Language and literature

Butler (2002) has further accentuated the need for integrating language and literature in his article Language through literature through Language: An Action Research Report on the English 100 Course at the University of North West. Pulverness (2003) offered valuable advice for teachers to make learning English language a joyful journey.  In order to draw the attention of students, teachers are expected to pay a lot of attention to pre-reading tasks, icebreakers etc.  Students can be encouraged to modify the texts, change the ending etc. using their creativity, creativity etc. Murat (2005) speaks of the semiotic elements i.e. signifier and the signified, in literature which the students can learn while studying a poem (according to T. S. Eliot a poem refers to any literary piece of writing). Poems are actually wired signs which are a combination of two constituents: signifier and the signified, so says Hiller (1983) as seen in Murat (2005). Murat precedes his study with stating the benefits of different literary genres like drama, short story, novel and particularly poetry. Hismanoglu (2005) argued that for teaching both language areas (vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation) and basic language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) the use of literature can be a popular technique. He provided some reasons for using literature in teaching English by quoting Collie and Slater (1990: 3). These are valuable authentic material, cultural enhancement, language enrichment, and personal involvement. Duff and Maley (2007) also proposed easy tasks to motivate the interest of students.  One should move gradually from easy tasks to difficult tasks.  Teachers can completely exploit the material by conducting brainstorming sessions, pre-reading tasks etc. for the benefit of students.

themselves. I agree with Kenyan novelist and scholar Wa Thiong’o (who writes in Kikuyu) that is important for Africans to write in African languages. And I also agree with the late Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe that English, French, Portuguese and Spanish are now African languages –especially as they are used by African people and authors who do not always use the standard version of a language, inflecting it with indigenous African languages and pidgins. And even when the words are in the standard European language, the syntax, the way we put them together, can differ from how it is used on other continents. My point is that at least some of the literature that people read should be in the same language that they use, a language that mirrors their own. There is a particular depth that comes from reading literature that was written in one’s own tongue. 3. Literature can reveal culture, like a window

His love life was somewhat tricky yet undoubtedly fascinating, crammed with forbidden homosexual affairs and interesting stories until he finally got married. Constance Lloyd, his wife and daughter of a prestigious layer from Dublin, also wrote stories for children. She was the mother of their two children, Cyril and Vyvyan. Their relationship was warm and passionate and, at least before they got married, she was completely in love with him. Wilde loved her in a different way. He had an idealized and spiritualistic love which was not capable to surpass the hindrances or handicaps that were to appear. Their marriage gradually became evermore distant and cold, and this was to worsen due to the accusation that Wilde was having a secret affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. His father, the Marquess of Queensberry, was to be the first to find out about their affair. A tense period followed between the couple before Wilde eventually was sent to spend two years in jail at Reading, where he invested his time in writing some poems to Lord Alfred Douglas. When he finally left prison, Constance determined that the most appropriate solution was to stop seeing Wilde (Alexander 2007) (Dalmau 1994).

In their role as social intermediaries, audio describers need to have a deep understanding of the world and reality of their target audience (sensorially, socially or culturally challenged). As is the case in any kind of translation, they need to know who they are doing it for. Secondly, they need to master a large set of skills, such as linguistic competences (Cambeiro and Quereda 2007): excellent command of the language in terms of vocabulary, grammar and syntax. They also need excellent writing skills, creativity and linguistic sensitivity that allow them to be adequate and adapt their ADs to the genre; Besides, they need competences related to the content of the audiovisual product (knowledge of the semiotics of the image), technological competences (computer literacy) and, finally, personal competences (good sight and hearing, excellent powers of observation and judgement to select the relevant parts that should be described, ability to analyze, summarize and interpret information, willingness to work in a team, excellent communication skills, empathy with the target audience, intercultural knowledge, etc.). Therefore, the skills developed while audio describing can also be very useful for language learners.

Abstract: Literature is not generally considered as a coherent branch of the curriculum in relation to language development in either native or foreign language teaching. As teachers of English in multicultural Indian classrooms, we come across students with varying degrees of competence in English language learning. Although language learning is a natural process for natives, students of other languages put in colossal efforts to learn it. Despite their sincere efforts, they face challenges regarding pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary. Indian classrooms are a microcosm of the larger society, so teaching English language in a manner that equips the students to face the cutthroat competition has become a necessity and a challenge for English language teachers. English today has become the key determinant for being successful in their careers. The hackneyed and stereotypical methods of teaching are not acceptable now. Teachers are no longer arbitrary dispensers of knowledge, but they are playing the role of a guide and facilitator for the students. Teachers of English are using innovative ideas to make English language teaching and learning interesting and simple. Teachers have started using literary texts and their analyses to explore and ignite the imagination and creative skills of the students. One needs to think and rethink the contribution of literature to intelligent thinking as well as its role in the process of teaching/learning. This article is, therefore, an attempt at exploring the nature of the literary experience in the present-day classrooms and the broader role of literature in life.

The adolescence is a period considered to take place between 12 years until 19 or 20 years. According to Piaget (1994), in this stage humans develop formal thought which is a thought that presents a major difficulty than the concrete thought, presented throughout childhood. It is seen as a thought of second order; this was explained by Piaget (1994) as the ability to think beyond the things that a person can see. In other words, this means to abstract think or think in hypothesis rather than the actual propositions of language; to think in ideas, rather than things. Following the previous idea, Piaget (1994) describes also the affective development of adolescents, in which they use this ‘hypothetic – deductive’ thought to make a living plan. This explains why adolescents think the most in changing the world. Most of them are uncomfortable with the actual society hence they create discussion groups in which they share their ideas with peers (Feldman, 1997), and so, very often, adolescents look for spots of time to share with their friends and classmates which is the most important part of their affective development.

The purpose of this study was to identify some strategies that allowed teenagers from tenth grade in a Bilingual School to improve their reading comprehension skills using English literature in a virtual learning environment. We were able to design a unit where we included several strategies that we analyzed and described, focusing on the reading skills, like inferring, predicting, motivating, making connections, designing diagrams, understanding literature, visualizing, and critical thinking and so on. Activities are presented in an innovative way, because the whole reading plan can be used as a complement of the presence based modality classes but it is helpful to be develop as an independent area too. For the design, we use different apps for making students competent not only in language but in technology as well. Some of the apps we proposed are: calmly writer, Speakpipe, Padlet, Prezi and Canva.

international perspective as a means to achieve human development. The English department, among other bilingual departments, guarantees mastery of English as a Second Language through the students’ interaction with technology to research and to develop international relationships. One way to achieve this is by offering a six-month academic and cultural immersion program in Canada for grade eight students. These students are placed in Canadian schools and get to live with Canadian host families to ensure experiencing the target culture to its fullest. Another way to achieve this is through the implementation of literature in the English Language Arts curriculum as a source for students to naturally acquire skills in reading and writing in their second language. Students are expected to use models of text analysis and interpretation given by their teachers that will allow them to develop a more globalized and tolerant view regarding respect to those cultures linked to the language of instruction.

Objectives: In the last decades such marginal phenomenon as works of Russian authors written in European, languages attract considerable interest of researchers. After Yu.M. Lotman, E.P. Grechanaya's, works devoted to Russian Literature in French, there was a number of researches of German-language works of such Russian writers as V.A. Zhukovsky, A.K. Tolstoy, K.K. Pavlova, E.I. Guber, E.B. Kulman, etc. In this article the task to reveal features of works of the Russian poet I.I. Hemnitser (1745–1784) is set in the context of Russian-German literary and historical and cultural communications of the last third of the 18th century. Methods: Poems in German written by I.I. Hemnitser, his fables created under the influence of Christian Fyurkhtegott Gellert's creative works became the material for the analysis. Comparative- historical and comparative and typological methods and also complex analysis were used in the work. Findings: The detailed analysis of ideological and thematic contents of works in German of the Russian poet is carried out. The specific features of I.I. Hemnitser’s creative manner are established. Special attention is paid to a question of interpretation of fable, epigrammatic and lyrical works of the poet in aspect of international literary relations and historical and literary traditions. Novelty: The revealed features of I.I. Hemnitser’s works in German allow to say that during an era of the increased influence on the Russian society of the French literature and French (a century of Catherine II) I.I. Hemnitser was one of the few Russian writers in the works of whom Russian-German literary and historical and cultural interaction was systemically presented. His fables became transfers, free translations of Ch.-F. Gellert’s works.

Even though there are not sufficient researches about the development of the intercultural competence through literature, the few there are depict how literature was introduced in the curriculum and how it was studied through the years. Unfortunately, there are no concluding studies on the use of literature to develop the intercultural competence in Spain. However, there are some researches of this within the British context, appearing in Hall’s Literature in Language Education (2015). Hall explains that the use of literature for education purposes appeared in the United Kingdom as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, becoming obligatory in the education systems. Yet, the type of literature introduced in these systems was the one considered as “canon”, which were “literary texts and authors of particular value […] [for the] growing demands on the teachers of literature” (p. 43). However, this literature was not suitable for everyone, as during this period, there were different social classes and literature was thought for “intellectual working classes and middle class women with leisure and some income” (p. 43). So, literature was not affordable for everyone in terms of proficient and economic issues.

Textbook topic contents are also often unreal in the sense of irrelevant to the learners sitting in the classroom. Now, thank goodness, students are no longer taught how to describe, say, the main sites of London but are invited to talk about their own towns and cities, but still much of the content often fails to address the issues that concern learners or are likely to confront them in real-life. To put it bluntly, just as no one ever pissed in Enid Blyton stories, so there is little sex, drugs or rock ’n’ roll in FL textbooks, little about human relations, sexual relations, sexual orientation, drugs, alcohol, racism, loneliness, fear, bullying, violence, growing up, dying, etc. etc. This is where literature can step in to fill the gap, supplementing topic areas with material that is authentic and has a chance of engaging learners affectively, more so than other text types. Literary texts carefully chosen in accordance with the social and cultural environment, the level of psychological development, and the interests, concerns and aspirations of learners can, if used wisely, be an effective tool for stimulating and achieving language learning and equipping learners with relevant linguistic and socio-cultural competences.

There is a distinction between spatial relations as they are used in language; spatial relations as they are described in the qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR) literature, which in some ways attempts to emulate the way spatial relations are used in language, and spatial relation queries that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or standards-based Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) are capable of executing. In GIS and SDI, a restricted range of spatial operators is available, and the only qualitative spatial relations that are currently commonly supported are the basic topological spatial relations and simple buffer/distance calculations [31]. While topology is acknowledged as an important way of describing relations between objects in space, there are a number of other types of spatial relations that are commonly used in natural language, the meaning of which have been explored in detail in both linguistics and QSR. In order to allow geospatial systems to take advantage of the significant work in both spatial linguistics and QSR, it is necessary to develop a mechanism for translating non-topological spatial relations into actual spatial queries that can be executed in a metric system.

Director of Studies> Rafael Macau | Director of the Graduate Degree in Multimedia programme> Ferran Giménez | Director of the Multimedia and Communication pro- gramme> Dr Montse Guitert | Director of the Foundation Degree in Management IT programme> Josep Maria Marco | Director of the Offi cial Master’s Degree in Free and Open-Source Software programme> Dr David Megías | Director of the Founda- tion Degree in Systems IT programme> Dr Josep Prieto | Director of the Computer Engineering programme> Dr Daniel Riera | Director of the Foundation Degree in Telecommunication, specialising in Telematics programme> Dr Eugènia Santamaria | Faculty> Dr Ferran Adelantado, Dr Joan Arnedo, Dr David Bañeres, Dr Roser Beneito, Dr Santiago Caballé, Dr Jordi Cabot, Carlos Casado, Dr Robert Clarisó, Germán Cobo, Dr Jordi Conesa, César Pablo Córcoles, Dr Atanasi Daradoumis, David García, Dr Joa- quim Garcia, Dr Carles Garrigues, Ana Elena Guerrero, Isabel Guitart, Dr Maria Antònia Huertas, Dr Josep Jorba, Dr Ángel Alejandro Juan, Dr Àgata Lapedriza, M. Jesús Marco, Antoni Marín, Dr Joan Manel Marquès, Dr David Masip, Dr Javier Melenchón, Dr Julià Minguillón, Dr Enric Mor, Dr José Antonio Morán, Dr Adriana Ornellas, Dr Joan Antoni Pastor, Dr Antoni Pérez, Elena Planas, Laura Porta, Dr Helena Rifà, M. Àngels Rius, Maria Elena Rodríguez, Dr Marc Romero, Teresa Romeu, Dr Teresa Sancho, Jordi Serra, Montse Serra, Dr Llorenç Valverde, Dr Xavier Vilajosana | Department Administrator> Marta Borràs | Postgraduate Activity Administrator> Daniel Roman | Programme Administration Staff> Xavier Casado, Elena Giner, Montserrat Junyent, Paqui Martín, Juanjo Martínez, Pepi Pedrero, Montserrat Ricart | Secretary> Elena Giner

The boat leaving Zambuango for Sabah contained a number of people armed with sub-machine guns, and my host arranged for me to be met by guards with high-powered rifles. The amount of illegal imports between the Philippines and Sabah was enormous, and I frankly cannot think of a part of the world that seems less open to the Prince of Peace than the scores of tiny islands where fast ships mock the international harbours and the smugglers’ hide-outs, but there are some exceptional people who nevertheless try to make the Gospel a reality in a place more like hell than heaven, and even to translate it into the indigenous languages for local people to understand.

It is common for some literary genres, such as the historical novel, to purposely roam an ethereal figurative frontier, a line that fades away in the hands of readers who agree –consciously– to enter into an interplay of correspondences blurred, to a greater or lesser extent, between reality and fiction. Up to a certain point, therefore, it does not seem necessary to remind ourselves of that which seems obvious when we read works such as The Name of the Rose or Perfume: the distinction between history and literature. However, when we confront geographically distant works of literature, the obviousness is no longer so, and the reminder becomes, perhaps, pertinent and necessary. It is also common that, in this new context, we forget –unconsciously– about the fictionality of the literary work and we read any text coming from, for example China, Japan or Korea, whether it be realist or modernist, traditional or avant-garde, romantic or science fiction, almost as an essay that reflects in a frank, transparent and non- problematic way the “society”, “history” or “culture” of a given country.

- Vlachos, K. 2009. “The Potential of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) in Content and Language Communication Technologies (ICT) in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): The Case of English as a Second/Foreign Language”. In: Marsh, D. et al. CLIL practice: Perspectives from the Field. Finland: University of Jyväskylä. y y

Despite the widespread I-just-want-to-speak student attitude, the most valuable professional skill to be acquired in Slavic language classrooms is the ability to understand authentic written and spoken texts in the target language. The importance of reading and listening skills in a real-life setting is obvious in a range of professions – from scholars of history, sociology, economics, etc. to intelligence officers. It is therefore imperative that authentic materials are included in the curriculum as early as possible. However, attempting to address this imperative leads to the following dilemma. On the one hand, students with limited command of the vocabulary cannot be expected to process “raw” authentic texts as constant dictionary lookup would be overly time consuming and frustrating. On the other hand, instructors do not command sufficient financial and temporal resources to manually gloss these texts with English equivalents. Being able to confront authentic materials early in the instructional process bears a two-fold importance. First, the student acquires the sense of achievement, the feeling that she/he can utilize the language in a sensible manner, which in and of itself wields a beneficial effect on the cognitive and affective factors in language acquisition. Secondly, the early inclusion of authentic materials creates a solid cognitive basis for later phases of the process in which authentic texts become ineluctable. Both these needs are broadly recognized in the current movement for foreign language learner autonomy.

2 It is widely believed that starting the study of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) before the critical period -12 or 13 years old – will build more proficient speakers of English. However, there is no empirical evidence supporting the idea that an early start in English language learning in foreign language contexts produces better English speakers (Nunan 1999). Levels of proficiency seem to be dependent on other factors –type of program and curriculum, number of hours spent in English class, and techniques and activities used (Rixon 2000). If an early starts alone is not the solution, then what can EFL teachers of young learners do to take advantage of the flexibility of young minds and the malleability of young tongues to grow better speakers of English? As the age for English education lowers in classrooms across the globe, EFL teachers of young learners struggle to keep up with this trend and seek effective ways of teaching.

Hablar de transnacionalidad en tiempos de Trump puede resultar engañoso: existe el riesgo de asomarse al vacío de los na- cionalismos reaccionarios que sospecho- samente resultan familiares a la fórmu- la del magnate norteamericano. Hablar de cine es hablar de transnacionalidad, lo ha sido desde su origen, desde las pri- meras vistas: la fascinación por el otro ha impulsado un intercambio y crecimiento de la industria hasta llegar a lo que cono- cemos hoy. En este contexto el libro Me- xican Transnational Cinema and Literature nos brinda nuevos ele mentos teóricos y analíticos para acercarnos al fenómeno de la transnacionalidad cultural a partir de la problematización del término. Para ello los coordinadores establecen tres ejes temáticos; sin embargo, al igual que la problemática social estudiada, desdibu- jan sus fronteras para reconocer los com- plejos procesos sociales y culturales aquí presentados.

Patricia Meyer Spacks; Literary Women (1976), de Ellen Moers; A Literature of Their Own (1977) de la misma Showalter; Woman´s Fiction (1978), de Nina Baym; The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), de Sandra Gilbert y Susan Gubar; Women Writers and Poetic Identity (1980), de Margaret Homan, o Splintering Darkness: Latin Ame- rican Women Writers in search of themselves (1990) editado por Lucía Guerra... por citar algunos de los más famosos, son libros en los que la escritura femenina se afirma como centro de los estudios feministas. Lo mismo sucede en Europa con Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray y la crítica feminista inglesa. Lentamente se incor- poran otros ámbitos como el italiano 5 . Al comentar este torrente bibliográfico,