Suchergebnisse

The volume Developing Intercultural Competence through English: Focus on Ukrainian and Polish Cultures edited by Anna Ni¿egorodcew, Yakiv Bystrov and Marcin Kleban offers a valuable result of a joint intercultural project between two universities from the neighbouring countries of Poland and Ukraine

What we are witnessing now, not only in Great Britain, is that citizens are less and less interested in participation in politics. We see a crisis of representative democracy. One of the means used to fight those negative trends is the use of Information and Communication Technology. It not only enables citizens to gain a wide access to public information but also empowers them to take part in decision making. The article was written with the aim to analyze the political agenda of successive British governments pertaining to the use of the Internet in building more effective local government communication channels in English local authorities. The analyses of documents and secondary sources were conducted. Special attention was devoted to the introduction and development of electronic petition systems on the local level, as e-petitions are one of the most popular e-democracy mechanisms in Great Britain. Their use has also been laid down in law.

On the threshold of the 21st century when another 12 states joined the European Union a matter of multilingualism has been recently considered as a crucial factor with regard to European integration process. Having diverse society the UE has started to promote a phrase Unity in Diversity which in turn provides patronage for a number of cultural and education campaigns. Their aim is to prepare the European citizens for cultural integration and to help them to create a sense of European identity. The main assumption of the already taken actions is taking multilingualism as the pillar of the Union and presenting it as an example of equality regardless to citizens' nationality. The herby article reveals however, that the idea of unity in diversity – at least from the linguistic point of view – is practically impossible to accomplish especially in the face of such a strong position of English in the international arena as it has nowadays. What's more, inside Union in its administration structures the idea of equality is not observed. Due to purely practical and organisational reasons just one language is used – English. Also English is the foreign language that is taught most often in schools throughout the Europe. A question arises whether the idea of a multilingual Union is not a myth? ; On the threshold of the 21st century when another 12 states joined the European Union a matter of multilingualism has been recently considered as a crucial factor with regard to European integration process. Having diverse society the UE has started to promote a phrase Unity in Diversity which in turn provides patronage for a number of cultural and education campaigns. Their aim is to prepare the European citizens for cultural integration and to help them to create a sense of European identity. The main assumption of the already taken actions is taking multilingualism as the pillar of the Union and presenting it as an example of equality regardless to citizens' nationality. The herby article reveals however, that the idea of unity in diversity – at least from the linguistic point of view – is practically impossible to accomplish especially in the face of such a strong position of English in the international arena as it has nowadays. What's more, inside Union in its administration structures the idea of equality is not observed. Due to purely practical and organisational reasons just one language is used – English. Also English is the foreign language that is taught most often in schools throughout the Europe. A question arises whether the idea of a multilingual Union is not a myth?