scholarly journals The Madness of Imagining New Worlds

Author(s):  
Mercedes Ariza ◽  
Maria Giovanna Biscu ◽  
María Isabel Fernándes García

This paper presents some reflections that emerged from a research project developed in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (SITLeC) of the University of Bologna. This three-stage project was based on language mediator training and the teaching/acquisition of intercultural communicative competence through theatre. During an eight-month workshop, a group of Italian students – beginners in Spanish – engaged in a series of extracurricular activities, resulting in the public performance of a play written in verse by Lope de Vega. Under the researchers’ supervision, students analysed the play from a linguistic and (inter)cultural perspective, giving special emphasis to the discovery of the other, the encounter of the Old and the New World and the miscommunication caused by lack of understanding in intercultural situations. All these aspects helped students to explore a wide range of verbal and nonverbal communicative strategies, as well as to increase their foreign language proficiency and develop empathy. The in-depth analysis of the play and of the emblematic character of Columbus, whose imagination is capable of inventing new worlds even before discovering them, showed students that the real shipwreck in intercultural encounters is incommunicability itself and that, in order to communicate, one needs to be an ‘apostate translator’. This paper presents some reflections that emerged from a research project developed in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (SITLeC) of the University of Bologna. This three-stage project was based on language mediator training and the teaching/acquisition of intercultural communicative competence through theatre. During an eight-month workshop, a group of Italian students – beginners in Spanish – engaged in a series of extracurricular activities, resulting in the public performance of a play written in verse by Lope de Vega. Under the researchers’ supervision, students analysed the play from a linguistic and (inter)cultural perspective, giving special emphasis to the discovery of the other, the encounter of the Old and the New World and the miscommunication caused by lack of understanding in intercultural situations. All these aspects helped students to explore a wide range of verbal and nonverbal communicative strategies, as well as to increase their foreign language proficiency and develop empathy. The in-depth analysis of the play and of the emblematic character of Columbus, whose imagination is capable of inventing new worlds even before discovering them, showed students that the real shipwreck in intercultural encounters is incommunicability itself and that, in order to communicate, one needs to be an ‘apostate translator’.

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (193) ◽  
pp. 432-439
Author(s):  
Oksana Samusenko ◽  

This paper deals with the methodology of teaching foreign languages, in particular Russian as a foreign one. The article presents an analysis of animated movies as one of the ways to motivate students to increase their speech activity and to form their communicative competence. The author learns an animation as an educational material in foreign languages teaching practice. As well the paper focuses on a linguo-methodological potential of animation and on variants of motivational exercises based on the animated movies material. The animated movies value in foreign languages teaching practice lies in the fact that the material is authentic and not made for educational goals initially; combines visual and auditory information; is a source for familiarity with culturally specific vocabulary; provides a wide range of opportunities for mastering grammatical constructions, different intentions and communicative strategies; develops listening and speaking, as well as reading and writing skills through the use of motivational exercises. Effectiveness of using such animated materials in teaching foreign languages and achievement of learning results, first of all, depends on coherent compliance of the principles selection. The main requirements are conformity of the proposed material to the level of language proficiency, a possibility to develop communicative skills, socio-cultural context. Precedence, ethical value and humorous component of a text are important as well. Based on the material of animations the author suggests such motivational tasks: predicting from a name or a picture, animated movie dubbing, staging of separate episodes, imagining life of characters, interviewing characters, retelling on behalf of each character, story-telling based on the pictures or screenshots of the animated movies, creating memes, blogging on behalf of a character, making a local map and giving a tour, making a quote book, quest based on an animated movie, various discussions and other role plays.


This book opens a cross-regional dialogue and shifts the Eurocentric discussion on diversity and integration to a more inclusive engagement with South America in private international law issues. It promotes a contemporary vision of private international law as a discipline enabling legal interconnectivity, with the potential to transcend its disciplinary boundaries to further promote the reality of cross-border integration, with its focus on the ever-increasing cross-border mobility of individuals. Private international law embraces legal diversity and pluralism. Different legal traditions continue to meet, interact and integrate in different forms, at the national, regional and international levels. Different systems of substantive law couple with divergent systems of private international law (designed to accommodate the former in cross-border situations). This complex legal landscape impacts individuals and families in cross-border scenarios, and international commerce broadly conceived. Private international law methodologies and techniques offer means for the coordination of this constellation of legal orders and value systems in cross-border situations. Bringing together world-renowned academics and experienced private international lawyers from a wide range of jurisdictions in Europe and South America, this edited collection focuses on the connective capabilities of private international law in bridging and balancing legal diversity as a corollary for the development of integration. The book provides in-depth analysis of the role of private international law in dealing with legal diversity across a diverse range of topics and jurisdictions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibtissame Khaoua ◽  
Guillaume Graciani ◽  
Andrey Kim ◽  
François Amblard

AbstractFor a wide range of purposes, one faces the challenge to detect light from extremely faint and spatially extended sources. In such cases, detector noises dominate over the photon noise of the source, and quantum detectors in photon counting mode are generally the best option. Here, we combine a statistical model with an in-depth analysis of detector noises and calibration experiments, and we show that visible light can be detected with an electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices (EM-CCD) with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 3 for fluxes less than $$30\,{\text{photon}}\,{\text{s}}^{ - 1} \,{\text{cm}}^{ - 2}$$ 30 photon s - 1 cm - 2 . For green photons, this corresponds to 12 aW $${\text{cm}}^{ - 2}$$ cm - 2 ≈ $$9{ } \times 10^{ - 11}$$ 9 × 10 - 11 lux, i.e. 15 orders of magnitude less than typical daylight. The strong nonlinearity of the SNR with the sampling time leads to a dynamic range of detection of 4 orders of magnitude. To detect possibly varying light fluxes, we operate in conditions of maximal detectivity $${\mathcal{D}}$$ D rather than maximal SNR. Given the quantum efficiency $$QE\left( \lambda \right)$$ Q E λ of the detector, we find $${ \mathcal{D}} = 0.015\,{\text{photon}}^{ - 1} \,{\text{s}}^{1/2} \,{\text{cm}}$$ D = 0.015 photon - 1 s 1 / 2 cm , and a non-negligible sensitivity to blackbody radiation for T > 50 °C. This work should help design highly sensitive luminescence detection methods and develop experiments to explore dynamic phenomena involving ultra-weak luminescence in biology, chemistry, and material sciences.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Vijay Pundalik Bhangale ◽  
Maithili Prashant Dhuri

Subject area Marketing. Study level/applicability MBA Marketing Class. Case overview The case describes the transition of a “Galvanized Wires Business of Tata Steel” into a unique identity, the'Tata Wiron' brand. It focuses on key stages in this journey, including “Understanding the Customers in Galvanized Wires Business”, “Value Chain”, “Challenges Faced”, “Need for Branding”, “Market Segmentation”, “Competition”, “Process of Branding”, “Differentiation”, “Distribution & Sales” and “Promotion”. Tata Steel Wires Business is a major player in the steel wire industry, servicing the discerning needs of its customers across global markets and the leading producer of steel wires in India. A wealth of experience and expertise in the wire industry coupled with latest technology incorporations has enabled Tata Steel Wires Division to constantly meet the most exacting specifications and requirements of its customers. It manufactures a wide range of wires catering to the needs of various industry segments, such as automobile, infrastructure, power and general engineering. The products are well established across the markets of Europe, the USA, Middle East Asia, Australasia, South Asia and Asia and the Far East. Expected learning outcomes The expected learning outcomes are as follows: understanding how in-depth analysis of the competition and value chain establishes the need for branding in a commodity market; understanding how consumer insights help in market segmentation and targeting; and building a brand in commodity market. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 580-587
Author(s):  
Z. Bekmambetova ◽  

This article discusses the methodological system of studying paremias in Russian language lessons. Linguistic and cultural analysis of paremia allows us to identify the existing value-significant representations of an ethnic group based on accumulated information of a cultural and historical nature, first of all, about a person in the aggregate of certain properties, qualities, activities, and his attitude to the world. Paremias are aphorisms of folk origin, characterized by conciseness of form, reproducibility of meaning and having, as a rule, an edifying meaning. Paremia is a unique object for the study of language and culture, the purpose of which is to study cultural layers in the structure of the meaning of language units. Paremia is capable not only of expressing a conclusion, but also of forming generalized ideas about the laws of life. Since paremias are part of the national language picture of the world, and therefore part of the national language mentality, in this case, in our opinion, it is also possible to talk about the existence of a proverbial mentality, that is, the mentality of the nation, reflected in the paremiological Fund. When studying the discipline “Russian language”, students have the opportunity to master the skills of linguistic and cultural analysis of language units, get acquainted with different types of exercises and tasks, prepare to apply the acquired skills and implement the skills in regular, extracurricular and extracurricular activities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fayadh Hamed Alanazi

The purpose of this research was to explore and compare the ideas of Saudi boys and girls on animal species. Eighty-four children (comprising 42 boys and 42 girls), aged nine years, from four primary schools, participated in structured interviews to determine their ideas pertaining to taxonomic labels, namely ‘animal’, ‘fish’, ‘amphibian’, ‘reptile’, ‘bird’, ‘mammal’, and ‘insect’. The results demonstrated that Saudi children of both genders display a wide range of alternative conceptions; more specifically, the effect of gender was significant for all taxonomic vertebrate labels, suggesting that Saudi boys have better knowledge relating to animals than girls. However, generally, children did not have adequate forms of reasoning for biological classification. It was also found that none of the fourth graders thought of humans as animals due to the Islamic science worldview. Based on these findings, it is argued that science education, notably in an international context, should strive to incorporate an understanding of local values and beliefs. Keywords: early year's science, animal taxonomy, socio-cultural perspective, Islamic science worldview


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamal Al-Qawasmi ◽  
Muhammad Saeed ◽  
Omar S. Asfour ◽  
Adel S. Aldosary

Urban quality of life (QOL) is a complex and multidimensional concept. A wide range of urban QOL assessment tools has been developed worldwide to measure and monitor the quality of urban life taking into account the particular conditions of cities/regions and the needs of their residents. This study aims to develop an urban QOL assessment tool appropriate for the context of Saudi Arabia (SA). For this purpose, this study developed and used a structured approach that consists of an in-depth analysis of 21 urban QOL assessment tools in use worldwide, combined with focus group analysis and feedback from a panel of experts. The results revealed that there is a lack of consensus among the existing tools regarding the usage of QOL indicators and domains, and that the majority of the tools demonstrate a lack of proper coverage of QOL subdomains. The results also show wide variations in the number of indicators used and that most of the examined tools are using objective measurable indicators. This study has identified 67 indicators distributed across 13 domains that constitute the core criteria of the proposed QOL assessment tool. The selected indicators and domains cover all the attributes of urban QOL and are evaluated by experts as important criteria to assess/measure QOL. Moreover, the results demonstrate the advantage of the developed framework and comprehensive list of criteria (CLC) as a structured and efficient approach to design better QOL assessment tools.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 356-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Álvarez-García ◽  
Amador Durán-Sánchez ◽  
María de la Cruz del Río-Rama

Purpose Since Masaaki Imai coined the term Kaizen in the mid-1980s, it has been seen as a key element for the competitiveness of Japanese companies, and it is currently a widely discussed philosophy and is applied in a wide range of organizations throughout the world. The purpose of this paper is to serve as guidance for researchers who are developing their studies in the field of the Kaizen philosophy, in order to improve their knowledge on the most relevant articles, the most productive authors or the key scientific journals that make up this subject. Design/methodology/approach In order to fulfill the proposed objective, a descriptive bibliometric study was carried out with the analysis of citations from 138 articles included in the multidisciplinary database Scopus (Elsevier) until 2016. For the search of documents, a tracking strategy was chosen that allowed for the development of the ad hoc database required to analyze each of the basic variables of the bibliometric indicators. Findings The results obtained show a growing interest of the scientific community in its study in the last decade, as shown by the significant increase in citations received by articles, despite the reduction in the number of papers published in the last two years. Research limitations/implications The main limitations are derived from the choice of a specific database, as well as the specific search equation. Originality/value The study presents an in-depth analysis of the current state of research regarding the Kaizen philosophy through its bibliometric study, providing useful information for academics and professionals by providing a series of significant indicators to measure the bibliographic material.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 789-797
Author(s):  
Imdad Ullah Khan ◽  
Rafique Ahmed Memon ◽  
Mansoor Khan ◽  
Sidra Amina ◽  
Saood Khan

Purpose of the study: This study aims to build the capacity of a learner as a "global citizen," language teaching needs to focus on building the 5 C's of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities along with language proficiency. The present study analyzes English language textbook contents taught at the secondary school level in Pakistan's postcolonial and multilingual context. Methodology: Identity and otherization are used as key heuristic tools to analyze the ideological texture of the focal texts and their influence on adolescent learners' emerging identities. Main Findings: Data analysis in the current article shows that texts in the textbook promote strong in-group identities. Exercises and activities for students focus on lexico-syntactical aspects of the texts. The communicative and intercultural skills of the students are not stimulated in the textbook. Applications of this study: This study can be useful for improving English language textbooks, and classrooms need to move beyond traditional language teaching and incorporate active critical thinking and intercultural awareness to suit the needs of the students in the globalized world of our present times. Novelty/Originality of this study: To create a more stable world in this age of interconnectedness, mobility, and globalization, our young generation needs to develop fluid identities open to dialogue with the Other and seek complexity instead of simplification and stereotyping in intercultural encounters.


Author(s):  
A. Andreini ◽  
A. Bonini ◽  
G. Caciolli ◽  
B. Facchini ◽  
S. Taddei

Due to the stringent cooling requirements of novel aero-engines combustor liners, a comprehensive understanding of the phenomena concerning the interaction of hot gases with typical coolant jets plays a major role in the design of efficient cooling systems. In this work, an aerodynamic analysis of the effusion cooling system of an aero-engine combustor liner was performed; the aim was the definition of a correlation for the discharge coefficient (CD) of the single effusion hole. The data were taken from a set of CFD RANS (Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes) simulations, in which the behavior of the effusion cooling system was investigated over a wide range of thermo/fluid-dynamics conditions. In some of these tests, the influence on the effusion flow of an additional air bleeding port was taken into account, making it possible to analyze its effects on effusion holes CD. An in depth analysis of the numerical data set has pointed out the opportunity of an efficient reduction through the ratio of the annulus and the hole Reynolds numbers: The dependence of the discharge coefficients from this parameter is roughly linear. The correlation was included in an in-house one-dimensional thermo/fluid network solver, and its results were compared with CFD data. An overall good agreement of pressure and mass flow rate distributions was observed. The main source of inaccuracy was observed in the case of relevant air bleed mass flow rates due to the inherent three-dimensional behavior of the flow close to bleed opening. An additional comparison with experimental data was performed in order to improve the confidence in the accuracy of the correlation: Within the validity range of pressure ratios in which the correlation is defined (>1.02), this comparison pointed out a good reliability in the prediction of discharge coefficients. An approach to model air bleeding was then proposed, with the assessment of its impact on liner wall temperature prediction.


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