Teacher Targets: A model for CLIL and ELF teacher education in polytechnic settings

The objective of this paper is to present an alternative model for CLIL/ELF teacher education, called the Teacher Target Model, which may help hard-science teachers undertake English-medium instruction more efficiently. Conceived as a visual educational trope for changing mentalities and practices, it derives from the needs analysis of a group of polytechnic teachers who have participated in the cycles of in-service training seminars given at the Polytechnic University of Madrid since 2009. Their notions, impressions, and video-recorded performances reveal that in general they hold a monolithic conception of classroom interactions and teaching procedures, with an ensuing impoverishment of genre and language repertoires. To bridge this gap, the model proposed here cross-weaves five discursive strands converging in university lectures, namely disciplinary discourse, (meta)discourse of the medium, embedded genres, lecture phase, and teaching style, thus fostering natural communication beyond the delivery of technical content and bringing ELF instruction closer to the CLIL dynamics

Pragmatic and Metacognitive Applications of Metaphor and Metonymy in Dialogic Professional Genres: the Case of the Job Interview

This article brings into focus the notion of metaphorical competence (MC) and posits the inclusion of its explicit training in LSP syllabi, stressing its important function in dialogic self-evaluative genres like the job/selection interview. A perspective of the different approaches to MC is given prior to discussing the features and specific difficulties intrinsic to the interview, as well as to analysing the meta-cognitive and pragmatic roles of metaphor and metonymy and the constraints governing them. Both tropes prove efficacious lexical activators and mnemonics and valid politeness strategies, especially as conflict neutralizers, intimacy builders, hedges, persuasive devices and topic-closing formulas. Key words: metaphorical compe- tence, metaphor, metonymy, metacognition, pragmatic impact, LSP

Redefinición de un producto informático de gestión inmobiliaria. Acciones correctoras de la estructura y funcionamiento de la empresa

El proyecto contempla el análisis de una empresa dedicada a ofrecer servicios a pymes inmobiliarias, basándose en un producto informático de gestión inmobiliario diseñado para permitir la colaboración entre inmobiliarias, la cual presenta una gran desviación entre los objetivos previstos y los reales tras un año desde su creación. El objetivo es el de esclarecer la viabilidad de la empresa y crear todos los procesos y cambios oportunos en el caso que así fuera. Se realiza el estudio de la estructura y funcionamiento de la empresa así como del sector, mediante el análisis DAFO y el estudio del entorno averiguando quién es su competencia, analizando las principales empresas de programas de gestión inmobiliaria y de portales inmobiliarios. Posteriormente se realiza un estudio de mercado, conociendo la tendencia del mercado inmobiliario español, y se analizan las necesidades de las agencias inmobiliarias para conocer qué es lo que quiere el posible cliente. Junto con el estudio de mercado, se obtiene toda la información para evaluar las deficiencias de la empresa. Se determinan los errores que han impulsado unas pérdidas constantes, los cuales indican decisiones poco acertadas a nivel directivo, la inexistencia de un plan de expansión eficiente y falta de funcionalidades en el producto Definiendo el nuevo rumbo que ha de adoptar la empresa, se estudian las mejoras que han de desarrollarse en el producto, mediante un análisis brainstorming y otro funcional de los usuarios inmobiliarios, creando nuevos procesos de implantación y control de desarrollos junto con el calendario de los mismos, extrapolables a otros sectores tecnológicos. Se procede a la redefinición de la comercialización del producto, desde el diseño de los nuevos canales de venta, procesos para la formación de los clientes y un completo plan de seguimiento postventa, primordial para el éxito de la empresa. Se crean procesos para la recopilación de información de los clientes y seguimiento de la carga de trabajo de los trabajadores de la empresa, permitiendo tener información actualizada tanto interna como externa. Los procesos de contención de costes implantados, junto con la nueva comercialización del producto, permiten una reducción drástica de los gastos mensuales en los que incurre la empresa, así como la potenciación de la captación de nuevos clientes y de nuevas fuentes de ingresos, vislumbrando de nuevo el futuro de la empresa

Semiotic Shortcuts. The Graphical Abstract Strategies of Engineering Students

  Graphical abstracts are representative of the rising promotionalism, interdisciplinarity and changing researcher roles in the current dissemination of science and technology. Their design, moreover, amalgamates a number of transdisciplinary skills much valued in higher education, such as critical and lateral thinking, and cultural and audience awareness. In this study, I investigate a corpus of 56 samples of graphical abstracts devised by my aeronautical engineering students, to find out the ‘semiotic shortcuts’ or encoding strategies they deploy, without any previous instruction, to pack information and translate the verbal into the visual. Findings suggest that their ‘natural digital-native graphicacy’ is conservative as to the medium, format and type of representation, but versatile regarding particular meanings, although not always unambiguous or register-appropriate. Consequently, I claim the convenience of including graphicacy/visual literacy and some basic training on graphical abstract design in the English for Specific Purposes and the disciplinary English-medium curriculum.  

Descriptive Strategies in U.S. Patents

While the knowledge contained in US patents descriptions is essentially the same as that conveyed by textbooks and journal articles (Myers 1995, Owen-Smith 2003), it must be shaped to claim temporary exclusive property over an invention. To effectively safeguard the value of such property, patents must reveal enough to suggest technical feasibility but conceal detail to cloud the specifications making replication easy. Usually co-authored by inventors and lawyers, the genre is therefore expected to hold a subtle interplay between boosting and hedging and gather traits from interdisciplinary discourses (Hyland 2000), in this case technical and legal. The aim of this study in progress is twofold: 1) to identify the linguistic act patterns used to match the requirements of legal patentability and the commercial interests of inventors, and 2) to bridge a gap in the know-how of readers and technical students by determining the discursive moves and interdisciplinary traits of the genre, comparing them with more familiar instances like manuals or specialized publications. To achieve this purpose, a corpus of 343 US electro-mechanical patents has been analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively with concordancing software at a macro (rhetorical) and microlevel (linguistic realizations). At this first stage of the research, the prime focus has been set on the most common boosting and hedging devices which stylistically feature the genre and may constitute a lexical and discursive technolectal repertoire useful for both professionals and engineering students. Among the devices detected, some (e.g. signaling nouns and verbs, repetition, evaluative adjectives and adverbs, inferential markers as code glosses) are signs of a pragmatic deference towards the non-expert members of the discursive community (i.e. lawyers and potential investors) and prove to be efficient means to overcome knowledge asymmetries

Understanding the inventor’s mind through patent analysis: a clil team-teaching experience at the Technical University of Madrid

Describimos una iniciativa de enseñanza en equipo, basada en la metodología CLIL y aplicada recientemente en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Agrónomos de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Dos profesoras—una ingeniera agrónoma y una lingüista, junto con cerca de 20 estudiantes de máster, analizamos una patente contrastándola con un artículo de investigación homólogo, escrito por los mismos autores sobre el mismo objeto tecnológico, y examinando sus diferentes contextos y consecuencias sociales. Con una duración de siete horas y media y un carácter eminentemente práctico, el seminario impartido no sólo se ha diseñado para proporcionar contenidos disciplinarios (agronómicos) y procedimentales (las estrategias propias de la escritura de patentes), sino también para suscitar sensibilidad hacia el lector y fomentar competencias transversale

Genre-based strategies for integrating critical and creative thinking in Engineering and Journalism

In this paper we propose genre-based strategies for integrating two key lifelong competencies, critical and creative thinking, in Engineering and Journalism. In both disciplines there is a need to apply professional expertise in various contexts and to communicate with different audiences. Drawing on previous studies, we sketch a basic needs analysis in these professional fields, point to major learning obstacles, and provide guidelines for collaboration between language and content teachers in English-medium instruction settings. In such collaboration, genre is simultaneously the hub, the framing structure, and the shared middle ground between content and form and even between disparate disciplines. Our goal is an integrative pedagogy that merges the acquisition of disciplinary content and procedures with the practice of ‘soft skills’ and the ability to transform and interrelate knowledge. Our contention for both Engineering and Journalism is that by allowing students to understand genres and explore their potential, we can provide them with learning experiences in which critical thinking and creativity are engaged

La creación poética es un acto de destrucción

Antología poética realizada por el propio autor, que recoge poemas de los libros Vida ávida, Conocimiento del medio, La llegada del mal tiempo, Biografía de la muerte, La voz de la mirada y Toda la luz del mundo, más dos poemas inéditos. Permite conocer una parte importante de la obra de este autor, cuya poesía refleja una fusión con su propia vida

Arquitextura. Apuntes hacia una poética (1980-2015)

Architexture. Notes towards a poetic (1980-2015)Arquitextura. Apuntes hacia una poética (1980-2015