The purposes of the study were to develop self-instructional materials for teaching selected business terms to college students, to determine the effect of using these materials as compared to the effect of using a lecture notebook teaching technique for instruction in business vocabulary and to no instruction in business vocabulary, and to compare the effect of using the lecture-notebook teaching technique to no instruction in business vocabulary. Four conclusions were drawn from the statistical findings from this experiment. (1) Specific instruction in business vocabulary by either of the two teaching approaches used in this experiment is more effective in increasing the business vocabulary of college business communications students than no instruction. (2) When total groups including all levels of business vocabulary knowledge are considered, the self-instructional materials are more effective than the lecture-notebook technique. (3) For students with a high initial knowledge of business vocabulary, one of these techniques is not more effective than the other. (4) The self-instructional materials used in this study are particularly effective for teaching business vocabulary to students who have a low initial knowledge of business vocabulary.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

In this study, we introduce several approaches to analyze large volumes of business descriptions by applying machine learning clustering and classification algorithms. The goal is to efficiently classify these descriptions, reducing the search scope and allowing for better business insights and decision-making processes. By using unlabeled business description data, we apply Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC), K-means, and Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithms. Various preprocessing techniques, parameters and cluster numbers are employed for each method, aiming to maximize the number of overlapping and get the right similarity scores within the resulting clusters. The best number of overlapping are obtained using AHC, followed by K-means and DBSCAN, based on the implemented evaluation metrics. The conclusions drawn from this project have the potential to improve and contribute to the development of automated systems for business description analysis. Furthermore, this research opens the way for further exploration and enhancements in the application of machine learning techniques to business analytics.

Submitted by William Justo Figueiro (williamjf) on 2015-07-21T22:59:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 66c.pdf: 5089880 bytes, checksum: 46a67f49defdee13632d6f766c727ece (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-21T22:59:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 66c.pdf: 5089880 bytes, checksum: 46a67f49defdee13632d6f766c727ece (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Nenhuma / O propósito desta pesquisa é identificar como se institui a terminologia empresarial, bem como, reconhecer as principais características formais dos itens lexicais especializados usados nesse contexto profissional. Para tanto, realizamos um estudo de caso em duas empresas (Refap e Nokia), considerando dois focos de análise: (i) a constituição formal dos itens lexicais especializados; (ii) o tratamento dado às terminologias em documentos das empresas. O corpus da pesquisa é constituído de documentos internos da Refap e das terminologias de produtos tecnológicos da Nokia. Os termos selecionados foram armazenados em uma base de dados da Microsoft Access. A investigação orienta-se, sobretudo, pela linha teórica de estudos da Teoria Comunicativa da Terminologia. Os resultados obtidos nesta investigação mostram dois tipos de constituição de termos: por um lado, uma terminologia lexical constituída de termos compostos predominantemente de base nominal, que cobre processos de produção que, em geral, envolvem conhecimento científico; por outro lado, encontram-se termos constituídos por combinatórias alfanuméricas. O primeiro tipo corresponde a um termo de feição denominativa e o segundo, referente à identificação de produtos tecnológicos, compreende uma feição designativa. Esses dois tipos são entendidos como uma tendência e justifica-se porque o estudo analisou dois casos específicos de uso de terminologias, os quais devem traduzir o comportamento de termos em empresas. Do ponto de vista do comportamento das unidades terminológicas, constatamos que a Refap possui seus termos repertoriados em glossários, mas de forma que não são evidentes os critérios da elaboração do material, o que se reflete na ausência de um padrão organizacional geral e de definição dos termos repertoriados. Por sua vez, os produtos da Nokia são apresentados no site da empresa a partir de um texto que privilegia as funcionalidades dos produtos, e não o conceito técnico, sobretudo porque o propósito da empresa é vender, assim o texto precisa ser convidativo para o consumidor. Concluímos, a partir da pesquisa realizada, que trabalhar com terminologia empresarial pressupõe saber reconhecer os tipos de termos criados e utilizados pela(s) empresa(s). Por isso, consideramos importante a presença de um profissional com conhecimentos linguísticos para lidar com as unidades lexicais especializadas presentes nesse contexto comunicativo. Além disso, estudos desta natureza são importantes para o desenvolvimento teórico e aplicado da Terminologia que, em geral, volta-se para a descrição dos termos de áreas científicas tradicionais. / The purpose of this research is to identify as establishing the business terms, as well as recognize the main characteristics of the lexical items used in specialized professional context. Therefore, we performed a case study of two companies (Nokia and Refap), whereas two foci of analysis: (i) the formal establishment of specialized lexical items, (ii) the treatment of terminologies in company documents. The corpus consists of internal documents Refap and terminology of technology products from Nokia. The terms selected were stored in a database in Microsoft Access. The research is guided mainly by the theoretical line of studies of the Communicative Theory of Terminology. The present results show a tendency to formation of two types of terms: first, a lexical terminology consists of terms composed predominantly of nominal base covering production processes generally involve scientific knowledge, and for second one, terms consisting of alphanumeric combinations. The first type corresponds to a term of denominational garb, and the second for the identification of technological products, includes a designative feature. The idea of the trend is justified because the study looked at two specific cases of use of terminology, which should translate behavior in terms of business. From the standpoint of the conduct of terminological units, we found that Refap has its terms listed in glossaries, but there aren’t established criteria in the preparation of the material, thus there isn’t an organizational pattern or definer in the works. In turn, the products of Nokia are presented on the company website from a text which makes an approach to product features, not the technical concept, especially since the company's purpose is to sell, so the text needs to be attractive to the consumer. We conclude from the survey, which involves working with business terminology coping with the terms created and used by the companies , therefore,it is important to consider the presence of a professional and language skills to deal with the lexical units present in this specialized communicative context. Furthermore, studies in this area are important and representative to the theoretical development and applied of the terminology field.

Over a thousand English metaphorical business terms collected from Longman Business English Dictionary, Dictionary of Economics, Macmillan Dictionary of Modern Economics and The Encyclopedical Lithuanian-English Dictionary of Banking and Commerce are analyzed in the Master’s thesis. Since often the same English terms can have multiple equivalents in Lithuanian language, it is essential to choose and consistently use the same terminology when translating. However, the analysis of authentic contemporary translations of such terms collected from Translation Memory of the European Commission's Directorate General for Translation and Donelaitis Parallel Corpus demonstrates that this rule is often ignored and various translation strategies are employed. Furthermore, multitude of proposed translations of such terms in the dictionaries shows that Lithuanian business terminology is still under development, but tendency not to preserve metaphoricity can be observed. / Magistro darbe nagrinėjama daugiau kaip tūkstantis metaforinių anglų kalbos verslo terminų, surinktų iš Longman Business English Dictionary, Ekonomikos terminų žodyno, Aiškinamojo ekonomikos anglų-lietuvių kalbų žodyno bei Lietuvių-anglų kalbų aiškinamojo bankinių ir komercinių terminų žodyno. Kadangi neretai tie patys angliški terminai lietuvių kalboje gali turėti kelis atitikmenis, verčiant ypač svarbu pasirinkti ir nuosekliai vartoti vienodą terminiją. Tačiau šiuolaikinių tokių terminų vertimų, surinktų iš Europos Komisijos generalinio vertimo direktorato vertimų atminčių bei Donelaičio lygiagrečiojo tekstyno, analizė rodo, kad ši taisyklė dažnai ignoruojama ir taikomos įvairios vertimo strategijos. Be to, žodynuose siūloma tokių terminų vertimų gausa rodo, kad lietuviškoji verslo terminija dar nėra nusistovėjusi, bet pastebima tendencija atsisakyti metaforiškumo.