The faculty of the English Studies Department at NBU is currently exploring various strands of research interests, from literary studies and morphology and syntax, through teaching English as a foreign language and methodology, to translation and language technologies. The present Yearbook 2015 features some of these pathways.
To start with, the article “Thoreu in/and "Thoreau": genius of life, art, and higher laws” written by Prof. Bakratcheva, deals with R. W. Emerson’s euology “Thoreau”, and discusses “Thoreau’s spiritual, poetic, perceptional and personal greatness”.
Assoc. Prof Svetlana Dimitrova-Gjuzeleva gets her students ‘lit up’ by teaching English through literature and shares the approach she has taken in her course to engage her students emotionally and motivate them to improve their communicative competence through discussions of authentic literary works.
In a similar vein, Milka Hadjikoteva shares her work with students preparing academic presentations to develop their communicative skills by focusing on the structure of the low-context Western model, non-verbal behaviour and intercultural communication factors in the process of delivery of the students’ academic presentations.
On a different note, Assoc. Prof. Maria Stambolieva makes a critical analysis of the existing classification criteria for lexical items in English and Bulgarian, while Assoc. Prof. Elena Tarasheva shows which concepts are central to a collection of texts through key words established via corpus linguistics methods by analyzing the speeches of the well-known political figure of Winston Churchill.
In the field of Theory of translation, Galina Velichkova looks at the common practice of re-translating. She traces the roots of this phenomenon and discusses the issues when fiction and prose written in less-used languages is not translated from the original language, but from a translation in a more commonly used language.
A guest in this publication is Vera Yaremenko, from Russia, who discusses the advantages and potential pitfalls of information and communication technologies (ICT) in blended learning environments in Higher education settings.
Finally, the Yearbook of the Department of English Studies at NBU gives the opportunity to our doctoral students to make their first steps in academic publishing. Giorgos Papakalodoukas discusses whether teaching meta-language to learners of Greek at level A2 is necessary; and Nikolay Nikolov describes his innovative approach to developing fluency in the English language through the use of drama techniques.
I wish you good reading!
Годишник на Департамент "Англицистика" 2015 [ Department of English Studies Yearbook 2015, NBU, ISSN 2367-8720] (PDF Download Available). Available from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301675802_Godisnik_na_Departament_Anglicistika_2015_Department_of_English_Studies_Yearbook_2015_NBU_ISSN_2367-8720 [accessed May 14, 2016].
