Synergy

7

Authors: Anca CODREANU

This article looks at Vijay K. Bhatia’s book, Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings, which had a powerful effect on genre research in the period following its publication, for significant researchers in the field, and which has retained its full relevance to ESP practitioners owing to the innovative ideas put forward by the author. It is therefore an attempt to prove how the concept or rather the instrument of genre, as defined and demonstrated by Bhatia, can be used with rewarding results in the teaching / learning of Business or Legal or Academic English.

8

Authors: Alexander HOLLINGER

Metaphor is a figure of speech based on association between two elements which are essentially different: one used in a certain sphere of human life, whose meaning is then transferred through association to another sphere of human life. According to P. R. Wilkinson (1993:VIII), “metaphor is a means of expressing a thing in terms of something else”. In the same source, distinction is made between “vehicle”, that is the meaning of the initial word/concept and “tenor” – the concept to which the meaning is being transferred.

8

Authors: Mihaela PARPALEA

Wir wollen hier einige Fragen, die mit der sogenannten Fehlerproblematik zusammenhängen, vor dem Hintergrund neuerer Fremdsprachenerwerbstheorien diskutieren. Fehler zu machen ist untrennbar mit dem menschlichen Wesen verbunden, denn auch das Sprichwort behauptet: "Irren ist menschlich". Wenden wir diese Sentenz ins Alltägliche des Lernens im Allgemeinen und des Fremdsprachenlernens im Besonderen, so können wir feststellen, der Mensch macht Fehler so lange er eine Fremdsprache lernt, er bemüht sich auch Fehler zu vermeiden, weil sie störend wirken. Fehler sind vor allem ein psychisches Phänomen. Sie entstehen, wenn Mechanismen der Sprachproduktion oder Sprachaufnahme unzureichend funktionieren. Aus Untersuchungen geht hervor, dass der Großteil aller Fehler universalen Charakter haben, d.h. unabhängig von der Muttersprache des Lerners, von der Lernmethode und typisch für bestimmte Stufen der Sprachbeherrschung sind.

8

Authors: Lucia GROSU

Recently translated into Romanian, The God of Small Things, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy’s novel, has surprised readers with a story about love and loss, about boundaries and transgressions, about small things that suddenly become central events in the characters’ destinies. The writer herself states in one interview that the novel is not concerned with the vast Indian themes, but that her main interest is the depiction of “insect life” which accidentally takes place in Ayemenem-Kerala, and could as well be happening in any other corner of the world. Roy writes a novel about the small detail in human existence, yet she cannot escape her cultural and social roots which eventually help shaping the plot of the book into a narrative regarding the big Indian issues. Roy makes use of a local scenario in order to elaborate a greater representation of the post-colonial Indian setting. Her novel can be considered a hybrid text since it is simultaneously contaminated by the two contexts, the Indian and the British. By choosing to express herself in English, Arundhati Roy is in an advantageous position. According to Braj Kachru.

9

Authors: Doina Irina SIMION

This article is an attempt to explore e-learning and management culture in search of analogies which could be used by English Language teachers for the purpose of strengthening the teacher’s grasp over the students’ learning process. If one accepts the analogical approach as a possible theoretical basis, one may come across findings regarding the student-computer interface that could be taken into consideration by the teachers themselves, to the extent teachers replicate such computer functions as resource providers or evaluators.

11

Authors: Roxana CIOLĂNEANU

An area that has attracted increasing interest and awareness in the last decades, Business English must be seen in the larger context of ESP, as it shares needs analysis, syllabus and course design, materials selection and development with all other fields of ESP. However, Business English relies on a specific language corpus and a particular kind of communication in a specific context. Hence, any Business English teacher must not only be an expert in teaching the specific language of business, but also develop awareness of the needs and concerns of Business English students and become flexible enough to respond to those needs.

12

Authors: Tony LUXON

Many of us have experienced initial teacher training, a period in which we are required, in a structured way, to explore methods and approaches to teaching in our subject area. Although this is certainly a tough time (I can remember teaching only a couple of hours a day during teaching practice during my initial teacher training, then coming home and sleeping for twelve hours as I was so exhausted by the sheer nervous effort involved), we learn an enormous amount from it. However, this in itself is not sufficient for our professional development. It is only when we enter the profession as a certified teacher or academic that we really begin to develop professional practices based in the reality of the situation, and we undergo (some might say endure) a period of hopefully, continuing professional development. Lave and Wenger (1991) refer to the early period of professional activity within a particular community of practice as ‘legitimate peripheral participation’. That is, we enter into this community of practice at its borders and learn from others, and from our own experience, and this is a necessary and unavoidable process if we are to become part of the profession. It can be argued however, that this process never ends, even when we are no longer in a sense ‘peripheral’, and we have emerged from our apprenticeship, we are in a continuing process of ‘becoming’, and we never stop learning. This may sound a slightly disturbing concept, in that we may never reach wholeness, but I would suggest that it is rather an exciting process of continuous change and development, and even though we are teachers, we are also permanently learners, gaining new experiences, experimenting with new techniques and approaches, encountering different students. This paper is concerned with ways that we, as teachers, can develop our own practice through a continual process of reflection and investigation as part of our day to day teaching activity. It suggests that professional development, especially that aspect in which we are investigating our own teaching and learning, wrestles with the same, or very similar epistemological and ontological issues as research in this area.

14

Authors: Roxana MARINESCU

In order to analyse some instances of violence in today’s global context, more specifically in the South-Asian postcolonial space, I will try to (re)define the study object of anthropology. For this I would like to look first into the concept of ‘culture’. By ‘culture’ I understand, as Ernest Gellner, whatever is transmitted nongenetically in an on-going human community, through a system of constraints, applied to a very wide range of situations. These non-genetic features turns a population into a community, separated from the species that genetically shares the same equipment (Gellner, 1995: 45-50). But how difficult or easy is it to distinguish between genetic and non-genetic traits? According to Clifford Geertz, it is very difficult, as what is innately controlled and what is culturally controlled in human behaviour is ill-defined and wavering. Culture is directly connected to human nature: we are “incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culture – and not through culture in general, but highly particular forms of it” (Geertz: 50).