Modern Languages Commons^™

Moving Beyond Comprehension In French: Question Development For Reading, Brian G. Kennelly

World Languages and Cultures

No abstract provided.

Bakhtin In His Own Voice: Interview By Victor Duvakin: Translation And Notes By Slav N. Gratchev, Slav N. Gratchev

Modern Languages Faculty Research

On March 15, 2013, Radio Svoboda (Radio Liberty) broadcast a recording of selections from a series of interviews with Mikhail Bakhtin conducted in 1973 by philologist and dissident Victor Duvakin (Komardenkov 1972, 18).¹ At this key moment in the Soviet era, Professor Duvakin, who had been dismissed from his position at Moscow State University, decided to create a phono-history of the epoch (Timofeev-Resovsky 1995, 384). Among the three hundred people whom Duvakin interviewed was Mikhail Bakhtin (Bocharova and Radzishevsky1996, 123), the seventy-eight-year-old retired professor of literature who was known familiarly by many as …

Book Review: George Z. Gasyna. Polish, Hybrid, And Otherwise: Exilic Discourse In Joseph Conrad And Witold Gombrowicz. London: Continuum, 2011. Bibliography. Index, Xii + 276 Pp. Si30.00 (Cloth); $44.95 (Paper), John A. Merchant

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A review of George Z. Gasyna's book Polish, Hybrid, and Otherwise: Exilic Discourse in Joseph Conrad and Witold Gombrowicz written by John Merchant.

Oltre L'Italia: Riflessioni Sul Presente E Il Futuro Del Postcoloniale, Cristina Lombardi-Diop, Caterina Romeo

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Beyond Italy: reflections on the present and the future of the postcolonial Italy, like other European countries, has undergone an epochal transformation as a postcolonial country in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and as a consequence of the demographic and social changes brought about by mass immigration from the global South. Similarly to most European countries, postcolonial studies applied to the Italian context repositions colonial history and its legacy at the center of the debate on contemporaneity and connects them to transnational immigrations. The historical examination of the Italian past, however, unlike that of other European …

Globalization And Possibilities For Intercultural Awareness: Multimodal Arabic Culture Portfolios At A Catholic University, Sawsan Abbadi

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This case study explores the teaching and learning of Arabic at one Catholic university campus, with a focus upon the complex interactions between language and culture in a postmodern globalized context. Specifically, it examines the use of “multimodal culture portfolios” as a means to engage students both linguistically and culturally in classroom and community discourses. Through their interactions and co-construction of knowledge with other participants, these students are led to think about the multiple communicative contexts that are shaping and being shaped by them. Data collection was conducted through survey questionnaires and students' responses to the assigned culture portfolio. The …

Audio Description Washes Brighter? A Study In Brand Names And Advertising, Jose M. Davila-Montes, Pilar Orero

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Dealing with objects in audio description, and particularly with those objects that have a clear designer imprint or branding, is a complex matter when a brand name is part of the scene in a film. Deciding whether to describe or not, and how, becomes more than a technical matter that depends on text–image synchronization: it is a complex decision-making process comparable to other forms of audiovisual translation that needs to be approached as a paradigmatic example of intersemiotic translation. Dávila-Montes and Orero address the audio description of branded objects in movies, and their intersemiotic translation from images to spoken words, …

Threatening Animals?, Heather I. Sullivan

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Threatening predators and pernicious beasts continue to play significant roles in the human imaginary even as human threats to other species increase exponentially in the age of Anthropocene. While posthumanist animal studies and material ecocriticism sync human and other animals within the biosphere’s living interactions, our shared material reciprocity is currently skewing ever more towards the human threat to other species – and so to ourselves as co-dependents. This essay explores the meaning of “threatening” and “threatened”. Five German texts presenting human-animal interactions in the Anthropocene’s span by Goethe, Kafka, Stifter, Duve, and Trojanow unsettle expectations of threats. In Goethe’s …

Ideology, Access, And Status: Spanish-English Bilinguals In The Foreign-Language Classroom, Michael E. Rolland

Graduate Student Publications and Research

Spanish language teaching in US higher education is today generally divided between ‘foreign language’ courses for novice learners and ‘heritage language’ courses for Hispanic/Latinx students with some knowledge of the language. However, ‘heritage’ students are a linguistically diverse group, and are also often enrolled at institutions where heritage courses are not offered. Little research to date has studied ‘heritage’ speakers enrolled in ‘foreign’ language courses. For this study I conducted semi-structured interviews to explore the affective and ideological characteristics of bilingual students enrolled in elementary Spanish courses. As the literature suggests, I find that these students have a generally low …

Traducciones De Documentos De Los Programas Que Ofrece United Way Del Condado De San Luis Obispo, Courtney Helena Connor

World Languages and Cultures

The intent of this project is to translate various documents used by the United Way of San Luis Obispo County from English to Spanish. Due to the large number of native Spanish-speakers in San Luis Obispo County, there is a great need for information about community resources to be available in Spanish. Due to the nature of languages having many dialects, a significant amount of research was put into determining the dialect and word choice for the translations. Factors considered included region, educational level, socioeconomic status, etc. The translation was completed using a form of Spanish that sought to avoid …

Ifele: A Method To Teach Spanish As A Second Language Within Communities Of Practice, Francisco Burgos

Andrews Research Conference

This study, which involved classroom-based experimental research conducted during the Fall semester of 2013 in a Spanish class at Oakwood University, aimed at extending the findings of previous studies on the use of familiar texts in reading and writing (Brown 2007, Vygotsky 1978, Kern 2000, Rollins & Villamil 2001, McCourt 2006, Morris, Beck & Smith 2004, Smith & Carvill 2000, Baring 2008, Bonard 2000, White 2009, Freire 1970. To do so, this study examined empirically the impact of familiar texts on students’ reading and writing outcomes using treatment and control conditions for comparison. This study was also interested in demonstrating …

A Linguistic Comparison: Stress-Timed And Syllable-Timed Languages And Their Impact On Second Language Acquisition, Madeline M. Conlen

Honors College Theses

Acquisition of a second language can be a challenging task because no two languages are alike in their structure, syllabification, pronunciation, rhythm, etc. Also, after speaking one language for any amount of time, the speaker becomes accustomed to the specific qualities of that language; therefore, learning to speak another language takes extra effort because it is essentially rewiring the brain to think differently in many ways. One important element of language is prosody, or the patterns of stress and intonation in language (Dilley et al 237). The subsector of prosody that is to be studied is rhythm, explicitly isochrony and …

Gossip And Nation In Rosario Ferré’S Maldito Amor, Ana Rodríguez Navas

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Gossip And Nation In Rosario Ferré’S "Maldito Amor", Ana Rodríguez Navas

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A literary criticism of the book "Maldito Amor" by Rosario Ferré is presented. This novel was interpreted as a feminist text of narrative gossip to assert characters voice or own's viewpoint. The author's conception of gossip as a narrative leveling process contrast with the popular conception of the practice as women's talk like chattering housewives and servant girls in the province. An overview of the story is also given.

A Translation Of Two Stories Of Khakim Nazir, Miraziz Khidoyatov

Modern Languages & Literatures Honors Theses

This thesis consists of two translations of the Uzbek writer, Khakim Nazir, along with a short biography and information about the historical context.

Spanish For Heritage Speakers: Instructional Module #2, Gabriela C. Zapata

Activities and Assignments Collection

This is the second instructional module for the teaching of Spanish to heritage speakers at the intermediate level. The outcomes for this module are as follows:

1. Students will be able to understand the way in which a persuasive essay is organized and written;

2. Students will be able to continue applying the rules for the accentuation of palabras esdrújulas and agudas to improve their spelling;

3. Students will be able to understand the rules that govern the present tense in Spanish and why it is the most appropriate tense when writing a persuasive essay.

4. Students will learn the …

Lingua Franca: An Analysis Of Globalization And Language Evolution, Abigail Watson

Honors Projects

This project details the evolution of languages and how globalization and advances in communication have effected smaller language groups. A world community in which communication is standardized by a Lingua Franca is in most cases harmful for isolated language groups without many speakers. The extinction of language is harmful for human society and culture, and there are many different ways to help prevent language extinction.

This project includes an essay, an animation, six illustrations, and a coloring book that all relate to endangered languages.

On Translation Policy, Gabriel Gonzalez Nunez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

The term translation policy has become problematic for the field of Translation Studies because it has meant so many things to so many authors that it threatens to lose some of its efficacy (see Meylaerts 2011a, 163–166). In light of this, the concept of translation policy should be developed so that it will be broad enough to account for diverse phenomena in different places with multiple agents, while retaining specific parameters that make the concept methodologically useful. This article will consider insights from Translation Studies and from other fields, especially from the field of Language Policy, in order to …

French Class Level 2:"Migrants In France" Project, Juli A. Douglass-Gillespie

Migration in Global Context Symposium

Being quite fed up with the disconnect between boring, abstract, and out of date so-called “units” in my French textbooks and real life, I decided to attempt to invent my own year-long “unit” based upon the ideas of migrants or immigrants who had come to France. From the beginning of the year I informed my students that everything we studied and explored throughout the year would help us create together and present to a small audience a final project in the spring in the form of a play, which they would write, me helping with the French. Since my student …

Technology, Games And Learning In An Intermediate Spanish Class, Rosalind Arthur

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

This presentation examines some theories of learning at the tertiary level of education, and tests them in a research activity involving games and learning/knowledge. Two Intermediate Spanish classes are engaged in preliminary research to measure the effectiveness of a simple game (hangman) and technology (Responseware/clickers) as practice and review tools versus traditional methods; in formative assessment.

The presentation will consist of reporting on the Quantitative results focusing on the impact of using games in learning on students in the digital age. Student attitudes based on a qualitative survey administered to the students involved will be included in the report.

Both …

Prisiones Y Afectos: Reescrituras Visuales Del Cuerpo Encarcelado En La Producción Documental Mexicana Contemporánea, Rosana Blanco Cano

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Este trabajo analiza documentales que desarrollan estrategias visuales y discursivas centradas en expresividad afectiva y corporal de individuos marcados por el encierro carcelario. Interesa en particular los trabajos Mi vida dentro (Lucía Gajá, 2007) y Teatro Penitenciario. Libertad desde la sombra (Carlos González/Pablo Ramírez Durón, 2011) que consideran, respectivamente, experiencias emocionales derivadas de una íntima relación con registros fotográficos y teatralidad. Al centrar la experiencia afectiva que al mismo tiempo se conjuga con la experiencia del cuerpo (Hardt 2007), estos trabajos construyen repositorios de emociones donde los “socialmente ausentes” (Foster 2013) acceden a espacios expresivos alternativos donde se confirma …