Review of True Experimental Research Studies in Applied Linguistics

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of true experimental research studies in the field of Applied Linguistics and to highlight the methodology and statistical application employed by the researchers. A total of ten true experimental studies are reviewed. The perspectives emerged from these studies have been identified and discussed

“Gender Biased Discriminatory Factors Affecting the Carrier Progression of Female Employees in Private Organizations of Multan City (Pakistan).”

Women’s professional experience is typically prone to incapacitation on account of gender discrimination in job opportunities and discontinuity in labor market participation. Gender discrimination in the workplace crop up when the potential of a person is discriminated due to gender biasness. In private sectors of Pakistan female employees are facing gender discrimination in job opportunities due to numerous discriminatory features that have unconstructive impact on their working potential. These dynamics comprised of patriarchal structure of the society, prejudice for working women, lack of social support, inadequate professional encouragement, social taboos, gender biased attitude of male employees towards female employees and traditional values attached with the reputation of working women. The researcher assembled the data from 200 female employees that were working in Banks and Mobile Franchises of Multan city (Pakistan) through convenient sampling technique. Chi-Square test and Binary Logistic Regression were applied on the data (to study the relationship between the dependant and independent variables) that was coded in SPSS (Version 17). From the data the researcher institutes that male dominancy at work place, traditional myths appended with the working women, wage discrimination, gender specified job positions, mangers biasness, lack of trainings (especially for female employees) and inferiority complexes of men (due to female prominence) are the salient discriminatory factors that are facing by females (related with their job) in private sector organizations of Multan city (Pakistan). The researcher concluded that various discriminatory factors and institutional obstructions become the foremost impediment in carrier advancement of the female employees. Even the skilled females (who have the aptitude to get managerial seat) cannot infiltrate this due to miscellaneous stereotypes attached with the female job orientation. On top of it institutional blockades becomes the salient impediment in career advancement of female employees. In private sector organizations female managers at higher levels will receive fewer promotions relative to men at comparable level. Passable implication of rules and regulations in private companies to exterminate the gender discrimination, sturdy monitoring system in organizations, formation of anti discriminatory policies as well as gender related educational programmes and trainings are the foremost remedies that can diminish the disparaging impacts on gender discrimination for female employees. Key words: Professional experience, incapacitation, gender discrimination, labor market participation, discriminatory factors, working potential, prejudice, wage discrimination, carrier advancement, managerial seat, institutional barriers, organization and gender biased attitude

CuO-based materials for thermochemical redox cycles: the influence of the formation of a CuO percolation network on oxygen release and oxidation kinetics

Thermochemical redox cycles such as chemical looping combustion (CLC) are an economically promising CO2 capture technology that rely on the combustion of a hydrocarbon fuel with lattice oxygen that is derived from a solid oxygen carrier. The oxygen carrier is typically regenerated with air. To increase the agglomeration resistance and redox stability of the oxygen carriers, the active phase is often stabilized with high Tammann temperature ceramics, resulting in the formation of so-called cermet structures. It has been hypothesized that the redox performance of the cermets depends critically on the conduction pathways for solid-state ionic diffusion and the activation energy for charge transport. Here, we investigate the influence of the formation of a percolation network on the electrical conductivity and the rate of oxidation for CeO2-stabilized Cu. We found that for oxygen carriers that contained 60 wt. % CuO, the charge transport occurred predominately via Cu/CuO conduction pathways. Below the percolation threshold of CuO, the conduction of charge carriers took place via CeO2 grains, which formed a continuous network. The measurements of charge transport and redox characteristics confirmed that the activation energy for charge transport through the cermet increased with decreasing Cu content. This indicates that the solid-state diffusion of charge carriers plays an important role during re-oxidation

Enhanced Three Layer Hybrid Clustering Mechanism for Energy Efficient Routing in IoT

Recently, different routing techniques were proposed for three layer clustering topology in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) which outperform the basic two layer clustering hierarchy. The problem that remains in these approaches is the heavy control packet exchange between nodes after every round in order to choose efficient lower layer heads. Among these techniques is Hybrid Hierarchical Clustering Approach (HHCA), in which a distributed approach is proposed. According to HHCA, the upper layer heads are centrally selected by base station, while sensor nodes only have to select lower layer heads distributively. In this paper, enhanced three layer hybrid clustering mechanism is proposed that limits the exchange of control packets between nodes after every round for lower layer head selection. The energy of nodes are divided into levels upon which it is decided when nodes of a cluster need to enter into new cluster head selection phase. The proposed mechanism helps to limit control packet exchange between nodes to a large extent, at the same time keeping energy consumption between nodes balanced. Moreover, it is focused that higher layer heads are selected by base station in a manner that reduces backward transmission in the network as much as possible. Simulation results show that nodes in the proposed mechanism stay alive for a longer time as compared to other approaches, and it outperforms HHCA technique in network lifetime based on Half of the Nodes Alive (HNA) by 18 percent

Whites and Browns: A Contrastive Study of Metadiscourse in English Newspaper Editorials

Metadiscourse is an interesting field of inquiry that is believed to play a vital role in organizing and producing persuasive writing. It is a set of linguistic devices used to communicate attitudes and mark the structural properties of a text. The study aimed to investigate whether native and non-native varieties of English varieties are similar or different from each other from the perspective of interactional meta-discourse markers. The study as contrastive rhetoric research scrutinized a corpus of 900 newspaper editorials (450 written in native English newspapers and 450 written in non-native English newspapers). Editorials were culled from 15 native English newspapers belonging to three native English countries, England, America, and New Zealand, and 15 non-native English newspapers belonging to three non-native English countries, Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. Based on the model of metadiscourse given by Hyland (2005), interactional metadiscourse resources were analyzed. The frequencies of interactional metadiscourse markers in both native and non-native varieties were counted and compared with each other. The results disclosed that there were worth-pointing differences between the native and non-native English editorialists in the use of interactional metadiscourse markers. Two different varieties of English editorials showed variations particularly in the use of hedging and self-mention markers. On the whole, findings suggested that the use of interactional metadiscourse markers in native English editorials were more frequent than those in non-native English editorials which made their writings more appealing and convincing context.Keywords: metadiscourse; native; non-native; newspaper; editorial

A Cross-linguistic Study of Metadiscourse in English and Urdu Newspaper Editorials

Metadiscourse markers are linguistic expressions which help the writers to organize their discourses. The original impetus for the research study came from the need to explore similarities and differences among the use and distribution of metadiscourse markers between two different languages, English and Urdu, within a single genre. To this end, the study as cross-linguistic research scrutinized a corpus of 100 newspaper editorials (50 taken from English newspapers and 50 from Urdu newspapers) written in Pakistan. Editorials were culled electronically from 5 English newspaper websites and 5 Urdu newspaper websites. To mitigate the diachronic effects on the selected sample, only editorials published in the first four months of 2020 (January, February, March, and April) were included in the corpora. Based on the model of metadiscourse markers given by Hyland (2005), both interactive and interactional categories of the model were analyzed. Frequencies of metadiscourse markers in both English and Urdu were counted through AntConc 3.5.7. They were compared and contrasted quantitatively and manually. The results disclosed that there were worth-pointing differences between the two groups. Two different languages showed variations among different subcategories of interactive and interactional metadiscourse resources. On the whole, findings suggested that the use of interactional metadiscourse was a predominant category and attitude marker was a predominant feature in both the groups. Analysis of differences that meta-discourse tools can encounter in the process of translating from English to Urdu or even other languages maybe another and very interesting field of inquiry

Textbook Evaluation: A Case Study of Punjab, Pakistan

Textbook is one of the most substantial elements of classroom learning. As a result, it is critical to conduct a textbook evaluation to improve the quality of the teaching and learning environment in the classroom. Keeping in mind the very importance of the textbook evaluation, the current study evaluated 10th-grade textbook for English published by Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board Lahore, Pakistan. The present study aimed to evaluate the book’s overall pedagogical worth according to teachers’ and students’ needs and demands. For this purpose, 10 teachers and 60 students were selected from different public and private schools. Two different questionnaires were prepared by Litz (2001) with slight variations. The teachers’ questionnaire version had 20 items, while the students’ version had 15 items. The statistical analysis was carried out using the SPSS tool after the data had been collected. The study’s findings revealed that the textbook as a whole is well-designed and offers a lot of useful extra material. The book is also visually pleasing, and it is well-organized, consistent, and logical. Overall, the positive characteristics outnumbered the negative ones by a wide margin. Despite a few flaws in the book, such as the lack of a glossary and grammar, the results showed that the textbook was adequate for language learners. Overall, it was considered that, despite some flaws, the textbook fulfilled the needs of students and might be a good book in the hands of competent teachers.Keywords: textbook; evaluation; English language