DISCOURSE COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS AND E.S.P TEACHING/ LEARNING PREREQUISITES

Yıl 2016, Cilt: 5 , 54 - 61, 01.09.2016

Khadoudja Belkhenchir

Öz

The notion
of “discourse community” has been widely used in different literatures in the
20th and the beginning of the 21st Centuries. Different scholars (Hymes, Fish,
Swales, Lave and Wenger, etc.) have given their own definitions /
interpretations of what ‘a community’ or ‘a discourse community’ is. Therefore,
we shall try to investigate the various notions and definitions of ‘discourse
community’ and its different characteristics, focusing mainly on the field of
teaching English for Specific Purposes (henceforth E.S.P). Globalisation,
the market economy and the development of different technologies have entailed
new jobs for which the use of different foreign languages has become necessary.
Algeria has always been aware that the goals of economic development cannot be
achieved through the official and national language alone (Arabic), but
together with the teaching/learning of various foreign languages at different
levels of the educational system. At university level, through the teaching of
English as a subject in Science Departments, and the introduction of the L.M.D
(Licence/Master/Doctorate) reform, the Ministry of Higher Education aims at a
better training with adequate qualifications that allow the students to join
the workforce and satisfy the needs of the socio-economic sector.The aim from
teaching Languages for Special Purposes (L.S.P) in general and E.S.P in
particular, is to answer the learners’ needs to become competent users of the
target language to reach various purposes. L.S.P / E.S.P teaching addresses in
most cases a restricted audience, a category of very specialised students who –
after training and experience- will join a specific discourse community. In the
present paper, we shall specify the characteristics of a scientific discourse
community and suggest some prerequisite conditions for teaching / learning ESP
adequately at university level.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Community, discourse community, E.S.P. teaching, earning at university level

Kaynakça

• Baker, P. and Ellece, S. (2011) Key Terms in Discourse Analysis, Continuum International Publishing Group: London/New York Belkhenchir, K. (2007) Access to the Discourse Community of Biologists in Algeria: Improvement in English Language Pedagogy Using a Corpus-based Approach, Doctoral Thesis, The University of Oran, Algeria. Bloor, M.(1998) English for Specific Purposes: The preservation of the species (some notes on a recently evolved species and on the contribution of John Swales to its preservation and protection) in English for Specific Purposes Journal, Volume 17, Number 1, pp.47-66. Borg, E. (2003) Discourse Community, in ELT Journal, Volume 57/4, October 2003, Oxford University Press. Downs and Wardle (2011) Writing about Writing, John Swales. “The concept of Discourse Community.” Boston: Bedford St Martins. Hjorland, B. (2006, June 17) Discourse Community. Retrieved from: http:// db.dk/bh/Core%20Concepts%20in%LIS/articles%20a-z/discourse_community Lave, J. And Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milroy, L. (1990) Language and Social Networks. Perelman, C. and Olbrechts-Tyceta, L. (2009) in Discourse Community. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_community Roe, P. (1993) Doctoral Summer School Lectures, Language Studies Unit, The University of Aston in Birmingham, U.K. Rouleau, M. (1995) La Langue Médicale: Une langue de Spécialité à Emprunter le Temps d’une Traduction, in TTR : Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, Volume 8, Number 2, 2nd Semester 1995, pp.29-49, Association Canadienne de Traductologie. Swales, J. (1990) Genre Analysis, English in academic and research Settings, Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. (1998) Other Floors, Other Voices: A Textography of a Small University Building, Mahwah NJ, and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Retrieved from: http://bowland-files.lancs.ac.uk/greg/genre/SWALES.htm Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Willis, D. (1990) The Lexical Syllabus: A New approach to Language Teaching, Collins Cobuild. Willis, J. (1996) A Framework for Task-based Learning, Addison Wesley Longman Limited. Willis, J. And Willis, D. (1996) Challenge and Change in Language Teaching, London:Heinemann. http://www.slideshare.net/eseochile/writing-in-a-social-context1-discourse-community