Many studies have found EFL/ESL learners over/under/misuse linking adverbials. Because their use is specific to genre and register (Biber et al., 1999), and news writing is a compulsory course for EFL journalism majors at many Chinese universities, this study investigates their usage patterns in news and suggests teaching material design for the…

Examines a representative text corpus to gain insights into language structure and use and to open new areas of linguistic inquiry. Various illustrations are presented that provide a glimpse into the value of corpus-based investigations for increasing one's understanding of language use and imparting insights important for designing effective…

Minimal feedback in English (e.g., "yeah, mm hm") are common in conversation but rarely found in second-language instructional materials. They can be examined best through the turn-taking system in English. We now know enough about minimal feedback to teach its use. Examples of use are presented here, with attention to intonation…

Discusses the description of English discourse for teaching purposes, drawing on new information from analysis of CANCODE (Cambridge/Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English). Concludes that language teaching should be based on regularities and patterns, not rules, and that exposure to real, informal language of native speakers, with its…

The handbook, arising from a research project on adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching, presents ESL teachers with ways to use authentic English as a teaching tool in the classroom. The purpose of this book is to: examine the connections between current theories of spoken discourse analysis and classroom practice; encourage language…

By comparing the language performance of native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and English to English second language performance across similar speech events, a study suggests a methodology for discovering potential areas of pragmatic transfer. Subjects were 6 native American English speakers and 12 native Chinese-speakers, 6 using Chinese and 6…

Proposes that courses in English for Special/Academic Purposes use instructional materials reflecting the needs, communicative purposes, and standards of effective discourse as perceived by the targeted discourse community, make the linguistic structures explicit, help learners self-evaluate and become independent learners in the workplace, and be…

An English-for-Special-Purposes (ESP) text embodies structure and conventionalized features that play important roles in conveying its message to members of the specific discourse community. This means that such a text should not be simplified or otherwise subjected to loss of its generic integrity, yet these texts are often difficult for…

This article discusses the incompatibility between the goal of communicative competence (defined more narrowly as minimal approximative communicative competence) and current practices of syllabus design, and suggests more relevant alternatives. Foreign language instruction is still dominated by the teaching of language structure for its own sake,…

A study was conducted at an American university to collect data on how native English-speaking students asked questions in class. The data were analyzed for use of syntactic forms, formulaic expressions or prefatory comments, terms of address, functions fulfilled by the questions, and politeness markers. The results were then compared with the…