Dotting the pill down: The technical vocabulary of rugby

Stuart Benson

PhD Candidate, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

What is the lexicon of spoken rugby discourse?

As with other specific fields, rugby has a language of its own, including a large amount of technical vocabulary. I will briefly report on how I identified this vocabulary to subsequently create a spoken rugby corpus. I will explain the methods of a corpus-comparison approach and a semantic rating scale to analyse and create a technical rugby word list. Finally, strategies on how this list may be used in an ESP classroom will be discussed.

“Teaching” listening in the pre-sessional classroom

Naheen Madarbakus-Ring

PhD Candidate, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

How do teachers teach listening in the English for Academic Purposes classroom?

Teachers often perceive that their teaching of listening is effective (Graham, 2018). However, research shows what teachers think differs from what they do. This presentation outlines fifteen teachers’ perceptions on teaching pre-/while-/post-listening stages at a pre-sessional University EAP course in New Zealand. Survey results show teachers are confident teaching pre-listening tasks but use only comprehension tasks in while-listening and post-listening. I will then outline process-oriented teaching methods that could attend to learners’ real-time listening difficulties.