Going from oral to written discourse: Norwegian students’ grammatical challenges when writing persuasive texts

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 101001
Author(s):  
Eva Maagerø ◽  
Henriette Siljan ◽  
Aslaug Veum
Keyword(s):  
Written Discourse

Pragmatic instruction in L2-Russian

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-95
Author(s):  
Daniele Artoni ◽  
Valentina Benigni ◽  
Elena Nuzzo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Instructional Treatment ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Pragmatic Instruction

Over the last three decades, a growing number of studies have investigated the effects of instruction on the acquisition of pragmatic features in L2. The bulk of this research has focused mainly on the teaching of English as a second/foreign language. However, instructional pragmatic studies in L2-Russian are lacking. The main purpose of our study is to contribute towards filling this gap by analysing the effects of pragmatic instruction on the acquisition of two speech acts by Italian learners of Russian. Furthermore, we aim to explore whether the Multimodal Russian Corpus (MURCO), a multimedia subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus, can be an effective tool for teaching speech acts in L2-Russian. Our research was composed of one experimental group (n = 18) and one control group (n = 11); each was composed of two intact classes of Italian university students at an intermediate level of L2-Russian, who were pre- and post-tested using a written discourse completion task. The experimental group was subjected to a programme of pragmatic instruction – eight thirty-minute MURCO-based lessons devoted to requests and advice, while the control group was taught according to the standard syllabus, that is, with no pragmatic instruction. The results revealed that the use of the target pragmatic features varied significantly in the experimental group, but not in the control group, thus showing a general positive effect of the instructional treatment based on the MURCO corpus. However, some limitations were identified with regard to the usability of this tool by teachers and learners.

Imperative in English Proverbs

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doc. Dr. Jelena Š. Novaković ◽  
PhD student Božana Tomić
Keyword(s):  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Referring Expressions ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Special Regard

Apart from personal pronouns which are by far the most used referring expressions in English and Serbian, reference can be established and maintained using demonstratives.Their function is to refer to the location or distance of a person or an object. The aim of this paper is to examine reference realised by demonstratives with special regard to the restrictions written discourse imposes on their usage. The texts we used for analysis are narrative stories written in the two languages.

The Calender’s Visions of Beauty

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Borris
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Poetic Imagination ◽  
Shepheardes Calender ◽  
Visionary Poetics

By reconsidering the main female exemplars of beauty in Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender, this chapter shows that the admiration of beauty is central there, as it is also in early modern Platonic poetics. As in the Phaedrus, beauty for Spenser inspires visionary apprehension; yet unlike Plato the poet links this stimulus to literary pursuit of the sublime. Platonism associated genuine beauty with truth and goodness, and Spenser likewise assumes that his Calender’s esthetic disclosures foster wisdom and virtue in at least some readers, and hence in the nation. However, whereas Plato valorizes philosophy for illuminating truth, Spenser advocates the enraptured poetic imagination endued with learning. In doing so, he seeks to circumvent, insofar as possible, the intrinsic limitations of words, images, and written discourse, such as those that Plato had identified in the Phaedrus. This reading newly illuminates the strategies of Spenser’s visionary poetics.

Orality and Textuality (With an Appendix on the Byzantine Conceptions)

2021 ◽  
pp. 240-272
Author(s):  
Charis Messis ◽  
Stratis Papaioannou
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Liturgical Texts ◽  
Secondary Orality ◽  
Primary Orality

The chapter proposes that one cannot approach Byzantine literature—preserved in either medieval and early modern manuscript books or in the form of inscriptions—without an appreciation of its textual modes of production and circulation, its possible origins in oral creation, and its likely orientation toward oral performance and auditory reception. It thus introduces and surveys three types of texts: (i) texts that reflect conditions of primary orality (songs, sayings, and short or long “stories”); (ii) texts that entail secondary orality (primarily rhetorical and liturgical texts); and (iii) a middle type of texts (texts of fictive orality and rhetoricized liturgical literature). The chapter is rounded off by an examination of Byzantine conceptions of oral vs. written discourse.

The problem of teaching communicative tactics in English-language professional discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
Svetlana S. Andreeva
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Professional Communication ◽  
Language Documentation ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Professional Discourse ◽  
Professional Field ◽  
The Will

The work discusses the problem of teaching students of civil engineering departments English-language civil engineering discourse, in particular, communicative tactics of this type of discourse. We substantiate the need to form students’ skills in using the communicative tactics applied in civil engineering discourse in professional communication. We give an overview of com-municative tactics of written discourse used by the authors of English-language documentation in civil engineering professional field. The purpose of the study is to determine the level of students’ skills in using communicative tactics in a foreign language professional written speech. Theoretical and practical research showed that in a modern technical university, insufficient attention is paid to teaching students this component of professional discourse. At the same time, the level of students’ skills to use communicative tactics in professional communication is quite low, which led us to the conclusion that it is of paramount importance to include this component in the pro-gram of teaching a foreign language in a professional field. The results of the will serve as the ba-sis for the development of a methodic model of teaching civil engineering students the communic-ative tactics of professional civil engineering discourse.

Shell nouns as register-specific discourse devices

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Chengyu Fang ◽  
Min Dong
Keyword(s):  
Past Research ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
British English ◽  
Small Core ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Core Set ◽  
Mode Of Production ◽  
Shell Nouns

Abstract This article provides a corpus-based investigation into shell nouns. Shell nouns perform a variety of referential functions and express speaker stance. The investigation was motivated by the fact that past research in this area has been primarily based on written texts. Very little is known about the use of shell nouns in speech. The study used the ICE-GB corpus of contemporary British English and investigated cataphoric shell nouns complemented by appositive that-clauses across fine-grained spoken and written registers. It has revealed that the deployment of shell nouns is governed by the principle of register formality definable in terms of contextual configurations of the Field-Tenor-Mode complex rather than the mode of production. Additionally, the study has uncovered the frequent use of a small core set of shell nouns common across speech and writing. Hence it argues that shell nouns are part and parcel of spoken and written discourse and that they pertain more to grammar than to lexis.

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