A political discourse contains some features that must be constant in them to be recognized and understood by the audience as such but, at the same time, must fulfill the purpose of transmitting the message aimed in that venue with a personal and original style. This is commonly done through layers of direct or subtle content. One of the most important political orators in the twentieth century is undoubtedly President Barack Obama. Even his detractors recognize the high level of his speeches.

The aim of this paper is to do a comprehensive analysis of the speech uttered by the President of the United States at Strasbourg, France in a very delicate political moment to reveal the rhetorical and intertextual means used to fulfill the purpose. The reason for his visit to Europe in 2009 was to explain the needs for the collaboration in the Afghan war in a moment in which Europe was against this participation.

An analysis of stancetaking in discourses enables us to analyze the implicit attitude of the speaker in a message. Although this is interesting in itself when dealing with general texts, it is even more important when dealing with political discourse. As it is well-known, President Barack Obama is known as one of the best orators and many studies corroborate this. The aim of this paper is to analyze three different speeches by Obama over a period of two years, delivered in three different countries, to analyze the differences in the stances used in order to determine his implication in the message. Secondly, I shall apply the Chi-square statistical method (X2) to compare the expected frequency of using stance markers with the stated frequency to reveal the possible incongruences.

Oral expositions in English for foreign students are probably the most difficult activity they can deliver. Lack of practice and fluency, English level and self-awareness in the task make them feel nervous and stacked in many occasions. But, on the other hand, this is a necessary skill in the development of any degree or for future situations they may face in working environments. Added to this, teachers at high schools do as much as they can taking into account the working conditions: high ratio and few hours. The oral practice is time-consuming and students still do not see the importance of the task and feel more embarrassed than at University. The aim of this paper is to do some research on the preparation and delivery of an oral exposition. The exercise finishes with a survey offered to the students of the first year in the degree of Modern Languages at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. We can conclude that only pages on the net were checked in the preparation of the task and hardly the library of the Faculty; in the analysis of the exposition itself, they agree that they could do much better if they had practiced more often. Some proposals are offered in the conclusions.

Current higher education students are frequently engaged to 24/7 interconnectedness, which should contribute towards their careful awareness of other languages and cultures at the time of receiving or communicating information. English remains the international language higher education learners and professional citizens in general need to perform to access the most competent job vacancies. This chapter is based on assessing oral production tasks that pursue to enhance speaking skills, team-work competences, and problem-solving in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses in the Degrees of History and Social Work. The results compare not only the oral outcomes of these two ESP groups but what evaluation procedures and assessment criteria have been considered to promote successful communication in English. Equally, this ESP content would be analysed to observe if teams succeeded in building not only local needs but also a conscious global education that is responsibly engaged with other cultures, as promoted by the global competence.

The aim of this paper is to make a qualitative analysis of the intensifiers used in the Spanish and American opinion columns. The topic chosen has been Weinstein's scandal and the publications during next weeks by different sources. The method followed will be Albelda Marco (2014) in which she divides intensifiers into lexical, semantical and expressions. Euphemisms will also be considered due to the relationship it has in the corpus with intensification. Conclusions try to explain the uneven number of examples in both nations and the reasons.