Challenges to Cultural Learning through International Cooperation: Festival of Sra. D’Agonia- Portugal

Moura Anabela, Jácomo António, Escaleira Joaquim, Magalhães Carla and Alves João Moura

The importance of cultural learning in general is increasingly being recognized in Portugal, not only for its cultural and human value but also for the contribution it makes to local, regional and national economies. This article summarizes the perceptions and information made by some members of staff of a BA program on “Arts and Cultural Management” (Gestão Artística e Cultural), created in 2007 by Escola Superior de Educação (Higher School of Education), at Viana do Castelo Polytechnic, in Northern Portugal. It presents some data on Portuguese current economic situation and strategies of cultural learning and cooperation at national and international level, in a small scale research project which is being developed in collaboration with the local Municipality of Viana do Castelo and De Montfort University at Leicester, United Kingdom. It intends to add to arts management literature a case that is demonstrating some benefit to public authorities, crafts makers and the wider artistic and business communities at local, regional and national levels. It is anticipated that the strength of this study lies in its implications for cultural learning and international cooperation.

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Understanding and teaching vocabulary

Georgios Besas

This study addresses a very interesting area, that of understanding and teaching vocabulary. Vocabulary used to be a neglected area in the past but nowadays, it receives much more attention as its usefulness and practicalities in communication are well acknowledged. Understanding a word entails much more than recognition or even recall and this fact makes this topic a fascinating subject to study. A greater challenge is to find the appropriate ways of teaching the words in a manner that will make them accessible, memorable and understandable. For cognitive psychologists, a word often brings to surface completely different notions and when these words are given as cues, interesting differentiation between people emerge. For example, when someone says the word ‘love’, different concepts of this word might emerge (love for friends, love for people, love for partner, love for pets, love for habits etc). And if one says ‘blue’, many different things might come to someone’s mind (blue-sky, blue-sea, blue-jumper etc). These associations can immensely affect the way we understand a new word. But what does it really mean to know a word?

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Cohesion and Coherence

Georgios Besas

Many researchers and linguists attempted to make a clear and solid distinction of what the terms ‘cohesion’ and coherence’ involve. It seems that notions are varied but the distinction is relatively clear. Cohesion is important for learners of English as a second/other language. Not only does it help students to produce grammatically accurate and wellformed utterances and texts, but also assists them to understand the meaning of a text in the absence of typical textual signals that signify cohesion within the text

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