Synergy

4

Authors: Laura Mureşan

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Authors: Dana Sorana URS

The educational focus in most technical universities of the world is still on developing the hard/ technical skills. However, their educational programs have started to include the training of the soft skills that appears to be essential for the multi- sided development of the future specialists. Soft skills have also become a priority within the well- known “courses in communication” that are being taught in the Romanian technical universities. The components that have received special attention and hence, comprehensive elaboration, are mainly those skills aimed at the technical/ business/ oral and written communication including presentations, meetings, reports, short documents etc. Some other components have been constantly neglected, viz. those dealing with the student’s personal development as an individual, his/her self-awareness, intuition, creativity etc. Unfortunately, these abilities are more difficult to teach because they pertain to the deep psychological aspects that, by definition, are neither directly tangible nor teachable through the conventional teaching instruments. The paper suggests some possible tasks, consisting in slides and short movies that might trigger in students emotions/ ideas conducive to the awakening of some latent aspects of self-knowledge.

8

Authors: Gene TANTA

This paper continues the conversation begun at the QUEST international conference on the topic of how to apply Socratic and Diogenic ideas to engage students in their own liberal education. How might we invite students to dialogue about the need to do the imaginative work of offering a vision rather than just settling for judgments? As a result of teaching and researching over the past year in Romania as a Senior Fulbright Scholar, my answer to this complex question is fairly simple: I try to perform vulnerability.

10

Authors: Zinaida-Tamara FEDOT

The Russian language is going through a transitional linguistic period characterized by a massive assault of influences from foreign languages, primarily from the English language. The lexical corpus is now enriched and continues to enrich itself with a variety of words designating objects, phenomena, processes and new concepts that have no equivalent terms in Russian. The process of external term borrowing is reflected in the process of a language`s development and the vocabulary reflects this reality, reacting quickly to social, political and cultural changes that occur in that respective society. We have tried to illustrate how borrowed economic terms are adapting in Romanian and Russian.

13

Authors: Pilar GONZALEZ-VERA

This paper aims to show the analysis of the survey prepared for first-year students in the grades of primary education. It presents the questionnaire designed to ascertain the expectations and needs in the English class of undergraduate students who will be primary school teachers in the near future. The study shows a wants and needs analysis of the respondents based on their answers and indicates the main needs of the Spanish English learners.

13

Authors: Traute TAESCHNER; Anca COLIBABA; Irina GHEORGHIU

This article presents the theoretical basis of an innovative methodology, the ‘Narrative Format’ used in teaching foreign languages to young children, as well as its implementation in Romania by EuroEd Foundation, Iasi. The intergenerational learning model applied both in families and kindergartens has been developed by the ‘Bilfam’ project co-financed by the European Union under the Lifelong Learning Programme and coordinated by the University of Rome Sapienza. Results have shown that the foreign language learning process is deeply influenced by the relationships between adults and children. Both children and adults can benefit from the experience which also stimulates a positive attitude towards multilingualism.

14

Authors: Maria PARASCA

The objective of the present work is, on the one hand, to compare the Romanian and the German languages for specific purposes, i.e. accounting, based on the specific methods of corpus linguistics, with a focus on their specific professional collocations. On the other hand, I compare these results and underline the benefits of statistical values for the translator of texts for specific purposes, who is educated as a linguist. Statistical values can help the translator separate collocations from more or less fixed phrases, while also serving as an objective basis for decision taking in the translation process, in case of several possible equivalents, to name just two of the possible applications of statistical values in the translation process.

2

Authors: James MOULDER

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2

Authors: Anca-Teodora ŞERBAN-OPRESCU

The volume is a successful attempt to document and propose a monograph of the development of applied modern languages for economics and business in Romania, more specifically in the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. The volume is the result of a multidisciplinary effort over a time period of more than two years.

3

Authors: Mariana NICOLAE

This paper is an opinion essay on the importance of language education within the education of professional people, mainly economists and business people, by looking at the importance of the study of languages during a century of existence of a university.

8

Authors: Irina DAVID

Despite its multiple benefits, writing has always been a problematic issue for business English trainers and their students, due to several aspects, among which the most significant ones are the fact that it is more time-consuming – therefore more difficult to integrate in the structure of face-to-face encounters – and less dynamic and interactive than other types of activities. This article focuses on analyzing the results of a questionnaire completed by students at the Faculty of Commerce from the Bucharest University of Economic Studies regarding their opinion on the usefulness of business writing skills, their views on tasks designed to develop these skills, as well as their suggestions of activities that might increase their interest in enhancing their business writing competences.

8

Authors: Irina DAVID Elena TĂLMĂCIAN

The present article focuses on linguistic and cultural dimensions of lexical borrowings from English into Romanian language. It is increasingly clear that English has a great influence upon Romanian, but when it comes to the necessity of English borrowings (especially English words that preserve their spelling and/ or their pronounciation) in Romanian, there are Romanian speakers (including Romanian linguists) who are very reluctant to accept the borrowings. However, nobody can deny at least two of the merits of lexical borrowings from English: internationality and re-Latinization of Romanian.

8

Authors: Virginia Mihaela DUMITRESCU

Culture can be conceptualized in various ways, but it is first and foremost communication, as noted by Edward T. Hall, the American anthropologist. This article sets out to demonstrate the need for flexible conceptualization in the area of intercultural studies starting from Hall’s nuanced classification of cultures as predominantly “high-context” or “low-context” according to their prevalent communication styles. It looks at a few diverging communicative tendencies in American English, a language that although generally considered a classic example of “low-context” directness, still resorts to oblique, euphemistic expression. Such contradictions as the one between the verbal glorification of the ordinary or the use of euphemism, on the one hand, and informal bluntness on the other, which can be traced either to certain socio-cultural aspects of 19th-century American frontier life, or even further back to the Puritan spirit of early colonists, illustrate the elusiveness of culture, and therefore the impossibility of strict cultural labelling.

8

Authors: Lucia-Mihaela GROSU

By making use of different theories stemming from research studies belonging to socialpsychology and diasporic criticism, this article discusses the intricate destiny of the main character in VS. Naipaul’s novel Magic Seeds. The paper focuses on the map metaphor seen as symbolic for one’s journey to find one’s identity. The literary analysis demonstrates that the author’s purpose is to emphasize the multiplicity of identities assumed by the hero in search for his authentic self

10

Authors: Zinaida-Tamara, FEDOT

When referring to modern day teaching methods, the notions of culture and civilization are an integrated part of the foreign language teaching process. The focus on studying about a country`s culture in which the respective language is spoken is more and more present during foreign language courses. This is realized by combining three components that are translated into Romanian by: language, culture and civilization. The theoretical knowledge about a language must be accompanied by the ability to use it in a practical manner. Modern day foreign language teaching methods have succeeded in demonstrating a close link between language-culture-civilization

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Authors: Elena TĂLMĂCIAN1

In the present article we are going to present several approaches of the term “anglicism” belonging to both Romanian and foreign linguists. Our approach to this term is a broad one. First, we will focus on the three main assimilation degrees of anglicisms in the Romanian language system. Further on, we will focus on another aspect directly linked to the assimilation phenomenon and that is the frequency of anglicisms in the Romanian economic language. The final part of our article makes a brief analysis of the presence of anglicisms in both general and specialized dictionaries. Although dictionaries should clarify even partially the meaning and the contextual behaviour of at least the most frequent economic anglicisms in Romanian, there are some examples that prove the contrary. The theoretical part of our article is supported by a wide range of illustrations from the Romanian written and spoken press, especially examples belonging to the Romanian economic language. Our collection of quotes was initiated in 2007 and has continued until 2013.

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Authors: Andreea CatrinelaLAZĂR

This paper seeks to investigate the female self as a narrative source in connection with wider constructions of femaleness with particular reference to the lifestyle women have chosen, the socialization they have experienced and interpersonal relationships they may establish through their lives. Starting with Paul Ricoeur’s ideas that narrative relates with time and self is a form of “being aware of existence”, I will give examples of how female self expressed at various levels is mirrored in Doris Lessing’s The Summer Before The Dark and Love, Again.