• 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences close

Cross-language plagiarism is increasingly being accorded the interest of academics, but it is still an underresearched area. Rather than displaying linguistic similarity or identity of lexemes, phrases or grammatical structures within one language, translated plagiarism is viewed as the theft of ideas involving two languages. Two instances of translated plagiarism will be discussed - lifting a text from language A, translating it in language B to reuse it as one’s own text, and back-translation: lifting a text verbatim from language A, translating into language B and then re-translating back into language A. The emphasis will be on non-standard structures and inappropriate linguistic choices violating source language norms which could go some way towards assisting in the detection of translated plagiarism, a task heretofore not resolved either by linguists or by computer specialists. The topic is of seminal importance to non-English speaking academic contexts.

This paper presents a study of the system of lexical devices used by English speakers to verbalize their personal memory experiences. The approach presented in the paper presupposes inclusion of non-narrative structures into the spectrum of language forms conveying mnemonic meanings and extends the latter so as to encompass the meanings of encoding, storage, retrieval and loss. The research is based on the hypothesis that lexical units expressing memory-related meanings in English constitute a specifically organized system. A variety of communicative contexts representing mnemonic situations are analyzed as to develop a typology of memory verbalizers in English, estimate their functional potential and role in objectifying personal memory experiences on the lexical level. The results confirm the original hypothesis and suggest that mnemonic lexicon as a linguistic reflection of the mnemonic faculty is an important and largely understudied element of the language – memory system.

Abstract In this review of System's scholarship on the learning and teaching of languages other than English (LOTEs), we focus on 12 articles on language pedagogy and language learners, selected from a total of 208 relevant articles published in the journal (until 2020). The review affirms the journal's commitment to the dissemination of scholarship for language teachers to address ‘all languages’. It identifies the evolving research trajectory targeting language learners and their language development through increasingly sophisticated methodologies. These have helped to generate deeper insights into the role of language learner characteristics in language learning. Articles on language pedagogy, which are closely associated with studies on language learners and their language development, have addressed a variety of topics, such as reading, pronunciation, task motivation and engagement, story retelling, group cohesion, and classroom management. We conclude the review with our thoughts on which research areas could be more fully represented within the journal in order to fulfil its mission statement.

This paper reports on a study of how a group of tertiary level EFL teachers perceived and used mobile devices in their teaching and personal learning. One hundred and fifty teachers (66 female, 84 male) from public universities in Saudi Arabia completed an online questionnaire. Results showed that the majority of participants used mobile devices and applications in their teaching and learning. Survey data showed that the vast majority of teachers had positively perceived and frequently used mobile technologies in their teaching and personal learning. In addition, there was a correlation between teachers’ use of mobile technologies in their teaching and their use in learning. There was also a correlation between how teachers perceived the value of mobile technologies in learning, and how they use them in their teaching.

This action research study aims to analyse the ways in which vicarious learning, one of the sources of self-efficacy beliefs according to Social Cognitive Theory, can materialise in the translation classroom. To achieve this aim, a mixed methodological approach was adopted based on the following techniques: the interview, the survey, classroom observation and focus groups. Results show that vicarious learning took place in the translation classroom where this study was performed both through the students’ comparison with professional translators and between peers. More particularly, a collaborative learning environment and practices such as the presentation of translation projects by the students, role-plays or discovering the careers of previous graduates favoured vicarious learning and thus positively influenced the participant students’ self-efficacy beliefs, according to their perception. The results obtained contribute to shedding light on some ways to incorporate students’ self-efficacy beliefs in translator education, satisfying the need underlined by several authors. This study was funded by a research grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. Grant number FPU13/03381 awarded from 2014 to 2018.

The article presents a study that aimed to examine how primary school teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) framed the identity of an ideal EFL teacher. The specific research aim was to identify and classify frames associated with the identity of an EFL primary school teacher in the corpus of reflective essays of approximately 1000 words about an ideal EFL teacher in Norwegian primary school contexts written by 32 Norwegian in-service primary school EFL teachers. It was hypothesised that the participants’ framing would be reflective of the identity of an ideal EFL teacher in Norway. The corpus of the participants’ essays was analysed in accordance with the framing methodology developed by Entman (1993) and Dahl (2015). The results of the framing analysis indicated that the participants in the study framed the identity of an ideal EFL teacher via frames associated with future ideal selves, ought-to selves, the identity of their former EFL teachers, and the identity of an ideal EFL teacher as a fictional character. The study implications would be beneficial to pre-service and current in-service EFL teachers and teacher-trainers alike, who could treat the results as a collective “portrait” of an ideal EFL teacher.

This article reports on the findings of a study investigating the motivation of Bulgarian undergraduates of International Relations to learn English as a second language (L2). First, we consider language learning motivation in the context of three influential theoretical developments in research on motivation. Then, we report on a small-scale survey aiming to define the motivational profile of students of International Relations through the lens of the L2 Motivational Self System. The analysis of the survey data reveals similarities with findings of previous research as regards the favourable attitude towards English language learning, the prominent role of the ideal L2 self in the motivational pattern, and some doubt over the relation between the ought-to L2 self and the intended learning effort. The study results also indicate relations between travel orientation and the ought-to L2 self, and between the two types of instrumental motivation which have not been reported in previous research. These motivation peculiarities are explained through the specifics of the surveyed group that refer to students’ aspirations and potential careers in international relations.

In the current study, late Chinese–English bilinguals performed a facial expression identification task with emotion words in the task-irrelevant dimension, in either their first language (L1) or second language (L2). The investigation examined the automatic access of the emotional content in words appearing in more than one language. Significant congruency effects were present for both L1 and L2 emotion word processing. Furthermore, the magnitude of emotional face-word Stroop effect in the L1 task was greater as compared to the L2 task, indicating that in L1 participants could access the emotional information in words in a more reliable manner. In summary, these findings provide more support for the automatic access of emotional information in words in the bilinguals’ two languages as well as attenuated emotionality of L2 processing.

The proliferation of publications, mainly the digital ones, makes it necessary to write well-structured abstracts which help readers gauge the relevance of articles and thus attract a wider readership. This article investigates whether abstracts written in three languages, namely Arabic, French and English, follow the same patterns within or across languages. It compares 112 abstracts in the areas of (applied) linguistics. The English abstracts include 36 research article (RA) abstracts from an Arab journal mostly written by non-natives and 10 by native speakers from British universities. Those produced in French are 36 divided into two sets, 23 from North African journals and the remaining 13 from French journals. The Arabic abstracts consist of 30 abstracts, 15 from North African journals mainly from Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco and the other 15 from the Middle East with a focus on Qatari and Saudi texts. Results emanating from the frequency of moves show that the abstracts written in English by natives and non-natives and those produced in Arabic by Middle Eastern writers show conformity with the existing conventions of abstract writing in English. However, those from North Africa, be they Arabic or French, do not share any specific patterns which can be attributed to the language in which they are written. Further research is needed to check whether abstract writing is part of the academic writing curriculum in these two latter languages.

Abstract The investigation of potential stylistic differences between translated and non-translated texts has been proven to be a promising line in corpus-based translation studies, yet similar research on the product of interpreting seems both smaller in scale and slower in development. This study compares the use of hedges in interpreted and spontaneous English speeches collected in similar settings. Specifically, we gathered the two types of speech data from Chinese and American political press briefings respectively and analyzed their differences in the employment of various hedging devices. The results show that interpreted speeches not only contain significantly fewer hedges but they are also dependent on a narrower range of such devices than spontaneous speeches, which is consistent with the tendency towards simplification in translations. Also, our findings suggest that interpreted and spontaneous speeches tend to follow distinct hedging patterns in terms of preferred linguistic choices. Potential factors triggering such differences are discussed.