Foreign Language Texts Research Articles

Teaching reading strategies in ELT

The term “strategy” can be applied to the behavior of a learner in a foreign language environment, which directly affects his learning – what the student does to control or transform the information received in a foreign language and regulate his learning. Strategies for learning a foreign language are special actions or techniques that are always problem-oriented, that is, students use them when the need arises, for example, to read and understand a foreign language text. Reading includes the skills and abilities associated with the possession of linguistic material (reading comprehension, guessing), as well as the ability to understand (extract) the information contained in the text for meaningful reading. This article discusses reading strategies in teaching English.

THE IMPACT OF KWL STRATEGY ON COLLEGE EFL STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT

Iraqi EFL learners face difficulties in comprehending English language reading texts. It is well-established that the teaching strategies focusing on the nature of reading comprehension process are more effective than traditional methods when seeking to achieve a better comprehension of foreign language texts. This study investigates the impact of the KWL strategy on the college EFL students' reading comprehension achievement. KWL (Ogle, 1986) is an instructional reading method utilized to guide students while reading a text. Students brainstorm the whole thing they Know about a topic. This information is written down in the K column of a K-W-L chart. A list of questions about what they Want to Know about the topic is then developed. These questions are set out in the W column of the chart. During or after reading, students answer the questions that are in the W column. This new information that they have Learned is recorded in the L column of the K-W-L chart. To achieve the aim of this study, a sample selected randomly from the first-grade students, the department of English, Al-Imam Al-Kadhum Private University College, Misan, Iraq. Ninety-two males and females participated in the study and were distributed equally to an experimental group and a control group. Both groups were pretested to determine their achievement level and make sure that they are homogenous. The students in the experimental group were taught reading comprehension by the K.W.L strategy, while the control group were taught by a conventional method. Pre- and post-reading comprehension tests were managed to collect data. The data were analyzed using a two-sample t-test. The findings reveal the superiority of the experimental group students in the reading comprehension post-test over their peers in the control group. Therefore, the strategy can be beneficial for students’ reading comprehension. This study is a call for teachers to utilize new strategies and techniques for teaching reading compr

Чтение на иностранном языке как этап формирования профессиональной компетенции

The paper deals with the need for new methods in foreign language teaching to students of non-linguistic universities. The article presents a strategy to optimize the foreign language lesson. As an example an algorithm with authentic technical text in German is considered. It makes possible to change the work with foreign language text. It is proposed to substitute the standard tasks to the practice-oriented, which purpose is to teach students to understand the text.

Techniques of mastering the emotional component of the content of foreign-language education

The problem for the research. Due to the focus of foreign-language education on the moral perfection of a younger personality and the development of a student’s creative abilities, many researchers consider that the structure of its content should include not only the “intellectual”, but also the emotional component. In this regard, the problem of developing an appropriate activity component that would contribute to the realization of reserves of such content and the appropriation of the cultural heritage of humanity by schoolchildren is becoming more and more urgent. Methods of investigation. The study involved students at the primary (grades 1–4), secondary (grades 5–7), high (grades 8–9) and subject-oriented (grades 10–11) levels of school foreign-language education. These are 138 students of schools in Kirov, Kirov Region, Izhevsk and the urban district “Lesnoy” (Russian Federation). In the experimental work foreign-language text material of emotional content was used, as well as the techniques of mastering the emotional component of the content of foreign-language education as a unit of emotional activity component of foreign-language education. The results were processed using methods of mathematical statistics (dispersion, standard deviation, Fisher’s criterion). The findings of the study. Identify statistically significant differences in the initial and final indicators of students with a vertical form of control at the significance level of p = 0.05. Thus, the indices of the Fisher criterion in assessing the results of mastering the “intellectual” unit and the emotional component of the content of foreign-language education by students of the junior stage were 1.89/1 and 1.3/1, respectively. At the middle stage, they were as follows: 2.47/1 (for the “intellectual” unit) and 1.5/1 (for the emotional component); at the high stage – 1.7/1 and 1.0022/1; at the profile-oriented one – 2.36/1 and 1.08/1. Conclusions. The results of the control experiment confirmed the feasibility of introducing techniques of mastering the emotional component of the content of foreign-language education in the mass practice of secondary schools. These data are of a fundamental nature on the way to the of a student as an intercultural language personality.

ОБУЧЕНИЕ СТУДЕНТОВ НЕЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИХ ВУЗОВ РАБОТЕ С ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНО-ОРИЕНТИРОВАННЫМ ИНОЯЗЫЧНЫМ ТЕКСТОМ

Objective of the article is to substantiate the necessity and possibility of implementing foreign language training for students of non-linguistic universities with an additional goal-the formation and development of skills to work with a professionally-oriented foreign language text. This goal should not require additional time or financial resources, but should be implemented in the process of regular foreign language training. Applied methods : goal setting; researching advanced pedagogical practices and modern approaches to foreign language training, current educational technologies and techniques, diagnostic tools to monitor the effectiveness of development of skills to work with a text; adaptation of diagnostic instruments for a specific purpose and other psycho-pedagogical conditions. Results . The international system PISA was chosen as a diagnostic tool for tracking the development of the ability to work with a text. It is adapted for use by students of non-linguistic universities studying a foreign language, and has been successfully used in pedagogical practice to assess the initial level of development of skills to work with a text, the final level, as well as intermediate results. Conclusion: this work will be used as the basis for substantiating and modeling the didactic system of teaching students of non-linguistic universities to work with a professionally-oriented foreign language text.

Henri H. Stahl (1901–1991): some features of intellectual biography and an outline of historical sociology

ABSTRACT The article seeks to clarify some aspects of works, ideas and professional activities of the prominent Romanian sociologist Henri H. Stahl. The article consists of four sections: a biographical profile, an outline of Stahl’s historical sociology, international discourses, critique and flaws. Although Stahl was a prolific author and his texts covered a wide spectrum of topics, the main field of his interest and expertise during his long professional career remained peasant studies. Stahl’s historical sociology is indistinguishable from the Marxist historical sociology. He was imbued by Marxist ideas from his youth and as a mature scholar he have been involved in various important Marxist debates which took place in Western academia during the 1960s–1970s. The most original part of Stahl’s historical sociology was his theory of tributarism which he had elaborated in the context of pre-modern Romanian social history. From the liberalization of the Romanian communist regime in the mid-1960s Stahl ceased to be isolated and entered into interaction with Western colleagues (despite the reluctance of the regime). Stahl’s output of academic texts in foreign languages and published abroad was significant, and his summarizing book about traditional Romanian village communities became a kind of academic bestseller.

Methods for expressing text-forming features in the structure of foreign-language technical teaching texts

Methods for expressing text-forming features in the structure of foreign-language technical teaching texts

The use of evocative content-section of foreign language media texts in environmental education

The article is devoted to the question of studying the application of a content-slicе of foreign-language media texts, created on the basis of evocative representation, in order to identify relevant environmental topics and use them in the process of teaching environmental students. An analysis of the evocative representation of environmental topics in media discourse, understood as a set of media texts, made it possible to single out the most demanded and topical issues in the modern global environmental community. The content-slice used in the study was developed on a cognitive basis with a systematic study of cognitive categories and types of information concept. Cognitive categories were identified by the representation in the titles of Englishlanguage media texts of a certain type of information concept indicating the importance and frequency of its reproduction in media discourse over a certain period. The identified cognitive categories and environmental topics were used in teaching environmental students English, significantly expanding the educational horizon of students, involving them in the discussion of modern environmental problems with an orientation towards the development of their own region and finding the place of its problems in global environmental practice. When using the content-slicе on media texts classified under environmental headings, the following environmental themes were identified: Danger of Hurricanes, Grееn Еnеrgy, Dangerous Footing; Global Warming / Climate Changе / Climate Skeptic, Pesticides, Biodiversity, Wildlife, Ecology in Space, Ecological education and researches, Recycling, Emissions. With the obvious value of using this material in the classroom of environmental students, the issues of practical development of these thematic areas not only in foreign language classes, but also in specialized subjects of environmental education have great potential.

Межкафедральное взаимодействие в аграрном вузе как основа для разработки курса профессионального иностранного языка на основе модели интегрированного предметно-языкового обучения

One of the new approaches to foreign language teaching for professional communication in non-linguistic universities, including agrarian ones, is content and language integrated learning. In contrast to a foreign language for special purposes, an integrated approach aims to develop a foreign language communicative competence and professional competence of students within one course. In this case, the discipline “Foreign Language for Professional Communication” is aimed at intra-profile specialization. However, the main difficulty in developing an integrated course arises in determining the subject-thematic content of training, reflecting the future professional activities of students. A foreign language teacher, for objective reasons, is not compe-tent to highlight this subject-thematic content of education. In this regard, interdepartmental inte-raction is presented as an effective and efficient solution to the current problem. In this work we: a) determine the relevance of interdepartmental interaction for the development of integrated courses; b) highlight the key differences between teaching a foreign language for special purposes and content and language integrated learning; c) illustrate interdepartmental interaction at all stages of the development of an integrated course and teaching materials. There are seven such stages in the work: 1) assessment of students’ needs; 2) defining the goals and objectives of the course; 3) definition of course topics or subject-thematic modules; 4) definition of subtopics of each sub-ject-thematic module; 5) selection of foreign language texts of a professional orientation; 6) development of problematic tasks of foreign language speech and professional orientation; 7) course assessment.

Translation difficulties from english to Russian

The article describes some translation difficulties of the words from English to Russian. As we know understanding foreign language text is difficult skill which requires good preparation. Even knowledge of grammatical norms and lexis doesn't guarantee best results. Difficulties of translation from English to Russian can appear for different reasons-from the problem of defining the meaning of the word to misunderstanding of syntactic structure of the sentence. So there are some examples given in the article.

Reading as a kind of oral activity in professional language training

The article analyzes the topical questions of professional language training. Particular attention is paid to teaching of the reading skills as a type of oral activity. The article considers the problems of teaching different types of reading, taking into account the differences in language training level of students. Reading is considered to be anoral activity that contributes to the development of skills and abilities of oral communication. Itis also characterized as a teaching tool in terms of the content, basic principles of teaching, as well as the sequence of teaching. The authors, based on the classifications of reading types suggested by most scientists, offer their own types of tasks and ways of forming speech competence based on teaching professional reading. The ways of overcoming the difficulties of a foreign language text are proposed. The article also outlines the basic principles of teaching various types of reading.

The formation of grammatical competence on the material of pronouns of German language

This article reviews the concept of educational competence, component composition of foreign language communication competence, and content of teaching technique of the grammatical side of speech on the material of pronouns of German language. The grammatical speaking skills, which are in the center of research analysis, manifest as the means of formation of communication competence. The knowledge of grammatical rules is the basis for language proficiency. Grammar performs an organizational role essential to students for structuring oral speech and understanding specializes texts in foreign language. The article analyzes the peculiarities of teaching basic syntactic structures of German language system, the methodologically appropriate presentation of which form grammatical speaking skills of the students. The need for paying closer attention to the formation and development of grammatical competence is substantiated by the fact that communication in foreign language is impossible without the command and proper use of words and phrases that comply with the norms of that language. Possessive and demonstrative pronouns are most difficult to digest for the Russian-speaking audience, due to discrepancy in their morphology and variety of meanings in the contacting languages, which necessitates the use of methodological techniques to alleviate the effect of linguistic interference.

Corpus Analysis of the Grammatical Categories’ Constituents in Fiction Texts Considering the Linguo-Regional Component

The problem of insufficient development of professional digital tools in the humanities, including linguistics, is posed. The results of a long-term study on the development of specialized software for corpus analysis of a foreign language text, in which the regional component plays an important role, are described. On the example of Franz Kafka’s novel “Das Schloss” the work of three computer programs is demonstrated, including primary text processing, automatized markup of a small special (grammatical) corpus, a combined search for selected constituents of the grammatical categories of certainty / uncertainty, modality, as well as individual grammatical phenomena by markers of the marked up corpus and by regular expressions in case of the not marked up text, considering the regional characteristics of spelling. It is concluded that the maximum effectiveness of research of this kind can be achieved with the active work of an expert with a specially developed software product. Moreover, the expert’s task includes not only professional software management, but also active participation directly in its development. The described analysis model can be used to analyze the categorical spectrum of a foreign language text, as well as to compile didactic materials for teaching foreign languages and translation.

CLIL: graphic organisers and concept maps for noun identification within bilingual primary education natural science subject textbooks

ABSTRACT Though concept maps and graphic organisers are useful tools for bilinguals to organise the information being managed and learned, its systematic use is not widened and decisive in CLIL domains. Apart from helping students to acquire meaningful learning, concept mapping might promote in them word-recognition skills for the identification and management of relevant information within foreign language (L2) texts. Hence, this article inquires into the influence of concept maps and graphic organisers as tools for noun category identification from L2 texts. Research sample comprises sixty Spanish primary education students from a bilingual school. Design is quasi-experimental, and the training programme lasted three weeks. Materials used during the training period are not exceptional, but the ordinarily found in regular classrooms. Data gathering procedure consists of the identification and circling of nouns by sample participants. As a starting point, secondary data as the intelligent quotient, learning style, and English level is collected via standardised tests. The analysis of the variance showed a highly significant interaction between the groups and the implemented texts both for noun identification (F 3.171 = 12.124, p < 0.000, η 2 = 0.175), and the grammatical categories mistakenly identified as nouns (F 3.171 = 3.840, p < 0.016, η 2 = 0.063).

Learners’ emotions in foreign language text chats with native speakers

The paper examines the emotions of 15 learners of Japanese across seven weekly online text chats in Japanese with native Japanese speakers, and the factors that caused their emotions. The data came from questionnaires about the learners’ biodata and previous experiences of text chats, weekly reports about their chats, transcripts of the chats, and occasional questions in e-mail exchanges between the researcher and the learners to clarify certain statements in the weekly reports. The learners’ positive and negative emotions and the causes of those emotions were coded and counted for descriptive quantitative analysis. The learners reported both positive and negative emotions within each individual chat as well as across the seven weeks. Enjoyment was the most frequently occurring of the positive emotions, while a sense of difficulty was most often reported among the negative emotions. Both positive and negative emotions changed over the seven weeks. The chat process and issues with the Japanese language tended to be triggers for negative emotions, with positive emotions likely to be triggered by the chat partners, and also by discussions of hobbies, similar interests and culture. It would appear to be important for learners to develop a rapport with their partner through chat communications and to avoid focusing too much on their own limited foreign language proficiency in order to increase their positive emotions in online text chats, thus improving the experience and leading to greater learning.

Multidisciplinary approach to determining the objects of listening control of a foreign language text

Multidisciplinary approach to determining the objects of listening control of a foreign language text

Learners’ success and self-esteem in foreign language reading comprehension

Demands for a high-level development of foreign language reading comprehension skills and competences are now escalating and processing of foreign language text information is a matter of course. Pupils and teachers are faced with the need to work with textual information in more complicated ways, in which self-esteem plays an important role. This paper analyses learners’ success of reading comprehension in foreign language and real self-esteem in acquiring those skills. Self-esteem helps to promote language self-confidence, the learner’s level of aspiration, and adjustment to perception of foreign language structure. As long as the learner does not really perceive themselves (real “self”), it is difficult to talk about understanding lexical meanings and their real perception of grammatical structures in the text. The research goal was to find differences in self-esteem and success in foreign language reading comprehension skills with respect to categories of comprehension (specifically: I always understand everything; I have a lot of problems with text understanding; specifically: I experience difficulties with understanding unknown words; problem with understanding long sentences; difficulty with understanding the unfamiliar topic of the text; pictures help me in understanding; guiding questions help me in understanding). The research question was whether the self-image of learners in relation to the skill of foreign language reading comprehension is realistic given their real success in this skill. The research was carried out in the Slovak Republic on a sample of 327 respondents and found differences in subjective perception of understanding and success in reading comprehension skills. The research showed a low real self image of learners especially in categories of global character in respect to the average understanding of foreign language texts.

The Effect of Critical Rhetoric in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

The present paper represents an attempt so as to examine and analyze texts in terms of the context and its relation to cultural, political and social issues. It also provides theoretical and practical information which are used in classroom to facilitate learning foreign language. Rhetorical analysis is essential to be used and incorporated into EFL classroom because it is an important field which is not isolated from other disciplines like critical thinking and learning process. Special emphasis is laid upon the role of contrastive rhetoric in facilitating the process of learning foreign languages. Some pedagogical implications for studying L2 correctly and effectively are also tackled. Furthermore, the major role of pragmatics in analyzing the Second and Foreign Language text is also highlighted. This is accomplished within a pedagogical point of view. It is hoped that the paper will be of value to EFL teachers, syllabus designers, applied linguists and specialists in ethnography of communication.

Poets of the Sixties as Translators of Ossetian Poetry

The results of a comparative analysis of multilingual texts - the original and the translation - of poetic works by Ossetian authors (M. Tsirikhova, A. Tsarukaev, R. Asaev, G. Dzugaev, H.-M. Dzuzzati, D. Darchieva, T. Tettsoeva) in the light of the translation interpretation by famous Russian poets of the sixties (E. Evtushenko, B. Akhmadulina, R. Kazakova, B. Okudzhava, Yu. Morits) are presented. In the course of comparative analysis, it was found that some translators resorted to adapted rethinking of the lines of a foreign language text (Yu. Morits, B. Akhmadulina). It was shown that for this purpose, in some places, translators violated the formal organization of the verse, expanded the original text by adding stanzas (R. Kazakov) or, conversely, narrowed the verse of the original (B. Okudzhava, B. Akhmadulina), but changes in the structure of the original did not affect the adequate perception of the text to recipients. The features of the implementation of the original pragmatic potential in translation are commented. It is noted that translators not only find lexical means characterized by semantic affinity with the words of the original, but also embody the aesthetic component of the literary text (R. Kazakova, Yu. Moritz) and others. It is stated that some poets deliberately resorted to rethinking the artistic reality captured by the author: in the language of translation, a new work is actually created based on the poem in the original (E. Evtushenko, B. Akhmadulina).

CHANDRAKANTBAKSHI’S GUJARATI SHORT STORIES: CONCEPTS, CULTURE AND PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH AN ANALYSIS

Translation is a tool of communication in education. Translation is an intelligent activity, requiring creative problem-solving in novel, textual, social and cultural conditions. A translator is the first ‘reader’ of the other culture as is shown in the foreign language text and he is expected to present the other in a primary process. Cultural substitution is a strategy of replacing the source language (SL) expression with a target language (TL) item that “does not have the same prepositional meaning but is likely to have a similar impact on the target reader”. In view of all these, we find it less than convincing to consider the notion of “cultural translation” as a sort of extension or overcoming of the linguistic concept of translation. The concept of culture is fundamental to any approach to translation. The objective of this paper is to discuss the concepts, cultural dimensions and the problems of translation from an Indian language text into English, especially, Chandrakant Bakshi’s Gujarati short stories into English language.