In the last couple of decades, teaching methods expanded, being reformed, enhanced and often complemented by new technologies as a means to support student-centred activities. The current educational practice illustrates that the span of activities widely extends beyond core and optional disciplines, encouraging learners to make use of both formal and informal sources of instruction. Recent contributors discuss the role of accelerated learning models in terms of influences exerted upon adult education teacher motivation and assessment results (Wlodkowski, Kasworm 2003). In terms of participation and results, recent contributions indicate an ascending curve in what regards student attendance while highlighting the permanent need for guidance and support (Gingsberg and Wodlowski 2010). Educators and psychologists underline that accelerated learning methods require a more substantial preparation on behalf of trainers (Patricia Scott 2003), since materials need to balance “depth over breadth of learning” (Wodlowski 2010). This paper analyses the way in which accelerated learning works for undergraduate students at various business-related profiles where English is used based on an ESP approach. Accelerated learning is a two-sides oriented process which refers to two different approaches: timeframes and learning and teaching (Lee and Horsfall 2010). Under these circumstances, the focus of our paper is on how accelerated learning is done both in full attendance learning as well as distant learning courses (shorter periods of time), and also how faculty members can deal with this type of situations and how the teaching strategy adapts itself to this type of instruction. To better understand the accelerated learning process from the two points of view - the student and the instructor - in the current higher educational context in two major universities in Bucharest (University of Bucharest and the Bucharest University of Economic Studies), we have concentrated on a questionnaire targeting the following respondents: a) Non-working undergraduates focusing on the completion of their studies; b) Working undergraduates needing to balance efforts between part-time or full-time work and studies in the distant learning programs; and c) Teaching staff: practice and challenges in the current educational context. Under these circumstances, the questionnaire for our study case has been designed so that it collected a varied range of responses from both the students and the teachers, revealing thus the opinions in relation to accelerated learning techniques. As expected, some of the already employed students have appreciated the short duration of the courses and the problem-solving approach of the tasks used in the instruction process while the instructors have described the challenges of the accelerated learning teaching techniques and the difficulty/easiness in choosing the best teaching practices for the students in acquiring professional skills demanded by the current labour market. As a result, undergraduates and tutors feel the need to complement traditional means of instruction with fast-paced learning activities, through which they can build their expertise in a rather independent, accelerated way.
In John McGahern’s stories, stories bring to life characters in both comic and tragic instances, and their whole existence comes under the spotlight, as the writer uses mild, ironic or sarcastic touches. In between automatisms and mobility often directed at dogmatism or mental stereotypes displayed by characters, clergymen, workers, teachers, writers or family members display their ignorance, occasional (lack of) manners, boredom or elevation, often imitating what seems to be ‘decent’ in terms of taste. This paper explores how class, gender and false pretences are ridiculed and exposed in both novels and short stories, and how laughter moves from a classical Kantian play instance to a Freudian-supported analysis of condensation and ambiguity as vehicles employed by a realist creator. The narrative often alternates between family roles and poles of power, visible and invisible laughter, as natural and changing (or hybrid) as human nature.
In Stavro, the first opening piece of Kyra Kyralina (published in 1923), the narrative focuses on the actions taken and the reactions shown or concealed by three male characters in alternation, with particular emphasis on gender, age, and experience. In between traditionally built sections and ample back-storytelling, the story addresses the key learning stances adopted by the three male characters at the end of a short trip that they complete together: reserve, reclusion and (self-)reflection. How does a modernist vision frame one’s identity against age, common social norms and openly manifested repression in small urban neighbourhoods? Can one protagonist’s understanding about his sexual orientation be genuinely shared with others? In what way does Stavro’s personal experience alienate his prospects of family life in the port of Br?ila? This paper aims to decode the narrative based on modern confession, continuity versus fragmentation, sexuality and modes of memory alter(n)ation.
Evident from her first book Voica (1924), and up to her last novel Le Témoin de l’Eternité printed first in France in 1975 and translated into Romanian in 1995, Henriette Yvonne Stahl becomes from a promising writer a unique voice in the inter-war and post-war literary scene in Romania. Starting from Rimbaud’s illuminating pensée “Love has to be reinvented” (Felman 2007: 213), this paper aims to explore the identity of protagonists in My Brother, the Man (Fratele meu omul, first published in1965), drawing on identity and trauma theory as developed by Penny Brown (1992), Cathy Caruth (1995; 1996), Shoshana Feldman (2007) and Dori Laub (1992; 1995). In addition, the mixture of memory and narrative analyses types of ‘talk fiction’ (Kakandes 2005), the shift of focus from the subject of remembrance to the mode in which it takes place (Whitehead 2009), and how narratives impact readers (Piątek 2014). Both male and female characters in My Brother, The Man have clear dominant traits, so that their actions and inner voices are marked by abrupt shifts, meant to stimulate a noticeable response from those they love or dislike. Are the main characters engulfed in a dense life texture able to explore their personal dilemmas, difficult choices and detach themselves from the flux of their own passions and desires? Or are they going to fall victim to their own inability to understand life’s meaning, paralleled by a lack of vision and humanity as manifested by other characters? How do they act and react to the actions and emotions they experience? The present paper examines how memories, dilemmas and changes nuance a story moving from a classically-structured narrative to crime fiction, embedding numerous interior monologues and deep psychological impasses, the result being a female novel of self-development.
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