Louis Rogers

www.macmillanskillful.com/

Current practice

General academic vocabulary

Beyond individual words

Practicalities

The broader picture

Current practices

How similar are different genres and disciplines?

Academic writing - 15,559 Results

How do these style guides present academic writing?

Bennett’s survey

Barrass, R. Scientists must write: A guide to better writing for scientists, engineers and students.

Brown, R, B. Doing your dissertation in business and management: The reality of researching and writing.

Fabb, N and Durant, A. How to write essays and dissertations: A guide for English literature students.

Kneale, P. Study skills for geography students: A practical guide.

Northedge et al. The sciences good study guide.

Strong, S.I How to write law essays and exams.

General principles

Text structure

Grammatical issues

Lexical features

Other features

Large degree of consistency

Evidence, caution and restraint, incorporation of sources

Formal, technical, objective

Structure – IMRD / IDC

Impersonal

General Academic Vocabulary

The Academic Word List (Coxhead)

4 discipline areas

3.5 million word corpus

570 word families

West’s 1953 General Service List

75% = 2000 most frequent words

10-15% = academic vocabulary

10-15% = specialist vocabulary

Job Examine

Quantitative Qualitative

Omission Persuasion

Classification Determine

Multi-meaning words

Volume Attribute

Is one core list possible?

Moving beyond individual words

General Service List + AWL◦ Address, control, means◦ Address-issue, control-group, by-means

Beyond individual words

Hyland 2008 ◦ Electronic Engineering◦ Biology◦ Business Studies◦ Applied linguistics

4 word bundles

50 most frequent◦ On the other hand, as well as the, in the case of,

at the same time, the results of the Half on one list only

Function of collocations◦Research-orientated = location, procedure,

quantification, description, topic

At the same time, the purpose of, a wide range of, the size of the, the currency board system

◦Text-orientated = transition, results, structure, framing

In addition to the, it was found that, in the next section, with the exception of

Participant-orientated = stance, engagement

It is possible that, as can be seenDiscipline Research-

orientatedText-orientated

Participant-orientated

Biology 48.1% 43.5% 8.4%

Electrical engineering

49.4% 40.4% 9.2%

Applied linguistics

31.2% 49.5% 18.6%

Business studies

36% 48.4% 16.6%

Sciences = research-orientated Social sciences = text-orientated

90% Vs. 80% and 9% Vs. 17%

Chunks not transferable

Functions are transferable

Relative weight of assessment type

Hyland and Tse (2007)

◦ marketing strategy◦ learning strategy◦ coping strategy

Durrant (2009)◦ Life Sciences, Science and Engineering, Social-

Psychological, Social-administrative, Arts and Humanities

◦ 1000 two-word collocations across all 5 areas

Three quarters grammatical

Reporting pattern ‘verb + that’◦ Argue, assumer, conclude, confirm, demonstrate,

emphasize, hypothesize, imply, indicate, note, predict, reveal, show, speculate, suggest, suppose

Frequency and pattern combined

Transferability of use not investigated◦ Based on, associate with, note that, defined as,

relationship between, effects on, indicate that

Strong evidence for disciplinary differences

Broad or subtle? ◦ Nation - theory is theory no matter what the

discipline

Are grammatical collocations and functions more transferable?

Implications for institutions and teachers

Time for research

Contact with academics

Time for materials development

Financial constraints

Broad ESAP

Combined degrees

◦ Accountancy with; Management, Divinity, Law, IT, Economics, Spanish, Biology, Broadcast media, Geology, Psychology, HR, Finance, Leadership Mandarin, Logistics, and Maths

EAP teacher knowledge

Variability of specialist areas◦ Management and Business

Consistent areas - Finance, Accounting, Statistics and Organisational Behaviour

Differences – Economics, Marketing, Computing, Enterprise, Law, Foreign Languages

Challenge in defining genres

‘An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.’ Nicholas Murray Butler

Bachelors, Masters, PhD

The interdisciplinary nature of the Colleges as a major stimulus to teaching and learning

Highly flexible programme Extensive choice of subjects Acquire transferable skills Highly flexible undergraduate learning

environment Cater for a variety of different student

interests and career aspirations Develops analytical, quantitative,

computing, presentation and other transferable skills

Progression through years

Sandwich degrees

Placements

Knowledge economy

Skills to deal with a wide range of texts◦ Purpose, audience, aims

Ability to identify patterns

Critically analyse these features

Mixed backgrounds, experiences, disciplines allows for better analysis

Is there a core academic vocabulary?

Are the differences significant enough?

How specific can we be?

How specific should we be?

www.macmillanskillful.com/

Anthony, L. (2011). Products, processes and practitioners: A critical look at the importance of specificity in ESP. Taiwan International ESP Journal. Vol 3:2 1-8

Bennett, K. (2009). English academic style manuals: A survey. English for specific purposes. 8 p43-54.

Biber, D, Conrad, S and Leech, G. (2002). Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman: Harlow.

Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34: 213-238.

Coxhead, A. (2011). The Academic Word List 10 Years On: Research and Teaching Implications. TESOL Quarterly, 45: 355-361

Dovey, T. (2006). What purposes specifically? Re-thinking purposes and specificity in the context of the ‘new vocationalism’, English for Specific Purposes, 25(4), 387-402.

Durrant, P. (2009). Investigating the viability of a collocation list for students of English for academic purposes. English for specific purposes. 28 p157-169.

Eldridge, J. (2008). “No, There Isn’t an ‘Academic Vocabulary’ but…” TESOL Quarterly, 42: 109 – 113

Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2007). Is there an “Academic Vocabulary”?. TESOL Quarterly, 41: 235 – 253.

Hyland, K. (2008). As can be seen: Lexical bundles and disciplinary variation. English for specific purposes. 27 p4-21.

James, M.A. (2009). “Far” transfer of learning outcomes from an ESL writing course: Can the gap be bridged? English for Specific Purposes. 18 69-84

Jordan, R, R. (1998). English for Academic Purposes: A guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ramoroka, B, T. (2012). Teaching Academic Writing for the Disciplines: How far can we be specific in an EAP writing course? English Linguistics Research. 1:2 available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/elr.vln2p33