How specific should we be?

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How specific should we be?

• Louis Rogers

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• www.macmillanskillful.com/

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Specificity Vs. Transferability

• Current practice
• General academic vocabulary
• Beyond individual words
• Practicalities
• The broader picture

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• Current practices

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Current practices

• How similar are different genres and disciplines?
• Academic writing - 15,559 Results
• How do these style guides present academic
  writing?
• Bennetts survey

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Current practices

• 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.

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Current practices

• General principles
• Text structure
• Grammatical issues
• Lexical features
• Other features

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Current practice

• Large degree of consistency
• Evidence, caution and restraint, incorporation of
  sources
• Formal, technical, objective
• Structure IMRD / IDC
• Impersonal

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• General Academic Vocabulary

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General Academic Vocabulary

• The Academic Word List (Coxhead)
• 4 discipline areas
• 3.5 million word corpus
• 570 word families
• Wests 1953 General Service List

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General Academic Vocabulary

• 75 2000 most frequent words
• 10-15 academic vocabulary
• 10-15 specialist vocabulary

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General Academic Vocabulary

• Job Examine
• Quantitative Qualitative
• Omission Persuasion
• Classification Determine

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General Academic Vocabulary

• 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

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• Beyond individual words

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Collocations

• 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

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Collocations

• 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

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Collocations

• Participant-orientated stance, engagement
• It is possible that, as can be seen

Discipline Research-orientated Text-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
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Collocation

• 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

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Collocation

• 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

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Collocation

• 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

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In favour of specificity

• 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

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Practicalities

• Time for research
• Contact with academics
• Time for materials development
• Financial constraints

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Practicalities

• 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

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Practicalities

• 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

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The bigger picture

• 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

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The bigger picture

• 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

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The bigger picture

• Progression through years
• Sandwich degrees
• Placements
• Knowledge economy

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Implications

• 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

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Conclusion

• Is there a core academic vocabulary?
• Are the differences significant enough?
• How specific can we be?
• How specific should we be?

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• www.macmillanskillful.com/

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Bibliography

• Anthony, L. (2011). Products, processes and
  practitioners A critical look at the importance
  of specificity in ESP. Taiwan International ESP
  Journal. Vol 32 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

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Bibliography

• 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 Isnt an
  Academic Vocabulary but TESOL Quarterly, 42
  109 113
• Hyland, K., Tse, P. (2007). Is there an
  Academic Vocabulary?. TESOL Quarterly, 41 235
  253.

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Bibliography

• 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. 12 available at http//dx.doi.org/10.5
  430/elr.vln2p33