published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Orientador: Elza Taeko Doi / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-09T20:48:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Oliveira_SandraMagalhaesde_M.pdf: 1272275 bytes, checksum: 64c7c04935a346d7349119148bcb6d7c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Resumo: Este é um estudo etnográfico que analisa o inglês técnico (¿Inglês para Propósitos Específicos¿ ou IPE) a partir do ponto de vista de alunos de diferentes áreas: Computação, Meio Ambiente e Enfermagem. O objetivo principal é determinar as preferências e as necessidades de cada grupo no que se refere às quatro habilidades (ouvir, falar, ler e escrever). O pressuposto básico contesta a noção de que ensinar IPE deveria significar ensinar ¿leitura¿. Os dados foram coletados através de (1) questionário investigativo, centrado nas preferências dos alunos; (2) gravação de aula em áudio, na qual professora e alunos discutem as respostas ao questionário com o objetivo de negociar o conteúdo do curso; (3) questionário final, que avalia as respostas dos participantes, à luz de suas preferências. O embasamento teórico deste estudo inclui o trabalho de vários pesquisadores, com uma ênfase especial em AUGUSTO (1997) e CELANI (1988) sobre IPE; LEFFA (1999; 2001; 2003) e PAIVA (2005), sobre o papel do inglês como uma língua multinacional; NUNAN (1988; 1999; 2003) e TUDOR (1996) sobre a abordagem centrada no aluno. Os dados coletados mostram que a produção oral, que tende a ser menos focada no inglês técnico, é considerada a mais importante das habilidades pelos alunos de Enfermagem e de Computação. Segundo a opinião dos estudantes de Meio Ambiente, a produção oral vem em segundo lugar. Os resultados são consistentes com a concepção de linguagem dos participantes, isto é, aprender uma língua significa aprender a falar. Além disso, eles corroboram a noção amplamente difundida de que os possíveis candidatos a um emprego devem falar inglês fluentemente a fim de se tornarem competitivos no mercado de trabalho / Abstract: This is an etnographic study that analyzes technical English (¿English for Special Purposes¿ or ESP) from the point of view of students in different fields: Computer Science, Environmental Science and Nursing. The main goal is to determine the preferences and needs of each group as far as the four learning abilities (listening, speaking, reading and writing) are concerned. The basic assumption challenges the notion that teaching ESP should be synonymous with teaching ¿reading¿. The data have been collected by means of (1) an investigative questionnaire, which focuses on students¿ preferences; (2) in-class tape recording, in which teacher and students discuss the answers to the previous questionnaire with intent to negotiate course content material; (3) a final questionnaire, which assesses students¿ responses in light of their preferences. The theoretical underpinnings of this study include the work of a number of researchers, with a special emphasis on Augusto (1997) and Celani (1988), on ESP; Leffa (1999; 2001; 2003) and Paiva (2005), on the role of English as a multinational language; Nunan (1988; 1999; 2003) and Tudor (1996) on student-centered approach. The data show that speaking, which tends to take a back-seat in technical English, is considered the most important of the four abilities by the Nursing and Computer Science students. In the opinion of the Environmental Science students, it comes in second. The results are consistent with the subjects¿ conception of language, that is, learning a language means learning to speak. In addition, they corroborate the widespread notion that prospective candidates must know how to speak English fluently in order to be competitive in the job market / Mestrado / Lingua Estrangeira / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Textual duplicates can be hard to detect as they differ in words but have similar semantic meaning. At Etteplan, a technical documentation company, they have many writers that accidentally re-write existing instructions explaining procedures. These "duplicates" clutter the database. This is not desired because it is duplicate work. The condition of the database will only deteriorate as the company expands. This thesis attempts to map where the problem is worst, and also how to calculate how many duplicates there are. The corpus is small, but written in a controlled natural language called Simplified Technical English. The method uses document embeddings from doc2vec and clustering by use of HDBSCAN* and validation using Density-Based Clustering Validation index (DBCV), to chart the problems. A survey was sent out to try to determine a threshold value of when documents stop being duplicates, and then using this value, a theoretical duplicate count was calculated.

The present dissertation is a corpus-based investigation of the frequency, structure and functions of lexical bundles in published scientific writing in English, whose main objective is the creation of an inventory of the most frequent and pedagogically useful lexical bundles in scientific prose, one that can be utilized in a variety of teaching applications. In this study, three- to six-word lexical bundles were extracted from a 1.3 million word sample from the Health Science Corpus, a collection of published articles in biology and biochemistry. This initial list was filtered and enhanced through the application of the Mutual Information (MI) statistic and of a set of exclusion criteria established to satisfy the pedagogical objectives of the study. Following the SciE-Lex investigation (Verdaguer et al., 2009) the remaining lexical bundles were grouped together using like keywords. The present study additionally used the concept of prototypical bundle, which is based on Sinclair’s (2004) notion of canonical units of meaning, to tackle the semantic and structural connections between similar bundles. The structural and functional characteristics of the lexical bundles were explored through careful concordance analysis, which made it possible to categorize the bundles using modified versions of Biber et al.’s (1999) structural framework and Hyland’s (2008a) functional taxonomy. These quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal how native expert writers employ recurrent word strings in the construction of a coherent, well-structured and convincing scientific text that conforms with the conventions of the genre. They bring to light the different functions that lexical bundles perform in scientific discourse, and how these functions enable writers to address their research concerns, achieve their communication goals and elicit the desired reaction from their target audience. They also show the typical structural realizations of these bundle functions, as well as important aspects of usage that non-native writers need to be aware of to be able to incorporate these expressions in their own writing. The study also compares the results obtained from the corpus of published scientific articles to the lexical bundles found in a smaller corpus of biomedical research articles written by native Spanish-speaking scientists, who are all non-native users of English. In accordance with the methodology proposed by Cortes (2004), the lexical bundles identified in the HSC were treated as target bundles and subsequently searched for and analyzed in the corpus of non-native writing. This comparison uncovered non-native writers’ overuse of certain bundles, a tendency that results in unnecessary repetitiveness and lack of variation, as well as their restricted use of participant- oriented bundles, which points to their limited awareness of the usage and importance of this particular function. The dissertation also discusses the pedagogical implications of its final product, a practical list of lexical bundles in scientific English for use in teaching applications, and how it addresses the six major challenges that hinder the successful introduction of lexical bundles in EAP classrooms and teaching materials, as identified by Byrd and Coxhead (2010). / La presente tesis es una investigación de la frecuencia, la estructura y las funciones de los “lexical bundle” en artículos científicos escritos en inglés, con la finalidad de crear un inventario de los “lexical bundle” más frecuentes y pedagógicamente rentables en la prosa científica, una lista que se puede utilizar en varias aplicaciones didácticas. La investigación empezó con la identificación de combinaciones léxicas de tres a seis palabras en una muestra del “Health Science Corpus” que contiene 1,3 millones de palabras. Después, se filtró la lista inicial con la aplicación de la estadística de la información mutua y de un conjunto de criterios de exclusión. Se organizó la lista a través de la agrupación de los “lexical bundle” mediante las palabras clave que tenían en común y la utilización del concepto de “prototypical bundle” o combinación prototípica (Sinclair, 2004), que permitió tratar las conexiones semánticas y estructurales entre los “lexical bundle” similares. Finalmente, se investigaron las características estructurales y funcionales de las combinaciones léxicas a través del análisis de listas de concordancia, lo que hizo posible clasificar los “lexical bundle” según versiones modificadas del marco estructural de Biber et al. (1999) y la taxonomía funcional de Hyland (2008). Los análisis cuantitativos y cualitativos revelan cómo los científicos nativos y con largas trayectorias de publicación científica, emplean combinaciones léxicas en la construcción de un texto científico coherente, bien estructurado y convincente que se ajusta a las convenciones del género. Ponen de relieve las distintas funciones que realizan las combinaciones léxicas en el discurso científico y muestran las típicas realizaciones estructurales de estas funciones. El estudio también compara los resultados obtenidos del “Health Science Corpus” a un corpus más pequeño de artículos de investigación biomédica escritos por científicos de habla española, que son todos usuarios no nativos de inglés. Esta comparación resaltó las diferencias entre los autores nativos y los no nativos, y permitió averiguar las dificultades que los científicos no nativos pueden tener en el uso de combinaciones léxicas, y cómo estas dificultades pueden abordarse en el aula de idiomas, así como en los materiales didácticos.

This project offers a strategy-based curriculum designed to increase academic competence in technical reading for Taiwanese students of English as a foreign language. Strategies include acquiring specialized vocabulary words, enhancing background knowledge, and increasing metacognitive awareness.

The purpose of this paper is to explain a curriculum package which was designed for science students at Orange Park IX, ninth grade center, Clay County, Florida. The target population consists of those students who read below the sixth-grade level according to the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) scores and who are enrolled in a general science class. These students are also enrolled in a Reading Skills class and some are in the SLD and ED programs as well. Although there will be interaction with the reading, SLD, and ED teachers, the classes will not be team taught. Therefore, the science curriculum is intended to be contained within the fifty-minute sessions allowed for science classes.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-194) / Underpinned by the premise that any text can be studied as a translation provided it is identified as such, this study theoretically uses Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) to investigate English-Swahili healthcare texts. The aim of the study was to: identify, describe and analyse linguistic and cultural aspects in the texts; identify, describe, and analyse translation strategies used in the texts; and describe and analyse the use of illustrations in the texts. The study made use of Kruger and Wallmach’s (1997) analytical framework. The Tertium Comparationis of the study was descriptive terms, cohesive devices, translation strategies, division of texts, illustrations, text titles, and taboo words. On the linguistic aspects, the study’s main findings were: that the English texts use more descriptive terms than the Swahili texts; Swahili texts have a higher frequency use of references because it contains a number of derivational and inflectional morphemes; substitution is sparingly used whereas ellipsis is almost non-existent in Swahili texts in spite of its presence in the source texts; additive and causal conjunctions were the most prevalent in the texts; and inasmuch as there were no significant differences in the use of lexical cohesion in the ST and TT, Swahili texts were found to be more cohesive due to the slightly higher number of lexical items. Regarding the cultural aspects, it was found that translators use euphemism in the translation of words considered taboo and this informed the conclusion that there reigns the euphemism norm in Swahili texts. It equally emerged that strategies used to overcome non-lexicalisation include: use of pure loan words, use of pure loan words preceded by explanation, use of indigenised loan words, use of omission and translation by a more general word. On the other hand, translators used strategies of substitution, use of general words, paraphrasing and cultural substitution to translate words considered taboo. In addition, the study found that illustrations are used in more less the same way both in the ST and TT save for some slight modifications that are done in order to align them with the target culture expectations. Furthermore, the study theoretically effectuated four norms: explicitation norm, explicitness norm, euphemism norm, and illustration norm / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt.et Phil. (Linguistics)