Category Archives: News

Ana Halbach, Alberto Lázaro Lafuente & Javier Pérez-Guerra. 2011. “The role of the English language in the post-Bologna Spanish universities”. Revista de Educación (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte) 362, doi: 10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2011-362-154.

The launch of the European Higher Education Area has brought with it many changes for universities in Spain, especially in relation to its turn towards the development of competences. Among these, the ability to communicate in a foreign language features prominently in the general requirements for the new university studies laid down by the Spanish Ministry of Education. However, how exactly this competence is developed, assessed, certified and measured depends on each university’s policies. This has created a situation of great heterogeneity among the different institutions of Higher Education. Based on the data obtained from a questionnaire filled in by representatives of 31 Spanish universities, and on the information the universities themselves make available on their web-pages, this article describes this variety as regards the treatment given to the English language. It then formulates a series of recommendations to assure that students acquire a level of English that allows them to enter the labor market, and that they are tested in a fair and objective way so that requirements and tests are valid for universities throughout Spain and beyond.

[Read full text at http://www.revistaeducacion.educacion.es/doi/362_154.pdf]

At the 35th International Conference of AEDEAN (Spanish Association for English and American Studies), Jorge Luis Bueno-Alonso received the 2011 Best Translated Book Award for his translation from Old English into Galician of Beowulf (Cangas do Morrazo: Rinoceronte Editora, 2010; 166 pp. ISBN 978-84-92866-17-5). Jorge Luis is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Vigo and a member of the LVTC team.

[Read more at http://duvi.uvigo.es/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5460&Itemid=2]

This course of lectures and seminars will take place at the Faculty of Philology and Translation of the University of Vigo, organized by the LVTC team.

(1) Variable article use (Marianne Hundt, University of Zurich): “The definite and indefinite articles in English are amongst the most frequent words. However, the contexts where there are used (or at times omitted) are difficult to describe and there is variability across time, regional varieties, text types, etc. In this seminar, we will start out by briefly looking at the history of articles in English and then move on to three case studies. The first will provide a focus on article use with institutional nouns like church and university in two major reference varieties, namely British and American English. The second will consider diachronic change in article use with single role referents like president and captain in predicate position. The third case study will take language contact into account and focus on variable article use in a variety of Indian English. The seminar will provide the theoretical background necessary to study variable article use in English. We will also look at issues related to data retrieval and analysis, such as the definition of a variable context and variable rule analysis. Finally, the seminar will provide an insight into the specific challenges involved in the analysis of spoken data.”

Datas: 9 de xaneiro 2012, 10-13 horas (aula B3, Salón de Graos da FFT); 10 de xaneiro, 10-13 horas (aula B3, Salón de Graos da FFT).

(2)  Syntax, complexity and the history of the English language (Britta Mondorf, University of Mainz) [datas por determinar].

(3) Gramaticalization, Construction Grammar and the history of the English language (Graeme Trousdale, University of Edinburgh) [datas por determinar].

(4) Topics in English grammar and lexis: double-possessive nominalizations, fail as a periphrastic negative, on a ___ basis as an adverbializing construction, besides as a connective (John Lachlan Mackenzie, Instituto de Lingüística Teórica e Computacional ILTEC, Lisboa) [datas por determinar].

Dirixido a profesorado, alumnado de posgrao e de 5º curso de licenciatura. Entregarase un certificado de asistencia aos/ás participantes que asistan ao 80% da totalidade das sesións lectivas. Para confirmar a asistencia, enviade un correo electrónico a Esperanza Rama Martínez (erama@uvigo.es) antes do 3 de xaneiro indicando nome, DNI, correo electrónico e enderezo postal para o envío do certificado final.

Cinco anos de intenso traballo da rede de investigación Círculo de Lingüística Inglesa.

A rede de investigación Círculo de Lingüística Inglesa que coordina a profesora da USC Teresa Fanego intensificará as súas actividades docentes e investigadoras no vindeiro ano. Entre outras accións, esta rede composta por cinco grupos de investigación das Universidades de Santiago e Vigo colaborou en estudos sobre os procesos de verificación do nivel de inglés das universidades españolas (por encargo do British Council) ou no deseño e construción dun corpus de aprendices de español (por encargo do Instituto Cervantes).

Constituída en decembro de 2006, os membros da rede reuníronse recentemente para facer balance dos seus cinco anos de traballo que a levaron a ocupar unha posición destacada dentro das unidades de investigación competitivas do Sistema Universitario Galego. Tanto é así que acadou financiamento ininterrompido da Dirección Xeral de Promoción Científica e Tecnolóxica en todas as convocatorias ás que concorreu, sendo na de 2008 a única rede de Galicia que o obtivo.

Desde a súa constitución, as actividades da rede nestes e outros campos plasmáronse na organización de varios simposios nacionais e internacionais; nun importante labor de formación de doutores (15 teses doutorais defendidas nos últimos cinco anos); na obtención de numerosos proxectos nacionais, autonómicos e europeos; e nunha forte presenza da rede en consorcios e redes internacionais, entre outros o ARCHER de lingüística de corpus, o LingNet Europe (‘Network of Centres for Linguistics and Research Groups in Europe’) e a rede CLARIN (‘Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure’).

[Source: XornalGalicia.com, 19/12/2011]

http://xornalgalicia.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=80892

We are pleased to announce the Third International Postgraduate Conference on Language and Cognition (ELC3), to be held at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) on 21-22 September 2012.

ELC3 aims to provide postgraduate students with an opportunity to present and discuss their research in an informal and intellectually stimulating setting. We welcome proposals for papers characterized by an empirical, cognitive-functional outlook on the study of language and communication; they may cover fields as diverse as grammar and morphosyntax, language change and historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, speech and language disorders, discourse analysis and pragmatics, lexicology and semantics, contrastive and corpus linguistics, and linguistics applied to the teaching and acquisition of first and second languages.