News

The English Department is glad to invite you to

to an exciting public lecture

by

Mgr. Martina Vránová, M.A., Ph.D.

assistant professor, Brno University of Technology

The Challanges of Teaching English for Special Purposes
May 22, 2023, 12.30 pm, P007

University methodology studies should equip you with knowledge and skills for teaching general language. But what if you are offered a job of teaching business English, English for medical professions or even for engineers? How will you deal with your lack of subject knowledge? How will you acquire technical vocabulary? Will you rely on a textbook or carry out your own needs analysis? These and many other challenges underlying English for Specific Purposes will be addressed in this lecture.

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Mgr. Martina Vránová, Ph.D. was a recipient of the Hlavinka Fellowship from the Czech Educational Foundation of Texas A&M University, where she earned her M.A. in English. In 2010, she received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Masaryk University. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at the Institute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology. She has been teaching ESP at various levels and areas for almost fifteen years. Her other research interests include academic writing, rhetoric, and contemporary fiction. She ha edited the volume New to the LSP Classroom? A Selection of Monographs on Successful Practices (2023) and co-edited the conference proceedings Languages for Specific Purposes in Higher Education (2017) as well as a volume of literary and cultural studies papers, Crime and Detection in Contemporary Culture (2018), as well as published two novels in Czech: Psohlavec (2018) and Hacafracká historie (2020).

The English Department is glad to invite you to

to an interesting public lecture

by

Iryna Dumchak, CSc.

researcher and external lecturer, Technical University of Liberec
visiting researcher, Charles University
associate professor, Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University

Farewell to Motherland: Narrative Identity in Ukrainian-American Studies
May 16, 2023, 12.30 pm, P004

Narrative identity is the story a human constructs to tell about themselves in order to understand who they are for themselves and for others. A cultural context is that one which influences the development of narrative identity rooted in "its origins in conversations between parents and their young children to the articulation of sophisticated meaning-making strategies in the personal stories told in adolescence and the emerging adulthood years."

Ukrainian/Canadian/Jewish narrative identity which could be traced in Askold Melnyczuk's, Irene Zabytko's, Claire Messud's, Jonathan Safran Foer's stories is represented by searching themselves not only within the context of their ancestors' homeland but also within the conditions of the new reality they, ancestors, happened to live and survive and their children were born and try understanding their "double" identity.

Farewell to motherland as a border situation is observed in the characters' attempts to leave their past behind or/and live with memories to the end of the life with/without their right for the future.

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Iryna Dumchak, CSc. was named assistant professor of English Philology by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education in 2012, and holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University and a master's degree in English Philology from Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. Dr. Dumchak has been an external visiting researcher at Charles University since 2022, and is a researcher and external lecturer at the Technical University of Liberec in the 2022/2023 academic year.

The English Department is proud to invite you to

two exciting public lectures

by

doc. PhDr. Jana Chamonikolasová, Ph.D.

associate professor, Masaryk University

and

Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek, Ph.D.

assistant professor, Masaryk University

False Friends Beyond the Language Class – What Is There to Study? (dr. Rambousek)
April 28, 2023, 8.50 am, P102

The lecture deals with selected aspects of language interference, especially the so-called false friends (faux amis, false cognates). There are around two thousand false cognates between English and Czech. While often mentioned in intermediate-level English lessons, they are neglected at higher levels of ESL and in translator training. Based on errors collected from authentic texts, the lecture looks into the existing types of false friends and compares the ESL approach to what is needed in translation studies. How can false friends be studied, registered, and their treacherous influence avoided? Throughout the lecture, a few tricky examples will be presented and discussed.

Jan Firbas and His Approach to Functional Sentence Perspective (doc. Chamonikolasová)
April 28, 2023, 10.40 am, P102

The lecture will present the basic principles of the theory of Functional Sentence Perspective founded by Jan Firbas and its position among other theories of Information Structure. Attention will be paid to factors affecting the flow of information in discourse and the distribution of Communicative Dynamism within sentences and clauses. The lecture will include an example of the application of the FSP theory in translation.

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Doc. PhDr. Jana Chamonikolasová, Ph.D. is a teacher at the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. She specializes in teaching Functional Syntax and the History of the English Language. The focus of her research is the Information Structure of Discourse. She is a follower of Jan Firbas, the founder of the Brno school of Functional Sentence Perspective.

Mgr. Ing. Jiří Rambousek, Ph.D., teaches translation theory and practice courses at the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. His research interests include the history of Czech translations of children’s literature, especially Lewis Carroll, and problems of language interference and language contact in translation practice.

In the week of April 17 to April 21, 2023 Dr Laura Castor of The Arctic University of Norway is visiting our department. Students have the chance to meet her in Culture 2 seminars and in some other classes.  Dr Castor teaches classes in American literature, indigenous studies, and life writing. She is the author of Facing Trauma in Contemporary American Literary Discourse: Stories of Survival and Possibility (2019). If you would like to meet Dr Castor for a consultation about a topic that is of interest to you, please contact Anna Světlíková and she will help you arrange a meeting.