Germanic and Romance languages, Faculty of Philology

e influence of the Internet can be felt in all aspects of our lives – people live online, read online, getinformed and even get married online. Online communication has become our main source of exchanging ideas, getting information and even broadening our personal vocabulary. The language of the Internet has started being used on a daily basis, notwithstanding the age, status and occupation of the people involved in this kind of communication. In fact, the ones that appear to be most influenced by the Internet language are the younger generation. Not surprisingly, their imagination can becompared to a deep well abounding in new words and phrases that they automatically adopt in their everyday conversations using various Internet platforms. Even before youngsters can speak English, they start using certain phrases so as to sound cool and attractive, thus receiving more attention. And since the language on the Internet is a language of active communication, the hereby presented paper...

Nominative symbolism in fantasy is a tool to attribute certain traits to literary characters and thus to convey meaning which enriches the readers’ comprehension of the fictitious personality. Proper names in the English naming tradition are not generally seen as means of alluding to the character of a person, yet they have sometimes been chosen purposefully by writers so as to reveal the idea that a symbolic name tries to convey. The paper therefore aims at investigating the origin and author’s intended meaning behind the names of some recurrent literary characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series from the viewpoint of their structure and the allusions they evoke in the reader’s imagination. The analysis includes five names presenting three different structures: neologisms based on syntactic composition, imitations of borrowed structures that are foreign to the English model of naming, and typical English naming models where name symbolism is due to the lexical choice of the c...

The aim of the article is to analyze the symbolic meaning of the name of Havelock Vetinari, one of the most recurrent literary characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The focus of the discussion are the literary and historical associations embedded in his name and his titles, which help the informed reader comprehend the complexity of the character’s behavior in the narratives. The intertextual appropriations and echoes at the heart of the name derive from the author’s multilayered encyclopedic knowledge that underlies the coining of the character’s name. Havelock Vetinari is a noteworthy example of how the invented name of a literary character can become a powerful tool for meaning making in literature. The study is carried out within the theoretical framework of the hermeneutic approach according to which a whole is understood as the synthesis of the numerous parts it consists of and the multifaceted interrelations among them. The analysis of Vetinari’s name is thus cond...

РЕЗЮМЕ: Статията разглежда текстове на ученици от трети и четвърти клас, написани по време на упражнения по творческо писане в часовете по английски език. Въпреки предизвикателствата, които ранната възраст представя пред творческото писане и допълнителните проблеми, свързани с изразяването на чужд език, ученическите текстове свидетелстват, че девет-и десетгодишните са способни на персонална и социална креативност и на дивергентното мислене; че при създаване на подходящи условия по време на учебния процес те могат да разбират абстрактни концепции; да преодолеят детската си егоцентричност и да показват емпатия и съпричастност; и не на последно място, че са способни на поетичен изказ. Всичко това прави създадените текстове значими както от педагогическа, така и от лингвистична гледна точка.

A widely recognised goal of tertiary education is to provide conditions for developing students into ‘reflective practitioners’ who can critically evaluate their own professional knowledge and skills. Although research has accumulated evidence for the benefits of self-assessment for increasing student engagement, promoting self-reflection and improving learning outcomes in the English language classroom, student reactions to the implementation of self-assessment techniques in the academic disciplines of language teachers’ preparation programmes have not been sufficiently explored. This article first discusses the characteristics of fifty-seven student teachers’ self-assessment of their involvement in the learning process, and of their learning outcomes. Then, it reports on the findings of a small-scale survey that aims to examine perceptions of their academic performance, and on the use of self-assessment as a tool to boost their involvement. Despite respondents’ insufficient experi...

A widely recognised goal of tertiary education is to provide conditions for developing students into ‘reflective practitioners’ who can critically evaluate their own professional knowledge and skills. Although research has accumulated evidence for the benefits of self-assessment for increasing student engagement, promoting self-reflection and improving learning outcomes in the English language classroom, student reactions to the implementation of self-assessment techniques in the academic disciplines of language teachers’ preparation programmes have not been sufficiently explored. This article first discusses the characteristics of fifty-seven student teachers’ self-assessment of their involvement in the learning process, and of their learning outcomes. Then, it reports on the findings of a small-scale survey that aims to examine perceptions of their academic performance, and on the use of self-assessment as a tool to boost their involvement. Despite respondents’ insufficient experi...

The article presents the findings of a small-scale study of the English language anxiety of students of International Relations at South-West University “Neofit Rilski”, Blagoevgrad. Data were collected via the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). The survey results suggest that speaking and test taking are the aspects of English language learning that provoke most anxiety in the surveyed group. Additionally, there are indications that respondents fear their peers’ negative evaluation. Changes in the teaching practice are suggested that might reduce the level of students’ English language classroom anxiety.

This article addresses a perceived need for a more comprehensive model of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, that is, teachers’ beliefs about their personal abilities to perform specific tasks related to teaching and learning within specific teaching contexts. It starts with an analysis of current representations, and how they encourage further explorations in the field. Next, it draws on Dewey’s theory of inquiry, insights from research on self-efficacy beliefs and doubts, and teacher cognition to propose a new conceptual model of the dynamics of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs in relation to the development of teacher knowledge. The article concludes with implications for research and teacher education.

This article reports on the findings of a study investigating the motivation of Bulgarian undergraduates of International Relations to learn English as a second language (L2). First, we consider language learning motivation in the context of three influential theoretical developments in research on motivation. Then, we report on a small-scale survey aiming to define the motivational profile of students of International Relations through the lens of the L2 Motivational Self System. The analysis of the survey data reveals similarities with findings of previous research as regards the favourable attitude towards English language learning, the prominent role of the ideal L2 self in the motivational pattern, and some doubt over the relation between the ought-to L2 self and the intended learning effort. The study results also indicate relations between travel orientation and the ought-to L2 self, and between the two types of instrumental motivation which have not been reported in previous...

The aim of this article is to present and analyse the motivational factors that drive expatriates in Brussels to learn English as a second language. Brussels is a very cosmopolitan city, where 179 different nationalities live and use English as a lingua franca to communicate among each other. There is not much research on expatriates in the literature on second language learning motivation, and all the available publications focus on the motivation to learn the language of the host country rather than global English. The present study takes a quantitative research approach in the context of Dornyei’s second language self-motivation theory. It employs Taguchi, Magid and Papi’s (2009) questionnaire to understand what motivational factors are most related to the effort expatriates intend to invest in studying English. The surveyed group consists of 40 expatriates learning English in Brussels. The main outcome of the statistical analysis is that the attitudes towards learning English an...