Suchergebnisse

Rewriting Language: How Literary Texts Can Promote Inclusive Language Use
Christiane Luck (2020)
London: UCL Press, 204 pp.

"Managing the (Post)Colonial" investigates a range of literary texts - from American newspaper articles to Philippine state-sponsored poetry - which circulated just before and during the Philippine Commonwealth period (1934 -1946), when the islands were neither an official U.S. colony nor an independent nation. I argue therefore that the Commonwealth period was an ambiguous and contradictory political moment which I signify through the parenthetical use of "post" in "(post)colonial." I thus call into question whether or not an entire nation and its subjects could be simultaneously colonial and yet not, for it is at the moment of seeming official separation from the U.S. that political, economic, cultural and social policies actually ensured U.S. hegemony under the guise of independence. Ultimately, I analyze cultural and literary texts of the period to show how sexualized and gendered representations of the Filipino subject were not only utilized in an attempt to reconcile this contradiction of the Commonwealth, but also to imagine alternative nationalisms and forms of social emancipation. In the first chapter, I focus on the patriarchal formulation of benevolent assimilation and on American journalist Katherine Mayo's 1925 book Islands of Fear. I argue that Mayo discursively enabled her own access to the masculine realm of imperial power by positing a theory of Anglo- Saxon racial superiority meant to overwrite the patriarchal hierarchy between genders. This chapter demonstrates the mutually constitutive yet simultaneously contradictory nature of the imperial systems of racialization, sexualization and gendering. I trace the lines of this argument further in the second chapter as I investigate the 1940 Commonwealth Literary Awards. As the formal structure of an independent nation was established, state-sanctioned cultural projects such as the Awards not only obfuscated but also enabled the persisting economic and political ties between the islands and the U.S. Such projects did so by cultivating a canon of Philippine writing in English that posited normative masculinist nationalism as the telos of American democratic tutelage. In the third chapter I focus on what I term the hypersexualization of Philippine independence and the (im)possibilities of queer moments of desire in Carlos Bulosan's prose and Josè Garcia Villa's poetry - the impossibility of asserting a normative Filipino American subject and the possibility of imagining an America that is in the heart. Focusing on the queer moments in Bulosan and Villa's texts, I trace how the relationships between race, gender and sexuality are not only inundated with power but are also productively contradictory, allowing one access to spaces and acts of freedom

Literature has an inherent authenticity as an input for language teaching. Literary texts carry with them sociolinguistic and pragmatic knowledge which is pivotal for language learners to have their communicative competence increased. This study investigates the effect of the text of poetry on the pragmatic competence and fluency of ESL students. This is an experimental study consisting of a control group (CG) and an experimental group (EG). The respondents of the study are students of the 3rd semester, Education Faculty, University of Malakand, Pakistan. Before the commencement of the experiment, a speaking-type pretest was administered to students of both groups. Afterward, the control group was taught through traditional teaching materials whereas the experimental group was treated with poetry as teaching materials. At the end of the six-week-long experiment, a posttest like the pretest was again conducted. Moreover, a semi-structured interview was also conducted after the experiment. The scores of the students of both the groups on pretest and posttest were analyzed through statistical tests. The results of the tests indicated that the students of the experimental group performed significantly better than that of the control group in fluency whereas there was no significant difference in the mean scores of both the groups regarding pragmatic competence. However, the students of the experimental group registered significant improvement in pragmatic competence on posttest in intragroup comparison. The thematic analysis of the interview showed that the learners of the CG were reluctant to express themselves freely. They did not take interest in the group activities and did not actively participate in the presentation activity. On the contrary, the learners of EG were provided with a free-of-fear speaking environment due to the ambiguity and the subjective nature of poetry. Moreover, the text of the poetry was motivating and led to lengthy and intimate interaction among the students of the experimental group thereby improving their fluency. The study recommends that literary texts may be utilized in ESL classrooms.

Purpose
This study aims to examine the outcome of an online project to inform preservice English language teachers regarding the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).


Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative research method was used to understand participants' overall knowledge. In total, 30 preservice teachers were selected from a larger pool after considering their grade point averages, sex, university affiliations and geographical backgrounds to ensure a balanced distribution and diversity. Qualitative data were collected through written productions, video recordings and a postproject survey.


Findings
Findings revealed that preservice teachers deepened their understanding of SDGs and adopted a positive attitude toward SDGs while increasing their pedagogical awareness and knowledge of teaching English in response to SDGs. They also regarded literary texts as a valuable resource for teaching SDGs.


Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that literary works are valuable for educating preservice teachers on integrating SDGs. A detailed overview of the project and its outcomes can guide practitioners and teacher educators in integrating SDGs into their education programs and English language teaching.

The present article deals with the means of expressing subjective modality of any literary text inthe process of studying a foreign language. The method of text analyzing and interpreting in order toevaluate and to mark the idea of the author is the main purpose of the scientific paper. The original versionof the antiwar pamphlet "The Conduct of the Allies and of the Late Ministry in Beginning and Carrying on the Present War" written by Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist and political pamphleteer, is the major source that the research has been conducted on. ; Данная статья рассматривает средства выражения субъективной модальности художествен-ного произведения на иностранном языке. Центральное место в статье отводится методике ана-лиза художественного текста на предмет определения оценочного аспекта. Для предлагаемой ме-тодики оценки и интерпретации текста основополагающими являются два фактора: смысловойили синтаксический рисунок текста и отношение автора произведения к излагаемому материалу.Посредством вышеназванных факторов, автор художественного произведения прибегает к опре-деленным языковым средствам, передающим смысл текста и воздействующим определеннымобразом на читателя. Материалом данного исследования послужил оригинал антивоенного пам-флета англо-ирландского писателя-сатирика и публициста XVII–XVIII веков Джонатана Свифта«Поведение союзников и министерства в настоящей войне».