Evaluation of the Assessment Criteria of English Language at Higher Secondary Level in Pakistan

The present research aimed to explore the weaknesses of the assessment criteria in relevance to the performance of the student in the subject English of grade XI-XII. The research was conducted to analyze the theoretical framework of assessment and practical pattern, practiced in public Examinations. The data have been collected from the handbook of National Curriculum document, 2006, up-to-date papers of the English subject (2007-2010), experts, teachers and students of respective classes. The mixed method approach was used for the interpretation of data. The major issues regarding the nature of assessment and its relevance with curriculum objectives has been studied. Comparison about the content, teaching methods, evaluation and objectives at intermediate level in the opinions of experts, teachers and student was analyzed. A descriptive and qualitative analysis was used. The findings of the study exposed that there is need to improve the quality of assessment to fulfill the desired learning outcomes. Assessment system suffers from multiple deficiencies like rote learning and assessing lower level skills. Methods of assessment have not been shifted from theory to performance in Pakistan. Key Words: Assessment, criteria, desired learning outcomes, Examination, English Language

Investigating Shades of Modality in an Autobiography, “If I am Assassinated”: A Corpus-Based Analysis

This study investigated the attitudes and shades marked by the writer in an autobiography through the corpus expressions developed on modalities (i.e., boulmaic, deontic, epistemic, and perceptual). The study also put to the test the patterns created to examine modality across fiction genre. A corpus was created for this purpose and tagged using the Parts of Speech (POS) Tagger for analysis using AntConc 3.4.4.0. This analysis was then further interpreted using Simpson\u27s (1993) model. It was discovered that the author used many modalities, such as (un)certainty, attitude, point of view, ability, possibility, and likelihood, to form the meaning in the autobiography. These features highlighted the text\u27s persuasiveness, interest, and realism. By including these features, the autobiography was given positive and negative undertones that helped readers comprehend the author\u27s perspective. In conclusion, the content seemed more upbeat than downbeat. The deontic and boulomaic modalities that indicated estrangement and uncertainty on the writer\u27s part were used to mark the positive shade. Additionally, the use of the suggested patterns was successful in analysing the modality aspects using corpus techniques. They were suggested in the study as a paradigm for additional research. &nbsp

Diachronic Variation in the Language of Pakistani English Newspapers: A Multidimensional Analysis

This research aimsto see the evolution of Pakistani English. Therefore, it diachronically explores the linguistic variation in Pakistani English newspapers (PEN) utilizing a corpus-based multidimensional approach(MDA). Corpus for this research has been developed from the texts of four Pakistani English language newspapers published across six decades (1947-1996), and analyzed through MAT Software. The results reveal that the textual dimensions studied in PEN vary across the decades. Especially, textual Dimension 2 (D2) across1977-1986and1987-1996indicates that the discourse (used in PEN)is narrative due to the overuse of past tense, present participial clauses and public verbs, and is non-narrative across 1947-1956,1957-1966 and 1967-1976 due to the overuse of third person pronouns, past tense and perfect aspect. Similarly, Dimension 4 (D4) across 1947-1956 highlights the language of newspapers to be interactive and less argumentative across 1957-1966, 1967-1976, 1977-1986 and 1987-1996. Due to these historical changes, the language of PEN is found to statistically less different across the decades, and close to Biber’s (1988) registers. Therefore, the language of PEN is concluded to: be informationally dense, non-narrative, explicit, abstract, and less argumentative; and fallin the outer circle (due to its closeness of PEN to Biber’sregisters) where it is named as second language due to the linguistic variation

Heavy metals mitigation and growth promoting effect of endophytic Agrococcus terreus (MW 979614) in maize plants under zinc and nickel contaminated soil

IntroductionHeavy metals such as iron, copper, manganese, cobalt, silver, zinc, nickel, and arsenic have accumulated in soils for a long time due to the dumping of industrial waste and sewage. Various techniques have been adapted to overcome metal toxicity in agricultural land but utilizing a biological application using potential microorganisms in heavy metals contaminated soil may be a successful approach to decontaminate heavy metals soil. Therefore, the current study aimed to isolate endophytic bacteria from a medicinal plant (Viburnum grandiflorum) and to investigate the growth-promoting and heavy metal detoxification potential of the isolated endophytic bacteria Agrococus tereus (GenBank accession number MW 979614) under nickel and zinc contamination.MethodsZinc sulfate and nickel sulfate solutions were prepared at the rate of 100 mg/kg and 50 mg/kg in sterilized distilled water. The experiment was conducted using a completely random design (CRD) with three replicates for each treatment.Results and DiscussionInoculation of seeds with A. tereus significantly increased the plant growth, nutrient uptake, and defense system. Treatment T4 (inoculated seeds), T5 (inoculated seeds + Zn100 mg/kg), and T6 (inoculated seeds + Ni 100 mg/kg) were effective, but T5 (inoculated seeds + Zn100 mg/kg) was the most pronounced and increased shoot length, root length, leaf width, plant height, fresh weight, moisture content, and proline by 49%, 38%, 89%, 31%, 113%, and 146%, respectively. Moreover the antioxidant enzymes peroxidase and super oxidase dismutase were accelerated by 211 and 68% in contaminated soil when plants were inoculated by A. tereus respectively. Similarly the inoculation of A. tereus also enhanced maize plants’ absorption of Cu, Mn, Ni, Na, Cr, Fe, Ca, Mg, and K significantly. Results of the findings concluded that 100 mg/kg of Zn and Ni were toxic to maize growth, but seed inoculation with A. tereus helped the plants significantly in reducing zinc and nickel stress. The A. tereus strain may be employed as a potential strain for the detoxification of heavy metal

The State-of-the-art Hybrid Approaches in Regression Testing

[ DOI: 10.22068/ijiepr.34.1.4 ]    [ Downloaded from ijiepr.iust.ac.ir on 2023-06-21 ] Software testing is the process of assessing the functionality of a software program. The software testing process checks for inaccuracies, gaps and whether the application outcome matches desired expectations before the software is installed and goes into production. Normally in large organizations, the development team allocates a high portion of estimated development time, cost and efficiency for regression testing to assure software testing quality assurance. The quality of developed software relies upon three factors time, efficiency and testing technique used for regression testing. Regression testing is an important component of software testing and maintenance, taking up a significant share of the total testing time, efficiency and resources organizations use in testing techniques. The key to successful regression testing using Test Case Prioritization (TCP), Test case Selection (TCS) and Test Case Minimization (TCM) is maximizing the test cases' effectiveness while considering the limited resources available. Regression testing introduced numerous techniques for (TCP, TCS, TCM) to maximize the efficiency based on Average Percentage Fault Detection (APFD). In recent studies, the TCP and TCS techniques can give the highest APFD score. However, each TCP and TCS approacshow limitations, such as high execution cost, time, efficiency, and lack of information. TCP and TCS approaches that can cover multiple test suite variables (time, cost, efficiency) remained inefficient. Thus, there is a need for a hybrid TCP and TCS technique to be developed to search for the best method that gives a high APFD score while having good coverage of test cases relevant to the cost and execution time to improve efficiency. The proposed hybrid test case selection and prioritization technique will exclude similar & faulty test cases to reduce test size. The proposed hybrid technique has several advantages, including reduced execution time and improved fault detection ability. The proposed hybrid Enhanced Test Case Selection and Prioritization Algorithm ( ETCSA) is a promising approach to select only modified test suites to improve efficiency. However, the efficiency of the proposed technique may depend on the specific criteria for selecting only modified test cases and the software's characteristics. The hybrid technique aims to define an ideal ranking order of test cases, allowing for higher coverage and early fault detection with reduced test suite size. This study reviews TCP and TCS hybrid techniques to reduce testing time, cost and improve efficiency for regression testing. Each TCS and TCP technique in regression testing has identified apparent standards, benefits, and restrictions

An Appraisal of Pakistani Fresh Kinnow (Mandarin) Exports in the Global Market: A Markov Chain Approach

This random variable study dealt with the export of fresh kinnow. The random variable study measure the probability of occurrence of something i.e. exports of fresh kinnow as stated by Dr. B. Swaminathan (2020). The study was intended to examine the retention and switching behaviors’ of the importing nations as well as growth in exports and consistency in exports of fresh kinnow growth. Therefore, in this study, we endeavor to examine the behavior of the big five importers (i.e., Afghanistan, Russia, UAE, Philippine and Indonesia), where Pakistani exports constitute more than 50 percent of its fresh kinnow. To complete these tasks, the techniques used are Markov chain analysis with transition probability matrix (TPM), compound annual growth rate (CAGR), the coefficient of variation (CV), and the Cuddy Della Valle instability index (CDVI). The TPM results of fresh kinnow export in terms of quantity showed that all the importing nations showed no retention behavior for fresh kinnow export from Pakistan. According to the results of the CAGR in terms of quantity export, except for the Philippines and other countries, the remaining importing countries showed negative growth. The results of CDVI in terms of quantity showed inconsistent growth for all the importing nations for the exports of fresh kinnow from Pakistan. The TPM results of fresh kinnow export in terms of value Russia and Indonesia showed 41.40 percent and 29.54 percent retention behavior respectively for fresh kinnow export from Pakistan. &nbsp

Variation in Academic Writing: A Corpus-Based Research on Syntactic Features across Four Disciplinary Divisions

<p>This research investigates disciplinary variations using syntactic features in Pakistani academic writing (AW). The corpus of this research is developed from 160 dissertations across four disciplinary divisions and analyzed through AntConc. Results reveal heterogeneous and homogenous use of the said features. Heterogeneity is seen in relation to the frequency of different types of clausal, intermediate, and phrasal features. Regarding the homogeneity, results reveal that the highest and lowest used features were similar across the four disciplinary divisions. That is, clausal coordinating conjunctions and WH complement clauses (highest and lowest used clausal features), nouns and prepositional phrases (highest and lowest used phrasal features), and adverbs and noun+to-clauses (highest and lowest used intermediate features) are observed to remain the same across the four disciplinary divisions. These results conclude that Pakistani AW does not reflect disciplinary variation. The practice is contrary to the expert convention. Therefore, Pakistani academic writers are suggested to appropriately use the syntactic features as per the expert conventions in their disciplines.</p&gt