The Role of Metacognition in the Development of EFL Learners’ Listening Skill

This study investigated the impact of metacognitive instruction on the listening skill, and metacognitive knowledge of a group of male students (N = 30) who were learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Iran. The study participants spoke Persian as a first language and were high-intermediate EFL learners. The participants received a guided lesson plan in metacognition (planning, monitoring, and evaluation) through a pedagogical cycle approach over a semester (eight weeks). International English Language Testing System listening tests (practice) were used to track the participants’ listening performance. Participants also completed a Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire, which examined their use of metacognitive awareness when engaged in listening tasks. Results indicated that the students improved their listening skill after being taught about metacognition; however, no significant use of metacognitive awareness was reported. This study concludes with a discussion of some potential implications, and provides scope for future research.     

Peering into the Abyss: Andreev’s Rejoinder to Tolstoi’s Kreutzer Sonata

This essay argues that Leonid Andreev’s (1871–1919) short story “The Abyss” (Bezdna) is an important and often misunderstood response to Lev Tolstoi’s (1828–1910) novella Kreutzer Sonata (Kreitserova Sonata), representing a fundamental shift in the way that pessimistic philosophy and degeneration theory would be incorporated into the cultural, intellectual and literary discourse of the Russian fin de siècle. For Andreev, intellectual currents were suggesting that civilized society was under attack by forces beyond its control. Tolstoi, however, asserted that celibacy and mortification of the flesh could conquer humanity’s primitive urges. In response, Andreev animated popular theories on sexual degeneracy to reject moral restraint as an option against sexual aggression. This rejoinder is significant for many reasons, not the least of which as an important intellectual segue between Tolstoi and subsequent decadent literary discourse on sexuality. After all, morality was no longer solely resident within religious thought in fin de siècle Russia, especially in light of mounting evidence that moral insanity was the result of hereditary taints and biological regression. Consequently, “The Abyss” should be reinterpreted as an important intellectual bridge between what would be deemed high- and lowbrow literature on human sexuality at the turn of the century.     

Biblical Motifs in Chingiz Aitmatov’s The Place of the Skull

Folklore is the artistic expression of belief. The various forms of folklore change and adapt to reflect changing circumstances and changing views of the world. When Ukrainians came to Canada, they brought their folklore, ballads included, with them. In the new land, ballads helped voice the struggles of the Ukrainian Pioneers. Examining a collection of ballads made approximately sixty years after Ukrainians began arriving on the Prairies shows that the ballads performed in Canada spoke of real problems, problems attested in both folk sources and historical records. These include the physical hardship of life on an acreage, male absence as they went to work on the railroad, and the tension between women and their daughters-in-laws, who were left to struggle on their own. Ukrainian girls attracted to non-Ukrainians were seen as problematic, as were men seeking solace in alcohol and infidelity. And there were many other Canadian issues for which traditional ballads provided a powerful means of expression. The ballad tradition was modified through selection, i.e., only relevant songs continued to be performed. It was also changed internally and individual ballad texts were altered by the addition of new terminology and new ideas. This is especially true when attitudes in Canada differed from those in Ukraine. A very important change in attitude applies to magic. While the use of magic is treated ambiguously in ballads performed in Ukraine, it is routinely condemned in those performed in Canada.     

The Crisis of the Russian Avant-Garde in Iurii Olesha’s Envy

In this essay 1 will analyze lurii Olesha’s novel Envy (1927) as a reflex of the crisis within the Russian avant-garde. 1 will argue that Olesha’s work can be viewed as the author’s perception of the destruction of the avant-garde in the mid-twenties and its replacement by a radically different aesthetic system, i.e., Socialist Realism.

In Envy, the fatal clash between the pragmatic productivism and the earlier constructivism finds its representation in the struggle of the three machines (or constructions—postroeniia—to use the avant-garde term). These constructions are: the communal kitchen Chetvertak’; a mysterious machine, Ophelia; and Anechka Prokopovich’s bed. I argue that all the power struggles among the main characters of the novel are connected to these three machines. The main feature common to these three machines and their design is control over human life. However, if the first two—Chetvertak and Ophelia—are involved in the active struggle for power, the third—the bed—epitomizes passive aggression. The bed mocks their struggle and lies in waiting and finally devours the future discourse, because it is in the bed that the action of Envycomes to its end. Thus, 1 suggest that Chetvertak be seen as a later productionist creation, while Ophelia represents an earlier constructivist avant-garde conception. In relation to the first two machines, the bed represents socialist realism as a stagnating aesthetic vision and the dystopian pretense of paradise attained.     

Europe’s Role in China’s Transition to Superpower Status

What can Western powers do today to ease an eventual global power shift resulting from the rise of superpowers such as China? This paper suggests that part of the answer lies in the same power-binding institutions that allowed the US to rise post WWII without threatening its allies. Continuity in the rules of the global system during a great power transition would promote stability by reducing uncertainty, as well as the extent to which material power can be used coercively. I argue that current superpowers, the EU among them, have an interest in ensuring an equitable distribution of the gains from cooperation. While distributional issues are usually treated in normative terms, they take on very real, material meaning in the context of a great power transition. With this in mind, I look at three aspects of the current global institutional framework that would benefit from reform: international trade and aid, institutional design, and institutional proliferation. In all three cases, a more equal distribution of the gains from institutions today increases the odds that those institutional arrangements will remain in the future.     

The underridization of Nancy: tracing the transformations in Nancy’s idea of community

My aim in this paper is to expose a misrepresentation of Jean-Luc Nancy’s ideas on community in the secondary literature. I argue that discussions of Nancy’s work have failed to recognize a transformation that has occurred in his later thought, which distances him from Jacques Derrida. I propose that Nancy’s later work points the way beyond the “persistence of unhappy consciousness” in deconstruction through allowing for the possibility of the creation of a world alternative to globalization. Recognition of this transformation is suggestive for how Nancy’s theoretical framework might be employed in analyses of recent resistance movements.     

The warped mirror: the reflection of the ableist stare in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man

David Lynch’s The Elephant Man tells the story of Joseph Merrick – called John Merrick in the film – a man who lived in Victorian England and who was exhibited in ‘freak’ shows under the moniker ‘The Elephant Man.’ One of Lynch’s central concerns in the film is visuality – how Merrick’s disabled body is seen and looked at, both by the characters in the film and by the film’s audience. Ultimately, at both the narrative level and the cinematic level, Lynch exposes the insidious power of forms of looking at the disabled body that collude with and reinforce ableist social hegemony. Using Lacanian and Foucauldian theory and building on the work of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Todd McGowan, this article examines exactly how Lynch is able to achieve this anti-ableist work.