Medicine is a science dealing with uncertainty and the art of judging probability. For effective communication, doctors, researchers, or health sciences writers, need to master the use of modality whereby unreal situations can be discussed. How modal verbs -- the most commonly used type of modality applied in the writing of health and medical…

Websites offer research groups a powerful tool for self-promotion and dissemination of their research to a diversified audience. The aim of this study is to explore how research groups affiliated to a research institution in a non-Anglophone country compose their websites to achieve visibility and impact and reach multiple audiences. Content…

The case presentation is the core section of a medical case report. Issues in the teaching of case report writing have recently been the subject of great interest in medical education, especially in the era of globalization. Given that Taiwanese medical students, residents and junior physicians are requested to write case reports in English and…

Analysis of tense usage in 20 scientific articles from the "Journal of Pediatrics" reveals a hierarchy of sociolinguistic relationships among context-dependent rhetorical functions, context-independent temporal meanings, and actual tense choices. (Author/CB)

The use of the cognate recognition strategy to enhance reading comprehension in a Latin American English-for-Special-Purposes context is considered. Focus is on the subtechnical vocabulary found in 40 texts from English engineering magazines, first describing vocabulary identification techniques and then assessing whether the items have Spanish…

Investigates the use of questions in medical texts. Six medical journals were studied; a large number of questions were found, particularly in editorials and letters. The paper discusses their uses in the organization of discourse and as part of the rhetorical devices used by the authors. (seven references) (Author/LR)

English as a Second language (ESL) instruction for business and commerce at Marymount College (California) serves a population with diverse characteristics but one central need: to develop a clear understanding of a relatively unfamiliar world of work while also acquiring terminology from an unfamiliar language to describe that world. The course…