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The role of the mother tongue in EFL classes
Ménová, Martina ; Gráf, Tomáš (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
This thesis focuses on the use of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching and learning. Recently there has been a notable shift towards promoting the use of the mother tongue. The theoretical part of the thesis maps the attitudes to the mother tongue in current literature as well as the suggested ways of its use in the classroom. The practical part attempts to analyse the students' attitudes towards the incorporation of Czech into English learning and teaching and their experience with its use from their secondary schools. To obtain the data, an online questionnaire was employed. The respondents are first- and second-year students of English and American studies who are expected to be able to analyse both the advantages and disadvantages of using Czech. The practical part focuses on the efficiency of Czech in comparison with English, ways of presenting grammar and vocabulary, the relation between the mother tongue use and the proficiency of students, and learning strategies of the respondents. Based on the analysis, suggestions regarding the mother tongue use are presented in the conclusion.
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Using Children's Literature in Teaching English at Elementary Schools
Vraštilová, Olga ; Mánek, Bohuslav (advisor) ; Mothejzíková, Jarmila (referee) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
of the thesis The dissertation thesis deals with the problem of using children's literature in teaching foreign languages at elementary schools. It frames the topic by Czech curricular documents and constituents of the teaching-learning process, provides a historical survey and lists the genres of the children's literature. It characterizes the skill of reading in foreign language teaching and deals with the position of the literary text and lesson planning with children's literature within the foreign language teaching process. Attention is also paid to children's literature as the constituent of the pre-service teacher training. The aim of the thesis is to find out whether children's literature is used in foreign language teaching at elementary schools, whether contemporary textbooks use it, how it is perceived by in-service and pre-service teachers and last but not least what children's literature in the teaching-learning process of foreign languages has to offer. Research tools used for the purposes of the thesis were questionnaires, observations, specially prepared teaching materials based on literary texts and analysis of a textbook. The research proved that children's literature is used both by contemporary textbooks and by teachers in the foreign language education process. Since there is...
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Strong adjectival forms in Early Middle English: a syntactic and FSP perspective
Kupková, Tereza ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The Master's thesis proceeds from a corpus-based analysis and focuses on strong forms of Early Middle English adjectives. A formal distinction between weak and strong adjectival forms had disappeared during the period of Middle English, the work, therefore, aims at the transitional period between Old and Middle English, when the strong forms could still be identified, either due to the relics of inflectional endings, syntactic position, or context. A representative sample of the most frequent adjectives was chosen from the corpus comprising the extant Middle English texts with help of specific searching code. Consequently, the strong forms were manually chosen from these according to their formal characteristics and position in the sentence. This sample was then analyzed from the syntactic point of view, as well as from the point of view of functional sentence perspective. The results of the analysis show that the indication of indefiniteness was mostly expressed by the mix of syntactic and contextual means in EME. It has also been found out that the adjectives, being used both attributively and predicatively, were by rule part of the rheme.
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Procedural generation of human skin structure
Čermák, Jan ; Křivánek, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Beneš, Jan (referee)
Title: Procedural generation of human skin structure Author: Jan Čermák Department: Department of Software and Computer Science Education Supervisor: doc. Ing. Jaroslav Křivánek, Ph.D. Abstract: Human skin is a very complex and diverse organ that differs not on- ly among different people and races, but also in the scope of one specific human body. In this thesis we tested several procedural approaches to generate textu- re suitable for surfaces of 3D models of various parts of human skin. Besides cellular structures using Voronoi diagrams or Delaunay triangulation, we also in- vestigate generation of the structure of human fingerprints based on the SFinGe method, used for creating synthetic fingerprints for fingerprint recognition algo- rithms in criminology. We conclude that human skin is so diverse that multiple different approaches are needed and each of them is suitable only for some regions. Keywords: computer graphics, procedural modeling, human skin 1
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Microporous materials in organic chemistry (The influence of microporous catalyzers on the synthesis of N-alkylbenzamides)
Čermák, Jan
ČERMÁK, Jan. Microporous materials in organic chemistry (The influence of microporous catalyzers on the synthesis of N-alkylbenzamides). Hradec Králové: Pedagogical Faculty, University of Hradec Králové, 2009, 58 pp. Diploma thesis. The following diploma thesis deals the theme of synthesis of N- alkylbenzamides from benzoic acid and primary aliphatic amines. Amines react with benzoic acid, it leads to formation of quaternary ammonium salt, which dehydrates by heating up with formation of amide. Synthesis was made under the solvent free conditions in the microwave field. Above all there was tested the influence of microporous catalysts on the reaction of benzoic acid with hexylamine. Use of acid catalysts SiO2/H3PO4 and montmorillonite KSF had the positive influence on the studied reaction.
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The current position of drill in ELT
Hájková, Jana ; Gráf, Tomáš (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
in English Aim of the thesis: The aim of this diploma thesis is to define the term drill and depict its current use within the English lesson and also assess its role within the language school, where drill is used as a primary teaching technique. Drill is a technique which went through its greatest development when the Audiolingual method became widespread but gradually, throughout the time of the Communicative approach, it began to lose popularity. Despite this, the drill has not been completely forgotten. Not only can we see drill exercises in modern textbooks, but we also encounter drill in the classroom. Drill has been defined in the theoretical section, where its forms have also been described. In addition, the use of drill in various different methods has been further elaborated on and the reasons that led to its downfall. Theoretical part: The aim here is to answer a number of questions: Why do teachers use drill? What are the drawbacks? What do learners prefer as an alternative? Why do some learners deliberately sign up for classes in language schools where drill is mainly used and what results and experience the language school has with drill? Practical part: The author describes her own research, which is based on a questionnaire survey done in a language school where drill is used as...
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Old English causative verbs, their formal build-up and subsequent development
Filipová, Helena ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
The present work provides a comprehensive overview of causativity - its definition, classification and characteristics - in a typological perspective. It outlines the development of causativity in English, from Indo-European to Present Day English with main emphasis on the Old English period and the factors that had led to the state of causative verbs at that time. In Research Part, it inquires into the possible competition between morphological and syntactic causatives and its future after- effects with respect to the described typology. Key words: causation, causativity, causative verb, causative opposition, morphological causative verb, syntactic causative expression, labile causative opposition, Old English
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The king as a writer: The image of Anglo-Saxon rulers in the perspective of contemporary artists and society
Kantorová, Aneta ; Panušková, Lenka (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The present thesis focuses on the importance of the written word as a ruling device of the Anglo- Saxon kings. Due to the availability of historical evidence, the studied period begins in 597 with the arrival of Christian missionaries from Rome and ends prior to the Norman Conquest in 1066. The kings' approach to the written word is analyzed on the basis of surviving literary and iconographic evidence, i.e. on documents composed for or by the rulers, and on the visual images of the rulers as portrayed in surviving manuscripts. The first chapter provides a historical background necessary for the correct interpretation of the examined texts and portraits. This section is aimed at the main concepts discussed in the thesis: medieval authorship, medieval kingship, and the spread of Christianity within the Anglo- Saxon kingdoms. The second chapter offers the analysis of written documents and focuses on the texts composed within the scope of King Alfred's educational and religious reform. The close reading of the OE translations demonstrates the king's use of the texts as didactic tools mainly serving to promote religion and learning within the kingdom. The key texts are Gregory's Pastoral Care, Augustine's Soliloquies, and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy; an additional context of the king's life and...
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Non-standard forms of the pronoun "you" in English
Valentínyová, Kristína ; Brůhová, Gabriela (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The present thesis focuses on the non-standard forms of the pronoun "you" which have emerged in the varieties of English in the last centuries. In the Early Modern English period thou-forms (expressing singular) dropped out of the pronominal paradigm, as you-forms assumed the singular reference in addition to the plural one. As a result, horizontal homophony on the level of second person became a possible source of ambiguity. In the following decades, non-standard 2nd person plural (2PP) forms started emerging to fill the lexical gap in the pronominal paradigm in the respective varieties of English. These innovative 2PP forms can be classified into following categories. While some of them are formed synthetically by addition of a plural suffix -s to you, the others are constructed periphrastically by certain quantifiers, numerals or noun phrases standing in apposition to you. The analytical part is a corpus-based study of 100 examples extracted from the following corpora. The examples of you guys and y'all were obtained from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). While the examples of youse were extracted from the International Corpus of English-Ireland corpus (ICE-IC), the sample of you lot was obtained from the British National Corpus (BNC). For each of the 2PP forms, a random sample...
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An analysis of the history of French borrowings' pronunciation from Middle to Modern English on the basis of corpus data
Rosová, Daniela ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The diploma thesis An analysis of the history of French borrowings' pronunciation from Middle to Modern English on the basis of corpus data attempts to account for the influence of Old French borrowings and their pronunciation on the Middle English phonological system with respect to Modern English. The theoretical part of the thesis explains extralinguistic and intralinguistic aspects of language contact and the related lexical and phonological borrowing, which is followed by an overview of the history of the English and French phonological systems and complemented by the corresponding scribal practices. The research is carried out on a list of French loans extracted from and further studied in Oxford English Dictionary. Selected samples are looked up in a Middle English corpus and their probable pronunciation is inferred on the basis of their orthography. The analysis is concerned with five French phonemes absent in the medieval English.
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