Desperately Seeking a Communicative Approach: English Pronunciation in a Sample of French and Polish Secondary School Textbooks

The first part of this paper analyses pronunciation exercises in a representative sample of textbooks from each country. Pronunciation exercises were classified based on the degree to which they mobilize communicative abilities, according to the five categories of a Communicative Framework for teaching pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010, p45): Description & analysis, Listening discrimination, Controlled practice, Guided practice, Communicative practice. The first category involves little risk-taking by the learner, usually focusses on form and allows little freedom. At the other end of the spectrum, communicative practice involves a focus on meaning and interaction, with the concomitant greater freedom to make mistakes. The exercises were then analysed to see which segmental and/or prosodic features they favoured and to what extent

Desperately Seeking Subsidiarity: Danish Private Law in the Scandinavian, European and Global Context

Professor Lookofsky delivered the Sixth Annual Herbert L. Bernstein Memorial Lecture in Comparative Law in 2007 and this article is based on his remarks. The article is included in the inaugural volume of CICLOPs that collects the first six Bernstein lectures. As the European Union draws closer together as a single legal community, the states that comprise the EU and their various local subdivisions struggle to come to terms with the unification and universalization of EU laws across borders. The imposition of civil code practices, particularly in the area of private law, on EU member states has caused great consternation amongst states like Denmark, as they struggle not only with different laws but also with an entirely different form of legal thought. The principle of “subsidiarity” was designed to help alleviate such growing pains. First established and defined in Article 5 of the Maastricht Treat of 1992, this principle is intended to ensure that decisions are taken “as closely as possible to the citizen,” and that the Community can only take action “if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the [European] member states.” In his Bernstein Memorial Lecture, Professor Lookofsky explains why he and other Danish jurists are seeking ― but not finding ― subsidiarity in the private law field

Criminal policy influence at European and global level : strategies, challenges, experiences, recommendations

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Taking the Law Seriously: The Imperative Need for a Nuclear Weapons Convention

Jonathan Swift famously said, Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. Swift was no doubt referring to the propensity of the law to shrink from prosecuting the lords of the realm, while going vigorously after smaller fry. But his aphorism applies equally to issues: the more portentous the issue, the less likely it is to yield to legal restraints. This is evidenced by such lawless pronouncements as international law is not a suicide pact or, more recently, I believe that all nations-strong and weak alike-must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I-like any head of state-reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. It follows that a compilation of a large volume of laws, treaties, regulations, and resolutions, no matter how thorough and exhaustive, from which the illegality of the threat and use of nuclear weapons can be deduced, will not necessarily bring about a nuclear-weapons-free world. Indeed, the main article recognizes this dilemma by describing the negative position of the United States, which may be characterized as desperately seeking Lotus. What is needed, therefore, is a clear, absolute, and enforceable mandate, akin to the biological and chemical weapons conventions. It is this logic that has led to movement for a nuclear weapons convention. This Essay will briefly describe the movement for a model nuclear-weapons convention ( MNWC or Convention ) in Part I and outline its contents and discuss some issues that it raises in Part II