Download SOME CHALLENGES FOR VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH FOR

SOME CHALLENGES FOR VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC
PURPOSES
Ibrayeva E.S.
Borangazy F.
Buketov Karaganda State university, Karaganda
Keywords: English for specific purposes, vocabulary, teaching subject, specialized
vocabulary, technical professions.
The article begins with an examination of definitions of specialized or technical vocabulary and
moves on to some challenges for bringing ESP research on vocabulary into classrooms. Also
authors have given viewpoints of ESP practitioners about vocabulary usage.
Мақалада арнайыланған және техникалық сөздердің анықтамасын сараланып, ары қарай
лексикаға қандай қойылатын талаптар жайында айтылған. Соымен қатар, авторлар
көптеген ғалымдардың сөздік қордың қолданылуы жөнінде айтылған пікірлерін келтірді.
Currently, language for special purposes is treated as adjacent to the concept of functional
stylistics of terminology, "it is a functional kind of natural language, specifically a limitedsectoral area of linguistic communication. Advances in the study is the finding ESP as a
functional area of terminological vocabulary, which greatly promotes the study of the term in
speech realization". Despite the similarity with natural language, which manifests itself in the
use of lexical and grammatical means, ranging within natural language it is also traced
specificity of a special language, consists in the fact that his cognitive conceptual system has a
special database definitions of a certain degree of formalization, which finds its reflection in
operating pre-selected language means. The Terminology is believed that the term should be
the perfect mono semantical deprived of emotional and expressive color, it must not have
synonyms, i.e., common language phenomenon of the asymmetry of the linguistic sign is
considered undesirable for the term. With respect to any terms we can say that there exist such
common terms, but they are only part of its composition, in other words, there are "ideal" terms,
but there is no "ideal" terminologies.
It is worthwhile keeping in mind, however, that specialized vocabulary does not always
mean long Graeco - Latin words or highly technical words that are not used in everyday
language. Some perfectly ordinary everyday words can carry very specific meanings in
particular contexts. Nation points out that by - pass and neck are high frequency words in
medicine but they also occur outside that specialized context [1]. Crawford Camiciottoli (2007)
lists market and price as words that can be found in everyday language but are also used in
business studies. This problem is discussed later in the chapter when challenges in vocabulary
and ESP are considered [2].
Vocabulary in ESP is important for several reasons. First of all, teachers and learners need
to know that precious classroom time is directly related to their language needs. They should
be reading material that contains key ideas and the language of their field and writing using
those ideas and language. Woodward - Kron carried out a longitudinal study of undergraduate
students ’academic writing in education and found that students ’ knowledge of a discipline is
closely tied to the specialized language of that discipline. Secondly, understanding and using
this special purposes vocabulary shows that these learners belong to a particular group. Learners
need that language to show understanding, “make meaning and engage with disciplinary
knowledge ” [3].
This point is particularly important if learners are to become fully - fledged members of
a particular community. Another important point to make is that the size of this specialized
vocabulary is not fully established. As Nation ( 2008 :10) states, “ we do not know a lot about
technical vocabularies but they probably range in size from around 1,000 words to 5,000 words
depending on the subject area. ” This means that ESP learners may face an extremely large
learning task to fully develop their understanding and use of specialized vocabulary in their
subject area at university or in a professional context.
One difficulty with identifying vocabulary for ESP is what to do with everyday words
that take on a particular meaning in a specialized context, as mentioned early on in this chapter.
These words appeared once out of every ten words on average. Furthermore, around twenty of
these words are also in the first 1,000 words of the GSL. The researchers compared the
frequency of these words in the economics text and in a general academic corpus and found the
words occurred more frequently in the specialized text.
These everyday words with specialized meanings could present some difficulties for
teachers as learners struggle to learn new meanings and concepts for words that are already
established in their lexicon in a particular way. In an interview as part of a study of specialized
vocabulary in secondary school teaching in New Zealand, a secondary school science teacher
explained that:
Teaching biology is like teaching a language subject. For every known word students are
familiar with, there is a biology word. For example, dissolve is not scientific English. It refers
to solubility and insolubility. It relates to solute and solvent. Students have to be able to explain
this meaning in a scientific context. If they use a scientific word in general terms, it will not be
used in the correct way in normal language.
The point to make here is that the knowledge of the everyday meaning of the word is well
established for this teacher’s students. They know that sugar, for example, dissolves in water.
But in their secondary school studies, these everyday words also have a specialized meaning,
which makes words become technical.
This new technical meaning requires her learners to build their knowledge of both the
concept of a word and its meaning. The teacher uses a variety of techniques to teach these new
meanings in the scientific context. She might deliberately not talk about a word like respiration
using its everyday meaning in class. Instead, the 128 ESP and Language Skills teacher might
just talk about respiration in chemical processes. In contrast, she might explore misconceptions
about words with her students through asking their opinion of the meaning of a word,
highlighting any misconception that arises, and giving the scientific point of view. Another
approach is to break down words such as photosynthesis to show their constituent word parts.
Another reason why vocabulary in ESP can be challenging, according to Crawford
Camiciottoli is that specialized vocabulary “evolves and renews itself according to changing
interests within communities of practice. ” In the case of Business English, as Crawford
Camiciottoli notes, it is important to consider how professional texts in business and academic
texts (including lectures as academic input) might use specialized vocabulary. That is, do
university level texts contain the same vocabulary as professional texts in the same subject area?
This article has looked at vocabulary in ESP from several perspectives. A great deal of
research effort has gone into considering the nature of specialized vocabulary. This effort,
however, does not equate in any way to the efforts that teachers and learners make when
teaching and learning vocabulary for ESP. Future research might focus on the nature of
multiword units in different subjects and contexts in ESP, more research into vocabulary in ESP
in languages other than English, and the development and use of multimodal corpora in this fast
- moving field.
References:
1.
Nation , P. ( 2007 ) The four strands . Innovation in Language Learning and
Teaching 1 : 2 – 13 .
2.
Crawford Camiciottoli , B. ( 2007 ) The Language of Business Studies Lectures.
Amsterdam : John Benjamins. p.133.
3.
Woodward - Kron , R. ( 2008 ) More than just jargon – the nature and roles of
specialist knowledge in learning disciplinary knowledge . Journal of English for Academic
Purposes 7 : 234 – 49 .