International Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Culture
The research aims at investigating the communicative abilities of Italian children in a bilingual... more The research aims at investigating the communicative abilities of Italian children in a bilingual (English-Italian) preschool, focusing on the benefits of bilingualism in children’s cognitive, social, and cultural growth. After an introduction on the role of bilingual education in early childhood in promoting a child’s life-long love of language and bilingual proficiency, through the support of some European documents and key studies in the field, the research design is presented. A variety of instruments were used, such as video recorded class observations, field notes and observation sheets, semi-structured interviews with L1 and L2 teachers and structured interviews with children, questionnaires for parents, as well as language knowledge tests for children and teachers. Children’s lexicon development was taken into consideration, especially the frequency of use of English language, thus showing a significant growth of the perceptive and productive lexicon for the investigated age...
Annali della Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Università degli Studi di Catania, 2020
Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, la ricerca su ELT si e concentrata sul ruolo delle nuove tecnolog... more Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, la ricerca su ELT si e concentrata sul ruolo delle nuove tecnologie nell’apprendimento, considerando tutte le forme di social media, cartoni animati e video giochi, in quanto tali materiali possono mantenere alti i livelli di interesse, sostenendo cosi la motivazione. In particolare, i cartoni presentano una combinazione di linguaggio verbale e non verbale, offrendo la possibilita di sviluppare diversi livelli di analisi, favorendo sia un approccio linguistico sia uno culturale. Gli effetti positivi dei cartoni sull’apprendimento sono stati comprovati da diverse ricerche, ma questo contesto di riferimenti deve essere ridefinito se si prende in considerazione l’apprendimento in eta prescolare. Al fine di analizzare un apprendimento che e sia formale sia informale, la presente ricerca considerera gli effetti che diverse tipologie di cartoni hanno sull’apprendimento della lingua inglese per la valutazione delle abilita di speaking, la conoscenza del less...
The paper will highlight the importance of integrating effective teaching methods in teaching Eng... more The paper will highlight the importance of integrating effective teaching methods in teaching English for Specific Purposes, in particular Business English. Based on the survey, where 48 BE instructors participated from different countries, the article will demonstrate the significance of Lexical Approach, Task-Based and Project-based Learning by evaluating the outcomes of integrating them in teaching practice and beyond. The results once again confirmed the hypothesis. The survey consisted of both open and close-ended questions and aimed at voicing the opinion of BE Course Instructors globally. The target audience was exposed to the above-mentioned teaching methods. At the same time, the survey provides recommendations for beginner BE Lecturers on how to ensure maximal approximation to the authentic environment via practicing most useful teaching methods and making the learning process more result-driven, engaging and enjoyable.
All linguists, at some time in their studies, run headlong into fundamental issues associated wit... more All linguists, at some time in their studies, run headlong into fundamental issues associated with language change, and I could not celebrate the ESJ 12th anniversary without investigating the English Language of the New Millennium. Change in languages over time seems to be an inevitable constant. All languages have undergone and, if not dead, are undergoing change. As Ferdinand de Saussure put it more than a century ago, “the linguistic river never stops flowing” (Course in General Linguistics, 1916:110). The English language has been no exception and continues to be widely discussed from different areas or branches of linguistics, such as generative, historical, variationist or corpus linguistics. There is, however, much that still needs to be investigated.
Despite the established importance of English worldwide, and notwithstanding the fact that in exp... more Despite the established importance of English worldwide, and notwithstanding the fact that in expanding circle countries (defined as expanding or extending circle countries those countries where English is used as a foreign language), English for Academic Purposes plays an increasingly important role. Studies on the linguistic needs of university students are still lacking their perspective, at least in Italy, where students studying English language in Higher Education institutions are expected to gain access to the discourses of the academia via language competence. For this reason, the present paper reviews the theoretical and practical bases of English for Academic Purposes in order to provide further thought-provoking ideas based on a study carried out in the Italian university context. As far as method is concerned, due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study was conducted through Google Forms. The results of the authors’ questionnaire model are presented and analyse...
Transnational education is one of the many facets of inclusive education, with its relevance of E... more Transnational education is one of the many facets of inclusive education, with its relevance of English as the natural Lingua Franca in a vast range of contexts. The University of Catania, Italy, is an interesting case-study of a highly international University, which welcomes students from all over the world, and where transnational education has become an ordinary practice. In the light of my experience of English language teaching, I would like to report both on the cognitive value of an intercultural, learner-centered approach and on the various factors that concur to make mixed classes a motivating practice. Based on the hypothesis that people who speak different languages have different worldviews, my teaching proposal aims at fulfilling two objectives: understanding the perspectives of other cultures, and comparing the language and culture of others with students’ own.
We all agree that language, like any living being, undergoes constant change and evolution to ada... more We all agree that language, like any living being, undergoes constant change and evolution to adapt to the needs of its users. Therefore, the English Language being a Lingua Franca is not an exception, and it keeps pace more than other languages in the world with cutting edge developments in all areas of human life with its primary function of effective communication in professional as well as ordinary real-life situations. The development of English as an International Language has become more noticeable since the beginning of globalization. Furthermore, it leads to the definition of Global English(es) and is even more vivid after digitalization in which its significant role and existential function are now unquestionable. Moreover, it is the best communication tool for global citizens, individuals equipped with 21st century skills uniting under one common goal of making the world a better place to live via sharing and exchanging knowledge and expertise, as well as collaborating an...
In the literature on the translation of humour, much attention is devoted to questions relating t... more In the literature on the translation of humour, much attention is devoted to questions relating to its (un)translatability, especially of audio-visual texts, where the degree of difficulty increases because of their inherent characteristics, such as time or space limitation in dialogues and scenes. The aim of this paper is to explore the transposition of Verbally-Expressed Humour) in Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell 1994), from a pragmatic-discursive perspective (Chiaro 1992; 2007), which enables light to be shed also on the cultural factors (Toury 2012) behind the choices of the elements for translating humour. The analysis of a corpus of selected scenes is carried out by comparing the English and Italian (dubbed) versions, focusing on three main strategies (Pavesi 2005) followed by translator-adaptors in rendering humour in Italian, namely equivalence, downgrading/downtoning, and omission, which are discussed both qualitatively and quantitatively. For the purposes of this ...
Annali della Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Università degli Studi di Catania, 2020
Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, la ricerca su ELT si e concentrata sul ruolo delle nuove tecnolog... more Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, la ricerca su ELT si e concentrata sul ruolo delle nuove tecnologie nell’apprendimento, considerando tutte le forme di social media, cartoni animati e video giochi, in quanto tali materiali possono mantenere alti i livelli di interesse, sostenendo cosi la motivazione. In particolare, i cartoni presentano una combinazione di linguaggio verbale e non verbale, offrendo la possibilita di sviluppare diversi livelli di analisi, favorendo sia un approccio linguistico sia uno culturale. Gli effetti positivi dei cartoni sull’apprendimento sono stati comprovati da diverse ricerche, ma questo contesto di riferimenti deve essere ridefinito se si prende in considerazione l’apprendimento in eta prescolare. Al fine di analizzare un apprendimento che e sia formale sia informale, la presente ricerca considerera gli effetti che diverse tipologie di cartoni hanno sull’apprendimento della lingua inglese per la valutazione delle abilita di speaking, la conoscenza del less...
14th International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems and 12th International Conference on European Transnational Educational (CISIS 2021 and ICEUTE 2021)
Annali della facoltà di Scienze della formazione …, 2011
Page 1. MASTERING READING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES: SOME EXAMPLES OF GOOD ... more Page 1. MASTERING READING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES: SOME EXAMPLES OF GOOD PRACTICE di Paola Clara Leotta 1. Introduction It might be argued that all psychologists, regardless ...
CONTENTS
- Foreword
- Lucia Abbamonte, Black stories matter – Liverpool International Slavery Mus... more CONTENTS - Foreword - Lucia Abbamonte, Black stories matter – Liverpool International Slavery Museum and multimodal representations of a controversial heritage - Barbara Cappuzzo, Medical English translation into Italian. The case of Netter’s work - Paola Leotta, A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic analysis of Freedom Writers: dubbing emotional upheavals from US English(es) into Italian - Fabiola Notari, Blended learning scenarios for developing students’ pragmatic competence in court interpreting - Monica Randaccio, Museum AD: interpretative or un-interpretative audio description? - Annalisa Sandrelli, A corpus-based study of deontic modality in English Eurolect - Alice Spencer, ‘The Certificate of Competence in English for the Social Services’: Using Open Badges to supplement and integrate traditional university credits in ESP - Notes on contributors
International Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Culture
The research aims at investigating the communicative abilities of Italian children in a bilingual... more The research aims at investigating the communicative abilities of Italian children in a bilingual (English-Italian) preschool, focusing on the benefits of bilingualism in children’s cognitive, social, and cultural growth. After an introduction on the role of bilingual education in early childhood in promoting a child’s life-long love of language and bilingual proficiency, through the support of some European documents and key studies in the field, the research design is presented. A variety of instruments were used, such as video recorded class observations, field notes and observation sheets, semi-structured interviews with L1 and L2 teachers and structured interviews with children, questionnaires for parents, as well as language knowledge tests for children and teachers. Children’s lexicon development was taken into consideration, especially the frequency of use of English language, thus showing a significant growth of the perceptive and productive lexicon for the investigated age...
Annali della Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Università degli Studi di Catania, 2020
Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, la ricerca su ELT si e concentrata sul ruolo delle nuove tecnolog... more Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, la ricerca su ELT si e concentrata sul ruolo delle nuove tecnologie nell’apprendimento, considerando tutte le forme di social media, cartoni animati e video giochi, in quanto tali materiali possono mantenere alti i livelli di interesse, sostenendo cosi la motivazione. In particolare, i cartoni presentano una combinazione di linguaggio verbale e non verbale, offrendo la possibilita di sviluppare diversi livelli di analisi, favorendo sia un approccio linguistico sia uno culturale. Gli effetti positivi dei cartoni sull’apprendimento sono stati comprovati da diverse ricerche, ma questo contesto di riferimenti deve essere ridefinito se si prende in considerazione l’apprendimento in eta prescolare. Al fine di analizzare un apprendimento che e sia formale sia informale, la presente ricerca considerera gli effetti che diverse tipologie di cartoni hanno sull’apprendimento della lingua inglese per la valutazione delle abilita di speaking, la conoscenza del less...
The paper will highlight the importance of integrating effective teaching methods in teaching Eng... more The paper will highlight the importance of integrating effective teaching methods in teaching English for Specific Purposes, in particular Business English. Based on the survey, where 48 BE instructors participated from different countries, the article will demonstrate the significance of Lexical Approach, Task-Based and Project-based Learning by evaluating the outcomes of integrating them in teaching practice and beyond. The results once again confirmed the hypothesis. The survey consisted of both open and close-ended questions and aimed at voicing the opinion of BE Course Instructors globally. The target audience was exposed to the above-mentioned teaching methods. At the same time, the survey provides recommendations for beginner BE Lecturers on how to ensure maximal approximation to the authentic environment via practicing most useful teaching methods and making the learning process more result-driven, engaging and enjoyable.
All linguists, at some time in their studies, run headlong into fundamental issues associated wit... more All linguists, at some time in their studies, run headlong into fundamental issues associated with language change, and I could not celebrate the ESJ 12th anniversary without investigating the English Language of the New Millennium. Change in languages over time seems to be an inevitable constant. All languages have undergone and, if not dead, are undergoing change. As Ferdinand de Saussure put it more than a century ago, “the linguistic river never stops flowing” (Course in General Linguistics, 1916:110). The English language has been no exception and continues to be widely discussed from different areas or branches of linguistics, such as generative, historical, variationist or corpus linguistics. There is, however, much that still needs to be investigated.
Despite the established importance of English worldwide, and notwithstanding the fact that in exp... more Despite the established importance of English worldwide, and notwithstanding the fact that in expanding circle countries (defined as expanding or extending circle countries those countries where English is used as a foreign language), English for Academic Purposes plays an increasingly important role. Studies on the linguistic needs of university students are still lacking their perspective, at least in Italy, where students studying English language in Higher Education institutions are expected to gain access to the discourses of the academia via language competence. For this reason, the present paper reviews the theoretical and practical bases of English for Academic Purposes in order to provide further thought-provoking ideas based on a study carried out in the Italian university context. As far as method is concerned, due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study was conducted through Google Forms. The results of the authors’ questionnaire model are presented and analyse...
Transnational education is one of the many facets of inclusive education, with its relevance of E... more Transnational education is one of the many facets of inclusive education, with its relevance of English as the natural Lingua Franca in a vast range of contexts. The University of Catania, Italy, is an interesting case-study of a highly international University, which welcomes students from all over the world, and where transnational education has become an ordinary practice. In the light of my experience of English language teaching, I would like to report both on the cognitive value of an intercultural, learner-centered approach and on the various factors that concur to make mixed classes a motivating practice. Based on the hypothesis that people who speak different languages have different worldviews, my teaching proposal aims at fulfilling two objectives: understanding the perspectives of other cultures, and comparing the language and culture of others with students’ own.
We all agree that language, like any living being, undergoes constant change and evolution to ada... more We all agree that language, like any living being, undergoes constant change and evolution to adapt to the needs of its users. Therefore, the English Language being a Lingua Franca is not an exception, and it keeps pace more than other languages in the world with cutting edge developments in all areas of human life with its primary function of effective communication in professional as well as ordinary real-life situations. The development of English as an International Language has become more noticeable since the beginning of globalization. Furthermore, it leads to the definition of Global English(es) and is even more vivid after digitalization in which its significant role and existential function are now unquestionable. Moreover, it is the best communication tool for global citizens, individuals equipped with 21st century skills uniting under one common goal of making the world a better place to live via sharing and exchanging knowledge and expertise, as well as collaborating an...
In the literature on the translation of humour, much attention is devoted to questions relating t... more In the literature on the translation of humour, much attention is devoted to questions relating to its (un)translatability, especially of audio-visual texts, where the degree of difficulty increases because of their inherent characteristics, such as time or space limitation in dialogues and scenes. The aim of this paper is to explore the transposition of Verbally-Expressed Humour) in Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell 1994), from a pragmatic-discursive perspective (Chiaro 1992; 2007), which enables light to be shed also on the cultural factors (Toury 2012) behind the choices of the elements for translating humour. The analysis of a corpus of selected scenes is carried out by comparing the English and Italian (dubbed) versions, focusing on three main strategies (Pavesi 2005) followed by translator-adaptors in rendering humour in Italian, namely equivalence, downgrading/downtoning, and omission, which are discussed both qualitatively and quantitatively. For the purposes of this ...
Annali della Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Università degli Studi di Catania, 2020
Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, la ricerca su ELT si e concentrata sul ruolo delle nuove tecnolog... more Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, la ricerca su ELT si e concentrata sul ruolo delle nuove tecnologie nell’apprendimento, considerando tutte le forme di social media, cartoni animati e video giochi, in quanto tali materiali possono mantenere alti i livelli di interesse, sostenendo cosi la motivazione. In particolare, i cartoni presentano una combinazione di linguaggio verbale e non verbale, offrendo la possibilita di sviluppare diversi livelli di analisi, favorendo sia un approccio linguistico sia uno culturale. Gli effetti positivi dei cartoni sull’apprendimento sono stati comprovati da diverse ricerche, ma questo contesto di riferimenti deve essere ridefinito se si prende in considerazione l’apprendimento in eta prescolare. Al fine di analizzare un apprendimento che e sia formale sia informale, la presente ricerca considerera gli effetti che diverse tipologie di cartoni hanno sull’apprendimento della lingua inglese per la valutazione delle abilita di speaking, la conoscenza del less...
14th International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems and 12th International Conference on European Transnational Educational (CISIS 2021 and ICEUTE 2021)
Annali della facoltà di Scienze della formazione …, 2011
Page 1. MASTERING READING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES: SOME EXAMPLES OF GOOD ... more Page 1. MASTERING READING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES: SOME EXAMPLES OF GOOD PRACTICE di Paola Clara Leotta 1. Introduction It might be argued that all psychologists, regardless ...
CONTENTS
- Foreword
- Lucia Abbamonte, Black stories matter – Liverpool International Slavery Mus... more CONTENTS - Foreword - Lucia Abbamonte, Black stories matter – Liverpool International Slavery Museum and multimodal representations of a controversial heritage - Barbara Cappuzzo, Medical English translation into Italian. The case of Netter’s work - Paola Leotta, A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic analysis of Freedom Writers: dubbing emotional upheavals from US English(es) into Italian - Fabiola Notari, Blended learning scenarios for developing students’ pragmatic competence in court interpreting - Monica Randaccio, Museum AD: interpretative or un-interpretative audio description? - Annalisa Sandrelli, A corpus-based study of deontic modality in English Eurolect - Alice Spencer, ‘The Certificate of Competence in English for the Social Services’: Using Open Badges to supplement and integrate traditional university credits in ESP - Notes on contributors
Uploads
Papers by Paola Leotta
ESP by Paola Leotta
- Foreword
- Lucia Abbamonte, Black stories matter – Liverpool International Slavery Museum and multimodal representations of a controversial heritage
- Barbara Cappuzzo, Medical English translation into Italian. The case of Netter’s work
- Paola Leotta, A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic analysis of Freedom Writers: dubbing emotional upheavals from US English(es) into Italian
- Fabiola Notari, Blended learning scenarios for developing students’ pragmatic competence in court interpreting
- Monica Randaccio, Museum AD: interpretative or un-interpretative audio description?
- Annalisa Sandrelli, A corpus-based study of deontic modality in English Eurolect
- Alice Spencer, ‘The Certificate of Competence in English for the Social Services’: Using Open Badges to supplement and integrate traditional university credits in ESP
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword
- Lucia Abbamonte, Black stories matter – Liverpool International Slavery Museum and multimodal representations of a controversial heritage
- Barbara Cappuzzo, Medical English translation into Italian. The case of Netter’s work
- Paola Leotta, A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic analysis of Freedom Writers: dubbing emotional upheavals from US English(es) into Italian
- Fabiola Notari, Blended learning scenarios for developing students’ pragmatic competence in court interpreting
- Monica Randaccio, Museum AD: interpretative or un-interpretative audio description?
- Annalisa Sandrelli, A corpus-based study of deontic modality in English Eurolect
- Alice Spencer, ‘The Certificate of Competence in English for the Social Services’: Using Open Badges to supplement and integrate traditional university credits in ESP
- Notes on contributors