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.

"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 Ðapo / 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.

"Земя" и "пустиня" в българската фразеология

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

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.

/fɑɪs/, /fes/ or /feɪs/? Teachers’ phonetic accommodation of diphthongs in an L2 classroom setting

Author(s): Piotr Steinbrich / Language(s): English / Issue: 11/2016

The following paper aims to investigate whether, and if so to what extent, native speaker teachers resort to phonetic accommodation in the use of diphthongs in the classroom setting. In the course of analysis, seven native speaker teachers, each representing a different variety of British English, were recorded in two distinct contexts: classroom and natural. The recordings were used in acoustic analysis in order to gauge potential differences in F1 and F2 in each context. It was concluded that phonetic accommodation does occur in the classroom setting and the modifications of either individual segments or the whole glides can be observed, irrespective of the native accent of the user. It was found, however, that the speakers representing northern varieties of English accommodate more than those speaking with other accents. Another important observation resulting from the analysis was that some diphthongs are likely to undergo phonetic accommodation more than others. On the one end of the cline we observe the diphthong price, whereas the other end is occupied by the glides goat and cure. It is still unclear, however, whether the modifications occur consciously, thus representing a rather developed declarative knowledge of the users, or subconsciously, which would suggest an inner need to attempt to pronounce diphthongs in a standardized way.

100 години Лекторат по български език и литература в Карловия университет в Прага

Author(s): Milena Prikrylová / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 33/2016

4;0-6;0 Yaş (48-72 Aylar) Arasındaki Çocukların Ad-Eylem Kullanımları

Author(s): Gülsün Seda Gökmen / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 137/2007

Within the language acquisition researches, the main focusing subject is searching the dominant usage of word category among acquisition and usage. In the findings through the researches, it takes part that noun spurt phenomenon does not have the same validity within the all databases and all languages. This study is based on the natural speech context of the 4-6 years old children groups. Also this is study is dealed with whether there is the noun bias in noun usage of children who acquired Turkish and are in later period. The most important finding of this study is determining that there is the dominance of verb usage rather than noun category which is also valid for either in three age groups. Additionally, it was found that the higher usage ratio of the verb type is the event category.

7. Sınıf İngilizce Ders Kitaplarında Cinsiyet Kavramı

Author(s): Hatice Çubukçu,Pinar Sivasligil / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 137/2007

This study aims to investigate ELT textbooks from the perspective of gender ideology underlying the representations of female and male figures, considering that coursebooks play an important role in children’s development of ‘gender’. The 7th grade English coursebook published by the Turkish Ministry of Education has been selected as the object of investigation, mainly because they are used by a large population at state schools. Both verbal and non verbal features of the textbooks have been analyzed through the content analysis, and discourse analysis has been applied to the verbal components to depict any possible power assymmetries reflected through language between two genders.

8. Sınıf Türkçe Ders Kitaplarındaki Metinlerin Metinsellik Ölçütlerine Uygunlukları

Author(s): Esra Lüle Mert / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 153/2011

The problem sentence of the study which aims to evaluate the compatibility of fictional and pragmatic texts in 8. grade Turkish textbooks with textuality criteria, is determined as “Are the texts in 8. grade Turkish textbooks compatible with textuality criteria?” This study is assumed to be important as it will provide feedback regarding the determination of textualities of the texts in Turkish textbooks. The data source of this study which depends on scanning model are the pragmatic and fictional texts in Turkish textbooks that were distributed to 8.grade students in city of Malatya in 2012-2013 academic year. There aare totally 19 texts in the book. 8 of the texts that are going to be examined are fictional texts and 11 of them are pragmatic texts. In the study, the textuality criteria suggested by İşeri (2010) was used as source. Only in 1 of the 19 texts (8 fictional and 11 pragmatic) (Memories and Documents about Ataturk) there is one to one compatibility with the determined textuality criteria. The texts being fictional or pragmatic did not effect their compatibility / incompatibility with textuality criteria. On the other hand the readability points of the texts are incompatible with student level except 5 texts. The readability levels of the 14 examined texts are below the student level. In this context, it is determined that the texts in 8.grade Turkish textbook were not created and selected by taking the textuality criteria into consideration.

A BLENDED-LEARNING APPROACH TO ESP TEACHING: DESIGNING A VIRTUAL PLATFORM

Author(s): Lorena Mihaes,Anda Dimitriu,Irina BOCIANU / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2016

The demand for English courses particularly tailored to specific needs is ever growing in today’s higher education system. We teach a generation of undergraduate students who will most likely use English as a medium of instruction for their master’s degree, whether they decide to apply for one in Romania (the University of Bucharest offers 20 such programmes) or abroad. A greater emphasis, therefore, should be laid on meeting the competence standards required by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, so that, upon graduation, the student will be an independent user of general English and have a good mastery of the terminology of his field of study. Since the undergraduate English course spans anywhere from two to five or six semesters, during which time the instructors have the task of bringing students with various language levels up to the same proficiency par - when they would ideally be able to apply for the abovementioned postgraduate programmes, a solution to the problem is offered by digital technologies, which can complement the traditional teaching methods already in use. Based on students’ answers to a questionnaire which led us to conclude that not only are they conversant with the new technologies, but they also consider that their language skills would improve, should the virtual medium be used during the in-class activities, we have devised a rough draft of an online platform specifically designed to facilitate the students’ access to and assimilation of information through online applications.

A blessing or a curse? Introducing autonomy to third-year BA students

Author(s): Malgorzata Szulc-Kurpaska / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2015

As a requirement for obtaining a BA degree in English philology studies, students have to write an academic paper of considerable length. This is the first work of this kind that they have to complete at the end of the three-year course of study. The supervisor monitoring students in writing the paper faces challenges in helping them find a topic, search for appropriate materials, develop skills in reading, analyzing and synthesizing the information found in the resources, and adopt the required academic style. Motivating students to finalize the paper within the third year of their studies seems to be a difficult task because writing of the paper is an arduous endeavor, especially that they quite often work and have other duties to perform. Completing a diploma paper requires a significant amount of independence on the part of the students in the out-of-class time. The paper presents the findings of a small-scale questionnaire study carried out among three groups of students from three different institutions of higher education writing their diploma papers. The aim of the study was to determine the students’ perceptions of and attitudes towards autonomy, as well as their thoughts on the final requirement for gaining the BA degree. The results serve as a basis for drawing some conclusions concerning the development of autonomy in third-year English philology students.

A Brief Outline of the History of English

Author(s): Jerzy Welna / 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 Comparative Study of Perception of (Im)Politeness between Iranian EFL Learners and Americans: The Case of Request Speech Act

Author(s): Bahareh Ghasempour,Maryam Farnia / Language(s): English / Issue: 29/2016

Learning a language means learning the culture. What we act and speak reflect the culture of our language. Requests have attracted the attention of many researchers which they have often been investigated adjacent to the politeness (Liu, 2007; Jalilifar, 2009; Al-Marrani & Sazalie, 2010; Félix- Brasdefer, 2010; Youssef, 2012; Mohammadi & Tamimi Sa’d, 2014). The purpose of this study is to examine Iranian EFL learners, Persian native speakers, and American English native speakers’ perception of speech act of requests without politeness markers. To this end, the data were collected from 35 EFL learners, 35 Persian native speakers, and 14 English native speakers. The data were collected through an open ended questionnaire in the form of Discourse Completion Task and a Perception questionnaire in the form of Likert scale adopted from Saidi and Khosravi (2015). The questionnaire consists of situations with variations in contextual variables, i.e. social status: requests made by people of higher social status, equal social status and lower social status relative to the speakers. The participants were asked to imagine themselves in the situations and rate the (im)politeness of each request situation on a 4-point Likert scale. Moreover, they were required to write down what they would say if they were in a situation without politeness markers. A translated version of questionnaire was handed to Persian native speakers. Results indicated that there was a significant difference between EFL learners and English native participants, and also between EFL learners and Persian speakers’ perceptions of (im)politeness of different request situations. Moreover, by comparing the three groups of participants who perceived a request as mostly/ slightly impolite, the writer provided information about their expectations of politeness in different situations. It is hoped that the findings of this study can add to the body of knowledge in speech act studies in general and to our understanding of Iranian EFL learners and Persian native speakers’ perception of (im)politeness in particular.

A COMPARISON OF ARGENTINEAN AND TURKISH ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION CURRICULA

Author(s): Andrea Paola Diaz,Arda Arikan / Language(s): English / Issue: 9/2016

In this study, we look at the education of English language teachers in two countries, namely, Argentina and Turkey. We specifically discuss the curricula of the teacher education programs by focusing on the specific courses taken by prospective teachers of English in each country and the steps they have to take to start teaching officially. Methodologically, we studied and analyzed two sample curricula, one from each country, in terms of the titles of the courses offered. While comparing, first, each curriculum was studied individually to understand the general outlook of it in terms of the type of English language teacher it aims to graduate. Hence, we tried to understand to “ideal” teacher that is to be educated for the country’s specific needs. Then, courses are grouped under categories and the groups are compared with each other. Results show that the Argentinean curriculum aims at graduating “proficient” language users who will develop their knowledge and practice of the language teaching methods on the job whereas the Turkish curriculum aims to graduate a workforce of teachers who have strong knowledge of teaching methods and who, most probably, will develop their language skills in time. This finding is supported with another which shows that literature and culture-related courses are given a significant place in the curricula offered at Argentinean teacher education institutions whereas little importance is given to literature and culture-related courses in the Turkish curriculum.

A complex dynamic systems perspective on foreign language anxiety

Author(s): Masoud Mahmoodzadeh,Christina Gkonou / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

Within SLA, there has been a growing awareness and understanding of complexity theories in recent years. In this article, the authors aim to address foreign language anxiety embodied in individuals in the classroom from a complexity perspective. Through a ‘complexity’ lens, we attempt to offer complexity-informed explanations for the emergence and maintenance of foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA), and suggest ways in which it depicts features typical of a complex dynamic system. Core features of complex dynamic systems, such as complex interrelations, openness, non-linearity, decentralized causality, unpredictability, dynamism and emergence, are discussed with a view to suggesting that complex dynamic systems perspective can facilitate our understandings of the dynamism and fluidity of FLCA in SLA studies

A CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS OF THE MOST FREQUENT ADJECTIVES IN ACADEMIC TEXTS

Author(s): Galip Kartal / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

Based on a mega corpus, The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), this study aims to determine the most frequent adjectives used in academic texts and to investigate whether these adjectives differ in frequency and function in social sciences, technology, and medical sciences. It also identifies evaluative adjectives from a list of a hundred most frequently used adjectives. A total of 839 adjectives, which comprises the list of frequently used adjectives in COCA, were searched using a search engine. 334 of the adjectives were found to appear more frequently in the academic sub-corpus than in other sub-corpora (spoken, fiction, magazine, and newspaper). There was only one adjective that was used more frequently in technology and medical sciences than in social sciences. Some adjectives were very dominant in a specific discipline of academic texts. The frequency of evaluative adjectives in most frequently used 100 adjectives was also listed. It is found that almost 40% percent of the adjectives are evaluative. The results of the study were discussed in terms of frequency effects in language learning and writing in the foreign language as providing learners with corpus data may improve language knowledge and the correct use of adjectives.

A cross-cultural study on teacher/mentor characteristics

Author(s): Marek Derenowski / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2014

The notion of mentoring may be described as ancient. The original Mentor first appeared in classical literature and was described by Homer as the “wise and trusted counselor” whom Odysseus left in charge of his household during his travels (Grzesiak 2010: 21). In more contemporary times, the concept of mentoring has found its application in practically every sphere of our lives, also in education. However, not every educator either wants to adopt the role of a mentor or has the required characteristics. Furthermore, it may be difficult to come up with a complete list of the mandatory features as they may differ according to the cultural background of the educators. Therefore, the article and the study reported therein attempt to investigate the possible differences in the characteristics of teachers/mentors existing in various cultural contexts.

A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO TECHNICAL TRANSLATION

Author(s): Raluca Ghentulescu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2012

This article presents the results of my research in the field of Technical-Scientific Translations and offers some suggestions to those who teach specialized translations at an academic level. My perspective on this subject is based on my own experience in working with the future specialized translators and interpreters from the Specialization of Translation and Interpretation within the Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest. The main aim of this paper is to share with my colleagues and my students the new methods of teaching specialized translations, which I have implemented at my lectures and seminars, in an attempt to turn an apparently tedious school subject into an attractive and useful activity.