Book
Proceedings of the 2d International Conference on Teaching English for Specific Purposes and New Language Learning Technologies
The book contains the proceedings of the 2d International Conference on Teaching English for Specific Purposes and New Language Learning Technologies, organized by the faculty of electronic engineering, University of Nis, Serbia. The book covers a range of topics within the area of ESP teaching.
Internationalization of the modern system of education poses multiple challenges for students. Not only does this process provide them with new opportunities, such as continuing education abroad at the master’s level, but it also establishes requirements to be aware of the academic conventions different from those they learn at the bachelor’s level at a Russian university. Awareness of academic conventions implies not simply theoretical knowledge of the Western higher education system but also acquisition of practical tools that will facilitate students’ ability to integrate their knowledge into a new academic environment. One of the most essential tools for students is undoubtedly academic English. However, academic English skills development frequently leads to the situation that can be metaphorically called ‘dual academic personality,’ when students have to be able to quickly switch from one academic style to another depending on the educational context. Firstly, this paper will examine differences between Russian and Western academic writing conventions (focusing on the requirements to a BA research project), Then main difficulties and typical mistakes in academic legal writing in English made by Higher School of Economics students will be analyzed.
This research studies the influence of professional competence of EFL learners on their metaphor production. The task was approached through analyzing metaphors in the English written texts produced by Russian students with different competence in economics – the non-professional and professional competence level. Findings highlight similarities and divergence of metaphor use in L2 writing in terms of learners’ professional competence. The results of comparative analysis of specific features in metaphors produced at different professional competence levels reveal the quantitative and qualitative differences of what functions metaphors are used to perform and to what extent they are used accurately. With the shift from the non-professional to the professional competence level learners are able to use metaphors that combine a function of presenting abstract concepts with a discourse organising function in a more balanced way and make much more use of creative metaphors, and their metaphor production tends to be less influenced by L1 background. Practical recommendations suggest an improved research methodology for studying metaphor production in ESAP as well as a deeper understanding of ESP content and its structure.
The paper describes a pilot project investigating the use of a teacher-made website for enhancing learner autonomy and the overall English language proficiency of second-year students in Psychology programs.
The article analyses and defines the range of some significant factors motivating first-year students at National Research University Higher School of Economics majoring in «World Economy» and «International Affairs» to study and acquire English effectively.
The article analyses the up-to-date principles of materials design in English language teaching. It is described how each principle comes to work in a new course for university researchers and PhD students. The conclusion is drawn that current methodological approaches have to be taken into account in order to create a course book able to meet the requirements of the new educational paradigm.
The paper focuses on the pilot project investigating the use of a teacher-made website to enhance learner autonomy and improve the overall English language proficiency of first-year undergraduate students in Psychology programs.
The coursebook encompasses the most common law areas and provides extensive communicative practice of legal vocabulary, as well as of reading, speaking and writing skills. It can be used as a supplementary material to prepare students for the International Legal English Certificate (ILEC) exam.
Institutions affect investment decisions, including investments in human capital. Hence institutions are relevant for the allocation of talent. Good market-supporting institutions attract talent to productive value-creating activities, whereas poor ones raise the appeal of rent-seeking. We propose a theoretical model that predicts that more talented individuals are particularly sensitive in their career choices to the quality of institutions, and test these predictions on a sample of around 95 countries of the world. We find a strong positive association between the quality of institutions and graduation of college and university students in science, and an even stronger negative correlation with graduation in law. Our findings are robust to various specifications of empirical models, including smaller samples of former colonies and transition countries. The quality of human capital makes the distinction between educational choices under strong and weak institutions particularly sharp. We show that the allocation of talent is an important link between institutions and growth.