262 10 3494 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 979 Title A name given to the resource Teaching other subjects through English Author Author Causevic, Sandra Abstract A summary of the resource. Many children are now relatively proficient in general English by the time they reach secondary school and need something more than simple revision of what they have already learnt. Teaching other subjects through English provides a better preparation for professional life than teaching English as a subject empty of content. There are many motivational advantages in teaching English for a well-defined purpose which is considered to be relevant by the students. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has attracted great attention in recent years, especially in Europe. In this paper we are going to show what the advantages of CLIL are and how efficient and useful teaching other subjects through English can be. We are also going to present some of the ways in which we can correlate other subjects and English. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 837 Title A name given to the resource Teaching Political Correctness Author Author Blančić, Bisera Abstract A summary of the resource. Political correctness is a term that describes language or behavior used when we do not want to offend someone, or to be insensitive to the feelings of another person or a group of people. The language may refer to someone’s religion, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, looks, sexual preferences, political views and the like. Its widespread usage started with emergence of the civil rights movements back in the middle of the 20th century. The intention was to contribute to the fair and benevolent society that most people want to live in. This phenomenon started in English and spread to many other languages always reflecting the changes in modern society, and the need to protect the rights of various minority and underprivileged groups. Over the years it gained supporters and opponents because initially neutral words and expressions become devalued over time turning into euphemisms, and they needed to be replaced by new neutral terms. Opponents see it as censorship and a danger to free speech while supporters still perceive political correctness as an unavoidable part of any civilized society. The authors believe that such an important issue cannot be ignored and that it is their obligation as EFL teachers to make their students familiar with it. Although in English and American society the term is often satirized, it is important for students to understand what all the sarcasm and irony are about. The ignorance on the subject may lead to expressing unintentional bias and offence regarding various groups of people. Making students aware of this, as well as of other important social issues, all leads to developing their communication skills and better understanding the cultural settings and background of the language they chose to study. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-05-04 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/de053a219a8b73fcaca2e98de9fefc27.docx ebe4b4a1e175a9dbacab396b9278b595 https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/e70984541c2f9ea9e523e74fc623e10f.pdf 9faf3e1899639cd83e45d642f597005e PDF Text Text Teaching Pragmatic Competence in Business English Courses Elzbieta Jendrych Kozminski University Key words: business English, pragmatic competence, students’ needs, tertiary education ABSTRACT Students’ needs in the 21 century are different from those ten or twenty years ago. They need more instruction and practice in sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence. Therefore the syllabi for business English courses at the tertiary level of education need to be revised and adjusted to the changing needs of students – future employees of global companies operating in a highly competitive business environment. The aim of the paper is to present these needs, assess and discuss the results of a research study into students’ self assessment of their competence and to give some recommendations on teaching the pragmatics of language use. Pragmatic competence is considered to be even more important now than ever before yet business English courses seem to offer very limited, if any, instruction on the most important pragmatic skills. Firstly, the paper gives examples of typical business situations in which pragmatic competence matters a lot, then it discusses the results of a study into students’ self assessment of their pragmatic competence, and finally it discusses the rationale of teaching pragmatic competence and suggests the ways of teaching it in business English courses at universities. It is hoped that the paper will contribute to increased awareness of the importance of teaching and learning the pragmatic skills in business English courses for adults. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1766 Title A name given to the resource Teaching Pragmatic Competence in Business English Courses Author Author JENDRYCH, Elzbieta Jendrych Abstract A summary of the resource. Key words: business English, pragmatic competence, students’ needs, tertiary education ABSTRACT Students’ needs in the 21 century are different from those ten or twenty years ago. They need more instruction and practice in sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence. Therefore the syllabi for business English courses at the tertiary level of education need to be revised and adjusted to the changing needs of students – future employees of global companies operating in a highly competitive business environment. The aim of the paper is to present these needs, assess and discuss the results of a research study into students’ self assessment of their competence and to give some recommendations on teaching the pragmatics of language use. Pragmatic competence is considered to be even more important now than ever before yet business English courses seem to offer very limited, if any, instruction on the most important pragmatic skills. Firstly, the paper gives examples of typical business situations in which pragmatic competence matters a lot, then it discusses the results of a study into students’ self assessment of their pragmatic competence, and finally it discusses the rationale of teaching pragmatic competence and suggests the ways of teaching it in business English courses at universities. It is hoped that the paper will contribute to increased awareness of the importance of teaching and learning the pragmatic skills in business English courses for adults. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBU Publishing Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-03 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/a93ea8c4fd4201549992e127417f99ac.pdf f9cebc21cb29e1bb7941b4b56f1a6e7f PDF Text Text Teaching Religion in a Secular Society Ali Murat YEL Fatih University, Department of Sociology Istanbul, Turkey 1. The Study of Religion in the Classical Period of Islam Religion has been a social reality since the earliest known history of human societies. It is an undeniable fact that man acquires everything in order to survive in this world from the society, in which he is born, raised in and lives his life. The needs for his survival do not only consist of material necessities; he also needs some metaphysical supports. The mechanisms that help man to endure in this world are generally called religions. In fact, systems of values and beliefs are the major component of a society’s culture. Belief systems overlap significantly with the other aspects of culture, for example, these systems may affect the cultural significance of rain, or even a recreational pursuit like playing polo. Religions affect virtually every learned behaviour; therefore, they enjoy a central part of the larger cultural systems in which they exist. Since people learn culture, civilisations throughout history and geographical areas generated their own institutions of learning. There may of course exist some similarities and differences among such institutions because of local traditions, customs, and people’s daily needs, all of which might have required a specific discipline in order to solve their everyday problems such as fiqh (Islamic law), or tasavvuf (Sufism). In the case of the various Islamic societies, the term madhab, which could be translated as “school”, in fact referred to “sect” or “rite” of the people who followed a specific teaching. As in the world of Christianity in the Middle Ages, religion played a very important role in the world of Islam as well. The role of the Islamic religion has been so central in the lives of ordinary Muslims that learning a science for them usually meant learning the tenets and rituals of their religion. Unlike Western legal systems, the shari’ah (the codification of God’s law) does not differentiate between religious and social matters, and it concerns itself with every aspect of social, political, economic and cultural lives of its followers. The idea of studying religion scientifically apart from philosophy, and especially apart from theology, became widespread in the West with F. Max Müller’s pioneering Buddhism studies (1880) in the second half of the 19th century. However, this did not mean that in the West there was no interest in religion and religious phenomena previously. In fact, religion had been one of the prime subjects that had occupied the minds of Western men since the ancient Greeks and many ideas and arguments had been produced about religious phenomena since then. Despite the fact that the investigation of the phenomenon of religion from historical, sociological, psychological, and phenomenological perspective and comparative religious researches appeared very late, humankind could not stay away from this innate phenomenon since its beginning. Thinking about religion and making interpretations of it, as well as of religious events, started in the Islamic world already during the revelation of the Qur’an. First of all, the Qur’an makes it very clear that there is not just one religion; there are religions. Therefore, the Qur’an makes a distinction between the Muslims and others in general; for example, “Thou shalt not find any people who believe in God and the Last Day who are loving to anyone who opposes God and His Messenger, not though they were their fathers or their sons or their brothers, or their clan” (58:22). Even during this initial period of Islam, there appeared works evaluating the terms religion (al-din) and the (real) religion (ad-din al-hakk) in addition to works about the religions of people of the book. The word used in Arabic for religion is din, “obviously related to the Hebrew and Aramaic word meaning law. In both Judaism and Islam, religion and law, though not identical, largely overlap” (Lewis, 1984:12). Of course, Islam is a din among other dins but it needed to define itself as different from others. It did so by differentiating its believers from the followers of other religions. Islam is defined in the Qur’an “against Christianity by verses rejecting the incarnation and the trinity, against Judaism by passages abandoning some of the Jewish dietary laws. Far more important than the rejection of Christianity and Judaism, however, was the rejection of paganism – the main enemy against which the Prophet fought and from which he won the main body of his converts” (ibid.). As a result of this overall rejection of paganism the Qur’an gave a superior position to Christianity and Judaism as against idol-worshippers. Therefore, according to the Qur’an at least three kinds of religions in the world: Islam, the religion per se, other revealed religions, and paganism. This three-partite classification is obvious in the Qur’anic verse as the pagans are excluded 129 �from the mercy of God: “Those who believe [i.e., the Muslims], and those who profess Judaism, and the Christians and the Sabeans, those who believe in God and the Last Day and act righteously, shall have their reward with their Lord; there shall be no fear in them, neither shall they grieve” (2:62). It is perfectly reasonable that the Muslims should inquire about the categories of religions mentioned in the Qur’an. The most important reason why works about religious subject matter and other religions came into being at an early stage is the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, which offered reflections on the term “religion” and on its fundamental characteristics. Secondly, the abundant information on the prevailing religions of other peoples who were living at the time in the Arabian peninsula contributed in a great deal as well. In several places, the Qur’an mentions the Jews and Christians in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as the Sabeans1 and Magians2 who lived nearby. It also speaks about the pagan religion of Mecca and the religion of Hunafa’ (pl. of Hanif, monotheists). These were the Arabic-speaking monotheist people, living in that area, who believed in one God with the concept of many lesser gods that included his daughters, Allat (the goddess), Manat, and Uzzah3. The Muslims made researches about the members of the religions that they encountered in their everyday lives and debated with them according to the information that the Qur’an had offered them. However, these researches were confined to the religions mentioned in the Qur’an, only. Later on, as a result of the expansion through conquests, the Muslims encountered many religions other than their own. In the new circumstances, in which they had to live together with adherents to other faiths, they felt obliged embark on new researches about these religions. The works of the Muslims on other religions were generally of the nature of responding the criticisms coming from these religions and trying to show the superiority of Islam. At other times, these works stressed incoherencies in and invalidity of these religions. Therefore, almost all of them were written in an apologetic nature. The works of Raddiya (Refutation, polemics) are the best examples of this genre. Thus, Raddiyas against Christians4, Jews, Magians, Dualists, and pagans came into being. The best example of these works is the book of the Andalusian scholar Abu Muhammad Ali b. Ahmed Ibn Hazm (d. 456/1063) entitled Kitab al-fasl fi‘l-milal wa al-ahwa’ wa al-nihal (Book on the other religions and sects and denominations within them). This book contains some critical evaluations of the Jewish and Christian sacred texts. In addition to the al-Fasl of Ibn Hazm, there were other scholarly and more objective works, such as Muhammad b. Abd al-Karim al-Shahristani’s (d.547/1153) al-Milal wa al-Nihal (Beirut: Dar al-Maarifa, 1961; Book of Religions and Sects)5 and Abu al-Raihan Muhammad b. Ahmed al-Biruni’s (d. 478/1048) famous work known as 1 The Qur’an mentions quite favourably a group known as the Sabeans, who were by the second century identified with various star-worshipping but still vaguely monotheistic sects in Mesopotamia. The Sabeans are tolerated in Islamic law, although they are less privileged than the Jews and Christians, a position reflected in the ruling in Shari‘a that a Muslim may not marry their women or eat their meat. 2 The Magian (the name is taken from the wise men or wonder-workers of the Middle East, the magi) is a person who believes there is one God (Ahura Mazda “the Knowing Lord”) whose Good Spirit is constantly opposed to the spirit of evil. This belief is also known as Zoroastrianism, which encompassed geographically the Persian plateau, the Arabian peninsula, the fertile crescent down into Egypt and well up into the Anatolian peninsula where East meets West. The rise of the religions--the Judaic, the Christian, and the Islamic--were in the Magian environment with its down to earth views of a contained sky vault or firmament. Heaven as an actual place somewhere in the universe, could even be transposed as a paradise garden such as Eden in an arid landscape on earth. 3 During the later period in Mecca, and above all, in Medina, the word 'hanif' is usually employed in reference to Abraham, where the Qur'an’s author emphasizes the point that, 'Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but a 'Hanif', a Muslim, one who did not belong to the idol-worshippers.'(3:60, 2:129). Since Abraham is thus represented as a 'Hanif', but was neither a Jew nor a Christian, Muhammad must have viewed him (as he did not have the Torah nor Gospel) as a man who had followed the above mentioned God-given disposition, and had cut himself free of the worship of idols. The Christians and Jews therefore, had no right to claim Abraham as their own, as he acted according to natural instinct, requiring neither the Torah nor Gospel to submit himself truly to God. 'Hanif' thus means for Muhammad, as indicated (in the majority of uses) one who is not of the idolworshippers, yet is neither a Jew nor a Christian, attaching himself to one of these religious communities. 4 As an example of a detailed study on the polemics written by Muslims against Christianity please see Aydın 1989. 5 This work was translated into English -I believe with a wrong title- as Muslim Sects and Divisions, (tr. by A. Z. Kazi and J. G. Flynn, London: Kegan Paul International, 1984) 130 �Tahqiq-i Hindi1. The former work was devoted to the comparative study of religions in general while the latter had a specific religion namely, Hinduism as its subject matter. In the introduction of this book al-Biruni complains that “while the Muslims had been able to produce fairly objective works on such religions as Judaism and Christianity, they had been unable to do so with regard to Hinduism and that, therefore he was going to attempt the task” (Rahman 1979:4). The Muslim authors dealing with religions and religious phenomena generally adopted the classification and the fundamental concepts of the Qur’an and then they considered other religions according to these terms. The Qur’an first of all defines the purpose of creation as belief in Allah and living a life in this world according to His will; it then classifies humankind into two groups in accordance with their willingness to accept this responsibility: as believers and non-believers. The terms Mu’min (believer) or Muslim (a person who surrenders to the will of God) are used to describe those who had accepted the message of the Qur’an and the term Kafir is used for those who did not obey the religion of Islam. The groups that are defined as Kafirs and who remain outside the religion of Islam are further divided into several sub-groups such as Jews and Christians who make up the ahl al-kitab (people of the book), pagans, Magians, and Sabeans (their status is a little ambiguous since, they were also reckoned among the ahl al-kitab by some scholars). According to the accepted dogma of Islam, all religions that were revealed to the prophets are the same in essence and all have the same divine origin. This religion, which was sent by Allah through His prophets to mankind, is called the (real) Religion (ad-Din al-Hakk) or the religion of Allah; the last version of this religion which was revealed to the prophet Muhammad is again called as Islam and it is accepted that the religion which was propagated by other prophets earlier is the same as Islam. The Muslims who considered religion from this point of view regarded religions other than Islam as false and corrupted. Their evaluations of them were mainly based on this understanding. Their religious investigations in earlier times in general adopted this view and consequently these religions, which were regarded as false or corrupt, were criticised. In the meantime, however, there were many other works on the essence and necessity of religion and other religions in an impartial and scientific way. Philosophy of Religion, which constitutes an essential part of the Sciences of Religion, was also dealt with intense care under the disciplines of Kalam (Theology) and Sufism. 2. The place of the discipline of History of Religions in the educational institutions throughout Turkish history 1 Tahqiq ma li al-Hind min ma’kula makbula fi al-akl aw marzula, (Hydarabad: Daira al-Maarif al-Nizamiyya, 1958). This book was translated into English and edited by Edward C. Sachau as Alberuni’s India, (Delhi: Chand & Co., 1964), for an excellent evaluation of the work of al-Biruni please see; Arvind 1991, Embree 1971, and Lawrence 1976. 131 �During the formation and progressive periods of the Ottoman state the discipline of the History of Religions was not to be found in the curricula of the madrasas (schools), of course, as these institutions were the basic and perhaps the most advanced teaching organisations throughout the Empire, there is no need to mention the fact that in other parts of the country or schools the subject was not taught. The works on the History of Religions that came into being in 19th-century Europe had a considerable effect in the Ottoman state and consequently the program of the Darulfunun Edebiyat Fakultesi (Istanbul University, Faculty of Literature) contained a class of Tarih-i Umumi ve Ilm-i Esatiri’lEvvelin (lit., General History and Science of the Religions of Earlier Peoples, “Mythology”) in 1874. There were some attempts, especially during the reign of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839), to reform the education system of the country after the Western style. After the death of Mahmud II his son Abdulmecid (18231861) became the sultan. He was a modernist sultan and gave importance to education as well. He demanded to be brought some brilliant students from all over the country to the Darul Maarif (a high quality private school that was established in order to prepare students for the Darulfünun) in Istanbul. These students, upon their completion of their studies were also sent to Paris to carry out their education. Reshid Pasha (1800-1858), for example, was his grand vizier who had a great impact on him about the Westernisation of the country. Ali Pasha (1815-1871) was also another grand vizier during the reigns of Abdulmecid and Abdulaziz,. Like Reshid Pasha he was also sent to several European countries as an ambassador. This post enabled him to compare the education systems of these countries and the Ottoman one. He was also of the opinion that the children of the religious minorities should be mixed with Muslim students in the schools lest Greek and Bulgarian subjects have hostile feelings towards Turks. Since the education of the Greeks children in Greece and the education of the Bulgarian pupils in Russia would make them see the Turks as their enemies, naturally, such activities should be avoided; as a result, he suggested to open a new school (the Galatasaray Sultanisi – Galatasaray High School) for these children (Akyüz 1985:165-66). Although the decision was made in 1846 to set up a Darulfunun, the opening of this university was as late as 18631. According to the 1863 Act of Maarifi-i Umumiyye (general education) the university was to have three departments, namely, Hikmet ve Edebiyat (Philosophy and Literature), Ilm-i Hukuk (Science of Law) and Ulum-i Tabiiyye ve Riyaziyye (Natural and Mathematical Sciences). After the proclamation of the Second Parliamentary Monarchy (1908), there was a course unit of Tarih-i Din-i Islam ve Tarih-i Edyan (History of Islam and History of Religions) at the Faculty of Theology in 1911. The madrasas of Istanbul were brought together under a new institution of Daru’l-Hilafetu’l-Aliyye in accord with the Act of Islah-i Medaris (Reformation of the Schools, 2 September 1914; Akyüz, 1985:263) and the Faculty of Theology was restructured as the Madrasatu’l-Mutehassisin (School of Experts) and at its department of Kalam, Sufism, Philosophy, and a course of Tarih-i Edyan ve Mezahib (History of Religions and Sects) were taught. Again, according to the Act of October 1917, the Madrasatu’l-Mutehassisin was transformed into Madrasa-i Suleymaniyye (School of Suleiman) as a superior institution above the Daru’l-Hilafetu’l-Aliyye and at the Department of Philosophy and Theology (Hikmet ve Kelam) the course of Tarih-i Edyan ve Din-i Islam (History of Religions and Islamic Religion) was taught. In the Republic era, that is, after 1923 under the effects of the 1924 Act of Unification of Instruction (Tevhid-i Tedrisat Kanunu) Madrasa-i Suleymaniyye took the name of Ilahiyat Fakultesi (Faculty of Divinity) and at this department the courses of Felsefe-i Din (Philosophy of Religion), Turk Tarih-i Dinisi (History of Turkish Religion) and Tarih-i Edyan (History of Religions) became available. The Faculty of Theology was closed down in 1933 and a new institution was opened the same year; at the Institute of Islamic Research (Islam Tedkikleri Enstitusu) two courses were taught: Türk Dinleri ve Mezhepleri Tarihi (History of Turkish Religions and Sects) and Umumi Dinler Tarihi (General History of Religions). Three years later, in 1936 the Institute of Islamic Research was abolished and in 1949 the Faculty of Divinity was opened in Ankara. At this faculty, at the Higher Institutes of Islam (Yuksek Islam Enstitutusu), which was opened after 1959, and at the high schools of Imam Hatip (Imam-Preacher), which provided students for the higher education, there existed courses of History of Religions. In contemporary Turkey at the faculties of theology and imam-hatip high schools, History of Religions is taught. It was Ahmed Midhat Efendi (1844-1912) who taught the course of History of Religions for the first time at the Department of Sciences of Sharia in the Daru’l-Funun-i Osmani (Ottoman University). He also wrote a book entitled Tarih-i Edyan (History of Religions, Daru’l-Hilafe, 1328/1911). There was, of course, some information on the history of prophets and religious history in the history books (like the books of Kisas-i Enbiya - Stories of Prophets), nonetheless; the work of Ahmed Midhat Efendi (Mudafaya Mukabele ve Mukabeleye Mudafa, [Replication to Defence and Defence against Replication], Istanbul: Tercuman-ı 1 For a detailed history of the University, please see Ayni 1995. 132 �Hakikat, 1883) was very different in terms of the subjects it dealt. In it, Ahmed Midhat Efendi stresses the importance of religious geography and he explains the significance of religion and theories of history of religion. He also investigates religions of Mongolia, America, Egypt, Greece, Germany, China, Japan, Iran and India. If this book is examined thoroughly, it would be obvious that Ahmed Midhat Efendi follows closely the book Manuel d’Histoire des Religions (Paris: Librarie Armand Colin, 1904) of Chastepie de la Saussaye. After Ahmed Midhat Efendi there were some other authors who wrote books on history of religions, such as Mahmud Esad Seydisehri (Tarih-i Edyan, Istanbul, 1912) and M. Şemseddin Gunaltay (Tarih-i Edyan, Istanbul, 1919). The book of M. Şemseddin Gunaltay deals with subjects such as the Science of Religion, History of Religions, Philosophy of Religions, the origin of the Science of Religion, its historical developments and its current situation in the Islamic world, the essence and classification of religion, the origin of the concept of religion, primitive religions and finally, Chinese and Japanese religions. Georges Dumézil taught the classes of Tarih-i Edyan at the Faculty of Divinity between the years 1924 and 1927. In the next six years (1927-1933) Hilmi Omer Budda gave these classes there. It was Fuat Koprulu who gave the classes of Turk Tarih-i Dinisi (History of Turkish Religion; Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1985) and Mehmet Emin taught Philosophy of Religion at the same faculty. At the Institute of Islamic Research which was run between the years 1933 and 1936 Omer Hilmi Budda gave these classes. Hilmi Omer Budda published his book entitled Dinler Tarihi (History of Religions) in 1935. This work dealt only with the religions of India, China, and Japan, and the section on Buddhism extensively relied on Hermann Oldenberg’s book Die Lehre der Upanishaden und die Anfange des Buddhismus1. After a blank period, that is, the prohibition of religious teaching in Turkish Republic between the years 1936 and 1949, Omer Hilmi Budda taught History of Religions in the Faculty of Divinity until 1952, which was opened in Ankara again in 1949. In the next two years Mehmet Karasan gave these classes and from 1954 to 1959 they were given by Annemarie Schimmel (Dinler Tarihine Giriş, [Introduction to History of Religions]). After 1959 they were given by Kemal Balkan and the teacher of many contemporary lecturers of History of Religions in Turkey, Hikmet Tanyu. There are 22 faculties of theology in modern Turkey and the experts of this discipline give the classes of History of Religions. The researches that have been made in Turkey so far, have been mainly pursued in the following fields: 1- The works of the Muslims (such as Ibn Hazm, Makdisi, Abu al-Meali, Razi, etc.) on History of Religions (for example, Belenköylü 1991 and Gürbüzer 1990); 2- Investigations into some specific phenomena in certain religions (for example, the institution of Sabbath and the belief in the Afterlife in Christianity, see Gürkan 1994, Paçacı 1989 and Atasagun 1989); 3- A comparative investigation of a phenomenon in various religions (for example, Adam, repentance, grace, angel, pilgrimage, etc. in divine religions; see Adam 1989, Cenan 1994, Yüce 1975 and Erbaş 1992); 4- Works on sects or denominations (for example, Unitarianism, Church of Chalcedony or Suryanism (Syrian Orthodox Church), etc.; see Çelik 1985, Albayrak 1995 and Bilge 1990); 5- The ancient tribes that were mentioned in the Qur’an like Ad and Sodom (for example, Yıldız 1989); 6- Works on the refutations of other religions (for example the Refutation of Tabari against Christianity; see Coşar 1985 and Güler 1989); 7- The religions of minorities in modern Turkey (for example, the Jews of Istanbul or the Protestant churches in Istanbul; see Alkoç 1997 and Lekesiz 1983); 8- Interreligious relationships (such as the theme of dialogue and the relations between Islam and Judaism; see Yılmaz 1995 and Ceran 1992); 9- Certain religions or religious concepts from an Islamic point of view (for example, Jesus, Moses or Judaism; see Akdemir 1992, İlbay 1990, Kutluay 1964 and Tezokur 1992); 10- Works on the sacred texts of other religions (for example, Vedas, Torah, Bible, etc.; see Demirci 1988); 11- Works on the Turkish world (for example, beliefs of various Turkish tribes, etc.; see Albayrak, Ali 1995 and Özdemir 1977). As can be seen from the above-mentioned works contemporary researches on History of Religions in Turkey have the following objectives: 1 This book has recently been translated into English by Shrotti (1991). 133 �a- They aim at unearthing the cultural heritage and its evaluation. b- Some works have a specific purpose of understanding various religious groups. c- There are also other works that try to give accurate information about other religions to the Turkish public in a world that becomes smaller every day. d- Some other studies try to define the nature of interreligious relations throughout history. In sum, all these attempts should be considered in the light of the significance of religion in future. It should also be mentioned that there are other researches and investigations in the subfields of religious sciences such as Sociology of Religion and Psychology of Religion. These works have become increasingly sophisticated since the 1950s. Ziya Gokalp, a follower and a representative of the school of Emile Durkheim in Turkey made the first studies in sociology. Gokalp, at the beginning, believed that Islam would have a positive effect on the progress of the Muslim societies and it would help these societies to adopt modern institutions (cf. Gokalp 1917). However, he changed this attitude on religion and its functions in society later and in the end religion became just one of the elements of social life and culture. Religion, according to him, was now reduced into some rituals and activities of religious groups or at most, it is one of many other institutions of social life. Gokalp, like Durkheim before him, distinguishes between two sets of phenomena; sacred and profane. For him, there are two kinds of rituals in Islam, namely, negative rituals and positive rituals. Negative rituals are individualistic rituals such as fasting, almsgiving (zakah), avoiding gossip and praying alone. The aim of these rituals are making the individual a good citizen, who loves his/her country (yurtsever). If these rituals are performed publicly, like praying the Jum’a (Friday) prayer or pilgrimage, then, these rituals would become reference points for the harmony in society (Gokalp 1917b). The ideas and beliefs of Ziya Gokalp played a very important role in the formation of the Republic and the consequent revolutions as modernisation was understood in terms of modernisation in religion. In other words, the attempts to create a new Turkish identity -independent of Ottoman or Muslim identities- were mainly based on the assumption that if and when religious knowledge is transformed from Arabic to Turkish then Turkish nation would be freed from the ummah (an entity that assumes all the Muslims in the world are just one nation). Apart from the fact that Ziya Gokalp was the most important figure in Turkish sociology, the reason why he was so influential in Turkish politics could be explained by his personal relationships with the current political figures. As that circle of friends came to power his ideas gained a source of legislation. Later, the researches in this field took Turkish history and Islam as their subjects, especially under the supervision of and guidance of the works by H. Ziya Ulken (1979) and Sabri Ulgener (1981). The writings of Mumtaz Turhan (1951) and Nurettin Topçu (1970) in the 1950s are especially noteworthy. M. Turhan investigates social changes in the social life, the fundamental problems of the system of education and the question of Westernisation in both theoretical and practical levels; while N. Topçu stresses the function and role of religion in a changing social structure. Ali Fuat Basgil (1962) and Osman Turan (1964) wrote about the relationship between religion and state which is a hot topic of discussion since the beginning of the Republic. The works of Serif Mardin (1969) and Niyazi Berkes (1973) investigate the socio-cultural structure of modern Turkey, specifically trying to define its religio-social and historical background in the light of the concept of modernisation. The studies in the field of the psychology of religion, have a relatively recent past. Bedii Ziya Egemen (1952 and 1965) was the first academic who did some researches in this field in Turkey. Since it is a new discipline most of the work in psychology of religion are concentrated on the developmental psychology. 3. Some Considerations and Comments on the Teaching of Religion in the Republican Era The Turkish Republic, which was founded on Ottoman soil, defined its ultimate purpose as reaching the same level of contemporary civilisation; in other words, when the Ottomans felt humiliated against their Western opponents in almost every field from military to politics, they decided to make their country modernised. In order to reach this very well-defined objective it was stressed that the society should be Westernised immediately. One of the elements of Westernisation was that religion, as in the Western society should be excluded from public and political life altogether. For the supporters of such a belief, religion should be understood as exclusively an individual relationship between man and God. Therefore, first of all the institution of Khalifate was disestablished on 3 March 1924 and with two new bills the state ministries of Sharia and foundations (Şer’iyye ve Evkaf Nezareti) were abolished. The Religious Affairs and Foundations were not ministries any more, but began to be administered by two presidencies under the prime minister. All matters related to education were monopolised by the state and the madrasas were closed down. The religious courts were abolished. All of these developments were the first steps of secularisation in the country. 134 �The tekkes (religious lodges) and similar institutions were also abolished. Religious dress was prohibited in 1925. In the next year, the Swiss Civil Code became the civil code of Turkey. This movement reflected a wholly secular world-view. The second article of the Constitution, which proclaimed “the religion of the state is Islam”, was abolished in 10 April 1928. The principle of secularisation was inserted into the Constitution in 1937. As Serif Mardin points out Ataturk took the movement of Westernisation under his patronage since he associated it with the contemporary civilisation. In other words, he just continued to execute existing attempts towards Westernisation (Mardin 1956). Although we are against the generalisations as they make the social reality appear to be analysed in simple terms but in order to elaborate our argument about the transformation of the Turkish society from Ottoman to Turkish Republic we feel compelled to resort to some generalisations. Simply, Islam was the main reference point in regulating the Ottoman society. Daily life was interpreted through the Islamic framework. The Ottomans believed that their world supremacy proved that the religion of the state was right and there was no reason why this belief system should not continue as it was. However, when the Ottoman state fell behind the Western powers in the 19th century, the officials of the state felt to imitate the West, either through a reformation or changing the status of their religion in the society. In fact, with the change in the superior status of the Ottoman state the social relations had changed as well. There was no harmony between religious life and profane life; as a result which the country was occupied by the positivist sciences and ideas. Religion in the Islamic civilisation represents the ultimate organisational factor; that is, it is the most important force to regulate daily life. Therefore, it is understandable that teaching or learning religion is an indispensable part of a Muslim’s life. In the theocratic regimes religion was taught all students in the general curricula of schools but if and when a regime becomes more secular, then religion becomes just another subject among many other classes taught in the school. That is the reason why we are proposing a distinction between religious teaching and teaching religion. As in the case of Turkey, the transformation of the country from a more religious regime to a secular one, had an enormous effect on the teaching of religion. In the Republican era, with the attempts of Westernisation, which usually means secularisation, religious teaching had lost its importance, and even from time to time it was abolished altogether. Later attempts to restore religious education could not go further than to place a unit of “Religious Culture and Knowledge of Morality – Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi” in state schools’ curriculum. References Adam, Baki 1989. Dinlerde Hac İbadeti Üzerine bir Araştırma, (An Investigation on the Ritual of Pilgrimage in Religions), unpublished PhD thesis, Selçuk University, Konya. Albayrak, Ali 1995. Cengiz Aytmatov’un eserlerinde eski Türk dini inançlarının tesbiti ve değerlendirilmesi, (An investigation of the old Turkish beliefs in the works of Cengiz Aytmatov), unpublished PhD thesis, erciyes University, Kayseri. Albayrak, Kadir 1995. Keldani Kilisesi, (The Church of Chalcedony), unpublished MA thesis, Erciyes University, Kayseri. Alkoç, Mustafa 1997. Günümüzde Istanbul’daki Protestan Kiliseleri, (The Protestant Churches in Istanbul Today), unpublished MA thesis, Marmara University, Istanbul. Akdemir, Salih 1992. Hıristiyan Kaynaklara ve Kur’an-ı Kerim’e göre Hz. İsa, (Jesus according to Christian Sources and the Qur’an), unpublished PhD thesis, Ankara University, Ankara. Akyüz, Yahya 1985. Türk Eğitim Tarihi, Başlangıçtan 1985’e, Ankara: Ankara University Press. Arvind, Sharma 1991. Karma and rebirth in Alberuni’s India, Asian Philosophy, vol. I, issue 1, pp. 77-91. Atasagun, Galip 1989. Hristiyanlıkta Dünyanın Sonu ve Ahiret Kavramı, (The End of World and the Concept of Afterlife in Christianity), unpublished MA thesis, Selçuk University, Konya. Aydın, Mehmet 1989. Müslümanların Hıristiyanlığa Karşı Yazdığı Reddiyeler ve Tartışma Konuları, Konya: Selçuk University Press. Ayni, Mehmet Ali 1995. Daru’l-Fünun Tarihi, (ed. by Metin Hasırcı), Istanbul: Pınar Yayınları. Başgil, A. Fuat 1962. Din ve Laiklik, Istanbul. 135 �Belenköylü, Ramazan 1991. İbn Hazm, Biruni ve Şehristani’nin Tenasüh İnancı Hakkındaki Görüşleri, (Ibn Hazm, al-Biruni and al-Shahristani’s Views on the Belief of Incarnation), unpublished PhD thesis, 9 Eylül University, Izmir. Berkes, Niyazi 1973. Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi. Bilge, Yakup 1990. Süryanilerin Kökeni ve Türkiyeli Süryaniler, (The Roots of Syrian Orthodox Church and its Turkish Members), unpublished PhD thesis, Istanbul University, Istanbul. Cenan, Süleyman 1994. Hristiyanlık ve İslam İlahiyatında Ahiret İnancı, (The Belief in Afterlife in the Theologies of Christianity and Islam), unpublished PhD thesis, Selçuk University, Konya. Ceran, A. Şeref 1992. XIII. Asırda Anadolu Selçuklularında Müslim, Gayr-i Müslim Münasebetleri, (The Muslim and nonMuslim Relationships in the Anatolian Saljuk State in the 13th Century), unpublished PhD thesis, Selçuk University, Konya. Coşar, Ramazan 1985. Taberi Tarihinde Yahudilikle İlgili Kısımların İncelenmesi, (An Investigation of the Parts of the Tarih alTabari that are Related to Judaism), unpublished MA thesis, Ankara University, Ankara. Çelik, Mehmet 1985. Süryani Kadim Kilisesi, Doğuşu ve Gelişmesi, (Syrian Old Orthodox Church: Its Birth and Development), unpublished PhD thesis, Ataturk University, Erzurum. Demirci, Kürşat 1988. Vedalar ve Doktrini, (Vedas and their Doctrine), unpublished PhD thesis, Marmara University, Istanbul. Egemen, B. Ziya 1952. Din Psikolojisi: Saha, Kaynak ve Metot Üzerine Bir Deneme, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. ------------- 1965. Terbiye İlminin Problemleri ve Terbiye Felsefesi, Ankara: Ankara University Basımevi. Embree, Ainslie T. 1971. Alberuni’s India, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Erbaş, Ali 1992. İlahi Dinlerde Melek İnancı, (The Belief of Angel in Revealed religions), unpublished MA thesis, Marmara University, Istanbul. Gokalp, Ziya 1917. İctimai Mezhepler ve İctimaiyyat, Yeni Mecmua, issue 26, p. 501-3. --------------- 1917b. İslam İctimaiyyatı: Dinin İctimai Hizmetleri III, Müsbet Ayinler, İslam Mecmuası, issue 37 (24 September 1331). Güler, Bayram 1989. Taberi Tefsirinde Ehl-i Kitaba Yapılan Atıfların Tevrat ile Mukayesesi, (A Comparison of the References of Tabari about Ahl al-Kitab with the Torah), unpublished MA thesis, Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir. Gürbüzer, Ibrahim 1990. İbn Hazm’a göre Dinler ve İnanç Sistemleri, (Religions and Belief Systems according to Ibn Hazm), unpublished PhD thesis, Ankara University, Ankara. Gürkan, Salime 1994. Yahudilikte Şabbat (Sebt): Kökeni, İlgili İnanç ve Uygulamalar, (Sabbath in Judaism: Its Roots, Related Belief and Practises), unpublished MA thesis, Marmara University, Istanbul. İlbay, Şakir 1990. Kur’an ve Tevrat’ta Hz. Musa ve Yahudilik, (Moses and Judaism in the Qur’an and Torah), unpublished PhD thesis, Atatürk University, Erzurum. Kutluay, Yaşar 1964. İslam Mezhepleri ile Yahudi Mezhepler ve Mukayeseleri, (Islamic Sects and Judaic Sects and their Comparison), unpublished PhD thesis, Ankara University, Ankara. Lawrence, Bruce B. 1976. Shahrastani on the Indian Religions, The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Lekesiz Bedrettin 1983. Ermeni Kilisesi Sakramentleri (Ayinleri), (The Sacraments of the Armenian Church), unpublished MA thesis, Ankara University, Ankara. Lewis, Bernard 1984. The Jews of Islam, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mardin, Serif 1956. Atatürk ve İnkılaplar Münasebetiyle, in Forum, vol. 6, issue 64 (15 November 1956), p. 10-11. -------------- 1969. Din ve İdeoloji, Ankara: Ankara Üniversity Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Yayınları. Müller, F. Max 1880. The Sacred Books of the East, Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Oldenberg, Hermann 1991. The Doctrine of the Upanisads and the Early Buddhism, translated by Shridhar B. Shrotri, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 136 �Özdemir, Mehmet 1977. Eski Türklerde Şamanlıkla İlgili İnançlar ve İncelemeler, (Shamanistic Beliefs among the Ancient Turks), unpublished PhD thesis, Ankara University, Ankara. Paçacı Mehmet 1989. Kur’an’da ve Kitab-ı Mukaddes’te Ahiret İnancı, (The Belief of Afterlife in the Qur’an and Bible), unpublished PhD thesis, Ankara University, Ankara. Rahman, Fazlur 1979 [1966]. Islam, second edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sachau, Edward C. (tr. & ed.), 1964. Alberuni's India: An account of the Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Geography, Chronology, Astronomy, Customs, etc., Vol. I & II, Delhi: S. Chand & Co. Schimmel, Annamarie 1955. Dinler Tarihine Giriş, Ankara: Ankara University, Faculty of Divinity Press. al-Shahrastani, Abd al-Karim (tr. & ed. A. Z. Kazi and J. G. Flynn) 1984. Muslim Sects and Divisions, London: Kegan Paul International. Tezokur, M. Hadi 1992. Yahudilikte İbadet ve İnanç Esasları, (Rituals and Beliefs in Judaism), unpublished MA thesis, Selçuk University, Konya. Topçu, Nurettin 1970. Din Eğitimi, Hareket Dergisi, vol. 5, issue 55. Turan, Osman 1964. Türkiye’de Manevi Buhran: Din ve Laiklik, Ankara. Turhan, Mümtaz 1951. Kültür Değişmeleri, Istanbul: Istanbul University Yayınları. Ülgener, F. Sabri 1981. İktisadi Çözülmenin Ahlak ve Zihniyet Dünyası, Istanbul: Der Yayınları. Ülken, Hilmi Ziya 1979. Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi, Istanbul: Ülken Yayınları. Yıldız, Muharrem, 1989. Kitab-ı Mukaddes ve Kur’an-ı Kerim Açısından Ad, Semud ve Lut Kavimleri, (The Tribes of Ad, Sodom and Lot from the Perspective of Bible and Qoran), unpublished MA thesis, Selçuk University, Konya. Yılmaz, Hüseyin 1995. Kur’an’da Müslim ve Gayr-i Müslim Münasebetleri, (The Relationship between Muslims and nonMuslims in the Qur’an), unpublished PhD thesis, Atatürk University, Erzurum. Yüce, Jale 1975. İlahi Dinlerde Melek, (The Concept of Angel in Revealed Religions), unpublished PhD thesis, Ankara University, Ankara. 137 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 351 Title A name given to the resource Teaching Religion in a Secular Society Author Author YEL, Ali Murat Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-06 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed L Education (General) https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/332fc2383d78e2ee62e4488740d09986.docx 3b741e52b9c26605d1f94dffd2ddd860 https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/9991857dea22f27205d0cf20b93f8597.pdf c657d8f550cd13cdff66d8aff89a8c63 PDF Text Text Teaching Science Vocabulary to Esl Learners Mehmet Özdemir & Çağrı Tuğrul Mart Ishik University/ Iraq ABSTRACT Without gaining knowledge of science vocabulary, understanding of scientific concepts can be difficult. Though, learning science vocabulary is a field of discomfort, and a difficult task for ESL learners, a student's understanding of vocabulary is essential in science classes. Through giving effective instructions that facilitate learning science vocabulary, learners can improve their vocabulary knowledge for a better comprehension of scientific texts. This article suggests some useful strategies to enhance learners’ science vocabulary. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2104 Title A name given to the resource Teaching Science Vocabulary to Esl Learners Author Author OZDEMIR, Mehmet MART, Çağrı Tuğrul Abstract A summary of the resource. Without gaining knowledge of science vocabulary, understanding of scientific concepts can be difficult. Though, learning science vocabulary is a field of discomfort, and a difficult task for ESL learners, a student's understanding of vocabulary is essential in science classes. Through giving effective instructions that facilitate learning science vocabulary, learners can improve their vocabulary knowledge for a better comprehension of scientific texts. This article suggests some useful strategies to enhance learners’ science vocabulary. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBU Publishing Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-03 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/d54b49bbc8a488b0aa23fc0c30c6373a.docx e193b3ed700235a45f04fa69ea5b7d1c https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/a17cad7b81b2b928bf156abcb5384b7a.pdf 79ca976be9a5aa6a235e6f7f5560b302 PDF Text Text Teaching to Speakers of Local Dialects through Task-Based Syllabus: Requirements, Limitations and Applications (The Case Study of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Lari Dialect) Behzad Moridi & Mahinnaz Mirdehghan & Muhammed Ourang Payame Noor University of Shiraz , Shahid Beheshti University/ Tehran, Iran Key words: Task-based syllabus, Persian language, Lari, grammar, Contrastive analysis. ABSTRACT Today, tasks have been widely preferred in second language classrooms. Task-based syllabus yields a set of the target tasks that learners will need to do in the everyday life outside of the classroom (e.g. filling in a form for hotel reservation). The current study aims at studying the points which are to be considered in designing the task for teaching Persian grammar to Lari speakers (a dialect spoken in the southernmost of Iran and other Gulf countries by about one million people); furthermore, it examines the impact of such syllabus on applicants. The study was conducted based on quasi-experimental method. Two groups (experimental and control) were chosen through purposive selection, the first of which received the syllabus based on task-based to learn Persian (it is of great significance to note that the tasks are design according to the similarities and differences between Persian and Lari in the areas of Verbal and Nominal phrases) and the other received their regular syllabus in schools. Having implemented the pretest, treatment (for 24 sessions, each of which for an hour) and posttest, it was revealed that the experimental group outperformed in the posttest. The descriptive and inferential statistics (through SPSS) represented that the treatment was effective in enhancing the Persian grammar literacy of Lari speakers. Consequently, the researcher-made model of influential factors proved that tasks made grammar forms salient to the learner; namely this was achieved through communicative activities. In addition, the tasks promoted awareness in Lari speakers and their attention was drawn to the nature of the Persian structure and engaged Lari speakers in meaning-focused interaction. In fact, tasks required learners to communicate with each other about the grammar structures of Persian. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2105 Title A name given to the resource Teaching to Speakers of Local Dialects through Task-Based Syllabus: Requirements, Limitations and Applications (The Case Study of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Lari Dialect) Author Author MORIDI, Behzad MIRDEHGHAN, Mahinnaz OURANG, Muhammed Abstract A summary of the resource. Key words: Task-based syllabus, Persian language, Lari, grammar, Contrastive analysis. ABSTRACT Today, tasks have been widely preferred in second language classrooms. Task-based syllabus yields a set of the target tasks that learners will need to do in the everyday life outside of the classroom (e.g. filling in a form for hotel reservation). The current study aims at studying the points which are to be considered in designing the task for teaching Persian grammar to Lari speakers (a dialect spoken in the southernmost of Iran and other Gulf countries by about one million people); furthermore, it examines the impact of such syllabus on applicants. The study was conducted based on quasi-experimental method. Two groups (experimental and control) were chosen through purposive selection, the first of which received the syllabus based on task-based to learn Persian (it is of great significance to note that the tasks are design according to the similarities and differences between Persian and Lari in the areas of Verbal and Nominal phrases) and the other received their regular syllabus in schools. Having implemented the pretest, treatment (for 24 sessions, each of which for an hour) and posttest, it was revealed that the experimental group outperformed in the posttest. The descriptive and inferential statistics (through SPSS) represented that the treatment was effective in enhancing the Persian grammar literacy of Lari speakers. Consequently, the researcher-made model of influential factors proved that tasks made grammar forms salient to the learner; namely this was achieved through communicative activities. In addition, the tasks promoted awareness in Lari speakers and their attention was drawn to the nature of the Persian structure and engaged Lari speakers in meaning-focused interaction. In fact, tasks required learners to communicate with each other about the grammar structures of Persian. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available IBU Publishing Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-03 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 3406 Title A name given to the resource TEACHING TRANSLATION Author Author SULJKANOVIC, Dženita Abstract A summary of the resource. Teaching translation is a widespread problem of nowadays schools and education system. Teaching a foreign language mainly focuses on acquiring new vocabulary and it is desirable for students to reach the point where they could freely communicate in a foreign language regardless to syntax and accuracy. On the other hand, translation as a study of the modern world requires truthfulness through writing skills and reading in order to deliver messages between two languages. How this functions in practice will be delivered in this presentation. Methodology involves teaching English in Bosnia and Herzegovina through grammartranslation method, with theory of translation, teaching and practice as a unity. The outcome represents the level which students nowadays reach by studying syntax of a foreign language before producing translation of it. Hopefully, this topic will efficiently be involved in the language acquisition and bring closer teaching and translation. Keywords: methodology, grammar-translation method, translation theory, teaching. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed PE English https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/46157a416d9d60e83808020c541991cc.pdf 6b310361d1c5399efc9f0b73394a3156 PDF Text Text Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics “Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” James St. André The University of Manchester, United Kingdom Submitted: 22.04.2014. Accepted: 04.11.2014. Abstract While teaching first in Singapore and now in Manchester, it has come to my attention that there are certain difficulties in teaching translation theory either outside of Europe or, in Europe, to students from outside of Europe who come here to study. This paper concentrates on the role of examples in theoretical works, the problems they pose in teaching theory and the implications for universalism in translation studies. I draw on Edward Said’s discussion of travelling theory, post-colonial critiques of the hegemonic role of English, and skopos theory to propose two courses of action to help overcome the problem: first, the incorporation of the translation of theoretical material both from and into European languages as part of practical postgraduate training; and second, the use of a radical substitution policy for examples, with new examples centred around the target language, rather than preservation of the original examples, which are centred around the source-language. Using the example of China, I will demonstrate how these two strategies push us to reconsider how we approach teaching theory. Firstly, the translation of Chinese theoretical texts into English will allow for a deeper appreciation of writings in Chinese and their wider dissemination. Secondly, the search for examples which involve the target language should lead to an engagement between the target culture and the theory. Translating Vinay and Darbelnet’s path breaking essay on translation processes, for example, immediately raises the question of what exactly is meant by ‘borrowing’ in the Chinese context, and for the need to distinguish between retaining the use of the roman alphabet and transliteration using Chinese characters, a distinction that would never arise between French, English and German. Keywords: translation theory, examples, Chinese Introduction Although not a specialist in foreign language acquisition or in teaching English as a foreign language, I have long been concerned with the teaching of theoretical texts in 131 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” translation studies to non-native speakers of English. These theoretical texts include translations from other languages (mainly German and French) into English, as well as translations from English into Chinese (which is my main foreign language, and the one most commonly shared by my students). Teaching such theoretical texts raises a variety of issues, in particular the question of examples and the problem of historical specificity versus universal applicability. For over a century, we have seen the imposition of Western European theoretical ‘universals’ on the ‘East’, the ‘South’ or ‘the Rest’ (depending on which term you prefer). Tackling the challenge of development of universals today involves making models that come out of a wider range of experience across the humanities and social sciences. In translation studies in particular, there is a need to go beyond the triumvirate of English, French and German studies, and to go beyond East and West. In a postmodern vein, I begin this paper with a story of a young American who went to Asia to teach translation and how that experience changed his perception of his chosen field of study. You should detect in this preamble a very heavy whiff of postcolonialism. After that preamble, I discuss briefly some of the arguments for and against universalism in the humanities and social sciences in general. Then I lay out some of the more recent arguments in favour of universalism, especially in computational linguistics and their application to translation studies. The final section of the paper will be a discussion of how and why we might or might not want to continue looking for universals in translation studies, and how historical specificity might engage with it, taking into account various factors, including: the (non) translation of translation theory East-West; the importance of examples and case studies in translation theory; the importance of religion as a grounding for Universalism; and a modified view of what ‘universal’ means in the field today. Anecdote In 1999 I was hired by the department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore to teach all levels of translation. Since primary and secondary education in Singapore is now in English, with ethnic Chinese students taking Mandarin Chinese as their required ‘Mother Tongue’ subject, there is a large bilingual EnglishChinese population there. Students in the Chinese department thus generally having fairly good skills in both languages, and Singaporean undergraduates are eminently suited for a translation programme. For the advanced module, I assigned three essays from Venuti’s Translation Studies Reader (2000) that I considered to be, if not easy, at least clearly written and engaged 132 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics with specific strategies of translation: Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet, “A Methodology for Translation” (1958/2000), Katharina Reiss “Type, Kind and Individuality of Text: Decision making in translation” (1971/2000) and Hans Vermeer “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action” (1989/2000). To my surprise, the students claimed that the essays were extremely difficult, if not incomprehensible, and my plans for in-class discussion went nowhere. When I pressed them as to what exactly they had trouble following, it turned out that the main problem was the examples that the authors used to illustrate their points. All three essays had been translated: Vinay and Darbelnet from French, the articles by Reiss and by Vermeer from German. More importantly, all three essays contained concrete examples, which I had thought would make the theoretical model easier to understand. However, the translators of all three articles had left these examples in their original form, ie, a combination of French, German, Spanish, and English. Reiss’s article was possibly the most difficult, because most of her examples were of translation between French and German, or German by itself, with no translation into English. Perhaps because I have a reading knowledge of these languages, I had not noticed the oddity of presenting an essay in English where the examples, which were supposed to illustrate the theoretical premises, were all between two foreign languages. The article by Vinay and Darbelnet was slightly better, because all the examples were English-French, so the students could at least understand one half of each example, and the article by Vermeer did not contain as many examples. Subsequently, we worked through each section of the essays, coming up with English-Chinese examples to supplement the texts, which then resulted in the students understanding them much better, but also led to the result (surprising to me at the time) that not all of the points that the theorists had to make were relevant to Chinese-English translation. Yet all of these models were couched in the language of universal applicability. Vinet and Darbelnet are typical in this respect, beginning their article by stating: “At first the different methods or procedures seem to be countless, but they can be condensed to just seven, each one corresponding to a higher degree of complexity.” (1958/2000: 84) The remainder of the article consists of discussing each of the seven types, with examples of how these seven techniques can solve (presumably) any and all difficulties a translator might encounter. There is no indication that there might be exceptions, either in the sense of a text posing a problem that one or more of these seven techniques cannot solve, or in the sense of there being alternative techniques which might produce different but equally valid translations. They end their paper with a table that sets out the seven techniques by ‘level of difficulty”, but which also enumerates how on “the three planes of expression” (ie lexis, structures, and message) these techniques are valid (1958/2000: 92). Here again the use of the 133 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” definite article ‘the” suggests that there are only these three planes, thereby strengthening the universalist claims of their seven techniques to solve all possible problems. Reiss, in turn, says that text-type is a phenomenon going beyond a single linguistic or cultural context, because the following essentially different forms of written communication may be regarded as being present in every speech community with a culture based on the written word and also because every author of a text ought to decide in principle on one of the three forms before beginning to formulate his text. (1971/2000: 163, my italics) Clearly the repetition of ‘every’ suggests that Reiss believes she is describing a universal phenomenon, and she goes on to list exactly three of them. Vermeer, similarly, opens his article with sentences that contain phrases such as “any form of translational action”, “[a]ny action has an aim”, and “[t]he aim of any translational action”. (1989/2000: 221, my italics), all of which demonstrate his belief that skopos theory is valid for all translational activity. Furthermore, the article contains an explicit defense of its universal applicability. Having been criticized (Vermeer does not specify who the critics were), he mounts a two-pronged defense, insisting both that all actions have an aim (1989/2000: 224-5) and that all translations, even of literature, have an intention (1989/2000: 226-7). All three articles make these strong universal claims with the help of examples from just four modern European languages. It was the difficulty I experienced teaching this material in Singapore that first aroused my interest in the relation between the particular and the universal in translation theory. Currently in Manchester, I have noticed again that the non-native speakers of English from non Western-European countries often have similar problems in a module I teach, Translation and Interpreting Studies II. As a result, I now teach a module entitled “Practicum: Translating Theory” in which we address this specific problem. I will return to look at some passages from these texts in more detail later in this paper; in particular, I have a few suggestions as to what might be done about those translations. First, however, I need to make a detour to discuss universalism as a general phenomenon in the human sciences. The urge to universalism Almost all theoretical models aspire to universalism, because all theoretical models are an attempt to generalize from the specific. The more widely applicable a theory is, the more powerful it is. There are many possible examples, but to choose just one, 134 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics we might examine post-colonial theory. Post-colonialism began as a movement among intellectuals living in, originally from, or studying the history of the Indian Subcontinent; an earlier term used to describe it was subaltern studies. That name derives from their attempt to theorize the development of Indian history under colonial rule, when the Indians were subalterns to the British, using Gramsci’s theoretical framework as a basis of their critique (see Guha 1982a, 1982b, and Guha 1983). The term ‘subaltern studies’, which was fairly specific to that historical time and place, was gradually replaced by the more general term post-colonial studies. At the same time, the scope of ‘post’ in post-colonial was expanded (or generalized) in three ways. First, from what was originally conceived rather narrowly as countries which had been colonized by European powers but were now independent, the term came to refer to the entire history of colonial and post-colonial rule in such countries; in this sense ‘post’ meant ‘after the beginning of colonialism’ not ‘after the end of colonialism’. (Robinson 1997: 13) Second, from the originally specific European colonialism, post-colonialism was also used to refer to, and theorize about, the colonial relation in any time period and by any country, not just European. (ibid: 1314) Third, the term was metaphorized so that it could refer to situations where, although there was not strictly speaking a colonial situation (one country controlling another, including sending significant numbers of people to live for a period of time, if not permanently) to many types of unequal power relations (ibid: 14). So for example we can now talk about one culture having a post-colonial relation with another; we can also use the term post-colonial to refer to situations such as Russia’s relation to the Eastern Block during the Cold War. Paulina Gasior’s paper at a recent conference in Prague (2009), which proposes that the relationship between Eastern and Western Europe today can be characterized as post-colonial, and that therefore a post-colonial framework can be used to examine translations between Polish and English or French, illustrates how post-colonialism can be used in such a metaphorical sense. At present, then, post-colonial has developed from what was originally a very narrow historical and temporal period (trying to understand modern India in terms of the after-effects of British colonial rule) to a set of theoretical assumptions and methodological tools that aspires to be universally applicable to an extremely wide array of historical phenomena. In effect, everyone theorist dreams of coming up with something like Newton’s laws of gravity, which are seen as being universally applicable to all physical objects in the universe. Certainly we can say that, in its weaker form (ie, generalization) universalism is a necessary tendency in human thought. It is unimaginable that we could make sense of the world if we could not group things together and say that, for all intents and purposes, these things are identical in respect to certain properties, and therefore can be treated as identical. The problem occurs when that urge to universalize erases important differences, or when a theoretical model can not in fact adequately describe dissimilar phenomena as similar. 135 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” The attack on universalism As my reference to Newton indicates, the ‘gold standard’ for universalism has been the sciences since at least the nineteenth century, if not earlier. The apogee of this valuation of science as providing universal knowledge came perhaps in the first half of the twentieth century with the emergence of logical positivism, or logical empiricism, which tried to exclude all non-scientific knowledge from having any truth value (Uebel 2008). This did not, however, prevent theorists in the humanities from pursuing universal theories; rather, the link between science and truth in logical positivism inspired a decidedly scientific turn in certain fields of the humanities, including linguistics and therefore the emergent field of translation studies, and perhaps an even more ambitious desire to map out universals in those fields. Quine’s work on the philosophy of language, and its influence in translation studies, is but one example.1 However, even as universalism in both the sciences and the humanities tried to make ever more ambitious claims, it came under attack in the twentieth century from a variety of angles. In the sciences, twentieth-century advances in both physics and mathematics were interpreted, paradoxically, as undermining truth claims. In physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity proved that Copernicus’s laws of motion were only special cases under ‘ordinary’ conditions, and that in other situations they did not necessarily hold. The theory of relativity itself claims to be universally valid; however, it was and continues to be interpreted popularly as proving that everything is relative and that therefore there is no absolute truth. In addition, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that it is impossible to know both the position and the momentum of a particle (Hilgevoord 2008), was similarly interpreted as meaning that scientific knowledge could not be absolute and therefore could not make universal claims. Yet Hilgevoord states at the beginning of his article on the uncertainty principle that “Quantum mechanics is generally regarded as the physical theory that is our best candidate for a fundamental and universal description of the physical world.” (2008) Thus quantum mechanics itself (for which Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is one of the foundational elements) makes strong claims to universal truth. Turning to mathematics, it was mainly the work of Gödel and Tarski in the 1920s and 1930s that raised problems. Gödel’s two incompleteness theorems and Tarski’s theorem of the indefinability of truth (which builds partly on Gödel’s work; see Gómez-Torrente 2008) led to a radical, if limited, undermining of the definability of 1 Quine 1960; see Uebel 2008 for the way in which Quine was influenced by, but critical of, the Vienna Circle and some of their tenets of logical positivism. 136 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics truth in arithmetic (Kennedy 2008). The ways in which Gödel and Tarski’s work limits truth functions and universal claims in mathematics is limited to axiomatic systems (Shalizi 2009). However, as Shalizi also points out, it has been used fallaciously to argue that there is “some profound limitation on knowledge, science, mathematics” imposed by the theorems (Shalizi 2009). Sokal and Bricmont (1999: 176-81) provide an example of such a use of Gödel’s theorems in the social sciences. Although scholars in the humanities may or may not understand quantum physics and theoretical mathematics, these theories, and the layman’s interpretation of them, have been used to caution against scientific ‘truth’ as absolute or universal. This view of scientific truth as ‘relative’ has been reinforced by the work of historians, sociologists and anthropologists of science. In the history of science, Philip Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), proposed the notion of paradigm shift. According to Kuhn, scientists shift from one paradigm to another, with different paradigms capable of explaining phenomena in different ways in varying degrees of usefulness.2 There is thus a strong suggestion that all paradigms are approximations of reality as we observe it, not Truth with a capital ‘T’. More recently, the work of Helen Longino (1990), Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar (1986), and others have insisted upon the inescapable social element to scientific knowledge, challenging its claims to absolute, universal truth (for an overview see Longino 2008). These developments in history and sociology of science were linked to a more general post-structural trend in the social sciences. In particular, a distrust of ‘master narratives’ emerged. In history, for example, Hayden White (1973) attacked the idea that the historian was an objective collector of facts that were already out there as a myth. Instead, he saw all history as story-telling, often based on archetypal stories or myths. The subjectivity of the historian thus precluded any hope of reaching a description of what ‘really happened’, or an objective Truth. White’s work is only one example of the ‘post’ movement: post-modernism, poststructuralism, post-colonialism, and deconstruction. Key to post-colonialism was the resistance to hegemony and received notions of truth. Post-structuralism sought to challenge the universal theoretical assumptions of structuralism. Post-modernism argued for the disappearance of “Truth” to be replaced by ‘truths’; and Derrida and For example, although scientists may believe that Einstein’s model of the universe is more accurate than Copernicus’s, the vast majority of people, including physicists, live out their daily lives as if in a Copernican universe; moreover, a modern-day physicist sailing in a boat at night out of sight of land, using stars to navigate, is basing her decisions of how to steer on a Ptolemaic universe, wherein the stars are fixed points in the heavens and can thus be used to guide a traveler. Thanks to Douglas Allchin, personal communication, for this example. 2 137 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” others sought to dismantle the entire Western philosophical tradition, upon which claims for scientific and universal truths had been built. Finally, more recently, the New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have again insisted upon the historical situatedness of knowledge. The essay by J. Hillis Miller, “Border Crossings, Translating Theory: Ruth” (1996) is a good example of these trends, demonstrating both the power and the problems of post-structuralist arguments, like the worm Ouroboros. Miller argues that all literary theory is grounded in the interpretation of particular texts, and that therefore literary theory is untranslatable. Miller gives the examples of Derrida’s notion of dissemination as having been developed as a response to the poetry of Mallarmé, and Paul de Man’s “Resistance to Theory” as being rooted in his reading of the word ‘fall’ in Keats’s The Fall of Hyperion (1996: 213). For Miller, there is thus always a tension between the universal pretensions of theory and its origins in specific historical and cultural knowledge. This means that, like any linguistic utterance, a theoretical model is always liable to distortion in the process of transmission from one culture to the next; there is not some meta-language of theory, as there is of mathematics. Yet Miller’s essay itself could be seen as falling prey to the same problem: he claims universal validity for his thesis that all theoretical models are inseparable from their roots. However, that thesis in turn emerges from the reading of a specific text: the story of Ruth in the Bible. Miller’s argument about the impossibility of translating theory is situated at the beginning of an article on traveling theory. While discussing the impossibility of translating theory, Miller also notes that, of course, theory continues to be translated all the time despite the problematic relation between universal and particular in theoretical discourse. This leads him to a discussion of the dangers of doing so, mainly in terms of cultural contamination or cultural colonialism. However, for Miller, there is another danger: that the theorist will lose control of his theory. I use the pronoun ‘he’ advisedly, because Miller is obviously talking about himself; he makes specific mention, more than once, of the fact that his own work has been translated into languages he does not read, like Chinese, and that he does not know what has happened to his theory in this process. There is, then, a contested power relation involved between author and translator, with Miller exhibiting a deep unease at the idea that ‘his’ work is circulating in forms that he cannot control. All in all, developments in mathematics, physics, history and sociology of science, and the ‘post-’ movement in the humanities led to universalism taking quite a beating in the second half of the twentieth century. The emergence of a new universalism 138 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Developing in parallel to some of the events mentioned above, there has been continued interest in universalism, in some cases coming from a new direction: quantitative methods. The modern science of statistics and probability is a relatively young discipline, gradually evolving from several different areas between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. Stigler (1986) charts how at least three different impetuses (a flurry of interest in games of chance; the need to record exact measurements in the sciences, especially astronomy; the demands by emergent nation states to understand and control large populations through the collection and interpretation of census data) led to the development of sophisticated mathematical techniques for dealing with information in this new form. Statistics depends on the ability to count large numbers of things, breaking down information into simple, discrete categories that can be quantified. A typical example, and one of the earliest broad uses of these methods as applied to human activity, is the census. In a census, people are not treated as individuals having a history; they are treated as a collection of discrete bits of information (sex, race, age, profession, marital status, number of dependents, etc). Breaking someone down into these categories and quantifying them allows for easy manipulation of information and the generation of statistical knowledge (X% of the population is male; P% are under the age of 20; Q% are married; the average number of offspring is W). Such information could be enormously useful for many reasons. In London, the beginnings of the census were the Bills of Mortality, statistics regarding deaths that were collected to predict new outbreaks of the plague. It quickly came to be used in a variety of hard sciences, and was responsible for the emergence of most of the social sciences, which developed various tools, including mean and standard deviation, the rule of least squares, and regression analysis to help evaluate probability and reliability of data, to name but a few of the most common techniques (Stigler 1986). However, it was expensive and time-consuming to collect and then to process such data. Stigler (1986) mentions two early cases in the nineteenth century which give us an idea of the labour involved: the Incomplete Beta Function of Baye’s equation can be extremely difficult to calculate when certain variables are large numbers; he says that The first extensive tables of this function were not compiled until this century, when the students in Karl Pearson’s laboratory were pressed into reluctant service as ‘computers.’ A story, possibly apocryphal, still circulates in University College London of a student who resigned in disgust after a week, telling Pearson of his plans for a different career and announcing, ‘As far as I am 139 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” concerned, the Table of the Incomplete Beta Function may stay incomplete.’ (Stigler 1986: 130) The second involves the Ordnance Survey of England for 1858: The 1858 Ordnance Survey of the British Isles required the reduction of an immense mass of data through the use of least squares. The main triangulation was cast as a system of 1554 equations involving 920 unknowns. Even though they broke the system into 21 pieces of no more than 77 unknowns each before attempting a solution, the calculations took two teams of human ‘computers,’ working independently and in duplicate, two and a half years to complete (Stigler 1986: 158) Therefore it was not until the advent of computers that such techniques really came into their own, as the labour was prohibitively expensive for most researchers. Computers are ideally suited to do the ‘grunt’ work of statistical analysis, since of course computers are digital technology and therefore are most easily used to manipulate figures, performing in nanoseconds complex operations on huge amounts of data that might take a human being weeks. Along with the growing importance of computing to manipulate ever-larger datasets, sophisticated means of sampling to establish representativeness were established. Since the 1970s in linguistics, corpus studies deal with databases that contain millions of words. These corpora are then manipulated, drawing on the statistical techniques developed in the social sciences and mathematics to draw conclusions about language use. In the mid-1990s, researchers such as Mona Baker, Dorothy Kenny, and Sarah Laviosa began to apply corpus linguistics to translation studies by compiling parallel and comparable corpora. They proposed that lexical simplification, explicitation, and standardization were universals in translation. (Baker 1995; Kenny 2001; Laviosa 1998) On a more theoretical level in linguistics, the proposal by Noam Chomsky that the ability to use language was hard-wired into our brains, and that therefore there must be a limited set of universal, deep structures that generate all the permutations of known languages, also fueled the search for universals in both linguistics and in translation (Chomsky 1965 and 1981). This can probably most clearly be seen in the continued belief that machine translation was perfectible if linguistic structures could be properly understood and transformed into what was variously called a universal deep structure or an intermediary machine language, to and from which all human languages could be translated.3 3 For representative statements, see Andreev 1967; Zelinsky-Wibbelt 1988; and Hutchins and Somers 1992, especially chapters 5, 6 and 13. 140 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Universalism in Translation Studies today? I would now like to explore a bit more in detail how universalism and historical particularism intersect, not just in general in the humanities and sciences, but specifically in translation studies. First, I think one quite interesting phenomenon is the relative dearth of translation of translation theory. Given that translation studies should, of all disciplines, be open to translation, this is a rather paradoxical state of affairs. To take just one example, China, very little theoretical material is being translated either to or from Chinese and French, English, or German. From English into Chinese, two alternative strategies are employed: summaries and descriptions written by Chinese scholars, or the republication of theoretical texts in China in English. In the other direction, very little has been done on any level, the exceptions being the historical presentation of debates regarding translation in Cheung (2006) and Chan (2004). A similar situation holds for Russian; Russia had and has a large field of translation studies, but almost none of it is being made available in Western European languages.4 I am sure that this is true of other languages; to this day, Jiří Levý’s work is known in Western Europe basically from one paper only (Levý 2000).5 This means that theoretical models in the field of translation studies are being developed with very little input from one of the world’s major languages and cultures outside of Europe and North America. This in turn poses a danger in translation studies. We risk our theoretical models not being well understood, or rigorously tested against, the local situation in different parts of the globe and with different linguistic structures. How, then, can we be confident about the universal applicability of those theories? The role of examples and case studies in translation theory This last point brings me back to the role of examples and case studies in translation theory. I want to return now to the English translation of Katharina Reiss’s article, which I mentioned was the impetus for me to start thinking about these matters. Below are two excerpts from her work: Unintentional changes may arise from the different language structures as well as from differences in translating competence 4 Private communication, Sergey Tyulenev. I would like to thank Zuzana Jettmarová (2009) for drawing my attention to some of Levý’s other work. See Gile (2009) on this issue in relation to Japanese. 5 141 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” Ex. 1: Je suis allée à la gare (French: information about a female person; no information about the means of travel) Ich bin zum Bahnhof gegangen (German: no information about the person; information about the means of travel) = Linguistically conditioned communicative difference. Ex. 2: La France est veuve. (Pompidou at the death of de Gaulle) Frankreich ist Witwe — Frankreich is Witwe geworden — Frankreich is verwitwet — Frankreich is verwaist [orphaned] Linguistically conditioned: La France — Witwe [Widow] “Frankreich” is neuter in German. The image of “widow” is odd to a person ignorant of French. “Waise” [orphan] is also neuter; the image of an emotional attachment programmed differently. (pp. 160-61) and further down: Written texts may have single or plural intentions. Plural intentions may be of the same rank and order. Mostly, however, one intention (and, with it, the text function) is dominant: Ex. 3: C vor o und u und a spricht man immer wie ein k; soll es wie ein c erklingen, lässt man die Cedille springen. (mnemo-technical rhyme: Intention 1 — to convey a rule Intention 2 — to facilitate remembering by giving the text an artistic form Intention 3 — to “sweeten” the learning process by giving the text a pleasing form) (p. 161-62) Here in the first example the source language is French and the target language is German, while in the second example, the example is only in German. In neither case did the translator provide an English translation. The vast majority of students in East Asia know neither of these languages (although a small minority will have learned some of one or the other). Moreover, the point on which the first example turns, the problem of mismatched gender of nouns in the two languages, is completely foreign to such students, who may know three or four languages, none of which feature gendered nouns, and will therefore be completely at sea. Such students, if they know English, might know mnemo-technical rhymes, such as “i before e except after c”, but of course cannot make any sense of the German. Instead of helping the students to understand the points Reiss is trying to make, the 142 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics examples thus serve only to frustrate the student, making the theory seem alien, incomprehensible and irrelevant because the example is opaque to her or him. Another, perhaps more ironic example, is the article by Vermeer concerning skopos theory. Skopos theory argues that the skopos, or purpose, of the translation is vital in determining the form that the finished translation should take. The skopos may derive from a variety of factors, including the commissioner, the translator, and the audience. Depending upon the skopos, different translations of even the same text into the same language by the same translator might look radically different from each other, and possibly also depart sharply from the source text. Yet the translation into English of Vermeer’s explanation of this theoretical approach to translation is itself full of examples between German, French, and Spanish, with seemingly no thought given to how the skopos of translating an article about skopos in translation might affect the examples used. In other words, if the skopos of the translation is to make Vermeer’s theoretical model understood by an English reader, how does leaving the examples in the original languages with no explanation help to fulfill the skopos of the translation? What exactly are examples used for anyway in these articles? Reiss, Vermeer, and other theorists use concrete examples for at least three different purposes. First, to demonstrate how their theoretical models function in relation to translation of actual texts. Second, to make the theory more accessible to the readers. Finally, to prove that the theoretical model is in fact valid by demonstrating that it can be applied to a real translation. However, when a student either does not know the source or the target language, then these goals are not being met. When teaching Reiss’s article in Singapore, I eventually came up with my own examples for the first example above that made sense to an audience bilingual in Chinese and English: She went to buy eggs with her brother. 她跟她的弟弟一起去买鸡蛋。 additional information concerning respective age of siblings less information about time and number. 请您把书放在桌子。 Please put the books on the desk. Additional information about number (plural) and object (desk is more specific than the Chinese term, which could also refer to a table) 143 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” Less information about formality of the situation (The Chinese pronoun is the polite form, similar to the way in which French has vous and tu) For the second example, I substituted the English mnemo-technical rhyme “i before e except after c”.6 When explaining this article to students in class and using these as additional examples, no one had a problem with it. However, when I later suggested to students that it would make more sense to substitute these examples for the original ones if the article were to be translated into Chinese, I encountered strong resistance. To the students, such substitution was a betrayal of the original. Taking examples outside of Europe Vinay and Darbelnet list seven techniques which translators can adopt, ranging from word-for-word translation to very extreme forms of adaptation. These seven techniques are illustrated with examples of translation between English and French for obvious reasons: Vinay and Darbelnet are Canadian, and these are the two official languages of that country. These techniques, which are developed in relation to two specific languages with a long history of interaction, are presented as the seven techniques of translation. In other words, they are presented as a complete and universal toolkit for any translator, working with any combination of languages. However, of the seven techniques they list, at least one is not directly applicable to Chinese. Procedure one, “direct borrowing”, is presented as being a ‘direct’ manner of using a word from French in English, as the historic theatre (from théâtre) or more recent borrowings such as déjà vu. This technique, however, actually does not make much sense in the case of English-Chinese translation because they use different writing systems. Instead, we need to distinguish between at least two different techniques. The first technique is Borrowing while retaining the use of roman alphabet, which results in a string of roman letters in the middle of a sentence otherwise composed of Chinese characters: 我不要买Persil, 我要买的是Daz [I don’t want to buy Persil, I want to buy Daz.] Although this technique was seldom used before the twentieth century, since at least the Republican Revolution of 1911 there have been periods when it has been widely practiced, especially by certain authors of the May Fourth Reiss’s second example is the kind of rule (phonetic) she would like to see for her own work - in other words, a rule that is simple, hierarchic, and logical. 6 144 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Movement in the 1920s and 1930s, and writers such as Yu Dafu (Levan 2007). The technique continues to be widely used, especially among bilingual speakers, although it is not in fact simply “direct borrowing”, but rather the creative re-use of English or other European languages in Chinese. Consider, for example the sentence “你 un不understand?” [do you or do you not understand?] Here a native speaker of Chinese has used a typical Chinese grammatical pattern of using the first part of a multisyllabic verb, followed by a marker of negation, and then full verb, to ask a question. In the process, however, the English word is used in a fashion that would be incomprehensible to an English speaker. Transliteration, on the other hand, which Vinay and Darbelnet do not mention, is the more commonly employed method of ‘borrowing’ a foreign loan word in Chinese, and involves finding roughly one Chinese character per syllable for a foreign word. Since the characters are chosen for their sound instead of their meaning, this results in a string of nonsense words, a bit like the famous transliteration of Mother Goose Rhymes into French by Luis d’Antin van Rooten as Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames (1980). When transliterating foreign words into Chinese, there are certain considerations to be kept in mind, especially regarding the appropriateness of the characters, either in isolation or in combination. For example, certain characters are avoided; you would not normally use the character “死” [si, to die], although one notable exception was an early transliteration of AIDS was “爱死病” [ai-si bing, love-to-death disease]. Also, certain combinations sometimes may result in unfortunate connotations, so that a company may choose a string of syllables that does not actually sound very close to the original term rather than get something such as “口渴口辣” [kouke koula, (makes you) thirsty and your mouth burn] for Coca Cola, which is instead rendered as “可口可乐” [kekou kele, tasty and pleasing].7 both of these techniques are also used in various hybrid forms, such as the commonly used T-血. (T-shirt), where the letter “T” is actually used as the first half of the word, with a transliteration of ‘shirt’ with the Chinese character “血” which is pronounced ‘xue’. The example of AIDS given above is similar, with the first two characters, ai-si, used for the sound of “AIDS”, and the final character, bing, which means disease, supplied for its meaning. One of the most famous stories of the May Fourth movement, mentioned above is entitled “阿Q正传” [The Story of Ah Q], where Chinese character Ah (阿) and the Roman letter “Q” were used together in the title and throughout the story to refer to the main character, Ah Q. There are in fact several other hybrid forms possible involving some of the other techniques Vinay and Darbelnet discuss. Two of the most common are borrowing and coining, and transliteration and coining. Thus once we begin to consider languages other than the ones originally used to develop Vinay and Darbelnet’s list, 7 : For more detailed discussions of transliteration, see Ching 1966 and Li 2007. 145 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” it becomes apparent that their list is neither exhaustive nor universal. The fact that English and French use the same writing system disguises a problem which emerges when we consider Chinese, Russian, Greek, or any other language that does not use the Roman alphabet. It is only when we look at how their techniques might be applied in a wide variety of cases that we can test their work’s claim to universalism. Moreover, once we have considered the Chinese case, and seen how transliteration results in words that do not actually sound exactly like the original English, we might wish to return to the examples of French and English, and ponder over why in some cases the accent marks have been preserved (déjà vu) or erased (theatre). If the accent marks are erased, is it really direct borrowing? Or what are we to make of their example of ‘direct borrowing’ into French of redingote, from the English “riding coat”, where the spelling has been modified? (1958/2000: 85) Even when the spelling is identical, the pronunciation is often changed; my favourite example is Goethe Street in Chicago, which is pronounced “go-eethy” by locals. Another possibility Vinay and Darbelnet do not mention is summary. This may perhaps be due to their adopting a fairly restricted definition of translation; however, in the world of professional language manipulation, this technique is widely practiced. Again to give a Chinese example, I mentioned that it is not common for European translation theory to be translated into Chinese; however, it is quite common for such theories to be ‘rewritten’, either in summary or adapted form, such as Liu Miqing’s 当代翻译理论 [Contemporary Translation Theory (1993)]. Eugene Nida, although in many ways a very ‘old-fashioned’ theoretician, is actually much better regarding examples than many of his contemporaries, or indeed most recent theorists. His short essay “Principles of Translation as Exemplified in Bible Translating” (1959) uses many diverse examples from little-known languages, to make his case for dynamic equivalence. Moreover, since he cannot assume that his readers will be conversant with all the languages he cites, he carefully explains the linguistic context for each. In teaching Nida, I ask students to come up with examples of the types of things he is discussing in relation to their own language combination. This often reveals that they have not understood the reading, because they either cannot come up with an example, or their example is in fact incorrect. After I have given them several examples, the ideas seem to sink in better. So working through examples can be effective way of learning theory. Conclusion Although universalism has come under attack from various quarters, we should not lose sight of the fact that, without generalization, we are left with atomistic facts that 146 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics do not add up to anything. Newton’s law of gravity is still the ‘gold standard’ against which most theories are measured. The attack by the ‘post’ movements (postmodernism, postcolonialism, poststructuralism) has been fairly effective in denying hope that we can achieve that sort of certainty in the human sciences. Instead, the emergence of computer-based number crunching has seen the emergence of statistical probability disguised as universalism. The challenge now is to build inclusive models that take into account the great range and variety of human linguistic expression and translation practice. Indeed, it would seem to be antithetical for a theoretical model based on statistics, which depends upon the concept of representativeness, not to be constructed on the basis of as wide a range of sample languages as possible. References Andreev, N. (1967) “The intermediary language as the focal point of machine translation” in Machine Translation, edited by A. D. Booth, Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1-27. Baker, Mona (1995) ‘Corpora in Translation Studies: An Overview and Some Suggestions for Future Research’, Target 7(2): 223-243. Chan, Leo (2004) Twentieth-Century Chinese Translation Theory: Modes, Issues and Debates, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Cheung, Martha, editor and annotator (2006) An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation. Volume 1: From Earliest Times to the Buddhist Project, Manchester: St. Jerome Press. Ching, Eugene (1966) “Transliteration or Translation: A Case of Cultural Borrowing” Chinese Culture: A Quarterly Review 7:2 : 107-116. Chomsky, Noam (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding, Dordrecht: Foris. Gasior, Paulina (2009) ‘Translating between Eastern and Western Europe – postcolonial contexts and parallels’ Paper presented at the 11th Prague 147 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” International Conference in Translation and Interpreting Studies: Translating Beyond East and West. Charles University, Prague 14-16 October. Giles, Daniel (2009) “East and West: Leveraging Stereoscopic Vision in TS” Keynote speech, the 11th Prague International Conference in Translation and Interpreting Studies: Translating Beyond East and West. Charles University, Prague 14-16 October. Guha, Ranajit (1983) Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Guha, Ranajit (1982a) “Preface” Subaltern Studies 1: vii-viii. Guha, Ranajit (1982b) “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India” Subaltern Studies 1: 1-8. Hilgevoord, Jan, Uffink, Jos, "The Uncertainty Principle", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/qt-uncertainty/>. Accessed 3 Feb 2010. Hutchins, John W. and Harold L. Somers (1992) An Introduction to Machine Translation, New York and London: Hartcourt Brace Jovanovich. Jettmarová, Zuzana (2009) “The Antinomy of the General and the Specific in Mind, Theory and Translation” Paper presented at the 11th Prague International Conference in Translation and Interpreting Studies: Translating Beyond East and West. Charles University, Prague 14-16 October. Kennedy, Juliette, "Kurt Gödel", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/goedel/>. Accessed 3 Feb 2010. Kenny, Dorothy (2001) Lexis and Creativity in Translation: A Corpus-based Study, Manchester: St. Jerome. Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, Bruno and Steven Woolgar (1986) Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. 2d ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 148 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Laviosa, Sara (1998) “The English Comparable Corpus: A Resource and a Methodology”, in Lynne Bowker, Michael Cronin, Dorothy Kenny & Jennifer Pearson (eds) Unity in Diversity: Current Trends in Translation Studies, Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 101-112. Levan, Valerie M. (2007) “Incorporating the Foreign: Translation in Yu Dafu’s Sinking” in Collected Essays from Translation: East Asian and the West, An International Conference for Junior Scholars, Taipei: Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan Normal University, 203-220. Levý, Jiří (2000) “Translation as a Decision Process” in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti, 1st. ed. London: Routledge, 148-159. Li, Chris Wen-Chao (2007) “Foreign Names into Native Tongues: How to transfer sound between languages—transliteration, phonological translation, nativization, and implications for translation theory” Target 19.1: 45-68. Liu, Miqing 刘宓庆 (1993) 当代翻译理论[Contemporary Translation Theory], Taipei: Bookman Books. Longino, Helen (1990) Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Longino, Helen, "The Social Dimensions of Scientific Knowledge", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/scientific-knowledgesocial/>. Miller, J. Hillis (1996) “Border Crossings, Translating Theory: Ruth” in Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, eds, The Translatability of Cultures, Stanford U. Press, 1996, 207-223. Nida, Eugene (1959) “Principles of Translation as Exemplified in Bible Translating” in On Translation, edited by Reuben Brower, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universiyt Press, 11-31. Reiss, Katharina (1971/2000) “Type, Kind and Individuality of Text: Decision making in translation”, translated by Susan Kitron, , in The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, London: Routledge, 160-71. Robinson, Douglas (1997) Translation and Empire: Postcolonial Theories Explained, Manchester: St. Jerome Press. 149 �“Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability” Rooten, Luis d’Antin van (1980) Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames, London : Penguin. Shalizi, Cosma Rohilla (2009) “Gödel’s Theorem” in his Notebooks http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/godels-theorem.html. Accessed 3 Feb 2010. Sokal, Alan and Jean Bricmont (1999) Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern I ntellectuals' Abuse of Science, New York: Picador. Stigler, Stephen M (1986) The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900, Cambridge, MA, and London: Belkap Press of Harvard University Press. Stigler, Stephen M (2000) Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods, Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Uebel, Thomas, "Vienna Circle", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/vienna-circle/>. Accessed 3 Feb 2010. Vermeer, Hans (1989/2000) “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action”, translated by Andrew Chesterman, , in The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, London: Routledge, 221-32. Vinay, Jean-Paul and Jean Darbelnet (1958/2000) “A Methodology for Translation”, translated by Juan C. Sager and M.-J. Hamel, in The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, London: Routledge, 84-93. White, Hayden (1973) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in NineteenthCentury Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Zelinsky-Wibbelt, Cornelia (1988) “The transfer of quantifiers in a multilingual machine translation system” in From Syntax to Semantics: Insights from Machine Translation, edited by E. H. Steiner, P. Schmidt and C. ZelinskyWibbelt, London: Pinter Publishers, 187-215. 150 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2790 Title A name given to the resource Teaching Translation Theory outside Europe: Historical Specificity Versus Universal Applicability Author Author St. André, James Abstract A summary of the resource. While teaching first in Singapore and now in Manchester, it has come to my attention that there are certain difficulties in teaching translation theory either outside of Europe or, in Europe, to students from outside of Europe who come here to study. This paper concentrates on the role of examples in theoretical works, the problems they pose in teaching theory and the implications for universalism in translation studies. I draw on Edward Said’s discussion of travelling theory, post-colonial critiques of the hegemonic role of English, and skopos theory to propose two courses of action to help overcome the problem: first, the incorporation of the translation of theoretical material both from and into European languages as part of practical postgraduate training; and second, the use of a radical substitution policy for examples, with new examples centred around the target language, rather than preservation of the original examples, which are centred around the source-language. Using the example of China, I will demonstrate how these two strategies push us to reconsider how we approach teaching theory. Firstly, the translation of Chinese theoretical texts into English will allow for a deeper appreciation of writings in Chinese and their wider dissemination. Secondly, the search for examples which involve the target language should lead to an engagement between the target culture and the theory. Translating Vinay and Darbelnet’s path breaking essay on translation processes, for example, immediately raises the question of what exactly is meant by ‘borrowing’ in the Chinese context, and for the need to distinguish between retaining the use of the roman alphabet and transliteration using Chinese characters, a distinction that would never arise between French, English and German. Keywords: translation theory, examples, Chinese Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed L Education (General),P Philology. Linguistics Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 850 Title A name given to the resource Teaching Turkish From Multicultural Perspectives Author Author Ökten, Celile E. Abstract A summary of the resource. This study explains why multicultural in-service teacher training is important for teachers, who teach Turkish as a foreign language, and proposes approaches for their professional development. This in-service training is required for the purpose of constructing improved communication between teacher and students. The theoretical framework was based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. It provides social and cultural basis of teaching through social mediation that provides teachers with a flexible instructional environment. This flexibility gives teachers several opportunities such as “modelling, contingency management, cognitive structuring, task structuring”, etc. The research was conducted in Mustafa Germirli Anadolu İmam Hatip Lisesi, Kayseri, which was one of the multinational high schools sponsored by Ministry of National Education and Turkish Religious Affairs Foundation. This qualitative study examined the attitudes and beliefs of teachers towards language education in a multicultural environment. The five study participants were in-service, high school Turkish language teachers, who have made efforts to match the curricular objectives with students' needs. Data were collected through semi-structured, face-to-face interviews using open-ended questions and classroom observation sheets. As a result of interpretive analysis, we focused on understanding how in-service learning process could be shaped on behalf of professional growth, and could be more responsively implemented through multicultural education. Implementation of national curriculum, adaptation of textbooks, culturally adjusted activities, student writing portfolios based on CEFR were all responsibilities of teachers that they had to take care at multicultural instruction. We also studied how they adjusted to these components of instruction through facilitations and collaborations they themselves discovered at this in-service learning process. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-05-04 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/461e204862c7baa2c2f275b74b26db0d.pdf ea585980f1434b6064dda129763986bd PDF Text Text Teaching VAK-abulary Dr. Yakup Çetin Faith University, Turkey ycetin@fatih.edu.tr Abstract:Research on the understanding of the brain and how people learn have introduced the VAK learning styles model to the ELT world in the last two decades. The VAK learning Style - Neuro-linguistic programming model (NLP) - addresses a learner’s three main sensory receivers - Vision, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. Teacher feedback and the findings of prevailing research into the field indicate that teachers’ ability in simultaneous practice of all three styles in their EFL classes boosts language learners’ success almost in all language skills, including vocabulary teaching. Studies on brain and cognition also show that strength of memory depends mostly on how deeply information is processed. The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate that we will not only maintain a lively foreign language class atmosphere but also provide our students with strong memory when we teach new vocabulary by tapping learners’ VAK sensory receivers which are brain friendly learning styles. Key words: Vocabulary, Learning styles, Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic learners, “When it comes to words, every person is destined to be a lifelong learner.” Dale Johnson (2001, 9) Introduction Over the last the decade, necessity of vocabulary knowledge has come into its own again in foreign language teaching. Luckily, thanks to notable research in psycholinguistic, computer-assisted language learning, teaching and learning strategies and styles we have come to better understand how the language learner’s mind processes and stores vocabulary. Since vocabulary growth is of great importance to academic success, traditional methods currently used in ELT classes regarding teaching vocabulary need to be urgently readdressed. In other words, the common vocabulary pedagogy which mainly consists of providing learners with dictionary meaning, synonyms, and antonyms is considered quite traditional and insufficient. David Wilkins’ (1972:111) famous quotation “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. If you spend most of your time studying grammar, your English will not improve much. You will see most improvement if you learn more words and expressions. You can say very little with grammar, but you can say almost anything with words!” is almost known by everyone interested in teaching foreign languages. Foreign language learners and teachers inspired by these convincing and guiding words have focused on innovative methods both for presenting, practicing, organizing new words and making them accessible and memorable (Harmer & Rossner, 1992; Wellman 1992; McCarthy and O'Dell 1994). For a long time, language courses and textbooks were organized according to a set of grammatical points along side with very limited number of words to support the topic of each language unit. This traditional type of language teaching pedagogy has been mostly based on the common credo of several language teaching methods as Direct Method, Audio-Lingual Method, and Communicative Language Teaching which give great priority to the teaching of grammatical structures. Their rationale behind introducing limited number of words has been that too many words could distract learners from studying the grammatical structures. Conscious or subconscious minds of these methods believe firmly that one grammatical rule can generate numberless sentences; therefore, 73 �teaching grammar is deemed more essential and productive. In their eyes vocabulary is merely a mass of items, while grammar is a system of rules worth teaching. However, more recently the hegemony of grammar has been substantially challenged since Michael Lewis (1998) introduced Lexical Approach whose principles stress the importance of word frequency and lexical chunks in the language teaching and learning process. Similarly proponents of Natural Approach, Total Physical Approach, Suggestopedia, Contend Based Teaching and so forth have also supported the necessity of vocabulary growth which resulted in more interest and research in teaching foreign language words. For instance, Harmer (2007) stated that in certain contexts vocabulary plays greater role than grammatical structures and the correct use of structures is almost impossible if one does not possess the necessary vocabulary knowledge. Fortunately, vocabulary is no more treated like Cinderella even if many ELT publishers insist on grammatical syllabus in their textbooks. The inclusion of different vocabulary activities in recent textbooks shows how seriously vocabulary is treated nowadays. For example, a back cover survey of some popular ELT textbooks shows the degree of importance given to vocabulary teaching: “Strong emphasis on vocabulary, with a particular focus on high frequency, useful words and phrases”. (from Cutting Edge Intermediate) Learning Styles Research in pedagogy has shown that we learn in different ways, at different rates, and under different conditions. Thus, it is significant for teachers to look to come with better ways to teach their students and plan their language classes to address the learning styles of their learners (Carbo, 1981). Newman (1981) defines learning styles as the ways through which people learn, Holland (1982) agrees that learning style is a student's preferred way of learning, and DeCecco (1968: 89) describes learning style as the "personal ways in which individuals process information in the course of learning new concepts and principals." Correspondingly, the results of Specific Diagnostic Study indicate that 29% of elementary and high school students learn best through visuals, 34% through auditory mode, and 37% through kinesthetic mode (Willis and Hodson 1999). Surprisingly, though the concept of learning styles has been known for more than two decades, it is still relatively new for many languages teachers and learners therefore needs constant reminding. Glad to see that it as an indispensable component of most teacher training programs because it stresses the idea of individualized instruction. According to its principles, maximum learning outcome is possible when learners are given to opportunity to learn in terms of their preference. Carbo (1981) argues that learners have different learning styles – mainly visual, auditory, and kinesthetic; thus, there is no single learning method best for all learners. For example, a visual learner may remember words after seeing them several times. A kinesthetic learner may desire to feel, touch, or trace over words to learn them. An auditory learner may learn words better when they are pronounced a few times. Each of these methods may help if they address the right group of learners; otherwise, they may be useless and even hinder learning. With the help of learning style inventory, the teacher can choose the most effective vocabulary teaching activities and materials for their learners. No doubt that when a teacher is able to address all types of learners with the same teaching material, it will help them save time that is otherwise spent on trial-and-error procedures which may result in failure. With respect to vocabulary teaching, if teachers use teaching material which includes visual, auditory and kinesthetic components simultaneously, students may not only learn the target words quickly but also enjoy the class and have long term retention. 74 �Visual Learning of Vocabulary The saying that a picture is often truly worth a thousand words is especially true in foreign language teaching. There is a significant amount of research which supports the idea that pictures can enhance considerably both reading and listening comprehension of L1 students (Clark and Paivio, 1991). Cognitive psychology and visualverbal behavior research supports the influence of pictures on learning (Cronin and Myers, 1997). Canning (2000) also claims that use of visuals in EFL and ESL classrooms can remarkably facilitate language learning, for they are able to form a strong link between the material learned and learners’ mental activity. Pictures are peculiarly effective because they evoke numberless cognitive pegs to make associative and referential connections between mental images and information in the long-term memory. Canning (2000) points out that visuals are available in different forms - illustrations, pictures, perceptions, mental images, figures, impressions, likeness, replicas, reproductions – and provide the learners with immediate comprehension aid. Visuals may help learners predict and infer information, and with their help teachers can present objects, animals, people, occupations, planets, organisms and countless other materials to the students and open useful discussions. However, the same researcher argues as well that visuals can be ineffective when they are not well-chosen and used in improper ways. For example, the use of violent scenes, too many distracters, too crowded or causing an overwhelming effect of information, too small or clearly defined, stereotyped images, poor reproduction, not related to the text, irrelevant captioning, and offering too much information, unclear picture which does not compliment the text do not facilitate learning of the material. Undoubtedly, pictures play an affective and motivational function for students and their benefit is greatest when they are related to the reader’s age. Young learners may benefit more from demonstrations, whereas for older learners “try-to-imagine” instructions may be sufficient. Kehret (1996) has found out that drawing or sketches made by the teachers is a useful tool to enhance comprehension. Accordingly, visual learners have the tendency to see what they are learning; thus, pictures and images help them understand ideas and information better than solely words. They like it when the teacher is capable of creating a mental image, for it provides them with greater understanding and stronger recalling of learning. When they are well-chosen, pictures can make any language learning task, in this case vocabulary teaching, more enjoyable, result in positive attitudes and high retention, and can influence the time learners are willing to spend on the learning material. Kinesthetic Learning of Vocabulary According to pedagogical research, we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 75% of what we see and 90% of what we do. Doubtless to say, the best way to learn something is doing it ourselves. Brown (1996:3) argues that “learning styles research shows that most people prefer learning by experiencing and doing (kinesthetic elements), especially reinforced through touching and movements (tactile elements)”. Similarly, Total Physical Response (TPR) proposes that second language acquisition occurs at a much faster rate when the kinesthetic sensory system of the learner is tapped (Asher, 2003). In TPR - which is based on the coordination of speech and action - language is taught primarily through physical activity. While it addresses both parts – right and left - of the brain, this approach to teaching language seems to enable children and adults to enjoy rapid, stress-free assimilation of any language followed by long-term retention. That is to say, kinesthetic learners enjoy learning when they are given the opportunity to sense the position and movement of a language skill or 75 �learning task. Seemingly, they are likely to avoid lecture and discussion type of classes, yet they do well in learning a language skill when there are materials available for manipulation and hands-on practice. While most children transcend by kinesthetic means during their schooling: especially in their early years they develop in kindergarten by moving, touching, feeling everything as they learn. As they grow older though some may shift to other learning styles – visual or auditory- a great number of them maintain their kinesthetic strengths throughout their lives. Kinesthetic learners strikingly learn faster when the medium of instruction is transmitted through labs, presentations, demonstrations, field trips and other tactile activities. Because of the great number of kinesthetic population it is quite reasonable to change our vocabulary teaching methods which address their gross motor (large-muscle) activity so that they we can enhance their learning. Auditory Learning of Vocabulary According to Dr. Shirley Wyver (reported in FPC Magazine for Australian parents) “Parents may notice they have one child who likes to talk and asks questions,” she says, “whereas the other likes to observe. Both children are engaging, but one is benefiting more from auditory input and the other from visual input”. Auditory learners enjoy listening to someone who talks about a topic rather than reading about it in the first place (Sarasin 1998). They avoid taking lecture notes in order that they can fully understand the lecturer. Further, auditory learners are left brain oriented and therefore respond well to messages, dialogues, speech, and music. They mostly enjoy both internal and external dialogues and demonstrate self-talk habits by often staring into the space and they may ask for somebody to repeat himself. Unlike other learner, they are able to work with music in the background and are not easily distracted by external noise from different sources. Learners with this type of learning style do remember learning instructions better and like it when somebody reads the directions for a given task. Therefore, as far as vocabulary teaching is concerned, they are required to exercise their vocal cords a lot, for their students success mostly relies on how well they can verbalize the learning tasks. VAK – abulary Teaching Sample 1. As an example to VAK-abulary teaching, I would like to present the Frayer Model ( adapted from Yopp, Yopp, and Bishop, 2009) which includes a simple definition of the target word (audio-visual) backed by necessary characteristics (audio-visual), examples (audio-visual), and non-example (audio-visual). I’m certain that the inclusion of pronunciation with phonetic transcription possibility (auditory), a picture (visual) and some tactile activity (kinesthetic) can create a lively classroom, develop deeper comprehension and result in long term retention of the target words. Even though the Frayer Modle is used mostly with nouns, they can be employed to 76 �teach other parts of speech (verb, adjective, adverbs) as well. / `kɑləni / Figure 1 shows a modified version of Frayer Model to present words through VAK-abulary teaching. Figure 1. A Flayer Model for Vak-abulary teaching. 77 �VAK – abulary Teaching Sample 2. The Verbal and Visual Word Association strategy ( also adapted from Yopp, Yopp, and Bishop, 2009) is another exemplar for VAK-abulary teaching, for it asks the learners to approach the target words form several angles as displayed below in Figure 2. Learners are asked to write the target word into the upper-left section (visual and kinesthetic). Further, they are expected to write a simple definition (visual and kinesthetic) obtained either from the teacher or dictionary into the lower-left section of the figure. In order to increase the comprehension of the target word, the teacher should provide the figure with an appropriate picture (visual) and pronunciation possibility of the phonetic transcription (auditory). / `a�sə,le�t / Figure 2. A Verbal Word Word Association strategy for Vak-abulary teaching. VAK–abulary teaching sample 3. This final type of VAK-abulary teaching A. Look, listen and repeat. techniques has been developed by me, myself and is unique in that it provides the teacher not obtain irrigation cultivation only with an energetic class atmosphere, but also amazingly results in high retention of abandon vocabulary, for it tackles concurrently all three learning styles – visual, auditory, and adversely fertilize precipitation aggregate kinesthetic. First, the target words are presented with pictures one by one with exact pronunciation (visual-audio). If teachers do not have access to photos, they may draw sketches. intensify photosynthesis When you choose pictures as a teacher, make B. Listen, point and tell. sure that the pictures are clear and congruent with the words. 4 3 2 In the next phase, the teacher presents the same pictures, only that the words are deleted and 1 replaced with numbers this time. Here the 6 5 7 8 78 9 10 �teacher starts to tell the words randomly and asks the students to point to the proper pictures (kinesthetic) which include a lot of TPR. Following this, the teacher tells the words and asks the students to provide him with the correct numbers that match the pictures and later roles are exchanged (auditory). Finally, this time the teacher deletes the pictures as well and leaves out only the numbers under the pictures. When you ask the students to come up with the C. Imagine and tell. right vocabulary for the numbers, surprisingly they provide you with the correct answers from 2 1 3 4 their mental picture: an activity which involves NLP elements in that it plays both hemispheres 5 6 7 8 of the brain. I firmly believe that rather than simply repeating the words for a longer period 9 10 of time, strong memory relies much more on how deeply the students are able to process the learning of new words. Conclusion Vocabulary teaching is an essential goal in ELT pedagogy, perhaps more significant than is generally accepted by researchers and foreign language teachers. Both parents and teachers can assist learners unforgettably in the vocabulary learning process by providing diverse activities which are most interesting and appropriate to their learning style. Correspondingly, learners’ vocabulary growth, comprehension and retention will increase remarkably provided that teachers practice whole sensory learning by addressing all learning receptors simultaneously: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. As long as teacher’s teaching style employed in the class does not relate to the learner’s sensory style, most probably students will shut down their preferred learning style which will most probably decrease their success, attention and motivation in the topic. As a result, schools, curriculums and lesson plans need to include large quantities of language activities that address multiple learning styles concurrently in the same lesson. Rather than saying "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," we should actually pronounce "Present information to others as they will best learn." References Brown, B. L. (1996). Learning Styles and Vocational Educational Practice. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Practice Application Brief. Carbo, M. (1981). Reading Style Inventory Manual. New York: Learning Research Associates. Decocco, J. P. (1968). The Psychology of Learning and Instruction. Eaglewood Cliffs, New Jersey: PrenticeHall. Harmer, J. 2007. The practice of English language teaching. (Fourth Edition). London: Longman. Harmer, J. & Rossner, R. (1992). More Than Words, Books 1 and 2. Harlow: Longman. Holland, R. P. (1982). Learner Characteristics and Learner Performance: Implications for Instructional Placement Decisions. Journal of Special Education, 16, 7-22. Johnson, D. (2001). Vocabulary in the elementary and middle school. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Lewis, M. (1998). Implementing the lexical approach. London: Language Teaching Publications. 79 �McCarthy, M. & O'Dell, F. (1994). English vocabulary in use: 100 units of vocabulary reference and practice, self-study and classroom use - upper intermediate & advanced, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Newman, E. (1981). Learning Styles of the Special Needs Student (K-6). Instructor’s Manual, Project: Least Restrictive Environment, MCC In-service Training for Regular Classroom Teachers, 3. Sarasin, L. C. (1998). Learning styles perspectives: Impact in the classroom. Madison, Wis.: Atwood Publishing. Wellman, G. (1992). The Heinemann English Wordbuilder. London: Heinemann. Wilkins D. (1972). Linguistics and Language Teaching. London: Edward Arnold Willis, M.& Hodson, V.K., (1996). Discover Your Child’s Learning Style. Prima Publishing. Yopp, H. K., Yopp, R. H., & Bishop, A. (2009). Vocabulary Instruction for Academic Success. Shell Education. Huntington Beach 80 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 654 Title A name given to the resource Teaching VAK-abulary Author Author Çetin, Yakup Abstract A summary of the resource. Research on the understanding of the brain and how people learn have introduced the VAK learning styles model to the ELT world in the last two decades. The VAK learning Style - Neuro-linguistic programming model (NLP) - addresses a learner’s three main sensory receivers - Vision, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. Teacher feedback and the findings of prevailing research into the field indicate that teachers’ ability in simultaneous practice of all three styles in their EFL classes boosts language learners’ success almost in all language skills, including vocabulary teaching. Studies on brain and cognition also show that strength of memory depends mostly on how deeply information is processed. The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate that we will not only maintain a lively foreign language class atmosphere but also provide our students with strong memory when we teach new vocabulary by tapping learners’ VAK sensory receivers which are brain friendly learning styles. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-06 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed L Education (General)