Article
English for academics concept: Course principles in teaching EAP to researchers
This article aims at sharing the results of the British Council partner project English for Academics implemented in Russia in 2012-2015. The need for this project was identified in the Baseline Study having indicated the necessity to design a course for university staff in order to develop their foreign language communicative competence and to stimulate their participation in international projects. The concept of the course is based on the needs analysis conducted by the British Council; the methodological principles of the book are conducive for meeting the needs of the target group. The participants of this project describe the project stages, the concept of the book they have developed, and illustrate the principles with sample activities from the course. We demonstrate how the understanding of learners’ needs and characteristics helps select appropriate pedagogical principles to meet these needs and to exploit the characteristics. Based on the results of a piloting stage we conclude that the course is an effective means of developing academics’ language proficiency and, consequently, enables university instructors and researchers to participate in international projects.
RESEARCH PORTAL FOR ACADEMIC PAPER ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION The problem of mastering the academic style of English language is relevant to many non-English speaking authors. Recommendations on style improvement are often of a theoretical nature, but there is a possibility to research their implementations using text corpora. This paper presents a concept and functional requirements for a Web-portal, which provides services of academic style analysis and evaluation. The portal is suitable for various types of users and will give them the opportunity to perform research using different corpora and linguistic data as well as get a simple summary of the document’s characteristics compared with other papers on relevant topics and recommendations on style improvement. To this day the research prototype of the portal is in development. Keywords: English for Academic Purposes, style analysis, corpus linguistics, academic paper evaluation
The use of 1st person pronouns - one of the most obvious strategies of authorial presence - and their pragmatic functions in academic texts have been the subject of many corpus-based studies. It has been shown that pronoun use can vary from discipline to discipline and from culture to culture. This paper presents a comparative study of the use of 1st-person pronouns in English and Russian research articles in sociology. The study employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches, including frequency counts and discourse analysis of a small corpus of research articles (40 single-authored articles in sociology: 20 in English and 20 in Russian). The analysis shows that the authors writing in Russian tend to use fewer 1st-person pronouns compared to the authors writing in English. Moreover, pragmatic functions of the pronouns are quite different in English and in Russian research articles. In this paper I will argue that these differences originate in the traditional collectivist approach to scholarly work that informs Russian academic discourse. In the concluding section, I discuss the implications of these findings for EAP pedagogies, especially for “English for Publication” courses.
The article reports on a study of the role of assessment and feedback in writing extended essays. It first outlines the course and teaching methods, then it looks at the results of the assessment of 131 essays with two sample ones analysed in detail and, finally, it provides students’ perception comments on the criteria specifically developed for the course and subject teachers’ opinions about the results of essay writing in Sociology exam.
The article considers the main principles underpinning course design with regard to teaching Legal English. Among the issues discussed are the syllabus design, types of interaction activities, as well as preparation of ESP teachers. Much attention is paid to needs analysis issues and the genre approach in teaching Legal English.
The article reports on a study of the role of assessment and feedback in making presentations. It first gives a brief overview of the programme and course outline, then looks at the teaching methods used and theory of assessment and, finally, provides results of assessment of almost 100 presentations with one sample analysed in detail. The criteria specifically developed for the course will also be given.
This volume contains a selection of papers from the Biennial BALEAP Conference held at the University of Nottingham, UK in April 2013. The papers reflect various aspects of the conference theme: ‘The Janus Moment in EAP: Revisiting the Past and Building the Future’.
Several papers cover perennial, yet still important, aspects of EAP, such as academic speaking, academic writing and assessment. Others describe and evaluate developments in the field, or how materials, practice, programmes and outcomes are being developed. Most research and interventions described here contribute directly towards either student or teacher engagement, or both. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both the opportunities offered and the challenges posed by technology feature too. The position of EAP in academic institutions, a common topic of debate, recurs within the volume, as does inevitable change faced by the profession.
Taken together, the papers provide a wide-ranging cross-section of EAP activity and thought. This cross-section is necessarily partial; even so, the volume represents the variety and energy which characterises EAP today.
BALEAP, the global forum for EAP professionals, supports the professional development of those involved in learning, teaching, scholarship and research in EAP in order to enhance its quality in institutions of further and higher education.
Students' internet usage attracts the attention of many researchers in different countries. Differences in internet penetration in diverse countries lead us to ask about the interaction of medium and culture in this process. In this paper we present an analysis based on a sample of 825 students from 18 Russian universities and discuss findings on particularities of students' ICT usage. On the background of the findings of the study, based on data collected in 2008-2009 year during a project "A сross-cultural study of the new learning culture formation in Germany and Russia", we discuss the problem of plagiarism in Russia, the availability of ICT features in Russian universities and an evaluation of the attractiveness of different categories of ICT usage and gender specifics in the use of ICT.