The main idea of modern education is to build competences as a produce of university educational process. One of the most important competences of intending teachers to be built is mobility competence, which is a component of professional pedagogical competence. We believe, to train a mobile teacher is possible within a purposefully created…

The main idea of modern education is to build competences as a produce of university educational process. One of the most important competences of intending teachers to be built is mobility competence, which is a component of professional pedagogical competence. We believe, to train a mobile teacher is possible within a purposefully created…

Virtual Exchange (VE) in second language education refers to a technology-enabled, interactive, intercultural experience that is designed to increase learners' intercultural communicative competence and performance. In this paper the findings of a bilingual (English/Turkish), synchronous video communication project among 31 US and Turkish college…

'We have the right to talk and think in our own language.' This self-evident slogan is ever challenged in the digital age of the 21st century. 'Talking and thinking' is most effectively trained and achieved by formal education carried out in one's own language. However, multilingual children growing up in multilingual societies would have to…

The purpose of this presentation is to show how instructional technology can be exploited to effectively integrate Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) "Can Do" performance objectives (Council of Europe, 2001) into the syllabus and assessment of an advanced (B2) level course. The particular course that will be used for purposes…

This paper will present and discuss the linguistic challenges that Argentinian university students of history and Danish university students of Spanish met during the course of a telecollaboration project based on synchronous communication in Skype. The purpose of this discussion is to identify linguistic pitfalls and the solutions adopted by both…

This study expands upon an existing model of students' reading comprehension ability within an intelligent tutoring system. The current system evaluates students' natural language input using a local student model. We examine the potential to expand this model by assessing the linguistic features of self-explanations aggregated across entire…

This pilot study aims to highlight a) differences in pragmatic function and distribution of discourse markers (DMs) in computer mediated and face to face (FtF) settings and b) any correlation of DM uses and language competence. The data have been collected by video-recording and analysing three speakers of Italian L2 (language level competence:…

Studies have investigated and proposed different potential influences on children's initial mappings of object words to referents. Each proposal is a variant on the idea that children use one source of evidence about the structure of word meanings or of grammar to discover other forms of structure, and in doing so they "bootstrap" their…

The interpretation of nonlexicalized compound words in English by speakers of English as a second language (ESL) was investigated. Three types of competence used in interpreting noun compounds are identified: pragmatic, linguistic, and textual. The use of these three types of competence by Hebrew speaking college students enrolled in ESL reading…

The relationship between linguistic awareness (assessed by the Surface Structure Utilization Test and Word Usage Recovery Test) and reading comprehension (assessed by a fifth-word deletion cloze test and by the Metropolitan Reading Subtest Form F, 1970) was examined among 153 fourth graders, 174 sixth graders, and 132 eighth graders. The…

Two tasks were used to choose between two rival accounts--cognitive vs. pragmatic--of children's failure to comprehend metaphors. A total of 120 children, in three age groups (6, 7, and 9 years) were given either an explication or a multiple choice task to assess comprehension of 15 novel comparisons expressed in five alternative forms varying in…

Acceptance of responsibility for their written expression can be encouraged in college students through oral games which emphasize the linguistic sensibility they possessed as children. The basic elements of good written language (pleasing sounds, repetition, word play, surprise, climax) are often paralleled in riddles, game rituals, and other…

A sample of 90 children drawn from kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade participated in a study of ability to decode ambiguous and unambiguous verbal messages. Subjects were read 12 message stems, each followed by a question pertaining to the contents of the stem. For half of the messages, the meaning of the questions was unambiguous; for…

This paper discusses the use of simple sentence-combining exercises as a way to show students the unlimited capacity of their own language. Using sets consisting of eight, six, four, and three sentences, no two students of the 27 in a freshman composition class produced identical rewrites of any one set. Such exercises are useful for instilling a…