ANALYSING MEDICAL ENGLISH LEXIS: A CORPUS-BASED RESEARCH. IMPLICATIONS FOR LEARNING AND TEACHING

Abstract In the last few decades medical specialized communication has become progressively dynamic and prolific with an ever growing number of researchers employing English as a lingua franca. Medical specialized communication unquestionably constitutes a challenging problem with non-native medical students and health care practitioners who are increasingly faced with the need to have an active command of Medical English, that vast set of standardized and non-standardized terms used to describe and represent the changes and the results accomplished in the medical field. My direct involvement in a language trial test aiming at investigating the productive vocabulary knowledge of a group of Italian medical undergraduates was the background that provided the incentive for this dissertation to investigate the language of medicine and devise strategies and materials that were specific enough to help non-native speakers from different medical fields acquire the English language skills they needed step by step. Trying to find the convergence between non-native medical doctors\u2019 vocabulary needs and pedagogy, my research has developed along two lines, purposefully called \u2018diagnosis\u2019 and \u2018remedy\u2019. Firstly, I endeavoured to \u2018diagnose\u2019 which key-words are homogeneously distributed across mainstream professional medical writings opportunely collected in the Medical English Corpus (MedEnCor), a specialized corpus extensively representative of current healthcare domains and biomedical topics. Secondly, I attempted to seek a \u2018remedy\u2019 to the non-native learners' lexical \u2018impairments\u2019 categorizing all the extracted key-words into semantic wordlists, suitably catalogued into the Medical English Corpus Lexical database (MedEnCor-Lex), a web-based monolingual glossary (www.medencor.com) meant to provide non-native users not only with denotative information on medical key-words, but also with appropriate instances of their collocational and phraseological context and use. Although this writing tool is currently being completed, my goal is equally educational and professional because by compiling a specialized lexical database I do not only mean to make the English used in medicine accessible to the healthcare community, but, first and foremost, to make non-native recipients familiarize themselves with the terms and expressions relevant to the scientific register. An essential skill for their career

Англійська мова для педагогів: бакалаврів та магістрів

The textbook «English for pedagogues» is for teaching English of master’s degree holders in various fields. There are following units in it: Modern School, A teacher’s role at school, Higher education, Education in the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia & New Zealand. There is a great deal of original texts, various exercises in basic and special vocabulary and grammar, and dialogues. A great lexical vocabulary gives the opportunity to perceive English more profoundly, to liberalize and develop communicative skills in English.Лексико-граматичний підручник «English for pedagogues» створено для педагогів – бакалаврів та магістрів – вузів, які вивчають англійську мову. Навчальний лексико-граматичний підручник «English for pedagogues» також призначений для підготовки магістрів у різноманітних сферах. В посібник включені такі розділи: Modern School, A teacher’s role at school, Higher education, Education in the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia & New Zealand. В навчальному підручнику велика кількість адаптованих і оригінальних текстів, різноманітних лексико-граматичних вправ, діалогів. Великий лексичний запас дає можливість з одного боку глибші пізнати англійську мову, з другого боку – розширює кругозір студентів, в третє – дозволяє розвивати комунікативні навички в спілкуванні англійською мовою

Chinese elements : a bridge of the integration between Chinese -English translation and linguaculture transnational mobility

[Abstract] As the popularity of Chinese elements in the innovation of the translation part in Chinese CET, we realized that Chinese elements have become a bridge between linguaculture transnational mobility and Chinese-English translation.So, Chinese students translation skills should be critically improved; for example, on their understanding about Chinese culture, especially the meaning of Chinese culture. Five important secrets of skillful translation are introduced to improve students’ translation skills

Specialised Languages and Multimedia. Linguistic and Cross-cultural Issues

none2noThis book collects academic works focusing on scientific and technical discourse and on the ways in which this type of discourse appears in or is shaped by multimedia products. The originality of this book is to be seen in the variety of approaches used and of the specialised languages investigated in relation to multimodal and multimedia genres. Contributions will particularly focus on new multimodal or multimedia forms of specialised discourse (in institutional, academic, technical, scientific, social or popular settings), linguistic features of specialised discourse in multimodal or multimedia genres, the popularisation of specialised knowledge in multimodal or multimedia genres, the impact of multimodality and multimediality on the construction of scientific and technical discourse, the impact of multimodality/multimediality in the practice and teaching of language, the impact of multimodality/multimediality in the practice and teaching of translation, new multimedia modes of knowledge dissemination, the translation/adaptation of scientific discourse in multimedia products. This volume contributes to the theory and practice of multimodal studies and translation, with a specific focus on specialized discourse.Rivista di Classe A - Volume specialeopenManca E., Bianchi F.Manca, E.; Bianchi, F

Lost in Translation: Academic and managerial discourses of knowledge transfer

This thesis investigates how Knowledge Transfer (KT) Policy in Scotland is understood, translated and put into practice by managers and academics in a new university in Scotland. KT Policy has entered the higher education arena as the ‘third sector’ alongside teaching and research: it puts new demands on universities, and could be said to attempt to redefine the relationship between the university and wider society. The (relatively few) studies of KT Policy highlight the problematic nature of the term ‘knowledge transfer’ and there is a substantial literature that illustrates the difficulty of ‘translating’ policy into practice. In understanding KT and its implementation, this thesis argues that account needs to be taken of the fact that in the expanded UK higher education (HE) sector there is no single idea of a university and thus the reception of KT policy needs to be understood in ways that are sensitive to the various (and possibly conflicting) meanings attached to the policy by managers and academics. The thesis adopts an interpretive methodological approach that draws on critical discourse analysis (CDA) to uncover the meanings attached to KT Policy as it is translated and enacted. KT policy is viewed as a ‘text’ that can be read in a variety of ways, and that is amenable to alternative readings that may be at variance with those encoded by policy-makers. Research methods include document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and observant participation. The findings illustrate how managers and academics attach multiple and conflicting meanings to KT policy, with quite significant implications for policy implementation. The different meanings of the policy are explained in terms of contrasting managerial and academic discourses. This study adds to knowledge about KT and also adds to knowledge about policy and its reception when it enters the university environment. Analysis of how policy is received and communicated using a CDA approach illuminates the university as a space through which ideas flow and are shaped by the meanings attached to them in that process. This case of translation of KT policy has more general applicability in terms of its illumination of the enactment of meaning in different ways in different institutional cultures

“That Was the Start of an Academic Career” - a Mixed-methodology Corpus-based Study of TEFL Theses and Portfolios

This dissertation explores ESP and academic writing and examines the Hungarian context in a mixed-methodology approach investigating the process of writing TEFL theses and portfolios submitted at the University of Pécs. Part I comprising three chapters provides an overview of previous research in the field. Chapter 1 introduces the reader into the topic of ESP by summarizing research done in separate subfields and reconsidering them by creating a formula applicable to any domain, E(x)P. Next, Chapter 2 defines the concept of academic discourse and narrows the focus to written academic discourse discussing discoursal features and genres, touching upon the topic of identity. Chapter 3 reports on the context of teacher education in Europe zooming in on the Hungarian context to provide an in-depth overview of the fundamental factors and changes in the preceding years. Subsequently, the five chapters of Part II establish the framework of the studies and report four studies in the field of TEFL. I introduce the social constructionist mindset and provide a comprehensive and concise overview on web and desktop applications used in the studies, tools, Vocabprofile Compleat Web VP, AntWordprofiler, AntConc, Coh-Metrix Web Tool, NVivo, and Word counter, are described in detail with special attention to integral corpora, word lists, and specific indices. Chapter 5 explores the use of narrative interviews as data collection instruments in a pilot study conducted on pivotal life events, career choices, and essential competencies reported by novice teachers. Interview sessions of the pilot study reveal narratives elaborating on positive and negative experiences as well. Data imply that novice teachers’ experiences were highly determined by their teachers and pivotal events encountered during their university studies, and in one case the influence of the mentor teachers’ negative attitude resulted in the interviewee leaving the teacher profession. This small-sized study assists the development of the interview questions in the case studies in Chapter 8. Chapter 6 is an inquiry into the nature of EFL teacher trainees’ vocabulary using a corpus-based approach. A specialized corpus of 1,495,058 tokens incorporating TEFL theses and portfolios written at the UP is analyzed to explore teacher trainees’ general- and specific-purpose lexis and academic vocabulary use. It also explores the coverage of low-frequency vocabulary in individual texts and reveals the nature of off-list words in theses and portfolios. Lexical statistics disclose that teacher trainees used a wide range of high frequency, general vocabulary in their academic writing samples resulting in a high ratio of general vocabulary coverage. Abbreviations and profession specific vocabulary are found in the low-frequency list, not covered by the reference word lists. The mixed-methodology study reported in Chapter 7 combines a quantitative corpus-based approach with qualitative textual analysis. The study focuses on reflective writing scripts submitted as part of TEFL portfolios in order to reveal lexical features and recurring themes of a twofold document reporting on both the professional and personal development of teacher trainees. The lexical analysis reveals a high ratio of general-purpose vocabulary in the documents and the dearth of low-frequency or academic vocabulary. Findings suggest the need for genre-specific improvement of teacher trainees’ language use, more specifically their academic and technical vocabulary use in reflective writing. The analysis of linguistic features shows that even though texts were well-constructed and utilize multi-clause sentences built up with logical relations, an overuse of cohesive devices was found in certain cases which might result in disturbing expert readers. Overall, 1,726 coding references were identified by the NVivo program and codes center around four main topics: teaching, language, school, and learning. Chapter 8 focuses on novice teachers’ beliefs and views by examining narratives told during interview sessions. The study addresses six factors: teacher competencies and characteristics, thesis topics, challenges while writing, their retrospective evaluation of the submitted documents, changes in retrospection, and advice for future trainees. Narrative interviews identified no pivotal events which resulted in participants leaving the profession in contrast to the study presented in Chapter 5. The findings show that thesis topics were related to the theme of teaching, and the main motives involved scaffolding student learning, passion, self-improvement, past experience, and continuing previous work. The retrospective evaluation of the documents uncovered teachers’ beliefs about their written products. The findings of the studies have implications for corpus linguistics research, as well as students and teachers in teacher education

Conference Proceedings. Assessing Language and (Inter) cultural Competences in Higher Education. Evaluation des compétences langagières et (inter) culturelles dans l’enseignement supérieur

This epublication contains papers that were presented at the conference “Assessing Language and (Inter) cultural Competences in Higher Education” which took place at the University of Turku (Finland) on 30.8.1.9.2007. The online proceedings may be downloaded and used provided the source is acknowledged.Cet ouvrage rassemble certaines communications présentées à la conference « Evaluation des compétences langagières et (inter) culturelles dans l’enseignement supérieur » qui s’est tenue à l’Université de Turku (Finlande), les 30.8.1.9.2007. Vous pouvez télécharger les communications et les utiliser en mentionnant la source.Siirretty Doriast