Developing students’ discourse competence: evaluation of a course. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the concept of discourse competence. The major part of the paper will be occupied by a summary of the findings of a qualitative study into the perceptions of discourse competence and ways it was developed with students of applied linguistics at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (UMCS).

The aim of this paper is to show the social representation of plurilingualism among students of French. The theoretical part of the paper presents definitions of plurilingualism used in sociolinguistics and foreign language didactics. The experimental part presents a survey conducted among the students, as well as a comparison of the results with the outcomes of a similar survey conducted in 2003, in order to indicate possible differences or changes in the didactic paradigm. The purpose of the study was to analyse the concept of plurilingualism, and to find to what extent students regard themselves as plurilingual.

This article attempts to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of foreign language teaching in Polish schools by giving learners’ views on the process of the teaching of languages. The opinions presented come from a questionnaire carried out among pupils who learn various languages. The results of the survey are intended to show the learning situation as seen by students themselves. Their description and assessment of school learning enable us, to judge whether being taught a language in school satisfies their needs and expectations, and also to assess whether and to what extent this learning is consistent with European language policy.

The fact that a successful language instructor has to be a reflective practitioner is undeniable. However, observations made during teacher training courses reveal trainees’ reluctance to self-evaluate their conduct and poorly-developed reflective thinking skills. In an attempt to aid the future teachers’ progress in this area, a series of written tasks was introduced during a course. These included: self-evaluation of one’s strengths and weaknesses, pre and post-microteaching reflections. The analysis of these narratives provides an insight into the trainees’ self-evaluation processes and demonstrates a gradual progress in their abilities from descriptive to productive reflective thinking. Thus the results seem to confirm the positive influence of the intervention.

Although a dominating paradigm in foreign language teaching in the past decades has been to use foreign language as often as possible, voices are now being raised that there is a place for students’ mother tongue in a language classroom. As the present article shows, both the critics and the supporters of the monolingual principle put forward commonsensical arguments in support of their stands. These arguments are outlined in the first part of the present article together with a brief look at the history of foreign-language-only approaches in language teaching methodology. What follows is a report on a study conducted by the author among 20 teachers in Poland with the aim of finding out the extent of and reasons for using mother tongue. The study demonstrated that on average teacher talking time in 60% comprises foreign language. Students’ first language is primarily used for teaching grammar and translating vocabulary.

Compared to colleagues teaching foreign languages for general purposes, who can use ready-made syllabuses or programs, the LSP teacher has to reflect on methodology at the level of course planning. The scope and nature of the proposed course content is tailored to the specific needs of a student. The analysis of these needs is based on interviews and questionnaires. There are many examples of such tools, but none of them are universal or exhaustive, nor can they be. The purpose of this article is to propose a set of parameters to facilitate investigation of the educational context, which could be a starting point for the development of questionnaires tailored to specific education needs.

In this article I will concentrate on various techniques for learning and teaching vocabulary that support the memorizing of new words, and I will present the results of a survey conducted among students of applied linguistics on this topic. The main aim of this article is to verify the hypothesis that students haven’t yet been exposed to different techniques for effective vocabulary learning. First, I will show what the mental lexicon is and how it is organised. How mnemonists learn will also be discussed. Then I will briefly explain the terms ‘vocabulary’ and ‘lexical competence’ and show the important principles of vocabulary training. At the end, I will present the most important results of my survey (opinion poll).

In this article the relation between the discourse production dynamic and the linguistic competence development is discussed. This problem is considered with regard to two types of language activities based on reformulation tasks: 1) written reconstruction of a story heard, 2) written production of the end of the story. The analysis of experimental data shows that in the second case the approach to the discourse is more complete which positively influences application of complex morphosyntactic structures in students production.

Pour comprendre les fonctions communicatives des formes que sont le futur simple et futur compose, il nous semble indispensable d'accorder une place plus importante a l’instance d’interlocuteur, en situant donc l’analyse sur un plan intersubjectif, ou interlocutif. Il faut pour cela admettre l’idee qu’un acte de parole ne vise pas simplement a decrire un etat de choses (approche objectiviste) ou a exprimer un point de vue (approche subjectiviste), mais a attirer l’attention d’autrui sur quelque chose ou a partager un point de vue (approche intersubjective ou interlocutive). Apres une breve presentation des approches objectiviste et subjectiviste, nous exposons notre vision de l’approche interlocutive, en nous appuyant sur les apports d’autres auteurs. Nous illustrerons ensuite notre hypothese sur la difference fonctionnelle entre les deux formes du futur, selon laquelle en choisissant la forme du futur compose le locuteur tend a attirer l’attention de l’interlocuteur sur le predicat a un plus haut degre qu’avec l’emploi du futur simple, comme cela est egalement le cas, selon nous, pour le passe compose en opposition a l’imparfait et pour certains temps de l’indicatif en opposition au subjonctif.

The present analysis aims at systematizing sparse remarks revolving around teaching of languages for special purposes (LSP). Detailed data were collected by observation within Polish academic circles. More precisely, they are based on past working experience gained among stu-dents boasting a high level of language proficiency. Apart from general tendencies, more streamlined requirements have been formulated on a par with their particular consequences.