This paper discusses the factors having influences on learning listening skill in a case study non-English majored student at Saigon Techology University (STU), Vietnam. Five main factors, including 18 elements, were identified: texts, listeners, speakers, tasks, and environment. The data were collected through questionnaire, including multiple choice questions and open questions, from 319 students. The results show that the texts and the listeners are 2 factors having close relation and influence each other with different rankings of different features; interesting, “physical and psychological states” is not the important element in this case. Based on statistical results, from a view of readability, the paper deeply analyzes these features to find the solutions in designing course syllabus, selecting materials, proposing teaching methods and improving the listening learning environment to meet the learning outcome; especially, achieving the outcome standard “B1”, shown the scale by the international TOEIC test, being trained at the school.

In language teaching, the use of computers has been on since before the coming of the internet. Later computer assisted language learning (CALL) developed and concerned itself with the pedagogical applications of the technology. Information Communication Technology (IT) which is an offshoot of science through its internet and computer-mediated communication (CMC) has gone beyond science to broaden the lexical inventories of the English language. It is against this backdrop that this paper tends to conduct a study on computer-mediated communication with a focus on the teaching and learning of the English language in Nigeria. The study aims to bring to the fore the issues and challenges associated with this new normal. The study also examines the benefits associated with the use of this technology in the teaching and learning of the English language. The study also employs Direct Participatory Observation and a questionnaire as means of gathering data for the research. Famous Mclunnham’s Technological Determinism Theory was employed as the theoretical framework of analysis. On the whole, the paper discovered among other things that the use of CMC made students confident and gives them the zeal of being online and wanting to discover and learn via the medium of computer-mediated communication. The study concludes that the use of this method of teaching and learning English in Nigeria has to be encouraged for efficiency and exactness for both in the teaching and learning of English in Nigeria. Solutions and recommendations were proffered to ameliorate the challenges associated with the use of these technological devices.

Imperialism is substantially a global, historical, cultural, economic, and political phenomenon. In Africa, how European imperialism has affected people continues to be subjected to debate with varying viewpoints. However, most of the literature on imperialism places greater emphasis on its political and economic dimensions, with passing discussion on its cultural aspect. This study intends to examine the impact of cultural imperialism on the Hausa people. Over the years, from pre-colonial through the colonial and post-colonial periods, Hausa cultures have been subjected to different changes due to different factors, imperialism included. Using primary and secondary sources, this study shows that the major areas of Hausa culture mostly affected by British cultural imperialism include language, culinary habits, attire, traditional sports, lifestyles, and festivities. Given the complexity of the current scholarly debate on the topic, a compilation of multiple viewpoints would be useful. In addition, the linked concepts, such as cultural imperialism and the concept of culture will be examined in depth.

Address and reference terms have attracted a lot of attention in sociolinguistic research. The present study contributes to these works by investigating the kind of address and referring expressions used by postgraduate students when they share e-mails with their lecturers and their colleagues as well as how age, gender and familiarity affect these terms. Using Brown and Ford’s (1961) study on Address in American English as a conceptual framework, a Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) questionnaire was designed and used to retrieve data from fifty-six (56) respondents who were all postgraduate students. The data revealed that postgraduate students mainly used five (5) forms of address terms in e-mails to lecturers: titles, attention getters, kinship terms, personal names and nicknames, and six (6) referring expressions (of lecturers) in e-mails to their colleagues: titles, kingship terms, personal names, nicknames, course titles and generic reference. The study concludes that, whereas age and gender greatly affect address terms and referring expressions in students-lecturers e-mails, familiarity does not present that much considerable influence on the address terms and referring expressions used in students-lecturers e-mails.

This study is a critique of a transitional state of mind and a comment on a juncture of indecision in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951). It is about a teenage boy who got expelled from his school and avoided going to his home for a few days. Lonely, on the cusp of adulthood, Holden Caulfield reclusively vacillates between what he was and what he is going to be. Since its publication till present, J. D. Salinger's Catcher is perceived as one of the perceptible novels to protrude from post-World War II. It revolves around the mettle of a troubled boy, called Holden Caulfield, towards a revelation. Tracking Holden's biography allows Salinger to wander into the minds of his peer adolescents and create a microcosm for them. The analysis will, therefore, be designated as a coming of age novel and as a trauma of World War II. The paper aims at examining the psychological structure of adolescence and what lies beyond and of the trauma of war and what did leave behind. The notions of Holden's angst and alienation justify the concept of vacillation and deepen the psychological and mental disorder of his oscillatory time and age. In short, this article aims to give a comprehensive account of the ambience of adolescents and how certain psychological and social conditions are crystalized behind their vacillation.

Banana Yoshimoto (the pen name of Mahoko Yoshimoto, born in 1964) is a Japanese writer who, like her contemporary Haruki Murakami, is distinguished by her desire to question and problematize aspects of modern Japanese society in her fiction. Banana Yoshimoto is regarded as a representative figure in contemporary Japanese fiction, foregrounding the experiences and self-questioning of a younger generation struggling to find its place in a society torn between conservatism and the contingencies of a radical, dynamic, globalized, but at the same time, consumer culture. The elusiveness of relationships, of intimacy, of love and life, the difficulty of defining and finding happiness, and the inscrutability of one’s self are some of the central themes in her writing. This paper looks at Yoshimoto’s widely acclaimed novella, Kitchen (1987), and the manner in which Mikage Sakurai, the protagonist, manoeuvers through death, loneliness and healing to arrive at a secure sense of self. This happens through the primary metaphor of the kitchen, and the gendered associations that it elicits. At the same time, Yoshimoto’s representation of this space, as well as of food in general, challenges certain stereotypes associated with these. In the process, interpersonal relationships as well as the conventional idea of family also come to be reconstituted in the novella.

This article entitled “Some Perspectives on Overcoming Communication Challenges in the Selected Novels of Fatou Diome, Gloria Naylor, Leanora Miano, Pamela Jooste and Walter Mosley”, analyses both genetic and biological disparities from childhood that characterize the lives of boys and girls till adulthood in society. Thus, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (Diome), The Women of Brewster Place (Naylor), Tels des astres éteints (Miano), Dance with a poor man’s Daughter (Jooste), and RL’s Dream (Mosley), motivated their use to raise an awareness campaigns on female conscientization against a male conspiracy built on the law of silence against the female gender, resulting in male marginalization, of women in gender relationships through diverse cultural and religious practices represented by the corpus. In order to achieve this goal, the following analytical tools were used: feminist criticism, post-colonialism and Africana Womanism. The hypothesis is based on the fact that the corpus underscores gender conflicts that rock power is exercised against women through the channel of communication by men. The analysis concluded that female consciousness raising is a tool that women use to counteract any form of subjugation in patriarchal societies that struggle to their emancipation and freedom. Consequently, the analysis highlights the philosophical and ideological vision that all five authors have of their respective African and African-American societies, concerning gender equality.