Plenary Lecture

Plenary Lecture

Website on English Learning


Professor Mirela-Catrinel Voicu
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration
West University of Timisoara, Romania
E-mail: mirela.voicu@feaa.uvt.ro

 

Abstract: Our objective is to present a website which can be used as traveler’s conversation guide in order to help the tourists. We are focused on the followings:
-Vocabulary – different lists of words with phonetic transcription for singular and plural (as tool for pronunciation learning), common and short phrases. A big part of language guides contain lists of words grouped by categories: for example, the 15-Minute series of language guides or European phrase book from Dorling Kindersley, Inglese in viaggio (English in travel)- Istituto Geografico De Agostini, European Conversation Dictionary from Thomas Cook Publishing, etc. The approach using lists of words in order to learn a foreign language is also currently common for some of very famous dictionaries. We recall the Visual Dictionary by Jean-Claude Corbeil and Ariane Archambault from Merriam Webster (see http://visual.merriam-webster.com), which has also a multilingual version and the Visual Dictionaries and Encyclopedias from Dorling Kindersley, UK.
-Grammar - we are focused on words and phonetic transcriptions. For example, in the website, if you select an adjective you can view the degrees of comparison: positive, comparative, superlative, with phonetic transcription. When you select a verb, you can see the entire conjugation, also with phonetic transcription.
The benefit of the website is that it can increase unlimitedly (a travel conversation guide, generally is a book in small size), can be used by everyone (using list of worlds- all in English, people can use tools for translation, e.g. http://translate.google.com/#). It is designed for those who will travel soon and they need to know the English travel conversation. Our new results will be focused on algorithms for word database exploration and the website model.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Mirela-Catrinel Voicu was born in Romania. In 1995, she graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, West University of Timisoara. She received the MSc degree in Applied Mathematics, Informatics in Economy and Computer Sciences from the West University of Timisoara. She followed a training course for PhD thesis at the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, Paris, France. She received her PhD in 2001 from the University of Timisoara, Romania (with the "Cum laude" distinction) and from the University of Paris 13, France (with the "Tres honorable avec felicitations" distinction). Currently she is a Professor at the Department of Economic Informatics, within the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, West University of Timisoara, Romania, where, since 1995, she has held several academic positions. Her activity includes Programming and Internet Programming, Informatics in Economy, Databases, OOP, Data structures. Through the collaboration program between the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the West University, she has held classes with international participation, in postgraduate education, in the section of "Mathematic modelling in economics and applied sciences" Exchange Rate Evolution Models subject introduced within the program due to the original contributions in her PhD. During the collaboration between the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, West University of Timisoara and CUOA Italy, she has taught a postgraduate class for the section of "Management of Business and Public Administration", regarding the Internet. She has 79 papers in conference proceedings or refereed journals (from these papers, 26 have been presented or published abroad). She has published 8 books (1 book in France, 1 book in Germany and 6 books in Romania). She is a reviewer and a member in international program committee of various WSEAS conferences from abroad, reviewer at "Journal of Knowledge, Communications and Computing Technologies", member in the teams of 9 research projects (one of which is international) and project manager for one research project. Since 2002, she is a member of INFOREC (Romanian Association for Economic Informatics Training Promotion), since 2005, she is a member of WSEAS (World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society) and since 2009, she is a member of SCT (Society for Computing Technologies).

 

 

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