<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
<rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/398">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[Product Writing for Better Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition by English Language Students]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[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 emphasising the relevance of teaching/learning as a process.    Keywords: product writing, teaching/learning writing as a process, linguistic acquisition, cultural acquisition, formative assessment]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-04-21]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2823]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/397">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[Lack of Oral Proficiency in English among Secondary Students in Misurata: Reasons and Remedies]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[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.    Keyowrds: secondary school students, Misurata, English language, fluency]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-04-21]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2820]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/396">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[The expansion of the borders of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) provides members of academic communities with a challenging opportunity to participate in various exchange programmes. The phenomenon of mobility tests the proficiency level of the participants’ Intercultural Communicative Competence, whichenables them not only to speak a common language but also interact effectively and appropriately in the context of a hosting country.     The paper focuses on the case study of internationalisation process implemented by eight European Teacher Training institutions – CáFoscari University (Italy), thePedagogical University of Tirol (Austria), the University of Cyprus (Cyprus), the School of Education of Aarhus University (Denmark), theUniversity of Nantes (France), EötvösLoránd University in Budapest (Hungary), Jagiellonian University, Krakow (Poland), and the Institute of Foreign Languages, Vilnius University (Lithuania) –via the designed educational project carried out within the framework of an Intensive Programme in the socio-cultural context of the Republic of Lithuania. The data of the study based on the participants’ reflections reveals that no matter how positive the respondents’ attitudes towards mobility are, and how willing they are to participate in various exchange programmes, the level of their ICC does not always meet the desired internal and external outcomes. This proves the necessity of Intercultural education to be integrated into the content of many subjects, foreign languages, above all.     Keywords: teachers&#039; Intercultural Communicative Competence, Intercultural education, educational project, diary, reflection]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-04-21]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2816]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/395">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[Types of synonymic groups in Russian]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[This research has two main purposes:   1) to distinguish structural types of synonymic groups;   2) to verify the headwords of synonymic groups as a linguistic or psycholinguistic concept.    Typically, a headword has: 1) common semantic elements, 2) the highest frequency, and 3) no stylistic and emotional connotations.     The main source of data is the results of two experiments and data from the Russian National Corpus. The subjects&#039; task was to choose the main words of the submitted groups. We used 32 synonymic groups, taken from the Russian synonymic dictionaries: the first experiment contained 12 synonymic groups and the second had 20 synonymic groups. Forty-five subjects participated in the first experiment, 67 in the second experiment.    We distinguished two types of synonymic groups with different structures. The first type (centric synonymic groups) consists of synonymic groups, the headword of which can be uniquely identified by experimental and corpus data. In such cases, the subjects unanimously determined the headword, and the headword is the most frequent word of the synonymic group. There are eight (67%) such groups in the first experiment and 14 such groups (70%) in the second experiment.     The second type (non-centric synonymic groups) includes synonymic groups, in which the subjects were not able to choose the main word of the synonymic groups. There are four (33%) such groups in the first experiment and six such groups (30%) in the second experiment.     It is impossible to distinguish the headword in non-centric synonymic groups. Such synonymic groups are integrated by a semantic gestalt based on a nonverbal semantic code. Formal and component analysis of non-central synonymic groups is not effective.     Keywords: Russian language, synonymic groups]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-04-29]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2827]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/394">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[Are future foreign language teachers prepared to educate the gifted and talented in schools in Herzegovina?]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[The aim of this study was to contribute to advancement of foreign language teaching and to direct attention to exceptional children as a group of students very often neglected in the elementary and high-school educational system in Herzegovina-Neretva canton. Data are collected using reflection and we attempt to answer the question whether the future foreign language teachers, upon completion of their foreign language-teacher education, feel prepared to work with the gifted and talented. The results suggest that work with gifted and talented children should be included in FL-teacher education in the future.    Keywords: language teaching, talented students, Herzegovina canton]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-05-03]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2814]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/393">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[Apology in Use]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[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 face-supportive 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.      Keywords: interlanguage pragmatics, speech acts, discourse completion task, role-play data, apology strategies]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-05-04]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2815]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/392">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[The Role of Cognitive Mechanisms and Semantic Motivation in Business English Idioms Acquisition: An experimental study]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[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.    Keywords: Idiomatic expressions, Business English, cognitive mechanisms, conceptual metaphor, semantic motivation, language acquisition]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-05-05]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2813]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/391">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[MAKING STUDENTS MORE ACTIVE IN LEARNING THE PASSIVE]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[Why are students of English so reluctant to use the passive voice? The answer to this question may lie in the fact that students find it artificial, even pretentious, partly because it really does tend to be overtly wordy and cumbersome. Moreover, a point often overlooked is that the Croatian language “favours” the active structure as more natural both in informal and formal discourse, which is why students often find it difficult to adopt the passive voice as characteristic of the English language. Also, both for learners of English and native speakers of the language, the passive structure may be felt as contrary to the more common subject-verb-object (or S-O-V) order of syntactic constituents in the transitive sentence, employed profusely in the majority of Indo-European languages.  Nonetheless, not only is it expected of the students to appreciate the passive, but also to use it competently. A great deal of academic English courses focus on formal communication; which makes the passive of key importance to understanding the type of language prevalent in EAP. This type of discourse is essential to studying English at university level, in the authors’ case ESP in the field of international relations and diplomacy, where study materials abound with passive structures.   The aim of the paper is to show that the passive is fairly simple and easy both to understand and apply in independent production since it follows a set of formulaic instructions with little or no exceptions to the rule. It will look into examples of texts such as newspaper articles, legislation, professional literature, etc., and provide various activities used as a springboard for the acquisition of passive structures.]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:publisher><![CDATA[International Burch University]]></dcterms:publisher>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-07]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2891]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/390">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[JAPANESE CASE MARKER DE IN COPULAR SENTENCES: ESSIVE OR LOCATIVE?]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[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.]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:publisher><![CDATA[International Burch University]]></dcterms:publisher>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-07]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2902]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description><rdf:Description rdf:about="https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/items/show/389">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[INVESTIGATING THE INFLUENCE OF STUDENTS’ PROJECT-BASED ENGAGEMENT ON THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE ESP COURSE]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:abstract><![CDATA[Research has shown that learner-centered classrooms are very effective. Engaging students in various classroom activities leads towards better learning outcomes. Moreover, project-based activities can have a positive influence on the students’ engagement and dedication towards a language class. Accordingly, this study will investigate the influence of project-based language learning on students’ achievements and attitudes towards the ESP course. The participants in this study were sixty students from the Faculty of Languages Cultures and Communication at South East European University (SEEU), in Tetove, attending ESP for Communication Sciences (1) and (2) courses. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for the data collection. The administered instruments were: group projects, student questionnaires, unstructured interviews with the students and process observation. The results confirmed that the students showed more positive attitudes towards ESP classes, after they participated in group projects. They became more motivated and more enthusiastic during their classes. The students improved their critical and creative thinking skills; they productively participated in teamwork and they were able to give constructive criticism. It can be hypothesized that engaging the students in group projects helps in lowering the affective filter, by which the students’ input increases and they show greater academic achievements.]]></dcterms:abstract>
    <dcterms:publisher><![CDATA[International Burch University]]></dcterms:publisher>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[2015-07]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:extent><![CDATA[2894]]></dcterms:extent>
</rdf:Description></rdf:RDF>