ESP Vocabulary Research Articles

Teaching English for specific purposes to computer science students with reading difficulties

This is a case study conducted to investigate difficulties that may hinder third-year computer science students in their development of English for specific purposes’ reading skills and to grasp the different factors that may influence students negatively. Data were obtained from a questionnaire which enabled the researcher to obtain valid information about the learning situation of the target population. Through the use of this tool, students’ preferences and difficulties in the area of reading were analysed. The results revealed the need to increase students’ exposure to reading and provide support with vocabulary. Hence, some recommendations and strategies are provided to remedy the situation and boost the students’ learning process
 
 Keywords: Computer science students, ESP vocabulary, reading difficulties, reading strategies.

VLS Model for Content Words: An Experimental Study on Engineering Students in India

The resurgence of interest in vocabulary learning in the past two decades and research in Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS) since Schmitt’s 1997 taxonomy have yielded a few other taxonomies and strategies to enrich the vocabulary of ESL learners. However, developing a VLS taxonomy or Model in ESP context has not been focused upon though the need for it has been studied and reported. Students from vernacular medium schools in ESL and EFL countries find it difficult to learn the content in colleges due to their limited knowledge of content vocabulary. Hence a new VLS Model for content words has been designed to render linguistic assistance to them. The efficacy of the Model has been tested in the context of Engineering Science. The proposed model is unique and specific for deriving strategies to learn content vocabulary in all branches of Science and Engineering. There is scope for diachronic, synchronic, and scientific study of words through Cognitive and Metacognitive strategies. Activities generated on this Model combine decontextualized Discovery strategy and contextualized Consolidation strategy. Eighty engineering college students in India took part in the study. The experimental group which received intervention based on the VLS Model outperformed the control group in the posttest. Hence this Model is advocated for enhancing the knowledge and use of ESP vocabulary and for helping learners understand their disciplinary field. It is believed that through appropriate VLS, the learners can be empowered to be autonomous in reading.

EFFECTIVE VOCABULARY TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES

Communicating in a foreign language is impossible without mastering vocabulary. It is of special importance in English for Specific Purposes (further ESP) courses as requirements of modern realities in Kazakhstan force experts to know enough ESP vocabulary to be able to demonstrate their knowledge in their professional sphere. Since vocabulary plays such an important role in ESP courses it is essential to determine what strategies ensure effective teaching and learning it in specific groups of learners. This paper presents results of a study held on vocabulary teaching and learning strategies employed by ESP teachers and learners at L.N. Gumilyev Eurasian national university (further ENU) in Astana, Kazakhstan. An open-ended questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were conducted among 20 ESP teachers and 48 ESP students of L.N. Gumilyev ENU. The questions elicit not only teachers’ vocabulary teaching experiences and opinions about the most effective vocabulary teaching approaches but also the reasons for students’ vocabulary learning and using problems. During the interview students described their preferred vocabulary learning styles and confirmed the importance of learning vocabulary in ESP. The study determined the most effective ESP vocabulary teaching and learning strategies for teachers to use at L.N. Gumilyev Eurasian National University.

The pedagogical potential of a bilingual specialized dictionary in tertiary education

<p>Even though specialized dictionaries provide abundant information, research findings indicate that their role in the teaching process has been neglected. Within the context of the current global domination of English and an increased need for linguistic standardization, special emphasis is placed on the use of specialized dictionaries in teaching vocabulary. With this in mind, the purpose of this research is to analyze pedagogical potential of a specialized bilingual dictionary in function of ESP vocabulary learning and knowledge transfer. A questionnaire-based research into dictionary use in ESP acquisition is conducted with 705 students and 21 teachers of non-linguistic faculties of the University of Novi Sad. The findings indicate that dictionaries are seldom used in the classroom, even though both groups of respondents have positive attitudes towards them, especially online dictionaries and other user-friendly applications. However, the findings also indicate students’ insufficient knowledge not only of lexicographic conventions but also the criteria for dictionary quality assessment. Building on the hypothesis that well-conceived dictionaries can enhance not only ESP teaching but also knowledge transfer from English to non-English languages, this research suggests the importance of compiling quality terminological products and their inclusion into the teaching process with systematic training in dictionary use.</p>

A Mixed-Method Case Study: Is there Only the Pictorial Input that Affects Word Retention?

This mixed-method case study was conducted to probe how a set of pictures had an influence on a group of EFL university students’ retention of English words. Seven Thai university participants, enrolling in the course of English for Service Industry, were voluntarily engaged in the study. They took a pretest of 45 words they learned in class through the use of pictorial input for one semester, and right after the posttest, they recalled how they could remember the words in an individually stimulated recall protocol session. The result of T-test from Wilcoxon sign-ranked test showed that the pretest and posttest scores were significantly different at the 0.05 level. Interestingly, the qualitative accounts from the stimulated recall revealed that apart from the pictorial input the participants learned in class, they also employed other strategies to help them memorize the vocabulary. The findings from the study; therefore, shed lights on cognitive-metacognitive processing and strategies an individual EFL learner adopted, and most importantly, on how teachers can encourage their learners to orchestrate them and make the best use of pictures in order to learn ESP vocabulary effectively.

Virtual Reality for Teaching ESP Vocabulary: A Myth or A Possibility

Studies on the effects of various strategies to improve vocabulary have documented the important role of input and output in terms of long-term retention of lexical items. Nowadays, the world is witnessing a growing interest in wearable devices. Considerable attention has been paid specifically to virtual reality (VR) headsets or smart Goggles and their abilities to engage their users. This paper examined whether virtual reality headsets help (N=20) Saudi female ESP postgraduates enrolled in the Didactic Terminologies in English Course to retain vocabulary related to their field. For six weeks, the students interacted with virtual objects through watching 360 degrees videos related to basic skills in counseling and some cases that require consultation and referral. For example, depression, addiction, suicide, autism, violence, domestic violence, bullying, and impulsive behavior. A pre and a post tests scores were compared by a paired sample t-test to examine the effect of the virtual reality videos on their vocabulary retention. The results showed a highly significant difference between the two tests with a (P< 0.001), and the mean scores between a pre and a post-tests pointed out that an alteration in favor to the post-test where students indicated the most improvement. The results demonstrated that virtual reality videos actually helped the postgraduate students to retain ESP vocabulary and therefore develop their competence level. Future work could investigate the perception of using virtual reality headsets to improve ESP vocabulary.

Evaluating the Ramifications of ESP Vocabulary Instruction through Facilitating Cognitive Processing

This study examines English for General Purposes’ (EGP) words that take on specialized meanings in particular contexts. For English native speakers, it may be easy to differentiate between these according to context, but it is challenging for non-native speakers to build cognitive awareness of the divergence between English for Specific Purposes’ (ESP) and EGP vocabulary usage. There are also conceptual metaphors within the ESP vocabulary that require cultural understanding or unequivocal definition guidance. Strengthening students’ proficiency in navigating the demands of professional fields is the ultimate goal of practitioners. As has been observed during language practice, building ESP vocabulary is the imperative groundwork for non-native speakers to establish their language skills in their specialized occupational fields to enhance employability. This study undertakes a comparison of ESP vocabulary proficiency between an experimental and a control group. The experimental group is comprised of learners who undertook cognitive processing training through learning strategies in business English courses, in which vocabulary was presented to students in ways that aimed to facilitate cognitive processing of ESP vocabulary acquisition. The control group is comprised of learners who took English vocabulary courses adopting conventional approaches toward intensifying their vocabulary volume. The outcome indicates that the experimental group significantly outperforms the control group in ESP vocabulary proficiency level. Examining these two groups allows us to explore the extent of the enhancement rate of vocabulary learning provided by ESP cognitive strategies’ training. Implications for future ESP reinforcement plans are also discussed in accordance with the findings.

Data-Driven ESP Vocabulary Learning

This empirical study is to test the feasibility and effectiveness of Data-Driven Learning. It first introduces the concept of DDL (data-driven learning) and probes the rationality and advantages of data-driven ESP vocabulary learning. It points out that DDL it is more motivating since it supplies authentic language materials and it is student-centered and majored-related learning. One semester’s ESP course applied self-constructed Agriculture English Paper Corpus and its CQPweb (web-based Corpus Query Processor) to ESP vocabulary learning as tools and resource. The results of empirical study indicates that corpus application into ESP vocabulary learning helped students in many ways, such as knowing high frequency words, grasping collocation and colligation, understanding prosody of words, etc. Vocabulary test and coverage (range) test indicate that DDL effectively improves the accuracy of ESP words use and helps students to acquire more ESP words.

DEVELOPMENT OF DISCUSSION SKILLS FOR PRIMARY TEACHERS IN TRAINING STUDENTS AT ENGLISH CLASSES

<p>The development of discussion skills is one of the most essential aims in the acquisition of foreign languages. Discussion skills are essential both for students in study process and for teachers in their professional work. The objective of the research is to investigate the improvement and perfection of discussion skills as well as motivate students to participate in discussions using the structured discussions, perfecting the discussions skills and acquiring the ESP vocabulary. Every discussion has to be purposeful and well-structured. The university lecturers have to perfect the skills of discussion planning, management and analysis. The results acquired proved that students’ discussion and listening skills, as well as the knowledge of ESP vocabulary increased. However, some other language skills, particularly the fluency that is based on the knowledge of the language structures did not improve considerably.</p>

Use of information technology in the development of professionally oriented lexical competence.

The article deals with the main problems of teaching ESP vocabulary by means of information technology. The definition of the term “lexical competence” has been given in the article. The process of lexical competence development has its own characteristics which have been discussed in the paper. Particular attention has been given to the term “professionally oriented lexical competence” which is an integral part of a foreign language teaching process to the future specialists of different fields. Information technology plays important role in teaching new vocabulary. It allows teachers to optimize and make learning new vocabulary partially automatic. The use of information technology ensures that a student is actively involved in learning new material and acquires new knowledge and skills. The principles of information technology use in teaching ESP are heavily emphasized in the article. Among them are integrative, personalized and interactive learning principles as well as the principle of lexical guidelines and computerized testing of the gained lexical knowledge and skills.

The Effect of the Keyword Method and Word-list Method Instruction on ESP Vocabulary Learning

The present study examined the effect of the keyword method and word-list method instruction on ESP vocabulary learning across proficiency levels. Two groups of students at Islamic Azad University of South Tehran branch were selected with the total population of 120 Industrial engineering intermediate students with an average age of 21. The students of each class were divided into two different homogeneous groups, the upper-intermediate level and the lower- intermediate level, based on their scores on the Oxford Placement Test. Each class was instructed through a specified method of vocabulary learning, i.e. the keyword method and word-list method, for an equal time of four weeks. Following both treatments, a multiple-choice test was administered to each class as the post-test to find out the ESP students' vocabulary knowledge. The results of the study indicated that the upper-intermediate learners who received the keyword method instruction outperformed the upper-intermediate learners who received the word-list method. In addition, the lower-intermediate level students in the keyword method group had better performance than those in the word-list method. Moreover, regardless of the proficiency level of the students, all of the students in the keyword method group obtained higher scores than those in the word-list method group. The results of the study revealed that the keyword method instruction has superiority over the word-lists method in learning ESP vocabulary regarding the proficiency level of the students.

ESP Vocabulary Teaching and Learning, Comparing the Language Teacher and Language Learning on the Internet

ESP vocabulary teaching and learning has become very important and indispensable in most of the different fields of study for both teachers and learners. This has brought to exploiting various ways of learning and enlarging ESP vocabulary. One of the most popular ways in English learning and teaching is the application of Information Communication Technology or English learning on the Internet. This study tries to investigate the difference or any potential relation between ESP vocabulary teaching by the language teacher and ESP learning on the Internet. Using the Internet to learn a language encourages the use of multimedia and network technology enhancing learning, but on the other hand learning a language face to face with the teacher creates a lot of opportunities to foster participation in different discussion groups developing students’ corporation. A questionnaire was done to students who study ESP in their course and will need it in their profession. Participants were selected through random sampling. Students taking part in this questionnaire study at the Faculty of Civil Engineering. Advantages and disadvantages will be discussed for both ways of learning the ESP vocabulary.Comparisons will be done and conclusions will be given concerning the strategies and methods that the ESP teacher and computer programs use in order to ease the recording and learning of ESP vocabulary. Conclusions will include even the fact that students nowadays prefer a combination of the two in order to assimilate the language faster ensuring the fostering of sustainable lifelong learning. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n7p655

Internet-supplemented ESP Coursebooks: Fostering Iranian ESP Students’ Vocabulary Breath

The Internet is equipped with tools helping users join other people to share their interests and work collaboratively. This study aimed at finding if the Internet could foster Iranian ESP students’ vocabulary breath. 80 students majoring in different fields were selected. They participated in ESP vocabulary tests related to their major. Then, students of each major were divided into two groups: the control group used printed materials; the experimental used them online. Then, they took a vocabulary post-test. The results indicated students using web-based materials could outperform the others; the findings also revealed the students of different fields performed differently.

Creativity in Building ESP Vocabulary in the Context Of ICT

The article aims at analyzing various creative methods of expanding students’ ESP vocabulary – the basic tool for communication and knowledge – in the context of ICT. The authors tackle traditional ways of using authentic texts and proceed with innovative methods of ESP vocabulary building such as using the Internet as an extremely diverse source of activities as well as emphasize the advantages of mock trials for law students and the most challenging activities – presentations and project-based learning. The framework of ICT offers numerous integrated and interactive materials and creative ways of vocabulary building.

Assessing Listening Skills in Children with Cochlear Implants: Guidance for Speech-Language Pathologists

Assessing Listening Skills in Children with Cochlear Implants: Guidance for Speech-Language Pathologists

Memory strategy instruction, contextual learning and ESP vocabulary recall

In the last decades there has been an increasing interest in vocabulary learning strategies given that they are found to facilitate second/foreign language vocabulary learning and recall. As many learners do not develop sufficient mastery of the strategy repertoire, explicit instruction on vocabulary learning strategies may help them to become more proficient with the broad range of strategies they can use through their vocabulary learning process. The present study investigates the effects of memory strategy instruction along with learning through context on the ESP vocabulary recall of Turkish EFL learners. The study further explores whether there is any difference in the use and choice of memory strategies of the learners as a result of such instruction.