Search results for: masked language model

Authors: Farouk A.N. Bouhadiba

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Based on Fishman’s Theoretical Paradigm (1991), we shall first discuss his three value positions for the case of the so called minority native languages in Algeria and how they may be included into a global language teaching program in Algeria. We shall then move on to his scale on language loss, language maintenance and language renewal with illustrating examples taken from the Algerian context. The second part of our talk relates to pedagogical issues on how to proceed for a smooth transition from mother tongue to school tongue, what methods or approaches suit best the teaching of mother tongue and school tongue (Immersion Programs, The Natural Approach, Applied Literacy Programs, The Berlitz Method, etc.). We shall end up our talk on how one may reshuffle the current issues on the “Arabic-only” movement and the abrupt transition from mother tongue to school tongue in use today by opting for teaching programs that involve pre-school language acquisition and in-school language acquisition grammars, and thus pave the way to effective language teaching programs and living curricula and pedagogies such as language nests, intergenerational continuity, communication and identity teaching programs, which result in better language teaching models that make language policies become a reality.

Keywords: native languages, language maintenance, mother tongue, school tongue, education, Algeria

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Authors: Salome Labeh

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Diverse Languages that exist in Nigeria, gave rise to the need to choose among these languages, which one or ones to be used as the National Language(s) in Nigeria. The Multilingual Nature of Nigeria has been examined, in relation to the provisional result of 1991 census conducted in Nigeria and the status of language policy in the country, which eventually led to the discovery of the fact that Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba languages have the highest speaker in terms of population, and are already made co-official languages in Nigeria, alongside with English language. Then, these languages should be considered as the National Languages, if eventually a language policy emerges in Nigeria.

Keywords: multilingual, languages, culture, Nigeria

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Authors: Neha J. Nandaniya

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In the present research paper researcher put focuses on the opinions of pre-service teachers have been taken regarding online language teaching, which was held during the COVID-19 pandemic and is still going on. The researcher developed a three-point rating scale in Google Forms to find out the views of trainees on online language learning, in which 167 B. Ed. trainees having language content and method gave their responses. After scoring the responses obtained by the investigator, the chi-square value was calculated, and the findings were concluded. The major finding of the study is language learning is not as effective as offline teaching mode.

Keywords: online language teaching, ICT competency, B. Ed. trainees, COVID-19 pandemic

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Authors: Raziel Felix-Aguelo

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Language competencies refer to the knowledge and abilities to use English in four inter-related skills: Speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Cooperative learning is a type of instruction where learners are grouped together to work on an assignment, project, or task. To become competent in second language, one needs to actively use English in each of four modalities. Learning English is challenging to second language learners. Sometimes, some students feel demotivated and scared to use English during class discussions and recitations. This paper explores the students’ attitude and perception towards cooperative learning in enhancing their language competencies. The primary method for this research is case study. Thirty-two grade 9 students within a single selected class are used as sample. The instruments used in data collection were questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The finding shows that collaborative learning activities enhance the four skills of the students. The participants consider this approach motivational as they engage and interact with others. This indicates that students develop their language competencies as they rely to one another in doing meaningful language activities.

Keywords: language competencies, collaborative learning, motivation, language activities

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Authors: Saleh Mohammad Alqahtani

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Foreign language Anxiety has been found to be a key issue in learning English as foreign language in the classroom. This study investigated the impact of foreign language anxiety on Saudi EFL learners' proficiency in the classroom. A total of 197 respondents had participated in the study, comprising of 96 male and 101 female, who enrolled in preparatory year, first year, second year, and fourth year of English language department at the University of Jeddah. Two instruments were used to answer the study questions. The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was used to identify the levels of foreign language (FL) anxiety for Saudi learners. Moreover, an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test was used as an objective measure of the learners’ English language proficiency. The data were analyzed using descriptive analyses, t-test, one-way ANOVA, correlation, and regression analysis. The findings revealed that Saudi EFL learners' experience a level of anxiety in the classroom, and there is a significant differences between the course levels in their level of language anxiety. Moreover, it is also found that female students are less anxious in learning English as a foreign language than male students. The results show that foreign language anxiety and English proficiency are negatively related to each other. Furthermore, the study revealed that there were significant differences between Saudi learners in language use anxiety, while there were no significant differences in language class anxiety. The study suggested that teachers should employ a diversity of designed techniques to encourage the environment of the classroom in order to control learners’ FLA, which in turns will improve their EFL proficiency.

Keywords: foreign language anxiety, FLA, language use anxiety, language class anxiety, gender, L2 proficiency

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Authors: Tsz Ching Jasmine Lam

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Linguistic landscape (LL) can serve as both top-down and bottom-up approaches to understanding language planning policy in various dimensions. It can reflect the language identities, motives and contestations perceived by stakeholders of different decision-making levels. Prior studies adopted the bottom-up approach to investigate the language practice and ideologies reflected by the design and linguistic features observed in the linguistic landscapes in ethnically and linguistically diverse areas, like Medan in Russia and Seoul in Korea. As Hong Kong is also a trilingual city with an inclusive combination of nationalities, this paper is intended to take it as a case study to explore the de facto language ideologies reflected by LL at the micro-level. We would look into the catering industry from a holistic perspective by reviewing the food menus of 66 restaurants located in diversified districts and serving different types of cuisines. This bottom-up LL research reveals that business owners and the public share the language ideologies of perceiving English as a prestigious language, multilingualism and traditional Chinese as a standard character.

Keywords: bottom-up, language ideologies, language planning policy, language policy, language identities, linguistic landscape

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Authors: Erteki̇n Kotbaş

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Teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is on the front burner of many countries in the world, in particular for English language teaching departments that train EFL teachers. Under the head of motivational theories in foreign language education, there are numerous researches in literature. However; researches comprising English language self-efficacy and teachers’ learning goal orientation which has a positive impact on learning teachings skills are scarce. Examination of these English language self-efficacy beliefs and learning goal orientations of pre-service EFL teachers may broaden the horizons, considering the importance of self-efficacy and goal orientation on learning and teaching activities. At this juncture, present study aims to investigate the strong relationship between English language self efficacy and teachers’ learning goal orientation from Turkish context in addition to teacher students’ grade factor.

Keywords: English language, learning goal orientation, self efficacy, pre-service teachers

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Authors: Georgiana Ciobotaru

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The vocabulary that foreign students assimilate once they start studying the Romanian language must allow them to develop the linguistic competence of oral and written expression, but also the intercultural one, necessary for their integration into the new socio-cultural environment. Therefore, the familiarization courses with Romanian as a foreign language aim at fundamental language acquisitions in order to obtain the expected level of Romanian language. They also relate differently to the new culture and the new language they come in contact with, having a distinct way of expressing themselves. Foreign students want to continue their university and postgraduate studies at specialized faculties in the country; therefore, they need both a general language for their integration into society and for interaction with others, Romanians or students from countries other than their own, but also from a specialized language that facilitates didactic communication and professional development. The complexity of the vocabulary must thus cover the daily communication needs, but also the subsequent evolution of each one. This paper aims to illustrate the most important semantic fields that students must assimilate in order to crystallize a linguistic identity in the new context of their personal and professional development and to help them cope with the culture shock.

Keywords: integration, intercultural, language, linguistic, vocabulary

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Authors: Mohd Rashid Bin Hj. Md Idris, Lajiman Bin Janoory, Abdullah Bin Yusof, Mahzir Bin Ibrahim

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The Malay language curriculum at primary school level in Malaysia is instrumental in ensuring the status of the language as the official and national language, the language of instruction as well as the language that unites the various ethnics in Malaysia. A research addressing issues related to the curriculum standard is, therefore, essential to provide value added quality to the existing National Education Philosophy in ongoing efforts to produce an individual who is balanced in intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical developments. The objective of this study is to examine the Philosophy of Language Theory, to review the content of the Malay language subject in relation to the Standard Curriculum for Primary Schools (KSSR), and to identify aspects of Theory of Philosophy in the Standard Curriculum for Primary Schools. The Malay language Primary School Curriculum is designed to enable students to be competent speakers and communicators of the language in order to gain knowledge, skills, information, values, and ideas and to enhance skills in social relations. Therefore, this study is designed to help educators to achieve all the stated goals. At the same time students at primary school level are expected to be able to apply the principle of language perfection as stated in the Philosophy of Language Theory to enable them to understand, appreciate and to take pride in being a Malaysian who speaks the language well.

Keywords: language, philosophy, theory, curriculum, standard, national education philosophy

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Authors: Chithra A. V., Somoshree Datta, Sandeep Nithyanandan

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Sign Language Recognition (SLR) is the process of interpreting and translating sign language into spoken or written language using technological systems. It involves recognizing hand gestures, facial expressions, and body movements that makeup sign language communication. The primary goal of SLR is to facilitate communication between hearing- and speech-impaired communities and those who do not understand sign language. Due to the increased awareness and greater recognition of the rights and needs of the hearing- and speech-impaired community, sign language recognition has gained significant importance over the past 10 years. Technological advancements in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have made it more practical and feasible to create accurate SLR systems. This paper presents a distinct approach to SLR by framing it as a video classification problem using Deep Learning (DL), whereby a combination of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) has been used. This research targets the integration of sign language recognition into healthcare settings, aiming to improve communication between medical professionals and patients with hearing impairments. The spatial features from each video frame are extracted using a CNN, which captures essential elements such as hand shapes, movements, and facial expressions. These features are then fed into an RNN network that learns the temporal dependencies and patterns inherent in sign language sequences. The INCLUDE dataset has been enhanced with more videos from the healthcare domain and the model is evaluated on the same. Our model achieves 91% accuracy, representing state-of-the-art performance in this domain. The results highlight the effectiveness of treating SLR as a video classification task with the CNN-RNN architecture. This approach not only improves recognition accuracy but also offers a scalable solution for real-time SLR applications, significantly advancing the field of accessible communication technologies.

Keywords: sign language recognition, deep learning, convolution neural network, recurrent neural network

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Authors: Thi Phuong Ly Tran

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Being a basic and unique to human beings, cognitive activity possesses spiritualistic characteristics and is conveyed through languages. Words that represent rational cognition or processes related to rationality as follow: know, think, understand, doubt, be afraid, remember, forget, think (that), realize (that), find (that), etc. can reflect the process by which human beings have transformed cognitive activities into diversified and delicate manners through linguistic tasks. In this research article, applying the descriptive method and comparative method, we would like to utilize the application of the theoretical system of linguistic characteristics of cognitive verbs in Vietnamese language in comparison with English language. These achievements of this article will meaningfully contribute to highlight characteristics of Vietnamese language and identify the similarities and differences in the linguistic processes of Vietnamese and English people as well as supply more knowledge for social requirements such as foreign language learning, dictionary editing, language teaching in schools.

Keywords: cognitive activity, cognitive perspective, Vietnamese language, English language

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Authors: Miho Yamashita

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In recent years, there have been attempts to introduce Machine Translation (MT) into foreign language teaching, especially in writing instructions. This is because the performance of neural machine translation has improved dramatically since 2016, and some university instructors started to introduce MT translations to their students as a "good model" to learn from. However, MT is still not perfect, and there are many incorrect translations. In order to translate the intended text into a foreign language, it is necessary to edit the original manuscript written in the native language (pre-edit) and revise the translated foreign language text (post-edit). The latter is considered especially difficult for users without a high proficiency level of foreign language. Therefore, the author allowed her students to use MT in her writing class in one of the private universities in Japan and investigated 1) how groups of students with different English proficiency levels revised MT translations when translating Japanese manuscripts into English and 2) whether the post-edit process differed when the students revised alone or in pairs. The results showed that in 1), certain non-post-edited grammatical errors were found regardless of their proficiency levels, indicating the need for teacher intervention, and in 2), more appropriate corrections were found in pairs, and their frequent use of a dictionary was also observed. In this presentation, the author will discuss how MT writing instruction can be integrated effectively in an aim to achieve multimodal foreign language education.

Keywords: machine translation, writing instruction, pre-edit, post-edit

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Authors: Safiah Ahmed Yahya Madkhali

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The aim of the present paper is to provide a characterization of the expression of comparison in the language of the Qur’an, the language of the Divine Book of the Muslim nation. It focuses on quantitative as well as qualitative comparisons. While works on comparison constructions in Arabic focus on a type(s) of the comparison construction and exclude another and investigate its behaviour in Standard Arabic, the paper aims to be inclusive of the varied instances that are scalar comparison constructions and describe its aspects in the language of the Qur’an. To the best of my knowledge, comparative constructions in the language of the Qur’an has not been tackled before and hence the characterization provided in the paper would be the contribution of the present work. The paper highlights the several rhetorical features of the construction as present in the different verses in the Qur’an which set them distinct from the ordinary use of the construction in the different verities of the Arabic language.

Keywords: comparison constructions, inequality, comparative, superlative, equality

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Authors: Judith Hanke

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Due to the increase of students with reading difficulties, digital reading support with diagnostics was developed to foster the individual student's reading comprehension. The digital reading support focused on the reading comprehension of elementary school students. The digital reading packages consist of literary texts with aligned reading exercises. The number of students with German as a second language is growing in Germany. Students with multilingualism, language 1, and language 2 learn German together in school. The research's focus is on determining whether and to what extent multilingualism, language 1, and language 2 affect reading comprehension. For the methodology, an ABA design was selected for the intervention study to examine the reading support. The study was expedited from April 2023 until July 2023 and collected quantitative data of individuals, groups, and classes. It comprised a survey group (N = 58) and a control group (N = 53). The quantitative data was collected from 3 classes of 3 teachers and 47 students for all three test times. To show differences between the groups, a standardized reading comprehension test was used for the three test times, pretest, posttest, and follow-up. The standardized test consists of three subtests regarding word comprehension, sentence comprehension, and text comprehension. The main findings include that students who spoke German as their first language had the best test scores. Interestingly, students with a different language had better testing scores than students with German as the first language and (an) other language/s. Also, the students with another language outperformed the native language speakers in one of the subtests of the post-testing. The variables of spoken language at home and German as a second language were also examined and correlated with the test results. One significant correlation was found between spoken language at home and the text comprehension test of the pretesting. Additionally, the variable German as a second language had multiple significant correlations in the pretest, posttest and follow-up. The study's significance is to understand the influence of several languages, language 1, and language 2, on reading comprehension.

Keywords: multilingualism, language 1, language 2, reading comprehension, second language

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Authors: S. Gordon

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Dual language immersion is growing fast in language teaching today. This study provides an overview and evaluation of the different models of Dual language immersion programs in US K-12 schools. First, the paper provides a brief current literature review on the theory of Dual Language Immersion (DLI) in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies. Second, examples of several types of DLI language teaching models in US K-12 public schools are presented (including 50/50 models, 90/10 models, etc.). Third, we focus on the unique example of DLI education in the state of Utah, a successful, growing program in K-12 schools that includes: French, Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese. The project investigates the theory and practice particularly of the case of public elementary and secondary school children that study half their school day in the L1 and the other half in the chosen L2, from kindergarten (age 5-6) through high school (age 17-18). Finally, the project takes the observations of Utah French DLI elementary through secondary programs as a case study. To conclude, we look at the principal challenges, pedagogical objectives and outcomes, and important implications for other US states and other countries (such as France currently) that are in the process of developing similar language learning programs.

Keywords: dual language immersion, second language acquisition, language teaching, pedagogy, teaching, French

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Authors: Humaira Irfan Khan

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The paper discusses that Pakistan is a multilingual, multicultural, and multiethnic society. The findings from quantitative and qualitative data collected in two public universities look at the importance of English language and the role and status of national and regional languages in the country. The evidence implies that postgraduate students having diverse linguistic, cultural, ethnic, socio-economic, and educational backgrounds display negative attitudes towards the use of English language for academic and interactive functions in universities. It is also discovered that language anxiety of postgraduate students is an outcome of their language learning difficulties. It is suggested that considering the academic needs of students, universities should introduce a language proficiency course to enable them to use English with confidence.

Keywords: Multilingualism, Ethnicity, Cultural Diversity, Importance of English, National language, Regional languages, Language Anxiety

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Authors: Sresha Yadav, Ishwar Kumar

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Second language learning is an important area of research in the language and linguistic domains. Literature suggests that several factors impact second language learning, including age, motivation, objectives, teacher, instructional material, classroom interaction, intelligence and previous background, previous linguistic experience, other student characteristics. Previous researchers have also highlighted that classroom atmospherics has a significant impact on learning as well as on the performance of students. However, the impact of classroom atmospherics on second language learning is still not known in the existing literature. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to explore whether classroom atmospherics has an impact on second language learning or not? And if it does, it would be worthwhile to explore the nature of such relationship. The present study aims to explore the impact of classroom atmospherics on second language learning by dwelling into the existing literature to explore factors which impact second language learning, classroom atmospherics which impact language learning and the metrics through which such learning impacts could be measured. Based on the findings of literature review, the researchers have adopted a clustering approach for categorization and positioning of various measures of second language learning. Based on the clustering approach, the researchers have approach for measuring the impact of classroom atmospherics on second language learning by drawing a student sample consisting of 80 respondents. The results of the study uncover various basic premises of second language learning, especially with regard to classroom atmospherics. The present study is important not only from the point of view of language learning but implications could be drawn with regard to the design of classroom atmospherics, environmental psychology, anthropometrics, etc as well.

Keywords: classroom atmospherics, cluster analysis, linguistics, second language learning

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Authors: Nahıd Naderı Anarı, Mojdeh Shafıee

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Languaging has been identified as a contributor to language learning. Compared to oral languaging, written languaging seems to have been less explored. In order to fill this gap, this paper examined the effect of ‘metanotes’, namely metatalk in a written modality to identify whether written languaging actually facilitates language learning. Participants were instructed to take metanotes as they performed a translation task. The effect of metanotes was then analyzed by comparing the results of these participants’ pretest and posttest with those of participants who performed the same task without taking metanotes. The statistical tests showed no evidence of the expected role of metanotes in foreign language learning.

Keywords: EFL learners, foreign language learning, language teaching, metanotes

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Authors: Yuqing Sun

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Chinese has been regarded as one of the most difficult languages in learning due to its complex spelling structure, difficult pronunciation, as well as its varying forms. Since vocabulary acquisition is the basic process to acquire a language, to express yourself, to compose a sentence, and to conduct a communication, so learning the vocabulary is of great importance. However, the vocabulary contains pronunciation, spelling, recognition and application which may seem as a huge work. This may pose a question for the language teachers (language teachers in China who teach Chinese to the foreign students): How to teach them in an effective way? Traditionally, teachers have no choice but teach it all by themselves, then with the development of technology, they can use computer as a tool to help them (Computer Assisted Language Learning or CALL). Now, they move into the Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) method to guide their teaching, upon which the appraisal is convincing. It diversifies the learning material and the way of output, which can activate learners’ curiosity and accelerate their understanding. This paper will focus on actual case studies occurring in the universities in China of teaching the foreign students to learn Chinese, and the analysis of the utilization of WeChat channel as an example of MALL model to explore the active role of MALL to enhance the effectiveness of Chinese vocabulary acquisition.

Keywords: Chinese, vocabulary acquisition, MALL, case

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Authors: Juan Manuel Real-Espinosa

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This paper addresses the first step to evaluate language learning apps: what theoretical framework to adopt when designing the app evaluation framework. The answer is not just one since there are several options that could be proposed. However, the question to be clarified is to what extent the learning design of apps is based on a specific learning approach, or on the contrary, on a fusion of elements from several theoretical proposals and paradigms, such as m-learning, mobile assisted language learning, and a number of theories about language acquisition. The present study suggests that the reality is closer to the second assumption. This implies that the theoretical framework against which the learning design of the apps should be evaluated must also be a hybrid theoretical framework, which integrates evaluation criteria from the different theories involved in language learning through mobile applications.

Keywords: mobile-assisted language learning, action-oriented approach, apps evaluation, post-method pedagogy, second language acquisition

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Authors: Archit Yajnik

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Part of Speech Tagging has always been a challenging task in the era of Natural Language Processing. This article presents POS tagging for Nepali text using Hidden Markov Model and Viterbi algorithm. From the Nepali text, annotated corpus training and testing data set are randomly separated. Both methods are employed on the data sets. Viterbi algorithm is found to be computationally faster and accurate as compared to HMM. The accuracy of 95.43% is achieved using Viterbi algorithm. Error analysis where the mismatches took place is elaborately discussed.

Keywords: hidden markov model, natural language processing, POS tagging, viterbi algorithm

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Authors: Afsheen Kashifa, Muhammad Saad Khan

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The present study examines the linguistic use of English as a permanent part of the regional languages of Pakistan. This research has delimited its investigation to the language used by the students of English language who speak different regional languages. It deals with the attitudes, causes, and effects of the language shift from regional and minority languages to English. It further gets insights from the feedback provided by the students as respondents that English is replacing the minority languages for being the language of prestige, convenience, and rich vocabulary. These concepts have been achieved through the use of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The findings of this research exhibit that the respondents speak English because of its vocabulary and easy way of communication; therefore, they enjoy a high place in society. This research also shows that the speakers of the regional languages are encouraged by their parents to speak English. Eventually, the words and expressions of English, the dominant language, have become a permanent part of the minority languages. Therefore, the minority languages are becoming endangered languages.

Keywords: language shift, language accommodation, language attrition, effects on minority languages

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Authors: Satya Girish Goparaju, Sushmita Pareek

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This paper examines two sets of pictograms published in Neurath’s books Basic by Isotype and International Pictorial Language in order to investigate the reasons for pictorial language having become an end in itself despite its potential to be relevant, especially in the 21st century digital age of heightened interlingual engagement. ISOTYPE was developed by Otto Neurath to be an ‘international language’ (pictorial) in the late 1920s. It was derived from the philosophy of logical positivism (of the Vienna Circle), which believed that language can be reduced to sets of direct experiences as bare symbols, devoid of the emotive and expressive functions. In his book International Picture Language, Neurath noted that any language is less clear-cut in one or the other way, and hence the pictorial language was justified. However, Isotype, as an ambitious version of logical positivism in practice distanced itself from the semiotic theories of language, and therefore his pictograms were defined as an independent set of signs rather than signs as a part of the language. This paper attempts to investigate intersemiotic translation in the form of Isotypes and trace the effects of logical positivism on Neurath’s concept of isotypes; the ‘international language’.

Keywords: intersemiotic translation, isotype, logical positivism, Otto Neurath, translation studies

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Authors: Daniela Panico

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Framed by language socialization and family language policy theories, the present study explores the ways the language choice patterns of bilingual siblings contribute to the shaping of the language environment and the language practices of Italian/English families residing in Sydney. The main source of data is video recordings of naturally occurring parent-children and child-to-child interactions during everyday routines (i.e., family mealtimes and siblings playtime) in the home environment. Recurrent interactional practices are analyzed in detail through a conversational analytical approach. This presentation focuses on the interactional trajectories developing during the negotiation of language choices between all family members and between siblings in face-to-face interactions. Fine-grained analysis is performed on language negotiation sequences of multiparty bilingual conversations in order to uncover the sequential patterns through which a) the children respond to the parental strategies aiming to minority language maintenance, and b) the siblings influence each other’s language use and choice (e.g., older siblings positioning themselves as language teachers and language brokers, younger siblings accepting the role of apprentices). The findings show that, along with the parents, children are active socializing agents in the family and, with their linguistic behavior, they contribute to the establishment of a bilingual or a monolingual context in the home. Moreover, by orienting themselves towards the use of one or the other language in family talk, bilingual siblings are a major internal micro force in the language ecology of a bilingual family and can strongly support language maintenance or language shift processes in such domain. Overall, the study provides insights into the dynamic ways in which family language policy is interactionally negotiated and instantiated in bilingual homes as well as the challenges of intergenerational language transmission.

Keywords: bilingual siblings, family interactions, family language policy, language maintenance

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Authors: Ebipatei Victoria Tunyan, T. A. Cao, Cheol Young Ock

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Detecting subjectively biased statements is a vital task. This is because this kind of bias, when present in the text or other forms of information dissemination media such as news, social media, scientific texts, and encyclopedias, can weaken trust in the information and stir conflicts amongst consumers. Subjective bias detection is also critical for many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks like sentiment analysis, opinion identification, and bias neutralization. Having a system that can adequately detect subjectivity in text will boost research in the above-mentioned areas significantly. It can also come in handy for platforms like Wikipedia, where the use of neutral language is of importance. The goal of this work is to identify the subjectively biased language in text on a sentence level. With machine learning, we can solve complex AI problems, making it a good fit for the problem of subjective bias detection. A key step in this approach is to train a classifier based on BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) as upstream model. BERT by itself can be used as a classifier; however, in this study, we use BERT as data preprocessor as well as an embedding generator for a Bi-LSTM (Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory) network incorporated with attention mechanism. This approach produces a deeper and better classifier. We evaluate the effectiveness of our model using the Wiki Neutrality Corpus (WNC), which was compiled from Wikipedia edits that removed various biased instances from sentences as a benchmark dataset, with which we also compare our model to existing approaches. Experimental analysis indicates an improved performance, as our model achieved state-of-the-art accuracy in detecting subjective bias. This study focuses on the English language, but the model can be fine-tuned to accommodate other languages.

Keywords: subjective bias detection, machine learning, BERT–BiLSTM–Attention, text classification, natural language processing

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Authors: Yasir Naseem

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In this fast-growing and evolving world, usage and adoption of technology have displayed an essential component of the learning process, both in and out of the class, which converges and incorporates every domain of the learning aspects. It aids in learning distinct entities irrespective of their levels of challenge. It also incorporates both viewpoints of learning, i.e., competence as well as the performances of the learner. In today's learning scenario, nearly every language class ordinarily uses some form of technology. It integrates with various teaching methodologies and transforms in a way that now it grew as an integral part of the language learning courses. It has been employed to facilitate, promote, and enhances language learning. It facilitates educators in numerous ways and enhances their methodologies by equipping them to modify classroom activities, which covers every aspect of language learning.

Keywords: communication, methodology, technology, skills

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Authors: Gizem Yilmazel

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Turkiye has been facing failure in English language teaching despite long years of English studies during mandatory education. A body of research studying the reasons of the failure in the literature exists yet the problem has not been solved and English language education is still a phenomenon in Turkiye. The failure is mostly attributed to the methods used in English education (Grammar Translation Method), lack of exposure to the language, inability to practice the language, financial difficulties, the belief of abroad experience necessity, national examinations, and conservative institutional policies. The findings are evident and tangible yet the problem persists. This paper aims to bring the issue a critical perspective and discuss the reasons of the failure.

Keywords: EFL, failure, critical perspective, language education

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Authors: Zhen Cheng, Xinyu Dai, Shujian Huang, Jiajun Chen

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Recently, explanatory natural language inference has attracted much attention for the interpretability of logic relationship prediction, which is also known as explanation generation for Natural Language Inference (NLI). Existing explanation generators based on discriminative Encoder-Decoder architecture have achieved noticeable results. However, we find that these discriminative generators usually generate explanations with correct evidence but incorrect logic semantic. It is due to that logic information is implicitly encoded in the premise-hypothesis pairs and difficult to model. Actually, logic information identically exists between premise-hypothesis pair and explanation. And it is easy to extract logic information that is explicitly contained in the target explanation. Hence we assume that there exists a latent space of logic information while generating explanations. Specifically, we propose a generative model called Variational Explanation Generator (VariationalEG) with a latent variable to model this space. Training with the guide of explicit logic information in target explanations, latent variable in VariationalEG could capture the implicit logic information in premise-hypothesis pairs effectively. Additionally, to tackle the problem of posterior collapse while training VariaztionalEG, we propose a simple yet effective approach called Logic Supervision on the latent variable to force it to encode logic information. Experiments on explanation generation benchmark—explanation-Stanford Natural Language Inference (e-SNLI) demonstrate that the proposed VariationalEG achieves significant improvement compared to previous studies and yields a state-of-the-art result. Furthermore, we perform the analysis of generated explanations to demonstrate the effect of the latent variable.

Keywords: natural language inference, explanation generation, variational auto-encoder, generative model

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Authors: Andreea Cervatiuc

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This study focuses on teaching second language writing through a constructivist approach. Unlike traditional approaches to teaching second language writing, which were product-oriented and emphasized surface features of writing, such as spelling and grammar, the constructivist approach to teaching second language writing is process-oriented and fosters discovery of meaning, creativity, collaboration, and writing for an audience. Educators who take a constructivist approach to teaching second language writing create communities of writers in their classrooms, emphasize that the goal of writing is to share ideas with others, and engage their students in collaborative, creative, and authentic writing activities, such as writing conferences, group story writing, finish the story, and chain writing. The constructivist approach to teaching second language writing combines a focus on genres, scaffolding, and treating writing as a process. Through constructivist writing, students co-create knowledge and engage in meaningful dialogue with various texts and their peers. The findings of this study can have implications for applied linguists, teachers, and language learners.

Keywords: constructivist second language, writing genres, process writing, scaffolding

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Authors: Abdullah Khuwaileh

Abstract:

The central aim of this paper is to investigate writing skills in the two languages involved, English and Arabic, and to see whether there is an association between poor writing across languages. That is to say, and it is thought that learners might be excellent in their L1 (Language 1: Arabic) but not in L2 (language 2: English). However, our experimental research findings resulted in an interesting association between L1 and L2. Data were collected from 150 students (chosen randomly) who wrote about the same topic in English and Arabic. Topics needed no preparation as they were common and well-known. Scripts were assessed respectively by ELT (English Language Teaching) and Arabic specialists. The study confirms that poor writing in English correlates with similar deficiencies in the mother tongue (Arabic). Thus, the common assumption in ELT that all learners are fully competent in their first language skills is unfounded. Therefore, the criticism of ELT programs for speakers of Arabic, based on poor writing skills in English and good writing in Arabic is not justified. The findings of this paper can be extended to other learners of English who speak Arabic as a first language and English as a foreign and/or second language. The study is concluded with several research and practical recommendations

Keywords: language, writing, culture, l1

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