Although the influence of learner beliefs on performance and satisfaction in particular instructional contexts is uncontested, empirical studies have so far concentrated on students in various geographical rather than discipline-specific settings. Starting from the premise that tertiary sector ESP students may have more in common than their choice…

In order for discourse to be considered idiomatic, it needs to exhibit features like fluency and pragmatically appropriate language use. Advances in corpus linguistics make it possible to examine idiomaticity from the perspective of recurrent word combinations. One approach to capture such word combinations is by the automatic retrieval of lexical…

Drawing on an interview-based study of the beliefs, practices, and experiences of 16 proofreaders of student writing at undergraduate and/or graduate level in a university setting, this paper focuses on the ethical concerns informants associate with the proofreading act. "Proofreading" is defined for the purposes of this research as "third-party…

The constant and continuous need for the university to work towards producing graduates who meet and exceed the requirements of their chosen industry has prompted the effort to gather feedback from those industries. The effort by researchers of an engineering-based university in the East Coast Region of Malaysia to collect information on the…

This article reports on an examination of the communication needs of a group of Thai civil engineering students. Twenty-five stakeholders helped identify the communication needs of the students by participating in individual interviews. These included employers, civil engineers, civil engineering lecturers, ex-civil engineering students of the…

This paper concerns the teaching of English to learners who are studying, or will soon study, engineering and who are expected to do at least part of their studying through textbooks written in English. Such students, especially in universities in developing countries, often find themselves very poorly equipped by their secondary education for…

Lexical bundles--recurrent sequences of words--are important building blocks of discourse in spoken and written registers. Previous research has shown that lexical bundles are especially prevalent in university classroom teaching, where they serve three major discourse functions: stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential…

Interactive lectures play an important role in improving comprehension and in enhancing communicative competence in the English language for EFL university students taking content lecture courses. This article considers the interactive discourse in lectures of the English Studies Department at the University of Alicante, Spain. It describes an…

The research project set out to improve reading skills among third level engineering students at an Egyptian College of Technology where many of them were dissatisfied with existing negative attitudes towards English and the inadequacies of the teaching that they received. A needs analysis was carried out to establish what they and their teachers…

This article analyses factors affecting L2 learning, using Regression and Correlation Analysis. Some of the the results are in line with those reported in the literature: for example, the positive role of "Reading" and the negative role of "L1" transfer. Other results, however, are surprising, such as the current use of "Grammar Translation…

Compares how three culturally distinct groups of undergraduates--mainstream American, Catalan, Latino immigrants to the United States--interact with course content to achieve academically. Analysis of interviews and documents reveals four informational operations--exposure, extraction, manipulation, and display--used to move content from sources…

Reports on a study exploring patterns of discourse organization in seminar-type discussions. Analysis was made of patterns of sequential organization in discussions between English for academic purposes students in university seminars in the United Kingdom. Analysis revealed two patterns of organization: simple exchanges of pre-formed ideas and…

Examines case discussion leadership in two English-medium strategic management courses in Hong Kong. Perceptions of case leaders and their students were investigated to better understand the learning situation from their perspectives. Questions and responses were coded and analyzed. Analysis revealed questioning and grouping techniques that group…

A needs analysis was conducted to determine why many English-as-a-Second-Language students enrolled in the nursing program were not succeeding academically. Interviews, observations, and questionnaires were used to gather information about the needs of students, all of whom were immigrants. In response, a course was developed to address students'…

Analyzed matched writing samples of 100 native Arabic speakers' writing on writing for science and technology (WST) topics in English and Arabic. Findings indicate that, though students have studied English-as-a-foreign-language writing for 8 years, and are judged to be good at the mechanics and lexis and grammar, they still have trouble with WST…