EDITORIAL WELCOME FOR VOLUME 13 ISSUE 1 (APRIL 2019)
On behalf of the Editorial Team, it is a pleasure to welcome our readership to volume 13(1) of Novitas-ROYAL (Research on Youth and Language). Once again, we would like to thank the authors and the editorial team for their contributions. This issue seeks to add to the literature with studies examining aspects in the affective and cognitive domains of learning, for both students and preservice teachers.
The first three articles focus on students’ perceptions while learning English as a foreign language. The article by Basoz and Erten examine learners’ perceptions of the aspects influencing their in-class willingness to communicate. The findings highlight the importance of factors varying from motivation to self-perceived communication competence. In the next article by Dislen-Daggol, a statistically significant relationship is found between learning climate and learners’ perceptions of their selfefficacy. The implications underline the importance of teachers building a positive learning atmosphere to enable the development of learners’ positive self-concepts. In the third article by Yuce, the scope is to investigate the self-regulated learning perceptions of foreign language learners at tertiary level in Turkey. The findings indicate that the participants have problems varying from controlling the stress level to relating the new knowledge to the existing knowledge base. In the light of the findings, it is suggested that informing learners on self-regulated learning via activities may improve the efficiency of language learning.
In the fourth article, Staub and Kirkgoz explore standards assessment in teacher education programs of English as a foreign language in Turkey. The data collected through a survey and interviews reveal that even though university faculty members are knowledgeable about the standards, not enough attention is paid to assess the effectiveness of the teacher education program.
The fifth article by Zorba and Cakir investigates two issues. First, whether the coursebook used for the 7th graders of English as a foreign language in Turkey promotes intercultural awareness or not. Secondly, the evaluation of the effectiveness of a series of instructional activities designed to develop learners’ cultural awareness. Although the coursebook is not found to be effective, the implementational design contributes to the learners’ awareness of cultural and intercultural issues.
In the last article of the issue, Karagoz and Isisag examine the request strategies employed by Turkish senior students of English language teaching and the pragmatic competence of the participants in their request speech acts. The results indicate that the participants tend to prefer conventional indirect request strategies while communicating with an equal status interlocutor. Nevertheless, with a higher-status interlocutor, they have difficulty in requesting appropriately and politely.
In closing, we would also like to thank our readership for their support, and we hope that you enjoy this issue. Moreover, we would like to invite researchers to submit their contributions to the upcoming issue in October 2019.
Sezgi SARAC, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief