Self-selection of a university course in psycholinguistics

The present article aimed at identifying the university students’ (further referred to as “participants”) self-selection of an optional course in psycholinguistics. The participants’ self-selection of the course was investigated by means of a structured questionnaire concerning their socio-linguistic background and a reflective essay on the topic ‘Why I Chose an Optional Course in Psycholinguistics’. Data analysis of the participants’ essays and the questionnaire revealed a set of variables involved in the students’ self-selection of the optional course in psycholinguistics. Whilst several variables were unique to each individual participant, data analysis indicated that there were recurrentpatterns in the self-selection process. Specifically, the data suggested that the following patterns shared by all the participantsinvolved categories “interest”, “future profession” and other categories respectively

Self-selection at the candidate level of simultaneous interpreting

Abstract. This article aims at outlining the role of self-selection in the decision by the potential students of simultaneous interpreting, i.e. interpreter candidates, to apply for a university programme in simultaneous interpreting. The role of self-selection is investigated by means of a psycholinguistic experiment involving the potential students’ written reflections on the topic ‘Why I Chose to Apply for a University Programme in Simultaneous Interpreting’. The experiment is conducted with six interpreter candidates (further referred to as ‘participants’) who want to apply for university translation and interpreting programmes at Stockholm University (Sweden), Brussels Free University (Belgium) and University of Seville (Spain) respectively. The study’s specific objective is to identify main categories involved in the participants’ self-selection of the university programme in simultaneous interpreting. The participants are instructed to write a 500 words essay on the topic ‘Why I Chose to Apply for a University Programme in Simultaneous Interpreting’. The corpus of the participants’ essays is subsequently tagged in computer program CLAN in order to facilitate the identification of the self-selection categories. Data analysis reveals that the most frequent categories involved in self-selection are ‘Interest’, ‘Communication with other people’, ‘Another identity’, ‘Novelty’ and ‘Interpreting as a natural choice’ respectively

The Framing of Dementia in Scientific Articles Published in ‘Alzheimer’s and Dementia’ in 2016

The present article involves a qualitative study of the framing of dementia in ‘Alzheimer’s and Dementia’, the Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, published in 2016. The aim of this study is to elucidate how dementia is framed qualitatively in the corpus consisting of scientific articles involving dementia published in ‘Alzheimer’s and Dementia’. The results of the qualitative analysis indicate that dementia is represented in ‘Alzheimer’s and Dementia’ in 2016 as the frames associated with gender, age, costs, caregiver and care-recipients, disability and death, health policy, spatial orientation, medical condition, and ethnic groups. These findings are further discussed in the article. Ця стаття містить фреймовий аналіз концептуалізації деменції в дискурсі наукової літератури, опублікованої в журналі «Alzheimer’s and Dementia» у 2016. Метa фреймового аналізу полягає у виявленні концептуалізації деменції в часописі «Alzheimer’s and Dementia». Результати фреймового аналізу показують, що деменція в «Alzheimer’s and Dementia» розглядається в межах таких категорій: стать, вік, кошти, догляд, інвалідність та смертність, політика в галузі охорони здоров’я, просторова орієнтація, стан здоров’я та етнічні групи. Ці результати обговорюються далі в статті

Primary School Teacher Candidates’ Reflective Essays on the Categories That They Find Problematic When Teaching English at Primary Schools in Sweden

This article comprises a mixed-methods study of primary school teacher candidates’ (henceforth participants) reflections associated with the categories that they find problematic when teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at primary schools in Sweden. In this study, the participants are instructed to reflect on problematic areas of teaching EFL to young learners at Swedish primary schools and present their ideas in the form of reflective essays written in the English language. The reflective essays are written after the participants have completed their school practice sessions, having taught EFL to the Years 4–6 at primary schools in Sweden. The participants’ reflective essays are analysed by means of the software program WordSmith (Scott, 2012) in order to generate a list of the most frequently used words. A qualitative component of the analysis involves the identification of a set of categories associated with the problematic areas of EFL teaching in the Years 4–6 at primary schools in Sweden. The results of the mixed-methods analysis reveal several problem areas, e.g. pronunciation, spelling, irregular verbs, adjectives, articles, vocabulary, prepositions, etc. These findings and their didactic implications for EFL teaching in the Years 4–6 at primary schools are further presented and discussed in the article.233

English goes digital: Framing pre-service teachers’ perceptions of a learning management system in their EFL studies

This article introduces and discusses an empirical investigation that aimed to establish how pre-service teachers of English (hereinafter “participants”) framed their perceptions of Canvas, a learning management system (LMS), in their studies of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In the present study, the participants and their respective controls (i.e., non-teacher EFL students) were requested to write a short reflective essay associated with the use of the LMS in their EFL course. All participants and the control group used Canvas as their LMS. The corpus of the participants’ and controls’ reflective essays was analysed qualitatively by means of framing analysis. The results of the qualitative framing analysis revealed that whilst there were similari-ties in the participants’ and controls’ framing, the corpus of the participants’ essays involved instances of framing that were specific to the participants’ perceptions of Canvas. These findings and their linguo-didactic implications were further presented in the article

British Petroleum’s corporate discourse involving climate change before and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: A cognitive linguistic account

This article involves a qualitative study of climate change discourse by British Petroleum (BP) before and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. The study aims at elucidating the impact of the spill upon BP’s climate change discourse by means of identifying conceptual metaphors in BP’s annual reports before and after the Deepwater Horizon spill. Data analysis reveals that BP’s climate change discourse prior to and following the Deepwater Horizon spill is framed by the metaphors Citizen and Journey. These findings are further discussed in the article

The English Fricative Consonant /z/ as a Challenge to Norwegian L1 EFL Learners: An Error Analysis of Phonemic Transcriptions

English fricatives, such as /z/, are thought to pose substantial challenges to the students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) whose first languages (L1s) are characterised by phonetic repertoires that are dissimilar to that of English as far as fricatives are concerned (Kallio et al. 2021; Kanokpermpoon 2007). The absence of the fricative /z/ in the phonetic inventory of Norwegian is reported to impact negatively on the Norwegian L1 EFL learners’ speech production in English (Rugesæter 2014). The study that is further presented in the article aims to analyse potential challenges associated with the English fricative consonant /z/ experienced by a group of Norwegian L1 EFL students (hereafter “participants”) on the B2 level of proficiency in English according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (The Council of Europe 2011). To that end, the participants were requested to execute a series of phonemic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): one transcription at the end of the autumn semester (Task 1) and another one at the end of the spring semester (Task 2). The phonemic transcriptions in the study were regarded as a diagnostic tool (Fouz-González, Mompean 2021; Lintunen 2005) that provided an index of the participants’ familiarity with /z/ and, indirectly, reflected their use of /z/. The error analysis of the participants’ transcriptions revealed that the majority of them made mistakes by substituting /z/ for /s/. Considering that the substitution of /z/ for /s/ was common in Task 1 and persisted in Task 2, it was concluded that the participants, who were on the upper-intermediate level of English proficiency, found /z/ challenging. The linguo-didactic implications of the findings are discussed in the article.Keywords: English as a Foreign Language (EFL), the English fricative consonant /z/, /s/ – /z/ contrast, upper-intermediate EFL learners, Norwegian L

Cинтаксичні вміння й навички англо-шведського білінгва з синдромом Аспергера в писемному дискурсі online: досвід дослідження

The present article described syntactic performance by an English/Swedish bilingual participant with Asperger syndrome. The participant’s syntactic performance was investigated by means of observing the participant’s status updates onFacebook, a social networking platform. Two observation sessions involved one week each, with the interval of six months between the sessions.It was theorised that the bilingual participant’s syntactic performance would be exacerbated by codeswitching. The participant’s data were tagged in computer software CLAN. Results of the data analysis indicated that the hypothesis was not supported: the participant’s syntactic performance exhibited no presence of code-switching. Data analysis indicated that there was no significant difference in the participant’s syntactic performance in the period of six months. В статті описано синтаксичні вміння та навички двомовного учасника eксперименту з синдромом Аспергера. Синтаксичні вміння та навички досліджено в серії з двох спостережень. Гіпотеза полягала в тому, синтаксичні вміння та навички можуть бути ускладнені наявністю двох мов у вербальному репертуарі учасника, англійської та шведської відповідно. Дані проаналізовано в комп’ютерній програмі CLAN. У результаті було встановлено, що синтаксичні вміння та навички двомовного учасника не зазнають перехресного впливу англійської та шведської мов; не було змін у синтаксичних уміннях та навичках учасника впродовж шести місяців

Primary School Teacher Candidates’ Reflective Essays on the Categories That They Find Problematic When Teaching English at Primary Schools in Sweden

This article comprises a mixed-methods study of primary school teacher candidates’ (henceforth participants) reflections associated with the categories that they find problematic when teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at primary schools in Sweden. In this study, the participants are instructed to reflect on problematic areas of teaching EFL to young learners at Swedish primary schools and present their ideas in the form of reflective essays written in the English language. The reflective essays are written after the participants have completed their school practice sessions, having taught EFL to the Years 4–6 at primary schools in Sweden. The participants’ reflective essays are analysed by means of the software program WordSmith (Scott, 2012) in order to generate a list of the most frequently used words. A qualitative component of the analysis involves the identification of a set of categories associated with the problematic areas of EFL teaching in the Years 4–6 at primary schools in Sweden. The results of the mixed-methods analysis reveal several problem areas, e.g. pronunciation, spelling, irregular verbs, adjectives, articles, vocabulary, prepositions, etc. These findings and their didactic implications for EFL teaching in the Years 4–6 at primary schools are further presented and discussed in the article

In-Service Primary School Teachers’ Account of Phonetically Difficult Words in English as a Foreign Language

This article presents and discusses a mixed-method study that seeks to establish a set of words in the English language that in-service primary school teachers consider difficult to pronounce by young learners of English whose first language (L1) is Norwegian. In the study, 26 in-service primary school teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are asked to write a reflective essay with a list of phonetically difficult words (henceforth PDWs) in English that they think are difficult to pronounce by young EFL learners. Additionally, the in-service primary school teachers (further – participants) are requested to reflect and comment on PDWs, and explain the reasons why they think they are phonetically difficult. The participants’ individual lists of PDWs are compiled into a corpus which is processed in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) in order to calculate the frequency of PDWs. The participants’ comments and reflections are subsequently analysed qualitatively in order to establish the sources of PDWs. The results of the investigation reveal that the corpus of PDWs is comprised of 257 lexical items. The most frequent PDWs are associated with those sounds of the English language that are absent in the young EFL learners’ L1, Norwegian, e.g., /θ/ in birthday, /ð/ in this, /z/ in zoo, etc. Other frequent PDWs are related to English spelling conventions (e.g., fruit), the word-initial position of affricates (e.g., chocolate), and word stress (e.g., window). These findings and their linguo-didactic implications are further discussed in the article