A Computerised Investigation Into Technical Expressions And Structures In Engineering Texts : A Development Of Est (English For Science And Technology) Corpus For UTeM

Safiah, Sidek (2007) A Computerised Investigation Into Technical Expressions And Structures In Engineering Texts : A Development Of Est (English For Science And Technology) Corpus For UTeM. Project Report. UTeM, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

The ability to use English language competently and confidently is considered as one of the basic pre-requisites for engineering students; and English language lecturers have been using various teaching materials to help students develop English language competency. The problem is, however. that most of these teaching materials are prepared on the basis ofintuitivejudgments ofthe respective lecturers and these materials may not cater specifically to the needs of the Engineering stUdents. This study aims to develop a specialised corpus (WEEC) derived from selected published engineering texts. Using WordSmith Tools Version 4, a concordance program, a word list was developed and the common patterns of technical expressions and structures in selected engineering texts used by first year students fi·om the Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering (FKEKK) were explored. It was found that the most frequent word fom1s in the WEEC are mainly function words and the most frequent content word forms are predominantly from the scientific registers. It is suggested that a corpus-based approach be incorporated in the teaching of English language at UTeM.

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