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Second language acquisition (English) based on mother tongue (Czech) - connections to the theory of children's language picture of the world
Lopatová, Lucie ; Pacovská, Jasňa (advisor) ; Filippová, Eva (referee)
This thesis engages in the language acquistion of the mother tongue (czech) and the second language (English) in preschool age and discribes the development of child language competence in both languages based on available theories, results of illustrative research and one-year observation in kindergarten with bilingual education program. In the beginning, there are defined theories which engaged in past and engage today (from 20th century till the present day) in study of language acquisition. In addition of these theories we focus factors which influence on the language development of children and consideration even theory of children's linguistic picture of the world. We compare the development of language competence (phonetic-phonological, semantic, grammatical, communication, pragmatic and vocabulary) in first language (czech) which are defined in agreement with available theories with empirical discoveries which indicate the development of those competence in second language (English) and we discribe partial methodological processes.
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Relationship between the strength of foreign accent and the presence of glottalization
Moravcová, Jana ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Weingartová, Lenka (referee)
In this paper, we are interested in what the part of glottalization is in a foreign accent. We focus on Czech speakers of English and an evaluation of their utterances. Those speakers analyzed for the purposes of this paper were evaluated in advance by a perceptual test. In accordance with the results of the test, they were divided into three groups: A, containing those speakers with an English close to the native standard; C, containing speakers with a strong Czech accent; and B, containing speakers with a detectable foreign accent which, however, is not evaluated as a Czech one. The aim of this paper is to determine in what way speakers of each group use glottalization and whether the use is identical to the assumptions of the previous studies.
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The occurrence of word-initial glottalization in Slovak English
Uhrinová, Mária ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The occurrence of word-initial glottalization in Slovak English Mária Uhrinová Praha, 2012 Abstract The features of prosodic structure were shown to influence the occurrence of word-initial glottalization in English. The aim of the present thesis is to analyze the occurrence of glottalization in word-initial vowels in Slovak English in relation to prosodic structure, specifically to word stress and position in the intonational phrase. The semantic status of words (lexical vs. grammatical) is also considered. The first part provides a brief overview of key concepts in second language acquisition with focus on acquisition of second language phonology. In addition, a summary of previous research on glottalization is given. The empirical part of this thesis is based on the recordings of 15 Slovak speakers of English. The results suggest that Slovak speakers use glottalization extensively in their production of English. This should be taken into consideration when looking for better methods for teaching English pronunciation. Keywords: glottalization, prosodic structure, Slovak, English, foreign accent
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Bilingualism on Social Networks: The Use of Czech, English and other languages among Czech users of Facebook
Pilzová, Zuzana ; Švelch, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Jirák, Jan (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to find and describe the evidence of bilingual communication of English language among Czech users of the social network Facebook. A qualitative method of both text document and semi-structured interviews with six active users was used to describe the type of bilingualism which occurs in the social media environment, in what situations and what is the user's motivation behind it. Therefore the main theoretical approaches I focus on are bilingualism and its place in the Czech Republic and the role of the English language in this socio-culture context. Furthermore I study the communication in an online environment: what are the specifications and what role does the CMC (computer-mediated-communication) play in relationship of the language and the user. Finally, I search for previous studies in the field of online bilingualism, social media preferably. The results show not only the Czech users are well situated within the discourse of English as (online) lingua franca, moreover they seem to be very active in self-imposed code-switching into the English language. The data acquired through the interviews helped to identify bilingualism occurs on both levels of code-switching and code-mixing. Additionally, Anglicism's in the Czech language were reported widely.
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Pythagorian Theorem in CLIL lessons
Dubová, Libuše ; Novotná, Jarmila (advisor) ; Procházková, Lenka (referee)
This diploma thesis, titled "Pythagorean Theorem in CLIL lessons", deals with one of the possible strategies in bilingual education - CLIL method which links teaching of a non- linguistic subject and a foreign language, mathematics and English, in this case. For the realization of CLIL method I have chosen the topic of the introduction to Pythagorean Theorem. The aim of this thesis was to check whether the chosen topic is suitable for CLIL lessons, then the influence of a foreign language on the active involvement of pupils in the lesson and on understanding of the subject matter. At the beginning, I focus on general integration of the content subject and a foreign language and then I describe the preparation of the experiment. The core of this thesis is the project of the CLIL lesson. The project was realized in the experimental groups, the gained data have been processed on the base of observation and analysis of the final individual work and the questionnaire. The results show the potential of the CLIL method as a new possibility for bilingual teaching of content subjects.
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English Loanwords in the Chinese Language
Ambrožová, Romana ; Pavlík, Štěpán (advisor) ; Zádrapa, Lukáš (referee)
The presented paper is devoted to the description of English loanwords in Chinese. It describes the problems connected to their integration into the target language and it also introduces a short history of borrowing in Chinese and the current tendencies in borrowing foreign words into Chinese. This paper also shows the classification of loanwords according to both Western and Chinese linguistics and focuses on language changes in the process of borrowing.
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The expression of interpersonal metadiscourse in English and Czech academic texts
Sudková, Marcela ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
This MA thesis explores the means of expressing interpersonal function in Czech and English academic texts. These expressions are found at various levels (e.g. lexical, grammatical and lexico-grammatical) and our classification takes into account both formal and functional point of view. From the various approaches to meadiscourse we have chosen the integrative approach subsuming both interpersonal and textual features of metadiscouse. However, this thesis focuses mainly on the interpersonal features. In the first part of the thesis, a detailed analysis of four academic texts was performed in order to get a range of expressions for the controlling search. The aim of the controlling search was to verify the findings from the detailed analysis and to find out to what extent the selected expressions were represented in a larger set of data. For this search we gathered twenty academic articles dealing with linguistics, ten per each language. Despite the different language types, Czech and English use similar means to express interpersonal features of metadiscourse. The greatest difference was found in the category of relational markers and self-mentions, other categories displayed relatively similar frequencies. Key words: metadiscourse, interpersonal function, Czech, English, academic register,...
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Southeast Asian Englishes and their perception
Bukraba, Maria ; Matuchová, Klára (advisor) ; Bojarová, Marie (referee)
The aim of this bachelor thesis is to prove that words from Southeast Asian varieties of English which were included in Oxford English Dictionary bear a unique meaning and thus are indispensable. Theoretical part depicts a classification of Englishes by Braj Kachru and later explores historical and socio-political aspects of English in countries where it is spoken by a large part of population such as Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Hong Kong which technically belongs to East Asia, but for the linguistic purposes it is included in the list. The practical part examines lists of words included in Oxford English dictionary from the mentioned varieties of English with the aid of local context such as magazines, blogs, newspapers and other unofficial sources. On the basis of the results of this research, it can be concluded that words from Southeast Asian varieties of English are irreplaceable due to their distinctive meaning.
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Teaching English at Czech Kindergartens
COUFALOVÁ, Martina
In the Czech Republic, the compulsory teaching of English is from the third grade of primary school. Most primary schools start with teaching English in the first grade. Today it is a big trend to acquaint children with English at kindergardents. More and more kindergardents are offering this extra activity not only for the children. The aim of this work is a theoretical introduction to methods that are used for teaching English to preschool children, the performances of several documents that deal with this issue and also the development of pre-school children on the basis of studied literature. The practical part focuses on three kindergardens, where the children are acquainted with English. On the basis of observations and interviews, the way of teaching English is described.
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