Chafe’s Semantic Structure Processes Versus Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar Processes

Processes are seen as a language phenomenon involving the participant of various language elements realized by verbals, nominal groups or adverbials. How these elements occur in the processes depends on linguists’ concepts of processes. The paper aims to consider Chafe’s processes and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar processes to see what similarities and differences are. The study was conducted with qualitative methods in order to analyse materials and analyse the data collected. The data include samples extracted from four literary works in English which are The Man of Property, The Old Man and the Sea, the Call of the Wild and the Moon and Sixpence. The findings can point out some differences and similarities of processes by Chafe and Halliday. At the same time, the results will help those who pay much attention to this language phenomenon have a deeper understanding in order to equip themselves with background knowledge of language learning and research

Water as Metaphor of Human Beings in English and Vietnamese Poems

This study aims to investigate the conceptual metaphors of water, which are metaphorically used to describe human beings, emotions, behaviours and relationships in English and Vietnamese poems. Based on the theory of cognitive linguistics and conceptual metaphors of Kövecses (2002) and Lakoff and Johnson (1980), this study examined 200 English and Vietnamese samples from a collection of poems written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through the application of descriptive, quantitative, and qualitative approaches and contrastive analysis, the study reveals that there are 6 categories of water images which are metaphorically used to characterize human beings. The study also finds out the similarities and differences between conceptual metaphors of water symbolizing human beings in English and Vietnamese poems. This investigation is hoped to improve our understanding of how metaphorical phenomena are interpreted across languages and enhance the process of teaching and learning English

Perception, Attitude and Practice of English Presentation Skills by Students at the University of Danang-University of Foreign Language Studies, Vietnam

The study aims to find out the perception, attitude, and practice of English presentation skills of first-year English students from the Faculty of Foreign Language Teacher Education and the Faculty of English at The University of Danang-University of Foreign Language Studies (hereafter called EFL students for brief) as well as to propose appropriate solutions to assist them. Data were collected from 200 questionnaires, and the analysis of the in-depth interviews was conducted with 10 student informants and observations of 30 students in total. The findings showed that most students were familiar with English presentation skills. Also, they were aware of the importance of presentation skills and agreed on the necessity for a successful presentation. Knowledge was what caused participants the most difficulties during the preparation stage, and when presenting, students struggled the most not to replicate the textbook word-by-word. To solve these problems, several solutions were discussed in the study

A Study on Communication Breakdowns between Native and Non-native Speakers in English Speaking Classes

English majored students have a positive influence on intercultural awareness in learning a foreign language. In their classes, they are often asked to discuss some academic matters in British cultural beliefs. Although they have a high level of proficiency in English communication, there often encountered misunderstandings between them when they interpret things or present academic matters. As a result, students cannot achieve plurilingual and pluricultural competence in the course. This paper was conducted to investigate communication problems between Vietnamese learners of English and Native teachers at HUFI. The data were collected from 28 participants who are third-year students and four different lecturers from different countries. The findings revealed that sources were mainly clustered for the following reasons: perceptual and language differences, information overload, inattention time pressures, distraction/noise emotions, complexity in organizational structure, and poor retention. The perceptual and language differences, information overload, and emotions were mainly responsible for the quality of communication. This paper can help students engage in awareness-raising activities that promote understanding in some contacts and discussions

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Discursive Strategies Used in Economic News in Economist.com and Tuoitre.vn

Economic news we read everyday is probably our main source of economic knowledge. Thus, it has an important role in shaping our public knowledge, attitudes and behavior. Concerned with significance of critical comprehending of economic news, this research is conducted to investigate how writers in economist.com and tuoitre.vn address economic issues as well as discover similarities and differences of English and Vietnamese economic news. More importantly, the researcher aims at shedding light on implications of critical discourse analysis (CDA) for understanding and writing economic news. In this study, Van Dijk's framework [4] is employed to detect 12 common discursive strategies used by journalists in 200 samples (100 samples in English and 100 samples in Vietnamese) collected from the two newspapers in English and Vietnamese: economist.com and tuoitre.vn. Findings show that discursive strategies are used differently in the two languages to address economic issues based on different ideologies of the writers