POSTER PRESENTATIONS

My doctoral research project explores translanguaging (García/Wei 2014) and multilingual practices in classroom from the students' perspective and analyze the relationship between student’s subjective perception on their own languages and their multilingual identities. Despite numerous studies show positive effects and considerable advantages of multilingualism and argue that drawing on students’ home language and cultural backgrounds in classroom teaching validates their identities, the languages of students are hardly taken into account in teaching and learning processes (Gogolin 2009; Garcia/Tupas 2019). Drawing on qualitative research methods including interviews and digital learning diaries, I investigate the individual and self-regulated multilingual learning practices of students with a migration background. The first analysis of the interview data shows that students do not learn exclusively in German when acquiring new subject content or doing their homework but use their entire linguistic repertoire. The results of the study show that using all their languages helps them improve their academic performance outcomes. The purpose of this poster presentation to contribute to the understanding of how students use their multilingual resources and competencies purposefully and consciously in subject-based learning in monolingual learning settings and what multilingual learning strategies they develop in dealing with the subject-specific and academic language requirements in upper secondary subject classes as well to shed light on how they use their linguistic repertoires for educational success.

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Globalization and migration in the modern world have pointed out the need to reconsider the value of mediation in the acquisition of a foreign language. The CEFR Companion Volume (2020), supplemented with new descriptors of mediation and plurilingual/pluricultural competence, stresses the importance of the whole plurilingual repertoire of a language learner. Such leading authorities in multilingualism and mediation as Piccardo and North (2017) emphasize that the use of a learner’s linguistic and cultural background can make language learning more meaningful and effective. In this context, the usage of translanguaging is no longer observed as an obstacle but as a tool for raising motivation and confidence (Duarte, 2020). In order to develop insight into the role of mediation in learning the host country’s language in Great Britain and Lithuania, the study used a survey to explore how mediation activities and strategies can be applied in ESOL and the Lithuanian language for foreigners (A1 and A2) courses. Furthermore, the research explored the enhancement of mediated language teaching leading to new opportunities to: 1) develop students’ non-linguistic competences and soften linguistic/cultural barriers in a host country; 2) find out how language learners can collaborate with each other and serve as language mediators for their peers; 3) improve learners’ competence of translanguaging. For these reasons, a survey, involving a group of 23 ESOL students and 60 students of the Lithuanian language for foreigners, was conducted. To analyse language learning experiences using mediation and students’ native language (or other languages) when learning the target language, a quantitative research methodology was applied. Short semi-structured interviews with students and teachers were conducted after mediated language lessons. The research results showed that a variety of students’ non-linguistic competences had been developed and learners’ native languages had been successfully used in order to learn the target language and preserve migrants’ national identity in another country.

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English as the Foreign Language (EFL) learning challenges in the context of the present pandemic situation will be discussed in the presentation. Research problem – students lack relevant knowledge about their emotional power so that that they could make decisions to improve their language learning success. Distant language learning requires to create the environment to meet students' expectations and facilitates to cope with arising learning problems. Therefore, it is significant that students develop their emotional power so that they could overcome their learning obstacles. Moreover, it is crucial to foster students’ understanding about themselves, their emotional capacity that could motivate them to make adequate decisions about their meaningful engagement in distant language learning processes. The aim of the research is to find out and discuss students' distant learning difficulties and to find out how emotional power can drive students’ actions and contribute to their distant language learning. For this reason, it is essential that students concentrate on how to develop their emotional intelligence for their successful learning experiences. Research methods are scientific literature analysis, quantitative (questionnaire) study and descriptive analysis. The findings of the study demonstrate that students face distant learning difficulties as well as various social psychological problems such as anxiety and uncertainty about the target language use. Moreover, the results show that students lack knowledge about the importance of emotional power which is a driving force for making adequate decisions and solving language learning challenges.

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This is a comparative study which examines the linguistic explicitness occuring in the Lithuanian translations of the National Geographic English headlines. The analysed corpus encompasses the headlines from five popular science magazines in English and Lithuanian. 255 headlines are examined. The theoretical part of the research discusses the terms of explicitness and explicitation, As it is commonly assumed in the field of translatology, explicitness is a universal component which occurs in translation and interpretation as a necessary tool of language mediation. The term explicitness is generally applied to describe the phenomena in translation when the information underlying the message (implicit information) is verbalized in a language. Some theorists classify it as a translation and interpretation strategy (Chesterman, 1997). Mona Baker lists explicitness as a potential universal (Baker, 1996), the concept which is confronted by other linguists (Baumgarten et al, 2008). In this study, explicitness in the target text is regarded as a result of explicitation. The term explicitation is understood as the process which leads to a higher extent of explicitness in the translated text (Baumgarten et al, 2008). The present research analyses the cases of the use of explicitation as a strategy. The magazine headlines are examined according to the parameters of addition, alteration and subtraction of information. The given criteria of the analysis of explicitation were identified by Nida (Nida, 1964). The study is a qualitative comparative analysis of the selected items. The findings illustrate extensive explicitness in the target text characterized by mostly addition and transformation of the source text items.

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Šio pranešimo tikslas – pristatyti vykdomą Lietuvos mokslo tarybos finansuojamą projektą „Arbitraliosios lietuvių kalbos kolokacijos: atpažinimas, aprašymas, vartojimas (ARKA)“ (Nr. S-LIP-20-18; http://arka.mwe.lt/), kuriame analizuojamos lietuvių kalbos arbitraliosios kolokacijos (toliau AK). Priešingai nei motyvuotosios kolokacijos (žr. Marcinkevičienė 2010), kurių junglumas paaiškinamas semantiniais apribojimais (pvz., graži diena, naujas tyrimas), AK yra nemotyvuotos: pagal panašią reikšmę teoriškai galima rinktis daugiau negu vieną žodį, bet linkstama vartoti būtent kurį nors vieną, pavyzdžiui, platus akiratis, bet ne didelis akiratis, stipri sveikata, bet ne galinga sveikata. Pirmajame projekto etape atliktas ankstesniame projekte (žr. http://mwe.lt/) sukauptų būdvardis+daiktavardis kolokacijų tyrimas. Palyginus visas su tam tikru būdvardžiu sudarytas kolokacijas, nustatyta, kad dalies AK būdvardžiai pavartoti netiesiogine reikšme: atsižvelgiant į daiktavardį, įvertinta, kuriose kolokacijose būdvardis vartojamas perkeltine reikšme. Iš maždaug 8000 būdvardis+daiktavardis kolokacijų pagal netiesioginės reikšmės kriterijų atpažinta apie 800 AK, pvz.: nepatogi vieta, skaidrūs rinkimai. Tarp būdvardis+daiktavardis kolokacijų yra tokių, kuriose nėra perkeltinės reikšmės žodžių, bet kurios, tikėtina, laikytinos AK, pavyzdžiui, egzistencinis klausimas, principinis sprendimas, priimtina kaina. Todėl antroje tyrimo dalyje testuojami papildomi AK atpažinimo kriterijai, vienas jų – kolokacijų dėmenų pakeičiamumas (Nesselhauf 2003). Jeigu kolokacijos būdvardiškasis dėmuo nėra pakeičiamas kitu artimos reikšmės sinonimu, yra pagrindo tokią kolokaciją laikyti AK. Artimiems sinonimams nustatyti naudojamas GloVe žodžių vektorių (angl. embeddings) modelis (Pennington et al. 2014). Daroma prielaida, kad kolokaciją galima laikyti AK, jeigu ji užfiksuota tik su vienu būdvardžiu iš galimų artimų sinonimų eilės. Jeigu pakeičiamumo testavimui trūksta duomenų arba jie nėra tinkami, tikrinamas trečiasis kriterijus – vertinama, kokia yra trauka tarp būdvardžio ir daiktavardžio. Šis rodiklis (collocational factor, Handl 2008), apskaičiuojamas naudojant abiejų kolokacijos žodžių pavartojimo dažnį tekstyne ir kolokacijos dažnumą.

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Nudge theory, which evolved in behavioural economics in 2008, is based on the assumption that people’s decisions can be directed towards choices that are beneficial to them without preventing access to all available options. A classic example of nudging is donor forms in Australia, where a deliberate decision to become a donor is replaced by a default opt out option not to become one, thus leading to higher rates of organ donations (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). Although criticized and called manipulative (Hausman and Welch, 2010), nudge theory has been widely applied in the fields of healthcare, energy, finances and policy making (Hummel and Maedche, 2019). Nudging in education is also employed, especially to facilitate student engagement in higher education or to improve study outcomes (Bird et.al., 2021, Damgaard and Nielsen, 2018). The case study presented herein describes the effectiveness of two nudges exploited in the virtual learning environment. Both nudges were administered in the form of informative messages in Moodle by default dispatched to the students’ email accounts. The first nudge aimed at reminding the students about the essential course requirements and offering a bonus for indicated action taken. The second nudge encouraged to complete missed assignments and thus achieve course objectives. Whereas both nudges were short, simple and motivating, only the first one showed a significant increase in student activity (29% compared to 3% activity boost after the second nudge). The results partially prove that nudging could be an effective tool in education if properly timed and framed.

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Academy awards, also known as Oscars are one of the most important awards for everyone in the film industry. Actors, directors, producers, composers, writers and many more people working in this field are waiting for these awards every year. Getting an Oscar could be seen as the top achievement in a life of an actor or actress. The aim of this study is to analyse the academy award acceptance speeches of women and men getting an award for the leading role from 1939 until 2019. The multimodal analysis has three objectives: to analyse the gestural mode, including body language and facial expressions of the winners in the categories “the best actor in a leading role” and “the best actress in a leading role”; to identify the main examples of aural mode in these speeches and to discuss the main trends in a visual mode. Quantitative analysis has been chosen as a method for the research. Two hypotheses have been raised as well: 1. Women accepting an award of the best actress in a leading role use more gestures and various types of body language in comparison to men winning an Oscar in a category of the best actor in a leading role. 2. Men accepting an academy award of the best actor in a leading role use more types of an aural mode, such as changing the tone, the emphasis of some words and accent in comparison to the best actresses in a leading role.

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Stephen King is widely known as an author of horror fiction, although he has also produced a trilogy of crime fiction novels. Because of the scarcity of stylistic research regarding King’s detective novels, the aim of this study has been to perform a comparative stylistic analysis of the original English and the Lithuanian translation of Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes (2014) / Ponas Mersedesas (2017). Lancsbox (Brezina, Timperley and McEnery 2018) software tools have been used in order to discover and compare the specific keywords and collocation types in both versions of the novel and to investigate how the discovered similarities and differences affect the style of the novel. Methodological approaches of translational stylistics and corpus linguistics have been used to analyse the data. The first 100 keywords were taken into consideration and grouped into four categories: verbs, adjectives, adverbs and proper nouns. The study revealed that the translation did not change the style completely. However, some changes of stylistic features were detected. These include more emphasis on some types of verbs which were less stylistically valuable in the original, neutralisation of some swearwords to make the style less vulgar, the usage of more time and place adverbs which are more typical in crime fiction, the verbalisation of the nominal sentences of the original and the usage of verbs instead of adjectives in some cases when representing characters. These changes were made because of the rules of the target language and because of the decisions made by the translator.

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Language skills are a key element in the process of creation of a European Education Area in general, and in eliminating the existing discrepancies between the different EU countries in quality education across various subjects and programmes. The drastic changes in higher education have highlighted the need for critical analysis of the huge amount of freely accessible language learning sources in terms of their applicability and effectiveness for specific purposes and for specific learners. QuILL (Quality in Language Learning) is the Erasmus+ Programme project (project number: 2020-1-PT01-KA226-HE-094809) that aims at providing language lecturers with the skills to identify, assess, use, create digital and ICT based language teaching sources, especially in the area of languages for specific purposes. The project team will develop three Intellectual products: a database of on-line language learning resources for teaching of 18 European Languages, an online training package for the identification, use and creation of ICT-based language teaching resources for teaching languages at Higher Education level, and guidelines on the methodologies for an effective planning and implementation of digital and ICT based solution for language teaching in the Higher Education sector (see more at https://quill.pixel-online.org/).

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Various methods, criteria, types of evaluators and error taxonomies are used to assess the quality and acceptability of machine translated text. It is important to understand well which method or a combination of methods works best in a particular setting as “[a]ny TQA method aims to minimise risk, whether this is a risk to communication, to reputation, or a risk of injury or death” (Castilho et al., 2018). Many factors are at stake, for example, the purpose of translated text, the conditions and requirements set for the text usability, etc. Diversity of approaches to the measurement of machine translation (MT) quality exists and different criteria, including human acceptability, have been discussed (Castilho et al., 2018). The research questions addressed in this study focus on translation quality assessment by humans, the methodological issues overall and complementary research methods used to check the validity and reliability of the findings in studies measuring MT by eye tracking as a method of human amateur or potential user assessment. The conclusions are drawn on an overview of articles searched in the database of Translation Studies Bibliography in the last decade. Addressing the issue of the most relevant methodologies may provide useful and significant insights into the study of public awareness of machine translation and societal impacts thereof. The study is conducted within a research project on societal impacts of machine translation financed by the Research Council of Lithuania.

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The university practice of today counts numerous exchange programmes bringing students from different countries into one classroom. It is an interesting and beneficial experience in higher language teaching levels. However, the situation is cardinally different in level A1. Two international groups of true beginners from Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and China participated in the research. How to organize a lecture? Which language should be the language of instruction? How to achieve the best results? What problems do lecturers and students face? The biggest negative factor is that the process is very time consuming. The lecturer has to give instruction in three languages- English, Lithuanian, Russian. That results in the significant loss of lecture’s time, distraction of students’ attention, lowering capacity of teaching/ learning content, lecturers’ dissatisfaction with the fulfilment of their work in the classroom, students’ frustration with the results achieved. A short questionnaire was compiled to find out the students’ opinion, as the best results can be only achieved combining the attitude of both participating sides- that of the lecturer and the students. The conclusion drawn is that the classes are to be conducted on the basis of the English language, grammar areas are to be presented with the help of visualities in three languages, content of the course is to be revised.

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This poster presents the results of a pilot study of selected discourse markers in spoken Lithuanian. The aim of this ongoing research is to collect new data of spoken Lithuanian to analyze the use of discourse markers and compare the findings with previous research. Discourse markers are particularly characteristic of spontaneous speech and serve a textual function, which relates to the structuring of discourse and building coherence as well as an interpersonal function as they indicate and help build a relationship between the participants in a conversation. The data is being collected from podcasts, a relatively new source for the analysis of spoken Lithuanian discourse. The current data set contains a transcript of a recording of one Lithuanian podcast (13,686 words). The methods of corpus linguistics and software Antconc were used to analyse discourse markers nu (well), čia (here), tada (then), ta prasme (I mean, that is) and va/vat (here, so), among others. The poster will discuss their general frequencies as well as their propositional and pragmatic meaning occurrences. It has been observed that four items chosen for the analysis, namely, nu (well), tai (so), žinai (you know) and ten (there) are among the ten most frequent words in the data set.

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Intensive global processes promote lexical changes in languages, rapid spread of new technologies causes the shift in IT terminology. The abundance of computing lexis arises due to the factor that this field is broad and constantly growing. Information technology loanwords are referred to as one of the newest layers of the lexis. Furthermore, it continuously broadens since words of foreign origin regularly enter the Lithuanian language. A big part of terminology consists of trans-determinised terms (terms borrowed from other areas of science), or well-known words become terminised. Even though the English language is considered to be the main source of IT term coinage, other languages also make a big impact to the entire lexis of computer science terminology. Since the ratio of Lithuanian and international terms has almost been balanced up, the tendencies of use of international words still remain a relevant and debatable issue. The present research focuses on the layer of borrowed IT lexis, the extent to which these terms are Lithuanianised. The study deals with one-word noun international terms and loan-translations, analyses and evaluates the methods of their composition, and correspondence of terms in both languages. The study sample is taken from online dictionaries, i.e., Encyclopedic Dictionary of Computing, Dictionary of International Terms, and Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language.

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Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) implements and participates in a great scope of initiatives designed to promote Lithuanian language, culture and teaching. This poster presentation showcases various initiatives organised and / or contributed to by VMU throughout the years to make Lithuania visible in the world and the world here in Lithuania. From long-running conventional academic study programmes, courses and training projects designed for students and teachers, to the inclusive and welcoming initiatives for immigrants, re-emigrants, World Lithuanians and those who want to make it their new home. From physical experience to digital platforms. The success of VMU in the promotion of Lithuanian Studies lies in different approaches designed for this purpose, their synergies and interdisciplinary projects. It encompasses both the ideological approach of World Lithuanian University oriented at promoting Lithuanian language and implementing joint initiatives with the Lithuanian diaspora and various courses, projects and events that present Lithuanian to foreigners and is closely related to VMU’s international reputation and recognition in various rankings as one of the most international universities of Lithuania. While most of the projects, courses, studies and initiatives are made possible by the cooperation of various institutions, national and international stakeholders, it is also very important to note that they build a large and close-knit community of people who first and foremost experience this sense of Lithuanianness, in a very personal way, become its ambassadors and join us in creating new ways for continue this line of work.

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