Current Developments In English For Academic, Specific & Occu

Description: Current Developments in English for Academic, Specific and Occupational Purposes Current Developments in English for Academic, Specific and Occupational Purposes is a collection of papers which reflect the diversity and multiplicity of strands that international EAP and ESP practitioners of the 21st century are engaged in across all the continents. Most of the papers in the book are contributions of the members of the ESP SIG at IATEFL (although there are a couple of 'guest' submissions), and were presented at the IATEFL Conferences in Cardiff (2005) and Harrogate (2006). The IATEFL ESP SIG hopes that the book proves a useful compendium for teachers, lecturers, teacher trainers, trainees and students of TESOL, ELT or Applied Linguistics. The ESP Special Interest Group (SIG) is one of the fourteen SIGs at IATEFL, and its main focus is on English for Specific Purposes, English for Academic Purposes and English for Occupational/Professional Purposes. The main objective of the SIG is to disseminate good practice in ESP (as well as in EAP and EO/PP) through its membership and to promote models of excellence in ESP to ELT professionals internationally through workshops, seminars and conferences and through publishing the output in our Journal and in leading international ELT journals and periodicals. More information about the ESP SIG can be found on http://espsig.iatefl.org/ For other ESP SIG titles published by Garnet Education, please visit the Journals and Academic Papers section.

Review: "Despite the specificness of the acronyms ESP/EAP/EOP, this title hosts selections of academic studies from a wide range of areas. Meeting under the roof of IATEFL ESP SIG, the professionals provide readers with a panorama of the latest ESP research and practice. Reflecting the practical nature of the group's aims, a proportion of the articles are concerned with classroom practices. The activities used are exemplified following the results section and could be inspiring for practitioners. For instructors disturbed by the notion 'EAP=seriousness, text-based traditional instruction', the use of Anderson's (Chapter 1) interactive tasks and Reguzzoni's (Chapter 8) simulation activities may help raise students' motivation. In terms of academic writing, which is a significant consideration of EAP, Atabas (Chapter 4) and Colledge (Chapter 12) discuss peer review techniques; yet under different names, coaching and dialoguing. While both studies aim for learner autonomy, the latter has additional targets such as making the assessment criteria clear to Open University students. From a more theoretical perspective, Chazal (Chapter 5) forms a 10-step academic writing framework accompanied by guideline for writers. Another framework of EAP writing is specially designed for English for medical purposes by Puentes (Chapter 15). Yakovchuk (Chapter 3) address another key issue: non-native speaker plagiarism, the leading causes of which are content problems and laziness. As for academic vocabulary learning, Huntley and Davidson (Chapter 13), introduce ways to organise vocabulary journals and programmes. For teachers, there are also ideas to integrate these journals into classroom activities. On the ESP side, Kovacic (Chapter 16) advocates studying lexical relationships for effective vocabulary learning in IT. Additionally, genre analyses of 'UN Security Council Resolutions' (Chapter 2) seem to be authentic and motivating for legal English classes. Kurgat's (Chapter 14) investigation of undergraduate essay questions, indicates a need for special training in reading exam prompts. Another strand of the studies monitors ELT policies and problems in countries such as Bangladesh, Kenya, Russia, Malaysia and Pakistan. Although a distinct categorisation of the research areas is lacking, the book successfully brings together different fields. While the research perspective dominates, both practitioners and researchers may get a good deal out of this title." Filiz Rizaoglu, Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey for iatefl Voices, Issue 208, May-June 2008 "Current Developments in English for Academic, Specific and Occupational Purposes is a collection of essays for those who are already experienced in the field. Academic in focus and method, these essays will interest professionals seeking to keep abreast of the study and pedagogies in their area. Most of the essays include a practical consideration of, and strategies for, the EAP context. The broad range of subject material - from the results of studies into assignment assessment to the cultural howlers in language teaching videos - means that no one will find all these essays relevant to them; on the other hand, there is something here for almost everyone. A great test for a piece of writing is to ask the 'so what?' question at the end, and some of the more arcane essays are found wanting. However, as a text for a learning centre, where teachers can select one or two essays of interest, this is an up-to-date and well-edited contribution to professional development." Jack Bowers, Australian National University for the Journal of Academic Language & Learning "This book brings together a collection of 22 academic papers. It explores a wide range of current issues and many of the contributions are from the 2005 and 2006 IATEFL conferences. The area covered - EAP, ESP and EOP - is very wide. Of course, not all of the essays are relevant to every reader. Some articles are too geographically or linguistically specific to be of interest to the browser, so the book needs to be used selectively." Pete Sharma for the EL Gazette, Issue 352, May 2009 Apart from boasting one of the longest, most acronym-heavy bibliographic references in the history of TEFL.net reviews, this collection of 22 articles is brimming with ideas and experiences of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) practitioners from across the globe. As you may well be aware, the International Association for Teaching English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) does its part in serving the international community of English teachers, lecturers and researchers worldwide by organising annual conferences and producing various publications. This particular offering is a product of the members of the ESP special interest group (SIG). As an overview, each article tends to be practically-oriented and is clearly written by teachers 'on the ground', teaching ESP, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) in a wide variety of contexts. The articles have clearly been selected to represent the diversity of members of the SIG, their interests and their teaching contexts. To give some examples, this collection includes contrastive linguistic analyses of EAP writing in China, socio-cultural considerations of teaching English in Pakistan, and EAP reading comprehension using African literature in Nigeria. In this review, I will avoid commenting on the highs and lows of the individual articles but will try to give an overall summary of the quality, applicability and contribution of the text as a whole to our knowledge and practice of these branches of English language education. The content of the articles deals directly with issues faced by practitioners on a daily basis. For example, the '10 steps to better academic writing' article provides useful questions which teachers can use when designing in-class tasks and materials. The insights offered by a questionnaire study of students' views on their reasons for plagiarizing is informative and valuable, summarizing a variety of factors which influence this negative, and sometimes prolific, learner behaviour. Articles which introduce classroom methodology such as coaching, dialoguing, using vocabulary journals and global simulations make stimulating reading which offer those much needed 'breaths of fresh air' - inspiration for trying out new techniques in the classroom to keep things interesting for both student and teacher alike. The variety of teaching contexts also adds an element of discovery to reading the articles and even more prominent is the realization that we all belong to a global community of teachers often with location being the primary difference. In terms of weighting across the three branches of English teaching indicated in the title, the majority of articles focus on EAP issues with a minority of ESP-related articles (e.g. English for medical purposes). I couldn't locate any articles which are directly related to occupational purposes. In terms of quality there is considerable variation across the contributions. Some articles are suitably rigorous in their academic pursuit of answers to research questions, offering results which can be applied to further research and can be trusted as being generalizable to a useful degree. On the other hand, numerous articles rely far too much on subjective interpretation of the value of particular teaching methods, with recommendations made without recourse to previous research or detailed examination. Similarly, sweeping generalizations made about learner groups are unhelpful and caused me to doubt the validity of certain studies and their applications. Having said this, the over-generalization and subjectivity displayed in the text should probably not be judged too harshly: as a text for practitioners, the ideas, materials and suggestions can be utilized as necessary and for this reason the articles still maintain their value. At the level of academic research, however, many articles do not really make the grade; that is, they would not be useful as citations of previous research. So who should read this book? Teachers of EAP and also ESP will no doubt find something of relevance and use in this publication. As a source of ideas and inspiration for the classroom and for understanding better the worldwide community of practitioners this is a valuable addition to the literature. Dave Allen for TEFL.net English for Academ