RESUMEN
This study attempts to generate new insights into the wide spread online and offline conspiratorial discourse on COVID-19. Twofold analytical lens consisted of narrative interrelations framework and content analysis showed how the linguistic resources and conversational such as popular socio-religious discourses, hypothetical narratives, personal narratives, personal mental archives, and interpolated arguments are integrated in the interpretation of intertextual Bases such as Bill Gates' TED talk 2015 (26%); Nematullah Wali's predictions (32%); 'End of Days' book by Sylvia Browne (14.9%); and 'The Eyes of Darkness' novel by Dean Koontz (22%) by which the conspiracists in Pakistan construct an internally persuasive discourse promoting conspiracy theories on COVID-19. Several linguistic resources such as mood, modality, topicalization, insinuation, and intertextuality emerged as the main tools of making the conspiracy theories internally persuasive.
RESUMEN
This longitudinal study examined the effect of the Visual Memory Development Technique (VMDT) on the motivation of students with low proficiency to read in the EFL context. The sample population consisted of 64 Preparatory Year (PY) students at Najran University. All 64 students were given the Motivation for Reading in English Questionnaire (MREQ) to measure their motivation to read prior to the treatment (VMDT). The 64 students were divided into an experimental and a control group. Both groups received instructions for reading with their traditional remedial materials, but the experimental group's instruction was supplemented by the addition of the VMDT at the beginning of each reading class for twelve lessons over a six-week period. An exit slip was given to the students at the end of each lesson. After six weeks, the MREQ was administered to both groups to measure the change in the students' motivation to read in the English language. The results of the quantitative tool (MREQ) were analyzed via SPSS (Ver.16) and Excel (Ver. 2013), and the findings of the qualitative tools (experimentation and exit slips) were collected and analyzed using a thematic approach. The post-test result for the MREQ showed a significant difference in students' motivations (F = 10, 21, p < 05). Based on the results, the students in the reading group that was given the VMDT at the beginning of the class showed increased motivation to read in the English language inside the classroom; suggestions and pedagogical implications are presented accordingly.