{"title":"Situating EAP learners in their disciplinary classroom: How Taiwanese engineering majors ‘read’ their textbooks","authors":"Hsin-Ying Huang , David Wible","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2024.01.003","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Tertiary-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in Taiwan are often required to read English-medium textbooks in their disciplinary courses. In science and engineering, it is a common practice for teachers to assign students English text but lecture in the local language, Chinese. In this study, we provided a situated picture of how these students interact with the text in their disciplinary context by triangulating multiple knowledge sources available to them. This includes analysis of the subject textbook in L2 (English), lectures in L1 (Chinese), and artifacts produced in the class, such as syllabus, exam sheets, and students' notes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the students' and an instructor's perceptions of the role of these sources and their interrelationships. The findings reveal that students exploited various meaning-making resources to comprehend the ideas covered in the textbook. In addition, the instructor's explanation of the teaching materials, homework problem sets, and exam questions all proved to be important and interconnected resources that students rely on in their reading practices. Notably, problem sets and equations captured the students' attention while reading the textbook. We discuss the role of problem sets in scientific textbooks and suggest implications for further research.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"74 ","pages":"Pages 85-102"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"English for Specific Purposes","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490624000036","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Tertiary-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in Taiwan are often required to read English-medium textbooks in their disciplinary courses. In science and engineering, it is a common practice for teachers to assign students English text but lecture in the local language, Chinese. In this study, we provided a situated picture of how these students interact with the text in their disciplinary context by triangulating multiple knowledge sources available to them. This includes analysis of the subject textbook in L2 (English), lectures in L1 (Chinese), and artifacts produced in the class, such as syllabus, exam sheets, and students' notes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the students' and an instructor's perceptions of the role of these sources and their interrelationships. The findings reveal that students exploited various meaning-making resources to comprehend the ideas covered in the textbook. In addition, the instructor's explanation of the teaching materials, homework problem sets, and exam questions all proved to be important and interconnected resources that students rely on in their reading practices. Notably, problem sets and equations captured the students' attention while reading the textbook. We discuss the role of problem sets in scientific textbooks and suggest implications for further research.
期刊介绍:
English For Specific Purposes is an international peer-reviewed journal that welcomes submissions from across the world. Authors are encouraged to submit articles and research/discussion notes on topics relevant to the teaching and learning of discourse for specific communities: academic, occupational, or otherwise specialized. Topics such as the following may be treated from the perspective of English for specific purposes: second language acquisition in specialized contexts, needs assessment, curriculum development and evaluation, materials preparation, discourse analysis, descriptions of specialized varieties of English.