Papers by Jolita Horbacauskiene
Teacher Activities in Adaptation of Innovative Study Methods at University
Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Innovation in Higher Education, 2020
The emergence of various types of educational innovations affect and change not only students lea... more The emergence of various types of educational innovations affect and change not only students learning methods but also teachers' competences and activities. Innovative study methods (ISM) are characterised by novelty to their implementers. Adoption of innovations as well as innovative study methods are faster and better when they are close from cultural-, social-, and value-based perspectives (i.e., when they are adapted). The teacher should have the appropriate competences to adapt, modify educational innovations, as well as study methods according to the students while at the same time not departing from the study program aims and study subject (module) results. The chapter aims to find answers to the research questions: What are the peculiarities of teachers' activities in adapting innovative study methods? How does the adaptation of an innovative study method affect other elements of the pedagogical system course? What are the possible variations in the process of innov...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The aim of this research was to recognize the relationship between well-being and civic engagemen... more The aim of this research was to recognize the relationship between well-being and civic engagement under the difficult circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst students from Poland, Lithuania and Croatia. Overall, 1362 academic students (Poland, n = 596, Croatia, n = 386, and Lithuania, n = 379) participated in the study. Mean rank differences in civic engagement level (overall CE) were analysed by levels of psychological well-being (overall PWB and its subscales) using the Kruskal–Wallis test (one-way ANOVA on ranks). We conducted post hoc analysis with Bonferroni tests to measure the significance of differences in CE between the detailed levels of PWB. To avoid biases due to interaction effects between dependent variables, the analysis of mean ranks was followed by a binomial logistic regression analysis model and subgroups analysis (by gender and by country). Results obtained showed that students with higher levels of psychological well-being have higher levels of civic eng...
Proceedings - Natural Language Processing in a Deep Learning World, 2019
In this paper, we present our work on developing a vocabulary trainer that uses exercises generat... more In this paper, we present our work on developing a vocabulary trainer that uses exercises generated from language resources such as ConceptNet and crowdsources the responses of the learners to enrich the language resource. We performed an empirical evaluation of our approach with 60 non-native speakers over two days, which shows that new entries to expand Concept-Net can efficiently be gathered through vocabulary exercises on word relations. We also report on the feedback gathered from the users and an expert from language teaching, and discuss the potential of the vocabulary trainer application from the user and language learner perspective. The feedback suggests that v-trel has educational potential, while in its current state some shortcomings could be identified.
Sustainability, 2021
Artificial intelligence-grounded machine translation has fundamentally changed public awareness a... more Artificial intelligence-grounded machine translation has fundamentally changed public awareness and attitudes towards multilingual communication. In some language pairs, the accuracy, quality and efficiency of machine-translated texts of certain types can be quite high. Hence, the end-user acceptability and reliance on machine-translated content could be justified. However, machine translation in small and/or low-resource languages might yield significantly lower quality, which in turn may lead to potentially negative consequences and risks if machine translation is used in high-risk contexts without awareness of the drawbacks, critical assessment and modifications to the raw output. The current study, which is part of a more extensive project focusing on the societal impact of machine translation, is aimed at revealing the attitudes towards usability and quality as perceived from the end-user perspective. The research questions addressed revolve around the machine translation types...
In this work, we report on a crowdsourcing experiment conducted using the V-TREL vocabulary train... more In this work, we report on a crowdsourcing experiment conducted using the V-TREL vocabulary trainer which is accessed via a Telegram chatbot interface to gather knowledge on word relations suitable for expanding ConceptNet. V-TREL is built on top of a generic architecture implementing the implicit crowdsourding paradigm in order to offer vocabulary training exercises generated from the commonsense knowledge-base ConceptNet and – in the background – to collect and evaluate the learners’ answers to extend ConceptNet with new words. In the experiment about 90 university students learning English at C1 level, based on Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), trained their vocabulary with V-TREL over a period of 16 calendar days. The experiment allowed to gather more than 12,000 answers from learners on different question types. In this paper we present in detail the experimental setup and the outcome of the experiment, which indicates the potential of our approach fo...
We present an architecture for crowdsourcing language resources from language learners and a prot... more We present an architecture for crowdsourcing language resources from language learners and a prototype implementation of it as a vocabulary trainer. The vocabulary trainer relies on lexical resources from the ConceptNet semantic network to generate exercises while using the learners’ answers to improve the resources used for the exercise generation. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Information systems → Web services; Information systems → Ontologies
Sustainable Education Methods
Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2019
Developing English Language Competence for Global Engineers
2020 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2020
English language skills are essential to professional communication in international engineering ... more English language skills are essential to professional communication in international engineering environments. Given the concomitant degree of specialization, university-level coursework in English for Specific Purposes is an essential component of engineering student preparation. This large-scale survey of university students of engineering in three European countries provides important insight into the most relevant language skills, with the goal of informing communicative, task-based curricula for Technical English courses.
Shifting Towards English Medium Instruction in Higher Education
Examining Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Theories and Practices, 2020
In higher education (HE), the emerging global phenomenon of English medium instruction (EMI) has ... more In higher education (HE), the emerging global phenomenon of English medium instruction (EMI) has brought huge opportunities for both students and teaching staff as universities are increasing the number of English-medium programmes. A number of studies have been conducted to explore EMI policies and practices, implications for pedagogy, as well as challenges for educators and students, including learners' academic skills, learning styles, level of content knowledge, academic practices, and varying ethical standards. Some issues under analysis are considered to be the main problematic questions faced in multilingual and multicultural classrooms. As noted by Dearden, the change in the learning and teaching language may deeply affect not only students but teachers as well. The current study seeks to answer the research questions of how university teachers conceptualize EMI and what possibilities and challenges this practice offers.
Journal of Language and Cultural Education, 2017
Currently various industries using translation services stress the necessity of analytical, criti... more Currently various industries using translation services stress the necessity of analytical, critical and practical knowledge of 2 foreign languages, substantial skills of translation technologies, as well as transferable skills for professional translator performance. A changing translator profile causes a shift in translation study programmes towards the development of transferable skills along with translation-related skills. Therefore, the paper focuses on employers’ expectations in relation to the abilities and skills of professionally trained translators. The outcomes of this study reflect the overall situation in the country, still undergoing significant changes in the translation-related industry from the perspective of employers who agree that together with translation-related skills graduates of translation programmes should possess a range of transferable skills, which empower them to act professionally in a changing environment.
Journal of Language and Cultural Education, 2020
There are no doubts that the interconnections between translation competence and revision compete... more There are no doubts that the interconnections between translation competence and revision competence are constantly increasing and contribute to better coherence of the translated product. Other-revision may be developed and made use of as a competence on its own. Self-revision is always part of translation competence. The study is based on students’ attitudes towards self-revision and other-revision. Before starting the revision training in practical translation courses, a survey was conducted to determine students’ attitudes towards the process of revision, the benefits of self- and other-revision training and the forms of such training thereof. The study also followed a research design where a semi-structured interview protocol was employed to find out the students’ attitudes to self-revision and other revision competences including possible modifications to be made in the translated text and skills required. The findings reveal students’ opinions and experiences acquired in tran...
Comedy for dinner – and other dishes, 2019
Humour may be used for gaining, protecting or sharing power. It may also be employed as a means
t... more Humour may be used for gaining, protecting or sharing power. It may also be employed as a means
to attack, undermine or criticise adversaries or ideas. In political discourse especially, humour may
be considered as an ambiguous and clear-cut concept. The study seeks to explore the instances of
usage and goals of humour in political discourse in a country with no long and deep democratic
political traditions. Theories of humour and superiority serve as a basis for theoretical framework as
well as ground the interpretation of empirical data, which is collected through content analysis. The results of the study may be beneficial for politicians, their public relations representatives and
general public
Figures of speech in the translation of audiovisual advertisements
The role of language and symbols in promotional strategies and marketing schemes / [edited by] M. Epure, L. C. Mihăeş. Hershey : IGI Global, 2019
Sustainable education methods
Encyclopedia of sustainability in higher education / editor Walter Leal Filho. Cham : Springer, 2019
Soft skills and sustainable development
Encyclopedia of sustainability in higher education / editor Walter Leal Filho. Cham : Springer,, 2019
ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics) , 2015
For several decades, there has been a heated debate about the value of providing corrective feedb... more For several decades, there has been a heated debate about the value of providing corrective feedback in writing assignments in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. Despite the fact that corrective feedback in writing has been analysed from various angles, learners' expectations regarding feedback given by language instructors are still to be considered, especially in different learning settings. Student attitudes have been found to be associated with motivation, proficiency, learner anxiety, autonomous learning, etc. (Elwood & Bode, 2014). Thus, the aim of this paper was to compare EFL learners' attitudes towards corrective feedback and self-evaluation of writing skills in different learning settings. Students at two technological universities in France and Lithuania were surveyed and asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire combining the Likert scale and rank order questions. The results indicate that frequency of writing assignments seems to have little or no impact on students' self-evaluation of writing skills. Moreover, although the two groups of students showed preference for feedback on different error types (e.g., feedback on structure vs. feedback on grammar), nevertheless, indirect corrective feedback with a clue was favoured by all the respondents.
Journal of Language and Cultural Education, 2017
Currently various industries using translation services stress the necessity of analytical, criti... more Currently various industries using translation services stress the necessity of analytical, critical and practical knowledge of 2 foreign languages, substantial skills of translation technologies, as well as transferable skills for professional translator performance. A changing translator profile causes a shift in translation study programmes towards the development of transferable skills along with translation-related skills. Therefore, the paper focuses on employers' expectations in relation to the abilities and skills of professionally trained translators. The outcomes of this study reflect the overall situation in the country, still undergoing significant changes in the translation-related industry from the perspective of employers who agree that together with translation-related skills graduates of translation programmes should possess a range of transferable skills, which empower them to act professionally in a changing environment.
Translationes/ , 2017
The translation of elements of formulaic language is extremely difficult in subtitles or voice-ov... more The translation of elements of formulaic language is extremely difficult in subtitles or voice-over due to time and space constraints. Besides, it is very difficult to provide a comprehensive definition of formulaic language as its sequences exist in so many forms. Traditionally, 6 basic formulas are distinguished: polywords, phrasal constraints, meta-messages, sentence builders, situational utterances, and verbatim texts. The analysis of subtitles and a voice-over version of a film shows that differences in the procedures applied for the translation of formulaic language are insignificant, and the strategies used are distributed almost evenly between preservation of content, transformation and localisation. Keywords: audiovisual translation, subtitles, voice-over, elements of formulaic language. Zusammenfassung: Die Übersetzung von Elementen der formelhaften Sprache ist extrem schwierig, in Untertitel oder Voice-over aufgrund Zeit-und Platzgründen. Es ist sehr schwierig eine umfassende Definition der Mustersprache bereitzustellen, wie seine Sequenzen in so vielen Formen vorliegen.Traditionell sind sechs Grundformeln hochgestellt: Polywords, Phrasenbegrenzungen, Meta-Nachrichten, Satzbilder, Äußerungen der Situation und wörtliche Texte. Die Analyse der Untertitel und Voice-over-Version eines Films zeigt, dass die Unterschiede in dem Verfahren für die Übersetzung von formelhaften Sprache unbedeutend sind und die Strategien verwendet werden, fast gleichmäßig zwischen der Erhaltung der Inhalte, Transformation und Lokalisierung. Schlüsselwörter: audio-visuelle Übersetzung, Untertitel, Voice-over, Elemente der formelhaften Sprache.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences Volume 231, 2016
Culture specific items (CSI) have received the attention of many researchers who claim that CSI t... more Culture specific items (CSI) have received the attention of many researchers who claim that CSI translation is always problematic due to cultural interrelation. Rendering culture specific items in an audiovisual format is currently one of the most topical issues in translation research. The paper employs the taxonomy designed by Pedersen (2011) for culture specific item translation from English into Lithuanian analyzed in the subtitles of the Australian TV reality show My Kitchen Rules. The results indicate that not all culture specific items are appropriately rendered into the target language, which is a significant factor in the evaluation of translation quality. 6 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of MTIP2016.
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Papers by Jolita Horbacauskiene
to attack, undermine or criticise adversaries or ideas. In political discourse especially, humour may
be considered as an ambiguous and clear-cut concept. The study seeks to explore the instances of
usage and goals of humour in political discourse in a country with no long and deep democratic
political traditions. Theories of humour and superiority serve as a basis for theoretical framework as
well as ground the interpretation of empirical data, which is collected through content analysis. The results of the study may be beneficial for politicians, their public relations representatives and
general public