Articles

This article presents the results of an empirical study of learners’ needs analysis to design a potential training course to adapt teachers to work in a middle school with International Baccalaureate (IB MYP) programs. The purpose of the study was to identify learning needs as well as gaps and expectations, preferred formats, amount of time that teachers in Russian schools have available for professional development courses in IB MYP programs. Using a survey method, the study identifies learning preferences of teachers as participants in a potential course: practice orientation, attention to documentation, preferred topics and formats of work. The learning needs analysis also revealed barriers that may prevent teachers from effectively engaging in professional development, including lack of time, conceptual complexity of the material, lack of institutional support and lack of professional guidance. The Learning Needs Analysis has proven to be a convenient, relatively simple, flexible, and effective tool for subsequent course design. The authors conclude that it is versatile for courses of varying focus and duration and suggest a number of ways to make the method more useful for understanding the learning context of specific groups by adding sociometric questions.

The current stage is characterized by the dynamic development of artificial intelligence technologies and their introduction into foreign language teaching. Chatbots are one of such dialogical interactive teaching programs capable of developing foreign-language oral and written speech skills of a learner by maintaining a dialogue with them and imitating human speech on the basis of natural language and machine learning technologies and the algorithms of human speech embedded in the programme. The present paper is based on the analysis and synthesis of methodological studies devoted to the development of methods of teaching pupils and students foreign-language oral and written speech interaction based on chatbots. The most frequently discussed aspects in the problems of modern research are identified, and the prospects for further research related to the use of chatbots in teaching a foreign language are defined. The most commonly discussed aspects in methodological papers include: a) identifying learners’ attitudes towards the use of chatbots; b) identifying the possibility of developing learners’ written and oral speech skills based on chatbots; c) determining the level of learners’ proficiency in a foreign language for educational interaction with a chatbot. As prospective research, we identify studies aimed at a) developing step-by-step methods of teaching foreign language speech interaction based on chatbots; d) defining the nomenclature of foreign language speech interaction skills with a chatbot.

The article is aimed at the analysis and classification of the main stages of digitalization of language education in the world. The use of computer technology in teaching foreign languages began more than 80 years ago. Until recently, this topic was the subject of discussion of a rather narrow circle of specialists, but with the onset of the digital era and the rapid development of mobile and cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, more and more foreign language teachers in our country and abroad are introducing open educational resources into the educational process and applications, design distance courses and massive open online courses for teaching foreign languages. At the moment, there is an urgent need to analyze the stages of implementing computer technologies in teaching foreign languages and to identify some methodological features of the organization of the educational process supported by ICT, namely: the dominant method of learning, some didactic potential of the latest technologies, the role of the student and teacher, etc. Five main stages of the digitalization of language education were identified, which were named in accordance with the dominant teaching method: behavioral, audial, integrative, social-communicative, task-based communicative. The article also discusses the types of learning that have appeared due to digital technologies, such as mobile, social learning, learning based on augmented and virtual reality technologies — immersive learning. Particular attention is paid to the opportunities provided by artificial intelligence — deep learning, chat-bot learning, robotic learning of foreign languages.

Although J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” has been rendered into Russian multiple times, in each new version its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, sounds surprisingly different. In this paper we seek to elaborate on some issues concerning the translation of the novel. We contend that it is vital to check translation against the reaction of the original recipient (the American reader) to the original text, on the one hand, and the effect the existing translations produce or produced on the new recipient (which is the Russian reader in our case), on the other. An examination of the difference between the former and the latter will create the necessary touchstone against which it will be possible to critically evaluate the existing renditions and offer guidelines for every new translator to follow. It is shown that data obtained through such analysis might provide more valid criteria for the criticism of existing translations and, appropriately enough, contribute to the quality of those yet to come. We also challenge the commonly accepted opinion that translation of slang expressions in the novel plays a dominant role in achieving the necessary level of equivalence. Against this backdrop, we make a few points about the narrator’s voice as something instrumental in character development. To this end, we shall focus on the more well-known Russian versions of Rait-Kovaleva (1960) and Maxim Nemtsov (2008), of which there can be found documented reader feedback, both professional and amateur. We do so with special regard to the author’s intentionality and sociolinguistic factors.

The article is devoted to the issue of preparing science students for an oral exam in English. The author analyzed the data of research considering the relationship between Teacher Talking Time and Student Talking Time in a foreign language classroom, conducted by C. Chaudron, V. Cook, D. Nunan, R. Ellis, C. Pesce, A. Korenev and D. Babaeva. The ratio of 30% to 70% was determined as optimal for oral speech practice and the conclusion is made that it is possible to increase Student Talking Time with the help of pair and group work.

The methods of preparing students for an oral foreign language examination are analyzed on the basis of teaching strategies at the biological faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The English language oral exam for undergraduate students consists of the following three tasks: a prepared monologue on the subject of personal and scientific interests of the examinee; an impromptu monologue-description based on visual materials on biological topics, and a dialogue with the teacher to continue the discussion of the topic presented in the visual materials. The possible difficulties that students face doing each task during an oral foreign language exam are listed. The author has proposed some solutions to overcome the difficulties associated with the insufficient practice of oral speech.

The article is dedicated to a number of theoretical and practical problems of intercultural business communication. The main focus is put on the analysis of the existing data and didactic sources designed to develop intercultural competence, required skills and abilities that ensure efficient communication in multicultural environment. It is generally accepted that conflicts arise as a result of a clash between individuals that belong to different social, cultural, religious and other groups, having negative psychological effect on communicators. These conflicts are difficult to avoid since people pursue individual self-interests lacking skills that could help them succeed in cross-cultural communication. In order to identify the underlying causes and issues of communication barriers and origins of cultural conflicts the authors investigate the content of the notion “intercultural communication” and speculate on its historical development. Despite the burgeoning interest paid to the issue in academic and business circles, we still witness lack of attention given to the development of intercultural communication and intercultural competence within the framework of educational process. The authors justify the need for implementation of some alternative technologies and resources such as multimodal texts, social networks, individual and group projects, role-play and debates as supplementary sources for existing Business English textbooks.

The article focuses on the integration of standard varieties of the German language, functioning on the territory of German-speaking countries in the teaching process. The author is aiming at analyzing briefly the main stages of German as a foreign language teachers’ interest in the mentioned issues. The major periods of the pluricentricity theory integration in the theory and practice of teaching German are discusses. The formation and the development of the DACH(L)-principle, the use of the concept of the German language variability in teaching languages and area studies, its integration into the process of language teaching on various levels of education are described. In addition, the problem of the diatopic functioning of the German language is analyzed in the framework of teaching translation. An overview of the literature, which codified the standards (dictionaries, grammar books, etc.), is also given. Special attention is paid to the review and analysis of textbooks and workbooks including phonetic, lexical, grammatical and pragmatic features of the German variety standards. The paper also raises the question of the relationship between the pluricentricity theory and the international German language tests. As a result of the study, the author comes to the conclusion regarding the major pedagogical potential of the pluricentricity theory of the German language.

The interaction of different fields of knowledge leads to the transfer of concepts. The new metalanguage often borrows terminology from areas traditionally considered contiguous, the enrichment of terminological units is due to cross-disciplinary invariants. The article touches upon the problem related to the cognitive potential of nomadic concepts. The purpose of the article is to study the heuristic potential of the interdisciplinary term platform. The objective of the article: to consider the cognitive features of the term platform in the communicative environment. The object of the research is platforms in the information network as a place for communication of scientific, social, financial and economic communities. The research material was: 1) comparison of the definition of the platform as a term in Russian and French dictionaries; 2) study of the meaning and heuristic potential of this nomadic concept and the concept in communication networks. As a result of the conducted research, the communicative significance of the nomadic term platform, formed as a result of the conceptualization of complex logical connections, has been revealed.

The category-based textual approach is utilized to describe the linguistic aspects of the English patent. The methodology is as follows: 1) identifying the author’s communicative intention; 2) taking into consideration the communicative function of the text resulting from the author’s communicative intention; 3) describing multilevel linguistic means used to convey the function and express the textual categories. The patent text is considered to be a product of the author’s intention finding its manifestation in the text function and the respective selection of content- and composition-related means of expressing the textual categories of theme, tonality, and composition being relevant for analyzing patents. As a structural category, the composition has the text-building role while the informative and appellative functions are typical of the compositional parts of patents. The theme of the patent is formed through the use of multi-component terminological collocations, with their syntagmatics being the result of the informative function. The subfields of tonality manifest themselves through the use of Present Simple and reference phrases in statements as well as non-categorical and neutral tones, with officialese words being typical. The compositional part Background has the appellative function resulting from the author’s intention to convey to the recipient the idea of the invention’s practical value and manifesting itself in the specific structure of the tonality where the emotionality subfield is expressed as an antithesis through the use of qualitative lexical units as well as metaphors which is not typical of other patent parts conveying primarily the informative function. The category-based textual approach to patents is deemed to provide systemic insights into the linguistic aspects thereof.

In the modern world, sport is considered to be one of the most important spheres of human activity. Sport is constantly developing, new kinds of sports are emerging, and, as a result, new names, terms, phrases, idioms appear and enrich the lexical vocabulary of the language.

Sports discourse is characterized by undeniable originality and consists of three components: professional and terminological communication of specialists, the description of sporting events in the media and the jargon of fans. With the development of information technology, the language of sports takes on its electronic form: discussions are held in chat rooms and forums, sports events are critically reflected on and analyzed. A new branch of linguistics is emerging –   Internet linguistics, the subject of research of which is Internet communication, which is becoming one of the most common forms of communication due to its interactivity, presence effect, and also information richness.

The article is devoted to the study of the stylistic features of the Spanish football minute-by-minute on-line commentary. The definition of this kind of commentary is given. The stylistic features of this type of commentary are explored: an analysis of the tropes and figures of speech used in it is carried out. Tropes and figures of speech are distinguished from a variety of stylistic devices. Actually tropes are tools which involve the deviation from the expected and literal meaning of words. Figures of speech involve a deviation from the typical mechanics of a sentence. The article also provides a brief analytical review of works devoted to the study of sports commentary and on-line sports commentary as a special genre of sports discourse.

The paper aims at analyzing culture-specific differences in genre conventions of research article abstracts from Russian and international journals on Applied Linguistics. The study involves the use of various methods of corpus linguistics (such as frequency lists, key words type/token ratio, concordances, clusters, etc.) along with the cognitive approach to analyzing the rhetorical structure of the text. Variations over time are traced using longitudinal comparison.

The comparative analysis of the two corpora reveals differences between the abstracts in terms of their overall length (the total number of words and sentences), prevailing vocabulary (for total number of tokens and for academic words), dominant semantic fields and rhetorical structure. Specifically, Russian abstracts are shorter and their structure is simpler. The verbs in the initial sentence are broader in mean- ing and the academic lexis centers around the subject-matter of the article. In contrast, international abstracts are longer having a manifested rhetorical structure (Purpose – Methods – Results – Conclusions). The verbs in the initial sentence are more variable and their meaning is more specific, whereas the academic vocabulary tends to relate to the methods of study. By and large, the Russian abstracts can be classified as indicative, while the international abstracts as informative.

The article examines historical perspectives of sociophonetic studies of the English language functioning in Germany at the end of the 20th century. The present study focuses on the sociophonetic features of the use of English by those whose native language is German. Between 1975 and 1999, a number of empirical studies were conducted that were aimed at identifying the sociophonetic features of the English language functioning in Germany. In 1980, H. Fink published the most fundamental and detailed empirical study of the pronunciation of anglicisms and English names of firms. It formed the basis for subsequent investigations into the issues in the field by other scholars. W. Viereck, in his turn, determined that partial assimilation in the German language is more commonly spread among people who do not speak English, and by elderly respondents. He also found out that it was only the pronunciation of anglicism that led to its recognition and understanding by the respondents. In 1990, M. Jabłoński identified the most common forms of assimilation that the respondents demonstrated during the test. He fixed cases of sound substitution, elision, epenthesis, and accentuation in accordance with the rules of the mother tongue. The article generalises their findings with the aim of comparing them with the data collected in the 21st century.

It has been customary to define fascist ideology as a revolutionary change of a preexisting value system. However, the results of the analysis of the value dynamics of Italian society provoke a consideration of an alternative interpretation. The supposition is that the efforts of the fascist ideologues were directed not towards changing the traditional value matrix of Italian citizens but towards reengineering the specific dominant values of the national culture. The question is whether it is pos- sible to construct values deliberately, as the constructivist paradigm claims, and whether these values will thrive in such circumstances. Or, as the primordial paradigm implies, these values can be sustained only organically? The purpose of this article, therefore, is to study the phenomenon of incorporation of fascist values into the traditional preexisting catholic value matrix. The first aim of the article is to highlight which aspects of Catholicism were chosen by the fascist regime as the most effective ones for the achievement of its goals. The second aim is to identify the functional value of the catholic religion for the regime and the objectives it attempted to realize. The third aim is to analyze the processes that took place inside a value while it was changing its modality.

The present article deals with the issue of how family members, education and instruction they provided influenced the transformation of life strategies of women in France from the middle of the nineteenth century up to the beginning of the twentieth. The research draws upon the primary sources including memoires of Judith Gautier, Louisa Michele, Cora Pearl and Sara Bernard. In the middle of the 19th century the French traditional family underwent several changes caused by the social, culture and economic factors. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century a woman was considered to be a family keeper, who was always under the control of her husband. She did not have any social rights and a chance to decide her own fate. However, in the middle of the century the situation started changing. A woman became more integrated into society. Family members were trying to educate their daughters, give them necessary skills, financial autonomy. As a result, women became more independent, were able to choose their own life strategy. They started working, could manage property. They had husbands, lovers and children, but the new attitude to life made them free.