Sooner or later, countries like Poland will have to welcome immigrants from the Middle East and successfully communicate with the immigrants from different cultural backgrounds. I would like to argue that critical cultural awareness proves to be a cornerstone of the model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (Byram, 1997) and should be considered a prerequisite for developing the rest of the components comprising the model. The main aim of the present research paper is to investigate, analyse and discuss Polish EFL teachers' beliefs on the idea of including critical cultural awareness, a crucial component of intercultural competence, in the EFL lessons, teachers' teaching practices with reference to developing particular elements of intercultural competence in the EFL lessons and the possible discrepancies between their beliefs and practices. A questionnaire administered to 125 Polish EFL teachers and a case study of three practitioners, who were observed, interviewed and confronted in a focus-group discussion, were used to collect the relevant data. The results of my research study suggest that a lot of Polish EFL teachers declare that they consider Byram's intercultural communicative competence model (Byram 1997) relevant to foreign language teaching and learning in the present-day and seem to be willing to implement it in their lessons, yet many of those teachers appear not to prioritize intercultural competence in their teaching practice. This apparent discrepancy between language teachers' beliefs and their practices may stem from teachers' lack of sufficient intercultural training during their professional education. A need for implementing critical cultural awareness into the pre-service teacher trainings was identified. Keywords: intercultural competence, critical cultural awareness, EFL teaching and learning

To face it, it is quite challenging to draw distinctive borders of women issues when it comes to Romantic poets of English literature. These poets were reforming many issues of the contemporary culture of England such as valuing the nature, which was deteriorated by Industrial Revolution of the period, and emphasizing intuition over reason. However, the changes those poets endeavouring to create might not be considered as revolutionary since these poets could not manage to stay away from the traditions of their societies. aim of this paper is to analyse the place of women in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Eolian Harp and Christabel: how he sexualised women and what were the cultural expectation from women at the time. Allocating an exaggerated feminine aspect to women nearly climaxes in one of Coleridge’s memorable poems “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Coleridge attends sexualising women in “Christabel” with the help of specific word choice. Additionally, it might be put forward that Coleridge gives significance to virginity, which is identified with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Christianity when Coleridge’s being ‘a staunch Anglican in religion’ is taken into consideration. In most of the patriarchal societies, virginity equates purity, which is utilized by men to suppress women. Moreover, negative attitudes of Coleridge towards his wife, Sara Fricker, must be concentrated on to have an insight into the poet’s views on women. Considering the attitudes of Coleridge towards his wife, the assertions above on sexualisation of women and cultural expectations from them in the eyes of Coleridge might be conceived as accurate. Keywords: Sexualisation, Women, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Cultural Expectations

Slovenia has long been a place for immigration; with the accession into the European Union it has become even more interesting for different groups of immigrants from European and non-European countries. According to the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, 106.486 foreigners (5.16% of overall population in Slovenia) were living in Slovenia at the end of 2015. It is expected that this migration trend in the light of world events continues or even increases. One of the key factors for the successful integration of young generations of migrants in society is education. The survey Index of the policy of integration of migrants (MIPEX, 2015), implemented by the British Council and Migration Policy Group, shows that few education systems in Europe are adapting to the realities of immigration. Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Canada, Portugal are the most engaged countries, whereas Slovenia is among the least committed (it ranks 28 among 38 selected countries). Language has a major role in supporting children’s process of identity formation and in helping them understand where they fit in the new environment they are entering. Language is, of course, not the only factor that promotes integration and enables successful education, but the fact remains that immigrant pupils are better achievers in those countries that pay greater attention to second/foreign language learning starting in preschool institutions. In the present paper we discuss the Slovene pre-school teachers’ and pre-school teacher assistants' attitudes towards learning Slovene as the second/foreign language in Slovene pre-school institutions. The research was conducted on a sample of 143 pre-school teachers and pre-school teacher assistants. The results imply that Slovene pre-school teachers and pre-school teacher assistants hold positive attitudes towards learning Slovene as a second/foreign language, they see their role as the promoters of learning Slovene as a second/foreign language to non-Slovene children, but they strongly express the lack of training in language learning strategies of Slovene as a second/foreign language. Keywords: Slovene, second/foreign language, preschool institutions, pre-school teacher and pre-school teacher assistant

What are the obstacles that impede understanding and decrease proficiency in reading academic texts in ESP? Correspondingly, how can they be overcome to achieve learning outcomes of EFL courses at tertiary level? Broadly speaking, academic texts are used in numerous learning processes across various stages of study. They are designed or aimed at such a purposeso as to facilitate instruction and the transfer of knowledge in academic subjects studied at the university level by providing textual input for the conceptualization and presentation of facts and hypotheses related to students’ respective fields of study. In ESP teaching they are used to introduce academic language through relevant academic content, aiming to draw upon the students’ existing vocabulary base, build new lexical-semantic connections and raise the students’ overall foreign language proficiency level. Upon direct class observation, the authors have found that students perceive such texts as unnecessarily complex and the language they employ as obsolete and overly pretentious to be considered instrumental. The underlying reasons for this potentially disallowing perspective can be linked to insufficient knowledge of advanced professional vocabulary, elaborate grammatical structures and rhetorical organization patterns, coupled with affective factors, often manifested in the acquired bias toward more “everyday” texts employed in previous language instruction, which provide only a limited representation of language. The role of the teacher is thus to stimulate and channel the students’ professed interest and curiosity for their field of study by exploiting academic texts and various language acquisition techniques in order for students to successfully tackle demanding content and acquire new vocabulary and structures. This paper will aim to determine the common features of texts used in tertiary level ESP, namely in applied health sciences and international relations, and to explore and design effective reading techniques and language exercises that might help develop a comprehensive approach to the multilayer pattern that is academic text. Keywords: academic text, tertiary level ESP, learning obstacles, reading techniques

Trinity College Diploma in TESOL offers a compulsory part of the course titled Unknown Language Learning Experience. It is an assessed part of the course and it accounts for 20% of the final mark. Trainees have to write a language journal guided by a semi- structured questionnaire after observing and participating in four lessons taught in an unknown language. The main objective of this experience is to introduce teaching methodologies and activities suitable for total beginners and to show how to write up a lesson plans and do a contrastive analysis. In 2003 we have organized a course on the island of Gran Canaria training 24 students from the UK, Australia and Spain. Eleven/twelve years after the experience, in 2015, we have asked them the very same questions they had to answer back in 2003 in their journals. This action research procedure has proven the validity of the unknown language experience. The questions we have analysed deal with feeling, motivation, teaching strategies, objectives and techniques. 100% of them valued the experience as a positive one and 40% of them stated that they could follow the lesson precisely because only L2 was used. 100% of the trainees said that they have used the same unknown language teaching strategies since they have considered them as a very useful in language teaching methodology. Due to the success of the experiment we have done trial experiments from 2011- 2013 at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria with the main aim to implement the Unknown Language Experience in the core curriculum at the Teacher Training Faculty. Keywords: L2, TESOL, journal, motivation, ULE

According to the statistics as of 15 November 2015 in Italy there are about 28,000,000 Facebook subscribers, which means a 46.1% penetration rate. Facebook is also the most commonly used social networking tool among university students: their involvement and the hours they spend on this popular networking site should encourage educators in higher education institutions to consider it as a place for learning and to integrate it in the academic practices. This paper reports and analyzes the data collected using a questionnaire concerning students’ perceptions of language learning possibilities on Facebook. The survey was conducted at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (Department of Literary, Linguistics and Comparative Studies) during the academic year 2015-2016 and involved students enrolled in three different courses. At this step, students’ perceptions and attitudes were measured through a questionnaire including several questions about demographic information, their perceptions of Facebook and their use and behavior on this social network site. The main purpose of this study was to find out the role and benefits of Facebook in students’ language learning processes, whether Facebook is able to improve students’ language skills and whether students use specific Facebook groups to facilitate language learning. The study was limited only to the generic social networking site Facebook, excluding all the other social networking sites (including the relatively new Language Learning Social Network Sites (LLSNSs) too, such as Babbel, Busuu, italki; Polyglotclub, etc.) Keywords: Social networking sites, Facebook, Foreign language learning, Engagement

Learning difficulties (LDs) refer to a range of complex and often misunderstood neurological-based processing challenges. In most cases, these processing cause challenges to the acquisition of basic skills such as reading, writing and math. Different teaching methods may need to be applied to compensate for the specific aspects of learning that children find challenging to a process of learning. In most ESL classrooms, there are no qualified special needs teachers or teachers who are trained to work with students with learning difficulties. Even if there are, only a few teachers are trained on how to deal with learning disabilities in an ESL classroom and there is very little information on the subject. This paper will introduce the research concerning the difficulties and the education in the inclusive system among the teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Keywords: inclusion, specific learning difficulties, dyslexia, ADHD, special education, teacher training

Despite the fact that phrasal verbs are used in everyday English, foreign learners avoid learning and using them for their complexity and impossibility to understand the meaning of a phrasal verb from its separate parts (a verb itself and a particle separately). As a result of that many learners at C1 level, although being fluent speakers, experience various difficulties using them. The focus of the paper is placed on the meaning and the use of phrasal verbs and the difficulties which students find at C1 level of the English language. The analysis in this paper is based on the phrasal verbs used in the book “Objective CAE” (O`Dell & Broadhead, 2008, Cambridge University Press). In this paper we are also interested in finding out why it is so difficult to understand and use phrasal verbs, the interaction between their meaning and understanding considering their polysemоus features. The results of this analysis may be useful for all ESL teachers to help them understand the difficulties their students face when dealing with phrasal verbs, especially at C1 level. Furthermore, it can be a valuable source for teachers how to introduce the phrasal verbs to their students and thus help them master phrasal verbs in both spoken and written discourse. Keywords: phrasal verb, meaning, use, difficulty, English.

The use of common people and objects as persuasive tools is an advertising strategy focuses on the assumption that common man can easily be identified with the masses i.e. target group for an advertiser. The ads feature people who appear to be average and typical ant thus lead the reader to believe that the product is for everyone (Howe and Edelstein 2000: 24). As Goddard (2005: 81-82) points out, ‘symbolic representation can be a powerful source of meaning in texts of all kinds. Symbols are much more about associations of ideas than about any literal or straightforward equation, and much more about group convention than about individual personalized meaning’. Accordingly, the semiotic analysis in this paper contains what Barthes (1977: 33) explained as follows: ‘…if the image contains signs, we can be sure that in advertising these signs are full, formed with a view to the optimum reading: the advertising image is frank or at least emphatic’. Keywords: semiotics, images, ads, common people, denotation, connotation.