Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language : Theory and Practice [1 ed.] 9781443834353, 9781443833899

Citation preview

Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language

Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language: Theory and Practice

Edited by

Teodora Popescu, Rodica Pioariu and Crina HerĠeg

Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language: Theory and Practice, Edited by Teodora Popescu, Rodica Pioariu and Crina HerĠeg This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Teodora Popescu, Rodica Pioariu and Crina HerĠeg and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3389-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3389-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................... vii Abbreviations ............................................................................................ xii Chapter I: Cross-disciplinary Issues in the English Language Introduction ................................................................................................. 2 Crina HerĠeg On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies ........ 5 Mona Arhire Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English ...................... 19 Teodora Popescu Transgressing English Language Boundaries: The Case of Business English Borrowings ................................................................................... 39 Crina HerĠeg Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed........................................... 53 Gina Măciucă Chapter II: Teaching English as a Discipline at the Crossroads Introduction ............................................................................................... 68 Teodora Popescu Using Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level .................................................................................... 71 Alexandra E. Jacobsen Teaching Entrepreneurship to Humanities Students.................................. 91 Ioan Moise Achim and Larisa Dragolea

vi

Table of Contents

A Teachers and Students’ Perspective on Their Engineering Underand Post-Graduate English Syllabus in a Transylvanian Technical University ................................................................................................ 103 Marinela Grănescu and Ema Adam Chapter III: Language and Culture in the Global Village Introduction ............................................................................................. 116 Rodica Pioariu A Cultural Briefing on Romania: Insider and Outsider Perspectives ...... 120 Emilia Plăcintar Culture and Collocations: Catalysts for Language Learning ................... 134 Gabriela Mocan and Mariana Toma Cross-cultural Issues in Teaching English to Romanian Students........... 150 Rodica Pioariu Contributors............................................................................................. 161 Index........................................................................................................ 167

PREFACE

Cross-disciplinary Approaches to the English Language: Theory and Practice provides an overview of a less tackled field of research, namely the main issues at stake when teaching English Language and Culture in Romania. The approach is an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural one, as the authors investigate problems, offer and probe solutions from a crosscurricular perspective. Interdisciplinarity has become a virtue of both modern research and applied disciplines, opening up multitudes of perspectives. The book is a collection of 10 contributions by teachers and researchers from Romania that draw on theoretical and applied methodological explorations into the challenges posed by teaching/learning English in a globalised context. Organised into three main chapters, the volume addresses the multifacetedness of language education as a crossdiscipline. Chapter I, Cross-disciplinary Issues in the English Language encompasses wide dimensions ranging from a corpus-based approach to translation studies and development of business students’ mental lexicon, to an inventory of business English borrowings in the Romanian language, as well as the translatability of language humour. The first paper in the series, On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies discusses the evolution of corpus-based translation studies. The author asserts that the Romanian research community is taking baby-steps in this respect trying to acquire an overall image of the international endeavours. That is why, the introduction of this field of study in the Romanian research environment is crucial in order to add up new theories to the existing ones and to improve Romanian translators’ performance, thus enhancing intercultural communication. The paper aims at presenting the status of online available corpora, along with considerations as regards the text genres, types, reliability, consistency, user-friendliness, authorship and purposes. The conclusion is a plea for the participation of Romanian linguistic research teams in such undertakings, as well as for the presence of the Romanian language as a language pair in contrastive corpus-based investigations. The second contribution, Teodora Popescu’s Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English tackles the teachability of the business lexis, and provides an insight into the characteristics of the business language as opposed to general English. The relevance of the

viii

Preface

subchapter lies in the hands-on approach and methodological guidelines for business English teachers. The main resources that lend themselves to pedagogic exploitation are: concordancers, lexical databases, paper-based and online dictionaries, thesauri, the business press, and/or other business related documents (e.g. meetings transcripts). For each of these tools, the author gives examples of practical activities. A student-centred approach is advocated and teachers are called upon to empower students to take charge of their own learning process. Crina HerĠeg`s Transgressing English Language Boundaries. The Case of Business English Borrowings deals with the current stage of Romanian language which witnesses an ever increasing process of enrichment. The author explains that this phenomenon is in close connection with the needs of the community, with the evolution of the society, with the social, economic, political, technologic and historical factors influencing it. The author draws on the fact that, irrespective of the field of activity, English words have become a prevalent reality in Romanian language. The primary focus of the paper is on the way of integrating and assimilating these borrowings, which means either translating them into Romanian, with using an equivalent in the Romanian language, or adjusting them according to the organic rules of the TL. While scrutinizing specialized websites and online newspapers the author provides us with an inventory of the newly introduced words in the field of business and its components (banking, financing, marketing, etc.). The last contribution, by Gina Măciucă, titled Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed explores the theory advanced by Coúeriu (1994) on linguistic norms, and applies it to humour-generating devices. The author starts from the premise that comic effects could indeed be traced back to the flouting of each of the three norm types identified by Coúeriu: of congruence, correctness and appropriateness. With respect to the translatability of such comic effects, the scale put forward by Gina Măciucă shows that the three types of humour rank quite differently from the corresponding linguistic norms in Coúeriu’s hierarchy (1994), namely: the congruence-flouting type ranks highest, while the correctness-flouting kind is relegated to the lowest position, with the appropriateness-flouting humour hovering somewhere in between. In conclusion, the translator is compelled to reshape the situational and linguistic context out of all recognition in order to successfully put the message across to his readers. Chapter II, Teaching English as a Discipline at the Crossroads addresses the issue of language education to students of other disciplines, as viewed from the perspective of two important genres, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The specific fields under scrutiny are teaching entrepreneurship to

Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language

ix

humanities students and teaching English to students of Science and Technology. The paper Employing Cooperative Strategies in Learning Professional English at University Level by Alexandra Jacobsen sets forth a course in professional English, understood both as a teaching environment and a set of teaching materials having as main criterion its usefulness for the students including its relevance to their future careers. Taking into account the students’ specific specialism (Applied Electronics), this course has a double focus. On the one hand, it attempts to employ learning methods and techniques already familiar to the students (e.g. project and team work). On the other hand, it attempts to address topics specific to their area of study. The point of departure for this exploration was the notion of ‘soft’ skills (Pulko and Parikh 2003), understood as general skills, such as making presentations and collaborative work. To achieve the course’s aims, Alexandra Jacobsen resorts to theoretical insights from Cooperative Learning and CLIL methodology, respectively. Moise Achim and Laria Dragolea’s paper, Teaching Entrepreneurship to Humanities students, sets out to present an overview of content-based education carried out through the medium of the English language. The authors give an account of their experience of teaching entrepreneurship to 31 MA students in Language and Communication for Business Administration, all with a non-business background. Students were randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. The pedagogic experiment revealed the double focus and efficiency of a course in entrepreneurship – the acquisition of business content (theoretical knowledge pertaining to setting up a business) and the acquisition of specialist business vocabulary in English as well as of specific pragmatic strategies. The research methods used were both quantitative (tests) and qualitative (questionnaires, interviews, etc.). The teaching methods were a combination of teacher mini-lectures, project work, pair-work, group work, simulations and role-plays. The results obtained were clearly indicative of the fact that Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) education is efficient and motivating. Marinela Grănescu and Ema Adam’s paper, A Teachers and Students' Perspective on Their Engineering Under- and Post-Graduate English Syllabus in a Transylvanian Technical University addresses the issue of ESP syllabus design. The authors start from the premise that designing a course syllabus represents a complex, time-consuming and difficult process, especially when the undergraduates and graduates aimed at display various levels of language command. Grănescu and Adam present an overview of possible syllabi types, as well as their suitability to various categories of students. They posit that the basis of product syllabuses remains fundamentally similar, while the

x

Preface

underlying assumptions about language and language learning from analytic approaches differ greatly: process type syllabuses assert that learning a language is transient and cannot be itemized; pedagogical procedure overweighing content. The authors consider that interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity bring a valuable contribution to both researchoriented and practice-based endeavours, especially in the case of ESP programmes, both under- and post-graduate. Chapter III, Language and Culture in the Global Village reveals the fact that in the process of language learning and teaching the indispensable presence of culture is taken for granted by all educational factors. In other words there is a cultural component in language teaching. Teaching English in a genuinely intercultural context will prove helpful in real life situations when it is so important to act appropriately and adequately. Emilia Plăcintar, the author of the contribution A Cultural Briefing on Romania: Insider and Outsider Perspectives aspires to help students in business deal with intercultural communication during a cultural awareness programme. The researcher has in view a number of stages to go through with her students starting from familiarisation with key concepts in intercultural communication, organisation of cultural knowledge and adaptation of personal business cultural style to the culture of the new business community. A few illustrative activities for each stage and a set of teaching techniques and methods are included with a view to equipping the participants in the training course with practical solutions meant to avoid potential cross-cultural misunderstandings. This calls for important changes namely, a shift from a national to an international mindset allowing trainees to relate to other cultures more appropriately, understand how the system works in their clients’ business environment and add these culture-based considerations to their task-based skills in order to proceed in the appropriate way and get the desired results. The second contribution, Rodica Pioariu`s Cross-cultural Issues in Teaching English to Romanian Students reiterates the importance of culture in language acquisition trying to provide an image of the evolution of the Romanian perspective and attitude to the study and teaching of English in Romania in a diachronic approach. The most significant moments in the development of English studies in Romania are honestly revealed without neglecting the inevitable ups and downs due to the competition with other widely-circulated languages more popular with certain intellectual circles at different historical epochs, be it the interwar period, the communist or the present-day one. It equally focuses on the obvious change of paradigm and teaching practices in Romanian schools and universities in the globalisation era and their beneficial effect on the younger generations

Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the English Language

xi

whose adherence to contemporary values and demands are undeniable. In the last study, Culture and Collocations, the authors Gabriela Mocan and Mariana Toma point to the reciprocal relationship between language and culture which can no longer be ignored since both culture and language combinations or collocations play an essential role in foreign language acquisition. They are more than likely to improve intercultural communication and avoid plenty of possible misunderstandings. The idea that there is great diversity in the way different language communities make use of phraseology is also stressed. Being in favour of ”different collocational patterning” reflecting not only a particular system of knowledge and thinking, but also another cultural model foreign language students sometimes have difficulties in mastering idiomatic language and collocations. The practical section illustrates culturally-oriented approach for teaching and learning collocations with a view to helping students change their world view, their attitude to it and last, but not least, promote genuine cross-cultural communication. To conclude with, the complexity and universality of the research enquiries and practical insights make the topics addressed valid across the globalising educational context nowadays. Cross-disciplinary Approaches to the English Language: Theory and Practice will be a useful tool to specialists and practitioners from ESP and CLIL domains alike, as well as graduate and postgraduate students in foreign language teaching.

ABBREVIATIONS

BNC (British National Corpus) BOKR (The Russian Reference Corpus) BULTREEBANK (Bulgarian Treebank) CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) CEXI (English-Italian corpus) CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) CIC (Cambridge International Corpus) CED (Chambers English Dictionary) CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) CILT (National Centre for Languages in the UK) COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) CTS (Corpus-based Translation Studies) DEX (DicĠionarul explicativ al limbii române) DTS (Descriptive Translation Studies) EAP (English for Academic Purposes) ECC (English Comparable Corpus) ECOLE (Expectations, Communication, Organisation, Leadership and Etiquette) EFL (English as a Foreign Language) ESL (English as a Second Language)



ENCP (English Norwegian Parallel Corpus) ESP (English for Specific Purposes) EST (English for Science and Technology) EUROCLIC (European Network of Administrators, Researchers and Practitioners) GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) INCA (Intercultural Competences Assessment project) L1 (mother tongue) L2 (foreign/second language) LDELC (Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture) LSP (Language for Specific Purposes) LMR (Linear-active, Multi-active and Reactive) NON-TEC (Non-Translational English Corpus) NOS (National Occupational Standards) PGDF (Pons Groȕwörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache) RADAR (Recognise, Analyse, Decide, Act and Review) SL (Source Language) TL (Target Language) TS (Translation Studies) TEC (Translational English Corpus) UC (Uppsala Corpus) UKCES (UK Commission for Employment and Skills)

CHAPTER I: CROSS-DISCIPLINARY ISSUES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

INTRODUCTION CRINA HERğEG

The chapter Cross-disciplinary Issues in the English Language brings together various contributions to language research tackled from an interdisciplinary perspective. This type of approach means crossing of the boundaries of disciplinary research in language studies and opening new horizons in interpreting language phenomena. The ever increasing number of research centres on interdisciplinary issues witnessed by the world research community as well as by the Romanian one, the conferences organized on this topic, adopting an interdisciplinary tenet within international research projects come to account for the introduction of these contributions in the chapter under discussion. Interdisciplinarity represents a type of approach, under different embodiments: interaction (when two or more fields interact and aim at a common objective), circulation (when a discipline uses, borrows or assimilates the concepts of another discipline), convergence (when a new discipline emerges as a result of cooperation of scientists belonging to different disciplinary fields), divergence (when differing points of view address a certain issue), integration. The interdisciplinary approach has advantages, as well as disadvantages. One of the first advantages refers to its openness, which at its turn entails overcoming the bridges which establish between different areas of research. A second implication of its open character could be the fact that it helps us integrate new knowledge, better interpret and understand language phenomena, innovate and bring novelty in language studies. It also enables the researcher to transgress the boundaries of languagerelated disciplines, as he is not confined any longer to pursue research within the limits of a discipline. Another advantage would be the fact that it promotes collaborative research, which highly recommends this type of approach in research projects. We believe that it would be honest to mention here some of the drawbacks entailed by the interdisciplinary perspective. Despite calling forth openness and innovation, bringing together researchers and theories,

Crina HerĠeg 

3

this type of approach has limitations too. One of them refers to the fact that there are areas which totally ban collaborative research, yet, we believe that disciplines under the umbrella of language studies are not encompassed in these areas. Another difficulty lies in devising a set of rules to be put into practice when discussing a language issue. A distinct terminology, and a set of rules to be taken into account by researchers have not been devised so far. To this respect, the propagation of interdisciplinary-type of research should have in view the fact that the researcher is expected to acquire and eventually master the methods, tools and terminology at work in different cognate disciplines. Thus, the interdisciplinary approach is made possible only after specialization in different areas of study. Traditional research promotes the use of certain values as well as devices necessary for measuring the final results. As far as interdisciplinarity is concerned the results of the research are difficult to quantify, which again could be considered a drawback of interdisciplinary research. As this approach requires solid and specialised knowledge in the respective fields of investigations, we believe that the introduction of an interdisciplinary component should be a gradual one, starting with the academic curricula and continuing to an upper stage, that of research projects. All the investigations under discussion in this chapter have in view several areas of language studies: translation studies (Gina Măciucă’s Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed and Mona Arhire’s On The Interdisciplinary Nature Of Corpus-Based Translation Studies) and specialized language, the case of business English (Teodora Popescu’s Developing Business Students` Mental Lexicon in English and Crina HerĠeg’s Transgressing English Language Boundaries. The Case of Business English Borrowings). We could conclude by stating that interdisciplinarity facilitates a meeting point between the above-mentioned language related areas, yet another reason to consider that the topics gathered within this chapter embrace an interdisciplinary perspective. Further arguments calling forth the interdisciplinary character of this chapter are embodiments of interdisciplinarity such as convergence: Mona Arhire’s On The Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies, divergence: approaching language humour from the perspective of language norms theory and the one of translation studies, interaction: penetration of specialized lexis from SL to TL.

4

Introduction

References Salter, Liora, and Alison Hearn. 1997. Outside the Lines. Issues in Interdisciplinary Research. Montreal:McGill-Queen’s Press. Thompson Klein, Julie. 1990. Interdisciplinarity. History, Theory, and Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

ON THE INTERDISCIPLINARITY OF CORPUS-BASED TRANSLATION STUDIES MONA ARHIRE

1 Introduction Modern research relies heavily on corpora in a large variety of fields, fostering both humanistic and exact sciences, out of which disciplines appear to operate in unexpected combinations and often emerge into new pair disciplines or even group disciplines, sometimes made up of traditionally remote standing ones. Hence, the era of interdisciplinarity, as the last decades might be called, represents a revolutionary turn for the research community in plenty of fields since the concern for joint disciplines has been opening up new horizons.

2 The Interdisciplinary Character of Translation Studies Casting a glance back towards the early history of translation studies, there is the prescriptive view that calls for recognition of its merits. After having thoroughly exploited the normative aspects of translations, scholars have opted for the challenging shift towards the descriptive perspective. This newly adopted, rather observant attitude has proved to be truly fruitful in findings, and has led to the age of what is known in the literature as Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). The field has naturally determined the implication of researchers in various empirical studies. The cooperation with corpus linguistics and computational linguistics has soon been observed to increase the effectiveness and reliability of research, which has, in its turn, brought about the establishment of Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS). Having emerged about two decades ago, CTS, at least partly, accounts for the interdisciplinary character of modern Translation Studies. Looking at the very core of the problem, we have to count with the already well-established fact that Translation Studies makes up a field that is interdisciplinary by nature. By far not surprising anymore, this is

6

On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies

sustained by sundry of scholars, including Hatim, for instance, in asserting that “translation studies has not remained a prisoner within one paradigm”, while discussing “linkages to other disciplines”, like contrastive analysis, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, text linguistics, psycholinguistics, cultural studies and deconstruction, gender studies, literature, etc. (Hatim and Mason 2001, 80). The interdisciplinarity of Translation Studies is to be considered also from the viewpoint of translations interfering, in content, with any possible subject matter. As an intercultural means of communication between parties not sharing the same linguistic code, translation has always carried information, discoveries, inventions and findings across the world, having a decisive role in the progress of humanity within any possible field. This is one of the reasons why translation is considered both art and science, and speaks for the complexity of the activity, but also about its constraints. A translator is impossible to possess exhaustive knowledge in all the fields that he/she might have contact with, whether pertaining to the humanities or the exact sciences. The intermingling of translation studies with other disciplines provides it with an imprecise character in its delimitation from them, with direct consequences on the translator as a professional and social being. Roland Barthes’ statement on interdisciplinarity sheds a doubt over the very identity of the discipline: “Interdisciplinarity consists in creating a new object which does not belong to anybody”. (Barthes 2007, 2). Wolf, resting on this assertion explains that interdisciplinarity is understood as a “differentiated, multidimensional epistemological concept” (Wolf 2007, 2). Translation belongs to the area of intercultural communication, being, above all, a form of communication between two cultures, since there is no possible way to separate communication, language and culture in an act of translation (Tomalin and Stempleski 1993). In the intention to provide a more orderly vision of interdisciplinarity within translation studies, we shall further on suggest a distinction between internal and external interdisciplinarity as far as the field of translation studies is concerned. Internal interdisciplinarity refers to the relation of translation studies with other disciplines pertaining to the wide area of letters, i.e. languages and literatures, for instance: applied linguistics, contrastive linguistics, intercultural communication, literary and cultural studies, discourse analysis, stylistics, pragmatics, lexicography, terminology, etc. By external interdisciplinarity we understand two distinct aspects: i) the contact of translation studies with so much and so diverse content knowledge, since it intrudes in any possible field, which, we daresay, makes of TS a genuine melting pot of disciplines. This

Mona Arhire 

7

interdisciplinary type is inherent to the translational field and it has always existed since translation does not operate apart from it. It cannot help interfering with remote standing disciplines since the bulk of translation work does not lie within the field of letters. Secondly, ii) the necessary partnership with the field of computer science in translational research initiatives linked to domains like corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and computer-based contrastive analysis. The dawn of external interdisciplinarity of this latter type overlaps with translation studies evolving to corpus-based investigation. Accounting for a new type of interdisciplinarity it has by far not exhausted its resources and is still expected to unfold findings to contribute to the development of the translation field in all its aspects. It is this particular kind of interdisciplinarity in the domain of translational research which falls under the scope of this paper in its focus on Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS), which depends by all means on computer processing throughout its research stages. Obviously, the computational aid has become so invaluable and highly necessary in areas of language study, that it has turned to be integrated into fields traditionally standing at the opposite end of the range of sciences. It is no less the case of CTS, which does not operate beyond the involvement of information technology. On the contrary, the advantages soar up due the perspectives opened up by IT within linguistics generally, and TS particularly.

3 Electronic Corpora: General Overview With a view to obtaining an overview of corpus-based research and the fields it pertains to, we have undertaken a survey of the existing electronic corpora, extracting information on the following criteria: i) general criteria, like: size, availability, initiation date, authorship, purpose(s), audience, user-friendliness, and ii) specific criteria referring to corpora types from various viewpoints: monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual; general or terminological; containing written or spoken language; synchronic or diachronic; full text, sample, or mixed; comparable versus parallel, but in terms of the text genres they include. Since an exhaustive incursion into the overwhelming amount of corpora available on the internet is impossible, we have considered a number of about 80 corpora, which we find fairly sufficient to provide relevant data. For this very article, we shall focus only on some of the aspects investigated, the ones in support of interdisciplinarity.

8

On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies

3.1 Purposes and audience of corpora To start with, the purposes and target audience explicitly stated by corpora authors do not necessarily offer a clear image of the underlying intent. However, most of them mention in the guidelines that the corpus is designed for research, teaching and learning. Vagueness should not be surprising or interpreted as weakness. On the contrary, it stems for the large variety of options that unfold before several categories of professionals. Once a serious, reliable corpus has been created, it has tuned into food for scientific, academic, teaching and professional environments. This is a reason why is it worthwhile compiling a corpus: it is subject to subsequent uses in theoretical or applied areas, beyond the compiler’s initial scope. Consequently, the potential audience is as varied as the corpora genres themselves, irrespective of whether stated as such in the corpus interface. The generality of the aim statement of some of the corpora is counterbalanced by others stating overtly much more precise objectives and addressees. Purposes are expressed in terms of: knowledge extraction, text production, (machine) translation, lexicographic use, phonetics research, usage guides, natural language processing, comparative studies, for scholars investigating linguistic and literary history, social history, and other related fields. In contrast, exact sciences display a much weaker representation and indicate purposes like: computer application, technology development, or the acquisition of medical information. Most of the corpora stating specific purposes and audience will also consider the interest of the general public in simply getting informed across domains of knowledge.

3.2 Corpora genres Text genres range from the ones containing everyday, accessible language to more specialised varieties. They vary so as to include journal and newspaper articles, literature, essays, biographies, autobiographies, personal letters, business correspondence, literature on medical ethics, college papers, and others. If we were to look at recordings of spoken language, we would notice a diversity of both professional and nonprofessional contexts where acts of oral communication have been selected for analysis.

Mona Arhire 

9

3.3 Corpora types Corpus typologies have constituted ground for debate among scholars especially since the emergence of Corpus-based Translation Studies. In this particular field, corpora are classified according to different criteria and on several levels, whose systematic presentation does not lie in the intention of the present paper. Still, the glance cast upon corpora types has provided evidence of the existence of parallel and comparable corpora in unbalanced numbers, the former being preferred to the latter. Researchers are obviously in favour of parallel corpora whether conceived as bilingual or multilingual text collections. Comparable corpora, even if reduced in numbers at present, are expected to raise more interest in future translational research due to the fact that they offer the opportunity of comparing the natural language with the language of translation, in the case of monolingual comparable corpora, for instance. Or, in another interesting approach, a bilingual comparable corpus can offer insights into two different natural languages. Obviously, the investigation entails similar text types in terms of genre, length, time stretch, etc. The few but fruitful investigations on comparable corpora have operated on the very essence of the translation universals, defining them on grounds of comparison between translational and non-translational language. A few languages are already represented in projects on comparable corpora, but it is not this type of corpus that the high amount of corpus-based projects is involved in. Probably, the most representative corpus of this category is the English Comparable Corpus (ECC), which is made up of two subcorpora, the Translational English Corpus (TEC) and the Non-Translational English Corpus (NON-TEC). The former includes a collection of computerized texts excerpted from different fields in translation into English from various languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, German, Spanish, French, Arabic, Jewish, Thai, and others. The corpus can be accessed free of charge and is available to the research community, together with a set of software tools which enable the investigation of the English language in translation. Another important corpus, a mixed one - of spoken and written British English - is the British National Corpus, known as BNC, containing 100 million words, available on the internet as well. Other languages are also represented as far as research in translation theory is concerned, among which the following stand out: BOKR (the reference corpus of Russian), the UC (Uppsala Corpus, University of Tübingen, 2004), the EnglishItalian corpus CEXI (Aston, Bernardini & Zanettin, 2003), the EnglishNorwegian comparable corpus ENCP, and so many others for languages as Finnish, Swedish, Welsh or Irish. In North America, the most important

10

On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies

corpus is the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English), an open-ended, being permanently updatable. All these corpora are domain specific, and integrate within a determined time stretch. The distinction by domain or content among corpora reveals that reference corpora are preferred to specialized ones. This means that the amount of heterogeneous corpora, possibly covering all varieties of a language (most commonly English) prevail over the ones limited to ESP research. Hence, the text collections have as sources more often pieces of writing addressing the general public, like newspapers, magazines, and literature, rather than specialized reviews, reference books, manuals, etc. One of the reasons must be the easy access to the former category as compared to the latter. If we were to take the compiler’s stance, specialized material in a particular field requires specialist search, is often subject to copyright and confidentiality restrictions and is limited. However, research encounters in ESP can extend their impact outside the scientific environment and the academic use, serving the practitioners in a field or another as well. They would be of particular interest and use to translators, for example, whose voyage towards obtaining a coherent target language text might be thorny in highly specialized areas. Written language corpora have been the initiating ones, the genres of which we have referred to previously. Even if written language collections were the first ones to be set under the scholars’ magnifying glass, there is a rising amount of spoken language recording transcribed to make up distinct corpora or a subcorpus within a more extensive mixed one, consisting of both written and spoken language (e.g. BNC). Available genres of transcripts comprise political speeches, formal, semi-formal and informal meetings, presentations, telephone conversations, every-day conversations, private dialogue, conversations over lunch or monologues. Moreover, several varieties of the English language are sampled: American, Scottish, Irish, New Zeeland, South African, Australian English, etc. As far as the field of Corpus-based Translation Studies is concerned, it is obviously only the written texts that are of interest, translation pertaining to the written language. Temporality is the criterion that accounts for the classification of corpora into synchronic and diachronic ones. Although diachronic corpora lie at the basis of interesting studies concerned with the contrastive analysis of the same language within distinct periods of time or different translations of the same classical literary works, the synchronic corpora type outnumbers the diachronic type. Most of the text compilations take into account a limited time stretch, within a maximum of one or two decades. Nevertheless, a number of corpora are open-ended, in that they

Mona Arhire 

11

are updatable and constantly worked upon, the so-called monitor corpora. Interestingly, the majority of the corpora investigated were created in the 1990s, and the more comprising and reliable ones give evidence of regular updating, once in two or three years. After the year 2000 it seems that a number of languages caught up with the English language corpora and completed the list of languages represented as corpora in electronic format. One of the latest is probably the Bulgarian – English bilingual, parallel corpus, which is still under construction (BULTREEBANK GROUP), and, as far as our search has revealed, the first Bulgarian initiative of the kind.

3.4 Authorship and reliability of corpora Among the features that a corpus needs to fulfil, a fore position is held by its reliability. This characteristic is comprisable enough to incorporate all the other ones: the quality, authorship, the considerable size, representativeness, good structure and user-friendliness. As far as authorship is concerned, it is obvious that corpora have chiefly been created by researchers for researchers. Users of corpora might be guided in their search for material to work on looking for reputed authors and institutions, which usually guarantees for the reliability of a particular corpus. Evidently, corpora users, irrespective of their intentions and objectives, should critically assess a corpus before counting on it entirely. There are weakly administered corpora and sites in terms of temporality, mention of authorship, size, or other important data. Such items speak about the reliability and user-friendliness of a corpus, alongside clear instructions, good presentation, and internal structure. But generally, users are fortunate to find that we mainly owe the compilation of electronic corpora to universities or centres for linguistic studies, among which there are British ones, like Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the Centre for Speech Technology Research of the University of Edinburgh (BNC, CIC - Cambridge International Corpus being among the most representative ones). Northern American institutions have also contributed decisively from the University of Chicago, the Department of Linguistics; the English Language Institute of the University of Michigan (Michigan Corpus of Academic English), and others. But also non-English parts of the world have created corpora. For example in Italy: University of Bologna (CORIS/ CODIS), Göteborg University – the Department of Linguistics, Saarbrücken University in Germany (SCOSE), Karlovoy University of the Czech Republic (The Czech National Corpus), University of Wellington, New Zealand (Corpora at Victoria University of

12

On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies

Wellington), Japan (Tanaka Corpus). Sometimes corpora are the result of the work of joint research teams from around the world. A noteworthy amount of corpora are owed to information technology departments. Such cases are: the Department of Informatics of the University of Sussex, the School of Computing within the University of Leeds (The Quranic Arabic Corpus), the Computer Science Department of Leipzig University (WORTSCHATZ), and many others. Given the overwhelming representation of the English language among the existing corpora, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn: English it nowadays the language of highest interest throughout the world. Evidence thereof is the finding that not all the English corpora have origins in the English-speaking parts of the world. Most bilingual parallel corpora consider English as the pair language. Furthermore, it is definitely the lingua franca of corpus-based research since the interface, user’s guides, instructions, metalanguage of the sites displaying corpora are in this very language. Corpus size also speaks for reliability. The more comprising a corpus is, the more accurate the data extracted will be. Corpora vary considerably in size, but the most sizable ones range between hundreds of thousands and hundreds of millions of words. It is the merit of electronic devices that data can be collected nowadays from large volumes of computerized texts and therefore produce much more reliable and relevant empirical discoveries.

3.5 Accessibility Most of the corpora are freely available on the internet, with special mention of the purposes as non-profit linguistic research and noncommercial ones. Some corpora require of the user, before allowing access, to fill in a statement in this respect. Others allow restricted use (to current students, faculty staff, authorised users) or offer access only to institutions. Some are open to be used by anybody but charge institutions differently from private users. The offer for a time-restricted free trial is also available at times. All this suggests that there is plenty of material available for research, but there is no exhaustive offer for any genre and text type ever, aspects that invite to further compilation, especially in specialized domains.

3.6 Preliminary conclusions The diversity of the text genres and types stands for the considerable number of fields having interdisciplinary character simply by interfering

Mona Arhire 

13

with computer science. This is due to the fact that text compilation, processing, and analysis rely on this indispensable and everywhereintruding discipline. Computational Linguistics is one of the best examples, and its very name speaks for it. Obviously, the linguistic half of the discipline has its roots in corpus linguistics, which has been added value by the computational input, especially in the possibilities offered to natural language compilation and processing. Concretely, linguistics has benefited from corpora and the tools created by computational linguistics in a variety of ways: to discover unexpected linguistic patterns, to study workplace interaction, to observe collocational behaviour and semantic prosody, to enhance teaching foreign languages and translator training, but also to investigate speech acts, to perform genre or narrative analysis, to obtain lexical frequency lists, to compare variations of the same language, and many others. A special focus shall be given to the translational aspects of corpus-based research, which has displayed important progress once corpora started being taken as source of inspiration and linguistic discoveries. Moreover, the electronic tools set at the translation scholars’ disposal have been crucial in providing new investigation methodology. It is precisely the meeting area between Translation Studies and IT that constitutes the departure point of Corpus-based Translation Studies.

4 Advantages of Corpus-based Research within Translation Studies As indicated above, interdisciplinarity is a must in the field of corpusbased translation studies. The compilation of corpora depends on electronic resource to the same extent as the analysis of such corpora is determined by the possibilities of the software. Or, to put it differently, there is interdependency between analysis and IT tools, each stimulating the other. Here, we have touched upon the essence of interdisciplinarity, namely the fact that the domains at stake are subject to mutual influence, challenge and stimulation. This is the way in which new perspectives open up to researchers, while each field extends its reach over others. The pure research has been enriched with outstanding means of investigation since the very dawn of corpus-based studies. Hence, it is also able to display a similarly invaluable harvest of findings. There are advantages to be traced throughout the stages of corpus-based translation studies as well: all the way from the very initiating, but crucial stage, namely that of corpus compilation, up to the highly productive linguistic analysis. It is precisely the interdisciplinary character of CTS that allows for in-depth scrutiny in both the process and the product dimension of

14

On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies

translations. But in order to reach the point of investigation, we need to proceed through the activity of collecting texts or text samples to be included in the corpus. Nowadays, written text corpora are hardly imagined to be compiled, sorted and categorized outside the area of electronic devices. At this stage, the advantages that the cooperation with computer science offers are manifold. Even if traditionally collected texts are still scanned and electronically converted to the desired and unitary format, this activity can never compete with the amount of texts available on the internet in all the possible fields and of so diverse a genre. The electronic search tools definitely offer easy and time-saving identification, selection, ordering and preparation of texts for analysis, even if internet searching is far form being perfect. The constraints and limitations that the internet sets on corpora compilation are strictly linked to the features corpora need to fulfil in order to lead to reliable investigation results. Such conditions would refer to authorship, authenticity of texts and contexts, length, the author’s writing skills, etc., some of which have been discussed above. As for the analysis proper, tools have been constantly created to allow for new approaches. Within the translational field, we can benefit today from findings that couldn’t have been possible with traditional means of language processing. The modern investigation technologies have led to the creation of research methodologies which have produced a turn of vision in the examination of translations and have determined shifts in the very essence of the translation universals. More precisely, the corpusbased methodology has favoured systematic investigation of the translational language and patterning, on sizable corpora, leading thus to more consistent results. Among others, the universals of simplification, normalization and explicitation have been subject to different perception changes due to the corpora-based approach to translations (Laviosa 2002, 58). Baker’s investigation, in 1995, on a monolingual comparable corpora revealed that the translated language operated after different qualitative norms as compared to the language of original texts. Undoubtedly, the comparison rests on similar text genres. Ever since the change of view for performing contrastive analysis between original texts and translated ones into the same target language as the originals, the universals have been constantly enriched by researchers involving tens of languages in such encounters. To be more specific, the list of electronic tools available for linguistic analysis, at different language levels, comprises concordancers, text aligners, word count instruments, as well as devices for the creation of lexical frequency lists and for identifying recurrent linguistic patterns.

Mona Arhire 

15

Some sites providing corpora offer electronic tools for language processing as well, usually for free. In addition, the electronic tools are accompanied by instructions and there is also evidence to be found as concerns the research projects that used those tools for investigation. Further details on the topic have given birth to plenty of articles accounting for such undertakings. For example, in 2000, Wools’ complex project on parallel corpora used computational programs, such as WordSmith, and became an important exploitation resource in a variety of ways, among which: to examine the translator’s choices and strategies, to test the validity of claims made in translation theory, and to formulate pedagogic strategies for the training of translators. Furthermore, the study pinpoints one of the major advantages of using parallel and comparable corpora, namely the refinement of the contrastive knowledge of two languages that come into contact in the process of translation. The outcome of the electronic-based analysis is of help to professionals, alongside other tools that they have at hand in the process of translation. The aid that they can take advantage of consists in obtaining concordances, fast and effective search for words, relevant search results due to contextual visualization of lexical items, illustrations of usage on the same contextual account, and others, all of them having as advantage the production of more accurate and fluent target language texts.

5 Conclusions The collision between disciplines broadens also the social interaction of the professionals whether in the scientific, academic or practitioners’ environment. That is why interdisciplinarity can be viewed as personal accomplishment, were we to consider the human involvement in other fields, constantly stimulating them and leading to the personal progress of the people involved, as professional and social beings. Translators cannot and should not be solitary in their work. They need the help of specialists or of specialized knowledge in the fields they interfere with, even if electronic corpora can offer fast and easily accessible information, being a valuable source of content knowledge. The translator is the social being operating in social and communicative events, always exceeding borders or meant of bridge disciplines. In recognition of this, the newly emerging area of study, the sociology of translation has been observed to acquire a well-deserved status over the last few years. The newly created discipline discusses the translator’s social implication in, for instance, the translation of dialects or culture-related language. A discussion about the overridden cultural transfer might seem

16

On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies

superfluous nowadays, but the analysis of translation errors has uncovered the fact that the cultural differences stem for most of the errors in translation rather than linguistic incompatibility between languages or insufficient linguistic competence on the translator’s part. That is the reason why it is essential for translators to have “bi-cultural vision” (Hatim and Mason 1994, 223) or possess “cultural fluency” (Tomalin and Stempleski 1993), apart from the linguistic competences. On account of its social and also interdisciplinary nature, translation studies extends its impact on a closely related discipline, one that is itself so generous and rewarding in terms of interdisciplinary, namely intercultural communication. Similar to translation studies, it pertains to whatever field can be imagined, envisaging increased quality of all kinds of international relations, as is the common and ultimate goal of the translational and the communicational fields. The benefits of interdisciplinarity generally and within Corpus-based Translation Studies in particular are not debatable. But for its interdisciplinary character, the translational field could not have evolved into such a dynamic and constantly stimulating study area. The virtues of interdisciplinarity within Translation Studies are felt beyond the scientific environment, outside the pure discipline since it stretches its influence over the profession of translator via the academic and translator training programmes. The number of Centres for Corpus-based Research around the world, as well the multitude of national and international projects whose analyses are based on corpora, stand proof of the merits of corpusbased research, including CTS, merits that are to a considerable extent grounded on the feature of interdisciplinarity attributed to such research. In a nutshell, Translation Studies “has been enriched by dint of possessing such a multi-faceted nature” (Snell-Hornby 2007, VI). In order to end in an optimistic key, we can only be hopeful as regards the Romanian translational research domain for fast development in the direction of corpus-based studies, and with a view to including the Romanian language on the long list of languages currently worked on.

References Baker, Mona. 1996. “Corpus-based Translation Studies. The Challenges that Lie Ahead.” In Terminology, LSP and Translation, edited by Harold Somers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chesterman, Andrew. 2007. “Bridge Concepts in Translation Sociology.” In Constructing a Sociology of Translation, edited by Michaela Wolf, and Alexandra Fukari. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Mona Arhire 

17

Publishing Company. Corpas Pastor, Gloria, and Miriam Seghiri. 2007. “Specialized Corpora for Translators: A Quantitative Method to Determine Representativeness.” Translation Journal 11(3). Accessed November 30, 2009. http://accurapid.com/journal/41corpus.htm. Hatim, Basil, and Ian Mason. 1994. Discourse and the Translator. London/New York: Longman. Hatim, Basil. 2001. Teaching and Researching Translation. U.K.: Longman. Laviosa, Sara. 2002. Corpus-based Translation Studies. Theory, Findings, Applications. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. Shuttleworth, Mark, and Moira Cowie. 1997. Dictionary of Translation Studies. U.K.: St. Jerome Publishing. Tomalin, Barry, and Susan Stempleski. 1993. Cultural Awareness. U.K.: Oxford University Press. Tymoczko, Maria. 1998. “Computerized Corpora and the Future of Translation Studies.” Meta: Translators' Journal 43(4):652-660. Accessed January 10, 2010. http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1998/v43/n4/004515ar.pdf. Wilkinson, Michael. 2006. “Compiling Corpora for Use as Translation Resources.” Translation Journal 10(1). Accessed April 15, 2010. http://accurapid.com/journal/35corpus. Wolf, Michaela. 2007. “The emergence of a sociology of translation.” In Constructing a Sociology of Translation, edited by Michaela Wolf, and Alexandra Fukari. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Zanettin, Federico. 2000. “Parallel Corpora in Translation Studies: Issues in Corpus Design and Analysis.” In Intercultural Faultiness. Research Models in Translation Studies I: Textual and Cognitive Aspects, edited by Maeve Olohan. Manchester: St. Jerome.

18

On the Interdisciplinary Nature of Corpus-Based Translation Studies

Annex 1. List of Corpora BOKR (The Russian Reference Corpus), http://www.ruscorpora.ru/en/ BNC (British National Corpus), http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ BULTREEBANK (Bulgarian Treebank) GROUP, www.bultreebank.org/ESyntAC COCA (The Corpus of Contemporary American English), http://www.americancorpus.org/ ENCP (English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus), http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/tjenester/kunnskap/sprak/omc/enpc/ENPCma nual.html

DEVELOPING BUSINESS STUDENTS’ MENTAL LEXICON IN ENGLISH TEODORA POPESCU

1 Introduction Teachers of business English have been constantly preoccupied by their endeavours to find the best methods to teach their students how to use the business language correctly and appropriately. Numerous textbooks have been elaborated, most of which focused on the notionalfunctional aspect of the business language (textbooks were divided into chapters such as: accounting, management, entrepreneurship, while learning was centred around situations such as negotiating and the language functions associated with it: agreeing, disagreeing, giving opinions, expressing ideas, etc.). However, practitioners have always endeavoured to find the best classroom methodology in order to equip business students with effective communication strategies.

2 Business English vs. General English From the outset, it is important to draw a demarcation line between business English and general English. Among researchers who have tackled the issue, mention should be made of Douglass Pickett (quoted in Nelson 2000), who managed to pinpoint some important aspects concerning the nature and characteristics of business English. He agreed that it is a part of ESP, although ...as business and commerce are by definition an interface between the general public and the specialist producer…it must be a lot nearer the everyday language spoken by the general public than many other segments of ESP”. (Pickett 1986, 1)

His tenet is that business English is characterised mainly by two attributes, one imposed by the relationship of the business world with the

20

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

“lay world” while the other refers to the business intra-world communications: Conversely, of course, the extent to which it departs from lay language depends more on the nature of the business than on any autonomous subject area it occupies all to itself. Thus if we take three different firms, one in insurance, one in pharmaceuticals and one in fashion, their language to the public will be much the same and no more specialised than can be avoided. Their internal specialist languages, however, will be respectively those of insurance, pharmaceuticals and fashion, not business in general. (Pickett 1986, 1)

As concerns the written business communications, there are universal actions that will always take place, e.g. in international negotiations: Incoterms (FOB, CIF, etc.), methods of payment (Bill of Lading, money transfer, etc.), whereas spoken language is less easy to define and ...what makes for real business communication is a whole gamut of subtly graded conversations sensitive to the subject matter, the occasion, the shared knowledge and social relationships holding between speakers. (Pickett 1986, 2)

Business English seems to be much more complex than any other area of ESP, especially considering the need for an interface with the general public. Broadly speaking there are two main communication areas, with the public and among businesses. Therefore, in terms of register, Pickett (quoted in Nelson 2000) refers to two domains: register, as defined by subject matter, i.e. special language entailed by the subject area, such as football or cookery, and register as defined by situation, i.e. by the special situation a speaker might find themselves in. “In other words, the individual can switch his linguistic code to conform to his role, just as a bi-lingual can shift languages” (1986, 8). In both major senses of the word ‘register’ business English includes register but is not confined by it. In so far as register is defined by subject matter, business English embraces at least two subject matters. One is the specialist language of whatever sort of business one happens to be in transport, petroleum, jewellery, hairdressing, banking, catering, etc. The other is the language of business in general that occupies a neutral place between particular businesses. Thus, terms like ‘order’, ‘issue’, ‘bad debt’, ‘invest’, ‘boom’, ‘slump’, ‘invoice’, ‘depreciation’, ‘stock’, ‘discount’, ‘turnover’, would belong there, since they are part of a framework of concepts that would probably be used in any business. Insofar as a register is defined by situation, we might also speak of a ‘business register’, since

Teodora Popescu 

21

there are certain situations peculiar to business which shape the language used in them. (Pickett 1986, 9)

According to Pickett, sociolinguistic factors play a far more important role in the production of business language, as Business English “depends much more on the setting and social relations than upon the subject matter” (1986, 2).

3 Characteristics of the business language In order to better understand what makes the business language a genre in itself, we will in the following look at some characteristics of business English, providing relevant examples from authentic sources. The examples draw on and expand the principles stated in Popescu and Bocoú 2008. 1. a certain fixedness of lexical associations, i.e. less free lexical combinations: e.g. to have a vested interest in V-ing (= a strong personal interest in something because you could benefit from it); syn. dominant interest, equitable interest, etc., which might mean almost the same thing, but with less semantic load and frequency of occurrence/usage. current liabilities (= a balance sheet item which equals the sum of all money owed by a company and due within one year); syn. current debts, although less frequent used. hedge funds (= funds, usually used by wealthy individuals and institutions, which are allowed to use aggressive strategies that are unavailable to mutual funds, including selling short, leverage, program trading, swaps, arbitrage, and derivatives). Net Interest Margin (NIM) (= the percentage difference between a bank’s yield on earning assets [mostly loans] and interest paid to depositors). asset-stripping (= the practice of buying an unsuccessful company at a low price and selling off its assets separately for a profit and with no regard for the future welfare of the company or its employees). 2. a certain degree of courtesy and formality which are to be found in the forms and frameworks of conventionalised transactions. e.g. Dear Sir, / Yours faithfully, Dear Mr. Jones / Yours sincerely,

22

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted for the above post … Enclosed are tow copies of the contract of employment. I am writing to complain about a shipment … we received yesterday against our invoice no. G 2932/3 … … As we will be unable to retail this consignment in our stores, we are returning the shipment to you carriage forward and we shall expect a full refund. 3. sociolinguistic and pragmatic orientation, by which we mean that the language used by business people display “sensitivity to subject matter, the occasion, shared knowledge and social relations holding between companies and communicators” (Pickett 1986, 2). e.g. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

CHAIRMAN DOUGLAS: Good morning. Welcome to the California Energy Commission Business Meeting of January 12, 2011. Please join me in the Pledge. (Whereupon, the Pledge of Allegiance was received in unison.) CHAIRMAN DOUGLAS: Commissioners, staff, everybody, welcome back for our first Business Meeting of 2011. I will start with the Consent Calendar, Item 1. VICE CHAIR BOYD: Move consent. COMMISSIONER BOYD: Second. CHAIRMAN DOUGLAS: All in favour? (Ayes.) That item is approved. I forgot to say that Item 4 will be moved to the next Business Meeting, so Item 4 is not going to be taken up today. COMMISSIONER BYRON: I’m crushed. VICE CHAIR BOYD: Just because you won the Orange Bowl, don’t think you get everything. CHAIRMAN DOUGLAS: Thank you! Item 2 – COMMISSIONER BYRON: Madam Chair, that comment, for the people here, Item 4, as I was reviewing it, I think, is the only time I can remember that we approved a PIER research contract in my tenure here with Stanford University, so that is why my comment is that I’m crushed. CHAIRMAN DOUGLAS: I understand that, you and I as the Stanford grads, me from the Law School, you know, have enthusiastically – VICE CHAIR BOYD: I’m out-gunned today. Well, no, I’ve got Jonathan here. CHAIRMAN DOUGLAS: -- we have enthusiastically supported many great proposals from the Cal system and, as Commissioner Byron says, this is the first one that I remember seeing as a PIER grant from Stanford. But, in any case, we will have the opportunity to take that up at a future date.

Teodora Popescu 

23

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Item 2. Calgren Renewable Fuels, LLC. Possible approval of Agreement ARV-10-033 for a zero-cost Participant Agreement with Calgren Renewable Fuels, LLC to establish the program requirements for participation in the California Ethanol Producer 20 Incentive Program (CEPIP). Mr. Rillera. MR. RILLERA: Good morning, Chairman and Commissioners. My name is Larry Rillera, I’m with the Division of Fuels and Transportation. In 2009 the Commission approved the first AB 118 Investment Plan that identified development of Ethanol Producer facilities in the state. […]

38 39 40 41 41 42

CHAIRMAN DOUGLAS: Thank you, Mr. Rillera. We have a member of the public who would like to speak on this item, Allen – and I’m struggling with your last name – maybe Breese, with Calgren. If you could come forward? MR. BREESE: Thank you. I just want to thank the Commission for their consideration of the Ethanol production in the Calgren plant. (The California Energy Commission 2011)

The excerpt above is taken from a transcript of a business meeting of the California Energy Commission, held on 12.01.2011. This text is relevant for the roles that the participants have to assume and how the code of politeness is respected. The meeting starts in accordance with formal business meetings conventions. It is interesting to note how some offhand comments are dealt with. In line 14, COMMISSIONER BYRON says “I’m crushed.” Ironically, VICE CHAIR BOYD retorts (lines 15-16): “Just because you won the Orange Bowl, don’t think you get everything.” To this, COMMISSIONER BYRON feels compelled to address Karen Douglas in order to explain his comment (lines 18-21): “Madam Chair, that comment, for the people here, Item 4, as I was reviewing it, I think, is the only time I can remember that we approved a PIER research contract in my tenure here with Stanford University, so that is why my comment is that I’m crushed.” The second comment is practically not taken into consideration at all. VICE CHAIR BOYD says in lines 24-25: “I’m outgunned today. Well, no, I’ve got Jonathan here.” Chairman Douglas continues unperturbed, her idea: “I understand that, we […] have enthusiastically –” VICE CHAIR BOYD: I’m out-gunned today. Well, no, I’ve got Jonathan here. CHAIRMAN DOUGLAS: – we have enthusiastically supported many great proposals […]” 4. metaphoric load: the language used in business materials may be characterised by what we could call metaphoric load, i.e. the business language borrows words, phrases, idioms from the general usage and

24

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

applies them to the specific contexts of the place of work: abort a product, rat race, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks, etc. Business English

General English

The union of television and the internet is spawning a wide variety of offspring. (www.economist.com)

Surveys also provide valuable information about where fish have been seen and what species are spawning in the stream. (www.hylebos.org) Natural selection therefore favours parents which can produce a variety of offspring. (http://en.wikipedia.org)

… one that threatened to devastate the television industry. (www.economist.com)

The fire devastated the countryside.

Joost, YouTube, iTunes and Netflix do not need their own networks to supply their video services; they can piggyback on fast internet links provided by others.

Give me a piggyback, Daddy!

The yen carry trade has amplified global liquidity, further inflating asset-price bubbles across the world.

You can inflate a balloon, with either air or helium.

…the Japanese government announced a plan to recapitalize its crippled banks. (www.economist.com)

He was crippled by polio as a child.

MOVEMENT / Describing trends: Verbs (I): The yen jumped by 13% within three days. (www.economist.com) …causing the currency to soar… V (T): The Europeans would like some action to push up the currency,

The children were jumping up and down with excitement. While he was out one of these eagles soared high over the village,...(www.mnh.si.edu/) She pushed up her children when the policeman came by.

Teodora Popescu  which, they say, is not bearing the fair share of the dollar’s decline. (www.economist.com) Nouns: But the lower the yen slides, the greater the threat of an even sharper rebound. (www.economist.com) … but an upsurge in currency volatility … (www.economist.com)

25

Giggs headed the rebound into the net.

… an upsurge of emotion that created a state of calm and self-understanding… (http://hemi.nyu.edu/)

5. in close connection with the above trait, marked idiomaticity: e.g. Instead, rather than undercutting television networks and producers, Joost might …give them new juice. (= give vitality) (www.economist.com) YouTube has been trying to thrash out an agreement with Viacom. (= discuss in order to reach an agreement) (www.economist.com) The market is chasing its own tail in defiance of the economic fundamentals. (= to be very busy doing a lot of things, but achieving very little) (www.economist.com) Japan’s economy is no longer flat on its back. (= helpless, without recourse, defeated) (www.economist.com) EA is now ramping up its development efforts… (= to increase the amount or size of something) (www.economist.com) EA hit a bumpy patch in 2006. (combination between: patch = a period of time of the type mentioned, usually a difficult or unhappy one; bumpy as in have / give sb a bumpy ride to have a difficult time; to make a situation difficult for sb) (www.economist.com)

3.1 The ergolect and the poetics of Business English In a subsequent article, Pickett (1989, quoted in Nelson 2000) introduces two important notions that have influenced further research into the nature of business English. He states that Business English ... is clearly a dialect of English but not exclusively of England. Indeed, it is not a dialect defined by place at all but by activity, occupation, subject

26

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English matter or situation. For this we might coin the term ergolect - work language, though for many years linguists have been using the term register. (Pickett 1989, 5)

Pickett discusses yet another concept – that of the poetics of Business English, by which he understands of process of creating this work language in a similar way to creating poetry. In other words, the business language is drawn from general English in order to create fresh meaning in different business contexts, which later on can easily flow back into general usage. And indeed, we will find lots of metaphors at the place of work and hardly think of them as metaphors in the first place. If we say: “I talked to the boss and hope to have planted the seed” we actually mean that we’ve introduced our boss to the idea, in a gentle way, and now hope he will act upon it. No physical seed has actually been planted. Another widespread metaphor at the workplace, with reference to sex discrimination / or the avoidance of it, is “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” (meaning that the sexes should be treated the same way and not subjected to different standards). Nobody ever thinks that this idiom is derived from an earlier proverb “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” and represents an analogy with the animal world. Quite frequently employees will use the expression “We’re swamped” to refer either to “a situation or place fraught with difficulties and imponderables” or to “having a lot of work to deal with”. Nobody would think of swamp as “an area of ground that is very wet or covered with water and in which plants, trees, etc. are growing”. When people in a department can’t reach an agreement, but nevertheless continue to disagree, we might say: “They could argue till the cows come home and still to no avail”. Of course the actual animals have nothing to do with our situation.

4 Methodological suggestions We will present in the following some methods that can contribute to the development our business students’ mental lexicon. The suggestions presented below are an extension and development of the ideas first advanced in Popescu 2007. 1. Using concordancers (a concordancer = a search engine for looking through a large body of texts, i.e. a corpus) and lexical databases There are some useful online concordancers that can be used during an English class, set in a multimedia language laboratory, with Internet

Teodora Popescu 

27

access, such as: • the British National Corpus, available at: http://natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html (the unsubscribed online version will only display a random selection of 50 hits); • the Web Concordancer, available at: http://www.edict.com.hk/concordance/WWWConcappE.htm, with some 27 corpora to choose from; or • the Online BLC KWIC Concordancer – Business Letter Corpus, available at: http://ysomeya.hp.infoseek.co.jp/, with a choice of 18 corpora. There also exist lexical databases, such as the Word.Net 3.1, provided by the Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University, available at: http://wordnet.princeton.edu, which provides information about nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms, each expressing a distinct concept. Sample Task 1: 1.a) Search for the word account through different concordancers and fill in the table below with maximum 10 collocates under each column. Consult the WordNet database as well, in order to find supplementary lexical and semantic relations. vb. + account

account + vb. (both [VN] and [V])

adj. + account

account + noun

1.b) Use the collocates you found in sentences of your own. Translate them into your mother tongue. What differences can you notice in terms of grammar and semantic/discourse prosody? 1.c) Can you find any idiomatic expressions? 1.d) Is account ever used as a verb? In what context and with what meaning? 1.e) Find examples where account co-occurs with money. The first concordancer will return 424 collocates (see Fig. 1), whereas the second 868 (see Fig. 2). Students are advised to pay attention to the most frequent word partnerships and also to take into account different idioms in which account may occur. The information provided by the

28

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

WordNet Search will add supplementary knowledge as to the other meanings of the word account (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 1 Lextutor Concordancer

Teodora Popescu 



Fig. 2 Online BLC KWIC Concordancer

29

30

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

Fig. 3 Word Net Search 3.1

2. Using dictionaries It is also possible for the teacher to have his students work with a dictionary of collocations (e.g. Dictionary of Business Collocations, Popescu and Toma 2009), in which collocations are listed for the most important meanings of the headword.

Teodora Popescu 

31

Fig. 4 Dictionary of Business Collocations (Popescu and Toma, 2009)

Likewise useful are online dictionaries, such as Cambridge Dictionaries online or the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English online. They provide information on the grammatical category of the word, as well as authentic examples of the word’s uses in different contexts. Below is a snapshot of the word account, with definitions and usage.

32

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

Fig. 5 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online

Another useful, interactive tool is the Visual Thesaurus, which shows students the interrelations between words, through visually captivating mental maps.

Teodora Popescu 

33

Fig. 6 Visual Thesaurus

3. Using business texts Different online business texts may be used in order to extract common collocations, which may be afterwards used to design meaningful tasks, such as: • articles from the business press: The Economist, Financial Times, etc.; • company web pages: http://press.benettongroup.com/, http://www.marksandspencer.com/, etc. For example, teachers may retrieve common collocations from a text found on The Economist site, jumble them, and create a matching exercise for the students.

34

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

Sample task 2 2.a) Match the following nouns with their corresponding adjectives: adjective financial public building resolution retail

a b c d e

noun block regimes deregulation banking utilities

1 2 3 4 5

2.b Now fill in the gaps with the collocations you found above: Britain, for long the most enthusiastic champion of 1. _______________, is going further still, pondering whether banks’ retail arms should be so tightly regulated that they become little more than 2. _______________. Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, in a recent speech in New York wondered aloud whether the use of deposits to fund loans should be outlawed. In essence, he was questioning a basic 3. _______________ of modern banking. In April a government-appointed commission said that Britain’s banks should wall off their retail arms so they could be salvaged if the rest of the business were to collapse. It is also trying to devise 4. ________________ and living wills to reduce the harm done when banks collapse, and it wants more competition in 5. ________________. (from The Economist 2011) Answers: 1 2 3 4 5

financial deregulation public utilities building block resolution regimes retail banking

Sample task 3 3.a) Match the words in the two columns so as to form suitable collocations. e.g. 1.g) bank draft 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

bank crossed credit net deferred dishonoured due

a) b) c) d) e) f) g)

note tender management services interest draft settlement

Teodora Popescu 

8 9 10 11 12

legal fiduciary portfolio promissory bearer

h) i) j) k) l)

35

bill securities cheque date worthiness

3.b) Now match the collocations you found above with their corresponding definitions. 1 __________ the date on which some debt, such as an interest payment or a bill of exchange becomes due to be paid. 2 __________ the settlement of a number of obligations or transfers between or among counterparties on a net basis. 3 __________ condition in which the payment of interest is postponed. 4 __________ a check drawn by one bank against funds deposited into its account at another bank, authorizing the second bank to make payment to the individual named in the draft. 5 __________ degree to which customers are certain to pay debts promptly, degree to which they are worthy of being allowed credit. 6 __________ the form of money in which a person has a right by law to pay a debt, and which the creditor must by law accept in settlement of the debt. 7 __________ a document which contains a promise to pay a stated amount of money to a stated person either on a fixed date or when the money is demanded. 8 __________ one with two parallel lines drawn across it, usu. by the drawer or his agent, e.g. his bank. This practice lessens the risk of loss by dishonesty. 9 __________ security (such as a bank note) that the issuer considers is legally owned and negotiable by the person who possesses it. 10 __________ the administration of a collection of company shares and other investments that are owned by a particular person or organization. 11 __________ one which the drawee (the debtor on whom it is drawn) has refused to accept, or which the acceptor (the person who has agreed to pay it) fails to pay when it is due. 12 __________ services provided by an individual or a corporation acting in a trust capacity. A bank authorized to do a trust business may act as executor or administrator of estates, guardian of minors, and trustee under wills.

36

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

Answer: 1 2 3 4 5 6

due date net settlement deferred interest bank draft credit worthiness legal tender

7 8 9 10 11 12

promissory note crossed cheque bearer securities portfolio management dishonoured bill fiduciary services

The above tasks serve as a modest model for materials designers, and we want to underline that the list of examples may continue, and therefore each teacher is called upon to design his/her own vocabulary tasks and activities, and to adapt different lexical-approach methods to the specific needs and individual proficiency level of their students.

5 Conclusions To conclude with, it is possible for the business English teacher to use different resources in order to develop the students’ mental lexicon, and to activate it. Teachers, however, need to be selective with the collocational input they provide to their students. Students themselves should be trained to browse authentic materials for keywords, usually nouns or verbs and identify themselves the collocational features of the selected words. Tasks designed have to be informative and useful at the same time, and students need to be encouraged to produce themselves language with specific collocations.

References Firth, John Rupert. 1957. “A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930-55.” In Selected Papers of J.R. Firth 1952-59, edited by Frank R. Palmer, (1968), 168-205. London/Harlow: Longman. Greenbaum, Sidney, and Randolph Quirk. 2004. A Student’s Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman. Kjellmer, Göran. 1987. “Aspects of English Collocations.” In Corpus Linguistics and Beyond, edited by Willem Meijs, 133-140. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Lewis, Michael. 1993. The Lexical Approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications. —. 1997. Implementing the Lexical Approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications. Lewis, Michael, and Jamie Hill. 1998. What is Collocation? Hove:

Teodora Popescu 

37

Language Teaching Publications. Lewis, Morgan. 2000. “There’s Nothing as Practical as a Good Theory.” In Teaching Collocations, edited by Michael Lewis, 10-27. Hove: Language Teaching Publications. Nattinger, James. 1988. “Some Current Trends in Vocabulary.” In Vocabulary and Language Teaching, edited by Ronald Carter, and Michael J. McCarthy, 62-82. London/New York: Longman. Nelson, Michael. 2000. A Corpus-Based Study of Business English and Business English Teaching Materials. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. Manchester: University of Manchester. Pickett, Douglas. 1986. “Business English: Falling Between Two Styles.” COMLON 26:16-21. —. 1989. “The Sleeping Giant: Investigations in Business English.” Language International 1(1):5-11. Popescu, Teodora. 2007. “Teaching Business Collocations.” In Languages for Specific Purposes. Searching for common solutions, edited by Dita Galova, 164-176. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Popescu, Teodora, and Muúata Bocoú. 2008. “The Business Lexis: Issues for Teachers and Researchers.” Stylistyka, XVII:335-345. Popescu, Teodora, and Mariana Toma. 2009. Dictionary of Business Collocations. With Romanian translation and practice section. Alba Iulia: Aeternitas. Rosenthal, Jonathan. 2011. “Chained but Untamed.” The Economist, May 12. Accessed May 15, 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/18654622. Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Webliography Corpus Concordance English (v.6.5). 2011. “account.” Accessed May 12, 2011. http://conc.lextutor.ca/concordancers/wwwassocwords.pl. EarthCorps. Friends of the Hylebos, www.hylebos.org. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, http://hemi.nyu.edu. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. 2011. “account.” Accessed May 12, 2011. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/account_1?q=account. Online BLC KWIC Concordancer. 2011. “account.” Accessed May 12, 2011. http://www.someya-net.com/concordancer/cgi-bin/kwiclcgi? string=account&SearchType=Equal+to&width=40&SelectCorpus=01. +Business+Letter+Corpus+%28BLC2000%29&SortType=Right.

38

Developing Business Students’ Mental Lexicon in English

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, www.mnh.si.edu. The California Energy Commission. 2011. Commission Business Meetings Agendas, Minutes, Transcripts and Back-Up Materials. Last modified May, 2011. Accessed May 12, 2011. http://www.energy.ca.gov/business_meetings/2011_transcripts/201101-12_transcript.pdf. The Economist. www.economist.com. Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus. 2011. “account”. Accessed May 12, 2011. http://www.visualthesaurus.com/landing/?ad=cdo&utm_medium=defa ult&utm_campaign=VT&utm_source=cdo&word=account. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org. WordNet Search. (v.3.1). 2011. “account”. Accessed May 12, 2011. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=account&o2=&o0=1& o8=1&o1=1&o7=&o5=&o9=&o6=&o3=&o4=&h.



TRANSGRESSING ENGLISH LANGUAGE BOUNDARIES: THE CASE OF BUSINESS ENGLISH BORROWINGS CRINA HERğEG

1 Introduction It is well-known that languages represent means of communication, not only within society, but also with society and that every language is a living and a dynamic body, with a continuous development, and permanently subject to innovation. This phenomenon of language development is meant to respond to and reflect the needs of the communities using them. As these needs change, languages are among the first which reflect this development. The rhythm of change is in close connection with the evolution of the society, with the social, economic, political, technologic and historical factors influencing it. Out of them, in our opinion, the most prevalent ones and those which account for coining and/ or introducing new lexical units are the economic and technological factors (especially in fields of science such as technology, IT, electronics, communications). This can be easily explained by the boom in technology which smoothed the path towards the exchange of information between countries. On the other hand, in the attempt of globalizing and internationalising its economy, as well as of developing its trade, Romania has lately turned into a great importer of business English words. We had to borrow and in certain cases integrate such terms, as they can ensure and facilitate crosscultural communication between Romanian business owners and European/world investors. This mainly occurs because The most important characteristics of the language of business English, as opposed to the language of general English, are a sense of purpose, an intercultural dimension and a need for clear, straightforward and concise communication. (Popescu 2007, 165)



40

Transgressing English Language Boundaries

Nowadays it is almost impossible for entrepreneurs irrespective of their origin to get along, sign contracts and establish business partnerships without resorting to business English, which became international and spread all over the world, turning business English into a lingua franca of the 21st century.

2 Lexical change Consequently, new terms are introduced in order to cover these new realities and to reflect the novelties occurring in those domains. In many cases these new terms join a new concept non-existent in the target language (TL). In this paper we will have in view the case of business English terms which have been acquired by Romanian language for almost 20 years. As regards their treatment, these terms can be either translated into Romanian, or adjusted according to the organic rules of Romanian language so as to enter the common core specialised vocabulary. The process of language renewal differs from one country to another, in Romanian newly introduced words can be obtained: A. internally: 1. using the already existing sources; 2. modifying the existing resources: a. by narrowing of meaning; b. by extension of meaning. 3. composition; 4. derivation; 5. change in the morphological value. B. externally: borrowings. Out of these situations we will mainly deal with the case of borrowings.

3 Integration and assimilation of borrowings Some of the borrowed terms imply complex translation problems, which can make difficult our understanding, proper use and good command of these lexical units. In order to settle these problems translators should be assisted in their endeavour by specialists in technology and by linguists. In this complex process linguists have to take into account the following requirements: create a term which should be productive, which should have synonyms or homonyms, and which should be in accordance with the syntactical rules of TL. A new branch of applied



Crina Herteg

41

linguistics – terminology - emerged, in response to this process. Its main purpose is to prevent the wrong and ambiguous assimilation, to give coherence and adjust these terms in accordance with the organic rules governing TL. In pursuing its investigation terminology relies on the following methods: identification, analysis, creation of new terms and it works on two levels: functional, which means facilitating communication and conceptual, meaning that newly created terms must follow certain requirements: they must be pronounced easily, they must be concise, they must enable the formation of new terms with the help of affixes, they must be linguistically correct. Since the task of integrating technical terms seems to be more difficult than the one of integrating business terms it rarely happens that technical terms are introduced in Romanian without passing through the abovementioned filters. The case of business English terms is a bit different as these are mainly conveyed by specialized sites, TV broadcasts and newspapers. Before we proceed with our investigation, mention should be made of the fact that in many situations there is slight demarcation line between general English lexis and the business English one. Some of the most common ways through which Romanian borrows Business English words are: 1. literal translation, which consists in the graphical and phonetic modification with maintaining the same conceptual identity: a. general business terms proactive (EN acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty; anticipatory)1 – proactiv (RO). Proactive is a general English term with most of the occurrences in business English contexts: There was some speculation that the statement might mention Japan, at least tangentially. I don’t think this was an unreasonable expectation given the magnitude of the crisis and its global impact on markets. There is a case to be made that a proactive comment promising to respond, if necessary, to the crisis could have taken some of the panicky edge off of market activity. (The Economist, 2011). InstituĠiile de credit au început o gestionare proactivă a portofoliului de credite. (www.zf.ro)

  1



www.thefreedictionary.com.

42

Transgressing English Language Boundaries

b. banking capitalisation (EN) - capitalizare (RO) in phrases such as: capitalisation of the market, capitalisation of the Stock Exchange Although PetroChina’s market capitalisation has fallen by 47% in the past year, it remains the world’s most valuable company. (The Economist, 2009). Chiar dacă în prezent capitalizarea întregii burse locale este destul de redusă, fiind echivalentă cu capitalizarea unei singure companii semnificative din regiune, precum CEZ, aceasta ar putea creúte cu 47% (8 miliarde euro) dacă statul va lista pachetele promise, potrivit analiútilor BCR. (capital.ro).

direct debit (EN)- debitare directă (RO) If digital money becomes standard, those insisting on paying with cash will be penalised. I am currently charged a ‘non-Direct Debit fee’ each time I pay my cable bill over the phone – speaking with an automated voice, no less – because I refuse the ‘convenience’ of Direct Debit. (The Economist, 2007). Banca pune la dispoziĠia posesorilor de card de debit multiple canale electronice de acces la serviciile úi produsele sale: Internet banking (Raiffeisen Online), phone banking (Raiffeisen Direct), mobile banking (myBanking) sau plata automată a facturilor prin Direct Debit. (capital.ro)

c. marketing marketing mix (EN) - mix de marketing (RO)2 Într-un interviu acordat recent ZF, Cătălin Pârvu, directorul general al Piraeus Bank Romania responsabil cu retailul úi operaĠiunile, a afirmat că anul trecut creúterea a fost stimulată de un mix de marketing úi lansarea de noi produse. (www.zf.ro)

marketer (EN) – translated into Romanian by operator de marketing/ specialist in marketing, the Romanian inflected version: marketerul/ marketerului is preferred in specialized newspapers and websites. Este o afacere de 2 miliarde de euro, reprezinta visul oricarui marketer, iar restaurantele de lux incheie orice festin cu o ceasca din cafeaua brandului. (www.zf.ro)

  2



Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 205.

Crina Herteg

43

d. finances bubble (EN) – bulă (RO) Analistul pe aur al Erste Group, Ronald Stoeferle, susĠine astăzi pentru clienĠii de private banking ai BCR o prezentare în care va explica de ce nu se poate spune că aurul ar fi într-o bulă speculativă. (www.zf.ro)

budget deficit (EN) - deficit bugetar (RO); injection of (public) capital The former financing arm of General Motors (GM) is in talks over a third injection of public capital. (The Economist 2009) Grupul bancar austriac Erste Bank a anunĠat joi că va primi o injecĠie de capital de la divizia sa din Cehia, Ceska Sporitelna, care úi-a propus să plătească tot profitul său net pe 2008, în valoare de de 628,4 milioane euro, sub forma de dividende, informează Reuters. (www.capitalul.ro) După primul semestru al acestui an, adaosul de capital din străinătate în companiile de asigurări din România s-a ridicat la 150 mil. EUR, din care 80 mil. EUR au reprezentat injecĠii de capital operate în cel de-al doilea trimestru, potrivit datelor Oficiului NaĠional al Registrului ComerĠului. Astfel, capitalizarea pieĠei de asigurări din România depăúeúte în prezent 980 mil. EUR. (www.xprimm.md)

liquid market (EN) – pieĠe lichide/ de lichidităĠi (RO) provision (EN) – provision, rezervă (RO)3 e. Stock Exchange listing (EN) – listare (RO) 2. calque translation which consists in modifying it graphically or phonetically:

adopting a term without

a. general business terms call center De asemenea, studenĠii vor afla ce înseamnă un call center de resurse

  3



Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 265.

44

Transgressing English Language Boundaries umane, ce este cultura organizaĠională, vor înĠelege particularităĠile comunicării cu presa, vor învăĠa despre mixul de comunicare úi despre cum se dezvoltă úi se implementează o campanie integrată de comunicare, cum se nasc ofertele comerciale, ce înseamnă úi cum se face mistery shopping, cum funcĠionează în practică regulile úi principiile contabile învăĠate la facultate úi multe altele. (capital.ro)

grant (the act of granting; something granted as land, money, etc)4, translated into Romanian as: grant, subvenĠie, donaĠie5. Valoarea aproximativă a fiecărui grant ce va fi acordat în cadrul programului este de 400.000 de dolari. (capital.ro)

Holding / holding company (a company which controls other companies through stock ownership but that usu. Does not engage directly in their productive operations = RO (holding, concern, grup, conglomerat)6. France Telecom deĠine un pachet de 35% din acĠiunile Orange Austria úi un pachet de 20% la holdingul Sonaecom SGPS SA, proprietarul celui mai mic operator de telefonie mobilă din Portugalia. (capital.ro)

rating Standby in collocations such as: standby loan and standby agreement standby loan (EN) – împrumut standby Această evoluĠie urmează deciziei luate de Fondul Monetar InternaĠional de acordare a unui împrumut standby de 16,4 mld. dolari Ucrainei pentru salvarea de la intrarea în colaps economic. (www.zf.ro) FMI a încheiat un acord stand-by pe 17 luni cu Ungaria, acord ce va fi aprobat de catre boardul executiv al Fondului luna viitoare. Un acord standby este o linie de credit care nu trebuie sa fie în mod necesar utilizată. (www.zf.ro)

voucher (A written document showing that a sum of money has been paid)7. Românii care vor opta să achiziĠioneze maúini electrice vor beneficia de úase vouchere prin programul “Rabla”, a declarat ministrul Mediului úi Pădurilor, Laszlo Borbely. (capital.ro)

  4

Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 150. Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 150. 6 Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 158. 7 Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 347. 5



Crina Herteg

45

b. finances Retail occurs in different collocations such as: PiaĠă de retail PiaĠa românească de retail va atrage în acest an, din partea reĠelelor internaĠionale de magazine, investiĠii de 700 milioane de euro, cel mai ridicat nivel din zona Europei Centrale úi de Est, potrivit unui studiu realizat de firma poloneză de consultanĠă PMR. (www.bloombiz.ro/piete.../)

InvestiĠii de retail Raportat la valoarea investiĠiilor în retail pe cap de locuitor, România va ocupa în acest an primul loc în Europa Centrală úi de Est, cu o medie de 30,9 euro, urmată de Bulgaria, cu 28,5 euro. (www.bloombiz.ro/piete.../)

Sector de retail Pot fi observate în rândul consumatorilor o tendinĠă susĠinută spre calitate úi distanĠarea de preĠurile scăzute, ca unic punct de interes. Un exemplu este segmentul de retail textile. (www.wall-street.ro)

This term can be identified inflected according to Romanian rules: retalerii, retailerului Majoritatea retailerilor din România úi-au construit afacerile pentru un profit imediat, fără a crea o strategie pe termen lung, lucru relevat în spaĠiile pe care le deĠin care nu sunt concepute pentru perioade mai lungi de timp, este de părere compania elenă Stirixis. (www.curierulnational.ro)

dumping: preĠ de dumping El a mai spus că a plătit salariile cu întârziere deoarece comenzile au fost puĠine în această perioadă de criză, mai ales pe fondul pierderii unor contracte la export, în condiĠiile în care concurenĠa chineză a oferit chiar úi preĠuri de dumping. (www.zf.ro)

c. banking banking in collocations such as: electronic banking e-banking internet banking Principalul avantaj pe care Ġi-l oferă serviciul Internet Banking este



46

Transgressing English Language Boundaries mobilitatea. (www.money.ro)

private banking O dovadă elocventă este finalul toamnei 2008, când o parte din bani au fost retraúi din sistemul bancar în momentul cel mai acut al crizei financiare, în general sume în euro úi aparĠinând clienĠilor de private banking. (www.capital.ro)

sistem de banking sisteme core-banking offshore (foreign, esp. of investments in companies)8. Cei mai mari producători de energie din România, alături de Electrica úi o filială locală a unui grup din Serbia, controlată printr-un offshore cipriot, sunt protagoniútii celui mai mare export de energie din România, în valoare de peste 100 de milioane de euro. (www.zf.ro)

d. insurance broker dealer e. marketing brand mono-brand multi-brand concept store f. human resources training (frequently preferred instead of the Romanian instruire). coaching leadership Cea mai sănătoasă combinaĠie de stiluri de leadership este o îmbinare dintre cel vizionar, în care angajaĠii înĠeleg cum arată succesul, útiu ce trebuie să facă pentru a avea performanĠe, úi au nevoie de feedback la performanĠă, cu stilul participativ (în care angajaĠii trebuie încurajaĠi să găsească noi idei) úi coaching, care oferă o dezvoltare pe termen lung a individului, mai spune Meintassis. (www.zf.ro)

  8



Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 228.

Crina Herteg

47

3. words which came into being by extension of meaning: e.g. maintenance (EN)- întreĠinere (RO); mentenanĠă (RO)- obtained by extension of meaning: comision de mentenanĠă. This situation is possible as it is in accordance with the tendency of maximization in communication. 4. words of English origin which are used in specialized language, although there is an equivalent in Romanian, these are basically conveyed via specialized websites, newspapers, magazines, TV broadcasts. a. general business terms driver private equity SituaĠia în private equity s-a schimbat dramatic de la o perioada de creútere fantastică în 2007-2008, anul acesta lucrurile s-au aúezat. In 2008 au început să-úi facă apariĠia în regiune firme precum Carlyle care úi-au deschis birouri în Varúovia, iar în 2009 úi-au strîns bagajele úi au plecat, a spus Cristian Nacu, partener al Enterprise Investors. (www.zf.ro)

feedback b. finances asset management (EN) – gestionarea activelor (RO) bond / Eurobond (EN) – obligaĠiune (RO) credit default swap (EN) – risc de neplată (RO) derivatives (EN) – instrumente derivate (RO) discount- (a reduction in the selling price of sth.9) gains more and more field in daily use, it is already imposed in Romanian by sales representatives, traders and shop assistants, despite the fact that the word has a Romanian equivalent; futures (EN) – instrument la termen (RO) mid-swaps (EN) – dobânda medie la euro pe pieĠele internaĠionale (RO) options (EN) – opĠiune de cumpărare, contract de opĠiuni, titlu de

  9



Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 105.

48

Transgressing English Language Boundaries

opĠiuni (RO)10 securities (EN) – titluri de valoare (RO)11 swap (EN) – corelare, tranzacĠie de valute pe piaĠa la vedere (RO) Even in cases when there is an equivalent in Romanian there is the tendency to borrow English terms. An explanation for conveying these terms might be the lack of linguistic awareness of the users. As shown before these newer words are either written and pronounced as in SL, or assimilated and adjusted, inflection can differ from case to case depending on the user, or context: know how-know hows; holdingholding-ul.

4 Conclusions Borrowings represent a normal and desired phenomenon in the language evolution, they enrich it, they develop synonyms and synonymy, sometimes they come to replace old words and help speakers keep up with the novelties occurring in technology, communications. Some of the borrowed terms are necessary, they are introduced because there is no equivalent to join the newly introduced concept, some develop as synonyms for words already existing in the vocabulary. The criteria of use, acceptability, ability to form new words, frequency impose foreign terms in our vocabulary, establish whether the newly introduced words should keep their original pronunciation or should be adjusted to the rules and regulations of the TL. To introduce a new word means to adjust, to assimilate and to modify it, to integrate it graphically, phonetically-which is very difficult as there are always many alternative pronunciations of a word, morphologically. If we take into account the issue of English borrowings from the position of English teachers we keep confronting ourselves with cases of erroneous translation: location, mistranslated by locaĠie, correct translation: amplasament; maintenance-mistranslated by mentenanĠă in comision de mentenanĠă, correct translation întreĠinere, even administrare (comision de administrare); subsidiară instead of filială. Irrespective of the field of activity, nowadays English words have become an ever prevalent reality in our language. Modern channels of communication, such as facebook, chat, email are conveyors of such

  10 11



Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 230. Popescu and Toma 2009, p. 300.

Crina Herteg

49

terms, out of which most will end up by being naturalized in Romanian. Although there is a fear that excessive use of English words might lead to a hybridisation and artificiality of language, banning borrowings might lead to a sterile purism, might have nationalist implications and might prevent a language from continuing its normal course of development.

References Avent, Ryan. 2011. ”The Fed doesn’t mention Japan.” The Economist, March 15. Accessed May 5, 2011. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/03/monetary_poli cy_2. Apostoiu, Cătălina. 2008. ”FMI, Banca Mondială úi UE dau 20 mld. euro Ungariei pentru a-úi pune pe picioare economia úubredă.” Ziarul financiar, October 29. Accessed May 26, 2011. http://www.zf.ro/business-international/fmi-banca-mondiala-si-ue-dau20-mld-euro-ungariei-pentru-a-si-pune-pe-picioare-economia-subreda3392102. —. 2008. ”Miliardarii Ucrainei salvează băncile de la colaps.” Ziarul financiar, November 13. Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.zf.ro/business-international/miliardarii-ucrainei-salveazabancile-de-la-colaps-3489934. BaniĠă, Mihai. 2010. ”Totul despre Internet Banking: oferte, costuri, comisioane.”, www.money.ro, April 8. Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.google.ro/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&sqi=2&ved=0CEg QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.money.ro%2Finternet-bankingcomisioane-costuri-oferte. Bărbuneanu, Raluca. 2009. ”Ce e mai bine să ai pus de-o parte: lei sau euro?” Capital.ro, November 5. Accessed May 24, 2011. www.capital.ro. Biszok, Bogdan. 2011. ”ùase vouchere la programul Rabla pentru cei care vor sa cumpere o maúină electrică.” Capital.ro, April 18, Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.capital.ro/detalii-articole/stiri/laszlo-borbely-vom-acordapana-la-maxim-sase-vouchere-la-programul-rabla-pentru-cei-care-vorsa.html. Biszok, Bogdan. 2011. ”ClienĠii Raiffeisen Bank pot plăti factura Vodafone la ATM-uri.” Capital.ro, March 24. Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.capital.ro/detalii-articole/stiri/clientii-raiffeisen-bank-potplati-factura-vodafone-la-atm-uri-145446.html. —. 2011. ”Stagii de practică pentru studenĠi la Orange România.”



50

Transgressing English Language Boundaries

Capital.ro, June 8. Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.capital.ro/detalii-articole/stiri/stagii-de-practica-pentrustudenti-la-orange-romania-148263.html. Botea, Ciprian. 2009. ”Ce mai pot face IMM-urile pentru a obĠine un credit?” Ziarul Financiar, October 21. Accessed May 24, 2011. www.zf.ro. Chiru, Liviu. 2008. ”Pireus úi-a triplat activele, până la 2, 87 miliarde de euro.” Ziarul financiar, February 14. Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.zf.ro/banci-si-asigurari/piraeus-si-a-triplat-activele-panala-2-87-miliarde-de-euro-3104482. ChiĠoran, Dumitru. 1971. Lexicologia limbii engleze. Bucureúti: Editura Didactică úi Pedagogică. Ciobanu, Georgeta. 1998. Elemente de terminologie. Timiúoara: Editura Mirton. Constantinescu, Ileana, and Angela Crocus. 1998. DicĠionar economic explicativ român-englez. Bucureúti: Editura Economică. Coúeriu, Eugeniu. 1996. Lingvistica integrală. Bucureúti: Editura FundaĠiei Culturale Române. —. 1997. Sincronie, diacronie úi istorie. Bucureúti: Editura Enciclopedică. —. 1999. Introducere în lingvistică. Cluj: Editura Echinox. David, Ioana. 2009. ”Companiile ar trebui să accepte restructurarea financiară până nu e prea târziu.” Ziarul financiar, December 10. Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.zf.ro/eveniment/companiile-ar-trebui-sa-accepterestructurarea-financiara-pana-nu-e-prea-tarziu-5167944. —. 2011. ”AngajaĠii unei fabrici Mobexpert în grevă.” Ziarul financiar, February, 7. Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.zf.ro/companii/angajatii-unei-fabrici-mobexpert-in-greva7961501. DicĠionarul explicativ al limbii române (DEX). 1998. Bucureúti: Univers enciclopedic. Dubuc, Robert. 2002. Manuel pratique de terminologie. Montréal: Linguatech. Gartoi, Ina. 2009. “InjecĠie de capital la Erste Bank Cehia.” Capitalul.ro, March 6. Accessed May 26, 2011. http://www.capitalul.ro. Ionete, Andreea. 2009. ”InjecĠii de capital străin de 150 mil. EUR în asigurări, în primul semestru.” xprimm.md, August 11. Accessed May 10, 2010. www.xprimm.md/Injectii-de-capital-strain-de-150-mil-EUR-inasigurari-in-primul-semestru-articol-2,3,100-36296.htm. Karjalainen, Jesse. 2007. “Cash works just fine.” The Economist,



Crina Herteg

51

February, 26. Accessed May 10, 2010. http://www.economist.com/blogs/theinbox/2007/02/cash_works_just_f ine. LeviĠchi, Leon. 1993. Manualul traducătorului de limba engleză. Bucureúti: Teora. Marina, Cristina. 2010. ”Cultul nespresso.” Ziarul financiar, April 29. Accessed May 24, 2011. http://www.zf.ro/premium/cultul-nespresso-6073683. Mihai, Adelina. 2009. ”Ce vor angajaĠii de la úefii lor: feedback, libertate, coaching úi atenĠie.” Ziarul financiar, November, 2. Accessed May 20, 2011.http://www.zf.ro/profesii/ce-vor-angajatii-de-la-sefii-lorfeedback-libertate-coaching-si-atentie-5072335. Mihail, Sorina. 2011. ”Bucureútiul, în programul oraúelor inteligente finanĠat de IBM.” Capital.ro, May, 2. Accessed May 20, 2011. http://www.capital.ro/detalii-articole/stiri/bucurestiul-in-programuloraselor-inteligente-finantat-de-ibm-146769.html. NiĠă, Constantin, and Marius Popescu. 1999. DicĠionar de marketing úi de afaceri. Bucureúti: Editura Economică. Pavel, Eugen, and Costin Rucăreanu. 2001. Introducere în terminologie. NoĠiuni fundamentale. Bucureúti: Editura Academiei Române, Editura Agir. Petrescu, Roxana. 2010. ”Export de energie de 100 mil. euro.” Ziarul financiar, September 1. Accessed May 5, 2011. http://www.zf.ro/companii/export-de-energie-de-100-mil-euro7083328. Pîrloiu, Marius. 2011. “BCR: Statul ar strânge 3,2 mld. Euro dacă listează ce a promis, capitalizarea bursei ar avansa cu 8 mld. Euro.” Capital.ro, May, 16. Accessed May 20, 2011. http://www.capital.ro/detalii-articole/stiri/bcr-statul-ar-strange-32-mldeuro-daca-listeaza-ce-a-promis-capitalizarea-bursei-ar-avansa-cu.html. Popescu, Teodora. 2007. “Teaching Business Collocations.” In Languages for Specific Purposes. Searching for common solutions, edited by Dita Galova, 164-176. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Popescu, Teodora, and Mariana Toma. 2009. Dictionary of Business Collocations. With Romanian translation and practice section. Alba Iulia: Aeternitas. Popescu, Teodora. 2009. “The Role of Computers in Developing Students’ Translation Competence.” In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views, 9-11 October 2009, edited by Elena Croitoru, and Floriana Popescu, 83-89. GalaĠi: GalaĠi University Press.



52

Transgressing English Language Boundaries

Ungureanu, Adrian. 2011. ”Retailerii români îúi deschid afacerile fără să-úi facă planuri pe termen lung.” Curierul naĠional, May 26. Accessed May 28, 2011. www.curierulnational.ro/.../Retailerii+romani+isi+deschid+afacerile+f ara+sa-si+faca+planuri+pe+termen+lung. Voican, Răzvan. 2011. ”BCR începe săptămâna viitoare să vândă lingouri de aur prin sucursale.” Ziarul financiar, May 26. Accessed May 28, 2011. http://www.zf.ro/banci-si-asigurari/bcr-incepe-luna-viitoare-savanda-lingouri-de-aur-prin-sucursale-8287131.

Webliography bloombiz.ro. 2007. “PiaĠa de retail din România va atrage în acest an cele mai mari investiĠii din regiune.” www.bloombiz.ro, 16 April 2007. Accessed May 5, 2011. www.bloombiz.ro/piete.../piata-de-retail-din-romania-va-atrage-inacest-an-cele-mai-mari-investitii-din-regiune_430066. capital.ro. 2011. ”France Telecom ar putea ieúi de pe pieĠele din Austria úi Portugalia.” Capital.ro, May, 24. Accessed May 28, 2011. http://www.capital.ro/detalii-articole/stiri/france-telecom-ar-putea-ieside-pe-pietele-din-austria-si-portugalia-147642.html. economist. com. 2009. “Top companies by market capitalisation.” The Economist, July 30. Accessed April 10, 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/14140262. economist.com. 2009. ”The Bust that Worked. CIT’s bankruptcy fuels the debate about resolving financial failures.” The Economist, November 5. Accessed May 5, 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/14816744. HerĠeg, Crina. 2006. “Analysis and Translation Approach to Specialized Language.” Innovations and Reproductions în Cultures and Societies, TRANS, Internet Journal for Cultural Studies 16. Accessed April 20, 2011. www.inst.at; file:///E:/trans/16 Nr/ 14-1/ herteg16.htm. thefreedictionary.com. wall-street.ro. 2011. ”Sectorul de retail revine la cifre pozitive in Germania.” www.wall-street.ro, February 9, 2011. Accessed March 6, 2009. www.wall-street.ro/.../Sectorul-de-retail-revine-la-cifre-pozitivein-Germania.html.





LANGUAGE HUMOUR INTERIDIOMATICALLY VIEWED GINA MĂCIUCĂ

1 Introduction The most reliable strategy – to my mind, at least – for keeping one’s mind nimble and one’s intellect sharp is humour. Consequently, the ideal exercise for a linguist’s mind is language humour. And, chopping logic even further, it follows from the above that the most palatable manner for a student of contrastive linguistics to sharpen her or his intellect would be comparing language humour specimens in terms of their translatability. With a view to putting the tenability of this last hypothesis to the test, I carried out extensive research on the topic in two Germanic languages (English and German) and a Romance one (Romanian) and in three interrelated stages: a) Ventilating Coúeriu’s theory on language norms. b) Submitting my own views on the flouting of language norms as a main generator of comic effects. c) Investigating translatability of language humour and verifying tenability of the views advanced in the previous stages.

2 Language Norms as Viewed by Coúeriu In one of his lectures delivered in 1992 at the Romanian Al. I. Cuza University of Iaúi, Eugenio Coúeriu advances a challenging theory tracing each of the three main levels of human language (universal, historical, individual) back to three types of linguistic competence (also labelled “technique” or “strategy”, viewed as semantic equivalents of the Greek word “dýnamis”): elocutionary, idiomatic and expressive (Coúeriu 1994, 31). He then proceeds to define types 2 and 3 as “to master a particular language“ (cf. “a úti o limbă”, Coúeriu 1994, 33)1 and “know how to speak

  1



The English translation of this excerpt, as well as of any of the following ones

54

Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed

under certain circumstances, about certain things, to certain people, i.e. know how to connect language in speech or writing” (cf. “a úti să vorbeúti în situaĠii determinate, despre anumite lucruri, cu anumite persoane, adică a úti să construieúti discursuri”, id.), respectively2. Elocutionary competence, on the other hand, is defined as “ability to speak as such, that has nothing to do with mastering a particular language” (cf. “a úti să vorbeúti în general, independent de o limbă determinată, de o anumită limbă”, id.). More precisely, it has everything to do with our language faculty, i.e. our biological ability to use language. Effective communication makes it a precondition that speakers should conform to a certain set of linguistic norms. Since the main attributes of language employed to show one’s competence at the three levels specified previously are congruence (for elocutionary competence), correctness (for idiomatic competence) and appropriateness (for expressive competence), it follows that, Coúeriu maintains (1994, 42), they can be conveniently promoted to the status of norms governing their respective provinces. Furthermore, since it is not unusual for norms to be flouted, linguistic norms are not spared either. To compound the difficulties encountered by listeners/readers, they are even apt to cause each other to be breached, provided, Coúeriu argues (1994, 45), a fairly rigid hierarchy is being observed, according to which: the norms of correctness are susceptible of violation due to enforcement of those of appropriateness, while those of congruence allow superimposition of both of the above levels. In order to better illuminate this rather difficult aspect, I submit to the listener/reader a case in point and request that (s)he should decide on the spot which of the following two utterances is the correct one: “pană de vulpe la pălărie” or “pană de vulpe pe pălărie” (“a fox feather in one’s cap” or “a fox feather on one’s cap”). With attention being deliberately invited on the norm of correctness (i.e. which of the two prepositions has been wrongly employed) and away from that of congruence (i.e. genetically-unmodified foxes are furred creatures, not feathered ones), most listeners/readers hasten to comply with the former in utter defiance of the latter (answer provided: “pană de vulpe la pălărie”). Only few of them manage to dodge the pitfall of logic (answer provided: “Neither,

   cited in languages other than English, originate with the author of the present contribution. 2 According to the above definition, the term “expressive competence” can be taken to cover roughly both sociolinguistic competence (“knowledge of such things as how to address people”, Trask 2007, 43) and strategic competence (“knowledge of how to organize a piece of speech in an effective manner and how to spot and compensate for any misunderstanding or other difficulties”, Trask 2007, 43).



Gina Măciucă 

55

because foxes do not grow feathers”). A shining example of failure to observe the norms of appropriateness originates with one of my foreign students, who in a casual conversation recounted a most embarrassing experience she had to go through at the beginning of her stay in Romania. It so happened that a close relative of one of her roommates had passed away and she was invited to attend the funeral. When first introduced to the grieving family, she hastened to express her condolences, but, as she was still unfamiliar to appropriate language usage, she came out with “Felicitări!” (= congratulations) instead of the usual “CondoleanĠe!” (= condolences), i.e. with the most infelicitous choice of words ever under the circumstances. Despite the prevailing macabre undertones of this last story, most listeners could hardly contain their amusement, and, when urged to motivate their happy moods, all of them related it to the “unexpectedness”, “unpredictability”, or even “nonsensicality” of the set expression made use of to show one’s sympathy on that particular occasion.

3 Violation of Linguistic Norms as a Means of Deriving Linguicomedy3 At this particular juncture, I deemed it safe to infer from the facts presented in the previous section that an intentional or unpremeditated failure to comply with any of the three linguistic norm types is bound to nonplus one or the other of the senses involved: of congruence, correctness or appropriateness. Taking the reasoning a step further, it follows from the above that the message conveyed to the listener/reader will in turn be rendered nonsensical. And, since it is a well-established fact that the ideal and most dignified escape for a mind at the end of its tether is to plunge into humour, stunning one’s interlocutor into laughter has come to be viewed as one of the favourite canonical ploys resorted to by humourists. That is precisely why the next step in my undertaking was selection and subsequent investigation of various language-humour specimens, with a view to exposing the language norm breach as well as other humourgenerating devices at work in each and every of the cases anatomized. Before tackling the most ticklish ones, however, I shall briefly digress from the topic at issue with the noble purpose of defining two major types of ambiguity which have been found to rule supreme in the province of linguistics. The former of the two types under discussion is lexical ambiguity,

  3



The originator of the term is Esar (1961, 14).

56

Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed

which, Trask claims, is “the simplest type of ambiguity” and “results merely from the existence of two different meanings for a single word” (Trask 2007, 14). A more complex type is the latter one, structural ambiguity, “in which the words have the same meanings, but quite different structures can be assigned to the entire string of words, producing different meanings” (id.). Still, by far more challenging and humour-friendly are specimens involving both types. The following are four – out of a total of ten English, German and Romanian specimens examined – which I consider highly relevant both in terms of devices employed for generating comic effects and of difficulties encountered when aiming to translate them into the other two languages under scrutiny. (1) În satul acela au braĠe úi picioare vânjoase úi păroase, poartă mustăĠi mari, negre úi fumează lulele. Te uiĠi în ochii lor úi vezi că sunt gata să te culce la pământ cu o labă. Iar bărbaĠii sunt la fel de groaznici. (DuĠescu 1993, 17) (In that village they have long dark moustaches, hairy brawny arms and legs and smoke pipe. You look in their eyes and see they’re just dying to knock you down with one blow. As for the men, they look equally terrifying).

Here one takes the norm of congruence to be constantly in force up to the very end, when the processing of the last sentence renders it null and void in a most abrupt manner4. It is at this particular moment of truth that the listener/reader suddenly realizes that the whole impressive array of what she or he rightfully assumed to be male features is in reality describing the representatives of the fair sex living in that weird village. This realization in turn manages to spectacularly send down the emotional pressure and, as a result, plunge the listener/reader into good old allhealing humour. (2) Professor Karl Thiersch fragte einen Studenten nach verschiedenen “Innereien”, doch der Student wuȕte nichts. Da sagte Thiersch miȕbilligend: “Wie kann ein Mensch Arzt werden wollen, der nicht einmal die Eingeweide der unteren Bauchhöhle im Kopf hat?” (Buscha 1981, 99) (Professor K.T. has been questioning a student for quite a while about all sorts of “ innards”, yet the latter seemed to be not even remotely familiar

  4

Cf. also Garman (1990, 316): “The classic garden-path property of withholding crucial information till the last possible moment”.



Gina Măciucă 

57

with the topic. At long last T. remarked in utter disapproval: “How can one ever expect to become a physician, if one can’t seem to get the entrails of the lower abdomen into his head once and for all?”)

Though obviously not in the mood for jokes, the exasperated professor finally came to crack one by unwittingly inducing the listener/reader to decompose the meaning of the idiom etwas im Kopf haben1 [“etwas (auswendig) wissen” (= know sth by heart)]5, as required by the semantics of the pre-processed context. More precisely, the technique at work here is, in a first phase, the superimposition of the non-idiomatically construed meaning etwas im Kopf haben2 [“etwas befindet sich im Kopf” (= sth is located in one’s head)] on the idiomatically intended one, which in turn triggers off the total amazement of the listener/reader, confronted with a blatant infringement of the norm of congruence claiming that one’s entrails as a rule occupy the lower levels of the body, not the upper storey. Putting the norm of congruence back into force leaves the listener/reader with no other choice but to recompose the idiomatic meaning and laugh herself or himself out of the predicament. (3) Tip cu cioc, la o masă într-un restaurant: “Ospătar, serviĠi bere úi la Ġapi?” Ospătarul: “Noi servim pe oricine, domnule!” (Libertatea 2007, 3) (Guy with goatee at a table in a restaurant: READING 1: “Waiter, do you serve pints here ?” READING 2: “Waiter , do you serve [=wait on] goats here ?” Waiter: “We serve all our customers , sir !” ).

Recourse to the semantically double-barrelled prepositional phrase la Ġapi is the most conspicuous – if a subsidiary – humour-generating device in this third example. Thus, the top-ranking dictionary of contemporary standard Romanian, DicĠionarul explicativ al limbii române, lists the following two definitions under the entry Ġap – along with a third one, which we can safely disregard as irrelevant in our case: “1. Masculul caprei […] 2. Pahar special de bere, cu toartă, având capacitatea de 300 ml, conĠinutul unui astfel de pahar […]” (DEX 1998, 1123) (“1. A male goat 2. A special glass container with a handle for drinking beer; the amount such a container will hold (300 ml)”).

Since the exceptionally versatile preposition la can combine with the noun Ġap in both meanings cited above, syntactic homonymy makes it

 

5 Translatability of the specimen into both English and Romanian will be discussed in more detail in the section to come.



58

Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed

possible for la Ġapi to be construed in one of the following senses: a servi bere la Ġapi1 = serve beer to male goats: malicious meaning, as construed by the waiter, b) a servi bere la Ġapi2 = serve pints of beer (verbatim translation: “serve beer by pints”): benevolent meaning , as intended by the customer, ambivalence reflected by the verb complementation patterns below: Subject + Verb + Direct Object + Indirect Object Subject + Verb + Direct Object + Adjunct (Cf Măciucă 2000a, 83, Măciucă 2000b, 86-103), as well as by the different semantic roles assumed by the prepositional phrase: la Ġapi 1 = Recipient la Ġapi 2 = Attendant Circumstance, Distributive (Downing and Locke 1992, 141, 87). a)

In terms of linguistic-norm infringement, facing us here is not a genuine one, much rather a prospect thereof lurking in the evil mind of the mischievous waiter, who knows perfectly well that goats – again, genetically-unmodified ones, at least – are not in the habit of going to pubs to order beer. Yet, it is this metaphorical extension of meaning from Ġap1 to Ġap3 (“tip cu cioc” = guy with goatee) which must in effect be credited with the chief humour-generating virtues. Since so far the opportunity has not presented itself to illustrate transgression against a norm of correctness, I submit for investigation variant two of the above-cited specimen, which I created with the explicit aim of filling this particular gap: (4) Un grup de puútoaice exuberante invadează o terasă agresând auzul paúnicilor consumatori cu stridenĠa vocilor piĠigăiate. Una dintre ele i se adresează cu un aer superior chelnerului: “Băiete, serviĠi bere numai la Ġapi?” La care acesta răspunde, ascunzându-úi orgoliul rănit sub un zâmbet úiret: “O, nu, se poate? ùi la …capre!!!” (A group of high-spirited teenage girls take all outside seats available in a café while carrying on their conversation in a sharp loud voice which obviously disturbs the other customers present. Suddenly, one of the girls waives to the waiter and asks him with a posh accent: “Are you serving beer only in pints, boy?” (READING 1) / “Are you serving beer only to billy goats, boy?” (READING 2). With his ego seriously offended, the waiter retaliates: “Oh, no, imagine that, we’re also serving beer in XYZ!” (READING 1)/ “Oh, no, imagine that, we’re also serving beer to nanny-



Gina Măciucă 

59

goats!” (READING 2).

Two main devices are being merged in this example to generate linguicomedy: a) lexical ambiguity, already familiar to the reader: capră2 , with no non-linguistic entity to refer to (= XYZ; s. fuller discussion below), is being semantically opposed to a figurative meaning derived from capră1 (“female goat”), namely capră3, taken to signify “a loud young woman who would not think twice before giving a man the come-on” (malicious reading, as intended by the notoriously mischievous waiter); b) complete bafflement of idiomatic competence by referring the listener/reader to a meaning of the Romanian word capră which simply does not exist, more precisely capră2, denoting in all probability “a special glass container for drinking beer, smaller than a Ġap; the amount such a container will hold” (benevolent, if nonsensical, reading inferred by the unsuspecting listener/reader), which could most conveniently be made to operate in tandem with Ġap2 as symmetrically opposed to Ġap1– capră1.

4 Translating Language Humour: a Modest Proposal The brief survey of the above specimens is more than it takes to make one realize the sad fact that even for an accomplished translator the rendering into another language of linguicomedy is not exactly mere child’s play. 4.1 As is only natural, the easiest to translate seem to be those flouting universal logic, i.e. the norms of congruence. As important piece of evidence supporting this view I adduce specimen 1, the translation of which into English has been provided in the previous section. The very fact that the sample in question was translated into Romanian from an English original by the editor when putting together the collection (s. in this respect the title of the book, Umor englezesc (“English Humour”) only to be just as easily translated back into English by me for the research at hand, goes to substantiate the above assumption. By way of additional proof I submit below the translation into German of the same specimen, with the punchline surviving intact: (1a) In jenem Dorf tragen sie lange schwarze Schnurrbärte, haben muskulöse, haarige Arme und Beine und rauchen Pfeife. Und die Männer sehen ebenso furchterregend aus.



60

Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed

4.2 As already intimated through the English translation accompanying the second specimen under investigation, our difficulties were compounded by the language barrier. More precisely, translatability of the punchline implies fulfilment of one major precondition, namely: that the vocabulary of the target-language should include a set phrase semantically equivalent to German im Kopf haben in both readings – as an idiom and as a free combination. Fortunately, in this particular case the language barrier turned out to be a less rigid one, for both English and Romanian fulfil it, though not to the letter. So, for instance, the closest semantic English counterpart I could come up with was get into one’s head, which, to be sure, is an inchoative verb combination – as opposed to the durative German one, but has instead the advantage of featuring the exact equivalent of the nominal constituent (head). In addition, it had to be dispensed with in order for the phrase to pass muster as a free combination. When assigned the at first blush less strenuous task of translating the punchline into Romanian, most translators would no doubt suggest a avea în cap, which is the perfect equivalent to the German verb phrase employed. However, we would be well-advised to think instead of two inchoative variants of the above, which proved to be far more “humourprone” than their durative version: căruia nu-i intră (odată) în cap / care nu-úi bagă în cap (verbatim translation: “get into one’s head / get sth into one’s head”). 4.3 The third specimen cited above is the one that definitely puts any translator’s idiomatic competence on the mettle. To be perfectly candid about it, the temptation to let the matter rest for obvious reasons of semantic incompatibility of the three languages involved (s. la Ġapi2) loomed as large as life. In other words, my intentions of rendering this joke into the other two languages investigated have been, so to say, nipped in the bud by the sheer absence in English and German of a noun covering both meanings listed above under Romanian Ġap. Consequently, the safest and easiest way out of the dilemma would be to dismiss the first humourgenerating device as unavailable to the target-languages, and confine ourselves instead to translation of the language humour generated by the second one, which, given the universal validity of the linguistic norm previously referred to (s. 4.1 above), poses no problem at all. Indeed, both morphological pattern and dictionary definition of English goatee (cf goat + ee; cf also LDELC 2003, 563: “a little pointed beard on the bottom of the chin like the hair on a male goat’s chin”) and German Ziegenbart (cf Ziege(n)[=goat]+bart [=beard]; cf also PGDF



Gina Măciucă 

61

2006, 1627: “(umg.) ein spitzer, schmaler Kinnbart”, though Spitzbart is preferred as a rule in standard German to discourage any such discourteously implied comparison with the animal in question) substantiate the claim of male goat and Ziegenbock to be metaphorically extended to “guy with goatee” and “einen Ziegenbart tragender Mann”, respectively. An English translation of the severely “crippled” joke has already been submitted in subsection 3 above. The German rendition accordingly reads: (3a) Mann mit Ziegenbart an einem Tisch im Restaurant: “Herr Ober, servieren Sie hier auch Ziegenböcken Bier?” Ober: “Wir bedienen alle Gäste unseres Restaurants, Mein Herr!”,

Again, needless to say, with the joke falling flat on us and, for that matter, on anyone who was privy to our discussion of the full-fledged Romanian version6. Since I could not bear to see such an exquisite piece of linguicomedy run to total waste, I put on my thinking cap in search of humourgenerating strategies making up for what had been lost in the translating process. The question which most readily springs to one’s mind when facing a challenge like this is: which are the main prospective conveyers of the punchline? The most obvious choice would be the English and German semantic equivalents of Ġap1 and Ġap2, i.e. male/he/billy goat or (Ziegen)bock and pint or Seidel, respectively. Unfortunately, failure to assume at least two different meanings dismisses both English pint and German Seidel from the very start as potential candidates for lexical ambiguity. That is precisely why I started looking for synonyms of or lexical items semantically related to these two words as a possible solution. My first choice was mug, displaying an odd assortment of no less than six homonyms (cf. CED 1990, 940-1). Mug1 (cf. CED 1990, 940: “a cup with more or less vertical sides: its contents”; cf. also LDELC 2003, 893:”1. a round container for drinking especially hot liquids such as tea and coffee, having straight sides and a handle, and used, without a SAUCER in the home or on informal occasions but not at formal events […] 2. […] the contents of a mug: two mugs of coffee)” and mug5 (cf. CED 1990, 941: “a woolly-faced sheep”) in particular struck me as possible conveyers of a pun type very much in

  6

As regards variant 2 of this specimen, created by me, its rendition into the other two languages under scrutiny is a feat by far more difficult to accomplish, because the semantic pattern to be matched must in this case be expanded to include at least two of the three meanings in which the word capră is employed.



62

Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed

line with the one generated by the humorous employment of Ġap1 and Ġap2 above. The specimen submitted below is, to my mind, the closest one can get to the punchline of the Romanian joke: (3b) Guy with thick unkempt hair down in his eyes: “Waiter, do you serve mugs here?” Waiter: “We serve all our customers, sir!”

For an even more true-to-punchline rendition of the Romanian joke into German I thought of punning on Bockbier, which PGDF defines as “starkes Spezialbier” (2006, 217) (“a strong special sort of beer”), but which might just as well be taken to mean “beer for goats”. The joke thus generated, though sounding almost identical to the previous German rendition, has the added advantage of language humour derived from a deep-structure ambiguity: (3c) Mann mit Ziegenbart an einem Tisch im Restaurant: “Herr Ober, servieren sie hier Bockbier?” (Verbatim translation: “Do you serve male-goat-beer here?”) Ober: “Wir bedienen alle Gäste unseres Restaurants, Mein Herr!”

A further strategy which can be successfully brought into play is – as suggested in 3 above – the recourse to idioms containing the lexical item to be punned on. Hence, my next choice was the pair mug1 and mug2 (cf. CED 1990, 940: “(coll.) n. the face: the mouth - v.i. (theat.) to grimace”), as played off against each other in the following example: (3d) The archetypal gentleman seated at a table in a pub: “Could you give me a mug, boy?” Upon which a mischievous waiter, impersonating nowadays’ Figaro, promptly replies: “Right away, Sir!”, and distorts his face in jest, and, naturally, in keeping with the second homonym of mug cited above.

Left to their own devices in punning on various potential conveyers of the punchline, resourceful translators could also come up with the following inspired variants: (3e) Guy seated at a table in a restaurant, with a goat standing by his side: “Waiter, do you serve goats here?” Waiter: “We serve all sorts of meat, sir!” (3f) A guy goes to a restaurant and orders lamb. After more than half an hour’s wait, the absent-minded waiter brings him goat instead of lamb. Customer flies into a rage, rises to his feet and cries out at the top of his



Gina Măciucă 

63

voice: “I say, you’ve definitely got my goat, boy! When are you going to get me my lamb?”

In 3e lexical ambiguity (goat = 1) the animal, alive… and kicking; 2) its flesh as food) joins forces with structural ambiguity (READING 1: Subject + Verb + Indirect Object + Adjunct; READING 2: Subject + Verb + Direct Object + Adjunct) to generate the comic effect, which, to be sure, is far below the one of the Romanian joke. What accounts for the diminished comicality of example 3e is the fact that facing us here is the very reverse of a linguistic norm violation. More precisely, by employing goat in the second meaning specified above, the roguish waiter is in fact putting back in force the norm of congruence disregarded by his interlocutor when viewing the animal as a potential customer (here is the keyword in this particular context, making it perfectly clear that the man does not rule out the possibility of goats being treated as regular customers in other restaurants). In 3f humour is generated by superimposing the non-idiomatic meaning of get someone’s goat (= fetch from the kitchen the goat-dish to be served to someone who has ordered it) on the idiomatic one (cf. LDELC 2003, 563: “3. get someone’s goat infml. to make someone extremely annoyed […]”). Admittedly, the punchline of many of the renditions submitted so far is what one would in all fairness call a far cry from the original version. But the equally true fact remains that, by getting to the bottom of the humourgenerating devices investigated, one can, in all earnestness, become nolens volens a more or less gifted creator of linguicomedy.

5 Conclusions While still under the spell of the theory advanced by Coúeriu (1994, 31-45) on linguistic norms, and in relentless pursuit of humour-generating devices, the connection between the two was gradually revealed to me (cf. Măciucă 2002b, 11-24). Taking the reasoning one step further, I also took the liberty of assuming that comic effects could indeed be traced back to the flouting of each of the three norm types identified by Coúeriu: of congruence, correctness and appropriateness (cf. Măciucă 2002b, 105-174; Măciucă 2005, 139-155). On the other hand, my fairly extensive research into contrastive linguistics as well as on referential-duality phenomena, contexts prone to ambiguous interpretations and the comic effects generated by the flouting of linguistic norms (cf. Măciucă 2002 (a, b), 2004, 2005) made me realize the sad fact that the rendering into another language of linguicomedy



64

Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed

samples poses a stern challenge even to an accomplished translator. As regards infringement of linguistic norms, the samples investigated above which, as already intimated, represent approximately half of the total number of specimens under scrutiny, with the remaining half being left out for obvious reasons of space limits – have clearly “exposed” the device as a main generator of comic effects, whether by accident or design. With respect to translatability of such comic effects, the scale I put forward shows the three types of humour ranking quite differently from the corresponding linguistic norms in the hierarchy suggested by Coúeriu (1994, ib.), namely: the congruence-flouting type ranks highest, while the correctness-flouting kind is relegated to the lowest position, with the appropriateness-flouting humour hovering somewhere in between. That should not surprise us in the least, for the norms of correctness observe the private logic of a certain language – not always in keeping with the universal one – and also reflect a particular forma mentis which not infrequently begs to differ even from that of other languages in the same family. In substantiation of this last claim I submit a final example provided by one of my Italian students, based on personal experience. Possessed of a beautiful voice, she was invited, shortly after her arrival in our country, to a soiree where she performed in a duet together with a Romanian male student. Though she was in exceptionally good voice, she confessed she almost burst into tears when the prevailingly Romanian audience applauded loudly shouting “Bravo!” at the top of their voices, which she mistakenly took to refer solely to her male partner’s flawless performance – as they usually do back home in Italy, where female performers are always acclaimed with shouts of “Brava!”. Moreover, the suggested attempts at transposing into another language the intricate pattern of semantic and sociocultural variables have shown the translator compelled to reshape the situational and linguistic context out of all recognition, yet content to have finally found an acceptable way of putting the message across to his readers. But, most importantly of all, considering the social evolution of zoon politikon throughout history and, more particularly, that of homo sapiens in a post-Babel world, such attempts clearly show the switch-over from an intraidiomatic to an interidiomatic modus vivendi, in other words, from “living-within-a-language” to “living-between-the-languages”, with Humour ruling supreme as the lingua franca of a future-conscious mankind.



Gina Măciucă 

65

References Bărbulescu, Lăcrămioara, ed. 24/2007. Libertatea pentru femei. Bucureúti: Ringier România, Divizia Magazines. Buscha, Annerose, and Joachim Buscha. 1981. Sprachscherze. Anekdoten für den Ausländerunterricht. Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie. Chambers English Dictionary (CED). 1990. Edinburgh: W&R Chambers Ltd. Coúeriu, Eugen. 1994. Prelegeri úi conferinĠe. Iaúi: Institutul de Filologie Română A. Philippide, S.C. Dosoftei S.A. Iaúi. DicĠionarul explicativ al limbii române (DEX). 1998. Bucureúti: Univers Enciclopedic. Downing, Angela, and Philip Locke. 1992. A University Course in English Grammar. London: Prentice Hall. Dragomirescu, Gheorghe. 1972. “Ambiguitatea ca figură de stil.” Limba română XXI(6): 551-561. DuĠescu, Dan. 1993. Umor englezesc. Bucureúti: Universal Dalsi. Esar, Evan. 1961. Humorous English. New York: Oxford University Press. Garman, Michael. 1990. Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. GuĠu Romalo, Valeria. 2005. Gramatica Limbii Române II: EnunĠul. Bucureúti: Editura Academiei Române. Helbig, Gerhard, and Joachim Buscha. 2001. Deutsche Grammatik. Ein Handbuch für den Ausländerunterricht. Berlin/München: Langenscheidt KG. Hornby, Albert Sydney. 1992. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (LDELC). 2003. Essex: Pearson Education Limited. Măciucă, Gina. 2000a. Verb Complementation in English. Suceava: Editura UniversităĠii Suceava. —. 2000b. Glimpses of English Syntax. Suceava: Editura UniversităĠii Suceava. —. 2002a. Dubla ipostază a unei construcĠii lingvistice: sintagma verbală funcĠională în limbile germană úi engleză. Suceava: Editura UniversităĠii Suceava. —. 2002b. Aspecte contrastive de semantică, stilistică úi sintaxă a verbului în limbile engleză, germană úi română. Suceava: Editura UniversităĠii Suceava. —. 2004. The English Progressive at Home and Away. Contrastive Analysis: German, Spanish, Romanian. Suceava: Editura UniversităĠii



66

Language Humour Interidiomatically Viewed

Suceava. —. 2005. Valori semantice úi stilistice ale verbului în limbile română, engleză úi germană. ConsonanĠe úi disonanĠe. Iaúi: Universitas XXI. Pons Groȕwörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache (PGDF). 2006. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Sprachen GmbH. Trask, Robert Lawrence. 2007. Language and Linguistics. The Key Concepts. Oxon: Routledge.





CHAPTER II: TEACHING ENGLISH AS A DISCIPLINE AT THE CROSSROADS





INTRODUCTION TEODORA POPESCU

The last decades have witnessed an increased interest in teaching and learning a second or foreign language, and hence, in various educational methodologies and practices that would ensure learning success, especially at tertiary level. English for Specific Purposes (ESP), as it was called, came as a cross discipline meant to meet the specific language learning needs of adult students, by resorting to the underlying methodology and the activities of the discipline it serves. ESP focuses on specific language components (grammar, lexis, register), communicative skills, discourse and genres. According to Dudley-Evans and St John (1998, 4-5), apart from the absolute characteristics mentioned above, there are others, which are variable: English for Specific Purposes may be related to or aimed at particular disciplines (economics, law, science and technology); it may resort to, depending on particular teaching situations, to a different methodology from that of general English. Although it may have primarily addressed adult learners, either at university level of already in a professional environment, it can also b used with secondary school students (especially in vocational schools). Despite a widely accepted premise that ESP courses are suitable only for learners who possess at least an intermediate level of language competence, practice has proved that ESP can be used with beginners (or students with elementary language knowledge). Much along the same line, content-based instruction was called upon to provide enhanced opportunities for second language learners to process and negotiate the target language through content. The great advantage of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) lies in the fact that it aims at integrating language and cognitive development, as well as it affords the necessary motivational premise for purposeful communication. According to Lightbown and Spada (2006), content-based and immersion classes may be regarded as a “two for one” approach, since learners in these programs learn subject matter and the target language at the same time, thus dramatically increasing their exposure to the target language.



Teodora Popescu 

69

CLIL is first and foremost trans- and cross-disciplinary in nature, and was introduced as a generic ‘umbrella’ term to describe those features of operational practice common to a wide range of variants of language and content education. Whereas CLIL shares certain aspects of learning and teaching with the previous learning/teaching processes (content-based instruction, immersion, bilingual education, etc.), it essentially operates along a continuum of the foreign language and the non-language content without establishing the precedence of one over another. It does not give emphasis to either language teaching or learning, or to content teaching and learning, but sees both as integral parts of the whole. (Marsh 2002, 58)

It may therefore be stated that CLIL represents a lifelong concept encompassing all sectors of education from primary to tertiary and beyond, from a few hours per week to intensive modules lasting several months. It may involve project work, examination courses, drama, chemistry and mathematical research. CLIL is flexible and dynamic, where topics and subjects–foreign languages and non-language subjects are integrated in order to provide value-added educational outcomes for the widest possible range of learners. Nevertheless, we need to pay heed to the fact that the underlying value is related to the quality of the learning experience. The efficiency of CLIL revolves around a series of situational and contextual variables, consequently it is essential that CLIL pedagogies are correctly understood. One of the first steps is to identify the fundamental principles and effective classroom practice which will lead to the creation of a framework for assuring quality in diverse contexts. CLIL per se is no guarantee for effective teaching and learning. Probably the most important pedagogical and methodological criterion originates in the very cross-disciplinary character of the concept: teachers of the various disciplines (both content and language educators) must cooperate in order to ensure the success of this instructional philosophy.

References Celce-Murcia, Marianne, ed. 2001. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (3rd edition). University of California, Los Angeles. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Coyle, Do. (2002). Relevance of CLIL to the European Commission’s language learning objectives. In CLIL/EMILE- The European Dimension: Actions, Trends and Foresight Potential, edited by David



70

Introduction

Marsh. Public Services Contract DG EAC: European Commission. Dudley-Evans, Tony, and Maggy Jo St John. 1998. Developments in ESP: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutchinson, Tom, and Alan Waters. 1987. English for Specific Purposes: A Learning Centred Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marsh, David, ed. 2002. CLIL/EMILE- The European Dimension: Actions, Trends and Foresight Potential. Public Services Contract DG EAC: European Commission. Popescu, Teodora. 2008. “A CLIL University Teacher Profile: A Romanian Perspective.” In International Conference English Language and Literature Studies: Structures across Cultures. ELLSSAC Proceedings, Vol. 1, edited by Katarina Rasulic and Ivana Trbojevic Milosevic, 663674. Belgrade: University, Faculty of Philology. —. 2010. “Teaching English at Tertiary Level: Perspectives from English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Domains.” In Ghid metodologic de pedagogie universitară, edited by Florea Voiculescu, 517-32. Alba Iulia: Aeternitas.





USING COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN TEACHING PROFESSIONAL ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL ALEXANDRA E. JACOBSEN

1 Introduction This paper builds upon the research reported in Jacobsen 2010, where the main concern was to develop a course in professional English, understood both as a teaching environment and a set of teaching material(s) and which had as main criterion its usefulness for the students including its relevance to their future careers as engineers. Such a course was meant to have at least four main objectives: 1) addressing topics specific to the students’ area of study and employing authentic materials in learning language in agreement with CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) teaching methodology; 2) using learning methods and techniques which are already familiar to the students, such as, for example, project work and team work; 3) improving the students’ communicative skills in areas which will benefit their future professional careers both as regards their interactions with professionals as well as non-professionals; and 4) not in the least the attempt to sensitize students to the cultural differences occurring in the present work environment (Jacobsen 2010). The point of departure for the earlier study is the notion of ‘soft’ skills (Pulko and Parikh 2003), understood as general skills, such as presentation and teamwork skills, which are seen as having become to a greater extent a requirement for most jobs both in the public and private sector. This also applies to the engineers-to-be; among the challenges faced by the students in their future careers, in addition to their technical expertise, the following are mentioned: (a)

the need for handling ever-increasing amounts of information, which the packaging of which also constantly changes; (b) the need for working efficiently with other people, i.e. setting up well-functioning teams;



72 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

(c)

the need for solving complex problems which require different types of expertise, i.e. multidisciplinary teams; (d) the need for working efficiently with people with different (cultural) backgrounds, i.e. multicultural teams (Jacobsen 2010).

The present paper elaborates on the idea of ‘soft’ skills by discussing them in more detail, showing the relationship between them, and proposing a further way in which they can be taught. To that purpose it uses as theoretical guidelines insights from Cooperative Learning and CLIL methodology, respectively1. Importantly, the perspective adopted both in the preceding as well as in the present paper is that of the practitioner - language teacher and communicator - as these studies are to a large extent the result of the author’s own experience in teaching professional English to Romanian students of Applied Electronics and Environmental Engineering, bachelor level. Consequently, the method used mainly consists in gathering insights from the author’s own reflections on the teaching process and the feedback received from the students in the process of developing a course in professional English, i.e. an attempt to build a specific type of learning environment. Another way of referring to this method would be to call it ‘action research’, i.e. “the careful examination of what takes place within a classroom“ (McCafferty et al. 2006 179-180). The following section and subsections gives an account of the main components of this course proposal.

2 A course sketch for teaching professional English The course proposal presented here is structured into two main parts. The first part gives an account of a teaching experience involving two different groups of Romanian engineering students (section 2.1). The conclusions gathered thereby are used in the second part (sections 2.2 and subsections) together with insights from Cooperative Learning and CLIL methodologies, in order to make a number of methodological specifications concerning the teaching of specific skills within such a course.

 

1 See also Popescu 2008 and 2010 for implementing CLIL in Romanian tertiary education.



Alexandra E. Jacobsen 

73

2.1 The experiential component 2.1.1 Making presentations This teaching experience was initially described in Jacobsen 2010. It involved Bachelor students of Applied Electronics participating in a onesemester course. The starting point for building up the teaching environment was to use the students’ experience in two ways. On the one hand, the students’ experience was made used of by employing learning methods and techniques already familiar to them, that is, project work and team work. In other words, this was an attempt of further developing skills already promoted by other staff members of the university. For example, the students were aware that a project takes time, that putting some effort into it was required, and that the delivery of an end product was expected of them. Similarly, they were used to working in teams since they had often done that as part of studying their main subjects. A second way of using the student’s experience was to address topics specific to their area of study. This included the use of authentic materials in learning language, such as, for instance, the use of the Internet, different computer programs and technical manuals. In the first part of the course, the students were introduced to the basic structure of a presentation and the language skills required for each stage. Other aspects of a presentation were discussed, such as, for instance, the manner of delivery or the design of slides for PowerPoint presentations (the amount of information per slide, font size, and various diagrams or tables). The next step involved the students practicing the specific language and communication skills in groups of 3-4 students appointed by the teacher during several weeks. When the students became familiar with these structures, the more permanent teams were set, i.e., those which were supposed to work together and present the final project. Here the students were given the freedom of choosing their own teams of 3 to 4 members. Subsequently, the topics for the presentations were selected using criteria such as, for instance, accessibility and interest for a larger, non-expert audience. Thus, among the chosen topics were ‘how to make PowerPoint presentations’, ‘how to use Microsoft Excel’, ‘how to build a Website’, etc. Two presentation formats were agreed upon: some students were to present in front of their own peers, others in front of an audience consisting of 1st year (English) language students. The second format particularly engaged the students into a special type of interaction. Such presentations were structured in two parts. First, there was a PowerPoint presentation which gave the overview or main ideas, which was followed



74 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

by a demonstration: while one student was projecting on the big screen and explaining each step involved, the rest of the team would help the audience actually perform it (Each student in the audience had access to a PC). While assisting the language students in their tasks, the engineers had to try to speak English as well, so that the interaction between the two 2 groups was carried out mainly in English. This exercise was intended as an exchange of knowledge: each group would benefit from the other group’s expertise, i.e. computer knowledge, in one case, and communication skills in English, in the other case. At the end of each presentation (but not in the presence of the language group), the students were provided with some feedback in the form of comments and recommendations regarding both content and manner of presentation. Finally, the students were evaluated both as a team, on the basis of the project as a whole, and on the basis of their individual contributions in the group presentations. This teaching experience can be characterized as generally successful for several reasons. Firstly, its implementation did not require much persuasive work, since the students had for the most part a positive attitude towards working in teams on a particular project. They got engaged in working on the selected topic from the very beginning. Moreover, they chose their own teams relatively easy, based on affinities and common interests. Secondly, in making the final presentation, they showed a great deal of imagination both in the way they chose to make the group 3 presentation, as well as the slide design . Thirdly, those who presented in front of the language students, took their responsibility seriously – gave clear explanations, listened carefully and responded to questions – and managed to do all of this mainly in English. Fourth and finally, the debriefing after each presentation proved rather useful: after a number of such debriefing sessions, students themselves were able to evaluate their peers’ presentations and provide useful feedback. In addition to the positive aspects of the teaching/learning presented above, a number of concerns could be expressed about the way in which students were working together. As regards the students’ work within the

  2

Occasionally, they would resort to Romanian, when, for example, comprehension difficulties occurred. 3 For example, in addition to presenting his or her own part, one of the team members would also introduce the rest of the team and make the transitions between the individual contributions. Others chose a format in which one student would talk about different steps of a computer program, for instance, and another would simultaneously demonstrate their use. In doing that, they would find an appropriate pace that would allow the audience to follow their combined explanations.



Alexandra E. Jacobsen 

75

classroom, for instance, it often was the case that some of the students within a group, especially those with a better mastery of English, would monopolize the group activities, leaving no opportunity for practice or decision making for the less language proficient or resolute ones. Similarly, as the final presentations would reveal, some of the students seemed to take too little responsibly for the project and thus leave most of the work load on their more conscientious peers. 2.1.2 Participating in meetings The second teaching event which is the focus of this paper is more recent (it took place during the first semester of the current university year), and it constitutes an attempt to further develop the course in professional English under discussion by extending it to include the development of skills for participating in meetings. This time in addition to the Electronics students, another group of engineers-to-be was targeted, namely those of Environmental Science. The format of the course is similar to the one on presentations, a one-semester course within which students working in groups are practicing various skills needed for meetings. Among the language and communication skills aimed at, the main ones are skills for controlling the meeting, asking for clarifications, dealing with interruptions, rephrasing, elaborating, and summing up (see also, Sweeney 2007). Simultaneously, the structure of a meeting was 4 taught, including the writing of agendas and minutes. In groups chosen by the teacher and using topics related to environmental issues, the students practiced the skills corresponding to each stage of the meeting, such as, opening the meeting, introducing the agenda, inviting participants to speak, making a point, asking questions, summing up, closing the meeting (Sweeney 2007). The final project consisted in preparing and enacting a meeting in teams of 4 to 6 on a topic elected by the students themselves. As with presentations, the final evaluation took into account the overall performance of a team as well as the individual contributions. This one-semester course in professional English on the topic of meetings generated conclusions similar to the one preceding it. Thus, on the positive side, students proved to be remarkably inventive not only in

 

4 Within the learning environment discussed here, the terms group(work) and team(work) are often used interchangeably (see also, Berk and Lintern 2005), with a preference for using the first for various classroom activities and the latter for student work mainly carried out in addition to these activities on common projects extended over a longer time span (usually a semester).



76 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

their choice of roles for the meeting enactment (in addition to the standard roles of chairman and secretary, they came up with different types of experts and guests to take part in the meeting); but also as regards the particular topics they selected (e.g., environmental issues to be taken into account when building a plant, ways of improving the environmental policy of a company, etc.). Moreover, with some of the teams, the students’ interaction during the meeting turned out to be exceptional indeed. They carefully planned the frequency of turn-taking, the length of each turn, as well as the way in which the meeting was run. For other teams, however, the interaction can best be described as insufficient. That is, some of these team members had only minor contributions during the enactment, rather short, and sometimes, irrelevant utterances, while others monopolized the discussion. In addition, it seemed at times almost impossible to judge how much effort each team member had contributed to the final project. The practical issues brought out by the teaching experience described so far are going to be used in the following sections as background for some methodological reflections on teaching particular professional skills.

2.2 Methodological specifications The theoretical framework that guided the investigation in Jacobsen 2010 had as its point of departure some general features which seem to frequently occur in many of the more recent approaches to learning and which can be summed up as follows: (1) (2) (3)

(4)



Active learning. First, there is the idea of active learning as opposed to passive learning. (Leigh Smith and MacGregor 1992, 1; Savery 2006, 15) Student-centred learning environment. Then, there is a learning environment built around the student, i.e., the learner. (Savery 2006, 9) Teacher’s role as facilitator of learning. In such a learning environment, the teacher is no longer a knowledge provider – does not have all the answers - but a facilitator of learning. He or she provides guidance rather than ready-made solutions. (Savery 2006, 15) Students as immediate practitioners. This allows the students to become immediate practitioners rather than being distant observers of questions and answers, or problems and solutions. (Leigh Smith and MacGregor 1992, 1)

Alexandra E. Jacobsen 

(5)

77

Students take responsibility for their own learning. This amounts to students taking responsibility for their own learning. It also involves few lectures and no structured sequence of assigned readings. (Savery 2006, 9)

With regard to the skills argued to be developed by the students in such created learning environments, four are more prominent: (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Developing teamwork/collaboration skills. By working cooperatively, by being organized around achieving a shared goal, students develop teamwork skills. (Leigh Smith and MacGregor 1992, 3; Savery 2006, 12-13; Sellnow and Ahlfeldt 2005, 33) Developing problem solving skills related to real life concerns. Similarly, by dealing with real life problems which have relevance to the students’ future careers, students develop problem solving skills specific to their future profession. (Savery 2006, 17) Developing higher-order thinking skills. Of no less importance is the development of higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis, which benefit both students’ present study work and learning as a continual part of their future career. (Leigh Smith and MacGregor 1992, 1; Savery 2006, 15) Developing self-directed learning habits. Last but not least, by taking responsibility for their own learning, students develop selfdirected learning habits which generally engage them more and increase their motivation for life-long learning. (Savery 2006, 1213)

The following sections are giving an account of a proposal for teaching some of the above-mentioned skills to the engineers-to-be within classes of professional English. For reasons which it is hoped are going to become clear in the process, this investigation focuses on the 1st and 3rd group of skills, while the rest are going to be dealt with only secondarily. Besides, a third category, namely business language and communication skills, is added to the list. Two methodological models are going to be used to frame the discussion, Cooperative Learning and CLIL, respectively, since it is believed they best reflect the general features stated earlier regarding the new teaching/learning environment for language classes.



78 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

2.2.1 Teaching collaborative skills As the teaching experience reported in this paper suggests, collaborative skills or the skills of working in teams are necessary for the students in order to enhance their language learning. Although the students in this investigation – the engineers-to-be – had been accustomed to working in teams by their main subjects in the sense that they participated in common projects, their teamwork skills were not always efficient. Thus, students didn’t seem to collaborate enough. For example, they didn’t equally get engaged in particular group activities, which resulted in some of them doing most of the work, while others passively went along. This was evident both from the group activities performed in the classroom, and from their presentations of the final projects at the end of the semester. Albeit necessary, teaching collaborative skills to the engineers-to-be did not always go as smoothly as one might have expected. Two main reasons have been identify for this. Firstly, there are the students’ attitudes to learning in general and language learning in particular shaped by their earlier experience. Since they are used to working individually in the classroom, and only get together outside the class when working on their common project, they view group activities in the language class as rather unnecessary and even awkward at times. The fact that these activities need to be performed in a foreign language certainly does not simplify things, especially because their previous experience with language learning (i.e., during high school, for example) has been significantly less interactive. A second state of affairs that further complicates the process of teaching collaborative skills is the curriculum associated with professional English classes, which in the case under discussion is less than adequate for practicing collaborative techniques (i.e., a large number of students signed up for a single course – around 40 –, a relatively small number of classes – two 50-minute sessions, given once a week –, and often students with different mastery of the English language in the same class). This section, and, indeed, this paper, will deal more extensively with the first problem, since it is concerned with teaching itself, and less with the second, which by its nature (i.e., administrative) usually lies outside the immediate influence of the language teacher him- or herself. In order to ensure that students are willing to participate in teamwork activities in the classroom, they need to be persuaded that these activities will benefit them. Therefore, the implementation of teamwork or collaborative skills as such needs to be prefaced by some persuasive work, by which the idea is ‘sold’ to the students. As suggested above, this concerned a change in their attitude to learning, and, as changes in attitude



Alexandra E. Jacobsen 

79

usually take time, it has to be an on-going process whose ultimate aim is to build a ‘cooperative classroom culture’ (McCafferty et al. 2006, 157). Attempts at persuading students can start with “explain[ing] their [teachers’] rationale for using groups to structure peer interaction in order to make it more productive at the level of individual learning” (Brookes and Grundy 1990, in McCafferty et al. 2006, 27). As mentioned earlier, the mere fact that students work together does not ensure that their work is efficient. What is essential is that their interaction is structured. In cooperative learning terms, … not all group work constitutes cooperative learning. Instead, cooperative learning represents the product of ongoing investigation based on theory, research, and practice as to how to maximize the benefits of studentstudent interaction. The introduction of student-student interaction into the classroom initially may make teaching more difficult, because, if teachers just put students in groups and ask them to work together without considering these factors, the chances of fruitful interaction diminish. (McCafferty et al. 2006, 4)

In other words, in order to work efficiently in teams, students need to be taught and need to practice a number of collaborative skills. A list of such skills is given in McCafferty et al. 2006: ... collaborative skills can include asking for help, giving reasons, speaking at an appropriate volume level, disagreeing politely, paraphrasing, asking for repetition, listening attentively, making suggestions, encourages others to participate, checking that other understand, keeping the group on task, asking about feelings, praising others, and so on (p. 36).

As the list above illustrates, collaborative skills are basically a number of speech acts pertaining to intergroup interaction. They are important for the teaching experience reported here in several ways. First, in addition to a) constituting skills which allow the students to work efficiently in teams, b) they constitute valuable language skills for the students. That is, they offer a repertoire of English speech acts which can prove to be useful outside the classroom and the context of teams. Furthermore, c) they coincide with the communicative skills described in the experience section, i.e. presentation skills and skills for how to interact during meetings. Last but not least, in their first and third function, they have the added benefit of being able to be transferred from English into Romanian. This means that, once the students – the engineers-to-be – learn how to collaborate efficiently with their peers or to participate in meetings in English, for example, they can use this know-how in a Romanian context



80 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

and thus influence their work-place culture. A further important point to be made about collaborative skills is the recommendation that they be taught explicitly (McCafferty et al. 2006, 38) for maximum efficiency. Accordingly, students need to understand why a particular skill is necessary, what it involves, and practice it in isolation before using it in group activities in the classroom and integrating it into more elaborate teamwork (Johnson et al. 1993, in McCafferty et al. 2006, 37). In the context of the teaching environment discussed here, given the limited number of English classes (see above), teaching collaborative skills explicitly becomes even more significant since it focuses and thereby speeds up the learning process. Importantly, collaborative work does not exclude conflicting agendas. Conflict is indeed by definition an ingredient of efficient teamwork both in the classroom and the future work environment: It is noteworthy that although we believe that the development of fitting language for collaborative work is a natural by-product of cooperative learning, we in no way mean to suggest that complacency and harmony are always necessary for cooperation to occur. Instead, we realize that the tensions, conflicts and disagreements are bound to happen during group activities. Moreover, we argue that such discord is important to second language development – students need to become able to hedge, defend their ideas, and effectively resolve disputes, for instance. (McCafferty et al. 2006, 178) Teams exist to get a job done or achieve a set of objectives. Their principle commitment should therefore be to doing that. In well-functioning teams, inevitably, that means team members will have many vigorous debates about how best to do the task. (West 2004, 117)

Consequently, being assertive is necessarily a subpart of collaborative skills. Therefore, the course discussed here devotes time to teaching students assertive skills, such as for instance, how to say ’no’ assertively, how to disagree, or how to give and receive criticism assertively (Back and Back 2005). As mentioned in the beginning of this section, a situation which apparently has been experienced by many teachers using collaborative work in their teaching, when working in teams, some students tend to monopolize the interaction and thereby do most of the work, while others, on the contrary, simply enjoy the benefits of being in a team and do almost nothing, the so-called ‘free-riders’5. Cooperative learning operates with

  5



An oft-heard complaint about using groups is that some students will try to get a

Alexandra E. Jacobsen 

81

two basic principles which are aimed at preventing such situations from occurring, positive interdependence and individual accountability, respectively: that is, … the perception among group members that what helps one group member helps all the group members, and what hurts one group member hurt all (Deutsch 1949; 1962, in McCafferty et al. 2006, 4-5); and the idea that “the teams’ success depends on the individual learning of all team members” (Slavin 1987, 5, cited in McCafferty et al. 2006, 5).

According to the literature on cooperative learning, the two features of effective teamwork defined above can be developed by a number of activities. Among these, one can mention a) the use of motivating tasks and topics, b) the use of unique information or equipment for each member, c) the practice of calling upon group members at random to give their group’s answer and to explain it, or d) the attempt to ensure that each group member takes primary responsibility for one part or aspect of the group’s work (McCafferty et al. 2006, 42). The present course proposal seeks to implement some of these ideas, for instance, by selecting topics and materials which are relevant to the students’ area of study (and therefore presumably of interest to them); or by encouraging each team member to research and present one part of the project (in the module on presentations6). Directly related to improving team efficiency is the notion of processing group interaction according to which “group functioning can be improved if groups regularly take time to evaluate how well they are working together” (Johnson et al. 1993, in McCafferty et al. 2006, 28-29). One way in which the present course project attempts to implement this idea is by encouraging students to keep records of their team activity. Thus, they are asked to create journals in which to report regularly on their activities both as regards the teams’ work sessions on the common project (i.e., date, participants, duration, problems discussed, solutions found), as well as regards the individual contributions made (i.e., who looks up what material, who writes what part of the project, etc.). It is hoped that such records will make more transparent the individual contribution to the

   free ride, to leave everything to others, or, alternatively, that one or more group members will try to do everything, not allowing others to participate and learn. (McCafferty et al. 2006, 42). 6 Similarly, upon enacting meetings, each student is encouraged to prepare and perform a specific role in the communicative event (e.g., chairman, secretary, technical advisor, etc.).



82 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

overall team effort both to the students themselves and to the teacher. 2.2.2 Teaching higher-order thinking skills In addition to cooperative learning, the idea of creating a new learning environment which promotes active and autonomous learning is convincingly reflected within foreign language teaching especially in CLIL methodology. To begin with, one of the basic strategies of CLIL (the acronym for Content and Language Integrated Learning) is to employ contents related to the real world, different authentic materials (documents, pictures, graphs, etc.) (Wolff 2007: 2; Clegg 2009: 2). What is preferred is real world rather than fictional contents, authentic rather than constructed materials. Real life contents “encourage learners to deal cognitively, consciously and emotionally with the subjects, thus promoting optimal learning processes” (Wolff 2007, 2). This is essential for CLIL, since, as transpires from its name, its central objective is to facilitate foreign language acquisition through learning of various contents. Using the above-mentioned principle has been one of the main concerns of the attempt to develop a course in professional English reported in Jacobsen 2010. Thus, topics specific to computer application were employed, which was the students’ main area of study, by using authentic tools and materials such as, for instance, the Internet, computer programs and technical manuals. Several criteria were established on the basis of which the materials were selected, as, for example, a certain degree of generality, a moderate level of difficulty, or interest on the part of the students. In this respect, the students’ feedback turned out to be of great importance, i.e. their experience in searching for and using different types of specialized materials. Working with real life contents is also an appropriate strategy for team work (Wolff 2007, 2), which unsurprisingly is promoted by CLIL methodology. Since most of the relevant issues concerning efficient team work have been dealt with in the previous subsection, the only point to be enforced here is the fact that developing team work skills facilitates growth of learner’s autonomy (Wolff 2007, 2), i.e. the students’ ability to work independently, a skill which is relevant to both students’ study work and their future careers. However, the aspect of CLIL methodology which is of most relevance to this investigation is the development of higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. By promoting the acquisition of the knowledge of a subject (in the form of various contents) through foreign language learning, CLIL creates the proper environment for developing



Alexandra E. Jacobsen 

83

such higher-order thinking skills. In fact, the more recent approaches to CLIL argue that what learners primarily need to acquire is not subjectrelated terminology of the foreign language, but a repertoire of speech acts such as, for example, ‘describing’, ‘explaining’, ‘evaluating’ and ‘drawing conclusions’ (Wolff 2007, 3). It has repeatedly been pointed out, that these skills are part of Jim Cummins’ concept of Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, CALP (Cummins, 1979) (Wolff 2007, 4; Clegg 2009, 1). In this regard, an important insight of Cummins’ is that “language and content will be acquired most successfully when students are challenged cognitively but provided with the contextual and linguistic support or scaffolds required for successful task completion” (Cummins 2009, 5) (italics added). Two important points are made here. One concerns the above mentioned real life contents which are thought to engage students cognitively and emotionally. The second important point in Cummins’ definition relates directly to acquiring such academic language skills. In the mother tongue, such skills are for the most part not aimed to be taught particularly, they develop during longer periods of (school) time in a gradual manner, they are “picked up” by students (Clegg 2009, 3) as part of them acquiring knowledge of different subjects. When acquiring a foreign or second language more often than not one does not have the same luxury of time. Therefore, similar to the process of teaching collaborative skills discussed in the previous subsection, an efficient way of speeding up the process of acquiring academic skills is by diagnosing the need for them and teaching them explicitly (Clegg 2009, 3). In this context, an insight from cooperative learning which integrates the development of higher-order thinking skills with the development of collaborative skills is of major importance for language learning. This concerns students explaining the content to be learned to their team members. Unsurprisingly, both the giver and the receiver seem to benefit from these explanations. Indeed, both of them are likely to better understand these contents after such interactions, an idea which is further confirmed by work conducted within cognitive psychology: Moreover, again because of being closer to them [than the teacher] in terms of background knowledge, fellow students may also be able to explain material in ways that their peers can understand better. (McCafferty et al. 2006, 13) Craik and Lockhart developed the depth of processing concept, which says that the deeper the elaboration of thought, the more likely something will be understood and remembered. (McCafferty et al. 2006, 13)



84 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

This course in professional English assigns great importance to developing higher-order thinking skills which are meant to be built up in several stages (see also Jacobsen 2010). In a first stage, students should be able to describe relatively simple things and explain basic instructions, as for example, ‘how to copy a file’, ‘how to save a file’, etc. (Glendinning and McEwan 2006, 71). Once the students begin to master these more basic moves, transition will be made to more complex ones, so that, at some point, they will be able to perform with a reasonable level of accuracy more sophisticated activities, such as for instance, comparing (the advantages and disadvantages of) two programs or presenting different computer applications in front of an audience. Importantly, students will practice these skills in teams, so that they can benefit from the interaction with their peers as discussed above. Interacting with students from other disciplines7 can also enforce their understanding of the contents they work with, as demonstrated by the event of electronics students explaining computer programs to language students, mentioned in section 2.1. A last point about CALP skills which is of great importance to this investigation is that, similar to collaborative skills (see subsection 2.2.1), they transfer from one language to another (Clegg 2009, 4-5). For example, “if you scan a text in one language, you don’t have to learn to scan again if you learn another,” which means that “a learner with good academic skills in the L1 will transfer them fairly easily to the L2” (Clegg 2009, 5). More importantly, the process works in the reverse direction as well; new skills learned directly in L2 can be transferred to L1. Needless to say, within the context of the course in professional English discussed here, the transfer of both higher-order skills and collaborative skills from English to Romanian is essential for the engineers-to-be. To complete the picture of the skills intended to be developed by this course, the following section will deal with language and communication skills.

  7

Various other types of cooperative activities could be organized in which students from different specialties could work interactively with the additional purpose of practicing the format of multidisciplinary teams, a clear requirement in their future careers. For instance, it is possible to set up teams in which environmental engineering students work together with students in public and/or business administration on English projects concerning environmental issues in the public and/or private sector.



Alexandra E. Jacobsen 

85

2.2.3 Teaching (business) language and communication skills The main goal set in the beginning of this paper was the attempt to build a learning environment for learning professional English within which students would be able to develop a set of skills which would benefit them in their future careers as engineers. Two types of such skills have already been discussed in subsections 2.2.1 and 2.2.2, collaborative and higher-order thinking skills, respectively. A third type intended to be developed by this course concerns the different forms of communication engineers are typically engaged in on a daily basis as part of their work. They are commonly referred to as business language and communication skills and can roughly be divided into oral and written (see, for instance, Wang 2008). Among other, there are oral skills, such as, presentation skills, skills for participating in meetings, telephoning skills, and writing skills, such as, those for writing emails, reports or grand proposals (Wang 2008). The three main types of skills mentioned above have primarily been dealt with separately during this investigation for explanatory purposes. In reality, as already suggested in the previous section, they often overlap to a great extend, or are different facets of the same process. Take, for instance, questioning techniques (as for instance, asking for repetition) which, with the respective variations in wording, are subparts of different business communication skills, such as those for making presentations, speaking on the phone, or in participating in meetings. In addition, the very same questioning techniques constitute collaborative skills when used in team activities. Finally, they can be used in collaborations among peers for the purpose of asking for and/or giving explanations (i.e. rhetorical questions), in which case they lead to the development of higher-order thinking skills. In the context of the course for professional English proposed here this means that, by being involved in specifically designed learning activities, students are bound to develop the three skills simultaneously; that is, by learning to collaborate with their peers, they are at the same time developing higher-order thinking skills and specific business communication skills. Most of the discussion in the paper has so far been focused on ways of developing the general learning environment for the course in professional English proposed here. As regards the design of the teaching material for the course, which is going to be discussed in detail elsewhere8, the main

  8

A detailed proposal for how to design such teaching material is under construction.



86 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

concern will be to integrate the practice of the three types of skills with the use of relevant and authentic contents. For now, it will suffice to say that the overall structure, as well as the main topics will resemble a course in business English (Sweeney 2007; Wang 2008). Consequently, an important role in the design of the material will be played by business language and communication skills which will be structured so that the spoken skills are integrated with the written ones for each module. Since the course extends over a period of two university years, there will be four modules corresponding to a semester each: Module 1: Telephoning. Main focus: verbal interaction which does not rely on much non-verbal communication cues, except maybe for the quality of voice. Different purposes in using the phone: a) arranging meetings which have already agreed upon; b) persuading people to meet with you; c) discussing important issues over the phone. Secondary focus: less elaborate forms of writing, as for instance, emails of confirmation following telephone conversations. Final project (teamwork): organizing an event by using the phone. Module 2: Presentations: Main focus: spoken skills, i.e. speaking in front of an audience. Secondary focus: written skills, i.e., designing PowerPoint point presentations. Final project (teamwork): making a presentation. Module 3: Meetings. Main focus: spoken skills for a) interacting during meetings, and b) making shorter presentations during meetings (by using the skills acquired in module 2). Secondary focus: written skills, i.e., writing agendas and taking minutes, as well as material to be presented during meetings, like graphs or tables. Final project (teamwork): enacting a meeting and writing agendas and minutes. Module 4: Report Writing: Main focus: written skills, i.e., producing elaborate pieces of writing such as a report. Secondary focus: spoken skills, i.e., using the skills acquired in module 2 and enforced in module 3 to present a report. Final project (teamwork): writing and presenting a report. Other features of the material will consists of, for instance, a) instructions on how to use the authentic materials9 included, b) references

  9



The same course format can be used for engineers-to-be in different fields.

Alexandra E. Jacobsen 

87

to other resources such as business courses found in the market, or relevant web pages, c) suggestions on how to make a journal (see subsection 2.2.1).

3 Conclusions The major concern of this paper, as stated in the introductory section, has been to develop a course in professional English which would be directly relevant to the students’ future careers as engineers. The method followed by this investigation, a form of action research, has been to reflect upon the teaching experience with professional English involving two different groups of Romanian engineering students. The main theoretical principle that guided the investigation has been the idea of a dynamic, interactive and creative learning environment, while at the same time, carefully structured both in terms of design and coordination. The essential features of such a learning environment were believed to translate best in the context of foreign language learning into two theoretical models, Cooperative Learning and CLIL methodology, respectively. As a consequence, insights from the two models together with the relevant details learnt from the teaching experience were used in order to make a number of methodological specifications concerning the teaching of a set of skills within foreign language classes that would allow students to cope with the requirements of their future work place. Three types of such skills have been identified, specifically: a) collaborative skills or skills for working in teams, b) higher-order thinking skills, and c) business language and communication skills. Several important features concerning teaching of the skills identified have become manifest during this study. First, it has been noticed that they often seem to overlap, or to be different facets of the same process. In the context of the course for professional English proposed here this means that these skills can be learnt by students simultaneously, that is, by being involved in activities which teach them how to collaborate with their peers, students are at the same time developing higher-order thinking and specific business communication skills. Second, the skills have the advantage of potentially being transferred from one language into another, in this case, from English into Romanian. That is, once the students have acquired the skill of making a presentation or writing a report in English,

   Although the general skills remain unchanged for each group of students, the topics, and consequently, the resources used will have to be chosen so as to fit their respective field.



88 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

they will be able to transfer this knowledge into Romanian. Indeed, even if languages are different, the communicative strategies (e.g., checking for understanding, summarizing, paraphrasing, etc.) basically remain unchanged.10 Similarly, if they have learnt how to collaborate efficiently with their peers in English, they can use this know-how in a Romanian context as part of their future workplace. A third main point enforced by this investigation is the recommendation that the skills under discussion be taught explicitly in order to achieve maximum efficiency. This becomes especially relevant in the context of the teaching environment discussed here which is constrained by a relatively small number of classes. Fourth and finally, there’s the need that the skills be implemented gradually, which implies that their different subcomponents are to be progressively taught and practiced in the classroom up to the point where students are able to integrate them into their learning practices. The last point made above, the need to implement the skills gradually, has further implications for (language) teaching in general. This concerns especially collaborative skills, which to a certain extend have constituted the background on which the rest of the skills have been discussed, and whose implementation is by no means an easy task. A main reason for this is students’ attitudes to learning in general and language learning in particular, together with their older learning habits, which often make it difficult for them to accept the cooperative forms of learning. To this, one can add the curriculum which often, as the case discussed here shows, is generally not fitted to the teaching of collaborative practices. Furthermore, there are the various administrative tasks and responsibilities that teachers are given as part of their job which take valuable time from both class preparation and research. Consequently, the administrative support plays a key role in this respect in that it needs to take seriously its role of “help[ing] establish a culture of cooperation” through the learning institution, thereby offering students “a model of collaboration in action” (McCafferty et al. 2006, 43-44).

References Back Ken, and Kate Back. 2005. Assertiveness at work: A practical guide to handling awkward situations. London: McGraw-Hill.

  10

Certainly, there are always cultural differences involved. The format of the present paper has not allowed for a discussion of the cultural dimension of this course proposal in professional English; however, this component is part of the initial study (Jacobsen 2010).



Alexandra E. Jacobsen  .

89

Berk, Monica, and Sue Lintern. 2005. “What is team work?” Accessed April 22, 2010. http://www.unisa.edu.au/ltu/. Carlson, Lawrence E., and Sullivan, Jacquelyn F. 1999. “Hands-on engineering: Learning by doing in the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program International.” Journal of Engineering Education 15(1): 20-31. Cialdini, Robert B. 1984/2007. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Collins Business. Clegg, John. 2009. “Skills for CLIL.” Accessed April 3, 2010. http://www.onestopenglish.com/. Cummins, Jim. 2009. “Putting Language Proficiency in Its Place: Responding to Critiques of the Conversational/Academic Language Distinction.” Accessed April 3, 2010. http://www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/converacademlangdisti.html. Dietrich, Suzanne W. n.d. “Getting started with cooperative learning in the engineering classroom.” Accessed May 15, 2010. http://clte.asu.edu/active/getstartcl.pdf. Felder, Richard M. 1995. “Cooperative learning in a sequence of engineering courses: A success story.” Cooperative Learning and College Teaching 5(2):10-13. Glendinning, Eric, and John McEwan. 2006. Information Technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huczynski, Andrzej. 1996/2004. Influencing within Organizations. London/New York: Routledge. Jacobsen, Alexandra E. 2010. “Employing Cooperative Strategies in Learning Professional English at University Level.” Annales Universitatis Apulensis, Series Philologica 11(2):300-315. Kagan, Spencer. 2001. Cooperative Learning. Chico, CA: Kagan. Leigh Smith, Barbara, and Jean T. MacGregor. 1992. “What is Collaborative Learning?” In Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, edited by Anne Goodsell, Michelle Maher, Vincent Tinto, Barbara Leigh Smith, and Jean T. MacGregor. National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning and Assessment, Pennsylvania State University. Accessed April 15, 2010. http://learningcommons.evergreen.edu/pdf/collab.pdf. McCafferty, Steven G., Jacobs, George M., and Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings, eds. 2006. Cooperative Learning and Second Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Popescu, Teodora. 2008. “A CLIL University Teacher Profile: A Romanian Perspective.” In International Conference English Language and Literature Studies: Structures across Cultures. ELLSSAC Proceedings,



90 Cooperative Learning in Teaching Professional English at University Level

Vol. 1, edited by Katarina Rasulic and Ivana Trbojevic Milosevic, 663674. Belgrade: University, Faculty of Philology. —. 2010. “Teaching English at Tertiary Level: Perspectives from English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Domains.” In Ghid metodologic de pedagogie universitară, edited by Florea Voiculescu, 517-32. Alba Iulia: Aeternitas. Pulko, Susan. H., and Samir Parikh. 2003. “Teaching ‘soft’ skills to engineers.” International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 40(4):243-254. Savery, John. R. 2006. “Overview of Problem-based Learning: Definitions and Distinctions.” The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning 1(1):9-20. Sellnow, Deanna D., and Stephanie L. Ahlfeldt. 2005. “Fostering Critical Thinking and Teamwork Skills via a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Approach to Public Speaking Fundamentals.” Communication Teacher 19(1): 33-38. Smith, Karl A., Sheppard, Sheri D., Johnson, David W. and Roger T. Johnson. 2005. “Pedagogies of engagement: classroom-based practices.” Journal of Engineering Education 94(1):87-101. Sweeney, Simon. 2007. Communicating in Business. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wang, John X. 2008. What Every Engineer Should Know about Business Communication. Boca Raton: Taylor and Francis Group. West, Michael A. 2004. Effective Teamwork. Second Edition, Blackwell. Wolff, Dieter. 2007. “Some Educational and Methodological Principles of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).” Accessed April 5, 2010. http://www.goethe.de/ges/spa/dos/ifs/enindex.htm.





TEACHING ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO HUMANITIES STUDENTS IOAN MOISE ACHIM AND LARISA DRAGOLEA

1 Introduction Policy makers now consider entrepreneurship in association with innovation to ensure sustained economic growth. Both entrepreneurship and innovation are linked with “doing something new” and government policies, if they are adapted to the particular situation in one country, can synergise in order to (re-)create economic dynamism. This dynamic process of new firm creation generates and distributes innovative products, processes and organisational structures across the economy. Therefore, the attention now given by all policy makers at national, European and international levels to fostering entrepreneurship comes as no surprise. Education represents one of the most important elements of human capital, as it can be a significant source of knowledge, skills, problemsolving ability, discipline, motivation and self-confidence (Cooper et al. 1994). All these characteristics are an asset to educated entrepreneurs, who can better address the problems they may be facing. Moreover, they can gear their knowledge to searching and acquiring additional resources. Research has shown that education is positively linked to individual earnings (Becker 1993), and that education has greater returns for selfemployment than for waged employment (Evans and Leighton 1989). Higher levels of education can give entrepreneurs the confidence, motivation and skills to own more than one business. Since entrepreneurship represents a crucial element of today’s society, as it contributes to job creation and growth, increases competitiveness, boosts and fulfils individual potential, and moreover, responsible entrepreneurship serves societal interests, it follows naturally that educators should turn their attention to integrating this component into the school curricula. According to The Green Paper: Entrepreneurship in Europe (2003), “education and training should contribute to encouraging entrepreneurship,



92

Teaching Entrepreneurship to Humanities Students

by fostering the right mindset, awareness of career opportunities as an entrepreneur and skills”. Research carried out by the Eurobarometer shows that 37% of Europeans are considering or had considered becoming entrepreneurs; although only 15% saw their dreams come true. Another element revealed by the survey was the fact that subjects with selfemployed parents were found to be more ‘self-employed-oriented’ than those with parents who were employees. Indeed, the occupation of parents can influence the extent to which a person is exposed to management and entrepreneurship. Having at least one business owner parent can help develop the human capital of the individual but also change one’s expectations about what business ownership entails. Individuals whose parents are business owners appear to be much more likely to follow into their parents’ footsteps and become business owners themselves (Evans and Leighton 1989; Curran et al. 1991; Bruderl et al. 1992). Another survey published by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) showed that people who are confident about their skills and experience are between two and seven times more likely to be involved in starting or running a new business; those that have friends or acquaintances who recently started a business are three to four times more likely. According to the British Household Survey, people previously exposed to entrepreneurship (through friends, family or education) were more likely to earnestly envisage starting a business. The education system can develop capabilities, as well as provide exposure so as to foster entrepreneurial behaviour in students (CEC 2003, 12-13). We all admit that one of the most important challenges of nowadays governments, regulators, public policy makers and educators is how best to balance unlimited technological resources and limited public resources. The answer could be found in creating an entrepreneurial society which will contribute to speeding up the pace of change, facilitating further learning and re-learning on a permanent basis. Setting up a business entails drive, creativity and persistence, while developing a business gradually calls for more managerial skills, such as efficiency, effectiveness and reliability. If we take into account that both personality and management skills are key ingredients of success, personal skills relevant to entrepreneurship need to be taught from an early stage and be continued up to university level, where the educators can focus on building management capacity. The European Commission found that most Member States, to varying degrees, are now committed to promoting the teaching of entrepreneurship in their education systems.



Ioan Moise Achim and Larisa Dragolea 

93

2 Why entrepreneurship education? As part of university education, entrepreneurship training should not only be for MBA students, it should also be offered to students in other fields. For example students of humanities can benefit from such a course, with a view to developing their entrepreneurial potential alongside the mainstream one in languages, history, philosophy, etc. Among the entrepreneurial qualities that can be developed in humanities students we may name intelligence, creativity, risk management, tolerance of uncertainty and persistence in achieving an inner directed goal. Nevertheless, these are also the characteristics all people, engineers included, who bring about innovation. Educating young people to develop an entrepreneurial character and behaviours will also contribute to equipping them for productive careers as true leaders in the future profession. According to Peter Drucker (2007), what defines an entrepreneur in a business and in any other non-business institution or organisation is their attitude to change: “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it as an opportunity”. Entrepreneurs can only exploit change through the process of innovation. The same scholar defines ‘systematic innovation’ as a “purposeful and organised search of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic and social innovation” (Drucker 2007). The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor published in 2008 an executive report which gathered findings pertaining to conditions and factors that influence entrepreneurship, i.e. entrepreneurial attitudes, activities, aspirations, etc. The above mentioned report includes a section on education and training, revealing the relationship between training in starting a business and entrepreneurial attitudes, aspirations and activity. The GEM model identifies Entrepreneurship Education and Training as an entrepreneurial framework condition that influences levels of entrepreneurial attitudes, aspirations and activity, which in turn affect the level of new enterprises in the economy. The 43 countries analysed were ordered according to three phases of economic development as presented in the Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009. Sala-i-Martin, et al. (2008) characterise competitiveness as the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the country’s level of productivity. Accordingly, competition includes static and dynamic components classified into openended, though interrelated and mutually reinforcing, 12 pillars of economic competitiveness. Different pillars affect different countries in a different way. Respective sets of pillars are key factors to corresponding stages of economic development. Factor-driven economies compete based



94

Teaching Entrepreneurship to Humanities Students

on their factor endowments, primarily unskilled labour and natural resources. Along with rising wages, countries move into the Efficiencydriven stage and compete based on more efficient production processes and increased product quality. In the last and third stage, the Innovationdriven stage, companies must compete through innovation, producing new and different goods using the most advanced production processes. According to this classification, Romania is an efficiency-driven economy. Niels Bosma, et al. (2008) analyse the relationship between the level of competitiveness and the level of entrepreneurship, stating that an increase in economic productivity will favour the formation of financial capital and to the opening up of niches in industrial supply chains. These phenomena, together with financial capital from the emerging banking sector, would contribute to the development of small and medium-sized manufacturing sectors.

3 Research aim and methodology 3.1 Research Background In the following we will concentrate on how entrepreneurship can be taught to non-business students at the University of Alba Iulia, through the medium of the English language. Therefore, the focus of our study will be two-fold: on the one hand, we will try to analyse how students’ entrepreneurial competences and predicted entrepreneurial behaviour may develop alongside increased communication skills in English. For the purposes of this paper we will refer to teaching a non-language subject through the medium of a foreign language as CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), the by-now commonly used term in the specialist literature. CLIL as such is an umbrella term coined by David Marsh of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, where courses in different subject through a second/foreign language and learning a second/foreign language by studying content-based subjects have been popular in vocational secondary education for a number of years. It was adopted by the European Network of Administrators, Researchers and Practitioners (EUROCLIC) in the mid 1990’s. The term refers to any activity in which a foreign language is used as a tool in the learning of a non-language subject in which both language and subject have a joint role (Marsh 2002, 58). Specialists felt compelled to give currency to such a term, as the nature of CLIL had to be more clearly defined from out of a whole series of related approaches, such as content-based instruction, immersion, bilingual



Ioan Moise Achim and Larisa Dragolea 

95

education and many others. Whereas CLIL shares certain aspects of learning and teaching with the previous learning/teaching processes, it essentially operates along a continuum of the foreign language and the non-language content without establishing the precedence of one over another. It was thus exclusive in explaining how a variety of methods could be used to give language and non-language subject matter a joint curricular role in the domain of mainstream education, pre-schooling and adult lifelong education. Usage of this term allows us to consider the myriad variations […] without imposing restrictions which might fail to take account of school or region-specific implementation characteristics […] It does not give emphasis to either language teaching or learning, or to content teaching and learning, but sees both as integral parts of the whole. (Marsh 2002, 58)

It may therefore stated that CLIL represents a lifelong concept encompassing all sectors of education from primary to tertiary and beyond, from a few hours per week to intensive modules lasting several months. It may involve project work, examination courses, drama, chemistry and mathematical research. CLIL is flexible and dynamic, where topics and subjects–foreign languages and non-language subjects - are integrated in order to provide value-added educational outcomes for the widest possible range of learners. Nevertheless, we need to pay heed to the fact that the underlying value is related to the quality of the learning experience. The efficiency of CLIL revolves around a series of situational and contextual variables, consequently it is essential that CLIL pedagogies are correctly understood. One of the first steps is to identify the fundamental principles and effective classroom practice which will lead to the creation of a framework for assuring quality in diverse contexts. CLIL per se is no guarantee for effective teaching and learning. Kees de Bot (in Marsh 2002, 32) asserted that It is obvious that teaching a subject in a foreign language is not the same as an integration of language and content… language teachers and subject teachers need to work together… [to] formulate the new didactics needed for a real integration of form and function in language teaching.

The CLIL teaching / learning programme caught on quite rapidly, particularly in Europe. According the Eurydice Report on European developments for CLIL,



96

Teaching Entrepreneurship to Humanities Students The CLIL methodological approach seeking to foster integrated learning of languages and other areas of curricular content is a fast developing phenomenon in Europe… Aware of this challenge, national policy makers are taking a greater interest in CLIL and offering a wide variety of initiatives consistent with the different circumstances facing them. (Eurydice 2006, 2)

According to Coyle (2002), four major components need to be emphasised by all those who teach a specialist subject through the medium of a foreign language: the subject matter (content); the language of and for learning (communication); the thinking integral to high quality learning (cognition); and the global citizenship agenda (culture). This framework points out that the effectiveness of CLIL depends on successful combination of several factors: progression in knowledge, skills and understanding of the content, engagement in associated cognitive processing, interaction in the communicative context, developing appropriate language knowledge and skills as well as acquiring a deepening intercultural awareness through the positioning of self and ‘otherness’.

3.2 Pedagogical experiment The premises for our pedagogical experiment, as well as the basic conceptual and practical framework1 are based on the work of Popescu 2008 and 2010. The research questions we undertook to answer were: 1. How easily can students in humanities learn business content? 2. Will their English language communication skill improve as well as a result of a specialist course taught through the medium of the English language? The pedagogic experiment that we carried out was aimed at nonbusiness students, who received formal training in entrepreneurship during one academic semester. Students were divided into two groups an experimental one, to whom a variety of teaching methods were employed, which focused on learner autonomy and critical thinking, and a control group, with whom traditional teaching methods were used. The experimental group consisted of 15 students, while the experimental one of 16 students. The experimental group was taught a course in general business English, with focus on varied topics, such as banking or

 

1 See also Jacobsen 2010 for further insights into CLIL within a Romanian higher education context.



Ioan Moise Achim and Larisa Dragolea 

97

accounting, The course in entrepreneurship (taught in English) was given during a 14-week academic semester. The course aims were to give students insights into and competences in entrepreneurship. Activities and tasks for the experimental group were practice-oriented, through collective projects and reflection upon own activities. Great emphasis was laid on the selflearning and critical analysis components, as students contributed to the design of own learning tasks, activities and situations which may be conducive to the development of an ‘enterprising mindset and behaviour’. The syllabus for the experimental group was so structured that we could focus on the following important issues: raising students; awareness as to the importance of initiative, decision-making, innovation, risk-taking, as well as planning, financing and implementation of a business idea. Students were divided into teams of four and had to decide together the agenda for their project work. The final product of the project had to be a business plan that they had to present in front of the other students, who would then evaluate and critically assess it. Throughout the semester the students themselves decided on the activities necessary to carry out their project. They also designed learning tasks and suggested ways of evaluating them. Mention should be made that the role of the teacher was that of a resource bank, a mediator and counsellor. The main aim was to foster creativity and learning independence. There were numerous real-life simulations, role plays and debates that mirrored actual situations that future entrepreneurs may be presented with in running a business. We will present in the following the outline of the syllabus and materials used: Syllabus/ Materials Timing

Control Group (CG)

Week 1

2 hrs.

Introduction Presentation of topics. Presentation of bibliography and distribution of teaching materials.

Week 2

2 hrs.

Finance (New International Business English)



Experimental Group (EG) Introduction. Brainstorming session. Tips on making effective presentations in English. Using computers. Useful internet sites. Group administration. Company profiles. Case studies – famous small business and the great men behind them.

98

Teaching Entrepreneurship to Humanities Students

2 hrs.

Accounting and financial reporting (English for Business Studies)

Profile and an entrepreneur. Differences between managers and entrepreneurs. Questionnaire for managerial skills.

Week 4

2 hrs.

Banking. Means of payment (Anglais économique et commercial)

Business opportunities and ideas. Mission statements.

Week 5

2 hrs.

Banking (New Insights into Business)

The planning stage. Establishing a target market

Week 6

2 hrs.

Banking (English for Business Studies)

Marketing strategies. Products/services. Pricing strategies

Week 7

2 hrs.

Stocks and shares (English for Business Studies)

Ways of financing a business

Week 8

2 hrs.

The stock exchange (English for Business)

Week 9

2 hrs.

Insurance (English for Business)

Week 10

2 hrs.

Insurance (Anglais économique et commercial)

Week 11

2 hrs.

Setting up a business (New Relationship with the bank. Insights into Business) Financial counsellors.

Week 12

2 hrs.

The entrepreneur (Business Class)

Week 3

Week 13

2 hrs.

Week 14

2 hrs. 2 hrs



Accounting Differences between the Romanian and the British/American accounting system. Setting up a small business. Differences between Romania and Great Britain/the USA. Taxation and insurance.

SWOT Analysis

(Writing the business plan – team work, outside class). Plenary presentation of the business plans, analysis of Final test business plans (own and colleagues’). Overall assessment of project work.. Teacher’s feedback. Negotiation Analysis of test results of the marking strategy. Standardised test in business English (with focus on all 4 language skills

Ioan Moise Achim and Larisa Dragolea 

99

Extensive recourse was made to electronic resources (various Internet materials: company websites, financial and economic publications, banking information and help). Here are some of the most widely used internet sites: http://www.theglassceiling.com, http://www.2h.com/Test/entrepreneur, http://www.businesstown.com/entrepreneur/article1.asp, http://www.businesstown.com/entrepreneur/article2.asp, http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/mssbdc/going_intobus.html, http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/6174/professional-quizelephant-fridge.htm, http://www.allbusiness.com/articles/content/2537.asp, http://www.geocities.com/wwjoke/htm/bill_manager.htm. Amongst the most seminal activities during the project work we would like to mention the session devoted to exploring the qualities of entrepreneur, the analysis of the specific drive and motivations behind the decision to start on one’s own. Students designed their own questionnaires and interpreted them according to the peculiar cultural determinism of the Romanian nation. The questions that seemed most important when wouldbe entrepreneurs assess their capabilities for starting up a business were “Are you prepared to work long hours, six to seven days a week, including holidays?” Romanians in particular seem to be aware of the fact that if important tasks have to be completed one needs the power to stay the course. Especially for new start-ups, you must do whatever it takes to launch your business on the market and to keep it there. Secondly, it also seemed essential to be able to answer the following question affirmatively: “Are you prepared to lower your standards of living for months, even years?” It could take months, even years to start making a profit. All participants agreed that it is crucial to be able to adjust your life so you can live without a steady income for as long as it takes to successfully launch your business. The end products of their project work activities were all very wellthought out and viable business plans, on which they worked collaboratively mostly outside the typical on-site classes. The progression along the course was evident, as the difficulties they encountered at the beginning with reference to organising their learning activities, were overcome towards mid-semester. Autonomy in learning and most importantly, in using their knowledge in real-life situations reached increased levels towards the end of the semester. The evaluation questionnaires were self-designed and democratically



100

Teaching Entrepreneurship to Humanities Students

negotiated and they reflected maturity in understanding the underlying processes in entrepreneurship. The assessment of the viability of the business idea, as well as of the realistic planning of financial issues was carefully and scientifically designed, proving that the students may be able to analyse and seize opportunities, ascertain and put into practice business ideas. They could therefore develop analytical thinking in conjunction with the business environment, understand financial data, read and fill in income statements, cash flows, balance sheets, financial forecasts, capital expenditures, etc. Moreover, students were able to understand the responsibilities of an employer, by evaluating human resources appropriately, as well as understand the legal structure of companies in Britain and make comparisons with the Romanian legal system. As far as the language dimension of the course is concerned, the experiment proved that the students significantly improved their communication skills, displaying increased ability in presenting information in a clear and concise way, in writing email messages, business letters and reports in English, reading contracts, evaluation sheets, and questionnaires. The following functions and skills were developed: giving effective presentations, negotiating successfully, finding and retrieving information, exchanging information, reading and write business letters, filling in forms, dealing with contracts, preparing for job interviews, assessing staff’s performance, establishing contact with banks.

3.3 Results The standardised test administered at the end of the semester (for comparison reasons, as the real testing for the experimental groups was actually in the form of formative, continuous assessment), clearly showed that students in the experimental group outperformed the control group on both accounts: 1. they acquired the business content much more easily and motivation proved higher; 2. their English language communication skill were more developed, both in comprehension (written and oral) and production (written and oral) and verbal interaction. Therefore, both research questions were addressed and positively answered, and the conclusions were that with the right pedagogical approach (i.e. appropriate resources, tasks and activities), students in humanities can both learn business content and improve their language skills.



Ioan Moise Achim and Larisa Dragolea 

101

4 Conclusions All in all, the experiment presented above was successful and proved the efficiency of CLIL education at postgraduate level. The most important students’ motivation had several components: course-specific motivational components (syllabus, teaching materials, teaching method, and learning tasks), teacher-specific motivational components (teacher personality and teaching style, teaching feedback, relationship with the students) and group-specific motivational components (dynamics of the learning group, group cohesion, etc.). Students were able to concentrate on the content and direction of learning and developed their understanding and (self-)critical thinking skills. By exploiting multimedia technologies and by elaborating their own learning materials, as well as appropriate tasks, learners managed to carry out both individual and group/pair work activities. They were able to cooperate and negotiate the immediate course objectives, as well as, manage and evaluate learning activities. The decision-making process concerning the meaning and direction of their own learning and that of their colleagues' was extremely successful and calls for replication in other instances too. Students managed to assume responsibility for their educational acts and turned into valuable collaborators for the teacher, who consequently assumed the role of resource, facilitator and counsellor.

References Cotton, David, and Sue Robbins. 1993. Business Class. London: Nelson Language Teaching. Coyle, Do. 2002. “Relevance of CLIL to the European Commission’s language learning objectives.” In CLIL/EMILE- The European Dimension: Actions, Trends and Foresight Potential, edited by David Marsh. Public Services Contract DG EAC: European Commission. Drucker, Peter F. 2007. Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Jacobsen, Alexandra E. 2010. “Employing Cooperative Strategies in Learning Professional English at University Level.” Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Philologica 11(2):300-315. Lumpkin, G. Thomas, and Gregory G. Dess. 1996. “Clarifying the Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct and Linking It to Performance.” The Academy of Management Review, 21(1):135-72. Popescu, Teodora. 2008. “A CLIL University Teacher Profile: A Romanian Perspective”. In International Conference English Language and Literature Studies: Structures across Cultures. ELLSSAC Proceedings,



102

Teaching Entrepreneurship to Humanities Students

Vol. 1, edited by Katarina Rasulic and Ivana Trbojevic Milosevic, 663674. Belgrade: University, Faculty of Philology. —. 2010. “Teaching English at Tertiary Level: Perspectives from English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Domains.” In Ghid metodologic de pedagogie universitară, edited by Florea Voiculescu, 517-32. Alba Iulia: Aeternitas. Reynolds, Paul D., Michael Hay, and Michael S. Camp. 1999. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 1999. Executive Report. Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. Shane, Scott, and Sankaran Venkataraman. 2000. “The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research.” Academy of Management Review. 25(1):217-226. Shane, Scott. 2003. A General Theory of Entrepreneurship: The Individual-Opportunity Nexus. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Watson, C. Howard. 2001. “Small Business versus Entrepreneurship Revisited.” In Entrepreneurship Education: A Global View, edited by Robert H. Brockhaus, Gerald E. Hills, Heinz Klandt, and Harold P. Welsch, 17-56. Aldershot: Ashgate. World Economic Forum. 2007. The Global Competitiveness Report 20072008. 

 





A TEACHERS AND STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE ON THEIR ENGINEERING UNDERAND POST-GRADUATE ENGLISH SYLLABUS IN A TRANSYLVANIAN TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY MARINELA GRĂNESCU AND EMA ADAM

1 Introduction Syllabus is one of the most recognised instrumental genres used in higher education, within which students and teachers act, practise and develop professionally in a classroom setting defined by two basic types of interaction, the one among students and the other between teacher and student. Therefore, a syllabus has to be balanced so that it can appeal to students, motivate and structure their learning, and, at the same time, can convince peers and external evaluators that the teacher has professionalism and the course has quality. In the faculty, the syllabus is both a classroom management tool and a way of assessing the success in teaching. However, designing a course syllabus represents a complex, time-consuming and difficult process. In making practical decisions about syllabus design, one must take into consideration all the possible factors that might affect whether or not a particular syllabus can be taught. Teachers often make a rough evaluation of syllabi proposed by others from the point of view of their teachable character, as difficulty or easiness in teaching a certain syllabus or material is one of the most often met concerns of a teacher. Present day teachers would ideally favour a student-centred syllabus. This is even more important in the case of ESP syllabi. What are the functions of a “Student-Centred” Syllabus? First, it establishes the objectives and goals, and the responsibilities of the student, defines active learning, provides a contextual framework, and can serve as a learning contract. In higher education the shift from the instructional to the learning paradigm and the emphasis on student-centred learning becomes of paramount importance. The teacher is no longer the focus of the educational process. In the student-centred paradigm students stop being



104 Perspective on Engineering Under- and Post-Graduate English Syllabus

passive listeners, turn into active participants engaged in the learning process through various interactive activities facilitated by the teacher. Designing syllabi from a student-centred approach normally starts with an examination of each syllabus type, tailoring the choice and integration of the different types according to local needs so as to find a practical solution to the problem of appropriateness and effectiveness in syllabus design. It is clear that no single type of content is appropriate for all teaching settings, and the needs and conditions of each setting are so different and varied that specific recommendations cannot be followed without considering constraints. Clearly, there is a vast amount of material to discuss, use and disseminate when considering syllabus design. All the numerous approaches offer valuable insights into creating a language program specifically related to Technical English, mainly taught in our university. In the context of ESP syllabi, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity have a great contribution to the research oriented to practical achievements. The paper has a twofold purpose. One of the aims of this paper consists in describing how syllabi are designed for Bachelor level undergraduates in Cluj Technical Universities and in evaluating their types, constraints and efficiency. The other relates to the steps taken to design a syllabus for the students attending their English language course at Master of Science level. With M.Sc. students, more than in other circumstances, the integration of content and linguistic matter was paid a special attention. The paper highlights the effect of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on language education, particularly at the two levels of ESP training programmes.

2 Syllabus Design Approaches Not far in the past, the focus of syllabi has shifted from structure to situations, functions and notions to topics and tasks. In fact, as Nunan (1988, 52) suggests, “the traditional distinction between syllabus design and methodology has become blurred”. Let us discuss the definition of the syllabus first. Hutchinson and Waters (1987, 80) define syllabus as “a statement of what is to be learnt”. It reflects the language and linguistic performance. This interpretation is rather traditional and considers the final product as the focus, not the process related to learning. However, a syllabus can also be seen as a “summary of the content to which learners will be exposed“ (Yalden 1987, 87). It is seen as an approximation of what will be taught and that it cannot accurately predict what will be learnt.



Marinela Grănescu and Ema Adam 

105

For the teacher, the syllabus is the key document that shows the way the teacher plans his/her works with the students; it also serves as a management and communication tool that justifies the activity of the teacher in front of the administrative bodies requiring it or by accreditation bodies. Presented in a complete, detailed, and precise form, or in a shorter variant, the syllabus also illustrates the relationship between teacher and student, the assignments required, the steps in grading as decided by the teacher. A good syllabus is an evidence of the serious personal and professional effort of the teacher to be consistent with the latest approved curriculum. Once agreed upon, additional and important changes should not be implemented, i.e. all the significant and valuable aspects of learning and teaching should be explained in the syllabus. In the context of higher education in Romania, designing the syllabi for undergraduates represents a common effort of groups of teachers working with parallel series of students. The syllabus designed for Master of Science level graduates represents the effort of a limited number of teachers, exposed to specific requirements, mainly related to content-based teaching. Designing an EST syllabus for undergraduates and graduates should start by making use of the same approaches. To design a syllabus is to decide what gets taught and in what order, to integrate subject matter and linguistic matter. Several distinct types of language teaching syllabi exist, and these different types may be implemented in various teaching situations, irrespective of the level of the undergraduate or graduate. It is known that theorists speak about six different types of language teaching syllabi, which never occur “in their pure form”. Almost all actual language teaching syllabi are combinations of two or more of the types defined here. For a given course, one type of syllabus usually dominates, while other types of content may be combined with it. Moreover, these six types of syllabi have many common points, so that the distinction between them can sometimes be minimal. Syllabi exhibit specific characteristics, differences, strengths, and weaknesses. For instance, the structural syllabus refers only to the grammatical forms and structures to be taught (nouns, verbs, adjectives, statements, questions, subordinate clauses, and so on). The notional/ functional syllabus emphasises the functions (for instance, informing, agreeing, apologizing, requesting; examples of notions include size, age, colour, comparison, time, and so on) that are performed when language is used, or the notions that language is used to express. The situational syllabus speaks about real or imaginary situations in which language occurs or is used, by several participants engaged in an activity in a specific setting. The skill-based syllabus organises teaching and learning



106 Perspective on Engineering Under- and Post-Graduate English Syllabus

so as to develop skills people possess to be competent in a language, relatively independently of the situation or setting in which the language use can occur. In a skill-based syllabus, the main purpose is to develop competence and turn it into a skill, and a type of behaviour, such as listening to a lecture, and jotting down the main ideas, writing well-formed paragraphs, giving effective oral presentations, and so on. The task-based syllabus is developed around purposeful tasks, i.e. activities with a purpose other than language learning, where language learning is subordinate to task performance, and language teaching occurs only as the need arises during the performance of a given task. Examples include: applying for a job, talking with a social worker, getting housing information over the telephone, and so on. The sixth type of a syllabus is the content-based-syllabus. Content and information are taught using the language that the students are also learning. The students are simultaneously language students and students of whatever content is being taught. The content teaching is not organized around the language teaching, but vice-versa. Content-based language teaching is concerned with information, while task-based language teaching is concerned with communicative and cognitive processes. Although the six types of syllabus content are defined above in isolated contexts, they can rarely be used exclusively in actual teaching settings. More than often, they are combined, one being used as the organizing basis around which the others are arranged and related. In so far ESP is concerned, many attempts of making use of a single syllabus types have been made and have failed. These various types of approaches available to course designers are also classified as product-oriented syllabi and process-oriented syllabi. Product-oriented syllabi put the stress on the product of language learning. The structural approach, notional/functional approach and the situational approach are product-oriented syllabi, while the rest of the approaches mentioned in syllabus design earlier are all process-oriented syllabi. In order to make an informed choice we have looked at different syllabi discussed by researchers. First of all we looked at syllabi designed for engineers, as those presented by Sadaune and Philippe (2002) where students are acting as a project team lead by a pluridisciplinary pedagogical group; or by Gutierrez-Martin and Huttenhain (2002) who advocate the E3 model within which chemical engineering students’ awareness is raised to ethical issues regarding pollution prevention; or by Dinsdale as early as 1991, who has contrasted analytical approaches and practical intuitive approaches considering engineering design education. Naturally we could not neglect the linguists perspective as, for example



Marinela Grănescu and Ema Adam 

107

the discussion of process syllabus offered by Skehan (2006, 56) or that regarding students of humanities – fine arts students in one case: – Kirschner and Wexler (2002) focusing on reading comprehension issues within an EAP/ESP syllabus. Secondly we looked at older perspectives, as for example in Bruce (2005) discussing Wilkins’s (1976) notional syllabus and its relevance to foreign language curriculum development. Or at Jones’s (1991) integrated model for the ESP syllabus design based on mathematical analysis of hundreds of telecom communication workers’ needs. We even went back as far as 1986 and as far as Chile to look at the ESP syllabus design proposed by Huerta, Ibanez, and Kaulen. And we returned to Manufacturing Technology for Dimsdale’s (1991) discussion of design theory and design methodology. And we looked at newer perspectives such as Coniam’s (2003), on the supportive role of multimedia programmes, or as that of Cummings, Bonk, and Jacobs’ (2002) presenting web-based syllabi and interactivity. Contrasts between paper-based and web-mediated syllabi were also considered, as discussed in Afros and Schryer (2009). Multicultural issues could not be neglected as our students come from a variety of backgrounds and we found support in papers like Gorski’s (2009). The collaboration with stakeholders was another issue to be tackled when devising our syllabus. Valuable aspects in that respect were revealed by Emad and Roth (2009) in their highlighting the role of the syllabus as a boundary object particularly in vocational education and by Tajino, James, and Kijima (2004) suggesting that a soft systems approach might bring about more meaningful collaboration between the different stakeholders touched by the design of an EAP course. Last but not least, we focused on our learners, without forgetting about the socio-cultural-political-linguistic influences students and teachers have to face. In this respect, useful insights were provided by Celce-Murcia’s 2001 book.

3 Syllabus Choice and Design As mentioned above, in making practical decisions about syllabus design, one must take into consideration all the possible factors that might affect the teachability of a particular syllabus. In designing the syllabi for the undergraduates in the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, for all the 54 specialisations, we started with an examination of each syllabus type, tailoring the choice and integration of the different types according to local needs, to reach a principled and practical solution to the problem of



108 Perspective on Engineering Under- and Post-Graduate English Syllabus

appropriateness and effectiveness in syllabus design. Among the steps passed through in preparing a practical language teaching syllabus for both undergraduates and graduates, we can mention the following: 1. We determined what outcomes were desired for the students in the instructional program, i.e. what the students should be able to do as a result of the instruction. 2. We evaluated the available resources (for teaching, needs analysis, materials choice and so on). 3. We determined what syllabus types would be the easiest to implement given available resources. 4. We repeated the process, taking into account the constraints contributed by teacher and student factors described earlier. 5. We decided upon one or two syllabus types as dominant and one or two as secondary, and we integrated them. This will be detailed in what follows. 6. We defined the actual teaching units. 7. We applied the syllabus defined to the format required by our institution. In our university, the syllabus is mainly notional/functional in structure. The reason lies in the communicative purpose established as a common goal for teachers and students alike and in including notions and functions, as opposed to grammatical items and situational elements which remain but are given a subsidiary role. In order to establish objectives, the needs of the learners are analyzed, keeping the focus on the learner. We use needs analysis annually at the beginning of the academic year to find out what the real needs, lacks and wants of our students are. We stream our students according to their needs and we try to select and grade the syllabi accordingly, but the learning pace of the undergraduates, their lack of motivation make the approach of using the results of needs analysis harder to apply. As early as 1984, Breen and Candlin (1984) proposed an approach based on how learners learn, on their motivation, interest and awareness (Learner-Led Syllabuses). Such a syllabus has never been used in our university because we, the teachers, felt it too utopian and too difficult to follow the track of each individual student in a group of 25. Another model of syllabus that was not used in our university is the proportional syllabus that basically attempts to develop an “overall competence“ (Yalden 1987, 97). In this approach, Yalden suggests that the learners should nominate a topic that shall link together the units and that interaction is the focus though it is important that the syllabus indicates



Marinela Grănescu and Ema Adam 

109

what will be taught and not what should be learned or will be learned. We have often thought of this approach and piloted it mainly with civil engineering students because it seemed suitable for learners who lack exposure to the target language beyond the classroom.

4 Syllabus Design and Needs Analysis In many cases syllabus design is a greatly overlooked area of course planning as many schools rely on a textbook as the sole syllabus. Such an outlook is proper if textbooks are suitable and exist in the classroom/ library. That might avoid the need for a time consuming and oftenexpensive syllabus design process. It often proves a convenient and sufficient solution especially in the case of general English. However, research has shown that the use of needs analysis as a tool in foreign language course design could be more attentively considered (sometimes a must) in the case of ESP (English for Specific Purposes), where the students’ needs are clearer, and published textbooks do not adequately fulfil their needs. Starting from the idea that in a technical university, both undergraduates and graduates should study ESP, mainly EST (English for Science and Technology) and that the process of syllabus design can be shortened and made more efficient if Needs Analyses are carried out, the authors have developed two short questionnaires that are administered to first year students and Master of Science students. The idea of developing the syllabus on the basis of questionnaires came from the specific conditions in our university. We cannot design only one general syllabus for all the 54 specialities in the university, because of the large differences between the numbers of hours per week allotted, types of courses, level of English language command and other limitations related to the educational process. Most of the language courses are taught for four semesters, in a two-hour seminar per week schedule. Economic Engineering students have a language programme of four academic years. Undergraduates in Civil Engineering study foreign languages only one year. In the case of Computer Science and Automation students, the first two semesters are of the practical course type, the last two semesters are in the form of lecture. The administration (deans, course directors of engineering faculties) ask for a new or a revised syllabus when they need an accreditation of their departments or when new student guides are to be produced. In such a varied context, several questions must be posed. Do we want a product or process oriented syllabus? Will the course be teacher or learner led? What are the goals of the program and the needs of your



110 Perspective on Engineering Under- and Post-Graduate English Syllabus

students? To what extent will the various elements be integrated? Teacher gurus underline that a complete syllabus specification will include all five aspects: structure, function, situation, topic, skills and that the priority given to each of these aspects will distinguish between syllabi. Related to the design of syllabi is the material used, which, according to Widdowson (1978, 89) must, in reality, operate several syllabuses at the same time. The problem is that the teacher of English in the Polytechnic does not find as relevant the points mentioned until now, because of a large variety of reasons. One of the most important aspects lies not in the discrepancy in foreign language level command, but also in the attitude towards ESP of our young students. In order to simplify the syllabus design process, needs analysis is used. All the students are administered in their first two weeks of the first academic year a questionnaire, to help teachers outline the syllabus and make the first choices related to materials. The needs analysis questionnaire contains the following open-ended questions: 1. How many years have you been studying English? Have you ever studied any other languages? 2. Have you ever talked to a foreigner other than your teacher? If yes, how did you feel? Did you feel you could communicate effectively? What problems did you encounter? What success do you feel you had in communicating? 3. Have you ever used English at work/in school? If yes, give examples. 4. Do you think you’ll need to use English in the future at work? Discuss the situations you think you’ll need to use English for. 5. Imagine you are English textbook writers. Your job is to write an English textbook for all 1st to 2nd year students in Cluj Technical University. What areas would you include in the textbook that you think would be useful for the students for study purposes and for later on, in their working lives? These questions allow us to get valuable information. Most of the undergraduates study English for 10 years, and they also study a second foreign language. If this language is Italian, Spanish or German, they would like to continue to study it in the faculty too, though they prefer General language not LSP. Very few students have travelled abroad and even fewer talked to foreigners. Consequently, they do not perceive difficulties or success in communicating, though they admit that lack of conversation in a foreign language could affect their performance. The most interesting answer is related to Question 5. The students suggest only



Marinela Grănescu and Ema Adam 

111

topics and areas linked to general English and to conversation. Reading, listening and writing seem to be far from their concern. After drawing the information we need, we establish, among other information, the prerequisites, required texts and materials (lists of textbooks) the learning outcomes, classroom procedures and assignments, participation and test procedures in detail. In the case of the graduate students, the questionnaire administered differs. The questions are also open ended, and they refer to two distinct aspects: working situation of the graduate and expectations referring to the study of English. 1. Where do you work? Which section do you work in? What is your job? 2. Do you ever use English when working in your company? In which situations do you need to use English? 3. Have you ever visited another country on business for your company in which you needed to use English? Please describe your experiences. Which countries? What was the purpose of your trip? In which situations did you use English? In which situations did you feel you were able to communicate successfully in English? Which situations did you feel were difficult for you when using English? 4. In the first four years at TUCN, you studied English. How well do you feel it prepared you for your present situation? Are there any topics or language areas you feel were particularly useful for your graduate studies? Are there any areas you feel should have been included that would have been useful for you in your Master studies? The questions dedicated to Master of Science students in the Faculties of Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering have the purpose of defining the situation and conditions at work with respect to the use of English. Mention should be made that the graduates are to attend according to the requirements of the faculties only English as a foreign language. Another requirement coming from the faculty was to teach and practice presentations. The presentations should have had only one large and interdisciplinary topic, that of virtual prototyping, in the case of Mechanical Engineering students and of Earthquake Engineering with the Civil Engineers. What did we find out? Only half of our students worked in industry. Most of them had jobs related to Quality Assurance. All of them used English in their job context. They had travelled abroad on business for their companies. The type of language used was business English and the most frightening - the first five minutes. They admitted



112 Perspective on Engineering Under- and Post-Graduate English Syllabus

their level of English ranged between A2 and B1, according to CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). But they said they managed. They would have liked to improve, but going to school and to work at the same time did not allow them have enough time for the study of English. The last questions gave us more insights into our work as teachers of English. Most students agreed that they were prepared to study as graduates and that the most useful areas taught in the first undergraduate years were those related to General Technical English, business English and grammar of English (in this order). With no exception, the graduates asked for more terminology. Consequently, we decided to focus our syllabus on two or three main aspects. The first chapter was dedicated to reading extremely specialized texts and to developing ways of comprehending them. The second focus was related to writing summaries and abstracts. The third part consisted in teaching and practicing presentations of the summaries produced in the writing module. The main requirement for the graduates consisted in asking them to provide materials for the class. We found out that English language teaching could be the basis for interdisciplinary education, with respect to content. The materials brought by the graduates ranged from nanotechnology to fine blanking, from Quality Engineering to biochemistry. Because most participants were trained in traditional disciplines, they learned to appreciate differing perspectives and methods, through English. Though this work seems lacking rigor, we realized that our graduates learned to be more autonomous and more committed to interdisciplinary work.

5 Conclusions Clearly, there is a vast amount of material to discuss when considering syllabus design. There are numerous approaches and all provide valuable insights into creating a language program. The foundations of the syllabuses remain fundamentally similar, whereas the assumptions about language and language learning differ greatly. If our assumptions are based on actual information about the students’ needs and expectations, then we can create a syllabus based around activities and tasks which promote real and meaningful communication. Further points to consider when critically reviewing a syllabus are related to the hybrid syllabus arising from purely pragmatic reasons. To accept this in designing our own syllabi means to show an increased sense of reality and balance. There should be time for research too. The implications of widespread needs based syllabi are difficult to predict.



Marinela Grănescu and Ema Adam 

113

Similarly, the concentration on learners’ views might develop the view that techniques for teaching/learning can be accumulated, not just introduced and rejected. The experience of this semester shows that with graduates, the teacher values were less imposed and that the students shall learn to listen to each other more than before. Our discussion started with a series of challenges raised by the difficulties of defining a syllabus. We then discussed the problems inherent to the possible disparity between syllabus content and learners’ ‘internal syllabi’. Learner-centred syllabi emerged as a possible solution. We feel that they are more suited to our learners’ linguistic needs, of what emerges from the learners themselves. In this way, the learners become more autonomous.

References Afros, Elena, and Catherine F. Schryer. 2009. “The genre of syllabus in higher education.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes (8)3:224-233. Breen, Michael P. 1984. “Process Syllabuses for the Language Classroom.” In General English Syllabus Design, ELT Documents 118, edited by Christopher J. Brumfit, 47-60. London: Pergamon Press/ British Council. Bruce, Ian. 2005. “Syllabus design for general EAP writing courses: A cognitive approach.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes (4)3:239-256. Celce-Murcia, Marianne, ed. 2001. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (3rd edition). University of California, Los Angeles. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Coniam, David. 2003. “Perceptions of a multimedia syllabus - making the demands of a performance test more accessible.” System (31)1:55-70. Cummings, Jack A., Curtis J. Bonk, and Robert F. Jacobs. 2002. “Twentyfirst century college syllabi: Options for online communication and interactivity”. The Internet and Higher Education (5)1, 1st Quarter 2002:1-19. Dinsdale, Jack. 1991. “Engineering Design Education.” CIRP Annals – Manufacturing Technology (40)2: 595-601. Emad, Gholamreza, and Roth Wolff-Michael. 2009. “Policy as Boundary Object: A New Way to Look at Educational Policy Design and Implementation.” Vocations and Learning 2:19–35. Gorski, Paul C. 2009. “What we’re teaching teachers: An analysis of multicultural teacher education coursework syllabi.” Teaching and



114 Perspective on Engineering Under- and Post-Graduate English Syllabus

Teacher Education (25)2:309-318. Gutierrez-Martin, Fernando, and Stefan H. Huttenhain. 2002. “Environmental education: new paradigms and engineering syllabus.” Journal of Cleaner Production (11)3:247 – 251. Huerta, Teresa, Ines Ibanez, and Amalia Edith Kaulen. 1986. “Balancing institutional and motivational factors in ESP syllabus design.” English for Specific Purposes (5)2:189-195. Hutchinson, Tom, and Alan Waters. 1987. English for Specific Purposes: A Learning Centred Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jones, Colin. 1991. “An integrated model for ESP syllabus design.” English for Specific Purposes (3)10:155-172. Kirschner, Michal, and Carol Wexler. 2002. “Caravaggio: a design for an interdisciplinary content-based EAP/ESP unit.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes (1)2:163-183. Nunan, David. 1988. Syllabus Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sadaune, Veronique, and Bernard Philippe. 2002. “La mécatronique dans la formation d’ingénieurs généralistes.” Mécanique et Industries (2)3:99-106. Skehan, Peter. 2006. “Second and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, edited by Keith Brown, 51-59. Oxford: Elsevier. Tajino, Akira, James Robert, and Kijima Kyoichi. 2004. “Beyond needs analysis: soft systems methodology for meaningful collaboration in EAP course design.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes (4)1:27-42. Widdowson, Henry G. 1978. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yalden, Janice. 1978. Principles of Course Design for Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.





CHAPTER III: LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE





INTRODUCTION RODICA PIOARIU

The complex phenomena of language and culture in close relationship with each other have constituted a constant topic of debate and controversy in various intellectual circles throughout the world. Irrespective of the definitions ascribed to language and culture there is a point of view shared by all researchers: the two concepts are intimately related and interdependent, obviously determining each other. Culture influences each aspect of human existence from personality and behaviour to economic and government or social practices and patterns as Edward T. Hall puts it in his work, Beyond Culture. Moreover, it is regarded as man’s medium, due to the great impact it has on all the compartments of human life. In his opinion there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched by culture. This means personality, how people express themselves (including shows of emotion), the way they think, how they move, how problems are solved, how their cities are planned and laid out, how transportation systems function and are organized, as well as how economic and government (Hall 1976, 14) systems are put together and function.

From another perspective culture, which could not be disseminated without language and interpersonal communication, is also described as “learned and shared human patterns or models for living; day-to-day living patterns” or rather “mankind’s primary adaptive mechanism” (Damen 1987, 367). Language, in its turn, is the expression of the cultural context in which it took shape and developed. It bears the imprint of the environment in which it was formed with the social conventions, norms, values and practices peculiar to that particular speech community. As a tool for communication language is at the core of human interaction, indispensable for people to express their thoughts, experience and behaviour both at individual and group or even national level. Without communication the different cultures of the world – with their specific knowledge, beliefs,



Rodica Pioariu 

117

traditional customs and life experience –would remain isolated, cut off from other cultures. Thus humanity would be unjustly deprived of the benefits of intercultural connections and free access to a huge human heritage to which it is, no doubt, so greatly entitled. Similarly, language and communication would be in their turn rather scarce and devoid of meaning without culture, which is created, learned and transmitted through language and social interaction. Consequently, we can state that language and culture are in a permanent process of (re)shaping mutually enriching each other. Under the impact of the communicational and technological revolution, as well as the huge progress of informational systems the world’s culture keeps shrinking, getting closer to what, already in 1964, McLuhan described as the “global village”. In his opinion contemporary world witnesses a “compression of cultures” followed by their rapid spreading due to the accelerating globalisation process and the undeniable technological boom. Naturally, the assertion that possibly all the cultures of the world could be drawn together making up one global village gave birth to endless controversies. Those in favour of cultural globalisation viewed it as a possible way of better economic opportunities for less developed countries, whereas the most sceptical feared that the so-called compression of cultures could lead to conflicts between cultures and maybe to cultural domination of more developed countries over other cultures. It may also lead to a “fragmentation of cultures” or even to the creation of “hybrid cultures” as June Johnson, the author of Global Issues, Local Arguments puts it (Johnson 2007, 191-196). Furthermore, she thinks that the idea of making up a cultural global village is more complex and more complicated than one could imagine because it also implies “equal representation, reciprocal sharing, enriched diversity and mutual understanding” (Johnson 2007, 192). In her article Understanding the Implications of a Global Village, published in 2009 in Student Pulseonline academic studies journal, Violet K. Dixon reveals another potential danger: loss of less spoken languages of the world and the cultures associated with them forever. She quotes an online database “Languages of the World” which focuses on endangered languages and the serious risks some of them run. According to the website, “The world faces enormous challenges in maintaining language diversity. Of the more than 6,912 languages, half may be in danger of disappearing in the next several decades” (Dixon 2009). For about five decades, the researchers of the globalisation process have not managed to come to terms with a common, coherent definition of the term. While some of them have been mainly concerned with its



118

Introduction

economic dimension, others have paid more attention to the financial, political or judicial aspects. Still, it is cultural globalisation that proves to be the most visible form of manifestation of this multifaceted process. The fact that “the instantaneous sharing of culture” (Johnson 2007, 192) has become possible through the Internet, Instant Messenger, Facebook, Myspace or other socialising networks can no longer be denied. There is unanimous agreement in admitting the huge role this fascinating breakthrough plays in improving communication and facilitating access to the most recent discoveries of the world, as well as human knowledge, at large. Nevertheless, it is also true that there are other voices complaining about the danger of “massive importation of standardised cultural models” (Conversi 2004) - mainly American- which could be regarded as a possible menace to other cultural models, traditional lifestyles or modes of thinking which could eventually induce a feeling of cultural insecurity. Since there is recognised interdependence between culture, language and social practices certain countries regard the English language as an instrument of globalisation and even of cultural imperialism. Under such circumstances, they see Hollywood as the emblematic capital of cultural globalisation and the McDonald’s as the major agents of spreading American lifestyles all over the world. Eastern Europe seems to be trapped by the McDonalds and “Americanisation” replaced “Sovietisation” both at political and cultural level. Despite this, such tendencies seem to be incapable of increasing mutual understanding and are far from providing real confidence among the world’s nations. Obviously, language and culture cannot be separated and the role language plays in transmitting culture is overtly admitted, beyond any doubt. Being not only a marker of identity, but also a reflection of a people’s way of thinking and reacting to internal or/and external stimuli language is, at the same time, the expression of a number of accumulated symbols, values, traditional wisdom, and a lot of shared customs, not to mention the particular existential philosophy it encompasses. Therefore, all foreign or rather English language teachers and students should become aware of the importance of culture in language teaching since no foreign language can be mastered out of its culture. Consequently, teaching language in general and English in particular means, teaching culture, after all. This has proved to be the best way of overcoming barriers, crossing cultural boundaries and avoiding miscommunication or possible misunderstandings between interlocutors belonging to different cultural backgrounds. We could conclude by saying that learning to facilitate and accept different attitudes and values, get respect and understand other cultures



Rodica Pioariu 

119

requires constant teaching and long-term practice, but it is sure to eventually show its strengths in promoting cross-cultural communication and mediation, mutual understanding and respect of otherness. Language teachers must be culturally aware and choose culturally appropriate teaching styles in order to reach one of the most important objectives of language teaching: to enhance communication, mutual understanding and tolerance in the context of an extremely complex contemporary world.

References Damen, Louise. 1987. Culture Learning: The Fifth Dimension on the Language Classroom. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley. Hall, Edward T. 1976. Beyond Culture. Garden City New York: Anchor Press Doubleday. Johnson, June. 2007. Global Issues, Local Arguments. New York: Pearson Education Inc.

Webliography Conversi, Daniele. 2004. “Americanisation and the spread of ethnic conflict: the trap of globalisation.” Forum permanent sur le pluralisme culturel. Accessed March 7, 2011. http://planetagora.org./theme4.html. Dixon, Violet K. 2009. ”Understanding the Implications of a Global Village.” Student Pulse-online academic studies journal. Accessed March 9, 2011. http://studentpulse.com/articles/61/2/understandingthe-implications-of-a-global-village. Net Industries. Education. Knowledge. Information. 2011. “Culture and communication - The Relationship between Communication and Culture, Characteristics of Culture, Glimpses of Culture”. Accessed February 28, 2011. http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6491/Culture-and Communication.html.





A CULTURAL BRIEFING ON ROMANIA: INSIDER AND OUTSIDER PERSPECTIVES EMILIA PLĂCINTAR

1 Introduction In today’s globalised world, occupational international mobility has become a way of living. This implies that, in order to become effective intercultural communicators, members of a culture coming into contact with people of a different cultural membership have to learn how to reach a modus vivendi, for, as Tannen warns, “the fate of the earth depends on cross-cultural communication” (Tannen 1986, 30). Cultural awareness involves, in essence, a change produced in our mindset as a result of our interaction with another culture. This is a gradual process of transition from a national to an international approach to cooperating and communicating with nationals coming from diverse cultures. In this sense, Bennett (1999), an expert on cultural awareness issues, speaks about the ability to step out of one’s “ethnocentric” viewpoint and slip into an “ethno-relative” one. This shift in perspective will allow us to accept cultural differences and mould our behaviour to take them into account when we deal with another nationality. Tomalin and Nicks explain that intercultural awareness involves not only an outward process of integrating your cultural style into the new cultural environment but also the simultaneous inward process of a change in your personality: “if you become a culturally aware international manager, your personality effectively changes. Some of your characteristics become enhanced and others reduced” (Tomalin and Nicks 2007, 74). The sections that follow describe the stages included in the intercultural training working model imparted on the Cultural Trainers Certificate Course by Barry Tomalin, the course instructor.1

 

1 Barry Tomalin is a cross-cultural consultant and the Director of Cultural Training at International House, London. He is writer on the ‘Diverse Europe at Work’



Emilia Plăcintar

121

2 A model for an intercultural awareness training programme The core objective of the course was to demonstrate to the attendees how to research, design and deliver a cross-cultural training programme for managers. This is a very practical and flexible working framework that can be tried out and adapted to the profile of our trainees and the format of our courses. The business training model starts from the notion of culture viewed in terms of the rules of engagement, that is, a certain way of viewing and doing business, sometimes referred to as the “view and do” theory of culture. So there arises the need for a system of variables along which to describe how business is viewed and done in a certain country or organisation or by a certain individual.

2.1 Dimensions of cultural variation Anthropologists claim that, in every culture, there is a set of preferred value orientations related to a limited number of eternal problems that human beings have had to deal with. Among these are human relationships and the temporal focus of human activity. For trainees to understand cultural diversity and get to grips with it, they need to be introduced to some fundamental concepts in cultural theory that are instrumental in classifying cultures. Out of a multitude of studies on intercultural communication, our trainer recommended the work of Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, John Mole and Richard D. Lewis. Further on the course, he demonstrated how the cultural orientations they introduced can be applied in cross-cultural education for the characterisation of cultural behaviour in business. Thus, Edward T. Hall (1999 [1959]), an American expert who studied European managers in the sixties, describes cultures in terms of highcontext and low-context communication styles and monochronic and polichronic working styles. In high-context cultures, stress is laid on the exchange of facts and information and on meanings expressed explicitly, while in low-context cultures there is a high degree of allusion and indirectness as it is assumed that listeners understand the context. Singlefocus cultures display concentration on one task at a time and commitment to agendas, schedules and deadlines, while multi-focused cultures lay

   project and runs the Business Cultural Trainers Certificate and the Intercultural Certificate in Diversity Training.



122

A Cultural Briefing on Romania: Insider and Outsider Perspectives

emphasis on attending to different tasks simultaneously with a strong commitment to relationship building rather than task accomplishment and the observance of deadlines. Geert Hofstede (1994), a Dutch interculturalist, deciphers cultures by taking into account five dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and time orientation. Low-power distance managers encourage individual autonomy, initiative and participation in decision making and are therefore perceived as consultant figures rather than authority. With high-power managers, power and authority are centralised and the hierarchical levels are tightly controlled. In high-uncertainty avoidance cultures, people dislike risk and want job stability and order, while low-uncertainty avoidance employees are more pragmatic, accept risk and have a high job mobility. Individualistic managers value personal initiative and encourage self-reliance and competitiveness, while collectivist ones, being primarily concerned with relationships, emphasise the value of social network and team loyalty. High-masculinity managers place value on competitiveness, assertiveness, performance and accumulation of wealth, whereas high-femininity managers value relationships and quality of life. Long-term oriented managers are willing to trade short-term gain for long-term results, while short-term oriented managers aim at quick results, are flexible and avail themselves of opportunities as they arise. Fons Trompenaars (2003), another Dutch author, Professor at Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania, has also developed a system of scales to assess business cultures. He identifies these five dimensions of how we relate to other people: universalism vs. particularism, individualism vs. collectivism, ascription vs. achievement, specific vs. diffuse and neutral vs. emotional. The last two dimensions overlap with Hofstede’s parameters of individualism vs. collectivism and masculinity vs. femininity. Universalists focus on abstract rules before relationships and emphasise societal obligations, while particularists give weight to changing circumstances and bend rules to suit personal obligations. Individualistic cultures value individual identity and independence and encourage self-reliance and competitiveness, while collectivist cultures tend to subordinate individual interests to group interests and emphasise shared benefit. In achievement cultures, managers rise through competitive promotion, while in ascription cultures status is given because of social status or personal loyalty. These two different attitudes will influence the promotion, recruitment and contract awarding policies of an organisation. With specific behaviour the job comes first, while with diffuse



Emilia Plăcintar

123

behaviour an overlap between the two is accepted, which affects the work/life balance. Neutral managers have an unemotional and impersonal communication style with a high degree of objectivity and stress on task achievement; emotional managers are relation-centred and have an emotive and personal communication style with a high degree of subjectivity. John Mole (1998), a specialist in the business cultures of the “new global Europe”, has mapped the business styles of the EU member countries in terms of two paradigms: group/individual leadership and organic/systematic organisation. In group leadership, managers make an effort to be participative and sensitive listeners and to engage everyone concerned in the decisionmaking exercise. Individual leadership emphasises hierarchical distance by virtue of seniority, qualifications and expertise; in such organisations, managers keep their distance from subordinates and the top management develops the strategic plan and makes the important decisions without the consultation of those affected. In an organic type of organisation, individual power dictates and contacts are more important than what you are capable of; flexibility and improvisation are common in management and, as a rule, decisions are not accompanied by specific and detailed action plans and time frameworks. Conversely, in a systemic organisation management, functions and responsibilities are logical and trust and relationships are built on your job ability; job descriptions are accurate, goals and targets are specific, procedures are strictly followed, appraisals are carried out regularly, people adhere to the agendas of meetings and punctuality is highly valued. Richard D. Lewis (2006), Chairman of Richard Lewis Communications Plc., an international institute of language and cross-cultural training with offices in over ten countries, and founder of the quarterly magazine CrossCulture, is famous for the iceberg theory of culture and the classification of cultures into three categories: linear-active (L), multi-active (M) and reactive (R) – the LMR cultural types model. For simplification, Tomalin uses the parallel labels of scheduled, flexible and listening business cultures. Here is a summary of the traits of each culture type: members of linear (scheduled) cultures plan ahead methodically, are guided by timetables and deadlines, follow correct procedures, confront with logic, are job-oriented and unemotional; those of multi-active (flexible) cultures are extrovert, impatient, plan grand outline only, do several things at once, change plans and juggle facts and confront emotionally; members of reactive (listening) cultures are introverted, patient, thoughtful and silent, avoid confrontation



124

A Cultural Briefing on Romania: Insider and Outsider Perspectives

and do not interrupt, protect face of others and plan and react slowly. To conclude, an overview of the categorisation of cultures is obviously useful, as it will equip us with conceptual tools to assess a business community’s cultural profile and allow us to predict a culture’s behaviour, understand why people behave the way they do, avoid loss of face to our interlocutors, “search for some kind of unity, standardise policies and perceive neatness and Ordnung” (Lewis 2006, 29).

2.2 The 5 C’s model of cultural awareness Tomalin has constructed a practical and accessible framework of cultural training that is founded on three ingredients: cultural knowledge, cultural behaviour and cultural values and expectations. With knowledge and information about the target culture where we are about to operate, we can move on to a description of our personal cultural style and compare it with that of the new business partner. This comparison will help us identify some similarities and gaps between the two approaches and anticipate potential problems, which will take us to the final stage, namely cultural adaptation, at which we decide in what way and to what degree we will need to change or determine our partner to do so. Each component of this cultural training model, which Tomalin entitles the Five C’s, will be described in the ensuing sections. Cultural knowledge Becoming familiar with the basic information about the target culture, with people’s attitudes and core values, which have shaped their behaviour, will build our confidence and help us orient ourselves in the daily patterns of the new environment. In a cross-cultural encounter, it is crucial for the participants to build trust. Tomalin explains that trust building relies on rapport and credibility. Depending on whether the culture under study is achievement-centred or people-oriented, relationship building starts either through work or through socialising, respectively, as a condition of doing business. Credibility is generated by harmonising your communication style with the other’s. In our endeavour to decode a culture, stereotypes and generalisations play an important role, but we are warned that, while the former are dangerous because they “fix people”, the latter are useful as long as we remember that there may be a lot of factors that can modify them, such as region, company culture, personal experience, race, religion, generation or gender. National generalisations should therefore serve as a foundation for



Emilia Plăcintar

125

a deeper understanding of your new interlocutors, which will be facilitated through unmediated personal experience. Cultural values and attitudes In his seminal book on leading across cultures, in an accessible manner that derives to a great extent from his anecdotal style, Lewis explains how we are culturally conditioned. Our mental programming is made up of three layers: the base is inherited and is common to mankind; the following layer is the national collective programming and it is learned; and the tip of the pyramid allows for personalities with deviant idiosyncrasies. The national or regional culture is gradually instilled into our minds by various factors of influence – parents, educators, social environment, religion, history and media – and will create in us values and expectations that will guide our behaviour. Lewis warns that for a correct understanding of a foreign culture we need to realise the subjective nature of our ethnic or national values and assumptions. Taking off your cultural spectacles and being able to grasp what makes your counterpart view and do things differently from your part of the world is part of developing intercultural sensitivity. For training purposes, Tomalin separates cultural values and attitudes into the following constituent elements: core values, cultural fears, motivation in its main five forms – money, status, power, security and fun – and attitudes to personal space and to time. This is a useful breaking down of cultural expectations, as it will help trainees get insights into what makes a culture tick. These insights will, in their turn, assist them in easing their way into the new professional community and in performing successfully. Once we have learned about a culture and become familiar with its values and attitudes, we can understand how these influence behaviour and business practices in the new cultural environment. Cultural behaviour For the portrayal of cultural behaviour we can resort to the paradigms introduced at the initial stage of the cultural awareness programme. For illustration, I will present the descriptors included in the matrixes provided on the course for the analysis of the communication style and the business process. Thus, the international communication matrix is composed of the following six two-vector paradigms:



126

A Cultural Briefing on Romania: Insider and Outsider Perspectives

1 Direct 3 High context 5 Concise 7 Formal 9 Neutral 11 Fast paced

2 Indirect 4 Low context 6 Expressive 8 Informal 10 Emotional 12 Slow and measured

Business practices are described in terms of the following cultural differentiators: 1. Relationships (relationship-centred vs. system-centred); 2. Respect for authority (institutional respect vs. functional respect); 3. Decision making (individual vs. collective); 4. Attitudes to time (on time vs. in time); 5. Organisation (flexible vs. scheduled) 6. Leadership (top down vs. consultative). After the trainer explains the paradigms, trainees are asked to mark their comfort zone with each and then to try and describe the default position of the target market. Next, they compare the two styles and finally discuss how they will adapt their approach to communication and business. Cultural preferences The previous stage prepares trainees for the evaluation of their own cultural style, as deciphering another culture implies understanding first and foremost your own cultural preferences. For this, we were asked to complete a chart that lists ten areas of business life, with a word or phrase designating an attitude at the two ends of a row of ten squares. Depending on how we consider we approach each category, we mark a cross in one of the squares and then join the crosses with a line. Here are the ten categories, with which by now our students will have become well familiar with: 1. Communication Style (Direct vs. Indirect) 2. Working Style (Formal vs. Informal) 3. Discussion Style (Fast-moving vs. Slow and measured) 4. Business Attitude (Progressive vs. Traditional) 5. Leadership Style (Flat vs. Vertical) 6. Business Relationship (Relationship vs. Task)



Emilia Plăcintar

127

7. Decision-making Style (Individualistic vs. Collective) 8. Basis for Decision-making (Facts vs. Instincts) 9. Attitude to Time (Scheduled vs. Flexible) 10. Worklife Balance (Live to work vs. Work to live) In their book, Tomalin and Nicks ask questions, describe the specifics for each type of attitude in the ten areas of the business process and provide illustrative case studies and relevant anecdotes to help trainees identify their cultural preferences. For illustration, here is the description of Discussion Style (2007, 63). The chart can also be used to evaluate a country or a company. Fast moving Interrupts more Talks more and quickly Conversation has to keep moving Dislikes silence

Slow and measured Never interrupts Prefers measured tone and pace Pauses are acceptable Is tolerant of silence

Cultural adaptation The exercise above is repeated on the same chart with the evaluation of the other culture according to your perception of it. There will be now two lines traced on the page that will be closer in some points and more distant in others. The next step is to compare the two profiles and deal with those areas where the lines diverge, that is where there is potential of communication problems. So the questions to ask would be if you or your partner will need to change and, if the answer is yes, then, how much you will need to adapt and exactly how. Tomalin draws our attention that not all problems arise from national differences, so you need to determine if the nature of the problem is personal – your personalities simply don’t match –, or procedural – you or the other might lack in job skills –, or cultural – you have different approaches to the task at hand. If the situation is one of the last type, then we are advised to “activate” the RADAR. RADAR is an acronym that helps us in identifying the (potential) communication problems and in determining the way to counterbalance them. It reminds us of the steps described above: Recognise that you have a communication problem; Analyse the problem; Decide on how to change your behaviour; Act as you have decided; and Review the outcome (Tomalin and Nicks 2007, 72-73). As for how much to change our behaviour, we are referred to the



128

A Cultural Briefing on Romania: Insider and Outsider Perspectives

Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule, which states that 20% of our effort generates 80% of our results. In our case, it follows that we will have to focus on the critical 20% to produce 80% change in our counterpart’s attitude: “To put it even more simply, if people see that you’re making a bit of an effort, they will react much more positively. (…) The trick is to know which way to move – 20% more or 20% less.”2 So which are the personal characteristics and skills to train in our students to allow them to reach the stage where they consciously work on a cultural adaptation action plan? The National Centre for Languages in the UK (CILT) led the Intercultural Competences Assessment project (INCA) – a continuation of the earlier EU-funded INCA project – and elaborated a suite of national occupational standards (NOS) for working with people from different countries and diverse cultures, which were approved by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) in September 2008. These skills are described on three levels: underpinning personal qualities, performance outcomes, and knowledge and understanding (of cultural influences, communication and language, and working relationships). These are the attributes and attitudes which people with different cultural experiences working together may need: tolerance of ambiguity, behavioural flexibility, communicative awareness, knowledge discovery, respect for otherness and empathy. These qualities represent “what people who are well disposed to intercultural working may aspire to and grow towards” (Tomalin and Nicks 2007, 71).

3 Application: Cultural briefing on Romania Interculturalists, diversity specialists and consultants in cross-cultural business communication have scored and assessed behaviour in different cultures over a number of dimensions and have produced a plethora of country profiles based on questionnaires, interviews, fieldwork, as well as their own experience as cross-cultural consultants. The most generous study in terms of the number of cultures described is Richard Lewis’s When Cultures Collide, whose expanded third edition includes 66 countries, among which Romania. As a rule, these cultural profiles are structured as follows: introduction to and historical background

  2

The 80/20 rule was formulated by the Italian economist Wilfredo Pareto in the early 1900’s and was updated by Richard Koch in his Living the 80/20 Way. The principle states that 20% input produces 80% output and is said to hold true in relationships, business, finances, time, etc. It reminds us to focus on the critical 20% that adds the highest value to our activities.



Emilia Plăcintar

129

about the country, cultural values, concepts of status and leadership, communication style, advice for empathising with the locals, and key motivating and demotivating factors. The data provided by my 2nd year students in their essays on the subject “Advice for a foreign friend about to start a business in Romania” will be compared with the cultural portrayal of Romania by Lewis. For this purpose, I have organised the information in the two sources into the ECOLE format introduced by Tomalin on the training course. This acronym stands for Expectations, Communication, Organisation, Leadership and Etiquette. The essay assignment was part of the examination given at the end of a semester during which we covered the theme “Management of cultural diversity”. The subject was inspired by the concerns about Romania’s unfavourable image abroad, which were voiced by the students in our class discussions. So the task was meant to give students the chance to write freely about how they perceive their national culture and how we should be viewed by others. Their essays turned out to be a natural source for compiling a cultural portrait of Romania, and the idea of the project was born while I was reading them. The content lent itself to being organised into the ECOLE structure. Obviously, given the fact that the students lack work experience, their reference to the Romanian management and leadership style is rather scanty. Instead, their writings abound in information about our geography, history and cultural values in general, and in tips for helping foreigners to integrate themselves in our culture. The following table presents a comparative summary of the traits of our national character as described in Lewis’s study (Lewis 2006, 324329) and in my students’ essays.



130

A Cultural Briefing on Romania: Insider and Outsider Perspectives

Overview of Romanian values

Expectations

Communication

R. Lewis -obsession to survive -evasive techniques of action: (opportunism, volatility, apostasy, unpredictability) -maverick behaviour (pride in being a Balkan anomaly, selfimportance); social corruption and nepotism -national persecution complex (suspicion – a national habit) -incredible ethnic diversity -impressive storehouse of manners, customs, traditions, folklore and folk art - beauty of language, scenery, churches, monasteries -85% Orthodox Romanians -appreciation of erudition -desire for spiritual closeness, confidences and exploration for human feelings -epicurean -tendency to converse at length -admire erudition, delicacy of expression, intuition, compassion -oratorical and sophisticated in discourse -lengthy presentations and arguments -long and complex answers -attentive but suspicious listeners -personal style of address Meetings & negotiations -skilled diplomats and negotiators -30-45 minutes late -extensive small talk -comfortable with ambiguity -no sense of following through



Students -sense of survival - smart nation -ability to handle difficult situations -pride in Latin descent

-tendency to blame others -cultural and ethnic diversity -regional peculiarities -country’s natural beauties, pristine way of life in rural areas -Christian principles -solid education (multilingual) - desire to bond; like to socialise, view people as potential friends -treat foreigners with warmth -enjoy talking -appreciate erudition, do not like to be offended -long boring speeches -polite and indirect -talkative

-curious and eager to get close -informal/personal style -skilled speakers of foreign languages (2+/ English widely spoken)

Emilia Plăcintar Organisation

Leadership

Etiquette



-bureaucracy and corruption -influence of the political apparatus -little knowledge of speed, urgency, integrity -poor sense of accountability -third parties often involved in deals and expecting bribes -(Italian style) autocratic and paternalistic, using emotion as a manipulation tool -spontaneous and original ideas in a crisis Ice breakers: -acknowledge R’s special history -admire beauty of lg, scenery, churches, monasteries -show willingness to help -elicit info indirectly -indulge in small talk and politics but do not “intervene” -accept their lavish generosity and reciprocate it -understand that business and social life are intertwined Ice makers: -aggressive questioning -brusque behaviour -causing loss of face -praising Hungarians and their qualities -reference to the country’s backwardness, inefficiency and corruption

131 -ineffective and chaotic -slow pace in decision making -not punctual -deadlines not observed -cult for “little crime” -adoption of Western model -appeal to both mind and heart -formal dress

-insistently hospitable (show enthusiasm!) -love to give and receive gifts on every occasion

- do not like to be offended -We are NOT: a communist country but a EU member with equal chances uneducated and incompetent dangerous thieves a land of gypsies lazy underdeveloped, living in tents/trees -We do NOT scratch our backs for flees

132

A Cultural Briefing on Romania: Insider and Outsider Perspectives

As one can remark, the students’ essays broadly confirm the core values, fears, complexes and motivating factors identified by Lewis. It stands to reason that students should be more emotional and even passionate when it comes to their reaction to how Romanians are viewed and mistreated abroad. In fact, their strong expression of the frustration and anger at these stereotypes lends validity and relevance to Lewis’s advice against references by foreigners to Romania’s “backwardness, inefficiency and corruption” (Lewis 2006, 329). The students’ defensive attitude against the way Romanians are portrayed outside also confirms what they themselves identify in Romanians as a tendency to blame others. As I have already mentioned, the essays provide little characterisation of the Romanian management style, but still enough to contradict Lewis’s categorisation of it. It may well be the case that our leadership style is undergoing a process of transformation and adaptation to the profile of the global executive, especially among younger managers, who do business (intercultural) communication courses in faculty and attend training sessions where they learn that management is not only about task-related considerations but also about communication skills.

4 Conclusions The cultural awareness programme described herein lays less emphasis on theoretical information and puts more stress on the provision of frameworks, models and structures where trainees can put their own experience. The core objective of the course is to give trainees skills and lead them through an inductive learning cycle made up of the following stages: Activity, Debriefing, Conclusions and Implementation. The key tenet of the course, which in fact was a demonstration of its application, was that there is no training without implementation. In light of this principle, trainers should always ask themselves what sense an activity or some information makes to the trainees and how they are going to use it. This is a flexible cultural training formula that can be tailored to the trainees’ express needs. Obviously, clients with work/business experience will be more aware of what their cultural training needs are than undergraduate students. The former will have a clear idea of the need-toknow aspects about the target culture they will be in work-related contact with, in which case the trainer’s mission will be to focus on the target market and discuss potential communication challenges and how to approach them. With the latter category of students, the trainer’s objective will be to stir their interest in learning about their own and others’ cultural



Emilia Plăcintar

133

behaviour and to provide them with frameworks for the organisation and interpretation of cultural knowledge.

References Bennet, Milton J. 1998. Basic Concepts of Intercultural Communication. London: Nicholas Brealey International. Hall, Edward T. 1999/1959. The Silent Language. New York: Anchor Books. Hofstede, Geert. 1994. Cultures and Organizations. Glasgow: Harper Collins. Lewis, Richard D. 2006. When Cultures Collide. London: Nicholas Brealey International. Mole, John. 1998. Mind Your Manners. London: Nicholas Brealey International. Tannen, Deborah. 1986. That’s Not What I Meant! New York: Ballantine Books. Tomalin, Barry, and Mike Nicks. 2007. The World’s Business Cultures and How to Unlock Them. London: Thorogood. Trompenaars, Fons, and Charles Hampden-Turner. (2003). Riding the Waves of Culture – Understanding Diversity in Global Business. London: Nicholas Brealey International.





CULTURE AND COLLOCATIONS: CATALYSTS FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING GABRIELA MOCAN AND MARIANA TOMA

The limits of my language are the limits of my world. (Wittgenstein)

1 Introduction Humans communicate with each other using a dazzling array of languages, each differing from the others in innumerable ways. Do the languages we speak shape the way we see the world, the way we think, and the way we live our lives? Do people who speak different languages think differently? Does learning new languages change the way you think? These questions have engaged numerous philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, sociologists and psychologists in heated debates. Moreover, they are the very questions that set the scene for our present research, urging us to dwell on the intricacies of the language-culture relationship. As instructors of English as a foreign language, we can no longer ignore the correlation between language and culture, the more so when the students are future business people and economists, and the Business English course curriculum encompasses issues of communication applied to global or intercultural contexts. Things get even more complicated when the teachers, that is, the authors of the present article, are supporters, on the one hand, of the “When in Rome do as Romans do” parable and, on the other hand, of the lexical approach initiated by Michael Lewis (1993), and advocated by all corpora theorists and practitioners so much in vogue today. The purpose statement of our research is therefore twofold: Language can be considered an indication of specific underlying cultural models, or, conversely, cultural knowledge can be assumed to play a part in linguistic usage. (Quinn and Holland 1987, 23)

and



Gabriela Mocan and Mariana Toma

135

A whole cloud of culture is condensed in a drop of phraseology.1 (Wittgenstein 1953, 222)

The ideas posited in the two purpose statements above led to the idea that culture and, respectively, language combinations or collocations serve the noble mission of teaching students how to prevent miscommunication in contexts with subjects coming from different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, we set foot on foreign ground, not knowing how way would lead on to way, but trusting our intuition and knowing that taking the road less travelled by would eventually make all the difference. Our joint support of the reciprocal relationship between language and culture served as the foundation of our present research, pointing out the mutual determination of language, mental representations, and social action. Language depends on culture and language organizes culture. Despite having been regarded as mutually exclusive, these two main approaches to the relation between culture and language cannot be separated, and research in more recent years has managed to prove wrong.

2 Culture But why is culture central to language learning and how can it impact upon student achievement? Briefly put, “To know another’s language and not his culture is a very good way to make a fluent fool of one’s self”. (Levine and Adelman 1982, ix) What this indicates is that, besides having a very good command of the language, one should also be culturally aware and adjust to the new environment by doing “as the Romans do” or, in Trompenaars’s words, “When in Rome, observe the Romans and become an even better Japanese.” Not knowing anything about the cultural specificities of a given community of people will prevent the foreign language learner from adapting and adjusting his sense of self, as well as his language knowledge and use in order to fit in. The foreign language learner is, in this respect, like a child making sense of the world around him. As Bruner pointed out: Learning a language, then, consists of learning not only the grammar of a particular language but also learning how to realize one’s intentions by the appropriate use of that grammar. (Bruner 1983, 38)

  1

Here phraseology is used instead of lexical unit or chunk since “the notion of phraseology implies much more than inventories of idioms and systems of lexical patterns, phraseology being a dimension of language use in which patterns of wording encode semantic views of the world” (Gledhill 2000).



136

Culture and Collocations: Catalysts for Language Learning

You may have the tools, but as long as you don’t know how to use them, you are condemned to silence. And where is that user manual that may get you out of trouble? This is why the foreign language instructor nowadays needs an all-encompassing perspective. Over the past years, the notion of culture has been invested with different meanings, proving its central role in numerous fields of activity. Various scholars joined forces in a much needed revision of the notion of culture, insisting on a shift in meaning. The concept of culture, which until then primarily derived from the study of ‘behaviour or artifacts’, had to be replaced by one which foregrounded the role of systems of knowledge and mental dispositions. Their general goal was thus that of breaking language down to find commonalities in different cultures and the ways people perceive the world. Indeed, culture is something that is shared; it puts forward models of the world that organize experience and the understandings shared by members of a group or society. This shared nature of culture enables people to predict, even if within broad limits, the behaviour of others in the society. Conversely, people become disoriented when attempting to interact in a culturally different society because they do not share the same behavioural expectations as members of that society. For this reason, it is important to keep in mind that each culture orders events, material life and ideas to its own criteria. Dwelling upon the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis according to which language conditions habits of speech which in turn organize and generate particular patterns of thought, Gumperz and Levinson explained it clearly: the semantic structures of different languages might be fundamentally incommensurable, with consequences for the way in which speakers of specific languages might think and act. On this view, language, thought, and culture are deeply interlocked, so that each language might be claimed to have associated with it a distinctive world-view. (Gumperz and Levinson 1996, 2)

To learn a foreign language should therefore mean to acquire a new standpoint in the world-view possessed. It means permanently adjusting your sense of self to the world around you. Moreover, the cultural input that emerges directly out of the language and is derived from it appears as a corrective of speech, guiding the use of forms in actual conversation. In learning a foreign language, there are four skills that we need for complete communication. When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listen first, then to speak, read, and finally to write. But besides these four basic skills, learning a foreign language also requires exposure



Gabriela Mocan and Mariana Toma

137

to the culture of the L2 community. One’s culture determines the way one processes information and how one copes with reality. Concepts and objects have frames of reference that differ from culture to culture, and it is well known that the meaning of a word partly depends on the culture’s historical relation to the concept or object described. Hence, we will call this invisible ingredient for success in foreign language acquisition the fifth language skill because it teaches you the mindset and techniques to adapt your use of a foreign language in order to learn about, understand and appreciate the values, ways of doing things and unique qualities of other cultures. It involves understanding of how to use language to accept difference, to be flexible and tolerant of ways of doing things which might be different from yours.

3 Language The most distinctive feature of being human is the capacity to create and use language and other symbolic forms of communication. It is hard to imagine how culture could even exist without language. Fundamental aspects of any culture such as religion, family relationships, and the management of technology would be virtually impossible without a symbolic form of communication. Our very capacity to adapt to the physical environment is made possible by language. It is generally held that language is the major vehicle for human thought because our linguistic categories provide the basis for perception and concept formation. Language reflects the world of its users (beliefs in human nature, relationship with nature, time, human activity, social relationships, greetings, forms of address, space and so on). Language is the most direct expression of culture; it is what makes us human and gives each of us a sense of identity. Language is understood in terms of certain elements: ideas, signs, and their association, which precede its arising. Before and after, the imagination is at work and association takes place. It transforms our world, endowing all that surrounds us with meaning, enabling us – through expressive language, and also the nonverbal codes of gesture, stance and dress – to create new ǥways of being’ in the world, with their associated sets of values. Language is, by its very nature, a competence shared by a community; a phonology, grammar and lexicon structured in ways that are comparable to, but different from, those of other languages; an expressive and constitutive medium through which we present, enact, and thus make possible our way of being in the world and to others. According to Edward Sapir, language is “a perfect symbolism of



138

Culture and Collocations: Catalysts for Language Learning

experience” and it “cannot be divorced from action”. (Sapir 1949, 11) What this points to is the fact that the full meaning of a typical individual word is the result of the experience that the individual has with that word in the cultural setting in which he has grown up. That is why we should not overlook the role of experience and perception for, as de Bono pointed out, “Once we have language, we may be able to see the world only in the ways defined, packaged, and boxed by language”. (de Bono 1991, 127128). By translating our experiences into linguistic symbols, we are able to store them, manipulate them, and pass them on to future generations. Language, then, is such an integral part of the human condition that it permeates everything we do. In other words, humans are humans because, among other things, we can symbolize through the use of language.

4 Sources of Cross-Cultural Miscommunication Why is it then that contact with persons from other cultures so often is frustrating and fraught with misunderstanding? In her Intercultural Communication Stumbling Blocks (1998), LaRay Barna identified six primary sources of cross-cultural miscommunication. Drawing on her research undertaken with US and international students in her own intercultural communication course, she managed to bring a valuable contribution to the field of intercultural communication, concluding that “If we would communicate across cultural barriers, we must learn what to say and how to say it in terms of the expectations and predispositions of those we want to listen.” (Oliver 1962, 154). The first and apparently most problematic barrier to cross-cultural communication is the assumption of similarities. It is not hard to observe how the invisible aspects of our culture lead us to assume our communication style and way of behaving is how everyone communicates and behaves. When they act like us we think they are right or we don’t give it much thought, in the same way in which when someone acts differently, we may judge them negatively. Secondly, when speaking a non-native language, language differences can easily lead to miscommunication. Even people speaking the same language can experience miscommunication because the same word can mean something totally different from one area to another. For example, ‘pop’ on the west coast of the United States usually means a soda drink, while on the east coast it often refers to drug use or shooting someone; being ‘stuffed’ in the United States generally means you have had too much to eat, while in Australia it often means you are pregnant. These are differences that can have serious miscommunication impacts. But



Gabriela Mocan and Mariana Toma

139

misunderstandings do not only occur from verbal manifestations of our thoughts. We send and receive wordless messages through body language, facial expression, and eye contact. Even clothing and furniture style can communicate an intended or unintended message. Therefore, nonverbal misinterpretations should also be considered and granted the due importance in this respect. Another major obstacle in cross-cultural interactions is represented by preconceptions and stereotypes. One cannot deny that culture influences the way we see the world, and we can observe how preconceived notions and stereotyping occur when oversimplified characteristics are used to judge a group of people or an individual associated with a group. It is this very subjective nature that brings about people’s tendency to evaluate. When we hear communication or observe behaviour, we tend to interpret the message or the action through our cultural lens. Consequently, we may evaluate the message or behaviour as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ without really understanding the intent. Besides these factors mentioned above, high anxiety can also contribute to cross-cultural miscommunication. Not understanding what is appropriate or expected can raise our anxiety level, and this is how miscommunication can be a direct result of being in an anxious state. All these considered, students’ cross-cultural awareness can be increased so that fewer problems arise in their interaction with people of another culture.

5 Communication styles However, becoming aware of the obstacles and conflict-prone areas is not the only thing one needs to consider when it comes to communicating with foreigners. Beyond pure language, communication styles prove to be an invaluable asset in coping with cultural differences. Style refers to how one speaks not what one says, and it can be observed how the same message can be transmitted in various ways, depending on the cultural background of the sender. For instance, members of individualistic societies will use a direct, informal and detached style, whereas collectivist societies are rather indirect, formal and attached. As David Brooks (2008) put it in his San Diego Union Tribune article, “If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.” Among the various communication styles, we chose to focus on three opposite pairs: direct versus indirect, formal versus informal and detached



140

Culture and Collocations: Catalysts for Language Learning

versus attached. The reason for selecting these three is that they proved to be the most illustrative for the practical part of our research. Communicating in a direct style does not imply any ‘beating around the bush’. What one means is stated in a straightforward manner, directness being equated with honesty and respect for the other person and the other person’s time. There is no ambiguity involved, as the ones involved need to focus on tasks and be as efficient as possible. At the opposite end, indirect communication supports the values of relationship, history, and group harmony. Meaning is conveyed by subtle means such as nonverbal behaviours, questions, stories, parables, or use of a third party. Since indirectness is equated with politeness and respect for the other person and the other person’s feelings, specifically citing a mistake or voicing disapproval is impolite and disrespectful. “Face-saving” is therefore a key concept here, and for this reason one should always be prepared for subtle implications. Moving on to informal communication, one can sense more flexibility in what is said, to whom one can speak, and under what circumstances. Communication is less bound to specific conventions, and it supports the values of fairness and equity. Unlike informality, those that communicate in a formal manner place great importance on status and acknowledge it, being extremely sensitive to hierarchy. Hence, communication is governed by strict rules regarding such things as forms of address based on age, status, topics. It is ritualized, including the use of organizational hierarchy to determine who can/cannot be talked to and under what circumstances. As opposed to formality, a detached style will always value objectivity, emotionally expressive communication being seen as immature or biased. This type of communication is closely related with the direct style, communication being calm and impersonal. But when it comes to attached communication, we can observe a shift towards subjectivity. The expression of passionate, strong feelings is an important and necessary part of communication here, and involvement is active, with a personal stake in the outcome. Those who use this communication style will find it hard to adapt to directness and detachment, since in their view objectivity equals ‘not caring’.

6 Collocations and Culture It is well known that language is not made up of words that may be used together in free variation; words have “a certain tolerance of compatibility” (Baker 1997, 63). It has often been argued that native speakers’ unconscious knowledge of collocations is “an essential component



Gabriela Mocan and Mariana Toma

141

of their idiomatic and fluent language use and an important part of their communicative competence” (Stubbs 2001b, 73). Therefore, learning to speak is not to have internalized a grammar, either through an innate language acquisition device or through some form of learning. Rather, it is about learning how to enter the linguistic community within which one is developing. Differences in collocational patterning in different languages reflect the preferences of specific language communities for certain modes of expression. Some collocations are a direct reflection of the material, social, or moral environment in which they occur. This explains, for example, why bread collocates with butter in English, but not in Arabic (Baker 1997, 49). Members of a culture interpret the world in a similar way. At the level of phraseology, typical lexis and syntax show how people routinely talk about and evaluate significant areas of their social world. It is often pointed out that not only semantic but also “pragmatic meanings are often conventionally encoded in lexicosyntactic form” (Stubbs 2001a, 440), that is certain phrases also convey cultural connotations. The notion of a cultural keyword was first introduced by Williams (1976), who investigated the history of over one hundred keywords in British culture. Traditionally, cultural keywords are understood to have obvious political or ideological meanings and are particularly revealing of the values of a culture. However, other scholars believe that even the most common words in the language, such as little, especially when used in frequent phrases, can have strong cultural connotations (Stubbs 2001b, 161). Considering these, one probable reason for the students’ lack of competence and knowledge of collocations may be due to the L1 influence. For example, Martelli (1998) believes that L1 interference accounts for misunderstanding and the generation of wrong collocations. Similarly, Shalev (2000) maintains that students learning EFL tend to make mistakes because of the differences between English and their native language. Moreover, lack of cultural competence could also be responsible for learners’ failure to do well on culturally-marked collocations. It cannot be denied that cultural knowledge, another dimension embodied in the issue of lexical competence, is a factor that has a huge impact on collocation knowledge. Teliya and Bragina argue that the use of some lexical collocations is restricted by certain cultural stereotypes (1998, 170). For instance, they stress that metaphorical collocates serve as clues to the cultural data associated with the meaning of restricted collocations. They propose phraseology as a language of culture since cultural stereotypes are



142

Culture and Collocations: Catalysts for Language Learning

most prominent in the idioms of a language. According to Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980, 5) “most of our thoughts are metaphorical”, that is, we understand one thing in terms of another. Metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a cognitive phenomenon of human beings and in essence it is a basic perspective and cognitive way in which people understand the surroundings. Metaphor refers to the way people choose to look at things and perceive reality. “Different languages have distinctive metaphors, and thus reflecting various conceptual systems.” (Jiaxu 2007, 85)

7 In the Language Classroom: An attempt to acquire the fifth language skill Language teachers, or more specifically, in our case, business English teachers, harnessed with the informational load exposed in the previous sections of this paper, can now set off to induce learning in their language students. As always, this implies lots of planning, preparation and application on the part of the teachers. The well known task-based lesson plan enriched with the culture-language intertwining could contain the following sections: -

explaining the task; creating the proper cultural scenario; motivating the student to empathize; offering the theoretical background; providing the adequate learning materials; monitoring the experiment; assessing the outcome; debriefing.

In this paper we will present two classroom activities: American or British English? and High Context vs. Low Context. Activity 1. American or British English? For a start, the business English teacher can rely on and invoke the statements made by several students who took part in the Work and Travel programmes in the United States of America, namely on their declaration that American English is so different from the English they had learned back home in Romania. Asked whether they were better treated if speaking/writing as Americans speak/write they answered affirmatively.



Gabriela Mocan and Mariana Toma

143

Consequently, the teacher will provide concrete examples of language differences as shown below: British English graduate an educational institution deposit money in a bank board and lodging all the year round

American English graduate from an educational institution deposit money with a bank room and board all year long

The source material for the examples in the table is J. Algeo’s British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns (2006). The book is presented to the students and the corpus based approach used in collecting the information by the author is exposed to them. In the case of board and lodging (BE) and room and board (AE), students are given the book extract to explain the linguistic differences brought about by certain cultural contexts: The American analog is room and board. In CIC texts, each national variety has only sporadic tokens of the term regularly used in the other variety, often with reference to life in the other country.