WHAT DOES IT TELL US ABOUT TEACHING AND CURRICULUM DESIGN?

Current ESP Research

Why select this topic?

Because the responsibility of every ESP practitioner is to be a researcher …

And also…

We are not teachers of what has always been taught, working from a textbook or materials produced elsewhere for another group of students..

ESP Teacher-researcher

Instead, we complete on-going needs assessments and target situation analyses within our students’ own target contexts---

Not your students??

And we create materials that reflect that our own students’ needs in the contexts in which they are studying or will be working.

Implications

In ESP, unlike TENOR (Teaching English for No Obvious Reason), research and pedagogy constantly are interwoven.

Implications

“Thus, our research should have pedagogical purposes—and our pedagogical practices are directed by the research completed within our specific contexts.”

(Belcher, Johns, & Paltridge, 2012, p.2)

• TO JUXTAPOSE PAST ESP RESEARCH AND TEACHING PRACTICES WITH CURRENT ONES.•TO CONCLUDE WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR ESP

TEACHING

This presentation’s purposes

Brief history: ESP in EFL Contexts

ESP was initially developed for EFL contexts, in countries where English was not the language of wider communication (Swales, 1988). As a result, much research has never been published—or is lost---as much was only appropriate for one context.

Research, theory, and context

Over time, ESP research has tended to follow the more general applied linguistics theories, the approaches to discourse analysis, and the research methods currently available.

Johns, A. (2013). “History of ESP Research…”

The difference has been that our goals have always been pedagogical. We

ask:

“What do these theories or research findings mean for a specific curriculum or classroom?”

“How can we bring the most authenticity possible to the classroom? “

The Past: Science research central

Most significant ESP research in the 1960s-1980s was about the sciences. We still have more research about academic scientific language and texts than we do about any other ESP area. (See the Episodes title.)

Other research areas

As time passed, other ESP areas besides science began to be researched, e.g., the language of business (St John, 1998) or law (Bhatia, 1993) or student work (Samraj, 2008).

Still, it was written language that was of central interest.

Currently: SEE THE PAPERS AT THIS CONFERENCE

Various studies of business and technology.

Workplace VESL/EOP. Academic disciplines of all types.ESP in the community---anyone who uses English, e.g., tourists, negotiators, prisoners…

Past research: (Post WW II)

Principally bottom-up and on written texts. Without computers and advanced data processors, early researchers counted types of verbs (Barber, 1962) or vocabulary (e.g., common content words) in the academic disciplines (Basturkmen, 2006).

Early research approaches

Often decontextualized: grammar and vocabulary were taken from discourses and studied without major consideration for rhetorical situation, i.e., genre, discourse structure, audience, purposes or the context.

Currently

Increasingly, research has been contextualized and triangulated.

(Tarone, et. al., 1981)The situated nature of language and texts is now considered in most research.

An example from the past: Bottom-up teaching approaches for vocabulary

In the past, ESP practitioners believed that their chief responsibility was to teach the isolated, specialist vocabulary of the students’ discipline or profession. Materials were full of glossaries.

Currently

Though vocabulary is still important, it is studied within a corpus or selected discourses and conditions of use and context are considered.

Vocabulary choices are examined, for example, for writer’s stance or as influenced by the values of a discipline.

Methods and research areas have also evolved

Corpus linguistics: VERY big! See, e.g., “bundling” (Csomay, 2012; Hyland, 2008)

Interviews (of specialists, students, and other stakeholders). (Tarone, et. al. 1981)

Observation and “job shadowing” (Johns & Price, 2013)

Contrastive work: cross-linguistic, cross-textual. (Mauranen, 2013).

Critical self-reflection (Johns & Makalela, 2013)

And combinations of several approaches, that is, triangulation.

“Bottom up” research and teaching: Corpus linguistics

CORPUS LINGUISTICS (CL)

A Recent, but major, influence

How is CL defined?

“…a collection of pieces of language text in electronic form, selected according to external criteria to represent, as far as possible, a language or language variety as a source of data for linguistic research” (Sinclair, 2004).

What authenticity did CL bring?

Bottom-up, word, phrase and sentence-level examinations of language use from authentic, target situation discourses.

CL interests

Initially, lexical frequency (AWL), key words, and lexical bundles (e.g., Csomay, 2012).

CL: Student involvement

Possibilities for students to do their own corpus studies through examining texts at their sites in the disciplines and professions. (See, e.g., L. Flowerdew, 2011, or Coxhead, 2013).

One current CL example

Nation’s Range Program, can be used to:◦ 1. Compare a vocabulary list (e.g., AWL) with words in a text to see what percentage appears in both.

◦ 2. Compare word usage in a student paper with a collection of articles or textbook prose in their own disciplines.

But CL is MUCH more than vocabulary in texts

See MICASE on spoken discourses and classroom interactions.

See Biber on his work comparing spoken and written English and describing academic language.

See Hyland on disciplinary language.See presentations at this conference.(References on handout.)

Published CL work

In fact, see much of the published research in ESPJ, EAPJ, and JSLW which uses corpus tools to answer many of the questions we currently have about authentic language use.

Current research: CL +

Vocabulary study is lexical-grammatical in many cases. Grammar and vocabulary are integrated in CL studies.

Corpus studies are combined with interviews with experts or students, studies of word use in various “texts” (e.g., lectures/textbooks)

Choices that relate to writer’s stance or disciplinary conventions (e.g., Hyland, 2007) are considered.

Summary: Vocabulary +

It can no longer be considered solely bottom-up or isolated in glossaries since research is triangulated and discourse and context are considered.

Vocabulary choices are disciplinary—but often genre- and author-based, as well.

Vocabulary: Teaching questions

What vocabulary do I teach? How do I complete my needs assessment and target situation research most effectively?

Do I draw from established corpus studies? If so, which ones, and why? Or complete my own?

Do I begin by teaching a general vocabulary and then move to more specialized words?

How do I integrate vocabulary study with examination of discourse and context?

How do I involve students in active study of the vocabulary that will be most useful to them?

VARIATIONS UPON ACTIVITY AND GENRE THEORIES

Research and teaching : Top down

How are genres defined in ESP?

Communicative events, named by the discourse community in which they are used (e.g., research article, case study, grant proposal) that serve social purposes for that community (Johns, 2011).

These events are recognized by certain repeated conventions (e.g., discourse moves, use of headings, language choices) BUT

As individual “texts,” they may vary in a number of ways (place of publication or presentation, audience)….

Group work: Questions about my presentation

Top down approaches: genre

1. What would you call this spoken text?2. What are some of the conventions of its

structure? 3. What kinds of language seem to

predominate? 4. How might this particular “text” differ

from a keynote in another context, e.g., in China?

5. How might this text differ in terms of “the author,” in this case, the presenter? That is, how might someone from this part of the world present the text differently?

6. Does knowing about the genre assist you in listening and taking notes?

Activity theory: Top down

Representation: What went into making this “text”? What

are the writer’s/speaker’s initial purposes? How did the writer plan?

What was required, e.g., research, before this “text” was produced? What challenges did producing this text present?

Adapted from J. Walker (2012). Just CHATing. Handout: Illinois State University.

Activity theory

Distribution: How is the text being distributed (e.g., online, through the mail)? How does this distribution affect how it is written and, in this case, presented?

More from activity theory

Reception: Who will take up and use the text? How will they read and interpret it? Will they repurpose it in some way? (That is, what will you, the audience, do with it?)

Ecology

What are the factors in the context influencing text production? For example, are writers/speakers under pressure to produce an article (or talk) so that they can keep their jobs or get promoted?

What types of pressures does the institution or the government put upon the writers/speakers as they produce texts?

Writer identity, stance, and engagement

What are the power relationships between the writer/speaker and the reader(s)/listeners? Who runs the show?

If the writer/speaker is predominant---or even if s/he isn’t, what types of stances are taken vis-à-vis the text and readers?

SEE NEXT SLIDE

How are speaker/writer relationships realized?

McGrath, L & M. Kuteeva (2012), stance and engagement in pure mathematics articles: Linking discourse features to disciplinary

practices. ESPJ, 31 (2).

Given current approaches, how will we go about our ESP

research?

What do we do?

Consider what is possible, or most important, to the classroom or curriculum.

Review previous research.Design research questions.Select data, e.g., “texts” for analysisPlan methodologies (e.g., corpus work,

interviews, focus groups, observation)Begin and continue studying needs and

target situations.

Decide upon how the findings will be classified and made pedagogically interesting to students and convincing to those in power.

Conclusions

What research-based teaching includes now:

The context (activity theory)Constraints of the situation, including stake-holders.

Active student involvement. Target genres and what they imply for readers/listeners, community.

The language and use of target genres from the discourses and contexts.

.

No written or spoken text is an island; no vocabulary or grammar stands alone.

Thus, our ESP research and teaching work is complex and

on-going..

Thank you!

ANN M. JOHNSAJOHNS@COX.NET

SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITYCA/USA