No abstract

The impetus behind the development of this research is to study the potential influence(s) of cartoons (caricatures) on L2 learners in terms of gaining cultural awareness and enhancing their motivation levels. To that end, three English classics in the form of cartoons, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare, and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson have been determined for the experiment. In this quasi-experimental research design, 47 learners of English were asked to read these cartoons illustrated either with colourful or colourless pictures, whereas randomly selected 20 people in the population were only exposed to plain texts. An assessment form, statistically found valid and reliable, developed by the researchers after a comprehensive literature review and getting approvals of two professors in the field in content validity has been utilized in the study. Accordingly, the findings point out the fact that the first group who has aimed at learning the target language through cartoons has adopted more positive attitude towards the language and its culture. Briefly, the current research emphasizes the importance of cartoons in increasing learners' cultural awareness, motivation and educational accomplishments in the end.

No abstract

The purpose of that study is to investigate the implementation of vocabulary teaching through cartoons on students who have read texts in the format of comic strips and the ones reading without the support of any illustrations. This paper also aims to reveal the effects of students' age and gender during vocabulary teaching process. Cartoon extracts of three classics from English literature, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare, and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson have been utilized for the experiment. On the one hand, 47 Turkish students taking English courses in Research and Application Centre at a state university in Turkey were in the experimental group, and they were exposed to cartoons. On the other hand, randomly drawn 20 took part in the control group who read stories in plain text formats. According to the results of this quasiexperimental research, a significant difference could not be detected between two groups. Nevertheless, the experimental group was more successful in vocabulary achievement rates than the control group. Moreover, the results indicated the fact that female students were more successful than the males in word knowledge, and 20-29 year-old students were distinguished to be better than the other age groups.

As also labelled as online learning or e-learning, Web-based learning (WBL) has recently come to the forefront in language education thanks to a huge number of online teaching practices the pandemic has induced as well as the new platforms and some applications accommodating language studies. As such, the current research has been orchestrated to review prestigious academic papers on WBL in ELT published in flagship journals from the years 2015 to 2020. Moreover, it aims at clarifying the recent trends on e-learning platforms. 20 empirical studies which were based on quantitative, qualitative, or mixed designs and indexed in Clarivate Analytics (Thomson Reuters) were incorporated into the study. Having investigated them particularly considering the education context, participants, and the methods, the researcher discovered that an overwhelming majority of the studies were administered in higher education context according to mixed and quantitative research designs. Furthermore, the research on online learning platforms was heavily related to one of the macro skills (i.e. writing) besides listening and vocabulary to a degree. Another fundamental result was the limited number of studies employing blended learning contexts enriched with authentic activities which would make learners use higher-order thinking skills in the digital world. Finally, some suggestions have been offered to future studies on WBL in the light of the findings.