Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics
Volume:14 Issue: 1, Winter-Spring 2023

Adverbial clauses are often-overlooked elaborated and explicit structures of L2 academic research writing. In this study, the researcher cross-examined finite adverbial clauses in Filipino-authored qualitative and quantitative research articles (RAs) in Applied Linguistics, Psychology, Sociology, Curriculum and Instruction, Measurement and Evaluation, and Communication through automated and manual coding techniques. The main findings revealed that cause/reason clauses were the most dominant adverbial clauses especially in qualitative disciplinary RAs. Final cause/reason and conditional clauses were more pervasive than their initial equivalents whereas initial concessive clauses were more ubiquitous than their final counterparts. In conclusion, cause/reason clauses are the most operational adverbial clauses across the six disciplines. Filipino researchers regardless of disciplines convey more causes/reasons for the arguments in the main clauses when writing qualitative research. Final cause/reason and conditional clauses are normative in qualitative and quantitative disciplinary RAs whereas initial concessive clauses provide background for the main clauses which carry new arguments.

Classroom justice is the degree of perceived fairness in the distribution of outcomes, enactment of procedures, and teacher-student relationships in classrooms. This study aimed to develop and validate a Teacher Classroom Justice Scale (TCJS). After thoroughly reviewing the extant literature, scrutinizing the existing questionnaires, and interviewing experts in the field, a draft version of the instrument involving 46 items was developed and pilot-tested with 30 Iranian EFL teachers. Subsequently, another group entailing 398 Iranian EFL teachers answered the scale, and reliability was examined for each of its components. Subsequently, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed that a three-factor solution about procedural, interactional, and distributive justice could best explain the scale. Finally, the EFA results were approved through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), which showed that the finalized TCJS consists of 18 items and enjoys good psychometric properties of validity and reliability. Language instructors, researchers, and practitioners can use the present study findings by employing the TCJS to assess the perceptions of classroom justice in the particular domain of second/foreign language (L2) education.

Sociolinguistic research has shown that religion has been in an intertwined relationship with language. However, the interaction between language and religion, especially in less institutional contexts such as prayer sites, has not received much attention. To address this issue, this study explores language use in religious discourse in multilingual settings. The study uses corpus linguistics techniques accompanied by a discourse analysis approach to investigate using Arabic in 182 English Friday sermons delivered at a New Zealand on-campus prayer site. The analysis shows that despite the presence of Arabic words in the corpus, the English equivalents of these words are also found. The analysis also shows that Arabic words are mainly either nouns or used in formulaic phrases. This study suggests that Arabic is used as an emblem of religious identity. This study contributes to the current scholarship by bringing together multilingualism research and corpus linguistics in under-researched contexts.

The analysis of nearly 205 minutes of the English and Farsi commentaries of the 2014 FIFA World Cup match featuring Argentina and Iran focused on the identification of the promotional metadiscursive tokens employed by the reporters covering this match in their respective vernacular. The sportscast transcriptions were inspected to uncover the various tokens with promotional characteristics. A thorough data analysis presented seven comprehensive categories of promotional components, namely adjectives, adverbs, verbs, nouns, interjections, idioms, and honorifics. Adjectives and adverbs were the most common constituents implemented in both languages and they were divided into nine and five subcategories, respectively. Honorifics were only witnessed in the Persian sportscasts and were interpreted as cultural markers in the discourse. The research serves as proof that promotional metadiscursive constituents are a fundamental aspect of soccer sportscasts, and it can also be considered as a basis for inquiries in this unique discourse genre.

This study explores how migrants are discursively constructed in the years 2007 and 2008 in New Zealand’s most-read national newspaper, The New Zealand Herald. This timeframe was selected to investigate how the Global Economic Recession influenced migrant representation in the context of New Zealand. Through a detailed analysis using the Discourse-Historical Approach, the paper examines the series of referential and predicational strategies, as well as the topical themes used in the newspaper discourse to discuss migrants during this period. To reduce the risk of cherry-picking the data, the study presents a detailed five-level data-sampling technique to examine the prevalent discourses. The findings indicate that metaphorical, professional anthroponyms and collective strategies were the most common referential strategies. In addition, regarding predicational strategies, migrants were presented as being a ‘double-edged sword’ that is benefitting the country in some instances and as a problem being which needs to be dealt with in other instances.

English academic vocabulary is significant for learning and teaching academic reading comprehension and writing skills for both native and non-native speakers. Hence, it is essential for academics including researchers, teachers, learners, material developers, and syllabus designers to know what has been done on academic word list development. This implies a systematic review. The current systematic review tended to identify, describe, appraise, and synthesize main themes and sub-themes as well as applications and implications of academic word list development from 2000 to 2020. Overall, 60 studies met the established criteria. Different themes and sub-themes were identified. Also, applications and implications were categorized based on their main themes. Limitations, suggestions for further study, and implications were also discussed.

Translators are liable to leave traces of their ideological worldviews in instances of text and talk. Tapping into these entails, inter alia, the identification, and analysis of Discursive Translation Strategies, that is, devices employed (un)consciously in creating and/or maintaining certain views of reality. This study set out to explore the use of such devices in the translation of politicians' tweets. The data in this exploratory investigation included all FM Zarif's U.S.-related tweets and their Persian translations as archived on the website of the Iranian Foreign Ministry. A total of 137 tweets, spanned within President Trump's term of office, were isolated to see how, if any, their translations might have contributed to the maintenance and/or construction of the U.S. image as displayed in the Source Texts. It was found the translations added yet another discursive level to the already extant diabolical image of the U.S. in the English tweets. The Discursive Translation Strategies employed included two general categories of those contributing to a smoother rendition of the image of the U.S. to the Iranian public and those showcasing such a portrayal.

The present study mainly aimed at determining the association between emotional intelligence (EI) and L2 ego components. In so doing, initially, to develop a measure to evaluate L2 ego, a sample of 9 university teachers was interviewed, and a pool of 126 English-major undergraduate students responded to the questionnaire designed by the researchers. The result of intercoder reliability proved satisfactory, and structural equation modeling (SEM) confirmed support for the factor structure of the measures. The final validated questionnaire included 3 factors and 16 items. The results of SEM showed that there was a moderate positive relationship between L2 ego and EI. The statistical analyses indicated that among L2 ego components, personality traits and cognitive styles made significant contributions to explaining EI. In the end, the interplay between L2 ego components, ego boundaries, and emotions is discussed, and the potentially helpful implications are offered for EFL learners and teachers.

The use of pragmatic markers as an aspect of language competence is necessary to present ideas and facts coherently. These markers mainly modify talk so that talk is comprehensible and meaningful, and help the audience follow the sequence of ideas. Failing to use these markers can negatively affect the audience’s comprehension of the presentation and consequently affect the student’s academic achievement. To this end, this study investigated the pragmatic markers used by Arab students during classroom oral presentations. The study focused on identifying the categories and sub-categories of markers as well as examining their linguistic meaning and pragmatic functions. The data were collected using audio-recordings of students' oral presentations and were analyzed based on Fraser’s (1996) classification and functions of pragmatic markers. The findings can inform better oral presentation performance of ESL/EFL learners in general and postgraduate students in particular. They add up to the literature of pragmatic discourses.

This study presents a microscopic analysis of distributional and syntactical aspects of 2189 research questions (RQs) in 748 articles from four leading L2 research journals published between 2000 and 2019. Concerning distributional features, The Modern Language Journal was found to include the largest number of both RQs and constituent words. Syntactically, there was no significant difference between polar and non-polar RQs. However, RQs were mainly formulated either as simple or complex questions with only a few comprising compound or compound-complex structures. Additionally, a substantial majority of RQs were used in the present tense, with past tense and future being the next frequent tenses. More specifically, it was noted that most of the RQs involved simple present tense wh-questions, insinuating that L2 researchers opted for more qualitative RQs, lending themselves to more extensive descriptions, explanations, and interpretations. The findings will have several implications for students and instructors of graduate writing courses.

Identity and agency, based on the related literature, are the central parts of any learning activities, especially for language instruction. Following a mixed-methods design, identity options and their related indicators were studied among EFL university students. To this end, a sociodemographic-based questionnaire and four writing tasks were utilized as the instruments, which were filled out by 334 EFL university students. The data were then analyzed through a six-phase thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Having deployed a concurrent transformative strategy, the researchers transformed the extracted codes and themes into numbers, then analyzed them descriptively and inferentially. The results of the study showed that five identity options were dominant among the participants. Four identity indicators of "native language", "gender", "major", and "proficiency level" were also found to significantly correlate with the five identity options and affect their intensity and salience. Our findings demonstrated that language learning is a process of constant and continuous negotiation of self-positioning and repositioning. The study also showed that identity options are determined by students' past trajectories, social and relational contexts, challenges, and cultural-based shared perceptions. The study suggests that learners' identities and histories are strategically implemented in pedagogy to develop a supportive space for the students to exploit their potential.

This study explores the research approach preferences of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) faculty members and Ph.D. candidates, and the role of TEFL Research Methodology course instructors and the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT) curriculum of Ph.D. level in Iran in this respect. Based on purposive sampling and availability, 10 faculty members and 25 Ph.D. candidates were selected and sat a semi-structured interview. Based on the results of the interview, a researcher-made questionnaire was developed and validated. Next, 53 faculty members and 98 Ph.D. candidates were selected based on purposive sampling and their availability to respond. Findings revealed that mixed-methods research (MMR) was the most preferred research approach of both groups of participants. Despite the overall preference for MMR studies, the results showed that the MSRT curriculum and the instructors of the Research Methodology course did not focus on MMR adequately. Furthermore, the participants believed that Research Methodology course at the Ph.D. level did not equip the addresses well enough to be able to conduct accurate and appropriate MMR studies. Findings could imply that MSRT curriculum developers and Research Methodology course instructors need to pay more attention to the research approach preference (i.e., MMR) of the end-users (i.e., PhD candidates).

Categorization is an essential cognitive activity to make sense of the world. Category-generating and word association studies help us elucidate how learners organize words in the mind. Categorization can indicate how learners acquire new vocabulary and how they use it to interpret reality. The present study analyses the word retrieval mechanisms of two groups of learners by looking into the word-pair associations produced as a response to a category-generation task. These associations in response to two semantic categories: countryside and animals were classified and scrutinized for shared patterns. Differences and similarities between semantic categories, and proficiency level of learners were explored. Results revealed learners favour coordination as the preferred mechanism for word attachment and retrieval, followed by event-based associations (metaphorical/ contextual and experiential knowledge). Although frequencies vary significantly depending on L2 proficiency and semantic category, associational behaviours are comparable, with a preference for semantic associations over formal and presence of both taxonomic and thematic associations. The implications of these findings can reach the EFL classroom by informing which words to teach together and through which strategies.