Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

5

Authors: Margarita Kulagina

The process of the world globalization leads to the enlargement of intercultural and interlingual connections among the representatives of different countries, nations, religions and cultures. Herewith, there is a special interest towards the study of intercultural communication and its reflection in the educational sphere. That is why the problem of including cultural information into modern educational programmes and compilation of cutting edge teaching materials has acquired great importance. Modern methodical complexes acquaint students with the changing realities of the English-speaking countries and fixed expressions that describe various aspects of life. The main task is to avoid misunderstanding, caused not only by purely linguistic reasons but also by lack of cultural knowledge, misunderstanding or simply unfamiliarity with the key concept of the culture being studied. Taking into consideration the changing status of foreign languages as a source of intercommunication and mutual understanding, methodology underlines the necessity of intensification of pragmatic aspects of the language acquisition. Nowadays, the main purpose of the educational process is to get acquainted with the foreign language as a whole unit, including grammar and lexical data, as well as cross-cultural information. It helps to understand natural, historical and social realia, spiritual values and assists in the formation of the linguistic consciousness. At the present stage educational courses solve the problem of a textbook, as well as a reference resource, highlighting all the lexical, grammatical and cultural information, and meeting the students’ needs. These directories support effective lesson and make it possible to get deeper into the culture of the foreign language.

7

Authors: Lindita Sejdiu-Rugova & Bardh Rugova

The paper aims at bringing up a type of text linguistic analysis, different from traditional one, with the emphasis on the contrastive studies in general and on the English-Albanian cross-linguistic phenomena in particular. It will concentrate in explaining some of the most intriguing and most diverse text analysis elements having in mind the following text categories: Point of view, Composition, Text Idioms. A grammatical structure (Relative Constructions) has been examined thoroughly within the translation method analysis, out of and within the co-text analysis. It resulted in two different outcomes: traditional direct method analysis on one side and text linguistic co-text analysis on the other. Text linguistics as a special field of studies has been greatly developed due to the increased number of translations from one language into another. Text analysis, which relies on the deep description of micro and macro text elements of the text, is crucial for determining the level of translation accuracy of a particular text. Having in mind the relevance of recent discourse and pragmatic analyses impact in the development of interdisciplinary studies, the explanation of constituent elements of the written text is of great importance for the contrastive text studies or translation studies respectively.

7

Authors: Maša Musulin

The phoneme is conceived as a mental image that is stored in our mind and then represented by sounds in speech and graphemes in writing for phonologically based alphabets. The acquisition of L2 phonology includes two very important skills – reading and writing. The information stored in the mind of a speaker interferes with new information produced by the L2 (Robinson, Ellis 2008; Nathan, 2008). What is similar or equal in the target language to one's native language is, while unknown, incorporated one way or another into an existing model, based on prototypicality (Pompeian, 2004, Moreno Fernández, 2010). The process of teaching the sounds, letters and alphabet to foreign students is much shorter than for native speakers because to a foreign student must be given a tool for writing as soon as possible as they have to write what they are learning and memorize new language units (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, Goodwin, 1996). This paper discusses one type of difficulties Spanish learners of Croatian as L2 face when they are introduced to phonology through letters which represent Croatian sounds in order to display the influence of their preexisting phonological concepts. The subjects are ten students from Spain and Latin America. Their task was to read a group of words containing sounds that were predictably hard for them, minimal pairs and a short text.

8

Authors: Jelena Bošnjak & Dubravka Trišić

The paper explores the linguistic and conceptual metaphors in media reports on the 2014 floods in the Balkans, focusing on the conceptualization of floods and flood-related concepts. While natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes represent a well-known source domain within the conceptual metaphor theory, this paper aims to explore floods as a target domain drawing on online Balkan newspaper reports from May 2014. The analysis offers insight into long-standing, conventional metaphors related to floods and natural disasters as well as the specific realizations and elaborations of these and other metaphors in the context of the 2014 Balkan floods. The possible functions and effects of the predominant metaphors related to the 2014 floods are discussed.

9

Authors: Fatmire Isaki

The purpose of this paper is through properly selected examples to prove that Millman Parry and Albert Lord’s aspects of the theory of the popular ballad can be applied in the English ballads too. Perry and Lord explained how the Homeric epic and numerous popular ballads of the Balkans and traditions, could be transmitted through many generations by oral route and why have appeared formulaic principles in the way they are created and presented. Following the same procedure, we will try to show the same principles on an analysis of three Anglo-Saxon ballads: Sir Patrick Spens, Lord Randal, and The Wife of Usher's Well. Ballads will be treated according to the theory of oral-formulaic structure of the ballad. This theory suggests that the more phrases the singer knows, the higher is the chance to improvise and structure strings of verses. Ballads Sir Patrick Spens, Lord Randal, and The Wife of Usher's Well will be analyzed starting from their metric system, rhyme, and as well as locating stylistic figures used in these ballads. The paper will have a comparative approach to find similarities and differences between ballads of Balkans posed by Perry and Lord, and three Anglo-Saxon ballads. Also, this paper will analyze the themes treated in these ballads. Given that these ballads are located in two different regions with different history and culture, this paper will try to come to the conclusion that no matter that they belonged to two different traditions, histories and cultures, themes encountered in them if not identical, then many are very similar.

10

Authors: Igballe Miftari

An issue that until recently has been “irrelevant” for me personally and for many other English teachers, is the issue of reading rate/speed. I presumably believe that most teachers have never thought of this issue because of limited time for classroom instruction or simply because as teachers, the level of reading and preparation for classroom instruction is usually plenty. EFL academic reading however, involves reading different materials in different subjects and courses and being able to “interact” with them. The issue of interacting with books and texts depends a great deal on the level of comprehension. At university studies, students are overloaded with different materials and deadlines that are in fact frustrating. Students are obliged to read “thick books” in different academic subjects and courses and are over-flooded with known and unknown terminology, both scientific and professional in the specific field of study. They now must get the most out of books and must perfectly understand course books in order to pass exams and gain overall success. For such reasons, students either learn to read faster or don’t read at all. According to Anderson (1999) “knowing how to read more efficiently and adjusting reading speed to reading task are critical to this success. (1999:56). Therefore, “increasing students’ reading rates makes them able to devote greater cognitive capacity to comprehension skills” (1999:54). The study aims at testing students’ overall comprehension skills using timed-reading activities and questionnaires over a period of 4 weeks (12 instruction hours). It will be conducted with 3 and 4 year students of the English department during their English reading instruction classes. Other matters of study will be students’ anxiety, frustration, previous experience with reading, motivation etc.

10

Authors: Olivera Petrović-Tomanić

The concept of the ‘other’ is an inherent part of understanding one’s identity, since people define their roles through their relations toward ‘others’. Generally speaking, the ‘other’ is everyone who is detached and different from one’s self or one’s true nature. ‘Otherness’ became the subject of research in postmodern British literature in terms of its diversity and variety, divergence and disagreement with standard, conventional and established. To demonstrate how prejudices are widespread and what their role in literature is, the selection of British novels of the 20th century has been made with the emphasis on the second part of the century and postmodern British novel. The analysis has proved that stereotypes are indeed unavoidable part of British culture and literature and exposed their particular role in works of literature. The second half of the twentieth century brings seismic shift of literary and national identity: The English novel was replaced by novel written in English language due to importance and to strength. This is the main reason for selection of the British novels of the late 20th century that are representative both for their artistic quality and influence. The analysis of selected works from modern and postmodern periods with the regard to stereotypes and prejudices about 'other' undoubtedly pointed out that mentioned concepts are unavoidable part of British literature and culture, and their numerous variations and roles in literature were clearly demonstrated.

12

Authors: Shpresa Gjergji

In today’s communication in schools, workplaces and communities has increased significantly being intermingled and involved with English language. Albanian and English languages have many phraseology units. They are formed by the transformation of the syntagm with two or more denominator units (noun, adjective, verb, adverb, etc). This figurative transformation is realized with comparison, hyperbola, litotes, metaphor, metonymy, etc. Both languages use all these means of communication. Our thesis focuses particularly on the formation of phraseology units with metaphors and aims to analyze how they are formed in four steps of transformation using the structure of: a)- free syntagm (phrase), (or free phrase). b)- syntagm (phrase) with comparison (with connectors: as, like ). c)- syntagm (phrase) with metaphor (connector falls). d)- formation of phraseology units. This process is similar in both languages, but there isn’t compliance and equality in their formation. By juxtaposing the phrases units in both languages, we aim at shedding some light on the main similarities and differences which seem to bring the languages closer but also create a gap between them, pointing out the common or universal features as well as the originality and the unique character of each language. If we analyze some phrasal units taken out from the dictionary (Phraseology English- Albanian dictionary by I. Stefanllari 1998) we notice that the units of English language are formed differently from the Albanian ones. This can prove the occurrence of linguistic relativism.

16

Authors: Sana’ Ababneh

The present study aimed at investigating the presence of proverbs in English textbooks taught to EFL Arab learners as well as investigating the attitudes of English language teachers towards proverbs as part of the EFL teaching materials. Results of the content analysis which has been carried out on four English textbooks of the Enterprise series show that teaching proverbs is included as part of the teaching material presented to the students. Proverbs are presented in different ways: sometimes they are used as titles of units, in vocabulary exercises, or as separate sections at the end of each unit. And they appear either in their original form or truncated. On the other hand, teachers' attitudes towards teaching proverbs to EFL learners show their belief in the importance of teaching proverbs since they convey the culture and wisdom of their users, moreover, they provide students with a rich source of vocabulary. They also give them an opportunity of making comparisons between their own proverbs and the English ones thus broadening their knowledge of the world; finally, they help students to express themselves in English in a more natural, native-like way.

9

Authors: Sera Güvenç

This study has been carried out to investigate the attitudes of students and writing teachers towards the performance-based portfolio. In the study, both qualitative and quantitative research methods have been used. Within the process of qualitative research, teacher reflection papers have been used and interviews with the teachers and students have been made. Within the quantitative research process, an attitude survey designed by Brooks (1999) has been used and the student attitudes have been investigated. The participants of the study are 89 university students and 5 writing teachers. In the light of the findings obtained from this study, it has been concluded that the majority of the writing teachers and the interviewed students have a positive attitude towards the performance based portfolio while the findings from the student attitude survey displays the opposite. According to the findings from the general attitude survey, the majority of the students show a negative attitude towards the performance-based portfolio.

10

Authors: Lesya Petrovska & Ana Dugandžić

In creating textbooks and course books for foreign language education, the starting point is the goal of learning the language – language acquisition either on the level of communication skills for specific purposes (business or daily), or as part of the process of training philology specialists, or more specifically, linguistics specialists. In this, among other factors, authors should take into account the ethno-linguistic characteristics of the audience, so the training process should be organised differently for groups of students who study a language closely related to their native language. In studying a closely related language, a variety of phenomena is observed, such as, for example, interference, cross-language homonymy, the fact that ability to perceive and understand a foreign language always outweighs the ability to reproduce material, etc. These points are important to consider when preparing textbooks and course books, and they should be reflected in the selection of lexical material and presentation of grammar. Existing textbooks for learning Ukrainian as a foreign language are mainly not designed for a Slavic languages-speaking audience, which makes the process of training specialists in Ukrainian in Slavic countries more difficult. On the other hand, the methods of organising the material in a textbook and its structure should be designed for philology students and therefore should feature a complex and comprehensive presentation of the language material and combine various methods of teaching. We propose the principles we follow in creating a textbook for learning Ukrainian designed for Croatian students whose primary field of study is the Ukrainian language.

12

Authors: Fatbardha Doko

In this article I tried give a comparative view between two great novel writers, who belong to different nations, cultures and periods, Ernest Hemingway and Ismail Kadare. Both of them are the greatest representatives of their own national literature, and both are part of the world elite literature, translated in more than 40 languages, and internationally awarded. Similarity between Hemingway and Kadare can be noticed not only in their literary works, but in their political ideology as well. I analyzed some of their novels, and in this paper I pointed out some similarities and differences in themes, characters, style, narration etc. Hemingway’s novels that I cover in this paper are Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Islands in the Stream, Moveable Feast and Old Man and the Sea, as long as Kadare’s novels are: Chronicle in Stone, General of the Dead Army and November of a Capital City. As a result, I noticed that these two authors have many things in common, their relation to Paris, their political ideology, and in their novels we can notice similar characteristics in their characters - their heroes represent moral values; themes - both of them write about war, love, social issues, etc; naration, style, etc. So, no matter Hemingway and Kadare distant in time and place, there are some touching points between them.

12

Authors: Nataša Kostić

Antonymy is traditionally regarded as a paradigmatic relation, but recent studies of antonym co– occurrence in written discourse have shown that it can be investigated as a syntagmatic relation as well. Such investigations in the Untagged electronic corpus of Serbian identified two major and four minor functions of antonyms in discourse and its accompanying lexico-syntactic patterns, matching the results of similar analyses in English, Japanese, Swedish and Dutch. This paper presents a research on the relation between word class that antonym pairs belong to (e.g. adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs and prepositions) and their textual functions in Serbian written discourse. It is hypothesized that language users employ antonymous pairs in text irrespective of their grammatical class. The general conclusion is that the roles of antonyms in text are not influenced by word class as significantly as one might expect.

13

Authors: Bronagh Ćatibušić

Since the 1990s, Ireland has experienced considerable immigration. Currently, 12% of its schoolchildren come from immigrant backgrounds. The majority of these children learn English as a second (additional) language (ESL/EAL). The Irish Department of Education and Skills (DES) provides a programme of English language support for young ESL learners. To guide this programme, English Language Proficiency Benchmarks were developed by Integrate Ireland Language and Training (IILT), a campus company of Trinity College, Dublin. IILT produced two sets of context-appropriate ‘Benchmarks’, for primary and secondary education, derived from the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This paper focuses on English L2 acquisition in Irish primary schools. It reports on how the primary level Benchmarks describe L2 proficiency development across CEFR levels A1, A2 and B1 in a manner sensitive to age/cognitive stage and curriculum requirements. It discusses assessment resources based on these Benchmarks – a version of the European Language Portfolio (IILT 2004) and the Primary School Assessment Kit (DES 2007). These tools enable assessment of and assessment for learning and promote learner autonomy. Research conducted by the author of this paper (published in 2014) into the relation between learning outcomes expressed in the Benchmarks and immigrant children’s English L2 acquisition is presented. It reports on mixed-methods analysis of data from a longitudinal study of L2 acquisition involving 18 children, aged four to ten years, from ten language backgrounds (including Croatian and Serbian). The children’s acquisition of English oral and literacy skills indicate that the Benchmarks appropriately describe L2 proficiency development. Individual and interactional influences on L2 acquisition and their pedagogical implications are discussed. The paper considers how CEFRrelated approaches can support language learning, teaching and assessment in an intercultural educational environment.

14

Authors: Iva Šarić & Patrick Levačić

In the novel The Map and the Territory (2011) by Michel Houellebecq the issue of merging the status of faction and fiction is present in all the poetic categories of the novel, i.e. in the plot and in the narration, the status of the narrator and characters, up to the narrative timespace continuum. The aim of this paper is to literary analyze and interpret this Houellebecq's work. Our approach is triple. First, we deal with the structure of the plot, the categories of characters and narrator, and then the narrative perspectives and spatial-temporal frame of the novel and its style. As a next step, our analysis is expanded to the interaction of mentioned narrative forms, i.e. their mutual relations are observed. Particular attention is put on the transformation of the metonymy to the metaphor. Finally, we complete this work observing the relations between the novel and ''the real'' in its sociological and historical meaning. In this way, the pragmatic level and the functioning of the novel outside of a strictly literary framework is problematized.

15

Authors: Teresa Maria Wlosowicz

The present study aims to investigate the attrition of Portuguese as a third or additional language (L3, L4, etc., cf. de Angelis, 2007) over the summer holidays. The research questions concern the correctness of the participants’ responses, the language areas in which attrition is observed, the ways in which it manifests itself and the students’ perception of their own attrition. Since multilingual systems are dynamic and the languages are in constant interaction, when a language is not used, attrition sets in (Herdina & Jessner, 2002). However, some elements of linguistic knowledge are more prone to attrition than others (SharwoodSmith, 1989). The study was carried out with 42 Polish (L1) learners of Portuguese, 30 of whom were second-year students of Portuguese philology, and 12 were students of other Romance philologies who followed a Portuguese language course. After the summer holidays, they completed a vocabulary and grammar test and participated in oral interviews, followed by a questionnaire. In general, they produced more incorrect and partly correct (e.g. the right verb in the wrong form) than correct responses. Attrition could be observed in various language areas, from speaking fluency to grammar and vocabulary, though the subjunctive, which they had only started to study before the holidays, caused them the most difficulty. The attrition of Portuguese manifested itself in various forms, from avoidance and the inability to retrieve certain items, through the confusion of Portuguese forms, to interference from other languages. As the questionnaire indicates, the students were aware of the areas in which attrition occurred. It can be concluded that attrition is connected mainly with a decrease in the activation of a language. Given the interference from other Romance languages, it can be supposed that, as the activation of Portuguese items is lower, Spanish, French and Italian items compete for selection.

16

Authors: Helen Sherwin

Although reflective practice has gained popularity world-wide in recent years, some argue that the ‘reflective’ research has focused too much on different conceptualisations of reflection and not enough on how teachers actually think when they reflect. This article addresses this issue of teacher cognition by examining one skill underpinning reflective thinking, problem solving. Specifically, this study compares the problem solving of six inexperienced and three experienced teachers of English. It emerged that the experienced teachers developed sophisticated reasoning skills to help themselves analyse problems in principled ways. This article identifies what principled reasoning actually consists of and how it may be developed in inexperienced teachers of English to help them solve teaching problems and so reflect more effectively.

18

Authors: Emine Shabani

The difference between modernism and postmodernism is difficult to make, but we take as a reference the hypotheses of well-known literary theorists and critics like Terry Eagleton, Pavao Pavliçiç, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Gerard Genette, TzvetanTodorov, JurijLotman Julia Kristeva, MiekeBaletc, a hypothesis of the canadian theorist Linda Hachion, as far as my opinion is concerned is very straightfoward and rational, as far as the definition of postmodern art is concerned, where she sees it as a field where the presence of the past in context of the critical reflex over it, dominates. The poetics of postmodernism is the result of the concept of the domination of irony, the contraverse role, great aesthetic, ideological, substantial paradoxes, the post-modern work of art as such represents a subversive and contraversial phenomenon, that builds and ruines the same phenomena it provokes and raises. Unlike previous currents of art, in postmodernism we have the elements of idelogical and gender movements. Postmodernist writers are: Borges, Marquez, Buzzati, Umberto Eco etc. And it is Umberto Eco’s “The name of the Rose” (Ilnomedellarosa) that is the subject of my study, with a new substantial, ethical, aesthetic, ideological, religious form. In the epilogue of the novel Eco uses the phrase “revisiting tradition” because the past, according to the author cannot be undone but it rather needs to be revisited with irony and not innocence, to highlight the dissension within the head of the church, that in the name of triumph of an idea crimes are commited in an abbey and the epicenter of the occurences is the library rich in ancient and modern texts... The references of our study were libraries, interviews, newspapers, raports and studies published in the internet as well as scientific journals.

4

Authors: Muhayo Umaraliyeva

This article highlights the issues of development of teachers’ professional competence, the necessity of cooperation and experience exchange between teachers, and the correlation of personal interests with the requests and needs of the state and society. The author considers the main means of the development of competence of the teacher (entry into communication, the establishment of friendly relations with the participants of the educational process, creation of an enabling environment), given the emphasis to the role of external factors on the development of professional competence of teachers.

7

Authors: Inomjon Azimov Nizami

Language is the mirror of a nation. All changes occurring in the life of a nation, undoubtedly, find their reflection in language. In this regard, patriots and eminent figures of a nation have always considered language as good means of self-apprehension, elevation of its greatness and glory, reservation and reiteration of spirituality during hard times. Particularly during the first quarter of the XX century, known in history as the National Renaissance, academicians and scholars paid a lot of attention to language as they believed it was engendering national spirituality and elevation of national ideology in people. They considered language to be an invaluable pearl which indicates the existence of a nation. In this regard, in the view of development of our own language, we have accumulated all the facilities and initiated elaboration of rules of Uzbek language.

9

Authors: Ana Beaven & Lucia Livatino

The increase in the number of students taking part in study abroad programmes worldwide has highlighted the need to offer intercultural preparation for this specific group of students. The IEREST European project (Intercultural Education Resources for Erasmus Students and their Teachers) has produced a set of teaching resources to help students benefit from their sojourn in terms of personal growth and intercultural learning. The theoretical approach underlying such resources is linked to a concept of interculturality that promotes the idea of multiple identities, and to the notion that identities are co-constructed in interaction (Holiday, 2011, 2013). Furthermore, the learners are taught to recognize the subjectivity and instability of worldviews. In this sense, the activities are culture-general, and can be taught to students regardless of their specific destination. This paper presents the activity “Meeting people abroad”. Although originally not designed for the language classroom, it was adapted for use in an Englishlanguage course for a group of future Erasmus students. Central to the activity is the learners’ engagement with other mobile students through the task of carrying out an interview from potentially non-essentialist perspectives. The target language is thus seen not as an aim in itself, but as the means to develop the learners’ intercultural communication skills and understanding. In their new format for the foreign language classroom, the activity was tested at the University of Bologna in September 2014. Feedback was collected through focus groups at the end of the course, and was used to evaluate the materials and reflect on ways of introducing the intercultural in foreign language education (Byram, 2008), in particular in the context of student mobility.

9

Authors: Melike Baş & Betül Bal-Gezegin

With the application of cognitive linguistics to language teaching and learning, metaphor analysis has gained interest among researchers in recent years. This study, which is conducted in an EFL language environment in Turkey, aims to investigate students’ metaphors that underlie their conceptualizations on English language teachers. Participants are students of English (n=83) studying at a university in Turkey during 2014-2015 academic year. Students were first instructed on the concept of metaphor, then they were asked to complete the metaphor elicitation sheet including the prompt “An English teacher is like ... because ...” Data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Conceptual Metaphor Theory defined and developed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980), who consider metaphors as mental constructs that shape human thinking about the world and reality, is used as the theoretical background for this study. The linguistic metaphors provided by the participants were first categorized thematically and then examined in parallel with previous studies (Oxford et al., 1998; Saban et al., 2006). Results revealed a variety of underlying conceptualizations that reflect different individual mappings across conceptual domains. The findings yielded new categories, which imply that culture as well as students’ personal experiences might shape their perceptions on language teachers. The study is significant in the sense that it highlights the use of metaphor as an effective cognitive tool to better understand students’ beliefs of their language teachers and their language learning process. In addition, it provides an opportunity for the teachers to have a self-reflection on their roles as language teachers.

10

Authors: Ira Slabodar & Galina Gordishevsky

A firm mastery of target language vocabulary is crucial for academic reading performance. Therefore, teachers should equip learners with tools that would help them understand and learn lexical items.To this end, we propose a graded instructional model, which combines strategies for decoding the meaning of novel words as well as learning and retaining them. In order to understand an unfamiliar word a student is encouraged to either guess it or consult a dictionary. Following lexical deciphering, the teacher assists the student in selecting the most frequent and useful words to be learnt. The learning process requires explicit focus on novel words. First, the learner copies the new word into his notebook alongside its dictionary definition and the context it was used in. Next, the student creates a keyword association which helps him retain the word. The learner then attempts to learn it using his preferred perceptual learning style. Since long-term retention of vocabulary requires multiple repetitions in varied contexts spaced at increasingly larger intervals, the teacher provides the learner with plentiful opportunities at novel vocabulary reinforcement. In addition, testing vocabulary progress guarantees further encounters with the target words. The graded vocabulary instruction model may be successfully integrated in versatile pedagogical frameworks aimed at lexical expansion.

10

Authors: Richard Madsen

The accessibility hierarchy of relativization (Keenan and Comrie 1977) describes the restrictions that the grammar of a language imposes on the relativizability of clause and phrase constituents. This paper explores the applicability and validity of the accessibility hierarchy in second language acquisition and production. It has been noticed that even Danes who are fairly proficient in English (university students) seem to have difficulties with relativizing possessors despite the fact that Danish has the exact same rules for relativization as English. All the elements listed in Keenan and Comrie’s hierarchy can be relativized, and several of the relativizers in the two languages are cognates. On the one hand, the apparent difficulties of Danes defy common sense and theories on contrastivity and cross-linguistic influence (Ellis 2009, 2012, Jarvis 2011, Lado 1957), according to which Danes should not have problems with the formation of English relative clauses. On the other hand, they lend the accessibility hypothesis support since Danes seem to be challenged by the relativization of constituents that are low on the accessibility hierarchy, suggesting that the hierarchy is not only relevant for the static differences between language systems, but also for the dynamic interlanguage of language learners (Selinker 1972). This study investigates the nature of the abovementioned difficulties and attempts to place the accessibility hierarchy subsequently in the context of second language acquisition by analysing several types of data stemming from Danish students studying English Business Communication. Essays and summaries in English, translations from Danish into English and vice versa, as well as gap-filling tests and tests concerning the construction of relative clauses by merging independent clauses both in English and Danish are analysed.

11

Authors: Simone dalla Chiesa

In this paper I will discuss two constructions of the Japanese verb aru ‘be’. In one construction, aru occurs with a copular complement marked by the particle de, obtaining a sentence-ending pattern known as N-dearu. In the other construction, aru expresses the happening of a dynamic event and may occur with a de-marked locative adjunct encoding the physical place of the event. By analyzing these two constructions I will single out a ‘predicative’ function of the case marker de, and show that when functioning as a support item in nominal predications and in other copular sentences, aru retains its original nature as a locational verb and consequently assigns a locative-like grammatical case (marked with de) to the second argument of its clause. In this instance of strong localism, a grammatical split of the locative marker de happens so that de ends up marking a number of different surface cases. In the conclusion I will propose that the particle de in predicative function should be acknowledged to be an ‘Essive’ case marker.

12

Authors: Miriam Bait & Raffaella Folgieri & Oscar Scarpello

In this paper we propose the use of Agent-Based Models (ABM) (Gilbert 2008) to study the development of historical natural languages starting from a universal grammar according to Chomsky’s "Theory of the principles and parameters" (Chomsky 1995) . The CLARION architecture, designed by Ron Sun (Sun 2002) integrates implicit and explicit knowledge, cognitive and meta-cognitive levels, with the motivational aspect, i.e. accepting the cardinal principles of the embodied mind (Clark 1997) and recognizing the basic role of direct men- environment interaction in cognitive mechanisms. Ron Sun develops these points in a theory of mind and in a thorough discussion of learning problems. The goal of an artificial neural network (ANN), based on a CLARION architecture, is to verify theoretical assumptions through simulation, bringing together the dichotomy between implicit (subsymbolic) and explicit (symbolic) knowledge through a learning mechanism realized by the extraction of explicit rules by subsymbolic knowledge, based on interaction with the world. In the real world, cognitive operations are mostly performed unconsciously. Moreover, learning is carried out through attempts, in dynamic circumstances. The methodology allows to observe the development of cognitive structures of individual agents through ABM and contribute to studying the emergence of unplanned and unexpected routines or mechanisms. The use of neural models as learning tools implies that the simulations are realistic, considering the relationship between intentional behaviour, learning, desires, individual structures and social structures. The simulation, thus, enables a study the mind from an evolutionary perspective (that of satisfying a particular need in a physical and sociocultural world), understanding how individual structures and social institutions and environment could change each other. Through ANN-based models one can build realistic 'intelligent agents', i.e. with a 'mind', minimizing the programming of rules of behaviour and letting the interaction with the environment produce efficient behaviour.

13

Authors: Fahreta Fijuljanin & Samina Dazdarevic

This paper aims to represent the usage of literature in foreign language classrooms in order to deploy the students’ knowledge of English literature as an important part of learning English language. Introducing literature in the language classrooms as well as the benefits of reading it make the introduction lines of this paper. The core of the analysis is presented through the poem of Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum est. This postwar poem with its rich vocabulary is a great tool for a didactic initiation and proposition of EFL literature classroom instruction.

14

Authors: Julie M. Kolgjini

Given present emergent trans-local new media in de-territorialized and poly-lingual milieus, an approach to the current Unified Literary Albanian (ULA) that integrates elements of Gramscianesque and Bakhtinian-esque optics on language would be more in sync with contemporary polyglossic realities of numerous Albanian speech communities in 21st century linguistic marketplaces than the language’s present standard. Such reforms could serve as partial remedies for current linguistic injustices and insecurities regarding various purported dysfluencies of marginalized and disenfranchised speakers of stigmatized Albanian varieties, thereby averting returning to past repressions. This alternative positioning allows younger generations of language learners to exercise their agency in arriving at “their own emergent orders of normativity” (Leppänen et al., 2009, p. 1080). Espousing this perspective encourages language guardians with ortholinguistic tendencies to refocus their energies from “deeply entrenched dogmas” (Del Valle, 2014, p. 370) of standard language ideology focusing on linguistic imposition and denigration, and exclusionary policies that neglected to integrate rich socio-historical realities of the languagers, to an inclusive linguistic regime that embraces the present linguistic diversity of polycentric sociolinguistic spaces. Instead of perpetuating outdated language policies involving inflexible linguistic intolerances of bygone eras that (still) attempt to hermetically seal language and prevent any leakage, cross-contamination, trans-languaging, or codemeshing from one variety (in)to another, mutual accommodation and communicability are advocated here. Given the diffusion of polycentric sociolects in various locales where Albanian is employed, “putting the toothpaste back in the tube” could be rather challenging and futile. Thus, various gatekeeping pedagogies, including many current replacement and appropriateness paradigms, could be ineffectual given contemporary metrolingual realities of many Albanian languagers and learners.

6

Authors: Azamat Akbarov & Hadicha Muhiddinova

In the process of teaching language the most important task is to know the peculiarities of interconnection of words. And one of the effective factors of learning and teaching Uzbek as a second language is to conduct specific research on interconnection and interrelation features of words and to compose special dictionaries of the Uzbek language for Russian-speaking students. Meanwhile, the issue of interconnection and interrelation peculiarities of words has been investigated not only by many linguists but by some psychologists as well.One of those prominent psychological scientists is N.I.Jinkinn. According to him, the integration of speech units is divided into two phases. He also relates “the grammar field” with the second phase of speechunitintegration. Furthermore, he points out that in the first phase of this process, words and word forms are spread out in the “speech field”. In the second phase a speaker selects the necessary words for the primary explanation of the idea,which is followed by the correct grammar form, and then collocates with a suitable word [1,45]. For instance, according to N.I.Jinkinn,a noun, an adjective and an adverb do not usually collocate with other words. They are called as lexics, which are spread in the “vocabulary field” but divided into characteristic groups.

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Authors: Ivan Milošević

This paper aims to explore the possible application of cognitive semantics in the process of teaching and learningBusiness English idioms. The theoretical assumptions of this study are based on the cognitivist view that idioms are, to a certain extent, semantically motivated by cognitive mechanisms, with the conceptual metaphor being the most dominant one. This study is an attempt to test the hypothesis that metaphoric conceptualisation can contribute to a more successful acquisition of idioms, especially in comparison to pure memorisation of the same linguistic expressions. This small-scale experiment was carried out with 20 Business and Economics students divided into the experimental group and the control group. The students in the experimental group were introduced to the semantic motivation of idiom meaning, whereas the control-group students were taught the same idioms in the traditional way. After being presented with the carefully selected idioms in two different ways, the students in both groups were required to do four different types of exercises with a view to testing the semantic motivation hypothesis. As a result, the research findings and the results obtained in this experimental study suggest that the awareness of cognitive mechanism and semantic motivation behind the meaning of idioms can significantly assist students in the process of a somewhat systematic and consistent acquisition of Business English idioms.

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Authors: Sanja Josifović-Elezović & Svetlana Mitić

Product writing is considered uncreative and unstimulating, as it trains students to model their output according to rules and patterns. The risk students might particularly be exposed to when taught such writing is their memorising complete phrases, the most common grammatical forms and lexis used, and leaving a false impression of having mastered the register and form of selected writing patterns, and improved their linguistic and writing ability in general. Teaching product writing to students whose native culture has proven hesitant in regard to adopting correspondence as standard in certain situations, e.g. when applying for a job, complaining about a faulty product or substandard service, or writing a report to an authority, may prove additionally difficult and the achievements of a course based on it unintended. Most people’s daily experience shows that the culture of cultivated writing is losing the battle with truncated correspondence via e-mail and other electronic media. In light of this, learning to write and utilize such basic forms as applications, complaints and reports may prove beneficial for students’ writing, as well as their general linguistic competence and their adoption of the target culture. This paper presents the results of a writing course administered to first-year English undergraduates as part of a general English language skills course and analyses them in terms of the students’ adoption of the grammatical forms and the vocabulary/register that are required, or most commonly used, in the selected forms. This shows the extent of their real progress, as well as changes in their attitudes toward such writing as representative of the target culture. It also reveals the role the course has had in developing the students’ awareness of learning as a process and of formative assessment, or rather, specific assessment that focused on a product, while emphasizing the relevance of teaching/learning as a process.

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Authors: Alastair Graham-Marr

In EFL curricula where language is taught as a knowledge set, links between pedagogical theory and practice can be quite strong. However, links between pedagogical theory and practice seems more tenuous when applied to the teaching of skills, in particular, L2 listening skills which are often left to develop as by-products of a student’s grammatical and lexical understanding. And, in many contexts, this oversight can have serious consequences. Given that English is a stress-timed language, learners coming from syllable-timed or mora-timed languages, such as Japanese or Korean, can be robbed of learning opportunities when listening skills are deficient. The crucial role of comprehensible input in second language acquisition is well established, so when learners have developed listening skills, all language that is basically understood is available as a learning opportunity as comprehensible input. However, when learners have incipient listening skills, learners are often unable to comprehend auditory input containing words that are largely understood, thus losing opportunities for L2 language development. Learners coming from syllable-timed or mora-timed languages often lack a natural understanding of suprasegmental phonology, impeding comprehension. It is well established in the research literature that listening skills are best taught as a set of sub-skills to help students develop a basic phonetic awareness, however such research findings have not always made it into practice. This qualitative study reports on a set of first year university students at a Japanese university where listening was taught as a set of sub-skills. An overwhelming majority felt this type of instruction helped to improve their listening skills, suggesting that this fundamental pedagogy needs greater emphasis in countries with syllabletimed or mora-timed native languages. The results of this study are described and interpreted in the context of the English education system in Japan.

9

Authors: David Dunér

The cognitive abilities explained by cognitive science and cognitive semantics can inform us concerning the use of metaphors in science. The thesis is that abstract ideas rest on experiences of the concrete world. In this paper I will explain the use of conceptual metaphors in science, with examples from the mechanistic worldview of the 17th and 18th century. If we proceed from the way people think in general, their mental abilities, reason and cognition, we could get close to an understanding of how scientists during the scientific revolution shaped their ideas about the invisible geometry of matter. This is a cognitive history of ideas. What is called the ‘cognitive turn’ in the humanities has generated vigorous growth of research, for example, in cognitive poetics, neuroaesthetics, and cognitive anthropology. These approaches try to arrive at an understanding of creative processes. In the historical sciences there is also a growing interest in cognitive-historical analyses, particularly in archaeology and history of science. The aim of the cognitive history of science is to reconstruct scientific thinking on the basis of cognitive theories. The starting point for a cognitive history of ideas that I defend here is that philosophy, science, and mathematics do not really happen just in texts, in language, in laboratories, or in social contexts, but in brains and minds in interaction with the world around the subject, and are thus connected to the body, to perception, thoughts, and feelings. We humans are captured in our brains situated in the world, we are dependent on our thoughts and senses, our prior knowledge, our mental images, when we try to create a picture of the world. Science, in other words, is shaped by our distinctive way of reasoning, not least in metaphors.

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Authors: Mohammed Elsaghayer

The study was conducted to investigate why the secondary students in Misurata were unable to orallycommunicate in Englishfluently, even though they had studied it as a general subject during their school education. Themain reasons for the students’ poor speaking skills are the traditional teacher-fronted method of teaching, insufficient allocation of time for oral-skills training, and theteachers themselves not taking any interest in developing oral skills. The data for the study, among other things, were mainly based on the classroom observations of the lessons presented by 12 secondary teachers at five schools over a period of more than two months. The data analysis was carried out using tables in percentageto obtain accurate results. The findings clearly proved that the points stated in the hypothesis for the poor oral production of speech by the secondary students in Misurata were correct. Based on the conclusions drawn, recommendations that can positively help to develop oral skills among the students of secondary schools were presented.

10

Authors: Goran Schmidt

The paper aims to shed light on how subtitlers cope with metaphor translation. The paper presents the results of a case study on a set of English subtitles of one Croatian movie. Metaphor translation procedures were analyzed using Conceptual Metaphor Theory. There are four basic ways to translate metaphors: a. using the same conceptual metaphor, b. using a different conceptual metaphor, c. using a nonmetaphorical paraphrase; and d. deleting the metaphor. In addition, a non-metaphorical expression can be translated by a metaphorical expression. Metaphors are mental, linguistic, but also cultural entities. Since translation in the contemporary age is recognized as both linguistic and cultural transfer, translating metaphors is at the core of the translation task. Many conceptual metaphors are universal and can be found in (almost) all languages, but some are culturally specific, appearing in just one language (group). This case study shows that the universality of metaphor influences the choice of a metaphor translation procedure, in a way that shared metaphors are mostly translated using the same conceptual metaphor, whereas non-shared metaphors are translated by a different metaphor or a non-metaphorical paraphrase. The paper also explores the ways in which the specifics of subtitling as a constrained type of translation influence the choice of a translation procedure. The results are compared to the results of a previous study, which dealt with the translation of metaphors in literature.

10

Authors: NattapornLuangpipat & WatanaPadgate

This study aims to explore the relationship between English learning achievement and students’ perceived self-efficacy, and the possible factors of the students’ perceived self-efficacy. Some 370 first-year students at Naresuan University were randomly selected to fill in the questionnaires while grades representing students’ learning achievement were collected from the instructors.The collected data was analyzed by Pearson’s Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression. The result of the study showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between English learning achievement and students’ perceived selfefficacy. The factor related to students’ perceived selfefficacy was mainly from vicarious experience, which was somewhat contradictory to the findings ofearlier studies (Bandura, 1986; Kiran&Sungur, 2012; Lent, Brown et al., 1996; Luzzoet al., 1999; Pajares, Johnson &Usher, 2007) Hopefully, the result of this studycan be utilized to improve student performance in English learning through a better understanding self-efficacy and its related factors.

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Authors: Veronika Kareva

There is no dilemma at present times that language learning means learning how to use the language and not learning to know about the language. Exactly for this purpose, in today’s global world characterized by massification and mobility in the field of education, the Council of Europe - Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), as a universal instrument allowing individuals to have a record of the different elements of their language learning achievement, begins its treatment of language use through the context of communication.Language programs at different institutions organize their work in the way that learners use the general competencies they bring with them, but also develop them further. Nonetheless, successful completion of university language courses does not always mean that the student has mastered the language and can use it for communication. This mostly refers to the cases where the language courses are treated as part of the curricula while the other instruction is in the L1. The fact that students at such institutions are not required to take any standardized English proficiency test put the effectiveness of the complete language program under a question mark. In order to provide evidence that its quality language provision resulted in improved communicative competence for students, the Language Center (LC) of the South East European University (SEEU) in Tetovo, Macedonia, introduced final oral examination as a part of the course grading criteria. The aim of this paper is to determine whether the introduction of the oral examination as a part of the final achievement exam has helped raise student’s awareness of the need to improve their communication skills and thus attain better performance. Participants of the study are 114 students from eight sections, two per level, starting from beginner to upper intermediate, whose final scores will be followed in the last three exam sessions. In addition, individual students will be chosen and their progress followed during three academic terms in order to show the development of their communication skills. The results are expected to be used as an indicator for program evaluation by the University management and external evaluation.

11

Authors: Reena Mathew

Native Arabic speaking students of the Gulf Middle East region are descendants of tribes and nomadic families which may be a possible reason why they are social constructivists when it comes to learning. Most prefer a learning environment in which they are actively engaged learners within a group. Native Arabic speaking students are social so best benefit from collaborative learning methods in particular from cooperative learning. Collaborative learning is an educational approach that involves groups of learners working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. (Lejeune, 1999).Cooperative Learning is a teaching arrangement that refers to small, heterogeneous groups of students working together to achieve a common goal (Kagan,1994).According to Vygotsky’sSocial Development Theory; social interaction plays a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate why collaborative learning is an effective teaching method in language education with nonnative English speakers (with focus on native Arabic speakers). Collaborative and cooperative learning styles are effective in the ESL classroom with native Arabic speakers because it helps students to share ideas, stimulates critical thinking, helps students to take control and invest in their learning with structural guidance from their teachers, teachers take the role of learners, students can become teachers, and every student gets to be an equal participant in the given task. Collaborative learning is also an effective teaching style that promotes social skills amongst students that can be used both in the classroom and outside in natural situations. It helps introverted students feel more confident about socializing with their peers. When I divide my students into groups or pairs using collaborative or cooperative learning styles; work is done with deeper concentration along with higher critical thinking skills.

13

Authors: Jelena Ilić

There have been many researchers (Holmes, Brown and Levinson, Olshtain, Blum-Kulka, House, Kasper) who have devoted themselves to the analysis of one of the basic units of human linguistic communication - the act of apologizing. An apology, as argued by Holmes (1989), is seen as a facesupportive act. As such, it does not impose on thehearer’s face. It has been understood that the act of apologizing serves as a social goal of maintaining harmony between the speakers, and in order to make it convincing and workable it has to be used with appropriate strategies. Olshtain (1989) claimed that apologies do not differ drastically across languages and therefore it could be said that they are mostly universal. Interestingly enough, what Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989: 21) noticed is that apologies are used with different degrees of intensity. Speakers may use intensifiers or upgraders to increase the power of their apology (‘I’m so sorry’, ‘I’m really sorry’), but they may also use other modality markers such as downgraders to avoid the use of apology and minimize their guilt (ex. I didn’t know you’d be eager to go out tonight.). Moreover, an act of apologizing might not accompany the set of realization patterns typical for apologizing and does not have to coincide with thespeaker’s pragmatic intention. ‘Sorry ‘bout that!’ is an example that one may find in contexts in which a speaker is not apologizing for something s/he did, but s/he is sarcastic or just superficially using the pattern to avoid a sincere apology. In other words, meaning does not have to be tightly connected to the pragmatic intention whatsoever. Still, the aim of this paper will be to analyze the structure of an apology using data-collection instruments, such asthediscourse completion test (DCT), rating scalesand role-plays,inorder to elicitapologetic data produced by non-native speakers who are highly proficient in English andwho are responsible for teaching and guiding young generations. The paper will examine teachers’ apologetic competences as a type of knowledge that everyone needs to acquire, process, develop, use and display on a daily basis. The analysis of teachers’ contextual perceptions and choices of apology strategies openly indicates their socio-pragmatic performance through written and oral tasks, and their pragmalinguistic performance as well.

15

Authors: Azra Jakupi, Neda Radosavlevikj & Milica Matoska

Whether you have been teaching for 20 years or have just started your teaching career, there’s always a possibility you will have a student in your classroom with disruptive behavior. This behavior can go beyond the limits of what is considered to be acceptable in a learning environment. An obvious example of disruptive behavior is when the student verbally attacks, is late for class, experiences angry outbursts, social problems, etc. or simply rebels against something that is happening beyond the classroom door. However, very rarely are we, as teachers, aware of the possibility that the student might be having a mental health crisis. We, the Language Centre at South East European University, have encountered various stressful situations, while at the same time we struggle for balance and try to find appropriate responses for students’ complaints about grades, “unfair” treatment, the policy of the faculty, etc. In an effort to resolve this dilemma, we will conduct research within the Language Centre through interviews with the academic and administrative staff as well as the students and their supervisors. In our presentation, we will present several strategies to deal with stressful situations that affect the entire learning environment, including the teachers themselves, such as: defining the problem, the reason behind it, the time of occurrence, its impact, introducing metacommunication and early communication by setting early expectations, ways to stay calm when responding to a crisis event and setting limits. We will also explore basic principles related to classroom management and a variety of strategies for early intervention in order to create a dynamic learning environment that promotes learning safety.

26

Authors: Fatma Aksoy

The present study was designed to investigate if there is a significant difference among SR clustering, SU clustering and TR clustering of vocabulary presented to Turkish EFL learners, and if there is, which way of presentation would be a more useful tool in a Turkish EFL classroom. A total of 46 preparatory school students, studying at Anadolu University School of Foreign Languages, participated in this study. The participants were required to provide Turkish equivalents of the 15 new words presented in semantic, thematic or totally unrelated sets that they were encouraged to learn through word cards. The data gathered from 37 of these participants were analyzed. The results of the delayed tests revealed that semantically related sets (SR) significantly differed from unrelated and thematic sets, and helped the participants learn and recall more words, while the results of the immediate tests did not yield to a statistically significant difference.

6

Authors: Keti Miteva-Markovic

Semantic and cultural analysis of the terms for 'ink' in the Slavic languages This text will analyze the semantic and cultural motivation of the terms for ink in the Slavic languages and their dialects, followed by an etymological analysis of the corresponding terms in other European languages. The VIII Lexical volume of the General Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA) will be taken as a foundation; it contains the terms for ink in the Slavic dialects, i.e. approximately 850 settlements on the entire Slavic territory. Namely, various terms are used to refer to ink in the different linguistic areas of the Slavic territory, such as мастило, чернила, tinta, atrament, inkoust etc. This text will analyze their geographic distribution while presenting the semantic motivation of appropriate terms through etymological analysis. Taking the geographic distribution of the various terms for ink into consideration, the compatibility of areas is evident according to both the etymology of appropriate terms and the cultural influence that encompassed the appropriate semantic motivation. By analyzing various terms for ink, my tendency is to illustrate that lexical diversity does not depend only on lexical heritage, but on other factors as well, such as civilization and culture.

8

Authors: Saule Abdramanova

The aim of the research is to investigateconceptual framesofbody parts,as perceived by native Turkish speakers while they learn English idioms that employbody-part components. The study is mainly based on the assumptions of the theory of frames by Minsky (1974), who proposed the frame system forthe cognitive sciences. Vygotsky (1986) introduced conceptual frames in his theory of human development, and Fillmore (2006) operated with the term “frame” in his frame semantics. The abovementioned theories have been applied to make up a network of ‘nodes’ and ‘relations’ that Turkish learners of Englishbuilt up while guessing the meaning of English idioms, with the focus on their body-part components. The experiment was conducted among first-year students with an intermediate level of English from the department of English Language Education at Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Participants were asked to fill in questionnaires and to guess the meaning of 15 English idioms that employbody-part components such as eyes, hands, head, heart, leg/foot, nose, and tongue. To ensure thevalidity and reliability of the experiment, interviews were conducted with five respondents and a think-aloud protocol was conducted with six other respondents. The qualitative data obtained in the experiment were analyzed, and the results showed that Turkish students build different frames related tobodypart meanings based on their universal, cultural and personal world perception.

9

Authors: Ines Skelac & Ružica Stanić

Native speakers of Croatian often have problems with appropriate usage of English tenses that do not exist in Croatian, frequently associating past forms in English with perfective meanings in Croatian and non-past forms with imperfective meanings (because Croatian has verb aspect). They also encounter difficulties with non-temporal uses of English tenses. Apart from the central meaning of tense as temporal reference, there are four non-temporal meanings of English tenses (Tyler, 2000): (1) emotional distance or intimacy; (2) the relative salience or status of the information being conveyed; (3) negative epistemic stance towards a particular scenario; (4) to express requests, commands and invitations. Although some non-temporal meanings are very similar to those in English, there are also significant differences that cause difficulties to native speakers of Croatian in learning English as L2. Some of the differences are caused by metaphorical and metonymical shifts in meaning between the source domain (time distance) and the target domain (distance between wish and reality, simulating of distance in order to avoid direct appeal, distance of the deictic centre, counterfactual possible situation, etc.). In order to examine those assumptions, 102 students – English learners – were tested. Differences mainly occurred in cases when the past tense is used in English to signal (1) a negative epistemic stance towards a particular scenario and (2) tense as an expression of attenuation: invitations, requests and suggestions, because Croatian speakers tended to use the present tense in some cases. We argue that a consistent description of non-temporal uses of tenses in Croatian and English, with analysis of differences, can facilitate the learning of these frequently occurring non-temporal uses of English tenses.

9

Authors: Chanturidze Yulia

Once a person sets a goal of studying the culture of some country or even of teaching it to foreign students in classrooms, he/she cannot manage without taking into account its reflection in the languages. it is the language that fixes all peculiarities of people’s world perception and becomes the storage of knowledge about it. It is in the light of such perception that a human being sees the world. Thus, one can speak about a linguistic world view. The linguistic world view is based on the set of certain concepts. A concept is a great deal broader than the lexical meaning of a word as it also includes an evaluative component. Cultures may share the same concepts or possess their own uniqueness. The latter are often referred to as national-specific concepts. These are the concepts that render the peculiarities of nation's mentality, world view and evaluation of the material world. In order to understand each other people must share the set of concepts and the same background information. This is often referred to as “common knowledge” [1.P.174-175]. At present considerable attention is drawn to discourse, especially its political variety. The analysis of national-specific concepts and the set of linguistic means which express them in political discourse seem to be of special interest in the discussion of typical cultural characteristics as political sphere is one of the constituent parts of any national culture. Thus, political discourse contributes to the understanding of the ways values have been developed. The importance of linguistic analysis of political discourse as part of culture teaching can be illustrated using materials from the African American political discourse, in which such concepts as ‘freedom’, ‘power’, ‘equality’ and ‘African American dream’ come to the fore.

10

Authors: Azamat Akbarov & Saodat Muhamedova

The article deals with the semantic field units with semanteme "thinking" in Uzbek, Bosnian and English languages, defined by their integral seme, on the basis of the criteria specified internal semantic groups. Lexical units refer to the meaning “thinking” and semantic field, integral and distinctive meaning have been investigated, inner groups have been classified in the example of the Uzbek language. The study of linguistic units on the basis of semantic fields is widespread in the world linguistics. They are mainly directed at the study of semantic groups of verbs. Our research will compare the semantic fields of units with semanteme "thinking" in the Uzbek language. The given lexicalsemantic field includes not only the lexeme of the verbs, but the lexemes of nouns, lexemes of adjectives, lexemes of adverbs and also some of the idioms. In the result of the analysis of the factual material revealed the following semantic groups of units with semantepe "thinking" in the Uzbek language.

10

Authors: Monika Černá

The paper discusses the challenges of test design in the context of a research project focusing on the analysis of tertiary students’ spoken production in English. One of the project aims is to create a corpus of learner-spoken English. The participants in the study are Czech first-year students in English language teacher education study programmes at three universities. In order to elicit samples of the students’ oral production, a test of speaking, including a pronunciation subtest,was designed with respect to the research aims and objectives and in accordance with the current trends in the field. The challenges faced by the research team may be divided into three groups – those pertinent to the construction phase of the research instrument, the pilot phase, and the data-collection phase. The paper discusses how the team responded to the perceived challenges.The process of test designing was informed by relevant literature (e.g. Bachman, 1990, Hughes, 2003, Luoma, 2004);the team strove to achieve the highest possible level of ‘test usefulness’, i.e. test qualities including reliability, construct validity, authenticity, interactiveness, impact and practicality, as introduced by Bachman and Palmer (2009). Consequently, the decisions regarding the abilities that the candidates, prospective English teachers, should demonstrate, as well as the decisions about the test format (elicitation techniques, number of tasks, etc.), were made with respect to the proposed ‘test usefulness’. The pilot phase confirmed the usability of the tool to elicit the required data, but also necessitated a few content- and procedure-related modifications. They reflected the results of the analysis of the performances recorded during the trial testing as well as the analysis of feedback questionnaires.Having revised the test, the researchers then implemented it in the data-collection processin three universities in the Czech Republic. The number of studentstested was 176.

11

Authors: Roma Kriaučiūnienė

The contemporary world is complicated and we face many difficult problems that sometimes can turn into conflicts that have to be resolved. As S. L. Dolan (2011) claims, these problems are: environmental pollution, human alienation, unemployment, crimes, drug addiction, disintegration of the family, mistreatment of the elderly, unequal distribution of wealth, food, educational opportunities, and many more. These challenges cause chaos and disturb the established sense of values across cultures. Some Lithuanian researchers (Aramavičiūtė, 2005) also maintain a view that such chaos has a major influence on people’s psychological condition as they lose the sense and meaning of life, which has a negative impact on their intra- and inter-relations.Documents from the EU also highlight the need for educational institutions to promote social cohesion, intercultural dialogue, diversity and equality. The development of personal and social skills and respect for human dignity and shared values are considered to be essential forthe resolution of intercultural problems. The article is based on the research into the cognitive-notional component of value attitudes among students of management and foreign languages. The criteria were the acknowledgement of the importance of values and the depth of understanding of the meaning of values. The conclusion is that students have to be prepared to understand the world, its cultural variety and values, think critically, andmake a stand against injustice.Only then can there be hope for life without prejudice, violence and contempt. Educational institutions have a huge and indispensible responsibility in this respect (Popovici, 2006).

11

Authors: Stanimir Rakić

Following the earlier works of Booij (1985) and Nespor & Vogel (1986) I provide further evidence that English compounds are made up of prosodic words. The length of the first components must be preserved because they are identical to basic lexical forms. In some other languages, as for example in Serbian, the length of the first components may be shortened because the inclusion of linking vowels can contribute to the building of the required ‘derived environment’ (Kiparsky 1985). This invoking of the strict cyclicity condition is however necessary only for those English dialects in which the accented syllables are not necessarily closed. In this paper I discuss the prosodic status and quantity of English compounds.

12

Authors: Ivana Brač & Sanja Drljača Magić

Difficulties in learning a second language (L2) may arise when a first-language (L1) speaker attempts to directly transfer a syntactic pattern from L1 into L2. Since there is a very high overlap in verb valency between Croatian and Russian, the generalization of syntactic patterns often leads to systematic errors. In this paper we analyze verbs that were selected from a list of verbs required for B1-level mastery in Croatian and Russian. The analyzed verbs are divided into semantic groups according to Levin (1993), but the paper focuses on the verbs of social interaction, verbs of communication and psych-verbs. Each verb is associated with its syntactic pattern supported by a corpus attestation. Within each semantic group, verbs are further divided into four groups based on the number of complements and their realization on the syntactic and morphological levels. This paper aims to facilitate the acquisition of basic verb complements in Croatian and Russian, with emphasis on non-matching pairs between the two languages.

14

Authors: Aida Tarabar

The paper offers an insight into the highlights of the ESP teaching practice at the University of Zenica, the university with the longest ESP tradition in the country. This type of language instruction started as part of an optional course at the Faculty of Metallurgy in 1970s. During the following decades – especially in recent times – the teaching has been developed and organized into several obligatory ESP courses that are taught during the final four semesters of undergraduate studies at technical faculties. The training finishes with so called Public Lecture – a series of presentations delivered by the students themselves. The main characteristics of ESP instruction at these faculties are total flexibility and adaptability. This means the ESP teacher not only tends to follow the most recent findings in the realm of the ELT, but also observes the specific educational and social circumstances within which the learning/teaching process takes place. In a country such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the legacy of war includes a brain drain and a complex situation at all three educational levels, it is important to design innovative practices that can compensate for the aforementioned deficiencies. By being responsive to students’ needs, we try to bridge and/or fill in the gaps in their knowledge. In the course of our ESP instruction the students are equipped with the most appropriate and practical tools they can use when they encounter the problem of translating a technical text – a simplified 'translation technology'. Thus, they are encouraged to enter the language arena. Without such a scaffold, they would most probably remain only spectators.

19

Authors: Irena Zovko Dinković & Maja Banić

Nowadays we are witnessing a substantial growth in the number of radio stations, as well as a simultaneous decline in the quality of the hosts’ speech, particularly its fluency. Whereas people may be quite tolerant of various hesitations in everyday conversations, listeners often find dysfluencies in the speech of radio hosts distracting and irritating, expecting the hosts to be skilled in controlling their output.This research paper therefore offers a contrastive analysis of hesitations in the speech production of English and Croatian radio hosts, with the aim of determining whether the frequency of hesitation markers can be related to the formal training of hosts. If so, we can suppose that greater fluency of speech may be achieved through practice.To this purpose we have analyzed eight minutes (480 seconds) of speech of 32 radio hosts, 16 American and 16 Croatian, with an equal number of males and females in each group. Also, half of the hosts work at public radio stations, and the other half at commercial ones. In order to obtain the most objective results possible, the analyzed samples were taken from different episodes of talk shows on various subjects, as well as from different parts of the episodes (beginning, middle and ending). The results indicate that there is no correlation between gender and fluency since there was no relevant difference in the frequency of hesitations produced by male and female hosts, in spite of the generally accepted popular view that women are more fluent and verbal than men. More importantly, the results indicate that fluency is an aspect of speech that can be improved through practice and formal training. A surprisingly similar number of hesitations in the speech of American and Croatian hosts confirms the fact that speech fluency is a cognitiveaspect of language, independent of language specific features.

34

Authors: Melisa Okičić & Merima Osmankadić

Teaching English as a foreign language at university level is quite a different challenge compared to teaching high school or young nonnative learners. This is due to the fact that university students are expected to acquire specific grammar terminology in order to master the grammar system of the target language. At the English Department of the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, during the first three (undergraduate) years of study the students are introduced to several grammar courses, focusing on the analysis of English grammar through descriptive explanations given in English. The courses serve as a basis that is expected to improve both the grammar and translation competence of the students. This paper examines to what extent the acquired descriptive knowledge of morphosyntactic properties of English is helpful in terms of translation of those Bosnian sentences whose proper translation into English requires the knowledge of contrastive rules. The research has been designed as a combination of action research and a quasi-experimental pre-test (delayed) post-test control-treatment group. As the research findings have revealed, teaching grammar to non-native learners of English without input as to the contrastive differences between the source and the target language results in erroneous translation, which is a consequence of negative transfer from the source into the target language. On the other hand, grammar teaching supported by the presentation of relevant contrastive rules has proved to be an efficient learning technique in terms of reducing errors and improving both grammar and translation competence of non-native learners.