ESP and specialized disciplines: Engaging disciplinary language and culture William Rozycki, Ph.D.

1. International Conference on English EducationESP: Theory into PracticeApril 26-27, 2008Shih Chien UniversityTaipei, TaiwanR.O.C. ESP and specialized disciplines:Engaging disciplinary language and culture William Rozycki, Ph.D. Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

2. Outline • Engagement: meaning & scope • Examples of engagement • Benefits of engagement • Case study of engagement with medicine

3. En·gage·ment (noun) active commitment to a cause or undertaking In ESP: active commitment to identifying and understanding discourse of the specialized field

4. Path to more effective ESP instruction • Research • Text analysis • Specialist input/focus groups • Speech analysis • Ethnography • Corpus collection/corpus linguistics • Collaboration • Cooperative & team teaching • Materials development • Assessment

5. Examples from both branches of ESP • English for Academic Purposes (EAP) • English for Occupational Purposes (EOP)

6. Regarding specialized knowledge for ESP instructors • Hutchinson and Waters (1987) • Positive attitude • Knowledge of fundamental principles of the field • Awareness of how much you already know [about the specialized field] (p.163)

7. From ESP ‘instructor’ to ESP ‘practitioner’ • Dudley-Evans and St John (1998) • Teaching • Course design • Materials development • Collaboration • Research • Evaluation & assessment

8. Three modes of engagement with specialized field (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998) • Cooperation • Learn conceptual and discoursal framework of specialized subject • Collaboration, three possibilities: • Teach language preparing students for subsequent specialized class • Teach specific skill using material produced by specialists • Offer back-up class to smooth difficulties of regular class • Team-teaching, elements for success: • Clearly defined roles • Few demands on subject lecturer • Mutual respect and acceptance (p.44-7)

9. How can EAP practitioners: “…teach students to read subject-matter material which we ourselves have trouble in understanding?” (Selinker, 1979: 190)

10. Sample questions asked to genetics specialist: • What is the difference between ‘duplicate’ and ‘replicate with extraordinary fidelity’ in a given excerpt? • Are ‘repair processes’ and ‘repair mechanisms’ the same? If not, what does the variation indicate? • What are the differences between the use of the singular and plural in such phrases as ‘efficiencies of repair mechanisms’ as opposed to [in the same reading excerpt] ‘efficiency of repair processes’?

11. Combined method of discourse analysis and subject specialist informant • ESP instructor gained knowledge of discourse in specialized field • Genetics professor also gained more insight into his own field’s discourse

12. Collaborative teaching • Henderson and Skeehan 1979 model for team teaching economics, addressing: • International students “economic naiveté” (p.46) and • Low proficiency in English

13. First learn, then teach • ESP practitioner simplified the language of the economics texts • Taught preparatory class prior to each standard economics lecture • Introduced both the concepts and language of economics so specialized subject class more accessible to students • On occasion new concepts in economics were presented first in the ESP class, then expanded upon in the economics class

14. Methods of this engagement • ESP practitioner reads specialized texts • Receives input from the specialized instructor • Discourse of the field is made accessible to learners Innovation: Taking on the role of introducing students to some special-field concepts

15. Evolving level of engagement • “Work in ESP was, by the middle eighties, not merely interested in characterizing linguistic effects; it was also concerned to seek out the determinants of those effects” (Swales, 1990:4)

16. Analysis of genre • Identifying rhetorical and linguistic features of a distinct class of communicative events e.g. • Research paper • Letter of inquiry • Résumé • Book review • Thank-you note • Business memo

17. What value to ESP instruction? • Knowledge of genre : • allows identification of rhetorical moves (expected or negotiated) in a genre • Leads to explicit instruction for students

18. Another tool in research • Computer-aided corpora collection • Use of computing power to aid in discourse analysis • Corpus linguistics especially useful in EAP

19. Applied to instruction • Academic Writing for Graduate Students (Swales & Feak 1994) combines text analysis, corpus linguistics, and genre analysis that can be used in teaching language use • Unit Seven, Constructing a Research Paper I • Empirical sample of the Results section from a research paper

20. Connectors and their frequency of use (Swales and Feak, 1994: 168)

21. Rhetorical moves in genre analysis • ‘Moves’ in discourse analysis: • Typical communicative actions identified in a given genre • Explicit knowledge of moves helps users of the genre

22. Swales and Feak (1994: 171) • Listing of moves in the commentaries of Results section of 20 published biochemistry papers

23. Benefits of combining analysis with computer power & corpus building • Personal computing Allows students and postdoctoral researchers to create or manipulate corpora of texts in their own fields • Students in a given field Make own decisions on how similar in structure and moves they want their own papers to appear in relation to those already successfully published by others

24. What of spoken language? • Analysis of spoken language • Dudley-Evans and St John, “In the earlier years of ESP development spoken interactions received almost no attention” (p.106)

25. EOP • Hotel and catering fields • Call centers • Tourism • Communicative needs of pilots, mariners, and air traffic controllers

26. Even in EAP speech is important • Casanave (1995) • A discourse community interacts, negotiates, and accommodates to effect a dynamic discourse • Speech plays a role in this negotiation and accommodation

27. Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) • Records, transcribes University of Michigan • Seminars • Graduate student gatherings • Laboratory meetings • Other academically-focused events • 152 transcripts – almost two million words • Permits students to study, with guidance, patterns of spoken discourse in academic context

28. Can spoken discourse corpus improve teaching? • Example from Swales and Leicher on the MICASE website • Low number of tokens for the word ‘suggest’ indicates the word itself is not key • Suggestions are made without using the word itself (Swales and Leicher, undated)

29. EOP: Sullivan and Girginer’s 2002 analysis of Airspeak • Analyzed spoken discourse and used focus groups of pilots and air traffic controllers as both a check of their analysis and as a resource to understand the context of the spoken utterances. • Compared to the canonical rules of Airspeak (regulated by the International Civil Aviation Organization)

30. Sullivan and Girginer 2002 findings • Instead of standard “Turkish six six six” to identify Turkish Airlines flight 666, controllers and pilots used “Turkish triple six”. • Call sign ‘two two one one’ was sometimes expressed as “double two double one” (p.401) • Instead of “on your frequency” they found “with you” (p.402)

31. Disciplinary culture • “…institutional attitudes and expectations … the belief-systems, initiation ceremonies, rites of passage, rituals, taboos, value judgments of excellence or otherwise, codes of practice, etc. of doctors, lawyers, navigators, geologists, and so on…” (Swales, 1985: 212)

32. Disciplinary culture (continued) • Big ‘D’ Discourse involves “acting interacting-thinking-valuing-talking (sometimes writing-reading) in the ‘appropriate way’ with the ‘appropriate’’ props at the ‘appropriate times’ in the ‘appropriate’ places” (Gee, 1999:17)

33. Ethnography • Ethnography is often the means to identify features of disciplinary culture in addition to language use: • Northcott’s 2001 ethnography of an MBA classroom shows how essential a student-centered, interactive instructional style is to preparation for the business world • Y. Ibrahim’s 2001 study of doctor-patient consultations in the United Arab Emirates • Louhiala-Salminen’s 2002 ethnography of a day in the life of a Finnish business manager in a multinational corporation

34. Combined approaches • Analysis of speech acts and of written texts and genres, when combined with ethnography and specialist input, yields: • Patterns of language in real contexts • More effective preparation of students culturally to function and excel in a specialized field

35. Engagement with specialized fields • Through: • Text analysis • Speech act analysis • Subject specialist input • Ethnography • Team or collaborative teaching • Any combination of these

36. Benefits of engagement • Better ESP instruction • Greater acceptance by subject specialists • Improved cooperation from subject specialists • Greater personal background knowledge • Greater career satisfaction

37. Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication • Linguistic research and language training • Specializes in professional discourse & ESP • Teacher training through the ESP Institute • Directed by Ulla Connor

38. Training

39. IUPUI Campus

40. Indiana University Medical Complex • IU School of Medicine • Three hospitals • More than thirty clinics in Central Indiana

41. Residency defined • A three-year clinical apprenticeship by which a medical doctor becomes certified in a specialty (e.g. neurology, psychiatry, urology, dermatology, pediatrics, etc.)

42. IMG defined • International Medical Graduate (IMG) is a graduate of medical education outside the United States and Canada

43. 10-Year History IMG Enrollment in IU Family Medicine Residency Program (Pugno, McGaha, Schmittling, DeVilbiss & Kahn, 2007)

44. Language challenges for IMGs • Linguistic Competence • Pragmatics • Pronunciation • Dialect use

45. Initial Linguistic Assessment • 75-minute test of grammar, vocabulary, and reading • oral proficiency test (modified SPEAK test) • standardized test of listening • self-evaluation of English proficiency • writing sample eliciting resident’s goals for the residency • 15-minute taped interview re family & living situation, attitude toward residency program, medical education, language use • 50-minute videotaped OSCE

46. Training recommendation • Assessment results inform a training recommendation. • Individual training for periods of three to thirty hours. (In some cases, referred residents are in their 2nd or 3rd year of residency, already failing to achieve the residency criteria.)

47. Critical incidents among IMGs in residency • Chief resident finds a 1st year resident in break room despite call for urgent response • Attending and chief residents evaluate a 1st year resident as “aloof, arrogant, untrustworthy” after resident claimed competence with a procedure but then failed to perform it stating ‘lack of practice’ • Two 2nd year residents are written up by faculty for arguing publicly about round assignments

48. What is lacking in each case? • Each incident can be traced to lack of cultural knowledge regarding norms in the residency

49. The task • To develop jointly with Family Medicine an assessment of cultural knowledge about the norms of the clinics and residency in the US

50. Competencies for medical specialist certification • Interpersonal & Communication Skills • Patient Care • Professionalism Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies Cf. http://www.umm.edu/gme/core_comp.htm