English Education

The present paper introduces Google Scholar (GS) as a linguistic tool available to researchers, practitioners and students in English for academic purposes (EAP). It demonstrates how the academic search engine can be used for searching not only for academic content, but also for the form of academic expression. In particular, the paper discusses the possibilities of employing Google Scholar as a tool for exploring collocations in academic language. It shows how the large GS virtual corpus of written academic English can be effectively used in EAP research as well as in the creation of corpus-informed teaching materials.

The story of the Black presence in the United States is deeply rooted in the founding of the nation. It should be impossible to study American literature, history, or culture in K-12 schools without taking Black American into account. This chapter posits that the African American "story" is neither singular nor uncontested, and never was -- yet the teaching of literature in most schools presents a narrative of triumph that is contradicted by many children and teens' daily experiences. The chapter concludes by positioning the Black American metanarrative as a 21st century classroom "cipher" which demands a rethinking of literary pedagogy.

"Abstract
The authentic association of spontaneity, as a spur or basis for artistic expression, with the vaunted notion of autonomy in literary creationis nowhere more clearly established than in the work of theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as they, inter-alia, explicate the unique literary repertoire bestowed upon the world by Franz Kafka. In their acclaimed works: Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature and Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,they offered to literary theory the fascinating and analytically productive constructs of  deterritorialization and anti-Oedipus in the context of  a compelling portraiture of the ways in which various institutionalized relationships subtly prescribe and reinforce inequity in society’s power mechanics that tendentiously impact, among other realities, the nature and quality of literary products. They offered, in the process, a refreshing definition of minor literature that unequivocally restores to literature its distinctive place and role in the amalgamated adjudications of society’s intergroup dissensions. In this regard, the present paper subscribes to the idea that spontaneity equaled the intrinsic and immutable desire of the gifted literary mind of African-American author/poet Langston Hughes to reach expressivity in accordance, strictly, with his unalloyed literary vision and thus made autonomy the inevitable upshot of his inspiration and practice.       

Key words: Langston Hughes, African-American author/poet, Minor author/poet, Literary spontaneity and autonomy, Deterritorialization
"

"Doris Lessing’s novels reveal the way in which war affects humanity by capturing the traumatic state of the author herself and also of the characters in her works. As a result of the two world wars, in the twentieth century, trauma emerges as a paradigmatic discourse for defining its catastrophic, disastrous and injurious aftermaths. In the novels Martha Quest and A Proper Marriage, the author shows  how the war is an extremely traumatic experience for those who are direct witness to its violence and how it wreaks havoc on the entire generation. In A Proper Marriage, there is no particular mention of any catastrophic effects of war. The novel vividly portrays the anxiety which people suffer before a war. The catastrophe of the World War-I aggravates the impact of the forth coming World War-II. Hasty marriages and pregnancies are manipulated as the ways to escape the trauma of the impending war. Such discourse of trauma of wars, with its vivid catastrophic and disastrous effects on the people, narrated in the Martha Quest and A Proper Marriage, forms the topics of investigation and discussion in the present paper. The paper also explores and discusses how scientific war accelerated the destruction of the youth without coming to their aid. Attempt has also been made to shed light upon various techniques of escapism used by the characters to survive in the chaotic world.

Keywords: Doris Lessing’s Novels, Paradigmatic Discourse, Stress Disorder,  Martha Quest,
                  Trauma of war, escapism
"

"Today, stories are recommended by many scholars in the area of ELT as good vehicles for presenting grammar items contextually. The roles they play increase as they become appropriate to students’ level, experience and interest. Students get the opportunity to see grammar points functioning within real contexts when they get exposed to stories, and they learn the varied ways of expressing a single thought through different structural formations in stories. In this respect, this paper is a part of the project which was designed to investigate whether association exists between reading stories for longer hours and grammar intake in the elementary levels in the Ethiopian context or not. After attending reading sessions for a specified number of hours, participants (from the total) were randomly selected (to reduce the effects of any extraneous variables) and were given grammar test, and then their scores were analyzed. Accordingly, the correlation coefficient was found to be (r) = 0.668, which indicated a strong positive relationship. The significance value was recorded as (p) < 0.001, indicating that a significant correlation exists between number of hours spent on reading stories and grammar intake. Based on the results and findings, the paper also recommends that material developers, in general, and classroom practitioners, specifically, should consider the contribution of carefully selected stories to the enhancement of students’ grammar intake and should use them as a technique of grammar presentation.

Keywords: Use of Stories, EFL Learners, Grammar Intake, Correlational Analysis, Ethiopian   
                Students
"

"This article examines constructions of “American” identity and
place in the first influential guides for English teaching published in the United States at the cusp of the 20th Century. It recovers how English teaching was to weaken youths’ ties to more immediate people and places and to reorient their sense of self, others and the world around imagined communities that differentiated America/Americans from uncivilised, irrational and illiterate “others”. Language and literature were directed to
reorder thought, inculcate the spirit of peoples and places, and locate individuals, races and nations temporally and spatially in sacred-secular redemption narratives. The study historicises practices of English teaching that have inscribed people and places within a religion-science-nation-West horizon, constituting distinctive experiences of sameness/difference, nationalism, and place that have spanned more than a century of English teaching."

"In this paper, we will problematize the proposed use of mother-tongue-based instruction in the Philippines. As a country that has, for almost a century, supported the use of English in schools, this proposal marks a drastic shift in Philippine languages in education policies. We
argue that a century of language policies, which have privileged English over all the local languages of the Philippines, have led to specific attitudes to language that will impact on the success of mother-tongue-based education. To support our arguments, we will draw on the results of a survey on language attitudes conducted in the Philippines. This survey specifically asked respondents about what they perceived to be the role/s of English and other Philippine
languages in education. We argue that although mother-tongue initiatives are admirable, they need to be examined in terms of attitudes to language, which may or may not value mother
tongues. In addition, we argue that for mother-tongue-based education to succeed, it is necessary to consider the possibility of changing these attitudes to language via a principles-based
approach to language policy."