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Using Videos from YouTube and Websites in the CLIL Classroom

Author(s): Cristina Oddone / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

This paper reports on a research study that was carried out on the use of videos for task-based learning of scientific subjects through English in secondary education. It examines the potential of implementing CLIL classes in language learning contexts with the aim of improving students’ competence by enhancing their motivation. It particularly describes the advantages of using technology and streaming videos in these situations as a way to engage learners. A wide range of video-sharing websites is available on the Internet, including video lessons, documentaries and educational material which can be used to facilitate students’ meaningful learning. CLIL methodology involves a combination of subject and language teaching with careful attention to learners’ language level and skills. Traditional language teaching largely relies on graded material and often corresponds to low levels of participation whereas CLIL employs authentic material and resources, which means creating more realistic learning opportunities but also designing specific tasks to boost students’ understanding. After analyzing the characteristics of videos and describing the advantages of using them in CLIL contexts, this paper provides some practical suggestions for classroom use and discusses the results of this experience.

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Rollenspiel als Ausgangspunkt für interkulturelles Lernen im Fachbereich Berufsdeutsch

Author(s): Giedrė Paurienė / Language(s): German Issue: 18/2011

Die Arbeit setzt sich mit der Problematik der Erziehung von interkultureller Kompetenz im Fach-bereich Berufsdeutsch auseinander. Das Ziel des Beitrags besteht darin, die durchgeführte Unterrichtssequenz zu zeigen und zu diskutieren, wie das Rollenspiel als Ausgangspunkt verwendet werden kann, um inter-kulturelles Lernen sowie die intensive Arbeit im Fachbereich Berufsdeutsch für zukünftige Polizeibeamte zu ermöglichen. Die Polizeiarbeit erfährt durch strukturelle Veränderungen der Gesellschaft eine zunehmende Veränderung ihres Aufgabenspektrums. Das Wissen über die anderen Kulturen, die eigenen kulturelle Sensibilität und die Fähigkeit, zielgerichtet zu handeln, können als strategische Vorteile bei der Erfüllung von Aufgaben fungieren. In diesem Kontext wird interkulturelles Lernen für die zukünftigen Polizeibeamten zunehmend wichtiger und stellt die berufliche Ausbildung und Personalentwicklung vor neue Anforderungen. Der berufsbezogene DaF-Unterricht passt ideal für Anbahnung der für interkulturelle Kompetenz notwendigen Schlüsselqualifikation. Interkulturelles Lernen beschreibt einen Lernvorgang, der in mehreren Stufen abläuft und dessen Ziel die Erlangung interkultureller Kompetenz ist. Zentrale Aufgabe des interkulturellen Lernens ist es, die Fähigkeit der Lernenden zur sozialen Interaktion mit Angehörigen anderer Kulturen zu verbessern.

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Kompiuterinis vertimas į lietuvių kalbą: alternatyvos ir jų lingvistinis vertinimas

Author(s): Bronius Tamulynas,Inga Petkevičiūtė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 18/2011

In machine translation (MT) it is extremely complicated to create perfectly functioning system. The main problems in the systems are errors occurring during translation process. The topic of this research is relevant because in the last years two freely accessible MT systems, supporting the Lithuanian language, were introduced in Lithuania. Comprehensive and well-grounded analysis of these systems would be useful to the system developers and ordinary users. The object of this research are typical linguistic and systemic problems occurring during translation. Those problems are indicators determining translation quality. The aim of this paper is to explore the main practical translation problems that ordinary MT users commonly deal with. Analysis has shown that the Google Translator had made 1066 and VDU system 565 translation errors. Most translation errors are common to both systems: declensional, polysemy, non-translated words, not suitable parts of speech constituted about 70 % of all errors. Out of 15 tested texts, VDU system has translated 13 texts in good quality. Out of 23 types of errors 19 types errors were “produced” by Google system. Both systems demonstrated the best translation results in translating administrative text and the worst results in translating fictional texts. Following the conducted analysis such recommendations could be made: to create or supplement dictionaries of phraseological units, expressions, constant word combinations, abbreviations, jargon and spoken language; constantly update dictionaries with new words and their forms; create larger parallel and comparative corpora; solve proper noun and systematic problems, etc.

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Mokinių ir studentų požiūris į mokymąsi mokytis užsienio kalba

Author(s): Virginija Jūratė Pukevičiūtė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 18/2011

Straipsnyje pabrėžiama mokymosi mokytis kompetencijos formavimo(si) svarba siekiant įgyvendinti visą gyvenimą trunkančio mokymosi idėjas, analizuojamas aukštesniųjų klasių mokinių ir pirmo kurso studentų požiūris į veiksnius, darančius poveikį šio fenomeno vystimuisi ir plėtotei. Mokymosi mokytis kompetencijos ugdymo(si) prioritetai išryškinami Europos Sąjungos ir Lietuvos Respublikos švietimo dokumentuose, mokslo darbuose, kuriuose gilinamasi į savarankiško, savivadaus, savireguliuojančio, autonominio mokymosi, padėjusio pamatus mokymosi mokytis idėjų atsiradimui ir plėtrai, problemas. Todėl tyrimo metu buvo svarbu išsiaiškinti, kaip mokymąsi mokytis užsienio kalbos mokymosi pagrindu supranta aukštesniųjų klasių mokiniai ir pirmo kurso studentai, taikytas kokybinis tyrimas pateikiant atviro tipo klausimą: „Man atrodo, kad mokymasis mokytis yra ......, nes ....“. Tyrimo metu, kuriame dalyvavo įvairių Lietuvos universitetų studentai (356) ir įvairių Lietuvos mokyklų mokiniai (333), nustatyta, kad respondentai mąstydami apie mokymąsi mokytis užsienio kalba, šį mokymąsi sieja su įvairiais mokymo(si) proceso aspektais. Analizuojant tyrimo rezultatus išryškėjo 5 kategorijos (perkeliamieji gebėjimai; efektyvi priemonė; ieškojimas, atradimas, tobulėjimas; strateginis, prasmingas mokymasis; nereikalingas dalykas), kurios buvo konkretizuojamos 12 subkategorijų. Vadinasi, mokiniai ir studentai mokymąsi mokytis sieja su efektyvia priemone, padedančia pagerinti pasiekimus ir taupančia mokymosi laiko sąnaudas; refleksijos, tobulėjimo priemone, menu.

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Exchange Students’ Experiences in Intercultural Communication

Author(s): Aušra Stepanovienė / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

The paper discusses the intercultural communication competence of Mykolas Romeris University exchange students who were studying at American, Finnish, Czech and German universities. The study explores the frequency of interactions between the exchange students and students from other countries; the difficulties they encountered and the reasons they attributed to these difficulties. Research results, derived from interviews and questionnaires, reveal that about 68 % of the exchange students communicated with students from other countries very frequently and more than 85 % of the respondents had at least one foreign friend. In this study, 74 % of the students reported they had faced difficulties when interacting with foreign students. Cultural differences were regarded as a significant reason to communication difficulties. One of the most notable difficulties was finding a suitable conversation topic to get the conversation going on. Many communicating difficulties derived from stereotypes against other cultures, culture shock and differences in politeness or misunderstandings of nonverbal communication. The paper formulates recommendations for good practice in helping students to develop effective skills of intercultural communication.

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Nauja paradigma – seni metodai ar sena paradigma – nauji metodai?

Author(s): Audronė Poškienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 18/2011

The changed educational paradigm from subject-centered into student-centered has changed the role of teaching/learning methods. A method allows a student to adjust to the teaching material, to socialize in a group, to know and assess oneself, to think critically and creatively. The module The language of negotiations is only an episode in a complex negotiation teaching. Students in the module develop skills and competencies in special English and negotiation science. The 3rd and 4th year students have evaluated the methods. The questionnaire has been based on revealing the effectiveness of four teaching/ learning methods: a discussion, problem-solving, video clips and oral academic presentations. The findings have revealed that the methods of video clips and oral academic presentations are considered to be the most effective. 50 % of 21 students consider it to be effective in negotiation language teaching/ learning process and develops different competences. A discussion as a method requires student’s artistic abilities to get involved into the process and it is mixed with role-play method. It can be concluded that only the combination of several teaching/ learning methods can make the study effective.

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Training Teachers of Languages to Meet the Needs of Inclusive Classrooms

Author(s): Tsvetelina Harakchiyska / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

The inclusion of special needs learners into mainstream schools is a key issue on the European agenda which poses new challenges to the training of future teachers (including teachers of languages to young learners) who need to receive adequate knowledge about various special needs categories and develop professional skills for identifying, assessing and meeting the needs of special needs learners. In response to this new demand and in relation to the growing number of primary school children with special needs who attend mainstream classrooms in Bulgaria, the University of Ruse introduces a new training pack of materials for initial teacher training. The training materials’ aim is to equip the student teachers with the relevant knowledge and competences for approaching diversity in their classroom in such a way that allows all children (including those with special educational needs) to demonstrate their potential as learners. The goal of this paper is to present the pedagogical and methodological underpinnings, planned outcomes and challenges in the design and development of the in-service teacher training materials and to motivate the need for such type of training in the Bulgarian educational context.

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Смысловая оппозиция стержневых компонентов по признаку самец/ самка в литовских и русских фразеологизмах с названиями животных

Author(s): Dalia Eigirdienė / Language(s): Russian Issue: 18/2011

Описание человека с помощью названий животных (зоонимов) — одно из древнейших явлений в языке. Во многих языках мира зоонимы активно используются в качестве образной характери-стики человека, обладают высоким коннотативным потенциалом. Тем не менее нельзя не отметить, что сопоставительных исследований зоонимной фразеологии не так много. С появлением идеографического словаря русских фразеологизмов с названиями животных (Козлова, 2001) представилась возможность провести сопоставительное исследование зоонимной фразеологии различных языков. Исследование показало, что фразеологизмы с названиями самки и самца в русском и литовском языках отражают отношения в мире людей. Среди них есть описание внешности, походки, физических действий и состояний, потребностей, движений человека. Характеристика человека как разумного существа в основном складывается через описание черт характера. Кроме того, такого типа словосочетания выражают и универсальные качества, где противопоставленность стержневых компонентов по признаку пола теряет смысл. Данную универсальную функцию в литовском и русском языках выполняет большинство зоонимов.

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Sprachlich-patriotische Elemente in politischen Weblogs

Author(s): Kathrin Habereder / Language(s): German Issue: 18/2011

Weblogs ziehen mehr und mehr Aufmerksamkeit auf sich. Sie werden nicht mehr nur im Privatleben, zum Beispiel als Tagebücher geschrieben, sondern treten mehr und mehr in öffentlichen Bereichen, wie z.B. in der Nachrichtenerstattung, im Journalismus oder im Wahlkampf auf. Die linguistische Forschung zu Weblogs steckt jedoch noch in den Anfängen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung stellt einen Versuch dar, politische Ideen und Konzepte in der in politischen Weblogs verwendeten Sprache zu analysieren. Im Speziellen fokussiert die Untersuchung das Konzept des Patriotismus im Sprachgebrauch. Sie basiert auf der Annahme, dass Patriotismus gerade bei Europa-Wahlen eine besondere Rolle spielt, da Politiker, insbesondere bestimmter politischer Parteien, sich selbst und ihre Ziele in Abgrenzung zu den anderen EU-Staaten definieren. Als Beispiel wurde hier die Sprache zweier Weblogs litauischer EU-Parlamentskandidatinnen der konservativen politischen Partei für die Wahl im Juni 2009 während der Wahlkampfphase untersucht. Die Analyse konzentriert sich auf Patriotismus in der Sprache auf drei Ebenen: Lexik, Deixis (Klusivität) und Referenz. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Ideologie einer Partei oder eines Politikers nicht zwingend in seiner geschriebenen Sprache im Weblog abgebildet sein muss: Beide untersuchten Kandidatinnen haben den selben parteilichen Hintergrund, die Menge an patriotischen Elementen, die in den Weblogs aufzufinden waren, unterscheidet sich jedoch beachtlich. Kombiniert man die Ergebnisse der oben genannten 3-Ebenen-Analyse mit einer Analyse der in denselben Beiträgen des Weblogs auftretenden Sprechakte (nach Searle, 1979), so stellt sich im Anschluss die Frage, ob es zwischen der Art der von den Politikern verwendeten Sprechakte und der Menge der patriotischen Sprachelemente einen Zusammenhang gibt. Dies bleibt jedoch Hypothese und wird erst durch eine umfassendere Analyse an einem größeren Korpus falsifiziert werden können.

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Lithuanian Past Simple Tenses and Their Equivalents in English

Author(s): Saulė Petronienė / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

The paper provides the analysis of Lithuanian simple past tenses, their meanings and equivalents in English. Grammatical forms determine two simple past tenses of the verb in Lithuanian: the past simple tense and the past frequentative tense. The past frequentative tense distinguishes Lithuanian from all other Indo-European languages. The specialists of historical comparative linguistics emphasize its exclusiveness, novelty, however, the origin and the ground for the overall usage is left aside. Thus, the problem of the past frequentative tense is fully covered in the paper. Moreover, some linguists suggest that there are three tenses in Lithuanian: past, present and future. They claim that there is no past frequentative tense and that its incorporation in the paradigm of tenses in Lithuanian is supported by tradition only. Furthermore, they declare that the opposition between the past simple and the past frequentative tense is the one of aspect but not of tense and claim that the past frequentative tense expresses some special meaning of iterativeness related to imperfective aspect (which is the meaning of aspect but not tense). Thus, the analysis attempts to prove that the past frequentative tense has to be included into the paradigm of tenses. The paper also focuses on the use and meanings of Lithuanian simple past tenses and provides the equivalents of them in English.

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Kai kurie studentų požiūrio į užsienio kalbų mokytojo profesijos kompetencijas aspektai

Author(s): Roma Kriaučiūnienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 18/2011

The article deals with future foreign language teachers’ viewpoints on teacher’s professional competencies as one of the influential factors on the development of their moral attitudes. The objective was set to determine the respondents’ viewpoints on their professional linguistic, professional pedagogical, intercultural and general competencies and to determine the possible correlations between the respondents’ viewpoints on teacher’s competencies and moral values, comprising the content of the cognitive-meaningful component of moral attitude. The research revealed that the majority of the respondents think that foreign language teachers should firstly acquire professional linguistic competence, secondly — professional pedagogic, thirdly — intercultural competence and fourthly — the teacher’s general competence. The research revealed the strongest correlations between the respondents’ views on professional pedagogic and general competencies and the components of moral attitude, the most significant being with the general competence. The respondents’ viewpoints on teacher’s competencies can have the greatest impact on the cognitive-meaningful component of moral attitude. Numerous correlations between the respondents’ viewpoints on general and professional pedagogic competencies of teacher’s profession and the acknowledgment and meaningfulness of the significance of moral values were established. The conclusion was made that the respondents’ viewpoints on general competence are likely to be most influential on the development of future foreign language teachers’ moral attitudes. Therefore, foreign language teaching process should be more focused on fostering general competence, thus providing more favorable possibilities for the development of future teachers’ moral attitudes.

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A Cognitive Approach to Teaching English for Special Purposes (ESP)

Author(s): Natalya Davidko / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

Cognitive science today makes it possible to combine independent studies under the auspices of one focal problem — the workings of the human mind in knowledge acquisition. Foreign language teaching draws heavily on linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. In this article we come up with a cognitive approach to teaching language for special purposes. The focus of our attention is on terms belonging to a specific domain (options). The acquisition of terminology in a foreign language presupposes knowledge of a non-linguistic conceptual structure (conceptual content) and means of verbalization (linguistic content). To expose the conceptual content of an individual term we employ the notion of qualia which allows us to study a term from four cognitive aspects. In order to give students a holistic picture of the domain in question we make use of cognitive modeling which means constructing an abstract “infrastructure” of the subject area and showing possible links among its elements. The objective of teaching is to help students create a “personal construct” — a personal model of knowledge — which enhances their information processing capacity and lays down the foundation of their future progress in advanced knowledge acquisition and comprehending and generating professional discourse.

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Zur Übersetzung von Internationalismen unter lexikalisch-semantischem und sprachpflegerischem Aspekt

Author(s): Sigita Stankevičienė / Language(s): German Issue: 18/2011

Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird auf Internationalismen als Übersetzungsproblem eingegan-gen. Dabei werden zwei Problemfelder genauer unter die Lupe genommen. Auf der einen Seite wird die Äqui-valenzproblematik der Internationalismen in der Ausgangs- und Zielsprache, im vorliegenden Fall Deutsch und Litauisch, behandelt, die auf semantische Charakteristika der zu übersetzenden Einheiten zurückzuführen ist. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt dabei den Internationalismen als möglicher Fehlerquelle durch ihre Affinität zu den sog. falschen Freunden des Übersetzers. Insbesondere bei angehenden Übersetzern und Übersetzerinnen ist mit verstärkten Interferenzeffekten zu rechnen, weil Internationalismen durch ihre Zugehörigkeit zu den beiden Sprachen — Ausgangs- und Zielsprache — als „sicher“, „problemlos“ erscheinen und anscheinend keinen (semantischen) Transfer außer der phonetischen und morphologischen Anpassung benötigen. Auf der anderen Seite wird auch der sprachpolitischen Diskussion Rechnung getragen, indem der Fremd-Eigen-Gegensatz bei der Wahl einer zielsprachlichen Variante im Hintergrund der aktuellen sprachpflegerischen Maßnahmen thematisiert wird.

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Tendances de l’évolution du vocabulaire dans des dictionnaires monolingues de la langue française

Author(s): Jonas Žilinskas / Language(s): French Issue: 18/2011

L’évolution d’une langue n’est pas le résultat d’un projet rationnel. Elle est le produit d’une histoire réelle avec ses périodes de crise et de prospérité, histoire qui est directement liée à l’évolution de la société. Les résultats des études synchroniques de la langue française menées par les linguistes français fournissent une bonne vue chronologique de la fréquence du vocabulaire de la deuxième moitié du 20ème siècle mais ne disent rien sur l’éventuelle évolution de sens d’un même mot. L’objectif de notre étude diachronique est de répondre aux questions suivantes: quelles sont les tendances de l’évolution du vocabulaire de la langue française et comment reflètent-elles les changements sociaux dans la vie des locuteurs au cours de la deuxième moitié du 20ème siècle? Comment les changements de vocabulaire sont-ils liés au changement de la mentalité de la population? L’objet de notre recherche est le vocabulaire enregistré dans le Nouveau Petit Larousse illustré paru en 1936 et Le Petit Larousse illustré paru en 2001. Pour cette étude, nous avons utilisé les méthodes descriptive, comparative et sociologique. Les résultats de l’étude ont confirmé que les tendances de l’évolution du vocabulaire sont définies par les changements lexicaux directement liés à l’évolution sociale. Le renouvellement du vocabulaire est conditionné par des causes externes relevant de l’évolution des techniques et des institutions. L’évolution des mentalités est reflétée par les termes de la communication, du comportement des gens et des relations entre eux. Ces changements mentaux influencent parfois la formation d’une connotation morale pour certains termes.

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Some Lexical, Morphological and Syntactical Similarities and Differencies in Lithuanian, Italian and English Languages

Author(s): Rimantas Kalindra / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

The article is aimed at facilitating parallel teaching and learning Italian by discovering lexical, morphological and syntactical similarities and differences in Lithuanian, Italian and English languages, which correspondingly represent Romance, Germanic and Baltic language branches of the Indo-European language family. Even though the English language is relatively young, having developed in the Middle Ages, it inherited a lot of morphemes and derivatives from Ancient Greek and Latin through Italian which are also rather common in other languages. While analysing the morphemes, the methods of comparative linguistics and contrastive analysis are applied. The major semantic groups of suffixes and prefixes along with their functions are compared in the three languages and are listed with typical examples of their use. Concerning inflectional and derivational morphemes in different parts of speech, grammatical categories such as voice, tense, person, gender and number are also discussed. Taking into consideration that Lithuanian is rather different from other languages, more attention is drawn to common similarities between Italian and English. Some lexical examples of correct and incorrect usage are advanced. In order to illustrate the issues related to interference of the mother tongue, syntactical correlation is also provided. This paper brings to light multidimensional profiles of the subject and suggests a new approach to teaching and learning foreign languages. The comparative analysis is mostly based on the survey of the corresponding scientific literature and dictionaries.

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Langues tertiaires à l’université Vytautas Magnus: offre, demande, raisons du choix

Author(s): Jūratė Andriuškevičienė,Svetlana Rašinskienė,Daina Kazlauskaitė / Language(s): French Issue: 18/2011

Le but de la présente étude est d’analyser l’offre et la demande de langues étrangères autres que l’anglais à l’UVM afin de voir la situation réelle de la promotion du multilinguisme dans notre établissement. Pour effectuer ce travail on s’est appuyé sur les données statistiques du choix d’une langue tertiaire en 2005 et 2010 de sorte de les comparer et constater les changements en faveur du multilinguisme. On a également effectué une enquête empirique auprès 190 étudiants cherchant à définir leur expérience langagière acquise à l’école et les raisons du choix d’une langue tertiaire à l’université ainsi que l’effort de maintenir la langue apprise et approfondir les connaissances langagières. En réalisant cette étude on s’est inspiré des documents du Conseil de l’Europe conçus pour promouvoir le multilinguisme telle que le Cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues: apprendre, enseigner, évaluer (2001), Portfolio européen des langues. Guide à l’usage des enseignants et formateurs d’enseignants (2001), on a aussi consulté plusieurs documents juridiques traitant de cette question. Les résultats obtenus ont démontré que 87 % des sondés ont eu à l’école l’anglais comme première langue étrangère, l’offre et la demande d’une langue tertiaire ont tendance à croître, en 5 ans le chiffre d’étudiants choisissant une autre langue que l’anglais a passé de 568 à 727 tandis que l’offre a crû de 12 à 17 langues étrangères. Les raisons du choix des langues tertiaires sont diverses mais la priorité est donnée aux opportunités professionnelles 32 % et la préparation à l’activité professionnelle — 20 % des sondés.

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Teachers’ Attitudes Towards the Use of Blended Learning in General English Classroom

Author(s): Vilma Bijeikienė,Svetlana Rašinskienė,Lina Danutė Zutkienė / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

The paper deals with the application of ICT and the use of blended teaching and learning within the curriculum of general English at the levels A1-B2 in tertiary education. The research presented in the paper focuses on analyzing the language teachers’ experience in computer assisted language teaching as well as their practices and attitudes towards the blended learning courses created at the Centre of Foreign Languages at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU). Given the fact that the contemporary society is especially sensitive with regard to the development and the application of innovative technologies and given the fact that current and future university students are increasingly ‘digital natives’, the task of language teachers to make the best use of ICT in teaching languages becomes their most acute need and their biggest challenge. Therefore, the authors of the present paper take it as their aim to ease the above indicated task of the teachers by scrutinizing and casting light on their relevant doubts, needs and endeavours. The research was carried out at the Centre of Foreign Languages (VMU) with 24 teachers of English taking the role of the respondents. The research is based mainly on qualitative methodology including the methods of an informal interview and a questionnaire.

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Regional Language Network: a Language Planning Model?

Author(s): Anne-Marie Barrault-Méthy / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

Language planning has been a major field of state and regional intervention of New Public Management in the United Kingdom, with a move towards taking subsidies off university language teaching to allocate it onto training at regional level. The Regional Languages Network (RLN) was created in England after 2002 to provide for responses to concrete corporate language needs. This paper aims at describing the working of RLN as a network and as series of autonomous members of the network, elaborating on Spolsky’s language management theory (2009). It is argued that RLN is a language planning consultancy which not only solves stakeholders’ language issues, as language agencies and services do, but also allows businesses to meet challenges. RLN also deals with projects by bringing solutions to problems or elaborating on hypotheses. It also has a number of additional functions, among which language planning, managing projects and brokering, which consists in visiting companies to explain what financial support is available and through what schemes language services can be funded. Overall, RLN appears to implement an original language planning model, occupying a niche in language planning.

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Triadic Dialogue in EFL Classroom: Embedded Extensions

Author(s): Dalia Pinkevičienė / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2011

Students learn languages through talking and there is a documented need for more student talk in the classroom. Through talk we learn not only structural components of a language but also the communicative application of it. Can standard classroom speaking strategies, embodied in typical predictable patterns, successfully serve these functions? And to which extent should those traditional patterns allow predictability and control in managing classroom interaction? In this paper the focus is driven towards the ways the classroom teacher can orchestrate and support a kind of classroom discourse that engenders more active student talk that leads to foreign language learning. A particular emphasis is put on the use of the Triadic Dialogue, known as IRF (initiation-response-follow-up) pattern, the value of which has been debated in writings on language education. It has attracted criticism for being ritualistic and restrictive, although recent research has pointed to the range of functions that may be fulfilled by the follow-up move. The paper examines the constituents and possible sub-genres of the three-part classroom exchange and aims to prove that a certain degree of freedom is possible within the constraints of the Triadic Dialogue. Drawing on recorded episodes of teacher-students interaction in adult EFL classroom, the paper will show that the three-part pattern allows spontaneous variations and extensions initiated both by teachers and students. The variety of forms that the basic IRF structure can take enriches the linguistic repertoire of choices in the co-constructed classroom reality.

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Historical Linguistics Applied: Finno-Ugric Narratives in Finland and Estonia

Author(s): Łukasz Sommer / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2014

Finno-Ugricity is one of the linguistic concepts whose meaning and usage have been extended beyond the boundaries of linguistics and applied in identity-building projects. The geographically and historically related cases of Finland and Estonia provide a good illustration of the uses of linguistic scholarship in the service of nationalism. More elusive than ties of “Slavic kinship” and not as easily translatable into a pan-ethnic ideology, the concept of Finno-Ugric kinship has nevertheless had a steady presence in the development of Finnish and Estonian identities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, entangling the two countries’ linguistic traditions in a web of national engagements. In both cases, the original idea of linguistic kinship was subject to non-linguistic interpretations so as to highlight and contextualize various aspects of the Finnish and Estonian self-images, notions of collective past, and cultural heritage. In both cases, the concept proved highly flexible.

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