<p align="center"><strong> </strong></p><p>The aim of this paper is to present the results of a longitudinal study based on anonymous (encoded) questionnaires filled in by a group of students enrolled at a university English Studies programme. The questionnaires analysed the students’ views and opinions concerning their own pronunciation in English as an L2.</p><p>The initial stage of the study took place at the beginning of the first semester of studies before the first pronunciation class in which the students took part. Then the study participants were trained in both segmental and suprasegmental phonetics of English. Finally, they filled in almost the same questionnaire. The obtained results have shown that although initially the subjects had been satisfied with their own L2 pronunciation, later they realized that it had left a lot to be desired and it improved only after the university course in English phonetics.</p>
Teaching languages in a company environment is a relatively new phenomenon which has appeared as a result of competition on a job market. Nowadays companies offer various fringe benefits to their best employees, free language courses among them. This is a completely new situation for language teachers who are faced with a challenge of working in a new environment, not resembling schools, universities or language schools. They need to adapt to new requirements and deal with new problems and difficulties they were not prepared or trained for (Scrivener, 2011; Chong, 2013). The aim of this paper is to check what kind of difficulties and problems arise while teaching an L2 in a company. A group of L2/foreign language (English, German and French) teachers filled in an anonymous questionnaire concerning their work environment. The subjects came from various areas of Poland. The obtained information was divided into thematic sections and showed that the scope of perceived difficulties is really vast. It suggests that the topic should be analysed and studied further and corporate teaching ought to be formally taught as a part of a teacher training programme.
Learning correct pronunciation of a second/foreign language always represents a considerable challenge for language learners (e.g. Rojczyk, 2010a), especially for adults (e.g. Flege, 2007). There is an abundance of studies (e.g. Nowacka, 2010; Flege, 1991) showing that second language learners whose first language (L1) phonetic system has only one sound where L2 is characterized by noticeable richness of separate sound categories, encounter serious problems when they try to distinguish those new sounds and, moreover, they tend to apply their native vowels or consonants in L2 speech. It may be easily audible in the case of vowels and actually a lot of studies on L2 learners’ production and perception of L1 and L2 vowels have been carried (e.g. Flege, 1992; Nowacka, 2010; Rojczyk, 2010a; Rojczyk, 2010b). The aim of this study was to examine elementary learners’ perception of 4 German vowels, namely: /ɪ/, /iː/, /ʏ/ and /yː/. They were organized as two sets of minimal pairs, namely /ɪ/ vs. /ʏ/ and /iː/ vs. /yː/. The aforementioned sounds were chosen for the study since /ʏ/ and /yː/ are considered to be very difficult vowels for Polish learners (e.g. Bęza, 2001). Twelve elementary, adult (29-52 years old) Polish learners of German agreed to participate in the study. The subjects had just began their A2-level language course, however they had been taught the basics of German pronunciation for a year, during their A1-level course. They were presented a printed list of word pairs and listened to the recorded words. Then they were asked to circle the right option in each pair. The results revealed that although all study participants were adults when they started learning German and they were still just elementary users of the language, they were already able to distinguish correctly a considerable number of words. It may suggest that proper pronunciation training during a FL/L2 course can provide language learners with measurable benefits.
W artykule omówiono układ sterowania zespółem wentylacyjno-grzewczym typu 104ZW o mocy 20 kW przeznaczonym do wentylacji i ogrzewania wnętrza wagonu tramwaju. Zespół przystosowany jest do współpracy z dodatkowymi grzejnikami o łącznej mocy 10 kW umieszczonymi pod siedzeniami w przedziale pasażerskim oraz z wentylatorami dachowymi.. Do zasilania elementów grzejnych zarówno w zespole wentylacyjno-grzewczym jak i elementów grzejnych w wagonie a także wentylatorów oraz obwodów zabezpieczeń termicznych zastosowano łączniki tranzystorowe wykonane w IPS „TABOR”. Pracą całego układu nawiewnego wagonu steruje sterownik mikroprocesorowy.
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