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The interest in monitoring and analyzing the speech messages in the context of the coronavirus pandemic is due to two hypotheses related to the responsible Bulgarian institutions, some medical workers and media. The first is that they do not have enough knowledge and skills to select and direct useful and correct information in crisis situation. The second hypothesis is that they do not present appropriate mechanisms for the formation of socially useful behavior in moments of required mass mobilization in a certain direction. I look for a reason for both hypotheses in the media messages related to the pandemic. That is why in this article I make the comparison between two French and two Bulgarian newspapers, as the excerpted material was taken only within one day, something like a snapshot. The comparison shows that the French have a unified speech strategy for reaching the reader and forming public opinion, while in the Bulgarian ones it is partially or completely absent.
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The paper traces the long-term influence of the French language on the formation of Bulgarian phraseology. Distinct periods during which the French influence on Bulgarian is especially strong are analyzed. Hypotheses of individual scholars about the calquing of French phrasemes both in Bulgarian and internationally are commented on. Idioms, conventional metaphors and metonymies, loan translations of verb paraphrases, and other types of collocations are discussed. Since the French influence is both literary and oral in Bulgarian from the National Revival Period to the present day, both slang and colloquial expressions based on the French model are used. Through a comparative study of a translation done during the Revival, an attempt is made to outline the specifics of borrowing in the field of phraseology in the years before the Liberation.
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The paper is aimed at studying the results of Ukrainian scientists who developed the theory and practice of suggestopedia.The ideas of the outstanding Bulgarian scholar G. Lozanov serve as the foundation of modern linguistics, including the directions of suggestive language didactics, linguistics of influence, psychological and neurological and marketing linguistics. Thanks to Lozanov's contribution, researchers have learned to find suggestive components in political messages, analyze strategic narratives, find hidden aspects in religious texts, better understand the applied nature of some folk genres and more. The special anthropological value of Lozanov's approaches is objectified by the development of neuroscience, where a person is often positioned as a functionary with electronic chips. Instead, Lozanov's man is a free, conscious and loving man. Although research on suggestion is growing in the scientific literature, there is still a significant gap in this topic, in particular on theoretical and empirical developments on the impact of suggestion on various aspects of communication. A review of recent publications on suggestopedic topics shows that the interest in G. Lozanov’s approaches does not fade and is nourished by the pedagogical search for educational paradigms which are adequate to the real needs of life and capable of combining tradition with innovation. The article presents different approaches to Lozanov's discoveries and aims to encourage new discourses into the area of the linguistic programming of personality.
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This is not only the general communicative competence, but also professional competence to converse. That gives us confidence to further actively research working pedagogical study models. In the course of one academic year, we have been developing such dynamic model with the medical students (who study Medicine in English), taking part in the freely chosen discipline “Bulgarian for medical purposes”. At this stage we have the following goals: to verify problematic areas in communication in professional environment and during practice; applying together conventional and innovative methods, instruments, and forms of education and proposing ways to improve the educational process; interdisciplinary approach to realize successful communicative competence by creating a direct connection between theory and practice. At the end of the academic year, we thus define the parameters of the results of the communicative competence in Bulgarian for professional communication. Achieving excellent communicative competence of the foreign students for a year is a key factor for checking the results.
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The standard form Bulghar, with which Bulgarians and the Land of the Bulgarians (Bulgaria) are recorded in medieval Armenian texts, has been established as traditional only since the 11th century. Until then, there were several attested variations, while the oldest form in the earliest Armenian texts was Bulkar, with “k” instead of “gh” (Movses Khorenatsi’s “History of the Armenians”, circa 482 AD), with parallel variants Bolkar and Blkar in the expanded version of the geography Ashkharats’uits’ of Anania Shirakatsi, who lived in the 7th century AD. This characteristic of the earliest Armenian records of the name “Bulgarians” puts an end to the speculation that the form Bulghar in some copies of the history of Movses Khorenatsi proves that his “Bulgarian passages” are a late interpolation making their reliability disputable. On the other hand, the parallel forms Bulkar, Bolkar and Blkar in Ashkharats’uits’ are a valuable indication that different Proto-Bulgarian groups have pronounced the name “Bulgarians” differently. The last leads to the hypothesis of the existence of dialectal differences among the Proto-Bulgarian tribes in the 7th century and even earlier.
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The use of translanguaging strategies in written Bulgarian discourse is continually expanding and this expansion ultimately affects the Bulgarian language system in one way or another. The present paper focuses on 42 instances of translanguaging taken from Bulgarian-language lifestyle magazines and online advertisements. On the one hand, the aim is to illustrate the interrelatedness between translanguaging and linguistic creativity and, on the other hand, to identify what economy effects could be achieved by applying translanguaging strategies in written Bulgarian discourse. The collected samples have been classified and described in such a way as to see how the phenomenon of translanguaging has currently affected the Bulgarian language system.
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The purpose of this study is to identify the pieces of biographical information that are most relevant for the study of Russian as a heritage language. It builds on a review of questionnaires for studying linguistic biographies that are currently used in articles and methodological materials by different researchers. We perform a critical analysis and comparison of these questionnaires, which aims at a more systematic and condensed approach to the gathering of relevant sociolinguistic data. This comparison showed that the most relevant types of biographical information are the following: (a) general biographical information, including data on the acquisition and proficiency in the languages of the participants, (b) information on language use in different communicative domains by the informant, (c) data on the attitudes of the informant towards the heritage language, and the language of the country of residence, (d) data on the informant's self-assessment of proficiency in the heritage language in general and mastery of basic skills. The research results can be useful not only for studying heritage languages, but also with a little refinement to studies on second and third language acquisition.
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In the present experimental study second-year students majoring in “Agricultural Engineering” and “Electrical engineering” revise for the Unified Entrance Exam to join the Master course. Both groups learn vocabulary through the online vocabulary learning platform Quizlet. In contrast, to control group the experimental group entered not isolated words, but words in chunks according to the lexical approach. To compare students’ progress in vocabulary acquisition the Student’s t-test was used. The results show that the first hypothesis should be taken into consideration: there is a significant difference in the average indicators in the groups. Learning words in chunks had a significant effect on the test scores and, consequently, increases the chances to pass the Unified Entrance Exam and do postgraduate studies.
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In instructional settings, the term gamification refers to the use of game-based elements to increase learner motivation and involvement. This study aimed to get insight into how adult learners of English perceive gamified activities incorporated into their English language course, and whether player types as defined by Bartle (1996) - explorers, achievers, socializers, and killers – affect student attitudes to specific gamification elements (rules, time limit, challenges, leaderboard, awards, bonuses, and badges). The results showed a high level of student support (97%) for gamified language instruction. A significant difference was observed between player types regarding their attitudes to certain gamification elements and player types. Challenges were highly rated by the explorers (p = 0.006); leaderboards by the killers (p = 0.049), and time limit by the achievers (p = 0.009). The conclusion is that player types and preferences should be surveyed and considered when designing gamified learning activities.
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The article presents a study concerning the development and testing of innovative educational approaches for developing language competences of engineering students. The study was carried out among 1st and 2nd year students of the specialty „Technical Mechanics“ at the University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy (UCTM) – Sofia, Bulgaria. An original bilingual educational tool was developed for this purpose. It was designed to support and improve the learning process in specialized foreign language classes.
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The article analyzes the current Bulgarian language curricula in primary and secondary education. A number of problems are pointed out both in the curricula and in the overall process of teaching Bulgarian from the 1st to the 12th grade. Consequently, measures which could significantly improve the quality of the educational process are proposed. The level of the Bulgarian language education at school and in higher education has a leading role in raising the authority of the Bulgarian language, in making the native Bulgarian speakers literate and in preserving the national and the cultural identity of the Bulgarians in the globalizing world.
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This paper dwells on maritime terminology and the relationships defining “oppositeness of meaning” in it. It briefly retraces some theoretical assumptions in the sphere of antonymy and offers a classification of antonyms from a morphological and semantic point of view. The examples given are excerpted from documented materials standardized and consistent within the area of shipping and discussed and systematized using the lexico-semantic method. The findings in this study can be applicable when teaching English maritime terminology.
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F0 is an important cue present in all vocalic segments, a parameter to differentiate between voiced and voiceless consonants, a relative phonological feature of syllable in tonal languages and a crucial feature of intonation. This paper aims to investigate pitch variation patterns in Mandarin Chinese depending on the syllable information load (Factor 1) in one type of discourse – advertising with the subdivision into social and commercial ads (Factor 2) considering gender differences (Factor 3). 1249 syllable tokens were selected for acoustic measurements, each syllable occurring twice – in the informative and uninformative utterance parts. The information load was determined perceptually: the syllable was considered informative when agreed by the minimum of 60% of listeners, other syllables were considered uninformative. Depending on lexical tone (T1 – T4 and T0), the measurements included average pitch values, declination/inclination starting and ending points (mean values). These parameters were used to judge about relevant pitch features – average height and declination/inclination slope. As a result, a consistent parameter increase in commercial ads vs. social ads and on informative syllables vs. uninformative ones was observed for all tones except T0 that showed the opposite trend in expressing information-based partition. Another finding was tone substitution that marked both informative and uninformative parts but was more frequent in the latter. Substitute tone frequency ranks did not depend on any of the three factors except for T0. High predictability of pitch variation patterns make them applicable in teaching Chinese as L2 in terms of speaking and listening for general and specific purposes.
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This article examines the results of a study in the discipline “Technical Mechanics”. This study was conducted among 1st and 2nd year students from the University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy (UCTM), vocational field 5.10 “Chemical Technology”. This paper is the continuation of a previous experiment conducted by the authors, and concerning the study of thesaurus and development of language competences among students from engineering specialties. The present study was conducted during the past academic year at the UCTM. A multilingual educational tool was developed and applied in order to support and improve the learning process in specialized foreign language classes. The motive is to ascertain the effectiveness of the experimental educational tool for the students.
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The last two years saw a dramatic increase in the use of digital classrooms due to the new pandemic realities. Internet platforms and social networks offer teachers many options for interacting with their students and colleagues. Online communication differs from face-to-face communication in many aspects and for linguadidactic purposes should be reconsidered from a sociolinguistic point of view. The aim of the study is to explore sociolinguistic aspects of teachers’ nature in online intercultural communication. The study relies on a questionnaire and interviews to collect data about students’ level of sociolinguistic awareness, their ideas about professional online interaction, and their views on sociolinguistic difficulties. The research provides a comparative analysis of the sociolinguistic competence status in Russian and European methodology. The paper introduces the list of internal and external features that influence interlocutors’ sociolinguistic behavior during intercultural communication online. The results suggest that there are a lot of digital factors that determine the communication outcome. The term “sociolinguistic credo” and its definition are presented. It is admitted that external and internal peculiarities should be taken into account in order to train future foreign language teachers effectively. There should be equality of cultures, especially on the Internet where it is easy to lose all cultures behind avatars.
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Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to apply a multidimensional comprehensive instrument to evaluate the overall impact of stuttering (OASES-A)from the perspective of adults who stutter (AWS) who completed one of two intensive stuttering therapies: The La Trobe prolonged speech program and Van Riper’s non avoidance approach. Methods: The OASES-A was applied to evaluate participants’ perceptions of their experience of stuttering with the specific aim of compare the changes in the experience of stuttering following two intensive treatments. An essential element in post-treatment evaluation are changes in the speaker’s self reported quality of life. Results: OASES-A group results regarding the La Trobe and Van Riper intensive treatment outcomes show positive changes in stuttering experience for 27 AWS in four sections: 1) general information on stuttering; 2)reactions to stuttering; 3) communication in daily situations; and 4) quality of life. Conclusions: The article represents the first English-language documentation ofthe Bulgarian results of OASES-A application of previously conducted intensive treatments. OASES-A outcomes show significantly greater overall improvement and changes in the four sections that relate to the experience of stuttering following two intensive treatments. As a research-based instrument for assessment of quality of life in AWS, the OASES-A was easy to administer and analyze. The OASES-A describes in substantial detail the experience and influence that stuttering exerts on quality of life from the client’s perspective. Its application was preferred because it assists speech-language pathology Master’s degree students to recognize the speech needs, abilities, preferences, and interests of AWS.
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Study objects are dialogues in French and English language learning systems. Studied are techniques of constructing dialogicity in them and the patterns of verbal behaviour recommended in tense, conflictual or apparently calm situations in which the 'ritual equilibrium' between participants is disturbed. This approach provides an opportunity to become familiar with the functioning of different communicative tools used to overcome difficulties in a real environment. The study draws attention to some cultural and interactional specificities of verbal communication that highlight common attitudes and skills of participants as well as communicative intentions and goals in different situations.
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