Teaching Spoken Production in Global Contexts 2021

Shaping and developing communication skills in non-linguistic faculties in higher education institutions remain relevant. Thus, the theoretical and methodological guidelines for training English professionally-oriented spoken production are among significant problems. Intending to overcome some related challenges, we conducted this study to investigate the efficiency of using presentational speeches based on authentic video materials. The main aim of the research was to analyze the problem from methodological and didactic perspectives and substantiate the theoretical and methodological principles of the professional training of monolingual students through the experimental verification of the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. To achieve the objectives of this study, in the first stage, we determined the efficiency of pedagogical conditions for developing the foreign language competence of students. Then we verified the efficiency of using presentational speeches in teaching Spoken Production. At the last stage, we analyzed the effectiveness of the proposed methods of forming and developing foreign language competence (Spoken Production) by using presentational speeches. The study sample included 45 students of the Sociology and Law Faculty in the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”. We obtained the results that confirmed the efficiency of the presentational speech approach in teaching spoken production. Our study revealed that the presentational speech approach facilitates enhancement in the level of students’ professional competence. These findings provide a good starting point for discussion and further research.

Intervention Reading Comprehension Programme in French Language

One of the priorities of European language policy is to maintain linguistic diversity, cultural identity and, last but not least, to promote effective foreign language learning. French language has a long tradition in the Slovak geographical area, whether in a historical, cultural or economic context. In the educational context over the last decade, however, it has become a second foreign language, which has begun to be reflected in particular in the declining numbers of pupils studying French. Quantitative indicators in the form of statistical yearbooks show a sixty to seventy-five percent decrease in the number of pupils learning French at different levels of education. The lower numbers of lessons, normally allocated for a second foreign language, affects the quality of the knowledge and language skills that the pupil has to acquire in order to be able to communicate at the required level in French. Based on the current position of French language in the Slovak school environment and the requirements that are placed on the language level of students, our goal was to design an effective tool that would take into account the various factors affecting the acquisition of foreign language competence of students in French. The main aim of our contribution is to present to the professional public a tool in the form of an intervention program, which specifically focuses on the development of one of the key language skills included in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, namely reading comprehension in French language. The degree of difficulty of its acquisition depends on several factors. The mastery of the linguistic, sociolingual and intercultural specifics typical for French language plays an important role in this process. In a broader sense, however, it is a much more complex process, which is also conditioned by cognitive, social and personality variables. These variables can also be called predictors or factors that significantly affect the understanding of a foreign language text. The overall concept of the intervention program is based on pre-research associated with measuring the level of reading comprehension and determining the predictors affecting students' comprehension of the text. Considering the pre-research carried out to determine the achieved level of pupils in reading comprehension, the proposed intervention program can be regarded as a preventive, but also a corrective tool for the development of language competence in French language. The compilation of an intervention program in the form of ten model intervention units for the development of reading comprehension in French has a precise structure and takes into account the ontogenetic specifics of the target group (third-year students of secondary education). The ambition of the intervention program is to include various possibilities and ways of working with text in French with regard to the development of the relevant predictor, and thus contribute to improve the quality of language education of students and last but not least to be an inspiration for teachers (as well as future teachers) of French language in a new original way.

Dame Edna and ‘the help’

‘Dame Edna Everage’, a persona originally created by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries in 1955, is a character designed to simultaneously shock and amuse. Dame Edna voices (and satirizes) the discourse of ‘average’, older, politically conservative Anglo-Australians who feel compelled to ‘tell it like it is’ – no matter how offensive their opinions might be. In the Anglosphere, Edna’s humour is well understood and sustained international success has followed Edna for more than 60 years in Britain, Canada, the US and Australia. However, Edna occasionally misfires. In 2003, for instance, Edna’s satire outraged Latinos across the USA, in fulfillment of Poe’s Law (Aikin, 2009). Simply put, Latinos assumed that Edna’s comments satirising negative mainstream attitudes towards them were expressive of Edna’s authentic racism. This paper investigates the Edna joke in the overall context of failed humour and then specifically for the offensiveness it generated amongst the Latino minority in the United States. It then tests whether this reaction was the result of a discursive frame specific to the US context, by conducting an exploratory study amongst a small sample of highly educated Australian bilingual Latin American immigrants and their adult children, to see whether they thought Edna’s joke was funny. These Australian individuals of Latin American heritage responded via an online questionnaire, and an analysis of their responses is presented here. The study’s main finding is that while these individuals generally demonstrated a high comedic literacy across both English and Spanish, including a prior awareness of Edna’s and Australian humour, they overall rejected the intention and humour of Edna’s joke. This paper asserts that, when it comes to humour, some transnational migrant speech community loyalties transcend other notions of identity and language competence.

ETHNOLANGUAGE COMPETENCE OF THE POPULATION OF BASHKORTOSTAN IN CONDITIONS OF BILINGUALISM (based on results of ethnosociological studies)

The article deals with the issues of language competence and speech activity of the population of the republic in different language situations. It was found that, despite the high level of recognition of the native language and language competence, individuals use Russian more when communicating. Such language behavior manifests itself not only in public places, in educational institutions or when communicating with close friends, but even in the family and household sphere. One of the factors of such speech activity of individuals is the ethno-linguistic environment, which contributes to the formation of linguistic competence and further generates linguistic behavior of individuals.

Pragmatic Characteristics of Indefinite Pronouns in Croatian as a Second Language

This paper deals with some of the pragmatic characteristics of indefinite pronouns, specifically about the potential for expressing a negative attitude or stance by using them. The results of a quantitative survey will be presented exploring to what extent the potential to express a negative attitude using indefinite pronouns has been mastered. The research questionnaire consisted of two parts and examined the respondents’ command in terms of both comprehension and production of the pragmatic properties of indefinite pronouns in Croatian as a second language (CL2), and the examples used in the questionnaire were taken from the hrWaC 2.0 corpus (Ljubešić and Erjavec 2011). The research was conducted among students of CL2 at the levels B2 and C1 (N=60) who attended the programs of Croaticum – Centre for Croatian as Foreign and Second Language, University of Zagreb in the 2019/2020 academic year. The results obtained in this research can be applied in the development of learning materials intended for teaching the semantic and pragmatic features of indefinite pronouns in the instruction of CL2. They show that the pragmatic level needs to be included more thoroughly in the teaching of CL2 because its mastery is an essential component of language competence, especially at higher levels. The pragmatic properties of IP should also be taught, as should idiomatic expressions with IP. It is necessary to not only teach from an explicitly grammatical approach, but also to teach lexically in such a way that includes the pragmatic level, because IP have great pragmatic potential.

PROBLEMS ON INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS’ PARAGRAPHS: A CASE STUDY AT UIN MAULANA MALIK IBRAHIM MALANG

Ideas within student’s scientific works must meet scientific conditions, one of which is written in a good and correct paragraph. Ironically, international students at UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang still make some mistakes upon writing papers even though they have been equipped with Indonesian language competence since the first semester. The current study aims to identify the problems on international students’ paragraphs, to find their factors, and to spot alternative solutions. It employed a qualitative approach with a text analysis or discourse analysis. The data were the in the form of linguistic practices within students’ papers. They were collected, classified, and analyzed according to the research focus. Three kinds of issues were found in the papers of international students at UIN Maliki Malang: not meeting the elements of cohesion and coherence, incomplete paragraph development, and unsequential paragraph development. Each form of the error supported one another

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE COMPREHENSION OF CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES BY NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY INSPIRED BY BOUTON’S (1988)

The main goal of the present study has been to examine implicature comprehension in native and foreign/second language speakers of English from different linguistic backgrounds. The project was inspired by an earlier work of Bouton (1988), whose objective was to measure the influence of cultural background on the ability to grasp implied meanings in English, by comparing native and non-native speakers' performance. A modified digital version of the original multiple-choice test (Bouton 1988) was used to collect the data. Gricean (1989) theory of conversational implicature served as a theoretical framework for the study. The quantitative analysis of the data collected from the speakers of 33 languages was compared against the original results and the scope of the analysis was expanded to incorporate the examination of other factors affecting implicature understanding in native and nonnative languages. The present results corroborate some of the earlier findings and suggest that language competence and cultural background are crucial factors in understanding implicated meanings.

Development of foreign language competence of higher education students in the context of blended learning

The circumstances of active implementation of a blended learning format at all educational levels require increased motivation and advancement of the competences learned by students of higher education institutions.Such statement equally applies to foreign language competence, which is one of most relevant skills to the future professional activity of international relations specialists. In considering this, the Ukrainian higher education institutions conducted a study on the development of foreign language competence of higher education students in the context of blended learning. The purpose of the article is to develop and empirically establish the effectiveness of the author's model of foreign language competence development of higher education students in the context of blended learning. The study involved the development, implementation and evaluation of the effectiveness of the author's model of foreign language competence development of higher education students in the context of blended learning. The participants of the study were students of higher education institutions: HEI 1, HEI 2, HEI 3, who majored in the following specialties: international activities, international relations and some technical specialities. The participants were 1st, 3rd and 5th year students.A total of 138 students were interviewed (68 from the experimental and 70 from the control group). The study confirmed that the implementation of the method of organizing the formation of foreign language competence of higher education students, which requires an optimal combination of blended learning with modern digital tools and the professional orientation of foreign language training in the system of higher education institutions, helps advance foreign language competence of higher education students.

PELATIHAN BAHASA INGGRIS BAGI MAHASISWA AKPARTA SURAKARTA

This study aims to train English language skills for Akparta students to be proficient in English. The research methods used include presentations, lectures, observations and discussions. The results showed that the level of English mastery of the Surakarta Akparta students had progressed in speaking English. Community service activities carried out at Akparta Surakarta are helpful for students to improve their English language competence so that students can become professional tourism workers

English Language Learners, Labels, Purposes, Standard English, Whiteness, Deficit Views, and Unproblematic Framings: Toward Southern Decoloniality

This paper argues for revisiting ways in which English Language Learners (ELLs), and the learner labels attributed to them, are negatively, racially, and pathologically framed and constructed based on, putatively, their English language competence, or their lack of it. It contends that this framing tends to give rise to a raciolinguistic profiling of these learners, as they end up being classified by their race, pan-ethnicity, nationality, immigrant/refugee status, regionality, and at times, by their skin color, in addition to their language abilities. This raciolinguistic framing often engenders other framings such as White, deficit, and poverty framings, and sub-framings like an othering framing (e.g., the racial others and the linguistic others). These framings, together with the normative ways in which ELLs’ language problems are constructed, have been characterized in this paper as misframings. Additionally, employing southern decoloniality, the paper problematizes and critiques the way ELLs are constructed and labeled, and the appropriation of Standard English (SE) as the sole touchstone of acceptable English in the midst of the other varieties of SE and of pluriversal speakers of English. Finally, the paper calls for the provincialization/localization or the deparochialization of English in keeping with its southern decolonial approach.