This paper investigates ESL learners’ prototyping mass nouns as a grammatical category. The study is supported by the theory of prototype developed by Rosch in 1970s which plays a wide role in graded categorization of the existent entities in the world. With an expected inspiration from the theory, the prototyping of vocabulary received research attention especially in the pedagogical world. Promisingly, this study seeks to extend the theory to explore a lexico-grammatical category i.e. “mass nouns” from learners’ perspective. Actually, the study was directed to  find out which prototypical feature ESL students exploit to prioritize some mass nouns as prototypical examples over some other mass nouns, and  how far students’ experientially and pedagogically perceived “prototypes” of mass nouns help them to correctly grouping up nouns as in mass category. The study was focused on  shedding some light on a few pedagogical tips and implications in some likely challenging contexts of teaching mass nouns. The study reveals that ESL students shortlist ‘liquids’ (such as water, milk, wine, juice etc.) ‘gases’(such as hydrogen, oxygen etc.), ‘abstract ideas’ (such as childhood, anger, safety, knowledge etc.), ‘powdered substances’ (such as sand, sugar etc.), and some ‘natural entities’ (such as heat, sunshine etc.) as “prototype of mass nouns” which all are un-individuated and sometimes  intangible - meaning uncountable - while the learners recognize ‘non-countable’ status as the most important prototypical feature of mass nouns. And, the students isolated ‘rice’, ‘wheat’, ‘hair’, ‘grass’ , ‘cotton’ and ‘coal’ as less prototypical mass nouns based on their intrinsic sense that these mass nouns are plural and they even can be individuated. However, the study reflects that the students’ perceived prototypes are not sufficient as they selected and considered many of mass nouns as so distant members as countable. It was further found that contextual type shifts of mass-count nouns, arbitrary sematic distributions to lexis, cross-linguistic approach to mass nouns, intrinsic and realistic conception, superordinate-subordinate influence, and perception of enumerating status etc. account for students’ this surprise selection of a number of mass nouns as opposite category i.e. count nouns. If pedagogues are non-responsive to these factors and fail to redefine their approaches to mass noun teaching, it is most likely to lead to learners’ grammatical inaccuracy resulted from their determiner-number-mass noun mismatch.

This paper presents a possible new religious meaning of Robert Frost’s well-known poem “Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening”. This new meaning exploration is carried through an Islamic reading of the text. The study investigated how much correspondence the poem shares with Islam and what representation of Islamic themes and teachings is possible to exist in the text. To this end, a critical analysis was done to ferret out religious essence contained in the poem. The analysis was based on the post-structuralism literary theory which expostulates that a text has no fixed meaning; in a text, there can be multiple meanings. Based on this theory, the analysis shows that the poem exhibits a drawing of Islamic inspiration for search for Allah, articulates philosophy about Islamic ways of life, presents justification of the good and bad of life, Allah’s prohibitions and commandments, and Muslim roles and responsibilities. The poem is thus infinitely of more value as a piece of literary work and reluctant readers of Muslim tradition might consider reading the poem with new greater religious significance. This study, thus, adds a new value to the poem.

Bangladesh is a densely populated country with a population of 130 million. In Bangladesh the Government and non-Government organizations have taken sufficient initiative to increase the literacy rate but the significant development is yet to achieve. Despite the various steps taken by the Government, the literacy rate stands at 62 percent and, as such, the goal to educate all remains more or less as elusive as ever. Sophisticated technological development in the education world changes the pattern of role and responsibility of learners and teachers and creates more opportunities of learning. Using the virtual image of the Distance Education system there emerges a new horizon of innovativeness with its unlimited possibilities to resolve a very long felt need of eradicating illiteracy and developing human resources (HR) in the globe. Technologies are used in distance education and which can create a forceful impact to accelerate mass literacy, gender balance and also help develop human resources in the pursuit of acquiring different branches of knowledge and skill along with technical and vocational aspects to meet the thirsty need of the time. This paper addresses the issues for developing strategies for technology based literacy programme. It also highlights to identify the parameters for developing an appropriate technology based quality materials for literacy programme. Key words: Appropriate technology, distance education, virtual image, illiteracy, quality material. DOI = 10.3329/jard.v5i1.1449 J Agric Rural Dev 5(1&2), 1-6, June 2007

Critical thinking (CT) is one of the crucial skills of the 21st century. Nevertheless, in the educational sector of Bangladesh, CT is still not appropriately taught and practiced to develop learners’ expertise. This study aimed to investigate how EFL teachers facilitate critical thinking (CT) skills of the undergraduate low-proficient learners and what obstacles they faced in promoting CT skills in writing classes in Bangladesh. It integrated both quantitative and qualitative data to achieve the research goals. To conduct this study, the researchers collected data from twelve teachers from six universities in Chattogram, Bangladesh. The results show that the common challenges teachers face while facilitating CT skills are- their lack of proper knowledge and training, inadequate focus on promoting CT skills in the existing educational curriculum, lack of motivation of both students and teachers, difficulty in transitioning from a ‘teacher-centric’ to a ‘student-centric’ classroom, inconvenient classroom environment, and more focus on securing good grades. Findings also show that teachers in tertiary-level education did not pay enough attention to enhance CT and problem-solving skills. However, there are possibilities to enhance teachers' abilities to improve the CT skills of low-proficient EFL learners. The research findings will help tertiary-level EFL teachers understand the current practice of facilitating CT skills in Bangladesh and devise appropriate strategies for better action.

A three day long training programme of the tutors of Diploma in Youth in