Browsing by Subject "English language and literature"
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Item Open Access English studies in Turkey: an assessment(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Randall, D.This paper assesses the present state of English studies in contemporary Turkey. It begins by noting the Head of Turkey's Higher Education Board's admission of the Board's failure to improve higher education. The paper then confirms the Head's position, first finding the acquisition of English language skills to be generally unsatisfactory among students and also among locally educated faculty members. It ascribes this problem to poor language-teaching practice, which tends to rely too much on translation. This paper also notes the misconception of viewing English studies as a domain of knowledge rather than as a field of study. It argues that these problems have global implications and arise in relation to the global history of English studies. It undertakes a detailed examination of T. B. Macaulay's 1835 "Minute on Indian Education," in which Macaulay presents English literature as a new and potentially edifying subject for higher education and a powerful instrument for more effective imperial management. It then places Macaulay's proposal in relation to Gayatri Spivak's recent advocacy of "aesthetic education." The paper shows that English studies in Turkey tends to conform to the Macaulay model, using scholarly articles published in Turkey to evidence the key elements of the argument. The paper ends with a suggestion that Turkish scholars with Anglophone-world degrees may help Turkish scholarship in the humanities approach international standards of quality and achievement. Copyright © 2015 The Johns Hopkins University Press and the University of Calgary.Item Open Access Investigating academic discourse socialization of undergraduate English language and literature students through literature circles(Bilkent University, 2019-03) Tunç, GüneşThis study aimed to examine the academic discourse socialization of undergraduate English language and literature (ELIT) students through literature circles. In this respect, the researcher explored the expectations of ELIT faculty members and experiences of first-year undergraduate ELIT students who were studying at a foundation university in Turkey. The data were collected through interviews with ELIT faculty members and students, and students’ literature circle discussions, role sheets and reflective journals. All the qualitative data were analyzed using Boyatzis’ (1998) thematic analysis. The findings of the study pointed out that in order to socialize into ELIT academic discourse, faculty members expect undergraduate students to develop a culture of reading and strategies to study literary texts better. However, the students faced challenges in meeting these expectations due to their educational background, low level of English language proficiency, lack of familiarity with the historical and cultural references, and heavy course loading. In that sense, using literature circles facilitated students’ socialization into the ELIT academic discourse community to a certain extent. This study is in line with the existing literature in reaching the following conclusions: undergraduate ELIT students not only need to improve their English language skills to make sense of the language used in literary texts but also gain an understanding of the values and practices of the ELIT academic discourse community. During this process, texts, peers and ELIT faculty members played key roles as socializing agents.