The thesis discusses the issues of communication of young people with mental disabilities. The theoretical part of the diploma work defines mental retardation. It shows the life of a mentally-disabled young person and explains the educational and employment opportunities of such young people. The theoretical part further focuses on the speech of persons with intellectual disabilities. It provides information about the development of speech and about impaired communication abilities. The work outlines the possibilities of speech therapy, its diagnostics and intervention. A diagnostic test oriented on the communication of young people with mental disability in selected situations of daily life was created within the practical part of the thesis. The speech of pupils was analysed on the basis of a test used in a selected two- year practical primary school, and on the basis of available documents and interview with the class teacher. A proposal of communication development was created for every pupil, which can be used in the preparation of the pupil's individual education plan. The contribution of the thesis is in the created proposal of measures for the development of communication of pupils at two-year practical schools, which is consistent with the school curricular documents. KEYWORDS...

This thesis deals with the possibilities of using television series `Friends' in teaching English on B2 level to further linguistic and communicative competences of the students. The purpose of this thesis was to find out, whether a systematic use of the series, as a motivation to the students, for sparking a discussion or conversation among them or as means of immersion in the language and acquisition of the language, would be possible in a high school English teaching environment for a prolonged period of time. The thesis also debates the advantages and disadvantages of using series, compared to the advantages and disadvantages of using different multimedia. The thesis contains a list of activities that have been used during the testing of the series and several ideas on their modification.

Title of the thesis: Developing pronunciation through musical activities in French lessons Keywords: communicative approach, phonetics, phonology, pronunciation, prosody, activity, music, rhythm, rhythmisation, melody, tempo, intonation, accent, song, rap, facial expressions Abstract: This thesis deals with the teaching of French phonetics, considers the status of phonetics in communicatively oriented teaching, and comes to the fact that the teaching of phonetics and phonology is not a priority in the communicative approach. The work demonstrates the importance of such teaching, and therefore explores how the teaching of pronunciation or some of its components could be made more attractive. Based on the proven relationship of music and language, both as auditory phenomena, this thesis approaches the interwoven elements of these two areas. The aim is to explore how the musical elements, such as: rhythm, melody, tempo, phrasing, etc., could be used in the teaching of French pronunciation - especially at the suprasegmental level. The work offers a basic inventory of exercises which benefit from this characteristic and which has been verified in practice, and in the final analysis summarises their effectiveness in foreign language teaching.

ABSTRACT This thesis will examine the feedback a teacher provides to a pupil during a regular daily interaction in English language teaching. This interaction has traditionally a three-phase structure called IRE (initiation, response and evaluation) or IRF, where F is a general follow-up, originally feedback. Traditionally, the third phase had evaluation function, but as it turns out, during the natural interaction between the teacher and the pupils in the classroom when the teacher focuses on the development of communication skills and when such interaction is more like an everyday conversation, this third stage has a different function, which is called discoursal by some authors. Such a feedback is very similar to the reaction heard by the speakers in everyday interaction outside classroom. The purpose is that the teacher tries to include pupils' responses to the discourse and not only correct and evaluate them. The teacher responds to students' answers with interest, some personal note, etc. This thesis will explore techniques that teachers in selected schools use to provide feedback in spoken language, it will examine whether the feedback is of evaluative or discoursal nature and what each type of feedback depends on. The aim of this thesis is to determine which type of feedback or which techniques are showing to be most beneficial for the development of effective communication for students.

(in English): The aim of this work is analysing a level of communicative competency in the czech sign language of deaf pupils. The theoretical part of this work discusses the issue of bilingual communication and bilingual education of deaf pupils, the czech sign language, the ontogeny of its development and educational content at bilingual primary schools in the Czech Republic. A quantitative survey observes communicative competencies of pupils with hard hearing impairment in the czech sign language in 3 batteries of non-standardized tests developed for language area of sign vocabulary, understanding and expression. The results were evaluated for pupils from deaf and from hearing families and it pointed to significant differences in the category of understanding and expression of the czech sign language. The survey also showed s positive correlation between sign vocabulary and understanding together with expression in the czech sign language. Key words: bilingual communication, bilingual education, czech sign language, communicative competency, deaf pupil, ontogeny of sign langure, severe hearing defekt

5 ABSTRACT The present paper deals with the development of reading skills of adult learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in Czech language schools and its support provided by three different Chinese language course books. Even though there are various Chinese language course books available on the market, the attention these pay to reading comprehension and its development, is still rather limited. The present master thesis proposes classroom techniques which might be used to address this problem during CFL lessons. The first chapter presents findings and recommendations based on research into the development of foreign language reading skills in general, which are, in the second chapter, subsequently followed by a summary of research findings focusing specifically on teaching reading in CFL. The demands on course books raised by researchers in both fields are then applied to reading texts and accompanying exercises included in three pre-intermediate level CFL course books, New Practical Chinese Reader (Liu et al., 2002), Boya Chinese (Lǐ et al., 2005) and Discover China (Qi et al., 2010). The outcome of the the thesis consists of 21 designed lesson plans which propose solutions to some of the issues raised in the theoretical part of the thesis. The lesson plans indicate how course book texts...

The present theoretical and biographical thesis deals with the work of Peter Newmark, a prominent Translation Studies scholar. The thesis is based on an analysis of Newmark's monographs and papers and identifies key ideas which constitute his contribution to the development of Translation Studies. Given the context of his time, with the Western world being dominated by neopositivism, Newmark's approach was not in line with the mainstream. The thesis also tries to take into account the chronological development of Newmark's ideas and highlight some ideas from more recent papers, the reception of which was rather limited. Furthermore, the thesis presents the reception of Newmark's ideas and the most important critical responses to them.

This dissertation thesis focuses on the use of drama in English language teaching. In the theoretical part the field of drama in ELT is elaborated in terms of its principles, methods and examples of practical use. Based on the outlined theoretical basis the technique radio role play is introduced. The main aim of the thesis was to identify and verify possibilities and limitations of the technique applied in English language teaching. To meet the aim of the thesis action research was used as the research design employing a range of data collection methods, e.g. questionnaires with pupils; interviews with pupils, teachers and critical friends. Content analysis was used to process the collected data and the analysis was further interpreted with the support of contextual information regarding educational setting in which the research was carried out and contextual material (lesson plans, teaching material, audio and video recordings). Within the four cycles of action research initial hypotheses, which were formulated before the actual research, were verified. The research findings show that the radio role playing contributes to the development of speaking as a language skill (mainly fluency and spontaneity of speech), improvisation skills, creativity and non-verbal communication. The main limitation...

This thesis presents the link between the environment and Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) based on ecolinguistics, which defines the inextricability of the environment and language. The specific aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the importance of an ecolinguistic approach to FLT with an ecocritical discourse analysis of textbooks use to teach French as a foreign language. Using the ecolinguistic tool The Stories We Live by, the analysis aims to assess the extent to which the textbooks stimulate environmental awareness and ecological communicative competence. The research concerns two textbooks, Totem and Saison, and investigates the representation of the stories and their polarity from the perspective of deep ecology. The results show the textbooks to exhibit a general tendency towards ambivalent content. Moreover, the presence of explicit ecological reference in the content was evaluated and revealed, by the analysis, to be under-represented in the textbooks' content. The analyses are presented as model analyses for an ecolinguistic evaluation of textbooks, which could be used by teachers seeking an ecologically conscious textbook. The thesis also seeks to encourage further research into the ecological aspect of FLT, notably in textbooks. KEYWORDS ecolinguistics, stories we live by,...

HAVELKOVÁ, L. Culturological aspects in lessons of Russian and German (based on the material regarding Czech, Russian and German lores) : Dissertation thesis. Praha : Univerzita Karlova, 2011. 254 p. Supervisor: PhDr. Hana Žofková, CSc. Key words: communicative competence, comparison of lores, (folk)lores, foreign-language education, language picture of the world, sociolinguistic competence, use of lores in foreing- language teaching Abstract: The dissertation thesis deals with culturological aspects of foreign-language education when concentrating on folklores, their culturological potential, their comparison and the possibility of their use in German and Russian language class work. The thesis is dedicated to the issue that has not been either theoretically or practically developed yet. The main objective was the discovery whether folklores can be used in foreign-language education while shaping communicative competence and eventually how they can be used. The thesis comes out from general relation between a language and culture, from knowledge about national culture and its components and from the analysis of basic modern linguistic didactic principles. The theoretical part explains basic terms and relations towards related disciplines which are crucial for the issue solution as well as the communicative...