An empirical study of the speech act of definition in science lectures found that definitions signposted the logical/discourse structure of the lecture, helped to maintain comprehension as discourse progressed, and were often clustered together in discourse. (14 references) (Author/CB)

Responds to criticism concerning a proposed model of evaluation for a Reading English for Science and Technology program. (seven references) (JL)

Focuses on the usefulness of corpus-based analysis to discover linguistic patterns selected and favored by a specific genre. Results show that the frameworks "the . . . of,""A . . . of," and "be . . .to," when used in medical papers, enclose restricted sets of lexical items and that the selection of specific…

Second language acquisition is a hard task for teachers, since to achieve the motivation from students to practice a language simulating a real context is very difficult. On the one hand, students are often influenced by their mother tongue and more when they are practising a second language with a partner from the same nationality. On the other,…

Analysis of tense usage in 20 scientific articles from the "Journal of Pediatrics" reveals a hierarchy of sociolinguistic relationships among context-dependent rhetorical functions, context-independent temporal meanings, and actual tense choices. (Author/CB)

Argues that English is the major international language at least in part because it is the dominant world language of science and technology, and suggests that no country can afford to ignore the important role English plays in information access and technology transfer and still expect to compete professionally and economically. (Author/CB)

Proposes "technicisation" theory with five central hypotheses to account for various aspects of foreign students learning Technical English (TE), including its linguistic, learning, experiential, cultural, and motivational dimensions. Suggests that the fundamental hypotheses are applicable to TE learning but they may, mutatis mutandis,…

Four practical approaches taken by teachers in their attempts to help students acquire the minimum sight vocabulary necessary for reading English for Science and Technology (EST) texts are described. Over a period of 12 weeks, subjects (native Spanish speakers at university level) were divided into 4 intact groups and worked under different…

Analysis of how students of English for Science and Engineering use certain categories of nouns in their technical writing projects revealed a significant use of "sub-technical" and "text-structuring" words serving both referential and discourse-oriented functions. The use of matching or cloze-type and open-ended writing exercises to improve…

Discusses a proposed "context adaptive" model for English-as-a-Second-Language program evaluation and suggests that the boundaries are set too narrowly within this model between phenomena and contexts and that the model of the Reading English for Science and Technology program in Guadalajara (Mexico) suffers from this constriction.…

Outlines a way of dealing with vocabulary in English for academic purposes instruction in light of insights provided by empirical observation. Focusing on collocation in the context of English for special purposes (ESP), and more specifically, English for information science and technology, shows how the results of the contrastive study of lexical…

When 45 biologists from eight countries were asked to critically read and amend the English in Discussion sections of three Dutch-authored draft research papers, many of their alterations impacted on the hedging. This article discusses these alterations. In particular, it focuses on the hotspots in the texts, i.e., the points on which several…

The Chinese-English bilingual teaching in the circuit course is an important approach to foster innovational talents for the electronic industry in the new century. In this article, we analyze the background, applicability and feasibility of bilingual teaching in the course of circuit and the difficulties facing in the process of implementation.…

A discussion of the dominant role of English in international science and technology looks at the interplay of several factors occurring during the post-World War II period: (1) imposition of English on the post-war world by the English-speaking victors (Britain, United States, Australia, New Zealand); (2) development of the first international…

The determiners in English include three categories: predeterminers, central determiners, and postdeterminers. The focus of the present study is the central determiners because they comprise the largest group and because a minimum of one central determiner is required in the generation of any noun phrase. Furthermore, the central determiners have…