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The collocational competence of EFL students in relation to their cognitive and affective predispositions.
Kacafírková, Petra ; Kucharská, Anna (advisor) ; Betáková, Lucie (referee) ; Šulová, Lenka (referee)
The dissertation deals with the collocational competence of English language students and its relation to the naturalness of language production. In addition to the theoretical foundations of the research, the main focus is first given to the definition of collocational competence, followed by the presentation of the research project itself - a teaching intervention with students from Charles University (n = 39) over the course of one semester. Students were divided into an experimental group with explicit collocation instruction and a control group where teaching was conducted in a traditional way. The primary aim was to explore whether instruction inspired by lexically-oriented approaches contributes to the successful development of collocational competence. At the same time, we monitored individual differences, such as foreign language aptitude, anxiety, motivation, and learning strategies, and their impact on the learning process. The results suggest that explicit instruction of language in general is beneficial for students with higher levels of anxiety and weaker foreign language aptitude. Systematic lexically-oriented instruction proved to be effective in enhancing collocational competence and also contributed to naturalness of written production regardless of individual differences. The...
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Developing Reading Skills Based on Reading the Bridge Articles
Paclíková, Gabriela ; Dvořák, Bohuslav (advisor) ; Hofmannová, Marie (referee)
This thesis deals with the development of reading comprehension in English language which is considered essential in the study and professional life. Its aim is to design practical activities based on reading articles from the Bridge magazine, to develop reading skills in learners on level B1 of CEFR. Theoretical parts of discussion reflect the need of the teacher to perceive different texts and the importance of the press for developing reading abilities in his/her everyday life to be able to develop pupils' abilities. It gives information about reading comprehension of pupils in their mother tongue, including international context. In developing reading skills in English as a second language, skills are specified and difficulties named. The method for my practical part is the lexical approach that was developed by Michael Lewis and Jane & Dave Willis, based on teaching chunks. In order to develop reading competence, work with dictionary material is developed that should be understood as an integral part for developing autonomic skills, continued by reading with prosody and finally making operations with meaningful chunks. Activities such as reading aloud and making operations with meanings proved effective. Making notes turned ineffective. KEYWORDS reading in english, competence, magazine...
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