This case study discusses the development and use of an oral performance assessment instrument intended to evaluate Filipino agents' customer service transactions with callers from the United States (US). The design and applications of the instrument were based on a longitudinal, qualitative observation of language training and customer service…

This study investigates whether the integration of ICT in education can facilitate teaching and learning. An example of such integration is computer assisted language learning (CALL) of English technical vocabulary by undergraduate physics students in Rwanda. The study draws on theories of cognitive load and multimedia learning to explore learning…

In the last 20 years, critical approaches to language and literacy education have established themselves as an academic field, with an abundance of empirical studies applying Critical Literacy principles in classes and curricula at schools and universities. Noticeably absent from the contexts of implementation are courses in Business English and…

The global high-tech industry is characterized by extreme competitiveness, innovation, and widespread use of English. Consequently, Taiwanese high-tech companies require engineers that are talented in both their engineering and English abilities. In response to the lack of knowledge regarding the English skills needed by engineers in Taiwan's…

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…

Using the academic writing sub-corpora of the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus as data and building on previous research, this study strives to identify the most frequently-used multi-word constructions (MWCs) of various types (e.g., idioms, lexical bundles, and phrasal/prepositional verbs) in general…

Email has revolutionised the way in which professionals work and companies operate, and yet has received surprisingly little scholarly attention in English for Specific Purposes and has an unexpectedly muted presence in many Business English textbooks. The dearth of research into email use in globalised business settings may be one of the factors…

The primary focus of this article is the investigation of how current applied linguistic research into the nature of call centre communication breakdown in business processing outsourcing (BPO) sites such as India and the Philippines, can impact English communications training program content and design for this industry. It is argued that a…

As is the worldwide trend, scientists in China face strong and increasing pressure to publish their research in international peer-reviewed journals written in English. There is an acute need for graduate students to develop the required language skills alongside their scientific expertise, in spite of the distinct division currently existing…

This article describes part of a European Commission Leonardo project that aimed to design a multimedia course for English language learners seeking work as ground staff in European airports. The structural-functional analysis of the dialogues written from the course showed that, across the four trades explored (security guards, ground handlers,…

This paper reports the findings of a study aiming to reveal the recurring patterns of lexical, syntactic and textual errors in student translations of a specialized EU genre from English into Hungarian. By comparing the student translations to the official translation of the text, this article uncovers the most frequent errors that students made…

Native English-speaking (NES) English teachers at universities in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts are sometimes asked to edit English manuscripts written by non-native English-speaking (NNES) colleagues in scientific fields. However, professional peers may differ from English teachers in their approach towards editing scientific…

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of lexicogrammatical devices which highlight important or relevant points in lectures. Despite the established usefulness of discourse organizational cues for lecture comprehension and note-taking, very little is known about the marking of relevance in this genre. The current overview of…

Cooperative learning has frequently been used in language classrooms, from in-class task-based group work to group presentations. Research suggests that cooperative learning provides mutual support, as well as successful and effective learning outcomes of tasks. The present research addressed a number of problems discovered in group oral…

This paper seeks to analyse discourse patterns of legal opinions in two languages and cultures--namely, Legal Problem Question Answers (LPQs) in the UK academic writing context and Pareri (Ps) in the Italian professional writing context. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of discourse in this paper, based on the tenets of genre analysis,…