Since the 1990s, the number of courses of Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP), especially Business Spanish, has increased rapidly in institutions of higher education in the U.S. Ideally, the design of these courses is based both on an analysis of the learners’ needs and on a specific business-related purpose. However, instructors of Business Spanish may not be specialists in this area and may lack the means or the time to perform a needs analysis (NA) to prepare the course syllabus and materials. Consequently, choosing the Business Spanish textbook ends up being the first step in designing the course, and for the reasons stated above, this choice tends to be based on the instructor’s needs rather than those of the learners. In this dissertation, I subjected four Business Spanish textbooks to an in-depth analysis (Littlejohn, 1998) in three stages. This analysis includes their approach to specificity (from narrow to wide), and how the business-related learners’ needs (language- and skill-based) are addressed. Results from these four analyses reveal that the authors adapted four different language teaching approaches and methods. Their wide-angled approach to specificity and different viewpoints of the target learners’ business-related needs are based on (1) their beliefs on the nature of language and language teaching, (2) the position of the course in the macro curriculum (macro-specific purpose), and (3) their respective target audiences. A two-step evaluation of Business Spanish textbooks is recommended to instructors based on the macro-specific purpose of their courses and the micro-specific purposes of communicative activities.

Тема выпускной квалификационной работы – «Моделирование двуязычного тезауруса инвестиционных терминов (на материале англоязычных и русскоязычных текстов тематики "Инвестиционная деятельность")». Цель исследования заключается в создании модели двуязычного словаря-тезауруса терминов инвестиционной деятельности. Объектом исследования данной работы служат инвестиционные термины в английском и русском языках. Предметом исследования является моделирование двуязычного русско-английского тезауруса инвестиционных терминов. Для научной работы использовались такие общенаучные методы исследования, как описание, классификация, метод сплошной выборки, а также лингвистические методы исследования, а именно: метод дефиниционного анализа, метод контекстного анализа, семантический анализ. Научная новизна исследования заключается в разработке специального двуязычного тезауруса, включающего терминологию инвестиционной деятельности, которым может воспользоваться не только представитель профессиональной экономической среды, но и любой актор, имеющий целью познание терминов сферы инвестиционной деятельности. Результаты исследования могут быть использованы в практической деятельности переводчика, для преподавания теории и практики перевода будущим переводчикам и лингвистам, а также могут быть применены в учебно-методической деятельности при создании учебных пособий по переводу и достижению эквивалентности текстов. / The topic of the present graduation thesis is “Modelling of Bilingual Thesaurus of Investment Terms (A Study of English and Russian Texts in the field of Investment Activity)”. The purpose of the study is to develop a model of a bilingual dictionary of investment terms. The subject of the research is investment terms in the English and Russian languages. The scope of the research includes developing the principles of compiling a bilingual dictionary of investment terms, including an appropriate methodological base. We used a set of scientific methods common for different scientific fields: descriptive method, classification of units, continuous sampling methods; as well as specific linguistic methods such as definition analysis, context analysis, semantic analysis. The work is novel in that it develops an English-Russian bilingual thesaurus of investment terms which can be used not only by specialists in linguistics, translation, and terminography, but also any person who deals with investment activities. The results of the research may be used in translation and interpreting practice, as teaching materials for students majoring in translation.