268 10 3494 https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/b4ae4ab91c7c0ff32aa04f18a1dc2e09.pdf 02ae83fccd0afcca85ee5c5cc5265e95 PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Ambiguity in Foreign Language Acquisition and Role of Language Aptitude Alma JeftiĤ Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences International University of Sarajevo ajeftic@ius.edu.ba Abstract: The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of cognitive theories important for foreign language acquisition and to emphasize the role of language aptitude for foreign language comprehension. Language comprehension is a specific example of the perceptual processes, and the same principles that emerge in perception also play important role in language. Ambiguity resolution is a key component of language comprehension, and it is similar to ambiguity in perceptual processes. According to CANAL-FT cognitive theory of foreign language acquisition, one of the central abilities required for foreign language acquisition is the ability to cope with novelty and ambiguity. This ability will be explained as a part of the experiential aspect of intelligence, based on Sternberg‘s triarchic theory of human intelligence. Novel tasks or situations serve as good measures of intellectual ability and more intelligent individuals move from consciously learning in a novel situation to automating the new learning. Applied to classroom environment, this theory predicts that language aptitude is kind of information processing and developing expertize, rather than an entity fixed at birth. Language aptitude training should increase language performance and lead to ambiguity resolution. Key Words: language acquisition, ambiguity resolution, CANAL-FT, triarchic theory, language aptitude training Introduction The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of cognitive theories important for foreign language acquisition and to emphasize the role of language aptitude for foreign language comprehension. Also, the purpose and importance of statistical language mechanisms will be concidered through analysis of contemporary researches. Language comprehension is a specific example of the perceptual processes, and the same principles that emerge in perception also play important role in language. Ambiguity resolution is a key component of language comprehension, and it is similar to ambiguity in perceptual processes. According to CANAL-FT cognitive theory of foreign language acquisition, one of the central abilities required for foreign language acquisition is the ability to cope with novelty and ambiguity. This ability will be explained as a part of the experiential aspect of intelligence, based on Sternberg‘s triarchic theory of human intelligence. Novel tasks or situations serve as good measures of intellectual ability and more intelligent individuals move from consciously learning in a novel situation to automating the new learning. Applied to classroom environment, this theory predicts that language aptitude is kind of information processing and developing expertize, rather than an entity fixed at birth. Language aptitude training should increase language performance and lead to ambiguity resolution. The constrained statistical learning framework suggests that learning is central to language acquisition, and that the specific nature of language learning explains similarities across languages. The crucial point is that learning is constrained and learners are not open-minded, and calculate some statistics more readily than others. Human learning mechanisms, such as statistical mechanisms, may themselves have played a prominent role in shaping the structure of human languages. Method of the Study This study is designed in qualitative research approach in which literature review method has been chosen. The main reason why this method has been chosen is that the overview of contemporary theories should be provided as well as the results of recent researches on language acquisition. Moreover, this study does not 91 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo attempt to generalize the results but aims to obtain deeper understanding of cognitive theories of foreign language acquisition and its application to classroom environment. Findings and Discussion Language Comprehension as Perceptual Process According to Galasso, acquisition is a sub-conscious process identical in all important ways to the process children use in acquiring their first language, while Learning is a conscious process that results in knowing about language (Galasso, 2002). The theories regarding second language acquisition are quite debatable, especially because of the distinction that has been drawn by Stephen Krashen in respect to the difference between second language acquisition and learning (Krashen, 1982). Thus, second language acquisition is the process by which children unconsciously acquire their native language, while learning stands for the ―conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them and being able to talk about them‖ (Krashen, 1982, 69). First theory about second language learning states that the principles of the Universal Grammar count only during the critical period, after which other learning mechanisms, not specific to first language acquisition, operate in the process of second language learning (Krashen, 1982). A second theory proposes that second language is acquired on the same universal innate principles that govern first language acquisition, which is why we may find the same stages of development, although the second language grammar is not completely acquired due to nonlinguistic factors that influence it (Krashen, 1982). Language comprehension is a specific case of percpetual processes, since the similar stages that occur in perception also occur in language. Perceptual system resolves the ambiguities inherent in a two-dimensional representation by making assumption about the way objects in the world usually look (Willingham, 2007, 68). Top-down and bottom-up processes, present in preception, also play a certain role in language processing. Also, McGurk's effect, as well as categorical perceptions demonstrates connection between perceptual and language processing. McGurk effect is showing that both visual and auditory information are used in phoneme perception, whilst categorical perception refers to the fact that people do not perceive slight variations in how phonemes are pronounced (Willingham, 2007, 507). Phonemes can vary along certain dimensions with no costs in their perceivability. Given the close relationship between second language acquisition and other areas of inquiry, there are numerous approaches from which to examine second language data, each of which brings to the study of second language acquisition its own goals, its own data-collection methods, and its own analytic tools (Gass, 1994). Therefore, second language acquisition is truly an interdisciplinary field. Ambiguity Resolution and CANAL-FT Since psychologists have observed that people vary in their ability to learn foreign language, they have tried to formulate theories and design tests of foreign language learning abilities (Grigorenko et al, 2000). Tests can help psychologists and educators know to whom to devote what levels and what kinds of resources, be able to predict success in language learning instruction, and be able to compare actual achievement with the achievement one might expect on the basis of foreign language learning ability (Grigorenko et al, 2000). There are several tests that are used to measure foreign language learning ability: - Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT; Carroll & Sapon, 1958) – measures phonetic cooding ability, grammatical sensitivity, memory, and inductive language learning; - Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery (PLAB, Pimsleur, 1966) – measures the ability to infer language structure from artificial language stimuli; - Army Language Aptitude Test (ALAT, Horne, 1971) – predicts learner success, particularly in learning to speak and read Westen Indo-European languages; - Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB, Petersen & Al-Haik, 1976) - measures the ability to infer language structure from artificial language stimuli; 92 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo - VORD (Parry & Child, 1990) – tests the ability to cope with grammar systems similar to that of Turkic languages. These tests have been generally effective in predicting foreign language abilities and success. But, when foreign language aptitude and intelligence tests are used together as predictors of foreign language learning success, results always reveal significant correlations between the two kinds of tests (Gardner & Lambert, 1965; Weche, Edwards & Wells, 1982). The hypothesis that intelligence and aptitude might play a different roles in foreign language learning has been investigated within longitudinal framework (Lett & O‘Mara, 1990; Skehan, 1989). The Cognitive Ability for Novelty in Acquisition of Language Test represents the possible instantiation of a cognitive theory of foreign language acquisition that stresses the role of coping with novelty in such acquisition (Grigorenko et al, 2000). The CANAL-F theory holds that one of the central abilities required for foreign language acquisition is the ability to cope with novelty and ambiguity which is a part of the experiential aspect of intelligence described by the triarchic theory of human intelligence (Sternberg, 1985, 1988, 1997). Novelty and Ambiguity in Sternberg‘s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence Sternberg‘s triarchic theory of intelligence includes three facets or subtheories: analytical (componential), creative (experiential) and practical (contextual) (Sternberg, 1985). Creative or experiential dimension examines how people approach new and unfamiliar tasks. This is also insightful dimension to a person‘s intelligence. It can be further divided into two categories: novelty (how a person reacts with a first exposure to a new scenario), and automatization (how a person handels repeated tasks, or practice) (Sternberg, 1987). In its application to foreign language learning, several knowledge acquisition processes specifying CANAL-F theory are Present: - selective encoding – how to distinguish between more and less relevant information; - accidental encoding – how to encode secondary or background information: - selective comparison – how to determine the relevance of old information for current tasks; - selective transfer – how to apply decoded or inferred rules to new contexts and tasks; - selective combination – how to synthetize the disparate pieces of information that have been collected via selective and accidental encoding and modify the learner‘s existing schemata. (Grigorenko et al, 2000) In foreign learning, the abovementioned five knowledge acquisition processes operate at four levels: - the lexical level deals with one‘s learning, understanding and use of words; - the morphological level deals woth the words‘ structures and derivations; - the semantic level deals with one‘s understanding and use of the meaning of the words; - the syntactic level deals with one‘s learning, understanding and use of the grammatical principles. (Grigorenko et al, 2000) These four levels of knowledge acquisition operates in two models of input and output: visual and oral mode. The former predominates in reading and writing, while the letter is involved in listening and speaking. CANAL-F theory suggests that language aptitude is based on expertize in certain kinds of information processing that, like any other kind of expertize, can be developed (Sternberg, 1988). Therefore, language aptitude is a form of developing expertizes rather than an entity fixed at birth (Grigorenko et al, 2000). On the ground of that, language aptitude training should increase language performance and lead to ambiguity resolution. Mechanisms of Statistical Language Learning Can learning-oriented theories also account for the existence of language universals? The constrained statistical learning framework suggests that learning is central to language acquisition, and that the specific 93 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo nature of language learning explains similarities across languages. The crucial point is that learning is constrained and learners are not open-minded, and calculate some statistics more readily than others. Of particular interest are those constraints on learning that correspond to cross-linguistic similarities (Newport & Aslin, 2000). According to this framework, the similarities across languages are indeed nonaccidental, as suggested by the Chomskian framework, but they are not the result of innate linguistic knowledge. Instead, human languages have been shaped by human learning mechanisms (Saffran, 2003). If human languages have been shaped by constraints on human learning mechanisms, it seems likely that these mechanisms and their constraints were not tailored solely for language acquisition. Instead, learning in nonlinguistic domains should be similarly constrained. Learning mechanisms not specifically designed for language learning might have shaped the structure of human languages. Results of Saffran's study suggests that human language learners posses powerful statistical learning capacities (Saffran 2003). By investigating how infants weight statistical cues relative to other cues to word segmentation early in life scientists have found ways in which statistical learning may help infans to determine the relevance of the many cues inherent in language input, as well as to discover how infants in bilingual environments cope with multiple sets of statistics. Researches disagree about when learning is best described as statistically based as opposed to rule based, and about whether learning can still be concidered statistical when the input to learning is abstract (Saffran, 2002). Although the answer to this question remains unknown, it is possible that a combination of inherent constraints on the types of patterns acquired by learners, and the use of output from one level of learning as input to the next, may help to explain why something so complex is mastered readily by the human mind (Saffran, 2003). Therefore, human learning mechanisms may themselves have played a prominent role in shaping the structure of human languages. Conclusions and Recommendations In this study, the clear overview of current cognitive theories as well as ability measures of foreign language ability was provided. There is no clear distinction on which test is the most applicable, since it depends on the purpose of each research. The main contribution of this paper is that it provides an overview of contemporary ideas on foreign language learning mechanisms with regard to psychological methods. Novelty resolution as one of the concepts of Sternberg‘s experiential facet plays a big role in foreign language acquisition. The main reccommendations of this papert for further analysis include the impact of language aptitude on language acquisition and use of different leraning methods, especcially statistical language learning mechanisms. According to Chomsky, children are able to learn the superficial grammar of a particular language because all intelligible languages are founded on a deep structure of grammatical rules that are universal and that correspond to an innate capacity of the human brain. Therefore, stages in the acquisition of a native language can be measured by the increasing complexity and originality of a child‘s utterances. People learning a second language pass through some of the same stages, including overgeneralization, as do children learning their native language. But, people rarely become as fluent in a second language as in their native tongue. Most traditional methods for second language acquisition involve some systematic approach to the analysis of grammar as well as to the memorization of vocabulary. The cognitive approach described in this paper emphasizes extemporaneous conversation, immersion, aptitude growth and development, intelligence and techniques intended to stimulate the environment in which most people acquire their native language as children. 94 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo References Galasso, J. (2002). Interference in second language learning: A review of fundamental difference hypothesis, Northridge: California State University. Gardner, R.C. &Lambert, W.E. (1965). Language aptitude, intelligence and second-language achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 56, 191-199. Gass, S.M. & Selinker, L. (1994). Second language acquisition: An introductory course, Hillsdale, New Yersey, Hove and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Grigorenko, E.L., Sternber, R.J. & Ehrman, M.E. (200). A theory-based approach to the measurement of foreign language ability: the Canal-F Theory and Test. The Modern Journal, No. 3, Vol. 84, 390-405. Krashen, S. (1982). Second language acquisition and second language learning, South California: Pergamon Press Inc. Lett, J.A. & O‘Marra, F.E. (1990). Predictors of success in an intensive foreign language learning context: correlates of language learning at the Defence Language Institute Foreign Language Center. In T. Parry & C.W. Stansfield (Eds.), Language Aptitude Reconcidered (222-260), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents. Saffran, J.R. (2002). Constraints on statistical language learning. Journal on Memory and Language, 47, 172196. Saffran, J.R. (2003). Statistical language learning: mechanism and constraints. Current Directions in Psychological Science, No. 4, Vol. 12, 110-114. Skehan, P. (1990). The relationship between native and foreign language learning ability: Educational and linguistic factors. In H. Dechert (Ed.), Current trends in European second language acquisition research (83106), Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Sternberg, R.J. (1985). Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of human abilities, New York: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R.J. (1987). Most vocabulary is learned in context. In M. McKeown (Ed), The nature of vocabulary acquisition (89-105), Hillsdale, NY: Erlbaum. Sternberg, R.J. (1988). The triarchic mind: A new theory of human intelligence, New York: Viking. Wesche, M., Edwards, H. & Wells, W. (1982). Foreign language aptitude and intelligence. Applied Psycholiguistics, 3, 127-140. Willingham, D. (2007). Cognition the Thinking Animal, (third edition), London: Pearson Edition. 95 � 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. 17 Title A name given to the resource Ambiguity in Foreign Language Acquisition and Role of Language Aptitude Author Author Jeftić, Alma Abstract A summary of the resource. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of cognitive theories important for foreign language acquisition and to emphasize the role of language aptitude for foreign language comprehension. Language comprehension is a specific example of the perceptual processes, and the same principles that emerge in perception also play important role in language. Ambiguity resolution is a key component of language comprehension, and it is similar to ambiguity in perceptual processes. According to CANAL-FT cognitive theory of foreign language acquisition, one of the central abilities required for foreign language acquisition is the ability to cope with novelty and ambiguity. This ability will be explained as a part of the experiential aspect of intelligence, based on Sternberg‘s triarchic theory of human intelligence. Novel tasks or situations serve as good measures of intellectual ability and more intelligent individuals move from consciously learning in a novel situation to automating the new learning. Applied to classroom environment, this theory predicts that language aptitude is kind of information processing and developing expertize, rather than an entity fixed at birth. Language aptitude training should increase language performance and lead to ambiguity resolution. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/068a23fd0246bcb868a3ba5b0e229bcb.pdf b7e8cf5bbada95f9580c832d057301b2 PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Business English Courses: Towards Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence Elzbieta Jendrych Kozminski University, Poland Head of the Language Centre and the Director of the Business English Postgraduate Program jendrych@alk.edu.pl Abstract: Global business environment requires a new approach to needs analysis in business English courses for adult learners. With increasing demand for excellent business communicators from multinational corporations, language teachers, publishers and materials writers are expected to offer more effective language courses. To be good communicators learners need to acquire both linguistic and non-linguistic competence. The latter refers to sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence and includes four basic components: (1) practicing transferable business skills and managerial skills, (2) being aware of intercultural differences and business etiquette, (3) understanding the principles of business ethics and corporate social responsibility, and (4) applying the principles of effecting business writing. Time of the course permitting, these four components incorporated into a language course are likely to make it more attractive and useful to the learner. This approach to language teaching was assessed in a questionnaire – tertiary level students were asked to assess their competence, strengths and weaknesses. The results of the study suggest that students highly appreciate the non-linguistic course components. The respondents believe that these components are of key importance in effective business communication and contribute to increased employability and promotion opportunities. Key words: ESP, business English, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence. Introduction Teaching business English in a systematic way has over fifty year old history. In business English courses teaching priorities have changed in line with changing approaches and teaching methods. The relative importance of course components has also changed over time. The priority of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation was replaced by the priority of communication. Good language skills do not guarantee that a learner will be a good communicator in business situations. However, in the majority of cases they are fundamental to acquiring good communicative skills. As a result of corpus studies we have witnessed attempts to describe language more accurately. Corpus studies have given ―ample evidence of the existence of significant language patterns which have gone largely unrecorded in centuries of study‖ (Sinclair 1985: 251). Linguists started to create frequency lists of core vocabulary and collocations. Today, there are more and more linguists and teachers who believe that acquisition of vocabulary is central in second language acquisition (Zimmerman 1997; Nation 1990). Others think that not only single words but also larger phrasal units, so called ‗chunks‘, are fundamental to improving fluency (McCarthy 1990). The concept of teaching language formulae rather than single words has many supporters. Most teachers adapt new approaches to language teaching and try to improve their methodologies. Now, more than ever before, they should consider not only how to teach but also what to teach. According to the guidelines for language teaching and learning published in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2001) communicative competence includes three components: linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competence. In order to improve communicative competence teachers need to incorporate course components aimed at improving two non-linguistic competencies, i.e. sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence. Business English students need to achieve excellent communicative competence if they want to be high performers in their professional careers. If teachers and materials writers fail to recognize this need, they will not be able to offer effective language courses. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that inclusion of non-linguistic components is essential when designing business English courses of today. 407 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Linguistic component The linguistic component of a business English course has always been central. Linguistic competence includes lexical, grammar, semantic, phonological, orthographic and orthoepic competence. In courses of business English at tertiary level students usually need to improve their lexical competence in order to be able to communicate in typical business situations. Without good lexical input courses cannot be effective. Nation and Newton (1997: 238) say that course designers need to ―decide what vocabulary will be selected for teaching, how it will be sequenced, and how it will be presented‖. They also explore one more important issue: incorporating vocabulary development into communicative activities. This element is crucial in business English courses at universities. Students can benefit most when they have a chance to develop their business vocabulary in communicative activities. Proper selection of core business vocabulary, terminology, collocations, and phrases is very important in all business English courses. Without corpus studies the right selection of business terms and business lexis items is hardly possible. The same refers to selecting metaphors, acronyms and abbreviations and presenting them in the form of frequency lists excerpted from corpus texts. With this evidence language teachers and course-book writers know which items to include in their teaching materials and what to prioritize in the classroom practice. Students are more motivated if they know they learn the things that they will need most in real-life business situations. Today, methodological constraints do not exist. Teachers usually use a mixture of approaches that best matches learners‘ needs. The eclectic approach to teaching has resulted in a more flexible syllabus design and course design. Teachers are encouraged to develop tailor-made supplementary materials for specific group of learners. However, they should be encouraged to use corpus evidence. Lists of highest-frequency specialized business lexis in the form of single words, compounds and multi-word expressions as well as popular collocations and acronyms are highly recommended in all courses of business English for adults. Sociolinguistic and pragmatic components The other two components of communicative competence, i.e. sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competence, contribute greatly to effective business communication. Why are they particularly important in the language of business? Effective business communication helps in making new contacts, networking, winning new markets, getting more customers; in short - it helps in making money. ―Communication is an essential function of enterprise. Whether written or oral, it is the conduit through which an enterprise speaks to its customers. It is management‘s mechanism for influencing employees and directing the work they do. And it is a means through which employees provide the information and feedback that management needs to make sound decisions‖ (Luecke 2003: ix). If an organization wants to create a favorable image and be perceived as a reputable enterprise, it needs good communicators. ―An organization that is clear, consistent, and effective in its communications with customers, employees, shareholders, creditors, and the community is in a good position to establish trust and to elicit their collaboration‖ (Luecke 2003: ix). With excellent communication skills businessmen can achieve more. People who are good communicators are much more successful at advancing in their careers than those who are poor communicators. Language students know that and they understand that better communication competence means higher employability, higher salary and better promotion opportunities. That is why they need business English courses that can improve their communicative competence. Linguistic competence, important as it is, will not make them good communicators. In fact, experience shows that there are four areas that need to be incorporated into business English courses: (1) business skills and managerial skills, (2) business culture and etiquette, (3) business ethics and corporate social responsibility, and (4) business writing. Business skills Speaking about Business English, Harmer says that ―an enormous growth area in English language teaching has been in the area of Business English because many students perceive a need for the kind of language which will allow them to operate in the world of English-medium commerce. Once again there is specific vocabulary and language events (presenting to colleagues, the language of contracts, etc.) which are 408 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo unlikely to appear in a general English course, but which are vitally important for business students. And so teachers find themselves training classes in such procedures as the art of negotiating, the correct use of phones and e-mail, or the reading of business reports‖ (Harmer 2003 :10). What does it mean in business English teaching practice? What students and language teachers need to do is first to learn/teach the core business terms, and then to go beyond language correctness, mastery of grammar, business lexis, and phraseology. In a course of business English at a higher level the traditional business skills of negotiations, presentations, meetings and telephoning need to be combined with managerial skills. Now, such new skills as conflict management, assigning roles in a team, setting tasks and goals and communicating them, and organizing teamwork also need to be incorporated into a business English course. The importance of practicing business and management skills in a course of Business English is confirmed by many experts in ESP teaching (Harmer 2003); (McGrath 2002). McGrath is of the opinion that ―knowledge and skill combine in efficient communication. However, teaching for knowledge is very different from teaching for skill. Knowledge can be ‘presented‘ or ‗discovered‘; it can also be forgotten. Skill, on the other hand, can only be acquired through practice, and once acquired is relatively easily maintained. The fact is that while we can ‗teach‘ knowledge, we cannot teach skill. Skill has to be learned, and practice is a central element in that learning‖ (McGrath 2002: 98). Many skills needed in the world of business are transferrable which means that they can be acquired. Learning new skills requires practice in performing various realistic business roles. It is usually done either in groups (e.g. negotiations, meetings) or individually (e.g. sales presentations, business writing). Students can practice new skills most effectively through task-based learning. This method requires students‘ involvement in real-life business tasks such as e.g. preparing an offer for a client, applying for a job or interviewing job applicants, or discussing financial statements. Here, instead of doing language exercises students perform various realistic business tasks in typical business situations and practice transferrable skills. The case study method is particularly effective in the process of acquiring new managerial skills because it is an active form of learning. The teacher is only a facilitator and it is students who analyze and solve a given business problem themselves. Generally, students like to solve business cases. The case study method gives them a sense of independence and competition and a feeling that they are decision-makers. Two factors are of key importance: (1) students have a sense of achievement and progression which motivates them to learn more and (2) they practice language skills in a very natural way. Business culture and etiquette It is a challenging time for business people operating in a competitive environment. In addition to business skills, a successful business career also implies awareness of cultural differences, being tolerant to other cultures and using this knowledge to the benefit of the company. Organizations are becoming more multicultural; many companies operate internationally, use diverse labor and communicate with partners and customers from various regions who represent different cultures. Business people need to know and understand their own cultural background, their attitudes and priorities. If they operate globally, they also need to know and respect other cultures. To avoid culture clashes with their business partners, they have to be flexible and tolerant and remember that cultural differences cannot be an obstacle to transacting business and attracting more customers. For teachers and learners of business English it means that a component of intercultural communication needs to be added either as a separate subject or as a component of a language course. The cultural component can be helpful in identifying the characteristics of a given culture, it can teach students what to do and what to avoid, how to address people, how to greet them or how to use body language properly. Learners who know the dress code, business etiquette and who have good manners are likely to be more effective in their future business contacts. ‗Manners make man‘ – this old proverb is true in the world of global business nowadays. Those who do not know the principles of business etiquette may find it difficult to establish and maintain good business relationships. Mistakes resulting from not knowing the etiquette may be costly to a company and an individual. Therefore, the basic rules of business etiquette such as exchanging business cards, extending invitations and accepting or declining them, etc. should also be taught. With better understanding of globalization processes, a cultural component has been included in many business schools curricula. Students are taught courses in intercultural or cross-cultural communication and 409 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo business etiquette. Such courses can give learners the basic information on the main typologies of business culture (e.g. monochronic versus polychronic, pro-partner versus pro-transaction, multi-active versus linearactive or reactive, and collectivist versus individualist) and of cultural do‘s and taboos in various regions and countries. Business ethics and corporate social responsibility Business people also need to understand generally accepted principles of business ethics and rules of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Rarely can one find a business organization that ignores these issues. A company which violates ethical or moral rules or does nothing for the community is no longer considered a reputable company. Students need to know which corporate practices as well as individual and collective behaviors are desirable and which are publicly condemned. They need to be exposed to such negative practices as tax evasion, using child labour, insider trading, cooking the books or mobbing. A business English course can be a good forum for discussing ethical issues of that kind. Business organizations also have to know and respect the rules of environmental protection, ‗going green‘ and sustainable growth. The general public expects companies to keep the environment free from contamination and pollution. Generating high profits at all costs and polluting the environment will quickly and inevitably devastate a good image of the company and, in extreme cases, lead to its bankruptcy. That is why, business people need to learn how to follow the standards and good practice guidelines and how to avoid bad publicity. Business writing Business writing is of key importance for business professionals. It is a typical pragmatic competence – here students need to know the principles according to which messages are organized, structured and arranged, how messages are used to perform communicative functions and how messages should be sequenced (Council of Europe 2001). Without this pragmatic competence students with a very good command of English are not able to write a proper business letter or report. They need to learn what layout, style and tone to use as well as how to structure, organize and sequence information. Typically business English courses at universities include the component of business writing. Students are first exposed to authentic examples showing models of commercial correspondence, memoranda, business reports, contracts, financial statements and advertising materials. Then they are given a scenario of a business situation which requires a response in writing. The basic principles of business writing include having a clear purpose, staying on the topic, economizing on words and using short sentences. General guidelines on the proper language use for each format are also useful. The only method to learn effective business writing is the trial and error method. Long experience in teaching business English to university students shows that it is the only successful way to learn business writing. It may be painful and time-consuming for both students and teachers but it works. Questionnaire study More than 120 upper-intermediate and advanced students of Kozminski University were asked to complete a questionnaire. It included questions on self assessment of their linguistic competence and on what they consider to be the weak and strong points in their linguistic competence. The respondents were in the middle of their business English course. They were divided into three groups: full-time undergraduate students, part-time undergraduate students, and students of business English postgraduate course. The results are presented below. Score Excellent Good Sufficient Insufficient Table 1. Self assessment of linguistic competence in the three groups (%). Speaking Writing Speaking Reading comprehension comprehension 24 14 33 35 44 59 50 55 20 24 13 9 10 3 4 1 410 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Table 2. Self assessment of strengths (%*). Component Business vocabulary Business writing Business culture and etiquette Business skills Full-time students Part-time students Postgraduate students Total 37 50 66 49 35 36 57 41 16 33 40 28 12 5 29 14 Table 3. Self assessment of weaknesses (%*). Component Full-time students Part-time students Postgraduate students Business vocabulary 35 40 29 Business writing 35 29 31 Business culture and etiquette 8 2 20 Business skills 33 52 34 * In question 2 and 3 the respondents could give more than one answer. Total 35 32 9 40 The only finding which requires author‘s comment is a relatively low number of full-time and part-time students who considered poor understanding of business culture and etiquette to be the main weakness in their linguistic competence. It can be explained by the fact that they had taken a course on business culture and etiquette before the questionnaire was completed. Conclusions Language learners have new needs resulting from the rapidly changing business environment of today. They expect that language courses will make them good communicators in the global world of business. Language teachers should try to understand students‘ new needs and be open to changes. It takes a lot of time and energy to learn how to teach the non-linguistic components. Yet, it seems to be inevitable if language teachers want to be successful in meeting the changing needs of their students. The paper demonstrates how language teachers can best satisfy the new learners‘ needs in courses of business English for university students. By incorporating the four additional components into a business English course they provide their students with an opportunity to practice the language and to improve their sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence. It seems that quite frequently sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence cannot be developed properly at tertiary level due to a limited number of hours of instruction in a language course. As a result of such limitations, teachers tend to concentrate on linguistic competence rather than non-linguistic one. Consequently, learners‘ communicative competence cannot be improved. 411 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo References: Nation, P. (1990). Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. New York: Newburry House. Council of Europe. (2001). Common European Framework for Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching and Assessment. Cambridge: CUP. Harmer, J. (2003). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Harlow: Longman. Luecke, R. (2003). Business Communication. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. McCarthy, M. (1990). Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGrath, I. (2002). Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Nation, P. & J. Newton. (1997). Teaching Vocabulary. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (pp. 238-254). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sinclair, J. (1985). Selected Issues. In R. Quirk & H.G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World (pp. 248-254). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zimmerman, C. B. (1997). Historical Trends in Second Language Vocabulary Instruction. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (pp.1-5). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 412 � 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. 60 Title A name given to the resource Business English Courses: Towards Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence Author Author Jendrych, Elzbieta Abstract A summary of the resource. Global business environment requires a new approach to needs analysis in business English courses for adult learners. With increasing demand for excellent business communicators from multinational corporations, language teachers, publishers and materials writers are expected to offer more effective language courses. To be good communicators learners need to acquire both linguistic and non-linguistic competence. The latter refers to sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence and includes four basic components: (1) practicing transferable business skills and managerial skills, (2) being aware of intercultural differences and business etiquette, (3) understanding the principles of business ethics and corporate social responsibility, and (4) applying the principles of effecting business writing. Time of the course permitting, these four components incorporated into a language course are likely to make it more attractive and useful to the learner. This approach to language teaching was assessed in a questionnaire – tertiary level students were asked to assess their competence, strengths and weaknesses. The results of the study suggest that students highly appreciate the non-linguistic course components. The respondents believe that these components are of key importance in effective business communication and contribute to increased employability and promotion opportunities. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/27c843e88dd674c94f2d7494e12fd36a.pdf ade747dad2032a62972f7520a3d448af PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo University students‘ attitudes towards alternative assessment in FLT Sanja Josifovic Elezovic Faculty of Philology, University of Banjaluka Bosnia-Herzegovina sanjajosifovic@gmail.com Abstract: This paper describes a small-scale study of newly enrolled university students regarding their views of nontraditional strategies of assessment in foreign language teaching. Taking into account the importance of attitudes to student motivation for learning, as well as contemporary education reform issues related to assessment, the research investigates students‘ attitudes towards alternative assessment methods, primarily peer, self and portfolio assessment, following a one semester, undergraduate course at University of Banjaluka. Attitudes of students from 3 different faculties Philology, Philosophy, and Technology, are explored and compared. The findings reveal that majority of students endorse alternative assessment techniques in FLT, and suggest their implementation in other subjects. This research confirms numerous benefits of alternative assessment application at university level, supporting beliefs of other researchers that using alternative assessment techniques to assess student learning can lead to increased self reflection, higher cognitive skills development, improved intrinsic motivation, creativity, communication, cooperation, integration of language skills and enhanced overall student performance. In conclusion, benefits for students, teachers and institutions have been summarized, and the use of alternative assessment recommended as an effective supplement, if not replacement, to traditional tests and exams, which will suit the needs of individual students by paying more respect to their personal, linguistic and sociocultural diversity. Keywords: alternative assessment, attitudes, FLT, peer assessment, portfolio, university students Introduction During the last decades of XX and the first decade of the XXI century assessment has become a state-of-the-art topic for teachers, educators, researchers. It has been frequently mentioned in professional publications, workshops, conferences, in-service training, and university courses. The term "assessment" is used in different contexts and means different things to different people. It is perhaps most often understood as testing and grading: scoring quizzes and exams and assigning course grades to students, as a way of informing them about how well they did in the courses. An emerging vision of assessment is that of a dynamic process that continuously yields information about how well they are doing, i.e. student progress toward the achievement of learning goals. This vision of assessment acknowledges that when the information gathered is consistent with learning goals and is used appropriately to inform instruction, it can enhance student learning as well as document it. Rather than being an activity separate from instruction, assessment is growingly being viewed as an integral part of teaching and learning, and not just the culmination of instruction. The current reform movement in educational assessment encourages teachers to think about assessment more broadly than "testing" and using test results to assign grades and rank students. Alternative assessment is another notion which may imply different things, but most often denotes forms which differ from conventional assessment methods such as tests and exam essay questions. It is compatible with constructivist ideas in that it favours integration of assessment, teaching and learning; the involvement of students as active and informed participants; assessment tasks which are authentic, meaningful and engaging; assessments which mirror realistic contexts, in contrast with the artificial time constraints and limited access to support available in conventional exams; focus on both the process and products of learning; and moves away from single test or exam scores towards a descriptive assessment based on a range of abilities and outcomes (Sambell, McDowell & Brown, 1997). Many alternative assessment techniques have been developed and implemented into educational practice, mainly as a result of new insights into student learning, and as a counterpart to standardized tests, e.g. multiple choice tests and the like. These alternative techniques often refer to peer assessment, self assessment and portfolio assessment, sometimes also to authentic and performance assessment. 1058 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Peer assessment (PA) is also a term that may mean many things. A range of situations are encompassed by the term - assessment by other students, self assessment (of oral presentations/viva, of written work, assignments, tests, for marks, for formative/feedback purposes, for participation in group work/derive individual marks on group projects, mark one-on-one, whole class or group marks an individual's performance), peer group assessment or collaborative assessment. PA is found to increase student–student and student–teacher interactions, and can be used to increase learner‘s understanding of other students' ideas during the learning experience (Falchikov,1995; Sluijsmans et al.,1999). It can increase learners‘ understanding in the cognitive and metacognitive domains, and develop social and transferable skills (Topping,1998). Self assessment is nothing new, but in educational context it represents an alternative technique, a way of increasing the role and involvement of students as active participants in making judgements about their own learning (Boud, 1995). It is mostly used for formative assessment in order to foster reflection on one‘s own learning processes and results (Sluijsmans et al, 1999). If carefully planned and encouraged it can be a springboard for discussion - a comparison between teacher and student self assessed mark can reveal agreement or disagreement in over or underscoring and provide space for dialogue and further student improvement. Portfolio assessment is an ongoing process involving the student and teacher in selecting samples of student work for inclusion in a collection, the main purpose of which is to show the student's progress. It demonstrates and evidences that students have, or have not, mastered a set of learning objectives during a longer time period. More than folders containing students‘ homework, they are personalized, longitudinal representations of students‘ work and efforts. Above all, they are excellent assessment and self-reflective tools. Through selecting optional papers to include in their portfolios students discover their strengths and weaknesses, they see where they are for themselves and increase their metacognitive awareness. In the new era of assessment, students are supposed to be active, reflective learners, regulating their own learning processes largely on their own and by their individual choices. This then also implies that they should be active assessors, given that learning is inseparable from assessment. Taking into account the well-proven importance of attitudes to student motivation for learning, it could be assumed that their attitudes to assessment, an integral part of learning, are salient issues for all educators and education researchers. Problem Statement Academic assessment of students serves two main purposes, formative and summative. The former intends to improve the quality of learning and serves students' learning needs, and the latter is needed for accreditation of knowledge or performance and serves the needs of the society to evaluate the end-result of schooling (Boud, 1990). Boud was one of many who argued that the need for the formative assessment is usually neglected, and alternative assessments should be developed in order to improve student learning. And indeed, contemporary education reforms put forward new rules related to assessment, that insist on constant taking account of students‘ progress throughout the academic year, enforcing two or more mid-term tests, attendance and participation scores, homework and different activities scores and other kinds of scores. However, in practice, it all too often appears that the whole assessment process boils down to just that – continuous scoring. Both students and teachers seem to endlessly count points, the side effect often being an absurd, detrimental preoccupation with grades and scores, rather than progress and learning. Frequent quizzes and tests throughout the academic year may represent a kind of formative, as well as summative, comment on students‘ learning and progress, but it does not necessarily need to be that way. If teachers are pressured to complete demanding teaching materials planned by the syllabus and curriculum, prepare, administer, score and correct tests all by themselves all the time, it might be logical to assume that formative assessment and differentiated instruction simply stand in the way. Furthermore, if we take into account big numbers of students per one teacher, it becomes obvious that finding time for formative assessment must be a big issue. Tests are usually administered as planned, but do they guarantee benefits with regard to students‘ learning and progress? Many studies have shown that tests and grades themselves actually do not significantly improve learning or ensure students‘ progress (Black and William, 1998). In recent years of education reform implementation at Banjaluka University (BLU) there has been a continuing overreliance on traditional tests and exams. Assessment practices are still most often limited to pen and paper tests and exams, use of traditional assessment is dominant and little attention is given to alternative assessment. These practices might partly be causes of frequently unsatisfying situation in our academic context. On one hand, there are time and again frustrated students complaining about everlasting tests and exams, workload, low grades, boredom. On the other, there are recurrently frustrated teachers 1059 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo complaining about countless tests and exams, workload, low students‘ performance, administrative requirements. The key question that this research is concerned with, the question for both students and teachers to ask, is: Can alternative assessment application contribute to lessening earlier mentioned burden, boredom and bureaucracy? Given that students are indisputably at the centre of teaching and learning it seemed essential to enquire about their attitudes to alternative assessment first. In some other study, it will be more than relevant to examine teachers‘ attitudes to alternative assessment as well, and compare the two. The purpose of this study is to identify, describe and compare undergraduate students‘ attitudes regarding alternative assessment at BLU. Attitudes of students from 3 different faculties have been explored and compared - Faculty of Philology, students of English language and literature, Faculty of Philosophy, students of Primary Teacher and Preschool Teacher Education, and Faculty of Technology, students of Graphic and Textile Technology and Design. Research questions to start with were: What are the attitudes of undergraduate students to alternative and traditional methods? What are the attitudes of undergraduates at Faculty of Philology to alternative methods? What are the attitudes of undergraduates at Faculty of Philosophy to alternative methods? What are the attitudes of undergraduates at Faculty of Technology to alternative methods? Are there any differences between the attitudes of students from different faculties? assessment assessment assessment assessment Research design Sample The study was carried out after the first semester of the 2010-2011 academic year, in February 2011, with the participation of 122 newly enrolled students at BLU. Students come from 3 Faculties and 5 Departments - Faculty of Philology, Department of English language and literature (66), Faculty of Philosophy, Departments of Primary Teacher Education and Preschool Teacher Education (20), and Faculty of Technology, Departments of Graphic Technology and Textile Technology and Design (36). In the winter term 2010/2011 these students were involved in a range of both traditional and alternative 337 assessment techniques in their English classes. The sample is convenient and not representative of the entire BLU student population. Majority of the students were female, born in Bosnia-Hercegovina and age between 18 and 23. Level of proficiency in English was ranging from A1-C1. Method and instrument The study employed a qualitative approach, and a post-course and post-exam questionnaire was used as a data collection instrument. Students‘ general perceptions of different assessment practices and formats, traditional and alternative, formal and informal, assessment with and without grades, were then analysed and compared. The draft questionnaire had been pretested with fourth year students of English, and also in different forms of midterm and end-of-term self-reflective essays. The questionnaire University students‘ attitudes to assessment in FLT (EGP) (Appendix1) was given to students of English, while the questionnaire University students‘ attitudes to assessment in FLT (ESP) (Appendix2) was given to students of Primary and Preschool Teacher Education and students of Technology. The questionnaires are the same, open-ended in nature, consisting of 10 questions related to formal and informal, traditional and alternative, forms of assessment the students participated in during the winter term 2010/2011, including final exams in February 2011. The only difference is in question nine, the table providing scaffolding for assessment activities and the only closed-ended question asking for just one answer, where the number of assessment activities is lower for the students of English for Specific Purposes than for the students of English, who do English for General Purposes. Content analysis and constant comparison method were used for interpreting qualitative data. 337 This was done to a slightly less extent at Faculties of Philosophy and Technology, not because these students learn English for specific purposes but because the number of classes of English per week is much lower. Students at Faculty of Philology have 8 classes of English weekly (four classes for integrated skills and four for translations L1-L2 and L2-L1) whereas students at the other two faculties have only two classes per week. 1060 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Data collection and procedure Students were given questionnaires to fill in and clearly explained they were to be used solely for research purposes, their anonymity secured. They were asked to be honest and given as much time as they needed to complete the questionnaire. The language to be used was English, but it was made clear to the students that the interest was in their thoughts and feelings, not at all in their language proficiency. Moreover, they were offered to answer the questions using their mother tongue, if they found it easier. In the analysis process all the responses were transcribed into a Microsoft Word file, and afterwards analysed in terms of themes related to the study aims. There are several limitations to this study that have to be highlighted in order to avoid overgeneralisations and misinterpretations of results. First, due to time concerns the study was confined to 1st year students only, and only to students who came to class the day the questionnaire was delivered. Second, due to the open-ended nature of the questionnaire on several occasions it was unclear what students exactly meant, e.g. oral or written peer-assessment, speaking exam or speaking activity class, translation from L1-L2 or L2-L1. Therefore, the results should be interpreted with care and only as an initial insight into views of assessment of the students who participated in the sample. Further studies with the same and broader sample are intended to be performed in the future in order to obtain a more reliable and extensive picture. Results - analysis and discussion On the whole, students seemed very interested in discussing their views of assessment. They answered all questions, often providing detailed reasons for their choices and offering suggestions. There were only seven cases, all in Q9, when an answer was missing. Reasons for preferring some assessment methods to others mostly fall into categories of affect and motivation, language learning and learning in general. Substantial generalizations are impossible since great variability of answers was shown throughout, proving considerable individual differences, but some insight is offered based on frequencies of students‘ answers, analysed in categories determined by the questions in the questionnaire. Personal preferences of assessment activity. In the first two questions, students expressed their personal assessment favourites, individual likes and dislikes, and gave reasons for them. The form of assessment that received the greatest frequency for both EGP (38%) and ESP students (40%) was an alternative form - portfolio. The most frequently mentioned reasons for it being the favourite referred to having enough time for learning, fostering creativity, interesting topics, handiness (‗everything in one place‘). Findings show that students generally prefer home assignments to timed exam assignments. It is not surprising, taking into consideration exam anxiety and stress. However, there were also students who expressed doubts to reliability of assessing home assignments due to greater possibility of cheating – copying essays from Internet or friends, or using Google translate. A third of ESP students disliked traditional assessment form test, mostly because they found it boring and stressful. Difficulty. Q3 and Q4 investigated students‘ opinion of the difficulty of assessment practices. The results indicate that some forms are more difficult for individual students than others but generally only small number of students found any of the assessment activities either too hard or too easy. This may imply that the level of difficulty was appropriate for most students. Portfolio was mentioned as the easiest by more than a third of the sample. Usefulness. Next set of questions, Q5 and Q6, examined students‘ opinion of usefulness of assessment practices. ESP students frequently mentioned portfolio and oral exam, while EGP students showed a great diversity here by regarding very different assessment forms as useful for them. The agreement in the most frequent answers was not higher than 20%. Generally, they found traditional forms, like dictation, essay writing or translation tests, useful. However, peer assessment was also marked as useful by 18% of students. Potential for overall language competence assessment. Q7 asked which assessment activities they feel show best their competence in English and why. The most frequent answer was oral assessment (40%), and then writing papers‘ assessment. Dictations and translations came after speaking and writing, and portfolio and peer assessment were mentioned by only 10 percent of the sample. In ESP group oral exam as best method of showing their competence was mentioned by 52% of the students, and 33% mentioned portfolio. Potential for extensive holistic assessment of students – learner screening. Q8 asked which assessment activities students feel show the teachers what type of student they really are. Similar to the previous question answers, the most frequent answer was oral exam – about 40%. This suggests that students value oral communication more highly than written. ESP students mentioned portfolio (34%) more often than EGP students (17%) as revealing them as students. 1061 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Q9 required from the students to evaluate more precisely each assessment activity undertaken throughout the course and exam, deciding on only one word that best describes each. Results are shown in the tables 1 and 2: Peer assess oral assess Peer Written Portfolio activities Self assessment Writing at home Lett Essays for nat speak Translation L1L2 test Translation L2L1 test exam Dict Test Timed essay Oral xamV Oral examT Table1 : Students‘ evaluation of traditional and alternative assessment forms (EGP – English Language and Literature) T A A A A A A T T T T T 4 4 4 8 11 4 5 10 6 4 3 12 Assessment Form/Activity Dict Class FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY Assessment A Type/mode Excellent 5 Interesting 4 5 18 9 18 13 9 15 4 2 19 19 15 Boring 1 2 7 7 5 3 8 14 3 3 4 1 2 Fun 4 0 9 9 12 11 5 6 4 3 3 4 8 Too easy 2 1 0 1 2 0 3 1 1 0 6 3 0 Too hard 3 7 2 2 0 2 2 1 6 15 4 5 5 Helpful 23 10 13 10 9 9 12 14 6 5 8 8 3 Important 7 23 2 0 0 6 9 1 22 23 11 11 10 Useful 16 10 9 14 6 6 13 6 10 6 4 5 1 Useless 0 1 0 10 3 2 0 3 0 2 1 0 2 Worthless 1 0 1 0 2 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 2 Other please0 state _______ 3 1 0 1 2 0 0 0 1 1 7 6 Number of66 responses N 65 Good (Little stresfulhard) NA 66 (good) (Little hard) NA 66 66 65 (stress (good) stres stres ful) 5 5 NA 2 NA 1 66 66 66 66 66 64 65 Table2: Students‘ evaluation of traditional and alternative assessment forms (ESP - Technology&Teacher Education) FACULTY OF TECHNOLOGY and FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY (TEACHER EDUCATION) Peer Assessment assess Peer assessPortfolio Writing atTest -grammar form/activity oral Written activities home translation Oral examV Assess type A A A A T T 5 3 10 3 7 10 Excellent 9 1 6 Interesting 12 12 1 4 4 6 3 Boring 1062 Oral examT T 10 8 1 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Fun Too easy Too hard Helpful 12 Important Useful 6 12 1 4 6 Useless Worthless Other please state ________ N 56 3 1 3 10 4 7 9 3 1 6 5 2 1 14 10 7 4 2 56 56 56 1 11 7 2 2 10 4 3 6 6 4 22 7 3 17 12 16 9 // 54 56 56 Generally speaking, students in the sample found alternative assessment either interesting and fun, or useful and helpful, whereas traditional assessment mainly important. It is obvious from the table that traditional assessment forms, written exams were dominantly qualified as important, while less traditional forms like peer-assessment, portfolio and self assessment were most frequently described as interesting. It is slightly surprising to note that, contrary to other parts of formal traditional written exam like translations and dictation, students of English found oral exam interesting, even excellent, more frequently than important. Especially surprising is to see that timed essay, another traditional form of assessment, was mostly qualified as interesting, rather than important. It is important to note that although majority of students found peer assessment useful and helpful, as well as interesting and fun, there were also almost 20 percent of those who thought written peer assessment was useless. This form of assessment was mainly new to the students, and probably the most demanding of their cognitive and linguistic abilities. The reasons they mentioned to explain their negative attitude to this kind of assessment mainly referred to their incompetence, lack of expertise in language assessment, or sheer insincerity to peers. In Q10 students were asked which form of assessment was entirely new to them. Almost half of the students said it was peer assessment, and immediately after that portfolio and essays for the native speaker. Findings suggest that majority of students at BLU are not familiar with alternative assessment methods when they start employing them. Only very few say their high school teachers used peer correction, peer comments or portfolio. Instead, the entire assessment process throughout their preuniversity education, i.e. elementary and high school, seems to be heavily teacher dependent. It was clear from the questionnaire that a great number of students of English expressed positive attitudes to different assessment practices. When asked to say which assessment activities are the least useful, more than a third of students in the sample answered that everything is useful. They show greater awareness of the importance of various kinds of language assessment techniques than students from the other two faculties in the study, especially Faculty of Technology. This may be explained by their better understanding of complex nature of language as such, as well as of language learning and assessment. It was interesting to note that, on the whole, students often did not make a clear distinction between some assessment and learning activity. They commented portfolio as almost solely a learning activity. This can further imply that they do not differentiate between the two. Such finding further indicates that some students are not aware of certain assessment techniques, thus proving the fact that learning and assessment are indeed, in practice, frequently inseparable. Conclusions and Recommendations The main conclusions that can be drawn from the study are that there is no major agreement among students on the best assessment technique that fits all and that students are not indifferent to assessment methods but have strong attitudes towards the ways their knowledge, and more particularly their language competence, is assessed. This study has also proved that students‘ perceptions of alternative assessment are to some extent problematic. Students were sometimes contradictory in their attitudes in that despite very positive personal preferences and opinions of alternative assessment activities they frequently viewed traditional, teacher governed, assessment as a more important, valid and reliable indicator of their competence. This indicates a strong social basis of attitudes in foreign language learning and the importance of educational strategies aimed at developing appropriate attitudes toward assessment in general. 1063 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo In the light of the above conclusions it may be generally recommended that alternative assessment strategies should be given more space in language classrooms, but must be very carefully organized, explained to students and methodically monitored. Students need to be trained and given time to get accustomed to the novelties in assessment. After that, alternative techniques could progressively be given more credit in the overall assessment of students. The development of positive attitudes toward the innovative assessment and learning activities is an important step toward developing more balanced assessment designs in higher education. Implications for theory are mainly in the confirmed finding that the questions which assessment method is the best and which instruments best reflect student achievement and competence remain unresolved. The purpose of this research was not to establish which method is the best, but to explore students‘ attitudes towards different assessment practices and obtain deeper insight into experience of assessment from the students‘ perspectives . A practical recommendation to teachers would be to employ various methods and also offer students choices regarding assessment, after which teachers could research which assessment their students preferred to engage in. There is no, and probably never will be, one best method for assessing students‘ knowledge. It is yet another sound reason why many different assessment methods should be employed, including various alternative assessment techniques. It is sensible to vary the weight of alternative assessment marks against traditional assessment marks in the final grade according to context. In the initial stages, when students are not used to the alternatives, it is more feasible to give them less importance in the final mark than after a semester or two of using alternatives as ways of assessment. Some balance between the two ought to be found so that a profile of students‘ abilities can be reliably assessed, and respect paid to individual personal, linguistic and sociocultural differences. Recommendations for further study in the area would include a larger and a more diverse population during a longer research period. In future research, attitudes by male and female students could be compared, as well as different age groups and students at different years of study. Teachers‘ and administrators‘ attitudes to assessment should also be explored, particularly their readiness to employ and experiment with alternatives to the canon. All in all, it is not to be forgotten that changes for better or for worse take time to implement, and so does alternative assessment. Teachers need to bear in mind that educating is greatly about raising awareness, broadening horizons, fostering critical and creative thinking, developing whole persons. Some students simply like to be spoon fed. Some teachers enjoy it too. That way is easier for both. However, students need to learn how to feed themselves and they will not learn it unless someone puts a plate of food and a spoon in front of them. What follows may not be pleasing or immediately successful, but is there another way to learn how to eat? Students need to learn the material, but also to make decisions about what they need to know, how they will acquire that knowledge and whether they succeeded in it. If students are to become autonomous learners, better-equipped for life-long learning and improvement, they ought to take greater responsibility for both learning and assessment. It ought to be reminded that although teachers should be required to design various assessment tasks that efficiently and continuously encourage students' learning and autonomy, the implementation of this policy needs to suggest an optimistic future for teachers, as well as students. It has to be taken into consideration that, while universities have been under increasing pressure to improve the quality of both the teaching and learning of their students, they have also faced diminishing funding, increasing student numbers and fulfilling complicated, time-consuming administrative requirements. Heavy workloads of teachers resulting from these factors unquestionably have implications for assessment methods. References Alderson, J. C. and Banerjee, J. (2001). Language testing and assessment (Part 1). Language Teaching 34, 4:213-236. Bachman, L. & Palmer A.S. (1996). Language testing in Practice: Developing Useful language tests. Oxford: Oxford University Press . Black, P. and Wiliam D., (1998). Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment . London: School of Education, King's College. Boud, D. (1990). Assessment and the promotion of academic values, Studies in Higher Education 15, 110–113. 1064 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Boud, D. (1995). Enhancing learning through self-assessment, London, Routledge Falmer. Cohen, A. D. (1994). Assessing language ability in the classroom. 2nd edition. Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle Publishers. Council of Europe. (2001). Common European Framework Of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Falchikov, N. (1995). Peer feedback marking: Developing peer assessment, Innovations in Education and Teaching International 32, 175–187. Falchikov, Nancy & Goldfinch, Judy (2000). Student peer assessment in higher education: A metaanalysis comparing peer and teacher marks. Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 287–322. Falchikov, N. (2001). Learning Together: Peer Tutoring in Higher Education. London:Routledge Falmer. Falchikov, Nancy (2005). Improving Assessment through student involvement: Practical solution for aiding learning in higher and further education. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Genesee, F. and Upshur, J. (1996). Classroom-based Evaluation in Second Language Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hancock, C.R. (1994). Alternative assessment and second language study, CAL Digests Huerta-Macias. (1995). Alternative assessment – Responses to commonly asked questions. TESOL Journal. 5.8–11. Kirkpatrick, D. and Fuller, R. (1995). The challenge of peer assessment. In Summers, L. (Ed), A Focus on Learning, p146-149. Proceedings of the 4th Annual Teaching Learning Forum, Edith Cowan University, February 1995. Perth: Edith Cowan University. http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/tlf/tlf1995/kirkpatrick.html Peng, Jui-ching. (2010). Peer Assessment in an EFL Context: Attitudes and Correlations. In Selected Proceedings of the 2008 Second Language Research Forum, ed. Matthew T. Prior et al., 89-107. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. www.lingref.com, document #2387. Richards C. J., Renenadaya A. W., (2002): Methodology in Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sambell, K., McDowell, L., & Brown, S. (1997). 'But is it fair?': an exploratory study of student perceptions of the consequential validity of assessment. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 23 (4), 349371. Sluijsmans, Dominique, M. A., Dochy, Filip, J. R. C., & Moerkerke, Geroge (1999). Creating a learning environment by using self-, peer- and co-assessment. Learning Environments Research, 1, 293–319. Topping, Keith (1998). Peer assessment between students in colleges and universities. Review of Educational Research, 68(3), 249–276. Tsagari, Dina. (2004). Is there life beyond language testing? Crile Working Papers No58. APPENDIX 1 Sample questionnaire form for EGP students University students‘ attitudes to assessment in FLT (EGP) Please answer honestly the following questions related to your experience with Modern English 1 course: 1 Which assessment activities of the Modern English 1 course do you like the most? Please say why. 2 Which assessment activities do you dislike the most? Why? 3 Which assessment activities do you think are the hardest? Why? 1065 �Excellent Interesting Boring Fun Too easy Too hard Helpful Important Useful Useless Worthless Other: please state ________ 10 Which assessment activities were totally new to you and how did you feel about them? APPENDIX 2 Oral examT Oral examV –Gram Test Voc at Writing home Portfolio activities assess Peer Written Peer oral assess Sample questionnaire form for ESP students University students‘ attitudes to assessment in FLT (ESP) Please answer honestly the following questions related to your experience with English 1 course: 1 Which assessment activities of the English 1 course do you like the most? Please say why. 2 Which assessment activities do you dislike the most? Why? 3 Which assessment activities do you think are the hardest? Why? 4 Which assessment activities do you think are the easiest? Why? 5 Which assessment activities do you think are the most useful? Why? 6 Which assessment activities do you think are the least useful? Why? 7 Which assessment activities do you feel show best your competence in English? Why? 8 Which assessment activities do you feel show the teachers what type of student you really are? Why? 9 Please rate different assessment activities you engaged in using one word that best describes it: Excellent Interesting Boring Fun Too easy Too hard 1066 Oral examT exam Timed essay Translation L2-L1 test Translation L1-L2 test Essays for nat speaker at Writing home Lett Self assessment Portfolio activities assess Peer Written assess Peer oral Dictation T Dictation C 4 Which assessment activities do you think are the easiest? Why? 5 Which assessment activities do you think are the most useful? Why? 6 Which assessment activities do you think are the least useful? Why? 7 Which assessment activities do you feel show best your competence in English? Why? 8 Which assessment activities do you feel show the teachers what type of student you really are? Why? 9 Please rate different assessment activities you engaged in using one word that best describes it: Oral examV 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Helpful Important Useful Useless Worthless Other: please ________ state 10 Which assessment activities were totally new to you and how did you feel about them? If you have any additional comments please write overleaf. Thank you 1067 � 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. 580 Title A name given to the resource University students‘ attitudes towards alternative assessment in FLT Author Author Josifovic Elezovic, Sanja Abstract A summary of the resource. This paper describes a small-scale study of newly enrolled university students regarding their views of nontraditional strategies of assessment in foreign language teaching. Taking into account the importance of attitudes to student motivation for learning, as well as contemporary education reform issues related to assessment, the research investigates students‘ attitudes towards alternative assessment methods, primarily peer, self and portfolio assessment, following a one semester, undergraduate course at University of Banjaluka. Attitudes of students from 3 different faculties - Philology, Philosophy, and Technology, are explored and compared. The findings reveal that majority of students endorse alternative assessment techniques in FLT, and suggest their implementation in other subjects. This research confirms numerous benefits of alternative assessment application at university level, supporting beliefs of other researchers that using alternative assessment techniques to assess student learning can lead to increased self reflection, higher cognitive skills development, improved intrinsic motivation, creativity, communication, cooperation, integration of language skills and enhanced overall student performance. In conclusion, benefits for students, teachers and institutions have been summarized, and the use of alternative assessment recommended as an effective supplement, if not replacement, to traditional tests and exams, which will suit the needs of individual students by paying more respect to their personal, linguistic and sociocultural diversity. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/a8fe24b8aa1beaa4d02922362bc6a14a.pdf a59cf6886c7a60903c0f8a30326d4b25 PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo The Teaching of [θ] and [ð] Sounds in English Ali KARAKAġ* Ecehan SÖNMEZ** Department of English Language Teaching Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Turkey akarakas@mehmetakif.edu.tr Abstract: Pronunciation teaching has its unique place in the curricula of most of the European countries though it has been neglected in Turkey so far. Mispronunciation of some core sounds is among the fundamental problems in the speech of both nonnative pre-service and in-service teachers in Turkey. The [θ] and [ð] sounds constitute the biggest trouble for Turks, for they do not take place in the Turkish sound system. To remedy this case, a sample lesson plan on teaching these problem causing-sounds has been developed according to the audio articulation method, which is claimed to be a fossilized pronunciation mistake breaker. It is hoped that the sample lesson plan on the [θ] and [ð] sounds will correct the pronunciation mistakes of non-native English teachers and teacher-trainees in Turkey. Key Words: [θ] and [ð] sounds, corpus, pronunciation mistakes, the audioarticulation model. INTRODUCTION According to HiĢmanoğlu (2009, p. 1697) ‗‘Pronunciation is a significant part of foreign language teaching‘‘, since having a good pronunciation is one of the most important signs of getting mastery in foreign language learning and teaching. However, the fossilized pronunciation errors may be a barrier for learners who are trying to get mastery in foreign language (FL) and second language (L2) in that such errors harm the learners‘ speech fluency and prevent them from speaking English in the way native speakers do. Of all the fossilized pronunciation errors, the phonemes /θ/ and / ð/ have always been problematic not only for Turkish learners of English but also for Turkish teachers of English who are already on the job (HiĢmanoğlu, 2009). These sounds cause severe pronunciation problems to the Turkish learners of English during the articulation process. That‘s why, they need an urgent remediation, which is going to be provided with a model lesson on teaching the /θ/ and / ð/ contrasts through the audio-articulation method (AAM) developed by Demirezen (2004) as fossilized pronunciation error breaker. Besides the AAM, some principles of the Audio-lingual Method (ALM) will be employed in the activities of the sample lesson plan to supplement the teaching of TH sounds. The Nature of Difficulty of /θ/ and / ð/ for Turks The main reason of difficulty of these phonemes lies under the fact that these sounds [θ] and [ð] do not exist in the sound system of Turkish. As it is seen in figure 2, the [θ] sound, which is named theta, is a voiceless interdental fricative sound while the [ð] sound, which is called eth, is a voiced interdental fricative sound as it is seen in figure 1. They are among the problem-causing consonants for Turkish learners of English, for they are not coded in modern standard Turkish (Demirezen, 2007, 2010). The voiceless [θ] sound can be heard clearly in such words like thick /θɪk/, ethnic /ɛθnɪk/ and sheath /ʆiθ/. The voiced [ð] sound can be heard in such words like thus /ðʌs/, within /wɪðɪn/ and lathe /leɪð/. Both [θ] and [ð] are highly frequent sounds in English language. Therefore, they require a special attention if the aim is to properly teach these sounds at the micro level and English at the macro level. As can be seen apparently above, these sounds occur word initially, word medially and word finally. To be able to get the bottom of the problem, it is beneficial to investigate the articulation of these sounds. After that, it is necessary to diagnose the problem and find out a remedy for the treatment. Figure 1: The mouth position of the /ð/ phoneme Figure2: The Mouth Position of the /θ/ phoneme (Adapted from Baker and Goldstein, 2008) 74 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo The Articulation of the /θ/ and / ð/ Phonemes Since these sounds are non-existent in Turkish sound system, difficulty arises in the production of them. The most common tendency is that Turkish learners replace the phoneme /θ/ with the phoneme /t/ and the phoneme /ð/ with the phoneme /d/. The word pairs below can be given as examples to the above statement:       /θɔt/ team /tim/ vs. theme /θim/ mat /mæt/ vs. math /mæθ/ boot /but/ vs. booth /buθ/ taught / tɔt/ vs. thought   dose /doʊs/ vs. those /ðoʊz/ dough /doʊ/ vs. though /ðoʊ/ dare /dɛər/ vs. there /ðɛər/ sued /sud/ vs. soothe /suð/ The reason of this tendency to replace the non-existent unvoiced and voiced [θ] and [ð] sounds stems from ‗‘the establishment of mother tongue interference‘‘ (Demirezen, 2008). As these sounds are not coded in the Turkish consonant chart, they are converted to into the closest sounds in the mother tongue; in this case they are mostly /t/ and /d/ to compensate for the lack of exact sounds in the target language (Dalton, 1997). To remedy these two fossilized pronunciation errors, a model lesson plan will be presented below, which has been organized by taking the principles of the AAM method and some ALM principles into account. AN APPLICATION OF THE AUDIO-ARTICULATION PRONUNCIATION REHABILITATION MODEL ON TEACHING THE /Θ/ AND /Ð/ PHONEMES Time limit: 45-50 minutes. Model: Audio Articulation Model & Audio-lingual Method. 1. Warm up – motivation The teacher of the course starts up with a poem including the problem causing-sounds. This session lasts nearly 3 or 4 minutes. If there occurs a probability of exceeding the time limit, the teacher has the right to keep the warm up session short by skipping the last part of the poem. T: Good afternoon everybody. How are you today? You all look very lively. Ss: Good afternoon, sir. We‘re all fine. T: Ok, friends. I wonder who likes poetry in the class. Ss: (Students who like poetry raise their hands.) T: Great. Today, we are going to read a poem. Who wants to read the poem? I need two volunteers. One will be the mother while the other will be the child. Hülya: I can be the mom, sir. ġeniz: And, I can be the child. T: Thanks, ladies. Ok, then. Let us start. Here is the poem. Enjoy it! My Thumbies Child: I have two thin thumbies They're with me day and night. My favorite thumb is on my left. The other's on my right My thumbies always soothe me when I am feeling sad. They help me to protect myself when I am feeling mad. My thumbies help me fall asleep when I am feeling tired. I do not know how better friends could ever be desired. My mother says it's time to quit-that sucking thumbs is bad. And every time I suck my thumbs, my mom gets very mad. Mom: You've got to quit. Don't suck thy thumbs--your left one or your right. It's pushing all your front teeth out. It's ruining your bite. It might take years to get straight teeth, with braces on your mouth. It isn't fun. Believe me, son. So keep your thumbs down south. Child: I'm 5 years old It's time to quit-of all the silly habits. I don't want people thinking that my teeth look like a rabbit's. 75 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Hùlya and ġeniz read the poem loudly and the other students listen to them. The teacher notices that they have some problems with voiced and voiceless TH sounds. But, the teacher does not make any correction of pronunciation and does not warn any of them, either. T: All right ladies. Thanks a lot. Ok, class. Let‘s remember what we did in our former class. 2. Reviewing the previous topic T: Friends, do you remember what we did in our former lesson? Ss: Yes, sir. We studied on the articulation of [t] and [d] sounds. T: Well done. Who can give the phonetic identifications of these sounds together with sample words? Ufuk: Sir, the [t] sound is a voiceless alveolar stop consonant and, the [d] sound is a voiced alveolar stop sound in English. (Barlow, J.A. & Gierut, J.A., 2002, Demirezen, 1987). We can see the [t] sound in such words tin /tɪn/, tank /tæŋk/, tease /ti:z/, and the [d] sound in the words day / dey/, and dice /daɪs/. T: Very good, Ufuk. Thanks. Now, it is time for today‘s topic. 3. Stating the aim of the lesson The teacher sets the goal of the lesson and writes the topic on the board, by saying: T: Dear friends, today we will study the articulation of [θ] and [ð] sounds in English, which were mispronounced by your friends during the poetry session in such words as they and teeth. Your friends tended to pronounce the [θ] as [t] and the [ð] sound as [d]. Please, be careful [t] and [d] sounds are mostly employed instead of the [θ] and [ð] sounds by Turkish students. In fact, [t] is a voiceless alveolar stop fortis sound and the [d] is a voiced alveolar stop lenix sound (Kelly, 2001, p. 49). However, the [θ] and [ð] sounds have different phonetic identifications which do not exist out language. After stating the aim of the lesson, the teacher gets ready to present his/her corpus that includes 50-100 words including the [θ] and [ð] sounds. The teacher arranges the words in the order of word-initially, wordmedially and word finally positions so that students can discriminate how they are articulated in all positions. Besides this, the teacher puts the transcriptions of these words into the corpus. After doing so, the teacher makes sure that students know all the words, otherwise it is better for the teacher to handle the unknown words in the corpus. a) Presenting the corpus The corpus prepared by the teacher should be given to the students in the class. It is important that students should also be provided with the sounds of the words in the corpus. Table 1: The corpus of the [θ] sound Word-Initially thigh /θaɪ/ thread Word-Medially /θrɛd/ ether /iθər/ /ɛθnɪk/ thou /θoʊ/ theorem /θiərəm/ ethnic thus /θʌs/ therapy /θɛrəpi/ method /mɛθəd/ thistle /θɪsəl/ thicken /θɪkən/ athlete /θif/ thicket /θɪkɪt/ pathetic /pəθɛtɪk/ thief Word-Finally bathtub /bæθtʌb/ breath /brɛθ/ toothpick /tuθpɪk/ sheath /ʆiθ/ length /lɛŋkθ/ month /mʌnθ bathrobe /bæθroʊb/ teeth /ti:θ/ fourth /fɔrθ/ panther loath /loʊθ/ broth /brɔθ/ bathroom /bæθrum/ wreath /riθ/ math /mæθ/ /iθɑs/ cathedral /kəθidrəl/ mouth /maʊθ/ worth /bɜrθ/ beneath /bɪniθ/ /æθlit/ /pænθər/ theme /θim/ thimble /θɪmbəl/ ethos thesis /θisɪs/ thug /θʌg/ apathy /æpəθi/ mouthful /maʊθfʊl/ sooth thick /θɪk/ thrift /θrɪft/ earthy /ɜrθi// bathmat /bæθmæt/ bath /bæθ/ faith /feɪθ/ thud /θʌd/ thorn /θɔrn/ ethic /ɛθɪk/ cloth /klɔθ/ booth /buθ/ thrift /θrɪft/ thumb /θʌm/ ethereal /ɪθɪriəl/ lethal /liθəl/ lath /læθ/ myth /mɪθ/ pithy zither /zɪθər/ birth /bɜrθ/ wrath /ræθ/ thrash /θræʆ/ thrill /θrɪl/ /pɪθi/ stealthy /stɛlθi/ /suθ/ 76 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo To compare the [θ] sound with the [ð] sound, the teacher needs to present another corpus including the [ð] sound in the words. This type of contrastive analysis will help students discriminate the difference between two sounds. Table 2: The corpus of the [ð] sound Word-Initially Word-Medially Word-Finally this‘ll /ðɪsəl/ thereof /ðɛərʌv/ either /ˈiðər/ smoother /smuðər/ breathe /brið/ thus /ðʌs/ thereby /ðɛərbaɪ/ mother /mʌðər/ northern /nɔrðərn/ bathe /beɪð/ scathe /skeɪð/ thou /ðaʊ/ therefor /ðɛərfɔr/ father /fɑ:ðər/ clothe/kloʊð/ blythe /blaɪð/ thy /ðaɪ/ therefore /ðɛrfɔr/ tether /tɛðər/ together /təgɛðər/ lathe than /ðæn/ they‘ll /ðeɪl/ dither /dɪðər/ southern /sʌðərn sheathe /ʆið/ those /ðoʊz/ then /ðɛn/ feather /fɛðər/ heather /hɛðər/ withe gather /gæðər/ /leɪð/ /wɪð/ the /ðə/ theirs /ðɛrz/ bother /bɑðər/ rhythm /rɪðəm/ soothe /suð/ these /ðiz/ them /ðɛm/ brother /brʌðər/ weather /wɛðər/ teethe they /ðeɪ/ their /ðər/ neither /niðər/ bathing/ /beɪðɪŋ/ wreathe /r:ið/ that /ðæt/ thence/ /ðɛns/ within /wɪðɪn/ further /fɜrðər/ mouth/maʊð/ there /ðɛr/ thee / ði/ other rather /ræðər/ loathe /loʊð/ though /ðoʊ/ this /ðɪs/ worthy /wɜrði/ /ʌðər/ another /ənʌðər/ lithe blithe /blaɪð/ scythe /sið/ seethe /sið/ tithe /taɪð/ writhe /raɪð/ /ti:ð/ /laɪð/ After the presentation of the corpus, students are asked to repeat these words in small doses individually or in group. Since over-repeating may be boring for the students, the teacher should avoid creating a parrot-like repetition phase and should keep the phase as lively as possible. The teacher should target those students who have trouble in articulating the words correctly. Having done all these chores, the teacher can establish the minimal pairs by exposing the [θ-ð] differences. b) Establishing the minimal pairs The teacher firstly handles the unknown words. It is also advisable to establish the minimal pairs with related pictures so that students can see the differentiations in meaning. The teacher tries to specify the words into minimal pairs with contrastive analysis (Baker and Goldstein, 1992). Students are asked to repeat the minimal pairs in single, group or choir. During the repetition phase, the teacher gets closer to the students to see the students‘ mouth positions, and to observe whether they can articulate the sounds correctly or not. The frequently encountered voiceless and voiced TH minimal pairs are as follows: [θ]             vs. sheath (n) /ʆi:θ/ thigh /θaɪ/ teeth (n) /tiːθ/ ether /i:θər/ loath (adj) /loʊθ/ wreath (n) /ri:θ/ mouth (n) /maʊθ/ thou /θaʊ/ sooth (adj) /su:θ/ thus /θʌs/ thistle /θɪsəl/ with /wɪθ/ [ð] sheathe (v) /ʆi:ð/ thy /ðaɪ/ teethe (v) /tiːð/ either (Am.)/i:ðər/ loathe (v) /loʊð/ wreathe (v)/ri:ð/ mouth (v) /maʊð/ thou /ðaʊ/ soothe /su:ð/ thus /ðʌs/ this‘ll /ðɪsəl/ withe /wɪð/ 77 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo c) Establishing near-minimal pairs Sometimes an exact minimal pair contrasting two phonemes may not exist in a language. Linguists then look for near minimal pairs. In a near minimal pair only the sounds surrounding the phonemes are identical.     [θ] bath /bæθ/ cloth /klɔθ/ breath /brɛθ/ lath /læθ/ [ð] bathe /beɪð/ clothe /kloʊð/ breathe /brið/ lathe /leɪð/ d) Tongue twisters The tongue twisters are practiced individually, in pairs or chorus in class after the teacher exhorts them first. The teacher can also make use of audio files of the tongue twisters. 1. A sheath A sword sheath A sheathed sword sheath A leather sheathed sword sheath 5. Breath Breathing the breath Breathing the toothy breath Breathing the toothy breath with a thief 2. Either Either of these Either of these ethers Either of these third-rate ethers 6. A bath A filthy bath Bathing in a filthy bath Bathing the baby in a filthy bath 3. Teeth Healthy teeth Healthy teeth in the mouth Healthy teeth teething in the mouth 7. A cloth A wool cloth A thicker wool cloth A thicker wool cloth to clothe 4. Thigh Thick thigh Thy thick thigh Thy thick thigh in a pie 8. Wreathing Wreathing Thomas Wreathing Thomas in a wreath Wreathing Thomas in a wreath with wrath e) Giving the rule The teacher should give the rule in a way that will enable students to capture it in clear details. For this reason, the teacher can use figures or charts illustrating the mouth position in the articulation of the problemcausing sounds. The teacher claps his/her hands to catch students‘ attention by saying: T: Dear students, it is RULE TIME now. Wide open your eyes and lend me your ears, please. As you can see in the figure below, we stick out our tongue a bit between the upper and lower teeth (Demirezen 1987: 39) and then we blow out air. Both sounds are inter-dental fricatives (Ladefoged, 2001). Please, pay attention to the [ð] sound; for it is a voiced consonant while the [θ] sound is a voiceless one. 78 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Figure 3: The articulational positinioning of of the [ð] and [θ] sounds in the mouth (Figures taken from http://englishgoes.com/en/english-pronunciation-lesson-2-th/) Kelly (2001) gives us some suggested ways of explaining how to form these two consonants: For the articulation of the [ð] and [θ] sounds: ―Put the front of your tongue against the back of your top teeth. Let the air pass through as you breathe out. Don‘t use your voice. Hold the sound, and add your voice‖ (p. 55). After giving the rule, the teacher shows a video to the students, in which a native speaker models how to articulate these sounds with sample words. Then, the teacher can do further exercises. 4. Doing Further Exercises In this part, the teacher does further articulations of the problematic sounds with different activities by creating a game like atmosphere. For example, the teacher can establish minimal sentences for students. A. Minimal Sentences (The teacher practices minimal sentences without boring students. First, s/he reads the sentences, and then s/he gets students to repeat in isolation, pairs or choir. It is advisable that the teacher should create his/her own minimal sentences by appealing to students‘ areas of interest.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Elizabeth can easily spell the word THY / THIGH. I don‘t like EITHER / ETHER. My father makes a good LATHER / LATHER. How do you say the word LOATHE / LOTH? They will SHEATHE / SHEATH the blade. (Nilsen & Nilsen, 1973) Rachel doesn‘t know the meaning of SOOTH / SOOTHE. Liz told me that she found THOU / THOU on the street yesterday. TEETHE / TEETH is a difficult word to pronounce. Does the word WREATHE / WREATH have two ‗e‘ letters? Here is an example word including TH: BATH / BATHE. LATH / LATHE is an unknown word for many students. B. Sentences with contextual clues (After the teacher exhorts the sentences, s/he practices the following sentences without boring students, in single or in pairs.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Julia will EITHER get ETHER or novocain. Please SHEATHE your knife in a SHEATH. The baby‘s TEETH will soon TEETHE. They will WREATHE him in a WREATH. Michael is LOTH to LOATHE anyone in the class. (Nilsen & Nilsen, 1973) Don‘t MOUTH a speech when your MOUTH is full. The three children BATHE in the same BATH. My daughter couldn‘t find a CLOTH to CLOTHE her doll. A SOOTH herbal tea will SOOTHE her. Mine, THOU lord of life, send me a THOU again Does THY THIGH hurt a lot after the operation? 79 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo   (voiceless Thou / /θaʊ/ /slang, one thousand dollars, pounds, etc.) (voiced Mouth /maʊð/ v. to utter in a sonorous or pompous manner) C. Oral Reading (The teacher prepares or finds an interesting paragraph including the problematic sounds. S/he makes students read the paragraph and want them to find the number of the TH sounds in the text. S/he can also invite the students to the stage, and gets him/her show the voiced or unvoiced TH sounds in the paragraph. An example is shown below.) Instruction: Listen to the speaker carefully and note down the words that have /ð/ and /θ/ in it. How many voiced and unvoiced TH sounds can you find? Even though my father is a weatherman, he can't predict with absolute certainty whether it will rain or not. Neither can the other people who work with him. They say there's only a thirty per cent chance of rain, and the next thing you know, it's pouring. They predict snow, and there's nothing for another five days. Then, there's a blizzard. So rather than trust my father's weather forecasts, I use a more reasonable approach. I ask my mother. (Taken from: www.eslgold.com/pronunciation/voiced_sound_th.html) Students listen to the speaker and note down the words including voiced or unvoiced TH sounds. Then, the teacher shows them the answer key so that the students can compare their own answers with the right ones. D. Sound Discrimination Exercise (The teacher presents an exercise in which students need to choose the sound they hear.) 1. "_____ be good medicine for you." the doctor said. a. This'll b. Thistle 2. Hospitals smell like ____. a. either b. ether 3. He could not speak. He couldn't even ______ the words. a. mouthe b. mouth 4. In 1620, the Pilgrims believed in "love _____ neighbor". a. thy b. thigh 5. Swords and rapiers are kept in a ______. a.sheathe b.sheath 6. The baby is crying. He must be cutting his _______. a. teethe b. teeth 7. Babies usually start to _______ around 6 months of age. a. teethe b. teeth 8. The carpenter is an excellent ____. a. lather (/laythe-^r/) b. lather(/lath-^r/) 9. This shampoo doesn't produce enough _. a. lather (/laythe-^r/) b. lather(/lath-^r/) 10. You hate him very much. In fact, you _____ him a. loathe b. loth E. Sentence Level Tongue Twisters (The teacher can present sentence level tongue twisters that include both voiced and unvoiced TH words. S/he practices the twisters carefully without boring the students. The order of the tongue twisters should be from simple to complex. The teacher should be on alert to correct the committed mistakes immediately in class.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. They threw three thick things. Is this the thing? - Yes, this is the thing. Father, mother, sister, brother - hand in hand with one another. I thought a thought. But the thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought I thought. The thirty-three thankful thieves thought that they thanked the other thirty three thankful thieves throughout Thursday. Three thin thieves thought a thousand thoughts. Now if three thin thieves thought a thousand thoughts how many thoughts did each thief think? Thirty thousand thoughtless thieves thought they would make a thundering noise, so the thirty thousand thumbs thumbed on the thirty thousand drums. (The teacher gets students to repeat these tongue twisters in single, pair or choir without boring them. S/he can praise students after the practice by saying: very good, well done, great job and the like.) Then, the teacher ends the lesson by giving homework.) 80 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo 5. Making Summary T: Dear friends, today, we have learnt how to articulate the [θ] and [ð] sounds in English. Don‘t forget that you must practice these sounds in front of a mirror two times a day: one before the breakfast and the other after dinner. You should do this in order to see your articulatory improvement. (Then, the teacher can go back to his/her rule again and can summarize it using the same charts, figures or videos s/he used during the rule-giving section.) • • • • T: Ok! Let‘s have a brief look at our rule again. To articulate the voiceless TH sound, put the tip of your tongue between your front teeth. blow out air between your tongue and top teeth. do not use your use. to articulate voiced TH, just use your voice. That‘s all you have to do. It is a piece of cake, isn‘t it Gizem? Gizem: Yes, sir. I am more comfortable with these sounds now. I think it will be rather better after I have practiced them in front of the mirror. T: Sure! We all love you and believe that you can achieve this. 6. Giving Assignment The teacher gives students their assignments and warns them not to be negligent in doing these at home. The teacher should not forget to recollect the assignments in the following lesson for evaluation. After making necessary suggestions and correction, s/he can give them back to the students. 1. In which of the alternatives is there an articulation of the voiced TH sound? a. think b. thumb c. thus d. thud e. thistle a. ether b. bath c. cloth d. thank e. either a. that b. month c. broth d. tooth e. path 2. In which of the alternatives is there an articulation of the voiceless TH sound? a. three b. thee c. thy d. thou e. bathe a. though b. feather c. father d. these e. ether a. other b. method c. neither d. together e. gather 3. Prepare 5 tongue twisters including both voiced and unvoiced TH. 4. Write down 3 sentences with contextual clues using the sounds we have learned today. 5. Write a poem including voiced and unvoiced TH sounds. 6. Consonant sound pair: voiced [ð] and unvoiced [θ]: clothe_____ bath_____ that_____ thought_____ cloth_____ whether_____ them_____ father_____ think_____ three_____ mouthe_____ teeth_____ this_____ thorough_____ soothe_____ together_____ though_____ mouth_____ thousand _____ theater_____ breath_____ brother_____ bathe_____ those_____ wealthy_____ thread_____ weather_____ these_____ breathe_____ thumb_____ healthy_____ mouth_____ bathe_____ fourth_____ through_____ smooth_____ month_____ birth _____ 81 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo CONCLUSION The consonants [ð], named as eth, and [θ] named as theta, are among the problem causing sounds for both Turkish students and teachers in pre-service and on the job. That‘s because of the fact that Turkish language has no [θ] and [ð] sounds (although Arabic and Spanish speakers do). Therefore, students tend to replace them with [s] and [z] word-finally and [t] and [d] sounds word initially. ―The difficulty of /θ,ð/ lies not so much in their articulation, which most learners can perform correctly in isolation, as in combination with other fricatives, especially, /s/ and /z/‖ (Cruttenden, 2008: 196-197). They must be practiced with combinations of other sounds in phrases, sentences or paragraphs as done in the above exercises but not in isolation. To cure these problematic sounds, a sample lesson was prepared according to the AAM model in this paper. While applying the sample lesson plan, the teacher should adapt the activities according to the level of students. There should not be over-repetition in order not to bore students. The success of the model mostly depends on teacher‘s creativity and classroom performance. The teacher should be very active by using his/her body in class. Although some teachers and students may think that replacement of /θ,ð/ with sounds in the mother tongue can be tolerated, it is not favorable to do so. Because as teachers and learners of English, we should pave the way leading us to the correct pronunciation, since having a correct pronunciation is a sign of both professionalism and phonetic intelligence. 82 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo REFERENCES Baker, A. 1992. Introducing English Pronunciation, A Teacher‘s Guide to Tree or Three and Ship or Sheep. Cambridge University Press, New York, the U.S.A. Baker, A. & Goldstein, S. 2008. Pronunciation Pairs, an Introduction to the Sounds of English. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, New York, the U.S.A. Barlow, J.A. & Gierut, J.A. (2002). Minimal Pair Approaches to Phonological Remediation. Seminars in speech and language, 23 (1). Cruttenden, A. 2008. Gimson‘s Pronunciation of English. 7th Edition. Hodder Education, London, England. Dalton, D.F. (1997). Some Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol.3 Demirezen, M. (2010). ―The principles and applications of the audio-lingual pronunciation rehabilitation model in foreign language teacher education.‖ Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies. Vol. 6 - No: 2, October 2010, 127-148. Demirezen, M. (1987). Articulatory Phonetics and the Principles of Sound Production. Ankara: Yargı Publications. Demirezen, M. (May 2004). Ġngilizce‘nin peltek-d (ETH) sesbiriminin Türkler için çıkardığı sesletim sorunları ve çözümler. Journal of Arts and Sciences vol 1.: Çankaya University Hismanoglu, M. (2009). The Pronunciation of the interdental sounds of English: an articulation problem for Turkish learners of English and solutions. Procedia social sciences 1, 1697-1703. http://englishgoes.com/en/english-pronunciation-lesson-2-th/ Kelly, G. (2001). How to Teach Pronunciation. Oxfordshire: Pearson Education Limited. Ladefoged, P. (2001). Vowels and Consonants. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English: (2004). The Living Dictionary. International Edition , 2004. Essex: Pearson Education Limited Longman Dictionary of American English. (2009). Pearson. Nilsen, D. L. F & Nilsen, A. P. (1973). Pronunciation Contrasts in English. Regents Publishing Company, New York, the U.S.A. www.eslgold.com/pronunciation/voiced_sound_th.html 83 � 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. 15 Title A name given to the resource The Teaching of [θ] and [ð] Sounds in English Author Author KARAKAŞ, Ali SÖNMEZ, Ecehan Abstract A summary of the resource. Pronunciation teaching has its unique place in the curricula of most of the European countries though it has been neglected in Turkey so far. Mispronunciation of some core sounds is among the fundamental problems in the speech of both nonnative pre-service and in-service teachers in Turkey. The [θ] and [ð] sounds constitute the biggest trouble for Turks, for they do not take place in the Turkish sound system. To remedy this case, a sample lesson plan on teaching these problem causing-sounds has been developed according to the audio articulation method, which is claimed to be a fossilized pronunciation mistake breaker. It is hoped that the sample lesson plan on the [θ] and [ð] sounds will correct the pronunciation mistakes of non-native English teachers and teacher-trainees in Turkey. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/6f494bf80f003018f2ee1ae2cb5584f6.pdf f62e29884eae1c9d38cce957c1ecd6ad PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Measuring Authorship - A Tribute to Forensic Discourse Analysis Nejla KalajdţisalihoviĤ Faculty of Philosophy, Sarajevo English Department nejlak@gmail.com Abstract: It is believed by many that our fingerprints are as unique as our DNA. Owing to the advances in modern technology and the aid of computers, it is possible to use software that is able to measure all the probabilities of occurrence of identical fingerprints, DNA, written or spoken discourse. In recent years, forensic discourse analysis experts and linguists have been trying to measure the degree to which every individual is unique. These findings are especially relevant for analysing the content of suicide letters, testimonies, testaments, ransom demands, confessions, SMS messages, diary entries etc. The quest of forensic discourse analysis is to apply the linguistic knowledge to the legal context with the aim of deciding on the authorship of the above-mentioned short notes. In applying the linguistic knowledge to the analysis of suicide letters, for instance, it is of great importance to determine whether there is a murder behind such a letter, viz. whether the letter is a genuine suicide letter. Another interesting phenomenon is related to testimonies, viz. the degree to which the interrogators added written content to the oral confession, or the degree to which the testimony, based on the linguistic evidence, is false. In this process, experts apply various methods of measuring the degree to which the testimonies are authentic. Some of these methods involve measuring sentence length average, word length average, collocations analysis, and forensic transcription. The aim of this paper is to pay tribute to forensic discourse analysis of English texts and focus on some of its methods that are particularly related to the application of the linguistic knowledge. In doing so, we shall focus on a brief analysis of two well-known cases, Derek Bentley and Susan Smith. Key words: forensic, transcription, word length average, sentence length average, collocation Introduction In recent years, there has been a rapid growth of interest in forensic linguistics, or forensic discourse analysis. The term ‗forensic English‘, however, was first used in 1949 by Philbrick in Language and the Law: Semantics of Forensic English (Coulthard, 2007:5). In 1968, Jan Svartvik analysed the statements given by Timothy Evans, who was accused of murdering his wife and child. Svartvik, who used the term ‗forensic linguistics‘ first, concluded that Evans did not give all the statements provided in the record written down by police. Namely, some of the statements were clearly distinctive due to their more formal style. Another important founding father of forensic linguistics is Roger Shuy, whose contribution to the science is related to Miranda rights. Even today, a lot of research is being done on whether immigrants understand their rights. Shuy made it clear that an individual cannot testify nonvoluntarily, especially if he/she does not understand his/her rights. Therefore, one of the major contributions of forensic linguistics to police interrogations is making sure that an individual‘s words are recorded correctly and not paraphrased. Apart from police and courtroom-related issues, the main concerns of forensic linguistics are related to detecting plagiarism and attributing authorship to pieces of different types of written discourse. Especially popular is attributing authorship to SMS messages as it is sometimes found that a criminal is sending messages from a victim‘s phone. A similar analysis is applied when it comes to attributing authorship to e-mails. Therefore, we can say that the focus of forensic linguistics is applying linguistic knowledge to the context of legal documents, courtroom interaction, speaker identification (SMS, e-mail, phone calls) and detecting plagiarism. Methods applied in measuring authorship A lot of emphasis has been placed on finding the best method for measuring and attributing authorship. So far, numerous statistical methods have been applied on finding the most accurate and 994 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo most reliable method for attributing authorship. One of the first scientists who attempted to compare two texts using forensic linguistics methods was Augustus de Morgan, ‗who used the word length average as a marker‘ (Olsson, 2004:11). As for the sentence length average, it was U. Yule who considered it to be a ‗viable marker‘ for attributing authorship (Olsson, 2001: 12). It is quite clear why word/ sentence length average cannot be considered the vital marker for attributing authorship unless we take into consideration the differences between spoken and written discourse, and some other factors. A. Q. Morton claims that there is not much difference between the two if it is about the speaking/writing habits of an individual. This author is famous for his ‗Qsum‘or ‗Cusum method‘. Namely, in analysing shorter texts, Morton looks for vowel-initial words and two or three-letter words. After finding these values, one has to measure their distribution in the text, as well as in the sentence. These values should correspond to the values related to the average sentence length. If there is a discrepancy, that should imply that a piece of text has been inserted by another author. This method is purely statistical and, according to many experts, not considered to be reliable as it lacks the dimension of intuition, which is often important for the analysis. Perhaps the most interesting approach is that of forensic stylistics. Namely, forensic stylistics compares texts in terms of (mis)spelling, the design of the pages, the space between the words, handwriting, collocations, word frequency, capitalisation, indentation, etc. (See: G.R. McMenamin, 2002). The scientific evidence or what is considered to be valid at courts is sometimes not clearly defined. As Olsson points out, although there are thousands of references to the subject of forensic linguistics, the question of whether or not we have the linguistic fingerprint is still unsolved. Namely, in Studies and Authorship Recognition: A Corpus-based Approach (1998), Hänlein discusses the possibility of recognizing the stylistic profile of an individual (Olsson, op.cit. p. 27). The recognition of the stylistic profile depends on whose stylistic profile it is as more language aware individuals are more able to switch codes or adapt their linguistic choices to the register or the context. In the lines that follow, we shall focus on the approaches given by J. Olsson, as he is one of the experts who thoroughly analyses most of the above-mentioned theories. We are, namely, going to focus on the already solved cases of Derek Bentley and Susan Smith to show how it is possible to determine whether some parts of a testimony have or have not been inserted. Forensic transcription - calculating word and sentence length average The piece of text that can be processed for forensic analysis may be a page from a diary, an email, a post-it note, a letter, etc. In case it is necessary to transcribe a text that was hand-written, one has to observe certain regulations when transcribing icons (e.g. smiley), exclamation or question marks, parts or words that were erased, etc. One of the most reliable methods of forensically transcribing a piece of text is transcribing it manually to a Word document. In addition to that, there is a number of software platforms that ease the transcription process as they are designed to find collocations (viz. colorcations) or calculate probability (e.g. Copy Catch). The word length average is calculated by counting the number of characters in a text from which all the punctuation marks have been removed and dividing the number with the number of words. The number is usually reduced to two decimals. As for the sentence-length average, it is calculated by counting the number of words in a sentence and dividing it with the number of sentences in the text. Data analysis- Susan Smith confession and Derek Bentley statement In 1994, Susan Smith, while trying to end both her life and the life of her two sons, admitted to having killed her children by letting her car roll down into a lake. After being interrogated, Susan Smith wrote a confession and confessed the crime. The average sentence length of the whole text is 14 words, whereas the average word length is 3.9 words. In total, the text contains 568 words, 2.173 characters and 39 sentences. Part one contains 25 sentences. The average word length for Part 1 is 13 words, whereas the average word length is 3.7. Part 2 contains 14 sentences. The average sentence length is 17 words, whereas the average word length is 3.9. We know for sure that Susan Smith herself wrote the statement using some formal phrases/collocations she may have heard (e.g. emotionally distraught) from police officers. The whole text is an emotional rollercoaster ending in statements of justification and self-evaluation. The author is also inconsistent spelling-wise ('he' vs. 'He'), 995 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo which suggests that she is either distraught or unsure about correct spelling. The deleted parts occur at very specific spots and seem to be deliberate at hiding something that is not supposed to be revealed. Also, it is unusual that the words referring to religious imagery occur quite often. The second part has word length longer by 0.2 and sentence average by 4 words. Although there are variations in sentence and word length average, her idiolect is quite specific in terms of repetition and consistency in grammar and spelling errors (See: Appendix A). As for Derek Bentley, a British teenager who was sentenced to death for being in the company of the juvenile Christopher Craig when Craig shot a police officer (1952), it has been confirmed that Bentley‘s statement given to the police was not properly recorded (See: Appendix, B). Analysing the text, and keeping in mind that Bentley suffered from epilepsy and had low intelligence quotient, it is apparent that the confession is not genuine, viz. as given by Derek Bentley. It is apparent that there are at least two authors of the statement as it is unlikely that Bentley could have remembered the date, the time and other details related to the event at the time of interrogation. In the part that we refer to as DB1 (the text that starts with ‗I have known Craig‘ and ends with ‗I then ran after them‘), there are 8 sentences and 483 characters. The average word length is 4.0, whereas the average sentence length is 15 words. In the part that we shall refer to as DB 2 (‗There was a little iron gate‘ to ‗he was going to use the gun‘), there are 9 sentences and 346 characters. The average word length is 3.9 and the average sentence length is 10 words. DB1 is significantly different from DB2 for several reasons. First of all, in DB1, it seems that the author had enough time to precisely remember the date and the time, as well as the order of events. Secondly, since the author had enough time to think about the setting, he can use tense agreement properly, viz. he is using Past Perfect Tense together with Past Simple Tense. Also, he is using afterthoughts, separated with dashes. The use of indirect speech shows that this is not an immediate reaction to interrogation. Also, in DB2, the personal pronoun ‗I‘ occurs nine times, whereas in DB 2, 'I' occurs only three times (Coulthard points out that the ‗I then‘ string is found in police-written statements). However, in DB2, the author is using shorter sentences, resembling spoken language. The events are put in an order, and they seem more immediate to the reader. The author is using direct speech and Past Simple Tense, a well-known pattern of economy in language when retelling recent events in the past. He is also not as precise as the author of DB1 (''for about ten minutes''). A comparison between DB1 and DB2 indicates that DB2 is the original statement given by Derek Bentley, while DB1 was inserted afterwards, as DB1 has elements of precision found in police statements. As for events and actions, DB1 is more focused on the events, where the narrator is a patient (and not an agent). DB2, however, is more action-oriented, viz. both the narrator and his colleague are active participants in the event. We propose that it is possible to analyse another part of DB2, the part that we shall refer to as DB2.a (the string from ‗The policeman dragged him‘ to the end), or the answers to police interrogation written down. Conclusion The above-given cases of Susan Smith and Derek Bentley are presented with the aim of stressing the importance of forensic discourse analysis when analysing statements given to the police or at court. In applying the linguistic knowledge to the analysis of corpora, it is of great importance to determine the degree to which the interrogators added written content to the oral confession, or the degree to which the testimony, based on the linguistic evidence, is false. In this process, experts apply various methods of measuring the degree to which the testimonies are authentic. Some of these methods involve measuring sentence length average, word length average, collocations analysis, and forensic transcription. However, there is not a single method that can be used for all the textual or phonetic evidence. Apart from linguistic and statistical evidence, profiling an individual's style and analysing the context or purpose for which a particular piece of text (or audio material) was created could be of great importance for discovering the vital cues. The two cases do not differ much in terms of the variations of sentence and word length. However, in terms of orthography, idiolect and style, it is evident why the authorship of the Bentley statement stirred so much debate. Further analysis of these and other texts (such as authorship reports in percentages) is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is important to point out that, for forensic discourse analysis, the roles of forensic stylistics and statistics are equally important. In studies that follow, our aim is to apply the forensic knowledge to the context of students‘ papers and to the analysis of authorship and instances of plagiarism. Our aim is to stress the importance of proper language acquisition as it is a vital step towards increasing language awareness. Note: Parts of the analysis presented above are taken from assignments the author of the article submitted to The Forensic Linguistics Institute (Powys, UK) in March 2010. 996 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo References: Coulthard, M. (1994). ‗Forensic discourse analysis‘, in: Advances in Written Text Analysis, M. Couthard (ed.). London: Routledge, pp. 242-258. Coulthard, M. & Johnson, A. (2007). An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics, Language in Evidence. New York, New York, NY: Routledge Coulthard, M. & Johnson, A. (2010). The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics. New York, NY: Routledge Gibbons, J. & Turell T. (2008). Dimensions of Forensic Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hänlein, H. (1998). Studies in Authorship Recognition- A Corpus-based Approach. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. McMenamin, G.R. (2002). Forensic Linguistics, Advances in Forensic Stylistics. Florida: CRC Press Olsson, J. (2008). Forensic Linguistics - The Language Detective, Unit 1. Powys, UK: Forensic Linguistics Institute. Olsson, J. (2004). Forensic Linguistics - An Introduction to Language, Crime and the Law. London: Continuum. Radford, A. (1990). Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of English Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell. Svartvik. J. The Evans Statements. Gotheburg Studies in English No. 20. Yule, G. Udney (1944). The Statistical Study of Literary Vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Web: Coulthard, M. "Identifying the Author." Web. 24 March 2011. <http://clf.unige.ch/display.php?idFichier=168>. "Analysis of Susan Smiths Confession." LSI Laboratory for Scientific Interrogation, Inc. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. <http://www.lsiscan.com/susan_smith_s_confession.htm>. "Forensic Linguistics Institute." Forensic Linguistics Institute - The Home of Forensic Linguistics. Ed. John Olsson. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. <http://www.thetext.co.uk/cgibin/view_texts.pl?dir=&folder=Confessions&text=Derek Bentley's Police Statement.txt>. "How Rare Is That Fingerprint? Computational Forensics Provides the First Clues - UB NewsCenter." University at Buffalo. 7 Dec. 2010. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. <http://www.buffalo.edu/news/12073>. Articles: Dugandņija, M. (2011). Napisao je toĦku umjesto zareza. Po tome su otkrili ubojicu. GLOBUS, No. 1048, 68-7 Durrant P. & A. Doherty (2010). Are high-frequency collocations psychologically real? Investigating the thesis of collocational priming. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 6(2). Guillen-Nieto, V. (et.al.) (2008). Exploring State-of-the-Art Software for Forensic Authorship Identification. IJES, Vol. 8 (1), pp. 1-28. Appendix: A) Susan Smith confession When I left my home on Tuesday, October 25, I was very emotionally distraught. I didn‘t want to live anymore! I felt like things could never get any worse. When I left home, I was going to ride around a little while and then go to my mom‘s. As I rode and rode and rode, I felt even more anxiety coming upon me about not wanting to live. I felt I couldn‘t be a good mom anymore but I didn‘t want my children to grow up without a mom. I felt I had to end our lives to protect us all from any grief or harm (deletion). I had never felt so lonely and so sad in my entire life. I was in love (underlined) with someone, very much, but he didn‘t love me and never would. I had a difficult time accepting that. But I had hurt him very much and I could see why he could never love me. When I was @ John D. Long Lake, (deletion) I had never felt so scared and unsure as I did then. I wanted to end my life so bad and was in my car ready to go down that ramp into the water and I did go part way, but I stopped. I went again and stopped. I then got out of the car and (deletion) stood by the car (insertion>a) nervous wreck. Why was I feeling this way? Why was everything so bad in my life? I had no answers to these questions. I dropped to the lowest when I allowed my children to go down that ramp into the water without me. I took off running and screaming go back, but I knew it was too late. I was an absolute mental case! I 997 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo couldn‘t believe what I had done. I love my children w/ all my (icon: heart). That will never change. I have prayed to them for forgiveness and hope that they will find it in their (icon: heart) to forgive me. I never meant to hurt them!! I am SORRY (underlined) for what has happened and I know that I need some help. I dont think I will ever be able to forgive myself for what I have done. My children, Michael and Alex, are with our Heavenly Father now and I know that they will never be hurt again. As a mom, that means more than words could ever say. I knew from day one, the truth would prevail, but I was so scared I didnt know what to do. It was very tough emotionally to sit and watch my family hurt like they did. It was time to bring a piece of mind to everyone, including myself. My children deserve to have the best and now they will. I broke down on Thursday, November 3 and told Sheriff Howard Wells the truth. It wasn't easy, but after the truth was out, I felt like world was lifted off my shoulders. I know now that it is going to be a tough and long road ahead of me. At this very moment, I don't feel I will be able to handle what's coming, but I have prayed to God that he give me the strength to survive each day and to face (illegible) times and situations in my life that will be extremely painful. I have put my total faith in God and He will take care of me. Susan V. Smith 11/3/94 B) Derek Bentley statement I have known Craig since I went to school. We were stopped by our parents going out together, but we still continued going out with each other - I mean we have not gone out together until tonight. I was watching television tonight (2nd November 1952) and between 8pm and 9pm Craig called for me. My Mother answered the door and I heard her say I was out. I had been out earlier to the pictures and got home just after 7pm. A little later Norman Parsley and Frank Fazey called. I did not answer the door or speak to them. My Mother told me that they had called and I then ran out after them. I walked up the road with them to the paper shop where I saw Craig standing. We all talked together and then Norman Parsley and Frank Fazey left. Chris Craig and I then caught a bus to Croydon. We got off at West Croydon and then walked down the road where the toilets are - I think it is Tamworth Road. When we came to the place where you found me, Chris looked in the window. There was a little iron gate at the side. Chris then jumped over and I followed. Up to then Chris had not said anything. We both got out on to the flat roof at the top. Then someone in a garden on the opposite side shone a torch up towards us. Chris said: "It's a copper, hide behind here." We hid behind a shelter arrangement on the roof. We were there waiting for about ten minutes. I did not know he was going to use the gun. A plain clothes man climbed up the drainpipe and on to the roof. The man said: "I am a police officer - the place is surrounded." He caught hold of me and as we walked away Chris fired. There was nobody else there at the time. The policeman and I went round a corner by a door. A little later the door opened and a policeman in uniform came out. Chris fired again then and this policeman fell down. I could see he was hurt as a lot of blood came from his forehead just above his nose. The policeman dragged him round the corner behind the brickwork entrance to the door. I remember I shouted something but I forget what it was. I could not see Chris when I shouted to him he was behind a wall. I heard some more policemen behind the door and the policeman with me said, "I don't think he has many more bullets left." Chris shouted "Oh yes I have" and he fired again. I think I heard him fire three times altogether. The Policeman then pushed me down the stairs and I did not see any more. I knew we were going to break into the place, I did not know what we were going to get - just anything that was going. I did not have a gun and I did not know Chris had one until he shot. I now know that the policeman in uniform is dead. I should have mentioned that after the plain clothes policeman got up the drainpipe and arrested me, another policeman in uniform followed and I heard someone call him 'Mac'. He was with us when the other policeman was killed. 998 � 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. 566 Title A name given to the resource Measuring Authorship - A Tribute to Forensic Discourse Analysis Author Author Kalajdžisalihović, Nejla Abstract A summary of the resource. It is believed by many that our fingerprints are as unique as our DNA. Owing to the advances in modern technology and the aid of computers, it is possible to use software that is able to measure all the probabilities of occurrence of identical fingerprints, DNA, written or spoken discourse. In recent years, forensic discourse analysis experts and linguists have been trying to measure the degree to which every individual is unique. These findings are especially relevant for analysing the content of suicide letters, testimonies, testaments, ransom demands, confessions, SMS messages, diary entries etc. The quest of forensic discourse analysis is to apply the linguistic knowledge to the legal context with the aim of deciding on the authorship of the above-mentioned short notes. In applying the linguistic knowledge to the analysis of suicide letters, for instance, it is of great importance to determine whether there is a murder behind such a letter, viz. whether the letter is a genuine suicide letter. Another interesting phenomenon is related to testimonies, viz. the degree to which the interrogators added written content to the oral confession, or the degree to which the testimony, based on the linguistic evidence, is false. In this process, experts apply various methods of measuring the degree to which the testimonies are authentic. Some of these methods involve measuring sentence length average, word length average, collocations analysis, and forensic transcription. The aim of this paper is to pay tribute to forensic discourse analysis of English texts and focus on some of its methods that are particularly related to the application of the linguistic knowledge. In doing so, we shall focus on a brief analysis of two well-known cases, Derek Bentley and Susan Smith. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/210170dd944458979f437a3fae6d562e.pdf a1fbbf4517c3161ac1bcc6287356e071 PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Bilingual Education: The Road to Multilingualism STUDYING A DIALECT OF MALAY LANGUAGE FAMILY – THE BATAK LANGUAGE , THROUGH FIELDWORK IN INDONESIA: LESSONS FOR FUTURE STUDY IN THE AREA. Associate Professor Dr Kamsiah Abdullah National Istitute of Education Nanyang Thecnological University Singapore kamsiah.abdullah@nie.edu.sg Abstract: All research is field work but field work undertaken to study a dialect of a community ‗foreign‗ to researchers, in an unfamiliar part of the world is a particularly daunting but enriching experience. So much about the language and culture of the people speaking the language, the dynamics of language and culture, the way language changes through contact with the outside world, can be learned through field study in the area. This paper will present a preliminary study on a dialect of Malay language family, that is, the Batak language, spoken by the Batak communities in the island of Sumatera Indonesia in 2010. The study was undertaken as part of a module on Methods and Approaches in Malay Linguistics taught at the National Institute of Education, Singapore (NIE). The first part of the paper will describe the aims and preparation process undertaken before the field trip. This will be followed by explanation on the actual study conducted in the field and its findings in relation to the objective of the research. Lastly, the limitations, accomplishment and implication in doing fieldwork research will be discussed. The issue of research ethics will be highlighted whenever appropriate. Scope of the field work Field work in linguistics can be defined as any type of linguistic data gathering where the linguist uses information from a pool of speakers interacting with each other or the researcher in their normal natural environment. Field study as one of the approaches in Linguistics was taught as a module called Methods and Approaches in Malay Linguistics taught at the National Institute of Education, Singapore (NIE). As part of the module students were encouraged to embark on a research on any one of the Malay Language families or dialects currently spoken in Indonesia and Malaysia. The Malays and Malay Dialect Groups or Ethnic groups prided themselves in being the indigenous or the original people of Singapore situated at the centre of a large geographical region comprising thousands of islands, big and small. A large number of the ancestors of the Malay peoples made Singapore their homes during the nineteenth and twentieth century. To engage in field research on an upstream environment involving speakers of a language which is not usually known in present day Singapore - a huge international, modern cosmopolitan hub, is a particularly daunting experience. In many cases urbanites tend to avoid doing research in remote indigenous areas because of unfamiliarity with the environment, the culture and tradition and above all the different languages and dialects involved. The area covered under this field work is actually related to a larger study on Languages and dialects of the Malays who are the indigenous people of Singapore. The term Malays in Singapore are normally classified under the ethnic group ―Malay‖ but they belong to a number of linguistic groups within the Malayan sub-family, that is, the Riau-Johor Malay sub-group, the Bugis, the Javanese, the Boyanese, the Minangkabaus, the Banjaris and the Bataks. Malay is an Austronesian Language Family (also known as Malayo-Polinesia) which branched into three primary subfamilies : Hesperanesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. These language families are dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The Malay language spoken by Singapore Malays which encompass many dialects and languages of the Austronesian language family comes under the Hesperanesian language branch. Hesperanesia is usually referred to as ‗Nusantara‘ in Malay, (where ‗ nusa‘ means islands and ‗antara‘ means inbetween, amongst or inter). It is one of the primary branches of the Autronesian language Family. Under the Nusantara Family can be classified, the language families of Malayic Hesion which is the fore-runner of the Malayan Subfamily. These include Achinese, Madurese and Lampungs. Javanese and Boyanese are not a subfamily of Malayic-Hesion but comes under an earlier proto language, the Java-Sumatra- Hesion. Bugis language spoken by Bugis people is a branch of South Sulawesi languages. The Minangkabaus speak a language under the Malayan subfamily called Minangkabau which also includes Malay and Kerinci in Sumatera. The Banjaris comes 724 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo from Kalimantan a large island of Indonesia and speak Banjar which is closer to Malayan and Ibanic languages The Bataks speaks a number of Batak languages which mainly spoken in Sumatera. 235 The Study on Batak Language The Study on Batak Language is small part of a baseline major study whose general aim is to track the origin of Malay language families and to understand its different branches and language families and dialect now spreading over a large area of maritime South East Asia also known as Nusantara (the Malay archipelago). For this particular part of the initial phase of study, the starting point is to focus on the smallest minority Malay group in Singapore. Thus the focus is on the Batak Language and its people whose origin is in Sumatera, Indonesia. The Batak community is not entirely unknown to Singaporean Malays, as there was a prominent village called ―Kampung Batak or Batak Village‖ up to the 1950‘s, before redevelopment of Singapore villages into urban residential estates took place. Some well-known and popular figures in Singapore also feature Batak names or marga or clan names like Siregar, Samosir, Nasution and others. The Batak People The choice of the Batak language was a result of careful consideration regarding the interest of the students, proximity of the native land of the Bataks to Singapore and the historical links of the Batak people residing in Singapore and their homeland. The Bataks, the smallest minority Malay group in Singapore had been coming to Singapore before the 20th century. Until 1978, there were less than 350 Bataks in Singapore. (1)236 The Bataks are mainly Christians, unlike other Malays who are wholly Muslims. There were also Bataks who were originally Muslims like the Mandailings and some who took Malay wives and converted to Islam. They mostly came for economic, educational and social reasons and unlike other Malay communities who attended Malay Language or Muslim schools, they received Western education which was seen as a passport to getting a white-collar jobs. The Batak Homeland Sumatra, one of 13, 000 islands that make up the country of Indonesia is where the homeland of the Batak people. Most of the Bataks live in the Northern Central part of Sumatra who collectively comprise around four million people, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in that country which hosts over three hundred distinct ethnolinguistic minorities. There are six distinct Batak tribes in this area: Angkola/Sipirok, Karo, Mandailing, Pakpak / Dairi, Simalungun and Toba. Although these six groups have many things in common, there are differences in their languages, histories and traditions. It is said that the term Batak was first used by Malay settlers to describe any non-Muslim in this part of Sumatra. (In fact a Batak, upon conversion to Islam, was no longer considered a Batak by the Malay, but ethnically Malay.) The Mandailings are Muslims, the Batak Karos are either Muslims or Christians and the rest and majority are Christians due to their conversion to Christianity during the colonial era. An important characteristic of the social structure of the Bataks whether Muslims, Christians or animist is their special kinship organization of family groups into marga (s) or clans. In their tradition adat or custom, which is still practiced widely until now, is their obligation to their marga . Marga determines their everyday conduct, their economic pursuits and marriages. Among them, it is taboo to marry within one‘s own marga even though there is no blood relations among the potential marriage partner. One well-known talent of the Bataks pertains to their music and singing abilities. In former times, songs were sung to tell stories, folk history, legends and also for the calling of spirit. In those days singers were believed to have special mystical powers. 235 236 Retrieved from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayic_languages . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malays_in_Singapore#The_Batak 725 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Aims of the Field Study The field study aims to obtain primary data on the Batak language from the native speakers of the language in their homeland. This brought us to the land of the Bataks in the island of Sumatra, Indonesia whose regional or provincial capital is Medan . It is not the aim of the study to produce a full description of the language, but only to understand its relationship to Malay language. Thus the methodology employed Lexicostatistics and Glotochronology methods to ascertain the position of the Batak languages in relation to Malay, such the length of period when the two language separated from Malay and other Austronesian languages. Lexicostatistics and Glotochronology Glotochronology is an approach in historical linguistics that estimates the time at which two or more languages diverged from a common earlier proto-language. It is based on the assumption that the basic or core vocabulary of a language changes or is replaced at a constant average rate. The result is an estimate of the age of the language studied or its origin. Glotochronology uses Lexicostatistical method that is a simple mathematical technique to estimate the distance between two related languages. Lexicostatistics is also widely used as a method in comparative linguistics. It involves quantitative calculations of lexical cognates or words that have a common origin. This method was developed by Morris Swadesh who collected and created words and the meaning slots in languages being studied. The Swadesh Word list contain 207 meanings in a number of languages. It was later reduced to 100 most important words presented as a list. The present study on Batak languages uses Lexicostatistics and the 207 Swadesh Word list as a basis of comparing cognate words or words having common meaning in Batak and Malay. Before the field study, trials and practices using Lexicostatistics and Glotochronology methods were tested using published data. A 207 Swadesh word list in Malay language encompassing concepts in human language such as personel pronouns, body parts, verbs of basic actions, numerals, was looked into and the Malay version was produced. The list was to be used as an instrument in the actual field work with the native speakers of Batak language or dialects in Indonesia. Some students make the effort of getting pictures to represent the words that could create confusion to the informants. Others thought of other ways to relate the meanings – such as using gestures. Preparation for the Field Study The purpose of the visit, that is to study the Batak language and meet the native speakers of the language was made clear so that full use of the little time that we had for the study, can be made. Full itinerary together with travel insurance was prepared before the trip. The first destination was Medan, a cosmopolitan city with over two million residents. It was identified as a starting point for excursions in the region of the Batak. Residents of Medan consist of two main thnic groups the Batak Peoples – as well the Malays of Sumatera. Contact with the University of North Sumatera (USU) , our host, was made very much earlier. Arrangements with the travel agents for accommodation and transport was done to make the trip of 12 students and lecturers a comfortable one. The Actual Field Study in Medan The field trip undertaken in November 2010 was carried out as part of the practical aspect of data gathering for the study on heritage languages of the Malays in Singapore. Malay language is studied in Singapore schools and research on the Malay language heritage, its language families and origin was supported by the Ministry of Education, specifically the Malay Language Learning and Promotion Committee (MLLPC). Overseas educational trips to understand the various cultures and languages of our heritage roots even as far as China and India are encouraged and supported by our Ministry of Education. Upon reaching Medan, a meeting and briefing was held in USU where our Singapore students meet with the Indonesian student volunteers who are native speakers of various dialects of the Batak language. After that interviews and travel to the villages of the Batak clans was undertaken, that is, on the second and third day of our arrival in Medan. The student researchers were able to visit the scenic Lake Toba as well as some historical sites related to the Batak people during their free time and after their gathering of data was completed. Data gathering Procedure There were two parts of data gathering: the first task is a semi-structured interview . The second task involved calculations using Lexicostatistics and Glotochronology methods. a) Semi or unstructured interviews 726 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Guide questions of what to investigate with regards to Batak language, dialects and use among the speakers were prepared before the trip and these were used when the semi or unstructured interviews were undertaken with native speakers who are also students at USU. Some of the interviews were conducted after lunch break and some did the interview once the preliminary introduction at the university was completed. This form of free-flowing and indeterminate interview was selected as it can also be like an opening conversation between two persons who unknown to each other. We would like it to be less formal and more ‗collegial‘ rather than like a formal interview between a ‗foreigner researcher‘ and native speaking informants as subject of research. The question of research ethics were strictly followed. Even though the student researchers possessed a set of guide questions, they were told not to seek answers directly or to impose it on the informants. Rather, they are encouraged to improvise allowing the interview to follow whatever course it takes. They should remain neutral during the data gathering process. They were told to withhold their own opinions vis-à-vis the questions and to remain impassive and objective in the face of their respondents‘ answers. It is heartening to note that the recording of the interview was done in a smooth and easy manner. The Batak words to the full Swadesh list in Malay was obtained by the students who worked in threes for the project. Findings from the project. Findings from the semi-structured interviews. The students reported many current facts on the sociolinguistics of Batak language. Some of the important findings are: 1. Most Bataks are now bilingual and speak at least two dialects. 2. Almost all understood and are able to speak Bahasa Indonesia , a variety of Malay 3. Among non Bataks, the Indonesia language is used. 4. Amongs Bataks, the relevant Batak dialect is used. 5. The younger Bataks are more inclined to speak Indonesian and some are not fluent in the Batak dialects 6. Even tough the use of bahasa Indonesia is prevalent among the people residing in towns and cities, it is often replaced by the Batak language when they return to their villages. 7. Batak language is widely used in the Batak homeland where Indonesian is only used for administrative purposes and with non-Bataks. Finding using Lexicostatistics and Glotochronology Two groups of students worked the the Batak Toba dialects, the largest in terms of speakers. Another group chose to study both the Batak Toba as well Batak Pak Pak Diari. The result of their calculations are as follows:  Sarifah Hassan, Maznunnisah and Md Farhan who studied the Batak Toba language found that the language separated from Malay about 3249 years ago.  Emrizal M Suhaimi, Nurfaeza Rahmat and Nurul ‗Ain Kamarulzaman who also studied Batak Toba found that the language separated from Malay about 2157 years ago (standard error – 110 years)  Ahmad Farkhan Mohd Nasir, Erfasiah Abdul Rahim, Noryanti Yahya found that according to their list, Batak Toba separated from Malay also about 3813 year to 3005 years ago.  Ahmad Farkhan Mohd Nasir, Erfasiah Abdul Rahim, Noryanti Yahya who also studied Batak Pak Pak Diari, a more recent dialect found that it separated from Malay about 5267 years ago (std error 660 years ago). There was a discrepancy in the number of years the Batak Toba language separated from the Malay language family. This is to be expected as the study is a preliminary one. Their findings and much of the results are based on their own respondents‘ information about the words (in Batak) on the Swadesh Word list. Further studies should be done by interviewing more informants in order to be more certain of the findings. Besides these the students were able to gains knowledge on the phonology, morphology and syntax of the Batak dialect that they studied. Students‘ Reflections The students gave very good feedback on the research journey. They were enthusiastic about doing the type of research not normally undertaken by others. They mentioned their anxiety at first and their preparation which took a lot of time and effort. But their initial fear was unsubstantiated, they really enjoyed doing the kind of research involving native speakers in a faraway lang from Singapore. Many students wrote on their appreciation on the culture and people. They now had more knowledge and would like to learn more on the people, their history and their tradition. Some mentioned their rapport with the interviewees and their ability to blend together with the Batak 727 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo students. All mentioned positively of their memorable visit to the Batak homeland as well their appreciation of the culture and language of this hospitable people. They had gained new insights and made new friends. Accomplishments Some of the noted accomplishments gained from the project are as follows: 1. Students discovering new information and consolidating their old or established knowledge on the subject. 2. They were able to obtaining different perspectives on the ‗same‘topic in participants‘ and informants‘ own words. 3. They gained information on participants‘ views, attitudes, beliefs, responses, motivations and perceptions on the topic studied. 4. They are able to examine shared understandings of everyday life and the everyday use of language and culture of this particular groups 5. They brainstorm and generate ideas among themselves and their interviewees 6. They also gained insights into the ways in which individuals are influenced by others and by their environments 7. The project help to generate a sense of rapport between the researcher and the researched. Lessons for Future Study Some lessons could be drawn from our study. This shows the way to channel concern and appreciation of linguistic diversity into concrete knowledge building projects. The most concrete result of this study is that scientific inquiry such as field work in a designated foreign land can be carried out successfully if adequate preparation and training is undertaken before the actual trip. The time and financial burden should be calculated even before embarking on the trip and to account for unexpected expenses. In our case a special boat, not the regular passenger boat had to be charted and this involved extra expenses. Moreover, the planning part should involve many parties including the students themselves who know more about their needs than older people. Most important for the academic part is the intellectual training and information of the place to do the field study. It should be thoroughly researched so that many of the ―culture shock‖ can be avoided. If possible the project planners should work in partnership with a local host or university familiar with the subject so that the activities could be done smoothly. Research ethics should be practiced at all times. Respect for others must be the motto when we travel to other places. Researchers should be flexible and accommodating in their interaction with the informants and host. Congenial atmosphere for more meaningful and closer interaction should be created so that a more ‗authentic‘ response. We had a particular case where ―interviews‖ between student researchers and informants were held in a bus while traveling on a long journey to the village. The informants gained a lift to their villages while our students get their information. At other times informants follow our group and stayed with us in our hotels. Field study can be an enriching experience for both the researcher and the researched. Work and play can be experienced together. References Asmah Haji Omar. (2001). Kaedah Penyelidikan Bahasa di Lapangan. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Blust, R. (1988). Malay Historical Linguistics: A Progress Report. In Mohd Thani Ahmad and Zaini Mohamed Zain, Rekonstuksi dan Cabang-cabang Bahasa Melayu Induk. Siri monograf sejarah bahasa Melayu. Pp 133. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Nigel Edley and Lia Litosseliti. (2009) . Contemplating Interviews and Focus Group. In Lia Litosseliti , Research methods in Linguistics. Continuum International Publishing. Nothofer, Bernd. 1988. "A discussion of two Austronesian subgroups: Proto-Malay and Proto-Malayic." In Mohd. Thani Ahmad and Zaini Mohamed Zain (eds.) 1988. Rekonstruksi dan cabang-cabang Bahasa Melayu induk, Siri monograf sejarah bahasa Melayu.pp. 34-58. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. 728 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Paitoon, M.C. (2002). Glotokronologi Dialek Austronesia: Satu kajian Leksikostatistik di Pulau Karimun, Indonesia. Singapura: Persidangan Antarabangsa Bahasa, Sastera dan Kebudayaan Melayu ke-2. 729 � 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. 107 Title A name given to the resource STUDYING A DIALECT OF MALAY LANGUAGE FAMILY – THE BATAK LANGUAGE , THROUGH FIELDWORK IN INDONESIA: LESSONS FOR FUTURE STUDY IN THE AREA. Author Author Kamsiah, Abdullah Abstract A summary of the resource. All research is field work but field work undertaken to study a dialect of a community ‗foreign‗ to researchers, in an unfamiliar part of the world is a particularly daunting but enriching experience. So much about the language and culture of the people speaking the language, the dynamics of language and culture, the way language changes through contact with the outside world, can be learned through field study in the area. This paper will present a preliminary study on a dialect of Malay language family, that is, the Batak language, spoken by the Batak communities in the island of Sumatera Indonesia in 2010. The study was undertaken as part of a module on Methods and Approaches in Malay Linguistics taught at the National Institute of Education, Singapore (NIE). The first part of the paper will describe the aims and preparation process undertaken before the field trip. This will be followed by explanation on the actual study conducted in the field and its findings in relation to the objective of the research. Lastly, the limitations, accomplishment and implication in doing fieldwork research will be discussed. The issue of research ethics will be highlighted whenever appropriate Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/fbab0508a401d875baa4413b1688f5d6.pdf 50e61e39bdacf9fde239825c8ebb8af0 PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo To write a textbook for teaching a ―little‖ languages Zenaida KaravdiĤ Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina zenaidameco@yahoo.com Abstract: In this time of domination of English in all fields, including linguistics, methodology of preparing textbooks for learning and teaching the foreign languages is also under its influence. This article shows how some achievements in this field can be well used, but also how it‘s necessary to pay attention to differences, whether structural, sociolinguistic, or purely pragmatic when writing a textbook for teaching the "little" languages such as Bosnian. Apart from some theoretical assumptions, this article offers some very practical advice that can be applied to writing books of other languages. Key words: textbook, Bosnian language, methodology of writing textbook, textbook evaluation Introduction It is ironical that those teachers who rely most heavily on the textbooks are the ones least qualified to interpret its intentions or evaluate its content and method. (Williams, 1983; in: Ansary and Babaii 2002) Even if I am, as the author of the textbook ―Bosanski jezik kao strani jezik‖, maybe last who should analyze it, I‘ll undertake this job because the writing such a book is not like writing any other textbook for the foreign language. So, I will attempt not to discover its good and bad sides, but to explain what the special was in it, such as: political reasons, methodical needs, user requirements, methodological difficulties and practical use. Why do we need the textbook for learning/teaching Bosnian as a foreign language? The answer is simple: because we didn‘t have it. Indeed, there is one: PelesiĤ-MuminoviĤ, F., Bosanski jezik za strance, but this book is more for individual learning of Bosnian. Beside, even if it is wrote in two languages parallel, which could be considered as an advantage, it used the old grammar-translation approach and it shouldn‘t be useful in the classroom (it was my personal experience). And why is so important to have the textbook for Bosnian? Couldn‘t we use one of Croatian, or Serbian, or former Serbo-Croatian? are the questions people often ask me. Now, the answer is not so simple. First of all, the strangers who came in Bosnia and Herzegovina mostly don‘t know anything about history of Bosnian language. It seems them so naturally to associate the name of the language with the name of the country and they don‘t know what should be a problem. The truth is that, even Bosnian exists for at least thousand years, and in big part of this time its name was Bosnian, in last hundred years this name was forbidden. And while the names Serbian and Croatian existed and developed at least in the common name ―SerboCroatian‖, the name ―Bosnian‖ was moved and almost forgotten. The same was with the particularities of this language – while those of Serbian and Croatian was raised from the dialect to the standard language, in the same time the particularities of the Bosnian was characterized more and more as a dialect.348 Nowadays, when the name ―Bosnian‖ is in use again, we have a big problem: there is no book which analyzes the specificity of the Bosnian language, nor literature, history… In last fifteen years the scientists of this three ―national discipline‖ make an effort to compensate that gap of hundred years, but some key books still didn‘t see the light. One of those books is the textbook for Bosnian as a foreign language too. Secondly, as I already sad, the Bosnian, even so similar to Serbian and Croatian, still isn‘t the same. There are some particularities which separate Bosnian from those two languages. Maybe one stranger couldn‘t understand why these few things are so important, but in this place the sociolinguistics reasons take effect. Namely, after relatively recent war (1992-95) in which three army was created – one Bosniaque‘s, second Serbian‘s and third Croatian‘s, the society was mostly – weather we would like to admit it or not – separate in those three categories. And how can it be recognized who belongs to which category? Mainly through his/her language – exactly those little differences between Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian. And even we‘re trying to delete those fine borders between the three nations which constitute the majority of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is still possible to happen that someone at least look at you weird if you say ―kava‖ instead of 348 More about the history of standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian language see in: Robin 2005. 1301 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo ―kafa‖ or vice versa. And that should be the problem for some stranger who don‘t know (and maybe even shouldn‘t know) about this social situation. And thirdly, as a country trying to be a part of European Union, Bosnia and Herzegovina should reach its level, this is, be considerate to many things in politics, economics, business, but also the culture, education, science… In this sense, like all ―big countries‖, Bosnia and Herzegovina should enhance the education of Bosnian language and Bosnian culture to the Bosnian foreign language learners. All around the world there are Bosnian people which children are forgetting the mother tongue. Somewhere it is organized the classes of Bosnian in primary school, some universities also introduce Bosnian, from one semester courses (for example in Wuerzburg, Germany) to three or four years study (in Izmir, Turkey). And Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the country, has a little or nothing with that. It means that about Bosnian language and culture can teach anyone who knows Bosnian, and sometimes even Serbian or Croatian. The country should take care of representing its language(s) in the world, and one of the ways is by creating the textbooks for learning/teaching Bosnian language, based on real Bosnian language and Bosnian culture.349 And, of course, the textbooks of Bosnian can be used also to represent Bosnia and Herzegovina in the world, to make it closer, more familiar to other countries and to minimize all of bad predictions which exist about it. What the textbook for teaching/learning foreign language should be? From the viewpoint of methodologists, the textbook presents a list (set of) rules (guidelines, recommendations and prohibitions) to work on school material (Арутюнов, 1990: 15, in: NeneziĤ 2009); textbook is a comprehensive and methodical system that is realized in certain material and has a concrete goal for a certain period and certain the composition of students (Пассов, 1989; in: NeneziĤ, 2009). The theory of textbook is still the young discipline which didn‘t develop yet its apparatus and methodology, but as its goals, it describes: a) obtain the authors to analyze and systematize the books from before and make one unique and optimal model for all the textbooks concerning one discipline b) reach the model and structure equality of the textbooks of the different disciplines c) establish one non-contradictory assertive criterion for the textbook valorization (NeneziĤ, 2009). Even if we still don‘t have the unique measures, we cannot say that we don‘t have many (sometimes contradictory) directions and recommendations about what should be the textbook for teaching/learning the foreign language. 1. Communicative method instead of the grammar-translation approach. Actually and pretty globally acceptable method for teaching any languages today is communicative method. Ideal textbook will be the one which wouldn‘t have the grammar at all, and it could teach its costumer to speak liquidly and similar as much as it is possible to the native speakers (for example: Millard, 2000, Tomlinson, 2008; in: Kurtz 2009). To reach that, the textbook should have: 2. multiply-answer-chose questions (Chastain, 1987, Walz, 1989; both in: Millard, 2000), 3. text resemble natural speech (Millard 2000, Rùhlemann 2009), 4. sentences linked to each other through a common meaningful theme (Hadley Omaggio, 1993, Walz, 1989; both in Millard, 2000), 5. grammar items associated with the others which are used together frequently (Millard, 2000). Beside that, all are agree that the textbooks must offer: 6. information about the target language culture (Santos, 2002), implying that: 7. book is completely written in the target language (and classes should be also completely in that language: Strzalka, 1998). Based on these principles, we have many evaluation checklists for the textbooks (for example: Miekley, 2005) and they mostly respect this rules. Learning third language It is important to notify that all of these rules are based on learning of English as a foreign language (for example: Miekley, 2005). Question is: Should those rules be used in writing the textbook for some other language? First of all, we must take care about the fact that learning some language beside English often means learning third or fourth language. And that means the learners, even if they ―might not know English well, they do know enough to make mistakes influenced by previously learned languages‖ (Gunske, 2007: 22). Some scientists 349 This is the problem with much other languages, even such „big― as Chinese is; see in: Hai-lin and Xiao-ling, 2010. 1302 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo propose interesting ways to begin teaching taking into account the above findings (Gunske, 2007: 22), but the problem with textbook is still pending. Additionally, the learners don‘t like the textbooks only on foreign language (and it is not only my personal experience: Strzalka, 1998). Accustomed on the learning based on grammar-translation approach, they mostly don‘t understand that the different languages follow different patterns (Santos 2002), and even if they do, it is hard for them to realize that difference, especially when their mother tongue belongs to the other group of languages. Actually, the teacher is the one who should explain it, but how the textbook can help him/her? It seems that the textbook which use English or another learners-familiar language for explaining will be better than the textbook completely written in the target language. If so, than the textbook I cited in the beginning (written half in Bosnian and half in English) should be perfect, and we wouldn‘t need one more book. But things are not so simple and using just target language is not the only problem in composing the textbook for third or fourth language. What the textbook for Bosnian language should be? As I already sad, the complete process of learning some language as a foreign is under hard influence of this one for English. Writers, trying to be modern as much as they can, often copy the methods and structure of the English textbooks. On the one side, they are right because the English is language with the most develop methods for teaching and learning, and none serious scientist should ignore those achievements. On the other side, in this consideration they should be reasonable and critical, this is, they should respect the differences between English and the target language. For example, the textbooks for teaching / learning English usually starts with present simple, sometimes with the present continuous tense in the same lesson (Acklam and Crace, 2006, Oxenden and Latham-Koenig, 2009, Kay and Jones, 2003). It means that students learn two new suffixes, and two different ways to make some tense. In Bosnian it would mean that the students should learn eighteen suffixes, three possible stem which couldn‘t be recognized just by regarding the infinitive form, not to speak about some sub-classes of verbs with their particularities, and all of that just to learn the present tense in regular verbs. The same things are with possessive adjectives: since the learners of English should learn six new words for the beginning, the learners of Bosnian should learn 29 forms just for the singular.350 Obviously, the differences between English and Bosnian are so big that they can‘t be overcome so easy. But it should be mentioned one more facts: since the students already accept some order in teaching / learning (one more influence of English!), they expect the same in every new language, which make them prepared for accepting of certain information, and the textbooks should take the advantage of it. Just, it must be chosen the best way for it, because when the learners see this bunch of suffixes, they will be concerned and scared of Bosnian, so we would do nothing. So, if the Bosnian textbook want to respect the rule from easy to hard, the order of grammar units must be totally different than in English textbook, and the learners expecting can be kept by announcing soon teaching of things they are waiting them to appear in every next page. But which principle should be applied in the ordering of the grammar units? It should be the frequency of use in the common speech, even if it implies just partly explanation of some of them.351 In the explanation of the rules of Bosnian, definitely it must be back at the one rule several times. Beside it, under prediction of English or their mother tongue, the learners /students make often the same and repeated mistakes, such as in gender or in cases. One textbook can‘t predict the mistakes caused by mother tongue, but can the one‘s caused by knowing English and it can pay attention on them by giving more exercises (Gunske 2007: 22). So, we see that the knowing English can even help to learn the Bosnian in above mentioned ways. But, there is one big difference: since it is so flective, it seems impossible to teach someone to speak Bosnian liquidly and correct without the grammar. The proof for that are many strangers who are in Bosnia and Herzegovina for more than ten years, but out of school system, and they still make many mistakes in their speech, especially if they are from the countries which languages don‘t have the gender or inflection. ―Mitigating circumstance‖ is the fact that the syntax, particularly the word order in Bosnian is much easier than in English (since it is almost free) so, when (somehow) learn the morphology, the students / learners can be considered as they know the Bosnian 350 Here it could be listed much differences, and the one is, for example, insisting on syntaxis, what can be accomplished in English, as the analytic language, but not in Bosnian, as the extremely flective: „To understand the essential concepts of syntactic it is necessary to know morphology, because it can be said that the syntax is actually functional (applied) morphology. Syntaxic level inevitabily demand the involving of the semanthic level, because the syntaxic units are complex language signs, which can't be analyzed by one side. Also, the relationship between syntax and stylistics is very complex, so it is important that teachers can refer the students how to functionally associate the level of grammatically with expressive values of certain syntactic structures.― (Петровачки, 2010: 443-444) 351 The textbooks of other, not so „small― languages have the same problem: Wagner. 1303 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo language.352 It means also that the full attention mast be paid to the organization, explanation and practice of grammar in an effort to make it easy and understandable as more as it is possible. Of course that in this place we can and we should use the rule for the English textbooks to associate grammar items with the others which are used together frequently. And there are more, practical things which should be considered if we want the Bosnian to be accepted and liked. They concern the learners which are mostly adult persons, even if they are students. Some of those things (recognized in the others' experience too: Strzalka, 1998) are the next: The adult learners and students love text, so the textbook should offer it, because the new vocabulary items seem to be better remembered if they are introduced in a context of a longer text (Strzalka, 1998) which, in some way, ―keep the meanings of the words‖ and if learner / student forget the meaning, he or she is still remembering where it words is saw first time, so he / she can quickly find it and remember its meaning. And this fact proof the demand for the textbook for teaching / learning English that the sentences should be linked to each other through a common meaningful theme. The adult learners and students don‘t like to play a role because of their natural shyness or just discomfort. A solution to this problem may simply be giving the more inhibited learners more detailed briefing about their role, thus limiting the freedom of choice which seems to be troublesome for some adult learners (Strzalka, 1998). And this correspond with the demand of the multiply-answer-chose questions for the textbooks for English. The adult learners and students don‘t like the homework (Strzalka, 1998). They wish to learn and be learned only at the classes, because they other occupations are often totally different and they can connect them to learning Bosnian. However, the rules of the faculty or department sometimes strictly demand it, and it has the methodological reasons. Solution can be not to give the explicit homework exercises in the textbook, but structure it in the way that every exercise can be the homework too. The adult learners and students don‘t like the exercises which don‘t demand the understanding of meanings. Doing these kinds of mechanical exercises, learners do not see how this rather passive activity could possibly improve their overall performance in the foreign language and they easily get disinterested (Strzalka, 1998). But ―mechanical‖ repeating is one of the way of the ―unconscious‖ learning of language so these exercises shouldn‘t be omitted, but they should be positioned after the harder exercises so they can be used as a ―relax‖. Moreover, there is one more thing which the textbook for Bosnian must consider and this one for English mustn‘t, and it is costumers who are the heritage speakers. All around the world there are the children or grandchildren of the Bosnian people who emigrate before about hundred years. Those children are often very interested for learning Bosnian, which they know a little bit, but not enough to communicate with people who today live in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The reason is that the language, in strange surround, slowly disappear, but also, and more interesting, that those speakers keep the condition of language before hundred years, and the language in Bosnia today is changed. Also, the emigrants were often from the rural background and they speech is more dialectal, beside it is old. If it wants to be multi-functional and satisfy the expectations, one textbook for learning / teaching Bosnian should take into account these facts and try to show the dialects too, but of course, to insist on the standard language. This corresponds with demand to natural speech in the textbooks for English (and students especially love the non-standard collocations so it can be used to relax some harder lesson). Also, those ―half-native‖ speakers often don‘t know anything, or know a little about the country where their ancients are from. They might have some old picture which their grand parents gave them, and it would be very important to introduce them in recent culture and civilization, beside the fact that it is necessary for all the textbooks for foreign languages (Kramer, 2004: 14). Conclusion After all, we can see that in writing the textbook for learning / teaching the ―small‖ languages such as Bosnian, we can use some rules for this kind of textbooks at all, like offering multiply-answer-chose questions, text resemble natural speech, sentences linked to each other through a common meaningful theme, grammar items associated with the others which are used together frequently and information about the target language culture, but some others, like only communicative method and writing completely in the target language, can‘t. Beside that, the textbook for ―small‖ languages should consider that: 352 There is one more reason for putting more grammar in textbook for Bosnian language: often, the customers are the students who study some other language, accustomed on the grammar explanations and they ask for it. The others don't ask, and to harmonize those two opposite demands, the textbook should offer enough of both, and the teacher can choose whether use it or not. 1304 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo - - learners often already know the English ore some other language (except their mother tongue, of course) what cause always the same mistakes and different expectations (or, to better say, the same expectations) of the textbook learners often already know the Bosnian, but old and dialectal learners are mostly adults and have some typical demands every language ask specific units order depending of its structure And I would like to conclude with a quotation from Allwright (1981: 9; in Ansary and Babaii 2002): There is a limit to what teaching materials can be expected to do for us. The whole business of the management of language learning is far too complex to be satisfactorily catered for by a pre-packaged set of decisions embodied in teaching materials. This means however perfect a textbook is, it is just a simple tool in the hands of teachers. We should not, therefore, expect to work miracles with it. What is more important than a textbook is what we, as teachers, can do with it. 1305 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo References: Acklam, R. & Crace, A. (2006). Total English. Student's book. Harlow: Longman. Ansary, H. & Babaii, E. (2002). Universal Characteristics of EFL/ESL Textbooks: A Step Towards Systematic Textbook Evaluation. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 2, http://iteslj.org/ Allwright, R. L. (1981). What do we want teaching materials for? ELT Journal, 36 (1) Арутюнов, А. Р. (1990). Теория и практика создания учебника русского языка для иностранцев. Москва, стр. 15. Chastain, K. (1987). Examining the role of grammar explanation, drills, and exercises in the development of communication skills. Hispania, 70, pp. 160-166. Gunske, M. (2007). Learning more than English as a foreign language: Are textbook designs fit for OLE classrooms? Second Language Acquisition – Theory and Pedagogy: Proceedings of the 6th Annual JALT Pan-SIG Conference. May, 12 - 13, 2007. Sendai, Japan: Tohoku Bunka Gakuen University, pp. 21-41. Hadley Omaggio, A.C. (1993). Teaching language in context (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle Hai-lin, D. & Xiao-ling, W. (2010), A Comparative Study on the Foreign Language Education Policies of China and Other Countries, Canadian Social Science, Vol. 6, No. 6, pp. 168-172. Kay, S. & Jones, V. (2003). Inside Out. Student's Book. Elementary. Oxford: Macmillan. Kramer, Ch. E. (2004). Accommodating Dialect Speakers in the Classroom: Sociolinguistic Aspects of Textbook Writing. Canadian Slavonic Papers; May-Jun 2004, Vol. 46, Issue 1/2, pp. 59-72. Kurtz, J. (2009). The Role of the Textbook in the EFL Classroom (1), http://juergenkurtz.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/the-role-of-the-textbook-in-the-efl-classroom-1/ posted January 19, 2009 Miekley, J. (2005). ESL Textbook Evaluation Checklist. The Reading Matrix, Vol. 5, No. 2. Millard, D. J. (2000). Form-Focused Instruction in Communicative Language Teaching: Implications for Grammar Textbooks. TESL Canada Journau / Revue TESL Du Canada, Vol. 18, No.1, pp. 47-57. NeneziĤ, J. (2009). Teorija udņbenika i njeno znaĦenje za konstruisanje visokońkolskog udņbenika stranog (ruskog) jezika. Riječ, nova serija, br. 1, NikńiĤ, str. 81-91. Okey, R. (2005). Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian? Language and Nationality in the Lands of Former Yugoslavia. East European Quarterly, XXXVIII, No. 4 Oxenden, C. & Latham-Koenig, Ch. & Seligson, P. (2009). New English File. Pre-intermediate Student's book. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Пассов, Е. И. (1989). Oсновы коммуникативной методики обучения иноязычному общению. Москва Петрпвачки, Љ. (2010). Пpoцecи caзнaвaоa cинтaкcичкиx пojмoвa. Годишњак Филозофског факултета у Новом Саду / Annual Review of the Faculty of Philosophy, Коига XXXV, Hoви Caд, 443-454. Rühlemann, Ch. (2009). Discourse presentation in EFL textbooks: a BNC-based study, Language & Computers, Vol. 69, Issue 1, pp. 415-435. Santos, D. (2002). Learning English as a foreign language in Brazilian elementary schools: Textbooks and their lessons about the world and about learning. Paradigm Journal of the Textbook Colloquium, Vol. 2 (5). Strzalka, A. (1998). Seven Things Adult Learners Dislike. English Teaching Forum, Vol. 36, No 2, p. 39. Tomlinson, B. (ed.) (2008). English Language Learning Materials. A Critical Review. London: Continuum Wagner, J. Grammar Acquisition and Pedagogy, http://www.ielanguages.com/documents/papers/SLA%20Grammar%20Acquisition%20and%20Pedagogy.pdf (12. 04. 2011) Walz, J. (1989). Context and contextualized language practice in foreign language teaching. Modern Language Journal, 73, 160-168. 1306 � 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. 680 Title A name given to the resource To write a textbook for teaching a ―little‖ languages Author Author Karavdic, Zenaida Abstract A summary of the resource. In this time of domination of English in all fields, including linguistics, methodology of preparing textbooks for learning and teaching the foreign languages is also under its influence. This article shows how some achievements in this field can be well used, but also how it‘s necessary to pay attention to differences, whether structural, sociolinguistic, or purely pragmatic when writing a textbook for teaching the "little" languages such as Bosnian. Apart from some theoretical assumptions, this article offers some very practical advice that can be applied to writing books of other languages. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/2dd0e1324efcdf5f8b1361b840c3a3bb.pdf 6f5022d594a255cb5a786e4754eb2fc3 PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo French Foreign Language Teacher Candidates‘ Evaluation of the Computer Assisted Language Teaching Course Erdogan Kartal French Language Teaching Department Faculty of Education Uludag University, Bursa/TURKEY ekartal@uludag.edu.tr Abstract: The aim of the present study is to determine the foreign language teacher candidates‘ evaluation relating to the elective Computer Assisted Language Teaching course which was conducted for four semesters between the academic years of 2007-2010 at Uludag University. The study group consists of 40 teacher candidates enrolled at Uludag University Faculty of Education, French Language Teaching Department. A questionnaire composed of one open-ended question was administered to the teacher candidates who had taken the course. At the end of the course, the candidates were asked to evaluate their experiences of the course, classroom practices, gains and teacher-student interaction. Therefore, a blank sheet of paper was distributed so that the candidates could write their answers in detail. The candidates‘ answers were decoded and interpreted by means of content analysis, a qualitative analysis method. Findings of the research revealed that the course was learner centered, the candidates had gained wide knowledge in both technical and educational points of language teaching, they were able to critically evaluate the language teaching websites, and finally, they had concerns relating to course assessment. Key Words: French language teaching, teacher candidates, computer assisted language teaching, course evaluation. Introduction In today‘s modern societies, the formal teaching process is one of the most important processes in the raising of the individual. The institution called school embeds programs designed for individuals of the same age group and same level. Teachers have a vital role in the implementation of these programs in organized educational processes. Therefore, in order to preserve the importance of the teacher‘s role, teacher training programs need to be continuously evaluated so that problems arising within the system can be traced and overcome effectively. The most important aims of teacher training programs is to define how to prepare quality teachers, explore how to train the teacher candidates in this direction, and to evaluate their achievement of these aims. As known, program development is a dynamic and continuous process. BaĢtùrk (2009), states that the effectiveness of teacher training programs can be reached by overcoming the problems and deficiencies of the program. Technology, especially in the last quarter of the century has become an indispensible component of educational settings (BiriĢçi, ve Karal, 2010). The computer is the primary type of technology used in an educational setting. Today, it can be clearly seen that in every level of education, from pre-school to higher education, the process of teaching is supported with information and communication technologies. One of the most widely spreading areas of this support is language learning/teaching. An investigation of the related literature in our country, shows that there are studies based on the teacher candidates‘ evaluations of courses conducted in the various programs of Faculties of Education (Gùven, 2006; Çoklar & ġahin, 2008; Öztùrk & Darıca, 2003; Acer, 2011; Arıkan, Ünver & Saraç-Sùzer, 2007). However, it was observed that there was no research based on the evaluation of the Computer Assisted Language Teaching (CALT) course. The present study aims to determine the teacher candidates‘ evaluation of the CALT course. At the end of the semester, the teacher candidates‘ were asked for a pedagogically-oriented evaluation of the CALT course that they had taken. The findings revealed by this aim, will assist CALT instructors in teacher training programs to evaluate the current program and reorganize their course material by developing the course context for future semesters. 1338 � 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. 685 Title A name given to the resource French Foreign Language Teacher Candidates‘ Evaluation of the Computer Assisted Language Teaching Course Author Author Kartal, Erdogan Abstract A summary of the resource. The aim of the present study is to determine the foreign language teacher candidates‘ evaluation relating to the elective Computer Assisted Language Teaching course which was conducted for four semesters between the academic years of 2007-2010 at Uludag University. The study group consists of 40 teacher candidates enrolled at Uludag University Faculty of Education, French Language Teaching Department. A questionnaire composed of one open-ended question was administered to the teacher candidates who had taken the course. At the end of the course, the candidates were asked to evaluate their experiences of the course, classroom practices, gains and teacher-student interaction. Therefore, a blank sheet of paper was distributed so that the candidates could write their answers in detail. The candidates‘ answers were decoded and interpreted by means of content analysis, a qualitative analysis method. Findings of the research revealed that the course was learner centered, the candidates had gained wide knowledge in both technical and educational points of language teaching, they were able to critically evaluate the language teaching websites, and finally, they had concerns relating to course assessment. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/6100a1446b6949fc8f51047e18080785.pdf 3ccbadedeb3865e2cb159aed0b58eca1 PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Teachers' Professional Development Tools: Importance and Usage Galip Kartal, Harun ġimĢek Department of ELT Selçuk University, Turkey galipkartal@selcuk.edu.tr Abstract: Current technological developments have led to an easier access to information leading to sociological changes worldwide. This brought about changes in all professions, especially in teaching as one of the roles of the teachers is to prepare their students to the world of future. This fact highlights the importance of foreign language teaching and personal and professional development of teachers. In order to enable professional development, professional development tools are crucial. Richards and Farrell (2009) suggest 11 professional development activities & tools for language teachers. These are: workshops, self- monitoring, teacher support groups, teacher journal, peer observation, teaching portfolios, analyzing critical incidents, case analysis, peer coaching, team teaching, and action research. In the present study, the level of importance attached to the above mentioned tools and the frequency of their usage by the lecturers teaching at the Foreign Languages High-school at Selçuk University is determined. Key Words: Professional Development, Teacher Training, Teacher Development. Introduction Foreign language teaching has been always an important matter in a globalizing community. Language teachers, hence, are to be open to new opportunities in teaching, learning, searching, exploration, and development. Besides, they also should be energetic to find solutions to encountered problems in classrooms. Furthermore, language teaching has become more learner centered and this necessitates an emphasis on guiding and helping students. Teachers need to improve themselves mentally, emotionally and professionally both in order to overcome challenges and in order to stay continue their interest in their jobs. In order to meet current demands, teachers‘ professional development enables them to keep up dated and learn new skills and techniques in his/her area. Fullan (1991, p. 326) defines professional development for teachers as ―the sum total of formal and informal learning experiences throughout one's career from preservice teacher education to retirement‖. Teacher development may also be defined as ―any attempt of the teachers to improve themselves and their teaching practices‖ (ġimĢek, 2009, p. 11). It is also systematic analysis of a teacher‘s own practice. (Villegas-Reimers, 2003, p. 19). The chief aim of teacher development is enhancing teachers‘ ability to teach more efficiently, increase their interest in lifelong learning and improving their skills. Effective professional development involves teachers both as learners and teachers (Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 1996). Successful teacher development helps to increase awareness via allowing teachers to observe their own development both professionally and personally. Pursuing new knowledge, taking advantage of technologies, and awareness of development are crucial to reach self-satisfaction, a condition required to make a teacher satisfactory. As Billings (1997) argues, professional development of teachers can be thought as: ―a deliberate and continuous process involving the identification and discussion of present and anticipated needs of individual staff for furthering their job satisfaction and career prospects and of the institution for supporting its academic work and plans, and the implementation of programs of staff activities designed for the harmonious satisfaction of needs.‖ (p. 4) There is a relationship between personal and professional development of teachers. (Calderhead and Shorrock 1997, p. 15). According to Earley and Bubb (2007): ―Managers and leaders of continuing professional development need to ensure that personal development is not marginalized as it is crucial to teacher effectiveness and school success. Research makes a compelling case for personal development a key component of teacher development.‖ (p. 43). Hence, teacher development can be thought as a part or form of personal development. 479 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Teacher training and teacher development are not same. Teacher training is usually determined by experts and is often available in standard training formats; on the other hand, teacher development is about examining different dimensions of a teacher‘s practice (Richards &Farrell, 2009, p. 4). As a result, teacher training is standardized but teacher development has different dimensions and can be self-initiated. Teacher training is compulsory, competency based, short term, temporary, and done with experts; teacher development is ―voluntary, holistic, long term, ongoing, continental, and done with peers.‖( Woodward, 1991, p. 147 in ġimĢek, 2009, p.43) Professional Development Tools of Language Teachers Richards and Farrell (2009) state eleven procedures/tools that can be used to facilitate professional development of teachers. These are: workshops, self-monitoring, and teacher support groups, keeping a journal, peer observation, teaching portfolios, analyzing critical incidents, case analysis, peer coaching, team teaching, and action research. If we are to provide short information for each: Workshops A workshop is ―an assisted form of learning in which the leader provides a structure for enquiry and which enables workshop members to learn through doing.‖ (Price, 2010, p. 35) Some benefits of workshops: (Richards and Farrell, 2009, p. 23)      Providing input from experts Offering teachers practical classroom applications Raising teacher motivation Developing collegiality Supporting innovations Self-Monitoring Self-monitoring is a self-management procedure and a systematical observation of an individual on his or her own behaviors, actions, reactions. (Ganz, 2008). Self-monitoring enables a teacher to observe his/her own success and behavior. Teacher Support Groups Teacher support groups should not only be thought as gathering together and discussing problems. (Richards and Farrell, 2009) define a teacher support group as: ― two or more teachers collaborating to achieve either their individual or shared goals or both on the assumption that working with a group is usually more effective then working on one‘s own.‖ Keeping a Teaching Journal By keeping a teaching journal, one can easily record a lot of information that can be easily retained for future reference. It provides personal growth and helps teachers to keep a record of classroom events . Peer-observation ―Peer – observation is an effective way of sharing skills and spreading examples of good practice across the teaching profession.‖ (Leaman, 2006, p. 146). Teaching Portfolios A portfolio is a collection of teachers‘ works and ideas providing clues about the performance and improvement of a teacher throughout a professional development endeavor. ―A professional portfolio is 480 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo an evolving collection of carefully selected or composed professional thoughts, goals, and experiences that are threaded with reflection and self-assessment. It represents who you are, what you do, why you do it, where you have been, where you are, where you want to go, and how you plan on getting there.‖ (Evans, 1995, p. 11). In a study made by Koçoğlu (1985) with 5 senior students, the results showed that the process of preparing a portfolio provided a useful approach to enhancing professional development. Analyzing Critical Incidents Richards and Farrell (2009) believe that critical incidents can reveal some of the underlying principles, beliefs, and assumptions that shape classroom practices. Case Analysis Case analysis is an analytical thinking technique. Cases can be used as a material in teaching-learning environment and for outgoing teachers case analysis might be very useful. ―We study cases not so much to find the right answer, but to train ourselves in systematic analysis so we will be effective decision makers in the business world. Successful case preparation depends on multiple readings of the case and multiple points of view.‖ (Robinson, 2008) Peer Coaching Rhodes et al. define coaching as ―a peer-networking interaction (working together) which draws upon collaboration and mutual trust. It is usually a short-term relationship which can be used to help embed change, raise performance, raise impact and assist in skill development.‖(2004, p. 25). Peer coaching may help to share ideas with other teachers, solve classroom-related problems in schools. Team Teaching ―Team teaching is a process in which two or more teachers share the responsibility for teaching a class. The teachers share responsibility for planning the class or course, for teaching it, and for any follow-up work associated with the class such as evaluation and assessment.‖ (Richards and Farrell, 2009, p. 159) Action Research According to Craig action research is ―a common methodology employed for improving conditions and practice in classrooms and in other practitioner-based environments such as administrative, leadership, social, and community settings.‖ (2009, p.2). Zuberr-Skerritt, (1992) informs that ―action research is based on fundamental concepts of active learning, adult learning and holistic, dialectical thinking, and on the principles of experiential and to advance knowledge.‖ (2004, p. 88). Methodology This research was carried out to find out the importance and usage of professional development activities and tools suggested by Richards and Farrell (2009). This study aims to find answers to the following research questions: 1. Does the level of importance given by teachers to professional development tools vary according to gender, age, and work experience? 2. Is there a difference between the levels of importance attached by teachers to the above mentioned professional development tools and the frequency of their usage? The participants of this study are 60 Turkish EFL lecturers (30 female and 26 male) working at Foreign Languages Teaching High School at Selçuk University. Out of the 60 participants, four didn‘t mention their gender. 481 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Data Analysis The data have been gathered through a questionnaire about professional development tools. The professional development tools mentioned were: workshops, self-monitoring, and teacher support groups, keeping a teaching journal, peer observation, teaching portfolios, analyzing critical incidents, case analysis, peer coaching, team teaching, and action research. In order to indicate the importance attached by the lecturers to these professional development tools, they were asked to select out of the following: 1- absolutely not important, 2- Unimportant, 3- undetermined, 4- important, and 5- very important. The second part asked to choose one of the options related to the usage of these tools by the lecturers. They chose one out of the following: 1- never, 2occasionaly, 3-sometimes, 4- usually, 5- always, in order to determine how frequency of their employment by these lecturers. Data gathered from the professional development tools questionnaire were analyzed quantitatively using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 18.0 with reference to the research questions. The mean values and the standard deviations were calculated to see the differences between English teacher‘s thoughts and usage of professional development tools suggested by Richards and Farrell (2009). Findings and Discussions 1. Does the level of importance given by teachers to professional development tools vary according to gender, age, and work experience? Table 1- Importance level of professional development tools according to gender Gender N Male Female 26 30 X S 42,96 6,37 -,67 41,23 12,32 t P ,51 As it can be seen in table 1, the importance level of professional development tools doesn‘t vary according to gender. In other words, both male and female teachers find teachers‘ professional development tools important. Table 2- Professional development tools usage scores of teachers according to gender Gender Male Female N 26 30 X S t 37,96 8,47 ,29 38,23 5,60 P ,77 The table above indicates that there is no significant difference between female and male teachers‘ usage scores of professional development tools. Table 3- Teachers‘ views about importance of professional development tools and teachers‘ usage scores of professional development tools 482 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Sum of Squares important Between Groups Within Groups Total usage Between Groups Within Groups Total df Mean Square 383,188 5 76,638 5178,996 5562,183 104,009 2693,391 2797,400 54 59 5 54 59 95,907 F 20,802 49,878 P ,799 ,555 ,417 ,835 According to Anova test results, there is no statistically difference (> 0,05) between average of age groups of the lecturers (20-25, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40, 41 and above) in terms of importance level and usage frequency of teachers‘ professional development tools. Teachers at different age groups give close importance to teachers‘ professional tools. Table 4- Importance level and usage scores acoording to work experience Sum of Squares important Between Groups 1086,918 4475,265 5562,183 48,017 2749,383 2797,400 Within Groups Total usage Between Groups Within Groups Total df Mean Square 4 55 59 4 55 59 F P 271,730 81,368 3,339 ,016 12,004 49,989 ,240 ,914 Anova test results indicate that the usage score of tools doesn‘t vary according to seniority in profession. But, multiple comparison analysis showed that teachers who have been working between 1 and 5 years find professional development tools more important than the teachers who have been working more than 20 years. Unimportant Absolutely Not Important SelfMonitoring Teacher Support Groups Keeping Teacher %18 %% 0 %% 0 %% 0 %%2 %% 0 %%3 Important Workshops Very Important PD Tools Undetermine d 2. Is there a difference between the level of importance given by teachers to professional development tools and frequency of conducting these tools? %% 27 %% 40 %% 27 %%5 0 %%4 8 %%5 5 %% 18 %%3 7 %40 %10 %18 %%0 %%0 483 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Occasionall y %% 37 %% 23 %% 37 %%42 %%0 %% 22 %%40 %% 10 %%1 8 %%1 0 %%5 %%0 %% 33 %% 22 %% 22 %%37 %% 12 %% 7 %% 23 %%5 %%0 %% 30 %% 37 %% 20 %% 30 %%35 PD Tools Workshops %%8 %%0 SelfMonitoring Teacher Support Groups Keeping Teacher Journal Peer Observation Teaching Portfolios Analyzing Critical Incidents Case Analysis Peer Coaching Team Teaching Action Research %%7 %%0 %%7 %%0 %%2 7 %%0 %%0 %%50 %%48 %%62 %%50 Never Sometimes Conclusions and Recommendations Table 5 above indicates that teachers find professional development tools very important for a successful teacher development, but they do not employ them accordingly. Workshops, for instance, are important according to %77 of teachers, but about 50 percent almost never conduct them. According to %88 teachers self monitoring is important but %20 never did self monitoring. For the majority of teachers, teacher support groups are important, but only %7 of them conduct it. %73 of teachers think keeping a teacher journal is important, but only %7 of them are keeping teacher journals. Although %73 of teachers find peer observation important, %49 almost never experienced it. For %78 of teachers, teacher portfolios are important, but just %10 of teachers keep a teacher Usually Peer %% %%5 %23 %% %%3 Observation 23 0 0 Teaching %% %%5 %20 %% %%0 Portfolios 20 8 0 Analyzing %% %%5 %18 %% %%0 Critical 30 2 0 Incidents Case %% %%3 %18 %% %%0 Analysis 40 7 0 Peer %% %%4 %33 %% %%0 Coaching 22 0 0 Team %% %%4 %18 %% %%2 Teaching 32 8 0 Action %% %%4 %22 %% %%2 Research 30 7 0 portfolio regularly. %82 of teachers find analyzing critical incidents important, but just %5 of them analyzes critical incidents. According to %77 of teachers case analysis is important, but just %5 of them conduct it. %62 of teachers find peer coaching important, but only %10 of them act accordingly. %80 of teachers think team teaching is important, but only %17 of teachers conducted it more than a few times. %77 of teachers think action research is beneficial for a successful professional development but about % 13 them never did an action research and about %80 of them almost didn‘t do it. The outcomes of the present study might indicate an unawareness of what these tools are and how they are going to be employed. Many of the lecturers at the Foreign Languages High School in Konya register in graduate studies if they seek professional development or attend conferences. However, self initiated teacher development sessions and activities do not rank high in their agenda. Table 5- The importance level and usage frequency of professional development tools. Always Journal %% 8 %% 20 %% 7 %% 27 %% 10 %% 18 %% 13 Both as a person and as a teacher lecturers %%1 %%0 %%42 have aims. While trying to reach those aims they come 0 across some challenges. In order to cope with existing %%1 %%0 %%42 and new challenges teachers need to develop 7 professionally. As professional development is not %%7 %%0 %%48 compulsory, teachers should develop some positive attitudes towards professional development. In a research conducted by AteĢkan (2008), science teachers‘ perceptions about online teacher professional development program were investigated. The results showed that teachers were not satisfied with previous professional development programs because of the problems about content, process and organization as conducted by the Turkish Ministry of Education. For successful teacher development there are some tools suggested by Richards and Farrell (2009). These are: workshops, self monitoring, teacher support groups, keeping a teaching journal, peer observation, teacher portfolios, analyzing critical incidents, case analysis, peer coaching, team teaching, and action research. This research showed us that lecturers at Foreign Language High School at Selçuk University find every tool important. According to them the most important tools is self-monitoring. But they do not employ these tools enough for their professional development. 484 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo The professional development tools mentioned in this study might be easier used via the internet. For example, keeping an online teaching journal or online teacher support groups can be more functional as internet allows mass access. Moreover, due to time concerns, gathering together and holding a workshop, for instance, is not very easy. Hence teachers may participate in online workshops or analyze critical instances together within a forum. A teacher can keep online teaching journal and teaching portfolios. In short, internet can be used in a variety of ways in order to conduct professional development activities easily. 485 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo References AteĢkan, A. (2008). Online Professional Development Program For Science Teachers: A Case Study. Unpublished PhD Dissertation Billings, D.E. (1977). The Nature and scope of staff development in institutions of higher education‘, in L. Bell and C.Day, Managing the Professional Development of Teachers Calderhead, J., & Shorrock, S.B.(1997). Understanding Teacher Education, London: The Falmer Press Craig, D.V. (2009). Action Research Essentials. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Darling-Hammond, L.,& McLaughlin M.W. (1996). Policies That Support Professional Development in an Era of Reform. In M.W. McLaughlin and I. Oberman (Eds.), Teacher Learning: New Policies, New Practices. 202218, New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Earley, P., & Bubb, S.(2007). Leading and Managing Continuing Professional Development: Developng People, London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Fullan, M., & Steigelbauer, S. (l991). The new meaning of educational change (2nd Ed.), New York: Teachers College Press. Ganz, J. (2008). Self-monitoring across age and ability levels: Teaching students to implement their own positive behavioral interventions. Preventing School Failure, 53(1), 39–48. Koçoğlu, Z.B. (2006). The Role of Portfolios in EFL Student Teachers‘ Professional Development: A Case Study. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation Leaman, L. (2006). The Naked Teacher: how to survive your first five years in teaching. London: Continuum International Publishing Group Price, B. (2010). Disseminating best practice through workshops. Nursing Standard. 24(28), 35-41 Rhodes, C., Stokes, M., Hampton, G.(2004). A Practical Guide to Mentoring, Coaching and Peer-Networking, London: Routledge Falmer Richards, J., & Farrell, T.(2009). Professional Development for Language Teachers, New York: Cambridge University Press Robinson, D. (2008). Notes on Case Analysis. http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/robinson/Case%20Analysis.pdf Retrieved April 15, 2011, from: ġimĢek, H. (2009). A teacher Development Program for Young Learners of English: An Action Research, Konya: ME-SA Publications Villegas-Reimars,E.(2003) Teacher Professional Development. An International Review of Literature. Paris: IEEP printshop Zuber- Skerritt, O.(1992). Action research in Higher Education, London: Kogan Page 486 � 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. 72 Title A name given to the resource Teachers' Professional Development Tools: Importance and Usage Author Author Kartal, Galip SimĢek, Harun Abstract A summary of the resource. Current technological developments have led to an easier access to information leading to sociological changes worldwide. This brought about changes in all professions, especially in teaching as one of the roles of the teachers is to prepare their students to the world of future. This fact highlights the importance of foreign language teaching and personal and professional development of teachers. In order to enable professional development, professional development tools are crucial. Richards and Farrell (2009) suggest 11 professional development activities & tools for language teachers. These are: workshops, self- monitoring, teacher support groups, teacher journal, peer observation, teaching portfolios, analyzing critical incidents, case analysis, peer coaching, team teaching, and action research. In the present study, the level of importance attached to the above mentioned tools and the frequency of their usage by the lecturers teaching at the Foreign Languages High-school at Selçuk University is determined. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/db305982d8c2003a4d4b1067a4a72118.pdf 7ce7ba67dd8460483302f0c3638aefec PDF Text Text 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Significance of Teaching Semiotic Pedagogy Aida Kasieva School of Translation and Interpretation Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University, Kyrgyz Republic aida_kasieva@yahoo.com Abstract: Charles Sanders Peirce, the father of American semiotics and pragmatism, insisted that educational institutions be places for learning and not merely instruction. If Peirce‘s argument is accepted, then it is necessary to redefine the role of teachers, students, and subject matters in relation to learning semiotics, with its cultural emphasis on codes, signs, and social interaction. Semiotics is especially appropriate for rethinking the learning and teaching progress. In particular, semiotics is a central part of the emerging global discipline which studies human communication as one of the Human Science disciplines using logic based research methods of semiotics and phenomenology to investigate social and cultural interactions. Thus, the present article is focused on the three areas of Semiotics as defined by Charles Morris when he participated in the Unified Science Project at the University of Chicago: 1. Semantics; 2. Syntax; 3. Pragmatics. In the same spirit, my article involves pedagogical activities for providing effective syllabus designs, teaching strategies, and classroom activities that show relevance for contemporary pedagogical studies in Communication and Cross-cultural studies. Pedagogy based on the semiotic work of Peirce, and exemplified by his definition of the university as a ―community of interpretation‖, forces a reconsideration of the roles which learners, teachers, and subject matter play within educational endeavors. This reconsideration may be called a ―semiotic pedagogy‖ of communication and culture. Key Words: semantics, pragmatics, syntax, symbol, icon, index, signifier, signified Introduction The study of semiotics is an interdisciplinary program encompassing such branches of science like Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Theory of Literature, Aesthetics, History, Communication and etc. It is the study of signs derived from the speculations on signification and language of the American pragmatist philosopher C.S. Peirce and the Swiss linguistic theorist Ferdinand de Sausurre. Also known as semiology, semiotics is concerned with the phenomena of signs in all their abundance and variety: letters, images, literary texts, acoustic signals, road signs, verbal signs, gestures, icons, symbols, allegories, corporate logos, indices, hieroglyphs, drawings, natural signs, celestial signs, musical notations, mathematical signs-in short, signifying objects and artifacts of virtually every size, shape, color, and substance. Semiotics includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood. In a simplified meaning it can be interpreted how the word or any object can be accepted by a person, its effect on the reader, listener or foreigner. Moreover, Semiotics broadens the experience range of sign systems and sign relations, which will increase mutual understanding between students from different countries and cultures. As concisely summarized by I.A. Richards ―Communication takes place when one mind so acts upon its environment that another mind is influenced, and in that other mind an experience occurs which is like the experience in the first mind, and is caused in part by that experience.‖ Given this context, the present paper is devoted to actualizing study of semiotic theory and pedagogy of American semioticians, which is extremely important to the development of educational system at any its level. This can be achieved by means of enormous resources of semioticians that offer us a truly unique opportunity to expand students‘ cross-cultural knowledge. Charles Sanders Peirce, the father of American semiotics and pragmatism, insisted that educational institutions be places for learning and not merely instruction. If Peirce‘s argument is accepted, then it is necessary to redefine the role of teachers, students, and subject matters in relation to learning semiotics, with its cultural emphasis on codes, signs, and social interaction. Semiotics is especially appropriate for rethinking the learning and teaching progress in linguistics, translation theory, communication and media, etc. In particular, semiotics is a central part of the emerging global discipline which studies human communication as one of the Human Science disciplines using logic based research methods of semiotics and phenomenology to investigate social and cultural interactions. Thus, the present paper is focused on the three areas of Semiotics as defined by Charles Morris when he participated in the Unified Science Project at the University of Chicago: 1. Semantics; 2. Syntax; 3. Pragmatics. 51 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Starting from its origin as a science, semiotics has been one of the most hotly disputed issues due to its connection, application, and belonging to different other sciences. In the same spirit, the scope of the present paper mostly covers basic theoretical information, knowledge, concepts, pedagogical activities, teaching strategies, and classroom activities relevant for contemporary pedagogical studies in teaching Semiotics as well as theoretical sources of outstanding semioticians on how the subject is interpreted from the points of view of different scholars. The role of scholars, their contribution into the development of Semiotics along with other sciences is vital to our understanding of the world. In order to have a clear idea of semiotics, it is necessary to systematize all the known models of communication and create an effective syllabus that would enable the development of students‘ critical thinking abilities. The reason why this paper is established within the frameworks of linguistics is that semiotics generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality and thus broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations. In order to extend the definition of semiotics applicable to language in amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense and closer to some of the humanities as well, it is necessary to conduct classes including most important and significant materials in semiotics such as the works of Charles W. Morris, Thomas Sebeok, Jurgen Ruesch, Chris Morris, Nim Chimpsky, Bob Hodge, Richard L.Lanigan, Umberto Eco and others. The study of semiotics through practical classes is of great value both for teachers and students as it offers number of advantages that would broaden students‘ thinking abilities from the point that the bases of semiotics are applicable not only in studying linguistics, literature and translatology, but every other respective science as well. Since signs exist everywhere and in every field regardless whether it concerns some definite science or everyday life, they should be revealed the proper way by means of applying semiotic analysis. By means of this very activity students acquire necessary skills to understand, decode the signs they face in their life, which is of a great importance for everyone. The process of analyzing should be reached by reviewing all three abovementioned stages: semantic analysis, syntactic analysis and pragmatic analysis. In order to realize the process of semiosis, first of all, it is necessary to overview general basic definitions that are frequently used in semiotics. Indeed, semiotics is a vast field, however in this paper we just try to give necessary information about the most frequently used concepts and terminology concerning semiotics. According to Pierce ―We make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs', 'we think only in signs' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.302). Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, acts or objects, but such things have no meaning and become signs only when we accord them with meaning. 'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign', declares Peirce (Peirce 1931-58, 2.172). Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something other than itself. We interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of conventions. It is this meaningful use of signs which is at the heart of the concerns of semiotics. There are two dominant models of what constitutes a sign that were suggested by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce: Saussure offered a two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of: a 'signifier' (signifiant) - the form which the sign takes; and the 'signified' (signifiй) - the concept it represents. The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (Saussure 1983, 67; Saussure 1974, 67). The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as 'signification'. A sign must have both a signifier and a signified. You cannot have a totally meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified (Saussure 1983, 101; Saussure 1974, 102-103). A sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified. The same signifier could stand for a different signified and thus be a different sign. A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer's psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses. This sound pattern may be called a 'material' element only in that it is the representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept. (Saussure 1983, 66; Saussure 1974, 66) 52 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo As for the signified, most commentators who adopt Saussure's model still treat this as a mental construct, although they often note that it may nevertheless refer indirectly to things in the world. Saussure's signified is not to be identified directly with a referent but is a concept in the mind - not a thing but the notion of a thing. Some people may wonder why Saussure's model of the sign refers only to a concept and not to a thing. An observation from the philosopher Susanne Langer (who was not referring to Saussure's theories) may be useful here. Like most contemporary commentators, Langer uses the term 'symbol' to refer to the linguistic sign (a term which Saussure himself avoided): 'Symbols are not proxy for their objects but are vehicles for the conception of objects... In talking about things we have conceptions of them, not the things themselves; and it is the conceptions, not the things, that symbols directly mean. Behaviour towards conceptions is what words normally evoke; this is the typical process of thinking'. She adds that 'If I say "Napoleon", you do not bow to the conqueror of Europe as though I had introduced him, but merely think of him' (Langer 1951, 61). Louis Hjelmslev used the terms 'expression' and 'content' to refer to the signifier and signified respectively (Hjelmslev 1961, 47ff). The distinction between signifier and signified has sometimes been equated to the familiar dualism of 'form and content'. Within such a framework the signifier is seen as the form of the sign and the signified as the content. However, the metaphor of form as a 'container' is problematic, tending to support the equation of content with meaning, implying that meaning can be 'extracted' without an active process of interpretation and that form is not in itself meaningful (Chandler 1995 104-6). At around the same time as Saussure was formulating his model of the sign, of 'semiology' and of a structuralist methodology, across the Atlantic independent work was also in progress as the pragmatist philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce formulated his own model of the sign, of 'semiotic' and of the taxonomies of signs. In contrast to Saussure's model of the sign in the form of a 'self-contained dyad', Peirce offered a triadic model: The Representamen: the form which the sign takes (not necessarily material); An Interpretant: not an interpreter but rather the sense made of the sign; An Object: to which the sign refers. 'A sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.228). The interaction between the representamen, the object and the interpretant is referred to by Peirce as 'semiosis' (ibid., 5.484). Within Peirce's model of the sign, the traffic light sign for 'stop' would consist of: a red light facing traffic at an intersection (the representamen); vehicles halting (the object) and the idea that a red light indicates that vehicles must stop (the interpretant). Variants of Peirce's triad are often presented as 'the semiotic triangle' (as if there were only one version). Here is a version which is quite often encountered and which changes only the unfamiliar Peircean terms (Nцth 1990, 89): Sign vehicle: the form of the sign; Sense: the sense made of the sign; Referent: what the sign 'stands for'. Daniel Chandler has continued to employ the Saussurean terms signifier and signified, even though Peirce referred to the relation between the 'sign' (sic) and the object, since the Peircean distinctions are most commonly employed within a broadly Saussurean framework. Such incorporation tends to emphasize the referential potential of the signified within the Saussurean model. Here then are the three modes together with some brief definitions and some illustrative examples: 53 �Symbol/symbolic: a mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but which is 1st International Conference on Foreign- Language Teaching must and Applied fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional so that the relationship be learnt: Linguistics e.g. language in general (plus specific languages, alphabetical May 5-7letters, 2011punctuation Sarajevo marks, words, phrases and sentences), numbers, Morse code, traffic lights, national flags; Icon/iconic: a mode in which the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified (recognizably looking, sounding, feeling, tasting or smelling like it) - being similar in possessing some of its qualities: e.g. a portrait, a cartoon, a scale-model, onomatopoeia, metaphors, 'realistic' sounds in 'programme music', sound effects in radio drama, a dubbed film soundtrack, imitative gestures; Index/indexical: a mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way (physically or causally) to the signified - this link can be observed or inferred: e.g. 'natural signs' (smoke, thunder, footprints, echoes, non-synthetic odours and flavours), medical symptoms (pain, a rash, pulserate), measuring instruments (weathercock, thermometer, clock, spirit-level), 'signals' (a knock on a door, a phone ringing), pointers (a pointing 'index' finger, a directional signpost), recordings (a photograph, a film, video or television shot, an audio-recorded voice), personal 'trademarks' (handwriting, catchphrase) and indexical words ('that', 'this', 'here', 'there'). Peirce and Saussure used the term 'symbol' differently from each other. Whilst nowadays most theorists would refer to language as a symbolic sign system, Saussure avoided referring to linguistic signs as 'symbols', since the ordinary everyday use of this term refers to examples such as a pair of scales (signifying justice), and he insisted that such signs are 'never wholly arbitrary. Turning to icons, Peirce declared that an iconic sign represents its object 'mainly by its similarity' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.276). A sign is an icon 'insofar as it is like that thing and used as a sign of it' (ibid., 2.247). Just because a signifier resembles that which it depicts does not necessarily make it purely iconic. The philosopher Susanne Langer argues that 'the picture is essentially a symbol, not a duplicate, of what it represents' (Langer 1951, 67). Pictures resemble what they represent only in some respects. What we tend to recognize in an image are analogous relations of parts to a whole (ibid., 67-70). Indexicality is perhaps the most unfamiliar concept. Peirce offers various criteria for what constitutes an index. An index 'indicates' something: for example, 'a sundial or clock indicates the time of day' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.285). He refers to a 'genuine relation' between the 'sign' and the object which does not depend purely on 'the interpreting mind' (ibid., 2.92, 298). The object is 'necessarily existent' (ibid., 2.310). The index is connected to its object 'as a matter of fact' (ibid., 4.447). There is 'a real connection' (ibid., 5.75). Film and television use all three forms: icon (sound and image), symbol (speech and writing), and index (as the effect of what is filmed); at first sight iconic signs seem the dominant form, but some filmic signs are fairly arbitrary, such as 'dissolves' which signify that a scene from someone's memory is to follow. Hawkes notes, following Jakobson, that the three modes 'co-exist in the form of a hierarchy in which one of them will inevitably have dominance over the other two', with dominance determined by context (Hawkes 1977, 129). Whether a sign is symbolic, iconic or indexical depends primarily on the way in which the sign is used, so textbook examples chosen to illustrate the various modes can be misleading. The same signifier may be used iconically in one context and symbolically in another: a photograph of a woman may stand for some broad category such as 'women' or may more specifically represent only the particular woman who is depicted. Signs cannot be classified in terms of the three modes without reference to the purposes of their users within particular contexts. A sign may consequently be treated as symbolic by one person, as iconic by another and as indexical by a third. As Kent Grayson puts it, 'When we speak of an icon, an index or a symbol, we are not referring to objective qualities of the sign itself, but to a viewer's experience of the sign' (Grayson 1998, 35). Signs may also shift in mode over time. As Jonathan Culler notes, 'In one sense a Rolls-Royce is an index of wealth in that one must be wealthy in order to purchase one, but it has been made a conventional sign of wealth by social usage' (Culler 1975, 17). From a semiotic point-of-view, such questions could only be answered by considering in each case whether the different forms signified something of any consequence to the relevant sign-users in the context of the specific signifying practice being studied. Thus, the discipline described is aimed at developing students‘ thinking abilities as semiotics is an interdisciplinary subject and is anticipated to provide developing interpretation skills of students, includes general concepts on semiotics. 54 �1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics May 5-7 2011 Sarajevo Thus, teaching semiotics would provide and acquaint students with general theoretical knowledge in semiotics along with its abovementioned three aspects (semantics, syntax and pragmatics), along with wide sources from different fields of science. As a new discipline in Kyrgyzstan, semiotics is now being included into the programs of just few universities in Bishkek whilst universities located in other regions of the Kyrgyz Republic still have no idea about Semiotics as a science. And even those ones that have this subject are mostly focused on just one of its branches called ―Semantics‖. 1. Despite the fact that Kyrgyz–Turkish Manas University is considered to be one of the youngest universities with its 15 years‘ existence, the administrators and faculty included the course in semiotics into its program. The urgency is caused with the fact that KTU ―Manas‖ is an international university with more than 20 nationalities, where students must aware of mastering semiotics not only to survive in a foreign country, but also be aware of the cultural aspects in order to communicate with each other and understand codes that are hidden in foreign words and study foreign languages, to conduct comparative analyses of different linguistic phenomena whether it is a word, a text, a picture, a symbol for further experiencing them. As a conclusion for the present paper, I would like to cite the words of one of American semioticians, Richard L. Lanigan, who in his book "On the Goals of Semiotics [Survey]", compiled by Thomas A. Sebeok, Semiotica, 61, nos. 3-4, p. 381, 1986 said: "Semiotics is rapidly becoming the lingua franca of the scholarly world. The primary goals of the semiotic discipline should be (1) to extend the current analysis and discussion of sign theory into new subject matters, especially in the human sciences, and (2) to continue educating our colleagues about semiotic research as the conjunction of animal, human, and machine realities. In every discipline, we need to acknowledge and illustrate the in situ discovery of sign production. This is not another facile call for more interdisciplinary work. Rather, it is a phenomenological challenge to the scholars of each discipline to reexamine their philosophical and theoretical grounding as communicated. It is a mutual demand: to the arts to be systemic as well as intuitive in presentation, and, to the sciences to be creative as well as empirical in abstraction… Semiotics as the human art and science of communicology can, and should, be a vigorous alternative to the conceptual comforts of traditional art and science. An achievable goal for semiotics is to effectively communicate what it describes, how it defines, and why it interprets." Reference 1. 1988. Richard L. Lanigan, Phenomenology of Communication: Merleau-Ponty‘s Thematics in Communicology and Semiology (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press; ISBN: 0-8207-0199-8), 288 pp. Korean trans. DuWon Lee and Kee-soon Park, Seoul, Korea: Naman Publishing House, 1997; ISBN: 89-3003554-X. [First research report book in English to use the disciplinary designation Communicology.] 2006. Richard L. Lanigan, ―The Human Science of Communicology (Semiotic Phenomenology)‖ in Semiotics Beyond Limits (Proceedings of the 1st Romanian Association of Semiotic Studies), (Bacau, Romania: SlanicMoldova), pp. 779-783. 2008. Richard L. Lanigan, ―Communicology: Towards a New Science of Semiotic Phenomenology‖, Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology [Rumania], vol. 8, pages 212-216, 218 2010. Richard L. Lanigan, "The Verbal and Nonverbal Codes of Communicology: The Foundation of Interpersonal Agency and Efficacy" in Communicology: The New Science of Embodied Discourse, ed. Deborah Eicher-Catt and Isaac E. Catt (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickson University Press), pp. 102-128. 2010. Richard L. Lanigan, "Slugging: The Nonce Sign in an Urban Communicology of Transportation" in Unfolding the Semiotic Web in Urban Discourse, ed. Diana Teters and Zdzisław Wąsik (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Internationalaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2010), pp. in press. 55 � 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. 11 Title A name given to the resource Significance of Teaching Semiotic Pedagogy Author Author Kasieva, Aida Abstract A summary of the resource. Charles Sanders Peirce, the father of American semiotics and pragmatism, insisted that educational institutions be places for learning and not merely instruction. If Peirce‘s argument is accepted, then it is necessary to redefine the role of teachers, students, and subject matters in relation to learning semiotics, with its cultural emphasis on codes, signs, and social interaction. Semiotics is especially appropriate for rethinking the learning and teaching progress. In particular, semiotics is a central part of the emerging global discipline which studies human communication as one of the Human Science disciplines using logic based research methods of semiotics and phenomenology to investigate social and cultural interactions. Thus, the present article is focused on the three areas of Semiotics as defined by Charles Morris when he participated in the Unified Science Project at the University of Chicago: 1. Semantics; 2. Syntax; 3. Pragmatics. In the same spirit, my article involves pedagogical activities for providing effective syllabus designs, teaching strategies, and classroom activities that show relevance for contemporary pedagogical studies in Communication and Cross-cultural studies. Pedagogy based on the semiotic work of Peirce, and exemplified by his definition of the university as a ―community of interpretation‖, forces a reconsideration of the roles which learners, teachers, and subject matter play within educational endeavors. This reconsideration may be called a ―semiotic pedagogy‖ of communication and culture. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-05 Keywords Keywords. Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics