321 10 3494 https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/16981396805b576cd0cee320e93e2133.pdf b17632859b4428957efdc4f83db4b303 PDF Text Text Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Product Writing for Better Linguistic Acquisition by English Language Students and Cultural Sanja Josifović-Elezović Svetlana Mitić University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina Submitted: 21.04.2014. Accepted: 11.11.2014. Abstract Product writing is considered uncreative and unstimulating, as it trains students to model their output according to rules and patterns. The risk students might particularly be exposed to when taught such writing is their memorising complete phrases, the most common grammatical forms and lexis used, and leaving a false impression of having mastered the register and form of selected writing patterns, and improved their linguistic and writing ability in general. Teaching product writing to students whose native culture has proven hesitant in regard to adopting correspondence as standard in certain situations, e.g. when applying for a job, complaining about a faulty product or substandard service, or writing a report to an authority, may prove additionally difficult and the achievements of a course based on it unintended. Most people’s daily experience shows that the culture of cultivated writing is losing the battle with truncated correspondence via e-mail and other electronic media. In light of this, learning to write and utilize such basic forms as applications, complaints and reports may prove beneficial for students’ writing, as well as their general linguistic competence and their adoption of the target culture. This paper presents the results of a writing course administered to first-year English undergraduates as part of a general English language skills course and analyses them in terms of the students’ adoption of the grammatical forms and the vocabulary/register that are required, or most commonly used, in the selected forms. This shows the extent of their real progress, as well as changes in their attitudes toward such writing as representative of the target culture. It also reveals the role the course has had in developing the students’ awareness of learning as a process and of formative assessment, or rather, specific assessment that focused on a product, while emphasising the relevance of teaching/learning as a process. �Product Writing for Better Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition by English Language Students Keywords: product writing, teaching/learning writing as a process, linguistic acquisition, cultural acquisition, formative assessment Introduction The practice and benefits of formative assessment Formative assessment refers to the gathering of information about student learning during a course or programme that is used to guide improvements in teaching and learning. Formative assessment can be performed in many forms (from simply posing a question in class or asking for a show of hands in support of different response options in order to guide further teaching, to various practice quizzes, oneminute speeches and papers, clearest/muddiest point exercises, various kinds of pair/group work during and after class, etc.). It provides students with opportunities to practice skills or test knowledge in a “safe” way. It usually consists of low-stakes or no-stakes, and/or ungraded (or peer- or self-evaluated) activities, and these can be combined to comprise all or part of a participation grade or all or a part of a preexam requirement. Even though formative assessment is the kind of assessment that is said to improve learning, students do not seem to value it as highly as they do when it is conspicuously related to summative assessment. Our classroom experience has repeatedly proved that formative assessment serves manifold purposes if it is allowed to serve as a scaffold into summative assessment. The scaffolding would primarily mean that formative-assessment activities are being used to provide the teacher with student feedback about how the course is going, and to create a culture of selfreflection and assessment that is focused on learning rather than solely on grades. However, if formative-assessment activities are designed to scaffold into summative evaluation and are worth points, students are more likely to take the activities seriously and put forth the effort; they will be more aware of the value of formative assessment and will be more likely to participate in a more meaningful way. If done this way, formative-assessment activities deliver a number of benefits for both students and teachers. They inform the teacher about how well his/her students are learning the material, provide valuable feedback about how the course is progressing and offer palpable evidence of student engagement (or the lack thereof) and learning (or not). They encourage attendance, student self-reflection and self-evaluation, and allow even very shy students to earn participation grades. They allow all learners to demonstrate knowledge in multiple ways. Process vs. product writing �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Just as we need both formative and summative assessment, we need both process and product writing. In product writing, the focus is on usage and grammar, topic sentences, paragraphing and rhetorical patterns of moulding the text, i.e. formal accuracy and correctness. Rather than creativity and innovation, mechanical drilling is present, along with fill-ins, substitution, transformation, completion, identifying the topic sentence and reordering scrambled paragraphs. Writing is considered a multi-stage linear process that leads to the gradual evolution of the text: prewriting, writing and rewriting. The process approach, on the other hand, assumes that writing is neither a linear nor a mechanical process; rather, it is an exploratory, recursive and generative process. Thinking and conveying meaning through collaborative work is encouraged, and the writer is the centre of attention. The focus is on the process of writing, consisting of prewriting, drafting, rewriting and presenting. It is supposed to help students understand their own composing process, giving them time to write and rewrite in order to discover what they want to say as they write. The process of revision is of central importance. Students are given feedback throughout the composing process, both from the teacher and their peers. Teaching process writing may take a lot of time because students need to learn the concept (peer editing, planning, stages); we may also encounter a loss of student focus or interest, since it may not be suited to some personalities and may restrict spontaneity. However, the benefits of implementing it outweigh the drawbacks in the long run. After all, the process ends with a creation of a product. Moreover, writing is understood as a communicative and purposeful activity; students learn to plan, research and collaborate. Examples of good practice should be incorporated into process writing and a balance between product and process writing should be reached (Brown, 2007). It is not a question of whether to use one approach or the other, but rather one and the other. Contrasted rhetoric and its implications for teaching writing When teaching writing skills in a foreign language classroom, the differences between cultural writing traditions around the world should be taken into consideration and should be made to work for the students, not against them. Some knowledge of contrasted rhethoric could be shared with students at English faculties from the outset, i.e. their first year of study. From the beginning, students would be made aware that, together with linguistic acquisition, some sort of cultural acquisition is necessary, and that this does not deny their own culture, but enriches it. It is well known that each community in the world consists of members who share similar experiences, beliefs, values, ways of working, and ways of speaking and communicating with each other, reflecting their beliefs and what they see as �Product Writing for Better Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition by English Language Students valuable. The same community system works in academia. In different countries and cultures, the way academics communicate with others in their community reflects their shared assumptions and values. Clearly, it is not possible to put all of this down to culture, as different genres of writing and disciplines (sciences, humanities, etc) have their own specific features. Indeed, as technology makes cross-border communication easier, the similarities between two academics from different cultures writing in the same discipline are becoming closer than the similarities between two academics from the same culture writing in different disciplines. Still, one should not forget that culture plays a large role, too. At English faculties throughout the world students write in English, and through their written work, they may be trying to join the Anglo-American academic community. This means following the conventions and styles that this community has developed over the centuries, which it sees as reflecting its values. Students learn some of these conventions. To meet the expectations of this community, they receive advice on how to structure their work and how to use other authors' work in their writing. It is hoped that they take advantage of this help, because not only will it increase their chances of successfully completing their courses, but also of getting published in the wider English-language academic community. However, the Anglo-American tradition is just one tradition in the world. When writing in our mother tongue, we write to satisfy the requirements of our community. These traditions are in some cases very different from what we encounter in the Anglo-American tradition. From examining texts written by authors of different nationalities, Robert Kaplan (1966) identified thought patterns and structures specific to those languages (pp. 1-20). Figure 1. Kaplan’s models of contrastive rhetoric It is suggested that Russian writing, similar to Roman, contains digressions from the main theme of the text to give extra information that may be relevant, but is not central to the central thesis of the text. In oriental rhetoric it seems we reach the �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics conclusion in a somewhat roundabout manner. Semitic languages seem to include repetition and backtracking, involving colourful and flowery language to engage the reader. In comparison, English is seen as linear, in that it identifies its main theme and follows it through without deviating to the end. One practical use of being aware of these differences is that it can help avoid misunderstandings and reduce frustration. Students may write in English with few grammatical mistakes and even have a strong command of the jargon of their discipline, but still their work may not seem “English”. This may be because they are using a structure or thought pattern from a different culture. Undoubtedly, this is not necessarily wrong, and may at times add colour to a dry text, but the writing community they aspire to join has its ways of doing things and these need to be respected. Making product writing more process-like: A case study of Banja Luka English undergraduates Course structure and requirements The writing course analysed was part of an integrated English language skills unit conducted with the first-year students of English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philology, Banja Luka University. The contents of the writing course were only partly related or completely unrelated to the contents of the unit. The goal was specifically to teach the students how to write job applications, reports and complaints, all of them closely related to perceived young adolescent/student experience gained in the local context of Republic of Srpska/Bosnia and Herzegovina/the former Yugoslavia. The idea was to deal with the need to do guided writing on specific, familiar issues by amalgamating them with standard application/report/complaint forms in English, as demanded at CEFR B2 Level, which is also the level of competence expected of English students after the first two years of study. The instruction was strictly controlled in that the students were presented with patterns and asked to model their own writing on them. In preparation for the writing task, they did a number of related exercises that tuned them in to the structure, most common phrases, grammatical structures and discourse used in each of the genres taught. The total workload was 12 writing assignments, six original drafts and six revisions (a diary entry, general informal and formal letters as preparatory forms, an application, a complaint and a report). Each first draft was checked by the tutor, who marked the students’ mistakes for them to correct in their second drafts (agreement, use of tenses, use of words/vocabulary, use of prepositions, spelling, word order). �Product Writing for Better Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition by English Language Students The students tried to make corrections based on the tutor’s input. Finally, the second draft was corrected by the tutor. At the start of the unit, the students were informed that the completion of the tasks would count towards the fulfilment of one formal requirement (one written test automatically passed, without taking account of the student’s actual writing ability as demonstrated during the semester) and their writing would not be marked. The students were told that at the end of the semester, they would take a written test and choose between three tasks, each corresponding to one of the genres taught during the semester. The mark they earned on this test was their total writing mark. It was hoped that this approach would help the students realise that real work was expected of them during the semester and that the quality of this work would not affect the final mark. The tutoring was expected to truly help them master the genres and improve their overall language proficiency. It was hoped that amalgamating local content with imported genres would aid cultural approximation in students coming from a culture whose political, social and economic interchange is largely verbal. The students are rarely, if ever, asked to use the taught genres in the local culture. In formal contexts, complaint writing is institutionalised and left to professionals (lawyers, public notaries, filling in forms used by specific institutions). Complaining is often perceived as impractical and impracticable in the ‘crude’ local service and trade market. The practice of writing job applications only takes place at foreign companies, which are few. There is no developed culture of written interaction that the students could be expected to have adopted at home, school or beyond. Questionnaire findings To make the achievements of the writing course measurable from the student perspective, a questionnaire was developed, consisting of 30 open-ended and closedended questions. The students were asked to fill in the questionnaire after they completed the course and sat the final exam, which requires that they take a dictation test, write an essay, do two translation tasks and a grammar test, and take an oral exam. The questionnaire was drawn up to show the extent to which the students were aware of distinctions and appreciation of the culture of writing in their local culture and the target culture, and whether they perceived the conducted activities as instructional and, specifically, as helping them to bridge the gap between some supposedly distinctive elements of the two cultures. Also, it probed the students’ awareness of the nature and consistency of the marking procedure, on its own as well as in the wider context of the unit, and their perception of their linguistic progress, as directly attributable to the writing course. �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics The questionnaire was answered by 40 of the 55 students who took the course, of whom four repeated the year. Most of the questions addressed the students’ metacognitive ability, and some were specifically concerned with their perception of the purposes of the course and evaluation of its appropriateness in regard to their linguistic and cultural improvement, and to the unit and course as a whole. The answers showed that in some cases, the students were not even aware of the objectives of the writing course and commented on other elements of teaching, such as dictation, practicing pronunciation etc. Relevant for this paper is the group of questions related to the structure and contents of the writing course, its purpose and how motivating the activities were. It was assumed that making the tasks motivating would increase the students’ intrinsic motivation and reinforce the benefits of the prospect of formative assessment. Of the 40 students who answered the questionnaire, 23 found the writing course motivating, and 15 somewhat motivating. Still, most of them said it was both the process and product of the writing activities that the final writing mark reflected (23; for 10, it was the product, and for five, the process), which must be seen as a positive achievement of the course. Defining literacy, most of the respondents said it was an issue of using grammar and vocabulary, and only very few were aware of functional literacy. Thirty respondents found the course relevant for their improvement of English, but fewer than half said it contributed to their literacy in English. This reflects their assessment of their improvement in the use of the English grammar and lexis: Most of them gave both aspects a 3 on a scale of 1 to 5. The fact that half of the respondents did not consider functional writing a significant life skill might lead to an essentialist conclusion that the local culture indeed largely depends on verbal communication and social relations are still significantly verbally organised. Conclusion Whereas the formal limitations do not allow this paper’s authors to more closely examine the types of mistakes and the progress of individual students following the completion of the presented course, it is possible to conclude that for the students appreciating the general method of work at the Department, the writing course has meant general linguistic improvement in English and better approximation to the target culture, which in itself again points to the relevance of affective factors. The practiced forms are generally no longer perceived as strange, and if required, the students would be capable of using them. The procedure of formative assessment used in the course has only partly amended the students’ perception of assessment as necessarily summative, with some students being able to distinguish between the �Product Writing for Better Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition by English Language Students various elements integrated in the assessment practice as formatively and summatively relevant for their progress and studies. References Brown H. D. (2007). Teaching by principles. An interactive approach to Language Pedagogy. Harlow: Longman. Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education. Language Learning 16 � 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. 2823 Title A name given to the resource Product Writing for Better Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition by English Language Students Author Author Josifović-Elezović, Sanja Mitić, Svetlana Abstract A summary of the resource. Product writing is considered uncreative and unstimulating, as it trains students to model their output according to rules and patterns. The risk students might particularly be exposed to when taught such writing is their memorising complete phrases, the most common grammatical forms and lexis used, and leaving a false impression of having mastered the register and form of selected writing patterns, and improved their linguistic and writing ability in general. Teaching product writing to students whose native culture has proven hesitant in regard to adopting correspondence as standard in certain situations, e.g. when applying for a job, complaining about a faulty product or substandard service, or writing a report to an authority, may prove additionally difficult and the achievements of a course based on it unintended. Most people’s daily experience shows that the culture of cultivated writing is losing the battle with truncated correspondence via e-mail and other electronic media. In light of this, learning to write and utilize such basic forms as applications, complaints and reports may prove beneficial for students’ writing, as well as their general linguistic competence and their adoption of the target culture. This paper presents the results of a writing course administered to first-year English undergraduates as part of a general English language skills course and analyses them in terms of the students’ adoption of the grammatical forms and the vocabulary/register that are required, or most commonly used, in the selected forms. This shows the extent of their real progress, as well as changes in their attitudes toward such writing as representative of the target culture. It also reveals the role the course has had in developing the students’ awareness of learning as a process and of formative assessment, or rather, specific assessment that focused on a product, while emphasising the relevance of teaching/learning as a process. Keywords: product writing, teaching/learning writing as a process, linguistic acquisition, cultural acquisition, formative assessment Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-21 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed L Education (General),P Philology. Linguistics,PE English,PR English literature 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. 2820 Title A name given to the resource Lack of Oral Proficiency in English among Secondary Students in Misurata: Reasons and Remedies Author Author Elsaghayer, Mohammed Abstract A summary of the resource. The study was conducted to investigate why the secondary students in Misurata were unable to orallycommunicate in Englishfluently, even though they had studied it as a general subject during their school education. Themain reasons for the students’ poor speaking skills are the traditional teacher-fronted method of teaching, insufficient allocation of time for oral-skills training, and theteachers themselves not taking any interest in developing oral skills. The data for the study, among other things, were mainly based on the classroom observations of the lessons presented by 12 secondary teachers at five schools over a period of more than two months. The data analysis was carried out using tables in percentageto obtain accurate results. The findings clearly proved that the points stated in the hypothesis for the poor oral production of speech by the secondary students in Misurata were correct. Based on the conclusions drawn, recommendations that can positively help to develop oral skills among the students of secondary schools were presented. Keyowrds: secondary school students, Misurata, English language, fluency Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-21 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics,PE English,PI Oriental languages and literatures,PR English literature https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/22e6f20101adde32da951d136a19d16e.pdf b4be9449854b273c4876b98bac8f668f PDF Text Text Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education LoretaChodzkienė Vilnius University, Lithuania Submitted: 21.04.2014. Accepted: 20.11.2014. Abstract The expansion of the borders of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) provides members of academic communities with a challenging opportunity to participate in various exchange programmes. The phenomenon of mobility tests the proficiency level of the participants’ Intercultural Communicative Competence, whichenables them not only to speak a common language but also interact effectively and appropriately in the context of a hosting country. The paper focuses on the case study of internationalisation process implemented by eight European Teacher Training institutions – CáFoscari University (Italy), thePedagogical University of Tirol (Austria), the University of Cyprus (Cyprus), the School of Education of Aarhus University (Denmark), theUniversity of Nantes (France), EötvösLoránd University in Budapest (Hungary), Jagiellonian University, Krakow (Poland), and the Institute of Foreign Languages, Vilnius University (Lithuania) –via the designed educational project carried out within the framework of an Intensive Programme in the socio-cultural context of the Republic of Lithuania. The data of the study based on the participants’ reflections reveals that no matter how positive the respondents’ attitudes towards mobility are, and how willing they are to participate in various exchange programmes, the level of their ICC does not always meet the desired internal and external outcomes. This proves the necessity of Intercultural education to be integrated into the content of many subjects, foreign languages, above all. Keywords: teachers' Intercultural Communicative Competence, Intercultural education, educational project, diary, reflection Introduction Exchange programmes within the EHEA oblige their participants to become interculturally competent. It meansthat mobile members of the academic 159 �Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education communityare expected to develop their “affective capacity to relinquish ethnocentric attitudes towards and perceptions of others, cognitive ability to establish and maintain a relationship between native cultures and foreign cultures” (Zarate, 1998), and communicate in at least one foreign language. Since the Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) is identified as the key competence of 21st century citizens (Deardorff, 2010), its developmentbecomes one of the prioritized areas in both secondary schools and institutions of higher education(Žydžiūnaitėet al., 2010):“now society expects schools to deal with different languages and student backgrounds effectively, to be sensitive to culture and gender issues, to promote tolerance and social cohesion” (OECD, 2005), and “teachersbecome the main factors of education changes and mediators of society development processes in the alteration of educational systems”(Barkauskaitė, 2005). To support the prevailing demand for ICC development at universities, the target competence has been included in the list of learning outcomes inthe majority of study programmes. Despite the attention given to ICC development,there is stilla feeling of uncertainty with respect to teachers’ readiness to develop younger generations’ICC, which would enable them, first, to grasp the core of their national identity, to become open and curious about other cultures, to be able to recognize the manifestations of behaviour based on the limits of other cultures, and todiscover cultural differences and commonalities, and, second,to shift their attitudes from ethnocentric points of view towards the ability to see the reality from the others’ perspectives (Deardorff, 2009). It is quite complicated to transfer the criteria measuring a person’s ICC from theory to practice. Only a real encounter with an unfamiliar culture can reveal one’s attitudinal and behavioural dynamics,indicating a certain level ofa person’sacquiredICC; therefore, mobility is considered the best educational means for developing a person’s ICC.It provides conditions for creating authentic relationships at the socio-cultural, academic and professional levels. This paper focuses on the development of the ICC of teachers, the people who are responsible for raising their students’ awareness of the existing differences and similarities between their native culture and other cultures, which is the backbone strategy in intercultural education. Thus, the Subject of the paper – a teacher’s intercultural communicative competence. The aim of the paperisto substantiate ICC developmental possibilities theoretically and empirically.In order to fulfil this aim, the following objectives were set: 1. to discuss the scholars’ insights into prevailing tendencies of intercultural training; 2. tohighlight future EUteachers’ ICC manifestation in the socio-cultural context of Lithuania within the framework of an educational project. 160 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Educational project: Participants The implementation of the educational project is related tothe LLP Erasmus project “EMETT – European Master for European Teacher Training”, (No. 134348-LLP-1IT-ERASMUS-ECDSP), the output of which – the newly designed MA study programme–aimsto devise teacher training that will develop knowledge, abilities, and professional awareness indispensable for teachers practicing in the European context. The study programme comprised a mobility term, the content of which was implemented via the Erasmus Intensive programme (IP) entitled “MEITT Modernisation of Europe by Innovating Teacher Training” (No. LLP-ERA-IP-2009LT-0261-LSS-12400-1133). The educational project provided the background for the IP. Thirty-three student teachers of various subjects representing seven European teacher training institutions –CáFoscari University, thePedagogical University of Tirol, the University of Cyprus, the School of Education at Aarhus University, the University of Nantes, EötvösLoránd University, and Jagiellonian University participated in a two-week educational project carried out atVilnius University. Educational project: Methodology A complex syllabus of the educational project was designed to enhance its participants’ICC both theoretically and practically. Further to the lectures and seminars on teacher profession, a number of activities were dedicated to master student teachers’ ICC: lectures on the history and culture of the host country (Lithuania) and its capital Vilnius, theLithuanian education system, Lithuanian culture, lessons in Lithuanian language, excursionsto the country’shistorical places, anobservation of the festivities dedicated to the Day of the Lithuanian Statehood, a two-day trip to the Open Air Museum of Lithuania in Rumšiškės, the Curonian Spit and the Baltic sea, andnational evenings organized by the project participants. In addition, the future teachershad to carry out an ethnographic survey, i.e., to explore the socio-cultural context of the host country. While applying theethnographic method,there was no intention of turning project participants into ethnographers in any full sense of the term (Roberts et al., 2001). We aimed at equipping them “with the ethnographic skills and knowledge” to carry out their own research (Byram, 2001, p. 79), i.e., to develop enough ethnographic imagination to describe, interpret, explain and construct the socio-cultural reality of the country (Bitinas, 2006). The applied reflection method helped the project participants to unfold some particular objects and situations here and now (Zlataravičienė et al., 2008, p. 89), and also to identify thecorrelation between the similarities and differences between their native culture and that of the host country, to become aware of the importance of their own identity and its impact on discovering and interpreting other cultures,and to expandtheir own worldviews. Thediary was chosen asa data-collection instrument to 161 �Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education identify the student teachers’ ICC-manifestation tendencies through their reflection, for it encompasses the methods of introspection and retrospection that are of particular importance for revealing one’s cultural experience (Bailey &Ochsner, 1983), which cannot be measured by any other means. From the diary data obtained,it was possible to identifythe teachers’ Englishlanguage proficiency, which, consequently, revealed the range of their abilities to demonstrate the worldview and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1994) they hadobtained. The latter was the background for constructing and interpreting the socio-cultural context of Lithuania. This instrument also allowed us to see the events from the student teachers’ point of view and observe shifts in their attitudes. The analysis of the data obtained by the 33 project participants was based on qualitative content analysis. (Žydžiūnaitė et al.,2005).Cultural anthropologists F. Kluckhohn and F. Strodbeck’s Model of “Value Orientations,” comprising such structural parts as 1) the human orientation to activity; 2) the relationship of humans to each other; 3) the nature of human beings; 4) the relationship of humans to the natural world; 5) the orientation of humans to time (Lustig& Koester, 2010, p. 90)was chosen as a methodological background for data interpretation. Key Aspects of Intercultural Education The revision of the research literature on intercultural education allows us to highlight several prevalenttendencies in this field of the EHEA. First of all, scholars admit the fact higher education institutions are responding to a worldwide demand for “interculturally competent”graduates (Paige& Goode, 2009, p. 333). To satisfy this demand,universities are widely considering the necessity to educate professionals who will “help foster cultural self-awareness and intercultural competence among their students” (Paige & Goode, 2009, p. 341), and manage the process of implementation of internationalisation. Further,R. Paige and M. Goode propose cultural mentoring during the study process that will support incoming students “when they are feeling strongly challenged by cultural differences”(2009, p. 335). Secondly, it has been admitted that institutions of higher education participating in the process of internationalisation started renewing the content of the study programmestargeting thedevelopment of students’ ICC throughout the component of experience (Paige et al., 2004; O’Donovan &Mikelonis, 2005;Cushner, 2009;Ruskamp, 2009). In many cases,theperiod for students’ exposure to a new culture is foreseen, which, naturally, guarantees the students’ immersion into a new socio-cultural context and thedevelopment of their abilities to reflect upon it (Zeichner,1996; Deardorff, 2010).Third,intercultural education is considered to be beneficial when studies abroad are student-oriented and guided by 162 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics experienced professional educators (Paige et al., 2004; Vande Berg et al, 2004; Vande Berg, 2007: Vande Berg & Paige, 2009) who are responsible for ensuring “that students would derive as much benefit as possible from time abroad” (Savicki& Selby, 2008, p. 349). K. Cushner proposes to classify study programmes “according to the degree of immersion into the host culture that the experience provides” and recommends relying on the assumption by L. Engle and J. Engle,which states that “the more integrated a student is in the host culture, the better the programme is assisting the student to develop Intercultural Competence” (2009, p. 158). This contemplation sums up the goals of any study-abroad period: to master competences both in the field of the subject studied and personal development; to cross the boundaries of a personal comfort zone; to get acquainted with the education system andthe prevailing philosophy of education and teaching methods, and to expand one’s knowledge of the culture of the host country and the worldview of the local people. The target of intercultural education is a person’s Intercultural Communicative Competence,defined in this article as “complex abilities ...required to perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from oneself” (Fantini, 2009, p. 458). According to A. Fantini, effective reflects the view of one’s own performance in the target-language culture (an outsider’s or “etic” view), while appropriate reflects how natives perceive such performance (an insider’s or “emic” view). The research literature presents the conceptualization of the construct of ICC as highly intertwined with the learning outcomes of the study programme and the context it manifests (Neuliep, 2006; Lustig& Koester, 2010). There is neither a common agreement on the content of ICC,nor the subject domain that should cover the development of ICC. Some scholars (Barkauskaitė, 2007; Gaižutis, 2011; Gibson, 2002; Lukšienė, 2000; Schachinger& Taylor, 2000) claim that one discipline alone is not enough to develop a person’s ICC, while others (Bandura, 2005; Byram, 1989, 2008; Fenner, 2006; Lázár, 2003; Little, 2007; Nizegorodcew, 2011; Risager, 2007; Sercu, 2005; Zarate, 1998) maintain that ICC development is a mission of foreign language teachers when language teaching integrates aspects of other sciences such as anthropology, social psychology, sociology. The third group of scientists (Bennet, 2008; Goode, 2008; Cushner, 2009; Cushner&Mahon, 2009; Paige et al., 2009; Sunnugard, 2007) believe that the process of intercultural training should encompass all the three chains of a higher education institution, including administrators, pedagogical staff and students, making them aware of the ICC concept and its importance in the process of internationalisation. The case presented in this paper supports the synergy of two fields – foreign language and anthropology. Results & Discussion 163 �Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education Culture-revealing Models, both vertical and horizontal (according to G. Weaver, 2000, pp. 75–77), equipped the project participants with abilities to identify cultural aspects typical of the host country’s socio-cultural context and its people. Among the abundance of data obtained the informants’ reflections mainly focused on people’s value orientations, therefore, the Value Orientations Model designed by anthropologists F. Kluckhohnand F. Strodtbeck(see Table 1) was chosen for data interpretation. Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s Value Orientations. Table 1. Orientation Activity Postulated Range of Variations Being-inDoing becoming Linearity Collaterality Individualism Relationships Evil Mixture of good Good Human nature and evil Subjugation to Harmony with Mastery over People-nature nature nature nature Past Present Future Time Source:Adapted version by M. Lustig and J. Koester, Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication across Cultures, Boston: Allyn& Bacon, 2010, p. 91. Being The culture’s orientation to the value of activity According to M. Lustig and J. Koester’s insights, a culture’s orientation to the importance and value of activity can range from passive acceptance of the world (a “being” orientation) to a preference for a gradual transformation of the human condition (a “being-in-becoming” orientation) and to a more direct intervention (a “doing” orientation) (Lustig& Koester, 2010, p. 90). Having reviewed the data presented by the participants of the educational project,the first thing that draws a reader’s attention is the student teachers’ surprise at theLithuanian people’s pace of life:“Wealways have to be in a hurry and on time. It is a little bit stressful,”indicate the informants from France. They find it difficult to adapt to such an orientation to time, while the student teachers from Italy demonstrate their impatience,statingthat“Lithuanians have lost the concept of time... there exist 24 hours per day, not 30!”. 164 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Since the participants spent most of the time within the academic context, the majority of the informants’ observations reflect the academic community’s orientation towards the value of activity. They point out Lithuanians’ keenness on intensive work and punctuality,misinterpretation of one’s leisure time and love of organizing everything. The informants from Hungary and France indicate thatLithuanians:“plan everything and try to be prepared for any casein life, though it is impossible!”; “you organise every step and explain how to carry it out”. The last comment was related to the tradition of organizing guided excursions to introduce the country or the city. However, this way of getting acquainted with a new country/city was not acceptable for the student teachers from Denmark and Italy: “Your society members neglect a person’s right to privacy: you foresee the strategies of how to discover your country beforehand: book excursions or appoint students to guide us. But we are mature enough to discover your country on our own. In Denmark we let foreigners discover our country themselves”. Lithuanians’penchant for carrying out activities in an intensive way was stressed in many cases and evaluated differentlyby the informants. Table 2 sums up the education-projectparticipants’ attitudes towardsthe intensity of activities in the Lithuanian academic context: Informants’positive attitudes towardsthe intensity of activities. Table 2a. Informants fromAustria: “Everything is organised very intensively”,“agenda for the whole day”. Informants from Cyprus: “The programme is very intensive, even for the weekend!”. Informants from Poland: “The programme is very intensive. Due to its intensity we can see and discover many valuable things, national evenings among them”. “Although the programme was very intensive and I had to get up early, I really like it and enjoy its every moment”. Informants from Hungary: “The programme was compact and well organised”, “really good according to the lecture – leisure time ratio: lectures-seminarsnational evening”, “although I was tired of the variety of lectures and seminars, and sleepless nights, I would not change anything in the syllabus of the programme. I was happy while participating in it, and my university colleagues were happy too”. 165 �Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education Informants’ negative attitudes towardsthe intensity of activities. Table 2b. Informants from Italy: “Excellent range of activities: diversity of lectures, keeping the schedules, punctuality. What should I say? A good school for army officers”, “The requirements for the programme participants are too high: preparatory work before coming, extra tasks, including diary writing, during the programme. When shall I do all of them?” “I got tired because of the intensive programme. I keep asking myself all the time I am I on holiday or at work?” “Lithuanians have lost the concept of time: you should study a little of Latin culture, ‘carpe diem’”. “I have never done so much within such a short period of time as in Lithuania.” Informants from Denmark: “You want to grasp everything within such a short period of time”, “This programme is too ambitious. From my point of view it is unfair to leave students without leisure and sleep. First, we are surrounded by unfamiliar people, second, the course is run in a foreign language, third, we find ourselves in a strange city, we need leisure to recover from all these things!” “Why nobody told me that I would have to work? If I had known that I would not have joined the programme”. Having decided to participate in the intensive programme and become familiar with its syllabus, some of its participants forget about the very nature of the programme and tried to establish the rules of their owncultures in the context of the host country. On the other hand, their reflections helped us to reveal a definite fact that our society members’ orientation to activity is the“doing” type, where“work comes before play” (Lustig& Koester, 2010, p. 94) and makes people forget about themselves as personalities. The culture’s orientation to the value of human relationships “A culture’s solution to how it should organize itself to deal with interpersonal relationships can vary along a continuum from hierarchical social organization (‘liniarity’) to group identification (‘collaterality’ or ‘collectivism’) or individual autonomy (‘individualism’)” (Lustig& Koester, 2010, p. 91). To put it another way, the social-relations orientation describes how the people in a culture organize themselves and relate to one another. Student teachers’ reflections on this issue allowed us toidentify four areas of human relationships existing in the country: Lithuanians’ relationship with the country residents of different nationalities; the residents’ inner relationship;student-teacher relationships in the academic context; 166 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics and the country residents’ relationship with foreigners. Lithuanians’ relationship with ethnic minorities residing in the country was illustrated by the reflection found in aninformant from Austria’sdiary:“Lithuanians are very tolerant of the people from minorities living in Lithuania (Karaite case in Trakai).” Thisopinion is supported by an informant from Hungary’s insight: “Lithuanian people open up in the run of time, they are used to live together with Jews, Polish, Russian.” The informant’s reflection sidetracks to the conclusion that generalizes the origins of good relationships demonstrated by the leaders of the country: “The President’s participation in the ceremonies on the Day of Statehood (6 July) demonstrates great respect to common people.” The tendency of good innerrelationships among the citizens of Lithuania was noted by the informants from Hungary, Denmark and France: “Friendly, make easy connections, smiling…; there are many old(er) people on the streets. In general, people are happy, helpful and kind, the same as in my country(Hungary) – they are warm-hearted. It is good that even when the financial situation of the country is difficult people are able to smile.” According to Lithuanian psychologist V. Legkauskas,the interpretation ofpeople’s social relationship is always subjective and biased, and depends either on the nature of our interest (2008, p. 149) oradoptedattitudes. Danish student teachers admitthat “people seem to be supportive to each other and have a strong sense of family”,“people trust each other”.Italianstudent teachers point out a “good atmosphere on the buses and trolley-buses. People here are very supportive,” while informants from France feel a good atmosphere “even on the beach. The relations here are good.” However, the atmosphere in the academic context of the host country dissatisfies the student teachers. They describe it as less friendlythan that of theirown universities, e.g. the student teachers from Austria and Denmarkstate that a“hierarchy is evidentbetween teachers and students. In Austria it is not so strong; the position of a person is more important in our (Austrian) countryside areas.” “The teachers do not have much respect to the students, in my country (Denmark) professors try to listen what their students tell them.” It does not take the participants of the educational project long tonote that the residents of Lithuania have a special attitude towards foreigners. Some of them were surprised at the level of Lithuanians’openness and helpfulness toward foreigners (9 cases): “You are open-minded and very positive towards foreigners. You are interested in our culture! In Austria we are also open-minded, however, the Austrian people’s 167 �Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education level of tolerance towards foreigners depends on the name of the country they come from. And Austrians are more distant from foreigners.” The respondent from Austria’s reflection is supported by a student teacher from Poland:“People are positive in general, very hospitable and friendly”. However, some criticism is voiced at the customer-service mentality: “Sometimes waiters and waitresses appear to be mean. It is a pity that the service staff of the restaurants do not respect foreign guests”. The informants keep comparing and contrasting their native people’s attitude toward foreigners: “Your people are friendlier to foreigners than we, Hungarians, are. You smile at foreigners and help them. Especially you’re happy when foreigners say something in Lithuanian. Further to it, you are interested in who we are, ask about our culture and traditions. We, Hungarians, try to be friendly to foreigners too, we understand that tourism is important, but we aren‘t as polite to foreigners as Lithuanians are”; or “Your people are much friendlier to foreigners than the French people are: we keep distance from them. We also find that your people are very curious about foreigners”. Describing human relationships in an unfamiliar context is one of the most complicated tasks. It requires specific culture knowledge about the host country, time to feel the new culture and experience to interpret it. Although the informants’ skills in evaluating and interpreting the host-country residents’ orientation to human relationships appear to be rather limited, and there is some evidence that reflections are linked to the people they met or situations they were involved in, the data obtained lead us to the assumption that the Lithuanian culture is oriented to collaterality with sparse manifestations of individualism. The nature of human beings Considering the nature of the host country people, the informants identified 48 character features of the people of Lithuania. Friendliness was pointed out as the most typical feature of the residents of the host country(20 cases): “Lithuanians are nice and friendly, happy and smiling”,“friendly and supportive”. 60 % of the informants said Lithuanians are kindand nice: “Your people are very nice: on the bus a girl came up to us to offer her help. We did not invite her; she did it voluntarily. The other one helped us on the street. In Italy people do not offer their help if they are not asked.” The informant from Austria doubts if this character feature is typical of her compatriots: “Lithuanian students are so kind to us. We have been wondering whether the Austrian students would be as kind as the Lithuanians are to foreigners?” 168 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics The third feature on a hierarchical scale happens to be Lithuanians’helpfulness(18 cases): “very supportive, willing to help”, “any time when help was in need we were given a hand”. Lithuanians’ well-known feature of hospitality was remarked uponby nine informants: “very hospitable”, “they know the way how to treat foreigners”. In an investigation into the origin of the Lithuanian hospitality, Lithuanian scholar M. Lukšienėcompares itto the feature of servilism described in M. Shennan‘sEuropean Identity theory, which states that Lithuanians might have inherited this feature during the cultural encounter with the Byzantine empire (2000, p. 37). The Greek Cypriots support the researcher’s idea, stating that our (Lithuanian) and their (Greek) “attitudes toward foreigners match”. The Polish informants are of the same opinion of their compatriots: “Poles try to be as hospitable as possible.”However, the rest of the informants doubt whether they can attribute these characteristicsto people in their homecountries: “In France younger generation are very open-minded, however, people in general are not so welcoming”; “We (Italians) are not as hospitable as you are.” French and Austrians admit that their people “keep away from foreigners”. The other characteristicfeatures of the Lithuanian peoplediscovered by the participants of the education project can be arranged in the following order: open(sevencases): “you’re open to the world, and proud of your origin”. The Lithuanian scholar R. Grigasdiscusses the importance of openness in the process of education, maintaining that theevolution of the nation can only occur only when it is open to the constantly changing world, and, on the other hand, receptive. However, openness should be selective (2005, p. 18). sociable(fivecases): “making easy connections, smiling”,“not greedy for advice”. polite (fivecases): “too polite to very demanding people”. honest (five cases): Lithuanians were discovered as respectingthe“family institution“ and proud of “the history of their country”,“customs and traditions”,“their culture”,“their nation”and“their national identity”. Although the majority of informants pointed out positive features of the people in the host country, there were some cases that highlighted the negative features typical ofthe Lithuanian people: avoiding uncertainty (four cases): “you are not very keen on confrontations with foreigners”,“your people tend to avoid constructive talks”. This featureof the country’s residentsis considered negative in the reflections of Danish and Hungarian student teachers. dishonest(sixcases): service people, mainly taxi drivers whohave a habit of cheating foreign visitors, were described as dishonest. 169 �Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education rude(sixcases): Lithuanian society members also cannot escape the phenomenon of beingblack sheep in a herd of white. This philosophical insight, revealed by the Cypriot student teachers, was meant to describe the rude service personnel who, further to the lack of foreign language knowledge, hide themselves under a skin of impoliteness, and thus tarnish the image of the residents. Despite some negative featuresthat, according to Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, stand for the ingredients of evil, the abundance of data presented by the informants reveal the dominant nature of the host-country people to be good. The relationship of humans to the natural world In F. Kluckhohn and F. Strodtbeck’sValue Orientations Model,a culture’s response to the preferred relationship of humans to the natural world can range from a belief that “people are subjugatedby nature” to “people live in harmony with nature” to “people master nature” (Lustig& Koester, 2010, p. 91). Environmental psychologist Richard Knopf maintains that “the natural environment is valued differently by different people. A culture’s relationship with nature is culture bound”. According to Knopf, culture influences the degree to whichpeople value nature and the symbols they use to communicate about it. People perceive and create symbols of their environment based on their cultural experiences with it. (Knopf, cit. by Neuliep, 2012, p. 135). J. Lang emphasises the importance of the built environment of any culture, which demonstrates people’s adaptations to the terrestrial environment. “The built environment artificially changes natural patterns of behaviour, heat, light, sound, odour, and human communication”(cit. by Neuliep, 2012, p. 139). The abundance of data obtained on the “the incredibly beautiful country with amazingly fantastic views, many rivers, lakes, forests, green landscapes”proved that environment is important to Lithuanian society and allowed us to classify the reflection cases into groups describing: The landscape ofthe city ofVilnius: “While landing I saw the green landscape of Vilnius. It is very impressive”.Student teachers from Austria, Denmark, Italy, Hungary remarked on the greenness of the city, expressing regret that the cities they come from “do not possess as much greenness as Vilnius does”. Vilnius citizens’ relationship with the landscape was noticed too. It was measured by the level of cleanliness in the streets: “Vilnius is so green and very clean. I am sorry to say that Copenhagen is far more dirty” and how the citizens take care of the public places in the city: “Vilnius is very 170 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics green, we do not have so many nice squares in our capital (Budapest)”. Recently the topic of the Built Environment has often been included in the syllabus of Intercultural studies. Lang emphasises the fact that “built environment is not random; it is intentionally designed to facilitate or restrict human interaction”and that it demonstrates relationships between objects and objects, objects and people, people and people (Neuliep, 2012, p. 139). The landscape of Lithuania: C. Sauer, an American geographer, advocated “a strictly geographical way of thinking of culture, namely, as the impress of the works of man upon the area” (Sauer, 1967, p. 326). S. Šalkauskis, a Lithuanian philosopher and teacher trainer, was also of the same opinion and acknowledged the fact that “a culture’s relationship with nature is demonstrated by the state of nature as a result of human activities”(1990, p. 19). According to Neuliep’s insights,“a culture’s orientation toward nature affects how people within that culture communicate about nature and organize their daily activities. Knowing and understanding a particular culture’s orientation toward nature is a helpful step in becoming competent intercultural communicator” (2012, p. 136). J. Neuliepnotes that all cultures exist within specific terrestrial contexts;however, some aspects of the terrestrial environment exist in every culture, while others do not. <...> oceans, lakes, streams, mountain ranges, deserts, valleys, trees, and forms of vegetation vary considerably across cultures. According to Lang, the natural environment of any culture influences life in that culture. Physical and climatic aspects of the environment can restrict the kinds of activitiesthat occur (Neuliep, 2012: 136). Although the project participants’ acquaintance with Lithuania and its landscape was based just on a two-day trip on the arranged Vilnius–Rumšiškės–Klaipėda, Klaipėda–CuronianSpit–Vilnius itineraryand a trip to Trakai, their reflections are full of landscape details. Student teachers not only demonstratethe skills of observation and evaluation,they also relate the landscape of the host country to their native countries. The most impressive landscape pictures of Lithuania and the informants’native countries are presented in Table 3. 171 �Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education Landscape comparison. Table 3. LandscapeofLithuania 1. From the informants from Austria: “Lithuania is a country of plains, dunes, the sea and greenness reigning everywhere”. From the informants from Cyprus: “Beautiful country with amazingly fantastic views, many rivers, lakes, forests, green landscapes; it is so incredible!” From the informants from Denmark: “Lithuanian nature is lovely, not too much garbage.” “The trip to the Baltic Sea showed Lithuania’s beautiful forest areas and wonderful beaches.” From the informants from France: “You are very rich: you have many rivers and forests, your country is green”. From the informants from Hungary: “The nature of your country is unique: 2824 lakes; ~ 800 rivers, churches, castles, beautiful seaside, sand dunes–all of them contribute to the uniqueness of the country”. From the informants from Italy: “The landscape is nice, pristine and very green”. From the informants from Poland: “Breathtaking! We find the nature of your country wilder and more intense”. 172 Landscape of My Country “In Austria the landscape is very mountainous, there is no sea. We do not have the seaside, though our lakes and mountains are very beautiful.” “We do not have such green landscapes, lakes and forests, neither the rivers to walk along.” “Denmark also has some spots of green nature.” “There are not so many forests in France, there are not so many lakes, either”. “Our landscape does not vary as much as yours”. “In Italy we have less green areas”. “In Poland we have a very similar coastline and seaside. We also have forests and dunes so we feet like we’re at home. We do not have as many lakes as you do.” �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics The data obtained prove the informants’ skills not only in comparing/contrastingthelandscapes of the countries, but also in describingnatural objects in detail, e.g. water deposits of the country, the Curonian Spit and“the fairytale like greenery reigning everywhere”. With respect to English-language proficiency, the diary appeared to be the right tool to observe linguistic progress: If there were just a few lines written on the first days of the stay, subsequently, the ideas presentedwere much more elaborate, like the following one: “The Baltic sea and its dunes are so impressive! The Curonian Spit makes you feel like you were in a dream standing at the crossroads of northern Africa, southern Europe and Scandinavia”. Detailed pictures of green forest areas and wild foods were found in the reflections of the informants from Cyprus, France, Italy, Hungary andPoland. Some of them are very interesting, e.g. the Italian student teacher notices Lithuanians’ relationship with bees: “I’ve noticed that there are many hives in the homesteads”and regrets that“in Italy it is a very rare case when people keep bees: the level of pollution is much higher”. The informant from France succeeds in discovering several layers of the soil, Cypriots identify nature’s influence on the people’s character and point out the existing nature-mythology-history synthesis; however, this already leads to the other value orientations related to time. The data collected make us infer that nature is a source of spiritual inspirationfor the Lithuanian people, thus they strive to live in harmony with the natural world. The orientation of humans to time This orientation concerns how people conceptualize time, whether the culture’s preferred time orientation emphasizes events and experiences from the past, the present, or the future. The reflections of student teachers from Hungary and Austria reveal people’s evident respect for their customs and traditions. The data obtained on the country residents’ orientation to time fall into the following groups: 1) preservation of the ethnic culture via embodying its elements in the world of nature; 2) nurture of mother tongue, customs and traditions; 3) commemoration of historic events and famous persons. The past is very important to Lithuanians. This opinion was predominant in many of the informants’ diaries. According to their insights, “Lithuanians still live in the ancient traditions, legends, fairy-tales and myths”,“and they care of the past which, to my mind, is theirgreatest value”. Having gone sightseeing onthe Hill of Witches, one ofthe most beautiful dunes in the region of Juodkrantethat is overgrown with old pine trees sheltering the outdoor exposition of wooden sculptures, the informants reveal Lithuanians’ love ofnature, forests and trees. The local people’s decision to 173 �Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education revive fairy-tale characters in carvings seemed to astonish them, which can be interpreted as a compliment:“the best example for the nation to preserve its past”;orasa sneer at “the people’s total regress revealing how conservative they are”. After the visit to the Rumšiškės open-air ethnographic museum, which displays the rural way of life in Lithuania’s four regions, the majority of the project participants praised the residents of the country for preserving the reality of the past in connection with the present. The informants from Cyprus, Poland and France found such a museum to be a good didactic example for the younger generations to discover the history of the country, otherwise “urban children won’t know where milk comes from, as it often happens to children in Paris”. Student teachers from Denmark and Italy find it boring to explore the past of the host country. They claim that young people do not like talking about the past or history of any country. This will be discussed when describing theplace of history in the people’s lives. All the participants of the project had an opportunity to be exposed to some folklore elements during nearly every cultural evening. At the Lithuanian cultural event, they were taught folk dances and folk songs, how to weaveEaster palms and how to paint eggs. These activities were abundantly reflected uponby the informants. Their opinions differ: Some enjoyed “every minute of dancing and singing”while the others wondered what kind of Lithuanian identity the organisers of the project were creating: “I saw parts of the Lithuanian traditions (egg painting, Easter palm making, dancing and singing) but I do not really know whether, e.g., traditional dances are part of young people’s everyday lives or whether the dances are mostly used to show tourists?”.A third groupmanaged to suspend criticism and remaindiscrete, saying that “It is great when people care about the preservation of their language, folk songs and dances, national foods and commemoration of historic events. My people (Hungarians) do not have so many traditions and we do not live by traditions, we care about the present”, thus demonstrating that their culture’s orientation to time is different from ours. The informants’ reflection on the Lithuanian people’s relationship with history is based on the Day of the Statehood events held in Vilnius. Student teachers from seven EU universities had an opportunity to observe the flag-hoisting ceremony at the Presidential Palace andthe re-enactment of theGrünwald battle at the Cathedral’s Square, visit a number of monuments dedicated to famous Lithuanians or historic events, and interview local people atthe monument and inquire as to who/what it is meant for. This interactive way of familiarizing themselves with the history of the host country appealed to the informants’ feelings,prompting themto review their own identities. They came to the conclusion that “everybody sees that you do care about your history, probably you’re in love with your history.” However, sightseeing the monuments and interviewing local residents made the informants change their minds 174 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics and draw a gap betweenLithuanians’different orientation to time and thevalue of historyto younger and older generations: “are you aware of the fact that your younger generation do not like the monuments of the city? They feel being Europeans now free to go wherever they want”. This could be an indication that in time, people’s orientation to time might change. Currently,it can be stated that Lithuanians live in the past, present and future: They value their traditions and find ways to revive them. They cherish their history and traditionsand they want the younger generation to know and observe them.Thus the people’s orientation to activity expands the range of orientation from the past to the present and adds the component of the future. To sum up, student teachers’ ICC skills allowed them to discover Lithuania as a country whose people’s orientation to activity is of “doing”, whose socio-relationship varies from collaterality to individualism, wherethe nature of people is good, where residentslive in harmony with nature,and where peoplevalue the past, the present and the future. It must be affirmed that diary is a rewarding tool, not only for checking students’ linguistic abilities, but also for tracing out the manifestation of their ICC components. 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Tarpkultūrinėskompetencijosugdymo/simetodologija, 4–19, 41–62.Retrieved from http://www.google.lt/#pq=europos+tarybos+strategijos+%E2%80%9Ceurop a+2020%E2%80%9D+(2011%2Fc+70%2F01)+i%C5%A1vadas&hl=lt&sug exp=kjrmc&cp=57&gs_id=1x&xhr=t&q=177.%09%C5%BDyd%C5%BEi% C5%ABnait%C4%97%2C+V.%2C++Lepait%C4%97%2C+D.%2C++Bubn ys%2C+%C4%8Cepien%C4%97+2010&pf=p&sclient=psyab&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=177.%09%C5%BDyd%C5%BEi%C5%ABnait %C4%97,+V.,++Lepait%C4%97,+D.,++Bubnys,+%C4%8Cepien%C4%97+ 2010&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb &fp=168bb4bdb303db1&biw=1564&bih=587; [žiūrėta 2010-12-03]. 180 � 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. 2816 Title A name given to the resource Forging Synergy between a Foreign Language and Intercultural Education Author Author Chodzkienė, Loreta Abstract A summary of the resource. The expansion of the borders of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) provides members of academic communities with a challenging opportunity to participate in various exchange programmes. The phenomenon of mobility tests the proficiency level of the participants’ Intercultural Communicative Competence, whichenables them not only to speak a common language but also interact effectively and appropriately in the context of a hosting country. The paper focuses on the case study of internationalisation process implemented by eight European Teacher Training institutions – CáFoscari University (Italy), thePedagogical University of Tirol (Austria), the University of Cyprus (Cyprus), the School of Education of Aarhus University (Denmark), theUniversity of Nantes (France), EötvösLoránd University in Budapest (Hungary), Jagiellonian University, Krakow (Poland), and the Institute of Foreign Languages, Vilnius University (Lithuania) –via the designed educational project carried out within the framework of an Intensive Programme in the socio-cultural context of the Republic of Lithuania. The data of the study based on the participants’ reflections reveals that no matter how positive the respondents’ attitudes towards mobility are, and how willing they are to participate in various exchange programmes, the level of their ICC does not always meet the desired internal and external outcomes. This proves the necessity of Intercultural education to be integrated into the content of many subjects, foreign languages, above all. Keywords: teachers' Intercultural Communicative Competence, Intercultural education, educational project, diary, reflection Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-21 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed L Education (General),P Philology. Linguistics,PR English literature https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/c5722f40d65a0b115176d7bd5350baf5.pdf 678d5472019436e15a5fa62ae60130b9 PDF Text Text Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Types of synonymic groups in Russian Vadim Belov Cherepovets State University, Russia Submitted: 29.04.2014. Accepted: 24.11.2014. Abstract This research has two main purposes: 1) to distinguish structural types of synonymic groups; 2) to verify the headwords of synonymic groups as a linguistic or psycholinguistic concept. Typically, a headword has: 1) common semantic elements, 2) the highest frequency, and 3) no stylistic and emotional connotations. The main source of data is the results of two experiments and data from the Russian National Corpus. The subjects' task was to choose the main words of the submitted groups. We used 32 synonymic groups, taken from the Russian synonymic dictionaries: the first experiment contained 12 synonymic groups and the second had 20 synonymic groups. Forty-five subjects participated in the first experiment, 67 in the second experiment. We distinguished two types of synonymic groups with different structures. The first type (centric synonymic groups) consists of synonymic groups, the headword of which can be uniquely identified by experimental and corpus data. In such cases, the subjects unanimously determined the headword, and the headword is the most frequent word of the synonymic group. There are eight (67%) such groups in the first experiment and 14 such groups (70%) in the second experiment. The second type (non-centric synonymic groups) includes synonymic groups, in which the subjects were not able to choose the main word of the synonymic groups. There are four (33%) such groups in the first experiment and six such groups (30%) in the second experiment. It is impossible to distinguish the headword in non-centric synonymic groups. Such synonymic groups are integrated by a semantic gestalt based on a nonverbal semantic �Types of synonymic groups in Russian code. Formal and component analysis of non-central synonymic groups is not effective. Keywords: Russian language, synonymic groups �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Introduction Synonymy is a problem that is widely discussed in linguistic and philosophic studies because it has an important theoretical and applied relevance. Although synonyms have been studied by people from the days of Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” to present-day scholars, synonymy still provides controversial issues that need further analysis. This phenomenon is connected with semantic relations in language. Synonymy can be found in levels that deal with semantic relations, specifically in lexical (words and lexical phases), morphological (affixes) and syntactic levels (propositions and sentences). This paper focuses only on lexical synonymy. Lexical synonyms are named words (or phases) that have the same or similar meanings. There are many definitions of synonymy, but most of them say that synonymic items have something similar in their meanings: “It is customary to call items having these special similarity synonyms” [3, 265]. Having analyzed linguistic literature, we chose four principal semantic approaches. These approaches try to define the nature of synonymy. 1) Synonyms are words denoting one real thing such as ‘lug’ and ‘earlap’ for ‘ear’. These words denote one real thing but they have different linguistic forms. This approach is the most effective for distinguishing stylistic synonyms. 2) Synonyms are words or expressions that have the same or similar meanings. “Synonymy is held to be sameness of meaning of different expressions” [5, 11]. In other words, synonyms must have the same or similar meanings, but in a pragmatic view it is difficult to precisely determine their semantic identity and similarity. Moreover, synonyms have “the same sense in a given context” [7, 10]. 3) Synonyms are interchangeable in utterances: “Two words are synonyms if they can be used interchangeably in all sentence contexts’ [Jackson 1988: 66]. Interchangeability has a great practical relevance because speakers most often use synonyms as replacements for other words in a sentence. But this approach does not consider the communicative and stylistic nuances of word and sentence meanings. 4) Synonyms have identical semantic and grammatical features. In J. Apresjan’s view, synonyms (1) have the same definition, (2) have the same set of syntactic valencies, (2) are capable of replacing one another in any schemes of syntactic trees [1]. Defining words, J. Apresjan uses a special semantic language. In this language there is no polysemy, and it cannot define all language units. These formal (semantic and �Types of synonymic groups in Russian grammatical) features are typical for absolute synonyms. However, there are not many absolute synonyms in the language but a huge number of near-synonyms. Typically synonyms are integrated into synonymic groups. In essence all dictionaries of synonyms are lists of synonymic groups. The members of a synonymic group have common semantic elements. For example, the synonymic group 'врач' (doctor) – 'доктор' (doctor) – 'медик' (medical man) – 'лекарь' (medico)' has an integrated semantic feature 'medic profession'. In dictionaries of synonyms the integrated semantic feature is expressed by a headword. According to The Oxford Thesaurus: An A-Z Dictionary of Synonyms, “headwords have been selected because of their frequency in the language” [14, 3]. Although frequency in the language is not a primary factor in the selection of headwords: “some headwords of lower frequency have been included because it would otherwise be impossible to find a suitable place to group together what are perceived as useful sets of synonyms” [14]. Headwords usually have no stylistic or emotional connotations. The traditional point of view considers that synonymy is a symmetrical semantic relation, and it differs from hyponymy (taxonomy). G. Miller’s paper [9] is the first step toward making an online lexical reference system, WordNet, whose design is inspired by psycholinguistic approaches of human lexical memory. It was obvious that the inner lexical memory differs from standard alphabetical dictionaries: “The most ambitious feature of WordNet, however, is its attempt to organize lexical information in terms of word meanings, rather than word forms” [9, 237]. WordNet is organized by semantic relations. And synonyms have the central rule in WordNet. According to Miller synonyms can be interchangeable and have symmetrical relations: “It is convenient to assume that the relation is symmetrical: if x is similar to y, then y is equally similar to x” [9, 241]. We can show semantic relations between symmetrical synonyms using the following examples: Figure 1. Synonymic relation ‘тоска' (melancholy) ‘грусть’ (sadness) ‘печаль’ (grief) ‘скука’ (boredom ) �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics At the same time, hyponyms and hyperonyms have a hierarchical (asymmetrical) structure: “These terms both refer to the relationship of semantic inclusion that holds between a more general term” [4, 82]. A hierarchical structure of hyponyms and hyperonyms is named ‘taxonomy’. Writing about taxonomy, A. Cruse [3] has distinguished two types of relations. He called the first type ‘is a kind/type of ’; the second type – ‘is a’ relation. Cruse said that only the first type is taxonomy. For example, spaniel is taxonym of dog because it is normal to say: A spaniel is a kind of dog. But kitten and cat do not have a taxonomy relation: we cannot say: A kitten is a type of cat. The following attempts to demonstrate semantic relations between hyponyms: Figure 2. Taxonomy relation dog spaniel airedale terrier Nevertheless, some research considers synonymy to be both a symmetrical and asymmetrical relationship. For example, The New Collins Thesaurus research group (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) has determined that 62% of synonyms are asymmetrical [2]. L. Murphy wrote that while prototypical cases of synonymy are symmetrical, in some cases synonymy appears asymmetrical [10, 158]. Hypotheses This research on the semantic relationship among synonyms has two main purposes: 1) to distinguish structural types of synonymic groups; 2) to verify the headwords of synonymic groups as a linguistic or psycholinguistic concept. The hypothesis is that synonymic relationships can have hierarchical and symmetrical structures. Methodology The sources of research data are: 1) The results of two experiments where subjects selected headwords for the submitted synonymic groups; �Types of synonymic groups in Russian 2) The Russian National Corpus (www.ruscorpora.ru), which is used to define the frequency of synonyms in the language; 3) The Russian Associative Dictionary by Sergey Karaulov, where associative word reactions are shown; 4) Russian dictionaries where definitions of words and sets of synonyms are given. In the first experiment, we used 12 synonymic groups taken from several Russian dictionaries of synonyms (dictionaries by N. Abramov, V. Klueva, Z. Aleksandrova, A. Evgenjeva, J. Apresjan). Chosen synonymic groups are presented in all of these dictionaries. Synonymic dictionaries differ by sets of synonyms and selection of group headwords. Table 1. The synonymic group in dictionaries of synonyms Dictionary synonyms of Words of the synonymic group New explanatory еда’ (food), ‘снедь’ (archaic word of food), ‘яства’ synonymic dictionary (archaic and high stylistic word of food ), ‘пища’ (food / of Russian by J. fare) Apresjan Short dictionary of 'пища (food / fare), ‘еда’ (food), ‘корм’ (forage), ‘харчи’ Russian synonyms by (expressive word of food), ‘яства’ (archaic word of food), V. Klueva ‘снедь’ (archaic word of food) Dictionary of Russian ‘пища’ (food / fare), ‘пропитание’ (subsistence), ‘еда’ synonyms by A. (food), ‘съестное’ (foodstuffs), ‘харчи’ (grub), ‘харч’ Evgenjeva (grub), ‘жратва’ (grub), ‘шамовка’ (vulgar word of food) Dictionary of Russian synonyms and expressions with the similar meaning by N. Abramov ‘пища’ (food / fare), ‘кушанье’ (meal) , ‘снедь’ (archaic word of food), ‘еда’ (food), ‘брашно’ (archaic word of food, ‘яства’ (archaic word of food), ‘стол’ (board), ‘харчи (харч)’ (expressive word of food), ‘хлеб’, ‘хлеба’ (bread), etс. Synonyms of low frequency, synonyms with connotative and emotive meanings and archaic words were deleted. In the second experiment, we used 20 synonymic groups from the most popular dictionary by A. Evgenjeva. The selection of synonymic groups was random. We deleted low-frequency synonyms, emotive and archaic words. �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Forty-five subjects participated in the first experiment and 67 in the second experiment. The subjects' task was to choose the main words of the submitted groups. Experimental instruction did not contain any rules for this operation, because it was assumed that a subject had an intuitive ability for semantic selection. However, it was possible that the subjects might not find the headword. Subjects were free to take as much time as they needed to complete the task. Results Having analyzed the results of the experiments, we distinguished two structural types of synonymic groups. These types differ by semantic relationship between synonyms. The first type (named centric synonymic groups) consists of synonymic groups, the headwords of which can be uniquely identified by experimental and corpus data. In such cases, the subjects unanimously determined the headword, and the headword is the most frequent word in the synonymic group. For example, the word ‘пища’ (food / fare) is the headword of the synonymic group ‘пища (food / fare) – 'еда' (food) – 'корм' (forage)’; the word ‘болезнь’ is the headword of the synonymic group ‘болезнь’ (disease) – ‘хворь’ (ailment) – ‘недуг’ (infirmity) –‘заболевание’ (illness). There are eight (67%) such groups in the first experiment and 14 such groups (70%) in the second experiment. The main features of centric synonymic groups are: 1) the results of the experiments have shown that there is one leading synonymy in such groups; 2) the headwords have the highest frequency in these groups; 3) the members of the centric synonymic groups have asymmetrical associative reactions. The Russian Associative Dictionary, which contains a massive number of word reactions, has demonstrated that the headword of a centric group is the most frequent associative reaction of word-stimulus. For example, subjects of our experiment chose the headword ‘болезнь’ (disease) for the synonymic group ‘болезнь’ (disease) – ‘хворь’ (ailment) – ‘недуг’ (infirmity) – ‘заболевание’ (illness). Stimulus ‘хворь’ (ailment) has following associative reactions: a. ‘болезнь’ (disease) in 141 cases of 517 reactions (27 %), b.‘прошла’ (form of verb ‘go’) in 16 cases of 517 reactions (3 %), c.‘боль’ (pain) in 15 cases of 517 reactions (3 %). Stimulus ‘недуг’ (infirmity) has the following associative reactions: a. болезнь’ (disease) in 121 cases of 508 reactions (24 %); b. ‘тяжёлый’ (hard / painful) in 47 cases of 508 reactions (9 %) �Types of synonymic groups in Russian c. боль’ (pain) in 15 cases of 508 reactions (3 %). It is important to note that the headword ‘болезнь’ (disease) has no associative reactions such as ‘хворь’ (ailment), ‘недуг’ (infirmity). Synonymic groups can differ by their degree of asymmetry / symmetry of associative reactions. Among centric synonymic groups we can find groups that have a high degree of asymmetry (like a synonymic group ‘болезнь’ (disease) –‘хворь’ (ailment) – ‘недуг’ (infirmity) –‘заболевание’ (illness)) and groups with a low degree of asymmetry (like 'путь' (way) – 'дорога' (road) – 'стезя' (way) – 'тропа' (path)). Moreover, centric synonymic groups tend to have asymmetrical associative reactions. The asymmetry of semantic distance between a stimulus word and the word associate it activates is interpreted as a reflection of the prototype-variant relationship in consciousness [15]. 4) A definition test has shown that a headword can be used in the analytical definition of members of a synonymic group. For example, the word ‘судьба’ (fate) is the headword of the group ‘фортуна’ (fortune) – ‘удел’ (destiny) – ‘судьба’ (fate) – ‘доля’ (lot). The word ‘судьба’ (fate) is typically used in definitions of the word ‘фортуна’ (fortune). According to V. Dal’s dictionary and V. Vinogradov’s academic dictionary, ‘фортуна’ (fortune) is ‘судьба’ (fate). S. Ozhegov’s dictionary has shown that the word ‘удел’ (destiny) is ‘судьба’ (fate). But the word ‘судьба’ (fate) cannot be defined using the words ‘фортуна’ (fortune) and ‘удел’ (destiny). There are no definitions of ‘судьба’ (fate) using words ‘фортуна’ (fortune), ‘удел’ (destiny) in Russian dictionaries. Centric synonymic groups have an inner semantic structure with a headword as the centre of this hierarchic structure. From the structural point of view, there are two elements: the headword of the synonymic group and other member of the group. They have different semantic statuses: the headword has a dominating status but the other members have a subordinate status. The headword plays a significant role in the semantic descriptions of synonyms that have this headword. It is an important semantic element of their synonyms. The centric synonymic-group headword seems to be a prototype (in cognitive terms) because headwords are “the clearest cases of membership defined operationally by people's judgments of goodness of membership in the category” [12, 38]. �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Turning to the reason why one word in the synonymic row is dominant, we should mention L. Vygotsky’s theory, which holds that the main word in the semantic network is the oldest word [16]. According to Vygotsky’s theory, historical linguistic development determines the semantic organization of lexical items. But in cognitive psychology and linguistics, it is argued that linguistic memory is dynamic and “evolves in accordance with a person’s linguistic experience” [13]. Synonymic groups can change: it is important to distinguish the synchrony and the diachrony of synonymic groups. The second type (named non-centric synonymic groups) includes synonymic groups in which the subjects were not able to choose the main word of the synonymic groups. The second type is illustrated by following synonymic groups: ‘буря’ (storm) – ‘ураган’ (hurricane) – ‘метель’ (snowstorm) – ‘вьюга’ (snowstorm) – ‘пурга’ (blizzard); 'плут’ (trickster) – ‘жулик’ (swindler) – ‘похититель’ (kidnapper) – ‘вор’ (thief); – ‘мошенник’ (cheat). There are four (33%) such groups in the first experiment and six such groups (30%) in the second experiment. Below we briefly list the main features of non-centric synonymic groups: 1) the subjects cannot determine the main word of groups; 2) the synonyms of non-centric synonymic have similar frequency characteristics; 3) the synonyms of this group have symmetrical associative reactions. The basis feature of non-centric groups is the absence of hierarchical structure and the independent status of each synonym. It is impossible to distinguish the headword in non-centric synonymic groups. The non-centric synonymic type is integrated by a semantic gestalt [8] based on a nonverbal semantic code. Nonverbal semantic codes differ from verbal units by formal variety, their continuous and unconscious nature and their ambiguous meaning. A. Paivio suggested that there are verbal and nonverbal codes and that memory performance is based on either or both of these codes: “The most general assumption in dual coding theory is that there are two classes of phenomena handled cognitively by separate subsystems, one specialized for representation and processing of information concerning nonverbal objects and events, the other specialized for dealing with language. I will often refer to the nonverbal (symbolic) subsystem as the imagery system because its critical functions include the analysis of scenes and the generation of the mental images” [11, 53]. In the Russian psycholinguistic tradition, L. Vygotsky's and his colleague N. Ginkin's ideas that there are oral speech and thought language are well known [16]. It seems nonverbal codes have a significant role in the meanings of non-centric group synonyms: an integrated base of their synonyms is non-discrete semantic elements �Types of synonymic groups in Russian like pictures, images and circuitries. Their nonverbal code can not be analyzed by logic, component methods. Thus, formal and component analysis of non-central synonymic groups is not effective because there are no common discrete semantic elements. Conclusion Our research has shown that most of synonymic groups have hierarchical structure. It is clear to see that the symmetrical organization is not a prototypical case for synonymy. In conclusion we resume our research results: 1). There are two types of synonymic groups. The groups differ by their inner semantic organization. 2). Сentric synonymic groups have a hierarchical organization and non-centric synonymic groups have a symmetrical organization. 3). Symmetrical organization cannot be a differential feature of synonymy. Most synonymic groups have a hierarchical (asymmetrical) structure. 4). Synonymic relationships can be hierarchical and symmetrical. 5). Only centric synonymic groups have headwords. It is impossible to define the headword of non-centric synonymic groups. References Apresjan, J. (1973) Synonymy and Synonym In Kiefer, F. (ed.), Trends in Soviet Theoretical Linguistics. Dordrecht: Reidel. pp. 173-200. Chodorow M., Ravin Y., Sachar H. A (1988) Tool For Investigating Tile Synonymy Relation In A Sense Disambiguated Thesaurus In Applied Natural Language Processing Conference. pp. 144-151. Cruse A. (1986) Lexical semantics. Cambridge. Geeraerts D. (2010) Theories of lexical semantics. Oxford. Harris R. (1973) Synonymy and Linguistic Analysis. Oxford. Jackson, H. (1988) Words and Their Meaning. London. Kreidler, C. W. (1998) Introducing English semantics. London: Routledge. Lakoff J. (1977) Linguistic Gestalts In Beach W.A., Fox S.E., Philosoph S. (eds.), Thirteenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, April 1416,. pp. 236-287. �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Miller, G., Beckwith R., Fellbaum C., Gross D., Miller K. Introduction to WordNet: An On-line Lexical Database In International Journal of Lexicography. – 1990. -№ 3(4) — p. 235-244. Murphy L. (2003) Semantic Relation and the Lexicon. Cambridge. Pavio A. (1990) Mental representation. A Dual Coding Approach. Oxford. Rosch E. (1978) Principles of Categorization In E. Rosch, B. Lloyd (eds.) Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale. – pp. 27–48. Taylor J. (2003) Cognitive Grammar. Oxford. The Oxford Thesaurus: An A-Z Dictionary of Synonyms (1991). Oxford. Tversky, A. (2005) Preference, Belief, and Similarity. Selected Writings. Cambridge, London. Vygotsky L. (1962) Thinking and Speech. The M.I.T. Press. Wittgenstein L. (1986) Philosophical Investigations. Oxford. � 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. 2827 Title A name given to the resource Types of synonymic groups in Russian Author Author Belov, Vadim Abstract A summary of the resource. This research has two main purposes: 1) to distinguish structural types of synonymic groups; 2) to verify the headwords of synonymic groups as a linguistic or psycholinguistic concept. Typically, a headword has: 1) common semantic elements, 2) the highest frequency, and 3) no stylistic and emotional connotations. The main source of data is the results of two experiments and data from the Russian National Corpus. The subjects' task was to choose the main words of the submitted groups. We used 32 synonymic groups, taken from the Russian synonymic dictionaries: the first experiment contained 12 synonymic groups and the second had 20 synonymic groups. Forty-five subjects participated in the first experiment, 67 in the second experiment. We distinguished two types of synonymic groups with different structures. The first type (centric synonymic groups) consists of synonymic groups, the headword of which can be uniquely identified by experimental and corpus data. In such cases, the subjects unanimously determined the headword, and the headword is the most frequent word of the synonymic group. There are eight (67%) such groups in the first experiment and 14 such groups (70%) in the second experiment. The second type (non-centric synonymic groups) includes synonymic groups, in which the subjects were not able to choose the main word of the synonymic groups. There are four (33%) such groups in the first experiment and six such groups (30%) in the second experiment. It is impossible to distinguish the headword in non-centric synonymic groups. Such synonymic groups are integrated by a semantic gestalt based on a nonverbal semantic code. Formal and component analysis of non-central synonymic groups is not effective. Keywords: Russian language, synonymic groups Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-29 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics,PG Slavic, Baltic, Albanian languages and literature https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/cdabfa1fd37dc551cf31316f97f55298.pdf ec7d0959b6b6a9c9456606a3eb60eb7e PDF Text Text Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Are future foreign language teachers prepared to educate the gifted and talented in schools in Herzegovina? Izabela Dankić & Ana Matić-Raguž University of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina Submitted: 03.05.2014. Accepted: 07.11.2014. Abstract The aim of this study was to contribute to advancement of foreign language teaching and to direct attention to exceptional children as a group of students very often neglected in the elementary and high-school educational system in HerzegovinaNeretva canton. Data are collected using reflection and we attempt to answer the question whether the future foreign language teachers, upon completion of their foreign language-teacher education, feel prepared to work with the gifted and talented. The results suggest that work with gifted and talented children should be included in FL-teacher education in the future. Keywords: language teaching, talented students, Herzegovina canton Introduction Formal elementary and secondary school educational systems in many countries in Europe are organized to give gifted students the opportunity to reach their full potential. The public educational system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, primarily organized at the cantonal level,is set to promotethe concept thatdifferent needs of all students should be met.As in many other countries (Page, 2010), gifted learners and their educators in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in Herzegovina-Neretva canton, face many challenges. While the special-learning needs of children are met by engaging teacher assistants who individually assist the children in schoolsby providing additional classes or organizing special programs, the special needs of the gifted are not met in a systematic way. If these children are identified in the public elementary and secondary schools in Herzegovina-Neretva canton, it is up to the school and its principal and teachers to decide how these special needs should be met.The prevailing belief is that gifted children adjust better than non-gifted children and gifted children are not systematically identified.However, this dominant viewof gifted children (Kessner, 2005) may be changed by the practitioner research results, 137 �Are future foreign language teachers prepared to educate the gifted and talented in schools in Herzegovina? which indicate that gifted students appear to adjust better, but experience different social and emotional difficulties. Gifted children are exceptional children and there is no agreement on how gifted chidren and learners should be identified. Some still believe that we should maintain the traditional approach of identifying gifted learners as children who score approximately 130+ on an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test (Krause et al, 2003), while others like Langrehr (2006) propose a series of tests that replace the intelligencequotient method with “multiple-answer thinking”. Zovko (1996) also points to the difference between gifted and talented learners, stating that the talented learners have one gift, while gifted learners have more than one gift.He prefers the term “exceptional children” because there are gifted and talented children who are learners with special needs. As far as this study is concerned, we define gifted learners as children who are talented inforeign language learning. During their education and foreign language-teacher training, future foreign language teachers are trained to work with the average-ability students andspecial attention is not devoted to the specializedpractical training – for example, how to organize a higher streaming class or how to handle the problems that usually accompany the gifted (self-esteem, self-concept, affective needs of gifted students).At University of Mostar, pre-service teachers study all factors influencing learning (including intelligence, aptitude, social-psychological factors, etc.) from the perspective of their role in the second-language acquisition and within the foreign language-teaching methodology courses. Since the importance of gifted children's relationships with their teachers is emphasized in many research studies (Kessner, 2005), the aim of this study was to contribute to advancement of foreign language teaching through examination of the position of pre-service teachers on teaching gifted students. Based on the obtained data, we can examine the pre-service teachers' position on teaching the gifted and whether they feel prepared to teach them. Methodology In this study, we combine the use of practitioner knowledge (Johnson, 2009) and the reflective practice within the exploratory practice framework. We use them to examine the teaching practice in the context of preparing future foreign language teachers to address the needs of gifted students. The term “reflective practice”is differently defined, but it includes processes that involve “meta-thinking” (Shkedi, 2000; Loughran 2002) and is based on a belief that 138 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics teachers can improve their understanding of teaching and the quality of their teaching by reflecting critically on their experiences related to teaching (Richards, 2002).Halbach (2002, pp. 245-246) writes that the type of reflection the students are able to produce and whether they comment on the course methodology indicates the course’s effect on their ability to be reflective and tothink critically. She distinguishes three degrees of reflection:summarizing (a simple summary of the ideas covered in class), exemplifying (a certain degree of introspection supported with their personal experience as students), and commenting (meaningful reflection including comments and questions that indicate critical thinking). We used the principled framework of exploratory practice to investigate the students’ reflection on their own learning and teaching in classes preparing them to become English teachers. Exploratory practice helps them better understand the quality of foreign language classroom life. It also helpsto teach pre-service teachers how to develop reflective mind habits when the content to be reflected upon and the quality of reflection are determined (Valli, 1997).The present study used the reflective practice of pre-service teachers when asking them to reflect on their training and preparation for teaching gifted students. The subjects are 19 second-year graduate students (pre-service English teachers)at the University of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina who have met all the requirements (completed teaching practicums and colloquiums) in 2013. They were asked to write a reflective essay on “Are future English teachers are prepared to teach gifted children?” The suggested time for essay writing was 45 minutes and the essay length was not specified. As far as the quality of reflection was concerned, they were told that their essay should reflect their pre-service teacher experience and training, and that their essays would be taken into consideration for initiating an elective coursecalled “Gifted children and foreign language teaching”. Results Although the group of 19 students (pre-service teachers) included 14 women and 5 men, only three of them (two male students and one female student) signed their essays. They were allowed not to sign their essays in order to express themselves more freely, knowing that they would not be judged or evaluated. They were also allowed to choose the languagein which they wanted to write the essay. Two students wrote their essays in English, one student combined both English and Croatian and 16 students wrote them in Croatian. The reflective data analysis was conducted after we had sorted the essay data according to three degrees of reflection as suggested by Halbach (2002): summarizing, exemplifying, and commenting. 139 �Are future foreign language teachers prepared to educate the gifted and talented in schools in Herzegovina? Interestingly, all 19 essays are classified as the third degree of reflection. The students do not summarize what was covered in the classes about the gifted. They provide their position based on their experience as students (pre-service teachers) and directly proceed to express their opinion on how well the future English teachers are preparedto teach gifted children. They support their position by providing interesting comments and suggestions that indicate critical thinking. They all agree that the needs of gifted children in public schools in the region are not met. Eleven pre-service teachers believe that they are prepared to teach gifted children in the public schools. Five pre-service teachers consider “the educational system”, “schools”, “the wider community” and “the cantonal government”to be responsible for problems gifted children and teachers might face. Three students particularly blamethe foreign language teachers who currently teach in the public primary and secondary schools as not being motivated and properly trained to cater to gifted students. Only one student specifically states that no elective course should be introduced, while the other 10 do not mention it at all. Three pre-service teachers believe that they are not ready to teach gifted students. They also believe that they are not prepared to teach the non-gifted children. They consider their practical experience to be limited and propose that courses on practical teaching issues should be added to the curriculum starting from the first year of their college education. They strongly recommend that the elective course on teaching English to gifted children should be introduced. Five students state that they are prepared to teach the foreign language, but they need additional training on how to teach gifted children and how to manage the classroom and teach gifted and non-gifted children together. Discussion Reflective essay analysis suggests that the observed pre-service teachers believe that the needs of gifted students in the region are not met. One might argue that gifted and talented children do not require supplemental resources at all and that their needs should be considered in the same way as the needs of the other non-gifted children. This is a view supported by the standard-based cost-function educational model (Baker, 2001) where the gifted must fit into the general public educational system and no supplemental resources are available for their education. The alternate resource educational model provides for special programs for gifted children and they vary depending on available funds. As far as the situation in the HercegovinaNeretva canton is concerned, these pre-service teachers correctly identified that there 140 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics is no cantonal educational policy with clearly established procedures for identification and assistance that would aid gifted elementary and secondary students. The foreign language teachers currently employed and teaching in the public schools have not been trained how to identify, assist and help gifted students reach their educational goals based on their special needs. Three students feel that they are not prepared to teacheither gifted or non-gifted students. Further analysis of their essays suggests that the reason for this position is that they do not consider that the practical training they received in the process of obtaining their teaching degree adequately prepares them for the challenges of teaching in the real classroom away from the micro-teaching context.Wellich and Brown (2012)point to the particular challenge related to the identification of gifted students proposing their classification into gifted achievers and gifted underachievers. As a result of interplay of different factors (motivation, confidence, lack of certain skills, socio-emotional adjustment) some gifted children do not achieve their educational goals in school and are not recognized as exceptional. They also state that gifted students may be misunderstood by their parents, by their peers at preschool and school, and by their teachers because of their style of communication and their different needs. As a result of these failing experiences coming from the primary social context, they might become underachievers. Based on their experience and practice in Herzegovina’s public schools, five preservice foreign language teachers think that they are prepared to teach non-gifted students but are not trained adequately to face the challenge of teaching gifted and non-gifted studentsin the same classroom. Mandatory or elective courses as a part of foreign language-teacher education might help better prepare the future teachers for this challenge. Beyond the curriculum additions at the university level, some authors suggest the adjustments and changes in the (foreign) language curriculathat would take into consideration the nature of the learner, theselection of thegrouping model, and theliterary and linguistic material. This curriculum treatment resulting in differentiated curricula would help gifted students produce significant and important learning outcomes (Van Tassel-Basko et al., 2002) and it might result, if funding is provided, in the establishment of special “gifted programs” like the program based on a small-group affective curriculum (Peterson &Lorimer, 2011). All observed pre-service teachers state that gifted children in public schools in Herzegovina need special attention in foreign language classrooms.Foreign language teachers must aim to develop positive attitudes in all children and need training to help gifted students utilize their general or specific cognitive abilities, combined with their foreign language learning ability, to master a foreign language. Conclusion 141 �Are future foreign language teachers prepared to educate the gifted and talented in schools in Herzegovina? The practitioner knowledge becomes part of the knowledge base of teacher education after it is made public for examination and discussion (Hiebert, Gallimore, and Stigler, 2002) and we hope that our workwill initiate a discussionon whether preservice teachers are prepared to teach gifted students in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on this practitioner research and our findings we propose that preparatory courses for teaching gifted children should become a part of foreign languageteachereducation and training. References Baker, B.D. (2001). Gifted children in the current policy and fiscal context of public education: a national snapshot and state-level equity analysis of Texas. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(3), 229-250 Halbach, A. (2002). Exporting methodologies: The reflective approach in teacher training. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 15 (3), 243-250. Hiebert, J., Gallimore, R., & Stigler, J. W. (2002). A knowledge base for the teaching profession: What would it look like and how can we get one? Educational Researcher, 31(5), 3-15. Johnson, K. E. (2009). Trends in Second Language Teacher Education. In A. Burns and J. C. Richards (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to second language teacher education (pp. 20 – 29). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kessner, J. E. (2005). Gifted children’s relationships with teachers, Interntional Education Journal, 6(2):218-223 Krause, K., Duchesne, S.K.,Bochner, S. & Duchesne, S. (2003). Educational Psychology for learning and teaching.Southbank, Victoria: Thomson Langrehr, J. (2006), New ways for identifying gifted thinkers. Gifted, 140, 11-14. Loughran, J. J. (2002). Effective reflective practice: in search of meaning in learning about teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53 (1), 33-43. Page, J. S. (2010). Challenges faced by “gifted learners” in school and beyond, Student Pulse, 2(11) retrieved from www.studentpulse.com/prin?id=330 Peterson, J.S. &Lorimer, M. R. (2011). Student response to a small-group affective curriculu, in a school for gifted children. Gifted Children Quarterly, 55(3), 167-180. 142 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Richards, J. C. (2002). Theories of teaching in language teaching. In J. C. Richards and W. A. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice (pp. 19-25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Shkedi, A. (2000). Educating reflective teachers for teaching culturally valued subjects: Evaluation of a teacher-training project. Evaluation and Research in Education, 14 (2), 94-110. Valli , L. (1997). Listening to other voices: A description of teacher reflection in the United States. Peabody Journal of Education, 72, 67-88. Van Tassel-Basko, J., Zuo L., Avery, L.D. and Little, C.A. (2002).A curriculum study of gifted-student learning in the language arts.Gifted Child Quarterly, 46(1), 30-44. Wellich, M. & Brown, J. (2012). An integrated identification and intervention model for intellectually gifted children.Journal of Advanced Academics, 23(2), 145167. Zovko, G. (1996). Odgojizuzetnedjece.Zagreb: Hrvatskaakademijaodgojnihznanosti 143 � 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. 2814 Title A name given to the resource Are future foreign language teachers prepared to educate the gifted and talented in schools in Herzegovina? Author Author Dankić, Izabela Matić-Raguž, Ana Abstract A summary of the resource. The aim of this study was to contribute to advancement of foreign language teaching and to direct attention to exceptional children as a group of students very often neglected in the elementary and high-school educational system in Herzegovina-Neretva canton. Data are collected using reflection and we attempt to answer the question whether the future foreign language teachers, upon completion of their foreign language-teacher education, feel prepared to work with the gifted and talented. The results suggest that work with gifted and talented children should be included in FL-teacher education in the future. Keywords: language teaching, talented students, Herzegovina canton Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-05-03 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed L Education (General),LF Individual institutions (Europe),LT Textbooks,P Philology. Linguistics,PE English,PG Slavic, Baltic, Albanian languages and literature https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/943b668a7c59daf567eb65c46eb29064.pdf f50af548adf148c65fb68c3daba71a77 PDF Text Text Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Apology in Use Jelena Ilić University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina Submitted: 04.05.2014. Accepted: 12.11.2014. Abstract There have been many researchers (Holmes, Brown and Levinson, Olshtain, BlumKulka, House, Kasper) who have devoted themselves to the analysis of one of the basic units of human linguistic communication - the act of apologizing. An apology, as argued by Holmes (1989), is seen as a face-supportive act. As such, it does not impose on thehearer’s face. It has been understood that the act of apologizing serves as a social goal of maintaining harmony between the speakers, and in order to make it convincing and workable it has to be used with appropriate strategies. Olshtain (1989) claimed that apologies do not differ drastically across languages and therefore it could be said that they are mostly universal. Interestingly enough, what BlumKulka, House and Kasper (1989: 21) noticed is that apologies are used with different degrees of intensity. Speakers may use intensifiers or upgraders to increase the power of their apology (‘I’m so sorry’, ‘I’m really sorry’), but they may also use other modality markers such as downgraders to avoid the use of apology and minimize their guilt (ex. I didn’t know you’d be eager to go out tonight.). Moreover, an act of apologizing might not accompany the set of realization patterns typical for apologizing and does not have to coincide with thespeaker’s pragmatic intention. ‘Sorry ‘bout that!’ is an example that one may find in contexts in which a speaker is not apologizing for something s/he did, but s/he is sarcastic or just superficially using the pattern to avoid a sincere apology. In other words, meaning does not have to be tightly connected to the pragmatic intention whatsoever. Still, the aim of this paper will be to analyze the structure of an apology using data-collection instruments, such asthediscourse completion test (DCT), rating scalesand roleplays,inorder to elicitapologetic data produced by non-native speakers who are highly proficient in English andwho are responsible for teaching and guiding young generations. The paper will examine teachers’ apologetic competences as a type of knowledge that everyone needs to acquire, process, develop, use and display on a daily basis. The analysis of teachers’ contextual perceptions and choices of apology strategies openly indicates their socio-pragmatic performance through written and oral tasks, and their pragmalinguistic performance as well. 145 �Apology in Use Keywords: interlanguage pragmatics, speech acts, discourse completion task, roleplay data, apology strategies Definition and Strategies of an Apology There are many definitions of apologies as most frequently studied expressive speech acts. Goffman (1971) defined an apology as a remedial interchange that is used to restore social equilibrium after the violation of social norms. It is clear that ‘an apology is called for when there is some behavior that violates social norms, … when an action or an utterance (or the lack of either) results in one or more persons perceiving themselves as deserving an apology, the culpable person(s) is (are) expected to apologize…’ (Cohencited in McKay, S.L., Hornberger, N.H., 1995:386).Moreover, Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984: 206) proposed the three preconditions that evoke the act of apologizing: 1. the apologizer committed a violation or abstained from committing a violation (or is about to commit it); 2. a violation is perceived by the apologizer only, by the hearer only, by both the apologizer and the hearer, or by a third party as a breach of a social norm; 3. a violation is perceived by at least one of the parties involved as offending, harming, or affecting the hearer in some way. It is evident that the apologizer shows readiness to accept the guilt and responsibility to restore social harmony and in that way an apology becomes a face-saving act or remedial interchange. Once there is a need for the act of apologizing, an apologizer may choose one or more apology strategies to restore social harmony. Fraser (1981: 263) proposed a systematic classification of apology strategies into: 1. announcing that you are apologizing: ‘I apologize for …’ 2. stating one’s obligation to apologize: ‘I must apologize for …’ 3. offering to apologize: ‘I offer my apology for …’ 4. requestingthat the hearer accept my apology: ‘Please accept my apology for …’ 5. expressing regret for the offence: ‘I am (truly / so / very / deeply) sorry for …’ 6. requesting forgiveness for the offence: ‘Please excuse me for…’ 7. acknowledging responsibility for the offending act: ‘That was my fault …’ 146 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics 8. promising forbearance from a similar offending act: ‘I promise you that will never happen again …’ 9. offering redress: ‘Please, let me pay for the damage I‘ve done …’ Dealing with the apology speech act set, Cohen, Olshtain and Rosenstein (1986) perfected five apology strategies: 1. an expression of apology, whereby the speaker uses a word, expression, or sentence that contains a relevant performative verb such as apologize,forgive, excuse, be sorry; 2. an explanation or account of the situation that indirectly caused the apologizer to commit the offence and that is used by the speaker as an indirect speech act of apologizing; 3. acknowledgement of responsibility, whereby the offender recognizes his or her fault in causing the infraction; 4. an offer of repair, whereby the apologizer makes a bid to carry out an action or provide payment for some kind of damage that resulted from the infraction; 5. a promise of nonrecurrence, whereby the apologizer commits himself or herself not to let the offence happen again. In her study, Trosborg (1987, 1995) categorized apology speech-act sets in seven categories, and she also added one additional, the Zero strategy, in whicha complainee does not take responsibility at all (opting out through implicit or explicit denial of responsibility, evading responsibility completely, blaming someone else or attacking the complainer). The classification ofthe other seven apology speechactsets is as follows: Evasive strategies – (minimizing; querying preconditions; blaming a third party); Indirect strategies – a) acknowledging responsibility (implicit and explicit acknowledgement; expression of lack of intent; expression of self-deficiency; expression of embarrassment; explicit acceptance of blame); b) providing an explanation or account (implicit or explicit explanation); Direct strategy – (expression of regret; offer of apology; request for forgiveness); Remedial support – a) expressing concern for the hearer; b) promise of forbearance; c) offering repair or compensation. 147 �Apology in Use The most influential classification of apology strategies is still the one developed by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper in 1989. 1. Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs): e.g. sorry; 2. Taking on Responsibility (explicit self-blame: e.g. my mistake; lack of intent: e.g. I didn’t mean to upset you; justify hearer: e.g. you’re right to be angry; expression of embarrassment: e.g. I feel awful about it; admission of facts but not of responsibility: e.g. I forgot about it; refusal to acknowledge guilt: e.g. it wasn’t my fault); 3. Explanation or Account: e.g. the traffic was terrible; 4. Offer of Repair: e.g. I’ll pay for the damage; 5. Promise of Forbearance: e.g. This won’t happen again; 6. Distracting from the Offence: (query precondition: e.g. are you sure we are supposed to meet at 10?; pretend not to notice the offence: e.g. am I late?, future/task-oriented remark: e.g. let’s get to work!, humour: e.g. if you think that’s a mistake, you should see our fried chicken!, appeaser: e.g. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee!, lexical and phrasal downgraders (politeness markers: e.g. please, understater: e.g. a bit, hedge: e.g. somehow, subjectivizer: e.g. I’m afraid, I wonder, downtoner: e.g. possibly, perhaps, cajoler: e.g. you know). (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, 1989: 289) As mentioned in the introduction, apologies are used with different degrees of intensity. Speakers acquire the knowledge of how to increase the power of their apology as well as they acquire the knowledge of how to evade a sincere apology. Trosborg (1995: 385-6) also identified some of the most common internal apology modifications, which she grouped into: 1. upgraders (intensifiers: I’m terribly sorry; I didn’t mean to cause you any pain;); 2. downgraders(downtoners, understaters, hedges and subjectivizers: just, simply, maybe; a little bit, not very much; kind of, sort of; I think, I suppose, I’m afraid;); 3. cajolers and appealers (you know, you see, I mean; okay, right, see;). Methodology The present paper compared the results on the speech act of apology obtained throughtheDiscourse Completion Test (DCT) and role-plays(RPs) that the Master’slevelEnglish-language students took at the beginning of the academic year 2013/2014 within their master’s-degree studies. The DCT data contained 10 different situations, whereas the RPs had six situations. For this study only six situations were selected within the DCT as to be easier to compare them with the results obtained via the RPs. 148 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics A description of every situation was given to a student who then needed to put down apologetic responses s/he thought to be the most adequate for the given context. Ina similar way, the data was obtained from the RPs, in which respondents were provided with a role card and then were asked to role-play the situation and reply in a way that would be the most typical, natural and spontaneouswith respect to the reallife situation. As far as informants are concerned, there were 40 native speakers of Bosnian examined. All of the speakers were highly fluent in English (80% of them were advanced EFL learners – C1, C2; 20% were pre-advanced – B2.). Most of them were employed as teachers of primary and/or secondary schoolchildren in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or giving private English lessons to friends and family members. The data included 20 males and 20 females. Their age range is from 24 to 37, and all of them started learning English at the age of 12 in primary school. The data in the present paper were collected through the DCT and RPs, offering situations that call for apologies for the purpose of investigating apologies. The corpus consisted of almost960 apologies and apology responses over a variety of contexts, some reflecting heavy, some medium-weighted and some light offences. The paper also put emphasis onto the degrees of apology intensity presented within the apology responses through the use of upgraders, downgraders, cajolers and appealers. What is more, the differences in apology responses between male and female respondents were also addressed as well as the overallwillingness or reluctance in expressing an apology explicitly through written and oral tasks. Results and Discussion It must be emphasized that the results revealed interesting and vivid differences between the two methods, DCT and RP. Namely, whathad been anticipated was thatthe DCT data would not differ too much from the RP data. However, the results proved different. First of all, within the DCT all respondents were asked to rate the contexts on a five-point rating scale for four context-internal factors (severity of the situation, offender’s obligation to apologize, difficulty of such obligation and likelihood for the apology to be accepted). Theyexpressed that the possibility of them apologizing remained high no matter how severe the situation (more than 80% said there was a high probability of them apologizing). They argued that expressing apologies is never problematic, especially if they are expected to apologize to someone they haveoffended. What is more, they pinpoint that an apology is never difficult to express and that they do not mind apologizing. They also strongly hold that the likelihood of the apology being accepted by the complainee is relatively high (more than 54% believe that their apology response bears qualitative characteristics and is sufficient to be accepted and to not let the complainee down). As far as gender 149 �Apology in Use differences are concerned, it could be said that both male and female respondents say that apology-strategy implementation is important and they do not find it difficult to use.Still, in contrast to the malerespondents, thefemale respondentsfound apologies a bit more important for restoring social harmony, regardless of whether they were apologizing for light, medium-weighted or heavy offences. On the other hand, theRP data revealed that the possibility of respondents apologizing is not as high as was evident withintheDCT data. Namely, less than 65% have not showed reluctance to apologizedespite the nature of thespecific apology situation (see Table 1). Generally speaking, it seems that respondents thought these situations to be less severe and therefore their performance on apology was generally poor or totally omitted. Therefore, it could be stated that there is evident minimization of the severity of offence inthe RPs rather than on theDCT. At times, it seemed difficult to say the apology out loud, and it was crystal clear that respondents behaved differently when engaging in theRPs. On several occasions, respondents did not employ an apology at all. To be more precise, they successfully tried to evade responsibility, or toblame or attack somebody else instead. With respect to gender differences, the females’ perception of how to apologize again became vivid and more common and colourful than the males’ perception. In addition, female respondents used apologies explicitly, but only when there was a high severity of offence that influenced their performance on apology. Male respondents proved unwilling to offer apologies, especially when they were apologizing to a male acquaintance or male friend. Needless to say, some intriguing results were discoveredwithin the RP sessions. Namely, on a few occasions it was noticed that respondents, when assuming the role of a complainee, understood the offence to be graver and therefore required not just an expression of apology, but also an additional explanation of the situation and a more thorough acknowledgement of responsibility. It was noticed that on several occasions neither an offer of repair nor a promise of forbearance were workable strategies. However, this paper could not provide a meticulous description and analysis of these situations for all examinees who acquired both the role of apologizer andcomplainee within this limited study;this should be included in further qualitative analyses of apology data.Is the edit correct? Table 1. Comparison of context internal factors in DCT and RP data DCT RP Context internal factors: severity of the situation light, medium-weighted light, medium-weighted and heavy and heavy 150 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics the possibility apologizing of difficulty of apology you 80% no likelihood of the apology 54% accepted is 65% questionable 50% Having reviewed the issue of context internal factors between the DCT and RP methods, it is now high time tofocuson the differences and similarities of the apology strategies obtained from the DCT and RPs. A close examination of the distribution of strategies is needed in order to make a detailed comparison between the two approaches.As mentioned above, the corpus consisted of almost 960 apology strategies over a variety of contexts. Furthermore, it is significant to mention that 960 apology strategies is a total number of apology strategies found across six situations of the DCT and six of the RPs. The results indicate that examinees tended to use at least two times the number of the apology strategies in theRPs than on theDCTs. It is quite clear that examinees behaved differently when engaged in RPs, probably because they reflected real, face-to-face interactions. In other words, there was no place for additional turns on the DCT due to its non-dynamic nature. In contrast, the RPs involved dynamics and thus created a lot of space for numerous apology strategies. Here are several examples on the distribution of apology strategies: (1) Situation: Knocking over a cup of coffee and burning a lady sitting next to you: DCT: I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the dry-cleaning. or: I’m deeply sorry. I didn’t mean to. Is there a chance to compensate? ROLE-PLAY: A: Oh, my God! B: Come on, look what you’ve done! A: I feel really bad now. I’m so clumsy. B: Yeah, my new white coat is stained now. I don’t believe it. A: Is there a chance to compensate in some way? I’ll do anything. B: It’s OK, you don’t have to worry. A: Are you sure? Can I pay for the dry-cleaners’? B: No, no, it’s ok. A: At least, let me buy you a drink. B: No, no, it’s ok. 151 �Apology in Use A: Please, forgive me. OMG, what a clumsy person I am! (2) Situation: You accidentally dropped your friend’s new phone and it broke. DCT: I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have touched it. or: Sorry. It was an accident. ROLE-PLAY: A: Oh, don’t kill me. B: I cannot believe that you dropped my new phone. A: I really don’t know how I dropped it, it just slipped off. B: How did you let it happen? What were you trying to do? A: Please, forgive me, I don’t know what happened. One second I am holding it, the other I just lose it. Like these hands are not mine. I don’t know what is wrong with me all day, I am having a bad day, really. B: Yeah, well, I will see whether I could repair the display. A: If there is anything I could do, let me know. I am willing to pay. B: We’ll see to it. Once again, the interactive nature ofthe RPs brought a great number of apology strategies to the surface. However, if a closer attention is paid to apology-strategy preference, one may perceive that not all the apology strategies are equally distributed onthe DCTs and in the RPs. The total number of apology strategies on theDCT is three; specifically, strategy 4 - Direct Apology, as an expression of apology (I apologize; I am sorry, Please, forgive me), followed by strategy 2 – as an indirect strategy referring to Acknowledgement of Responsibility,and strategy 7 – strategy of Offering Repair or Compensation. On the other hand, the total number of apology strategies in the RPs is five: strategy 7 – strategy of Offering Repair or Compensation, followed by strategy 2 – as an indirect strategy referring to Acknowledgement of Responsibility, strategy 5 – Expressing Concern for the Hearer, and strategy 4 – Direct Apology and the last being strategy 1- Evasive Strategy. It is of high importance to mention that the Zero Strategy is also very common (up to 9.5%) when examinees show implicit or explicit denial or responsibility, evading responsibility completely or even attacking the complainer. Needless to say, the Zero Strategy was a rarity within the DCT data. Table 2. Apology strategies distribution STRATEGIES Strategy 0: opt out 152 DCT 0% ROLE-PLAY 9.5% �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Strategy 1: evasive strategy 1% 12% Strategy 2: acknowledgement of responsibility 17% 17% Strategy 3: providing explanation 4% 6.5% Strategy 4: direct apology 54% 15% Strategy 5: expressing concern for the hearer 3% 16% Strategy 6: promise of forbearance 2% 1% Strategy 7: offering repair or compensation 19% 23% It is worth mentioning that examinees almost never employed a single apology strategy, but a combination of strategies within a first or single response, both on theDCT and in theRPs. The most workable strategies withinthe DCT were: Direct apology (54%), Offering Repair or Compensation (19%) and Acknowledgement of Responsibility (17%). In addition, those were the strategies common in theRPs as well. However, there is a different distribution of the strategies withinthe RPs, the most frequent being: Offering Repair or Compensation (23%), Acknowledgement of Responsibility (17%), Expressing Concern for the Hearer (16%), Direct Apology (15%) and Evasive Strategies (12%). What is more, the use of Opt-out or Zero Strategy seems to be quite interesting for this study, as one could witness that theexaminees were at times minimizing the severity of the offence, or regarded it as a light one, so they would not implement any apology at all. Next, the preference order of apology strategies is evidently different on theDCT and in theRPs. Direct Apology was indeed the most preferred strategy within theDCT, but not particularly favoured within theRP approach. Examinees showedareluctance to explicitly apologize in theoral tasks, which was never the case in thewritten tasks. Both tasks, written and oral, did not affect the examinees’ selection of apology strategies in general. However, when it comes to thepreference order of these eight strategies, the differences came to the surface. The factors influencingthe preference order of the strategies might be various; generally speaking, one may conclude that the major differences are due to the nature ofthe RPs and face-to-face conversations. Such contexts allow speakers to offer a response that looks like a real response formed in real contexts with real interlocutors. As a matter of fact, written contexts might appear far away from spontaneous and natural conversations, so speakers perceive a written task as a more formal task that requires a more formal language in order to show politeness and restore social harmony. Let’s now take a look at the distribution of apology strategies within the abovementioned examples: (1) Situation: Knocking over a cup of coffee and burning a lady sitting next to you: DCT: I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the dry-cleaning. (Direct Apology + Offer of Repair or Compensation) or: I’m deeply sorry. I didn’t mean to. Is there a chance to compensate? 153 �Apology in Use (Direct Apology + Acknowledgement of Responsibility + Offer of Repair) RP: A: Oh my God! (Opt out) B: Come on, look what you’ve done! A: I feel really bad now. I’m so clumsy. (Acknowledgement of Responsibility + Providing Explanation) B: Yeah, my new white coat is stained now. I don’t believe it. A: Is there a chance to compensate in some way? I’ll do anything. (Offer of Repair + Offer of Repair) B: It’s OK, you don’t have to worry. A: Are you sure? Can I pay for the dry-cleaners’? (Expressing Concern for the Hearer + Offer of Repair) B: No, no, it’s ok. A: At least, let me buy you a drink. (Offer of Repair) B: No, no, it’s ok. A: Please, forgive me. OMG, what a clumsy person I am! (Direct Apology + Providing Explanation) (2) Situation: You accidentally dropped your friend’s new phone and it broke. DCT: I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have touched it. (Direct Apology + Acknowledgement of Responsibility) or: Sorry. It was an accident. (Direct Apology + Providing Explanation) A: Oh, don’t kill me. (Acknowledgement of Responsibility) B: I cannot believe that you dropped my new phone. A: I really don’t know how I dropped it, it just slipped off. (Providing Explanation) B: How did you let it happen? What were you trying to do? A: Please, forgive me, I don’t know what happened. One second I am holding it, the other I just lose it. Like these hands are ROLE-PLAY: 154 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics not mine. I don’t know what is wrong with me all day, I am having a bad day, really. (Direct Apology + Providing Explanation + Providing Explanation + Providing Explanation + Acknowledgement of Responsibility) B: Yeah, well, I will see whether I could repair the display. A: If there is anything I could do, let me know. I am willing to pay. (Offer of Repair + Offer of Repair) B: We’ll see to it. When addressing gender differences one may witness that the act of apologizingis common for both male and female respondents on theDCTs and inthe RPs. Female examinees find an apology to be significant and valuable for re-establishing social equilibrium, as do male examinees. Still, when it comes to general use of apology strategies, the results show that female examinees have a tendency to use a combination of at least three apology strategies for every situation on the DCT and in the RPs, whereas male examinees use up to two strategies. As theresults reveal, both male and female examinees use the same common strategies on the DCT (Direct apology, Offer of Repair or Compensation and Acknowledgement of Responsibility). Role-play data clearly display that the implementation of preferable strategies is differentfor males and females. Namely, male examinees are in favour of strategy 7 – Offer Repair or Compensation, as opposed to females, who prefer strategy 2 – Acknowledgement of Responsibility, strategy 5 – Expressing Concern for the Hearer and strategy 3 – Providing Explanation or Account. The most surprising fact is that both male and female apologizers usedthe Zero Strategy on certain occasions, denying or evading responsibility completely. There is also an evidently greater use of modality markers by female examinees on both theDCT and inthe RPs. Male examinees rarely used upgraders, unlike their female colleagues (intensifiers: I’m terribly sorry; I’m awfully sorry; I deeply apologize; emotional expressions: Oh, no; OMG;). Downgraders, cajolers and appealers were also more frequent with female apologizers (hedges: My hands were kind of slippery;downtoners: I simply dropped the phone;). The use of modality markers becomes greater when there is ahigh severityof offence in question, especially in theRPs. Bearing in mind that this study covered a small number of examinees, future research should be based on a more relevant number of examinees in order to address gender differences in apology performance, including apologizer gender and complainee gender. In addition, certain social parameters, like distance, power and age might also contribute to clarification and intensification of the issue of apologywithin every culture. In that way, more reliable and valid conclusions might be drawn. 155 �Apology in Use Conclusion To sum up, this pilot study focused on a comparison between the apology data obtained from theDCT and theRPs. Similarities as well as differences have been established in the general use of apologies, context-internal factors found across six situations on theDCT and in theRPs and the preference order of apology strategies in both approaches. It is worth mentioning that, when performing an act of apology, respondents almost never employed a single apology strategy, but a combination of strategies. What is more, several important preliminary conclusions can be made at this point: 1. Act of apologizing is always a combination of several apology strategies; 2. The three most common strategies on theDCT and in theRPs are Direct Apology, Offer of Repair or Compensation and Acknowledgement of Responsibility; in addition, theRP data pointed tothe use of other strategies such as Expressing Concern for the Hearer and Evasive Strategies; 3. Direct Apology is preferable on theDCT, whereas Offer of Repair or Compensation is the most favoured in theRPs; 4. The use of theZero Strategy seems to be quite an extraordinary discovery, as it was employed exclusively in the RPs; 5. Frequency of explicit Direct Apologies is higher on the DCT than in theRPs; 6. Female examinees have a tendency to use a combination of at least three apology strategies for every single situation, as opposed to male examinees who use up to two strategies; thus, female apologizers are more expressive than male apologizers; 7. Male examinees are in favour of strategy 7, while femalesprefer strategy 2, strategy 5 and strategy 3; 8. Female examinees are eager to use modality markers, especially in RPs, in order to maximize and strengthen the power of their apologies. What future research needs to resolve is the issue of Direct Apology in everyday, natural and spontaneous conversations. A more detailed examination and analysis is required in order to address the notion of offence and apology performance in every culture. Also, further analysis of apologetic responses obtained from everyday conversations is something that needs to be taken into consideration so as to demonstrate actual culture-specific aspect(s) of apologies in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina and culture-specific way(s) of dealing with offensive situations. Needless to say, this pilot study has raised a list of questions related to the understanding of theact of apologizing. It is essential to comprehend that apologizing cannot be truly understood without taking reference to cultural values and attitudes into consideration. The aspect of culture is highly important and deeper than the norms of politeness and therefore apologies themselves.Thus, one must raise 156 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics awareness about different socio-culturally determined behaviours that exist and operate above the explicit norms of politeness. 157 �Apology in Use References Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., Kasper G. (1989). Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Blum-Kulka, S., Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and Apologies: A Cross-cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns; Applied Linguistics 5, 196-213. Brown, P., Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: CUP. Cohen, A.D., Olshtain, E., Rosenstein, D.S. (1986). Advanced EFL Apologies: What Remains to be Learned? International Journal of the Sociology of Language 62, 51-74. Fraser, B. (1981). On Apologizing. In F. Coulmas, Conversational Routine. The Hague: Mouton. Holmes, J. (1989). Sex Differences and Apologies: One Aspect of Communicative Competence. Applied Linguistics 10, 194-213. Kasper, G., Blum-Kulka, S. (1993). Interlanguage Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McKay, S.L., Hornberger, N.H. (1995). Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olshtain, E. (1989). Apologies Across Languages. In Blum-Kulka, S., House, J, Kasper, G. (eds) Cross- cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. 155-173. Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Watts, R.J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: CUP 158 � 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. 2815 Title A name given to the resource Apology in Use Author Author Ilić, Jelena Abstract A summary of the resource. There have been many researchers (Holmes, Brown and Levinson, Olshtain, Blum-Kulka, House, Kasper) who have devoted themselves to the analysis of one of the basic units of human linguistic communication - the act of apologizing. An apology, as argued by Holmes (1989), is seen as a face-supportive act. As such, it does not impose on thehearer’s face. It has been understood that the act of apologizing serves as a social goal of maintaining harmony between the speakers, and in order to make it convincing and workable it has to be used with appropriate strategies. Olshtain (1989) claimed that apologies do not differ drastically across languages and therefore it could be said that they are mostly universal. Interestingly enough, what Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989: 21) noticed is that apologies are used with different degrees of intensity. Speakers may use intensifiers or upgraders to increase the power of their apology (‘I’m so sorry’, ‘I’m really sorry’), but they may also use other modality markers such as downgraders to avoid the use of apology and minimize their guilt (ex. I didn’t know you’d be eager to go out tonight.). Moreover, an act of apologizing might not accompany the set of realization patterns typical for apologizing and does not have to coincide with thespeaker’s pragmatic intention. ‘Sorry ‘bout that!’ is an example that one may find in contexts in which a speaker is not apologizing for something s/he did, but s/he is sarcastic or just superficially using the pattern to avoid a sincere apology. In other words, meaning does not have to be tightly connected to the pragmatic intention whatsoever. Still, the aim of this paper will be to analyze the structure of an apology using data-collection instruments, such asthediscourse completion test (DCT), rating scalesand role-plays,inorder to elicitapologetic data produced by non-native speakers who are highly proficient in English andwho are responsible for teaching and guiding young generations. The paper will examine teachers’ apologetic competences as a type of knowledge that everyone needs to acquire, process, develop, use and display on a daily basis. The analysis of teachers’ contextual perceptions and choices of apology strategies openly indicates their socio-pragmatic performance through written and oral tasks, and their pragmalinguistic performance as well. Keywords: interlanguage pragmatics, speech acts, discourse completion task, role-play data, apology strategies Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-05-04 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics,PE English https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/b998b0accbd133904b6618574ce07663.pdf c6579a43a343dc07dca353a03f8b490a PDF Text Text Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics The Role of Cognitive Mechanisms and Semantic Motivation in Business English Idioms Acquisition: An experimental study Ivan Milošević Submitted: 15.05.2014. Accepted: 05.11.2014. Abstract This paper aims to explore the possible application of cognitive semantics in the process of teaching and learningBusiness English idioms. The theoretical assumptions of this study are based on the cognitivist view that idioms are, to a certain extent, semantically motivated by cognitive mechanisms, with the conceptual metaphor being the most dominant one. This study is an attempt to test the hypothesis that metaphoric conceptualisation can contribute to a more successful acquisition of idioms, especially in comparison to pure memorisation of the same linguistic expressions. This small-scale experiment was carried out with 20 Business and Economics students divided into the experimental group and the control group. The students in the experimental group were introduced to the semantic motivation of idiom meaning, whereas the control-group students were taught the same idioms in the traditional way. After being presented with the carefully selected idioms in two different ways, the students in both groups were required to do four different types of exercises with a view to testing the semantic motivation hypothesis. As a result, the research findings and the results obtained in this experimental study suggest that the awareness of cognitive mechanism and semantic motivation behind the meaning of idioms can significantly assist students in the process of a somewhat systematic and consistent acquisition of Business English idioms. Keywords: Idiomatic expressions, Business English, cognitive mechanisms, conceptual metaphor, semantic motivation, language acquisition Introduction: Traditional vs. Cognitivist view of idioms Contrary to the traditional view of learning idioms as ‘dead’ metaphors, thecognitivist view suggests that the meanings of idioms (or the majority of them) are semantically motivated and not arbitrary (Gibbs 1994; Kövecses & Szabo 1996; Lakoff 1987). The semantic motivation stems from the cognitive mechanisms such as the conceptual metaphor, the conceptual metonymy, and conventional knowledge (Lakoff 1987), which link different domains to the meanings of idioms. ‘The 129 �The Role of Cognitive Mechanisms and Semantic Motivation in Business English Idioms Acquisition: An experimental study motivation for the occurrence of particular words in a large number of idioms can be thought of as a cognitive mechanism that links domains of knowledge to idiomatic meanings’, Kövecses & Szabo (1996: 330). In the cognitivist light of idiom interpretations, these linguistic units are perceived as part of our conceptual world, belonging both to the language and mind. As a result, idioms are semantically motivated by conceptual mappings that are formed in the world of concepts and reflected onto the language. Such a perception of idioms highlights the partial compositionality of idioms, which enables a much easier semantic interpretation (Gibbs 1994). This view of idioms was the starting point for our experimental study with the example of Business English idioms. Research objectives and methods Having in mind the conceptual nature and the semantic motivation of idioms, we wanted to investigate the pedagogical aspect of cognitivist view of idioms. We chose to carry out a small-scale experiment to check if the cognitivist theoretical framework could facilitate the teaching and learning of idioms. For that purpose, we decided to focus our research on BE idioms. The basis for the experiment was an indepth cognitivist study of Business English idioms conducted by Milošević (2008). In that comprehensive thesis, Milošević (2008)investigated the semantic motivation of BE idioms within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Semantics,detecting four cognitive mechanisms1 behind the semantics of idioms together with 18 source domains motivating the meanings of the idioms under examination. As regards the methodology for this experiment, we exploited the basic ideas of similar experimental studies undertaken by Boers at al. (2000) and Kövecses & Szabo (1996). The main hypothesis was that the awareness of the semantic motivation of BE idiomsproduces better results than mere memorisation in the teaching/learning of BE idioms. Although no rigorous statistical method was implemented in the results analysis, the research findings supported the hypothesis that learning is more successful whenstudents are aware of the semantic motivation of BE idioms. Research procedure The subjects of the study were 20 second-year students studying Business and Economics at Belgrade Business School. These students were chosen bearing in mind that they were already learning business English at the college and were 1 The four mechanisms identified in the research are: the conceptual metaphor, the conceptual metonymy, conventional knowledge and conceptual blending. 130 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics familiar with the basics of Business terminology. Moreover, theirEnglish was at the upper-intermediatelevel, which was a sufficient level for this experiment. The students were divided into two groups: control group A and experimental group B, each composed of 10 students. In order to make both groups equal with regard to their level of English knowledge, subjects were asked to do a general English test (Quick Placement Test, Oxford University Press and University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate). After analyzing the test scores, we divided the students into two groups: the control group had an overall score of 78.25%, whereas the experimental group’s overall score was 78.75%. The experiment consisted of two parts. The first part involved a lecture on Business English idioms, whereas the second part involved the testing of BE idioms. It is important to point out that the subjects were not familiar with the BE idioms they were taught (and later tested on)before the experimental study was conducted. The experiment started with a 20-minute lecture for both groups. Both groups were introduced to and taught the following twelve BE idioms: a business angel, a sinking ship, a green product, a bidding war, fresh blood, given a red card, white-collar worker, economic chill, a safe bet, locust funds, to get off the ground, andeconomic headwinds. The selected idioms reflect12different source domains, which, owing to various conceptual metaphors2 identified by Milosevic (2008)3 ,establish the conceptual mappings with the target domain of BUSINESS/ECONOMY. In the case of Group A, the procedure was as follows. All twelve BE idioms were written on the white board and the meanings of all twelve idioms were explained. The idioms were also exemplified by one sentence containing the given idiom together with the Serbian translation. After the lecture, the students had 15 minutes to memorise the given idioms. Then, the students were asked to do a four-exercise test, which lasted 40 minutes. In the experimental Group B, the teaching of idioms involved a slightly different procedure compared to the control Group A. Namely, the idioms were also written on the white board and the meaning of each idiomwas explained and exemplified with one major exception. Unlike the students in Group A, while teaching the selected idioms to students in Group B we introduced the fact that these idioms might be semantically motivated by the conceptual metaphors established between the various source domains (WAR, SAILING, etc.) and the target domain of BUSINESS. For example, when explaining the meaning of an idiom a bidding war, 2 Since this was small-scale research, the emphasis was on the conceptual metaphor as the primary cognitive mechanism responsible for the semantic motivation of BE idioms. 3 In his work, Milošević (2008) recorded and conducted a detailed semantic analysis of almost 400 BE idioms in a corpus-based study within the framework of Cognitive Semantics. 131 �The Role of Cognitive Mechanisms and Semantic Motivation in Business English Idioms Acquisition: An experimental study the students were presented with the conceptual metaphors DOING BUSINESS IS WAGING WARS and COMPANIES/BUSINESSMEN ARE WARRIORS. Similarly,an idiom a safe betinvolved introducing the following metaphors BUSINESS IS A GAMBLE and INVESTORS ARE GAMBLERS. The same process was reiterated with all 12 BE idioms. The aim of this teaching/learning procedure was to raise the experimental-group students’ awareness of thesemantic motivation of BE idioms by drawing attention to the fact that various conceptual metaphors motivate the semantics of the BE idioms under examination, forming conceptual mappings between the established source domains and the domain of BUSINESS. These students also had fifteen minutes to learn the presented BE idioms, but, unlike the Group A students, the Group B students were expected to develop links between the given idioms and the presented conceptual metaphors. Then, the students in Group B were given 40 minutes to complete a four-exercise test. As mentioned earlier, the test that the students in both groups were asked to do had four different exercises. The total number of idioms in all four exercises was 484.The first exercise was a gap-fill exercise with 12 sentences that were missing the 12 BE idioms with which the students had been presented during the lecturing process. The second exercise consisted of10 sentences and10new BE idioms with a gap-fill task as well. The sameness of the first two exercises was not coincidental. The second exercise was devised with a view to checking the students’ ability to apply the knowledge of the semantic motivation of BE idioms to previously unknown idioms. The third exercise with a more creativetask was made up of six sentences containing idioms with one word missing, which needed to be completed with six out of 12 given words. The missing words were the words that were a clear indication of the source domains they originated from (e.g. slide – PHYSICAL MOVEMENT, blue – COLOUR, etc.). Finally, the fourth exerciseinvolved twentyBE idioms divided into two columns of 10idioms and wasthusthe most demanding one.The10idioms in both columns belonged to the same source domains. The students were instructed to match the idioms based on the potential similarity between the given idioms. The first aim of this exercise was to see if the students in the control group could perceive any similarity between the idioms, and the second was to check to what extent the experimental group students would recall the semantic motivation of idioms an be able to applythat knowledge in the matching exercise accordingly. Here are the two hypotheses that we wanted to test: 4 The 48 tested idioms encompassed all 18 source domains that motivated the semantics of BE idioms detected by Milošević (2008). 132 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics a) If semantic motivation is more useful than the mere memorisation in the process of idiom teaching/learning, group B will have more correct responses in exercise 1. b) If semantic motivation plays a positive role in idiom acquisition, group B will score higher in exercises 2, 3 and 4, which involve more creative tasks in three different types of exercises. We will now investigate the results in relation to the two hypotheses. The data analysis is presented in the next section. Data analysis and results Let us now look at the results of the experimental study. Table 1 presents the maximum number of points for each of the four exercises, the number of points scored by Groups A and B respectively. Table 1.Number of points for Maximum number of points Group A Group B Exercise 1 120 (100%) 102 (85%) 117 (97,5%) Exercise 2 100 (100%) 58 (58%) 70 (70%) Exercise 3 60 (100%) 31 (51, 66%) 35 (58, 33%) Exercise 4 100 (100%) 42 (42%) 63 (63%) As the findings in table 1 show, experimental Group B students performed better in all four exercises. Taking into account the results, let us examine the two hypotheses. In Exercise 1, both groups recorded high scores. Group A scored 102 correct responses, which is 85 per cent of the possible 120 responses. Group B scored 117, which is 97.5 per cent. The high scores of both groups in Exercise 1 −97.5 per cent for Group B and 85 per cent for Group A − can be attributed to the fact that the 133 �The Role of Cognitive Mechanisms and Semantic Motivation in Business English Idioms Acquisition: An experimental study exercise contained the same idioms that students were taught during the lecture 15 minutes prior to the test.Even so, Group B outperformed Group A by 12 per cent. In Exercise 2, the scores were lower, namely70 and 58 per cent for Groups B and A respectively, because the idioms were all new to the participants, so they had to perform a more creative task. Nevertheless, Group B achieved a 12 per cent higher score. The difference in the third exercise was somewhat smaller, with Group B scoring58.33 per cent and Group A 51.66 per cent, for two reasons: This was a more complex type of exercise that required the application of semantic compositionality of idioms and the number of overall points was significantly lower (60 points) than the number of points in exercise 1 (120 points) and exercise 2 (100 points). Finally, the largest difference was recorded in the fourth exercise, with Group B scoring21 per cent higher thanGroup A.This discrepancy probably arises from the fact that the students in Group B were aware of the existence of various source domains that motivated the meanings of theBE idioms. The higher scores achieved by Group B in exercises 2, 3 and 4 appear to support the second hypothesis. To sum up, Group B produced better results in all four exercises,with the difference ranging from 6.67 to 21 percent. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that both groups recorded considerably lower scores in Exercises 2, 3 and 4 in comparison to Exercise 1. There may be at least two reasons for this. The first, more obvious reason may be the fact that in Exercise 1, the students were tested all the idioms they had been taught in the lecture 15 minutes before the test. The second, less evident reason might be the fact that Exercises 2, 3 and 4 contained new idioms, and thestudents had to predict their meanings. Since we already know that prediction is to be distinguished from motivation (Lakoff 1987), the lower scores are not surprising. Nevertheless, the higher scores recorded by Group B indicate that the awareness of semantic motivation and cognitive mechanisms can assist students in the idiom acquisition process. Based on the results analysis, it is tempting to assertthat higher scores achieved by Group B in all four exercises area result of the Group B students’ knowledge of conceptual metaphors and the existence of various source domains whose elements are mapped onto the domain of BUSINESS.This knowledge helped them match the idiomatic expressions with a greater facility in comparison to Group A.According to the analysed data, it is evident that there is a clear tendency towards more effective acquisition of BE idioms if the awareness of their semantic motivation is present. Clearly, the findings clearly show that the knowledge of the cognitive mechanisms that motivate the semantics of idioms contributes to a more successful learning of idioms compared to the traditional learning through the ‘blind’ memorisation process. 134 �Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Conclusion Despite the fact that this wasasmall-scale study without any in-depth statistical analysis, its results are still sufficient to support the conclusion that awareness of the conceptual structure of BE idioms and of the existence of cognitive mechanisms behind their meanings –especially the conceptual metaphor – significantly facilitates the acquisition of BE idioms. Taking into account the research findings and subsequent interviews with the subjects of the experiment, we may say that the knowledge of the semantic motivation of idioms helps students learn these linguistic units more successfully. This claim can be corroborated by the score in all four exercises, which evidently demonstrates that the experimental group students achieved consistently higher results than the control group students. On the other hand, it is important to underline the fact that thesemantic motivation of BE does not mean that the meanings of the observed idioms are fully predictable (Kövecses & Szabo 1996: 330). However, the semantic motivation of BE idioms opens up endless possibilities fora morecomprehensive description of the idiomatic meanings, which carries considerable pedagogical implications. All in all, we hope that this experiment might carve out a path to a more systematic acquisition of idioms by making students aware of the cognitive mechanisms that motivate the semantics of these linguistic expressions. References Bencses, R. (2002). The Cognitive Semantics of Idioms: A Cognitive Linguistic View. The Even YearBook 5. pp 17-30. Boers, F., Eyckmans J.& Stengers H. (2007). Presenting Figurative Idioms with a Touch of Etymology: More than Mere Mnemonics. SAGE Publications. Croft, W. & Cruse, D.A.(2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner. (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York. Basic Books. Gibbs, R.W. (1994). The Poetics of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 135 �The Role of Cognitive Mechanisms and Semantic Motivation in Business English Idioms Acquisition: An experimental study Kövecses, Z (2000). A Cognitive Linguistic View of Learning Idioms in FLT Context. Universitat GesamthochschuleEssen. Kövecses, Z & Szabo, P. (1996). Idioms. A View from Cognitive Semantics. Applied Linguistics 17-3:326-355. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Makkai, A. (1972). Idiom structure in English. The Hague: Mouton. Milošević, I. (2008). Idiomatski izrazi u poslovnom engleskom jeziku. Magistarski rad. Beograd. Filološki fakultet. Nunberg, G., Sag, I., Wasow, T. (1994). Idioms. Language, Vol.70, No.3, 491-538. Palmer, F.R. (1981). Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 136 � 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. 2813 Title A name given to the resource The Role of Cognitive Mechanisms and Semantic Motivation in Business English Idioms Acquisition: An experimental study Author Author Milošević, Ivan Abstract A summary of the resource. This paper aims to explore the possible application of cognitive semantics in the process of teaching and learningBusiness English idioms. The theoretical assumptions of this study are based on the cognitivist view that idioms are, to a certain extent, semantically motivated by cognitive mechanisms, with the conceptual metaphor being the most dominant one. This study is an attempt to test the hypothesis that metaphoric conceptualisation can contribute to a more successful acquisition of idioms, especially in comparison to pure memorisation of the same linguistic expressions. This small-scale experiment was carried out with 20 Business and Economics students divided into the experimental group and the control group. The students in the experimental group were introduced to the semantic motivation of idiom meaning, whereas the control-group students were taught the same idioms in the traditional way. After being presented with the carefully selected idioms in two different ways, the students in both groups were required to do four different types of exercises with a view to testing the semantic motivation hypothesis. As a result, the research findings and the results obtained in this experimental study suggest that the awareness of cognitive mechanism and semantic motivation behind the meaning of idioms can significantly assist students in the process of a somewhat systematic and consistent acquisition of Business English idioms. Keywords: Idiomatic expressions, Business English, cognitive mechanisms, conceptual metaphor, semantic motivation, language acquisition Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-05-05 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics,PE English,PR English literature https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/41c84b18d4a567db540599e6a9a71b5c.pdf 81a5f2b6e9c12e58a805d3b8a036fa5d PDF Text Text MAKING STUDENTS MORE ACTIVE IN LEARNING THE PASSIVE Iva Čupić & Martina Klanjčić Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations and Diplomacy, Croatia Article History: Submitted: 15.06.2015 Accepted: 27.06.2015 Abstract Why are students of English so reluctant to use the passive voice? The answer to this question may lie in the fact that students find it artificial, even pretentious, partly because it really does tend to be overtly wordy and cumbersome. Moreover, a point often overlooked is that the Croatian language “favours” the active structure as more natural both in informal and formal discourse, which is why students often find it difficult to adopt the passive voice as characteristic of the English language. Also, both for learners of English and native speakers of the language, the passive structure may be felt as contrary to the more common subjectverb-object (or S-O-V) order of syntactic constituents in the transitive sentence, employed profusely in the majority of Indo-European languages. Nonetheless, not only is it expected of the students to appreciate the passive, but also to use it competently. A great deal of academic English courses focus on formal communication; which makes the passive of key importance to understanding the type of language prevalent in EAP. This type of discourse is essential to studying English at university level, in the authors’ case ESP in the field of international relations and diplomacy, where study materials abound with passive structures. The aim of the paper is to show that the passive is fairly simple and easy both to understand and apply in independent production since it follows a set of formulaic instructions with little or no exceptions to the rule. It will look into examples of texts such as newspaper articles, legislation, professional literature, etc., and provide various activities used as a springboard for the acquisition of passive structures. Key words: passive voice, formal discourse, activities in EAP, ESP 1 �1. Introduction Students’ opinions on the passive predominantly point to the fact that they either avoid to use it (unconsciously) or, if they do use it, they do so tentatively because of perceived complexity and awkwardness, whereby the passive is rendered almost inappropriate. It is also interesting to note that, before the term “passive voice” is introduced, the students use the structure relatively confidently and with few mistakes. So, on the unconscious level, students feel competent to use it because they grow accustomed to it over the course of time, and it simply “sounds right”, as they often put it. Once the passive structure is given a “name”, however, they become self-conscious and alarmed, referring to it as something extremely difficult and horrible. Among other things, when asked to describe how they perceive the passive voice, they call it “the language of Yoda”, “the language of poetry”, “unnatural”, “sophisticated and academic”, etc. Even though not all of these attributes can be classified as negative or derogatory, it is rather obvious that the students perceive the passive as difficult, demanding and complex, perhaps even too complex to be used consciously. In order to understand the underlying causes of this obvious disinclination, the passive voice needs to be looked at as both the grammatical structure and what is being communicated. 2. What makes the passive voice so difficult to learn? On the communicative or pragmatic level, the perceived pretentiousness of the passive has made it unfashionable – it sounds more learned, more complex, “sophisticated and academic”. More profoundly, it is often perceived as artificial (“used only in poetry”, according to the students) or even cumbersome and convoluted due to its so-called “reverse order”. The “conventional” subject-verb-object (or S-O-V) sentence structure, where the object is identified as the patient, accounts for a large majority of world languages.[7][10] This compels the conclusion that the S-V-O word order, in which the initial place in the sentence is conventionally occupied by the agent, is more commonly used, more natural, direct, clear and concise, so its communicative function is more emphasized, more openly directed toward the listener or the reader, or the receiver of communication. All this leads to the fact that students avoid using passive structures, especially in spoken communication, where the active voice is constantly gaining ground. On the surface level, the passive is simply wordier, because in order to form it, we have to employ the auxiliary verb to be, literally adding to its “wordiness/verboseness”. Grammatically, it requires skill and adept knowledge of several distinct grammatical 2 �categories: verb tenses, verb forms (the base form, the –s, the –ing, the past and the past participle), grammatical function of sentence constituents (the verb and its arguments; the subject, the object), agreement, verb transitivity and finally the voice, i.e. the recognition of whether the subject acts or is acted upon. [2][5] Confusions mostly abound among students about certain features of the passive voice. For instance, the passive voice may, as we all know, be used in various tenses. Students, however, perceive the passive verb structure as tense switching, not being able to differentiate between verb tense (grammatical category used to express the present, the past and the future) and verb voice (grammatical category used to express the relationship between the verb and its arguments – the subject and the object). Another compelling argument “against” the passive is derived from our students’ mother tongue, Croatian. Since all the observations made throughout this paper are based on experiences from the Croatian ESP classroom, it may be deserving of consideration to mention briefly the status of the passive voice in the students’ native language. One of the reasons for the predominance of the active voice in Croatian is the normative status of the passive; it has been described as an undesirable imposition or import from Germanic languages, which only adds to its rigidity and austerity. By the same token, due to the negative normativization of the passive, found in many prominent language reference books, the passive is often overlooked and neglected in a number of functional styles or subsystems of the Croatian language, except perhaps in publicist/newspaper style, scientific and the poetic functional style. Passivity in the Croatian language is more often expressed or signalled by other grammatical categories (various paraphrases) than by means of syntactic transformation, i.e. passivization. According to generative grammar, the passive sentence is derived from the active sentence via rules of transformation. The active sentence is considered to be the core, underlying structure (the deep structure – pure representation of relations within a sentence), while the passive sentence is the surface form derived from the common deep structure (surface structure – one of the final syntactic forms of a sentence, as it exists after the deep structure has been modified syntactically). This is why it is often considered that the two types of utterances are not of equal value. [1] [3] On the other hand, the Croatian language can “afford” not to use the passive voice as often as some other languages, notably Germanic languages such as English. In comparison to the English language, the Croatian language abounds in various paraphrastic models (considering it is a flective language, which means that grammatical relations are conveyed by means of morphemes, it is rather superior in the flexibility of word order), whereas English, 3 �being an analytic language (in which various grammatical relations are expressed by means of syntax), lacks similar possibilities or techniques to vary the sentence perspective. The S-V-O pattern needs to be observed more consistently, which means that the passive voice serves not merely as voice but also as a useful construction that allows for the highlighting of patients (objects) in cases when agents (subjects) are inert or redundant. [3] Hundreds of African opponents of apartheid refuse to receive food ... demanding a fair trial or to be released (Cro. = that they release them) [3] Majority of the prisoners have never been brought to trial (Cro. = they have never brought the majority of the prisoners to trial) [3] 3. Why is the passive voice necessary for students of EAP? After considering all the “negative” aspects of the passive voice and almost arriving at the conclusion that it has become obsolete, why is it still necessary for students to acquire it and use it competently? First of all, even though the use of the passive seems to be resisted from many sides, it is beyond question that it has an innate capability to turn an utterance into a more impersonal, detached and thus more formal statement by removing the agent (subject) of the action from the sentence, which is a requirement in technical, scientific and academic writing. While the active is considered more direct, succinct and authoritative, it may sometimes be problematic if one’s priority is to sound as polite as possible and avoid condescension (e.g. You must address the ambassadors as Mr./Madam Ambassador.). It is also a prerequisite in EAP, notably diplomatic etiquette; code of conduct, protocolary situations and in this particular case of ESP in international relations and diplomacy. Furthermore, the syntactic features of the passive are rather simple and straightforward in that the rules are elementary and unambiguous: it is just a different way of showing who is doing the action in a sentence and who is receiving it. The object (patient) of the active sentence becomes the subject (agent) of the passive one, and then the verb assumes the passive shape (auxiliary to be and past participle of the main verb), followed by an optional remark on the object (or the subject of the passive sentence), and indicated prepositionally (by). Why is learning the passive essential for students of international relations and diplomacy? For competent users of foreign languages – future diplomats – the passive is an everyday tool, both in comprehension and production, especially in formal discourse. Formal discourse is the primary medium of language instruction in this specific field of ESP/EAP, 4 �which draws heavily upon international currents affairs as a springboard for the acquisition of structures of professional language usage. The study programme of international relations and diplomacy centres upon materials which abound with such structures (newspaper articles, legislation, and professional literature). Additionally, as part of their academic training, students learn how to write essays and papers, and are not infrequently instructed to use the passive instead of personal pronouns (I or we) to avoid sounding self-absorbed or egotistic, in which case the passive helps exhibit a more professional and impartial note, allowing the writer to omit personal involvement in an inconspicuous manner. This also allows the language instructor to address the sentence from two different levels, the active and the passive, so as to broaden the students’ understanding of syntax. Ultimately, their future job/profession will also mostly involve formal communication (gathering information, giving speeches, briefing the media, conducting meetings, handling formal correspondence), which employs a great deal of passive structures. And finally, it cannot be left out of account that the language of politics, law and the media often exploits passive structures to avoid responsibility, to pacify the reader or the overall situation or to eliminate unwanted information. 4. Facilitating the students’ acquisition of passive structures The aim of this paper is to show that teaching and learning the passive does not have to be dreadful, terrifying or exhausting. In order to involve students and make them more interested and positive about learning the passive, many different activities can be devised which will help overcome the prejudice about the passive and engage them more actively. The three activities presented in this paper are structured in such a way that the students will find them both interesting and appeasing. By highlighting the interdisciplinary approach to this grammatical issue, the activities manage to “conceal” that the primary goal is the acquisition of the passive. Instead, the students are presented with activities which draw on history, geography and international current affairs, making them concentrate on the content and not the structures they need to acquire. a) Activity 1 – The Unknown about the Known In the first exercise, entitled The Unknown about the Known, students are presented with three historical figures and little known facts about their lives (the materials are always related to topics covered in other courses – e.g. The History of Western Civilization and World 5 �War II). Students are divided into groups and they need to decide which fact refers to which person. Once they have matched the facts with the people, they are required to write their answers using passive sentences (the passive structure has been explained beforehand). The answers are then checked with the language instructor. The unusual and unknown facts contribute to the activity being engaging; the activity can also be transformed into a competition, which provides an element of fun. Activity 1:  in 1899 (hold) POW in South Africa as a newspaper correspondent [9] 1) WINSTON CHURCHILL 2) BENITO MUSSOLINI 3) JOSEPH STALIN  at the age of 12 (strike) by a horse-drawn carriage and his arm (damage) permanently  arm (reconstruct) by extensive surgery, leaving it shorter and stiffened at the elbow [6]  at age 10 (expel) from a religious boarding school for stabbing a classmate in the hand [11] Answers: In 1899 Winston Churchill was held POW in South Africa as a newspaper correspondent. At the age of 12, Joseph Stalin was stricken by a horse-drawn carriage and his arm was damaged permanently. The arm was reconstructed by extensive surgery, leaving it shorter and stiffened at the elbow. At the age of 10 Benito Mussolini was expelled from a religious boarding school for stabbing a classmate in the hand. 6 �b) Activity 2 – The IO (International organization) quiz In the second activity, The IO Quiz, students are divided into groups and are given materials with information on different international organizations (the activity can be used for countries as well). The students’ task is to write questions about the organizations in order to check the knowledge of the other group(s). All the questions and answers given need to be in the passive. The activity serves two purposes – it checks the knowledge of various international organizations and of passive structures. The students are awarded points for correct questions, as well as answers. The activity in the form of a quiz makes it more interesting and motivates the students to score as many points as possible. This particular activity is all the more convenient because, as part of their course, the first year students give presentations on international organizations and countries of their choice, which only makes them more actively engaged and more competitive. Activity 2: The United Nations: 1 founded in 1945; 2 mission and work of the United Nations guided by the purposes and principles in its founding Charter; 3 the UN divided into five branches; 4 programmes and funds financed through voluntary contributions; 5 states admitted in the UN by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council; 6 currently made up of 193 Member States. [8] Answers: When was the UN founded? – It was founded... How are UN programmes and funds financed? – They are financed... How are states admitted in the UN? – They are admitted... c) Activity 3 – What’s in the News? The final activity makes use of the fact that the passive is often employed in news stories and news articles, which are used as authentic course materials. Students are given the title of the article that will be dealt with in the lecture, e.g. Nepal government criticized for blocking earthquake aid to remote area.[4] 7 �Firstly, students put the headline into its full form (Nepal government is criticized for ...).Before being given the full article the students try to guess what it is about, and are required to write their guesses using passive forms. After going through the answers, the students are given the article to check who was the closest to the topic of the article. Finally, the students read the article carefully trying to find all the passive forms. If there is sufficient time at the end of this activity, the students can turn the passive sentences into their active counterparts as an additional exercise. Nepal government criticized for blocking earthquake aid to remote areas ‘They are not suffering so they do not care. They are just out to get the foreign money for themselves’, said Rashmita Shastra, a health worker in a village in Sindhulpalchowk district, 50 miles from Kathmandu, which had to receive a shipment of aid that was eventually blocked by authorities because it was ‘unofficial’. The village, where seven people died and which has been almost entirely destroyed, has not yet been visited by any government official or politician, though one aid agency managed to distribute some tarpaulins and rice late last week. Even villagers in accessible locations beside roads only 30 miles from Kathmandu told the Observer they had yet to be contacted. Hundreds of helicopter flights have also been paid for by private individuals, religious foundations or businesses. It is unclear whether these will be allowed to continue. Officials said private initiatives would be permitted if they were coordinated with local administrators. [4] 5. Conclusion Even though there is an ongoing tendency toward using the active voice, the passive voice is an essential grammatical category, especially in the specific case of ESP in international relations and diplomacy. Despite the perceived complexity and awkwardness of the passive, due to which the students tend to avoid it, at least on the conscious level, the syntactic features and formation rules of the passive are rather straightforward and can be acquired quite easily. In order to deal with the students’ prejudice that the passive needs to be avoided, a number of activities can be devised that might appeal to students’ genuine interest in social sciences (notably political science, history, geography, etc.) and help “conceal” the inner aim of such activities, the acquisition of the passive. References: 8 �Barić, E. et al. (1999). Hrvatski jezični savjetnik, Zagreb: Institut za hrvatski jezik ijezikoslovlje:Pergamena:Školske novine Carter, R.; McCarthy, M.; Mark, G. and O'Keeffe, A. (2011). English Grammar Today,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Ham, Sanda (1990). Pasiv i norma.Jezik, Časopis za kulturu hrvatskoga književnog jezika,3, 65-96 Nepal government criticised for blocking earthquake aid to remote areas (May 2, 2015). The Guardian. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/02/nepal- government-criticised-blocking-earthquake-aid-remote-areas Silić, J.; Pranjković, I. (2007). Gramatika hrvatskog jezika, Zagreb: Školska knjiga Stalin Facts: 10 little known facts (November 18, 2010). Retrieved February 1, 2015, from:http://www.military-history.org/articles/stalin-facts-10-little-known-facts.htm Subject-verb-object (n.d.). Retrieved February 1, 2015, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93verb%E2%80%93object United Nations. (n.d.) Retrieved January 17, 2015, from: http://www.un.org/en/index.html Winston Churchill Facts: 10 little-known facts (Nov 16, 2010). Retrieved February 1, 2015, from: http://www.military-history.org/articles/winston-churchill-facts-10-little-known- facts.htm Word order (n.d.) Retrieved February 1, 2015, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order 9 Things You May Not Know About Mussolini (October 25, 2012). Retrieved February 1, 2015, from: http://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-mussolini 9 �Iva Čupić, born June 20, 1984 in Zagreb, studied at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, obtaining a master’s degree in English and Croatian languages and literatures. She taught English at the Accredited Private Classical High School, Zagreb, and is currently teaching English for Specific Purposes at the Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations and Diplomacy, Zagreb. She has work experience in text editing and proof-reading (Mate Ltd., publishing, Međunarodne studije, scientific magazine of the Center for International Studies, Zagreb). Fields of interest: teaching English as a foreign language, English for Academic and Specific Purposes, contrastive analysis of the English and Croatian languages, translation. Martina Klanjčić, born September 29, 1977 in Zagreb, studied at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, where she earned a master’s degree in English language and literature. Her work experience includes teaching English as a foreign language at the first accredited school for foreign languages in Zagreb, which included English courses in general and business English. She is currently teaching English to first-year students of International Relations and Diplomacy at the Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations and Diplomacy in Zagreb. Fields of interest: teaching English as a second language, teaching English for specific purposes, translation. 10 � 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. 2891 Title A name given to the resource MAKING STUDENTS MORE ACTIVE IN LEARNING THE PASSIVE Author Author Čupić, Iva Klanjčić, Martina Abstract A summary of the resource. Why are students of English so reluctant to use the passive voice? The answer to this question may lie in the fact that students find it artificial, even pretentious, partly because it really does tend to be overtly wordy and cumbersome. Moreover, a point often overlooked is that the Croatian language “favours” the active structure as more natural both in informal and formal discourse, which is why students often find it difficult to adopt the passive voice as characteristic of the English language. Also, both for learners of English and native speakers of the language, the passive structure may be felt as contrary to the more common subject-verb-object (or S-O-V) order of syntactic constituents in the transitive sentence, employed profusely in the majority of Indo-European languages. Nonetheless, not only is it expected of the students to appreciate the passive, but also to use it competently. A great deal of academic English courses focus on formal communication; which makes the passive of key importance to understanding the type of language prevalent in EAP. This type of discourse is essential to studying English at university level, in the authors’ case ESP in the field of international relations and diplomacy, where study materials abound with passive structures. The aim of the paper is to show that the passive is fairly simple and easy both to understand and apply in independent production since it follows a set of formulaic instructions with little or no exceptions to the rule. It will look into examples of texts such as newspaper articles, legislation, professional literature, etc., and provide various activities used as a springboard for the acquisition of passive structures. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-07 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/95e3ac039237b29f0e77f16115d9c9f5.pdf 93945772b26a4ea140cb9e471d604411 PDF Text Text JAPANESE CASE MARKER DE IN COPULAR SENTENCES: ESSIVE OR LOCATIVE? Simone dalla Chiesa University of Milano, Italy Article History: Submitted: 10.06.2015 Accepted: 22.06.2015 Abstract In this paper I will discuss two constructions of the Japanese verb aru ‘be’. In one construction, aru occurs with a copular complement marked by the particle de, obtaining a sentence-ending pattern known as N-dearu. In the other construction, aru expresses the happening of a dynamic event and may occur with a de-marked locative adjunct encoding the physical place of the event. By analyzing these two constructions I will single out a ‘predicative’ function of the case marker de, and show that when functioning as a support item in nominal predications and in other copular sentences, aru retains its original nature as a locational verb and consequently assigns a locative-like grammatical case (marked with de) to the second argument of its clause. In this instance of strong localism, a grammatical split of the locative marker de happens so that de ends up marking a number of different surface cases. In the conclusion I will propose that the particle de in predicative function should be acknowledged to be an ‘Essive’ case marker. Key words: Japanese, Case marking, Locative, Essive, copula. Abbreviations ACC Accusative AND adnominal COMP complementizer CONT contrast COP copula GEN Genitive NEG negative NOM Nominative NOMIN nominalizer �POL polite PROG progressive TOP topic VOL volitive 1. Introduction In this paper I will analyze the Japanese sentence pattern: (1) Bun-wa oto-no renzoku-de sentence-TOP sound-GEN sequence-de aru. be ‘A sentence is a sequence of sounds.’ in which the verb aru behaves as a copular verb ‘be’ and the particle de marks the predicative argument. The sentence-ending pattern so obtained is commonly known as N-dearu. But the particle de is also used to encode the Locative: (2) Siken-wa ikkai-no kyoositu-de aru. exam-TOP 1st_floor-GEN classroom-de be ‘The exam is in a 1st floor classroom.’ so that, by comparing and distinguishing these two functions of de, I will argue here that the former, ‘predicative’de, should be considered to be an Essive surface casemarker. To do so, I will introduce the verb aru and the constructions in which aru and the particle de co-occur, then I will introduce and briefly discuss the several functions of de, and lastly I will draw my conclusions. The Japanese language The Japanese language has a SV/AOV syntax; with verbs inflecting for politeness, negative, tense, aspect and mood by means of suffixed morphemes (mostly left unglossed in the present paper). Grammatical functions are expressed by postpositional case markers (I will also leave de unglossed). The nominative marker ga is often replaced by the topic marker wa, with the shift of the subject to sentence-first position. Sentences with no subject are interpreted as impersonal or as having a 1st person subject. 2. The verb aru and the ‘copula’ da �Aru is a lexical verb with no voice, irregular negative inflection and irregular potential form – just as many ‘be’ verbs across the world. It can head three types of sentences. First, as the support verb in locational sentences (locative constructions with inanimate subjects, in both a locative proper and an existential reading;whole-part constructions and possessive sentences. Muromatsu, 1997; Iida, 2007; Creissels, 2014b), aru assigns dative case to its locational complement. These dative constructions will not be discussed here. Second, aru may predicate the occurrence of a dynamic eventuality, admitting a delocative phrase to express the physical location of the event. As such, it can be replaced by a verb like okoru ‘happen’: (3) Kazi-wa koko-de {atta/okotta}. fire-TOP this_place-de {was/happened} ‘The firewas here.’ (4) Koko-de kazi-ga {atta/okotta}. this_place-de fire-TOP {was/happened} ‘There was a fire here.’ A topicalized subject must occur in sentence-first position. In (3), then, the word order is rigid, the de-phrase is rhematic and cannot be omitted. Otherwise, short-, medium- and long-distance scrambling is relatively free in Japanese. One simple instance of it is shown in (4). Third, aru supports nominal and nominal-adjectival predications, like (1) and (5)-(6), and all other non-locational copular sentences (identificational, equational, specificational sentences, as classified in Mikkelsen, 2011 after Higgins, 1979), like the identificational (7): (5) Wagahai-wa neko-de aru. I-TOP cat-de be ‘I am a cat.’ (6) Yoru-ga sizuka-de aru. night-NOM quiet-de be ‘The nights are quiet.’ (7) Zibun-wa Onoda-de ari-masu. self-TOP Onoda-de be-POL ‘Name’s Onoda, sir.’ �Here again aru behaves as a two-place verb assigning a locative-like de case to its second argument. Unlike the eventive construction above, in these copular sentences aru cannot be replaced by another verb (but see (22)-(23) below) and the NP-de element must always be the phrase in the closest proximity to the verb: (8) *Neko-de wagahai-ga aru. cat-de I-NOM be On this basis, the dominant approach to Japanese copularization (Bloch, 1946; Makino 1968; Wenk, 1973; Mills 1977; Narahara, 2002; also Pustet, 2005; Stassen, 1997) considers de and aru to form the “uncontracted” variant-dearu of the copula da, bound to the preceding nominal: (9) Wagahai-wa neko-da. I-TOP cat-COP ‘I'm a cat.’ Da is part of a complex paradigm of forms which I will gloss COPthroughout this paper (despite my discontent with the traditional approach). Dearu, the supposedly “uncontracted” form of da, occurs for markedness only, namely in writing, occasionally in formal speech, in the negative as in (10), and for the insertion of focus markers as in (11): (10) Inu-de nai wagahai-wa… dog-de be.NEG I-TOP ‘I, who am not a dog,…’ (11) Yoru-ga sizuka-de-mo aru. night-NOM quiet-de-‘even’ be ‘The nights are even quiet.’ Under the dominant approach, the predicative function of de is dismissed as uninteresting and irrelevant (cf. Teramura, 1982: 171), and not considered in valence dictionaries (such as the Nihongo kihondoosiyoohooziten, 1989). However, an alternate, “minority” approach also exists (based on Tokieda, 1950; adopted by and summarized in Nishiyama, 1999; see also Daniels, 1973: 267; Sawada, 2008), which analyzes -dearu as being composed by •a verbal element aru defined as the ‘semantically vacuous’ or Dummy copula; plus •the morpheme de, defined as the ‘semantically contentful’ or Predicative copula(Nishiyama, 1999: 187-188). Still, the grammatical nature or the meaning of the morpheme de is not discussed. Here I am going to take this analysis several steps further and deal directly with de. �3. The marker de On the basis of the broad taxonomic criteria outlined by Narrog (2009) and of the current classification of de (based on Iori, 2000; Iwasaki, 1995; Martin 1975; Makino and Tsutsui, 1986; Morioka and Takubo, 1987; Narita, 1993; Nishiyama, 1998; Nitta, 1982; Sugai, 1997; Teramura, 1982), I distinguish three typical usages of this particle. In one function, de is the marker of the Instrumental case. This and other instrument-related functions will be not discussed here. Another function of de is that of marking the Locative, as mentioned above. Examples of Locative-de are (3)-(4) above,(24) and (27) below, and the following: (12) Pāti-wa shokudoo-de yaru. party-TOP cafeteria-de do ‘We’ll have the party in the cafeteria.’ In the spatial domain, de encodes the physical place where the subject is located during the whole event (Sugai, 1997). De implies continuity in the temporal domain as well, strongly suggesting that some relevant process took place until the moment specified by the temporal adjunct. (Iwasaki, 1995): (13) Gakkai-wa asita-de owaru. conference-top tomorrow-de finish ‘The conference will end tomorrow.’ More abstractly, de can also express manner: (14) Moo_supiido-de hasiru. crazy_speed-de run ‘Running at a breakneck speed’. so that, in their quest for the single underlying meaning of each particle, driven by a principle of iconicity, Japanese scholars have concluded that de encodes the general background of the event in all of its uses (see for instance Sugai, 1997). This connects with the third main function of de, that of encoding non-referential roles and functions: (15) Kodomo-wa hadasi-de {hasiru/aru}. child-TOP bare_feet-de {run/are} ‘The children {run/are}barefooted.’ �In (15), with the action verb hasiru ‘run’, the de-phrase encodes a subject-oriented depictive. However, as shown, with copular verb aru that same de-phrase realizes the predicative argument. This also happens with object-oriented depictives: (16) Ken-ga sakana-o Ken-NOM fish-ACC nama-de taberu. uncooked_condition-de eat ‘Ken eats his fish raw.’ (17) Ken-no sakana-wa nama-de Ken-GEN fish-TOP aru. uncooked_condition-de be ‘Ken’s fish is raw.’ In (16), the marker de cannot be replaced with any other particle or expression with similar functions (the polite gerundive -desite of the ‘dummy copula’, functive -tosite). The same obviously holds for (17), where de marks the predicative argument. Marker de may also express the functive, a type of depictive defined as «the expression of the [temporary] role or function in which a participant appears» (Creissels, 2014: 607): (18) Kono ningyoo-o gakkoo-no this school-GEN homework-de doll-ACC syukudai-de tukutta. made ‘I made this doll as an assignment from school.’ (19) Kono ningyoo-wa gakkoo-no this school-GEN homework-de doll-TOP syukudai-de atta. was ‘This doll was an assignment from school.’ In (18), the de-phrase encodes an object-controlled functive, and again can double as a predicative argument, as in (19). More problematic is the encoding with de of a subjectcontrolled functive: (20) ??Isya-de hatarak-oo-to omou-no-desu doctor-de work-VOL-COMP think-NOMIN-COP.POL ga,… but ‘I think I’m going to work as a physician, but…’ (http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1077822085) The de-phrase in (20) (which can also occur in isya-de aru ‘I am a doctor’) is not accepted by my informants. Particle -tosite should be used instead. However, several tokens of similar de-phrases are retrievable from the Internet, and this might be proof of a new trend in the Japanese language. The following de-phrases are not functives, as they do not encode a temporary ‘role’, yet they express temporary conditions and can be considered to be depictives: �(21) {Hitori/kazoku/minna}-de kita. {one_person/family/everybody}-de came ‘I camealone / with my family / we came all together.’ With a proper subject, all de-phrases as in (21) can realize predicative arguments (as in {hitori/kazoku/minna}-deatta). (22) Titi-wa katyoo-de {owatta/atta}. my_father-TOP section_chief-de {ended/was} ‘My father {ended as /was} a chief of a section.’ (23) Imooto-wa dokusin-de {toosita/atta}. younger_sister-TOP single-de {passed/was} ‘My sister {remained/was} single.’ In (22)-(23) the de-phrases cannot be omitted, must occur immediately before the verb, and are therefore predicative arguments. Indeed, verbs owaru ‘end’ and toosu ‘pass’ can be replaced by aru, the only difference being aspectual. Lastly, de realizes the copular complement, as in the identificational sentence (7) above. 4. The behavior of de As shown in (24), several de-phrases may co-occur, provided they do not encode the same function. For instance, sentences with two locative or subject-oriented depictive dephrases as (25)-(26) are ungrammatical: (24) Daidokoro-de hadaka-de sakana-o te-de nama-de tabeta. kitchen-de naked_body-de fish-ACC hand-de uncooked_condition-de S-DEPICTIVE INSTRUMENTAL O-DEPICTIVE ate LOCATIVE ‘I atemy fish raw, with my hands, naked in the kitchen.’ (25) *Niwa-de taiikukan-de kodomo-ga asondeiru. garden-de gym-de children-NOM play:PROG ‘There are children playing in the garden in the gym.’ (26) *Hadasi-de syatu-nasi-de hasiru. bare_feet-de shirt-without-de run ‘Running barefooted shirtless.’ �This proves that when the particle de is used in the locative, instrumental or depictive function, it actually marks distinct surface cases.The co-occurrence of a subject- and of an object-oriented depictive as in (24)is due to the fact that, as secondary predications, depictives are linked to different arguments in deep structure. Actually, however, two (or more) case markers in the same function can co-occur under certain markedness conditions: (27) Niwa-de-demo taiikukan-de-demo doko-de-demo garden-de-‘even’ gym-de-‘even’ kodomo-ga where-de-‘even’ children-NOM asondeiru. play:PROG ‘There are children playing everywhere, even in the garden and even in the gym.’ (28) Hadasi-de-demo syatu-nasi-de-demo hasiru. bare_feet-de-‘even’ shirt-without-de-‘even’ run ‘Running barefooted, shirtless even.’ Demo in (27)-(28) is one of several ‘pragmatic’ focus particles which can be encliticized to any oblique case marker (except for genitive no). As mentioned above and shown in (11), some of these particles (sae/saemo ‘even’, mo ‘too’, sika ‘anything but’, contrastive wa) can even occur between a de-phrase and aru: (29) Zibun-ga tukutta syoosetu-de-wa ari-masu ga... self-NOM made be-POL novel-de-CONT but ‘It’s just a novel I wrote…’ (30) S.J.Guurudo-wa rippa-na sakka-de-sae S.J.Gould-TOP writer-de-‘even’ was wonderful-COP.ADN atta. ‘S.J.Gould was even a wonderful writer.’ No infixation mechanism exists in Japanese, so that the insertion of light morphemic material between de and the verb obtains from anordinary encliticization of the focus marker. Therefore, dearu is not a single ‘copula’, and de behaves like any other oblique case marker. 5. Discussion and Conclusion From the above treatment of N-de aru sentences I can conclude that aru is a ‘be’ verb which has no meaning, performs linking and feature carrying functions, and corresponds to the notion of a copula as a dummy element. In so doing, however, aru retains its original nature as a locational verb and consequently assigns a locative-like grammatical case (marked with de) to the second argument of its clause. Thus, aru encodes the condition, state or class in which entities are located as if they were located in physical space, and this both in matrix clauses and in secondary predications. Such a behavior of aru can be seen as a strong �example of localism, and may be considered an instance of locational takeover of the nominal encoding (after Stassen 1997: 57). On the other hand, the co-occurrence of locative, ‘predicative’ and instrumental de-phrases shows that de is actually split into a number of different surface case markers, or, in other words, that the Locative de neutralizes several grammatical functions. One is the predicative function, in which de shows the same behavior as all other oblique case markers. The few syntactical constraints a predicative de-phrase is subjected to are caused by its relation to the verb, not by a peculiar nature of the marker de itself. The need then arises for a specific label to be applied to the case marker de in apredicative function. This case marker cannot obviously be labeled ‘Locative’. I am not inclined to propose the label ‘Predicative’, though, because the locative coda of existential sentences is also considered a predicate but its oblique case is referred to as ‘Locative’ rather than ‘Predicative’. My choice falls on the term ‘Essive’. First, de has several features in common with the Essive case in Uralic (and in Caucasian: Creissels, 2010) languages. Whereas the Uralic Essive denotes a temporary state of being and only occurs in secondary predications (features not shared by de), it is probably of spatial origin, is used in both the spatial and temporal domains, and is often interpreted as manner (deGroot, 2010), not unlike the Japanese de. Second, de has instrumental functions, and this is analogous with the predicative function of the Russian Instrumental case, which is also is defined ‘essive’. Third, to my knowledge, the term ‘essive’ is used to refer to the functions of de in at least two sources, Martin (1975: 42) and Narrog (2009: 594), albeit for unstated reasons. References Bloch, B. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese: I. Inflection. Journal of the American Oriental Society,66(2), 97-109. Creissels, D. (2010).The essive form of nouns in Akhvakh and other Caucasian languages. 43rd Annual meeting of the SLE, Vilnius, September 2010. Creissels, D. (2014a). Existential predication in typological perspective. 46th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, 1-60. Creissels, D. (2014b). Functive phrases in typological and diachronic perspective”. Studies in Language, 38(3), 605-647. Daniels, F.J. (1973). Does modern Japanese have a copula? Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 36(2), 261-270. �deGroot, C. (2010). Uralic essive. 14th International Morphology Meeting, Workshop ‘Uralic case’, Budapest 2010. Higgins, R.F. (1979). The Pseudo-cleft Construction in English. New York: Garland. Iida, T. (2007). Towards a semantics of Japanese existential sentences. In M. Okada (Ed.), Essays in the Foundations of Logical and Phenomenological Studies(pp. 67-96), Tokyo: Keio University. Iori, I., Takahasi, S., Nakanisi, K., & Yamada, T. (2000). Syokyuu o osieru hito no tame no nihongobunpoohandobukku. Tokyo: 3E Network. Iwasaki, T. (1995). Ni to de: Toki o arawasu kakuzyosi. In T. Miyazima,& Y. Nitta (Eds.). Nihongoruigihyōgen no bunpō (zyoo). Tanbun hen (pp. 74-82) Tokyo: Kurosio. Makino, S. (1968). Japanese ‘be’. In J.W.M. Verhaar (Ed.). The Verb “Be” and Its Synonyms: Philosophical and Grammatical Studies (3) (pp. 1-19). Dordrecht: Reidel. Makino, S., & Tsutsui, M. (1986). A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. Tokyo: The Japan Times. Martin, S.E. (1975). A Reference Grammar of Japanese. Rutland, Tokyo: Tuttle. Mikkelsen, L. (2011). Copular clauses. In K. vonHeusinger, C. Maienborn,& P. Portner (Eds.). Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, Volume 2 (pp. 1805-1829). Berlin: deGruyter. Mills, D.O. (1977). Teaching the Japanese copula. The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 12(1), 7-20. Morioka, T., & Takubo, Y. (1987). Nihongobunpoo seruhumasutaa siriizu 2. Kakuzyosi. Tokyo: Kurosio. Muromatsu, K. (1997). Two types of existentials: Evidence from Japanese. Lingua, 101, 245-269. Narahara, T. (2002). The Japanese Copula: Forms and Functions. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Narita, S. (1993). Bunpookaku to hukusikaku. In Y. Nitta (Ed.). Nihongo no kaku o megutte (pp. 67-94).Tokyo: Kurosio. Narrog, H. (2009). Varieties of instrumental. In A. Malchukov, & A. Spencer (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Case (pp. 593-600). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nihongo kihondoosiyoohooziten. (1989). Tokyo: Taisyuukan. Nishiyama, K. (1999). Adjectives and the copulas in Japanese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 8, 183–222. �Nitta, Y. (1982). Zyosirui kakusetu. In Nihongokyooiku gakkai, Nihongokyooikuziten. Syukusatuban (pp. 392-417), Tokyo: Taisyuukan. Pustet, R. (2005). Copulas: Universals in the Categorization of the Lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sawada, T. (2008). Da-deletion: Classification of clause-final elements in Japanese. Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue, 3(2), 139–163. Stassen, L. (1997). Intransitive Predication. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sugai, K. (1997). Kakuzyosi 'de' no imitokusei ni kansuru ikkoosatu. Nagoya daigaku bungakubu kenkyuuronsyuu, 127, pp. 23-40. Teramura, H. (1982). Nihongo no sintakusu to imi I. Tokyo: Kurosio. Tokieda, M. (1950). Nihon bunpoo. Koogohen. Tokyo: Iwanami. Wenck, G. (1973). The Japanese copula: A dummy? Linguistics: An Interdisciplinar Journal in the Language Sciences, 15(100), 77-86. � 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. 2902 Title A name given to the resource JAPANESE CASE MARKER DE IN COPULAR SENTENCES: ESSIVE OR LOCATIVE? Author Author dalla Chiesa, Simone Abstract A summary of the resource. In this paper I will discuss two constructions of the Japanese verb aru ‘be’. In one construction, aru occurs with a copular complement marked by the particle de, obtaining a sentence-ending pattern known as N-dearu. In the other construction, aru expresses the happening of a dynamic event and may occur with a de-marked locative adjunct encoding the physical place of the event. By analyzing these two constructions I will single out a ‘predicative’ function of the case marker de, and show that when functioning as a support item in nominal predications and in other copular sentences, aru retains its original nature as a locational verb and consequently assigns a locative-like grammatical case (marked with de) to the second argument of its clause. In this instance of strong localism, a grammatical split of the locative marker de happens so that de ends up marking a number of different surface cases. In the conclusion I will propose that the particle de in predicative function should be acknowledged to be an ‘Essive’ case marker. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-07 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics https://omeka.ibu.edu.ba/files/original/6a2069929ec2d1b6656fcfc68dda9445.pdf e39921cae77545203ab2b1124b622632 PDF Text Text INVESTIGATING THE INFLUENCE OF STUDENTS’ PROJECT-BASED ENGAGEMENT ON THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE ESP COURSE Luiza Zeqiri South East European University, Macedonia Article History: Submitted: 10.06.2015 Accepted: 23.06.2015 Abstract Research has shown that learner-centered classrooms are very effective. Engaging students in various classroom activities leads towards better learning outcomes. Moreover, project-based activities can have a positive influence on the students’ engagement and dedication towards a language class. Accordingly, this study will investigate the influence of project-based language learning on students’ achievements and attitudes towards the ESP course. The participants in this study were sixty students from the Faculty of Languages Cultures and Communication at South East European University (SEEU), in Tetove, attending ESP for Communication Sciences (1) and (2) courses. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for the data collection. The administered instruments were: group projects, student questionnaires, unstructured interviews with the students and process observation. The results confirmed that the students showed more positive attitudes towards ESP classes, after they participated in group projects. They became more motivated and more enthusiastic during their classes. The students improved their critical and creative thinking skills; they productively participated in teamwork and they were able to give constructive criticism. It can be hypothesized that engaging the students in group projects helps in lowering the affective filter, by which the students’ input increases and they show greater academic achievements. Key words: project-based, ESP, teamwork, affective filter, input. �1. Introduction Learner-centered classes promote learner autonomy because they focus on making students independent by involving them directly in the learning process. This can be done by implementing PBL1 in the curriculum. There is a number of studies related to PBL which shows that learning through projects is really effective. If students work with their projects more seriously and if the projects are well-implemented from the teacher and the students, this can help the students practice and improve their social and workplace skills. When students are engaged in project-based tasks they have to use their critical and creative thinking skills; they need to conduct research, they have to organize ideas and elements of the projects and they have to use their problem solving skills as well. By collaborating, sharing ideas, assisting each other in order to achieve their common aim (a well-structured project) they apply and develop the above mentioned skills. 2. Literature Review There are many studies which conclude that PBL is very beneficial for the students. On the other hand, there are also studies which point out the disadvantages and difficulties of PBL. However, from the previous research it can be suggested that PBL helps students improve their social and workplace skills and prepares them for the job market. According to Ciftci (2014): Project-based learning is an implemented learning and teaching model developed in opposition to teach the curriculum as an irrelevant pile of unimportant little information in modern countries. This model focuses on one or more fields’ basic concepts and principles and if possible it covers more than one learning target in a scenario of a lesson. (pp.1019-1020) Barron & Darling- Hammond (2010) mention that teachers need to engage the students to the fullest and stimulate them to identify problems. They also state that: “students must be given opportunities to develop their skills in the context of complex, meaningful projects that require 1 Project-Based Learning �sustained engagement, collaboration, research, management of resources and development of an ambitious performance or product” (p.200). Other researchers, Musa, Mufti, Latiff & Amin (2010) conducted a study to analyze the influence of PBL on “the transference and inculcation of workplace related skills” where they share a very realistic idea that basic academic skills are not enough for the job market, but employers want to hire employees who have mastered “reasoning, creative thinking, decision making and problem solving” (p.187). Moreover, they state that through PBL students will practice language skills as well; and not only skills which are required in the workplace. In another study published in 2011 they say that the job market today is seeking for employees who posses skills which are practiced through projects. Then they say that the employees should know how to cooperate with each other and how to be constructive during conflicts, and they should also be able to come up with insightful ideas. There are other researchers who agree that PBL has an influence on helping students improve their workplace skills and create a more positive attitude towards the content of the subject. For example, Kloppenborg and Baucus (2004) as cited in Musa, Mufti, Latiff & Amin (2010) say that PBL is crucial because students practice very important skills starting from collaboration, being able to solve problems or conflicts, etc. Another researcher, Bell (2010), states that if students are involved in PBL then they can practice their social and communication skills. On the contrary, Efstratia (2014) mentions the disadvantages of PBL. She states that: “Teachers are discouraged of implementing this method, because sometimes they are not experienced, they lack motivation, or consider PBL as additional activity” (p.1259). She also concludes that PBL is problematic when it comes to respecting deadlines and that evaluation is difficult. 3. Research Methodology 3.1. Participants The participants in this study were 60 students from the Faculty of Languages Cultures and Communication at SEEU, in Tetove. They attended ESP for Communication Sciences (1) and (2). During the academic year 2013/14 a pilot project was also conducted with 30 other students. �3.2 Approach Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for the data collection. 3.3 Instruments The administered instruments which were used for the data collection were: group projects, student questionnaires, unstructured interviews and process observation. 3.4 Setting Data collection lasted for two academic semesters, 2014/15 at the Language Center, in SEEU. 3.5 Procedure During ESP (1) and ESP (2) courses, students were engaged in different projects. Their biggest projects were planning and recording a promotional video for the university. They also had to give short presentations and fill in the questionnaire related to PBL. Finally, unstructured interviews were conducted with the students. 3.6 Research questions The following are the research questions designed to provide reliable data related to PBL approach. 1. Does PBL contribute towards greater academic achievement or performance? 2. What is the influence of PBL on students’ attitudes towards the ESP class? 3. What are the students’ attitudes towards integrating group projects in the curriculum? 4. Findings and Discussion Only some representative answers from the student questionnaires were selected in order to analyze the students’ attitudes and experiences with project-based approach �4.1 Have you enjoyed ESP (1) and (2) courses? (where PBL approach was implemented) Student 1: ESP courses have aroused my interest more than all the other courses until now. Despite the knowledge I gain, I love the space that is given to us to express our ides, opinions and experiences. Student 2: Yes of course. The courses were so good, I felt free to discuss, share ideas, learn new things and the very important thing was that our teacher made the classes more enjoyable by assigning us different task and projects. Students 3: ESP 1 and 2 courses were very interesting, I enjoyed so much and I was looking forward to attending every single class. Student 4: Yes, we have worked too much and we have learnt a lot. Very useful. Student 5: Yes, we had a lot of fun. 4.2 What did you enjoy the most during your ESP classes? What did you enjoy the most during your ESP classes? 30 27 25 18 20 15 10 10 5 3 2 Writing Reading 0 Individual work Presentations Group projects Figure 1. As shown in Figure 1. above, 27 students out of 60 enjoyed group projects the most. Eighteen students enjoyed delivering the presentations which were also part of their projects. Interestingly, only 10 students enjoyed working individually during the ESP course. 4.3 What was your favorite part from the group projects? �Student 1: Organizing the group, dividing the tasks and preparing for it were my favorite parts from which I gained the most experience on learning new things and improving communication & organization skills as well. Student 2: The part when we recorded the videos about multiculturalism in our university because we had to work with students from different cultures. Student 3: Working together and getting to know each other better. Student 4: Dividing the tasks for the video project and finding material for the posters. Student 5: Discussion about the work, the way how we would organize the work and how to assess it. Student 6: Recording the video. It was a good feeling “being an actor”. Student 7: Exchanging ideas. Student 8: Presenting the project and preparing the posters. 4.4. Did you enjoy PBL? If yes, why? If not, why? Student 1: Working in a group project is always enjoyable and easier. But it requires a lot of responsibility. Student 2: Yes I liked it. It is so important and less stressful for me because of sharing ideas. So, it’s not like individual work where you have to give only your effort to have the work done. Student 3: It’s definitely more fun working with a partner than alone. More students share their ideas and the results are better. Student 4: Yes, group projects helped me improve my multi-tasking skills, improvising and leadership skills. Student 5: I love working in a group with projects because in this way we can have more discussion and then decide on the best answer. I like the moment when each of us presents his/her part of the work. However, it’s very irritating for me if any student in the group shows no interest. Student 6: Yes, because working in groups always has something special. Student 7: Yes, because I like the fact that we all should contribute to do a good job. Student 8: No, because boys are lazy and they don’t work. �Student 9: Working in a group is not always my favorite because I can’t express myself as much as I want because I have to be coordinated with the others and I have a limited time. 4.5 How do you learn the most? Which learning methods/styles are more effective for you? Student 1: Reading at home is one of the most effective learning methods, especially when you take notes, but for me it won’t be effective if we don’t discuss it in the classroom again. Student 2: I learn the most when we read in class or do projects together. Student 3: Interacting in class was a very good method. The videos that the professor played in class were very effective and well-thought. I liked it so much because the professor was only a facilitator. Student 4: I must have someone to listen to me, to correct me and to help me. Firstly, I take notes and then I read them so I can memorize. If there is something I don’t understand, I have to do some research or discuss it with my colleagues. Student 5: I think that I learn more while working for a project because I enjoy it and I think the input is higher then. Student 6: Participating in conversations and brainstorming as a class. Student 7: Through group projects because if there is something I don’t understand I ask the other members of the group. 4.6. Are group projects stressful or difficult for you? Explain. Student 1: Group projects are not difficult at all when you know your task. For me they are stressful if not all the students in the group participate and I have to do the work for them. I love to help others, but not when they are not trying. Student 2: Not that much because we separate the work and we take just one part of the project and we work only on it. Student 3: It’s difficult if there is any student who doesn’t participate. Student 4: They can be stressful because we have a deadline. Sometimes our colleagues aren’t very responsible. Especially if we have to engage even students from other classes. Student 5: The deadline makes me nervous. Not knowing if others will be on time or having that bad feeling that you can’t be ready and you don’t have the ability to work with the others. �Also, the time when the group is separated, I really feel angry and so stressful until we have good results at the end. Student 6: Group projects for me are more stressful than difficult because I worry what if I can’t finish my part on time and the project fails. Student 7: Yes, because each student has a different personality and opinions and sometimes it’s difficult to agree on one topic. Therefore, we should have a lot of discussion. Student 8: They are difficult because we have to find and select good sources and material and to prepare a lot. Student 9: They are difficult because they require organization and a lot of effort. 4.7 What is your attitude towards the EPSP course (PBL approach)? Student 1: ESP is an essential course for improving the language in an academic level. It is a very effective course not only for improving our language but also for shaping our ideas, attitudes and personalities. Student 2: ESP courses make me more self-confident. Student 3: ESP courses are the best for me. I have gained a lot of knowledge and I wish we had more classes per week. In these classes we learnt the theory and brought it to life. Student 5: It’s one of my favorite courses and I’ve never missed a class. I learn a lot and I give my best just like my teacher does. This course has had a very big importance for my studies in general. Student 6: Very relaxing and productive classes. 4.8 Have you achieved good success at the end of the course? Student 1: In my opinion you can always feel the results of a course from the way it is taught. ESP has always been a very effective course and taking into consideration that I have worked hard, my final results were great. Student 2: Yes, and I have learnt many things about life in general. Student 3: Outstanding. And I am not happy that I got a good grade, but because I’ve learnt a lot. Student 4: With a lot of work of course there will be good results. This is my biggest success ever. �5. Conclusions st 5.1 Conclusions for the 1 research question Does PBL contribute towards greater academic achievement or learning outcomes? From the analysis of the results it was concluded that students became more autonomous learners after they were engaged on projects. They showed better leadership skills, many of the students performed better in their next group projects and were able to lead the groups effectively. Their critical and creative thinking skills were improved because they had the chance to practice and apply creative and critical thinking while working on their projects. Also, students showed improved presentation skills and better intra and interpersonal communication. Moreover, PBL helped the students with decision making process. Students were given topics or questions which required decision making or problem solving skills. Being involved in a decision making process they also practiced and improved their organizational skills. Majority of the students productively participated in a teamwork and they were able to give constructive criticism. Students showed lower affective filter, they were more relaxed, very positive, willing to come to classes and work. As a result their output was outstanding. It can be concluded that engaging the students in group projects helped in lowering the affective filter, by which the students’ input increased and they showed greater academic achievements. nd 5.2 Conclusions for the 2 research question What is the influence of PBL on students’ attitudes towards the ESP class? The results confirmed that the students showed more positive attitudes towards ESP classes after they participated in group projects. They became more motivated and more excited during their classes. The students were very enthusiastic and as a result they contributed more productively towards completion of each of their projects. They were so happy and proud to see their final products getting promoted at university level and shared online. Moreover, after being engaged in group projects the students started to attend classes more regularly and they became more responsible. To finalize, students shared their experiences with students from other courses who always wanted to come and visit ESP classes. So, PB approach fostered curiosity and interest even on students from other English classes, working with different teachers and different methodologies. �rd 5.3 Conclusions for the 3 research question What are the students’ attitudes towards integrating group projects in the curriculum? The results from the students’ questionnaires, the unstructured interviews and from the process observation showed that students enjoyed working with projects and that they benefited from PBL approach. The following are some significant conclusions related to students’ attitudes towards integrating group projects in the curriculum: 1. Majority of the students answered that they wish they had projects in their other subjects as well. 2. The students found working on projects as a very interesting and innovative method. 3. Even students from other classes were interested to come and attend ESP for Communication Sciences classes, just because they found the students’ projects as a very interesting and attractive method. 4. Majority of the students didn’t find the group projects stressful, but some of them said that projects are difficult because: a) students should divide the parts of the project. b) students are dependent on each other. c) students sometimes have difficulties arranging meetings. d) there might be students who think they know everything. e) students might disagree with each other. f) there are students who don’t participate. g) the projects are more time consuming and they worry about the deadlines. 6. Limitations and Conclusion This study has its own limitations. The limited number of participants can be considered as a limitation. However, working during two semesters with 60 students and conducting a pilot project with 30 other students contributed to receiving reliable results. Another limitation might be that the course wasn’t 100% based on projects. �References Barron, B. & Darling- Hammond, L. (2010). Prospects and challenges of inquiry-based approaches to learning. The nature of learning. Using research to inspire practice. ISBN 978-9264-08648-7. Corrigenda to OECD publications. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/pW08jR Bell, S. (2010). Project-based learning for the 21st Century: Skills for the future. The Clearing House. 83, 39 – 43. Retrieved from doi: 10.1080/00098650903505415 Ciftci, S. (2014). The Effects of Using Project-Based Learning in Social Studies Education to Students' Attitudes towards Social Studies Courses . Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 186 ( 2015 ) 1019 – 1024. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved from doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.205 Efstratia, D. (2014). Experiential education through project based learning. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 152 ( 2014 ) 1256 – 1260. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved from doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.362 Musa, F., Mufti, N., Latiff, R.A. & Amin, M.M. (2011). Project-based learning (PjBL): inculcating soft skills in 21st century workplace. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 59 ( 2012 ) 565 – 573. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved from doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.315 Musa, F., Mufti, N., Latiff, R.A. & Amin, M.M. (2010). Project-based Learning: Promoting Meaningful Language Learning for Workplace Skills. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 18 ( 2011 ) 187 – 195. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved from doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.05.027 � 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. 2894 Title A name given to the resource INVESTIGATING THE INFLUENCE OF STUDENTS’ PROJECT-BASED ENGAGEMENT ON THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE ESP COURSE Author Author Zeqiri, Luiza Abstract A summary of the resource. Research has shown that learner-centered classrooms are very effective. Engaging students in various classroom activities leads towards better learning outcomes. Moreover, project-based activities can have a positive influence on the students’ engagement and dedication towards a language class. Accordingly, this study will investigate the influence of project-based language learning on students’ achievements and attitudes towards the ESP course. The participants in this study were sixty students from the Faculty of Languages Cultures and Communication at South East European University (SEEU), in Tetove, attending ESP for Communication Sciences (1) and (2) courses. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for the data collection. The administered instruments were: group projects, student questionnaires, unstructured interviews with the students and process observation. The results confirmed that the students showed more positive attitudes towards ESP classes, after they participated in group projects. They became more motivated and more enthusiastic during their classes. The students improved their critical and creative thinking skills; they productively participated in teamwork and they were able to give constructive criticism. It can be hypothesized that engaging the students in group projects helps in lowering the affective filter, by which the students’ input increases and they show greater academic achievements. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Burch University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-07 Keywords Keywords. Article PeerReviewed P Philology. Linguistics