BA Students Research Articles

The Challenges, Methods and Results of Teaching GB Pronunciation to Slovene EFL Students

The paper presents and discusses the results of a study whose main purpose was to test the oral production of General British (GB) sounds in connected speech by Slovene BA students of English. Previous studies in contrastive English-Slovene pronunciation were mainly concerned with the perception and production of individual sounds. Our study, on the other hand, focused on the production of GB sounds in connected speech. We were interested in the state of affairs of English pronunciation before and after a 60-hour intensive and systematic theoretical and practical instruction of English pronunciation. The results confirmed out initial two hypotheses that the influences of L1 phonological and phonetic system, orthography and General American pronunciation were stronger before the instruction, and that the phonemic transcription has a very positive influence on the acquisition of foreign sounds in EFL students.

Diseño de un itinerario aumentado e interdisciplinar para la formación de maestros de educación primaria

La Realidad aumentada (RA) configura un nuevo ambiente de aprendizaje más enriquecido, combinando contenidos físicos y digitales. Por ello, el objetivo de este trabajo se dirige al diseño de un itinerario didáctico interdisciplinar con RA destinado a estudiantes universitarios del Grado de Maestro en Educación Primaria. Así, haciendo uso de una estructura gamificada se presenta a los estudiantes un misterio que deben resolver a través de diferentes pistas y pruebas geolocalizadas de manera colaborativa e innovadora. Con todo, el itinerario propuesto pretende servir de guía a los futuros maestros/as de Educación Primaria como vehículo para promover la integración efectiva de las nuevas tecnologías y que dé respuesta a las necesidades de un alumnado cada vez más digitalizado.

De-centring the psychology curriculum: Diversity, social justice, and psychological knowledge

The psychology curriculum has close ties to the histories and cultural traditions of industrialised societies’ white middle-class populations, so it is unclear how it may reflect the interests and values of students from a variety of ethnic, racial, and socio-economic backgrounds in contemporary higher education settings. To address this question, we established an innovative research project of de-centring the psychology curriculum, so that BA students from diverse backgrounds could familiarise themselves with cultural-historical, postcolonial, feminist, and other critical psychological approaches as well as reflect on the histories, contexts, and epistemologies of classic developmental psychological theories and research. We conducted focus group discussions with the students to explore their views on the introduced contents and approaches. The findings of our research form the basis for critical reflection on the possibilities and challenges of de-centring the psychology curriculum in contemporary university settings.

Serdülők és fiatal felnőttek identitása az önértékelés és a társas támogatás függvényében

Az identitás a személy önmeghatározásán kívül arra is vonatkozik, hogyan viselkedik az egyén interperszonális vagy szociális kontextusban (Baumeister, 1986). Az identitás alakítás folyamatában rendkívüli szerepet töltenek be a fiatal életében jelenlévő referencia személyek, jelentős mások, akik által nyújtott társas támogatás, mint pszichoszociális erőforrás támogathatja az identitásalakítás folyamatát (Kaplan, Cassel, and Gore, 1977). A serdülőkori identitás befolyásolja a fiatal jövőképét, önértékelését, meghatározza a társas helyzetekhez való viszonyát is (Szabó, 2010).Kutatásunk célja egyrészről a 9-10. osztályos középiskolás diákok és az elsőéves egyetemisták identitásállapotának feltárása volt, másrészről annak vizsgálata, hogy a különböző identitásállapotok milyen összefüggést mutatnak az önértékeléssel, és a társas támogatás mértékével. A vizsgálati személyek a Rosenberg Önértékelés Skálát (Sallay, Martos, Földvári, Szabó és Ittzés, 2014), az EOM-EIS-II -Interperszonális identitás alskáláját (Bennion és Adams, 1986, magyarul Biegelbauer, 2003; Szabó, 2003), és a Multidimenzionális Társas Támogatás Kérdőívet (Papp- Zipernovszky, Kékesi és Jámbori, 2017) töltötték ki.Vizsgálatunk bebizonyította, hogy mind a serdülők, mind a fiatal felnőttek esetében a magasabb önbizalom és az észlelt társas támogatás, főként a barátok és a jelentős mások tekintetében segíti a valódi identitás állapot elérését. Míg a diffúz identitás alacsonyabb önértékelés pontszámmal, és szignifikánsan alacsonyabb mértékű baráti és jelentős másoktól észlelt támogatással járt együtt. Kutatásunk meggyőzően bizonyítja, hogy az önértékelés és a társas támogatás jelentős szerepet játszik mindkét korosztálynál a valódi identitás állapotának elérésében.

LEARNING-STYLE BASED ACTIVITIES IN BOOSTING UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ TRANSLATION SKILLS: AGRARIAN SPHERE TRANSLATORS’ TRAINING

The paper is aimed at presenting theoretical and empirical research on developing learning-style based activities for boosting the translation skills of BA students majoring in English-to-Ukrainian agrarian sphere translation. The participants of the research are 60 BA students taking English-to-Ukrainian agrarian sphere translation at National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. To collect empirical data we used the modality questionnaire developed by O’Brien (1990). The novelty of the study is in combining theoretical and empirical research concerning the learning styles of BA students majoring in English-to-Ukrainian agrarian sphere translation, developing learning-style based activities aimed at boosting students’ translation skills and implementing developed learning-style based activities into the “The Theoretical and Practical Course of English-to-Ukrainian Agrarian Sphere Translation”. Learning-style based activities presented in this study might contribute greatly to the development of teaching materials aimed at boosting translation skills of students who major in agrarian sphere translation.

Enhancing thematic competence by exposure to professional discourse in economic translation1

This paper discusses a situation in a course on economic translation for BA students, and tries to show how exposure to professional discourse helps master the “lingo” of the professional community. An experiment was carried out to show what impact, if any, exposure to professional discourse has on the terminological and phraseological quality as well as on the overall acceptability of translation in this domain. In controlled classroom settings, students were assigned to translate a text on macroeconomic outlook from English to Czech. The first group of participants was asked to translate the text immediately. The second group was first exposed to three TV interviews on the same topic, and then asked to translate the text. The third group was presented with three newspaper articles on the same topic, and then asked to translate the text. The student translations were then assessed with respect to selected rich points to see if there were any differences between the groups. The results suggest that exposure to professional discourse in written form increases the use of idiomatic terminology and phraseology as well as the overall acceptability of the translation while the oral form only increases the overall acceptability of the translation. The potential of using such exercises in specialized translation classroom is discussed.

Overview of textbooks published for Hungarian fashion design students

In this article, the author introduces two textbooks published for the Hungarian fashion design students. Textbooks Collection development and Design of fashion accessories were published by the Hungarian National Office for Vocational Training and Adult Education in 2015. The two textbooks created based on the curriculum of same name subjects were issued with a goal to create competitive, high-quality literature for the Hungarian young professionals, in their mother tongue. The overview introduces the contents of the books, presents the some content editing issues, and article announces the opinion of the peer review and introduces some sales and library statistic. The textbooks created for college, BA and MA students, and possibly will match the interest of the professionals and fashion enthusiasts too.

The Schematic Structure Use of Non-trained and Trained EFL Learner English Major BA Students

Having the appropriate schema plays a crucial role in text comprehension and in the ability to extract relevant pieces of information from a source text. Being able to successfully extract relevant information from a source text is most important in the case of tertiary education students, who are constantly required to solve tasks requiring this skill, for example, taking notes from books, writing summaries, or preparing presentations based on multiple source texts. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to investigate how tertiary education students apply the appropriate formal schema when they have to solve a global summary and a guided summary writing task. The issue raised was investigated by analysing the global and guided summaries written by 12 first year English major BA students before and after receiving training in summary writing. The results suggest that at the beginning of their university studies, first year students completely lack the formal schema required for solving the guided summary task.

Using translation strategies to solve cultural translation problems. Differences between students and professional translators

ABSTRACTThe translation strategies used to solve cultural translation problems were analysed in different levels of acquisition of the translator’s cultural competence. Thirty-eight BA students in Translation and Interpreting at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and ten professional translators translated a text containing cultural translation problems from German (L3) into Spanish (L1). The strategies based on internal support (automatised and non-automatised cognitive resources) and the strategies based on external support (the use of different documentation sources) used when translating the text were recorded using a screen-recording software. Results indicate that, while professional translators apply internal support strategies with good quality results, students are not capable of applying them, despite the fact that doing so is related to better results than those obtained when using external support strategies. Translation students tend to apply the same type of strategies regardless of the year they are in, suggesting that training may have had little impact on their strategy choices. A multinomial regression analysis revealed that factors such as the subjects’ level of knowledge of German culture and the nature of each cultural translation problem influenced the choice of each strategy, suggesting that translation strategies are linked to the translator’s cultural competence and translation competence.

Towards finding a difficulty index for English grammatical terminology

Abstract Despite going through some ups and downs, grammar teaching has always been one of the central issues in the history of second language teaching. In order to teach grammar, teachers frequently get involved in metalanguage, which has grammatical terminology as one of its major components. Since the nature and use of grammatical terminology in language teaching has remained a considerably under-researched area to the day, the present study, originally a doctoral dissertation, was an attempt to find a difficulty index for a more or less comprehensive list of English grammatical terms, collected from various sources of English grammar. For this purpose, frequency of terms in a researcher-built corpus of EFL/ESL pedagogic grammar textbooks and English students’ familiarity with the terms were used as the two main criteria for calculating the difficulty index. A corpus of 14 grammatical textbooks was created, and then each of the 459 terms in the list was searched for in the textbooks to calculate their frequencies as well as ranks in the corpus. Student familiarity with the terms in the list was also measured through a productive test of grammatical terminology administered to 72 BA students of English at Shahid Beheshti University in Iran. Based on the results, the traditional dichotomy of scientific versus pedagogic terminology was questioned, arguing for an additional category, non-pedagogic term. Accordingly, 173 (37.7%) of the terms in the list never appeared in the corpus and thus were labelled non-pedagogic. Terms with a large corpus/test rank were reanalyzed to find out about the reasons for the gap. Furthermore, the distribution of terms across the corpus textbooks revealed that as the level of the books rises, the number of terms also increases, indicating the direct relationship between second language proficiency and metalingual knowledge. Most importantly, more than 10 major and minor trends in the use of grammatical terminology in pedagogy were explored and suggested. Finally, as the output of the study, 6 equivalent objective tests of pedagogic grammatical terminology were developed for the first time in the literature.

Intervision and Professional Development: An Exploration of a Peer-Group Reflection Method in Social Work Education

Abstract‘Intervision’, a peer-led group reflection method, was introduced in a teaching partnership between a university and three local authorities to enhance the quality of social work education and support the development of a learning culture across the partnership. A review of the limited international research on Intervision shows almost entirely positive impacts but no studies in social work education. This article reports on research into impacts following the introduction of Intervision sessions for BA (bachelor’s) and MA (master’s) social work students. An interpretive, qualitative approach with thematic data analysis of two focus groups with twenty-three participants was carried out. Findings show that, for most students, Intervision offered emotional containment, widened their perspectives and enhanced skills for Intervision. Students identified several positive impacts on their professional development and practice. Reported factors that contributed to students’ varied experience of Intervision sessions and their impact were commitment among participants and facilitators’ ability to model the Intervision process. The context of the teaching partnership was crucial in supporting students to negotiate their learning at the boundary between practice and university. Based on these findings, Intervision is suggested as a useful approach to embed peer-led reflective practice, and open questions for further research are suggested.

The Translation of Compliments in Spoken Jordanian Arabic into English

This paper examines the difficulties involved in translating culture-bound compliments from spoken Jordanian Arabic into English in different cultural interactions. The study specifically looks into a number of compliments in Arabic and discusses their translation into English. To achieve this goal, a test was designed by the researchers to examine the translation of 10 compliments that are not familiar to the English language and culture, and these translations were examined with the help of a few native English-speaking colleagues to check their acceptability in stylistic terms. The sample of subjects included 20 female BA students at the University of Jordan; all of them are in their third year. The findings reveal that the participants adopted the techniques of literal translation, paraphrase, addition, and omission when translating culture-bound compliments. They also encountered difficulties relating to grammar, lexical choice, and collocation.

A novel approach to challenging OCD related beliefs using a mobile-app: An exploratory study

Background and objectivesAccording to cognitive models, obsessive compulsive symptoms result from catastrophic misinterpretations of commonly occurring intrusive experiences and the use of counterproductive strategies to manage them. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) related beliefs such as inflated responsibility, importance of thoughts and perfectionism increases the likelihood of such misinterpretations. Consistent with a growing body of literature supporting the usefulness of mobile delivered technologies in fostering cognitive behavior change, the present study assessed the effectiveness of a novel cognitive training exercise designed to challenge OCD-related beliefs. This mobile app training exercise consists of users having to pull statements challenging OCD beliefs towards themselves (downwards) and to throw away (push upwards) contra-productive self-statements. Methods36 third-year BA students started the trial. Twenty completed pre and post measures of OCD-beliefs, mood and OCD symptoms including relationship-obsessions. Participants were instructed to complete 3 min of daily training for a period of 15 days. ResultsNo significant differences were found between completers and non-completers on demographic and most symptom related measures at Time 1. Repeated-measures MANOVA of the 20 completers showed a significant reduction on all OCD symptoms measures and on OCD-beliefs. No significant reduction was found in depression symptoms. Regression analysis showed change in levels of OCD-beliefs was associated with reduction in OCD symptoms at Time 2 over and above OCD symptoms at Time 1. LimitationsThe study is an open trial with non-clinical participants. ConclusionsThis mobile delivered training exercise may be useful for the reduction and relapse prevention of OCD-related beliefs and symptoms.

Attitudes of Jordanian Undergraduate Students towards Using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)

The study aimed at investigating the attitudes of Jordanian undergraduate students towards using computer assisted -language learning (CALL) and its effectiveness in the process of learning the English language. In order to fulfill the study’s objective, the researchers used a questionnaire to collect data, followed-up with semi-structured interviews to investigate the students’ beliefs towards CALL. Twenty- one of Jordanian BA students majoring in English language and literature were selected according to simple random sampling. The results revealed positive attitudes towards CALL in facilitating the process of writing assignments, gaining information; making learning enjoyable; improving their creativity, productivity, academic achievement, critical thinking skills, and enhancing their knowledge about vocabulary grammar, and culture. Furthermore, they believed that computers can motivate them to learn English language and help them to communicate and interact with their teachers and colleagues. The researchers recommended conducting a research on the same topic, taking into consideration the variables of age, gender, experience in using computers, and computer skills.

The metacognitive reading strategy awareness of first year EFL BA students: A mixed-methods study

Reading comprehension skills are a crucial set of skills which university students need. Even though these skills are not under-researched in either the international or the Hungarian context, research on the reading strategy awareness of first-year BA students at the beginning of their university studies is not extensive. In Hungary, no recent comprehensive studies investigating the input students receive in high school regarding reading strategy training can be found. Therefore, the aim of the present project is to explore the reading strategy awareness of first-year English major BA students, the reading skills training they received at high school, and to compare and contrast that training with the requirements stipulated in the official high school curriculum. To complete this research endeavour, a mixed-methods study was designed, involving a questionnaire and an interview study. The findings indicate that first-year university students lack the necessary reading strategies, and therefore the data suggests that offering targeted training to improve reading comprehension skills should be made part of not only secondary but also tertiary education. Raising students’ reading strategy use awareness is important because during their university studies they are constantly faced with tasks requiring excellent reading skills.

Promotion of Human Rights in Mental Health – Youth’s Perspective

There exists a global human rights emergency in mental health. The stigma, myths and misconceptions associated with mental disorders negatively affect the lives of people with mental disorders leading to denial of even the most basic human rights. Worldwide, people with mental disabilities experience an ambit of human rights violations. They are denied access to basic mental health care and treatment. They are not only discriminated against and stigmatized but are also subjected to abuse in both mental health facilities and the community. Several violations in community-based mental health care go unreported. Victims of discrimination are particularly vulnerable to restrictions in economic, social and cultural rights that make it difficult to be integrated into mainstream society. A sense of alienation can affect a person’s dignity and self-esteem, which is detrimental to one’s well-being. A qualitative approach was employed to understand the role of youth in promoting and protecting human rights in mental health. A Focus Group Discussion was done on a sample of 10 respondents who willing first BA students of Psychology – 2 males and 8 females aged 18–20 years. Results were analyzed using narratives. The objectives were to understand the threats to dignity in mental health care and ways to promote it. It was expressed that mental health inequalities lie even outside the health sector and thus inter-sectoral action is required to redress the issue. It was advocated to raise mental health issues on the agenda of political, religious and community arenas. Health facilities ought to be person-centred, privacy maintained, equitable and equal. The study has implications for mental health professionals to be more humane and ethical in practice and improve quality health care. Besides, mental health literacy should be imparted at various levels of education.

The Role of Psychological Capital in Academic Adjustment Among University Students

To investigate the potential of psychological capital as a resource for academic adjustment, 250 BA students were asked to complete two questionnaires, one assessing participants’ psychological capacity, the other academic adjustment. Average grade-point scores were collected at two points in time as an additional measure of academic adjustment. Correlational as well as SEM analyses suggest that psychological capital is a positive resource with a central role in students’ academic adjustment. The study extends knowledge on the impact of psychological capital on positive organizational behavior by generalizing it to higher education.

Lugemisstrateegiate kasutus akadeemilises õppes

Artikkel kasitleb lugemist eesti keeles emakeelena ja teise keelena ulikooliopingute kontekstis. Uurimuse eesmark oli valja selgitada, missuguseid strateegiaid uliopilased enese hinnangul kasutavad oppeulesannete taitmiseks vajalike tekstide lugemisel eesti keeles ning missuguseid teksti moistmise raskusi nad seejuures teadvustavad. 80 Tartu Ulikooli eesti ja muu emakeelega uliopilast 27 erialalt taitsid kusimustiku, millega kogutud andmeid analuusiti nii emakeelest kui ka oppeastmest lahtuvalt. Tulemused naitasid, et 1) uliopilased on eesmargiparased ja teksti uksikasjadesse suuvivad lugejad; 2) emakeel mojutab lugemist noudva ulesande taitmise kiirust ja tundmatute sonadega tegelemise viisi; 3) taustteadmised on teksti moistmisel olulisel kohal soltumata emakeelest ja oppeastmest. *** The use of reading strategies in academic studies The aim of the study was to ascertain the difficulties students encounter when reading Estonian texts for academic purposes, in order to support them in their studies. 80 native and non-native students from the University of Tartu (Estonia) from 27 programs participated in the study. Data was gathered using a 5-point Likert-type scale questionnaire and analyzed by the following subgroups: L1, L2, BA (years 1–3) and MA (years 4–5). As regards the reading strategy students used, both L1 and L2 students strategically plan their reading by thinking carefully about the task and using support strategies. Compared to L1 readers, the L2 group more frequently uses different strategies, and they can be characterized as more careful readers on both a local and a global level. Finding out the meaning of unknown words was the most commonly used strategy for both L1 and L2 students, which indicates problems with word recognition processes. However, while L2 readers mostly do so using a dictionary, the L1 readers tend to rely on guessing the meaning using context or background knowledge. Compared to L2 students, L1s tend to be better at expeditious reading. The top perceived reading difficulties were related to background knowledge (e.g. complicated topic, insufficiency of required knowledge) and vocabulary (struggling with unknown words). In the former, about half of respondents in all subgroups (L1, L2 and years 1 to 5) reported having difficulties. In word recognition, the difficulties were experienced more often by L2 students and BA students. The results suggest that, in addition to Estonian language courses for academic purposes, more attention should be paid to developing students’ academic reading skills in various specialised courses by providing the background knowledge needed to understand texts and supporting them in interpreting complicated texts.

Presenting the Structural Equation Modeling of Achievement Goal and Self-regulation on Passing the Course

The aim of this research was to investigate the relationship between goal orientation and academic achievement with emphasizing the mediating role of self-regulation of the students. The research method was correlational and the statistical population included all BA students of Islamic Azad University who choose general English in 2015-16 academic year (2 semesters) at Shiraz. They were selected through random sampling. The research tools were standard goal orientation and self- regulation questionnaires. The data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results of the structural equation modeling revealed that there was a direct and meaningful relationship between goal orientation and self- regulation with academic achievement. Moreover, the results indicated that the direct effect of academic achievement on self -regulation was meaningful.

The role of parents in the perfectionistic tendencies of university music students

Perfectionism is a complex multidimensional state with positive and negative outcomes. Research has identified that parents could influence perfectionistic inclinations, which may lead to increased levels of anxiety and ultimately lead to maladaptive tendencies. The aim of the study is to explore the role of parents in the experience of perfectionism in South African university music students. A total of 93 BA (Music) and BMus music students from four South African university music departments participated in the quantitative study by completing the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS). The data were analyzed according to the variables of academic institution, type of music degree, academic year of study, gender, home language, and main instrument. The results showed significant differences in BA (Music) students who scored significantly higher than the BMus students in the dimensions Parental Expectations and Parental Criticism, along with students from the African language group. The study provides valuable insight into the perfectionistic trends of South African undergraduate music students, with particular emphasis on the parental dimensions of perfectionism.