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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

10

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.

11

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.

2

Authors: Anca-Teodora ŞERBAN-OPRESCU

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9

Authors: Irina DAVID

This article highlights Eastern European positive perceptions of America, as they are described in the scholarship. Particular attention will be paid to the reasons which explain Eastern European pro-Americanism. As shown in the article, the experience of communism and the subsequent post-communist European and worldwide reconfigurations are perceived by scholars as the main factors that prevent most formerly communist countries – Romania included – from expressing the same degree of anti-American reactions that can be seen in Western European countries

9

Authors: Virginia Mihaela DUMITRESCU

This article explores the relationship between culture and rhetoric starting from the premise that language is not only a major element of culture, but also a faithful reflection of it, as confirmed by linguistic anthropologists who tend to equate language learning with culture learning. More specifically, it focuses on the cultural characteristics of the UK and the US along two pairs of descriptors (“dimensions”) provided by Geert Hofstede and Michael Minkov – Long-Term Orientation vs. Short-Term Orientation, on the one hand, and Monumentalism vs. Flexumility (understood as a mix of flexibility and humility) on the other-, in an attempt to identify certain cultural differences and their corresponding linguistic expression: an effaced vs. an enhanced self-image, and the rhetorical use of understatement vs. overstatement. The article is meant as a tentative, cultural approach to rhetoric, and a possible starting point for future research on the rhetoric-culture relationship.

10

Authors: Monica CONDRUZ–BĂCESCU

This article deals with the issue of blended learning from a perspective less used in the specialized literature, applying blended learning to foreign language learning. There are highlighted several advantages of using this type of learning in the process of acquiring a foreign language, which can be extended to other areas of learning and that meet the central idea of the article, that blended learning is the future in terms of methods, learning strategies and lifelong learning. A big advantage is to have the assistance of a tutor 24 hours a day, managing to combine time saving, space, that an online classic program with the presence of human factor offers, without which the coherent, effective, genuine and lasting learning can not occur. The article also highlights the disadvantages of this concept; an important one being the fact that some students are not familiar with the latest technology. The last part approaches the issue of online platforms that continue to provide ever more useful applications, at affordable prices and tools for language learning. Even if blended learning has been a functional process for about ten years, there are already numerous supporters of this type of learning, particularly in higher education, where the combination of traditional courses and online interactive activities have already been implemented.

10

Authors: Monica CONDRUZ–BĂCESCU

This article deals with the issue of blended learning from a perspective less used in the specialized literature, applying blended learning to foreign language learning. There are highlighted several advantages of using this type of learning in the process of acquiring a foreign language, which can be extended to other areas of learning and that meet the central idea of the article, that blended learning is the future in terms of methods, learning strategies and lifelong learning. A big advantage is to have the assistance of a tutor 24 hours a day, managing to combine time saving, space, that an online classic program with the presence of human factor offers, without which the coherent, effective, genuine and lasting learning can not occur. The article also highlights the disadvantages of this concept; an important one being the fact that some students are not familiar with the latest technology. The last part approaches the issue of online platforms that continue to provide ever more useful applications, at affordable prices and tools for language learning. Even if blended learning has been a functional process for about ten years, there are already numerous supporters of this type of learning, particularly in higher education, where the combination of traditional courses and online interactive activities have already been implemented.

13

Authors: Maria HRIŢCU, Mariana NICOLAE

This paper focuses on a growing trend of interest in “spiritual leadership” and three important directions arising from a mindful and meditative approach to leadership - selfawareness, empathy and system awareness. The paper also tries to make sense of the experience one of the authors embarked upon in India, at the end of which she noticed significant changes in her understanding of and reactions to her professional and personal life. The methodology employed is of a qualitative type, being based on the narrative inquiry as the most appropriate to the sensitive issues discussed.

16

Authors: Lavinia PETRE Ruxandra CONSTANTINESCU-ŞTEFĂNEL

The present article explores the cultural and communication parameters of both Romania and Japan with the purpose of finding the main cultural barriers that can become potential sources of conflict at the negotiation table. Particularly, what are the profiles of the Romanian/ Japanese negotiator and how culture impacts on business people’s behaviour. The methodology used covers two empirical methods: a qualitative survey, with data collected from expert interpreters with first-hand experience in the negotiation field; and a case study, with an in-depth analysis of a failed negotiation between a Romanian and a Japanese company. Findings suggest that, although there are huge differences between the two cultures, they can be overcome by preparing thoroughly and keeping an open mind to other cultures’ peculiarities.

6

Authors: Ruxandra CONSTANTINESCU-ŞTEFĂNEL

This article presents the author’s experience in teaching business correspondence in French to students who learn both business French and business English. The author is interested in the interferences between the French and the British communication styles and in the errors such interferences cause in the students’ written productions. She proposes an original solution to diminish or even eliminate these errors. At the same time, her solution increases students’ cultural awareness and their motivation

8

Authors: Diana TSOTOVA

The article describes a model of the European Language Portfolio specially developed for people with visual impairments within a European project and received the accreditation of the Council of Europe. It outlines specific features of the electronic model, gives a short review of its structure and provides some practical recommendations on introducing the ELPBVI in the language classroom with a particular focus on building of self-evaluative skills. Furthermore, the article briefly presents further initiatives of the developers to disseminate the ELPBVI and support both teachers using the application and individual unsighted language learners. Keywords: European Language Portfolio, electronic format, blind and visually impaired, self-evaluative skills, self-assessment checklist

11

Authors: Sanja MARINOV Gorana DUPLANČIĆ ROGOŠIĆ

With the advent of computing and the Internet, language teachers have been given a new tool that could be used in English language teaching classrooms. However, the use of technology is showing its drawbacks and the biggest one is definitely the sense of déjà vu. Students too often use the Internet to find already made solutions for their take-homeassignments and simply copy-paste them. In order to battle plagiarism (more) successfully, we decided to have our students do one of their tasks in the computer lab during class. It was believed that doing this task in the lab would also increase student motivation and encourage peer correction and cooperation. This paper will present the results of using web-based materials with first-year, second-semester students of Tourism, enrolled in the course “English in Tourism II” at the Faculty of Economics, University of Split.

13

Authors: Monica CONDRUZ–BĂCESCU

The main topic of the article is effective communication in modern companies. Employees of the companies who can communicate feel connected to the progress of business and understand how their actions can support that business. A company or organization that communicates effectively – both outside and inside – records higher profits than "introverted" companies with a poor or nonexistent communication strategy. Basically, it shows that the communication process is not a "software" function of a company, but a driver of business performance, playing a key role in the organization’ performance. Measuring the communication process becomes mandatory to design, implement and change – where necessary – the communication strategy of a company or organization, in order to increase its profit

14

Authors: Raluca Şerban Mihai Şerban

John Barth’s Book of Ten Nights and a Night seems to mark if not a turning point in Barth’s writing, at least an isle of concern for everyday reality, with its complex social and political matters, in the midst of an ocean of playfulness and “irrelevant” storytelling, as the author himself labels his fiction. The eleven stories themselves are light, playful, funny, ironic, in his words, “irrelevant” to the world out there – in one word, entertaining. They self-reflexively turn towards obsession themselves, as the author’s fascination, indeed , with writing and story-telling is as noticeable as ever: virtually all stories, one way or another, revolve around writers and teachers of literature, and they include extensive commentary on writing, yet something is radically different: the real world finally managed to creep into Barth’s writing in a way it had never done before. Even a writer of so “light” novels could not turn his face from the nightmarish Ground Zero, the scene of the 2001 terrorist attacks that literally put an end to the world as Americans knew it. The full horror of September 11 is depicted in the frame of the stories. The moral seems to be that if mankind, if America is to survive such horror, it is going to be through storytelling.

14

Authors: Raluca Şerban, Mihai Şerban

John Barth’s Book of Ten Nights and a Night seems to mark if not a turning point in Barth’s writing, at least an isle of concern for everyday reality, with its complex social and political matters, in the midst of an ocean of playfulness and “irrelevant” storytelling, as the author himself labels his fiction. The eleven stories themselves are light, playful, funny, ironic, in his words, “irrelevant” to the world out there – in one word, entertaining. They self-reflexively turn towards themselves, as the author’s fascination, indeed obsession, with writing and story-telling is as noticeable as ever: virtually all stories, one way or another, revolve around writers and teachers of literature, and they include extensive commentary on writing, yet something is radically different: the real world finally managed to creep into Barth’s writing in a way it had never done before. Even a writer of so “light” novels could not turn his face from the nightmarish Ground Zero, the scene of the 2001 terrorist attacks that literally put an end to the world as Americans knew it. The full horror of September 11 is depicted in the frame of the stories. The moral seems to be that if mankind, if America is to survive such horror, it is going to be through storytelling

7

Authors: Ken COLLINS7

This is a new type of language–learning activity which can be done online in class or at home by students. Within a 50-word limit, students are encouraged to tell a story which can be fact, fiction, poetry or prose in the target language (English). The competition is judged internationally, with the active encouragement of a teaching institution which then has to develop new links with business to provide prizes. In an appropriate ceremony for prizewinners, it can publicise itself through the students’ use of English. Reference is also made to methodology available to stimulate the learning of English in the classroom. Keywords: language-learning competition, corpora for research, host institution, further teaching material

8

Authors: Ruxandra CONSTANTINESCU-ŞTEFĂNEL

The present development of science and the globalization of information have resulted into an increase of the number of concepts and terms denominating the same, as well as into strengthening the importance of terminology and terminography. This article presents a project which is part of this trend, answering the need of the beneficiary and of the whole target audience to possess a reliable instrument enabling them to have access to international accounting standards, to increase the Romanian researchers’ international visibility and to reinforce their connections with professional accountants all over the world. The project consists of a bilingual English-Romanian and Romanian-English dictionary of financial accounting, accompanied by a glossary in French, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish. Drawn up according to the methodology prescribed by the specialised literature, based on the most significant bibliography in the field, it is meant for all the specialists who wish to apply cutting-edge accounting methods in their work, and wish, personally or by their works, to strengthen their relationships with experts from various countries or to present to the world their scientific vision of accountancy. Keywords: bilingual dictionary,multilingual glossary, financial accounting, term, special language

10

Authors: Mariana SĂNDULESCU

It is a well-known fact that the dimension patemica our research is focussed on is vital in daily newspapers, especially in nowadays newspapers. In many cases feelings constitute news, thus becoming the very object of the journalistic information. In the following study we propose a general analysis, valid for any economic page or daily newspaper in order to underline the diffusion and pervasive dimension of love level in the journalistic discourse, even if each and every feeling is not nominated; it is extremely important to stress that neither isolated lexemes nor isolated news are the only issues discussed in this article - but also a level of meaning going over the entire significance of the journalistic text - in various ways and in different modulations. Keywords: dimension patemica, euphoria, dysphoria, involvement timica, tension of information, model-reader

13

Authors: Carmen PEREZ-LLANTADA AURIA

This article reports on an innovative practice entailing the use of an EAP literacy portfolio as a pedagogical tool for initiating adult language learners in higher education into a language/competency-oriented learning while building up a supportive environment and setting off a culture for learning. The rationale underpinning this integrated language/competency oriented approach was double-fold: firstly, to stimulate the students’ competence in a repertoire of academic literacies and, secondly, to formulate appropriate instructional interventions regarding curricular design, classroom methodology and language assessment system. The article describes the procedures carried out for implementing this integrative approach – namely, designing a coherent instruction and teaching materials, planning classroom work, introducing on-line learner management systems for monitoring progress, assessing student performance and supporting on-going, measurable progress of linguistic, metacognitive and interpersonal competencies. On pedagogical grounds, the article discusses how the ELP becomes a suitable tool to make the course content and pedagogy stay true to the linguistic and generic communicative skills that lie at the heart of academia. In addition, it assesses the advantages of the ELP in helping diagnose each student’s conceptual and competency-oriented progress, organise, control and support the learning process and make students move from the reactive into the proactive. Keywords: language learning, EAP (English for Academic Purposes), ELP (European Language Portfolio), EAP literacy portfolio, academic literacies, TEFL (Teaching of English as a Foreign Language)