The aim of the current study is to investigate practically the determining factor(s) affecting the students’ inclination to become lifelong learners and further to verify the potential effect of pedagogy for critical thinking to play a significant role in this respect. Participants in the study were 80 freshman English majors, found mostly through the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) questionnaire to be amotivated as learners. Primarily, significant variables, identified in the literature to affect the students’ inclination to grow as lifelong learners, were specified. The criteria were applied in practice to investigate their relative contribution in making a group of amotivated freshman English majors motivated as lifelong learners. Various instruments and materials from questionnaires to student writings were used to collect data concerning the identified variables so as to identify through both quantitative and qualitative analyses the most determining one(s) in educating lifelong learners. The results suggested critical thinking as the most consequential variable involved. Implications of the study for pedagogy in higher education were discussed and questions were raised for future studies to take into account.
This study investigated the representation of sociocultural identities in six textbooks selected from Top Notch and Summit series, to assess their potential to promote intercultural communicative competence in the learners. Ting-Toomey's identity negotiation theory and Scollon and Scollon's (2001) discourse system structure were used to assess the identity representations and the structure of discourses in the books. Identity representations were analyzed in terms of the four primary elements of cultural, ethnic, gender and personal identities, to determine the extent to which the books could foster communication between members of various identity groups. In the analysis of discourse structures, the study investigated primarily the politeness and face strategies used in the conversations and further the particular ideology they perpetuated, as a clue to their potential to promote the learners' pragmatic competence for intercultural communication. Concerning identity representations in the books, different results were found for the two series. Top Notch, addressing beginner to intermediate level students, proved considerate of diversity in the sociocultural identities it presented and providing information about the values of different cultures and the customs and traditions of various nations it tried to set the bases of interculturality within its audience. Summit, on the other hand, addressing higher intermediate and advanced learners, had a unilateral approach in its identity presentations, depicting principally European and American nationalities and the cultural values of individualism typically associated with them. Nevertheless, where the discourse structures in the books were concerned, both the two series were identical in their exclusive focus upon the utilitarian ideology of discourse and its related politeness and face strategies. This was found as a pitfall in the books, limiting the students' range of discursive resources, which they require for successful intercultural communication in different contexts. The study concluded with subsequent recommendations for improving the content of the textbooks as well as some implications for further research.
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