scholarly journals Encounters with National Stereotypes in Foreign Language Teaching: Adjectives Describing Americans

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Andrej Stopar

Teaching (or learning) a foreign language is a complex, interdisciplinary undertaking. Teachers and students are required to tackle aspects of language that transcend its merely linguistic component. This article discusses the relationship between language, thought and culture, and explores some aspects of the integration of cultural content in the English classroom. To achieve these goals, a study is conducted that identifies the main stereotypes about Americans among Slovenian university students of English as a foreign language. The results of the research can be used as a means of questioning some frequent stereotypes about Americans, and thus contributing to the fulfilment of (sometimes seemingly abstract) curricular aims that emphasize the significance of intercultural communication, awareness of cultural variety, and intercultural sensitivity.

Author(s):  
Hui Su

AbstractSince China’s reform and opening up, foreign language teaching (FLT) in China has achieved rapid development under the guidance of foreign language teaching theories both at home and abroad. However, problems such as ‘time-consuming and inefficient foreign language learning’ and the presence of ‘dumb foreign languages’ in FLT in China have not been fundamentally solved. Based on Whitehead’s process philosophy, this research aims to put forward feasible solutions to the existing problems in FLT in China so that the level of FLT in China can be promoted by discussing the purpose, contents, processes and stages of FLT and the relationship between teachers and students in both FLT and FLT evaluation systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 88-95
Author(s):  
O. A. Maslovets

The article represents an effort to specify the essential characteristics of the relationship between the intentionality of consciousness, language and culture, and on this basis to reveal the features of the process of foreign language teaching.The author considers intentionality as a phenomenon that defines and provides the content of consciousness, allowing one to commit an act of self-determination and gaining subjectivity. In the activity of consciousness, the author distinguishes intentional flows of both relatively objects and subjects, which is a prerequisite for comprehending another I, a different cultural entity, and at the same time a condition for self-knowledge and deeper penetration into one’s own culture.Culture is a complex semiotic text, it is a context in which the language being studied as a secondary modeling system acts as a means where various phenomena can be sequentially described and interpreted by students.The openness of the subject to the world, nurtured in the course of intentional teaching of language and culture, allows its utter uniqueness, and at the same time utmost universality, to manifest itself. Such an attitude actualizes the internal regularity of human actions, the possibility of self-development and the formation of a system of deferred actions, which allows a person to realize, take place, actualizes the intentional field of his capabilities.The author comes to the conclusion that the process of foreign language teaching should be interpretative, significative, semiotic in nature. Taking into account during teaching а foreign language the intentional conditioning of any action, including speech, will ensure the achievement of a coordinated consciousness.


Author(s):  
I. A. Vorob’eva

The article is devoted to professionally-oriented a foreign language teaching at a university, which today is one of the links of training a competitive specialist. The author describes the meaning of practical application of a foreign language. The problem of searching a way to improve the quality of foreign language teaching of university students is considered. A foreign language is considered as a means and as a way to improve the professional competence of a university student.


Author(s):  
Tatiana V. Baydikova

Currently, content and language integrated learning is becoming more widespread in the teaching of agrarian university students. For university pedagogy, this is a fairly new and innovative approach aimed at achieving two goals at the same time: 1) the further development of students’ foreign language communicative competence; 2) the further development of professional competencies by means of a foreign language. The dual purpose testifies to the fact that with this approach, a foreign language is both the teaching goal and a mean of professional development of students. However, the effectiveness of the teaching methods will depend on the consideration of a number of pedagogical conditions. In this work we identify and substantiate six pedagogical conditions, the consideration of which, when developing the appropriate teaching methods, will contribute to the effectiveness of the process of professional foreign language teaching in an agrarian university students of the “Agricultural Engineering” programme. These conditions include: a) the selection of subject content of teaching is carried out on the basis of the implementation of intersubject communications reliance principle; b) in the learning process, problem speech tasks are used, as well as tasks that reflect the specifics of the students’ future professional activities; c) the minimum level of foreign language proficiency by students is B1-B2; d) grouping students by level of knowledge of a foreign language; e) grouping students according to their study profiles within the framework of the programme; f) the competence of the teacher in the field of foreign language, profile specialty and methods of teaching them. The work describes in detail each of the selected conditions.


Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Schwenk

The present paper deals with the relationship between contrastive linguistics on the one hand and foreign language teaching on the other hand, more precisely, with the influence exerted by the first on the latter. It goes without saying that a teacher who teaches his mother tongue is expected to teach it as completely and correctly as possible. Yet the complete and correct teaching of any language depends on the teacher’s complete and correct knowledge of the given language and, comes to that, his awareness of this knowledge. It could be shown and proven on various examples that this aim can only be reached by the way of analyzing an other / a foreign language and comparing it with the language / the mother tongue to be teached, that, as much as paradoxical this may sound, self-understanding quite often needs the understanding of the other.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-265
Author(s):  
Milena Meira Ramos dos Santos

Language teaching methodologies have changed/improved over the years to meet the needs of teachers and students in the classroom. In this paper we aim to present the evolution of foreign language teaching through a description of language teaching methodologies over time. We describe the principles underlying some methodologies, the role of teacher and student, and how learning assessment is done. Authors such as Richards and Rodgers (1991), Almeida Filho (1999), Silva (2004), Pérez (2007), among others, were some of the academic experts on which we relied to conduct this study. We conclude that methods should work as a reference for the teacher, and should be adapted to each particular situation or context in which they live. Therefore, the teachers should use the methodologies that reflect their principles, reducing the distance between the theory developed by language experts and the teaching experience.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Dung Nguyen Tri Tran

The global language teaching community has largely spotlighted students’ autonomous learning for the last few decades. Through the thorough review of the existing literature on learner autonomy, this article aims to theoretically investigate this concept as well as clearly specify the roles played by teachers and students in an autonomy-oriented classroom. Autonomous learning is not at all synonymous with the absolute elimination of teacher’s role and learner-learner relationships. In fact, language instructors need to comprehend their roles in a multidimensional way, and students are supposed to be responsibly active for their own learning process as well as positively interdependent for academic cooperation.


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