Book
Mastering English through Global Debate
Mastering English through Global Debate brings together rhetorical traditions and the best practices of ESL instruction to facilitate Superior-level proficiency in the English language. Each chapter addresses a rich topic of debate, providing students with a set of prereading activities, texts covering both sides of a debate topic, and postreading comprehension and lexical development exercises - all of which foster the language and critical thinking skills needed for successful debates. A rhetorical methods selection in each chapter integrates language and practice and prepares students for end-of-chapter debates. Using debate to develop advanced proficiency in a second language is a method that is finding increased interest among instructors and students alike, in both synchronous online teaching and the individual classroom. Students are prepared to participate fully in debates with their classmates - at home, abroad, or both.
The need to foster critical thinking has long been one of the key issues in education. It is essentially vital nowadays against the background of an increased volume of cross-cultural communications due to the present-day demand for collaboration to tackle pressing global issues through joint efforts of different nations. While the format of debates has been recognized by researchers as one of the most efficient tools of setting off critical thinking, it is up to the new technologies in education to make it possible to bring this platform to a cross-cultural level. Since a cross-cultural dialogue in most cases supposes the mastery of a foreign language, e-learning in the form of cross-border video-conference debates present an invaluable opportunity for educators to enhance the pedagogy of foreign language acquisition around the globe. The present paper focuses on a case-study of an on-going project of implementing the tool of synchronous cross-cultural video-conference debates.
This article presents an approach to the automatic generation of open cloze exercises based on arbitrary English text. The exercise format is similar to the open cloze test used in Cambridge English certificate exams (FCE, CAE, CPE). The presented method also makes it possible to adjust the difficulty of the resulting exercises to better suit specific proficiency levels. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the usefulness of the machine-generated exercises, compare them with authentic Cambridge English tests and study the difficulty-setting capabilities. The experiments showed that the generation method used was quite effective. With some customization, the method can be applied to generating similar exercises for other languages.
Mastering Russian through Global Debate brings together rhetorical traditions of the communications field and the best practices of edult second-language instruction to facilitate Superior-level proficiency in the Russian language. Each chapter addresses a rich topic of debate, providing students with a set of prereading activities, texts covering both sides of a debate topic, and postreading comprehension and lexical development exercises - all of which foster the language and critical thinking skills needed for successful debates. A rhetorical methods selection in each chapter integrates language and practice and prepares students for end-of-chapter debates. Using debate to develop advanced proficiency in a second language is a method that is finding increased interest among instructors and students alike, in both synchronous online teaching and the individual classroom. Students are prepared to participate fully in debates with their classmates - at home, abroad, or both.
In response to a growing demand for highly proficient speakers of foreign languages, both from private and government sectors, an added emphasis has been placed on developing communicative skills in the foreign language classroom. While time in a target language culture certainly plays a valuable and needed role, this research demonstrates that innovative curricular design and development in the university foreign language classroom can equal if not exceed uptake that occurs in extended immersion environments. A thorough description of the research design is provided, including the application of lexical items (connectors), listening, reading, written exercises, and videoconference debates involving students from National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia and Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Assessment instruments used to measure language uptake among students included pre- and post-written proficiency testing and oral proficiency interviews in one’s respective target language as administered by certified American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) raters. In addition, students completed a background language questionnaire designed to elicit data relative to individual learner motivation.
Academic environment constraints, i.e. limited amount of EFL hours for non-majors, call for a careful consideration of the stakeholders' needs in curriculum design in higher education context of a non-English speakign country. Tailoring an EFL course to those needs lands itself into an integrated program, comprising several study areas. This article discusses a case of syllabus design, combining a traditional EFL component, academic skills training and major-specific content (Country Studies for International Affairs majors). The author discusses the application of a solf systems methodology (SSM) in the academic environment.
Students' internet usage attracts the attention of many researchers in different countries. Differences in internet penetration in diverse countries lead us to ask about the interaction of medium and culture in this process. In this paper we present an analysis based on a sample of 825 students from 18 Russian universities and discuss findings on particularities of students' ICT usage. On the background of the findings of the study, based on data collected in 2008-2009 year during a project "A сross-cultural study of the new learning culture formation in Germany and Russia", we discuss the problem of plagiarism in Russia, the availability of ICT features in Russian universities and an evaluation of the attractiveness of different categories of ICT usage and gender specifics in the use of ICT.