A Review of Robert Frost’s Poem:The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken is one of the Frost’ s classic poems in the collection Mountain Interval.The poem betrays the poet’ s deep thought about life philosophy and helplessness towards reality.From the perspectives of content,metaphor,image etc.the writing skills and significant connotation are discussed in this paper in order to help readers to have a better understanding about this poem as well as the artistic techniques the author employed to elaborate the life wisdom through image and common settings.     

A Study of Non-English Majors’Errors in English Writing

Researchers in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have long held the interest towards the teaching of college English writing. Their research topics, range from how to improve college students’ability to write with English as their second language, to how to correct their wrong expressions in their writing. This article mainly aims at exploring college students’ various writing errors and mistakes,trying to provide some hints for college students and teachers about English writing. Such studies are abundant.     

Being a Stranger and the Strangeness of Being: Joseph Conrad’s ‘The secret sharer’ as an allegory of being in education

Abstract

Joseph Conrad’s ‘The secret sharer’ has often been associated with what can be called initiation stories. However, in this article I argue that Conrad’s text is more than that. It can, I suggest, be read as an allegory of the inaccessibility to reveal the essence of being in command, being in education, and also the inaccessibility of the essence of the meaning of the text itself. It keeps its secret by allegorically staging alternative readings. This inaccessibility gives rise to a feeling of strangeness, of the uncanny, that must be faced in order to pass through the initiation into the unknown that all the possible allegorical meanings of the text produce. In other words, ‘The secret sharer’ has an educational value that goes beyond the act of merely using it to exemplify a certain type of initiation. In this way I connect Conrad’s text to the themes of strangeness and the stranger and show how they mutually can involve a reading of education and literature as two distinct discourses of learning.     

Children’s Narrating as a Way of Learning About Other People’s Beliefs in Interaction with Teachers

As a genre of talk, narratives represent important building blocks in children’s learning in many fields. The purpose of the study presented in this article is to examine how teachers can encourage children’s learning about people’s beliefs through narrating. Narratives play an important part in children’s learning to understand other people and how they will act according to what they believe, think or know. This study is based on video observations of six children, 3 and 4 years old, and their spontaneous personal narratives told to teachers over a period of 8 months. The narrative analysis revealed that in most of the narratives the teachers were passive listeners or were concerned about the structure of events. The teachers seldom asked questions about the children’s mental state or disagreed with the child in ways that revealed their different beliefs. Suggestions about implications of this study are that early childhood teacher education should focus on talking with children about what they may think or believe concerning narrated events, and also reveal what they think and believe themselves.     

A Study of Presupposition in Hotel’s English

As a common phenomenon in language,presupposition plays an important role in linguistic communication.Study of presupposition in hotel’s English reveals that on account of the felicity of information-conveying,presupposition has been em ploying by Hotels’staff intentionally or unintentionally.In hotels’service,proper use of presupposition ensures the normal con duction of hotels’service circuits,contributes to the economy and coherence of communication,facilitates understanding be tween guests and the hotels’staff.In addition,it enhances persuasion and latency of staff’s speech,guarantees satisfactory settle ment of complaints.     

English as a Medium of Teaching and Learning in a Resource-Poor Country: The Case of Malawi’s New Language Policy

Abstract

This article discusses the resource implications of Malawi’s new language-in-education policy. Whilst previous publications on the English as a medium of teaching and learning policy, which was announced in Malawi in 2014, have sharply criticised and dismissed the new language policy from pedagogical and other educational grounds, the current article is the first to dwell exclusively on the resource implications of the new language policy. The qualitative study reported on, which utilised Barron’s learning ecologies framework, was based on information drawn from one key informant; readers’ comments extracted from a Malawian online newspaper; and some scholarly publications. The article argues that the available resources are too inadequate to lead to a successful implementation of English as a medium of teaching and learning in the non-English-dominant Malawi. The article recommends that Malawi should return to the previous language policy, which was UNESCO compliant, and that adequate and enabling resources be channelled to improving the teaching and learning of English as a subject. Resources should also be injected into the professional development of teachers in order to capacitate them to effectively handle English as a medium of teaching and learning from Grade 5 onwards.     

A Review of Atlanta’s “FUBU”: On Power

This media review focuses on one of Atlanta's episodes entitled "FUBU." The episode is utilized as a proxy to provide a critique of American society and its power relations in everyday life. Atlanta and its writers use television as their vehicle to create critical and constructive discourse in spaces that they would otherwise not be able to physically occupy. Out of this, the hope is that this discourse leads to healthier interaction in the educational spaces facilitated by educators with an understanding of the social forces at play.     

A Brief Introduction of Irony as A Writing Technique

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Dialectical Features of Students’ Argumentation: A Critical Review of Argumentation Studies in Science Education

This paper explores the challenges of using the Toulmin model to analyze students’ dialogical argumentation. The paper presents a theoretical exposition of what is involved in an empirical study of real dialogic argumentation. Dialogic argumentation embodies dialectical features — i.e. the features that are operative when students collaboratively manage disagreement by providing arguments and engaging critically with the arguments provided by others. The paper argues that while dialectical features cannot readily be understood from a Toulminian perspective, it appears that an investigation of them is a prerequisite for conducting Toulminian analysis. This claim is substantiated by a detailed review of five of the ten most significant papers on students’ argumentation in science education. This leads to the surprising notion that empirical studies in the argumentation strand — even those studies that have employed non-dialectical frameworks such as the Toulmin model — have implicitly struggled to come to terms with the dialectical features of students’ discourse. The paper finally explores how some scholars have worked to attend directly to these dialectical features; and it presents five key issues that need to be addressed in a continued scholarly discussion.     

A secondary school teacher’s experiences as a victim of learner cyberbullying

This instrumental case study reports on the unique experiences of a secondary school teacher who was a victim of learner cyberbullying. This teacher experienced severe emotional distress, family stress, anxiety, anger, intense humiliation and loss of dignity as a result of cyberbullying. On a professional level he felt unsupported by his teachers’ union, school management team and teaching authorities. Support from his family, his community and the opportunity to share his experience with other teachers influenced his resilience positively while taking action made him feel like a role model for other teachers. This study highlights the effects of aggression in schools and raises concern about school climate and the need for social emotional competence programmes for learners.     

Computer Majors’ Education as Moral Enterprise: a Durkheimian analysis

Abstract

Recent commentators on Durkheim have stressed his work's emphasis on the moral dimensions of social reality. Building on this premise and using it to explore the contemporary education of aspiring computer professionals, we think many of Durkheim's claims are verified in the process. We posit that the college computer department studied has developed an interlocking set of images, maxims and operating assumptions‐‐a collective moral account‐‐which frames its curriculum, courses and student evaluation. In short, we contend that even in a profession dealing with arguably the most advanced edge of late 20th‐century technology, only a very thin boundary separates its technical professional education from its essentially moral claims.     

Joan Aiken’s Armitage Family Stories: Place and Storytelling as a Way into the World

This article explores the importance of place and story in the life and work of Joan Aiken (1924–2004), with a focus on the Armitage Family short stories. It explores the fluid relationship between books, storytelling and place in Joan Aiken’s childhood and looks at her close relationship with the landscape of the Sussex Downs. Particular attention is paid to the short stories “The Land of Trees and Heroes” and “Kitty Snickersnee”. The final section of the article explores the possibilities of drawing on Aiken’s writing, and the work of other relevant authors, in the primary school classroom.