Abstract
Acquisition of academic vocabulary is paramount to students’ success in academic life, as well as for the process of writing publishable papers in English so that research can be shared more broadly (NAGY; TOWNSEND 2012; PAQUOT, 2014). While in countries such as The U.S. and England the practice of offering Writing Centers for academic writing thrives, the initiative is still quite shy in Brazil (CONS 2020), though some Writing Centers around the country have recently started to operate. The aim of this paper is to report how the training activities of the Writing Center at University of Caxias do Sul – UCS Writing Center - use the Corpus Linguistics approach (BERBER-SARDINHA 2004) to enhance acquisition of academic vocabulary, therefore providing better academic writing skills to professors and students of the institution and the community it targets. The article contextualizes the Writing Center within the University and presents a series of activities which were designed based on research of Corpus Linguistics’ application to the teaching and learning of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The activities provide specific instances of how Corpus Linguistics resources can be an invaluable asset for the improvement of vocabulary in academic writing in English, being especially useful for researchers who wish to upgrade the quality of the language used in their international publications.
Highlights
The current teaching scenario of higher education features an unprecedented movement towards internationalization (WASSEM ET AL., 2020), brought by the overcoming of physical limits which has been one of the few positive aspects of the Covid-19 pandemics
The aim of this article is show examples of how Corpus Linguistics has been contributing for the training activities developed by University of Caxias do Sul (UCS) Writing Center, with the intention of improving academic vocabulary, and better writing skills in Academic English; such activities are targeted at the professors of the institution, its students, and the community that it serves
The idea of opening the Writing Center began when we presented our intention of hosting a BRAZ-TESOL event (2016) and we were selected (2018) to host it
Summary
The current teaching scenario of higher education features an unprecedented movement towards internationalization (WASSEM ET AL., 2020), brought by the overcoming of physical limits which has been one of the few positive aspects of the Covid-19 pandemics. The internationalization of education must aspire to the production and diffusion of knowledge with international partners, so as to contribute for the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and global progress as a whole (PATEL, 2017). Centers could represent an invaluable aid in the process of internationalization, due to the lack of consolidated writing programs in English in Brazilian Universities, and given the pressure that professors and graduate students feel to publish in good quality journals (CONS; MARTINEZ, 2021). The aim of this article is show examples of how Corpus Linguistics has been contributing for the training activities developed by UCS Writing Center, with the intention of improving academic vocabulary, and better writing skills in Academic English; such activities are targeted at the professors of the institution, its students, and the community that it serves. It presents a few activities, designed under the wing of previous studies in Corpus Linguistics, aimed at directing the audience of the training sections towards improving academic vocabulary and writing skills in Academic English
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