Dr. Ali BakhshiBy: Sh. Tamizrad

Fall 2014

• Introduction

• In-house teaching material developed for engineering

students

• An academic speaking course

• A research study into workplace language

• Summary

Introduction

Although some ESP teaching or research

may rely on one type of description,

many ESP courses of instruction or

research projects involve a combination

or combine descriptions of language with

a focus on language skills.

• Genre-based language description + Grammar

• First part of the English 221 course

• Aim: To help the students write abstracts for reports on engineering projects that involve innovative procedures, techniques, or designs

• No focus on skills development

• Focus of the course is on features of the two writtengenres (abstracts and recommendation reports)

• Information is given about the use of these

forms in general.

• Genre-based approaches to language

description often proceed from examination of

the purpose and positioning of moves in a

genre to analysis of grammar or vocabulary

use in those moves.

The approach used by Swales and genre

analysts generally is descriptive and is

concerned with the choice of grammatical

forms or vocabulary in relation to the

communicative purposes of the move and

the genre.

The material shown, progresses from

description of the structure of the genre

(the first move in the abstract) to a focus on

grammatical aspects of verb tenses in

general.

• Speaking-skills-focused course + Speech-act-basedlanguage description

• skills practice and development

• Two units: Health and Education.

• a skills focus, and the course covers skills involved in giving presentations (looking for ideas to shape a talk, giving an

overview, and rehearsing) and participating in discussions

• some language description of a number of speech acts important to participation in academic speaking (expressing opinions, asking questions, and asking for clarification)

• A skills focus, and the course covers skills involved

in giving presentations (looking for ideas to shape a talk, giving an

overview, and rehearsing) and participating in discussions

• Some language description of a number of speech

acts important to participation in academic

speaking (expressing opinions, asking questions, and asking for

clarification)

• Speech-act-based language research + Investigation of

aspects of social interaction

• A tanning factory in New Zealand

• The main speech act: directives (identified in line

with Holmes (1983) as acts to try to get others to do

things)

• Aim of the study: how workers and key figures in the

factory, such as the manager, the foreman, and the

accountant, used directives.

• Who used directives and when

• The syntactic choices the speakers used (declaratives,

interrogatives, and statements) in making directives in

the factory setting.

The data set was then analyzed for the following features:

1. The choice of syntactic forms by the participants.

2. The relationship between the forms selected by the

participants, strength of the directives, and the power

relationships and social distance between the speakers.

3. The use of modifying devices (hedges or other means to

minimize or maximize the strength of the directives) by the

participants.

• Different types of language description are

often merged in instruction in ESP and ESP

oriented research.

• Often it is the case that one type of description

predominates.