the oppressed characters of Jean Rhys’s novel (who can stand for Australia’s native population) and re-grants the oppressor characters (who can stand for white Australians) full agency and power. In this process, the movie reclaims the superiority of the British culture, justifies the rightness of the British colonial and “civilizing” missions, and grants a kind of psychological pleasure to its white audience ensuring them that they still have power and control over their former aboriginal ‘slaves’. In this paper the researcher attempts to show the hidden purposes of the movie.

One of the significant aspects of the communication is its nonverbal aspect. In this study there was an attempt to explore this aspect of language teaching qualitatively from the learners’ point of view through observation and interview in Iranian context. It was revealed that four main categories of nonverbal communication(NVC) including: hand gesture, eye-contact, facial expression and tone of voice are used from the most frequently used to the least used respectively. Moreover, it was found that a teacher’s use of nonverbal communication can help learners to get more benefit from the learning context. Also, the findings indicate how utilizing NVC may contribute to different aspects (vocabulary, grammar, and pronuciation) of language learning. According to the students’ comments, six main themes as different roles of the teacher were found including: Teacher as a composer, Teacher as a constructor, Teacher as a mirror, Teacher as a conductor, Teacher as a mentor, and Teacher as a vocalist.