Language Value
June 2020, Volume 12, Number 1 pp. i-iii
ISSN 1989-7103
From the Guest Editor
THE WAY AHEAD IN LANGUAGES FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES
The processes of globalisation, the increasing dominance of English in academic and
professional spheres, and the ongoing changes in higher education worldwide have
destabilised the role of specialised language teaching at university level. Like many
situations of instability, the current panorama presents those involved with both
opportunities and threats. On the positive side, the increase in international contact in
most areas of social, academic and economic life means that the need for specialised
language education is probably greater than ever before. No one leaves school with
excellent professional communication skills in a second language - and so precisely
those skills should be the focus of new generation Languages for Specific Purposes
(LSP) courses. But unfortunately many institutions have been slow to understand the
vital role that language training for specific purposes has in equipping students for their
future professions. The teachers and departments responsible for LSP teaching also
urgently need to update their own knowledge and competences, redesign their courses,
and seize this opportunity to become experts in professional communication. As
linguists, LSP practitioners are uniquely positioned to conduct principled inquiry into
specialised language domains, to map the specific features of professional genres, and to
build a robust understanding of how different discourse communities use them. Such
research will allow LSP teachers to adopt a critical attitude to material that is available
(Jiang and Hyland 2020), and to devise courses and resources that match more closely
with what their students need.
Against this background, this special issue of Language Value brings together a number
of papers that sketch out new routes for LSP teaching in the next ten years. As we
would expect in LSP, these papers all presuppose a solid underpinning in genre and
sound knowledge of how language is used in specialised discourse communities. But
they are also forward-looking in different ways, characterised by a special emphasis on
aspects such as the importance of digital technologies, our growing awareness of
Language Value, ISSN 1989-7103.
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From the Editor
multimodality, and the need to cultivate pluriliteracies in complex multilingual settings
(Meyer 2015).
In the first article, Ignacio Guillén Galve and Miguel Ángel Vela Tafalla show how
the application of technology to digital genres can inject new dynamism into our
understanding of English intonation and its rhetorical functions in professional
language. Their research brings further insights into promotional aspects of scientific
discourse, and has practical applications for those of us involved in supporting students
on the road to becoming scientists on the international academic stage. Also focusing on
spoken language, in the next paper Bojan Prosenjak and Iva Lučev address the
importance of helping students to develop presentation skills in International Relations,
proposing pedagogical innovations designed to make students take responsibility for
their own learning in a collaborative and reflective way. In their course design, peer
assessment plays a key role in sensitising students to the different aspects of their
performance.
In our changing scenario it is not always easy to negotiate the relationship between
language experts and other university teachers, or between teachers specialising in
different languages. In the third article, Teresa Morell takes on the essential issue of
how LSP experts should cooperate with teachers involved in English Medium
Instruction (EMI), analysing ways of optimising preparation for EMI in the Spanish
context. After this, situated in the very different context of a university on the border
between the USA and Mexico, Theresa Donovan, Isabel Baca and Teresa Quezada
add a new dimension to the discussion of LSP in the age of globalisation by
approaching the need for students to develop pluriliteracies. The idea of developing
professional and academic literacy in two languages in a way that is affirmative and
mutually complementary is epitomised in their design for a cross-disciplinary certificate
program in Bilingual Professional Writing. Their paper also points to the increasing
importance of languages other than English as targets for LSP, and the growing need for
students to develop linguistic mediation skills, biliteracies and bicultural competences.
The last paper in this selection, by Enrique Sologuren Insúa, helps to expand this
plural approach to LSP by addressing the need for principled research on LSP in
languages other than English. Sologuren’s article provides a detailed account of the
Language Value, ISSN 1989-7103
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Language Value
June 2020, Volume 12, Number 1 pp. i-iii
ISSN 1989-7103
creation of a map of student genres from a Spanish learner corpus in engineering, which
should provide a starting point for developing a focused writing programme for
engineering students in his university, and in similar contexts.
Finally, I would like to thank all the people who have helped with this special issue of
Language Value. My thanks go particularly to the two editors, Begoña Bellés Fortuño
and Carmen Sancho Guinda, and to Lucía Bellés Calvera. I am also grateful to all those
who took part in the AELFE conference in Pamplona in 2019, which was the starting
point for this special issue. My special gratitude goes to Larissa D’Angelo, Marcelino
Arrosagaray, Sally Burgess, Miguel García Yeste, Christoph Hafner, Ana Halbach,
Matthew Johnson, Mark Krzanowski, María José Luzón, Gerrard Mugford, Barry
Pennock, Joan Ploettner, Hanne Roothooft, Davinia Sánchez and Ekrem Simsek for
their guidance, comments and advice on the papers in this issue.
Ruth Breeze
Guest editor
University of Navarra, Spain
REFERENCES
Jiang, F. K. and Hyland, K. 2020. “Prescription and reality in advanced academic
writing”. Ibérica, 39 [in press].
Meyer, O. 2015. A pluriliteracies approach to teaching for learning. Graz: European
Centre for Modern Languages.
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