Teaching American Literature; Cultural differences and the Advantages of Close Reading

For the students in higher education, whatever their field of study is, it is necessary to acquire not only the English proficiency enough to survive in the global business world but also the knowledge of diverse cultural and historical backgrounds of various countries in the world. However, as the English language course deals with four skills of communication, with emphasis on speaking proficiency, and recently, IT skill as well, less time is allowed for the content study. This report examines the way to teach students how to be an independent reader of English texts, specifically of literary texts which contains rich dialogues and narratives that help expand their vocabulary and deepen the knowledge about the foreign cultures and histories.

For the learners of English as a foreign language, it is especially important to be exposed to the enormous amount of authentic texts. To attain this goal, well-organized “extensive reading program” would be the necessity for those who want to be an active reader of English language. However, to be a successful speaker/reader requires the highly developed skill of cultural comparisons, considering the aspect of English as a Lingua Franca. This is where the close reading works as the most effective approach in both small and large English classes. Let’s take for example an American Literature class. Through reading short stories by authors of various ethnicities in a group of, for instance, five or six, the students gain knowledge of diverse cultural heritages. Reading closely in group makes it possible for the instructor to assign each student a task to explore one of the elements of fictions, such as characters, setting, point of view, figurative languages, and narrative structure, etc. During the course of discussion, they can prepare for the cross-cultural communications in which they will be involved in the future, because each student has a different way of reading a story, according to his or her English proficiency and the background in which he or she were brought up.

Innovative trends in modern linguistics

Baldyniuk Oksana

On the Notion of the Neologism in American Scholars Research

Scientific and systematic study of neologism began in the 20th century. In 1902, Leon Mead published a book named Word-Coinage, being an Inquiry into Recent Neologisms, also a Brief Study of Literary Style, Slang, and Provincialisms, which said to be the first book studying neologism in the 20th.

Although it was not a neologism dictionary, it contained some articles about new words. What’s more, Mead put forward the idea of making research on new words for the first time in the history. He also provided lots of examples of new words created by some American writers at that time.

In 1920, C.Alphonso Smith, the dean of the English department of American

Navy Institute wrote a book entitled New Words Self-defined, in which 420 new words were illustrated by examples. This had proved to be a big progress in the research on the neologisms.

From 1937 to 1940, the famous American scholar Dwight Bolinger first applied newspapers and magazines to introduce new word. He created a column, The Living Language, in the newspaper, Words. In 1943, the column was brought into American speech and the title was changed into Among the New Words. Then, in the next year, Professor I. Willis Russell took the place of Bolinger and became the chief-editor of the column. He wrote articles entitled Words and Meanings, New, to introduce new words and their new meanings.

War is said to be the major cradle for the born of new words. Majorie Taylor, a librarian in New York, collected numerous neologisms created during the World War II. In 1944, Taylor compiled a word-list, The Language of World War II: Abbreviation,captions, Quotations, Slogans, Titles and Other Terms and Phrases, in which every new word was explained.

After the World War II, science and technology development had greatly influenced the society. Subsequently, a lot of scientific and technical words were flooding into the language field. A lot of neologism dictionaries about words in those fields were published. Two of them are mostly welcomed: An Explaining and

Pronouncing Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Words by W. E. Flood & Michael West and Words of Sciences and the History Blind Them by Isaac Asimov.

From 1970s on, the study of English neologism drew great attention from western scholars, many of them established special column to introduce new words in English, such as William Safire who was well known for his On Language in New York Times weekly and Anne H. Soukhanow who was the chief-editor of Word Watch.

In Safire’s column, he provided a considerably clear explanation of new words by citing typical examples, exploring their origins and performing their current usage. The digital revolution in 1990s is the radical reshaping and restructuring of social patterns. “Because of the wild spread of internet, America is speaking a whole new language”, said Shawn Holley in his The New Word Revolution. Lots of neologisms that have a historical significance by reason of the influence they exerted on the language field are brought into existence. According to the statistics, more than 20 neologism dictionaries have been compiled, among which some put emphasis on the academic field and some are distinctive by their popularity. Oxford English Dictionary, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and Barhart Dictionary of New English are the ones with the highest academic value. New words are numerous. Sometimes it seems as if a new word has about as much chance of developing into a permanent addition to our vocabulary. Only few of them will remain as serious candidates for the dictionary. Books especially about new words are abundant. However, only a few scholars have ventured to propose factors that make for the success of new words. One is Goran Kjellmer, whose article "Potential Words" in the journal Word for August 2000 also reviews previous proposals. The other is the executive secretary of American Dialect Society, Allan Metcalf who proposed the FUDGE scale. The two reached different conclusions.

Along with books and periodicals, there is the Internet. In particular, it makes our extensive searches for examples of how words are actually used today possible. A jump of several decades has showed us more researches on the neologisms. Language reflects our life, and the research on the neologisms has never been stopped. By collecting new words or phrases occurring in languages, the previous researches have provided precious materials for the further exploration in this field. Therefore, a careful look at the research background of neologisms carries an essential academic significance.

Horbenko Yuliya (Vinnitsia)