Cultural threads in oral presentations

Author(s): Elena Savu / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2014

Foreign language education in the 21st century does no longer focus on the merely linguistic competence, but rather on instructing our learners how to use the language communicatively. Given the globalization we are experiencing, communicative competence equally involves cultural awareness as a means to effectively communicate with other people who do not share the some cultural background. Oral presentations are complex classroom activities that can train learners to become competent oral communicators who are culturally sensitive. This paper will discuss the impact that culture has on oral competence and signal some important cultural cues learners should be made aware of when delivering live presentations.

"Blended Learning": Concept and Implementation in Language Learning

Author(s): Stefan COLIBABA / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2007

The aim of this article is to offer the reader an overview of the concept of "blended learning" and of the advantages of using this approach in language learning/ teaching. After online learning exposure has fallen short of creating real group bonding, the rise of the blended learning approach has given a fresh impetus to the role new technologies have in education in general and in language education in particular. Its key features are illustrated with examples of how blended learning methodology functions in the context of a number of language learning courses elaborated in two European Lingua projects called TOOL 2 and ALL, respectively.

"FIRE" AS THE "LOGO" OF THE ARTISTIC WORLDS

Author(s): Natalja Dyorina,Yuliya Yuzhakova,Liliya Polyakova,Tatyana Zalavina / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2019

Fire as the ‘Logo’ of Artistic Worlds. The aim of the present paper is to analyse the image of fire created by two representatives, one of the Acmeist and the other of the Romantic school of poetry, N. Gumilev and S.T. Coleridge, revealing similarities and differences between their approaches. The obvious parallelism of the poets’ works is demonstrated, with particular attention paid to the fact that specific fire-related images were emphasised by Gumilev in his translation of Coleridge’s works. The attributes of the artistic universes of the Russian and of the English poet are shown: the continuity and constant interaction of their elements, the identity of the properties of the whole and of its various parts in each case.

"Fit für Europa". Spracherwerb und (Inter)Kulturelles im studienbegleitenden Deutschunterricht

Author(s): Lora Constantinescu / Language(s): German / Issue: 1/2009

Fit for Europe – it is the core idea of a unit in a new book for teaching German for Special Purposes ("Mit Deutsch in Europa"/A2-B1). FL-acquisition means linguistic communication patterns and sometimes different cultural perceptions as well as the attribution of (possibly) different meanings. Therefore, the learners should be offered means and opportunities to get insights into what the foreign cultural background holds. It is the aim of this paper to highlight some basic theoretical positions and practical aspects when teaching German to students of Economics on L2-level. The focus lies on the chances/challenges of integrating a "blended choice" of L2-competences, business and intercultural communication skills.

"I am years seven old." Acquisition of English word order by Bosnian and Turkish children

Author(s): Azamat Akbarov,Larisa Đapo / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

This paper aims to investigate differences in the acquisition of English word order between Bosnian and Turkish students resulting from word order in these two languages (Bosnian and Turkish). In second language acquisition, the knowledge of the native language (L1) in acquisition of a foreign language (L2) can indeed have a facilitating or inhibiting effect on the learner’s progress in mastering a new language. Thirty children from the first grade at the International School of Sarajevo were tested. Some of them attended the kindergarten where English was a language of communication and the rest of them had six months of exposure of English in school settings. We wanted to find possible differences in acquiring word order in English in these groups of children as well. This study offers new results for acquiring correct word order in English.

"Kłótnia" i "kłótliwość" na tle stereotypów zawodowych i zwierzęcych w języku polskim i rosyjskim

Author(s): Michał Sarnowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: V/2000

"Евгений Онегин" Пушкина по-польски и по-украински

Author(s): Leontij Mironiuk / Language(s): Russian / Issue: III/1998

"Женитьба" Н. В. Гоголя на болгарской сцене

Author(s): Tatiana Fed / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 2/2019

The article traces a range of performances staging Gogol’s play Marriage in Bulgaria with a special emphasis on the respective translations into Bulgarian. The theory features translation and adaptation mechanisms specifically applied to cultural realia. The staging in the Sofia Theatre is highlighted. The methodology applied belongs to the framework of cross-cultural communication studies and employs cultural-historic and reception approaches.

"Земя" и "пустиня" в българската фразеология

Author(s): Ekaterina Struganova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1 (5)/2017

This article is dedicated to analyses of Bulgarian idioms stemming from semantic fields centred round "earth” and "desert” from the point of view of cultural linguistics. An attempt has been made to classify cultural markers which were found in our material published in the phraseological dictionaries.

[ˈhӕrəs] or [,həˈrӕs], [’hɒtəl] or [həʊˈtɛl]? – What/ Whose Language Do Our Students Learn (and Why)?

Author(s): Andreea Bratu / Language(s): English / Issue: XX/2019

Learners of a foreign language (L2) are to a greater or smaller extent influenced by their native tongue (L1), be it at the level of the structures used or at the lexical and morphological levels (tenses used according to the L1 verbal behavior, to give just one example). The purpose of this paper is twofold: to investigate the deviations from the standard pronunciation in English that are common among Romanian students, trying to explain them, and to analyse the choices they make between British and American pronunciation. Questionnaires have been used with Ist and IInd year students of the English Department of the Faculty of Letters in Craiova.

4:0 dla języka angielskiego. Czynniki hamujące motywację uczniów do nauki języka niemieckiego

Author(s): Anna Kizeweter / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2020

The interest in learning English and German is in great disproportion in Poland. Hence, this paper attempts to draw attention and analyse the differences between motivating and demotivating factors affecting learning these languages. The author analyses the variables discouraging motivation in the didactic process. She takes into account the aspects of global popularization of English, the student’s age at the start of learning both languages, the total number of lesson units in the compulsory educational process, and the physical and emotional growth of a student, in other words, the time of adolescence when the second language is introduced, as well as an element of intergenerational transmission defining the attitude towards learning German, Cognitive psychology, psychology of motivation and elements of neurolinguistics are deployed in order to provide a thorough review of the hindering factors.

5es Assises européennes du plurilinguisme 23-24 mai 2019 – Bucarest. Le plurilinguisme dans le développement durable

Author(s): Christian Tremblay / Language(s): French / Issue: 2 (32)/2020

A Brief Outline of the History of English

Author(s): Jerzy Wełna / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2003

The book contains a brief account of the history of the English language as well as its variants in the British Isles and overseas. In order to illustrate the problems under discussion the author adduces text samples from documents relating to English history and literature and also translations of some difficult words and phrases.

A CALL FOR RECONCILING EAP AND CALL

Author(s): Reza Dashtestani,Jarosław Krajka / Language(s): English / Issue: 5/2020

A COLLABORATIVE NOTEBOOK FOR THE ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY SEMINAR: CONTENT ANALYSIS AND STUDENTS AS ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS

Author(s): Alexandra Cotoc / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2020

Collaborative editing of google drive files constitutes a new and useful method of organising, structuring and acquiring academic content in a dynamic and interactive way. This ensures an up-to-date way of note taking, allowing students to become active participants in the teaching-learning process by providing them with the digital medium in which they can collaborate with their colleagues and teacher. It also allows them to critically evaluate the content of the course under focus. Students can signal to the instructor not only the most relevant aspects to them, but also the problematic and challenging ones. Moreover, the final result is a collaborative notebook which is an efficient tool for learning and formative assessment for a lesson, unit or entire course/seminar. Students are motivated by hands-on, attractive and challenging activities. Students are more motivated when they can choose the material that they have to study and when they are involved in tasks which are relevant to them and to their future profession. As such, this study focuses on the collaborative notebook edited by the first-year students majoring in English at the Faculty of Letters. The notebook was edited in ten days at the beginning of the second semester of the academic year 2020. Given the academic context caused by Covid-19, the collaborative notebook was a trigger for the online activity performed the entire semester. The students received the active role of selecting relevant content related to the second unit of the seminar in English Morphology: The Noun. Students were asked to edit together a google drive file and they performed this activity for ten days under the guidance of the language instructor who provided constant feedback and addressed the issues selected by the students. Besides being a powerful tool which allows students to collaborate with their peers, the notebook also performed the function of a needs analysis at the micro-level of a seminar’s unit, identifying the weak points and the strong points, but also highlighting the students’ interest. Moreover, the collaborative work resulted in obtaining a notebook containing the essential aspects related to the topic the Noun: a useful learning tool, but also exam material. In this study, we are going to analyse important aspects of this collaborative notebook and its utility value for the teaching-learning process in general and the English Morphology seminar in particular. Finally, we are also going to present the students’ perception and attitude in relation to this activity.

A comparison of the impact of extensive and intensive reading approaches on the reading attitudes of secondary EFL learners

Author(s): A Young Park / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2020

Extensive reading (ER) which encourages second or foreign (L2) learners to engage in a great deal of reading, has long been recognized as an efficient approach in L2 reading pedagogy. While many attempts have been made to understand the effect of ER on the cognitive domains of L2 learners, there has been insufficient investigation into how ER influences their affective domains. Particularly, reading attitudes, one of the key elements of affective factors involved in L2 reading, have received little attention. This classroom-based intervention study investigated the impact of ER on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ attitudes toward English reading compared to the influence of the traditional intensive reading (IR) approach. In addition, this study explored whether the impact of the ER approach on EFL learners’ reading attitudes is different depending on L2 proficiency. The study included two intact classes of EFL secondary learners (N = 72) who received either ER or IR instructional treatments for a 12-week period. For the results, ANCOVA showed that the ER approach fostered positive reading attitudes significantly more than the IR approach. In addition, the analysis indicated that the participants’ proficiency levels did not have a significant effect upon changes in their reading attitudes. That is, regardless of proficiency level, the ER approach demonstrated a significantly positive effect on participants’ reading attitudes in comparison with the IR approach.

A Corpus Linguistics Investigation into Phrasal Verbs in British Academic Spoken English

Author(s): Fatma Kübra Durna,Okan Güneş / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

This current study aims to shed a new light into the usage of phrasal verbs, which are one of the most avoided multi-word constructions for English learners but widely used by native speakers of English in BASE (British Academic Spoken English). The purpose of this study is to identify which phrasal verbs are used more frequently in BASE and how the findings might be utilized in educational settings. To do this, three lexical verbs (go, come and take) combining phrasal verbs with nine adverbial particles and forming 27 phrasal verbs were analysed using 1.742.886 running words in BASE. BNC (British National Corpus) was used as the core data for selecting lexical verbs and adverbial particles by benefiting from the research of Gardner and Davies (2007). The results reveal some similarities between BNC and BASE in terms of phrasal verb usage and the paper exemplifies some ways to teach phrasal verbs in the light of the analyses.

A Critical Review on the Equivocal Definition of Comprehensible Input and the Misleading Use of the Term “Acquisition”

Author(s): Hilal Peker,Onur Özkaynak / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

Stephen Krashen has been one of the prominent figures in the field of second language acquisition. His Input Hypothesis and Monitor Model can be considered as his most noteworthy work. Specifically, his principal proposition that emphasizes the importance of comprehensible input for language acquisition sheds light on linguistic competence. Krashen claimed that languages could be easily acquired as long as the acquirer is provided with natural bits of language. Despite the high acclaim they have received, Krashen’s ideas have also been harshly criticized by certain linguists as his claims failed to clarify certain issues related to the second language acquisition. In this respect, the authors of this paper critically review his Input Hypothesis and Monitor Model focusing on the insufficiency of the input for language acquisition, absence of an operational definition of comprehensible input, and misleading use of the term acquisition. In addition, the authors also adopt a satirical language to pinpoint the aforementioned insufficiencies and misleading components, while supporting their claims with recent empirical studies that were rarely conducted in the field.

A Lost Lady: A Narrative of Manifest Destiny and Neocolonialism

Author(s): Ammar Aqeeli / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

The greatly examined story of A Lost Lady usually depicts Mrs. Forrester’s success in meeting and adapting to the challenges of a changing world, a world characterized by materialism and self-fulfilment. However, the overlooked story, one far more disturbing than the privileged story in the text, is the narrative of oppressed groups of people of other races and the lower class. Drawing on some aspects of postcolonial theory, this paper explores Willa Cather’s own reactions to real changes in her society, to the waning power of imperialism, and of her nostalgic longing for the western prairies of her youth, without showing any sympathy for the dispossessed Native Americans and other oppressed races. It will also disclose the unmistakable colonial overtones, which remarkably resonate with the common discourse of “Manifest Destiny” during the time period of American expansion to the Wild West.

A moldvai csángómagyar oktatási program kutatása és támogatása vizuális módszerekkel

Author(s): Petteri Laihonen / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 0

The study and support of the Moldavian Csángó Educational Program is a multi-year project including fieldwork carried out in 30 Moldavian sites between 2017 and 2019. During the fieldwork, several visual and digital methods are introduced, and the materials generated form a large multimodal database. In this article, I present some visual methods that have proved successful so far, with particular reference to answering the following research questions: In what situations and how do the participants in the Educational Program identify themselves? What is the language repertoire of the participants in the Educational Program and how does it evolve? How do the participants in the Educational Program relate to literacy? How do the participants in the Educational Program vision their linguistic future? What kind of language or language varieties are used in the Program? I mention the following preliminary results: The pupils in the Educational Program were dominantly Romanians, but most often Hungarian language was viewed as the language of identity. With regards to spoken language, the Program is characterized by language tolerance. However, due to the large distance between Hungarian varieties in Moldavia and the Hungarian standard, standard Hungarian orthography is hard to learn for the participants. The activation of oral language knowledge serves the maintenance of Hungarian varieties in Moldavia, while teaching Hungarian literacy serves further studies in Hungarian medium education available beyond Moldavia.