Foreign language anxiety is the psychological tension, apprehension, and worry experienced by non-native speakers when learning or using a foreign language (Young, 1991). Such a phenomenon can make English learning a traumatic experience for learners and may prevent them from learning it effectively. In this respect, this book aims at introducing a critical review of the literature about this psychological variable, its types, factors, symptoms, and negative effects. Through two research methods, which are the scale and the questionnaire, this book also has the purpose of investigating Foreign Language Anxiety among Moroccan secondary and high school students. Not only that, but this book also attempts to suggest a variety of strategies to alleviate anxiety among learners in order to make their EFL learning experience an interesting and pleasing one. Therefore, this book can be useful for students, teachers, parents, educational counselors, curriculum developers, educational policy makers, and researchers.

Self-regulated learning strategies have recently received a remarkable attention by researchers. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between self-regulated learning strategies and students' reading comprehension ability as well as their language proficiency. To do so, 115 university students majoring in TEFL were selected. First, a TOEFL test was given to the participants so as to determine their language proficiency as well as reading comprehension ability. Then, they were asked to fill out self-regulated learning strategies questionnaire. In order to analyze the data obtained, descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation were conducted. The results of data analyses revealed that there is a significant relationship between the students' use of self-regulated learning strategies and their reading comprehension ability. Also, a significant correlation between the students' use of self-regulated learning strategies and their language proficiency was found. Finally, the pedagogical message of this study is that teachers and students should incorporate self-regulated learning strategies into their teaching and learning process.

In an age of global anxiety and suspicion, South Asian immigrants juggle multiple cultural and literate traditions in Mid-South America. In this study Iswari P. Pandey looks deeply into this community to track the migration of literacies, showing how different meaning-making practices are adapted and reconfigured for cross-language relations and cross-cultural understanding at sites as varied as a Hindu school, a Hindu women's reading group, Muslim men's and women's discussion groups formed soon after 9/11, and cross-cultural presentations by these immigrants to the host communities and law enforcement agencies. Through more than seventy interviews, he reveals the migratory nature of literacies and the community work required to make these practices meaningful. Pandey addresses critical questions about language and cultural identity at a time of profound change. He examines how symbolic resources are invented and reinvented and circulated and recirculated within and across communities; the impact of English and new technologies on teaching, learning, and practicing ancestral languages; and how gender and religious identifications shape these practices. Overall, the book offers a thorough examination of the ways individuals use interpretive powers for agency within their own communities and for cross-cultural understanding in a globalizing world and what these practices mean for our understanding of that world.

Early Literacy Assessment and Toolbox supports pre-service teachers in phonological and morphological assessment and instruction. The book addresses assessment and implementation strategies to teach students at developmental levels through a series of modules. Geared toward helping classroom teachers and reading specialists successfully and effectively differentiate their literacy instruction, the book can be used in teacher education literacy courses, fieldwork, and student teaching. The material features a usable assessment tool, and the mini-module lessons are designed for actual classroom use. Early Literacy Assessment Toolbox is an excellent supplement to standard textbooks for courses in early and middle literacy methods and literary assessment courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

With the recent explosion of activity and discussion surrounding comics, it seems timely to examine how we might think about the multiple ways in which comics are read and consumed. Graphic Encounters moves beyond seeing the reading of comics as a debased or simplified word-based literacy. Dale Jacobs argues compellingly that we should consider comics as multimodal texts in which meaning is created through linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, and spatial realms in order to achieve effects and meanings that would not be possible in either a strictly print or strictly visual text. Jacobs advances two key ideas: one, that reading comics involves a complex, multimodal literacy and, two, that by studying how comics are used to sponsor multimodal literacy, we can engage more deeply with the ways students encounter and use these and other multimodal texts. Looking at the history of how comics have been used (by churches, schools, and libraries among others) will help us, as literacy teachers, best use that knowledge within our curricula, even as we act as sponsors ourselves.

The aim of this analysis is to explore the intertextual relationship between Orwells novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Suzanne Collinss dystopian The Hunger Games trilogy (2008-2010). The study is based on a definition of dystopia and its conception of man, which is then related to the totalitarian regimes of Orwells Oceania and Collinss Panem. The features of dystopian society include the use of torture, brainwashing, propaganda and violence, as well as the notion of reality control." The text attempts to outline the theory of intertextuality and applies it to the critical reading of the two novels. The problem of the distinction between intentional and accidental intertextuality is also addressed, and so are the concepts of originality versus imitation. On a practical level, similarities and differences between the two texts in action and plot are discussed. Also, the intended readership are characterized and the narrative technique is examined. Additionally, the motives of the authors for writing dystopian novels are addressed. One primary ideological difference between the two novels, namely the attitude to rebellion as a means for overcoming a totalitarian regime, is considered. Finally, it provides an answer to the question as to why rebellion is successful in Panem, but impossible in Oceania.

The present book aims at discussing critically the autobiographical tones in the fiction of Charles Bukowski with special reference to his two famous novels Ham on Rye and Women. An attempt has been made to examine how truly he could, through his characters and their peculiar situations express his autobiographical facts in these novels. Bukowski created a literary persona named Henry Chinaski as a vessel for expressing his alternative view of the world, to a large extent concerned with commenting on the role of the artist in the society, the stultifying dullness and conformity of the 'day-job', the comic dimensions of sexual relationships, the often unpleasant realities of poverty and chronic drunkenness, and the constant struggle of the alienated individual to assert his non-conformist identity. The book traces the development of Chinaski's non-conformist personality from Ham On Rye, based on Bukowski's youth in Los Angeles during the Depression, to Women, where Bukowski focuses on relationships and sex.

The concept of the text is perhaps one of the most problematical issues in contemporary critical theory. Postmodernism has significantly changed the concept of the text. After postmodernism, the term "text" has come to refer to many objects, aspects and activities, mostly extrinsic to the work itself. This book attempts to research the way postmodernism has affected the traditional concept of the text. The author suggests five strategies which are thought to be the most functional in deconstructing literary texts, examining the way they are applied to readings of some popular romantic poems. In a sense, the aim of this book is to prove that there is a strategy for deconstruction through examining both the theoretical premises and the practical discourse of postmodernism. This becomes possible through the exploration both of the relation between the text and reality and the relation between the text and the subject. It is also made clear through an examination of the suggested major strategies of deconstruction and their application to romantic poetry.

The present endeavour is a synthesis of two different choices: the theoretical assumption of Phenomenological Criticism and R.K. Narayan's novels which are replete with the concepts of Phenomenology. Phenomenology, as a philosophy, has a very wide spectrum but the present work confines its range only to the literary domain of the philosophy commonly represented by Geneva Critics or Critics of Consciousness with the overtones of philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. This effort examines ten out of total fifteen novels penned by R.K. Narayan. Swami and Friends (1935), The Bachelor of Arts (1937), The Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1945), The Financial Expert (1952), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1962), and The Painter of Signs (1978) are touched upon in this book.

Dalit literature has so very visibly expanded the horizon of Indian literature and criticism and transformed people's preferences. Dalit literature has awakened many new social strata and made new literary contributions. This literature has always stood for Equality, freedom and social justice. There are This book on the emerging perspectives on Dalit Literature offers to fill the gray areas and address the huge gap in the current day literary discussion and debate (that hide entire sections of our literary and artistic culture), through an alternative perspective, analyzing the Dalit Literature and Culture in its myriad facets and that too on a large scale and in an international context. The contributors in this book seek to serve the primary objective of initiating an alternative perspective in literary studies and criticism and create space for the voices and opinions which have largely been ignored and overlooked.

SLA researchers mostly agree that focus on form is crucial for L2 acquisition. In focus on form practices, learners' attention is explicitly or implicitly drawn to linguistic features of the input as they occur incidentally in meaning-oriented language lessons. The present book explores the effectiveness as well as the relative impacts of planned preemptive focus on form versus delayed reactive focus on form on four sub-components of speaking proficiency, namely fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation in meaning-oriented interviews. This book will be of substantial use to ESL/EFL teachers, ELT researchers as well as material developers to optimally integrate focus on form with focus on meaning in language learning classes.

The First World War is one of the biggest traumas for the British people. The war killed more British citizens than The Second World War and hugely affected British economy. Unlike the war against the Nazi Germany, it is not what may be called "just war" and the doubts about its meaning have been growing over the last century. Some historians even claim that it was the biggest mistake of modern history. The atrocities like those of the trench warfare and mass mechanized killing had never been experienced thus far. The war has inspired many writers both those who fought it and those who have not experienced it. Today, we can trace an increased amount of novels which dealt with the war or use it as a background. This may be, to some extent, caused by the growing interest in the historic novel as such. The writers who have not fought in the war deal with the topic differently. Almost a century has passed since the guns fell silent in 1918 and this time has had an impact on the perception of the war. Last veterans of the war have already died and the war has become a subject of books rather that of a living memory.

Don DeLillo is one of the most prominent figures in contemporary American fiction. This book addresses the intersection between postmodernism and neo-orientalism in his fiction. The writers examine the significance of orientalist discourse, the system of representations about the East, which figures noticeably in DeLillo's fiction, particularly in The Names, Mao II, Cosmopolis, and Falling Man. They argue that this discourse fuses with discourses of terrorism and fundamentalism. Central in this book is the contention that despite the postmodernist claims about the validity of all narratives, DeLillo's postmodern fiction largely excludes the alternative "unwelcome" narratives by disregarding the historical contingencies involved in phenomena such as terrorism.

The simplicity of modern communication systems and the existence of internet has enabled exposure of works not imaginably exposable. Internet has made the world a small village. The Afrocentric reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Charles Mungoshi's Waiting for the Rain is an in-depth analysis, critic and commentary of these authors' works. Chinua Achebe and Charles Mungoshi are the two most prominent Writers in African Literature, and a review of their works has been justified by the widespread readership of their works. This is one reading that both a student and teacher must go through to have a fair view of Afrocentric reading of Africa Literary works.