Search results for " Writing"

Evidential al parecer: Between the physical and the cognitive meaning in Spanish scientific prose of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries

2015

Abstract Some of the evidential particles and adverbs in Spanish are believed to have developed during the 18th and 19th centuries. This also coincides with the consolidation of scientific writing in Spanish, a genre that holds a special relation with the expression of sources of information. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to study the evolution of the Spanish evidential discourse particle al parecer (‘seemingly, apparently’) in scientific texts of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Our analysis shows that in the period under review the occurrences of the evidential particle al parecer were dominant, but they were not the only uses of this construction. It coexisted…

Speed in cognitive tasks as an indicator of second/foreign language reading and writing skills

2013

In a cross-sectional study 823 Finnish school children were tested to examine the relation between speed of performance in cognitive and linguistic tasks and second/foreign language reading and writing. Participants were Finnish-speakers with English as foreign language and Russian-speakers with Finnish as second language which made it possible to compare the results across these two language groups. The Finnish group was furthermore divided into three groups by age to see how speed develops with age and education. Groups were tested with a number of cognitive instruments that included measures of speed of performance. Overall, performance on the speed measures improved with age; often, the…

Two ways to reformulate: a contrastive analysis of reformulation markers

2003

The aim of this paper is to present a contrastive analysis of reformulation markers in English, Spanish and Catalan. The study is based on a corpus of expository prose (mainly academic writing). The analysis shows coincidences in the sources of the markers and differences in the variety of forms expressing reformulation as well as in their frequency of use. Assuming that grammaticalization processes such as those leading to the creation of connectives have their roots in discourse, parallel differences are expected to be found in text construction. The present paper argues that the differences identified in the grammar of English vs. those of Spanish and Catalan can be associated with two d…

Some Notes on Andrapolis, the Royal City: Apocryphal Acts of Thomas 3

2021

The following paper aims to explore the meaning and significance of the so-called royal city  Andrapolis  (Ἀνδράπολις) within the context of the  Apocryphal Acts of Thomas’ s narrative (chapter 3). The identification of this Indian toponym have attracted the attention of many scholars during the last century and nowadays again, as witness of the few reliable historical traces supposedly transmitted by the apocryphal. For doing so, after a short introduction, we deal with the allegedly historicity of the text; then, we focus on the issue related mainly to the different variants of the location depending on the Syriac and Greek versions of the  Acts of Thomas,  and propose a new interpretatio…

A third space: discursive realizations of immigrant identity

2015

The relationship between additional language use and identity has long been of interest to scholars studying immigration and multilingualism. While oral language is frequently examined as a site for the negotiation of identity, written texts can also be studied for information about how language learners position themselves within their receiving culture. This study looks at the relationship between pronoun choice and identity in additional language academic writing by first generation immigrants in Norway, arguing that language learners signal solidarity with certain subject positions through their use of pronouns. Examining English-language texts discussing themes related to language pres…

Assessing learners’ writing skills in a SLA study: Validating the rating process across tasks, scales and languages

2014

There is still relatively little research on how well the CEFR and similar holistic scales work when they are used to rate L2 texts. Using both multifaceted Rasch analyses and qualitative data from rater comments and interviews, the ratings obtained by using a CEFR-based writing scale and the Finnish National Core Curriculum scale for L2 writing were examined to validate the rating process used in the study of the linguistic basis of the CEFR in L2 Finnish and English. More specifically, we explored the quality of the ratings and the rating scales across different tasks and across the two languages. As the task is an integral part of the data-gathering procedure, the relationship of task p…

Les listes dans le discours visuel du Moyen Âge italien. Le cas de Rome aux XIe et XIIe siècles

2019

Viajando a la mercantil o apresado de ingleses piratas: dos formas de dar la vuelta al mundo a finales del siglo XVII y dos maneras de contarlo

2013

[EN] The paper analyses the accounts of two trips around the world conducted in the last two decades of the Seventeenth-century and published the one in Naples, 1699-1700, the other in mexico, a decade earlier. the first case was led by giovanni francesco gemelli Careri, a traveller vilified as fake by whom gave the final impetus to the genre of travel literature from french and British Enlightement. the second case was led by Alonso Ramirez, a traveller who was considered for three centuries just a fictional character. though two texts set in a peripheral place and time, from the point of view of European geopolitics of the moment and of the literary genre of travel writing as well, our ai…

Narratives of professional development in a teachers’ creative writing group

2021

This paper explores teachers’ experiences of professional development in a creative writing group. The data was collected in a teachers’ creative writing group and consist of semi-structured interviews and creative writing assignments. Reflexive thematic analysis and narrative analysis were applied to compose a nonfiction piece that describes the teachers’ experiences of a ‘year of creative writing’. Within the nonfiction piece, four themes were presented as findings of the study: social aspects, personal and emotional aspects, writer identity aspects, and pedagogical aspects. The results suggest that utilising creative writing methods in qualitative research can raise otherwise hidden voic…

Haunted Spaces in Twenty-First Century British Nature Writing

2020

Over the past three decades, the concept of ‘enchantment’ has increasingly been used in literary and cultural studies to investigate how a sense of wonder enables us to transcend the everyday, forg...