scholarly journals Factors Preventing Technical Colleges and Universities from Cultivating Foreign Language Talents

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (12) ◽  
pp. 7-11
Author(s):  
Yanlin Li ◽  
Mingfeng Yang

This article discusses about the cultivation of foreign language talents, through which it can be appreciated that the emphasis is to be laid on improving their comprehensive qualities. Only in this way can foreign language talents adapt to the needs of the market, integrate into the ranks of technical personnel in the field of engineering, and be warmly welcomed by employers or employing units. Nevertheless, in order to achieve this aim, three factors should be overcome to avoid the hindrance faced by technical colleges and universities from cultivating foreign language talents with comprehensive qualities. This article probes into the three negative factors: first, students are not fluent in their mother tongue; second, foreign language majors lack basic knowledge of science and technology so much so that they are not able to do well in such translation; third, they lack the ability to perform simultaneous interpretation Simultaneous interpreting. In regard to those factors, this article then provides several suggestions as countermeasures to those three negative factors, so as to cultivate talents that can satisfy the needs of the market.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Zhe Liu

For foreign language learners, whether Chinese people are learning Japanese or Japanese learning Chinese, if they can eliminate the interference of basic knowledge of the mother tongue, the efficiency of foreign language learning will be greatly improved. This paper mainly analyzes the problem of mother tongue interference encountered by Japanese learners who use Chinese as their mother tongue in the study of "passive sentences". It focuses on introducing Japanese functional grammar on the basis of traditional grammar to eliminate these interference problems.


2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saleh Al-Salman ◽  
Raja’i Al-Khanji

Abstract The present research sought evidence to either support or refute the claim that simultaneous interpreters are more efficient when decoding/interpreting oral discourse from a foreign language into their mother tongue. The data for the study were collected by means of (1) a questionnaire which elicited the responses of a number of professional interpreters who participated in national, regional, and international conferences, and (2) an analysis of the actual performance of some professional interpreters in actual interpretation tasks conducted in both languages. Their performance was analyzed according to some major criteria of linguistic adequacy, strategic competence, and communication strategies. A theoretical framework based on the variability model (Labov 1969) was employed to validate the data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Manuela Svoboda

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyse any potential similarities between the Croatian and German language and present them adopting a contrastive approach with the intent of simplifying the learning process in regards to the German syntactic structure for Croatian German as foreign language students. While consulting articles and books on the theories and methods of foreign language teaching, attention is usually drawn to differences between the mother tongue and the foreign language, especially concerning false friends etc. The same applies to textbooks, workbooks and how teachers behave in class. Thus, it is common practice to deal with the differences between the foreign language and the mother tongue but less with similarities. This is unfortunate considering that this would likely aid in acquiring certain grammatical and syntactic structures of the foreign language. In the author's opinion, similarities are as, if not more, important than differences. Therefore, in this article the existence of similarities between the Croatian and German language will be examined closer with a main focus on the segment of sentence types. Special attention is drawn to subordinate clauses as they play an important role when speaking and/or translating sentences from Croatian to German and vice versa. In order to present and further clarify this matter, subordinate clauses in both the German and Croatian language are defined, clarified and listed to gain an oversight and to present possible similarities between the two. In addition, the method to identify subordinate clauses in a sentence is explained as well as what they express, which conjunctions are being used for each type of subordinate clause in both languages and where the similarities and/or differences between the two languages lie.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2319-2324
Author(s):  
Rina Muka ◽  
Irida Hoti

The language acquired from the childhood is the language spoken in the family and in the place of living. This language is different from one pupil to another, because of their social, economical conditions. By starting the school the pupil faces first the ABC book and then in the second grade Albanian language learning through the Albanian language textbook. By learning Albanian language step by step focused on Reading, Writing, Speaking and Grammar the pupil is able to start learning the second language on the next years of schooling. So, the second language learning in Albanian schools is related to the first language learning (mother tongue), since the early years in primary school. In our schools, the second language (English, Italian) starts in the third grade of the elementary class. On the third grade isn’t taught grammar but the pupil is directed toward the correct usage of the language. The textbooks are structured in developing the pupil’s critical thinking. The textbooks are fully illustrated and with attractive and educative lessons adequate to the age of the pupils. This comparative study will reflect some important aspects of language learning in Albanian schools (focused on Albanian language - first language and English language - second language), grade 3-6. Our point of view in this paper will show not only the diversity of the themes, the lines and the sub-lines but also the level of language knowledge acquired at each level of education. First, the study will focus on some important issues in comparing Albanian and English language texts as well as those which make them different: chronology and topics retaken from one level of education to another, so by conception of linear and chronological order will be shown comparatively two learned languages (mother tongue and second language). By knowing and learning well mother tongue will be easier for the pupil the foreign language learning. The foreign language (as a learning curriculum) aims to provide students with the skills of using foreign language written and spoken to enable the literature to recognize the achievements of advanced world science and technology that are in the interest of developing our technique. Secondly, the study will be based on the extent of grammatical knowledge, their integration with 'Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing' as well as the inclusion of language games and their role in language learning. The first and second language learning in Albanian schools (grade III-VI) is based on similar principles for the linearity and chronology of grammatical knowledge integrated with listening, reading, writing and speaking. The different structure of both books help the pupils integrate and use correctly both languages. In the end of the sixth grade, the pupils have good knowledge of mother tongue and the second language and are able to write and speak well both languages.


2003 ◽  
Vol 139-140 ◽  
pp. 129-152
Author(s):  
Paul Bogaards ◽  
Elisabeth Van Der Linden ◽  
Lydius Nienhuis

The research to be reported on in this paper was originally motivated by the finding that about 70% of the mistakes made by university students when translating from their mother tongue (Dutch) into their foreign language (French) were lexical in nature (NIENHUIS et al. 1989). This was partially confinned in the investigation described in NIENHUIS et al. (1993). A closer look at the individual errors suggested that many problems were caused by words with more than one meaning which each require different translations in the target language. In the research reported on in this paper, we checked our fmdings in the light of what is known about the structure of the bilingual lexicon and about the ways bilinguals have access to the elements of their two languages. On the basis of the model of the bilingual lexicon presented by KROLL & Sholl (1992) an adapted model is proposed for the processing of lexical ambiguity. This leads to a tentative schema of the mental activities that language learners have to perfonn when they are translating from their mother tongue into a foreign language, The second part of the paper describes two experiments we have carried out in order to find empirical support for such a schema. The last section of the paper contains a discussion of the results obtained as well as the conclusions that can be drawn.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
María-José Arévalo ◽  
María Asun Cantera ◽  
Vanessa García-Marina ◽  
Marian Alves-Castro

Although Error Analysis (EA) has been broadly used in Foreign Language and Mother Tongue learning contexts, it has not been applied in the field of engineering and by STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) students in a systematic way. In this interdisciplinary pilot study, we applied the EA methodology to a wide corpus of exercises and essays written by third-year students of mechanical engineering, with the main purpose of achieving a precise diagnosis of the students’ strengths and weaknesses in writing skills. For the analysis to be as exhaustive as possible, the errors were typologized into three main categories (linguistic, mathematical, and rhetorical–organizational), each of which is, in turn, subdivided into 15 items. The results show that the predominant errors are rhetorical–organizational (39%) and linguistic (38%). The application of EA permits the precise identification of the areas of improvement and the subsequent implementation of an educational design that allows STEM students to improve their communicative strategies, especially those related to the writing skills and, more precisely, those having to do with the optimal use of syntax, punctuation, rhetorical structure of the text, and mathematical coherence.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Sahar Jalilian ◽  
Rouhollah Rahmatian ◽  
Parivash Safa ◽  
Roya Letafati

In a simultaneous bilingual education, there are many factors that can affect its success, primarily the age of the child and socio-cognitive elements. This phenomenon can be initially studied in the first lexical productions of either language in a child. The present study focuses on the early lexical developments of a child, who lives in the monolingual society of Iran, where there is no linguistic milieu for French, and has been exposed to a bilingual education since birth. Applying Ronjat’s principle of “one parent-one language” (1913), the parents have formed the child’s basic linguistic interactions; the father employs Farsi in his interactions with the child as his mother tongue while the mother uses French as her foreign language. The data is collected from audio files recorded in the period between 18 and 36 months old of the child, containing her everyday interactions with her parents. Through the analysis of the data with the purpose of studying the changes of the presence of the minority language words, i.e. French, in the child’s sentences at different ages, questions are raised regarding the conditions of a persistent presence of both languages and the reason due to which one language positions as a minor means of communication, observing parental attitudes and environmental issues that can influence the language acquisition procedure.


Interpreting ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Sabatini

Ten final-year interpreting students, all native speakers of Italian, were asked to perform three tasks using two ‘non-standard’ English speeches, one by an Indian speaking English as a second language (speaker A), and one by an American speaking English as a native language with a strong accent (speaker B). The duration of each speech was about 11 minutes, of which a different section was used for each task. First, subjects listened to the initial part of each speech (about 3 minutes) and were tested for listening comprehension. They then shadowed part of the speeches (about 2 minutes), after which they simultaneously interpreted the remainder from English into Italian. The working hypotheses were that: (i) the three tasks involve an increasing level of complexity: listening comprehension being the simplest and simultaneous interpretation the most difficult; (ii) ‘non-standard’ language in the source speech is a potential problem trigger for the interpreter. Performance in the three tasks was evaluated by examining the subjects’ answers to questions in the listening comprehension task (the highest score possible being 12), and by transcribing the shadowing and the simultaneous interpretation (both scored on a 12 point scale). In addition, subjects’ handling of previously identified problem areas in each simultaneous interpreting task was evaluated, again on a 12 point scale. Scores for each task were divided into bands, to distinguish between ‘very high’, ‘high’, ‘low’, and ‘very low’. Performance in the three exercises partly reflected their growing complexity, listening comprehension being the simplest and simultaneous interpretation the most difficult. The non standard characteristics of the two speeches were indeed difficult for some of the subjects to interpret. Taking Gile’s Effort Model as a theoretical basis, the study also provides some insight as to which phase of simultaneous interpretation caused most difficulties.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Vincent Mirabile

Abstract To teach English as a second foreign language at university levels provides the educator or professor an excellent occasion to compare the first and second languages by a series of analogical activities that not only highlight the similar forms and structures of them, but more important still, oblige students to comprehend these forms and structures without having either to rely on or depend upon their mother tongue or apprehend them through the prism of their own. In this article are compared Turkish, French and Chinese forms and structures with English through sets of analogical activities that I prepared and applied in classrooms with my Russian students studying the aforesaid languages at the University of Academgorodok near Novosibirsk in Siberia. It was my methodical experiment to bring together English/Turkish, English/French and English/Chinese as interrelated objects of study; to put into relief the interpenetrating analogical elements that these languages possess as a pedagogical approach to them in spite of their very different language families and distinctive structural and morphological features.


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