English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teaching has become a popular trend in English language teaching in the world. It is distinguished by its clearly defined purposes in teaching and its student-centred short intensive courses. It tends to be more effective than other types of English language teaching. Therefore it has attracted more and more attention of linguists and language teachers, and is warmly welcomed by learners. ESP teaching also enjoys much popularity in China. In recent years a great number of ESP programmes, as well as programmes of other foreign languages for specific purposes, have emerged. These programmes have successfully prepared thousands of specialists for the language required by their future work or overseas studies. Nevertheless, there still remain a number of problems in Chinese ESP teaching. This study is intended to analyse ESP teaching in China. It examines the development, thec haracteristics, the achievements, existing problems and attempts to highlight implications for teachers and educational administrations.

Denna studie är en kartläggning av prostitution och människohandel för sexuella ändamål i Värmland. Den gjordes på uppdrag av Länsstyrelsen i Värmland. Syftet med kartläggningen var att få en uppfattning om förekomsten av prostitution och människohandel för sexuella ändamål i Värmland, att undersöka om och hur myndigheter, frivilligorganisationer och näringsidkare arbetar mot prostitution och människohandel för sexuella ändamål samt att se vilka resurser som finns tillgängliga för detta arbete. För att undersöka detta gjorde vi inledningsvis en förstudie i form av en observationsstudie på Internet för att få en uppfattning om det överhuvudtaget förekom försäljning av sexuella tjänster i Värmland. Denna följdes sedan upp av en enkätundersökning som skickades till myndigheter, frivilligorganisationer, bostadsbolag samt privata näringsidkare. När resultatet sammanställdes kunde vi konstatera att det förekommer både prostitution och människohandel för sexuella ändamål i Värmland och att både män, kvinnor, unga och barn kan vara utsatta för den sexuella exploateringen. Vad gäller det arbete som bedrivs mot denna exploatering kunde vi konstatera att den sker endast i begränsad utsträckning och att samverkan mellan berörda verksamheter är bristfällig. I kartläggningen kunde vi även se att kunskapen hos de yrkesverksamma inom de berörda verksamheterna är begränsad samt att myndigheterna saknar resurser för arbetet mot prostitution och människohandel för sexuella ändamål. / This study is a survey of prostitution and trafficking for sexual purposes in Värmland. This was done as an assignment from the County Authorities of Värmland. The purpose of this survey was to get a comprehension of the presence of prostitution and trafficking for sexual purposes in Värmland, to examine if and how the authorities, the voluntary organizations and associations working against prostitution and people trade as well as seeing which resources are available for this work. To examine this we did initially do a preparatory study in form of an observation study through the Internet to get an idea if overall it exists. This was then followed up with an official survey that was sent to the authorities, the voluntary organizations, the housing authority as well as private sectors. When the result was compiled we were able to state that both prostitution and trafficking for sexual purposes does exist in Värmland and that both men, women, adolescents and children can be exposed to sexual exploitation. In consideration of the work that is being done against this exploitation we were able to state that it happens only in moderate scale and that the cooperation between the involved parties is lacking. In the survey we were also able to see the knowledge of the different working officials within the involved authorities is limited, as well as the authorities are lacking the resources for the work against prostitution and trafficking for sexual purposes.

Unauthorized-use is the most difficult problem to government-owned land authorities. Although the land used for military purposes belongs to government-owned land, its reasons for unauthorized-use are still different from those other government-owned land authorities face. Most researches about government-owned land occupations and exclusion focus on the part of the management sector. This study, however, takes both the manager¡¦s and the unauthorized-user viewpoint to discuss the land unauthorized-use problem the Chinese Military Academy faces. After analyzing literatures, interviewing related people, and several case studies, I am able to suggest some practicable solutions based on the present law. This study finds the land belonging to the Chinese Military Academy was taken illegally mostly during the 1950s and the 1970s, before Government-Owned Land Laws were passed. Ninety percent of the unauthorized-user are veterans, and the rest are ordinary people living close to the battalion, who took the land mostly for housing, with a very small percentage for profit. The main reasons are the unauthorized-user complaints of unequal treatment, their financial conditions, and their dependence on the unauthorized-use land. Of course the military authorities¡¦ negligence has made the situation worse. This study also finds that most unauthorized-user ask for alternative housing and compensations, while the military wants to resort to law. Since the R.O.C. Constitution safeguards people¡¦s property right, I try to take the unauthorized-use peoples¡¦ appeal into consideration. This research suggests that the National Defense Act Stipulations 22 and 23 be revised, making it possible for the military authority to entrust the management of its property to related organization. Besides, a special fund can be established to compensate for the loss of the people who were forced to exchange lands during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. Moreover, the VAC (Veterans Affairs Commission, Executive Yuan, R.O.C.) can use the Fund for Veterans¡¦ Housing (°ê­x°h°£§Ð©x§L¦w¸m°òª÷) to subsidize veterans with housing problems. In this way, we can elastically solve the unauthorized-use problem, help unauthorized-user to live within the law, resolve the conflicts between the military and civilians, and promote the efficient management of land used for national defense purposes.

Self-efficacy refers to people&rsquo / s judgments of their own abilities about a specific situation. The present study examined self-efficacy beliefs of senior students about using ESP (English for Specific Purposes) in their prospective careers. For this purpose, a new scale was developed by the researcher. The predictive power of certain variables (gender, English course grade, watching English language films, reading English language books, listening to English language songs) was investigated through multiple regression analysis. The study was conducted at a private university in Ankara and 303 senior students participated in the study. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed to determine the factor(s) in the questionnaire. EFA provided evidence for two factor solution and they were named as Academic Reading-Writing Skill (ARWS) and Academic Communication Skill (ACS). Cronbach&rsquo / s alpha coefficients of both ARWS and ACS scales were .97 for each which was a satisfactory result. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that the model of the combination of variables which were gender, reading English language books, watching English language films, listening to English language songs and English grade significantly predicted both ARWS and ACS scores of the participants. The variables which were reading English language books, watching English language films and English course grade significantly predicted both ARWS and ACS scores of the participants. Listening to English language songs predicted ACS scores but not ARWS scores. However, gender predicted neither of them.

English for Academic Purposes literature is often criticized for its very functional interpretation of language (e.g. Benesch, 2001) which ignores the intellectual, cultural, and social side of learning in an attempt to appear “neutral.” Furthermore, writing is the EAP skill area which seems to provide students with the most difficulty. Many EAP students express high levels of frustration toward their writing despite years and years of ESOL writing courses (e.g. Johannson, 2001). Thus, the purpose of this study was to invent and describe a curriculum which would approach the teaching and learning of EAP writing in a way that addressed student frustrations toward L2 writing, shifted the idea of EAP writing back toward the more authentic purpose of communication and, described students’ reaction to the curriculum. The resultant PBL2 curriculum evolved into a method, under the umbrellas of Communicative Language Teaching and the Process Approach, that “fleshed out” EAP curricula with regard to second language writing by recognizing students as intellectual, cultural, and social beings, promoting life-long learning, emphasizing the importance of discourse communities, and by shifting the focus of writing to communication. This dissertation is a teacher research-evaluative case study that took place in an exit-level EFL course at a small bilingual university in Mexico City. The students were all Mexican nationals, of an average age of 21, whose majors included psychology, business administration, international studies, and computer information systems. All were enrolled in the class in order to complete the mandatory English requirements of the university. The data collected included observations via a teacher-researcher journal/lesson report per Richards & Lockhart (1994), three audio taped semi-structured student interviews per Seidman (1998), and various course related documents such as student assignments and instructor evaluations. Three types of analyses were used: (1) emergent theme-constant comparative analysis, (2) cross case analysis, and (3) document analysis. During analysis, issues concerning the impact of the learners’ feelings toward the L2 emerged along with issues of culture, hegemony and power; moreover, classroom management and learning communities were highlighted in addition to the invaluable role of technology in facilitating the PBL2 inquiry process. / text

This thesis investigates factors influencing the reading difficulties of advanced learners of English as a foreign language. It proposes a new approach to reading research and pedagogy in which neuroscientific insights on human verbal and non-verbal cognition are incorporated into the theoretical conceptualisation. This thesis explores the neurosdentific literature for the purpose of identifying basic principles governing human perception, emotion and cognition. The mechanisms of learning and memory are also studied. It examines how the verbal systems of the brain interact with the non-verbal systems. Making use of neural perspectives, a critical review of historical and of current reading models is conducted. Attempts are made to provide alternative interpretations for the phenomena recognised in empirical studies based on observations of reading behaviours, on computer-based studies and on the introspective data of experts and of learners. This thesis reports two experiments which were designed to investigate the Ll and L2 reading processes through Think Aloud, Immediate Retrospection, Questionnaires and Interviews. The results indicate that advanced learners, despite their established reading ability in their native languages, often rely heavily on cognitive and studial styles of L2 reading which inhibit fluent and effective reading. Neural accounts are offered which suggest that the ineffective reading styles are due to weakness in the degree of neural developments. This thesis evaluates the reading sections of current and typical coursebooks according to neural-based criteria and concludes that learners are not being given the opportunities to develop the neural networks required in fluent and enjoyable reading. Finally suggestions are made for future reading research and pedagogy.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In this dissertation, Van Davy makes a case for a cohesive system of schools which can serve the public — both the national interest and individual interests — while directly addressing the current national schooling system’s failure: * to replace, for the entire student cohort...high levels of student boredom with high interest and engaging curriculum and pedagogy; * to replace, for low SES and indigenous students...low levels of learning outcomes, low enrolment levels in senior schooling, and only brief experience of curriculum choice with a curriculum paradigm providing intrinsic value, understanding of pathways from disempowerment to empowerment, curriculum choice from the earliest years, and schooling outcomes which, over time, equal those of the national cohort of students * to replace a citizenry divided in its support for public, church-based, and exclusionary schools with a community united in its support for a socially agreed set of social purposes for schooling and a new curriculum paradigm, one half of which is generated by this set of social purposes * to address a major political issue: social cohesion The proposed new and cohesive system of schools is envisaged to meet the needs - both Common Good and Individual Good - of the citizenry. It will grow from an earlier and pre-requisite national social agreement around a set of political goals which together sketch a preferred future society - these political goals in the hands of education specialists will generate an "essential" curriculum as one of two elements in a new two-tiered curriculum to be followed from the earliest until the latest years of schooling. The second element, occupying the other half of the curriculum from the earliest to the latest years of schooling, will be an elective curriculum designed to encourage all students to pursue their own interests in as much depth as desired. Studies of sectarian studies will be included in the elective curriculum. Davy’s analysis ranges across a number of disciplines, fusing together a number of viewpoints: historical, political theory, educational performance, and educational theory. It searches Australia’s schooling outcomes, identifies low SES and Aboriginal outcomes as major areas of failure, and challenges a number of widely accepted schooling practices. In the process, Davy discovers OECD and ACER data, but little official interest or analysis, concerning widespread boredom amongst Australia’s students. He argues that, in respect of both low SES students and student boredom, system responsibilities such as the nature of Australia’s curriculum, could be just as implicated as concerns for “teacher quality.” Davy’s interest extends beyond the purely educational. He examines the purposes that public and non-public school authorities articulate, as well as reasons parents give for enrolling their children in schools. From this research Davy identifies several issues and suggests that very considerable “choice” in schooling could be found in a different curriculum paradigm, and that both public and non-public schools are deficient when measured against widely-accepted concerns for religious freedom, social cohesion, and fundamental democratic principles. For Davy, a major political issue confronting Australia is the national imperative of “social cohesion.” He searches Australia’s schooling history for evidence of any social agreement around the social purposes of schooling, including more recent attempts to formulate “essential" and “new basics” and “national” curriculum. He concludes that while many educators, and the OECD, refer to the need for a pre-requisite set of social purposes that outline a preferred future society, the politics of schooling has not permitted this to eventuate and, given the absence of this management fundamental, “it is not surprising that schooling systems are shaped by internal logics (ideologies, religions, personalities, internal politics, quest for advantage and/or privilege) rather than wider concerns for the shape of the globe’s and nation’s future, and the advancement of the twins: Common Good and Individual Good.” With these problems laid bare — low SES and indigenous outcomes, student boredom, and social cohesion — Davy addresses all three simultaneously. He draws confidence from contemporary political theorists proposing political processes which engage the public in a “deliberative democracy.” He constructs a surrogate “foundation of agreed principles” which, he deduces, the processes of deliberative democracy might lead the Australian people to construct, then outlines a step-by-step means by which these principles can generate an essential curriculum for all Australian children, while encouraging a full range of choice within an elective stream. The political processes of open collaboration throughout civil society which produces the social agreement may produce a new political context. This new, less adversarial and more trusting political context is seen to be fertile ground for the replacement of Australia’s fractured schooling system with a cohesive schooling system for the Australian public — an Australian schooling system — to be managed nationally.

This dissertation uncovers and examines linguistic and functional patterns of student writing in the first two years of college. A corpus of student papers from six disciplines (philosophy, English, psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics) was collected, and multi-dimensional (MD) analysis (Biber, 1988) was used to examine the ways that discipline and paper type influence writing. Further explorations of the data compare lower-level student writing to upper-level student writing, professional academic biology writing, and the discipline-specific approximations of an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. Findings show that specificity of both linguistic and functional properties exist even at such low levels of disciplinary acculturation. These studies are followed by a summary and contextualization of their findings. Finally, future inquiry using collected data and future investigations into student literacy practices are proposed.

ALMEIDA, Larissa Pereira de. Gênero carta-corrente digital: estudo dos aspectos formais e funcionais. 2007. 157f. – Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Departamento de Letras Vernáculas, Programa de Pós-graduação em Linguística, Fortaleza (CE), 2007. / Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2014-08-20T12:35:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2007_dis_lpalmeida.pdf: 1310914 bytes, checksum: 5fa1aef5aa1db67d2c5ba2a73aa04430 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo(marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2014-08-20T16:36:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2007_dis_lpalmeida.pdf: 1310914 bytes, checksum: 5fa1aef5aa1db67d2c5ba2a73aa04430 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-20T16:36:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2007_dis_lpalmeida.pdf: 1310914 bytes, checksum: 5fa1aef5aa1db67d2c5ba2a73aa04430 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / This research analyzes the digital chain letters through the sociorethoric perspective of gender, that consider speech gender as an interaction process between people and places where it is in. The approach of textual gender discourse is based on propositions of Bakhtin (1981, 1997), Swales (1990, 1992) and Bhatia (1993, 2004). The corpus is composed of 36 digital chain letters copies. The methodology procedure is based on Bhatia (1993) and allowed us to identify digital chain letters by others genders that are in the web. The main purpose is to analyze the formal and functional aspects of digital chain letters and the specific objectives are: to analyze digital chain letters specifics purposes; to identify the standardized form characteristics; to analyze the standardized functional characteristics in the samples. The characteristics analyzed showed the essence of digital medium inside the texts. Evidenced, either, a standardized constitution of linguistics and functional aspects, that are connected to their specific purposes and have digital evidence inside constitution and text. / Enviadas por e-mail a diversos destinatários, as cartas-corrente surgem cada vez mais freqüentes nos correios eletrônicos. Este trabalho de pesquisa analisa as cartas-corrente digitais por meio de uma orientação sócio-retórica de gêneros e possui fundamentação teórica composta pelos postulados de Bakhtin (1981, 1997), passando por concepções atuais de Swales (1990, 1992) e Bhatia (1993, 2004). A pesquisa nos permitiu alcançar os objetivos específicos de identificação das cartas-corrente e diferenciação dos outros gêneros que circulam por e-mail, analisar seus propósitos comunicativos específicos e identificar as regularidades formais e funcionais encontradas nos exemplares. Observamos que nas cartas-corrente digitais, assim como em outros gêneros, os aspectos formais e funcionais estão intimamente ligados e que as tornam diferentes entre si é o uso dos recursos lingüísticos e de apresentação da ordem de idéias, que estão ligados ao tema apresentado e ao conhecimento institucional do ambiente de replicação. A análise nos permitiu identificar as regularidades da carta-corrente digital e alguns aspectos que são específicas do próprio gênero não apenas por se tratar de uma mensagem que circula por e-mail, mas por levar em consideração as peculiaridades desse meio, as estratégias de escrita e a abordagem de assuntos que configuram como específicos.

Using quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, the current study examines Saudi students’ perspectives, coupled with EAL instructors’ views, regarding Saudi students’ English language-learning needs. Two data collection tools were used, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The study (N = 172) included samples of EAL learners (n = 127) and EAL instructors (n = 45) both in Saudi Arabia and Canada, Victoria. The mismatch between the skills identified as important and areas identified as needing support by the learners, in addition to the divergence between learners’ and instructors’ perceptions, underscores the necessity of triangulation when using needs analysis to discover language-learning needs. The study delineates oral communication (i.e., being able to interact by using the language appropriately and efficiently) as a language-learning need identified by both Saudi students and their language instructors. Quantitative (skill ratings) and qualitative (responses to open-ended questions and interviews) data suggest that both students and instructors view writing as a challenging area for Saudi English-language learners. The results also indicate issues that contribute to the challenges faced by Saudis in the process of learning English. Findings show the importance of educational background and cultural differences in the students’ language development. Responses report that reading is devalued in the Saudi educational system and Saudi culture in general. Hence, both Saudi students and instructors in Canada pinpointed reading as an area needing support. Based on the key findings, it is evident that the language-learning needs of Saudi students are shaped according to the requirements of their immediate study context and their prospective goals. The study contributes crucial findings about participants’ perceptions of the importance of skills and their assessment of skills status in Saudi Arabia and Canada. In addition to the implications for English language learning in Saudi Arabia, these findings can be informative for educational institutions and practitioners in the English-speaking world. Most importantly, the multi-level analysis confirms that language learning needs are context-specific. / Graduate