Language Classes Research Articles

Использование цифровых технологий в практике преподавания русского языка как иностранного на подготовительном факультете в российском вузе

The article examines the specificities of teaching Russian as a foreign language to pre-graduate and pre-doctoral students in the field of nuclear physics and technologies using digital tools and methods. The work considers the benefits of teaching language for specific purposes with the application of digital tools. The research aims to determine how using digital tools can enhance the effectiveness of teaching Russian as a foreign language for specific purposes in groups of pre-graduate and pre-doctoral students. The research is novel in that it is the first one to formulate the differences between the educational process for students in graduate programs and programs for training scientific and pedagogical personnel in postgraduate studies, compared to undergraduate and specialist programs. In addition, an experiment is conducted to confirm the effectiveness of using digital tools when teaching these student cohorts. The article provides a detailed description of the system of tools used in classes at the National Research Nuclear University “MEPhI” in groups of pre-graduate and pre-doctoral students. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that in the case of a systemic and methodologically justified use of digital tools in Russian as a foreign language classes, the effectiveness of the learning process increases, interest in learning Russian and nuclear physics is stimulated through practical assignments and research activities, and student motivation is also enhanced.

On decision problems concerning contextual insertions and deletions

The notions of stability, anti-stability, and error-correctability of a language that is modified by making contextual insertions in the words of the language were introduced in a previous paper by Bottoni et al. in 2011, where it was shown that these properties are decidable for regular languages. The authors proposed investigating the decidability of these properties for other classes of languages. Here, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for a class of languages to have decidable stable, anti-stable, and error-correctable properties, and use these conditions to exhibit general classes of languages (strictly greater than the regular languages) for which the properties are decidable, and also simple classes (the first such classes) for which the properties are undecidable. We obtain identical results for the case when contextual deletions (instead of insertions) are made in the words of the language, and also with mixes of insertions and deletions. Our constructions also demonstrate that certain general problems involving nondeterministic generalized sequential machines (GSMs) applied to languages accepted by deterministic machine models are decidable, which is surprising as the deterministic language families do not need to be closed under GSM mappings.

Transforming Cambodian Education: Full-Time Learning, Technology, and Language Integration for Public Schools

The Cambodian government has announced a significant educational reform to transition public schools to full-time learning by integrating computer and English or Chinese language classes. This initiative is designed to enhance the quality of education and better prepare students for the demands of the modern world. This paper compares these proposed changes by examining practices in five private schools already implementing full-time education and advanced technological and multilingual programs. By evaluating the academic performance, resource availability, and overall educational outcomes of these private schools, this study aims to provide actionable recommendations for successfully adopting these strategies in public schools. The research involved surveys of 565 respondents, including students, teachers, school administrators, parents, and policymakers, and in-depth interviews with 50 key stakeholders. Key findings include strong support for full-time education, higher levels of technology integration, and better multilingual education in private schools. These findings will inform policymakers, educators, and stakeholders about the potential impacts and necessary steps to ensure the successful implementation of these educational reforms in Cambodia's public school system.

Thematic control and criteria-based assessment of foreign language writing skills using artificial intelligence technologies

Importance. Currently, there is a tendency that when teaching a foreign language, teachers are increasingly resorting to the use of artificial intelligence technologies to plan training sessions, generate educational content, as well as to conduct automated testing of formed communication skills. The monitoring of academic achievements and assessment is one of the key components of the organization of the educational process. Traditional methods of control and assessment require significant time and labor-intensive costs from the teacher, while artificial intelligence technologies make it possible to simplify and automate routine tasks: check tests and written papers, analyze them and identify mistakes, provide feedback. Thanks to the integration of natural language processing (NLP) technologies into chatbots and adaptive intelligent learning systems, it becomes possible on a daily basis to check texts created by students, evaluate them from the point of view of grammatical and lexical correctness, as well as identify stylistic and factual errors in real time. The purpose of this work is to test the applicability of artificial intelligence technologies for thematic control and criteria-based assessment of educational achievements using the example of productive and reproductive writing.Research Methods. In carrying out this study, the following groups of methods were used: theoretical methods aimed at familiarizing with scientific and methodological literature on the topic of research, analysis and classification of theoretical and methodological material for conducting thematic control and criterion assessment in foreign language classes, as well as empirical methods that allowed modeling pedagogical control and assessment processes using artificial intelligence technologies, observation, analysis and description of the results obtained.Definition of Concepts. The main concepts used in the study are “control of educational results” and its variety “thematic control”, “criterion assessment”.Results and Discussion. In the course of the study, various types of monitoring educational results using artificial intelligence technologies were considered: preliminary, current, intermediate, thematic, final. The choice of thematic control is due to the opportunity to trace its applicability within the framework of a single lesson in a foreign language and identify the main difficulties in using this form of control. The following criteria for evaluating writing skills are used to evaluate learning outcomes using artificial intelligence technologies: a) the structure of the written text; b) compliance with the main topic; c) coherence; d) relevance; e) grammatical correctness; f) lexical correctness; g) ethics of writing and stylistic correctness.Conclusion. Artificial intelligence technologies at the present stage have a high degree of adaptability and include a wide range of software and hardware solutions that allow for such important pedagogical procedures as monitoring educational achievements and evaluation in accordance with user-defined evaluation criteria. The obtained results are proposed to be used in research devoted to the study of modern methods of monitoring educational achievements in the methodology of teaching foreign languages using artificial intelligence technologies.

Le Ton beau de Xuanzang: Translation as Epistemological Journey

ABSTRACTThis essay shows how one professor teaching “Introduction to Buddhism” sought to counteract his students' view that Chinese and Tibetan forms of Buddhism represented a deviation from a “pure” Indian Buddhism rather than worthwhile forms of creativity and religiosity in themselves. A simple comparative assignment that asked a group of primarily monolingual students from Minnesota to translate a 500‐year‐old French ditty into English helped illustrate the inextricability of form and content, that all translation is interpretation, that translations target specific audiences, and that religious systems that might be intuitively conceptualized as perversions of a pure original can be more charitably understood as valuable systems of thought and practice in their own right. The assignment shows that linguistic translation can be a valuable form of comparative pedagogy in the undergraduate classroom beyond language classes, especially as a proxy for simulating the challenges and possibilities of intercultural translation.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The teaching of English, historically centered on structural paradigms, faces challenges with the rise of digital technologies in social interactions. Augmented Reality (AR), by integrating virtual elements into real environments, offers transformative potential. The present work, "English in Public Schools: Augmented Reality Applications and Social Language Practices," explores the integration of AR in English language classes. Based on teacher plans in Sergipe, data from a teacher training course conducted in 2021 are analyzed through Freeman's Teacher Research (1998). Results highlight the potential of augmented reality in public English teaching, emphasizing the importance of teacher training courses in the effective implementation of educational technologies.

Subjective Well-Being of Students with Disabilities in Kazakhstan: An Exploration of Practice

This study aims to examine the factors that mediate the impact of physical disabilities on the subjective well-being of learners with disabilities in Kazakhstan. Classified as descriptive research, the study sample consists of students from four to eight Kazakh language classes in Almaty, Kazakhstan, totaling 76 male and female students. Subjective vitality is considered one of the indicators of subjective well-being. The data show that the meaningfulness of life has the strongest correlation with the Vt-d scale. The study findings also reveal that personal efforts, an active role in one's own situation, and a desire for self-development serve as the foundation for harmonious personal development and subjective well-being. An analysis of variance reveals a statistically significant effect of disability on life satisfaction; however, the vast y majority of differences appear at the trend level and/or are caused by the combined impact of gender and disability factors. The study's findings enable the development of recommendations for educational policymakers and specialists working in the disability assistance system.

Group Rapport Building in an Institutionaized Face-To-Face Interaction: a Case Study

When people are engaged in any interaction, they are likely to respond to each other's verbal and nonverbal cues. This responsiveness is a critical factor in the notion of rapport. In this paper, the author argues that the same human dynamics that govern everyday conversations are at play between participants in institutionalized conversations such as classroom discourse. The purpose of this study is to develop critical aspects of "conversational involvement" (Duranti, 1986; Goodwin, 1986; Gumperz, 1982; Tannen, 1985) as rapport-building devices and to provide observable phenomena that characterize rapport with participants' verbal and nonverbal cues in informal and formal conversation. In this study, nine people participated: a Korean professor of an elementary Korean language class at a major US university and eight undergraduate students whose first language is English. Three fifty-minute classroom sessions were videotaped, and segments that illustrated the teacher's and students' behaviors that facilitated rapport were transcribed and qualitatively analyzed. The author recorded the frequency of the teacher's verbal and nonverbal cues that appeared to foster rapport. This study found that the teacher shared small talk in informal before-class conversations by bringing up insignificant details about daily life. The teacher played the role of teacher during class by directing a lesson. However, she continued to utilize various rapport-building devices through selected verbal and nonverbal cues to engage her students in the conversation. In this classroom, as in everyday conversation, the participants demonstrated their desire to listen to, be responsive to, and be influenced by individuals in a certain way. The participants were part and parcel of achieving their goals in the classroom. The participants created a certain alignment to achieve their goals and signal that they were involved in the interaction. Then, the students would be able to learn the target language more through the involvement of the classroom activity, which is one of the outcomes of good rapport.

Опыт использования проектных заданий при формировании лингвокультурологической компетенции у студентов нелингвистических специальностей на занятиях по иностранному языку

The study aims to describe the experience of using project-based assignments in forming linguocultural competence in non-linguistic students during foreign language classes. The study material consists of final project assignments at the end of sections in the textbook “Zeit für Deutsch” (“Time for German”) by S. A. Volina, G. B. Voronina, and L. M. Karpova. The scientific novelty of the study lies in describing the content and stages of project-based assignments aimed at forming linguocultural competence in non-linguistic students in German language classes, which corresponds with the goals of foreign language teaching in higher education institutions. The results of the study indicate a positive attitude of learners towards project-based assignments in the study of not only foreign languages but also the culture associated with the language. The following advantages of these assignments for learners should be highlighted: 1) application of previously learned vocabulary; 2) assimilation of new lexical units containing cultural semes; 3) motivation to seek new information related to cultural differences; 4) a creative approach to project implementation; 5) a playful nature of social interaction. The use of project-based assignments in foreign language teaching effectively forms linguocultural competence in non-linguistic students, which contributes to the adaptation of speech behavior to the cultural characteristics of the interlocutor, minimizing the likelihood of misunderstanding. This ensures successful and harmonious interaction in the process of cross-language communication.

Factors affecting teacher-student interactions in a foreign language teaching class: a language socialisation theory perspective

The study explored teacher–student interactions in foreign language teaching classes in China, aiming to identify ways to improve these interactions. Data were collected through 180 min of unstructured observations in two teaching classes. The study found that the frequency of interactions varied among teachers. After analysing the data with a language socialisation theory, the study revealed the factors that affected teacher–student interactions in foreign language classes in China: firstly, the concept of an equal teacher–student relationship is the precondition of teacher–student interactions; secondly, paying attention to both language acquisition and culture acquisition is the foundation of teacher–student interactions; thirdly, a good English acquisition context is one of the critical elements of conducting teacher−student interactions. The study delivered suggestions to promote teacher–student interactions based on English education in China. As there are many similarities in the English education policy and pedagogy between countries in Asia, the findings of the current study can be referenced by other Asian countries as well.

ИННОВАЦИОННАЯ ПАРАДИГМА В КОНТЕКСТЕ ВЫСШЕГО ТЕХНИЧЕСКОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ

The purpose of the article is to describe the experience of using the technology of developing critical thinking in the practical course of the Russian language in the technical university. The article considers efficient ways of applying elements of technology of critical thinking development in practical classes in the Russian language. The classification technology of critical thinking development techniques carried out by the authors, which is based on three phases of learning, gradually replacing each other ("challenge — comprehension — reflection"), is successfully used in university practice. In technology of critical thinking development, the ability to work with questions occupy an important place. Technology of critical thinking development is focused on the questions which develops the mental activity of students. During reflection, students analyze the received information, exchange opinions, justify their point of view. At this stage, it is advisable to turn the acquired information into written form, since in the process of verbalization, new information is comprehended. In this aspect, it is important to instill in students the ability to summarize information. The use of technology of critical thinking development techniques in practical classes of the Russian language makes it possible to make students' educational activities more creative and productive. The organization of such classes, characterized by a certain logic of construction and sequence of combinations of specific tasks, develops the communicative competence of learners, teaches them to read thoughtfully and immerse themselves in information, organize and analyze information, define and solve problems, deal with a notion, conduct reasoned discussion, interpret, creatively process new information, reflect. The use of technology of critical thinking development techniques in Russian language classes contributes to the formation of students' skills to determine the value of an idea based on a critical and objective consideration of arguments.

“I feel like I cannot manage without her”

This study explores how a teacher at a Swedish language introductory school is perceived as a literacy mediator or literacy broker (Brandt, 1998) by a group of migrant adolescents with limited prior formal education. Beyond traditional language acquisition elements like grammar and vocabulary, these students are navigating emergent literacy in a second language while adapting to a new society (Gee, 2005). My research is guided by two main questions: (1) How do the students report that their teacher supports their engagement in literacy practices? (2) What do the students think about the fact that certain literacy practices seem to be enabled while others are hindered? Conducted during the 2017/18 school year as an ethnographic case study in an introductory language class, the investigation utilizes field notes, recorded interactions, field conversations, and formal interviews with nine students. The analysis reveals the students’ appreciation for the teacher’s support in meeting new literacy standards, while also highlighting their acceptance of the devaluation of some prior literacy practices as a strategic choice to facilitate engagement in mainstream society’s literacy practices (Nocon & Cole, 2009; Janks, 2010). The study also discusses the students’ opportunities to express themselves, both in interviews and within the classroom, in connection to these findings. Additionally, the concept of literacy sponsorship is explored in relation to these discussions.

Crisis – Challenge – Coherence: Combining Universal Design for Learning and Sense of Coherence

The study investigates the effectiveness of using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach as a trauma-sensitive pedagogy strategy in higher education. By integrating the concepts of UDL and Salutogenesis, we aimed to develop a tool that promotes healthy learning, problem-solving, and motivation among students. Salutogenesis emphasizes the development of a Sense of Coherence (SoC), which serves as a tool for stress resilience and restoration. To assess the impact of UDL practices on SoC levels, we administered a Sense of Coherence-13 questionnaire before and after implementing UDL practices in English language classes at a polytechnic university. All the students in the study had experienced traumatic events caused by the current crisis in Ukraine. The study focused on demonstrating that UDL practices can serve as a restorative and inclusive tool. The results indicate that the application of UDL practices led to an increase in SoC levels, demonstrating their potential for promoting restoration. Additionally, teacher interviews were conducted to identify the challenges and benefits of implementing UDL practices.

Mobile Assisted Language Learning: Ecuadorian Undergraduate Polytechnic Students' Perceptions

Despite the increased use of mobile devices for language learning, little research has examined Ecuadorian university students' perceptions of Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL). This study aims to explore undergraduate polytechnic students' perceptions of using MALL for English skills development. Also, it looks at the different factors associated with the acceptance of technology and identifies those that are more common. This quantitative research design uses a survey adapted from the Technology Adoption Model (TAM). It counts with the participation of 126 Ecuadorian undergraduate polytechnic students taking English as a foreign language classes. Participants were very positive about using MALL applications to learn English during their off-classroom time. The average total mean score was 4.373. It was also determined, through multiple regression analysis, that Perceived Usefulness (t = 6.025, p < 0.000), Social Influence (t = 2.876, p < 0.000), and Perceived Outcomes (t = 3.903, p <0.000) were the highest predictors of MALL acceptance. The two main contributions of this study to the literature are that students feel a connection between their language learning aims and attaining them by using MALL. Perceived Outcome is a high predictor of MALL usage. The findings suggest that Ecuadorian educational practices should increasingly integrate Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) technologies, as students perceive them as highly useful, especially in improving language skills, fostering social collaboration, and offering personalized, flexible learning experiences that align with their technological readiness and cultural context.

An exploratory study on the usage of quantum programming languages

As in the classical computing realm, quantum programming languages in quantum computing allow one to instruct a quantum computer to perform certain tasks. In the last 25 years, many imperative, functional, and multi-paradigm quantum programming languages with different features and goals have been developed. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has investigated who uses quantum languages, how practitioners learn a quantum language, how experience are practitioners with quantum languages, what is the most used quantum languages, in which context practitioners use quantum languages, what are the challenges faced by quantum practitioners while using quantum languages, are program written with quantum languages tested, and what are quantum practitioners' perspectives on the variety of quantum languages and the potential need for new languages. In this paper, we first conduct a systematic survey to find and collect all quantum languages proposed in the literature and/or by organizations. Secondly, we identify and describe 37 quantum languages. Thirdly, we survey 251 quantum practitioners to answer several research questions about their quantum language usage. Fourthly, we conclude that (i) 58.2% of all practitioners are 25–44 years old, 63.0% have a master's or doctoral degree, and 86.2% have more than five years of experience using classical languages. (ii) 60.6% of practitioners learn quantum languages from the official documentation. (iii) Only 16.3% of practitioners have more than five years of experience with quantum languages. (iv) Qiskit (Python) is the most used quantum language, followed by Cirq (Python) and QDK (Q#). (v) 42.8% use quantum languages for research. (vi) Lack of documentation and usage examples are practitioners' most challenging issues. Practitioners prefer open-source quantum languages with an easy-to-learn syntax (e.g., based on an existing classical language), available documentation and examples, and an active community. (vii) 76.4% of all participants test their quantum programs, and 42.6% test them automatically. (viii) A standard quantum language, perhaps high-level language, for quantum computation could accelerate the development of quantum programs. Finally, we present a set of suggestions for developers and researchers on the development of new quantum languages or enhancement of existing ones.

QSIM: A Quantum-inspired hierarchical semantic interaction model for text classification

Semantic interaction modeling is a fundamental technology in natural language understanding that guides models to extract deep semantic information from text. Currently, the attention mechanism is one of the most effective techniques in semantic interaction modeling, which learns word-level attention representation by measuring the relevance between different words. However, the attention mechanism is limited to word-level semantic interaction, it cannot meet the needs of fine-grained interactive information for some text classification tasks. In recent years, quantum-inspired language modeling methods have successfully constructed quantized representations of language systems in Hilbert spaces, which use density matrices to achieve fine-grained semantic interaction modeling.This paper presents a Quantum-inspired hierarchical Semantic Interaction Model (QSIM), which follows the sememe-word-sentence language construction principle and utilizes quantum entanglement theory to capture hierarchical semantic interaction information in Hilbert space. Our work builds on the idea of the attention mechanism and extends it. Specifically, we explore the original semantic space from a quantum theory perspective and derive the core semantic space using the Schmidt decomposition technique, where: (1) Sememe is represented as the unit vector in the two-dimensional minimum semantic space; (2) Word is represented as reduced density matrices in the core semantic space, where Schmidt coefficients quantify sememe-level semantic interaction. Compared to density matrices, reduced density matrices capture fine-grained semantic interaction information with lower computational cost; (3) Sentence is represented as quantum superposition states of words, and the degree of word-level semantic interaction is measured using entanglement entropy.To evaluate the model’s performance, we conducted experiments on 15 text classification datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that our model is superior to classical neural network models and traditional quantum-inspired language models. Furthermore, the experiment also confirms two distinct advantages of QISM: (1) flexibility, as it can be integrated into various mainstream neural network text classification architectures; and (2) practicability, as it alleviates the problem of parameter growth inherent in density matrix calculation in quantum language model.

Teachers' Perspectives on Teaching Listening Skills in Secondary Level English Language Classes

Teachers' Perspectives on Teaching Listening Skills in Secondary Level English Language Classes

Using conceptual maps when working with foreign language texts in foreign language classes at a non-linguistic faculty

Using conceptual maps when working with foreign language texts in foreign language classes at a non-linguistic faculty

The Trajectory of Parental Psychological Control, Self-Esteem, Language Class Risk-Taking, and EFL Learners’ Confidence in Speaking English

To best understand foreign language learning, the present study proposes and tests a conceptual model of confidence in speaking English by examining the path effects of three variables. These three variables are parental psychological control, self-esteem, and language class risk taking. Data were collected from 394 Taiwanese undergraduate students. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique was adopted to examine the path effect in the research model. The results confirmed four significant path effects: (1) parental psychological control negatively predicts self-esteem; (2) self-esteem positively predicts language class risk taking; (3) language class risk taking positively predicts confidence in speaking English; (4) self-esteem positively predicts confidence in speaking English. A mediator was also identified in this model. Language class risk taking was found to mediate the relationship between self-esteem and confidence in speaking English. This study might provide one of the very first empirical findings in the exploration of the relationships among these variables. The findings could help applied psychology researchers understand university EFL learners’ parental psychological control, self-esteem, language class risk taking, and confidence in speaking English in psychological, educational and linguistic contexts.

On Pushkin, Cultural Continuity and Linguistic Features of Modern Media Discourse

The article emphasizes the enormous infl uence of the work of Alexander Pushkin on the entire national culture, literature and language. It became the source of the most signifi cant socio-historical, philosophical, aesthetic ideas for all subsequent Russian literature. Personal reader observations related to the classical heritage and language of the modern media space, as well as practical experience in training journalistic personnel, prompted the author to turn to the problem of cultural continuity, which has become relevant in recent years to our society. Attention is drawn to the fact that high school graduates who have chosen the specialty of journalist and public relations specialist have in recent years come to university with a weak background of general cultural knowledge. “Digital” youth, brought up on exams, don`t always give preference to reading original literature.The purpose of the article is to understand the modern process of cultural continuity, cultural and linguistic meanings and features of modern media discourse. Society is based on communication, and communication is impossible without a common system of concepts and values. The author expresses the idea that in the context of the new challenges of our time, society has clearly formulated a request for the preservation of national roots, national culture, domestic classics, the need to preserve the intergenerational cultural code as an urgent task that determines the dynamics of the humanities in general and journalism in particular. Based on the method of theoretical analysis, as well as using the method of content analysis, the author analyzes the specifi c results of a study of the press of the big cities in the Privolzhskiy Federal District, the state of the modern media agenda and changes that have affected the language of modern media. The author concludes that these processes refl ect the transformation of both the press and society. Also, we express an opinion on the need for attention to the issues of the mission of modern media discourse, the infl uence of media on the formation of the spiritual world of modern humanity, its worldview and civic position, which was characteristic of the best traditions of Russian culture. Keywords: Alexander Pushkin, classics, cultural continuity, language of modern media, media discourse, training of journalists