1. Introduction One recent workday morning reading emails I noted that the accustomed number of automatically generated messages from FutureLearn had arrived in my inbox which usually indicated that I had new ‘followers’ for the course for which I was a tutor. On this occasion there was a different email...
In this position paper Antonio Martínez-Arboleda presents his Ártemis 2016 project of audio-visual digitisation of poetry, providing links to some of the 30 poems and 30 mini-interviews of the videos of the Open Educational Resources (OER) collection “Las flechas de Ártemis” (“The Arrows of Ártemis”). Antonio discusses the educational rationale behind this initiative and suggests a framing for 21st Century poetry that accounts for the old and the new in the Age of Technological Eversion. Some principles are advanced for the development of strategies to support learners, as they encounter the videos of this collection.
Sound symbolic words, also known as ideophones, represent that part of language that attempts to imitate real-life senses through the vocal tract. Sound symbolism as a discipline has often been overlooked and considered as relegated to child-like media and playful linguistic exchanges. In recent years, more and more research has been dedicated to these forms, which are often characterised by uncommon linguistic elements and tend to drift away from canonical grammatical and phonetic rules; for this reason, their analysis can reveal new perspectives on language creation and linguistic iconicity. The current study aims to align itself with those enquiries that have defined sound symbolic forms as ‘linguistic rebels’ and does this through the preliminary analysis of a bilingual corpus of ideophones taken from Italian Disney comics and created through extensive, doctoral archival work. The results will help clarify the role of ideophones in the comic book and will focus on identifying the morphophonological stratagems that make sound symbolic words expressive and iconic.
In response to undergraduate calls for more vocational modules for students of French at the University of Leeds, I designed a level-2 ‘Introduction to Professional Translation and Interpreting’ (IPTI). Students participate in role-plays throughout the year and so learn, through experience, observation, and feedback/discussion, the interpreting skills on which they are assessed. In this article, we shall look at the rationale behind the use and form(s) of role-play in the teaching of interpreting. We shall explore the ideas that scripted role-plays ‘work’ better than semi- or unscripted scenarios, and that generating scripts is preferable to ‘borrowing’ existing scenarios. There will then follow some comments on how role-plays can be used in a 50-minute seminar. To conclude, we shall discuss more general benefits of using scripted role-plays in the teaching of foreign languages.
In this paper, I outline the principles behind the development of an English for Academic Purposes pre-sessional programme, using Exploratory Practice as a framework. Through this framework, I argue, we are able to move beyond the issues of deciding what language and skills to teach, and when to do so, towards a more collaborative approach to language learning and teaching. This fits with the overall goal of EAP teaching, which is to meet student end need rather than work through arbitrarily created ‘language levels’. By providing space within the curriculum for ‘puzzlement’ we move towards a ‘praxis of not being sure’ (Meyer & Land, 2005), thus encouraging students to take greater control of their own language learning journey and allowing opportunities for teachers to engage in scholarship within and through the curriculum, the syllabus and their own classroom practices.
This paper discusses two peer learning projects, namely the Joint Presentation Project and YouTube Video Project, involving post-beginner students of Japanese and Japanese year abroad students at the University of Leeds. The discussion will focus particularly on the merits of the projects and some problems arisen. The results of a pilot study in 2015-16 suggested the need to reconsider the role of the teachers, as some students did not contribute to the projects as much as we expected them to do. Thus, the structure and assessment of the projects were revised and the teachers were given more active roles as supporters and facilitators in order to promote the students’ peer learning activities beyond the classroom. Student online feedback at the end of each semester showed that the projects not only increased student opportunities for in-depth communications using the target languages, but also enhanced their cultural and linguistic awareness, as well as their motivation and personal development through the sense of achievement and collaboration. In addition, the issue of unequal contributions to the project observed in 2015-16 seemed to have been resolved to some degree, due to changes in the structure and assessment of the project. However, it was also noted that the timing of the project should be more carefully planned so as not to conflict with other academic commitments.
This study aims to determine whether Spanish dictionaries commit linguistic sexism and what the effect on a non-native subject would be. Linguistic sexism in Spanish (García Meseguer 2001, Portal 1999) and its occurrence are defined, allowing the exploration of the use of masculine/feminine voices and analysis upon different semantic fields in three selected three dictionaries.
Introduction The majority of undergraduate and postgraduate translation programmes include a compulsory translation element as part of the training. In addition to this, training in Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools is frequently part of the postgraduate curriculum. However, these two components tend to be taught separately, one being seen as a...
1. INTRODUCTION [1] The Arabic Undergraduate Programme at the University of Leeds involves teaching Arabic to complete ab initio students who know no Arabic when they start level one. The programme involves the following degree combinations: Single Honours: BA in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. Single Honours: BA in Arabic...
Given the rising interest and enrolment figures in Arabic language teaching programmes, the new global technological and security concerns, and the recent shift in understanding the importance of teaching culture in foreign language pedagogy, there has been an inexplicable lack of scholarship on the integration of culture and technology in the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language. Likewise, research into appropriate web-based tools that address the unique cultural context of the Arabic language and into creative teaching materials that can support the integration of culture and technology in the Arabic teaching classroom is lacking too. Existing scholarship on these topics also tends in many cases to be theoretically based and does not explain exactly how to create intercultural communicative competence through experientially embracing the changing world of technological communication in the target culture. A significant part of this everyday communication takes place in colloquial Arabic rather than MSA. However, despite the extensive scholarship on the issue of diglossia and the integration of colloquial Arabic alongside MSA in the Arabic curriculum, there is limited research into effective methods of employing colloquial Arabic in cultural training within the Arabic classroom. If such an employment and integration does not happen, Arabic learners will find it difficult to reach a true intercultural communicative competence. This paper will look at possible ways the above issues could be resolved by employing certain technological forms of communication and cultural products in the ever-changing contexts of language use. Such a new way of teaching Arabic would require integrating the various discussions and scholarship on the teaching of Arabic, breaking existing boundaries, and promoting a new re-defined role for the Arabic teacher, as well as an increasingly innovative, experiential, and student-centred use of technology, curriculum and web-based tools that could support these changes.