Volume 31-2 Winter 2022

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Bochra Kouraïchi, Enhancing EFL Students’ Motivation Using the ARCS Model

An abundance of research suggests that motivation is important for foreign language learning. However, fewer studies have focused on the effective use of motivational strategies by EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers. Keller’s (2010) ARCS (attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction) model addresses the gap between L2 motivation theories and classroom practice with a focus on four categories: attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction. The present research seeks to investigate Tunisian university EFL teachers’ use of motivational strategies (MotS) (Dörnyei 2001) and the extent to which their students find them effective. It also explores the difference between teachers’ reported use of MotS and their actual motivational practice. To answer the research questions, the Instructional Materials Motivational Survey (IMMS) questionnaire (Min and Chon 2021) was administered with students and teachers, and the Motivational Orientation of Language Teaching (MOLT) scheme was used for classroom observation (Guilloteaux and Dörnyei 2008). Quantitative and qualitative methods were employed for the data analysis. The present study is expected to make methodological and pedagogical contributions to the Tunisian educational context.

Kristína Melišová, An Examination of British Modernist Literary Patronage

Part of a larger ongoing dissertation project, this article presents an application of patronage studies’ methodology, namely Helleke van den Braber’s (2021) model of post-romantic patronage, to selected British modernist patrons—Lady Ottoline Morrell and Lady Sibyl Colefax and the writers that they supported. It examines all the elements of van den Braber’s model—the patron, the artist, the artwork and the public—as they interacted in relationships of patronage in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Thanks to the critical perspective offered by sociologists of art, especially Howard Becker and Pierre Bourdieu, who are among the central theoretical voices consulted in this article, it illustrates how modernist writers entered a complex exchange of capitals in order to escape the demands of the mainstream literary market. Besides commenting on the role of commodification in the modernist literary market, this article contributes to understanding of the conditions under which literary works are written, their value is influenced and notions of authorship and creative agency are problematised when a patron is involved.

María Piqueras-Pérez, Excavating Ceddo Film and Video Workshop

During the 80s, several black independent film and video workshops gained importance in the United Kingdom. These workshops tried to encapsulate the political and social problems black British communities were facing as well as countering the misrepresentation and stereotypes put forward on black British subjects by British media. One of these workshops, and on which this paper focuses, was Ceddo. Ceddo was a film and video workshop whose productions were characterised by its community orientation and its use of image as a weapon. I concentrate on the films The People’s Account (Bryan 1986) and Culture for Freedom (Gordon 1990a). These works use the riots of 1985 in Brixton and Tottenham as a background to expose the marginalisation of black British communities by hegemonic Britain. They mirror each other in content but not in form being Culture for Freedom a continuation to The People’s Account and the censorship that it faced.

Amaia Soroa-Bacaicoa, The Portrayal of Migration and Mental Health Issues in Twenty-First Century Latina Literature

The aim of this article is to examine the portrayal of migration and mental health issues in selected works by Reyna Grande (2012), Diane Guerrero (2014), Julissa Arce (2016) and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (2020). These twenty-first century Latina texts are analyzed by incorporating an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to observe simultaneously how this literature reflects reality and how migration and mental health are perceived by literary criticism. The first part of this paper will summarize the state of the art and provide the sociohistorical context of the literary texts, and the second part will address the key points of the literary analysis, that is, the impact of migration and undocumented status on the mental health of the protagonists and its implications for social belonging and the pursuit of the American Dream. The selected literary works are first-person narratives that deal with migration to the US and the multiple factors embedded in this process, and they also depict how these experiences may have an impact on the mental health of migrants. These texts are valuable contributions to the ongoing debate on migration and illustrative of the evolution of the DREAMer movement.

Armin Stefanović, Universalism as a Factor in the Global Popularity of the Harry Potter Universe

One of the most interesting phenomena of the turn of the century is the rise of the Harry Potter culture. Irrespective of their race, ethnicity, nationality and religion, children and adults around the world feel they belong to the Wizarding World. What is it about these stories that makes them so translatable to other cultures? In this paper, I argue that the universalism of the Harry Potter stories is a factor in the rise of the Harry Potter culture. Even though race, ethnicity, nationality and religion are a part of the Harry Potter world, in the novels and films, they are never discussed explicitly. Their function is to paint a ‘real world’ backdrop of Britain at the turn of the century. To support my claims related to the presence of religion in Harry Potter novels, I analysed keywords in a context using digital tools AVOBMAT and Voyant Tools. I hypothesised that if words that have religious origins appear in the novels, they do not refer to a specific religious practice, rite or ritual. The words I examined are pray, church, God, religion, Jesus and Christmas.

Reviews

Baelo-Allué, Sonia and Mónica Calvo-Pascual, eds. Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative: Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture. New York and London: Routledge – Taylor & Francis Group, 2021.
by Miloš D. Đurić

Fischer, Andreas. James Joyce in Zurich: A Guide. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
by Elif Derya Şenduran

Ionescu, Arleen and Maria Margaroni, eds. Arts of Healing: Cultural Narratives of Trauma. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd., 2020.
by Eszter Láncos