Search

The intricate and tricky case of semantic analysis, especially of the enigmatic realm of nouns, the red thread of linguistics and literary exploration. This academic research explores the rich sphere of Russian literature in-depth to determine connections between function and the embodiment of theme through proper names. This research is aiming at studying the role of proper nouns in the literary masterpieces by focusing on the ideas of character development, thematic cohesiveness, and the narrative flow. This papers deals with profound significance of proper nouns as linguistics pointers that take you beyond their literal meaning to different levels of connotative value. It takes most of its ideas from the late linguistics and literary critique. This research gets down to serious business by cherry-picking and analysing a set of Russian masterpieces. An intensive method of semantic analysis was used by the study to properly identify and categorize all the structural features of proper nouns. Also, it conducts an examination of the usage of language by these instrumentalities so as to discover their common features and themes which lead to the invention of the main narrative. The results of this study add to our comprehension of proper noun semantics in Russian literature and provide us with a stepping-stone to broader discussions on the linguistic theory and literary studies. This cognitive effort exceeds the linguistic borders, as it takes into consideration the cultural and historical value of the proper nouns being presented. The report shows why it is necessary to reconsider the theoretical design to account for the distinctive linguistic and particular cultural features of the Russian literary heritage. This research is a step toward unravelling noun semantics' mystery and adds to the already existing linguistic aesthetics and cultural semiotics debates.

Despite all the attempts to convince teachers and school authorities to support critical thinking (CT) skills in school settings, the application of CT skills has not reached a satisfactory point. Using a quasi-experimental design, the present study attempted to examine the effect of critiquing journal articles on English major students' argumentative writing abilities. To develop CT skills among language learners and improve their argumentative writing abilities, the strategy of critiquing journal articles was applied to a semester of foreign language writing classroom instruction of the experimental group for the results to be compared later with the performance in a control group. This comparison was made through the analysis of covariance, which revealed that the experimental group performed significantly better than the control group in writing argumentatively. This, in turn, demonstrated that critiquing journal articles as a pedagogical strategy in classrooms could significantly affect English as a foreign language learners' argumentative writing performance.

The implementation of "Merdeka Belajar -- Kampus Merdeka" (Freedom to Learn) in Indonesia urges universities to adapt and set changes in learning activities. One of the changes is the implementation of Project-Based Learning to increase students' activeness and creativity. This research aims to assess students' creative thinking on the implementation of Project-Based Learning. This research was a descriptive case study with a qualitative approach. Purposive sampling was chosen in this research because the sample was chosen on purpose, i.e., those who joined literary criticism class. There were ten students who played as the subject of the research. It used observation sheets and questionnaires to obtain the data. The data were then analyzed to get reliable results of students' creative thinking assessment. The result showed that some students (40%) strongly agreed that they faced some difficulties in developing their creative thinking. Most of their problems were about developing ideas into coherence text, structuring or organizing a good text, and choosing appropriate vocabulary to avoid repetition in the text. Students also found that project-based learning allowed them to develop their creative thinking in forms of independence, confidence, creativity, tolerance, and leadership. Regarding the result, it can be concluded that project-based learning is proven to be beneficial in developing students' creative thinking, though they find some obstacles during the process.

"Using Sentiment Analysis to Ease Students toward or around Macroanalysis" introduces teachers to the mathematical analytical method currently being promoted by Matthew Jockers which he calls macroanalysis. This method uses an algorithm called "R," originally designed by researchers in sociology. In many ways, macroanalysis presents an approach to literary analysis that might seem to many traditionalists to run counter to our training as close readers or advocates of specific literary theories. Instead of focusing on specific elements in a limited number of texts, macroanalysis uses a computer to consume a huge number of literary works--more than a single human being could read in a lifetime--and collect a statistically significant amount of data, a search which has been programmed into the algorithm by the researcher. This use of a computer to do the reading for the researcher results in a new methodology which Jockers calls "distant reading" (a term he borrows from Franco Moretti). After providing an introductory discussion of macroanalysis, I turn my focus onto making a case for the advantages of using graphs to aid in classroom discussions of reading assignments. In the introductory discussion, I point out that one serious advantage that arises from Jocker's macroanalysis is how the "R" algorithm produces a variety of graphs that provide visual reinforcement for the statistical data it generates. Consequently, in the second section of the essay, I provide a justification for why it would be advantageous in a college or even high school discussion of a reading assignment to privilege visual presentations of student responses to the assignment. Once I've established the nature of macroanalysis, and how challenging it is for the average English major, I offer an alternative approach to creating graphs to clarify student responses. This alternative approach is a blend of "sentiment analysis" and reader-response theory. Essentially this approach can be used to ease students toward the more serious graphing features of macroanalysis, or it can function as a self-contained form of analysis without shifting to the difficult mathematics characteristic of macroanalysis. To prepare the readers for the rather lengthy discussion of a graph produced by a group of Virginia Governor's School students, I first provide a simple graph that shows my responses to the opening scene of Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Having clarified how sentiment analysis, with the mechanical help of Microsoft Excel, can produce an engaging graph of emotional and intellectual responses that can be easily shared with the class, I then move to the last half of my essay--a detailed discussion of an actual student graph derived from a reading of Helen Klein Ross's "What Was Mine" which was much more sophisticated than the graph I created for the O'Connor story. Even though the students' graph was overly ambitious, the discussion of its visual dynamics demonstrate how even a faulty graph can teach students how to become close readers and appreciate the importance of analysis that is based on specific elements of the literature being analyzed.

This study describes the thinking strategies and epistemological stances of two Bible experts, who applied a literary and historical interpretive approach, respectively. A thinking-aloud protocols methodology was used as the two scholars read the same biblical story and verbalized their thoughts. The findings reveal intricate relationships between thinking strategies and interpretive approaches. The two scholars use similar thinking strategies, yet apply them within distinct epistemological stances and reading objectives. Both apply close reading; recall commentaries; syntactic and grammatical analysis. Both connect the story with other biblical texts. However, their reading goals differ. One applies strategies that deconstruct the biblical story to different sources and restore the Urtext. The other applies a reading approach that conceives the text as a unified literary work. He constructs possible meanings and messages from the story using literary criticism tools, relating to literary genres, and actualizing the ancient text. I discuss how these findings contribute to the literature about Bible scholarship and religious education and its pedagogical implications.

The author, a fifth-grade teacher, describes how she reimagined the literary essay curriculum to amplify student identity, agency, and voice by creating a class podcast. Because of their similar structure and organization, teaching students literary analysis and interpretation through podcast writing offered entry into literary essays. The author provides the steps for teaching students how to create a class podcast and write episodes reviewing diverse, inspiring, and thought-provoking texts. She explains how to support students to transfer their voice, energy, and skills when writing literary essays. The article shares insights about how engaging students as talkers and thinkers supports their identities as readers and writers.

Have we been teaching reading well? Close reading has been the signature practice in literary studies. More recently, however, postcritique has polemically revised this traditional mode of teaching reading. This essay proposes the initial framework for a novel arts-based pedagogy based on Spoken-Word Song, bridging critical literary interpretation and teacher-student co-created artistic performance. Spoken-Word Song is here cast as a privileged means for allowing university students to become intellectually and emotionally invested in poetry, following precepts of the affective turn in the humanities. Moving from theory to practice, this paper will contextualize Spoken-Word Song within three domains before describing the practical steps of my pedagogy: (1) its relevance to contemporary literary theory; (2) a brief overview of the American Spoken-Word Song; and (3) Spoken Word pedagogies currently practiced in the American educational system.

This essay analyzes the educational significance of the metaphysical novel, that is, how it can be used to educate ourselves and our students. Mordechai Gordon begins by describing the nature of the metaphysical novel while contrasting it to "pure" philosophy and theory building. Gordon also situates Beauvoir's insights in the broader context of the ongoing conversation on philosophy and literature. In the next part, he examines Beauvoir's philosophy of lived experience and compare her philosophical approach to more traditional phenomenological theories. From the analysis of Beauvoir's philosophy of lived experience, Gordon turns to explore the role that "ambiguity," "contingency," and "complexity" play in helping us make sense of people's lives while drawing on examples from several metaphysical novels to illustrate these notions. He concludes this essay by reflecting on the question: what can the study of metaphysical novels bring to philosophy of education?

In this article, I will try to elucidate the relevance of Deleuze and Guattari's approaches in the philosophy of education, along the lines of the Deleuzean pedagogy of 'do with me' and the absence of pre-established rules for learning or methodological anarchism. To do so, I will consider three important milestones in Deleuze and Guattari's thought: (i) antihumanism as the matrix of a pedagogy of generosity; (ii) the primacy of functioning over meaning as a vindication of practical learning versus rote learning; and (iii) the concepts of 'deterritorialisation-reterritorialisation' as the unlearning required by all true learning.

In "Anti-Oedipus," Deleuze and Guattari saw the difficulty of disentangling the question of Spinoza and, later, of Reich from the very limit of a system of representation by which they mean Oedipus. As "A Thousand Plateaus" would emphasize later, this limit brings out the question of the desire for democracy ('democracies are majorities'). It desires Oedipus. In "What Is Philosophy?", the limit question (Oedipus) gave way to the concept of a people to come. Fifty years since its publication, "Anti-Oedipus" remains a relevant text (apropos of its 'strategic adversary' identified by Foucault) against the background of the social pathology of neofascism, populist politics, and the rise of the alt-right and neoconservative movements in recent years. The paper tries to locate this inflexion point where the desire for democracy modulates into the bi-univocal plasticity of Oedipal desire whose dangers people already seem to know. They have unmasked Oedipus' double impasse and have escaped it. They no longer desire fascism; they desire fascists, neocons, and right-leaning mob rousers. Fifty years since its publication, "Anti-Oedipus" confronts a type of people who have learned to behave like the enemies of capitalism, too careful not to overload desire and destroy its bi-univocality, its great balancing act on the Body without organs. Incidentally, in 'Postscript on the Societies of Control,' Deleuze spoke about a people who know how to 'surf' replacing the 'older sports.' This applies to people who could become either schizoidal or regress to its more familiar inversion, the simulacra of Oedipus.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, only 23 Queer literary works have been published for children and adolescents in Hebrew. This paper examines the characteristics of these works in light of the ambivalent and controversial status of the LGBTQ+ community in Israel. The findings show that the few works that have been published and that present same-sex families or LGBTQ+ characters, and the manner in which Queer themes are presented in those texts, are in line with how these issues are perceived and addressed by Israeli society. Moreover, this article divides the Queer Israeli literature for children and youth into three categories: implied Queer literature that hides the Queer existence through the allegoric genre; Queer-phobic literature that seemingly presents the Queer family but in actual fact promotes homophobic stereotypes; and Queer literature that places the LGBTQ+ character or family in the center of the story without passing judgment or criticism.

Fairy tales have been an essential ingredient in children's literature. Canonical fairy tales passed down from generation to generation not only enrich children's imagination but connote significant values typical of the community. However, as time passes, contemporary writers often challenge these traditional values when they work on the same topic. This changing face is evidenced by Emma Donoghue's rewriting of classical tales. Based on my teaching of Donoghue's story 'The Tale of the Bird' alongside Andersen's 'Thumbelina' at a university in Hong Kong, this paper discusses the ever-evolving cultural values and the benefit of reading Donoghue via Andersen or vice versa in the literature class and beyond.

Reading is an integral part of scholarly practice, though we do not often discuss how our approaches to reading differ, and how these approaches may ultimately make interpretive impact on our research. This essay considers approaches to reading in light of the concepts of proximity and orientation. Though formal "close reading" is a common approach to teaching reading and analyzing texts, it is possible that there are other, closer approaches to situating reader and text. Perhaps reading has been seen as dangerous and liberating because it is true that texts can draw us into their landscapes and fundamentally alter our orientations to the world, an important consideration for scholars.

Queer theory taught at historically Black colleges and universities often meets with resistance from students. This article proposes a means by which to overcome this resistance. Deferring resistance involves encouraging students to approach queer theory texts in the same vein as they have approached texts earlier in the course. By building upon prior knowledge and connecting texts and coursework from earlier in the course, the student understands the placement of queer theory within the canon of literary criticism. The technique of deferring resistance involves contriving instructor fallibility by mis-labeling queer theory readings as something other than what they are. The purpose of mis-labeling texts is not deception but to lessen preconceived notions of an otherness or foreignness to queer theory. Once students make the connections between the critics, from the classics to the formalists, to the structuralist, to the poststructuralist, they can fully appreciate the arguments made by queer theorists.

The study aims to investigate the higher education students' and teachers' perception of using literary text in the foreign language course; to evaluate learners' progress in the foreign language communicative competence throughout the experiment period; to outline the policies and strategies of using analytical reading in the English class, which lead to increasing motivation to learn foreign languages with a focus on literature. The study involves 85 Bachelor's degree students and 35 teachers from linguistics and translation departments of three universities: Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, National Aviation University, Kütahya Dumlupinar University during the spring term in the school year 2021/2022. The students from these universities were using analytical reading in foreign language learning during this term. The quantitative research method allowed us to assess the students' progress in the development of their foreign language analytical reading skills, that included the understanding of the culture of foreign language, literary and aesthetic skills, vocabulary and foreign language skills, critical thinking and problem solving, inferential and interpretational skills. The qualitative research method was used to interpret the data of the experiment. Three questionnaires were employed as an instrument to assess teachers' and learners' perceptions of using literary texts in foreign language teaching/learning; to monitor the development of student's skills in analytical reading. The students-philologists involved in the research increased their motivation to learn English as a foreign language through literary texts and showed progress in the development of analytical reading skills up to 16%. The results obtained can be implemented into the practice of foreign language teaching as literary texts enriched the language input in the classroom and stimulated language acquisition, and analytical reading involved students-philologists emotionally challenging their imagination and creativity.

The construct of critical cultural awareness (CCA) is often regarded as an element pertaining to intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 1997, 2021). In this model, CCA is defined as the ability to "evaluate, critically, and on the basis of a systematic process of reasoning, values in one's own culture and other cultures" (Byram, 2021, p. 90). Although the potential of literature to develop learners' CCA is widely accepted by intercultural education scholars, Byram's definition has some limitations as a theoretical basis for teaching students how to "evaluate and reason critically" about literary texts, as it does not take into account certain aspects of literary reading and critical interculturality that are essential in contemporary foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. This study aims to redefine CCA for the specific context of secondary literature education in a bottom-up manner, based on an analysis of student texts about migratory literature. To this end, 97 students learning Spanish as a FL in the upper forms of pre-university education (aged 15-19) at four schools in the Netherlands were asked to write an evaluation of two literary texts they read in class. Via qualitative analysis of these texts with Atlas.ti, three content categories--social justice, emotions and conflict--and two evaluative categories--cultural representation and transformation--were identified for CCA. The findings of this study have implications for other FL literature teaching settings, as a generic rubric for assessment of student texts was developed based on the criteria that emerged from the data.

Bringing real-life cases to the educational environment and presenting them to students is one of the main goals of psychology. However, this is unfortunately not as easy as it is said, both ethically and practically. Since the educational materials to be offered to students on this subject are insufficient, academics and lecturers recommend that their students read case studies in psychopathology lessons or watch videos depicting certain disorders. While the use of films in both national and international literature in psychology and psychological counselling theories and practices is increasing, it is thought-provoking that there is no similar interest/attempt in reading literary works. Despite the (not)reading rates, the using literary works in students' education is overshadowed by films constitutes the main motivation of this study using literary works in students' education is overshadowed by films, which constitutes this study's main motivation. In this sense, the main purpose of the research is to provide an example of how literary works can be used in psychopathology teaching. Accordingly, Jean-Louis Fournier's book entitled "My daddy never killed anybody" was examined in terms of both causal factors and DSM criteria by using document analysis, which is one of the qualitative research methods, to delineate "alcohol use disorder. Accordingly, Jean-Louis Fournier's book named "My daddy never killed anybody" was examined in terms of both causal factors and DSM criteria by using document analysis, which is one of the qualitative research methods, to delineate "alcohol use disorder". In conclusion, it is thought that analysing literary works in terms of psychopathology and actively discussing them in front of a class will make the teaching process more creative and permanent.

Background: Since its integration into the European Higher Education Area, the Spanish educational system has evolved, introducing innovations into university teaching methodologies. This new approach entails the development of capacities, competencies, and skills that enable students to develop their critical thinking. Objective: This work aims to present an innovation project conducted in a "History of Psychology" course, part of the Degree in Psychology in the Spanish university system. Method: The current study was launched to evaluate the effectiveness of the Teaching Innovation Project, which itself arose from the need for students to improve their critical essay writing skills, incorporating such evidence-based methodologies as explicit instructions, online platforms, collaborative peer work, and rubrics. Results: A comparison of outcomes among three cohorts showed a marked improvement in student performance on critical essays and final exam scores after implementing new methodologies. Conclusion: It is possible to improve students' critical essay writing skills in the context of the "History of Psychology" through the intentional implementation of evidence-based practices, changing the pedagogical focus from teacher-centered to student-centered. Teaching implications: Psychology instructors who teach courses with writing skill development as a course goal could consider incorporating elements of the Teaching Innovation Project program.

This study is intended on the development of the learners' reading comprehension and story analysis skills under the implementation of PowToon as an innovative instructional material for learners' development in reading comprehension and story analysis skills. This study provided various evidence on how innovation can be a great step in developing the learners reading comprehension and story analysis skills. The purpose of this action research is to determine or evaluate the effectiveness of using PowToon as an innovative instructional material to improve and develop learners' reading comprehension and fluency. Various test and data gathering procedures showed promising data on the success of the implementation of the said instructional material where thirty (30) students assessed under the supervision of the chosen master teachers and grade 4 teachers with the use of learning materials evaluated by the teachers using LRMDS tool. The data that this study generated in terms of the success it shown over the development of the learners were significant in terms of their level of reading and analysis skills. Furthermore the information gained from this study will benefit English teachers by yielding information about the effectiveness of using PowToon as an innovative instructional material to develop learners' reading and analyzing skills.

The current COVID-19 epidemic, which began in China and has nearly infected every nation globally, is one of the most recent public health catastrophes of worldwide significance. The language and literature programs in public and private schools have become more flexible due to the new standard structure that the Philippines adopted due to the COVID-19 epidemic. This study utilized a basic qualitative design under a qualitative research approach. There were six (6) English teachers as participants. The participants answered open-ended questions about language and literature programs in one's school in the new normal of education through social media platforms, Facebook messenger. The data has yielded three (3) themes: learning competencies and guides of language and literature programs, approaches and programs to language acquisition and literature appreciation, and new learning methods towards language and literature programs. Hence, the language programs sharpen students' macro abilities, which they will use in real-life situations. Literature programs also seek to help students understand and appreciate literary appreciation and analysis. The utilization of diverse techniques, programs, and competencies will allow for more practical learning. It is essential to the teacher's job that we motivate students to master these abilities. We scaffold them to help them comprehend our goal, which is to prioritize education for students to see what is unseen in the actual world.

Ethnopoetics involves in the conducting of translation experiments on oral poems of native ethnic groups, converting its relevant oral texts into written forms. The theory of ethnographic poetry begins in the 1970s and was translated and introduced to China in the early 21st century. However, most ethnic minorities in China do not have textual writings. Their oral creations from primitive society to modern society such as epics, long poems, narrative poems, ballads, and folk songs are mostly in form of oral poetry. The collection and translation of oral poems of ethnic minorities in China began in the late 1950s, that demarcated the beginning of ethnopoetics in China. In this article, the reasons behind the collection and translation of Chinese ethnic minority oral poems will be analysed. The restoration process of ethnopoetics and the connections between the collections and the translations, and the issues on whether translation is consistent to Chinese ethnic minority oral poems will also be further elaborated. The history of Chinese ethnic minorities oral poetry traces back to a long history and consists of a variety of themes and contents. Therefore, the restoration process of ethnopoetic research on the relationship between oral culture and written culture not only have gained the attention from the Chinese academic community, but also shown strong interests by the Western academic research community and worldwide.

One of the most critical problems of the Linguistics of text is the structure study of the literary text, principles of its organization following the rules of the compositions that suggest splitting the linguistic work into the interconnected parts. In this regard, it is necessary to research the individual compositional and significant elements of the text and their role in forming the whole work. The paper focuses on revealing structural and syntactic properties of the author's digressions, namely, detecting such concepts as integration/non-integration of the author's digressions in the English literary prose. Integrated and non-integrated types of author's digressions into the academic space of the text have been distinguished based on interpretative-textual and compositional analysis. The analysis of the text-forming function of the author's digression contributed to defining the features of the cohesion of the literary text and included in its elements. The analysis results show that the author's digressions can be both integrated and non-integrated. Non-integration of the author's digression lies in their composition-semantic independence, and integrated author's digressions are the ones that the author weaves into the text with different types of cohesion. This research promotes the studies of the cognitive aspect of the author's digression in the different genres literary texts of English and American prose.

The quality of language produced is greatly influenced by the quality of language input. Reading is a major source of language and knowledge input. In Pakistan, two types of books written in the English language are available for the reader. The first type includes the books written and published in Pakistan and the second type is of the books written by foreign authors published in or outside Pakistan. The purpose of this study was to analyze 5 storybooks written and published in Pakistan. The linguistic analysis and technical analysis of the books were carried out to explore the kind of material which is being produced locally and is readily available to Pakistani children. The focus of the study was on the English language and technical components of the storybooks. The findings of the study reveal that the storybooks contain several language-related problems and technical deficiencies in story writing elements. Hence it is concluded that proofreading for language and technical refinement for the storybooks can help improve the work quality.

The article deals with the analysis of literary narrative where a possible unreal fictional world and a possible real fictional world usually coexist. When the norms of life plausibility are consciously violated, the real and the unreal possible worlds are emphatically opposed. Hence, their certain aspects are depicted in a fantastically exaggerated form. The interaction of possible worlds in a literary narrative destroys the stereotypes of the reader's perception. It can occur in different planes: structural (a shift of plot elements of the story, transformation, unusual, sharp turns of the borrowed plot, violations of a plotline); fictional (a combination of real and fantastic features in one image); temporal (violations of the chronological flow of time, a shift of time flow); spatial (expansion or contraction of space, magical spatial formations, displacements, deformations). By their nature, the interaction of different possible worlds can be continuous, partial, and fragmentary; resulting from their boundaries may overlap or be violated (entirely or partially). The continuous interaction of different possible worlds, destruction of their borders, although they do not disappear completely, make them largely blurred, interpenetrating each other. In the case of partial interaction of possible worlds, their boundaries intersect. In the case of fragmentary interaction of possible worlds, their common points are slightly visible, for example, only the borrowed title of a literary work or a character's name, or a fantastic concrete event or a place of the event.

Literature has been an imitator of life for generations on this earth, this literature has voiced the voiceless. Recent contemporary and postmodern literary theories have catered to burgeoning notions of logic that go beyond human survival on the planet. Science fiction is a genre of fiction that encompasses imaginative concepts like futuristic scientific-technological settings, faster than light, past and future spatial time travel, the existence of parallel universes and extraterrestrial life etc. An outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by a novel acute respiratory syndrome of coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) occurred in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. The outbreak was declared as a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization on 30 January 2020. During this crisis, literature also plays an important role and apocalyptic literature has shown the disastrous consequences if humans didn't stop their behaviour and attitude towards the world. This research project aims to take literature out of the realm of imagination and present the harsh realities of culture. This study revealed how literature represents the truth of the world that science is learning every day, and how certain inventions can have harmful effects if they are not halted in time. This research analysed the novel "Oryx and Crake" in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and pointed a convincing glimpse of the future. Snowman (protagonist), known as Jimmy before humanity was overrun by science, is trying to live in a world where he might be the last human Snowman tells the tale of how Crake's scientific ambitions contributed to the abolition of human civilization. The researcher emphasizes how the reel depicts reality and how people are to blame for the degradation of their world.

This article applies Linguistic Criticism tools (Fowler, 1981) as methodological framework for interpreting narratological devices in fiction pointing out the relationship between the perspective of the narrator and the character. Fragments from a Kosovan contemporary novel by Mehmet Kraja (2005) are analysed focusing on the non-intrusive narration and the internal perspectivism of the literary text. Linguistic markers such as: transitivity, representation of actions, events and states and the presentation of speech and thought are used to examine the mind style of the character when he goes through physical actions, perceptions, emotions and mental experiences. The study shows that the linguistic choices correlate throughout the novel and create the discrepancy between the elaborated code of transmitting faithfully the interior world of the character on one side and the mechanical unwilling actions of this character on the other side. This contrast produces the ironical reading of a specific historical period in communist Albania and former Yugoslavia.

Reverend Father Professor Amechi Nicholas Akwanya is one of the towering scholars of literature in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world. For decades, and still counting, Fr. Prof. Akwanya has worked arduously, professing literature by way of teaching, researching, and writing in the Department of English and Literary Studies of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. To his credit, therefore, this genius of a literature scholar has singularly authored over 70 articles, six critically engaging books, a novel, and three volumes of poetry. His PhD thesis, "Structuring and Meaning in the Nigerian Novel," which he completed in 1989, is a staggering 734-page document. Professor Akwanya has also taught many literature courses, namely: European Continental Literature, Studies in Drama, Modern Literary Theory, African Poetry, History of Theatre: Aeschylus to Shakespeare, European Theatre since Ibsen, English Literature Survey: the Beginnings, Semantics, History of the English Language, History of Criticism, Modern Discourse Analysis, Greek and Roman Literatures, Linguistics and the Teaching of Literature, Major Strands in Literary Criticism, Issues in Comparative Literature, Discourse Theory, English Poetry, English Drama, Modern British Literature, Comparative Studies in Poetry, Comparative Studies in Drama, Studies in African Drama, and Philosophy of Literature. A Fellow of Nigerian Academy of Letters, Akwanya's open access works have been read over 109,478 times around the world. In this wide-ranging interview, he speaks to Andrew Bula, a young lecturer from Baze University, Abuja, shedding light on a variety of issues around which his life revolves.

In this study, children's literature was defined according to a review of the related literature. The value and positive effects of children's literature on children were discussed and opinions of 2nd grade elementary school students' regarding their most and least favourite books were investigated. Participants consisted of 15 students enrolled in elementary school near the city centre of Ankara, Turkey. The research data were obtained from semi-structured interviews with participating students as well as students' book scoring forms used to rate 25 books provided to them. First, students' scoring forms were reviewed and analysed to determine their choices. Next, interviews were conducted with students regarding the reasons for their book selections. Data obtained from the student interviews were evaluated through content analysis. Finally, according to the students' responses, the characteristics that made up their most and least favourite books were explained for the educators and parents. Students frequently mentioned internal features, especially the characters and plot of the story, as the primary reasons for determining their most and least favourite storybooks. Also, it was shown in the findings that having characters that were animals, good-hearted, and/or funny as well as having action and adventure within the stories made the storybooks the children's most favourite. Whereas not having action, being boring, and/or having unsolved problems within the stories as well as being short or having unknown words and expressions made the storybooks the children's least favourite.

The aim of this study was to investigate the mental processes university students followed while reading short stories. It also sought to find the common problems in reading and understanding short stories and how linguistic and extralinguistic factors formed those challenges. The total number of the participants was 15 (seven males and eight females) in three public universities in Iraqi Kurdistan. The data were recorded and collected among second year university students who were enrolled in an English short stories course in the second year of their studies in the 2014-2015 academic year. To collect the data, a think-aloud protocol was developed and questions about the text were answered verbally by the participants. A qualitative approach was adopted to analyse the obtained data descriptively. The results indicated the fact that some reading strategies were employed by the learners, these strategies were not adequate for them to fully analyse the text in a literary manner. More specifically, they attempted to answer literary questions in the same way that they answered general reading comprehension questions. The analysis of the data also revealed that lack of vocabulary was a major issue for the learners' inability in answering questions correctly. It was also found that the learners were influenced by their own cultural backgrounds and the social norms that they have been exposed to while reading and analysing short stories.

In recent years, numerous computational methods have been developed that have been widely used in humanities and literary studies. In spite of the potential of such methods in providing workable solutions to various inherent problems in research within these domains, including selectivity, objectivity, and replicability, very little empirical work has been done on thematic studies in literature. Such studies are almost entirely undertaken through traditional methods based on individual researchers' reading of texts and intuitive abstraction of generalizations from their reading. This has negative implications in terms of issues of objectivity and replicability. Furthermore, there are challenges in dealing effectively with the hundreds of thousands of new novels that are published every year using traditional methods. In the face of these problems, this study proposes an integrated computational model for the thematic classification of literary texts based on lexical clustering methods. This study is based on a corpus comprising Thomas Hardy's novels and short stories. The study employs computational semantic analysis based on a vector space model (VSM) representation of the lexical content of the texts. The results indicate that the selected texts could be grouped thematically based on their semantic content. Thus, there is now evidence that text clustering approaches, which have long been used in computational theory and data mining applications, can be usefully applied in literary studies.

In Morocco, debates over English language instruction have marginalized poetry as a distinct literary genre. The shortage of poetry events arguably makes poetry teaching both daunting and intimidating. Besides fostering trust, memorization, and empathy, helping students develop a penchant for English language, as well as humanity, poetry, and narrative poetry, in particular, proffers teachers ample opportunities to fully engage students in the learning process. Not only does it awaken their senses and make them establish connections but leads them to think in a critical way about the world around them. In this paper, the teaching of narrative poetry through the cooperative approach is negotiated along with its value and pertinence for the stylistics course.

How do we navigate fear of catastrophic change while also fostering a sense of well-being in our everyday? This question provides the lived context for the story this article tells about teaching a course on imagining well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking an integrative interdisciplinary approach that employs methods of literary analysis in conversation with phenomenological philosophy gives students insights into the necessary relationship between well-being and catastrophe that modernist discourses bypass. This approach thus underscores the limitations in disciplinary attempts to find objective measures to quantify well-being and, implicitly, to prescribe (physiological, psychological, political, or economic) methods for attaining it. Further, attending to the lived experiences of students as they encounter this integrative approach can give us insights into valuable resources that are not just material but existential. In the face of direct and immediate threats to our physical, psychological, and emotional well-being, diving into a shared exploration of loss, fear, and displacement invites students and faculty to show up increasingly in our full humanness, replete with contradiction, confusion, and ambiguity. This stance of not-knowing, as opposed to claiming to know and hence prescribing, may lend itself to new cognitive, emotional, and imaginative avenues for self-realization and connection, which are means to the experience of well-being.

This paper examines how the Cultural Model of teaching literature in the Applied linguistics scenario can adopts a trans-disciplinary approach to teaching of language and skills courses. The premise stated is that it does not focus merely on language learning but also makes an impact on other variables like learners' autonomy and motivation to learn. In the context of EFL, this study also premises that the Cultural Model assists in enhancing the learners' autonomy and learners' motivation as literary texts are directly related to their cultural consciousness. The Cultural Model allows both the teachers and the students to go beyond the lexis and consider the literary aspects of a text as it is culturally closer to their consciousness. A questionnaire (for students) and semi structured interview (for teachers) were designed to study the perception of teachers and students and find the relationship between such variables as Learners' Autonomy and Learners' Motivation with Cultural Model of teaching literature. The study carried out multiple linear regression tests on a sample of 120 EFL respondents. The data was analyzed with SPSS 25.0 to ascertain the influence of predictors and dependent variables. Results showed the evidence of significant relationship between Learners' Autonomy and Learners' Motivation with Cultural Model of teaching literature. This shows that the Cultural Model of teaching literature acted as a predictor to enhance Learners' Autonomy and Learners' Motivation. The study recommends that students should not be passive receivers of the teaching content with undeveloped skills but should build in them autonomy and motivation to read, interpret, evaluate and criticize a literary text. Besides, teachers should also make efforts to make students read literary texts in cultural contexts.

Students in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students' engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students' own interpretations of the authors' texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of Roland Barthes's the Death of the Author manifesto to their students. Barthes's concept helps students to recalibrate the value of an author's biography and the author's interpretation when analyzing a text. Just such a power recalibration takes place for teen characters in Green's "The Fault in Our Stars." Hazel, the protagonist, demonstrates sharp literary critique informed by Barthes's theory when she engages with most texts. However, she initially rejects the Death of the Author approach when it comes to interpreting one idolized piece of literature: her favorite novel. During the novel's emotional climax, Hazel repositions herself in the author-reader relationship and takes a more empowered position. She then discovers a new parallel text that helps her to find solace and to reclaim authority from the Author-god.

This article examines the power of special topoi to characterize the discourse of literary criticism, and through emphasis on rhetorical action, it sheds light on the limitations of topos analysis for characterizing research articles in disciplinary discourse more generally. Using an analytical approach drawn both from studies of topoi in disciplinary discourse and rhetorical genre theory, I examine a representative corpus of 21st-century literary research articles. I find that while most of the special topoi recognized by Fahnestock and Secor and Wilder remain prevalent in recent criticism, contemporary literary critics tend to draw on only a select subset of those topoi when making claims about their rhetorical actions. The topoi they use most often--mistaken-critic and paradigm--help identify the ways knowledge-making work is undertaken in literary criticism, a discipline often considered epideictic rather than epistemic. But what the special topoi do not capture is precisely the distinctly motivated, actively epistemic character of this disciplinary rhetoric. Based on these findings, I suggest that special topoi must be seen as functioning in the context of the rhetorical action undertaken by literary research articles. These articles undertake not simply persuasion but the particularly humanistic act I refer to as contributing to scholarly understanding: a rhetorical action worth attending to for scholars of disciplinary discourse, because it is deliberately more concerned with practice than product.

Acts of sexual violence and rape, as well as the ensuing treatment of survivors and those who perpetuate the crimes, are pervasive in canonical texts that populate mandated reading lists in secondary English classrooms. Given the outsized role the literary canon places in English curriculum, we believe English teachers must develop practices that grapple with rape culture and sexual violence in their classrooms. A practice we advocate for and develop in this article places canonical texts in conversation with young adult adaptations of the canonical source material. We draw on scholarship that positions young adult literature as a vehicle for addressing rape culture and sexual violence and scholarship that illustrates critical canonical teaching to demonstrate how both genres of text can work together to push against ideologies that normalise sexual violence.

This essay examines a half-term of Year 9 work on "An Inspector Calls," with a particular focus on group discussion, writing in role and class reading of the text. I argue that extensive talking before writing is an invaluable way to elicit pupil insight; I then argue that this is necessarily a collaborative endeavour. I then go on to contrast this experience of the classroom with the (2014) English national curriculum's positioning of pupils and emphasis on the individual.

This case study examined how a 14-year-old youth and eighth-grade student named Kendra (pseudonym) mobilized restorying to (re)center her experiences in horror fiction. I asked how she conceptualized horror and monstrosity in a 6-week English language arts unit, and how she (re)centered her life experiences within horror fiction through restorying "The Price" by Neil Gaiman. Focusing on two forms of her restorying practices--counter-storytelling and transmedia storytelling--I analyzed how she composed an original, personalized horror story. The findings illustrated how the composition reflected her conceptualizations of monstrosity and subverted problematic horror tropes. I also discussed how her horror story functioned as sociopolitical critique, a (re)interpretation of source material, and a method of composing for audiences.

This narrative inquiry explores the author's attempt to teach Henry James's novella "The Turn of the Screw" in a high school English class, making the celebration of confusion -- in the tradition of John Dewey -- the cornerstone of the experience. The students' interpretive discourse is analysed, prompting reflection on promising approaches, opportunities, and challenges connected with teaching difficult literary texts in high school and introductory college courses.

Purpose: Preservice English teachers are expected to use literary theories and criticism to read and respond to literary texts. Over the past century, two of the most common approaches to literary encounters in secondary schools have been New Criticism -- particularly the practice of close reading -- and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, both of which have been expanded through critical theorizing along the way. Elucidated by data produced in iterative experiments with Frost's "The Road Not Taken," the authors reconceptualize the reader, the text, and close reading through the critical posthuman theory of reading with love as a generative way of thinking outside of the habitual practices of European humanisms. Design/methodology/approach: In "thinking with" (Jackson and Mazzei, 2023) desiring-machines, affect, Man and critical posthuman theory, this post qualitative inquiry maps how the "The Road Not Taken" worked when students plugged into it iteratively in processes of reading with love, an affirmative and creative series of experiments with literature. Findings: This study mapped how respect for authority, the battle of good v evil, individualism and meritocracy operated as desiring-machines that channeled most participants' initial readings of "The Road Not Taken." In subsequent experiments with the poem, the authors demonstrate that reading with love as a critical posthuman process of reading invites participants to exceed the logics of recognition and representation, add or invent additional ways of being and relating to the world and thereby produce the possibility to transform a world toward greater inclusivity and equity. Originality/value: The authors reconceptualize the categories of "the reader" and "the text" from Rosenblatt's transactional theory within practices of reading with love, which they situate within a critical posthuman theory. They eschew separating efferent and aesthetic reading stances while also recuperating practices of "close reading," historically associated with the New Critics, by demonstrating the generativity of critically valenced "close reading" within a Deleuzian process of reading with love.

A key instructional goal of English language arts instruction is teaching students to read and interpret complex literary texts. This report reviews the literature on the development and pedagogy of literary analysis skills. It analyzes literary analysis skills as a "key practice," a bundle of disciplinary skills and strategies that form a key target for instruction. This practice focuses on applying a variety of strategies for building textual interpretations, including strategies for deepening comprehension, inferring the author's purpose, considering multiple perspectives, connecting text to context, generalizing and applying themes, and participating in cultural conversations about texts. It also identifies a sequence of activities that define literary interpretation as a social practice and identifies key goals and subgoals for those activities. If literary analysis is viewed as a key practice, it requires participants to habitually engage in the following practices: (a) read and reread texts to find cues that suggest new possibilities for interpretation, (b) participate in interpretive discussions of literary texts, (c) use writing both as a tool to support interpretive work and as a means to communicate interpretive arguments, and (d) maintain an openness to new interpretations and a willingness to revisit previous interpretive conclusions in the light of new evidence. The evidence indicates that this is a late-developing practice, typically acquired during high school and never fully mastered by a large proportion of the population, though it can be encouraged and fostered in the upper elementary and middle school years with effective instruction.

Eco-criticism determines how the relationships of each element belonging to the field of being outside the human beings with each other and their environment are depicted in literary texts, the approach of literature to these relationships, as well as the forms of discourse in which a human being can direct through language. The aim of this study is to examine the children book entitled "I Am a Hornbeam Branch" by Hasan Ali Toptas in the context of human-nature relationship and question with what perspectives eco-criticism scrutinizes such literary texts. In this study, the possibilities of thinking about nature are discussed through "I am a Hornbeam Branch" written in an eco-critical language. In the thought imposed by the "human" oriented hierarchical order, inquiries have been made that every living thing other than a human being is considered as the "other" and deprived of an identity owing to the lack of language and intellect. Furthermore, it has been determined that the representation of "nature" is presented in a cycle based on ecological consciousness by taking into consideration material transformations and that the problems of nature are cited not only environmentally but also as sociological, psychological and cultural problems that concern humanity.

The purpose of the present paper is to offer a state-of-the-art review on the topic of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and its theoretical and practical implications on the field of language education. SFL has been widely recognized due to its potentiality to encourage both reflection and action for the participants involved, becoming over the years in a very influential applicable linguistic theoretical approach. Recent empirical studies were thoroughly reviewed, which shed light on the three most researched areas, including text analysis and literacy intervention, classroom discourse, and language teaching and learning processes. As a final remark and taking into account the literature analysis, some prospective studies are briefly listed.

The buoyant shift from form and structure to the fluid constructs of meaning turned discernible in Jacques Derrida's "Deconstruction." Meaning or reality that had so long been enjoying a fixed and definite status was worn out with the advent of the theory of deconstruction. The turnaround of what was considered real or true became subjacent while challenging all the existing binaries that had been hegemonizing human comprehension of the world (Derrida, 1997). Relying on the theory of deconstruction by Jacques Derrida, the study examines the shift from form and structure to the text itself regarding its privileged and marginal aspects of meaning with particular reference to the novel "A Case of Exploding Mangoes." The study suggests that the interplay between privileged and marginal aspects of meaning can constructs multiple meanings and interpretations of a single text. It has further been added that the nature of the theory of deconstruction--change in the fixed status of meaning/reality--at the same time, is a representation of the indefinite nature of modern man who has experienced a bumpy ride of social and religious values resulted due to the political, industrial, economic and technological revolutions. The paper finds that the fluidity of meaning that is the sole characteristic of the theory of deconstruction traverses the contemporary Pakistani fiction in its dealing of the sensitive matters such as religious extremism and dictatorship etc., and Muhammad Hanif's selected novel is the perfect example of it.

With the advancement of technology and series of curriculum reform, teachers are challenged to recalibrate their teaching methodology and delivery of instruction. Teachers may adopt ways to improve the quality of instruction everyday. In order to achieve this goal, teachers may opt to use variety of instructional methods and techniques such as developing research-based instructional materials that will aid the current teaching-instruction modality. In this context, this paper aimed to develop an instructional material in Literary Criticism and Teaching of Literature to enhance instruction in these fields. The content of the proposed IM was based from CMO 30 s. 2004 to align with the expected competency based standards for education students specializing English and Literature. There were 100 English majors used as respondents for the need assessment, grouped as follows: 57 freshmen, 33 sophomore and 10 juniors. These respondents noted that "learning is best achieved in the presence of sample output exercises reflected in the handouts (WM 1.29)" and "handouts promote the habit of self-individualized learning (WM 1.38)", lastly, "teaching the theories requires textbooks and references (WM 1.49)". All the responses fall in the interpretation of strongly agree. Three experts in the field evaluated the content validity of the two instructional materials: The Lectures on Discourse and Teaching of Literature. The instructional materials were evaluated on the following criteria: content, organization, effectivity and preference. The Lectures on Discourse was rated 4.30 while the Teaching of Literature was rated 4.28 both with an interpretation of very satisfactory, recommended for utilization if corrections are typographical in nature; then editors can correct them and return it to the writer then re-submit again the IM for further evaluation. Meanwhile, there were four selected stories used as specimen-texts for this study. The first layer of criticism used content thematic approach to identify the content, which discussed the cultural issues of the texts and the second layer used symptomatic reading to examine the deeper meaning. The actual experience of the respondents in doing the literary analysis provided the insight in establishing the chronology and suggested content of the lecture notes. The actual output from the literary analysis served as sample models in the exercises part. Homi Bhabha's (1994) postcolonial framework established the concept of postcolonial symptoms while Francis Johnson's (1975) framework established the framing of the instructional material. At the end of this attempt, this paper hoped that it may open up a series of literary studies to other perspectives and multidisciplinary approaches and develop instructional materials generated from the exercises made by the students to serve as additional reference in appreciating literature and criticism particularly for a student-directed group environment.