Language and Education Network - Research Seminar - Davron Abdullaev (Urgench State University, Uzbekistan) - Using a Specialized Corpus of Food Science and Technology to develop ESP teaching materials

Using a Specialized Corpus of Food Science and Technology to develop ESP teaching materials

The overall objective of my research is to analyze a specialized corpus of Food Science and Technology for developing ESP teaching materials for the 1st year undergraduate students of food technology at Urgench State University. 

In 2016, English language specialists in Uzbekistan carried out a research study examining the state of ESP teaching in higher education in the country. The study reported that most of the syllabi were taken from the required books, which means that syllabi designers take the book prescribed by the ministry and copy the topics from the book, thereby converting the book into a syllabus [1]. In addition, there is a gap between the goal of developing communicative competence and the structural approach to language teaching used in most educational institutions [1]. Finally, researchers raised concerns about the difference between the final exam content and the course objectives, which differ in most cases [1]. My goal is to address these issues by applying a corpus linguistics approach to teaching ESP to students of non-philological majors in the country.

So far, I have researched the learning context of teaching ESP to food technology students, which has shown that the syllabus is designed to improve general English proficiency and not improve students' professional and academic language skills. In addition, I conducted a needs analysis among food technology teachers to gain insight into data collection for a specialized food science and technology corpus. Finally, the finished corpus was used to develop teaching materials, which were subsequently used in the lessons.

The initial attempt to develop corpus-based materials focused on vocabulary training sessions derived from frequency analysis of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Subsequent teaching materials focused on developing students ’vocabulary, reading, and listening skills, and all exercises focused on topics related to a specific topic in food science and technology. Currently, I am working on analyzing the specialized corpus, concentrating on the grammatical aspects and mainly on the frequency of parts of speech and trying to develop grammar-teaching materials.

1.       David L. Chiesa, Ulugbek Azizov, Svetlana Khan, Klara Nazmutdinova, Komila Tangirova (2019). Reconceptualizing language teaching: An in-service teacher education course in
Uzbekistan. Baktria Press, p.166.