Writing has traditionally been a neglected area of foreign language teaching, and most probably the least popular skill to acquire among students. However, it has lately emerged as an important element of the communication dyad, which also involves speaking, i.e. the oral manifestation of social interaction and exchange of information. When explaining writing in practical terms, the focus falls on showing that there should be a link between real-life needs and instruction, both from the perspective of the language and from that of the task. Understanding writing systematically not only guarantees successful writing outcomes, but also leads to the acquisition of a secondary set of language-related abilities: an informed selection of grammar and lexical structures; a logical pattern of organization in the development of ideas; an appropriate choice of register and style; an overall better approach to writing tasks and contextualizations. This article aims to discuss writing as a productive skill while proposing six different approaches that successfully marry both the linguistic dimension and the task-related awareness students need to acquire in order to successfully express themselves in written forms.

The new requirements regarding the professionalization of the Romanian armed forces derived from our country’s becoming a NATO and EU member state. The challenges of the 21st century battlefield demand the development not only of certain soldierly skills, but also of the abilities to properly function in a multicultural context. The cadets of the military academies are the future officers that will operate in the international theatres of operations. Being engaged in multinational formations and having to work side by side with foreign military personnel, our cadets need to have a good command of the English language, as well as to acquire and develop the intercultural skills necessary to appropriately function in a multicultural environment. Thus, a shift in the curricula of the Romanian military academies has been made, from an emphasis on the transmission of knowledge content to a focus on relating language to the target culture and developing cadets’ linguistic and intercultural competences. This paper suggests some methods and techniques that have proven efficient when teaching basic military English in the Land Forces Academy.

No abstract

This paper is the result of the Military Gender Studies project. The aim of the project is to analyze the dynamics of gender perspectives in some military institutions in Europe, namely the Military Academy, Lisbon, Portugal, the University of Turin, Italy, “Vasil Levski” National Military University, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria and “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy of Sibiu. The project started with the application of a questionnaire to military students and this paper will present part of the results obtained only in “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy of Sibiu, after analyzing the discrimination dimension.