International Linguistics Research

The Comic in the Republic of Machado de Assis

Antônio Joaquim Pereira Neto — Sat, 04 May 2019 00:00:00 +0800

This article analyzes the tale “A Sereníssima República” (The Most Serene Republic), by Machado de Assis, approaching the rhetorical artifices of this narrative as constitutive of the conventions of the comic genre. Understanding that this genre consists in a textual unit formalized by images that subvert the common places of realistic enunciation, it points out to the presence of wonder, the fantastic in this fiction, whose conventions amplify the comic and grotesque character of the enunciation. Formed by oxymorons, paradoxical sentences and ingenious metaphors, this narrative satirizes, taking the metonymy as an interpretative procedure, the current values of politics, moral and justice present in the scenes of the nineteenth-century Brazilian republic.

The Influence of Differentiated Instruction on Academic Achievement of Students in Mixed Ability Classrooms

Mazen Muhieddine Kotob, Malak Ali Abadi — Sat, 04 May 2019 00:00:00 +0800

The present study aims at describing the influence of differentiated instruction on the academic achievement of English Language Learners low achievers and high achievers in a mixed ability classroom. It explores the strategies used by teacher to apply some principles of differentiated instruction in mixed ability classrooms and how pupils including low achievers and high achievers progress academically in English classrooms and how much they benefit taking into consideration teacher's time and effort. A total of 20 students from one intact English class were used as a sample of this experimental study that was conducted on 10 low achievers and 10 high achievers. In order to obtain the data, the achievement test pre-test and post-test was used as an instrument to gauge the low achiever's and high achiever's academic performance. In this experimental class, the researcher used differentiated instruction as an intervention. This intervention class was able to improve their academic score from pre-test to post-test. Therefore, the results revealed a marked improvement in the low achiever's academic scores following the implementation of differentiated instruction in a great way. But for high achievers, their scores were somehow stable between the pre-test and post-test following the implementation of this process. It is evident that differentiated instruction is a strategy that has a great influence on the academic achievement of low achievers in a great way.

Speech Act Taking Place in the Medical Conversation

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0800

This study aims at analyzing the maxims in the five categories of speech act on medical conversation of textbook entitled “English for midwives: Practical Guidance For Antenatal care”. The objectives are: (1) To find out the categories of speech act on the medical conversation, (2) To analyze the intended meaning of the speaker, (3) To analyze the cooperative principle that must be concerned on the conversation. There are some theories applied in this study, namely the theory of Speech Act, theory of context of situation, the maxim theory. The result shows that there are three categories of speech act (illocutionary act) found in the conversation, namely: assertive, directives, and expressives. The data (1) shows that the assertive conveys asking information; The data (2) shows directive conveys request; The data (3) shows directive conveys suggestion, there is maxim violation in term of manner found in this data; The data (4) shows directive conveys request; The data (5) shows directive conveys explanation; The data (6) shows directive conveys suggestion, there are maxims violation found in terms of quantity, quality and manner; The data (7) shows expressive conveys asking physiological condition, there are maxims violation in terms of quantity and quality; The data (8) shows expressive conveys asking physiological condition, there are maxims violation in terms of quantity, quality and manner found; The data (9) and (10) show expressives convey asking physiological condition.