To prove successful, language teaching requires a great deal of students’ participation in the process. However, students’ attention, a pre-requisite for such participation, tends to gradually wane as the lesson proceeds – a phenomenon that becomes yet more marked at lectures due to these not requiring listeners’ active involvement. The paper focuses on the means and techniques of keeping students attentive at ESP lectures (whose primary purpose is to acquaint them with IT-related vocabulary and advanced grammar structures) such as message encryption and decryption, use of metaphors, deviation from the expected, incorporation of grammar in the relevant socio-cultural context, etc.
Due to the nature of most university examinations, students often tend to concentrate their preparation efforts into a one-off act. This approach, however, proves ineffective when it comes to languages. The author introduced a method of regular testing that boosts the efficiency of English-teaching process in that it makes students prepare on a regular basis and minimizes the burden of handling numerous tests submitted in every round. The paper discuses the methodology of systematic computerized testing by means of answer sheets whose contents can be scanned and automatically evaluated.
The paper tackles the issue of language teaching by means of language-based Internet websites paying particular attention to teaching the language for specialized purposes. It foreshadows the potential of Internet to function as a supplementary source of language information and training as well as that of self-contained material which is capable of covering virtually every area of language learning - grammar, spelling, specialized expressions, pronunciation etc. The emphasis is laid on how all the above mentioned categories can be combined and harmonized to produce concise worksheets targeting specific areas (biology, medicine, computer science etc.), their specialized terminology and merits of working with such material. The demonstration of samples of worksheets, tests and pronunciation exercises represents a major part of the paper. All these utilize web design (HTML, CGI scripts, JAVA scripts) and common methods of Internet audio transfer to meet the modern learner's language needs. The paper is given in English.
The paper focuses on the factors affecting the speed at which a toddler acquires language, chiefly new expressions and collocations. A special attention is paid to the individual functions of the child’s early language as described by M.A. K. Halliday (instrumental, regulatory, interactional, etc.) and the situations determining these. It also aims to point out idiosyncrasies of the acquisition process in terms of the infant’s exposure to two different languages – a major one (spoken by most of the members of the infant’s community) and the minor one (spoken by one of his/her parents only). Besides the theoretical background, the paper presents author’s practical examples and authentic recordings.
The paper focuses on the role different kinds of context (situational, physical, social, and linguistic) play in the development of infant's language during its individual stages (cooing, babbling, word and sentence formation) and attempts to delineate those contextual factors that the author considers most fruitful in the language acquisition process. Some attention is also paid to the peculiarities of bilingual upbringing such as language games the child himself/herself invents in the context of two languages (Czech vs. English) and calque creation. The paper lists numerous examples and its presentation is accompanied by audio and video material collected during research.
The cooperation between a patient and their physician represents a pre-requisite for successful treatment. Provided the patient is well-informed and willing to cooperate, their illness turns out to progress more slowly and, as a result, they usually live longer than the one who is not as they are more likely to take precautions against medical complications associated with it. Moreover, the quality of such a person’s life is higher and treatment less expensive. The nefrologie.eu portal aims to educate patients, their relatives and other people interested in the area of kidney diseases. Apart from the provision of information on how to prevent and alleviate kidney-related disorders, the portal conducts a perpetual needs analysis thereby ensuring it is the areas that interest patients most that are widely covered by it. In this respect, it also serves as a needs analysis tool for doctors to monitor the fields patients most frequently lack information about allowing them to pinpoint and focus on these during their sessions with their own patients. As the counseling section comprises answers to the questions (800 up to now) the visitors (more than 200 a day) have posted via the site and thus contains concrete information relevant to the individual visitors’ past, present and future lives, its educational impact is facilitated through the personalization factor. What also contributes to the efficiency of the educational process is the fact the information is presented through multiple presentation channels and thus ensures sufficient repetitions and variations on themes. The paper also discusses other principles of andragogy that appear crucial in building a publicly available electronic information source targeting medical education of adults.