- Email: [email protected]
English for Specific Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design
English for Specific Purposes 21 (2002) 99±104
www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
Book reviews
English for Speci®c Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design MarõÂa del Pilar Garcia Mayo. Universidad del PaõÂs Vasco, 2000, 145 pp. US$8.00. ISBN 0-848-77725-13. English for Speci®c Purposes (ESP) has become an important focus both in the English and non-English speaking world and much has been written on that speci®c area of English language teaching (ELT) in the last 40 years or so to ful®l the needs of prospective ESP students worldwide. As a consequence, the ®eld now has a healthy body of research lines, scholarly publications and teaching materials. English for Speci®c Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design is the latest ESP oering whose purpose is to present readers with an overview of ESP theory and practice and to provide original and innovative ideas about the structure of an introductory one-semester (60 h) course on English for Science and Technology. Such a course is intended for advanced undergraduates in ELT and/or students in Master's programs in applied linguistics who are interested in teaching ESP and want to have a general overview of the latest research in this ®eld. The book undoubtedly ®lls a gap not only in the ESP literature, but also in the much broader ®eld of Languages for Speci®c Purposes (LSP). Its author, MarõÂa del Pilar GarcõÂa Mayo, drew on her experience both in the design and in the teaching of the proposed course and on her students' reactions to the materials presented. In so doing, she shows a high degree of creativity and expertise. In her ®rst chapter, the author traces the evolution of the essential principles of ESP from the very beginning of the movement in the early 1960s until the present day. She starts with a comprehensive introduction on the role of ESP; its origin; the reasons for its development and its role in today's world; the dierent stages of ESP research (and its in¯uence on teaching materials) starting from the quantitative analysis of ESP texts characteristic of the 1960s to the rhetorical/discourse/genre analysis phases of the late 1990s, without forgetting such approaches as register (in the 1970s) and needs analysis (in the 1980s). But Dr. GarcõÂa Mayo not only mentions the most important phases in the development of the ESP movement, but also critically analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of these dierent approaches which have all marked the history of ESP. The highlight of the second chapter is the design of the actual proposal for the course entitled ``English for Science and Technology'', its objective, its detailed program and the pedagogic approach are recommended. The course proposed is made up of four sections. Section I covers an overview of the world of ESP/EST. 0889-4906/01/$20.00 # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0889-4906(01)00004-7
100
Book reviews / English for Speci®c Purposes 21 (2002) 99±104
Section II provides a comprehensive survey of the main linguistic features of scienti®c prose (e.g. the use of the passive voice, grammatical and lexical metaphor, nominalizations, the role of vocabulary, verb tenses and visuals aids). Section III addresses the issues of scienti®c-technical translation and genre analysis, making particular emphasis on the structure of the research article and on that of the journal abstract. Methodological issues (e.g. the role of ESP teachers and the question of the importance of their background knowledge, needs analysis and course design in ESP, the tricky issue of text-task authenticity, the development of materials for reading, writing, listening and speaking in an ESP context, etc) are discussed in Section IV. Each section is in turn made up of various units, the outline of which is presented in great detail along with possible classroom activities. In most of these units, there is a section devoted to the possible pedagogical applications of the materials presented. The author shows her creativity in the variety of tasks/ handouts/information sources students receive with the presentation of each unit. The carefully chosen list of bibliographical references presented at the end of each unit includes texts that the author considered important references in the ®eld. MarõÂa del Pilar GarcõÂa Mayo's familiarity with all the main approaches to scienti®c discourse analysis is shown in the detailed units of the proposed syllabus and in the original points and valuable insights she makes throughout her work. Her ideas are substantial and they will, I think, prove quite in¯uential. The well-thought out selection and sequencing of both conceptual and procedural contents to be presented in the course keep a thematically logical structure, but one could wonder whether it is actually feasible to cover such an enormous amount of ground in one semester (60 h) only. Isn't it too ambitious a proposal for such a short amount of time? Will students be able to grasp the exhaustive content of each section? Will they really have time to read and properly understand at least part of the selected bibliography? I am aware of the fact that MarõÂa del Pilar GarcõÂa Mayo's proposed course is based on what she did and tried with a speci®c group of Spanish-speaking ELT students, but it would be interesting to know whether the author's experience is corroborated under quite dierent circumstances (e.g. in non-Western cultures). Chapter 3 focuses on future avenues for research in ESP/LSP (e.g. diachronic studies, contrastive/comparative rhetoric studies, cross-cultural/cross-disciplinary research), what the author refers to as ``future challenges of ESP/LSP at the turn of the century'' and rightfully quali®es as ``very promising for those involved in research in these areas''. By oering various interdisciplinary research, this Chapter will prove useful for LSP researchers and for graduate students enrolled in ELT/ linguistics departments worldwide. The issue of the accelerating anglicization of non-Anglo±American science could have perhaps also been mentioned in Chapter 3. It is indeed quite a contentious topic these days (Mauranen, 1993; Swales, 2000) and more research should be carried out in that speci®c area. As Swales (2000, p. 67) so rightfully puts forth: We are faced in eect with a growing linguistic and rhetorical monopoly and monoculture against which we need to consider oering `cultural rainforest' arguments. . . One small but direct way in which the ®eld can resist this
Book reviews / English for Speci®c Purposes 21 (2002) 99±104
101
standardization is to transfer some of the resources and expertise that exist in ESP to lesser understood professional languages. From a strictly stylistic standpoint, English for Speci®c Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design is clearly presented and lucidly expressed, although the repeated use of the singular personal pronouns `s/he' to refer to a student/learner could have been happily replaced by the plural `they'. With respect to typos, I could ®nd only one (p. 32). All in all, GarcõÂa Mayo's book will not only be of interest to students embarking on a career in ELT, but also to ESP practitioners and researchers; to language teachers in general; and to researchers concerned with scienti®c discourse analysis. By bridging the gap between the purely theoretical and the strictly applied, English for Speci®c Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design will also be of great value to high school teachers who teach English in vocational schools and technological institutes. All of them will ®nd in this book practical and useful ideas and bibliographical references (including a selection of ESP textbooks for dierent levels and dierent ®elds) to design their own course according to their students' speci®c needs and linguistic competence. To conclude, then, I believe that Dr. GarcõÂa Mayo's book is a much needed contribution to the ®eld of LSP. It will be useful for anyone interested in constructing a coherent foundation for LSP teaching and research, and especially for those ESP teachers from countries where the teaching of ESP is quite recent [e.g. Ukraine (cf. Yakhomova, 1997) or China (cf. Xu Yun Zhu, 1999)], countries where there is an increasing and unprecedented demand for the study of English within the framework of speci®c professional ®elds. The only problem for these ESP teachers Ð as well as for those who work in so-called `emergent' countries Ð might be to ®nd the bibliography its author has so adequately selected for each one of the units of the proposed course. References Mauranen, A. (1993). Cultural dierences in academic discourse: Problems of a linguistic and cultural minority.. In L. Lofman, The competent intercultural communicator: A®nLA yearbook (pp. 157±174). Helsinki: A®nLA. Swales, J. (2000). Languages for speci®c purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 20, 59±76. Yakhontova, T. (1997). The signs of a new time: Academic writing in ESP curricula of Ukranian universities. In A. Duszak, Culture and styles of academic discourse (pp. 103±113). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Yun Zhu, X. (1999). A new ESP course in the present Chinese context. English for Speci®c Purposes, 18, 57±75.
FrancËoise Salager-Meyer Graduate School of Medicine Universidad de Los Andes MeÂrida Venezuela E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0889-4906(01)00004-7
www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
Book reviews
English for Speci®c Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design MarõÂa del Pilar Garcia Mayo. Universidad del PaõÂs Vasco, 2000, 145 pp. US$8.00. ISBN 0-848-77725-13. English for Speci®c Purposes (ESP) has become an important focus both in the English and non-English speaking world and much has been written on that speci®c area of English language teaching (ELT) in the last 40 years or so to ful®l the needs of prospective ESP students worldwide. As a consequence, the ®eld now has a healthy body of research lines, scholarly publications and teaching materials. English for Speci®c Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design is the latest ESP oering whose purpose is to present readers with an overview of ESP theory and practice and to provide original and innovative ideas about the structure of an introductory one-semester (60 h) course on English for Science and Technology. Such a course is intended for advanced undergraduates in ELT and/or students in Master's programs in applied linguistics who are interested in teaching ESP and want to have a general overview of the latest research in this ®eld. The book undoubtedly ®lls a gap not only in the ESP literature, but also in the much broader ®eld of Languages for Speci®c Purposes (LSP). Its author, MarõÂa del Pilar GarcõÂa Mayo, drew on her experience both in the design and in the teaching of the proposed course and on her students' reactions to the materials presented. In so doing, she shows a high degree of creativity and expertise. In her ®rst chapter, the author traces the evolution of the essential principles of ESP from the very beginning of the movement in the early 1960s until the present day. She starts with a comprehensive introduction on the role of ESP; its origin; the reasons for its development and its role in today's world; the dierent stages of ESP research (and its in¯uence on teaching materials) starting from the quantitative analysis of ESP texts characteristic of the 1960s to the rhetorical/discourse/genre analysis phases of the late 1990s, without forgetting such approaches as register (in the 1970s) and needs analysis (in the 1980s). But Dr. GarcõÂa Mayo not only mentions the most important phases in the development of the ESP movement, but also critically analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of these dierent approaches which have all marked the history of ESP. The highlight of the second chapter is the design of the actual proposal for the course entitled ``English for Science and Technology'', its objective, its detailed program and the pedagogic approach are recommended. The course proposed is made up of four sections. Section I covers an overview of the world of ESP/EST. 0889-4906/01/$20.00 # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0889-4906(01)00004-7
100
Book reviews / English for Speci®c Purposes 21 (2002) 99±104
Section II provides a comprehensive survey of the main linguistic features of scienti®c prose (e.g. the use of the passive voice, grammatical and lexical metaphor, nominalizations, the role of vocabulary, verb tenses and visuals aids). Section III addresses the issues of scienti®c-technical translation and genre analysis, making particular emphasis on the structure of the research article and on that of the journal abstract. Methodological issues (e.g. the role of ESP teachers and the question of the importance of their background knowledge, needs analysis and course design in ESP, the tricky issue of text-task authenticity, the development of materials for reading, writing, listening and speaking in an ESP context, etc) are discussed in Section IV. Each section is in turn made up of various units, the outline of which is presented in great detail along with possible classroom activities. In most of these units, there is a section devoted to the possible pedagogical applications of the materials presented. The author shows her creativity in the variety of tasks/ handouts/information sources students receive with the presentation of each unit. The carefully chosen list of bibliographical references presented at the end of each unit includes texts that the author considered important references in the ®eld. MarõÂa del Pilar GarcõÂa Mayo's familiarity with all the main approaches to scienti®c discourse analysis is shown in the detailed units of the proposed syllabus and in the original points and valuable insights she makes throughout her work. Her ideas are substantial and they will, I think, prove quite in¯uential. The well-thought out selection and sequencing of both conceptual and procedural contents to be presented in the course keep a thematically logical structure, but one could wonder whether it is actually feasible to cover such an enormous amount of ground in one semester (60 h) only. Isn't it too ambitious a proposal for such a short amount of time? Will students be able to grasp the exhaustive content of each section? Will they really have time to read and properly understand at least part of the selected bibliography? I am aware of the fact that MarõÂa del Pilar GarcõÂa Mayo's proposed course is based on what she did and tried with a speci®c group of Spanish-speaking ELT students, but it would be interesting to know whether the author's experience is corroborated under quite dierent circumstances (e.g. in non-Western cultures). Chapter 3 focuses on future avenues for research in ESP/LSP (e.g. diachronic studies, contrastive/comparative rhetoric studies, cross-cultural/cross-disciplinary research), what the author refers to as ``future challenges of ESP/LSP at the turn of the century'' and rightfully quali®es as ``very promising for those involved in research in these areas''. By oering various interdisciplinary research, this Chapter will prove useful for LSP researchers and for graduate students enrolled in ELT/ linguistics departments worldwide. The issue of the accelerating anglicization of non-Anglo±American science could have perhaps also been mentioned in Chapter 3. It is indeed quite a contentious topic these days (Mauranen, 1993; Swales, 2000) and more research should be carried out in that speci®c area. As Swales (2000, p. 67) so rightfully puts forth: We are faced in eect with a growing linguistic and rhetorical monopoly and monoculture against which we need to consider oering `cultural rainforest' arguments. . . One small but direct way in which the ®eld can resist this
Book reviews / English for Speci®c Purposes 21 (2002) 99±104
101
standardization is to transfer some of the resources and expertise that exist in ESP to lesser understood professional languages. From a strictly stylistic standpoint, English for Speci®c Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design is clearly presented and lucidly expressed, although the repeated use of the singular personal pronouns `s/he' to refer to a student/learner could have been happily replaced by the plural `they'. With respect to typos, I could ®nd only one (p. 32). All in all, GarcõÂa Mayo's book will not only be of interest to students embarking on a career in ELT, but also to ESP practitioners and researchers; to language teachers in general; and to researchers concerned with scienti®c discourse analysis. By bridging the gap between the purely theoretical and the strictly applied, English for Speci®c Purposes: Discourse Analysis and Course Design will also be of great value to high school teachers who teach English in vocational schools and technological institutes. All of them will ®nd in this book practical and useful ideas and bibliographical references (including a selection of ESP textbooks for dierent levels and dierent ®elds) to design their own course according to their students' speci®c needs and linguistic competence. To conclude, then, I believe that Dr. GarcõÂa Mayo's book is a much needed contribution to the ®eld of LSP. It will be useful for anyone interested in constructing a coherent foundation for LSP teaching and research, and especially for those ESP teachers from countries where the teaching of ESP is quite recent [e.g. Ukraine (cf. Yakhomova, 1997) or China (cf. Xu Yun Zhu, 1999)], countries where there is an increasing and unprecedented demand for the study of English within the framework of speci®c professional ®elds. The only problem for these ESP teachers Ð as well as for those who work in so-called `emergent' countries Ð might be to ®nd the bibliography its author has so adequately selected for each one of the units of the proposed course. References Mauranen, A. (1993). Cultural dierences in academic discourse: Problems of a linguistic and cultural minority.. In L. Lofman, The competent intercultural communicator: A®nLA yearbook (pp. 157±174). Helsinki: A®nLA. Swales, J. (2000). Languages for speci®c purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 20, 59±76. Yakhontova, T. (1997). The signs of a new time: Academic writing in ESP curricula of Ukranian universities. In A. Duszak, Culture and styles of academic discourse (pp. 103±113). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Yun Zhu, X. (1999). A new ESP course in the present Chinese context. English for Speci®c Purposes, 18, 57±75.
FrancËoise Salager-Meyer Graduate School of Medicine Universidad de Los Andes MeÂrida Venezuela E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0889-4906(01)00004-7