The ESP Journal最新文献

Designers and teachers of courses in VESL often find it necessary to identify the language required for specific jobs. This paper describes one approach to discovering the necessary language forms and the contexts in which they are used. The approach is illustrated by means of observations of language use in two health care occupations: Central Supply technician and hospital transporter. While certain uses of language are specific to particular jobs, other language functions (e.g., seeking clarification, reporting problems, understanding imperatives and numbers, socializing) seem to have wider applicability. Assumptions one may make about the language a worker needs on the job do not always hold up under a thorough on-site analysis. Thus, on-site observation of language use is important in the identification and interpretation of the language appropriate to the job.

This article is a case history of the development of a test package to be used in identifying the aptitudes, competencies, and remedial services required by prospective enrollees in a machine shop training program. Three community college districts, working as a consortium on a project entitled the Competency-Based Vocational Education Assessment Project (CBVEAP), identified the minimum competencies for enrollment in machine shop training and developed test instruments to help predict successful completion of the training and subsequent employment. The consortium researched, developed, and field tested a written test and a listening test. The results were computer analyzed and revised tests were produced. This article lists the competencies required at the time of enrollment in machine shop training and provides samples of the CBVEAP Machine Shop Written and Listening Tests. Also included are samples of two additional assessment tests, addressing manual dexterity and spoken English proficiency, which may be used to augment the CBVEAP tests.

This is a description of retraining programmes devised and developed by the Lancashire Industrial Language Training Unit during the period 1980–1983 in order to meet the specific needs of adult South Asian textile workers in the country who had become unemployed as a result of the current economic recession in Britain. The Industrial Language Training Service was originally established in Britain to improve communications in multiracial workplaces. This has always involved a combination of: (i) job-related language training for ethnic minority workers in their place of employment, and (ii) communications awareness training for indigenous managers, supervisors, and union representatives. All programmes are based on a survey of communication needs in the specific workplace and the active involvement of key company personnel in the language training. The programme described here adapts this approach to meet the needs of unemployed adult speakers of English as a second language. The aims of the programme are to integrate communications and trade training in order to increase learners' trainability and employability, and thus equip them for either re-entry to employment or further specific skills training. This article describes the steps taken to achieve this.

The paper analyses economics text and examines the range meanings conveyed by the simple conditional form (if + noun phrase + verb phrase [verb present/modal + verb] + … and the expression of conditional meaning. The data comes from a well known introductory textbook. The author of the book claims the status of a science for his subject and argues that scientific predictions in economics have a recognisable form: if + noun phrase + verb phrase [verb present] + then + noun phrase + verb phrase [verb future],as in “if you do this then such and such will follow”. But examples from his own work belie this. We show, firstly, that economics predictions are expressed by a range of conditional and nonconditional forms. Secondly, these same conditional forms (including that expressing a prediction) are used to realise a number of functions. These functions are classified and discussed. It is concluded that the relationships between economic concepts and their verbal expressions cannot be precisely correlated. And both teachers of English for economics and teachers of economics need to recognise this lack of correlation as a source of difficulty for their students.