Writing development during study abroad

Author(s):  
Carola Strobl ◽  
Kristof Baten

Abstract Previous research on the benefits of study abroad (SA) has mainly focused on oral communication skills and L2 English, while written communication and other foreign languages have received far less attention. This study addresses this gap by investigating writing development in L2 German. It also aims to further the discussion about methods to assess writing development by combining different types of data. The writing gains of 30 Belgian students in L2 German were investigated after one semester abroad. Pre- and post-SA writing samples were analysed using linguistic and task-related assessment criteria. The results are triangulated with data about self-perceived language gains, on the one hand, and self-reported language contact and social networks during SA, on the other. The results indicate a correlation between self-report writing gains, language contact, and social networks.

Author(s):  
Leonarda Myslihaka

Knowing at least one foreign language has become almost a necessity. However, in learning a foreign language, communication definitely plays a crucial role. Moreover, without communication there is no interaction, language teaching or learning. Communication is considered as very important and more and more is used as a useful tool to organize a pupil – centered lesson. In this article is treated the need to strengthen and highlight the communicative aspects in teaching foreign language, in our case French language, for a better learning of the language. The objective of learning a foreign language is to develop at pupils the communicative competences in this language. More and more we are going towards a method where communication is the one that realizes successfully the process of teaching and learning. The hypothesis that is set in the article is: Is communication the core element in teaching and learning a foreign language? Other research questions and cases that will be treated are: Communication methods of the foreign languages. What communicative skills are required to develop at pupils/students who learn a foreign language and the strategies of their lessons?; Linguistic competences and their communication role; Communication and the importance of interaction; Oral communication in teaching / learning French language, in the French and Italian language department, in “Aleksandër Xhuvani” university, Elbasan.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Carnine

Today close to one third of the world’s internationally mobile student population is from China, and as the trend for Chinese to study abroad grows exponentially, newer destination countries are added, some of them non-Anglophone, such as France. Regardless of where they study, Chinese students have a reputation for sticking together when abroad and for not mixing with locals. Yet what types of relationship actually come into being now that Chinese are going abroad in such unprecedented numbers? This paper is based on a broader empirical study conducted in 2011-12 from fieldwork in France, the United States, and China (N = 180) and again in 2015 in France (N = 10). The study uses a mixed-method approach based on quantitative Social Network Analysis (sna) and 25 qualitative interviews to analyze the composition of students’ social networks. The paper focuses on Chinese studying in France (N = 55). By examining different types of relationships, how they are initiated, and how resources are shared, the paper discusses how internationally mobile Chinese students interact socially, on the one hand with non-Chinese (French nationals or other international persons) and, on the other, with local Chinese immigrants. The results show that students form strong co-national relationships among themselves but not with established ethnic and migrant Chinese communities in France. As for transnational relationships, individual will and the institutional frameworks for studying abroad that underpin language and accommodation choices are found to play crucial roles in fostering local contacts with non-Chinese.今天跨国流动的学生总人数中有三分之一来自中国。然而,中国留学生有自我封闭,不同所在国当地人交往的名声。由此提出了在庞大的海外中国留学生群体中,他们的社会关系类型的问题。基于社会网络分析 (sna) 方法,我们于 2011-12 年在法国,美国和中国,2015 年在法国进行的实证研究,运用混合方法来分析中国留学生的社会网络构成。本文侧重分析中国留学生样本 (N = 55) 在法国的情况,讨论中国留学生内部,他们与其他国际学生,他们并与当地华人移民的社会交往互动。结果表明中国留学生内部之间频繁的合作关系起着关键作用,但它并不属于传统上意义上的海外华人网络。中国留学生跨国关系的形成有赖于他们的个人意愿和留学制度框架,并对他们同当地非华人的接触交往起到了至关重要的促进作用。This article is in Chinese Language


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Leonarda Myslihaka

Knowing at least one foreign language has become almost a necessity. However, in learning a foreign language, communication definitely plays a crucial role. Moreover, without communication there is no interaction, language teaching or learning. Communication is considered as very important and more and more is used as a useful tool to organize a pupil – centered lesson. In this article is treated the need to strengthen and highlight the communicative aspects in teaching foreign language, in our case French language, for a better learning of the language. The objective of learning a foreign language is to develop at pupils the communicative competences in this language. More and more we are going towards a method where communication is the one that realizes successfully the process of teaching and learning. The hypothesis that is set in the article is: Is communication the core element in teaching and learning a foreign language? Other research questions and cases that will be treated are: Communication methods of the foreign languages. What communicative skills are required to develop at pupils/students who learn a foreign language and the strategies of their lessons?; Linguistic competences and their communication role; Communication and the importance of interaction; Oral communication in teaching / learning French language, in the French and Italian language department, in “Aleksandër Xhuvani” university, Elbasan.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832110306
Author(s):  
Rosamond Mitchell

A major rationale for study abroad (SA) from the perspective of second language acquisition is the presumed opportunity available to sojourners for naturalistic second language (L2) “immersion”. However, such opportunities are affected by variations in the linguistic, institutional and social affordances of SA, in different settings. They are also affected by the varying agency and motivation of sojourners in seeking second language (L2) engagement. For example, many sojourners prioritize mastering informal L2 speech, while others prioritize academic and professional registers including writing. Most will operate multilingually, using their home language, a local language, and/or English as lingua franca for different purposes, and the types of input they seek out, and language practices they enter into, vary accordingly. Consequently, while researchers have developed varied approaches to documenting L2 engagement, and have tried to relate these to measures of L2 development, these efforts have so far seen somewhat mixed success. This article reviews different approaches to documenting SA input and interaction; first, that of participant self-report, using questionnaires, interviews, journals, or language logs. Particular attention is paid to the popular Language Contact Profile (LCP), and to approaches drawing on Social Network Analysis. The limitations of all forms of self-report are acknowledged. The article also examines the contribution of direct observation and recording of L2 input and interaction during SA. This is a significant alternative approach for the study of acquisition, but one which poses theoretical, ethical and practical challenges. Researchers have increasingly enlisted participants as research collaborators who create small corpora through self-recording with L2 interlocutors. Analyses in this tradition have so far prioritized interactional, pragmatic and sociocultural development, in learner corpora, over other dimensions of second language acquisition (SLA). The theoretical and practical challenges of corpus creation in SA settings and their wider use to promote understandings of informal L2 learning are discussed.


2019 ◽  
pp. 145-156

The article analyses the game method, as a method of teaching consecutive interpretation of senior students of a language university. At present, the role of the interpreter as an intercultural intermediary is growing, that implies the mastery of students’ skills in interpretation activities in various communication situations. The exercises-games presented in the article allow teachers to model different types of interpretation situations in the classroom and promote the willingness of future interpreters to carry out interpretation activities in real conditions of intercultural communication.The relevance of the purposeful formation of students' skills in consecutive interpreting is caused, on the one hand, by increased requirements for professional training of an interpreter in the context of reforming the teaching of foreign languages at universities and, on the other hand, insufficiently systematic teaching this important type of interpreting activity to students. In order to increase the effectiveness of teaching students of a language university consecutive interpreting (CI), it is necessary to use various exercises that take into account the psychological characteristics of under taking interpreting activities. As the practitioners of interpreting claim, the specifics of an interpreter’s work is that (s)he often has to deal with subject areas that (s)he is far from due to his/her humanitarian linguistic education. That is why specialists in the field of interpretation training recommend constant expanding their horizons, trying to learn as much as possible special terminology associated with various industries and scientific knowledge. The method described in the article contribute to the process of developing students’ skills and expanding their background knowledge.


2021 ◽  
pp. 70-76
Author(s):  
Н.А. Козловцева ◽  
Н.Н. Толстова

Интенсификация процессов виртуализации образовательного пространства и пандемия COVID-19 сделали вынужденным поиск новых способов онлайн-взаимодействия с обучающимися. Остро встал вопрос обеспечения качества обучения РКИ в социальных сетях, прежде всего в Instagram. С одной стороны, преподавание РКИ должно соответствовать принципам обучения, а с другой – в Instagram существуют собственные правила и особенности взаимодействия с аудиторией, которые необходимо учитывать при разработке материалов. Являясь не образовательной платформой, а социальной сетью, Instagram привлекает пользователей, более ориентированных на развлечение, чем на получение знаний, что также накладывает определенные ограничения на обучение. В статье на примере созданного авторами аккаунта pRUve.your.RUssian рассматривается реализация принципов обучения РКИ с учетом целевой аудитории, а также описываются возможности использования материала данной страницы в традиционной аудиторной и внеаудиторной работе. In connection with the intensification of the processes of virtualization of the educational space, as well as with the global pandemic COVID-19, which made it necessary to search for new ways of online interaction with students, teachers of foreign languages, including RFL, began to use more actively as additional tools in their work. social networks, primarily Instagram. For this reason, the quality of RCI education in this social network has become an urgent issue. On the one hand, teaching RFL should comply with the principles of teaching RFL, and on the other hand, Instagram has its own rules and features of interaction with the audience, which must be taken into account when developing materials. Also, being not an educational platform but a social network, Instagram attracts users who are more entertainment-oriented than learning-oriented, which also places certain restrictions on learning. Using the pRUve.your.RUssian account created by the authors as an example, this article examines the implementation of the principles of teaching RFL taking into account the target audience, and also describes the possibilities of using the material on this page in traditional classroom and extracurricular work.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nada Šabec

The paper focuses on Slovene - English language contact and the potential language change resulting from it. Both the immigrant context (the U.S. and Canada) and Slovenia, where direct and indirect language contact can be observed respectively, are examined from two perspectives: social on the one hand and linguistic on the other. In the case of Slovene Americans and Canadians the emphasis is on language maintenance and shift, and on the relationship between mother tongue preservation and ethnic awareness. The linguistic section examines different types of bilingual discourse (borrowing, code switching), showing how the Slovene inflectional system in particular is being increasingly generalized, simplified and reduced, and how Slovene word order is gradually beginning to resemble that of English. In the case of Slovenia we are witnessing an unprecedented surge in the influence of English on Slovene, especially in the media (both classic and electronic), advertising, science, and the language of the young. This influence will be discussed on a number of levels, such as lexical, syntactic and intercultural, and illustrated by relevant examples.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 1231-1242
Author(s):  
Celeste Domsch ◽  
Lori Stiritz ◽  
Jay Huff

Purpose This study used a mixed-methods design to assess changes in students' cultural awareness during and following a short-term study abroad. Method Thirty-six undergraduate and graduate students participated in a 2-week study abroad to England during the summers of 2016 and 2017. Quantitative data were collected using standardized self-report measures administered prior to departure and after returning to the United States and were analyzed using paired-samples t tests. Qualitative data were collected in the form of daily journal reflections during the trip and interviews after returning to the United States and analyzed using phenomenological methods. Results No statistically significant changes were evident on any standardized self-report measures once corrections for multiple t tests were applied. In addition, a ceiling effect was found on one measure. On the qualitative measures, themes from student transcripts included increased global awareness and a sense of personal growth. Conclusions Measuring cultural awareness poses many challenges. One is that social desirability bias may influence responses. A second is that current measures of cultural competence may exhibit ceiling or floor effects. Analysis of qualitative data may be more useful in examining effects of participation in a short-term study abroad, which appears to result in decreased ethnocentrism and increased global awareness in communication sciences and disorders students. Future work may wish to consider the long-term effects of participation in a study abroad for emerging professionals in the field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-127
Author(s):  
Rossella Maraffino

Abstract In this paper, I will deal with the diffusion pattern of the progressive periphrases (PROGPER) attested in the minority languages that are present in the areas of Swiss Grisons, Trentino-Alto Adige and Friulian Carnia. I will individualize on the one hand the vectors of diffusion between the standard languages and the minority varieties; on the other hand, I will explain the mechanism of adaptation or re-elaboration of the borrowed structure in the replica language. Finally, I will pinpoint which of this structure replication seems to be the result of an internal development witnessed in the Alpine area.


Cancers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1333
Author(s):  
Benjamin Motais ◽  
Sandra Charvátová ◽  
Matouš Hrdinka ◽  
Michal Šimíček ◽  
Tomáš Jelínek ◽  
...  

Hematological malignancies comprise over a hundred different types of cancers and account for around 6.5% of all cancers. Despite the significant improvements in diagnosis and treatment, many of those cancers remain incurable. In recent years, cancer cell-based therapy has become a promising approach to treat those incurable hematological malignancies with striking results in different clinical trials. The most investigated, and the one that has advanced the most, is the cell-based therapy with T lymphocytes modified with chimeric antigen receptors. Those promising initial results prepared the ground to explore other cell-based therapies to treat patients with blood cancer. In this review, we want to provide an overview of the different types of cell-based therapies in blood cancer, describing them according to the cell source.


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