Universitatea de tiine Agricole i Medicin Veterinar Iai

TEACHING TECHNICAL VOCABULARY TO THE 1st YEAR STUDENTS

OF FOOD PROCESSING

Roxana MIHALACHE 1

1
University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Iai

Abstract

In a changing world, the needs of those who learn English also evolve. In the last decades, the English courses for
specific groups of learners have become highly important. English for special purposes found its way after the II World
War. As for Romania, even if there was a certain interest in this field, it was taken to the next level only after 1990,
when there appeared the economic and technological background for the development of this type of English.
The scientific paper presents methods used for teaching the technical vocabulary to the first year students of the faculty
of agriculture, the specialization of Technology of Processing Agricultural Products. The technical texts that are studied
during the first year are those related to different types of cereals, such as wheat, maize, oats, barley, rice and millet.
There is also a unit that deals with the history of food processing and types of preserving foodstuffs. The vocabulary
awareness has in view various types of exercises, such as: true or false exercises and answering questions synonyms and
antonyms, matching words, word-building types of exercises, find the mistakes, translation of technical texts both from
Romanian into English and from English into Romanian.
Typical mistakes have been found and we propose ways of correcting them.
We noticed that during the students performance the most frequent mistakes were those of pronunciation. When
learning the new vocabulary, the students confused words, trying to use the more common one; also they misspelled
and misused words.

Key words: English for Specific Purposes, communicative competences, vocabulary awareness.

Our world is rapidly changing and so is observations taken during the semester from the
English. After the Second World War, when conversations and also the handouts used during
different fields of activity developed, there has the courses.
been an increasing need for learning English. At
the same time, the language we speak be it English RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
or Romanian, varies from one context to another.
This naturally has led to the development of Although manufacturing and production of
English courses for specific groups of learners. different types of goods appeared since the 19th
Basically, it should be easy to identify the century, the breakthrough took place after the II
features of specific situations and then make these World War. Together with them, English turned
features the basic material of the course. But most into a world wide used language.
difficulties, which happen to be the very important The need for specialized English made
ones, appear when using different methods to teach methodologists turn their attention to this narrow
technical vocabulary. domain: English for Specific Purposes.
As suggested by its name, English for Even if the study of ESP started together
Specific Purposes covers the common nucleus, the with the study of linguistics, in 1988, Strevens was
basic structure and categories of Basic English and the first to make the distinction between absolute
the variations relevant to the specific domain. and variable characteristics of ESP. For him, the
Along the years, the guiding principle of English ESP absolute characteristics were: designed to
for Specific Purposes has become Tell me what meet specified need of the learners, related in
you need English for and I will tell you the English content to particular disciplines, centred on the
that you need. language appropriate to those activities in syntax,
lexis etc., and the analysis of this discourse, and in
MATERIAL AND METHOD contrast with General English. In the variable
characteristics, ESP was restricted to the language
The basic materials for the research skills to be learned and was not taught to any pre-
consisted in the written papers of the students, the ordained methodology.

384
 Lucrri tiinifice - vol. 53, Nr. 1/2010, seria Agronomie

In 1997, Dudley-Evans offered a modified situation, be it connected to their field of activity or

definition. His absolute characteristics included a general one. We use methods to improve this
ESP defined to meet specific needs of the learner, competence by conversations on different subjects,
centred on language skills appropriate to the such as history of food processing, types of cereals
activities and also the use of the underlying and their use, history of bread making, types of
methodology and activities of the discipline it bread, oleaginous plants and so on. At the
serves. As for the variable characteristics, Dudley- beginning of the seminar we have a lead-in
Evans noticed that it is generally designed for discussion which offers us the opportunity to see
intermediate and advanced students. the problems the students face connected to both
There were other theoreticians of ESP, such grammar and lexis. We generally do not interrupt
as David Carter, who identified different types of the students during the conversation, letting them
ESP among which English for Academic and to freely express their opinions. The corrections are
Occupational Purposes, the one that we are also made at the end of the conversation, pointing out
dealing with. the most frequently encountered mistakes. Here,
As we can see, there has been much interest our goal is to increase the accuracy of the
in English for Special Purposes along the decades, discourse, but also to offer the students confidence
but in Romania only after 1990 there appeared the in their capacities when speaking English.
economic and technological background for the For example, when talking about cereals, the
development of this type of English. As the most often encountered mistake is the confusion of
demand for English to suit particular needs has words wheat [hwi:t] and wet [wet]. Being more
increased, the university curricula have adjusted to familiar to the word wet which belong to the Basic
the necessities. English, the students try to make analogies and
The geographical area of Romania not only misspell it. For the same reason the students
has an impact on the professional requirements but wrongly pronounce the words to droop [dru:p],
also affects the students need of English when which means a se ofili and to drop [drop], a
they enter the university. In the last few years, the picura, a lsa s cad.
study of English has become a trend; the children Another common mistake is the word
start studying it in kindergarten and become more legume, the plural of legumen, which means plante
acquainted to its rules along the years, especially in leguminoase, often translated by students as
high school. The students of The University of legume. The easiest way of correcting this mistake
Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Iasi is to start from the Romanian word, legum and
have upper-elementary to advanced knowledge of find the English version, vegetable. Thus, when we
English. put the two words next to each other, the confusion
When we start teaching English for different no longer appears.
specializations in our university, such as
agriculture, food processing, horticulture, Intercultural competence
landscape design, we take into account information Many students have the opportunity to study
about the students, their goals and objectives for abroad for three or four months within the Socrate
determining which aspects of ESP learning will be Erasmus programmes. In order to take full
included, emphasized, and used as basis of the advantage of the whole experience, they need to
course. One of the goals of teaching ESP is to meet have solid knowledge both of Basic and Technical
the students needs and expectations. English. The former is useful for every day
In this paper we focus on teaching English conversations with colleagues, teachers, at the
to the 1st year students of the specialization of library etc, while the latter is essential for studying
Technology of Processing Agricultural Products. the specialized materials, understanding the
As for the content of the course, there are courses and taking notes.
many ways of conceptualizing it. We focus both on For example, some of the Erasmus students
developing basic skills, communicative go to study in Italy. There they have subjects such
competence, intercultural competence and on as olive oil processing. Even though in our country
vocabulary awareness. olives are not cultivated for massive production,
we consider that the students should have
Basic Skills minimum information in this field in order to be
Communicative competence able to cope with certain situations and challenges.
Even though the students have knowledge of That is why it is fundamental for the
English when entering the university, we continue students to have an average knowledge of technical
to improve their communicative competence, as it English.
is useful for them to be able to communicate in any

385
Universitatea de tiine Agricole i Medicin Veterinar Iai

Vocabulary awareness distinct types: two-row barley, six-row barley, and

As regards the technical vocabulary, here irregular barley. The varieties grown in the United
appear most of the problems. The technical States are generally of the six-row type, in Europe
vocabulary of food processing mainly comprises the two-row type predominates, and the irregular
words that have a Germanic origin, making the type is found in Ethiopia. The finest malting
assimilation process a more difficult one, as a lot varieties are the six-row and the two-row types(
of terms do not resemble the ones in Romanian. Mihalache R. pp. 53-54).
Some methodologists consider that the In the True or False exercise we highlight
primary task when dealing with a text is to teach the terms to make the students more familiar with
word recognition in context, including contextual them:
guessing, instead of list of unrelated words. The varieties grown in the United States
Even though, during the English seminars, are generally of the two-row type, in Europe the
we generally deal with specialised texts from food six-row type predominates, and the irregular type
processing domain, we follow the already is found in Ethiopia. (which is false)
mentioned principles. Within the texts we offer Other technical terms can be assimilated
images of cereals or types of breads and ask the through their synonyms or antonyms. Very good
students to identify the rye, barley or wheat from a examples are the words: rancid, to seal, slaughter,
list of images. But in order to reach this point, it is to cure (with its meaning of to preserve), dormant,
essential for the student to have an idea of the type to ripen, livestock, kernel and so on. During each
of cereal we deal with. Thereby, only when seminar we have one exercise with synonyms and
absolutely necessary, we offer the Romanian another with antonyms that comprise many new
version of the word. technical or semi-technical words.
Other types of words such as vernalization, Clearly, nouns such as vernalization and
starch, bran, tassel, kiln, are also important for the starch are difficult to assimilate by the first year
understanding of specialised texts. In order to have students; we help them by introducing Match the
an efficient learning of these words, we use words with the definitions below type of exercise.
different types of exercises. Many of them will be Referring to the word vernalization, the students
mentioned below. did not even know what the word iarovizare,
The first one is the Reading meant in Romanian. So, we had to give the
comprehension which comprises both true or explanation of the word (we did it in Romanian at
false exercises and answering questions related to the Vocabulary) and while doing the exercise we
the text. Both the former and the latter exercises could have a feed-back showing if they understood
focus on the new specialized words and their the explanation and could use it correctly in
integration in the context. English: the subjection of seeds or seedlings to
An example in point is the expression joint low temperature in order to hasten plant
of the stem. First of all, when we finish reading the development and flowering. It is commonly used
text we emphasize on the difference between stem for crop plants such as winter rye and is possible
[stem] and steam [sti:m], as 90% of the students because the seeds and buds of many plants require
misread these words. We reinforce the expression cold in order to break dormancy.
by exercises. The true or false exercise comprises a One of the most difficult areas of vocabulary
sentence like: to be assimilated are those that gather words
The secondary roots arise from the joints of belonging both to Basic and Technical English, as
the stems. (which is true) and there is also a students already knowing a term, will tend to
question regarding this expression. translate it with its basic meaning. The most
The students should be able to make the frequently terms we came across were:
difference of certain types of cereals, such as a) to cure used not with the meaning of to
barley. There are three types of this cereal: six- stop someone from being affected by an illness
row barley, which means orz comun, two-row (which is the first definition mentioned in the
barley orzoaic and irregular barley orz Macmillan Dictionary and which belongs to Basic
neregulat. We have all the three items mentioned English), but with that of to preserve meat, fish or
in the text: other foods by drying them, or by using smoke or
Barley belongs to the genus Hordeum, of salt (Macmillan, p. 340), which is the fourth of
the family Poaceae (formerly Gramineae). Two- four possible definitions of the words.
row barley is classified as Hordeum distichum, six- b) grass the common meaning a very
row barley as Hordeum vulgare, and irregular common plant, with thin green leaves that covers
barley as Hordeum irregulare. [.]The different the ground(Macmillan, p. 620) is easily mistaken
cultivated varieties of barley belong to three for the second more specialized definition, which

386
 Lucrri tiinifice - vol. 53, Nr. 1/2010, seria Agronomie

appears only in the Oxford Dictionary, (Bot.) From the experience gained along the years
plant of family Gramineae, including also cereals, we came to the conclusion that these types of
reeds, and bamboos (Oxford Dictionary, p. 467) exercises are the most appropriate for the 1st year
c) ear translated as organ of hearing students at the specialization of Technology of
instead of the part at the top of a plant such as Processing Agricultural Products for acquiring the
wheat that contains the grain (Macmillan, p. 436) necessary technological vocabulary. They can be
d) spike the definition belonging to Basic adapted and improved through the course design;
English, sharp point, pointed piece of metal is while generally playing a relatively minor part in
more often used, while the appropriate one is the life of the General English teacher, for the
flower cluster of many sessile flowers arranged English for Special Purposes teacher, course
closely on long common axis (Oxford Dictionary, design is often a substantial and important part of
p. 1104) the workload.
There are other exercises to enrich the
technical vocabulary, most of the time proving CONCLUSIONS
itself essential during a specialized conversation.
When teaching we ask the students to do word- The interest in English for Specific Purposes
building type of exercises. Some of the terms are has grown in Romania after 1990.
used in their technical context, but we also give We analysed the mistakes made by the 1st
examples from other areas in interest or from Basic year students in TPAP within UASVM Iasi while
English. Some examples in point are: acquiring the new technical vocabulary.
rancid rancidity: Prevention of may The most frequent mistakes were those of
become a problem in such baked goods as word confusion.
crackers, cookies, and fruit cake which may be In order to improve the students accuracy of
stored for longer or shorter periods (RANCID). using technical English, we presented several
pasteurize pasteurization: is the process learning strategies, types of exercises and remedial
of heating a liquid, particularly milk, to a measures.
temperature between 55 and 70 C, to destroy
harmful bacteria without materially changing BIBLIOGRAPHY
the composition or the nutritive value of the
liquid (PASTEURIZE). Basturkmen, H., 2006 - Ideas and Options in English for
Specific Purposes.
germ germination: The idea of setting up Dudley-Evans, T., John, M.J. St., 1998 - Developments
his own company began to in his mind. (GERM). in ESP: a Multi-Disciplinary Approach, Cambridge
gluten glutinous: The major production University Press, Cambridge.
areas for rice are the upper northern and north- Hutchinson, T., Waters, A., 2006 - English for Specific
Purposes: a Learning-Centered Approach,
eastern regions of Thailand where water is Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
scarce. (GLUTEN). Kouilova, M., 1979 - Teaching English for Specific
boil parboil: Firstly, he and then sauted Purposes, from British Medical Journal, 2, BMJ
the new potatoes.(BOIL). Publishing Group Ldt., London.
flower inflorescence: The of rice is made Levichi, L., 1974 - Dicionar englez-romn, Editura
Academiei Romne, Bucureti
up of spikelets bearing flowers that produce the st
Mihalache, R., 2010 - English for 1 Year Students in
fruit. (FLOWER) (Mihalache, R., 2010., pp.14, 76). Technology of Processing Agricultural Products,
At the end of the seminar we solve more Editura Tehnopress, Iai.
difficult exercises, which need even more Sykes, J.B., 1976 - The Concise Oxford Dictionary,
Oxford University Press, Oxford
attention. Thus, students can have exercises which * * *, 2006 - Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced
ask them to find the mistakes and also to translate learners, Macmillan Publishers, Oxford
texts, either from English into Romanian or vice
versa.

387