| June
2006 Volume 1
PDF Version
Hard
Cover
Foreword
John Adamson, Senior Associate Editor The
June 2006 edition brings some changes to the journal. Firstly, we have decided
on a new name signalling a perhaps clearer direction. The new title, Asian ESP
Journal, reflects the core vision that we hold of creating a forum for ideas into
English for Specific Purposes in Asian education. This reaches across a wide range
of subject areas to include Business English, English for Science and Technology
and the various specialist professional and occupational purposes for which English
is taught. The cohesive element within this diversity in ESP are the considerations
that ESP practitioners must address when assessing student needs, designing the
syllabus, gathering feedback from all the stakeholders involved in shaping the
course, and continually developing themselves academically. In this sense, there
are many commonalities in the depth and diversity of ESP research in various working
and academic contexts. These contexts covered in the Asian ESP Journal may, at
first sight, be only within the Asian geographical area. However, reflecting upon
the flow of Asian students, scientists and business people across borders into
other continents for study, training and business purposes casts another perspective
on the diversity of research into 'Asian' ESP. This means that the relevance of
Asian ESP research extends beyond the Asian zone into, for example, the experiences
of Asian students in American and European universities, as well as research into
the various work-related issues of Asian business people negotiating contracts
with South American counterparts. Clearly, the Asian ESP Journal has the potential
to address a variety of topics of relevance from teaching methodology, research,
and issues which inform the ESP practitioner. The first 2006 edition of the journal
is an example of this diversity. It has a mixture of research articles, a paper
on teaching methodology, and an interview with a leading Japanese business professional.
Dr.
John Adamson interviews Shigeo Toda from the leading Japanese electronics manufacturer,
Seiko Epson. This in-depth interview casts light on the company's strategic approach
to investment in Asia and also takes a look into internal management style. The
academic and teaching section of the issue is comprised of three articles.
Mansour
Arvani's study "A Discourse analysis of business letters written by Iranians
and native speakers" presents research into Iranian and native speaker business
letters using Halliday's (1985) notion of "lexical density", schematic
structures of "moves" and "steps" (Swales,1990; and Bhatia,
1993), and Brown and Levinson's (1978) politeness strategies to analyze follow-up
letters in English. His conclusion that "Iranian business letter-writers
mostly focused on surface linguistic aspects of English language while… politeness
strategies, were ignored in their letter writing" carries great significance
for ESP course design in the Iranian context. Dr.
Yong Chen's article "From Common Core to Specific" describes the evolution
of an ESP program for multi-disciplinary needs in a Chinese steel company. This
study focuses on the ways in which the English language curriculum is shaped by
the insights gained from student needs analyses and regular course evaluation.
Specifically, it shows how General English still has a role to play alongside
more specialist English in the ESP curriculum in meeting "common core"
needs. The manner in which course designers continually reflect upon student feedback
and requirements as a program develops provides valuable insights for ESP curriculum
designers in similar settings. Finally,
Dr. John Adamson puts forward a proposal for a teaching methodology in Business
English entitled "The Globalization Debate in Business English: Exploiting
the Literature through matrices." In this paper, the use of reading grids
in encouraging an "active reading" (Davies, 1995) approach to the globalization
debate is outlined. This methodology argues that articles from a variety of stances
and 'ages' can be successfully utilized with grids which focus the students upon
key concepts in the texts. We
hope you enjoy this mixture of insights into the Asian business world, research
papers and teaching methodology. It represents the eclecticism which we hope can
inform and enrich Asian ESP practice.
June
2006
Volume2.
Issue 1
PDF E-Book Version pps 1- 57 (click)
MS
Doc E-Book Version pps 1- 57 (click) Foreword.
1.
Adamson, J. Interview with Shigeo Toda, Seiko
Epson
2. Mansour Arvani. A Discourse analysis
of business letters written by Iranians and native speakers
3. Yong
Cheng. From Common Core to Specific
4. Adamson,
John. The Globalization Debate in Business English: Exploiting the Literature
through matrices
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