On the metaphorization of space: a closer look at the English far from X-construction and its Polish equivalents

Although a fair share of scholarly attention has been paid to the metaphorically driven grammaticalization of the originally spatial English far from X-construction into a minimizer, whereby it emphatically points to the subject’s non-attainment of a given property or failure to enter a specific eventuality, little has been written about whether, and how, this change finds reflection in the translation of English texts into foreign languages, including Polish. Thus, on the basis of a random sample composed of sentences containing the English far from X-construction along with their respective Polish translations extracted from the parallel English-Polish Paralela Corpus, this paper sets out to examine how the grammaticalized English expression is typically rendered into Polish. Considering the variation observed in the data, five main translation categories have been identified, namely those involving (i) spatial markers, (ii) standard minimizers, (iii) simple negation, (iv) omission, and (v) other locutions. The results of the empirical analysis indicate that in slightly more than half of the cases, the metaphorical English construction is translated into Polish with the use of non-spatial expressions, in particular canonical minimizers, a finding which can be accounted for in terms of the fact that the Polish spatial counterparts of far from X have generally undergone a lower degree of grammaticalization.

FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS: THE AETIOLOGY OF A FAMILIAR ENGLISH EXPRESSION

‘Fiddling while Rome burns’ is arguably the most familiar English saying inspired by classical antiquity. The image of Nero actually playing an instrument during the Great Fire is not, in fact, found in ancient sources: the first English reference belongs to Cooper's 1548 revision of Elyot's Latin–English Dictionary, where Nero is said to play a harp during the conflagration. In 1649 the royalist poet George Daniel applied the term ‘fiddle’, and the familiar modern form of the expression, as a byword for a leader's neglect, was apparently coined in a 1680 English parliamentary speech by Silius Titus.

IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL THEORIES TEACHING IN COMPREHENSIVE BUSINESS ENGLISH TEACHING

Comprehensive Business English course is a comprehensive language practice skills course, which integrates English language knowledge, communication ability, cultural background knowledge and business knowledge. By imitating English materials in different kinds of business and cultural scenes, students can get familiar with English expression habits, cultivate English critical thinking and master fundamental English oral expression ability; by learning different subjects, students' vocabulary and discourse reading comprehension ability are to be enhanced and the basic discourse expression ability and a good foundation for the third and fourth grade English learning are to be improved. Our university, Shandong Institute of Business and Technology, is a university of finance and economics with the striking characteristic of wealth management. We have the integration and development of students’ business English. Comprehensive business English is a compulsory course for the first and second year of business English majors, with small classes about 30 students in each. The courses for English majors are all business-related, most of them aim to work in business-related fields or study for master degree domestically or overseas after graduation. Business-English teaching aims to cultivate students with strengthened basic English listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation skills, relevant theories and knowledge of linguistics, economics, management and other studies, business operation mode and norms, good moral cultivation, social adaptability and innovation ability, and finally and most possibly the Applied Business English professionals. This paper, designed on the study and introduction of the present ideological and political theories teaching of Comprehensive Business English, is to discuss about the application of ideological and political teaching in the very basic course for Business English majors. By finding the ideological and political teaching topics and resources, it is to discover the proper, positive and critical means of applying theories in practice.

Teaching Strategies for Improving English Effectiveness in Higher Vocational Colleges Based on The Present Situation of English Teaching

As the development trend of the English era gradually became clear, more and more young people began to pay attention to the special importance of student English teaching in the English learning of Chinese college students. At the same time, in higher vocational colleges, the student English teaching system needs to make certain system adjustments and continuous improvements, not only because the current situation of the development of student English teaching in higher vocational colleges is not optimistic , but also because some students in colleges and universities are less enthusiastic about the work of college English education and learning, which leads to the low quality of college English teaching. As a key stage of talent training and corporate human resource savings in colleges and universities, we still need to continuously strengthen the learning of weak points of English. In other words, in vocational English colleges, our English teaching level needs to be improved to a certain extent. There are still many teaching methods in higher vocational English teaching that need to be gradually improved. This inevitably requires language teachers and English schools to give full play to their roles at the same time. Teachers must fully stimulate students’ interest in learning in the classroom, schools must organize various communicative English regularly. Teaching activities create a good communicative English learning atmosphere for the majority of students themselves, so that they can truly effectively improve their communicative English expression ability.

The Development of English Competency-Based Curriculum Integrated with Local Community for High School Students

The purposes of this research were to study needs of high school students and teachers on competency-based curriculum integrated with local community for high school students, develop a curriculum based on the needs, implement the developed curriculum, and evaluate the developed curriculum. The samples of the needs study stage consisted of 244 high school students, and 82 teachers in schools located in Ubon Ratchathani, and Warinchamrab Municipalities, gained by quota sampling, and those for the curriculum implementation consisted of 34 high school students studying at Luekamhan Warinchamrab School, in the second semester of academic year 2018, gained by cluster sampling. The research instruments were the developed curriculum, questionnaires for the students and the teachers, a test of English expression, a test of writing, and an attitude evaluation form. The findings revealed the students and the teachers rated their needs on competency-based curriculum at a higher level, the developed curriculum consisted of vision, mission to achieve the students’ competency through the aims, contents, and instructional procedures concentrated on practicing and the evaluation focused on performances, the students had significantly higher learning achievement and writing skills after the curriculum implementation than those before the implementation at the level .01. The developed curriculum was evaluated by the students at medium level of its feasibility.

Strategies of Native Culture Integration in College English Teaching Based on “Education of Chinese Ethics and Culture in All Courses”

Language is one of the carriers of culture. Language teaching cannot be divorced from cultural teaching. As an important compulsory course of general education in university, college English has long largely ignored the teaching of native language nature, which affects students’ cultural consciousness and confidence. The aphasia of Chinese culture in inter-cultural communication has caused wide concerns and worries in the field of foreign language teaching. Based on the concept of education of Chinese ethics and culture in all courses, the first part of this paper introduces the basic idea of education of Chinese ethics and culture in college English teaching and the problem of aphasia of English expression for Chinese cultures which leads to the lack of cultural consciousness and confidence. Then in the second part, the paper deeply discusses and explores the reasons for Chinese culture aphasia in college English teaching from the perspectives of teaching syllabus, teachers and students, textbooks and teaching materials and assessment systems. The third part of the paper puts forward a series of efficient strategies from the aspects of teaching and learning ideas, teaching mode, curriculum setting and evaluation mechanism. Finally, conclusions and reflections that need further consideration and research are discussed in the fourth part of this paper.

USING VIDEOTAPING HOMEWORK TO IMPROVE SPEAKING ABILITY

Improving learners’ speaking ability is the main purpose of Conversation 1 Class in Tadris Bahasa Inggris STAI Bandung. One of the strategies that were given is homework. The homework was in the form of video, which was called videotaping homework. The videos contained conversations using English expressions learned in the form of roleplay. The research design was qualitative research and the data collection was questionnaire. The result showed that 75% of the learners though that this strategies was able to improve their speaking ability in terms of Productivity, Purposefulness, Challenge, Authenticity, Academically. In addition videotaping homework had academicals purpose also that it could improve speaking ability of the learners, especially English expression knowledge by re-watching the video and finding the lackness through those videos.