Language-Related Developments in ESP and Workplace Literacy:
A New Departure in Transmediation Using Corpus Analysis

Noorzan Hj. Mohd. Noor
Universiti Teknologi MARA
Shah Alam

Date: 26 October 2001
Time: 11.00-11.30
 

This paper presents a new departure in the methodological and theoretical frameworks in quantitative and qualitative research in the application of corpus linguistics to language teaching.  The concentration is on the teaching of Professional English for Business Communication in ESP (English for Specific Purpose).  This research is based on a corpus of commercial banking and finance texts extracted from the 100-million word British national Corpus (BNC).  The methodology employed is refinement of lexico-grammatical analysis, using available corpus search and retrieval software.  The analysis is focussed on interdisciplinary perspectives incorporating the benefits of both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.  Analysis is on multi-word combinations of lengths of up to 10-14 word combinations.  Based on all the levels of analyses, patterns of lexical and grammatical variability and co-occurrence discovered are represented in the form of finite-state grammar networks.
It is claimed that this method uncovers the ramifications of both formulaic and variable components of the noun phrase in business and professional English.  Thus the method has both practical workplace literacy and pedagogical applications in bringing together the teaching of commercial and financial subject matter and the teaching of ESP, as an international vehicle of communication in this domain.
The paper provides the relevant educational contexts in ESP, ESL and SLA.  The step-by-step methodology starting from the overview of corpus extraction methods employed right up to the progressive concentration on multi-word analyses are also presented.  The pedagogical conclusions are drawn based on the research and the implications for the future are discussed and highlighted.  Recommendations on the suggested teaching materials formulated based on the research are also presented.  The paper also provides a rather comprehensive analysis of multi-word combinations found based on the research.