The ambitious objectives of European language policy and the strive for competitiveness have led to an increasing emphasis on foreign language competence at the level of national education systems. Using Spolsky’s onion model of language policy (2004) and Engeström’s Expansive Learning theory (1987, 2008), the study attempts to determine the formative influence of the existing multilayered language policy on the professional development of Latvian educators with the aim to compare the situation for teachers and teacher educators in respect of their English language proficiency.Given the prioritisation of English and strategic differences in foreign language management in relation to teachers and faculty, the activity systems analysis points to significantly higher demands and concomitant pressure in respect of English language competence of academic staff, and the lack of incentives to increase their proficiency for teachers. Remedying the existing situation through policy making, both systemic and individual perspectives should be taken into account, as their interplay affects the agency of educators in achieving the goals.

Paradoxerweise befreit die Mehrsprachigkeit, wie der Text zeigt, den jungen Hugo nicht, sondern drängt ihn zusätzlich an den Rand; die Liminalität des Protagonisten und die Komplexität der Erzählung macht das Werk zu einem der besten Beispiele der irischen Lebenserinnerungen.

The fast transition to fully online studies due to the pandemic made the universities around the world question many of their accepted notions on teaching foreign languages in general and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) methodology in particular. Putting stress on the synchronous remote teaching and learning has proven to yield a reductionist perspective missing asynchronicity, the dimension which makes reconsider the whole educational process. With its shift from the sole focus on learning terminology to training skills in authentic professional contexts, the task-based approach has long excelled in meeting the diverse needs of students. Thus, the research question is how well task-based teaching (TBT) solves the problems raised with asynchronous learning in a university ESP course. The research of available literature on TBT yielded the framework for constructing an extended task applicable in the advanced medical English. The case study with 120 first-year students of medicine organised around an informational interview with health professionals demonstrated easy adaptability of the task to the asynchronous nature of the educational process. Personal observations by the course instructor, summaries of student-conducted interviews, and student written feedback proved the responsiveness of the method to the learners’ needs and the potential of the approach in terms of motivation. The emphasis on self-directed learning, however, threatens the systematicity of the acquired language skills, as a more controlled teaching environment would not allow “skipping” any learning step. Additionally, TBT does not solve the problem of the voluminous teaching load.

No abstract

Fludernik’s (1996: 13) view of narrativity in terms of experientiality makes the centre of narrative consciousness a more essential characteristic of narrative than the presence of a plot. Significantly, this consciousness – or point of view – is generated through deixis, thus, deixis is central to both the embodiment of perception and narrative comprehension. Grounded in the deictic shift theory (presented in Duchan, Bruder and Hewitt (1995); and articulated most clearly in Stockwell (2002)), the research aims at finding marked patterns of deictic shifts pertaining to the openings of childhood memoir. The literary context of the given study is limited to the Irish subgenre, and the two memoirs for analysis are Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996), and Hugo Hamilton’s The Speckled People (2003). The application of the chosen methods to the opening segments reveals some regularities in the use of deictics, namely, a high frequency of first-person pronouns, such as chained I, my, and we as a textual indicator of intermentality, as well as pop-shifts from I to we and the obligatory shift to you. Other observed patterns include the voiding of the narrator and temporal shifts from the past to the present.