Exit West by Mohsin Hamid propagates the reflection of a war-torn city and subsequent challenges faced by two asylum seekers. But sexual fluidity may appear as another key concern of the novel. This paper analyses the traits of sexual fluidity in Nadia, one of the protagonists of the novel experimenting her situation-dependent flexibility in sexual responsiveness. Nadia, in the beginning, is though found as a heterosexual adult girl, over time she becomes sexually fluid. Again, in the last phase of her life, she returns to meet Saeed, her first noteworthy lover with whom she shares the most crucial part of her life in home and abroad. This shifting of sexual attraction elevates questions about her sex/sexual preference broadly considering the concept of nonexclusive attractions and behaviours. Finally the paper comes to a decision how different concepts of sexuality are motivated by cultural, biological, and psychological constructs.

This study investigates different methods for improving speaking skill and compares using traditional methods with using consciousness-raising (CR) tasks. The aim of this study was three fold: (i) to explore whether using CR tasks can improve Iranian EFL learners’ speaking skill in terms of self-efficacy, (ii) to examine whether using CR tasks can improve Iranian EFL learners’ speaking skill in terms of autonomy, and (iii) to explore Iranian EFL learner’ attitudes towards the effects of using CR tasks on their speaking skill in terms of self-efficacy and autonomy. To achieve these aims, 30 L2 learners studying English at Payam Persa language institute in Zarinshahr were selected, after taking part in an Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT), as the participants of the study. They were subsequently divided into two groups of equal size in order to obtain the required data. The study was a quasi-experimental one, which employed a pretest-treatment-posttest design. The experimental group (EG) was exposed to the treatment (i.e., Consciousness-Raising), while the control group (CG) was taught based on the pattern drill practice and traditional methods. The required data were obtained from a Face to Face Oral Placement Test (FFOPT), speaking pretest/posttest, speaking self-efficacy questionnaire, and speaking autonomy questionnaire. The findings showed that using CR tasks had significant effects on the learners’ self-efficacy. Furthermore, using CR tasks had a significant effect on the autonomy of the learners. In addition, the participants had significantly positive attitudes towards using CR tasks for the purpose of speaking self-efficacy and speaking autonomy in language class. The use of CR tasks has many pedagogical benefits for the teachers and they are enjoyable among the EFL learners.

If you want to write a novel with a lot of action in it, you will need to use a lot of verbs. By the same token, if you change your style and focus on an effective description of a memorable event or a marvelous place, you will have to switch to a plethora of adjectives. In our case, in 2009 Paul Collins used his erudite expertise and his quite impressive vocabulary to create a vivid history of Shakespeare’s First Folio that came out in 1623. It is a masterpiece in the true sense and in its own class that ripened through the centuries. Not only did it survive the patina of time; it is now showing its uniqueness for all to see.

Literature can play an important role in shaping our responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It can offer us significant insights into how individuals treated the trauma of pandemics in the past, and how to survive in a situation beyond our control. Considering the changes and challenges that the coronavirus might bring for us, we should know that the world we are living in today is shaped by the biological crisis of the past. This understanding can help us deal with the challenges in the current pandemic situation. Literature can show us how the crisis has affected the lives of infected individuals. By exploring the theme of disease and pandemic, which is consistent and well-established in literature (Cooke, 2009), we come across a number of literary works dealing with plagues, epidemics and other forms of biological crises. Among the prominent examples of pandemic literature is Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947), narrating the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The novel illustrates the powerlessness of individuals to affect their destinies. Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague (1912) is another story depicting the spread of the Red Death, an uncontrollable epidemic that depopulated and nearly destroyed the world. The book is considered as prophetic of the coronavirus pandemic, especially given London wrote it at a time when the world was not as quickly connected by travel as it is today (Matthews, 2020). Furthermore, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death (1842) is a short story on the metaphorical element of the plague. Through the personification of the plague, represented by a mysterious figure as a Red Death victim, the author contemplates on the inevitability of death; the issue is not that people die from the plague, but that people are plagued by death (Steel, 1981). Moreover, Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826) is another apocalyptic novel, depicting a future which is ravaged by a plague. Shelley illustrates the concept of immunization in this fiction showing her understanding about the nature of contagion. Pandemic is also depicted in medieval writings, such as Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales illustrating human behaviour: the fear of infection increased sins such as greed, lust and corruption, which paradoxically led to infection and consequently to both moral and physical death (Grigsby, 2008). In ancient literature, Homer’s Iliad opens with a plague visited upon the Greek camp at Troy to punish the Greeks for Agamemnon’s enslavement of Chryseis. Plague and epidemic were rather frequent catastrophes in ancient world. When plague spread, no medicine could help, and no one could stop it from striking; the only way to escape was to avoid contact with infected persons and contaminated objects (Tognotti. 2013). Certainly, COVID-19 has shaken up our economic systems and affected all aspects of our living. In this respect, literature can give us the opportunity to think through how similar crises were dealt with previously, and how we might structure our societies more equitably in their aftermath. Thus, in order to explore what literature tells us about the pandemic, the following interview is conducted with Frederick Aldama, a Distinguished Professor of English at the Ohio State University.