17 research outputs found
Teaching Pronunciation to Young Learners in an ELF context : An Analysis of Pronunciation Activities in English Coursebooks for the Primary School
This paper deals with the teaching of English pronunciation in the primary classroom. It starts from two major premises. First, the Lingua Franca status of English (ELF), which has prompted a shift in pronunciation teaching from the attainment of a native accent to the achievement of mutual intelligibility. Second, the features of todayâs primary classroom, which is de facto an ELF context, the school population being characterised by a growing number of multilingual pupils and of non-native teachers of English. Three English coursebooks for the primary school are analysed to investigate: 1) if and which pronunciation-focussed activities are suggested; 2) if and what support is provided to the primary teacher to make the most of the activities; 3) whether any of such activities/support show a trend towards an early inclusion of ELF-aware pronunciation pedagogy
Building rapport in BELF communication : solidarity strategies in business emails
In the globalized market, business professionals use emails to communicate
with customers, suppliers, and even colleagues who may be based in any part of
the world, employing English as a business lingua franca (BELF). Despite the
goal-oriented nature of business communication, rapport is âan essential
element in the building and maintenance of strong work relationsâ (Pullin 2010,
456), and the achievement of business goals may be âdependent to some extent
on the establishment of relationsâ (Pullin 2010, 458). However, nurturing
interpersonal relationships may be difficult in intercultural business
interactions (Spencer-Oatey and Xing 2003), especially in the case of business
emailing, whose main aim is the rapid fulfillment of the task at hand.
Based on a corpus of business email exchanges amongst BELF users of different
L1s, this paper proposes a classification of âsolidarity strategiesâ (Köster 2006)
aimed at building and nurturing rapport in email communication despite the
pressure of getting the job done. It is argued that being less concerned with
issues of accuracy in the target language, BELF email writers seem to pay more
attention to the pragmatic needs of business communication, including that of
building trust and common ground
The Training of Business Professionals in ELT Materials: A Focus on Email Writing
Nowadays, business organizations are faced with the challenge to operate in a global, informational, and highly networked context. The globalization of business and the fast growth in digital technology are having a massive impact both on business structures, with a proliferation of international mergers and acquisitions, and on corporate communication, with most business transactions being carried out via digital media.
In this context, corporate communication needs are rapidly changing too: not only is a common working language required (Galloway and Rose 2015), but there is also the necessity for business professionals to acquire the communicative competence that will enable them to communicate efficiently, effectively and rapidly. As for the language, although â[i]t is undeniable that English [âŠ] has now come to represent the main common contact language and lingua franca in an interconnected globalized worldâ (Vettorel 2014: 1), it is also true that in the field of business there has been a shift from a focus on âBusiness English as a Lingua Francaâ to âEnglish as Business Lingua Francaâ (Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen 2013): This means that English is the main, but not the only component of a âBusiness Lingua Francaâ that caters to the âsuper-diversityâ (Cogo 2012) of todayâs business contexts. On the communicative competence side, professionals need to acquire the ability to quickly adjust to the immediacy of the communicative event and to adapt to the variable and unpredictable circumstances of business transactions worldwide. This calls to the fore the deployment of a vast array of pragmatic and interactional skills, which until recently have mainly been investigated in spoken interactions (e.g. Firth, 1996; BjĆrkman, 2011) However, in business contexts transactions are also and more often conducted via written interactions, where the lack of social context cues such as certain body messages may pose a barrier to effective communication (Murphy and Levy 2006).
This diachronic study of a set of ten Business-English email writing textbooks published between 2004 and 2017 focuses on the tasks and guidelines provided for the development of email writing skills. By drawing on Louhiala-Salminen and Kankaanrantaâs (2011) notion of âGlobal Communicative Competenceâ, the analysis tries to establish whether ELT materials for the training of business professionals make provisions for the development of pragmatic and interactional skills, and can therefore effectively assist business professionals when attending to the everyday tasks connected with their jobs.
Preliminary findings highlight the need for a less prescriptive approach which moves away from single lexico-grammatical elements and incorporates communicative strategies
OVERVIEWING RESEARCH ON BELF COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES From professional practice to ELT materials
The present paper focuses on the use of English in BELF contexts, bearing in mind both teaching and practice in the professional field. After an overview of the state of the art in ELF and BELF research over the last twenty years, the topic is tackled from three different perspectives, which mirror the studies carried out by the unit of the University of Verona in a three-year-long nationally funded research. Firstly, we will address BELF in professional settings, to shed light on what facilitates success in online interactions, with a special focus on e-mail exchanges. Secondly, still addressing e-mail exchanges, we will suggest a broadening of the notion of BELF communication strategies that goes beyond sheer successful, mutual understanding in the professional field. Finally, bearing the first two steps of our research in mind, we will turn to the teaching environment, overviewing if and to what extent international business ELT coursebooks deal with BELF communication strategies at different levels of competence, so as to provide hints and suggestions for more effective materials in this field
A Comparison between EFL Writing Errors in Computer-Based and Paper-Based Assignments
Advances in writing technologies have fostered the gradual move from PaperBased (PB) to Computer-Based (CB) writing assessment in foreign language
(FL) education. The trend was further boosted by the outburst of the Covid-19
pandemic, which led to drastic changes in teaching and assessment practices.
In higher education (HE) contexts, writing assessment in English as a foreign
language (EFL) is more and more often managed by means of online learning
platforms, where students create and submit written assignments on the
computer. This paper examines a sample of 100 EFL exam essays completed
by 100 Italian university students. Half of the essays were computer-typed on
Moodle from home during the Covid-19 lockdown, whereas the other half were
handwritten on paper during a face-to-face exam session after the Covid-19
emergency. The study presented herein compares the amount and types of
formal errors in the CB and PB written assignments respectively. The results
of the comparison may be useful to suggest hypotheses on the impact that both
writing modality and environment can have on the quality of EFL writing in
assessment contexts.
Keywords: computer-based writing; EFL writing errors; higher education;
paper-based writing; writing assessment; writing technologies
Recensione a Brian Tomlinson (ed.) (2013). Applied linguistics and materials development London, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing
Applied linguists and language educators are well aware of the big gap between applied linguistics research and language classroom practice. They are therefore likely to welcome Applied Linguistics and Materials Developments, a volume that is aimed at helping bridge the gap between theory and practice by proposing materials developers as a vehicle for a more concrete cooperation between researchers and practitioners
Recensione a Bednarek, M. & Caple, H. (2017). The discourse of news values. How news organizations create newsworthiness. New York: Oxford University Press.
The reviewed volume focuses on the role of newswriters in the construction of newsworthiness based on a redefinition of news values
Communication strategies in BELF e-mailing: âOnlyâ a matter of shared understanding?
Research in BELF (English as a Business Lingua Franca) has increasingly focused on pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects of business communication (Kecskes 2019). In particular, a number of studies has explored the employment of Communication Strategies (CSs) in interactions in the workplace, both in oral communication (Franceschi 2019; Haegeman 2002; Poncini 2004) and in digital written exchanges (Incelli 2013; Ren 2018; Zummo 2018). CSs have mainly been analysed from a perspective of âproblematicityâ (Bialystok 1990), in that they are usually presented as moves undertaken to repair (Watterson 2008), signal (Cogo, Pitzl 2016), or pre-empt (Mauranen 2006) problems of understanding, with the aim of achieving successful communication (Pitzl 2010). This paper suggests a broadening of the notion of communication strategy in the domain of BELF that includes the achievement of goals other than, or at least complementary to, shared understanding. It does so by analysing some examples from a collection of business e-mails which seem to suggest that there may be other reasons, besides mutual intelligibility, for business partners to employ certain communication strategies. The pedagogical implications of this broadening are also considered, with reference to the findings of current research concerning Business English (BE) teaching material (Vettorel, Franceschi 2020)
English in Italian higher education: Does writing (still) matter?
Prendendo le mosse dalla denuncia di una generale situazione di criticitĂ concernente le competenze di scrittura degli studenti universitari, sia in Italia (Sobrero 1991; Battaggion and Salvi 2003; Simone 2009; Cacchione 2011; Novello 2012) che allâestero (Bok 2006; Lillis and Scott 2007; Altbach, Reisberg and Rumbley 2009), e nel contesto degli importanti cambiamenti strutturali che hanno interessato il sistema universitario a livello europeo in attuazione delle indicazioni fornite dal Processo di Bologna, la presente tesi si interroga su quale sia il ruolo della scrittura nellâuniversitĂ âinternazionalizzataâ del XXI secolo, sullâimportanza attribuita alla scrittura in ambito accademico, e sulle responsabilitĂ dellâistruzione universitaria per ciĂČ che concerne lo sviluppo dello studente-scrittore. In particolare, viene preso in esame lâapproccio didattico adottato dallâuniversitĂ italiana per contribuire allo sviluppo delle abilitĂ di scrittura in una lingua seconda, specificamente la lingua inglese, nel primo ciclo di istruzione universitaria (corso di laurea), partendo dal presupposto che interventi e attivitĂ volti al consolidamento delle competenze di scrittura debbano interessare innanzi tutto questo stadio. Lâargomento viene affrontato da molteplici prospettive. In primo luogo si intende fornire un esempio delle attivitĂ di insegnamento e supporto delle competenze di scrittura in lingua inglese offerte dallâuniversitĂ italiana partendo dalle informazioni fornite direttamente dagli studenti. A tale scopo sono stati analizzati i dati raccolti attraverso un questionario rivolto a studenti universitari del primo ciclo provenienti da tre diversi istituti italiani di istruzione terziaria, e frequentanti corsi di laurea in ambito linguistico, specificamente Lingue e Letterature Straniere, e Mediazione Linguistica e Culturale. Per questi corsi di laurea, una buona padronanza delle competenze di scrittura, sia nella lingua madre che in altre lingue, Ăš di importanza fondamentale non solo ai fini prettamente accademici, ma anche in funzione dei profili formativi, attinenti in questi casi a professioni richiedenti un alto livello di competenza linguistico-comunicativa. La seconda prospettiva di analisi Ăš di tipo pedagogico. Prendendo come riferimento da un lato il quadro teorico noto come Academic Literacies (Lea and Street 1998; Lillis and Scott 2007) e dallâaltro lâapproccio pedagogico noto come Writing Across the Curriculum (Bazerman, Little, Bethel, Chavkin, Fouquette and Garufis 2005), viene avanzata la proposta di una integrazione dellâinsegnamento della scrittura in lingua straniera nel contesto dellâinsegnamento delle singole discipline, anche non linguistiche, sfruttando le potenzialitĂ dellâapproccio CLIL, Content and Language Integrated Learning (Costa 2016). In particolare, si suggerisce un approccio allâinsegnamento della scrittura in lingua inglese che esca dagli schemi generali e generalizzanti della classe di lingua, o da quelli dei tradizionali corsi di Academic Writing o English for Academic Purposes, e che tenga conto dellâinscindibilitĂ di lingua e contenuto, guardando alla scrittura come processo e non semplicemente come prodotto. Infine, una terza prospettiva Ăš di tipo speculativo. Si propone una riflessione sul significato della scrittura, sul valore intrinseco della scrittura come strumento fondamentale per lo sviluppo del pensiero critico, ed in particolare sulla necessitĂ di sviluppare abilitĂ di âscrittura multilingueâ (Gustafsson and Ganobcsik-Williams 2016) come risorsa indispensabile cui lâindividuo del ventunesimo secolo deve poter attingere. In tal senso questa tesi intende incoraggiare una rivalutazione delle effettive opportunitĂ di pratica e sviluppo della scrittura, sia nella lingua madre che in lingua seconda, che lâuniversitĂ italiana offre alla propria popolazione studentesca, nonchĂ© della loro adeguatezza alle esigenze delle nuove generazioni di studenti.Within the debate concerning the claimed decline in the writing skills of university students, both in Italy (Sobrero 1991; Battaggion and Salvi 2003; Simone 2009; Cacchione 2011; Novello 2012) and abroad (Bok 2006; Lillis and Scott 2007; Altbach, Reisberg and Rumbley 2009), and against the background of the major structural changes that have interested European higher education systems following the implementation of the Bologna Process, this thesis interrogates the role of writing in âinternationalisedâ twenty-first century higher education, the importance attached to writing within the academic setting, and the responsibilities of higher education in developing student writers. In particular, this doctoral thesis focuses on the approach to the teaching of writing adopted by the Italian university to contribute to the development of student writing in a second language, specifically English, in the first cycle of higher education (Bachelorâs degree), based on the assumption that any initiatives or activities aimed at consolidating studentsâ writing skills should be undertaken at this very stage of the university experience. The issue of writing in higher education is dealt with from several perspectives. The first is of an informative-diagnostic nature. Based on the information gathered directly from students, the study presented in the thesis provides an example of the kind of activities and practices for the teaching and support of English writing offered by the Italian university. The study has analysed the data collected through a questionnaire targeted to undergraduate students coming from three different higher education institutions, and majoring in foreign languages. Specifically, the questionnaire was designed for undergraduates on BA programmes in Foreign Languages and Literatures, and Linguistic and Cultural Mediation. For these degrees, good writing skills, both in the mother tongue and in a second language, are fundamental not only for academic purposes, but also in relation to the type of employment that graduates in these areas are expected to fill, which rely heavily on good written communication skills. The second perspective is of a pedagogical nature. Drawing on the insights provided by the Academic Literacies theoretical framework (Lea and Street 1998; Lillis and Scott 2007) on the one hand, and on the pedagogical approach referred to as Writing Across the Curriculum (Bazerman, Little, Bethel, Chavkin, Fouquette and Garufis 2005) on the other hand, the suggestion is made that the teaching of writing in a second language should be integrated into the teaching of curricular disciplines, including non-language-related ones, exploiting all the potentials of the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach (Costa 2016). In particular, it is claimed that the teaching of writing in English should be dealt with outside the general and generalising format of language classes, or outside traditional text-based courses in Academic Writing or English for Academic Purposes. A different approach is suggested, one that takes into account the inseparability of language and content, and that looks at writing as a process, rather than a product. Finally, the third perspective is speculative in nature. It proposes a reflection on the significance of writing, on the intrinsic value of writing as a fundamental tool for the development of critical thinking, and on the necessity to develop âmultilingual and multiliteracy writingâ skills (Gustafsson and Ganobcsik-Williams 2016) as an indispensable resource on which the twenty-first century individual must be able to draw. In this sense, this thesis aims to encourage a reconsideration of the actual opportunities to practise and develop writing, both in the first and in a second language, that the Italian university offers to its student population, as well as a reassessment of the suitability of such opportunities for the needs of the new generations of students