VOCABULARY IN ESPLANGUAGE ISSUES IN ESP

NURUL-IKHLAS ARSHAD

G1014798

THE TYPES OF VOCABULARY

Technical Semi-technical/sub-technical (EAP) Core business (EBP)

WHICH SHOULD WE TEACH AS AN ESP TEACHER?

Hutchinson and Waters (1987), Higgins (1966): Priority should be given to the teaching of

semi-technical or core-vocabulary. The teaching of technical vocabulary is not

the responsibility of the EAP teacher.

BUT IS THIS ALWAYS TRUE?

In certain specific contexts it may be the duty of the ESP teacher to deal with technical vocabulary by checking learners understanding of technical vocabulary appearing as carrier content.

THE TEACHING OF TECHNICAL VOCABULARY

ESP exercises often contain technical vocabulary that acts as the carrier content, not the real content. In order for students to be able to do the exercises, they need to understand first the technical vocabulary.

Adopt a questioning role especially if the subject specialist is not present.

HOW DO WE DEAL WITH TECHNICAL VOCABULARY?

1. A term may be cognate with the equivalent term in students’ L1. So it is enough to translate the term in L1.+ carbon, cycle, carbon cycle ciclo de carbono

2. If the term is not cognate and is unfamiliar, then it may need to be introduced and explained.+ Use technical dictionaries or other relevant sources.+ Language teacher and subject expert prepare a glossary of new terms.

SEMI-TECHNICAL AND CORE BUSINESS VOCABULARY

There is not yet a satisfactory definition of the concept. Baker’s (1988) 6 categories of vocabulary:

1. Items expressing notions general to all specialized disciplines.

2. Items used to describe/comment a technical processes/functions in preference to other items with the same meaning.

3. Items used to signal writer’s intentions/evaluation of material presented.

4. GL items that have a specialized meaning in one or more disciplines.

5. Specialized items with different meanings in different disciplines.

6. GL items that have restricted meanings in different disciplines.

Proportionality, mild

Occur : HappenFast : Rapidly

Extension, load

Worked : deformed at atmospheric temperature

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Load, Extension, Worked, Rapidly, Proportionality, Mild

General vocabulary that has a higher

frequency in a specific field.

General English words that have a specific meaning in certain

disciplines

Academic: factor, method, function, occur, cycleTourism: confirm, advise, accept

Computer science: bugPhysics: force, acceleration, energyEngineering: stress, strain

(Semi-technical or core business vocabulary)

(Technical vocabulary)

THE TEACHING OF VOCABULARY IN ESP Follows general principles in EGP.

Comprehension

Production

•Method of learning new vocabulary:• Deducing the meaning

from context• Deducing the meaning

from the structure of the word

•Techniques for storage and retrieval:• Word association• Mnemonic devices• Loci; the use of visual

images

Vocabulary

Each technique involves cognitive processing, not mechanical learning of lists.

Ways in which vocabulary may be gathered tofacilitate cognitive processing:

1. Situational, semantic and metaphor sets

2. Collocation and the use of corpora

3. Lexical phrases

1. Situational, semantic and metaphor sets

• Grouping the words according to their meaning aids their retrieval from memory.

• They can be grouped according to:• topic (situational sets)- LIBRARY: book, shelf, borrow, loan…• chains of association (semantic set) – synonyms, antonyms,

superordinates & subordinate items

• metaphor – ‘wild horse’ to describe inflation: out of control, run away inflation, galloping inflation.

‘argument is war’: defended his claims, attacked the idea

• Use materials that encourage learners to build their own sets.

2. Collocation and the use of corpora

•From corpora of specific texts, we can draw up lists of key lexical items AND examine the context in which a lexical item occurs, its collocation.•Collocation describes the company that a word keeps.

•Problem with unnatural collocation:

• Examine the collocation of both INSIGHT and PRESENT:

“The variation of these ratios presents some insight about the financial intermediary role of banks”.

INSIGHT: inquiry is a mouthwatering one, offering an insight into the detail.PRESENT: record findings, interpret data and present findings for different audiences.

3. Lexical phrases

• Learners do not store vocabulary as individual words, but as chunks of language or lexical phrases; short set phrases that are frequently used in certain situations.

..as shown in the diagram....sales fell sharply..

..the table suggests that..

•This is not advocate the unthinking learning of set phrases but to introduce to learners the range of lexical phrases and provide learners with a number of options.

Thank You!