Sindh Journal of Linguistics

Broadening Perspectives and Possibilities: Learners’ Pathways to Digital Multimodal Composition (DMC) in ESL Context

Adeel Khalid — 2024-05-10

In this paper, we delve into the experiences of 60 English as a Second Language (ESL) undergraduate learners who actively participated in distinct multimodal instructional units within their writing curriculum. Drawing upon a qualitative analysis encompassing design interviews, written reflections, and video observations, this research elucidates the principal themes that emerged from the learners' perspectives related to the potential of Digital Multimodal Composition (DMC) in the ESL context. These themes encompassed the exceptional opportunities afforded by this approach, which included the capacity to conceptualise ideas through the incorporation of visuals and auditory elements, the ability to communicate in novel and inventive manners, the platform it provided for the authentic expression of personal identities, and its effectiveness in the contextualising topic within their learning journey. Furthermore, this research highlights the primary challenges and constraints voiced by the learners, which encompassed a gamut of technical issues and the quest for the most suitable mode of expression within the multimodal framework. Leveraging these insights, the study culminates in a discussion of implications for both research and practice, particularly about the integration of digital multimodal composition in the multilingual classroom setting.

Understanding English Language Speaking Anxiety among Pakistani University Students: A Teacher Centric Exploration

Saba Ahmed — 2024-05-10

Language-related anxiety is a psychological phenomenon that occurs either during the process of language acquisition or the academic process of an individual’s life. The usage of English as the medium of instruction leads to this anxiety in higher education context of Pakistan. Students’ poor performance and heightened anxiety remain significant concerns in the field of language education. This qualitative paper through in-depth interviews from the faculty members investigates the manifestations of English language anxiety in classroom settings, particularly focusing on variations across educational streams, distinguishing between students from the matriculation and those educated in the Cambridge system. The findings reveal a multifaceted landscape of language anxiety, influenced by educational backgrounds, unfamiliar teaching methodologies, fear of evaluation and educational trajectories. Moreover, the research identifies recommendations and steps taken by faculty to lessen this anxiety. The findings support the importance of tailoring conducive mechanisms to address these disparities. This may result in the facilitation of a more inclusive educational environment that empowers students to overcome language anxiety and excel academically.

The Development of Semantic Processing in Children’s Emotional Advancement: An Analysis of the Movie “Inside Out”

Quratulain . — 2024-05-10

The study focuses on the development of semantic processing in children through the lens of the Disney animated movie “inside out” by Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen. Semantic processing is a basic aspect of human knowledge of language processing that enables to extract meaning from the words and to comprehend the intended information conveyed by others. The movie “Inside Out” depicts the story of an 11-year-old girl named Riley and the personification of her emotion Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust as they navigate her life experiences. By analyzing the movie’s plot, characters and dialogues, the study investigates (1) how children’s semantic processing develops over time, (2) how it relates to the ability to understand abstract concepts and how it can impact children’s emotional development. (3) What role do metaphors and analogies play in the semantic development of children depicted in the movie. The goals of this study are to investigate the content, characters, and themes of the movie, to analyze the use of metaphors and analogies in the movie and to explore the relationship between the development of semantic processing and children's emotional advancement. The present study used mixed method to provide a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. The study targeted two different age groups i.e. 5-8 years and 9-12 years to calculate the impact of age on the development of semantic processing. The findings indicate that the movie “Inside Out” successfully engaged the children in reflecting on and succussing their understanding of emotions. Participants demonstrated and enhanced awareness of the importance and complexity of emotions. Also, it provides insight into how animated movies can be used as a tool to promote semantic development in children’s emotional advancement and inform the development of educational materials that can facilitate semantic processing in children.

Exploring Discourse Markers in Analyzing Gender Discrimination in Pakistani Drama Serials: A Corpus-Based Study

Arooba Abid — 2024-05-10

This research examines gender-related language patterns and discourse markers in Pakistani drama serials, focusing on the lexical choices made by male and female authors. Drawing on Lakoff's model, we conduct qualitative content analysis on the selected episodes to uncover gender dynamics and power imbalances. Results show that men use words like "absolutely", "decide", "go", "listen", and "stop" along with self-referential pronouns "I" and "he" more frequently. Women employ words like "doubt", "maybe", "very", "excuse me", "wonder", "we", and "might", as well as pronouns "she", and "we" more often. These findings reveal gender stereotypes in Pakistani drama serials, underscoring the need for more diverse and inclusive narratives challenging traditional roles. This research impacts the broader media landscape, emphasizing media's role in shaping societal perceptions and the importance of promoting gender equality in representations. Moreover, by analyzing the corpus of Pakistani drama serials authored by both genders, our methodology employs qualitative content analysis, contributing to a more equitable and inclusive media environment by dissecting gender-related language patterns and discourse markers in these serials.

Exploring Linguistic Choices as a Representative of Eastern Culture: A Study of Moni Mohsin’s “The Diary of Social Butterfly”

Snober Gull — 2024-05-10

Language and culture are entangled (Translations, 2018). A specific language typically points to a particular cluster of individuals. Language and culture share a symbiotic relationship. When people intermingle with people of different languages, it means that people are also intermingling with the values, norms and beliefs of that speaker. People cannot comprehend one's values without retrieving its language directly. When people learn a new language, it not only involves the learning of the structure of that language but also involves the learning about the cultural norms, values, manners and behavior. The main aim behind this research is to explore the linguistic choices as representative of Eastern culture in “The diary of Social Butterfly”. Textual analysis is performed in order to investigate the representation of culture and language in novel. This research has been conducted in the milieu of framework given by Sapir & Whorf and Wardhaugh (2011). The findings of the research reveal that Moni Mohsin has used food terminologies, kinship terminologies, dress terminologies, religious terminologies, professional terminologies and Festival terminologies of Eastern countries in order to highlight the Eastern culture. She has used words like Gulab Jamans Luddoos, shahi tukras, kheer, badaam ka halwa, Behari kebabs seekh kebabs, kaala, gora, bhai, ammi, saas, bahu, in sha Allah and many others. These all words are representatives of the culture of East.

Beliefs about Difficulties in Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language in a Public Sector University

Mariam Aftab — 2024-05-10

Chinese language teaching in universities was introduced as part of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative (CPEC) signed in 2013 for economic, entrepreneurial, and social reasons. Over a decade of introducing Chinese as a foreign language, Pakistani language learners invested in Chinese language for scholarships, higher education, jobs, and business purposes. However, many CFL learners were unable to acquire Chinese language and had low proficiency in the language. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the beliefs about difficulties that foreign language learners face about learning Chinese as a foreign language in a public sector university. For this purpose, quantitative research using BALLI questionnaire was conducted within a public sector university. The beliefs about language learning inventory (BALLI) questionnaire inquired about the general and specific language learning difficulties that students face while learning CFL. Data was collected using stratified sampling from two hundred undergraduate students who have completed CFL-I and CFL-II language courses at the university. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics through SPSS. The findings of the study showed that learners considered Chinese as a difficult language to learn as compared to other foreign languages. Also, when inquired about the success of their spoken Chinese language in future, few of the participants believed that they would be able to succeed with Chinese language. Similarly, learners reported about the four language skills in Chinese and considered listening as easier than speaking. Additionally, the learners reported that reading and writing are equally difficult in acquiring Chinese.

A Study of Reading Comprehension and Receptive Vocabulary Retention Using the Electronic Glossing Sandwich Approach

Maryum Aslam Khan — 2024-05-10

Abstract

The present research deals with the English as second language apprentices’ reading comprehension and receptive linguistic retention using the sandwich approach for the first language and making the way of communication simple by the use of electronic glossing in the education sector of Pakistan. The leading objectives of the article were to explore whether the learners who have approach to electronic glosses have better reading scores than the ones who have no access to electronic glosses in an ESL classroom and to investigate whether the learners who have access to electronic glosses have a higher vocabulary than the ones who have no access to electronic glosses in an ESL classroom. A quantitative research method was adopted to carry out this research. The data was collected from 40 students at a private school in Rawalpindi with different socio-economic backgrounds. The collected data was analyzed by three different analyses of variance (ANOVA) conducted to get the results of reading comprehension of the students followed by instant vocabulary test, and delayed vocabulary test. Moreover, four univariate analyses of the covariate (ANCOVAs) were introduced to examine the hypotheses using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS-24) software. The results of present study demonstrated the benefits of the electronic glossing in ESL classroom. The use of electronic glossing should not be neglected while learning English as second language in the private education sector of Pakistan, where direct method is used for teaching English as second language.

Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Classroom Oral Presentations at Tertiary Level

Ahmed Saeed — 2024-05-10

The study was an investigation of tertiary classroom student presenters’ use of language, gesture, positioning and movement in the lesson. Teaching and learning in the classroom is a multi-semiotic experience and the current study provides the insights into their distinct pedagogies. Raised comprehension of semiotization and resemiotization has multiplied the responsibilities of both teachers and students. 12 teachers and 320 student presenters’ use of semiotic resources at tertiary level had been investigated quantitatively and qualitatively through thematic analysis. The semiotic resources of language, gesture and the use of space through the positioning and movement of teachers and students have been discussed in relation to the pedagogy they realise, which require insinuations in teaching and learning both.

Analysing the Functions of Lexical Bundles for Teaching Academic Writing to Graduate Students

Tanveer Hussain Mangnejo — 2024-05-10

Academic writing skills contribute greatly in academic performance. One of the key elements of good academic writing is to know the proper use of the strings of the words usually occur together. These words are termed as lexical bundles in corpus linguistics. Some research has been conducted on the use and functions of lexical bundles in spoken and written discourses (Chen & Chen, 2020). However, there is scarce research on the functions of lexical bundles and their use in Pakistani research writing. While drawing on the corpus of 90201 corpora of the 12 Pakistani research articles, we investigated the functions and use of lexical bundles in research papers of Pakistani authors. The list of the lexical bundles by Simpson-Vlach and Ellis (2010) was used as a source to interpret the lexical bundles. We found the referential expressions were the highest lexical bundles in research articles of Pakistani authors followed by the expressions of ability and possibility and hedges in the list. Based on these findings, we argue that Pakistani authors are aware about the various types of the lexical bundles and their functions in academic writing. It is suggested that the high-frequency bundles can help the learners to improve the use of modal words used as hedges in academic writing. As per the findings of this study, it is recommended that a large corpus may be built for better results in the future.

English Language Speaking Anxiety: A Quantitative Study

Nargis Mari — 2024-05-10

The present study attempts to investigate the extent of English language speaking anxiety among the English as foreign/second language learners, studying at a public sector university in Sindh, Pakistan. The study is quantitative in nature and the data is gathered using random sampling survey method. Participants of the present study are studying in part II. A theoretical framework based on Horwitz et al (1986), a well-known theory followed by Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) is adapted. For the purpose of data analysis, SPSS (V.24) is used to determine the general descriptive statistics of the study. This study reveals the level of anxiety among students. It also concludes that learners even at a university level face language anxiety specifically in the EFL context. This study also assist the teachers and course designers for necessary steps be taken to overcome the English language speaking anxiety among EFL learners in EFL classroom.

A Semiotic Analysis of Social Class Representation in Pakistani Television Commercials

Sehrish Karim — 2024-05-10

Semiotics interprets that how different signs are used in everyday lives to represent different things. Different verbal and non-verbal signs are used to reflect different ideologies and hidden agendas in the field of advertisements. The meanings and hidden agendas of TV commercials can be analysed in a more appropriate and effective way by considering semiotics as an influential tool of investigation. The enterprises of different domains as semiotics, linguistics and sociocultural studies make the current study as a multidisciplinary study. Media has become one of the most influential and feasible tool in the diffusion and representation of information and ideas in this globalised world with the advancement of science and technology. It encompasses strength and power to present different ideologies and agendas with the help of different verbal and non-verbal signs. The current study aims to analyse the demonstration of social class distinctive patterns in Pakistani television commercials. The study examines the representation of different social classes in the commercials by keeping in view the agendas and ideologies of advertisers. The nature of the study is qualitative. The theory of semiotics proposed by Dyer (1982) in the book advertising as Communication is the basis of the theoretical framework of the study. The commercials of renowned Pakistani television channels are collected as the data of the study. Non probability sampling technique is used to collect the data which comprises only those commercials which reflect social class representation. The analysis of the study highlights that different social classes as upper and lower classes are represented in different spheres of lives at symbolic level in the selected advertisements. The social class presentation in commercials represent the domination and superiority of upper class. The images of both upper and lower classes presented in the commercials support ideological beliefs about how social class biased practices are prevailed in the Pakistani society.