http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45825 Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:01:16 GMT 2026-04-04T12:01:16Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45830 What every EFL Instructor Needs to Know: Effective Implementation of Needs Analysis Trendak-Suślik, Olga One of the first issues that any foreign language teacher needs to take into consideration prior to commencing on their language course is the implementation of a comprehensive learner needs analysis (NA) also referred to as needs assessment. Garnering information on, among others, students’ learning preferences, their previous learning experience or their goals is pivotal in order to design a course that would cater to students’ different needs and meet their expectations. A one-size-fits-all approach is not in line with the reality of language teaching in the 21st century, hence the need for the introduction of NA during language classes.The aim of the following article is to explore the area of needs analysis – examine its beginnings and further development; define its basic components and also investigate the different data-collection instruments language teachers have at their disposal. The article will also present the results of a pilot study exploring Polish teachers’ perspectives on the introduction of needs analysis in the foreign language classroom. Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45830 2023-02-09T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45828 Gendered Neologisms Beyond Social Media: the Current Use of Mansplaining Szymańska, Maria The word mansplaining, which is a linguistic blend of man and explaining, is one of the examples of a trend in the English language of creating gendered neologisms – blends and compounds that add an aspect of gender to the meaning of already existing words that originally are gender-neutral (or appear to be). So far, the linguistic research on this phenomenon has focused on analysing them in informal context of social media (see Bridges 2017, Lutzky and Lawson 2019) or crowd-sourced dictionaries (see Foubert and Lemmens 2018). Nonetheless, with the growing popularity, some gendered neologisms, including mansplaining, start being used in outside social media, in more formal contexts. This study presents the place of mansplaining in the current linguistic landscape through looking at its definitions presented in traditional dictionaries and how it is used outside of social media – in what grammatical forms and in what contexts. Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45828 2023-02-09T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45829 Investigating Rater Perceptions in the Assessment of Speaking Krakowian, Przemysław In the assessment of spoken production, numerous reasons can be identified behind the decisions that raters make in evaluating samples of oral performance. Inter and intra rater factors are relatively well documented in various reliability and validity studies. Some that have been identified in literature involve the effects of examinee pairing or the familiarity with the examinees, others point in the direction of gender and gender role perceptions O’Sullivan (2008), others appear to be connected with body language and non-verbal cues that accompany oral production (cf.: Krahmer and Swerts 2004, Seiter, Weger, Jensen and Kinzer 2010). While some studies that address the assessment of speaking English in exam contexts suggest that raters may not feel as comfortable assessing pronunciation as they do other aspects of a speaker’s performance (Orr 2002, Hubbard, Gilbert and Pidcock 2006, Brown 2006, De Velle 2008), more recent investigations of rater behaviour involving electronic evidence from training, maintenance and online examination programmes tentatively show that pronunciation, in fact, is the first category examiners attend to (Hubbard 2011, Chambers and Ingham 2011, Krakowian 2011, Seed 2012, Tynan 2015, Kang and Ginther 2019). This paper looks at large collection of assessments stored in an electronic system to investigate what raters really seem to pay attention to when allegedly following rating scales. Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45829 2023-02-09T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45827 Language and Music: Designing a Course at an Academic Level Gralińska-Brawata, Anna The parallels that are present between language and music, together with popular beliefs that musicality may be a factor enhancing language learning, especially with regard to pronunciation, prompted the idea of designing an academic course whose main aim was to demonstrate the relation between the two domains from the linguistic perspective. There were eighteen students participating in the course which was an elective for 1st year MA students of English at the University of Łódź. The course content included presentation of direct links between language and music, and of selected studies indicating the influence of music on developing various aspects of linguistic performance, e.g. second language learning (e.g. Pastuszek-Lipińska, 2008; Kolinsky et al., 2009), early reading abilities (Fonseca-Mora et al., 2018) or pitch processing (Besson et al., 2007). The practical part of the course involved testing the students' musical abilities with the use of various tools: tests available online and a sample of a music school entrance exam (based on Rybińska et al., 2016). The participants completed tasks related to their English speech performance, i.e. recording the passage The North Wind and the Sun and analysing their English speech production with the use of acoustic speech analysis software (Praat) in order to learn about the ways in which they could explore the possible links between their musicality and performance in L2 English. The majority of students claimed that they had not been aware of the degree of interplay between language and music, and had overestimated their musical abilities prior to taking the tests, but they saw the potential of music training not only in language learning, but other spheres of human activity. Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11089/45827 2023-02-09T00:00:00Z