Emergency remote teaching and learning in simultaneous interpreting: Capturing experiences of teachers and students

The article covers the transfer to emergency remote teaching and learning in Simultaneous Interpreting (SI) during the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown in early 2020. The study aims to establish some approaches as to how the emergency move to online training was conducted, what we can learn from this experience and what were the main challenges. The article presents and analyses the findings of the survey of teaching staff and students in seven universities in Europe and Australia. Twelve interviews were conducted remotely with selected members of teaching staff and students. The study confirms that universities were able to complete their modules in Simultaneous Interpreting by making arrangements for a smooth transfer to remote training in synchronous and asynchronous modes. The transfer and emergency remote teaching and learning mostly depended on the prior experience of teaching teams in delivering online workshops and webinars and their close engagement with students. The role of course or module leader has been outlined as key to providing leadership during the transfer to emergency arrangements during lockdown. One of the conclusions of this study addresses the need for teaching remote interpreting within university Interpreting or Translation and Interpreting courses in view of the current situation with the Covid-19 pandemic and possible new requirements in the future

Some Aspects Of Student Engagement In Formative In-Class Peer Review

The paper deals with some aspects of postgraduate students’ perceptions of formative in-class oral peer review of presentations or participation in other speaking activities in language modules. The research specifically addresses the development of language, presentation, professional/academic communication, and research skills during peer review exercises in small groups and analyses the feedback of students over the period of two academic years showing the development of their perceptions during their postgraduate studies. The findings confirm the results of previous research in peer review and expand our knowledge with regards to the use of in-class oral peer feedback in language training with the aim of developing academic speaking skills, critical thinking and argumentation, teamwork and some elements of the community of practice. The paper also considers challenges which students experienced in relation to in-class peer review especially at the beginning of the academic year and explores whether students perceive this approach useful for the development of their language and research skills while comparing those attitudes at the beginning and at the end of modules. The paper argues that this approach contributes to more effective engagement of students in teaching and learning and can be easily transferred to online training which is crucial in the current circumstances of coronavirus pandemic

Language planning and policies in Russia through a historical perspective

The article aims to provide a historical overview of language planning and policy in Russia and to establish and analyse the overarching approaches in status, acquisition, and corpus planning. The provided examples and analysis of various stages reinforce the argument that the development of language policy and planning was consistent with the endeavours of political elites to centralise power and adjust the agency use of languages for their political ends. Our data showed that the State has played the key role in the development of the rhetoric either in order to frame language selection or to generate the perception of high or low prestige languages. We argue that the Russian language has always been central for ruling elites. They have supported the development of Russian throughout history while limiting the use and functioning of other national, regional, or minority languages through promoting bilingualism or other approaches generating mass loyalty. Recent changes which diminish the role of minority languages may lead to further deterioration of their status, acquisition, and corpus planning

Migration and Languages in the UK Industrial Relations

The paper is based on the research conducted by the author together with the teams of researchers within IR Multiling project31 which addressed the issues of migration and languages in industrial relations in six EU countries. The current research investigates how the situation has been evolving in the UK in the last decade. The paper aims to establish and address some trends in migration and the use of languages in the current landscape of industrial relations

Project-based learning as an instructional tool in teaching ad drafting to students majoring in advertising

As advertising penetrates into all social spheres, it vastly affects the social behavior of different linguocultural communities. While advertisements have a profound effect on the social medium, it is the extent and the various facets of this influence that grab the headlines of scientific research. This article aims to consider one of the leading methods of teaching ad drafting to students majoring in Advertising while focusing mainly on the functions and syntactic characteristics of the advertising discourse. Considering the peculiarities of ad drafting as a class activity, the article brings a focus on the project method as one of the most efficient training frameworks that allows to introduce profession-specific practices into the learning process, promote creativity and foster proactive mindsets in the context of learner-centered practice-oriented training environment. The study highlights the theoretical considerations involved in the study of advertisements, specifically centering around their syntax and functions that include attracting attention, informing, persuading, motivating by offering discounts and gifts, and most importantly encouraging the consumer to choose a particular product or service being advertised. The syntactical peculiarities and nomenclature of the basic functions of advertisements are further on analyzed to explain the corresponding teaching and learning implications and clarify the place and role of the project method in ad drafting training. The authors suggest that while project-based learning implies a lot of creative activity being incorporated into the class, purposeful implementation of projects cannot only be associated with motivational boost, encouragement of personal interest, or a somewhat informal practice of skill transfer: as the article stresses, projects developed as part of the instructional “toolkit” in ad drafting classes should at all times be designed so as to teach students to think strategically. Strategic reasoning, in turn, should be based on the awareness of the functional load behind the language and syntax used in advertising texts. Thus, the paper singles out syntactical features inherent in the advertising discourse (such as, for example, brevity, an abundant use of elliptical constructions, or prevalence of imperative sentences) and makes systemized conclusions regarding the project-based methodological routine most suitable for the purposes of ad drafting classes with students majoring in Advertising

The issue of lexical interference in teaching LSP

As pertains to professional communication training, the issue of reducing lexical interference holds a controversial position in foreign language methodology: while the issue obviously poses a challenge, it remains relatively unexplored in terms of methodological aspects involved. The most significant obstacles and errors in foreign language teaching have to do with the linguistic phenomena taking on contrasting shapes in the target and native languages. This article aims to develop a set of methodological principles to help overcome lexical interference of Russian in ESP learning. This is a complex task. Using authentic training materials, audio courses, newspapers, magazines, and online content, providing adequate methodological handling of foreign language features, identifying challenging lexical peculiarities of the English language, estimating the most probable manifestations of interference on the lexical level can help expose the main causes and roots of lexical interference and errors in LSP learning. The vocabulary of most of the world’s languages incorporates a significant number of words common to two or more languages. Their occurrence can be traced to specific historical reasons – common etymology of languages, prolonged domestic and cultural communication of peoples speaking different tongues. Lexical interference stems from disparity, variance in terms of the volume of notions, in particular, when it comes to international roots and the socalled ‘false friends of a translator’. By identifying the areas of convergence and divergence in the use of language means, we will be able to detect the scope of interference, estimate probable challenges, and devise ways of dealing with errors caused by lexical, as well as other types of interference. The study deploys the methods of complex semantic analysis of interfering lexical units

The use of homomorphic image processing to analyze coke grading

The estimation of the geometrical sizes of particles of crushed solid fuel (coke), moving on the conveyor belt, is associated with a number of technical difficulties. One of the problems is the need for a non-invasive way of determining particle geometry. A promising way to solve it is to use devices based on machine vision systems. This paper describes the algorithmic part of the prototype of such a device. It is proposed to improve the quality of boundary detection between fragments of coke particles to perform homomorphic processing of the initial low-contrast video images. The algorithm for calculating the Fourier spectrum has been optimized based on the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) with the mixed base. As a result, it becomes possible to reduce the computational cost for calculating two-dimensional Fourier spectra for complex multiplication operations by 1.33 times, and the number of complex addition operations by 1.67 times. The software of the prototype, built using the proposed methods, made it possible to obtain good convergence of the results for assessing the particle size distribution of samples of crushed coke with laboratory estimates. Thus, the maximum absolute average error of the machine vision system in assessing the size of crushed coke is only 3.37%, and the maximum error for all measurement classes do not exceed 6.9%. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd