Little Quick Fixes are small, inexpensive books from Sage that deal with specific areas of a research project or dissertation.
There are about 20 books at present, and I’ve had a good look at some of them.
Each book is about 120 pages and can be read – so they say – in one hour.
Continue reading
Language for Specific Purposes. Sandra Gollin-Kies, David R. Hall, and Stephen H. Moore. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Theoretical and practical books about ESP teaching are rare, so I was happy to see this book available recently. Although the title is “Languages for Specific Purposes”, most of the examples are from English and as well as that useful research from other languages is included. The book is highly recommended to all ESP, including EAP, teachers.
In Language for Specific Purposes, Gollin-Kies, Hall, and Moore provide a good overview of the history, concepts, application, pedagogy and research of language for specific purposes (LSP).
I was recently asked to work with a group of students on blogging. The students had been asked to write a weekly assessed blog of between 500 and 700 words and were having difficulty.
As I thought about it, I realised that I did not have enough information about what the students were expected to do, and neither – I think – did the students.Continue reading
I’ve often quoted Frank Smith when discussing writing. In Writing and the writer, Smith distinguishes between “composition” and “transcription” in writing. “Composition” is deciding what you want to say, and “transcription” is what you have to do to say it. His advice is “The rule is simple: Composition and transcription must be separated, and transcription must come last. It is asking too much of anyone, and especially of students trying to improve all aspects of their writing ability, to expect that they can concern themselves with polished transcription at the same time that they are trying to compose. The effort to concentrate on spelling, handwriting, and punctuation at the same time that one is struggling with ideas and their expression not only interferes with composition but creates the least favorable situation in which to develop transcription skills as well” (Smith, 1982, p. 24).
After watching Juzo Itami’s 1995 film Shizukana seikatsu (A quiet life) recently I decided to read Nobel prize winner Kenzaburu Oe – on whose novel the film is based. In his novel The Changeling, he deals with a similar situation:
I’ve just returned from the IATEFL English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Special Interest Group (SIG) Pre-Conference Event (PCE) in Birmingham, UK.
The theme of the PCE was tensions and debates in ESP and EAP.
As usual it was a very interesting day with teachers from many parts of the world discussing how they go about trying to meet the academic and professional linguistic needs of their students, sometimes with limited resources.
I have been collecting old EAP textbooks for a while now and have quite a good collection.
You can see a summary of them at:
http://www.uefap.net/materials/materials-history
I’ve been trying for some time to come up with an analysis of trends in EAP as shown through these books. It needs more work, but this is what I have come up with so far, with some examples: Continue reading
I did some work for a well-known organisation recently. My job was to investigate ESP teaching in universities in the capital city and make recommendations. I spent a few days driving round the city, meeting teachers, lecturers, administrators, course directors, students, subject lecturers etc. and was generally very impressed. The ESP teachers knew what they were doing. They had talked to students, lecturers and course managers. They had examined students materials. They knew what the students had to read and to write and had analysed the required language and designed their courses accordingly. The only problem I could see was that the various universities did not talk to each other and so the main recommendation I made was that there should be ways in which the universities could talk to each other and share materials and ideas. Continue reading
Many Students in Higher Education studying at British institutions of higher education experience problems. Some of these problems will be general to all students, but many will be particular to those students who are non-native speakers of English. Most UK universities therefore run EAP (English for Academic Purposes) courses. The object of these courses is to help Students in Higher Education overcome some of the linguistic difficulties involved in studying thought the medium of English. These courses are normally taught in groups with the content determined by the lecturer in advance. The students in the class are from different countries, studying different subjects at different levels. There are three main problems, though, with these classes, which means that attendance is often low: