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Word of the Year 2024: A Reflection Through Language

Word of the Year 2024: A Reflection Through Language As we stand on the brink of 2025, it’s fascinating to see how words capture the essence of our collective experiences. Words don’t just live in dictionaries; they thrive in our minds and conversations, as Virginia Woolf aptly remarked: "Words are the wildest, freest, most irresponsible, most unteachable of all things... they do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind." Each year, the selection of a “Word of the Year” reflects more than mere popularity—it tells a story of societal change and the zeitgeist of the moment. Let’s explore 2024’s most celebrated words and a few new entries that have reshaped our vocabulary: Word of the Year 2024 🗨️ Merriam-Webster : Polarization A term both sides of the political spectrum agree on, capturing the divisive yet defining debates of our times. 🗨️ Oxford : Brain rot A phrase emblematic of the dangers of excessive virtual life and how we utilize our free time. 🗨️ Collins Dicti...

English Language Speaking Anxiety Among Sri Lankan Students

English Language Speaking Anxiety Among Sri Lankan Student s According to the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Sinhala and Tamil are designated as the National Languages of the country, while English serves as the link language (Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka - Chapter IV - Language, n.d.) . Furthermore, the Constitution affirms that “a person shall be entitled to be educated through the medium of either of the National Languages: Provided that the provisions of this paragraph shall not apply to an institution of higher education where the medium of instruction is a language other than a National Language.” This provision ensures linguistic inclusivity in state-funded higher education while offering flexibility for universities to provide courses in multiple languages. Consequently, undergraduates are often required to use English for various purposes within universities, given its status as both a global and academic lang...

Role of a Teacher - I

Role of a Teacher Last Monday, I had a very nice discussion with one of my colleagues about the role of a teacher. This conversation inspired me to write about my personal opinion on the subject. Teacher/Lecturer From a pragmatic perspective, the word "teacher" typically refers to someone who educates school-aged learners, whereas "lecturer" denotes a person who delivers specialized content to undergraduates. However, both these referential nouns can be broadly identified as educators (using educators as an umbrella term that includes teachers, lecturers, and others in similar roles). It is commonly understood that an educator's role is to educate or teach. But is that their main role? As a practitioner in the field, I believe, the role of a teacher is to create an environment where students feel motivated and engaged in the learning process. This enables students to develop a genuine desire to learn. The responsibility of an educator goes far beyond simply deli...

Increasing Intellectual Interaction among the Teacher and the Learners in an ESL Classroom

What is intellectual interaction- Intellectual means the combination of two or more groups of people to exchange their existing knowledge with each other. It is like cooperative learning which is based on pairs or groups of learners. This benefits both the parties to gather and share information with each other. Why is intellectual interaction important- A teacher’s interaction in a classroom affects the academic and behavioral success of a student. If the teacher has a positive interaction with the learner, it will help the learner to achieve his or her goal more easily than the one who received negative interactions from the teacher. Each language learner needs emotional and instructional support from the teacher. How can a teacher interact with the learner- According to Muntner, M. (2008), there are three categories: emotional sup...

Increasing Intellectual Interaction among the Learners and the Teachers in an ESL Classroom

What is Intellectual Interaction? Classroom is a heterogenous place where teachers and different students from different socio-economic settings come together and learning happens. Therefore, the interaction has to be managed by everyone taking part in teaching-learning process because interaction is a reciprocal action that people do together and in a cooperate way. In that sense, the intellectual interaction among learners and between learners and teachers happens in a classroom setting. Why Intellectual Interaction among Teachers and Learners is Important? In an ESL classroom, what becomes important in language learning and teaching is that in addition to increase students’ linguistic knowledge, language teaching is also expected to focus on the language as well as a channel to convey information, to develop ideas, comprehension, and to neg...

Increasing Intellectual Interaction Among The Learners And The Teacher In An ESL Classroom

Role of teacher in the classroom Teacher in an ESL classroom has a responsibility to interact with the students of the class. Teachers always keep in touch with the students and ask questions from the student and when the teacher enters the classroom, with comparable training in accounting and pedagogy. It's also a major influence that affects the intellectual interaction between both parties. Communication is also another factor that can develop intellectual interaction . If the teacher is talking to rapt rows of students, it’s very harmful to interaction. When a teacher communicates better it leads to students’ mutual understanding and mutual respect toward the teacher. So this way of communication contributes to making a bridge called intellectual interaction to keep a positive relationship between the students and the teachers. Good teachers' communication influence encourages the students' persuasion, self-advocacy, and questioning. These facts close the gap between...

INCREASING INTELLECTUAL INTERACTION AMONG THE LEARNERS AND THE TEACHER IN AN ESL CLASSROOM

What is intellectual interaction? Intellectual interaction can be simply defined as the interaction between individuals where they share information. This includes sharing of information between two or multiple individuals. The word intellectual brings this explanation to a new frontier. Brown (2001:165) defines interaction as the cooperative exchange of ideas, sentiments, or thoughts between two or more people that have a reciprocal impact on one another. Moreover, Rivers According to (1988:3), communication entails more than merely expressing one's opinions. and understanding of others' perspectives. One response (directly or indirectly) after listening to others; others Observe and react. Through this connection, the participants develop meaningful interpretations. Proper communication is the factor that makes humans the dominant species of the plant. We can communicate effectively with one another which enables humans to improve their cognition and this communication enab...

Increasing Intellectual Interaction among the learners and the teacher in an ESL classroom

What is intellectual interaction in an ESL classroom? Intellectual interaction is the formal relationship that is maintained between the teacher and the learners in a classroom. It is the teacher’s involvement that influences either to have a positive interactive or negative interactive learning environment within the classroom. When the teacher is able to establish positive interaction among students, they get motivated to learn more and it becomes effortless even to teach. Otherwise, if the teacher makes a negative interaction with the students, the students pay less attention and become easily bored in learning in an ESL classroom. Intellectual interaction among students can be improved by conducting interactive activities. They are the key factors (interactive activities) that make the ESL classroom effective and fruitful. Thus, these activities make the student very active, responsible, and confident during the ...

Increasing intellectual interaction among the the learners and the teacher in an ESL classroom.

This is an experience of a friend from another university in Sri Lanka, true story but names are changed for convenience.Isuru was at a basic level in his English knowledge but was a nerd in his field of archeology. He would carry out research and was a person with interesting ideas but had a little difficulty communicating them in English. At his university he was in a lower level class in the foundation in English course. One day he came out from the class really frustrated because that day what they discussed in the class was about unicorns. Even though the lesson was carried out in English, the content would have been rather interesting to children and not everyone in a classroom of university students. Course contents need to be intellectually stimulating for learners to engage in better conversations to develop their skills. The Radiant Way: First Step, book by Elizabeth L. Sinton and Jane Brown wouldn't be appropriate in a classroom of adult learners even though it i...

Higher-Order-Skills and Interaction in an ESL Classroom

Increasing intellectual interaction among the learners and the teacher in an ESL classroom can be indicated as an essential requirement in the teaching learning process. This idea of intellectual interaction can be understood as developing higher order thinking skills of the learner interlocutors within the classroom discourse community through instruction interaction and peer interaction. This phenomenon can be understood through Bloom’s Taxonomy to learning, socio-cultural perspectives and theories to interaction. Intellectuality Intellectuality is the achievement of an individual to be able to critically think, research and reflect about the reality about the society. In Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of learning (1956), a hierarchical classification of types of learning is presented. According to that, knowledge as the basic ability to recall facts, comprehension as the ability to understand relationship among facts and application as the ability to use information in varied con...