Syntactic complexity is a crucial aspect of linguistic proficiency and thus understanding and supporting such development in learners is a keen concern for language teachers. Research conducted has shown growing sophistication of noun phrase structures by writers of different abilities in academic writing (Biber & Gray, 2010; Liu & Li,…

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…

This report aims to show how an emphasis on vocabulary can contribute to courses in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), using the data from two lexical studies. The first study attempts to discover to what extent there may be a general language of science, or semi-technical vocabulary. This type of vocabulary would seem to offer a useful…

In Zimbabwe, university students continue to have problems with scientific communication despite the fact that English is a widely-used second language and students have received most formal science instruction in English. However, the problems differ from those of both students of English as a foreign language and students studying their first…

This paper discusses how a native English-speaking scientist should write and how they actually write scientific articles. This is complemented by considering the aspects of English that journal editors reported as influencing their assessment of manuscripts submitted by second language authors. Some of the ways in which native language and…

This paper discusses the dilemma of the non-specialist teacher of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or English for Science and Technology when faced with technical content, and describes the response of De La Salle University (Philippines) that broadened the graduate curriculum to help develop future ESP teacher competencies. The personal…

Scotland's vocationally-oriented Napier College was funded by the French Government to develop language courses for scientists and engineers. The courses developed have been intensive and extensive, based on work started by a team of French scientists focusing on the language, concepts, and ways of thinking common to the scientific community.…