Although English is the lingua franca of international humanitarian medicine, healthcare professionals trained in predominantly Francophone systems often face significant communicative barriers in high-pressure environments. This study investigates the linguistic preparedness of Algerian doctors during the 2024 Gaza humanitarian mission, a context in which English functioned as the primary operational language. Using an exploratory mixed-methods design, data were collected from ten participating doctors through a semi-structured questionnaire and discourse analysis of a narrative field account. Findings reveal a critical functional gap: while participants possessed receptive academic English, they lacked operational fluency for core clinical tasks. Notably, a ‘productive atrophy’ was identified in clinical writing, with 0% of participants engaging in English-based documentation in their daily practice. During the mission, although 90% of practitioners subjectively felt that language barriers did not noticeably degrade the final quality of care, a staggering 80% admitted to specific instances where they were unable to perform effectively due to linguistic limitations. Specifically, 60% of participants reported significant difficulties in high-stakes tasks, including discussing patient cases and writing medical notes, with qualitative data highlighting terminological misalignment during surgery and an inability to produce accurate post-operative documentation. The findings suggest a structural misalignment between Algeria’s French-medium medical education and the demands of global emergency medicine. The results advocate for a shift towards Medical English as a Lingua Franca (MELF) models that prioritise operational speed and patient safety. The findings provide empirical justification for the integration of task-based Medical English (EMP) training within the Algerian medical curriculum to ensure professional autonomy in international contexts. The study contributes to ESP research by conceptualising linguistic preparedness as a dimension of clinical competence in high-stakes international medical contexts.

Climate fiction (Cli-fi) is one of the literary responses to the ecological changes that are a product of the Anthropocene. The narrative structures of climate change representation, while they get less attention, have received sustained critical scrutiny in recent scholarship about the theme of cli-fi. This study focuses on the narratological structure of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future (2020) in order to prove that certain climate fictions develop distinctive narrative patterns that are capable of reflecting the ideological and epistemological tensions of a planetary crisis. Through close textual analysis, this study identifies a number of repeated structural features found in the novel, namely: catastrophic immersion as entry point into the climate catastrophe, scalar expansion from personal witness to global systems, polyphonic narrative voices, documentary interruptions that conflate fiction and analysis, trauma-focused subjectivity, and essayistic commentary on political and economic systems. This paper argues that these structural features are not just stylistic innovations but ideological interventions. Robinson’s narrative brings together various knowledges – scientific, political, experiential – within a single narrative structure. In doing so, the novel reconfigures modern convention to present a climate politics that speaks to collective responsibility, intergenerational justice, and systemic change. As per the article, cli-fi as a genre, has developed specialized narrative structures and hybridised storytelling forms in order to tackle climate change’s ideological and conceptual demands.

This study examines the enhancement of teachers’ linguistic and pedagogical competencies through capacity-building initiatives in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The research focuses on teachers’ English language proficiency, communicative competence, metalinguistic awareness, and pedagogical language knowledge—competencies essential for effective instruction where indigenous languages dominate daily communication. Using census sampling, questionnaires were distributed to 300 newly recruited teachers, with 260 responding (86.7% response rate). Data analysis via SPSS version 29 employed frequency counts, percentages, and descriptive statistics. Findings reveal that training effectively improves teachers’ linguistic and pedagogical competencies, demonstrating positive impacts on instructional practices, lesson delivery, student engagement, and classroom management. However, challenges exist in developing advanced academic language skills, implementing sophisticated questioning strategies, and creating English-rich learning environments. The primary obstacles were accelerated training pace and indigenous language dominance in daily communication. The study recommends extending training duration with dedicated modules on language awareness, academic discourse, and strategies for maximising English use in indigenous language-dominant contexts.

This quasi-experimental study investigated the effectiveness of a 12-week AI-assisted intervention on presentation skills development among 94 BA second-year English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. Employing a mixed-methods design with pre-test/post-test measures, the study examined the impact of AI-powered feedback tools on five dimensions of presentation competence: content organization, language accuracy, delivery skills, visual aids, and audience engagement. The research was guided by three primary questions: (1) To what extent does AI-assisted instruction improve EFL students' presentation skills? (2) What are the differential effects of AI-assisted instruction across various dimensions of presentation competence? and (3) How do students perceive the utility of AI feedback in developing their presentation abilities?

Participants (N = 94) were divided into experimental (n = 47) and control (n = 47) groups, with the experimental group receiving structured AI-assisted practice using speech recognition and automated feedback platforms. Results indicated statistically significant improvements in the experimental group across all measured dimensions, with large effect sizes (Cohen's d = 0.82 to 1.24). The highest gains were observed in pronunciation accuracy (M = 3.42, SD = 0.68 to M = 4.28, SD = 0.52) and fluency development (M = 3.18, SD = 0.74 to M = 4.15, SD = 0.61). Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) revealed significant group effects for all dimensions when controlling for pre-test scores, with partial eta squared values ranging from .15 to .21, indicating medium to large effect sizes. Qualitative findings from reflective journals and focus group interviews revealed that students valued the immediate, personalized feedback provided by AI tools, though they emphasized the continued importance of human instructor guidance. Three major themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: (1) the value of immediate and detailed feedback on performance dimensions, (2) the reduction of anxiety through private practice opportunities, and (3) the complementary roles of AI and human feedback in supporting comprehensive skill development. The study contributes to the growing body of research on AI-assisted language learning by demonstrating how technology can effectively support the development of complex oral communication skills. Implications for pedagogical practice and future research directions are discussed.

This paper presents a formal syntactic analysis of negation in Algerian Arabic (AA), a variety that has attracted growing scholarly attention yet remains inadequately theorized in formal syntactic terms. The study centres on the discontinuous negation construction mā…š, in which the preverbal particle mā and the postverbal clitic -š together constitute the canonical sentential negation strategy of the variety. Drawing on naturally occurring conversational data collected through ethnographic fieldwork in the Tiaret region of western Algeria and supplemented by structured elicitation from native speaker consultants, the analysis is developed within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995, 2001) and the cartographic framework (Rizzi, 1997; Cinque, 1999). The central proposal is that mā and -š head distinct functional projections — NegP2 and NegP1 respectively — in the clausal functional sequence, with NegP2 projecting above TP and NegP1 embedded within the inflectional domain above vP. This bipartite structure accounts for word order asymmetries, the scope of negation over temporal and aspectual operators, and the positioning of -š outside the object clitic cluster. The paper further identifies three principal environments in which -š is obligatorily suppressed: the presence of negative polarity items such as ḥatta wāḥed, wālu, and ʕomr; oath-prefaced utterances introduced by wallāh; and the lexically restricted case of the stative verb ʕaraf. These environments are unified under a feature-economy account in which an uninterpretable negative feature borne by another clause-internal element enters into an Agree relation with NegP2, rendering the lower NegP1 head redundant at PF. The analysis situates AA within the broader typology of discontinuous negation and contributes to ongoing debates on Jespersen’s Cycle, the internal geometry of NegP, and the syntax of negative polarity licensing.