EDITORIAL WELCOME FOR VOLUME 10 ISSUE 1 (APRIL 2016)
On behalf of the Editorial Team, I would like to extend a very warm welcome to the readership of the journal Novitas-ROYAL. I take this opportunity to thank the authors, editors and reviewers for their voluntary contribution to the success of Novitas-ROYAL in its 9th year of publication.
In this issue, Sylvén and Sundqvist present the validation of the Young Learner Vocabulary Assessment Test (YLVAT) taken by Swedish students. Via four validity measurements, it is indicated that YLVAT possesses useful features to determine learners’ vocabulary knowledge. The second article, by Top, Liew and Luo, focuses on a longitudinal study that investigated the effects of a school-based program, called Second Step, on observed problem behaviors. The selected sample consisted of 5,189 students from 16 control and 19 treatment schools. The results indicated that the students in treatment schools raised their achievement and also displayed fewer negative school behaviors. In the third article, Watanabe investigates a novice language learner’s development of interactional competence through data collected over four years in an English language teaching program in Japan. The study contributes to the related literature on the development of communicative competence over time. The fourth article, by Tuncer, presents the refusal strategies used by Turkish university instructors of English via a Discourse Completion Test identifying that the participants preferred indirect strategies the most. In the final article, Jubouri Al-Ogaili and Babaee explore the political chaos in Cat’s Cradle, written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1963, by focusing on the post-nuclear characteristics through the discourse in the novel.
In closing, we also thank the readers of Novitas-ROYAL, whose support has been a great motivator for all those involved in these publications. So whether you have recently found us or have been a dedicated subscriber for years, we hope that you enjoy reading the articles in this issue, and that they inspire you to shape your future research studies.
Sezgi Sarac
Editor-in-Chief
Akdeniz University, Antalya, TURKEY
.