Search results for: English as a second language (ESL)

Authors: A. Elsehemy, M. Abdeen , T. Nazmy

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Since the appearance of the Semantic web, many semantic search techniques and models were proposed to exploit the information in ontology to enhance the traditional keyword-based search. Many advances were made in languages such as English, German, French and Spanish. However, other languages such as Arabic are not fully supported yet. In this paper we present a framework for ontology based information retrieval for Arabic language. Our system consists of four main modules, namely query parser, indexer, search and a ranking module. Our approach includes building a semantic index by linking ontology concepts to documents, including an annotation weight for each link, to be used in ranking the results. We also augmented the framework with an automatic document categorizer, which enhances the overall document ranking. We have built three Arabic domain ontologies: Sports, Economic and Politics as example for the Arabic language. We built a knowledge base that consists of 79 classes and more than 1456 instances. The system is evaluated using the precision and recall metrics. We have done many retrieval operations on a sample of 40,316 documents with a size 320 MB of pure text. The results show that the semantic search enhanced with text classification gives better performance results than the system without classification.

Keywords: Arabic text classification, ontology based retrieval, Arabic semantic web, information retrieval, Arabic ontology

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Authors: K. Kalieva, G. Ibraimova

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In literature, poetry stands as a profound genre that bridges the life experiences of everyday people, transcending language and culture to unite people through the universal language of emotion and human connection. This paper explores the collaborative efforts of translators in creating the anthology of post-Soviet Kyrgyz women’s poetry, a project spanning over ten years. This compelling anthology brings together the works of fifty prominent female poets from Kyrgyzstan during the post-Soviet era. It includes the original poems in Kyrgyz and provide English translations, sharing the rich and diverse voices of Kyrgyz women with a global audience and fostering a deep appreciation for the beauty of their words. The paper highlights the unique perspectives on life, love, and identity offered by each poet, and emphasizes the role of translation in making these voices accessible worldwide. Each poet's unique voice offers a glimpse into the rich cultural and literary landscape of Kyrgyzstan, highlighting themes that resonate universally. Methodology of the paper employs a combination of qualitative content analysis, semiotic analysis, and quantitative thematic analysis to examine the translation strategies, and the cultural and emotional peculiarities captured in the translations, as well as the themes explored by the poets in their poems. Through the art of translation, the paper explores the lyrical world of Kyrgyz women poets. Although Kyrgyz poets’ names and poems are unfamiliar to many, their words resonate with an emotional depth that is sure to leave a lasting impression. Kyrgyz women's poetry translated into English celebrates the distinctive voices of women in the contemporary world. It serves as a reminder that poetry possesses the power to transcend life's obstacles, foster mutual understanding, and inspire positive change. The poems created by Kyrgyz women are envisioned to serve as a source of inspiration for readers. The paper proposes a poetic journey created by Kyrgyz women, offering readers an opportunity to experience Kyrgyz landscapes, traditions, and universal human themes through their verses. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of the poem translations, exploring the beauty and depth of the poets' thoughts and feelings. Through these translations, readers are invited to explore the world of Kyrgyz women poets, enriching their understanding of the language, culture, and the profound human experiences conveyed in the poetry. The hypotheses of the paper is that analyzing these translations through translation studies theories and linguistic and semiotic frameworks will reveal the complexities and challenges involved in translating poetry across languages and cultures.

Keywords: Kyrgyz poetry, post-soviet literature, translation, women poets.

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Authors: Gareth Baxter

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We use a mathematical model of language change to examine two recently observed patterns of language change: one in which most speakers change gradually, following the mean of the community change, and one in which most individuals use predominantly one variant or another, and change rapidly if they change at all. The model is based on Croft’s Utterance Selection account of language change, which views language change as an evolutionary process, in which different variants (different ‘ways of saying the same thing’) compete for usage in a population of speakers. Language change occurs when a new variant replaces an older one as the convention within a given population. The present model extends a previous simpler model to include effects related to speaker aging and interspeaker variation in behaviour. The two patterns of individual change (one more centralized and the other more polarized) were recently observed in historical language changes, and it was further observed that slower changes were more associated with the centralized pattern, while quicker changes were more polarized. Our model suggests that the two patterns of change can be explained by different balances between the preference of speakers to use one variant over another and the degree of accommodation to (propensity to adapt towards) other speakers. The correlation with the rate of change appears naturally in our model, and results from the fact that both differential weighting of variants and the degree of accommodation affect the time for change to occur, while also determining the patterns of change. This work represents part of an ongoing effort to examine phenomena in language change through the use of mathematical models. This offers another way to evaluate qualitative explanations that cannot be practically tested (or cannot be tested at all) in a real-world, large-scale speech community.

Keywords: agent based modeling, cultural evolution, language change, social behavior modeling, social influence

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Authors: Asma Ben Abdallah

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Language has a powerful influence over people and their actions. The language of advertising has a very great impact on the consumer. It makes use of different features from the linguistic continuum. The present paper attempts to apply the theories of stylistics to the analysis of advertising texts. In order to decipher the stylistic features of the advertising discourse, 30 advertising text samples designed by MA Business students have been selected. These samples have been analyzed at the level of design and content. The study brings insights into the use of stylistic devices in advertising, and it reveals that both linguistic and non-linguistic features of advertisements are frequently employed to develop a well-thought-out design and content. The practical significance of the study is to highlight the specificities of the advertising genre so that people interested in the language of advertising (Business students and ESP teachers) will have a better understanding of the nature of the language used and the techniques of writing and designing ads. Similarly, those working in the advertising sphere (ad designers) will appreciate the specificities of the advertising discourse.

Keywords: the language of advertising, advertising discourse, ad design, stylistic features

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Authors: Shazi Shah Jabeen, Ajay Jesse Thomas

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The study is aimed at understanding the learning trends of students who opt for online language courses and to assess the effectiveness of the same. Multiple factors including use of the latest available technology and the skills that are trained by these online methods have been assessed. An attempt has been made to answer how each of the various language skills is trained online and how effective the online methods are compared to the classroom methods when students interact with peers and instructor. A mixed method research design was followed for collecting information for the study where a survey by means of a questionnaire and in-depth interviews with a number of respondents were undertaken across the various institutes and study centers located in the United Arab Emirates. The questionnaire contained 19 questions which included 7 sub-questions. The study revealed that the students find learning with an instructor to be a lot more effective than learning alone in an online environment. They prefer classroom environment more than the online setting for language learning.

Keywords: effectiveness, language, online learning, skills

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Authors: Raghad Abu Salma, Beatrice Szczepek Reed

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Politeness is one of the most researched areas in pragmatics as it is key to interpersonal interactional phenomena. Many studies, particularly in linguistics, have focused on developing politeness theories and exploring linguistic devices used in communication to construct and establish social norms. However, the question of what constitutes polite language remains a point of ongoing debate. Prior research primarily examined politeness in English and its native speaking communities, oversimplifying the notion of politeness and associating it with surface-level language use. There is also a dearth of literature on politeness in Arabic, particularly in the context of Jordanian Arabic. Prior research investigating politeness in Arabic make generalized claims about politeness in Arabic without taking the linguistic variations into account or providing empirical evidence. This proposed research aims to explore how Jordanian Arabic influences its first language users in making and responding to requests, exploring participants' perceptions of politeness and the linguistic choices they make in their interactions. The study focuses on Jordanian expats living in London, UK providing an intercultural perspective that prior research does not consider. This study employs a mixed-methods approach combining discourse completion tasks (DCTs) with semi-structured interviews. While DCTs provide insight into participants’ linguistic choices, semi-structured interviews glean insight into participants' perceptions of politeness and their linguistic choices impacted by cultural norms and diverse experiences. This paper discusses previous research on politeness in Arabic, identifies research gaps, and discusses different methods for data collection. This paper also presents preliminary findings from the ongoing study.

Keywords: politeness, pragmatics, jordanian arabic, intercultural politeness

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Authors: Vladimir Simovic, Matija Varga, Robert Svetlacic

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Scientific work analytically explores and demonstrates techniques that can animate objects and geometric characters using CSS3 language by applying proper formatting and positioning of elements. This paper presents examples of optimum application of the CSS3 descriptive language when generating general web animations (e.g., billiards and movement of geometric characters, etc.). The paper presents analytically, the optimal development and animation design with the frames within which the animated objects are. The originally developed content is based on the upgrading of existing CSS3 descriptive language animations with more complex syntax and project-oriented work. The purpose of the developed animations is to provide an overview of the interactive features of CSS3 descriptive language design for computer games and the animation of important analytical data based on the web view. It has been analytically demonstrated that CSS3 as a descriptive language allows inserting of various multimedia elements into websites for public and internal sites.

Keywords: web animation recording, KML GML HTML5 forms, Cascading Style Sheets 3, Google Earth Professional

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Authors: Vasiliki Stratidou

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Modern simulation mobile games have the potential to enhance students’ interest, motivation and creativity. Research conducted on the effectiveness of digital games for educational purposes has shown that such games are also ideal at providing an appropriate environment for language learning. The paper examines the issue of simulation mobile games in regard to the potential positive impacts on L2 vocabulary learning. Sixteen intermediate level students, aged 10-14, participated in the experimental study for four weeks. The participants were divided into experimental (8 participants) and control group (8 participants). The experimental group was planned to learn some new vocabulary words via digital games while the control group used a reading passage to learn the same vocabulary words. The study investigated the effect of mobile games as well as the traditional learning methods on Greek EFL learners’ vocabulary learning in a pre-test, an immediate post-test, and a two-week delayed retention test. A teacher’s diary and learners’ interviews were also used as tools to estimate the effectiveness of the implementation. The findings indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in acquiring new words through mobile games. Therefore, digital games proved to be an effective tool in learning English vocabulary.

Keywords: control group, digital games, experimental group, second language vocabulary learning, simulation games

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Authors: Chapman Eze Nnadozie

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Relational databases constitute a very vital tool for the effective management and administration of both personal and organizational data. Data access ranges from a single user database management software to a more complex distributed server system. This paper intends to appraise the use a programming language extension like structured query language (SQL) to establish links to a relational database (Microsoft Access 2013) using Visual C++ 9 programming language environment. The methodology used involves the creation of tables to form a database using Microsoft Access 2013, which is Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) database compliant. The SQL command is used to query the tables in the database for easy extraction of expected records inside the visual C++ environment. The findings of this paper reveal that records can easily be accessed and manipulated to filter exactly what the user wants, such as retrieval of records with specified criteria, updating of records, and deletion of part or the whole records in a table.

Keywords: data access, database, database management system, OLE, programming language, records, relational database, software, SQL, table

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Authors: Kênio Angelo Dantas Freitas Estrela

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Traditionally meaning holism is a theory that is related to the meaning attributed to words and their relationships to other words in a language. This theory can be more specifically defined as a defense of the mutual interdependence of all items of linguistic knowledge, so that, for example, to understand the meaning of a given expression, it is necessary to understand a large sector of the language in question or, even the complete language. The aim of this paper is to present a moderate version of meaning holism, which argues that, among other things, meaning holism does not imply the thesis of instability - if there is the change of belief about an object, there is a change of meaning - and, in this way, it is possible to attribute meanings to objects admitting changes of opinions and then beliefs. It will be shown how this version of holism gives an account of the main criticisms made of meaning holism in the last decades and also show how this theory can justify linguistic phenomena (like vagueness and polysemy) that are often treated as problems of language. Finally, it will also be argued that these linguistic phenomena are intrinsic to languages and that the moderate version of meaning holism can justify the occurrence of these phenomena.

Keywords: linguistics, meaning holism, philosophy of language, semantics

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Authors: Jianhua Wang, Ying Zhou, Xi Zhang

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To establish the influential mechanism of learning engagement on interpreter’s performance, the present study submitted a questionnaire to a sample of 927 English major students with 804 valid ones and used the structural equation model as the basis for empirical analysis and statistical inference on the sample data. In order to explore the mechanism for interpreting learning engagement on student interpreters’ performance, a path model of interpreting processes with three variables of ‘input-environment-output’ was constructed. The results showed that the effect of each ‘environment’ variable on interpreting ability was different from and greater than the ‘input’ variable, and learning engagement was the greatest influencing factor. At the same time, peer interaction on interpreting performance has significant influence. Results suggest that it is crucial to provide effective guidance for optimizing learning engagement and interpreting teaching research by both improving the environmental support and building the platform of peer interaction, beginning with learning engagement.

Keywords: learning engagement, interpreting performance, interpreter training, English major students

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Authors: Ali Algryani

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Ellipsis involves the omission of an item or items that can be recovered from the preceding clause. Ellipsis is used as a cohesion marker; it enhances the cohesiveness of a text/discourse as a clause is interpretable only through making reference to an antecedent clause. The present study attempts to investigate the linguistic phenomenon of ellipsis from a translation perspective. It is mainly concerned with how ellipsis is translated from English into Arabic. The study covers different forms of ellipsis, such as noun phrase ellipsis, verb phrase ellipsis, gapping, pseudo-gapping, stripping, and sluicing. The primary aim of the study, apart from discussing the use and function of ellipsis, is to find out how such ellipsis phenomena are dealt with in English-Arabic translation and determine the implications of the translations of elliptical structures into Arabic. The study is based on the analysis of Dhofar University (DU) students' translations of sentences containing different forms of ellipsis. The initial findings of the study indicate that due to differences in syntactic structures and stylistic preferences between English and Arabic, Arabic tends to use lexical repetition in the translation of some elliptical structures, thus achieving a higher level of explicitness. This implies that Arabic tends to prefer lexical repetition to create cohesion more than English does. Furthermore, the study also reveals that the improper translation of ellipsis leads to interpretations different from those understood from the source text. Such mistranslations can be attributed to student translators’ lack of awareness of the use and function of ellipsis as well as the stylistic preferences of both languages. This has pedagogical implications on the teaching and training of translation students at DU. Students' linguistic competence needs to be enhanced through teaching linguistics-related issues with reference to translation and both languages, .i.e. source and target languages and with special emphasis on their use, function and stylistic preferences.

Keywords: cohesion, ellipsis, explicitness, lexical repetition

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Authors: Qin Yao

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Content and language integrated instruction provides second language learners instruction in subject matter and language, and is greatly valued, particularly in the language immersion classroom where a language other than students’ first language is the vehicle for teaching school curriculum. Corrective feedback is an essential instructional technique for teachers to integrate a focus on language into their content instruction. This study aims to fill a gap in the literature on immersion—the lack of studies examining corrective feedback in Chinese immersion classrooms, by studying learning opportunities brought by oral corrective feedback in a Chinese immersion classroom. Specifically, it examines what is the distribution of different types of teacher corrective feedback and how students respond to each feedback type, as well as how the focus of the teacher-student interactional exchanges affect the effect of feedback. Two Chinese immersion teachers and their immersion classes were involved, and data were collected through classroom observations interviews. Observations document teachers’ provision of oral corrective feedback and students’ responses following the feedback in class, and interviews with teachers collected teachers’ reflective thoughts about their teaching. A primary quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data revealed that, among different types of corrective feedback, recast occurred most frequently. Metalinguistic clue and repetition were the least occurring feedback types. Clarification request lead to highest percentage of learner uptake manifested by learners’ oral production immediately following the feedback, while explicit correction came the second and recast the third. In addition, the results also showed the interactional context played a role in the effectiveness of the feedback: teachers were most likely to give feedback in conversational exchanges that focused on explicit language and content, while students were most likely to use feedback in exchanges that focused on explicit language. In conclusion, the results of this study indicate recasts are preferred by Chinese immersion teachers, confirming results of previous studies on corrective feedback in non-Chinese immersion classrooms; and clarification request and explicit language instruction elicit more target language production from students and are facilitative in their target language development, thus should not be overlooked in immersion and other content and language integrated classrooms.

Keywords: Chinese immersion, content and language integrated instruction, corrective feedback, interaction

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Authors: Malin Isaksson

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Teaching French as a foreign language usually implies teaching French literature, especially in higher education. Training university students in literary reading in a foreign language requires addressing several aspects at the same time: the (foreign) language, the poetic language, the aesthetic aspects of the studied works, and various interpretations of them. A pilot study sought to test a teaching model that would support students in learning to perform competent readings and short analyses of French literary works, in a rather independent manner. This shared practice paper describes the use of a flipped classroom method in two French literature courses, a campus course and an online course, and suggests that the teaching model may provide efficient tools for teaching literary reading and analysis in a foreign language. The teaching model builds on a high level of student activity and focuses on attentive reading, meta-perspectives such as theoretical concepts, individual analyses by students where said concepts are applied, and group discussions of the studied texts and of possible interpretations.

Keywords: attentive reading, flipped classroom, literature in foreign language studies, teaching literature analysis

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Authors: Imam Uddin, Imtiaz Ahmed Memon

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This paper analyzes the ideological contextuality of market oriented strategy language used by Industry leaders to envision the future of Islamic financial Institutions (IFIs) in the light of Wittgenstein language-games and Foucault’s power-discourse framework. The analysis infers that the explicit market orientation of strategy language and modern knowledge of finance now defines various concepts related of Islamic finance, let alone Islamic finance theory itself. Theorizing and practicing Islamic finance therefore under the dominant influence of modern strategy discourse and modern knowledge of finance has significant implications for developing an ethical and spiritual orientation of Islamic banks. The concerned academia and scholarship therefore need to review such trends and work around the possible degradation to the public image of IFIs and resulting disappointments of religiously inspired customers.

Keywords: Islamic finance discourse, strategy discourse, language games, strategic intent, productive misunderstanding

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Authors: Hifzur Ansary

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The aim and scope of the present research are to delve into the form of geminates and the process of gemination with special reference to Indic Languages. This work presents the results of a cross-linguistic investigation of word-medial geminate consonants. This study is a theoretical as well as experimental, that is, it is based not only on impressionistic data from Indic languages but also on an instrumental analysis of the data. The primary data have been collected from the native speakers. The secondary data have been collected from printed materials such as journals, grammar books and other published articles. The observations made in this study have been checked with a number of educated native speakers of Bangla and Telugu. The study focuses on geminates and gemination in Bangla (Indo-Aryan Language Family) and Telugu (Dravidian Language family) exhaustively. Thus this study also attempts to posit the valid geminates in Bangali and Telugu and provides an account of gemination in these languages. It also makes a comparison of singletons and geminated consonants. It describes the distribution of geminate phonemes and non-geminate phonemes of Bangla and Telugu. The present research would also investigate the vowel lengthening in Bangla with respect to gemination. The study also explains how gemination processes present in Indian Languages are transferred to Indian English.

Keywords: geminate consonant, singleton-geminate contrast, different types of assimilation, gemination derives from borrowed words

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Authors: Neha Toppo

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Method and strategies of teaching instruction highly influence learning of students. In second language teaching, number of ways and methods has been suggested by different scholars and researchers through times. The present article deals with the role of teaching instruction in developing compositional ability of students in writing. It focuses on the secondary level students of rural areas, whose exposure to English language is limited and they face challenges even in simple compositions. The students till high school suffer with their disability in writing formal letter, application, essay, paragraph etc. They face problem in note making, writing answers in examination using their own words and depend fully on rote learning. It becomes difficult for them to give language to their own ideas. Teaching writing composition deserves special attention as writing is an integral part of language learning and students at this level are expected to have sound compositional ability for it is useful in numerous domains. Effective method of instruction could help students to learn expression of self, correct selection of vocabulary and grammar, contextual writing, composition of formal and informal writing. It is not limited to school but continues to be important in various other fields outside the school such as in newspaper and magazine, official work, legislative work, material writing, academic writing, personal writing, etc. The study is based on the experimental method, which hypothesize that guided instruction will be more effective in teaching writing compositions than usual instruction in which students are left to compose by their own without any help. In the test, students of one section are asked to write an essay on the given topic without guidance and another section are asked to write the same but with the assistance of guided instruction in which students have been provided with a few vocabulary and sentence structure. This process is repeated in few more schools to get generalize data. The study shows the difference on students’ performance using both the instructions; guided and unguided. The conclusion of the study is followed by the finding that writing skill of the students is quite poor but with the help of guided instruction they perform better. The students are in need of better teaching instruction to develop their writing skills.

Keywords: composition, essay, guided instruction, writing skill

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Authors: Dina C. Castro, Rossana Boyd, Eugenia Papadaki

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Immigration within and across continents is currently a global reality. The number of people leaving their communities in search for a better life for them and their families has increased dramatically during the last twenty years. Therefore, young children of the 21st century around the World are growing up in diverse communities, exposed to many languages and cultures. One consequence of these migration movements is the increased linguistic diversity in school settings. Depending on the linguistic history and the status of languages in the communities (i.e., minority-majority; majority-majority) the instructional approaches will differ. This session will discuss how bilingualism is addressed in early education programs in both minority-majority and majority-majority language communities, analyzing experiences in three countries with very distinct societal and demographic characteristics: Peru (South America), the United States (North America), and Italy (European Union). The ultimate goal is to identify commonalities and differences across the three experiences that could lead to a discussion of bilingualism in early education from a global perspective. From Peru, we will discuss current national language and educational policies that have lead to the design and implementation of bilingual and intercultural education for children in indigenous communities. We will also discuss how those practices are being implemented in preschool programs, the progress made and challenges encountered. From the United States, we will discuss the early education of Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers, including the national policy environment, as well as variations in language of instruction approaches currently being used with these children. From Italy, we will describe early education practices in the Bilingual School of Monza, in northern Italy, a school that has 20 years promoting bilingualism and multilingualism in education. While the presentations from Peru and the United States will discuss bilingualism in a majority-minority language environment, this presentation will lead to a discussion on the opportunities and challenges of promoting bilingualism in a majority-majority language environment. It is evident that innovative models and policies are necessary to prevent inequality of opportunities for bilingual children beginning in their earliest years. The cross-cultural examination of bilingual education experiences for young children in three part of the World will allow us to learn from our success and challenges. The session will end with a discussion of the following question: To what extent are early care and education programs being effective in promoting positive development and learning among all children, including those from diverse language, ethnic and cultural backgrounds? We expect to identify, with participants to our session, a set of recommendations for policy and program development that could ensure access to high quality early education for all bilingual children.

Keywords: early education for bilingual children, global perspectives in early education, cross-cultural, language policies

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Authors: M. Kalyuga

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Prepositions have long been considered to be one of the major challenges for second language learners, since they have multiple uses that differ greatly from one language to another. The traditional approach to second language teaching supplies students with a list of uses of a preposition that they have to memorise and no explanation is provided. Contrary to the traditional grammar approach, the cognitive linguistic approach offers an explanation for the use of prepositions and provides strategies to comprehend and learn prepositions that would be otherwise seem obscure. The present paper demonstrates the use of the cognitive approach for the explanation of prepositions through the example of the Russian preposition 'за'. The paper demonstrates how various spatial and non-spatial uses of this preposition are linked together through metaphorical and metonymical mapping. The diversity of expressions with за is explained by the range of spatial scenes this preposition is associated with.

Keywords: language teaching, Russian, preposition 'за', cognitive approach

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Authors: Madhavi

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All linguistic units are context-dependent. They occur in particular settings, from which they derive much of their import, and are recognized by speakers as distinct entities only through a process of abstraction. Most of the words have several concepts associated with them and convey a number of meanings in different contexts in any language. For instance, there are different uses of the word good as an adjective from English. The adjective good expresses many senses like (1) ‘high quality of someone or something’ (2) ‘efficient’ (3) ‘virtuous’ (4) ‘reliable’ etc. These senses will be analyzed by using cognitive semantics framework. The context has the power to insulate one meaning from all the other meanings in communication. This paper will provide a cognitive semantic analysis. The basic tenet of cognitive semantics is the sense of a word is the way we conceptualize it. Our conceptualization is based on the physical experience we go through. Cognitive semantics tries to capture this conceptualization in terms of some categories like schema, frame, and domain. Cognitive semantics is a subfield of cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics studies the language creation, learning, and usage by the reference to human cognition. The semantic structure is conceptual structure which is related to the concepts which are the elements of reason and constitute the meanings of words and linguistic expressions. Cognitive semantics studies how our mind works for the meaning of any word and how it perceives meaning from the environment through senses and works to map with the knowledge which already exists in our mind through experience. In the present paper, the senses are further classified into some categories.

Keywords: cognitive, contexts, semantics, senses

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Authors: Lucian Vasile Bagiu, Paraschiva Bagiu

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The study is a contrastive essay on language acquisition and learning and follows the outcomes of teaching Romanian language to foreign students both at Lund University, Sweden (from 2014 to 2017) and at '1 Decembrie 1918' University in Alba Iulia, Romania (2017-2018). Having employed the same teaching methodology (on campus, same curricula) for the same level of study (beginners’ level: A1-A2), the essay focuses on the written exam at the end of the semester. The study argues on grammar exercises concerned with: the indefinite and the definite article; the conjugation of verbs in the present indicative; the possessive; verbs in the past tense; the subjunctive; the degrees of comparison for adjectives. Identifying similar errors when solving identical grammar exercises by different groups of foreign students is an opportunity to emphasize the major challenges any foreigner has to face and overcome when trying to acquire Romanian language. The conclusion draws attention to the complexity of the morphology of Romanian language in several key elements which may be insurmountable for a foreign speaker no matter if the language acquisition takes place in a foreign country or a Romanian university.

Keywords: Arab students, morphological errors, Romanian language, Swedish students, written exam

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Authors: Iman Al Khalidi

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Recently, English has become the language of globalization and technology. In turn, this has resulted in a seemingly bewildering array of influences and trends in the domain of TESOL curriculum. In light of these changes, higher education has to provide a new and more powerful kind of education. It should prepare students to be more engaged citizens, more capable to solve complex problems at work, and well prepared to lead meaningful life. In response to this, universities, colleges, schools, and departments have to work out in light of the requirements and challenges of the global and technological era. Consequently they have to focus on the adoption of contemporary curriculum which goes in line with the pedagogical shifts from teaching –centered approach to learning centered approach. Ideally, there has been noticeable emphasis on the crucial importance of developing and professionalizing teachers in order to engage them in the process of curriculum development and action research. This is a qualitative study that aims at understanding and exploring the process of designing EFL courses by teachers at the tertiary level from the perspectives of the participants in a professional context in TESOL, Department of English, a private college in Oman. It is a case study that stands on the philosophy of the qualitative approach. It employs multi methods for collecting qualitative data: semi-structured interviews with teachers, focus group discussions with students, and document analysis. The collected data have been analyzed qualitatively by adopting Miles and Huberman's Approach using procedures of reduction, coding, displaying and conclusion drawing and verification.

Keywords: course design, components of course design, case study, data analysis

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Authors: Iman Al Khalidi

Abstract:

Recently, English has become the language of globalization and technology. In turn, this has resulted in a seemingly bewildering array of influences and trends in the domain of TESOL curriculum. In light of these changes, higher education has to provide a new and more powerful kind of education. It should prepare students to be more engaged citizens, more capable to solve complex problems at work, and well prepared to lead a meaningful life. In response to this, universities, colleges, schools, and departments have to work out in light of the requirements and challenges of the global and technological era. Consequently, they have to focus on the adoption of contemporary curriculum which goes in line with the pedagogical shifts from teaching –centered approach to learning centered approach. Ideally, there has been noticeable emphasis on the crucial importance of developing and professionalizing teachers in order to engage them in the process of curriculum development and action research. This is a qualitative study that aims at understanding and exploring the process of designing EFL courses by teachers at the tertiary level from the perspectives of the participants in a professional context in TESOL, Department of English, a private college in Oman. It is a case study that stands on the philosophy of the qualitative approach. It employs multi-methods for collecting qualitative data: semi-structured interviews with teachers, focus group discussions with students, and document analysis. The collected data have been analyzed qualitatively by adopting Miles and Huberman's Approach using procedures of reduction, coding, displaying, and conclusion drawing and verification.

Keywords: course design, components of course design, case study, data analysis

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Authors: Jiang Niu, Yue Jiang

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With the ultimate goal to automatically generate translated texts with high quality, machine translation has made tremendous improvements. However, its translations of literary works are still plagued with problems in coherence, esp. the translation between distant language pairs. One of the causes of the problems is probably the lack of linguistic knowledge to be incorporated into the training of machine translation systems. In order to enable readers to better understand the problems of machine translation in coherence, to seek out the potential knowledge to be incorporated, and thus to improve the quality of machine translation products, this study applies Theme-Rheme structure to examine how a machine-translated literary text is organized and developed in terms of coherence. Theme-Rheme structure in Systemic Functional Linguistics is a useful tool for analysis of textual coherence. Theme is the departure point of a clause and Rheme is the rest of the clause. In a text, as Themes and Rhemes may be connected with each other in meaning, they form thematic and rhematic progressions throughout the text. Based on this structure, we can look into how a text is organized and developed in terms of coherence. Methodologically, we chose Chinese and English as the language pair to be studied. Specifically, we built a comparable corpus with two modes of English translations, viz. machine translation (MT) and human translation (HT) of one Chinese literary source text. The translated texts were annotated with Themes, Rhemes and their progressions throughout the texts. The annotated texts were analyzed from two respects, the different types of Themes functioning differently in achieving coherence, and the different types of thematic and rhematic progressions functioning differently in constructing texts. By analyzing and contrasting the two modes of translations, it is found that compared with the HT, 1) the MT features “pseudo-coherence”, with lots of ill-connected fragments of information using “and”; 2) the MT system produces a static and less interconnected text that reads like a list; these two points, in turn, lead to the less coherent organization and development of the MT than that of the HT; 3) novel to traditional and previous studies, Rhemes do contribute to textual connection and coherence though less than Themes do and thus are worthy of notice in further studies. Hence, the findings suggest that Theme-Rheme structure be applied to measuring and assessing the coherence of machine translation, to being incorporated into the training of the machine translation system, and Rheme be taken into account when studying the textual coherence of both MT and HT.

Keywords: coherence, corpus-based, literary translation, machine translation, Theme-Rheme structure

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Authors: Ewa Toloczko

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Studies show that developing writing skills throughout years of formal foreign language instruction does not necessarily result in rewarding accomplishments among learners, nor an affirmative attitude they build towards written assignments. What causes this apparently wide-spread bias to writing might be a diminished relevance students attach to it, as opposed to the other productive skill — speaking, insufficient resources available for them to succeed, or the ways writing is approached by instructors, that is inapt teaching techniques that discourage rather that inflame learners’ engagement. The assumption underlying this presentation is that psychological and psycholinguistic factors constitute a key dimension of every writing process, and hence should be seriously considered in both material design and lesson planning. The author intends to demonstrate research in which writing tasks were conceived of as attitudinal rather than technical operations, and consequently turned into meaningful and socially-oriented incidents that students could relate to and have an active hand in. The instrument employed to achieve this purpose and to make writing even more interactive was the format of a project, a carefully devised series of tasks, which involved students as human beings, not only language learners. The projects rested upon the premise that the presence of peers and the teacher in class could be taken advantage of in a supportive rather than evaluative mode. In fact, the research showed that collaborative work and constant meaning negotiation reinforced not only bonds between learners, but also the language form and structure of the output. Accordingly, the role of the teacher shifted from the assessor to problem barometer, always ready to accept the slightest improvements in students’ language performance. This way, written verbal communication, which usually aims to merely manifest accuracy and coherent content for assessment, became part of the enterprise meant to emphasise its social aspect — the writer in real-life setting. The samples of projects show the spectrum of possibilities teachers have when exploring the domain of writing within school curriculum. The ideas are easy to modify and adjust to all proficiency levels and ages. Initially, however, they were meant to suit teenage and young adult learners of English as a foreign language in both European and Asian contexts.

Keywords: projects, psycholinguistic/ psychological dimension of writing, writing as a social enterprise, writing skills, written assignments

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Authors: M. Vassou, A. Karasimos

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A primary concern in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research is to determine the innate mechanisms of second language learning and acquisition through the systematic study of a learner's interlanguage. Errors emerge while a learner attempts to communicate using the target-language and can be seen either as the observable linguistic product of the latent cognitive and language process of mental representations or as an indispensable learning mechanism. Therefore, the study of the learner’s erroneous forms may depict the various strategies and mechanisms that take place during the language acquisition process resulting in deviations from the target-language norms and difficulties in communication. Mapping the erroneous utterances of a late adult learner in the process of acquiring Greek as a second language constitutes one of the main aims of this study. For our research purposes, we created an error-tagged learner corpus composed of the participant’s written texts produced throughout a period of a 4- year instructed language acquisition. Error analysis and interlanguage theory constitute the methodological and theoretical framework, respectively. The research questions pertain to the learner's most frequent errors per linguistic category and per year as well as his choices concerning the Greek Article System. According to the quantitative analysis of the data, the most frequent errors are observed in the categories of the stress system and syntax, whereas a significant fluctuation and/or gradual reduction throughout the 4 years of instructed acquisition indicate the emergence of developmental stages. The findings with regard to the article usage bespeak fossilization of erroneous structures in certain contexts. In general, our results point towards the existence and further development of an established learner’s (inter-) language system governed not only by mother- tongue and target-language influences but also by the learner’s assumptions and set of rules as the result of a complex cognitive process. It is expected that this study will contribute not only to the knowledge in the field of Greek as a second language and SLA generally, but it will also provide an insight into the cognitive mechanisms and strategies developed by multilingual learners of late adulthood.

Keywords: Greek as a second language, error analysis, interlanguage, late adult learner

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Authors: Luzia Dominguez

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This paper explores the concept of ‘translanguaging’ and the relevance of its pedagogical application in the context of foreign language education in a multilingual urban environment. We review relevant literature discussing this theoretical concept, its scope, potential, and limitations when applied to the teaching of foreign languages. We then discuss its possible practical application in Welsh secondary schools, particularly in the most diverse areas of the Welsh capital, Cardiff (United Kingdom). The concept of translanguaging has evolved in scope, from its initial application in the teaching of Welsh and English in the Welsh bilingual context to finding a relevant space not only in the international arena of Sociolinguistics and language pedagogy but also being present in current Welsh educational policies and, presumably, practices. However, it is important to consider the actual pedagogical relevance of incorporating this concept into these policies, particularly in the teaching of Modern Foreign Languages. Additionally, it is important to examine any social factors that may influence the effectiveness of its application in the social context, in our case, a multilingual, ethnically diverse urban context. By analyzing these issues, we aim to explore possible teaching practices that could be pedagogically effective in applying the concept in Cardiff secondary schools.

Keywords: pedagogy, modern foreign languages, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics

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Authors: Shyhrete Morina

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This paper deals with morphological features in Mjeda's works. To make such a distinction, these features will be compared to standard Albanian language, considering the linguistic structure in the morphological field, which represent an all-important segment of Albanian language. Therefore, the study will focus mainly on the description and construction of these paradigms, which will give a linguistic insight into the entire work of Mjeda as the author who wrote in the dialect of northwestern Geg. Therefore, we have tried to distinguish different parts of the author's language, as well as the distinctive features or even the similarities of these paradigms that arise in the literary work of Mjeda. By constructing the corpus of this phonetic and grammar segment from the whole of Mjeda's work, we have seen that in these fields has built a variety of grammar structures, which for the history of Albanian are of special importance, that in the full variant of the work, as far as we can investigate, we will point out in all the distinctive features. Therefore, our study aims to highlight the linguistic features, namely the author's deep knowledge toward the language, the authenticity of its use, and its mutual relationship with it.

Keywords: distinctive morpholgy, nouns, adjetives, pronouns, Albanian standard language

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Authors: Svetlana Kostrubina, Anastasia Prokopeva

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This research presents a comprehensive study of the word formation processes in computer terminology within English and Russian languages and provides listeners with a system of exercises for training these skills. The originality is that this study focuses on a comparative approach, which shows both general patterns and specific features of English and Russian computer terms word formation. The key point is the system of exercises development for training computer terminology based on Bloom’s taxonomy. Data contain 486 units (228 English terms from the Glossary of Computer Terms and 258 Russian terms from the Terminological Dictionary-Reference Book). The objective is to identify the main affixation models in the English and Russian computer terms formation and to develop exercises. To achieve this goal, the authors employed Bloom’s Taxonomy as a methodological framework to create a systematic exercise program aimed at enhancing students’ cognitive skills in analyzing, applying, and evaluating computer terms. The exercises are appropriate for various levels of learning, from basic recall of definitions to higher-order thinking skills, such as synthesizing new terms and critically assessing their usage in different contexts. Methodology also includes: a method of scientific and theoretical analysis for systematization of linguistic concepts and clarification of the conceptual and terminological apparatus; a method of nominative and derivative analysis for identifying word-formation types; a method of word-formation analysis for organizing linguistic units; a classification method for determining structural types of abbreviations applicable to the field of computer communication; a quantitative analysis technique for determining the productivity of methods for forming abbreviations of computer vocabulary based on the English and Russian computer terms, as well as a technique of tabular data processing for a visual presentation of the results obtained. a technique of interlingua comparison for identifying common and different features of abbreviations of computer terms in the Russian and English languages. The research shows that affixation retains its productivity in the English and Russian computer terms formation. Bloom’s taxonomy allows us to plan a training program and predict the effectiveness of the compiled program based on the assessment of the teaching methods used.

Keywords: word formation, affixation, computer terms, Bloom's taxonomy

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Authors: Ororho Maureen Ekpelezie

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This study investigates language educators' perceptions and experiences regarding AI-driven personalized teacher training modules in Awka South, Anambra State, Nigeria. Utilizing a stratified random sampling technique, 25 schools across various educational levels were selected to ensure a representative sample. A total of 1000 questionnaires were distributed among language teachers in these schools, focusing on assessing their perceptions and experiences related to AI-driven personalized teacher training. With an impressive response rate of 99.1%, the study garnered valuable insights into language teachers' attitudes towards AI-driven personalized teacher training and its effectiveness in enhancing language teaching competence. The quantitative analysis revealed predominantly positive perceptions towards AI-driven personalized training modules, indicating their efficacy in addressing individual learning needs. However, challenges were identified in the long-term retention and transfer of AI-enhanced skills, underscoring the necessity for further refinement of personalized training approaches. Recommendations stemming from these findings emphasize the need for continued refinement of training methodologies and the development of tailored professional development programs to alleviate educators' concerns. Overall, this research enriches discussions on the integration of AI technology in teacher training and professional development, with the aim of bolstering language teaching competence and effectiveness in educational settings.

Keywords: language teacher training, AI-driven personalized learning, professional development, language teaching competence, personalized teacher training

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