E-mail: gs05els@panther.gsu.edu
1 | From Description to Explanation in Language Teaching
2 | Readers, Texts, and Second Languages: the Interactive Process
3 | Text, Context, and Learning
4 | Genre Analysis and the Identification of Textual Boundaries
5 | Textbooks and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Bhatia,V. (1993). From description to explanation in language teaching. In Analysing genre: language use in professional settings (pp. 147-206). New York: Longman.
This chapter is concerned with important language-teaching contexts, especially ESP (English for Specific Purposes), where genre analysis research helps the understanding and appreciation of general issues in current language teaching, especially in places where English is a second language. In each of the six sections of this chapter a specific issue is discussed. Section one discusses the teaching of grammar and shows why explanation is necessary in language teaching, especially in ESP. Special emphasis is given to complex nominal expressions of various kinds which are associated with professional and academic discourse. Section two is about syllabus design in relation to a genre-based language curriculum and the importance of input in regard to teaching materials. English used in newpapers is the focus here. Section three considers appropriate text-task relationships, addresses the specific difficulties involved in English for legal purposes, and stresses the necessity of using authentic sources in this and other disciplines. Section four describes an existing case in which genre-based teaching materials in English for Business and Technology occur. The example demonstrates how a knowledge of formal and content schemata can facilitate learning generic conventions and rhetorical action and, in addition, gives information about the necessary linguistic resources to realize them. Section five examines issues raised about the evaluation of achievement in relation to ESP courses and notes that assessment is one of the most neglected areas of ESP theory and practice. In the final section, cross-cultural factors in the teaching of ESP are discussed and also the need for both creativity and orthodoxy in a genre-based curriculum. Each section, in addition to basing the discussion on theory and analytic traditions, gives detailed illustrations and examples which further clarify the topic of discussion. Cross-cultural variations in both academic and professional fields are noted and give the reader valuable insights into these areas.
At publication, Vijay Bhatia was Senior Lecturer in English Language at the National University of Singapore.
This book should prove helpful for students and teachers of Language, Linguistics, and Applied Linguistics.
In discussing the three major types of nominal expressions (1. complex nominal phrases - used in particular advertisements, 2. nominal compounds - used in scientific writing, 3. nominalization - used in legislative provisions) he states:
I like this quotation and this part of the book because the material gives additional insight into the use of complex noun phrases. Hopefully, others can also make use of the infomation in this book.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1982). A grammar of contemporary English. London: Longman.
2. The data from research in linguistic analysis can help administrators plan and design ESP programs.
3. The extensive discussions of cross-cultural variation will give ESL professionals greater insight into cultural issues and a better understanding of their students.
Swaffar, J. (1988). Readers, texts, and second languages: the interactive processes. The Modern Language Journal, 72 (2), 123-149.
In this article, the author focuses on current research concerning reading comprehension of foreign language texts. In reading a second language, she examines the role of insight and whether the need to process a language prevents the processing of information. These questions are addressed by looking at current research from five points of view: 1) the reader's role in relation to new models of language and textual meaning. This new role of the reader and text comprehension is seen as a conceptualizing process, an interactive function whereby a mental representation of incoming pieces of information is constructed and understood according to the perspectives and background of the reader. 2) L1 research which has revised definitions of textual meaning and reader processing. These studies suggest that a limited command of a language is not an impassible obstacle to L2 reading and that students can use texts to learn both language and subject matter. 3) L2 research in reader processing of schemata. This research indicates that comprehension can be improved by reader use of background and text schema, by universal rather than cultural thought patterns, by schema-sentence text selection and prereading, and by recognition of discourse logic and texts with analytic instead of descriptive organization. 4) the relationship between L2 language competency and reader strategies. Here are given various theories from research referred to as "threshold studies", which focus on text or language product rather than reader processing. Vocabulary learning is discussed in relation to direct and indirect methods, extensive reading, shorter and longer texts, semantic versus lexical precision, and eye movement. The last part of this section contains the research results from studies about language thresholds for reading, strategy training and reading success, conceptualization and content or function words, semantics versus syntax, and whether L1 and L2 recall are two proficiencies. 5) implications for the classroom. In the final section, the author discusses the significance of these studies and the issues they bring forward for classroom teachers.
At publication, Janet Swaffar was affiliated with the University of Texas and the University Research Institute at the University of Texas.
I find this quotation valuable because it will help me and other teachers understand the importance of connectors for grasping the larger context in reading.
Sim, D. (1979). Links between context and selected features of grammatical cohesion in English, and performance in advanced reading comprehension for overseas students. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Manchester University, England, 148.
I find the following points especially important:
2. For vocabulary practice in class, ask students to find additional words that relate to the same semantic category.
3. Encourage students by creating a non-judgmental environment where they can explain their decisions about text meanings.
4. Be aware of stylistic factors in texts that make reading difficult.
Halliday, M. (1989). Text, context, and learning. In M.A.K. Halliday & R. Hasan, Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective (pp. 44-49). New York: Oxford University Press.
This book is about educational linguistics, an area which interprets language in relation to interactive, social processes. In this chapter, Halliday begins by making two statements which he says are closely connected. First, language is studied to understand it and how it works, and second it is studied to understand what people do with it. He describes language or text as a metafunctional construct consisting of an interpersonal function for doing and an ideational function for learning or thinking. He states that adult languages have both functions. He then discusses language use in relation to its context of situation, or immediate environment, and lists its three components: 1) field of discourse, the 'play' or kind of activity where the language plays some part, 2) tenor of discourse, the 'players' or interacting roles involved in the creation of the text, 3) mode of discourse, the 'parts' or particular functions given to language in particular situations and the rhetorical channel it is assigned. Next, he considers the larger backdrop against which language must be interpreted. This is its context of culture, the totality of elements that go together in a culture. He states that the school provides an interface between context of situation, the lesson, and context of culture, the institution in a particular culture. The author continues by explaining that the context of situation and context of culture make up the non-verbal environment of a text. This intertextuality includes not only the feature of the lesson context, but also other aspects, logical sequencing, interpersonal features, etc. In the final section, he explains that the text is the focus, once again, in the sense that every text is also a context for itself. Previous happenings provide the environment for what comes next. He observes that learning is a process of contextualization, a building of expectancies about what will happen next.
M.A.K. Halliday, a native of Leeds, England, has held prestigious positions on many linguistic faculties in colleges and universities throughout the world. He has published many articles and books and has recently researched in the areas of semantics and grammar of modern English.
This quotation is of particular value for me because it shows that teaching language needs to be viewed from a broad perspective. It will help teachers be aware not only of the text itself, but also of the text as a context for future learning.
2. Understanding the close link between text and context and the importance of the ability to make predictions while reading and listening will enhance teaching skills.
3. Teachers need to understand the linguistic resources involved in teaching coherence. Pupils need to be told why something is incorrect and how to make it work, not just that it is wrong.
Paltridge, B. (1994). Genre analysis and the identification of textual boundaries. Applied Linguistics, 15 (3), 288-299.
In his introduction, the author notes that current interest in the concept of genre in educational linguistics has produced important trends in the teaching and learning of languages. He mentions two particularly influential areas: 1) applications from systemic-functional linguistics to language education, and 2) the use of English in academic and professional settings. He acknowledges the importance of these contributions to genre analysis but observes a lack of critical research in the identification of stages in texts in the development of areas such as "schematic structure (Martin 1989), generic structural potential (Hasan 1984, 1989), or moves and steps (Swales 1981,1990)" (p. 288). In this article he examines several examples of genre analysis and aims to identify the criteria used in the identification of textual boundaries in these studies.
He begins by considering a question that has not been widely researched, namely, how boundaries of structural elements in texts are determined. Referring to recent research in genre analysis, he cites Hasan's work in which she claims that 'the boundaries of a text can normally be determined by reference to patterns of cohesion' (1978). Through examination of patterns of lexical cohesion and reference in 'service encounter' texts presentaed by Hasan, he confirms her position and demonstrates the analysis in an illustration of one text. However, he then illustrates his analysis of another text in which he shows that the boundaries of structural elements in texts cannot always be determined by reference to patterns of cohesion. He remarks that Hasan has become aware of this and in recent writing states that 'an element's realization criteria might be stated most clearly in terms of some semantic property' (1989).
In his discussion of semantic attributes and structural units in texts, the author refers to a number of prominent researchers in this area, including Hasan. He finds that in addition to the obvious physical indicators of text boundaries, such as paragraph and chapter divisions, content boundaries also exist. These are cognitive, not linguistic, and guide a reader's perception of textual division. His conclusion is that the "structural divisions in texts should be seen as a search for cognitive boundaries in terms of convention, appropriacy, and content rather than as a search for linguistically defined boundaries; that is, there are non-linguistic, rather than linguistic, reasons for generic staging in texts" (p. 295).
Hasan, R. (1978). Text in the systemic functional model. In W. Dressler (Ed.), Current trends in text linguistics (242). Berlin:Walter Gruyter.
Hasan, R. (1984). The nursery tale as a genre. Nottingham Linguistics Circular, 13, 71-102.
Hasan, R. (1989). The structure of a text. In M. Halliday and R. Hasan, Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective (68). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martin, J. (1989). Factual Writing: Exploring and Challenging Social Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Swales, J. (1981). Aspects of Article Introduction. Language Studies Unit, The University of Aston, Birmingham.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
At publication, Brian Paltridge was Assistant Director of the Language Institute at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. His research includes genre analysis and language teaching and learning, testing and evaluation in language learning programs, and language teacher education. He is co-author of Context: An Australian English Course (1991).
This quotation is meaningful to me because it shows the importance of considering factors in addition to that of the text itself. Teachers need to realize that, for a variety of reasons, their perception of the text may differ considerably from that of their students. In order to better address the needs of their students, teachers should not narrowly confine the text but be aware that it has a broader environment.
2. It is important that teachers consider not only text language and its reflection of reality, but they also need to be aware that a text is also conditioned by external and internal factors.
Myers, G. (1992). Textbooks and the sociology of scientific knowledge. English for Specific Purposes, 11 (1), 3-17.
The author begins by stating that textbooks are often used for examples by teachers of ESP and frequently viewed as representative of academic discourse. However, textbooks are often viewed by academic researchers as peripheral. He informs the reader that the purpose of his article is to review two lines of thinking about textbooks in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). The first involves the role of textbooks in the life of a scientist, the second their role in the life of a fact. The first view is concerned with the use of textbooks in the early training of a scientist. He refers to a work of Kuhn (1962) in which textbooks are viewed as dogmatic and the means by which scientific practice and thought are formed. Kuhn believes that their manner of usage can serve to distinguish scientific fields from nonscientific fields, since scientific education is conducted mainly through textbooks. Kuhn (1963) also thinks that textbook usage in science study is also a way of dating the coalescence of a field as a science. However, Myers states that other views somewhat counter these observations. Certain fields lack textbooks because of the rapid speed of their data, which makes codification impractical or impossible. He also observes that after students have become scientists, they do not use textbooks as sources of support in their research articles. According to the first line of thinking, science textbooks are seen as important because they come at the beginning of a scientist's intellectual formation.
The second view of textbooks in SSK is also one of centrality in education, but here they are seen as the end of the development of a fact. This view emphasizes "the social development of knowledge, not the psychological development of careers" (p. 6). The question of interest to Myers is the differences between textbooks and other scientific texts, not their typification of scientific language. He states that articles in scientific journals represent conflicting claims which are not yet facts, whereas textbooks are a synthesization of research materials and represent a survey of knowledge in an area. Textbooks are also intended to serve as an introduction into a discipline for a student. Recent studies in the sociology of science trace the way texts refer to other texts and then make statements in a factual manner. Two studies in this area are presented.
In the last section, which is about analyzing textbooks, the author states that understanding the process of accreditation will allow textbooks to be viewed in relation to other genres of academic discourse. Textbook authors aim to arrange information into a coherent whole, while those of journal articles attempt to make the strongest case possible in order to achieve general agreement with others. The section concludes with valuable information on features to look for in texts. These are grouped in the following categories: 1) personal and impersonal subjects, 2) tense, 3) modalities, 4) cohesion, 5) references to texts, 6) illustrations.
Kuhn, T. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. (1963). The function of dogma in scientific research. In A.C. Crombie (Ed.), Scientific change (pp. 347-369). London: Heinemann.
At publication, Greg Myers was a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English at Lancaster University. His research interests are in the areas of texts on molecular genetics and the discourse of the linguistics and natural language processing communities in Britain.
This quotation is of special importance to me because it focuses attention on the differences between the writing in textbooks and that of other academic texts. If teachers are to prepare students for their future careers, they need to make them aware of the differences in genre texts.
2. Textbooks use a greater variety of cohesive devices (however, moreover, etc.).
2. Textbooks use references and illustrations pedagogically not rhetorically.