Competent Speakers Research Articles

The Importance of Intercultural Communicative Competences for Tourism Labour Market: Students’ Views and their Self-Assessment

Abstract The present paper is founded on two pillars. Firstly, it is one of the current trends in education worldwide, i.e. to connect theory and practice. Secondly, it is the need to be interculturally competent speakers of a foreign language in today’s globalized world of massive migration flows and signs of increasing ethnocentrism. Based upon these two requirements, the ability to communicate in a FL effectively and interculturally appropriately in the tourism industry is a must, since being employed in whichever of its sectors means encountering other cultures on a daily basis. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to find out undergraduate tourism students’ opinion on the importance of intercultural communicative competences for their future profession as well as their self-assessment in the given field. The findings of the research, which are to be compared to employers’ needs, revealed that there is considerable difference between the respondents’ views on the significance of the investigated issues and their self-esteem.

O uso de ferramentas de voz android e ios para desenvolver inglês para fins acadêmicos (eap): habilidades de fala para falantes não nativos de inglês

ESAP refers to English for a specific discipline, which specificity includes technical or special vocabulary, varying uses of academic grammar such as passive voice and nominalization, and particular professional and academic genres which are produced by the discipline. Thinking in how to increase the English speaking confidence and competence of non-native speakers, this study has aims to analyze how the use of Android and iOS voice recording tools can develop students’ speaking English skills in an English Letters graduation course in Brazil. The study pointed out that voice recording tools provide learners with opportunities to produce oral output, since they allow students to practice their speaking skills inside and outside the classroom, bringing up more confidence and courage to use ESAP in classroom.

Verbal Extensions as a Morphological Productivity Strategy Towards Meaning Creation in Languages

Languages are said to be productive because of their ability to adopt a variety of morphological strategies of word-formation through which they enrich their lexicon for ease and. facilitation of meaning creation and communication. Universally, sundry such morphological processes available for natural languages to exploit are affixation, compounding, clipping, blending and reduplication. Beyond these strategies, many African languages also adopt the device of verbal extension which seems to be absent in English morphology. This paper investigates the use of verbal extensions as a morphologically productive word-formation strategy in linguistic and communication studies. The data used for analysis in the paper are derived from standard textbooks written in English and from competent native speakers of Izọn language especially of Kolokuma and Gbarain dialects of Izọn both of which have 99% lexical contiguity. This was done through unobtrusive observations and purposive interviews and collation of a list of verbs. These methods were complemented by the researchers’ introspection. The study reveals that verbal extensions are used in Izọn as a very creative and productive word-formation and meaning-creation strategy and the ability to use them functionally is part of the linguistic and communicative competence of native speakers of Izọn language.

Translingual Negotiation Strategies Used by English Students to Build Classroom Interaction in a Translation Class

This research aimed at revealing what kind of translingual strategies that were practiced by the sixth-semester students to build interaction in the translation class. This qualitative research conducted through observing students’ interaction in translation class (using English, bahasa Indonesia, and Minangkabau languages). The researcher finds that four macro strategies proposed by Canagarajah (2013): envoicing, recontextualization, interactional, and entextualization strategies are consciously used by students during communication. Envoicing strategies are used by way of word coinage, foreignization, as well as code switching and code mixing dominantly by students while asking and clarifying information. Recontextualization strategies are done through the use of the feature of linguistic form such formulaic Islamic greeting in Arabic preceding the talk. Interactional strategies used are confirmation check, check, clarification request, and recast. Interestingly more competent students use simplification in communication, and less competent speakers use leveling as entextualizationstrategies. The use of these strategies in speaking helps students (as speakers) to establish classroom interaction.

Experimental ordinary language philosophy: a cross-linguistic study of defeasible default inferences

This paper provides new tools for philosophical argument analysis and fresh empirical foundations for ‘critical’ ordinary language philosophy. Language comprehension routinely involves stereotypical inferences with contextual defeaters. J.L. Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia first mooted the idea that contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from verbal case-descriptions drive some philosophical paradoxes; these engender philosophical problems that can be resolved by exposing the underlying fallacies. We build on psycholinguistic research on salience effects to explain when and why even perfectly competent speakers cannot help making stereotypical inferences which are contextually inappropriate. We analyse a classical paradox about perception (‘argument from illusion’), suggest it relies on contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from appearance-verbs, and show that the conditions we identified as leading to contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences are met in formulations of the paradox. Three experiments use a forced-choice plausibility-ranking task to document the predicted inappropriate inferences, in English, German, and Japanese. The cross-linguistic study allows us to assess the wider relevance of the proposed analysis. Our findings open up new perspectives for ‘evidential’ experimental philosophy.

Wittgenstein on Thinking as a Process or an Activity

Abstract In this paper I focus on a major aspect of the later Wittgenstein’s investigation of thinking – his discussion of the idea of thinking as a process or an activity. I shall show that Wittgenstein’s remarks, apart from some concerning the methodology and conception of philosophy, are grammatical remarks, meaning that they describe the use of the word “thinking” and can be agreed to by every competent speaker. I thus show that Wittgenstein’s investigation of thinking is a grammatical one, and hence that there is no inconsistency between his conception of philosophy and his philosophical practice. In the process of doing so, I shall also review previous studies on this topic and point out their deficiencies.

Collocational Competence among Polish Students of Croatian as a Foreign Language

Collocations in the Croatian language have been described in detail (Blagus Bartolec 2014). However, research on collocational competence in Croatian as a first or foreign language is still sparse. Previously, only the factors that influence the collocational competence of Croatian native speakers (NSs) were investigated, showing that NSs have the best knowledge of collocations with high frequency and associative strength (Ordulj and Cvikić 2017). The most extensive research on collocational acquisition in Croatian as a foreign language (CFL) in heterogeneous groups was done by Ordulj (2017). This research showed that participants with lower proficiency had very poor collocational competence, while participants with higher proficiency showed an equal knowledge of noun collocations in the nominative case and in oblique cases. This paper aims to deepen previous findings and to examine productive knowledge of noun collocations based on their frequency, associative strength, morphological features, and the proficiency level of Polish students of Croatian. Collocations used in this research were collected from essays written by students of Croatian at B1 and B2 CEFR (2005) proficiency levels. The hrWaC corpus was used to count the frequency of collocations, and the associative strength of collocational constituents was assessed by native speakers of Croatian. The respondent sample comprised 27 students of Croatian in Krakow, Poland, who were divided into two proficiency level groups: lower (2nd and 3rd year of studies) and higher (4th and 5th year of studies). The influence of morphological features on collocational knowledge was tested with two fill-in-the-blank tasks containing collocations in the nominative and oblique cases. The analysis of productive tasks showed that morphological features do not influence collocational knowledge at the lower or higher proficiency level. In both cases participants produced the best results in tasks with collocations of high frequency.

Highlights of a competence oriented methodology of teaching Ukrainian in school

The author is concerned that modern schools do not actually produce personalities who have linguistic stability, who have extensive experience in language use, for whom language is a value and a means of self-realization, but rather small “devices” with different memory cards and content. Despite the obvious advance of the theory of the question, the author still had the feeling that something really important has not been taken into account, because the competence mechanism fails to be fully launched because the focus on knowledge indicators slows it down. The author considers a certain way out of the current situation a necessity to form a citizen during the study of school subjects, and therefore demonstrates the role of the Ukrainian language in solving this problem. The author offers an algorithm of actions on the problem of forming a citizen, which should be complete: knowledge contributes to the formation of skills, skills become the impetus to thinking, contribute to the emergence of feelings, on the basis of which there is an attitude without which there is no personality. If the attitude is formed, the student feels confident in the choice situation, their behavior is motivated. If a person is not trained to think and analyze, if a thought, decision, action is not the product of their efforts, operations, then they become mentally lazy, accustomed to consume a ready-made opinion, which is formed for them by the media, politicians, neighbors and even detractors. The author points out that the world no longer encourages people to possess knowledge - search engines know everything. An important result of school language education is the formation of a competent speaker.

Zur Situation von Sprache und Kultur der Tsou in Taiwan

Background: In Taiwan, there are 16 recognized minorities speaking Formosan languages; the Tsou in the Alishan mountaneous region are a small distinct group of 4000 people; their language is endangered. Material and method: This is a report on various conversations with three Tsou about cultural and sociolinguistic aspects of Tsou culture and language use which were collected during a short field trip in 2018. Analysis: The subjective view of indigenous people being the last generation of competent speakers of a small language is reported, in a mixture of viewpoints, old stories and explanations about traditional culture. Conclusions: Members of small communities made the step into modernity in a rather fast process enforced from outside which challenges their traditional group identity in many ways. Modernisation comes at the price of losing the indigenous language.

Teaching social issues through cinema and teletandem

Teletandem is an innovative learning experience that helps to connect foreign language students with native or competent speakers in a virtual context. Through a Teletandem project, students have the opportunity to learn a language while developing a new cultural dimension. This paper presents the pedagogical experience of using Spanish cinema and a U.S. – Chilean Teletandem project designed to promote linguistic skills while addressing sociocultural issues related to the target culture. Using Web 2.0 tools, students had monthly synchronous conversations that focused on cultural, racial, gender, and social-political problems associated with the Hispanic culture. The Teletandem project allowed students to compare information learned in class with the material collected from their partners. This exchange of information helped students to form their own opinions and gain new perspectives of the target culture.

Familiarization and Confidence: Factors Affecting Young Learners’ Speaking Test Performance

Acquiring second language for young learners is a challenging task for them especially when it comes to speaking competence. Speaking may be the hardest competence that young learners have to master as it involves many aspects of language skills such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency at the same time. Young learners find difficulty in expressing their thought and idea in spoken language as they have to combine what is in their mind with the target language and then express it orally. These young learners finds difficulties in expressing their ideas in the target language because they have limited knowledge in vocabulary and grammar while speaking is the key skill in primary school foreign language curricula as the learners develop their social-awareness and become competent speakers of the target language (Toledo & Hoit, 2016).For this reason, some school holds English Proficiency test which include speaking as one of the test. Young learners or primary school students need to practice speaking more as it is the medium through which language is encountered, understood, practiced and learnt, (Cameron, 2001).This study aims to find out what are the factors affecting young learners’performance in speaking test and to find out what problems encountered by young learners in speaking test. This study was done in a private school in West Surabaya, Indonesia and the subjects were 87 students from second grade to sixth grade. The research instruments are questionnaire and interview. This study was expected to help students with their difficulties and improve their speaking skill.
 Keywords: speaking test, speaking skill, young learners, difficulties

On Cicero’s fine-grained perception of the prosodic features in Latin

AbstractThe long tradition of philology and comparative linguistics acknowledges the distinctive value of vowel length in Latin phonology. However, to think of Latin as a spoken language, and not only as a literary one, implies the adoption of a sociolinguistic perspective based on the idea of variation, at all levels of grammar. In this view, with due caution, it is possible to argue that vowel length was unstableab antiquoin spoken Latin, at least in the low diaphasic and diastratic levels. In this view, the paper analyzes some passages by Cicero often interpreted as testimonies in favor of the maintenance of contrastive vowel length in the phonological competence of Roman speakers. In those passages, Cicero compares the performance of the orators in theforumto the one of the actors in the theater. This comparison is based on the idea that the competence in the phonetic and prosodic elements of language could determine the success of the locutory act in both communicative contexts. The detailed analysis of the texts suggests that the whistles of the audience in the theater of which Cicero speaks to us might refer to prosodic errors concerning the length of the verse rather than that of the vowel. Therefore, those testimonies could not be considered an evidence in favor of the fine-grained perception of vowel length by all the speakers of Latin.

Adult Learning and Language Simplification.

Languages spoken in larger populations are relatively simple. A possible explanation for this is that languages with a greater number of speakers tend to also be those with higher proportions of non‐native speakers, who may simplify language during learning. We assess this explanation for the negative correlation between population size and linguistic complexity in three experiments, using artificial language learning techniques to investigate both the simplifications made by individual adult learners and the potential for such simplifications to influence group‐level language characteristics. In Experiment 1, we show that individual adult learners trained on a morphologically complex miniature language simplify its morphology. In Experiment 2, we explore how these simplifications may then propagate through subsequent learning. We use the languages produced by the participants of Experiment 1 as the input for a second set of learners, manipulating (a) the proportion of their input which is simplified and (b) the number of speakers they receive their input from. We find, contrary to expectations, that mixing the input from multiple speakers nullifies the simplifications introduced by individuals in Experiment 1; simplifications at the individual level do not result in simplification of the population's language. In Experiment 3, we focus on language use as a mechanism for simplification, exploring the consequences of the interaction between individuals differing in their linguistic competence (as native and non‐native speakers might). We find that speakers who acquire a more complex language than their partner simplify their language during interaction. We ultimately conclude that adult learning can result in languages spoken by more people having simpler morphology, but that idiosyncratic simplifications by non‐natives do not offer a complete explanation in themselves; accommodation—by comparatively competent non‐natives to less competent speakers, or by native speakers to non‐natives—may be a key linking mechanism.

Thematic Learning Training Based on 2013 Curriculum for Primary School Teachers

The purpose of this Community Service is to provide an understanding of the implementation of curriculum-based thematic learning. The teachers involved numbered 30 people and were representatives from several schools. The method of the activities carried out in the form of training and counseling by displaying competent speakers and models in terms of compiling and implementing thematic learning based on 2013 Curriculum. The results of community service activities that have been carried out are better understanding of teachers on 2013 curriculum based thematic learning for primaryschool teachers. For teachers who teach in classes that have implemented the 2013 curriculum, this activity can be good learning in order to apply the 2013 Curriculum in the classroom.

Speech adaptation to palatal perturbation: Evidence for sensorimotor reorganization across the workspace

Competent speakers demonstrate a high degree of precision in speech production, but also considerable flexibility in speech motor patterns used to attain speech goals. This flexibility is evident in studies examining adaptation to sensory perturbations, including physical manipulations that alter both auditory and somatosensory feedback (e.g., using a palatal prosthesis to disrupt the production of the alveolar fricative /s/). While the acoustic effects of such perturbations (and subsequent adaptation) have been well explored, their underlying articulatory basis remains poorly understood. In this study, we explored speech adaptation to a palatal perturbation in 9 adult speakers using acoustic and articulatory measures of adaptation (using electromagnetic articulography) during the production of various consonants and vowels. Acoustic measures showed effects of both the perturbation and subsequent compensation (following 15 minutes of speech practice) across the consonants and vowels. Analysis of tongue kinematics confirmed the global nature of these effects, including significant changes in sounds involving no physical interaction with the palate. Furthermore, directional analyses revealed a degree of fine-tuning in motor adaptation across phonemes. The findings indicate that even localized changes in palate shape induce complex compensatory changes in speech motor control across the articulatory workspace.

복합시스템 접근방식의 문법 개념과 문법지도법

The purpose of this study has been to study the concept and content of Larsen-Freeman’s grammar and grammaring as a skill in the complex systems approach claimed in Larsen-Freeman & Cameron(2008) in line with complexity theories developed in physics, mathematics, chemistry and computer science since Prigogine’s 1970’s research(Prigogine & Strengers, 1984). First, we examined background hypotheses and discussed the unpredictable behavior of complex systems, which is fundamentally different from UG theories, including their sensitive dependence on initial conditions, non-linearity, self-organizing adaptation. Secondly, we studied the concept and content of Larsen-Freeman’s grammar (2001, 2003, 2009) focusing on L2 learning and learners. Finally, we reviewed and selected some successful instruction methods for L2 learners to grow into competent speakers of English through grammaring.

The diffusion of higher-status lexis in medieval England: the role of the clergy

For Rothwell (1998: 156) ‘words of ultimately French origin became part of the lexis of English as a result of the myriad daily contacts between Anglo-French and Middle English in the minds and under the pens of a whole literate class’. Although such contact interfaces between Francophone and Anglophone speakers clearly must have existed, not enough is known as to the means by which French-origin lexis was borrowed and diffused. I argue that a principal agency of contact-induced lexical change in Middle English was the clergy in their everyday role of spiritual guidance, whether or not they themselves composed religious texts. French loans in works of spiritual guidance are known to be common from the thirteenth-centuryAncrene Wisseonwards (Trotter 2003a). According to contemporaneous sources, English clerics received a Francophone-medium school education (Orme 1973), which would have familiarised them with the French vocabulary used in religious instruction in chantry schools and beyond.The various manuscripts of theCursor Mundi, a work of lay religious instruction probably composed around 1300, also offer a revealing window on the process of lexical innovation and replacement instigated by the clergy. An analysis of variant lexical forms, native and French-origin, found in the first 10,000 lines of this work shows that the latter would go on to replace native items the majority of the time. The loss of many native variants, e.g.niþ,menskandþole, and their replacement, respectively, byenvy,honourandsuffer, can be attributed to the role played by the clergy in diffusing French-origin items in the domains of discourse they dominated. Rather than merely reflecting the pre-existing lexical knowledge of monolingual English speakers, the clergy's use of such items initially introduced and then maintained French-origin lexemes in at least the receptive competence of such speakers. Their regular and widespread contact with the population at large would have enabled the take-up of lexical innovation via the spoken medium, thus motivating the use observed in homiletic and devotional written texts of extensive French-origin lexis.

COMMUNICATIVE-STRATEGIC COMPETENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF TEACHING CONTENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE FUTURE GERMAN LANGUAGE PHILOLOGISTS (INITIAL STAGE)

The article substantiates the need for the formation of abilities to apply communication strategies in teaching foreign language students at an initial stage, to form strategic competence integrated with textual and communicative ones. A competent speaker must be able to choose the leading communicative strategy aimed at achieving a communicative goal (in productive speech) and adequate perception and interpretation of the communicative purpose (in speech reception). The existing views on the content and composition of communicative-strategic competence are analyzed, the author's approach to the understanding of this concept is substantiated: the need for the differentiation of educational-strategic and communicative-strategic competence is determined. Communicative and strategic competence is defined as a system of knowledge, skills and abilities, ability and willingness to use communication strategies in order to achieve the necessary perlocative effect in the process of communicative interaction. The communicative-strategic competence is proposed to be considered in correlation with the pragmatics of speech (as the ability to use communicative strategies and implement them using a system of tactics, verbal, nonverbal and paraverbal communication means). It is substantiated that at the initial stage of studying the German language students of philology must master the informative strategy in monologue speech (within the monologue-narrative and monologue description), informative, regulative-inducing and conventional strategies in dialogical speech (in the framework of dialogue-questioning, dialogue - exchange of views, dialogue-agreement) and strategies for interpreting and understanding the intentions of the interlocutor, the content, the meaning of the statement (in listening and reading: communication tactics of reading and listening to co-authors is subjected to varieties of these types of speech activity), groups of tactics (communication tactics - messages, commentary, illustrations of tactics of language use, compensatory tactics - tactics of the selection of lexical and grammatical material, its previous repetition, the use of speech cliches, the use of fillers of silence, monitoring the success of oral utterance with the help of gestures, facial expressions, actions of the listener, paraphrase, the formation of derivative words, the use of internationalisms, the selection of synonymous lexical grams tional units; the use of nonverbal means - gestures, facial expressions, affective tactics - remission, anxiety reduction, breathing exercises, contrastive tactics - the choice of ways of communication, linguistic means, typical linguistic formulas, intonational patterns, rules of courtesy, inherent in a foreign language culture, the use of non-verbal means of communication specific to foreign language linguistic culture), verbal, non-verbal and paraverbal means of implementation of these strategies.

When Speech Stops, Gesture Stops: Evidence From Developmental and Crosslinguistic Comparisons.

There is plenty of evidence that speech and gesture form a tightly integrated system, as reflected in parallelisms in language production, comprehension, and development (McNeill, 1992; Kendon, 2004). Yet, it is a common assumption that speakers use gestures to compensate for their expressive difficulties, a notion found in developmental studies of both first and second language acquisition, and in theoretical proposals concerning the gesture-speech relationship. If gestures are compensatory, they should mainly occur in disfluent stretches of speech. However, the evidence is sparse and conflicting. This study extends previous studies and tests the putative compensatory role of gestures by comparing the gestural behavior in fluent vs. disfluent stretches of narratives by competent speakers in two languages (Dutch and Italian), and by language learners (children and adult L2 learners). The results reveal that (1) in all groups speakers overwhelmingly produce gestures during fluent speech and only rarely during disfluencies. However, L2 learners are significantly more likely to gesture in disfluency than the other groups; (2) in all groups gestures during disfluencies tend to be holds; (3) in all groups the rare gestures completed in disfluencies have both referential and pragmatic functions. Overall, the data strongly suggest that when speech stops, so does gesture. The findings constitute an important challenge to both gesture and language acquisition theories assuming a mainly (lexical) compensatory role for (referential) gestures. Instead, the results provide strong support for the notion that speech and gestures form an integrated system.

Three accounts of propositional relation reports

AbstractPeter Hanks and Scott Soames have developed a theory of propositions as structured cognitive event types, as have I in earlier works. They use the theory to offer similar accounts of transparent propositional relation reports, and very different accounts of opaque reports. For both, the sentences used to report propositional attitudes or speech acts are semantically unambiguous. Hanks invokes context-sensitivity, Soames pragmatics, to account for the different interpretations. I raise problems and offer solutions. Their accounts succumb to the non-compositionality of transparent reports, and wrongly predict that all propositional relation reports have both transparent and opaque interpretations. Soames’s pragmatic enrichment account of the opaque interpretation is unfounded, and forces him to conclude that competent speakers do not know what the sentences they use mean. The notion of an “object-dependent” or “bare” proposition is both problematic and unnecessary. I offer a new account, on which propositional relation reports have the semantic ambiguity characteristic of idioms, with the transparent interpretation being highly but not completely compositional.