Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Literature: Dynamics and Advances
Volume:7 Issue: 2, Summer-Autumn 2019

According to Patrick Colm Hogan, in the US academic context, few people in literary theory or comparative literature have much familiarity with non-Western literary theories, and fewer still have research expertise in the field. While working on a project in non-Western literary theory, he was surprised to find that many of his friends and colleagues found it difficult to understand what non-Western literary theory might be. And when he explained that by non-Western theory he meant theory before European colonialism, he was, more often than not, faced with looks of blank incomprehension. Hogan blames ethnocentrism for this blank incomprehension because “it is at least in part a matter of assuming that theoretical reasoning is somehow peculiarly Western, that abstract reflection must have its source and impetus west of the Black Sea and north of the Mediterranean. It is closely related to the blank incomprehension which greets such phrases as ‘Classical Indian logic,’ ‘Medieval Arabic mathematics,’ and ‘Ancient Chinese empirical science and technology.’”

Nigel Lowther Love is associate professor of linguistics at University of Cape Town. He was born in 1950 in the U.K. He received his B.A. (1973), M.A. (1976) and D. Phil. (1976) from Oxford University. His Ph.D. thesis title was: The generative phonological analysis of non-vocalic alternations in Modern French. Nigel Love has been the invited lecturer or conference speaker at universities in: Athens, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Cape Town, Chicago, Copenhagen, Durban, Edinburgh, Grahamstown, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Jyväskylä, Kirksville, Montpellier, Mumbai, New Orleans, Nottingham, Odense, Oxford, Paris, Pittsburgh, Quebec, Seville, Stellenbosch, Tambov, Warsaw and Williamsburg. He was the head of Linguistics Department at University of Cape Town (1995-1998). He has been the editorial board member (since 1992) and associate editor (since 2019) of journal of Language and Communication. He was the editor of the journal of Language Sciences (1997-2014). Among his authored and coauthored publications are Generative Phonology: A Case-Study from French (1981), The Foundations of Linguistic Theory: Selected Writings of Roy Harris (1990), Linguistics Inside Out: Roy Harris and His Critics (1997), and Language and History: Integrationist Perspectives (2006). JALDA’s editor-in-chief, Dr. Bahram Behin had the following short communication with Nigel Love.

The role of using meta-discourse elements in writing, especially in research newspapers, is so important that their authors can convey certainty, doubt, and characteristics of the writers in their writings. There are different meta-discourse markers used by various authors in different branches; for example, hedges and boosters are the most important devices in writing. The meta-discourse elements are communicative strategies for increasing and reducing the force of statements, i.e. authors and writers who write theses, books, or articles give more information with certainty by these markers. In the present investigation, 60 reports from 2 important newspapers, Iran Daily and US Today, were studied, where for each field 30 articles written by both native and non-native writers were selected and studied. In sum, for each newspaper, 30 articles were chosen. Frequency and distribution of the meta-discourse elements were examined to show which one of the newspapers used those more. The analysis was done by ANOVA test to compare the frequency and distribution of the meta-discourse devices. The result of the test indicated differences between the selected newspapers, i.e. Iran Daily and US Today. It is important to mention that the results of this study can have pedagogical implications for prospective academic writers.

The current study was an attempt to investigate the relationship among L2 Motivational Self-System, Reading Comprehension Ability, and Gender of Iranian EFL Learners. 70 participants of both male and female at intermediate level at Shokooh Institute in Kashmar-Iran were randomly selected. The instruments of the study were a L2 motivational self-system questionnaire by Yan(2011), and a reading comprehension test. The questionnaire consists of 61 questions, based on six-point scale from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree". The reading comprehension test was extracted from the texts in VOA special English website. The obtained data were analyzed through descriptive analysis and Pearson Correlation coefficient. The data were fed into SPSS 22, followed by employing T-test, Shapiro-Wilk and Levene's test. The findings revealed a positive relationship between L2 motivational self-system and reading comprehension ability and also a negative relationship between L2 Motivational self-system and the gender of EFL learners. The findings have some useful pedagogical implications for language teachers and syllabus designers that can be taken into account in teacher-training programs.

The present review article discusses the significant role of technology, particularly blogging, in the development of the writing skill. Similar to the conventional classroom teaching, practitioners and researchers view blogs as tools for constructing grammar and writing skills and dispersing knowledge. In spite of the fact that learning through blogs can advance higher development of identity and bring about collaboration and social interaction, it can offer higher opportunities for learners to represent and express themselves, fostering the skills to develop and build their own community(Love, 2004; Spangenberg, 2004). Blogging is not presumed to be a substitution for conventional classroom writing pedagogy, neither just an issue of delivering classroom writing into digital space of the 21st Century, but,instead, it is writing in an innovative way that cultivates, among learner bloggers, a strong interest to write for the aim of communication and expression. Theadvantages of blogs, specifically in comparison to other technological advances such as discussion boards, are overviewed in this article. Besides, the relevant empirical investigations that have endeavored to explore the role of blogging in the cultivation of writing and learners’ attitudes towards it are presented. Considering that the majority of research studies have pinpointed the potential of blogging in writing development, it is suggested that teachers use models to familiarize their learners with blogging prior to actively using it in their writing classes.

Introduction of Cultural Linguistics in the modern ages of communication can address the issue of cultural schema transfer in online communication. Despite a good number of studies on a compliment, this pragmatic behavior has not been examined in the context of online communications such as social networking sites where compliments are commonly paid and received. The present study aimed to examine the realization of Persian cultural schema of Shekaste-nafsi (Sharifian, 2005) on compliment responses uttered by Persian EFL on Facebook. To do so, 30 Persian EFL learners were selected through convenient sampling, and their compliments and compliment responses were recorded as data. Herbert's (1986) taxonomy was used to identify the strategies' types and the Persian cultural schema of Shekaste-nafsiwas served as a model to gloss the samples. The interpretationssuggested that participants applied their Persian cultural schemas and expressed their modesty while they tend to be polite and appreciate the compliments. The findings indicated the importance of cultural schema and highlighted the pragmatic knowledge transfer both in Persian and English while online communicating. The results of the present study may contribute to the issue of pragmatic transfer in the process of foreign language learning and can benefit the EFL learners in identifying the source of miscommunication.

Nowadays, studying in higher education is not as uncomplicated as it seems to be, particularly in PhD programs. Given the complex interplay of multiple variables affecting one’s experience in such programs, there is a mounting need for probing more into the ways in which PhD students’ lives are affected by these factors, and how their transition trajectories emerge. The present study explored the elements which shape PhD students’ lives, and how they interact with each other. Employing an ecological model framework, this cross-sectional study investigated how present as well as graduate students’ lives were affected in different phases of the program. To this end, ten PhD students or graduates of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), representing early, mid, and completion phases of the program, were interviewed to qualitatively elicit the views they harbor toward the program. The findings emanating from the content analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that multiple factors in tandem mold students’ perceptions of the program. The most notable extracted themes embraced dissatisfaction with academic procedures, satisfaction with university professors, and challenges related to the students’ private lives.

The present article shows that all scientific texts included in journals, magazines, and newspapers are vulnerable to the penetration of hedges and boosters.  However, it was found that scientific texts in the three corpora tended to open up the possibilities of alternative voices rather than narrowing them down. The relatively higher frequency of occurrence of hedges in comparison with boosters indicates that regardless of whether the audience is expert or non-expert, their voices are seen as respected in the scientific texts. Similarly, boosters as means of narrowing down the alternative positions and developing a strong and certain authorial voices are equally disfavored in both expert and popularized scientific texts. Despite this similar pattern of the use of hedges and boosters in the investigated corpora, the means to achieve the mentioned objectives slightly differed and the informal style of language use dominating popular genres influenced the textual realizations of such functions.

Acquiring proficiency in academic genres is a key factor in research community. Among various genres in academic discourse communities, spoken genre, especially Conference Presentations (CPs), play a crucial role in research communities, though investigation on this important genre is in its infancy or is relatively under-researched. Therefore, the present study aims to shed light on the importance of two most frequently used structures in CPs, passive voice, and pseudo-cleft. To this end, 600 minutes of Iranian international CPs were recorded and then transcribed. The rate of employment of the structures, and the effect of gender and university degree of presenters were estimated. The results of the chi square analysis of the data suggested that although rate of use of passive voice was higher than pseudo-cleft, the differences between males and females, and graduates and postgraduates were minor and hence gender and university degree did not significantly influence the rate of use of the structures. Since passive voice and pseudo-cleft are two of the most important structures in academic genre, the results of the present study have obvious importance in increasing conference presenters and lecturers’ awareness of the employment of the structures efficiently.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the Canonical analysis of the relationship between personality traits and attitude with motivation and EFL learners’ written production task. This research in terms of data collection procedure is a correlation type. The statistical population consisted of the students who were selected by random cluster sampling method. Data were analyzed using standard questionnaire of motivation, attitude, and personality traits, and analyzed by SPSS software using statistical tests. The results of correlation analysis of variables showed that there is a significant positive correlation between personality traits with motivation and written skills. It was also determined that attitudes with motivation and written skills predict a positive and significant relationship. Finally, the results of this study can be a very clear perspective for planners and trainers of writing skills training courses to pay more attention to non-cognitive and attitudinal variables such as personality traits and learners’ motivation in English language classes.

The aim of this study was to see if there was any significant difference between undergraduate students of biological sciences and humanities in their test anxiety scores at University College of Rub-bi Rashid, Tabriz, Iran. This analytical-descriptive study was conducted on a sample of 188 students composed of 94 students of humanities and 94 students of biological sciences. The cases were selected by simple random sampling and Sarason Anxiety Questionnaire was used for gathering data and finally the collected data was analyzed via SPSS 24. The mean of anxiety level among students of humanities was 1.84 and 2.05 before and after the test respectively, and the measured mean for students of biological sciences was 1.89 before the test and 2.15 after the test. This result showed a significant difference between these two types of students (P < 0.05) in both phases, but there were no significant differences between experimental and test groups’ sex and anxiety level (P > 0.05). Moreover, the results of chi-square tests showed no significant difference between the two types of students after the test (P > 0.05). In these two studied groups, the test anxiety was increased after the test in comparison with that before it. Also, it was concluded that biological students’ test anxiety was as large as humanity students’ test anxiety in the second phase. Similarly, no significant difference was observed between boys and girls after the test. Finally, the authors suggest some handy tips that can help to relieve the pressure on the tests.

As an important focus of modern language education, intercultural language learning reflects greater awareness of the inseparability of language and culture and the need for providing the learners with materials concerning teaching intercultural communication to enhance learners’ intercultural competence in an increasingly multicultural world. Proper development of a learners’ understanding of another culture’s perspective and worldview is an essential of effective communication. Regarding the significance of issues, the present study is an attempt to consider the trend of addressing culture in Iranian ETL textbooks at the high school level of education before and after the Islamic Revolution. The research findings indicated that the cultural contents are neglected in the ELT textbooks used both pre- and post-Islamic revolution. Therefore, due to overlooking learners’ cultural communicative needs intentionally or unintentionally, Iranian ELT textbooks are insufficient materials for teaching communicative language and in overall teaching culture-general skills such as intercultural competence and understanding. It is noteworthy that this study recommends constructive changes in textbooks to make them more communicative and more consistent with the students’ needs and expectations.

In this study, the researcher chose three different vocabulary techniques (Visual Representation, Textual Enhancement, and Glossing) and compared them with traditional method of teaching vocabulary. 80 advanced EFL Learners were assigned as four intact groups (three experimental and one control group) through using a proficiency test and a vocabulary test as a pre-test. In the visual group, students used flashcards; in the textual enhancement, every synonym and antonym were highlighted and numbered and in the glossing group new vocabularies were numbered and their explanations were provided in the margins or footnotes. Students in the control group learned vocabulary through traditional way by meaning explanation, translation, or providing synonyms and antonyms. All the other three groups had the same procedure as control group but besides these processes they had access to visual, textual, or glossing techniques, too. The results showed that in the posttest, all three experimental groups outperformed the control group. However, the highest improvement in both post-test and delayed post-test was for glossing group. As a whole, we can say improvement in vocabulary learning was respectively for glossing, then visual, and finally textual enhancement. Therefore, it can be concluded that using pictorial, textual cues and glossing enhance their interlanguage system.

This study intends to investigate the realizations and functional patterns of shell nouns in Applied Linguistics research articles.  To this end, fifty research articles in the field of Applied Linguistic were selected from Journal of English for Academic Purposes and journal of English for Specific Purposes published by Elsevier.  The articles were analyzed for the realizations of shell nouns based on the list suggested by Hinkel (2004).  As to the functional patterns, Schmid’s (2000) classification of functional patterns of shell nouns was also adopted.  Findings reported that some shell nouns are used more frequently while some were put aside.  Findings also reported that writers of research articles in the field of Applied Linguistics used functional patterns suggested by Schmid (2000).  Findings of this study could have implications by raising the awareness of writers of Applied Linguistics research articles, especially in EFL contexts, concerning the use of shell nouns and functional patterns in which shell nouns are used.

The book ‘Developing expertise through experience’consists of twenty chapters written by language educators. Alan Maley has edited the book. The writers of the chapters have written their stories and experiences about learning English and being an Educator with regard to the notion of ‘sense of plausibility’ defined by Prabhu. Prabhu explains that plausibility in pedagogy is teachers’ intuition about learning arising from her own experience of teaching. The book is a major effort to share experiences between professionals working in different parts of the world. Therefore, the purpose is not to reach an agreement between many individuals but rather an enlarging, sharpening or enriching of every individual’s personal perception.In the first chapter of the book, Robert Bellarmine elaborates on the understanding of the ‘teacher’s sense of plausibility’. He explains that it is a personal theory of learning and teaching and its elements are not only beliefs and values but also concepts, principles, rules of thumb, truths and metaphors.