People always talk, discuss, argue, criticize or contradict each other. Have you ever thought of how do we do this? What language means do we use? What kind of elements do we use in verbal interaction? It is undoubtfully the use of arguments, part of a well-organized logic. Spontaneously people argue about different issues, trying to answer every question, trying to be persuasive in what we say. In the same way, we comment and express our opinion according to our point (...) of view if something happens. This occurs naturally and no one stops to think how we argue and how many forms of argumentation exist. Different linguists and philosophers treated argumentation from ancient times up to now. We can mention Aristotle and his rhetoric, Perelman and Toulmin with The new Rhetoric or the Theory of Argumentation. Thanks to these studies, these theories are applied and used in Linguistic, Applicable Linguistic, and Text Linguistic. In this paper, we will have a look at different types of argumentation from theory to practice. (shrink)

Naomi Shiheb Nye is an American Arab poetess, who lives within the Arab diaspora of Texas in harmony with other Diasporas. Her tie with Palestine is a tie of 14 years stay. Her sympathy with her father, Aziz, becomes the inciting element for her poetry. Besides, her mother, who is an exiled German, has a great effect on the visionary aspect of the nature of her exile. Nye’s reaction to what is happening in Palestine seems to be very paradoxical and (...) challenging in explanation. Her “peaceful” revolt seems to be against Zionism and the ideology of racism, rather than the loss of Palestine. Though she is far from her father’s land, she does not consider herself as a stranger – an other in America, where her father and some other intellectuals installed after the Nekba (War of 1967). These exile writers found this new land tolerant and accepting the melting pot. Such friction between their own culture and the cultures of other diasporas make them reconstruct another identity, which seems to exclude them from both their home and the host country – America. This in-betweenness is a home within literature – a home conceived with art, and where the self-reveals its nature and philosophical outlook through language. (shrink)

Vulnerability: an ethical category. Vulnerability must not be considered as an equivalent for the weakness or for the precariousness, i.e. the state in which the most resourceless people are living -with regard to power, wealth and health -; the strong are also vulnerable and they are potentially likely to be weakened. We will try to give its chance to an ethical category which, unlike person, personality, dignity, benevolence, non-malevolence, focusses on pleasures and displeasures, no more on the virtues of nursing (...) people. Moreover the category of vulnerability is quantity-sensitive. We will expose two mathematical models that highlight this last point of view. (shrink)

“Classroom management refers to the ways in which student behavior, movement and interaction during a lesson are organized and controlled by the teacher.” While one has completed a graduation and learned all that s/he could about classroom management while student teaching, by reading textbooks, or observing experienced teachers, he’s still left with many questions unanswered. Many ‘inexperienced’ teachers stand in front of the classroom, instruct students, give explanations, assign homework and are convinced that they have done the best possible job. (...) However the question still remains if the students “got it”?! It’s worth taking a moment here to define exactly what we mean when we talk about classroom management. To our point of view, there are a number of key concepts to consider, namely: preparation, procedures and behavior. Cultural norms are also different. So there are a lot of classroom management questions and answers that every novice teacher wants to know. Teaching is only the half of it. A large part of our “teaching” time is spent not on developing lesson plans or introducing new material, but doing something else entirely. Unfortunately, there doesn’t exist a simple bound of tips that will work in all situations. To get to the heart of how-to-effectively manage the classroom, we’ll have to go deeper. In this article, we’ll examine some key questions and elements that we all, as educators, need to consider when deciding on our own approaches to classroom management. We give some ideas that seem to work effectively, but personal observation, experience and reflection is what matters. Our best advice is, reflect on what works and adapt the approach accordingly. (shrink)

Materials’ development in EFL classes is a continuous concern of teachers. Teaching components include explanation, questioning and feedback. However, without a good textbook and suitable teaching material, even an experienced teacher will not have a great success. “Materials should teach students to learn, they should be resource books for ideas and activities for instruction/learning, and they should give teachers rationales for what they do.” Language teaching has important elements like students, methods, strategies and techniques. Why are teaching materials important in (...) EFL classes? What is the role of materials in language learning? What is a good English textbook? How can we select materials according to student’s age and language level? Can teachers and novice ones manage their time to use supplementary materials? It is true that the text is the base of teaching / learning processes, but in some cases, teachers should differentiate materials and activities for the sake of learning. If your students feel bored, not motivated, creating interactive activities based on additional materials will lower the barriers of learning. Curriculum is adapted to student’s goals in centered classes. It is the teacher’s concern to monitor the learning process and to adapt materials, textbook, activities and methodology to student’s needs if they are not. With materials it is understood every teaching/learning sources used in class like textbooks, audio visual, ITC. In this paper, we will consider some important elements in how, what and why to choose materials concerning effective teaching/learning in EFL context. (shrink)

The domain of ethics deals with the antagonisms between “good and evil, right or wrong, correct or unjust, virtuoso or vicious” etc. However, ethics is not the only area where these terms can be used, but as a norm, most ethical systems have been grounded in negotiating and consolidating these debates. Ethics has been transposed into many areas of activity, social and / or professional, so over time, according to Harry Redner, ethics have been born on account of the relationship (...) of feelings: love vs blame (religious or moral ethics), patriotism and glory vs. disgrace and disapproval (civic ethics), respect and veneration vs. rejection and humility (ethics of responsibility). These types of ethics over time have mixed up and can be “distinguished according to the external guarantees that they rely on to ensure social conformities.” These external guarantees, according to Harry Redner, are conventions, norms and laws. Even though they seem to be identical, there are some details of difference that are worth mentioning to understand the analytical assembly. (shrink)

Learning a foreign language is not always an easy task. There are many components that play a vital role in the whole process. Among the most important ones we can mention the learning styles used by the learners themselves. As we know, the way students learn a foreign language varies from one to the other. As teachers, knowing more about their leaning styles helps considerably in the acquisition and learning of the foreign language by our students. More specifically, the aim (...) of this study is to find out what learning styles result to be the most typical in learning English language. For this purpose we chose two different levels of education in order to see if there would be any difference in the learning styles applied namely the 8th grade and the 3rd year in “Aleksander Moisiu” University. A questionnaire containing 30 statements, which covered a wide range of learning styles namely: visual, tactile, auditory, group, kinesthetic and individual was administered to them and quantitative techniques were used in order to analyze the data. As was expected, there were certain differences concerning the major and minor learning styles used by the two groups surveyed. Recommendations for further research and implications of the findings will also be part of the article. (shrink)

The study highlights the fundamental contribution of the cultural activity of the academician Ioan of Gheorghe Sbiera, to the establishment of the cultural and national unity of the Romanians in Bukovina in the second half of the 19th century. The Bucovinean scholar was a brilliant philologist, literary historian, editor, memorialist, folklorist and, last but not least, historian. He is awarded the title of the first professor of the Romanian Language and Literature Department at the University of Cernăuţi, from which he (...) taught the first course in Romanian, although he was forbidden by the foreign authorities. As a founding member of the Romanian Academy, it is worthwhile to be considered the first philologist to present the first full and homogeneous version of the Latin alphabet of the Romanian language. His entire activity brings a valuable contribution to the history of the Romanians in Bukovina, definitively putting his mark on the evolution of the stages preceding the Union in 1918. (shrink)

The phenomenal consciousness, or the subjective experience of our inner world is a very surprising topic, «the last surviving mystery» able to ignite a long line of philosophical and also scientific controversy. Despite all of the comprehensive efforts, the ideal of clarity remains far beyond our expectations. Should we abandon the studies of consciousness as being too futile or counterproductive? Or should we continue to struggle for dismantling the articulations of «the hard problem of consciousness», and setting more sophisticated questions (...) even if there are no guarantees for adequate answers. The following enterprise is just an attempt to persuade the reader about how the problem of conscious experience remains an important issue not only for the philosophy of mind, but also for the commonsense thought too. This special topic deserves our whole attention, because it is able to generate a shift in our perspectives about us and our place into the external world. (shrink)

Students’ beliefs about language learning are an important component which will definitely have an impact in their future as teachers. The beliefs students hold and the way they are formed have been at the center of many studies. This article, however, reports the findings of a quantitative study related to English language students’ beliefs about English language learning. The students surveyed had just finished the third semester of their school practice and the instrument used to collect the data was Horwitz’s (...) Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory –. It included 35 items which covered a wide range of categories such as: language aptitude, nature of language learning, learning and communication strategies, difficulty of the language and last but not the least Motivation. Apart from the beliefs, through the questionnaire we attempted to investigate if students had had other teaching experiences apart from their school practice and if there were teachers among their family members. At the end we tried to find out if these two variables had any effect on students’ beliefs about English language learning. Recommendations for further research and implications of the findings are also part of the article. (shrink)

We live in times where we have to learn to come together, to join, although the geographical distances between us are great. We owe it (or is due to) the phenomenon of globalization. Globalization affects our lives and, at the same time, challenges us. The process of globalization gives a new challenge for the humanity by the emergence of transnational corporations. How do we handle them? Can they operate on the basis of management only in their own interests or do (...) they have social obligations? But can they operate on the basis of a minimum legal (juridical) code or does it require a deliberate assumption of moral responsibility? It seems that by looking at the specialty literature, we can see that, in the context of globalization, companies should adopt, in addition to those written rules, a minimum standard of non-specific rules (morals) specific to a community at a time. Thus, going beyond legal responsibility to corporate moral responsibility balances the relationship between business and society. Moreover, it helps the business to withstand the market and at the same time to participate in the common good. Research on this topic has resulted in the development of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility. The concept could help corporations to develop a management that can meet both the requirements of the economy and the demands of society. The assertion can be argued by the existence of constituent components of the concept of economic, social and ethical domains. (shrink)