Search results for: english for professional development

Authors: Owulo Thomas

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Despite Nigeria’s ranking as the 6th among oil producing countries, the country faces great challenges. One of such challenges is how to reduce poverty or eradicating it in the land that promises milk and honey to enhance national development. The government of Nigeria initiated various programmes including the NEEDS programme in which it committed her to meeting these challenges. This paper is an attempt to discuss the concept of National Development, the Nigerian poverty profile and its implication for national development, the NEEDS programmes and the extent to which it has addressed the poverty problem in Nigeria at 53.

Keywords: challenges, poverty, national development, NEEDS programme

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Authors: Bo Ning Lyu

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Blog assisted language learning (BALL) has been trialed by educators in language teaching with the development of Web 2.0 technology. Understanding the development trend of related research helps grasp the whole picture of the use of blog in language education. This paper reviews current research related to blogs enhanced language learning based on bibliometric analysis, aiming at (1) identifying the most frequently used keywords and their co-occurrence, (2) clustering research topics based on co-citation analysis, (3) finding the most frequently cited studies and authors and (4) constructing the co-authorship network. 330 articles were searched out in Web of Science, 225 peer-viewed journal papers were finally collected according to selection criteria. Bibexcel and VOSviewer were used to visualize the results. Studies reviewed were published between 2005 to 2016, most in the year of 2014 and 2015 (35 papers respectively). The top 10 most frequently appeared keywords are learning, language, blog, teaching, writing, social, web 2.0, technology, English, communication. 8 research themes could be clustered by co-citation analysis: blogging for collaborative learning, blogging for writing skills, blogging in higher education, feedback via blogs, blogging for self-regulated learning, implementation of using blogs in classroom, comparative studies and audio/video blogs. Early studies focused on the introduction of the classroom implementation while recent studies moved to the audio/video blogs from their traditional usage. By reviewing the research related to BALL quantitatively and objectively, this paper reveals the evolution and development trends as well as identifies influential research, helping researchers and educators quickly grasp this field overall and conducting further studies.

Keywords: blog, bibliometric analysis, language learning, literature review

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Authors: Eli Maikoto Agison

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The relevance of enhancing human resource development in entrepreneurship for economic growth and development cannot be overemphasized since no country can grow and developed economically above its citizenry. Africa for example and Nigeria in particular is lagging behind in terms of economic growth and development when compared with other developed countries of the world like China, Japan, Singapore, USA etc. The reason is not farfetched from these developed countries efforts in enhancing human resource development in entrepreneurship education. For Nigeria to attain this height of development, this paper discusses the meaning of human resource development in entrepreneurship as the framework for helping employees develop their personal and organizational skills knowledge and abilities as this includes employee training, career development and performance management to enable an organization achieve a set goal. While entrepreneurship education is seen as an aspect of education that is geared towards self-reliance, some of the challenges faced in the enhancement of human resource development in Nigeria include inadequate training and re-training of instructors of entrepreneurship in higher education. Insufficient funding to higher education were discussed and recommendations to include adequate funding, training and re-training of instructors of higher education be enhanced as some of the ways forward.

Keywords: economic development, economic growth, entrepreneurship education, human resource development

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Authors: Svetlana Ignatjeva, Jelena Slesareva

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The aim of the study is development and adaptation of the method to analyze and quantify the indicators characterizing the relationship between a company and its employees. Diagnostics of such indicators is one of the most complex and actual issues in psychology of labour. The offered method is based on the questionnaire; its indicators reflect cognitive, affective and connotative components of socio-psychological attitude of employees to be as efficient as possible in their professional activities. This approach allows measure not only the selected factors but also such parameters as cognitive and behavioural dissonances. Adaptation of the questionnaire includes factor structure analysis and suitability analysis of phenomena indicators measured in terms of internal consistency of individual factors. Structural validity of the questionnaire was tested by exploratory factor analysis. Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. Factor analysis allows reduce dimension of the phenomena moving from the indicators to aggregative indexes and latent variables. Aggregative indexes are obtained as the sum of relevant indicators followed by standardization. The coefficient Cronbach's Alpha was used to assess the reliability-consistency of the questionnaire items. The two-step cluster analysis in the space of allocated factors allows classify employees according to their attitude to work in the company. The results of psychometric testing indicate possibility of using the developed technique for the analysis of employees’ attitude towards their work in companies and development of recommendations on their optimization.

Keywords: involved in the organization, loyalty, organizations, method

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Authors: Saeed Musaid Alzahrani

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Shared values, beliefs, norms and assumptions within the organisation can affect personal and team effectiveness. Organisational culture can also affect the performance of organisational members. The nature of middle leadership in a primary school is largely influenced by organizational culture. The effectiveness of middle leadership in primary schools and their performance is strongly determined by the circumstances in which they work and can be political or institutional. This study aims to examine the influence of organisational culture and government policy on the performance and effectiveness of middle managers, using the English and Saudi education systems as case studies. To examine how education policy conditions educational discourse, and answer the research questions, there is a need to collect qualitative data on middle manager’s perceptions and experiences in the English and Saudi Arabian contexts. The study involved a qualitative and interpretative approach. In-depth interviews with 6 middle managers and school supervisors in 3 English primary schools and 6 middle managers in 3 Saudi Arabian primary schools were conducted to answer the research questions. The study also included ethnographic tools such as observations of a sample of three primary schools in both England and Saudi Arabia where the researcher observed middle managers’ interactions with their peers. The sample of three enabled the study to identify trends and make comparisons between leadership approaches in both systems based on observations without the bias of prescriptions. The use of ethnographic tools not only makes the study empirical but also increases the reliability and validity of the findings by reducing prescriptive bias. The observations will be triangulated with the results of the interviews to draw comparisons and conclusions on whether middle managers act as leaders or as followers in their respective political contexts.

Keywords: education management, government education policies, middle managers, organisational culture

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Authors: Salamatu Sani

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This study is an investigation of how code-mixing manifests in the language development of a Nigerian child, especially in the Hausa speaking environment. It is hinged on the fact that the environment influences the first language acquired by a child regardless of the cultural and/or linguistic background of the parents. The child under investigation has been subjected to close monitoring on her speech hitherto. It is a longitudinal study covering a period of twelve months (January 2018 to December 2018); that was when the subject was between twenty-four and thirty months of age. The speeches have been recorded by means of a tape recorder, video, and a diary. The study employs as a theoretical framework, emergentism, which is an eclectic of the behaviourist and the mentalist theories to the study of language development, for analysis. This is in agreement with the positions of Skinner and Watson. Sequel to this investigation, it was discovered the environment is a major factor that influences the exposure of a child to a language more than the other factors and that, if a child is exposed to more than one language, there is a great tendency for such a child to code-mix and code-switch in her speech production. The child under investigation, in spite of the linguistic background of her parents, speaks the Hausa Language much better than the other languages around her though with remarkable code-mixing with other languages around her such as English and Ebira languages. The study concludes that although a child is born with the innate ability to acquire a particular language, the environment plays a key role to trigger the innate ability and consequently, the child is exposed to the acquisition of the dominant language around her at a particular given time.

Keywords: bilingual, code-mixing, emergentism, environment, Hausa

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Authors: Narjes Tahmasbi

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Burnout is considered a work-related syndrome made from a person’s recognition of a gap between expecting success in professional performance and less satisfying reality. Teaching, as one of the most stressful jobs in the world, creates a sense of burnout that disturbs the competency of teachers’ personal and professional features, and it can be dangerous for themselves as well as their students. Recently, there has been growing research on the different effects of burnout; however, it is necessary to investigate the causes of this issue, especially in universities. This study aims to investigate the causes and recommended solutions to burnout in the teaching careers of university professors. The participants of the study were 5 EFL university professors from an institution of higher education in Shiraz, Iran. The current study used a qualitative design. Data were obtained from an interview with all participants. The participants were asked to answer 8 questions that were made through a semi-instructional interview. The results of the interview with the participants indicated that there were 4 main reasons that cause burnout in teachers: lack of student motivation, environmental factors, interpersonal problems, and financial problems. Recommended solutions were different according to the different personalities, creativity, and experiences of participants. The discussion of each of the causes of burnout represents how these categories cause burnout, and the discussion of each of the solutions shows how a teacher can handle burnout.

Keywords: burnout, EFL teachers, reasons, solutions, work-related syndrome

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Authors: B. O. Diyaolu

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The globalization of football especially among youth over the decade is uprising. Nigeria youth displaying football jerseys at every opportunity is an acceptance of football globalization. The Love for English Premier League (EPL) football jersey is very strong among Nigeria fans. Football club jerseys of the EPL are a common sports product among fans in Nigeria. This study investigates the contribution of football club jerseys towards EPL fans’ loyalty in Nigeria. Descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population consists of EPL fans in Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique (fish bowl without replacement) was used to select two states from the six geo-political zones. Purposive sampling technique was used to pick eight viewing centres while accidental sampling technique was used to pick five vendor stands from each State. An average of 250 respondents was selected from each state. A total of 3,200 respondents participated in the research. Two research instruments were used. A self-developed structured questionnaire on Football Jersey Scale (FJS): The instrument consists of 10 items. Fans Loyalty Scale (FLS): The instrument was modified from the psychological commitment to team (PCT) scale, and consists of 20 items. The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.72 and 0.75 was obtained, respectively. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 significant levels. Data were analysed using frequency, percentages count, pie chart and multiple regressions. The result showed that the b-value of football club jersey is 0.148 also the standard regression coefficient (Beta) is 0.089. The t = 4.759 is statistically significant at p = 0.000. This signified a relative contribution of football club jersey on EPL fans loyalty in Nigeria. Club jersey, which is the most outstanding identifier of every club, was found to significantly predict loyalty. The jersey on the body of the fan has become the site for a declaration of loyalty which becomes available for social interaction and negotiation. The Nigerian local league clubs in an attempt to keep Nigerian fans loyal must borrow a leaf from their European counterparts.

Keywords: club Jerseys, English Premier League, football fans, Nigeria youth

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Authors: G. Khasaev, S. Ashmarina , A. Zotova

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The priority of Russian enterprises development has been given to the optimization process of industrial enterprise activity for their sustainable development in a long-term period. The assessment of sustainable development level as one of the most efficient instruments of sustainable development management at the industrial enterprise gives a complex view of its state. In order to perform accurate analysis of the current state of the industrial enterprise, it is necessary to perform the assessment of its sustainable development and using its results to elaborate the further tactic of enterprise functioning. The assessment of sustainable development level of the enterprise may help the effective management of strategy development only if the corresponding indicators system is created. The elaboration and usage the sustainable development indicators allows the enterprise to implement analysis of its activity results and monitoring of sustainable enterprise functioning. The authors’ methods are based on general aspects of the industrial enterprise functioning such as finance, customers, inner economic process, and staff system.

Keywords: assessment methods, indicators system, industrial enterprise, sustainable development

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Authors: Hatun Korkmaz

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Todays, the developing countries of the world widely face challenges of economic growth, political, social and human development. One of the ways to achieve economic, political and human development is good governance. Without an improvement in good governance, the objectives of human development cannot be achieved. The good governance has become a key issue over preceding two decades and it is the very important component of good economic growth and human development. This paper argues that good governance impacts positively human development with the case of Rwanda. Rwanda is a good example of this subject. In this paper, firstly we explained that what is good governance and human development and how we measure them. Then we researched the relationship between good governance and human development in case of Rwanda with the indexes of many international institutions which are researching in this topics. Rwanda has recorded the 'best progress' since the year 2000, making it the ‘most successful' about governance. Rwanda is seen as one of the top ten countries in the region in terms of relative peace, political stability and economic progress. Part of the reason for Rwanda's success is accountability, which comprises access to information, elimination of corruption and bureaucracy and transparency in public service, which variables cumulatively earned it 72.1 percent. According to this research If countries want batter growth and human development then good reforms of good governance is needed.

Keywords: human development, Rwanda, good governance, governance, development

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Authors: Yun-Ju Chiu, Feng-Yi Chen

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Kinematics is the beginning to learn mechanics in physics course. The concept of acceleration plays an important role in learning kinematics. Teachers usually instruct the conception through the formulas and graphs of kinematics and the well-known law F = ma. However, over the past few decades, a lot of researchers reveal numerous students’ difficulties in learning acceleration. One of these difficulties is that students frequently confuse acceleration with velocity and force. Why is the concept of acceleration so difficult to learn? The aim of this study is to understand the conceptual evolution of acceleration through the historical textual analysis. Text analysis and one-to-one interviews with high school students and teachers are used in this study. This study finds the history of science constructed from textbooks is usually quite different from the real evolution of history. For example, most teachers and students believe that the best-known law F = ma was written down by Newton. The expression of the second law is not F = ma in Newton’s best-known book Principia in 1687. Even after more than one hundred years, a famous Cambridge textbook titled An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics by Whewell of Trinity College did not express this law as F = ma. At that time of Whewell, the early mid-nineteenth century Britain, the concept of acceleration was not only ambiguous but also confused with the concept of force. The process of learning the concept of acceleration is analogous to its conceptual development in history. The study from the perspective of historical textual analysis will promote the understanding of the concept learning difficulties, the development of professional physics teaching, and the improvement of the context of physics textbooks.

Keywords: acceleration, textbooks, mechanics, misconception, history of science

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Authors: John D. Sanderson

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The popularity of American cinema worldwide has contributed to the development of sociolects related to specific film genres in other cultural contexts by means of screen translation, in many cases eluding norms of usage in the target language, a process whose result has come to be known as 'dubbese'. A consequence for the reception in countries where local audiovisual fiction consumption is far lower than American imported productions is that this linguistic construct is preferred, even though it differs from common everyday speech. The iconography of film genres such as science-fiction, western or sword-and-sandal films, for instance, generates linguistic expectations in international audiences who will accept more easily the sociolects assimilated by the continuous reception of American productions, even if the themes, locations, characters, etc., portrayed on screen may belong in origin to other cultures. And the non-normative language (e.g., calques, semantic loans) used in the preferred mode of linguistic transfer, whether it is translation for dubbing or subtitling, has diachronically evolved in many cases into a status of canonized sociolect, not only accepted but also required, by foreign audiences of American films. However, a remarkable step forward is taken when this typology of artificial linguistic constructs starts being used creatively by nationals of these target cultural contexts. In the case of Spain, the success of American sitcoms such as Friends in the 1990s led Spanish television scriptwriters to include in national productions lexical and syntactical indirect borrowings (Anglicisms not formally identifiable as such because they include elements from their own language) in order to target audiences of the former. However, this commercial strategy had already taken place decades earlier when Spain became a favored location for the shooting of foreign films in the early 1960s. The international popularity of the then newly developed sub-genre known as Spaghetti-Western encouraged Spanish investors to produce their own movies, and local scriptwriters made use of the dubbese developed nationally since the advent of sound in film instead of using normative language. As a result, direct Anglicisms, as well as lexical and syntactical borrowings made up the creative writing of these Spanish productions, which also became commercially successful. Interestingly enough, some of these films were even marketed in English-speaking countries as original westerns (some of the names of actors and directors were anglified to that purpose) dubbed into English. The analysis of these 'back translations' will also foreground some semantic distortions that arose in the process. In order to perform the research on these issues, a wide corpus of American films has been used, which chronologically range from Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939) to Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012), together with a shorter corpus of Spanish films produced during the golden age of Spaghetti Westerns, from una tumba para el sheriff (Mario Caiano; in English lone and angry man, William Hawkins) to tu fosa será la exacta, amigo (Juan Bosch, 1972; in English my horse, my gun, your widow, John Wood). The methodology of analysis and the conclusions reached could be applied to other genres and other cultural contexts.

Keywords: dubbing, film genre, screen translation, sociolect

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Authors: Khodijah Ismail, Elfindri

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Tourism development have many environmental, economically and sociocultural benefits. Small islands have a lot of potential for marine tourism development. But, stereotype gender issues still dominate the social and cultural life of rural communities that have an impact on the gap in benefits of local development. The purpose of this study is to found development strategy concept of marine tourism in small islands gender-based. This study found in the marine tourism development of small islands not involved women, from planning to monitor marine tourism development in small islands. It's affects to the low of socio-economic of women in the coastal village and small islands. This condition is not advantage for sustainable development of marine tourism in small islands. Therefore, strengthening of livelihood assets by gender based through the marine tourism development in small islands is very important to attention, that women can contributed to household welfare, bargaining positioned in social culture was better and increase broad access to local government development policies. To realize it requires the full support of the government and relevant stakeholders through gender empowerment and strengthening of accessibility, connectivity, regulation, and design institution.

Keywords: gender inequality, marine tourism, development, tourism management

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Authors: K. Z. Tang, K. Ameek, K. Kuang

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Rapid product development cycles and changing economic conditions compel businesses to find new ways to stay relevant and effective. One of the ways which many companies have adopted is to spur innovations within the various team-based units in the organization. It would be relevant and important to ensure our graduates are ready to excel in such evolving conditions within their professional eco-systems. However, it is not easy to understand the interplays of nurturing team innovation and improving students’ learning, in the context of engineering education. In this study, we seek to understand team innovation and explore ways to improve students’ performance and learning, via motivation and mentorship. Learning goals from a group of students are collected during a carefully designed two-week long summer programme to provide insights on the main themes, within the context of learning and working in a team.

Keywords: team innovation, mentorship, motivation, learning

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Authors: Juha Kettunen

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This study analyzes the quality and the size of the strategic network of higher education institutions. The study analyses the concept of fitness for purpose in quality assurance. It also analyses the transaction costs of networking that have consequences on the number of members in the network. Empirical evidence is presented of the Consortium on Applied Research and Professional Education, which is a European strategic network of six higher education institutions. The results of the study support the argument that the number of members in the strategic network should be relatively small to provide high quality results. The practical importance is that networking has been able to promote international research and development projects. The results of this study are important for those who want to design and improve international networks in higher education.

Keywords: balanced scorecard, higher education, social networking, strategic planning

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Authors: Ugur Karakaya, Hasan Bulent Kantarcı

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In this study, firstly democratic thoughts which directly or indirectly affect economic development and/or the interaction between authoritarian regimes and the economic development and the direction and channels of this interaction were studied and then the study tried to determine how democracy affects economic development. It was concluded that the positive contributions of democracy to economic development were more determinant than the effects that were either negative or restrictive in terms of development. When compared to autocracy, since democracy is more successful in managing social conflicts, ensuring political stability and preventing social disasters such as famine, it contributes more to economic development. Democracy also facilitates delegation of authority, provides a stable investment environment and accelerates mobilization of resources in accordance with economic growth/development. Democracy leads to an increase in human capital accumulation and increases the growth rate through reducing income inequality. It can be said that democratic regimes are the most appropriate ones in terms of increasing economic performance and supporting economic development through their strong institutional structures and the assurance they will ensure in property rights.

Keywords: democracy, economic growth, economic freedom, autocratic regime

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Authors: Khashane Stephen Malatji, Makwalete Johanna Malatji

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Student evaluation of teaching (SET) is the common way of assessing teaching quality at universities and tracing the professional growth of lecturers. The aim of this study was to investigate the role played by student evaluation in the teaching and learning agenda at one South African University. The researchers used a qualitative approach and a case study research design. With regards to data collection, document analysis was used. Evaluation reports were reviewed to monitor the growth of lecturers who were evaluated during the academic years 2020 and 2021 in one faculty. The results of the study reveal that student evaluation remains the most relevant tool to inform the teaching agenda at a university. Lecturers who were evaluated were found to grow academically. All lecturers evaluated during 2020 have shown great improvement when evaluated repeatedly during 2021. Therefore, it can be concluded that student evaluation helps to improve the pedagogical and professional proficiency of lecturers. The study therefore, recommends that lecturers conduct an evaluation for each module they teach every semester or annually in case of year modules. The study also recommends that lecturers attend to all areas that draw negative comments from students in order to improve.

Keywords: students’ voices, teaching agenda, evaluation, feedback, responses

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Authors: Aluisius Pratono, Deddy Marciano, Suyanto Suyanto

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The emerging model of community development social enterprise is one of the social enterprise models. However, a precise view of the community development enterprise is still lacking. Hence, this study was aimed at deepening the concept of the community development social enterprise model at the place management and development context. Multiple case studies in Indonesia context were observed to explore the typical criteria of the community development enterprise model in place-making practices. The research paradigm used interpretative approach, which involves dialectic process between the researchers and research participants. This study highlights some principles in the community-development enterprise, which cover an entrepreneurial dimension, social goals, participatory governance, and co-management. The result makes a contribution to conceptual literature occurs at the criteria of social enterprises by highlighting the typology of community development enterprise.

Keywords: community development enterprise, social purposes, economic project, participatory governance

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Authors: Baki Dursun, Kemal Benk

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English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has become an increasingly hot topic in many of the developing countries including Turkey. Likewise, in most of these expanding circle countries the way of teaching English has been redesigned in accordance with Lingua Franca Core. Admittedly, the focus was on Grammar-based teaching formerly; however, with the introduction of the ELF, the shift is now more on teaching speaking abilities and strategies of negotiation of meaning. However, there are several reasons for this shift, one of the major contributions stems from the teacher training programs offered by Turkish universities as M.A. programs. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to compare and contrast the similarities and divergences among the instructors who have taken ELF classes in their teacher-training program and those who have not. With a longitudinal design, for five months, classes of two different groups of teachers (ELF Group vs. Traditional Group) have been observed and three teachers have been selected for each group. During the observations, principles of Lingua Franca Core offered by Jenkins have been taken into account and used to form the rubric for the observations. After the five-month period, a Likert scale type questionnaire has been given to the students to explore their level of anxiety while speaking. Independent samples t-test have been administered to see the groups differences statistically. The results of the study will be presented during the conference.

Keywords: ELF, teacher training, speaking, anxiety

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Authors: Fadeke E. Olu-Owolabi, Fayomi Oluyemi

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The political and societal orders face the awesome task of overcoming the difficulties which lead to growing tensions and conflicts in Africa. At the core of analysis is the question, how stable and adaptable are established democracies, new democracies, and political and societal actors? The idea of development-democracy as implying the strong linkage between economic development and political democracy appropriately describes the distinguishing characteristic of this new demand for democracy in Africa. The theoretical study examines the political and philosophical foundation of the idea of development-democracy and the arguments presented to support the need for its adoption in Africa today. This paper critically examines the polemic between the advocates of developmental dictatorship and developmental-democracy and argues for the adoption of the latter in Africa. The paper sets out to expose for the political and philosophical foundation of developmental democracy maintaining that only democracy can facilitate development. This argument is supported further by the claim that both democracy and development are two sides of the same coin in the sense that the two are both ethical concepts. The paper also maintained that the only way by which democracy is worthwhile is when it is developmental. Finally the paper affirms that since the two concepts of democracy and development are like the Siamese twins then the way out of Africa’s present crisis of development is to wholeheartedly embrace democracy. It posits that when genuine democracy is adopted, genuine and sustainable development can then be attained.

Keywords: democracy, development, polemic, principles

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Authors: Rutuja Rajendra Ghadage

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Villages surrounding the city undergo the process of peri urbanization, which transforms their original village character. These villages undergo fast and unplanned physical growth and development. Due to the expansion of urban activities, peri-urban villages are experiencing extensive changes. Focusing on the peri-urban villages of Baramati city in Maharashtra, India, this paper assesses the nature and extent of spatial development and identifies the factors contributing to the rapid development of eleven sample Peri-urban villages. After reviewing similar studies, four indicators are selected to assess the spatial development of peri-urban villages; 1) population, 2) road network, 3) land use landcover change, and 4) built-up distribution. The spatial development of peri-urban villages of Baramati is uneven as few villages are still expanding or growing while few villages have started intensifying. The main factor for this development is the presence of industries and educational institutions. They have affected spatial development directly as well as indirectly. In the future, most of the peri-urban villages of Baramati will be in the intensification phase, so if this happens in an unplanned manner, it will create stress on services and facilities.

Keywords: factors and indicators of spatial development, peri urban villages, peri urbanization, spatial development

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Authors: Oluwalola Felicia Kikelomo

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The introduction of entrepreneurship education in polytechnics is seen as a measure to reduce the rate of unemployment and strategically position the economy for sustainable development in Nigeria. This paper discusses the roles of polytechnics in entrepreneurship development. It also examines the challenges of entrepreneurship education in Polytechnics. The paper recommends, among others, that the entrepreneurship education should be property funded by the government with the support of non-governmental organizations so that there would be adequate resources to organize and manage the education. In addition, drastic and serious awareness campaigns should be mounted to sensitize the public and the students on the need for entrepreneurship education.

Keywords: education, polytechnic entrepreneurship development, education, human development

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Authors: Oluwabukola Oluwaseyi Oduntan

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The English Language plays a central and strategic role in the school system because almost all the school subjects are taught using the English language. However, students’ achievement in this subject at senior secondary school is not encouraging. Therefore, this study examined the effects of oral-written mode of assessment on senior secondary school students’ achievement in a descriptive essay. It also examined the moderating effects of students’ gender and class on students’ achievement in a descriptive essay. The study adopted a pretest-posttest, control group, quasi-experimental design with a 2x2x3 factorial matrix. The participant consisted of 140 Senior Secondary II students drawn from four intact classes from four schools randomly selected from four Local Government Areas randomly selected from Oyo town in Oyo State. Two schools were assigned each to the treatment group and the control group. The following instruments were used for the study: Descriptive Essay Achievement Test (r = 0.78); Descriptive Achievement Test Marking Scheme; Check List of Oral-Written Assessment and Teachers’ Instructional Guide on Descriptive Essay (r = 0.81). Seven null hypotheses guided the study and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance, Estimated Marginal Means and Scheffe post-hoc test. The result revealed that treatment had a significant main effect on students’ achievement in descriptive essay (F(1,127) = 25.407, P < .05, η2 = .167). Students exposed to oral-written assessment had a higher achievement scores ((x ) ̅= 36.15) than those exposed to written assessment ((x ) ̅= 28.55). There was no significant main effect of gender on students’ achievement in descriptive essay (F₍₁, ₁₂₇₎ = .349, P > .05, η2 = .003). The result also revealed that the effects of class was not significant on students’ students’ achievement in descriptive essay (F₍₁, ₁₂₇₎ = .679, P > .05, η2 = .006). Oral-written mode of assessment enhanced students’ achievement in a descriptive essay. It is, therefore, recommended that teachers and curriculum developers should adopt the use of oral-written assessment for better improvement of students’ achievement in a descriptive essay.

Keywords: class, gender, oral-written assessment, written assessment

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Authors: Giovana Perini-Loureiro

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The purpose of this research was to identify whether the nominalizations terminating in -TION in the academic discourse of native English speakers contain the arguments required by their input verbs. In the perspective of functional linguistics, ideational metaphors, with nominalization as their most pervasive realization, are lexically dense, and therefore frequent in formal texts. Ideational metaphors allow the academic genre to instantiate objectification, de-personalization, and the ability to construct a chain of arguments. The valence of those nouns present in nominalizations tends to maintain the same elements of the valence from its original verbs, but these arguments are not always expressed. The initial hypothesis was that these arguments would also be present alongside the nominalizations, through anaphora or cataphora. In this study, a qualitative analysis of the occurrences of the five more frequent nominalized terminations in -TION in academic texts was accomplished, and thus a verification of the occurrences of the arguments required by the original verbs. The assembling of the concordance lines was done through COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). After identifying the five most frequent nominalizations (attention, action, participation, instruction, intervention), the concordance lines were selected at random to be analyzed, assuring the representativeness and reliability of the sample. It was possible to verify, in all the analyzed instances, the presence of arguments. In most instances, the arguments were not expressed, but recoverable, either in the context or in the shared knowledge among the interactants. It was concluded that the realizations of the arguments which were not expressed alongside the nominalizations are part of a continuum, starting from the immediate context with anaphora and cataphora; up to a knowledge shared outside the text, such as specific area knowledge. The study also has implications for the teaching of academic writing, especially with regards to the impact of nominalizations on the thematic and informational flow of the text. Grammatical metaphors are essential to academic writing, hence acknowledging the occurrence of its arguments is paramount to achieve linguistic awareness and the writing prestige required by the academy.

Keywords: corpus, functional linguistics, grammatical metaphors, nominalizations, academic English

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Authors: Alex Baratta

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In Britain, accent is arguably still a sensitive issue, and for broad regional accents in particular, the connotations can often be quite negative. Within primary and secondary teaching, what might the implications be for teachers with such accents? To investigate this, the study collected the views of 32 British trainee teachers via semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires, to understand how their accent plays a role in the construction of a professional identity. From the results, it is clear that for teachers from the North and Midlands, in particular, accent modification is something that is required by their mentors; for teachers from the Home Counties, accent is rarely mentioned. While the mentors’ rationale for accent modification is to ensure teachers are better understood and/or to sound ‘professional’, many teachers feel that it is a matter of linguistic prejudice and therefore regard an accent modified for someone else as leading to a fraudulent identity. Moreover, some of the comments can be quite blunt, such as the Midlands teacher who resides in the South being told that it was ‘best to go back to where you come from’ if she couldn’t modify her accent to Southern pronunciation. From the results, there are three broad phonological changes expected: i) Northern/Midlands-accented teachers need to change to Southern pronunciation in words such as bath and bus; thus, a change from [baθ] [bʊs] to [bɑ:θ] [bʌs], ii) Teachers from the North, notably Yorkshire, told to change from monophthongs to diphthongs; thus, a change from [go:] to [goʊ], iii) Glottal stops are to be avoided; a teacher from South London was told by her mentor to write the word ‘water’ with a capital t (waTer), in order to avoid her use of a glottal stop. Thus, in a climate of respect for diversity and equality, this study is timely for the following reasons. First, it addresses an area for which equality is not necessarily relevant – that of accent in British teaching. Second, while many British people arguably have an instinct for ‘broad’ versus more ‘general’ versions of regional accents, there appear to be no studies which have attempted to explain what this means from a purely phonological perspective. Finally, given that the Teachers’ Standards do not mention accent as part of the desired linguistic standards, this study hopes to start a national debate as to whether or not they should, rather than shy away from what can be a potentially complex – and sensitive – topic.

Keywords: accent, accommodation, identity, teaching

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Authors: Raquel Rossini, Edelvais Caldeira

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The aim of this work is to investigate the motivation for the metaphorical uses of two verb combinations: come out and take over. Drawing from cognitive semantics theories, image schemas and metaphors, it was attempted to demonstrate that: a) the metaphorical senses of both 'come out' and 'take over' extend from both the verbs and the particles central (spatial) senses in such verb combinations; and b) the particles 'out' and 'over' also contribute to the whole meaning of the verb combinations. In order to do so, a random selection of 579 concordance lines for come out and 1,412 for take over was obtained from the Corpus of Contemporary American English – COCA. One of the main procedures adopted in the present work was the establishment of verb and particle central senses. As per the research questions addressed in this study, they are as follows: a) how does the identification of trajector and landmark help reveal patterns that contribute for the identification of the semantic network of these two verb combinations?; b) what is the relationship between the schematic structures attributed to the particles and the metaphorical uses found in empirical data?; and c) what conceptual metaphors underlie the mappings from the source to the target domains? The results demonstrated that not only the lexical verbs come and take, but also the particles out and over play an important whole in the different meanings of come out and take over. Besides, image schemas and conceptual metaphors were found to be helpful in order to establish the motivations for the metaphorical uses of these linguistic structures.

Keywords: cognitive linguistics, English syntax, multi-word verbs, prepositions

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Authors: Okoh Chinasa, Asimuonye Augusta

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This study investigated the trends in language testing in Primary Schools in Rivers State. English language past question papers were collected from four (4) Primary Schools in Onelga Local Government Area and Ahoada East Local Government Area. Four research questions guided the study. The study is aimed at finding out the appropriateness of test formats used for language testing and the language skills tested. The past question papers collected which served as the instrument were analyzed based on given criteria developed by the researchers in line with documentary frequency studies, a type of survey study. The study revealed that some of the four language skills were not adequately assessed and that the termly question papers were developed by a central examination body. From the past questions, it was observed that an imbalance exists in the test format used. The paper recommended that all the language skills should be tested using correct test formats to ensure that pupils were given a fair chance to show what they know and can do in English language and for teachers to be able to use the test results for effective decision making.

Keywords: discrete test, integrative test, testing approach, test format

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Authors: Caroline Dupre, David Hupin, Christ Goumou, Francois Belan, Frederic Roche, Thomas Celarier, Bienvenu Bongue

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Background: Previous cohorts have been notably criticized for not studying the different type of physical activity and not investigating household activities. The objective of this work was to analyse the relationship between physical activity and cognitive decline in older people living in the community. Impact of type of physical activity on the results has been realised. Methods: The study used data from the longitudinal and observational study , FrèLE (FRagility: Longitudinal Study of Expressions). The collected data included: socio-demographic variables, lifestyle, and health status (frailty, comorbidities, cognitive status, depression). Cognitive decline was assessed by using: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Physical activity was assessed by the Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE). This tool is structured in three sections: the leisure activity, domestic activity, and professional activity. Logistic regressions and proportional hazards regression models (Cox) were used to estimate the risk of cognitive disorders. Results: At baseline, the prevalence of cognitive disorders was 6.9% according to MMSE. In total, 1167 participants without cognitive disorders were included in the analysis. The mean age was 77.4 years, and 52.1% of the participants were women. After a 2 years long follow-up, we found cognitive disorders on 53 participants (4.5%). Physical activity at baseline is lower in older adults for whom cognitive decline was observed after two years of follow-up. Subclass analyses showed that leisure and domestic activities were associated with cognitive decline, but not professional activities. Conclusions: Analysis showed a relationship between cognitive disorders and type of physical activity. The current study will be completed by the MoCA for mild cognitive impairment. These findings compared to other ongoing studies, will contribute to the debate on the beneficial effects of physical activity on cognition.

Keywords: aging, cognitive function, physical activity, mixed models

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Authors: Alexey Abilov

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Sociological research in the form of a questionnaire survey of the population in the last decade has become an essential part of a comprehensive assessment of the territory in the practice of urban planning in Kazakhstan. This method was successfully used for developing master plans of settlements, urban agglomerations, and projects of detailed planning of individual sections of the urban environment. Also, it greatly contributes to the objectification of design solutions, since in addition to the traditional expert multifactorial assessment of urban development territories by professional designers, they provide an opportunity to consider existing urban development problems at the local level from the inside, through the eyes of the living population. A comparison of two areas of assessment of the territory -expert and social- allows us to give a more balanced final assessment, which can serve as a strong basis for making correct design decisions. The author of the article shows this by the example of the social assessment of the territory of the Almaty urban agglomeration in the form of a questionnaire survey of the population conducted in order to assess the quality of the living environment of the population, preferences in place and forms of recreation, as well as to delimitation the boundaries of the agglomeration. At the same time, the author's methodology of qualitative and quantitative assessment of the territory divided into polling stations is used, based on a comparison of the percentage of respondents' responses to various questionnaire questions with the total number of respondents.

Keywords: social assessment of territory, comprehensive assessment, urban agglomeration, correct design decisions

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Authors: Hanan Abufares Elkhimry

Abstract:

Looking for more effective teaching and learning approaches, teaching instructors have been telling trainee teachers to decrease their talking time, but the problem is how best to do this. Doing classroom research, specifically in the area of teacher talking time (TTT), is worthwhile, as it could improve the quality of teaching languages, as the learners are the ones who should be practicing and using the language. This work hopes to ascertain if teachers consider this need in a way that provides the students with the opportunities to increase their production of language. This is a question that is worthwhile answering. As many researchers have found, TTT should be decreased to 30% of classroom talking time and STT should be increased up to 70%. Other researchers agree with this, but add that it should be with awareness of the quality of teacher talking time. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the balance between quantity and quality of teacher talking time in the EFL classroom. For this piece of research and in order to capture the amount of talking in a four classrooms. The amount of talking time was measured. A Checklist was used to assess the quality of the talking time In conclusion, In order to improve the quality of TTT, the results showed that teachers may use more or less than 30% of the classroom talking time and still produce a successful classroom learning experience. As well as, the important factors that can affect TTT is the English level of the students. This was clear in the classroom observations, where the highest TTT recorded was with the lowest English level group.

Keywords: teacher talking time TTT, learning experience, classroom research, effective teaching

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