International Journal of English for Specific Purposes

Foreword

2023-03-21T19:27:25-06:00

Welcome to the fourth issue of the International Journal of English for Specific Purposes (IJESP) and a trio of papers looking beyond the panacea of simply building linguistic skills to meet learners’ needs as they endeavor to achieve academic agency. Not only are non-native English speakers adopting another language, they are typically learning content through this foreign medium while encountering its metalanguage. Hence, our authors flag the fundamental importance of genre.

How many words must we have? Threshold crossing into an academic disciplinary voice in the UAE

2022-02-10T04:56:58-07:00

When students enter higher education, they are confronted with making sense of content but also of the ways that language functions as a meaning-making resource to transmit disciplinary knowledge. In most university contexts, a growing body of research calls for a shift from general skilled-based literacies towards an explicit focus on subject disciplines and their associated epistemological literacies (Hyland, 2017; Tribble, 2017). In this paper, we argue that academic success requires that students cross Threshold Concepts (TC), which are the 'conceptual gateways or portals that lead to a previously inaccessible and initially perhaps troublesome way of thinking about something' (Meyer & Land, 2005, p.373). When English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) is a foreign language for students, it becomes imperative to develop their metalanguage or to assist them in crossing threshold concepts because they are "learning a language, learning through language, learning about language" (Halliday, 1993, p. 113). In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), health sciences' students' English language proficiency is consistently under pressure when writing assignments and tests. Thus, they are often framed in deficit discourses associated with being underachievers, unmotivated, or lacking an academic voice. This paper addresses this issue and focuses on low-proficiency EFL students who displayed little motivation when entering a compulsory one-year General Requirements Department (GRD) program. As a result, this paper highlights how two lecturers, one specializing in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and the other in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) genre-based pedagogies inducted Emirati health sciences into academic writing discourses associated with their career programs.

Medical Humanities: the ‘glass slipper’ of Medical English. A review of instructional interventions

2022-09-29T02:56:50-06:00

The language of medicine has long been the subject of research from multiple perspectives. English for Medical Purposes (EMP) courses and materials in Tertiary Education have been developed aiming at practicing specific lexical and grammatical features of medical discourse, with particular emphasis on their functions and rhetoric realizations in typical academic and professional medical settings.
Yet, the use of creative literature and visual imagery is rather uncommon in typical EMP modules, since these are usually employed in Medical Humanities courses to advance ethical debates, enhance philosophical reasoning on medical issues and sharpen narrative and observational skills. The present paper reviews implemented interventions and proposes that English language instructors, often endowed with a rich humanities background, are adept at effectively introducing Medical Humanities resources in their classes, enhancing the simultaneous development of language and humanistic qualities including increased medical language awareness, self-reflection, empathetic skills and critical understanding of professional values.

The Impact of Essay Genre on Emirati University Students’ Writing Errors

2023-03-21T19:43:33-06:00

There is a lack of studies investigating the relationship between essay genre and writing errors. To fill this gap, our study examines whether genre modulates the frequency of error types and their distribution across error categories. This requires analysis of the most common errors in both genres so remediation strategies can be recommended. Ninety argumentative essays (AE) and ninety rhetorical analyses (RA) were analyzed using methods that were modified from the literature. Essays were composed by adult female Emiratis (n = 90), enrolled in academic writing courses at Fatima College of Health Sciences in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Results showed that rhetorical analyses contained twice as many errors as argumentative essays. Rankings of error categories (e.g. grammar errors) in both genres revealed some partial differences. Rankings of error types (e.g. syntax: run-on sentence) showed further differences. Lexical errors were highly prevalent in both essay genres, in terms of both error category and error type. Essay genre may be partially responsible for error count differences. Other factors, primarily composition method and submission conditions, may also have impacted error counts. Three factors account for the majority of errors: intralingual & interlingual processes, overgeneralization errors and violation of subcategorization and semantic selectional rules. More research is needed to understand further the relationship between essay genre and writing errors.

ESP Research in Second Language Acquisition and Translanguaging. A Future Necessity

2023-05-22T07:05:42-06:00

ESP is taught in many universities of the world. Much attention is devoted to ESP course design. ESP teaching has much in common with English as a Foreign or Second Language and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Quickly developing Business English can be considered as part of a larger concept of English for Specific Purposes.

ESP is different from standard English teaching in the fact that the one doing the teaching not only has to be proficient in standard English, but they also must be knowledgeable in a technical field. When doctors of foreign countries learn English, they need to learn the names of their tools, naming conventions, and methodologies of their profession before one can ethically perform surgery. ESP courses for medicine would be relevant for any medical profession, just as how learning electrical engineering would be beneficial to a foreign engineer. Some ESP scholars recommend a "two layer" ESP course: the first covering all generic knowledge in the specific field of study, and then a second layer that would focus on the specifics of the specialization of the individua

Publishing ESP Research. An Unsettled Research Mantra

2023-05-22T07:08:24-06:00

Academics are churning out 100,000s of pages of research that will never be read. They do it for various reasons, especially to show the university hierarchy that the academic is an essential cog in the wheel without which the university cannot survive. Of course, the infamous H index, so ill thought out also shapes the desire to publish. The refrain, ‘what your H’ is one they ask. Of course, getting past H10 is not easy – and the system is so fundamentally flawed that academics in Indonesia know how to manipulate the publishing system and receive high Hs in the 10+ mark without their paper ever being read. And there is no alternative as the likes of the major publishers absolutely rely on the complexity of the system to stay in business. Nowadays with over 25,000 universities all competing for the elusive research dollar to survive that means they require more and more publications to boost their fame knowing full well they are deceiving the world, for its all about money and grants, and only unlimited publishing can generate that massive income which keeps not only universities in business, but the large multinationals like Springer, SCOPUS, Elseveir who require unlimited publishing output to feed their shareholders handsome dividends.

It is a commercial juggernaut that is manipulated by many in the know. So the theme of this paper takes up where the learned professors named in the title left off- namely that papers should only be 3,000 words long – that saves countless wasted hours that the academic could better put into teaching his/her student – it also simply tells the story in a fraction of the words that historical publishing has demanded for no reason apart from making some review editors a an item on the Editorial Board ( this helps their university standing) and allows the editors to advise their employers that they are an Editor of an online research journal. And hence the eminent sense in academics publishing much shorter papers, and stop putting wasted hours into a piece of paper that will never be read and instead put that time and effort in to securing great future for their undergraduates.