Readiness of Special-Needs Schools in Developing Oral Language Skills Programs for Deaf Students

Limited learning programs in developing spoken language, as well as the inconsistency of teachers in implementing oral language communication, are allegedly the main causes of poor communication skills, especially for hearing impaired students. In contrast to this, oral language skills are a prerequisite for having communication with others. The present study draws attention to receive a description of the school (teacher) readiness in developing oral language skills programs for students with hearing impairment. Conducted through descriptive qualitative method, the current project explores data from the chosen teachers of grade 2, 3, and 4, as well as PKPBI teachers through interviews, observation and documentation study. The data analysis technique is performed through data reduction, data presentation, drawing conclusions and verification. The findings disclosed that the oral language program planning is based on incidental needs analysis. The oral language skills program is still developed separately from the PKPBI program and communication training (either speaking or articulation). Likewise, conversational competence as a basis for developing communication has not become a definite program and is only applied to certain themes. The implementation of the oral language skills program is carried out partially with different learning patterns and methods, namely the global word method and the maternal reflective method (MMR). The teacher’s evaluation was limited to correcting phonemes, repeating simple sentences and once into integrated thematically. The faced constraints are the availability of supporting infrastructure such as PKPBI room and articulation room that have not been optimized and the limited number of speech experts and PKPBI teachers. For such obvious reason, the seriousness and consistency of schools are highly necessary in developing oral language skills programs as the main focus during the learning process at each grade level by providing opportunities for all teachers to possess integration with PKPBI program and thematic articulation training programs using the reflective maternal method (MMR).

Perceptions on the Use of Movies and Multimodal Aspects for Teaching Conversational Competence to Porter Students

This study addresses these following questions: (1) How are the students’ and teachers’ perceptions toward the use of movies to teach conversational competence to porter students in a vocational high school?; (2) How are the students’ and teachers’ perceptions toward the use of movies to facilitate the students’ understanding of verbal and non-verbal conversational competence in the target situation of the job they will encounter as porters?; and (3) How can multimodal aspects help the students to master the conversational competence needed to become porters as reflected on the movies used in this study? This study employs descriptive qualitative design. The results show that movies are perceived to improve the conversational competence of porter students in a vocational high school. Movies facilitate the students’ understanding of verbal and non-verbal conversational competence in the target situation of the job they will encounter as a porter. The multimodal aspects help the students to master the conversational competence needed to be a porter as reflected on the movies. Therefore, movies along with their multimodal aspects are worthy for teaching conversational competence to porter students.

Preparing students for the global workforce: Chinese and non-Chinese working professionals on key employability skills

In this study, 79 Chinese and non-Chinese working professionals responded to an employability-skills survey. They were asked to identify key language and intercultural proficiencies that would allow non-Chinese professionals to work more effectively with Chinese colleagues and clients. All participants work or worked in multilingual and multicultural settings from a limited set of business sectors and job positions in mainland China. Quantitative data suggest that the participants consider intercultural competence to be the most valuable skill in global work settings. Intercultural competence includes the ability to collaborate with colleagues and clients of different nationalities, the ability to adapt to Chinese problem-solving norms when conflicts arise, and the flexibility to apply Chinese cultural practices inside and outside the workplace. Notably, a significant mean difference exists between the Chinese and non-Chinese participants concerning adaptability to Chinese norms around conflict. Regarding language proficiency, the participants identified conversational competence as the most important skill for interpersonal communication at work and beyond, placing less emphasis on the ability to read formal documents and correspondence in Chinese. This analysis attempts to suggest pedagogical guidance for Chinese and other business language educators seeking to develop sustainable business language curricula that meet the demand for a globally competent workforce.

German Language Adaptation of the Kalamazoo Communication Skills Assessment Form (KCSAF): A Multi-Method Study of Two Cohorts of Medical Students

This work investigates the German version of the Kalamazoo Communication Skills Assessment Form (KCSAFd) for three assessment methods: students' self-assessment (KCSAFd-self), assessment by standardised patients (KCSAFd-sPat) and video-assessment by trained raters (KCSAFd-video). Videotaped simulated patient consultations of N = 163 medical students from the first ( n = 97) and the final clinical years ( n = 66) were rated using the KCSAFd. Investigating the psychometric properties of the instrument, we found a two factor-construct with interpersonal and conversational competence. All methods showed good internal consistency and acceptable model fit values. Additionally, we found plausible relationships between the three methods and meaningful differences between the two groups of students.

Investigating Instructors’ Techniques to Develop EFL University Students Conversational Competence

The ever-growing need for good communication skills in English has created a huge demand for English teaching around the world. Millions of people today want to improve their command of English. And opportunities to learn English are provided in many different ways such as formal instruction, travelling, studying abroad, as well as through the media and the Internet. Such a worldwide demand for English has created an enormous demand for quality language teaching and language teaching materials and resources so as to meet learners’ demanding goals. Learners want to be able to master English to a high level of accuracy and fluency through the acquisition of good English language skills since fluency in English is a prerequisite for success and advancement in many fields of employment in today’s world. The present research attends to the techniques utilized by English as a foreign language (EFL) university instructors to develop their students’ speaking skills. It hypothesizes that EFL university instructors use a variety of techniques to bring about such an objective. To bring about the aims of the research and validate the posed hypothesis, a 30-item questionnaire has been designed and distributed among all the instructors of conversation at the Depts. of English and Translation / University of Mosul during the second term of the academic year 2103-2014. The analysis of the data collected via the sample’s responses to the questionnaire indicates that EFL instructors used indeed a variety of instructional techniques to develop their students’ speaking skills. Hence the posed hypothesis has been accepted and duly a set of concluding remarks and recommendations have been put forward.

Immersion versus Engagement Strategies: Examining the Effects on Conversational Competence amongst Korean Students in an Intensive English Program

This study seeks to examine the effect that immersion versus engagement strategies has on the language growth and efficacy of Korean EFL students learning to speak conversational English in an Intensive English Program (IEP) at an American university. This study utilized quantitative research techniques to answer the various questions that arise in regard to the effectiveness of immersion in an intensive English program. Eight Korean students were selected to partake in the research with four currently attending the IEP program and four having since graduated from the same IEP program. The study was conducted through interviews and questionnaires to examine the effectiveness of immersion strategies within the IEP program. The study found that although some engagement strategies remained somewhat effective for Koreans learning conversational English, the students preferred immersion. The Korean students noted that their interaction with native English speakers in environments where they were immersed in English such as in living situations or extracurricular programs increased their retention of English over activities done in the classroom.

Dialogic competence as a stylistic category

Our contribution is based on an assumption that the ability to conduct a dialogue is determined by a complex of linguistic and non-linguistic predispositions. In the forefront of our considerations there is a question we have identified as a dialogue (dialogic) competence. Dialogic competence in our perception consists of three core components: an organisational part of dialogue and its corresponding conversational competence, a pragmatic part and ability to cooperate, and finally a social part of dialogue and empathy or maintaining the accommodation-assimilation proportion in a dialogue. In the frame of these components, we suggest research issues for interactional stylistics that could provide a base of knowledge useful for application areas as well as social practice when cultivating the dialogic competence.

“Parno Sar Papin – White as a Swan”, Or How Metaphors Help Roma Children to Acquire Grammatical Categories in Romani

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