Archives-July 2016

Amit Chaudhuri's first Novel A Strange and Sublime Address won the Betty Trask Award (1991) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (1992) and was short-listed for the-Guardian Fiction prize (1991). In 1993, Afternoon Raag won the Southern Arts Literature Prize and won the Encore Award for Best Second Novel. Freedom Song was published in 1998 and won the Los Angeles Book Prize for Fiction (2000). His recent novel, A New World was published to great acclaim in the year 2000. His latest Book Real Time (2002), includes a number of short stories set in Bombay and Calcutta, some of which have been published in The London Review of Books, The Time Literary Supplement and The New Yorker. He is also the editor of the Picador Book of Modem Indian Literature published by Picador in 2001. He lives in Calcutta with his wife and daughter. The theme of the novel A Strange and Sublime Address deals with myriad impressions of life etched vividly in the consciousness of Sandeep, a Bombay based ten year old Bengali boy during the summer vacations he spends in the house of his youngest maternal uncle Chottamama in Calcutta. The random and banal occurrences of his day to day life such as baths, meals, outing, shopping, games, watching the adult routine, rituals, household chores and so on form the subject of the novel. Afternoon Raag tells the story of a young English Literature student at Oxford University, whose obsession with music is matched only by his equally obsessive memories and hallucinations. The ‘raag’ is not only an allusion to the musical tastes, but also a reference to the substance of the novel and its poetic and musical prose. The book might have got its title from an experience of an afternoon, when the narrator bought his first tanpura and tuned it with his Guru. The theme of his third novel A New World deals with the ordinary family life of Jayojit Chatterjee. The central character of the novel is Jayojit Chatteijee. He is a successful economist, a writer and university lecturer. He travels with his son Vikram to Calcutta from the United States to visit Jayojit’s parents for two months in the sweltering premonsoon season. Jayojit had recently finalized a divorce between himself and Vikram’s mother Amala. The divorce was stressful, but Jayojit and his exwife were able to reach a reasonable agreement concerning the joint custody of their son. Jayojit’s father a retired Admiral, has kept English as his language to perpetuate his membership of a ruling class. His mother busies herself with tasks done by servants in the days of plenty. Chaudhuri’s beautiful novels offer delicate tableaux of these characters. They whisper their visions to the readers with an eerie intimacy and power.

Abstract The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of homework writing as an academic extra-curricular activity on second language vocabulary development of upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners. To do so, having reviewed the related literature thoroughly, the researcher designed the present quasi-experimental study. One hundred homogenized upper intermediate learners (both males and females) in an institute in Tehran, Iran, took part in the study in two groups (experimental and control groups) and the experimental group received separate trainings based on the specific extracurricular activities. The participants received a standard TOEFL PBT as the test of language proficiency as well as the validated pretest of second language vocabulary, the treatment, and posttest of second language vocabulary. Findings of the present study firstly revealed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups’ means on the posttest of vocabulary. Thus it was concluded that homework writing as an academic extra-curricular activity significantly affects second language vocabulary development of Iranian Upper-intermediate EFL learners. The findings also showed no statistically significant difference between the male and female learners concerning their second language vocabulary development affected by homework writing as an academic extra-curricular activity. The present study contributes to the fields of SLA and ELT instruction as its findings are in line with the previous research in the ESL context and some studies done in the EFL context. Also, this research not only could improve our understanding of second language vocabulary development in an EFL context, but also would enable us to incorporate effective methods of teaching vocabulary in the EFL classrooms through considering various homework types. The study findings could be employed by a variety of ELT community members in Iranian schools and language institutes: materials developers, foreign language teachers, and educational policy makers. It was stressed that homework writing could pave the way for the learners in an EFL situation to improve their performance in second language vocabulary.

With the advancement in technology and increase in number of vehicles it is the need of the day to recognize registered and unregistered vehicles. Extraction of number plate plays a key role in the recognition of vehicles. For this purpose, in this paper we propose a system to automatically extract digits and alphabets from the number plate of vehicle and search it in the database for its registration. The proposed approach involves four different processes that include Image smoothing, Edge detection, Image segmentation and data extraction. The result shows that the proposed approach can easily detect and extract data from the number plates. Some of the number plates and its extracted data are shown in this paper. The results can further be implemented on automatic extraction of data from shields, sign etc.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of paragraph writing on vocabulary learning of Iranian intermediate EFL students. The main question this study tried to answer was whether Paragraph Writing might enhance higher knowledge of vocabulary in Iranian learners of English. To answer the question, 30 English intermediate students (male & female) participated in the experiment of the study. They were selected Via an OPT test score which had its own criteria to select a homogenous group. Then they were divided into two groups and were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. The participants of this study were all students at Azad University of Tonekabon. Next, a pre – test of English vocabulary taken from TOEFL book, was administered to both groups. The pretest consisted of 20 multiple – choice of vocabulary each had 1 point as their score. Then, they were taught vocabularies for 10 sessions but with different methodologies: the experimental group received the treatment of Paragraph Writing for ten sessions, using the vocabulary they were taught. However, the control group received the existing methods of teaching vocabulary like translation and synonyms, etc. A post – test of English vocabulary which was parallel with the pretest but had different items was then administered to both groups. The data of the study were analyzed using an independent sample t – test to indicate the groups' post – test mean difference. The degree of progress from the pre – test to the post – test in the two groups of the study was indicated by calculating two separate ANCOVA coefficients. The result indicated that the Iranian EFL learners in the experimental group received higher scores, though not significantly, in vocabulary after being treated with 10 sessions of the treatment.

Jack bean (Canavalia ensiformis) was field grown at population densities of 10.0, 13.3, 17.8, 20.0, 26.7 and 40.0 x 103 plants/ha and evaluated for herbage yield and quality 63 days after planting. Dry matter (DM) yield of all the plant components examined increased up to a density of 26.7 x 103 plants/ha and then declined. The leaf fraction and the total plant recorded maximum of 3698 and 5787 Kg DM/ha respectively. As population density increased, the leaf: stem ratio decreased from 2.7 to 2.0 to 1.6. The leaf blade, leaf stalk, stem (main stem and young branches) and developing inflorescences fraction registered averages of 24.5, 8.6, 7.8 and 17.8 % crude protein respectively. It could be concluded that Jack bean has the potential to serve as supplement to low quality ruminant feed sources.

We are very happy to announce that from 4th July 2016, Prof. (Dr.) Bipin J. Agrawal has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Textile Chemistry. Prof. (Dr.) Bipin J. Agrawal working as Associate Professor, Department of Textile Chemistry, Faculty of Technology & Engineering, The M. S. University of Baroda, Vadodara 390 001 (Gujarat), India. The appointment of Prof. (Dr.) Bipin J. Agrawal as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal. Please send any expressions of interest to elixirpublishers@gmail.com.

We are very happy to announce that from 4th July 2016, Dr. A. Sasi Kumar has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Computer Science. Dr. A. Sasi Kumar working as Associate Professor, Vels University, Chennai, India. The appointment of Dr. A. Sasi Kumar as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal. Please send any expressions of interest to elixirpublishers@gmail.com.

We are very happy to announce that from 22nd July 2016, Dr. Mangesh Anil Bhutkar has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Pharmacy. Dr. Mangesh Anil Bhutkar working as an Assistant Professor in Pharmaceutics Department at Kasegaon Education Society’s, Rajarambapu College of Pharmacy, Kasegaon, Maharashtra, India. The appointment of Dr. Mangesh Anil Bhutkar as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal. Please send any expressions of interest to elixirpublishers@gmail.com.

Table of contents for the month of July 2016