English For Specific Academic Purposes Research Articles

English for specific purposes in surging English-medium instruction contexts

Abstract English-medium instruction (EMI) research increasingly reports on students’ language-related challenges and a lack of academic and language support classes, collaboration between content and language teachers and overall teacher training. Our study explores EMI in Japan and China, two contexts where EMI has been referred to as emerging but is now “surging.” In these contexts, EMI is closely linked to English language proficiency goals, yet research on supporting students remains scarce. Data were collected via interviews and focus groups with students, English teachers and content teachers, who provided insights into approaches to EMI policy implementation, stakeholders’ attitudes, and the need for English for specific purposes (ESP) and English for specific academic purposes (ESAP). The results provide much needed insights for evidence-informed EMI policy implementation, curriculum development and teacher training. The study also provides insights into institutional infrastructure conducive to EMI policy, with findings revealing ESP needs of EMI students and the training needs of teaching staff. The study presented in this paper furthers the work that has been conducted in Anglophone settings on the complexity of ELT practitioner roles. The results also provide directions for future research.

Revamping an English for specific academic purposes course for problem-based learning: Reflections from course developers

Under the current trend of curriculum reform in higher education worldwide, many institutions have taken the initiative to develop English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) courses to cater for students' diverse needs for disciplinary learning and future professional practices. This paper illustrates the pedagogical innovations in an ESAP course to facilitate undergraduates’ disciplinary learning at an international university in Hong Kong. Based on the data collected from students and discipline teachers, we, as the course developers, reflected upon the opportunities and challenges in implementing the revamped ESAP course. Our reflections reveal the importance of promoting flipped learning and peer feedback practices in the ESAP classroom and interdisciplinary collaboration between ESAP course developers and discipline teachers. This paper will be of interest not only to ESAP teachers but also to discipline teachers who intend to promote best practices for effective disciplinary studies through English teaching and learning in higher education.

The Theoretical Merits and Practical Challenges of Adopting an ESAP Methodology in Teaching ESP, with an Emphasis on the Pragmatic Viability of an EGAP Approach

This article vividly exhibits and distinguishes the distinctions between teaching ESAP and EGAP. It defines the two approaches and shows which teaching approach is the realistic option according to the author's point of view. The author hence proceeds with elucidations on why EGAP is the realistic option and elaborates on the five roles of an ESP teacher. In addition, the author mentions a study that was conducted in Vietnam. The study was based on a systematic literature review of current research on English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) and English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP) teaching approaches, and 15 relevant studies were synthesized. Some of this research showed positive results, while others showed negative results of the approaches. The final results of this study show that ESAP learning was hard in practice. It shows how EGAP is considered a course to equip and prepare students for ESAP courses. It prompts EGAP through group work and suggests it will make students feel less intimidated. The weaker students will learn from the stronger students in an EGAP group working class. It shows one of the relevant study's responses and teachers who think EGAP is significant in teaching before students can enter ESAP courses. Scaffolding is considered a significant role teachers need to ensure learners have reached their needs in both approaches. In the latter part of the article, the author mentions her experience teaching ESAP at Kuwait University, specifically at the College of Engineering. The authors show what difficulties they have gone through and how they managed to teach at this college.

Paraphrasing in ESAP: Teacher-Guided, AI-Assisted or Communicative Activities

"Paraphrasing in ESAP: Teacher-Guided, AI-Assisted or Communicative Activities. At the heart of progress in academia lies the principle of building upon other people’s ideas, linguistic expressions and/or scientific endeavours by taking note of invariably crediting the original author (Mori 2018). One way of doing this is by the usage of paraphrasing. Though paraphrasing is regarded as the prerogative of successful academic thinking and writing, what it means exactly is still ambiguous to some extent. After undertaking to formulate some working definitions, we discuss paraphrasing techniques and activities in the context of teaching English for Specific Academic Purposes to students majoring in Biology. The activities considered are grouped into three main categories with respect to the procedure involved: teacher-guided (with a focus on certain parts of a sentence/text as selected by the teacher), AI-assisted (linked to the usage of automated paraphrasing tools) and communicative (tasks having a connection to real-world communicative needs). Some examples are discussed with the purpose of determining their appropriateness in a teaching context. The article sketches an initial paraphrasing teaching toolkit, developing mainly the first category, and ends with considerations regarding future research, such as the development and implementation of AI-assisted tasks and the analysis of inferential and rhetorical processes. Keywords: paraphrasing, English for Specific Academic Purposes, English as a Second Language teaching, ESP teaching activities, artificial intelligence in education."

DISCIPLINARY LITERACY IN
 THE GLOBAL SCHOLARLY COMMUNITY:
 CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Russian university graduates and academics face significant challenges to become
 full-fledged participants of the global scholarly community. One of the most common, yet
 sometimes overlooked causes of this situation is the lack of disciplinary literacy. Disciplinary
 literacy is defined as the ability to appropriately participate in the communicative practices of a
 discipline. The paper investigates the factors that lead to the expansion of the requirements for
 disciplinary literacy in today’s globalised world. Based on the analysis of literature and their
 own experience of teaching ESAP (English for Specific Academic Purposes) in a pedagogical
 university, the authors put forward the idea that in many cases the best way to tackle the
 problems of disciplinary literacy may be to use elements of the constructivist approach to
 teaching this subject.

SPECIALISED LEARNER CORPUS RESEARCH: A REVIEW FOR FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF THE GLOBAL AND MALAYSIAN CONTEXTS

Literature survey concerning the Learner Corpus Research (LCR) in the last 20 years has shown a paucity of studies involving specialised/discipline-specific text. Since the use of discipline-specific academic writing learner corpora is useful in determining the language pattern within the English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) context, this paper presents a review of specialised LCR based on journal articles from the Web of Science database and the Google scholar, reference books and relevant websites to address the gap both globally and within the Malaysian context for future needs. The review suggests the need for more specialised/genre-specific or discipline-based learner corpus studies employing the non-native novice versus native novice and expert comparative method in both global and Malaysian contexts, with more studies executed in relation to specialised learner corpora in the latter. In relation to linguistic aspect, the understanding of lexical bundles’ communicative function can be attempted through the analysis from the core word to the surrounding pattern or discourse. The use of learner corpus as a pedagogical instrument needs also to be well-accepted and executed to enhance the teaching and learning of academic writing in ESAP classrooms via Data-Driven Learning approach or corpus-related activities.

IDENTIFYING WEAKNESSES OF CLIL IN THE MILITARY HIGHER EDUCATION CLASSROOM

Due to the ever-increasing expansion of English language integration into content courses within higher educational institutions (HEIs), this study seeks to gain insights into how domestic students, as well as content and language lecturers perceive integrating English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) in an academic/vocational military university using Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). We investigate firstly on how mostly domestic, non-native English speaking students perceive learning academic military content in an English Educational Environment (EEE), and secondly, how content and ESAP lecturers perceive collaborating within CLIL at the Swedish Defense University. Using a mixed-methods approach with data gathered from students and lecturers, the results are useful for HEIs looking to increase their English integration. Our results indicate that NNES students indeed learn content and language knowledge simultaneously using CLIL because communicative ESAP tasks enable them to process, and increase content knowledge. However, as this article will show, students prefer drastically different CLIL methods for reasons that we argue can be traced to varying L2 proficiencies. Meanwhile, lecturers had different expectations of, and perceived, interdisciplinary collaboration differently. This study concludes by suggesting that CLIL step 3 is inherently flawed due to a mismatch of implicit methods and explicit expectations of language proficiency, which consequently complicate lecturer roles and interdisciplinary collaboration.

LEARNING ENGLISH ACROSS CULTURES-A REFLECTION ON CHALLENGES FACED BY ONLINE LEARNERS AND THEIR MITIGATION STRATEGIES

This study sets out to investigate learners’ cross-cultural experience of learning English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) course from an international instructor via online setting. The objectives of this study were to investigate a) the learners’ feedback on the overall online learning experience, b) the challenges that the learners have experience during their online lessons and c) learners’ strategies in overcoming the challenges experienced during their online lessons. Qualitative data is elicited via purposive sampling from five diploma students enrolled in the ESAP course at a public university in Malaysia. Focus group and follow up individual interviews were utilised to gather feedback on their general cross-cultural learning experiences online learning experience as well as the challenges they encountered during their lessons and their strategies in overcoming those challenges faced during their lessons. The study found that learners perceived their online language learning experience in cross-cultural setting as a positive one. They shared several challenges experienced during the lessons and some strategies that they utilized to manage the challenges.

English language teaching and English-medium instruction

Abstract The role of English language teaching (ELT) in English-medium instruction (EMI) can vary widely depending on education policy objectives and teachers’ responses to EMI students’ language and learning needs. In this paper, we provide a narrative review of a growing number of studies reporting language-related challenges as the foremost barrier to successful implementation of EMI. Such research highlights the fundamental roles that English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes have in the provision of targeted language support for EMI students. Based on this review, we set a future research agenda, calling for explorations into the efficacy of English language programs for supporting EMI students to reach educational outcomes. We also call for explorations of greater collaboration between English language practitioners and content lecturers to ensure the right type of language support is being provided to students. The paper ends with a discussion for the need to reposition EAP as English for Specific Academic Purposes to ensure students’ specific academic needs are met. Essentially, universities offering EMI will need to account for their unique institutional characteristics to ensure ELT provision is central in organizational and curricular structures; otherwise, they may be setting their own students up to fail.

The Effectiveness of ESAP and EGAP in ESP Teaching

The study compares a distinct between English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP) and English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) to explore the real needs of students and help students and teachers choose proper learning and teaching strategies to improve the effectiveness of English learning and teaching. Literature review is used as a research method and offers an overview of the definitions, pros and cons, case study of EGAP and ESAP. It is concluded that both EGAP and ESAP contribute to the academic English learning, while EGAP focus on academic language study for specific English proficiency tests like IELTS/TOFEL and ESAP focus on academic language study for postgraduate and professional work.

Demystifying Problems and Opportunities of the Persianophone Physical Education Ph.D. Academic Writers in Writing English Research Article Abstracts for International Journal Publication

Writing effective and persuasive manuscripts for submission to the high-indexed Iranian and international English-medium journals for the purpose of publication deserves having to-the-point knowledge and proficiency, which the Non-Native English writers of the non-English speaking countries seem to be lacking. Therefore, researchers need to identify problems and challenges that the group of writers encounter in the field of English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP). Therefore, this study aims to identify the ERPP needs of the Physical Education Ph.D. students and writers. Hence, interviews were conducted with a group of Physical Education content experts and Ph.D. students to identify the writers’ problems and challenges. The interviews were tape recorded as the participants had already been informed of the recordings and research aim. The tape recordings were then transcribed and analyzed in the thematic analysis and the grounded theory methods. The data analysis came up with four major themes (gained in the selective coding stage), 20 sub-themes (gained in the axial coding stage) and 83 themes (gained in the initial/open coding stage). The four major themes were `problem with language,’ `problem with content,’ `problem with journals,’ and `the demotivating factors.’ The fourth major theme, i.e., `the demotivating factors’, consisted of the sub-heading the technological illiteracy problem, which should be regarded as the novelty feature of this paper. The research is useful for material designers and instructors of the English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) and others to offer tailor-made education to the tertiary level Physical Education students.

Tackling the content of a course for academic legal purposes

Abstract This article addresses the practices that English for academic legal purposes (EALP) teachers employ to tackle law subject content. It draws on research that took place in a British university pre-sessional course for third-year undergraduate and postgraduate law students. The data come from tutorials, legal skills classroom observations and semi-structured interviews. The original study examined four EALP teachers; here I focus on the findings regarding one EALP teacher with sound experience of teaching EAP but no specific law background. The results of the study show that in EALP, as well as wider English for specific academic purposes (ESAP) contexts, limited subject-content knowledge (SCK) can lead to the frustration and lack of confidence of the ESAP teacher, and suggest utilizing the SCK of experienced colleagues and students to address this.

A Preliminary Analysis of Lecturers’ Empathy in Mitigating Challenges of Developing English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) Assessment Materials

Running English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) courses at tertiary institutions is becoming more challenging due to a number of factors and it leaves impact on lecturers’ emotions. Emotional dimension is among the aspects that significantly influences the way lecturers view assessments and their choice of assessment practices. This paper specifically looks at empathy as one emotional aspects present within lecturers as they undertake tasks of developing assessment materials and mitigate the challenges that they encounter. Six senior ESAP lecturers teaching engineering students at two engineering related universities reflected on this scenario via interviews and self-reflections. Their empathy in planning and developing assessment materials were elicited and scrutinised via qualitative approaches. All the lecturers exuded empathy based on professional grounds and directed towards essential learner factors and the intended ESAP course outcomes attainment. Empathy was found to be consistently demonstrated towards language learner factors and their language learning context that comprise aspects like background of students, language proficiency level, familiarity with language materials, current knowledge and skills required for test-taking. Such empathy for the best interest of the learners have induced careful and selective practices among the lecturers when preparing assessment materials. The presence of empathy in assessment practices appeared to be second nature to the lecturers and it helps to complement assessment best practices and upholds quality delivery of the ESAP courses. Empathy at a positive level has enabled the lecturers to embrace the spirit of assessment for learning where more time and efforts were devoted towards planning suitable assessments that promote understanding and mastery of the language, before going for the assessment of learning or summative assessments.

TRANSLATION IN AN ES(A)P COURSE – CHOOSING AND USING TEACHING/LEARNING MATERIALS

The paper deals with L2-L1 translation as used in different phases of an ES(A)P (English for specific academic purposes) course for different purposes – namely, as a complementary class activity carried out throughout the course, as well as one of the means of assessing students’ reading comprehension. It foregrounds the importance of selecting adequate materials, and elaborates on the different factors that this selection is dependent on. An extensive analysis of translations by students of the humanities and social sciences at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade has been carried out, the results of which have been used to substantiate the rationale behind the use of translation as a learning and assessment tool, while indicating the kind of translation materials most appropriate for the two purposes. The paper also aims to contribute to the reevaluation of the use of translation in ESP, since it has for a long time been “ostracised” from language teaching practice, while placing this activity/tool in the context of the humanities and social sciences, which have also been undeservedly neglected in EFL/ESP studies.

A comparative study of proximity in Iranian and American newspaper editorials

The study is aimed at gaining further insight into the concept of proximity and its contribution to text development in general and newspaper editorials in particular. It also furthers our understanding of cross-linguistic differences in the use of metadiscourse. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate and compare proximity elements in Iranian and American newspaper editorials. Following Hyland's proximity model (2010a) which comprises five major elements, organization, argumentative structure, stance, engagement, and credibility , we focused on a detailed analysis of proximity features in two corpora, Iranian newspaper editorials and American newspaper editorials. To this aim, 240 newspaper editorials, including 120 editorials from each category, were collected. The outcomes revealed that there were significant differences in the use of proximity elements in the mentioned corpora. It was demonstrated that stance markers were considerably more recurrent in the American data than their Iranian counterpart. Unlike the American editorials, the Iranian ones contained a larger number of engagement markers. The key reasons behind such discrepancies are discussed in terms of differences in cultural, social, and political backgrounds. This study can be helpful for English for Specific/Academic Purposes (ES/AP) learners who study journalistic English to become familiar with proximity.

An investigation into the learning transfer of English for specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) writing skills of students in Singapore

This article explores learning transfer in an undergraduate engineering English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) course. The study followed 25 undergraduate engineering students over one academic year. It uses a mixed-methods approach that compares individual interviews and written assignment samples from an ESAP course for engineering students as well as assignment samples from subject-specific engineering courses. By comparing the participants’ student-identified transfer of learning outcomes, and the transfer identified in the participants’ assignments, this study provides insights into whether students transfer what they learn in academic writing courses to other academic contexts. The results of this study show the strong transfer of some learning outcomes and offer support for the idea that ESAP courses can be taught for transfer.

ПРОГРАМИ АКАДЕМІЧНОЇ ТА ПРОФЕСІЙНО-ОРІЄНТОВАНОЇ ІНОЗЕМНОЇ МОВИ З ПУБЛІЧНОГО УПРАВЛІННЯ: ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКА ПРАКТИКА

competences on public administration based on European practices. The methodology of teaching foreign language for specific purposes, foreign language for special academic purposes is revealed. ESP – English for Specific Purposes and ESAP – English for Specific Academic Purposes are analyzed. As an example, the methodological provision of teaching a foreign language for public servants is reviewed. The a course-book for the first-year university study foreign language program in Administration at the Faculty of Administration, University of Ljubljana is reviewed.The methodology of teaching English for public servants is built on the principle that the graduates in administration have to be knowledgeable about different areas, such as economics, management, law, public finance, informatics, human resources etc. That is why the topics cover such areas as: Student of Public Administration, State, Government, Municipality and administrative unit, Judiciary, Parliament, the European Union and a Career in (EU) Administration. The methodology of teaching is to satisfy such key requirements as:- as the term 'public administration' encompasses a scope of various job positions and employments the main goal of methodical materials is to satisfy the practical language needs relevant to an extremely wide spectrum of employment possibilities;- the language learners’ specific reasons for learning a foreign language are key for all the decisions regarding content and teaching methods. ESP – English for Specific Purposes – has two criteria features. Firstly, it is orientation toward learners’ goals, and secondly, the necessity for performing the analysis of needs. The curricula and its methodical supply full of useful topics and information for the public administration target group of foreign language learners, such as: - language in the activity of a servant/administrator;- paying income tax;- public administration institutions;- names of various institutions, ministries and types of courts;- names of civil servants' titles ;- learning about the features of a state, the Constitution, the Parliament, the National Council and National Assembly;- the procedure of applying for citizenship or obtaining a residence permit; - information on the EU, its history, EU acronyms and jargon;- the EU as a multicultural society etc. The material mainly focuses on covering the four skills, and language structures. The most covered skill is reading, the least dealt with is listening. In terms of structures, vocabulary is paid more attention to than grammar. The grammar topics include: passive voice; word formation; modal verbs; infinitival and gerundial constructions; phrasal verbs; conditional clauses; very little work with prepositions, tenses and, collocations.

Encoding, decoding, packing and unpacking via agnation: Reformulating general knowledge into disciplinary concepts for teaching English academic writing

In assessing student writing, instructors typically look for evidence that a writer has grasped concepts from the field and is using them appropriately. Texts may demonstrate this by linking discipline-specific knowledge to the everyday world, either translating common knowledge into classroom concepts, or from them. This procedure is particularly important in Economics, a real-world discipline. However, the language resources employed for this process are not generally an explicit part of the English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) curriculum. This paper argues that an effective ESAP writing course should teach how language facilitates this translation process via agnation. This paper first explores the evolution of the approach to agnate relations, then applies the concept as either packing (placing common phenomena into technical terms) or unpacking (explaining technical terms through common phenomena). It then gives the results of applying this method in a classroom setting: the course “Writing for Disciplinary Studies” for Chinese Economics students studying in English. It was found that students’ writing scored higher accuracy and clarity marks when they had been explicitly instructed in these agnate relations and how to employ them in writing, but work could be done to make this process more student-friendly.

Teaching English for Specific Purposes in Russian Universities: A Case of Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences

The paper discusses the impact of English for Specific Academic Purposes teaching methodology on developing in-house materials for the course of English for Social Sciences taught at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. The paper gives examples of the materials and provides results of their evaluation. The case study demonstrates efficiency of the approach to in-house materials development based on collaboration with faculty, teachers of English for Specific Academic Purposes in other disciplines, and students. The approach involves analysis of the materials designed at different stages of the educational process. Research results are assessed through the survey conducted among the students and interviews conducted with faculty members and teachers of English for Specific Academic Purposes. The efficiency of the employed approach makes it possible to use it as a model for developing in-house materials in similar academic contexts in non-linguistic universities.

Towards a Sustainable Curriculum for ESAP Teacher Training Program: A Profile of ESAP Content Specialists’ vs. Language Instructors’ Needs

Abstract The first and most crucial step towards developing a sustainable curriculum for instructors teaching English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) is a needs analysis. Therefore, the main aim of conducting this study was to investigate the in-service needs of language instructors and content specialists teaching ESAP and to spot the differences between the needs of these two groups in order to provide them with systematic treatments in ESAP teacher training programs. This mixed method study was designed on a qualitative-quantitative survey basis using a questionnaire, a semi-structured interview, and an observation checklist. The analysis of the data collected from 50 content specialists and 50 language instructors completing the questionnaires reveals that there is a significant difference between the in-service needs of these two groups, that is, language instructors desire more to be trained in an in-service ESAP teaching training program in terms of professional, procedural and personal needs. Furthermore, the results of the data obtained from the semi-structured interview and the observation of 20 of the above-mentioned instructors (i.e., 10 content specialists and 10 language instructors) indicate that language instructors have more difficulty selecting suitable materials, suffer more from low income, attitudinal difficulties and backwash effect compared to their counterparts teaching ESAP courses. It can be inferred that the results of the present study can sufficiently help the researchers to embark on an in-service teacher training program both for ESAP content specialists and language instructors based on their specific needs in the ESAP context.