Synergy

7

Authors: Radadiana CALCIU

In this paper I will argue for the need to carry out inspections in Language schools for quality control and ongoing evaluation and assessment that will finally lead to ongoing school development. “Few, if any, researchers deny the value of external evaluation [...] - above all there has to be a systematic attempt to fit external and internal evaluation together and use them as a coherent planned whole.” J MacBeath Language schools which are members or would like to become members of an association whose main goal is to provide quality language services have to undergo inspections at regular intervals in order to prove that they meet the quality standards set by the respective association. Examples of associations are QUEST (the Romanian Association for Quality Language Services), EAQUALS (the European Association for Quality Language Services), OPTIMA (the Bulgarian Association for Quality Language Services), QLS (the Greek Association of Quality Language Schools), etc.

9

Authors: Cristian Silviu BĂNACU 1

This article deals with an original proposed benchmark instrument useful in selecting investment projects, called The Circular Synergic Benchmark (CSB) graph. It is proposed to be used in Project Management and in other Management activities. Compared with the other graphs or benchmark instruments, this instrument allows for one single view to have a complete image of good and bad aspects of economic, technical, social, and environmental issues of two or more projects in order to chose the best one.

12

Authors: Lucia-Mihaela GROSU

In this article I focus on different strategies of legitimation of actions as they are decoded through Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Thinking (CDA-CT). The text selected for analysis is a speech delivered by George W. Bush on occasion of his second election as president of the USA in 2005. In the current article I will focus on the Inaugural address and I will present some of my conclusions following the joined CDA-CT analysis. This is to raise awareness regarding the multiple layers of meaning that political speeches can have

15

Authors: Ramona PĂUN 1

In this paper, I present a brief overview of the available information on how to write a paper, in order to use these good practices in my future work and to better understand the way papers are being evaluated. My interest in this was in particular raised by trying to explain why one of my own assignments, which I considered to be quite well written, did not receive the consideration I thought it would. As it turns out, writing papers is not an easy task, but following some simple rules and learning from experience may smooth the way towards successful writing.

16

Authors: Laura MUREŞAN

"Learning Organisation" concepts and characteristics are usually associated with specific management systems and approaches to human resources development in companies. The aim of this article is that of exploring to what extent an interdisciplinary research and teacher education Master programme can meet both institutional needs and personal professional interests. The case study analysed here is provided by the Interdisciplinary Master programme "English Language Education and Research Communication in Business and Economics" at The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. How are its component elements inter-connected and which of its characteristics are comparable to those of a "learning organisation"? To answer to these questions, reference will be made to various processes and stages within the programme, such as needs analysis, multiple perspective evaluation, including feedback already received on the programme's impact on the institutional environment, a.s.o.

17

Authors: Carmen-Cristina CATARGIU 1

To what degree can writing skills be developed during an academic semester? Is writing still important in this era of communication which seems to favour oral communication? What is the best method to adopt when teaching writing skills? This article contains a case study on graph descriptions which suggests answers to these questions. As teachers, we need to make room for writing tasks during classes, as it is only by practice that we can develop this skill. Writing does not come as naturally as speech, so the best way to teach it is to provide it with a context and a purpose.

17

Authors: Mihai Anton PALFI

This paper analyses a project for the design of an Integrated Security System for the critical infrastructure protection of a maritime port. Accordingly, critical thinking principles are applied to the management of this type of project, and its risk analysis is also detailed.

20

Authors: Gyorgy ATTILA 1

This article aims to analyze the impact of using on-line communication, especially e-mail, with students in order to improve class activities. The first part presents theoretical issues related to on-line teaching techniques. Researchers from all over the world are interested more and more to develop online communication techniques that can incorporate the most recent facilities offered by the internet. Professor Paulsen’s correlation table regarding on-line teaching methods, devices, and techniques represents a reference in this field. Numerous scientific papers used this correlation table and developed the subject. One category in Paulsen’s table refers to one-to-many on-line communication using pre-defined e-mail lists. After presenting and analyzing the main advantages and disadvantages of this method, I sustain that the advantages are significantly higher than the disadvantages. The second part presents the context for implementing one-to-many on-line communication using e-mails. The location is represented by the Bucharest University of Economics. For empirical testing, this location is recommendable because it offers to students wide access to the internet for free and encourages students to use modern technologies. The third part is based on 118 answers given by the students in the 3rd year at the Faculty of Finance, Assurance, Banks and Stock Exchange. The students had to fill in a questionnaire with 8 points regarding internet usage in their study and the opportunity of using it in relation with the teacher. The analysis of the responses confirmed my main expectations regarding the utility of e-mail communication between teacher and students. Unfortunately, there was also a point where the answers did not confirm the expectations: students are not quite interested in challenging applications, they prefer simplified, hypothetical exercises.

20

Authors: Anca-Teodora ŞERBAN-OPRESCU

This paper represents a bringing together of two significant trends in continuing professional development and our contemporary understanding of the ways in which educational organizations (namely higher education) respond to the competitive edge in present times society. As such, the present material hopes to tackle these issues through identifying and discussing the key issues in individual development in organizational settings and then applying these in a practical example of professional development through project management. I will exemplify with two seemingly different domains which combine and make viable the equation of successful professional development and transferable skills: namely, humanities and project management.

5

Authors: Maria Liana LĂCĂTUŞ

The Games Theory is focused on strategy issues that imply interdependences between participants’ decisions and actions. In particular, this theory deals with situations in which one’s gains depend on another’s decisions and actions, so that each person involved has to identify the best reaction to possible actions of all the others. The Games Theory has been applied to understand and explain the behavior of an oligopoly firm. One of the most well known activities is the Prisoner dilemma. Two prisoners are asked to recognize the crimes they committed in a specific period of time. The prisoners are separated and cannot communicate with eachother. Each of them has to make a decision by himself, but the decision he will make depends on the other’s decision that affects him a lot. The prisoner dilemma model is used to explain the decisions that two competitive firms have to make regarding their spending for advertising.

6

Authors: Monica CONDRUZ-BĂCESCU

The main idea of this article is the concept of global culture as it is perceived nowadays due to the spreading of the American life style, goods and values worldwide. The idea of a global culture wasn’t possible only during the global modernity time. The cultural writings can overcome the political and linguistic borders on condition that they are translated in the languages of the interested cultural communities. For centuries this process was hindered by the geographical distances and the technical difficulties. With the mondialisation development facilitated by mass-media and the contemporary means of transport, the writings’ circulation becomes wider.

7

Authors: Adriana CHIRIACESCU

During the past decades the study of intercultural communication has received much more interest and attention than ever before, although it is as old as civilization; the ease of travel, the development of international trade as well as of multinational organizations – in other words globalization – have made people aware of the fact that they must communicate and cooperate with other people different from themselves in order to succeed and, sometimes, even to survive. Effective communication in a different context is felt as being important especially in business, because of the competition existing among companies all over the world; at the same time, intercultural communication is very complex, because of the existence of intermingling distinguishing characteristics. That is why well trained professionals, able to function correctly in different environments are required in practically every field of activity; having to face international competition no company can concentrate only on domestic activities / markets. In business of any kind, cultural incompetence can jeopardize lots of money through wasted negotiations, lost purchases / sales or contracts and poor customer relations. It is said that “cultural risk is just as real as political risk in international business arena”. Nowadays, even if a person does not leave his / her own home country to work abroad, it is almost sure that he / she will meet or work with men / women coming from other countries; even the students may share classes with colleagues from different nations and some intercultural training, as well as the experience they will get learning to communicate internationally will be beneficial to them.

9

Authors: Elena TĂLMĂCIAN

The present article focuses on the use of critical thinking skills and techniques during a Business English class on the topic of problem-solving. I included four activities to which students were asked to apply critical thinking skills such as: analysis, interpretation, inference, explanation and evaluation. Students’ positive feedback to the practice of critical thinking principles, as well as their active participation in that lesson, add to the other advantages of such a practical approach: a better understanding of the problem solving concept and an increased ability to solve business problems.

12

Authors: Ştefan COLIBABA

This article examines the problematic relationship of the self to patterns of all kind as reflected in post-World War 2 American short fiction and highlights specific ways in which language is used to organise the character’s ‘reality’. We point out how the minimalist orientation in the American short fiction of the late 70s and early 80s, through reductive and allusive techniques, explores the contemporary loss of a sense of history and the moral authority of marginality. Characters in minimalist short fiction are shown to have a static view of life in which things felt but left unstated have value.

20

Authors: Martina TEMMERMAN, Dave SINARDET

This article analyzes political television interviews in the two languages (French and Dutch) of federal Belgium. Clayman and Heritage (2002) have listed the communicative characteristics of news interviews and have set forth a framework for analysing them. We have applied their findings to the corpus we have collected from the two public broadcasting stations in Belgium. The focus of this paper is on the specific characteristics of interviews with politicians interviewed both in their native and their non-native tongue. We have especially focused on the interviewer’s role in communication. It turns out that the interviewing styles on both channels analyzed are equally adversarial, but that the ways in which this adversarialness is achieved, differ

6

Authors: Radadiana CALCIU

As universities are facing a tough competition all over the world, the PR activity has become crucial in order to create an image, a personality to the organisation. Thus, they can inform the public about their outstanding achievements or their wide range of courses and as a result they would attract the best students and professors and would also raise funds to sustain their activities. This article describes the PR activity in German universities and gives some hints on how to improve the quality of materials used to enhance the image of the university, both in written or digital form.

7

Authors: Maria Liana LĂCĂTUŞ

Public choice economics is a new domain of knowledge developed in order to understand the complex mechanism of governmental intervention in economy and, especially, the lack of efficiency of governmental decisions and actions. Its founder is James Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1986. Public choice economics is focused on the effects of individual personal interest, voters and politicians alike, on public decisions. Public choice economics became a valuable teaching method which helps students understand and apply an economic way of thinking in the classroom or in real life situations.

8

Authors: Adriana CHIRIACESCU

Skilled business persons know that creating goodwill is the main objective of any business, whatever the specific objective may be: buying, selling or solving problems. How could we define good will? The Oxford Dictionary considers it as a “kindly feeling to persons”. Trying to define it, we may say that goodwill is the degree to which the receiver of the message perceives the communicator of the respective message as a likable, trustworthy and consistent person. Of course, this image shall be determined by the attitude of the communicator. Can goodwill be taught and learned? Our hope is that it can become a constant value of human behaviour by gradual, trained accumulation of knowledge and successful practice.

8

Authors: AESTHETS AND AESTHETICISM

This article does not intend to be a dogmatic critical approach. The two novelists that I focus on, Vladimir Nabokov and Mateiu L. Caragiale are observed from the perspective of their similarities and of their differences. Each author has a different cultural background and created his work in an environment that was in most respects different from the cultural milieu of the other. However, the artistic views of the two authors are more similar than one would imagine.

9

Authors: Doru ENACHE

The present article analyzes Emil Cioran’s well-known essay collection, On the Heights of Despair, explaining and illustrating the philosopher’s understanding of the absurd. The main ideas focus around the author’s approach to the meaning of life (or better said, to the meaninglessness of life), and around the efforts one makes in order to try to lend some noble purpose to one’s own existence. However, one’s only escape from the self-induced world of illusions seems to be the “passion for the absurd”.

10

Authors: Laura Mureşan

As language professionals, we are all familiar with the added value the European Language Portfolio (ELP) can bring to the language class and its potential for continuous language learning outside class. So which are the new vistas for the ELP? Which are its new roles and target audiences? Which is the transversal dimension of Portfolio-based self-assessment? These are some of the questions this article aims to address. The focus will not be on language teaching and learning per se, but rather on the relevance of language learning and the importance of communication and cooperation in a wider context of European values, integration and transferability of multiple competencies. To illustrate the role European projects can play in bridging the gap between the field of language education and the world of work, reference will be made to the Lingua 1 project “EuroIntegrELP – Equal Chances to European Integration through the use of the European Language Portfolio”, which has recently been awarded the European Label for Innovation in Language Education.

12

Authors: Monica CONDRUZ-BĂCESCU

This article explores the struggles of identity and the multiple processes associated with increasing globalisation in the modern age. The contradictory process of globalisation has led to wideranging changes in the processes of identity formation. Globalisation causes a loss of marks, of individual identity, far away from our own ego. In this context, the term “identity” makes reference to one’s feeling of belonging that allows an individual to identify him/herself with a social group through a sort of shared memory that has a single cultural ground. Identity is reflected in people's lifestyles, language and religion. It has two key aspects: similarity with others and difference. This fear of the loss of cultural diversity and hence identities stems from the fact that globalisation is viewed as cultural homogenisation or westernisation or Americanisation.

15

Authors: Anca PECICAN

The present research article is a cross-linguistic approach to economics discourse lexis, more exactly to the expression of business trends in Romanian and English. The analysis focuses on the use of conceptual metaphors in expressing increase and decrease of economic indicators such as price, GDP, unemployment, etc. and uses as corpus the Romanian and English Central Bank reports. Starting from Lakoff and Johnson’s definition and Deignan, Gabrys and Solska’s classification of conceptual metaphors, several types of such linguistic expressions are identified and compared. The findings of the research indicate that the metaphors used to express economic trends are largely the same between the two languages but differ in terms of frequency and lexical realisation. The study is intended to prove helpful to Romanian speaking economists reading and writing in English, as well as to translators and ESP students.

6

Authors: Mihaela DUMITRESCU

The present article, which is meant as a brief introduction to the “antimetaphysical” deconstructionist project, is a paradoxical attempt to make sense of a peculiar type of critical discourse that obstinately resists intelligibility. As such, to deconstructionists themselves it would necessarily appear as one more illustration of the illegitimate, totalising, yet unavoidable gesture condemned by both Derrida and his Yale followers – a gesture ironically performed by its own critics, at times. Given the deconstructionist inconsistency that we have just mentioned, we prefer to look at it as one more example of logocentric “blindness” understood in the highly ambivalent, demannean sense of the word, as both a hindrance to, and a condition for valuable critical “insights”.

7

Authors: Roxana CIOLĂNEANU

Teaching a foreign language goes beyond teaching the language itself. Language is rooted in culture; it reflects customs and sets of values that people display when they speak. So, in the context of globalisation, teaching a foreign language involves the intercultural communicative competence as a key component, essential for communicating effectively with people belonging to various cultures, which helps one better understand one’s own culture. Teaching intercultural communicative competence to our students of Business English is all the more important today, with business going more and more international as an immediate consequence of the recent European integration and as a general consequence of the broader phenomenon of globalisation.

7

Authors: Anastasia ROMANOVA

When students take the exam in English, they are asked to answer various questions concerning a text they have heard once or twice. So we should ask ourselves a few questions concerning the problem of listening comprehension assessment.

8

Authors: Bob IVES, Kathryn M. OBENCHAIN

Expectations for Romanian scholars to publish their work in Western journals have risen in recent years. Meeting these expectations can be a challenging process because of language differences and differences in publication traditions. In this article, we describe the typical publication process for Western journals, including the peer review process and how articles and journals are evaluated for quality. We also indicate some of the challenges to being successful with this process, and offer a few suggestions that may help all scholars, including Romanian scholars, publish their work in these journals

10

Authors: Iulia RĂŞCANU

Commercials – entertainment, business or something more? “A means of moulding social stereotypes” seems a formula a little too pretentious. This paper appeared because at one point I was struck by the commercials’ power to intrude in people’s choices and to strengthen their preconceived ideas or social stereotypes. The recurrent theme that I noticed is related mainly to household products and the idea of marriage where advertisers felt like it was necessary to focus on the woman’s wedding ring (it is always the woman), especially when there are some kids involved. The point I want to make here is that it is not the advertisers’ role to mould or strengthen social or religious morale: they need to promote a product, not social behaviour or personal choice.

11

Authors: Diana IONCICĂ

The present study discusses the consequences free speech may have in today’s society, making reference to the case of one of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century, namely the book Salman Rushdie published in 1988: “The Satanic Verses”. By presenting the different aspects of the controversy surrounding the novel, we hope to reveal significant points related to the intricate and at times potentially dangerous connections established between religion and fiction and to show how a multitude of elements – including religious, political and social factors – combine in shaping the effect a piece of writing has on its audience.

16

Authors: Juan José VARELA TEMBRA, Eduardo ENCABO FERNÁNDEZ

The use of dictionaries in the teaching of English as a foreign language was not considered as an indispensable tool in the learning process for many years. The emphasis was laid on different strategies pursuing the acquisition of meaning. It is our sincere opinion that it is highly important to promote their use, both in and out of the classroom, and from a very early stage. The benefits of dictionaries over other techniques for learning vocabulary could be summarized in two basic points; they provide autonomy to the student to continue learning outside the classroom and they give the student complete information about the world. Therefore, teachers, have to dedicate special attention to the presentation of good dictionaries, and also their proper use in the classroom.

7

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.

10

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.