• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.57-72
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• 2020

This study seeks to add to the current understanding of learners' use of modality in argumentative writing. A learner corpus of argumentative essays on four topics was created and compared to native English speaker data from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE). The relationship between learners' use of modal devices (MDs) and the devices' appearance in the school's curriculum was also examined. The results showed that learners relied on a very narrow range of MDs compared to those in previous studies. The frequency of use of MDs varied based on the topic and did not seem to be driven by cultural factors as has been previously suggested. Learners used more hedges than boosters on all topics, contradicting most previous studies. Curriculum was determined to have a direct correlation with MD use, and other important factors may include perception of topic and overreliance on certain MDs over others (the One-to-One principal). This research implies that learners' perception of topic should be explored further as a variable affecting MD use. Curricula should be designed based on frequency of MD use by English native speakers, and learners should receive instruction that teaches the norms of MD use in academic writing. The methodology used in the study to determine correlations between MD use and the curriculum has a wide range of potential applications in the field of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.3
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• pp.483-530
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• 2018

Unpacking and dispersing rights of various kinds formerly enjoyed by a selected few has been the constant motivation behind the democratization and modernization of human society. Human rights and later civil rights have continuously been constituted and reconstituted in response to the demands of the laboring class, slaves, women, subalterns, animals, and things, expanding beyond the boundaries of class, race, nation, sexuality, gender, species and organism. Calling attention to the ways in which literary and cultural texts have narrated rights so as to inscribe these human, nonhuman, and inhuman demands. Narrating rights offer opportunities to interrogate the lasting contributions of English language and literature to questioning, reforming, and practicing rights. The interrogation is particularly pertinent in this age in which revised and dispersed rights are creating new conflicts, requiring them to be narrated differently and imaginatively so as to allow all the parties in conflict to participate in working out the conflicts. With the 2017 theme of "Literature and Human Rights," JELL editorial collective hope to explore the relationship between literature and human rights in its multiple simultaneous, and plural manifestations in an open platform. "Narrating Rights" is a double-edged task that, on one hand, reflects the singular life conditions or contexts of a human, inhuman or nonhuman being and, on the other hand, aspires to the perpetual process of rights' universal application. Eleven out of all the keynote speakers at the 2017 ELLAK Convention were invited to this roundtable on Literature and Human Rights. The following transcription includes the dialogues of the eleven discussants.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.575-596
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• 2010

The modes of narratives and communication have expanded due to social and cultural changes and technological development. Thus texts have become multimodal and media hybridities and media crossover have been increasing as well. Multimodality requires new literacy to understand and interpret those multimodal texts other than existing traditional literacy approaches. The New London Group (2000) argues that multiliteracies are needed to serve today's changing multimodal texts. Kress (2003) also argues, visual texts have been prevailing, being mingled with other modes of texts such as linguistic, audio, gestural, and spatial modes. Literary texts are not exception in this trend of multimodality. The recent renaissance of comics, in particular, the new light on graphic novels can be interpreted in this historical vein. In comparison to comics, no consensus has been made in defining graphic novels, however, many studies have been recently conducted in order to look into the potential of graphic novels in building multiliteracies. In this paper, the graphic novel as a literary genre are explored from a histocial perspective and the definition of graphic novels was attempted to be made. In the light of multiliteracies, this paper presented cases that show how graphic novels can be utilized to build multiliteracies. Lastly, the use of graphic novels for English as a foreign language was introduced as well. The author hopes that at the age of multimodality, the potential graphic novels have in language and literacy education can be taken into account by language teachers and students in expanding their territory of literacy.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.1063-1083
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• 2012

Florence Nightingale is best remembered today as the Lady with the Lamp, but modern research on the English nurse primarily addresses her popular iconography as a historical misrepresentation of her character and career. This scholarly reluctance to analyze critically Nightingalean iconography, however, has obscured important cultural work performed by the popular tropes. This article argues that the proliferation of Nightingale's iconic image as a symbol of Christian womanhood in transatlantic periodical poetry, when examined separately from biographical considerations, reveals important insights into the complex relationship between form and affect in mid-nineteenth periodicals. Popular representations of Nightingale give form to the disorienting effects produced on newspaper readers by the nascent field of international journalism and reflect a key generic paradox at the heart of the Victorian periodical: the simultaneous aim to report news objectively and to move readers affectively in response to events beyond national contexts and interests. Focusing on Lewis Carroll's "The Path of Roses" and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Santa Filomena," this article contends that Nightingalean periodical poetry mirrors back to readers their own affective response to modern media and functions as a new technology for managing an increasingly acute awareness of events and ethical responsibilities beyond the nation.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.6
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• pp.1-24
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• 2000

Listening comprehension is an integrative and creative process of interaction through which listeners receive speakers' production of linguistic or non-linguistic knowledge. Compared with reading comprehension, it may arouse difficulties and thus impose more burdens on foreign learners. The Audio-Lingual Method focused primarily on speaking. Mimicry, repetition, rote memory, and transformation drills actually interfered with listening comprehension. So learners lost interest and were not highly motivated. Improving listening comprehension requires continual attentiveness and interest. Listening skill can be extended systematically only when students are frequently exposed to a wide range of listening materials with an affective, cultural, social, and psycholinguistic approach. Therefore, teachers should help students learn how to comprehend intactly the overall meaning of intended messages. The literature on teaching listening skill suggests various useful activities: TPR, dictation, role playing, singing, picture recognition, completion, prediction, seeking specific information, summarizing, labeling, humor, jokes, cartoons, media, and so on. Practical classroom teaching necessitates a systematic procedure in which students should take part in meaningful tasks/activities. In addition to this, learners must practice listening comprehension trough a self-study process.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.67-85
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• 2007

The main concern of the study is the playwrights' perspectives toward the relationship between society and individuals rather than specific cultural or social circumstances. This study is justified in that the similarities of both playwrights not only provide an opportunity to bridge two different cultures, but they also help readers understand another culture and deepen the understanding of their own culture in the map of international literature. In their plays, both Miller and Cha express an individual's or a family's frustration, conflict, pleasure, and hope as reflected in the social circumstances. The characters take ideas and values from their social world and thrive or fail. Specifically, I have focused on three elements--obsession, generational value systems, and alienation. With three common features, I examine how closely Miller and Cha deal with ordinary people's tragedies.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.125-146
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• 2011

Within a framework of sociocultural approaches to writing process, this study examined six ESL graduate students' writing processes in depth based on individual interviews and their narratives of writing process. The narratives and interviews were analyzed to discover salient aspects of the students' writing processes and to understand the socially situated nature of the writing processes. First, it was observed that these six students displayed multiplicity in terms of their representations of writing process, episodes, textual practices, and concerns. Several factors including the writing task, students' familiarity with genre, literacy skills, attitude toward writing, and involvement in interaction contributed to individualized trajectories of writing process. It was also revealed that writing is unavoidably a socially situated practice. Students were situated in their cultural arenas as well as their disciplinary arenas, and these contexts helped the students serve as active agents producing and sharing knowledge. The confluence of personal, cognitive, and social factors observed in their writing processes suggests that writing process should be understood from multiple perspectives.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.3
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• pp.1-12
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• 1997

Errors in EFL writing are very often attributable to learner's inadequate understanding of the target culture. Most of these errors are very hard to identify because they are grammatically correct notwithstanding the meaning. EFL learners almost habitually equate the meaning and usage of a linguistic item when it is present both in the native and the target languages. However, seemingly identical items in both languages sometimes prove themselves to be distinct from each other because of cultural differences. Some expressions in the native language are neither socially acceptable nor meaningful in the target language. Out of sheer ignorance, moreover, one puts a target item in the way he may use it in his native language. For instance. the primary feature of the term "friend" in Korean is [+same age group]. So, a Korean young man is not supposed to call his teacher a friend. This paper aims to clarify patterns of college level writing errors caused by interference of mother culture.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.127-152
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to elaborate design strategies for a Web-based self-directed cooperative distance language learning community. Research was done regarding the theoretical foundations for self-directed cooperative language learning and Web-based learning communities. The components of a Web-based community for self-directed cooperative language learning system are also investigated. As a result of this study, design strategies for Web-based communities are suggested. There are performance and supporting environments(synchronous/asynchronous) for self- directed cooperative language learning. There are also cultural experiences and communication factors in the performance field. Furthermore, matching communicators, finding and offering information, language learning content and other supporting agents are important in the supporting environment.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.15-38
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• 2002

This article explored 9 EFL learners' emotional reactions they experienced in order to locate sources of EFL apprehension in university-based classroom settings. As part of further establishing construct validity of the measure (the FLPAS) Kim (2002) developed, lengthy interviews were adopted with focus on sources of discomfort with a variety of forms of language learning tasks. Findings showed that the interviewees confirmed most of the statements in the measuring tool, thereby increasing the trustworthiness of the measure. Specifically, the following themes or categories emanated from the analysis of interview data: (a) anxiety about performance in EFL classrooms; (b) EFL anxiety or discomfort about difficulties with cultural understanding; and (c) EFL anxiety induced by instructor and instruction.