English for Scientific Purposes

With more demand for courses in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) that go beyond just layering a thin veneer of content upon an otherwise general curriculum, there is an increasing need for suitable textbooks and student resource guides. Sadly, most class texts in English for the sciences available in Japan do not provide adequate scaffolding to ungraded English corpora and grammar shows it to feature Halliday (2004) puts it more broadly, grammatical metaphor), and particular uses of modal auxiliaries. A further weakness of currently available texts is that, although there are now a number of academic English writing textbooks, science writing. While similar to other genres of display key differences in format and structure unfamiliar to language teachers without training in the natural sciences. To this end, Science Research Writing for Non-native Speakers of English is a welcome, if imperfect, option for teachers of EAP science writing courses.

"This study is a frequency-driven analysis of the frequency, structure and functions of lexical bundles with verbs in Philippine and British scientific English. It follows Biber et al.’s (1999) definition of lexical bundles as sequences of frequently co-occurring words in particular registers and studies their forms and functions in two corpora: a corpus of medical research articles from a Philippine journal published in English and a corpus of research articles from the British Medical Journal. Frequency criteria are used to identify lexical bundles and concordances are examined to classify them according to Hyland’s (2008) functional taxonomy.

Results of the quantitative analysis show a lower amount of verbal lexical bundles in the Philippine corpus compared to the British. This comparative study also describes structural and functional similarities and differences between the British and Filipino corpora of medical articles with regard to lexical-bundle use."

To date, the concept of English for Specific Purposes has brought about a great impact on English language learning across various disciplines, including those in science education. Hence, this review paper aimed to address current English language learning in the science disciplines through the practice of computer-assisted language learning to identify the use of learning technologies in science-based literacy. In the literature review, the researchers found that science-based literacy instruction shares many pedagogical aims with English language teaching in terms of reading, writing, listening and speaking, allowing it to be classified as English for Scientific Purposes (EScP). To answer the research questions, the researchers conducted the survey by extracting related articles and teaching examples from the Web of Science. In the search procedure, the researchers used the keywords science OR scientific AND technolog* OR comput* in ten selected journals of social science citation index. Only articles which are specified as journal articles rather than other document types were included. After compiling the corpora, the researchers compared the trends, methodologies and results of EScP instruction in science education. The implications of this study include the opportunities, advantages and challenges for EScP instruction in science education to further develop better educational approaches, adopt new technologies, as well as offer some directions for researchers to conduct future studies.

Both teaching and learning a foreign language requires hard work and a great deal of effort on both sides. The traditional chalk-and-talk approach to teaching and reviewing English grammar and vocabulary may be supplemented by other activities like (online) puzzles, crosswords, quizzes, games, experiments, etc., which can be done as whole class work, group work, pair work and individual work. The aim of the paper is to present the use of such activities in ESP/EAP classes (in our case, Technical English classes), which, when selected carefully and appropriately, contribute to the acquisition of the content being taught and increase the effectiveness of language learning and teaching. Although there are both advantages and shortcomings of using such activities in (ESP/EAP) teaching, generally speaking, they support teachers’ efforts to increase student motivation and engagement in class. These activities can be used at any stage of our lessons, be it to warm up the class before the lesson begins, to give students a break or to keep them engaged or interested during the lesson, or as a recap exercise at the end of class. Since it is absolutely important for the students to be familiar with the activity they are about to do, the teacher must explain the rules in detail, write instructions on the board or even simulate the activity. Although there is an abundance of activities that can be used in ESP/EAP classes, in this paper we present only a few that can be used to both revise and recycle vocabulary and grammar studied in previous classes. It is important to add that most of these activities, though sometimes (slightly) modified, can be used in ESP/EAP classes of any type and at any level. In this paper, we illustrate the following: experiments, Word Association, Collocation Pelmanism, Taboo, Plickers, Kahoot, Socrative, and QR codes, and mention some of their variations as well.

To date, the concept of English for Specific Purposes has brought about a great impact on English language learning across various disciplines, including those in science education. Hence, this review paper aimed to address current English language learning in the science disciplines through the practice of computer-assisted language learning to identify the use of learning technologies in science-based literacy. In the literature review, the researchers found that science-based literacy instruction shares many pedagogical aims with English language teaching in terms of reading, writing, listening and speaking, allowing it to be classified as English for Scientific Purposes (EScP). To answer the research questions, the researchers conducted the survey by extracting related articles and teaching examples from the Web of Science. In the search procedure, the researchers used the keywords science OR scientific AND technolog* OR comput* in ten selected journals of social science citation index. Only articles which are specified as journal articles rather than other document types were included. After compiling the corpora, the researchers compared the trends, methodologies and results of EScP instruction in science education. The implications of this study include the opportunities, advantages and challenges for EScP instruction in science education to further develop better educational approaches, adopt new technologies, as well as offer some directions for researchers to conduct future studies.

As tourism has become a prominent industry, there has been a growing demand for skilled professionals, who are able to adapt to technology-laden markets. In this setting, digital development and communication take on an important role, making it necessary to reshape the way tourism education is approached, focusing on the skills required of today's graduates. English is currently the most important global language and it is ranked as a crucial skill for tourism workers. The main goal of this study is to collect, analyse and cross-reference evidence as to the development of language and digital competences in Tourism Education and how they are leveraging digital transformation.
The methodology used was based on a literature review focusing on digital technology in the scope of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The data retrieved was analysed as to outline key concepts and best practices within tourism education. As the market requires tourism graduates to possess transversal skills, being fluent in English is decisive. Research shows that tourism students need more exposure to technical jargon and quality resources, as there are still significant gaps when it comes to using specific terminology and vocabulary. With technology playing a pivotal role, it is important that tourism education keeps up with current technological developments and changes. Tourism professionals should be proficient English users, capable of interacting, understanding and communicating relevant information. Leveraged by digital technology, this study makes a contribution towards the ongoing discussion on the need to reshape tourism education and update the curricula.

Tematiziranje konvencionalnih znanstvenih žanrova u nastavi engleskog jezika struke na fakultetima prirodnih znanosti (EST nastava) pomaže ostvarenju jednoga od njezinih najvažnijih ciljeva, boljem snalaženju studenata u znanstvenoj literaturi, i već na taj način, njihovu lakšem pristupu u međunarodnu znanstvenu zajednicu. Budući da se u EST nastavi u nas uvriježila interpretacija teksta i diskursa na tragu suvremenih uvida u metodiku nastave engleskog jezika kao jezika struke, to bi ovo proširenje gradiva uslijedilo kao logično i ne bi zahtijevalo bitne modifikacije nastavnih metoda, pa čak ni nastavnih materijala. Osim toga, rezultati istraživanja provedenog na uzorku od 323 studenta fizike i kemije upućuju na to da oni posjeduju predznanja koja im, sistematizirana, dopunjena i osmišljena kroz EST nastavu dijelom i zbog očekivanog pozitivnog transfera znanja i vještina, omogućuju da bez većih teškoća razlikuju i usvoje glavna svojstva različitih žanrova znanstvene literature, kao što je npr. izrazito konvencionalni i za znanstvenu komunikaciju tipični žanr znanstvenog članka.

Objective: To investigate the practice among freelance language professionals relating to seeking acknowledgement for editing texts by EAL (English as an additional language) scholars and scientists.
Methods: Freelance editors were recruited from three European organisations for freelance editors and translators. They completed an 8-question online survey (country of residence, broad area of specialisation and acknowledgement for their work). The data analyses are descriptive.
Results: There were 131 respondents, residing in 16 countries and representing four broad disciplinary areas (biomedicine (36;27.5%), humanities (27;20.6%), science (31;23.7%) and social science (37;28.2%). Netherlands-based editors were the largest group (60;45.8%). Only 19 (14.5%) of all respondents always actively encouraged authors to acknowledge language assistance: The two main reasons for always or sometimes seeking acknowledgement were ethics and self-publicity, each mentioned by 33(60%) of the 55 ‘always’+ ‘sometimes’ respondents) Among the remaining 76 respondents, the two most frequently mentioned reasons for not seeking acknowledgement were never having thought about being acknowledged (24;26.7%) and the expectation that authors would introduce errors in the text before publication (21;23.3%).
Conclusions: Seeking acknowledgement is not a priority among these editors. They fear their work and reputation will be compromised by authors introducing post-editing errors and infelicities unintentionally and without consultation.
Keywords: Freelance editors, English as an additional language authors, science editing, academic editing, academic ethics

The primary goal of this project is to understand how scientific knowledge is construed through language. In other words, this project aims to develop a framework to describe the registers found in scientific language.
Many approaches to the analysis of scientific language look selectively at a particular feature, such as lexis, metaphors, nominalization, organization, text types and diagrams, but these studies have not taken the complementarity of language and image in scientific text properly into consideration. Thus, an initial objective of this project is to analyze all the linguistic features found in a single text and treat them as a whole to study their roles and the connections among them. By locating the analysis of scientific language within the overall system of English, from context to semantic and then to lexicogrammar,  the relationship of the ‘actual’ to the ‘potential’ --- as end points on the cline of instantiation – can be made explicit, as well as the relationship of particular analyses to each other.
In this project, a small sample of science textbooks used by Hong Kong secondary students has been collected to investigate the general pattern of ‘scientific language’ in Hong Kong. The main research activity includes a discourse analysis of these science texts (both written and multimodal texts) based on systemic functional linguistics. For written texts, the analysis will be based on systemic functional grammar (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) to explore these texts at three different “levels”: text level, paragraph level and clause level. At the text level, different types of educational genres are categorized. The common genres have been found to be classifying & describing, explaining, instructing and recounting & interpreting. Their realizations are characterized as reports, explanations, procedures and procedural recounts. At the paragraph level, different semiotic-processes will be identified. The common processes are expounding (explaining and categorizing), reporting, recommending and enabling. At the clause level, the logical relations among clauses (usually elaboration), transitivity (commonly ‘relational’ process type) and salient lexicogrammatical features (grammatical metaphor, nominalization and high lexical density) will be examined. For other modes of communication such as image, the analysis is based on the framework for multimodal analysis by Bateman (2008). The investigation has shown that language and image serve two different roles in construing scientific knowledge in procedural texts.
Based on the analysis of science textbooks, this thesis provides more descriptions of scientific language and gives evidence of linguistic challenges students have in learning science through textbooks. Ultimately, the analysis will raise the awareness of learning ‘science language’ in the Hong Kong education system and attract the attention of textbook publishers, education professionals and teachers, stimulating them to develop strategies for addressing students’ learning challenges in science education.

KEY WORDS: Scientific English, Chemistry textbooks, Text analysis, Language & Education