Vocabulary as an undeniable part of language learning is a main component in communication which requires to be taught in innovative ways. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of musical mnemonic on vocabulary recalling, and long-term retention of words by young learners. The design of study was experimental. Sixty teenagers from Shokoh Language Institute in small town of Khorramdare, Iran participated in the study. To conduct the study, participants were divided into experimental and control groups. A list of 14 words were harmonized to melody of mentioned song and recorded in a professional studio. Validity of the words were examined by Lawsh CVR (Content Validity Ratio) and CVI (Content Validity Index). The results from Independent T-Tests indicated that experimental group outscored control group. Regarding research questions, it was found that musical mnemonic improves vocabulary recalling of experimental group in comparison to control group. In addition, results related to research questions showed that musical mnemonic help learners better understand words in new contexts. The findings imply that musical mnemonic can improve memory, and comprehension by practicing, and using melodic and rhythmic information.
Literature in the field of TESOL recruitment practices suggests that the myth of monolingual speakerism has impacted the employment methods in various countries in the world. The monolingual (native) speaker has a privileged position in English language teaching, representing both the model speaker and the ideal teacher. Bilingual teachers of English are often perceived as less competent than their monolingual counterparts in Oman. The aim of the study was to critically explore and problematize the recruitment practices that discriminate the bilingual English teachers in Oman. This article reports the findings of a small-scale qualitative study conducted at an English Language Center (ELC) at one of the colleges of technology in Oman (CoTs) through obtaining data from bilingual teachers of English. The results demonstrated that the native (monolingual) speakers’ fallacy is “alive and kicking” in Oman. All the recruiting agencies prefer to recruit monolingual speakers justifying this stance on the pretext that bilinguals are viewed as incompetent imitators of English. There is also a huge discrimination based on salary range between monolingual and bilingual teachers, despite doing same job. Colonial impact is another reason behind monolingual speakers’ preference. The impact of discrimination is that bilingual teachers of English are left feeling inferior. Hence, it is essential to adopt policies, which install greater sense of job security to enhance motivation and innovation. The study suggests that there is an urgent need to review the recruitment practices in Oman to establish equality and to create a healthy working environment.
Due to subjectivity in oral assessment, much concentration has been put on obtaining a satisfactory measure of consistency among raters. However, the process for obtaining more consistency might not result in valid decisions. One matter that is at the core of both reliability and validity in oral assessment is rater training. Recently, multifaceted Rasch measurement (MFRM) has been adopted to address the problem of rater bias and inconsistency in scoring; however, no research has incorporated the facets of test takers’ ability, raters’ severity, task difficulty, group expertise, scale criterion category, and test version together in a piece of research along with their two-sided impacts. Moreover, little research has investigated how long rater training effects last. Consequently, this study explored the influence of the training program and feedback by having 20 raters score the oral production produced by 300 test-takers in three phases. The results indicated that training can lead to more degrees of interrater reliability and diminished measures of severity/leniency, and biasedness. However, it will not lead the raters into total unanimity, except for making them more self-consistent. Even though rater training might result in higher internal consistency among raters, it cannot simply eradicate individual differences related to their characteristics. That is, experienced raters, due to their idiosyncratic characteristics, did not benefit as much as inexperienced ones. This study also showed that the outcome of training might not endure in long term after training; thus, it requires ongoing training throughout the rating period letting raters regain consistency.
<p><b>1. </b></p><p><b><i>1.1.1.
</i></b><b><i>The processes of instruction in the control group (CG)</i></b></p>
<p>The researchers
started with 40 intermediate students from both adults, adolescents, males and
females. Then, a text from Oxford Intermediate Reading Comprehension textbook
was selected. Afterwards, the researchers distributed the reading text, so that
each person had all the parts of reading. The instructor asked the students to
read the text individually and translate the text sentence by sentence. At the
end of the instruction, the students responded to the reading comprehension
questions individually.</p>
<p><b><i>1.1.2.
</i></b><b><i>The processes of instruction in the experimental group (EG)</i></b></p>
<p>At the first
step, the researchers focused on 60 intermediate students and divided them into
small cooperative jigsaw groups (i.e., 3-6 persons in each group). The
instructor asked the students to make circles with their chairs. Then, a
reading text from the same source was assigned for the experimental group.
Afterwards, the pieces of reading texts were cut out into separate paragraphs
and were distributed among the students so that each person had a different
part of reading paragraph. The instructor asked each member of the cooperative
jigsaw group to silently read the assigned text. The time allocated for this
stage was 5-10 minutes.</p>
<p>In
the second step, the instructor created new small (2-3) persons “Expert” groups
with the individuals who had read the same material. The students were given
time to discuss what they had read and how they might treat this when they
return to their cooperative groups. This time, the allocated time was 5-10
minutes.</p>
<p>In
the third step, the instructor recreated the original cooperative jigsaw
groups. Then, she had each person explain the content of the reading text to
the rest of the group. In other words, the students shared knowledge, ideas,
and information in terms of pieces of the text which they had in their hands.
In this part, each member of the "expert group" took responsibility
and shared their information with the members of the other group, so that they
could have access to the whole text, sentence by sentence, and were able to
reorganize it. Each member of the group then cooperated with the rest of the
group regarding the content and the subject matter. Each person in the group
was also responsible to learn from the others inside the group. Five minutes
was allocated to this activity.</p>
<p>In
the fourth and the last step, the instructor concluded with several key
questions for students to discuss implications of the points with people either
within the groups or with the entire class. A number of oral questions based on
the reading text were asked to ensure that individuals had grasped the overall
content. During this step, each person had all of the pieces of the whole text
in his/her hand.</p>
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