Synergy

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Authors: Laura-Mihaela Muresan

This issue of Synergy Journal (1/2016) reflects the scholars’ and language experts’ growing interest in emerging trends in language education and research in the field of languages for professional and academic purposes. It takes further the conversations begun at the 14th international conference of AELFE – Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos – organised in Bucharest in the summer of 2015, in co-operation with the Romanian Association for Quality Language Services QUEST and The Bucharest University of Economic Studies.

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Authors: Mariana NICOLAE

The present book, edited by Karen Bennett, is important from several points of view. It is important for the international community of researchers of English for international scholarly publishing, it is important for each of the 10 national contexts presented in the book, and it is important for its individual contributors as well. It is also important from the point of view of the larger Romanian academic context, which is featured in the volume with a study by Bardi and Muresan. As Swales pointed out (Swales, 2015) the book is surprising and important in that it makes a significant effort to contribute to the understanding of today’s academic world, a contribution put forward probably for the first time by a majority of nonnative speakers of English, with the exception of Bennett herself and of Burgess. Equally important, it is put forward by a majority of female researchers, a dimension that is particularly relevant for the semiperiphery context.

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Authors: Boryana Kostova,Galina Shamonina

Internationalization of higher education and the impact of English in academic communication have resulted in opening a niche in language education. First, this involves a growing interest in studying academic discourse and rhetorical practices in order to support not only foreign and exchange students but mainly those academics who wish to publish in English and are apprehensive due to the widely acknowledged inequality in academic publishing in relation to discursive norms of languages different from English. Second, studying academic discourse involves studying language in action, looking at texts in relation to the social contexts in which they are used and the social relations they construct. Third, to meet the demand for formal language instruction targeting academics in non-English speaking countries, a handbook of academic communication in three languages was devised. Using the genre based approach it leads learners through academic genre moves and lexical bundles to strategies for academic communication.

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Authors: Anisoara POP

Exploration of technology-enhanced (TE) language learning has potential benefits pertaining to raising motivation levels and increased dynamics, cooperation, collaboration but at the same time student autonomy, authentic materials, flexibility of access to content and substantial extension of students’ contribution time. However, technology-enhanced language learning can be perceived as time consuming and difficult by some of the students. Therefore, feedback from course participants (Feedback on teaching, FoT) is crucial in language learning as it is in any quality optimization endeavour. The current paper will present the empirical results of ESP writing with second year students (N=36) in Dental Medicine of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Tirgu Mures (Hungarian line) who contributed for one semester to an asynchronous English writing project (Blog writing – BR). Students’ FoT perceptions based on variables such as convenience of delivery, strengths, challenges and preference of e-learning versus traditional activities have brought important insights for the design of TE writing practice and communication in the future as well as adjustments necessary for quality language learning.

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Authors: Maria ȘTEFĂNESCU

The aim of this article is to present and discuss some preliminary theoretical aspects related to designing and compiling a bilingual ESP dictionary, more specifically a Romanian-English dictionary of religious terms that will cover religious vocabulary associated with Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed Christianity. The main prospective beneficiaries of this work will be students attending Faculties of Theology, although I hope the dictionary may also benefit scholars with a background in theology, translators of religious texts from Romanian into English and other interested parties. The wordbook I envisage will be a work of specialized lexicography with an underlying pedagogical focus. The main aspects I intend to discuss in this article are: (1) identification of ESP students’ lexicographically significant needs and skills; (2) organization of each dictionary entry so that the users’ needs are successfully met; (3) discussion of some specific difficulties associated with the project of compiling such a dictionary.

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Authors: Gloria BOSCH-ROIG

The situation of the German language on Mallorca is a largely unexplored field, and there still is a lot of room for the unfolding of its potential as economic factor for the local and regional development. Based on objective data we try to demonstrate this and advocate the promotion of a more differentiated, regionalized and vocational multilingualism.

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Authors: Diana-Eugenia IONCICĂ,Tom BURNS , Antonia ENACHE , Marina MILITARU , Sandra SINFIELD

The current paper deals with studying the level of student satisfaction in the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. As for the method used – the paper commences with an outline of the main factors contributing to student satisfaction. Then, we introduce and analyze research which was undertaken by the authors in the academic year 2014-2015 in the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. The main objective of the research is to reveal if our academy meets students’ needs. We do that by trying to see if factors influencing the satisfaction level find appropriate responses from the teaching staff and, also if, from a student’s perspective, the university curriculum contributes to their professional development. The results of the research do not focus strictly on language learning in higher education. They are more general, including various aspects of student satisfaction. However, the conclusions of our study do not omit the role played by language learning opportunities in student satisfaction and emphasize its major importance, especially for students in International Business. The limitations of the research follow from the method used – they are due to the fact that the conclusions are based solely on students’ replies and are not, for the time being,correlated with other student satisfaction surveys or academic performance indicators. Thus, the connection established between student satisfaction and academic performance could be a direction for further research.

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Authors: Yolanda-Mirela CATELLY

This study presents research in embedding language learning strategies and language using strategies in an ESP course designed for engineering tertiary education, whose focus is on the transferability and generalizability of the approach. An enlarged sample of students was created by including a second teacher in the experimental research, who was thoroughly instructed on how to teach the experimental module, as one hypothesis was to check to what extent transfer of the proposed instructional construct was feasible. The findings analysis shows there are good chances of transferring the approach, with necessary amendments, towards other teachers and/or educational contexts.

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Authors: Antonia ENACHE

Without any political bias whatsoever, the present article analyses a recent Romanian election debate, that between the incumbent President, Klaus Iohannis, and his opponent at the time, Victor Ponta, with a view to winning the 2014 presidential elections. The analysis looks into a strategy that frequently appears in political communication, the indirect attack, which has the advantage of conveying a strong message without putting the speaker at risk. Out of the multiple facets that the indirect attack may present, the paper focuses on irony, questions, as well as the apparently neutral assumptions that both speakers make about themselves and the opponent, in order either to assert themselves and gain legitimacy, or to undermine the interlocutor's position. These strategies are used repeatedly by both participants in an attempt to make the antagonist appear unprepared, opportunistic,unreliable and corrupt in the eyes of potential electors.

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Authors: Anda-Elena Cretiu

The present paper focuses on how English is used in the Romanian art context, by whom, in what circumstances, to what purposes, and to what avail.The working thesis maintains that the use of Art English is a most valuable tool for increasing visibility and market value in the contemporary art world. Results so far encourage us to believe that the use of English played an important role in the growing international public of our former art students,helping them boost their visibility world-wide, encouraging meanwhile the efforts of the teacher to provide the students with this wonderful tool they may benefit from in the future.

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Authors: Maurizio Gotti

The paper will investigate the present globalising trends in the academic world, focusing in particular on their main implications for language education and research. The first part of the paper will explore the globalising effects of the use of English in the world of academia and the complex nature of its linguistic realisations, highlighting both its homogenizing and localising trends. Indeed, in spite of the greater similarity deriving from the process of globalisation, academic discourse is not at all uniform but varies according to a host of factors, such as language competence, disciplinary field, community membership, professional expertise and generic conventions, as well as other factors which clearly reflect aspects of local traditions and cultures. The data presented in this part originate from recent research projects on identity and culture in academic discourse, which show that the (native or non-native) Anglophone textual realisations are clearly influenced by their authors’ cultural allegiance to their linguistic, professional, social, or national reference groups. The second part of the paper will be devoted to the analysis of another issue which is highly topical in the academic context at a global level, i.e. the use of English as a medium of instruction in higher education. As part of the internationalisation programmes adopted by many Universities in non-English-speaking countries, the implementation of these ‘international’ courses have opened up new opportunities for learning the English discourses relating to the specialized disciplines taught, but have also aroused problems connected with language proficiency and the level of content competence acquired. These issues will be investigated with reference to experiences and research projects carried out in various European countries in the last few years.