Questionnaire-based pronunciation studies: Italian, Spanish and polish students’ views on their English pronunciation

Rather than casting new light on teaching pronunciation, the outcome of this study is consistent with the findings of other research on foreign students’ choice of preferred pronunciation model, which is undeniably native rather than foreign-accented

English Spelling Among the Top Priorities in Pronunciation Teaching: Polglish Local Versus Global(ised) Errors in the Production and Perception of Words Commonly Mispronounced

The results of the study confirm the necessity for explicit instruction on the regularity rather than irregularity of English spelling in order to eradicate globalised and ‘either-or’ pronunciation errors in the speech of students. The avoidable globalised errors which have turned out to be the most numerous in a production task include such areas of English phonotactics as: the letters and , ‘mute consonant letters’, ‘isolated errors’ and two categories related to the reduction of unstressed syllables: ‘reduce the vowel in stress-adjacent syllables and in syllables following the stressed one to /ə/ or /ɪ/’ and ‘reduce , , and in nouns and adjectives.’ The hope is also expressed that once introducing spelling-to-sound relations becomes a routine procedure in pronunciation training, the strain on part of the students of memorizing a list of true local errors, phonetically challenging pronunciation exceptions, will be reduced to the absolute minimum

Back to Orthoepia – Spelling in Pronunciation Instruction: “Words Commonly Mispronounced” by Learners of Six L1s

This is a continuation of Nowacka’s (2016) study on the importance of local and global errors and spelling in pronunciation instruction. Unlike in the previous research that focused on the performance of Polish learners only, respondents of six different nationalities are included, in search of some cross-national universals or absence of them. This study seeks to answer the following questions: whether there is a need to focus on spelling in a pronunciation course with learners representing six different L1s and if this is the case which graphophonemic / phonotactic rules of English should be explicitly taught to all of these learners and which ones might be L1 specific only. The intention is also to empirically confirm the existence of local errors in the performance of around 240 speakers and 50 more listeners, constituting 291 listeners of six nationalities (Kazakh, Malaysian, Polish, Turkish, Tajik and Ukrainian) and to confirm the usefulness of memorizing Sobkowiak’s (1996) ‘Words Commonly Mispronounced’ even for learners of different L1s

Self-Study of the MOOC English Pronunciation in a Global World: Metaphonetic Awareness and English Accent Variation

This paper reports on a study in which Polish first-year university students of English, self-studied the massive open and online course (henceforth MOOC) entitled “Pronunciation in a Global World” to gain some knowledge on the fundamentals of phonetics (the notion of comprehensibility, nativeness and identity; vowels, consonants and selected suprasegmentals) and English accent variation. Its two main goals are: firstly, to examine the MOOC’s impact on the participants’ understanding of basic phonetic concepts and, secondly, to obtain the users’ assessment of this MOOC’s attractiveness and usefulness.In general, the results do not give evidence for the positive influence of the MOOC course on the students’ meta-awareness of English phonetics, since there are statistically significant differences in only three of sixty-eight questions between the experimental and control group. Nevertheless, many informants regard the course as useful (72%) and attractive (49%).Although the results do not support the hypothesis of the MOOC’s beneficial role in facilitating the understanding of English phonetics our stand is that this online training could complement classroom teaching as a form of blended learning

English Phonetics Course: University Students’ Preferences and Expectations

This paper examines the perspectives of Polish university students of English (n=110) on selected aspects after the pronunciation instruction they underwent during their phonetics course. It shows qualitative questionnaire results obtained by means of four open-ended statements. It sheds light on: English accent preference, reasons why they favoured and disfavoured the course and expectations from the course tutor. The students reported a positive impact of the training on their speaking and overall English/language skills, sounding native-like, good, and being understood. They admitted to disliking rules, theory of phonetics, unexpected pronunciation of words. In addition, the expected responsibilities of a pronunciation tutor comprised: correction of students’ pronunciation and helping them improve this skill. It confirms that the nativeness principle to pronunciation learning still prevails as the students wish to sound nativelike and expect the teacher to give them corrective accuracy-based feedback

Zespół pomijania stronnego u pacjentów po udarze mózgu — przegląd metod fizjoterapeutycznych

Brain stroke is one of the most prevalent central nervous system conditions. Among other post-stroke complications there are neuropsychological conditions including perceptual disorders such as hemispatial neglect (also called hemiagnosia, hemineglect, unilateral visual inattention or hemi-inattention). Clinical features include inability to process or react to stimuli present within a definite side of visual field. This inability is the result of a contralateral brain injury. Hemispatial neglect is diagnosed among 43% of right-hemisphere stroke patients and about 20% of left-hemisphere stroke patients. Daily life is severely affected and that is why early diagnosis and implementation of specific and suitable physical therapy program is vital.Udar mózgu to jedno z najczęstszych schorzeń ośrodkowego układu nerwowego. Jednym z powikłań udaru są zaburzenia neuropsychologiczne, w tym zaburzenia uwagi, do których należy zespół pomijania stronnego (zwany również zespołem zaniedbywania połowiczego, nieuwagi połowiczej lub agnozją wzrokowo-przestrzenną). Kliniczny obraz cechuje niemożność przetwarzania lub reagowania na bodźce pojawiające się w określonej połowie pola widzenia na skutek uszkodzenia mózgu po przeciwnej stronie. Zespół pomijania stronnego rozpoznaje się u około 43% pacjentów po udarze prawej półkuli mózgu i około 20% chorych z uszkodzeniami lewopółkulowymi. Życie codzienne chorych jest znacznie utrudnione, dlatego ważną rolę odgrywa jak najszybsza diagnoza i wdrożenie specjalistycznego postępowania fizjoterapeutycznego, charakterystycznego dla zaburzeń związanych z tym zespołem

LC-ESI-MS/MS profiling of phenolics from Eleutherococcus spp. inflorescences, structure-activity relationship as antioxidants, inhibitors of hyaluronidase and acetylcholinesterase

AbstractNature is a source of many plant-based molecules used as pro- or drugs. Eleutherococcus species are native to Asia and the North Russia, and are traditionally used to treat various diseases. In turn, neither secondary metabolites of the species cultivated in the West Europe nor the bioactivity is known. No differences in the phenols and flavonoids content in the inflorescences were found. The richest in polyphenols was E. giraldii (5.18mg/g), while in flavonoids it was E. gracilistylus (1.80mg/g). Using LC-ESI-MS/MS, protocatechuic and trans-caffeic acids have been identified as the most abundant compounds in E. gracilistylus, E. giraldii, E. senticosus (833.4; 855.6; 614.7 and 280.8; 156.0; 167.6μg/g DE). It was observed that all species were able to chelate Fe2+ with the EC50 value of 0.2, 0.6, 0.3mg/mL for E. gracilistylus, E. giraldii, E. senticosus, respectively. E. gracilistylus exhibited the strongest antiperoxidation and anti-DPPH∗ activity (EC50 3.2 and 0.48mg/mL). The weak inhibitory potential has been observed in case of AChE inhibition at the level of 16.17 and 12.2% for E. gracilistylus, E. giraldii. We report for the first time that the extracts inhibited Hyal activity in the range from 16.4 to 60.7%. To our best knowledge, no information was available on this activity of the inflorescences and this provides a background to study inflorescences in more detail. Considering the SAR, an antioxidant activity may be correlated with a high amount of protocatechuic and trans-caffeic acids and their chemical structure

Cell cycle regulation of embryonic stem cells and mouse embryonic fibroblasts lacking functional Pax7

The transcription factor Pax7 plays a key role during embryonic myogenesis and in adult organisms in that it sustains the proper function of satellite cells, which serve as adult skeletal muscle stem cells. Recently we have shown that lack of Pax7 does not prevent the myogenic differentiation of pluripotent stem cells. In the current work we show that the absence of functional Pax7 in differentiating embryonic stem cells modulates cell cycle facilitating their proliferation. Surprisingly, deregulation of Pax7 function also positively impacts at the proliferation of mouse embryonic fibroblasts. Such phenotypes seem to be executed by modulating the expression of positive cell cycle regulators, such as cyclin E