Synergy

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Authors: Luminiţa ANDREI COCÂRŢĂ

The present article focuses on some aspects of English vocabulary acquisition, starting from factors influencing this process and going through statistics of vocabulary size, approaches and strategies of language learning, as well as instances that could be considered barriers in the acquisition of English vocabulary.

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Authors: Adriana CHIRIACESCU

Research activity, part and parcel of modern academic training, results in writing research papers. Success cannot be attained in this activity without knowledge and possession of specific reference skills, such as documentation, library/dictionary use, etc. Their acquisition by the students represents the task of the academic educational scheme, and specific training units including specific activities should be part of the modern languages department curriculum.

10

Authors: Iulia RĂŞCANU

Although the political and socio-economic aspects of the century that passed and of the one that has just started show us that money is the issue that creates debate and action, beauty remains a major factor capable of influencing attitudes and manners of behaviour within society. ‘Beauty’ is a word that should be linked to what is good and positive; but when related to gender, it undergoes some kind of curious transformation which turns it into something that is quite the opposite of what it initially denoted or at least something not really flattering. That is why you will find out that beauty is largely seen as a myth, a myth that theorists have tried to ‘demystify,’ to decompose or, in softer terms, to clarify.

12

Authors: Daniela GIURCULESCU

Paolo Ruffili (born at Rieti, Italy, in 1949) is the author of several volumes of poetry, among which Piccola colazione (“Breakfast”), Garzanti, American Poetry Prize, Diario of Normandia (“Diary of Normandy”), Amadeus, 1990, Montale Prize, Camera oscura (“The Dark Room”), Garzanti,1992, Nuvole (“Clouds”). The Italian critics underline the Montale influence on Ruffilli’s poetry. We are confronted with an existential cisis due to the absurdity of the world. Ruffilli’s poetry appeals to us not only because of the modernity of his surprising plot, but also because of the harmony and musicality of his wording. The metrics is typically Ungaretti’s but the musicality of his verse, the concrete presence of the objects in the landscape remind us of Montale. The photograph is both miracle and magic. The image fixed on the paper remains there for ever, while all the things that happened after the click of the camera have changed. This “moment’s eternity” is captured there for ever.

13

Authors: Carmen-Cristina CATARGIU

The article presents the main features of advertising in the modern consumer society. Does advertising shape our desires and promise eternal bliss? Does it force us into buying things we don’t really need? Is it a fierce business or mere entertainment? Is advertising the cause or rather the effect of consumerism? These are some of the questions the article tries to answer through the analyses of both classic and new adverts.

20

Authors: Raluca ŞERBAN

The article focuses on the different ways in which the postmodern author is reflected in/by his writing, on the relationships author – text, author – fictional world, author – characters, author-as-character – author, in non-autobiographical writing. The examples provided are two novels by American writers: John Barth’s Chimera and Paul Auster’s City of Glass, which are analyzed from this perspective. Consequently, special attention is given to the literary technique of la mise-enabyme, as it is used in these novels. One of the lessons taught by many postmodern authors is that nothing of what they say should be taken at face value. Or almost nothing. At least not when they are on duty, that is, not when they are writing novels. Postmodern writers, in the second half of the 20th century, started making their own rules for novel writing. The playful, inconsistent, ironic postmodern author, who prefers parody and metanarrative to any other form, keen to re-write old texts, their people’s ‘grand narratives’, as well as tradition itself3 , who questions everything, even his own role as an author, needed to be visible again for the reader. The easiest way to do it seemed to be stepping back into their novels, literally, doing away with the border between the real and the fictional. Maybe this is why la miseen-abyme (cf. Gide’s definition of the concept, 1948:41) is one of the favorite devices employed by some postmodern authors. In this paper I shall attempt to substantiate the following thesis: one of the most undeniable peculiarities of postmodern novel-writers is their stubbornness not to let the reader – especially the professional reader, the scholar – make much sense of their statements, in other words, their ironic playfulness. Two means of achieving this goal struck me as particularly important in the two novels I chose to discuss – John Barth’s Chimera and Paul Auster’s City of Glass: the first is the undermining of both the ‘real’ and the fictional world’s ontological stability, and, together with it, of the credibility, of the reliability of an authorial voice that toils – seemingly – to make a statement (about the novel, about the status and role of the author, about writing in general and even about broader issues like identity). I shall pay particular attention to the ways in which this boundary crossing, this destabilization is achieved: the construction of what Brian McHale, taking over a Foucauldian concept, named a ‘heterotopian space’, in which details of the ‘real’ world are mixed with fictional ones, the proliferation of authorcharacters, as unreliable as possible, and especially the projection of the author inside his fictional universe – what McHale called trompe-l’oeil and what, as I shall try to prove, would more appropriately be referred to as mise-en-abyme.

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).