The Language Teacher

At large, multi-faculty universities in Japan, students generally study English in their first year or two before focusing on the specialized subjects of their faculty. In these English classes, if my own exposure as a full time and part-time university teacher is typical, there is little, if any, requirement laid down by universities to teach content that is related to a class's actual faculty. This, in large part, may be due to the average English teacher's lack of specialty knowledge of the content that is taught in any given faculty. This does not mean that English teachers, with some assistance, cannot contribute in some small way to bridge the gap between the language department and the area of specialty.

In an effort to better cater to the academic needs of first and second year university students as these needs relate to the learning of English, I have made lists of important words for eleven faculties: education, economics, law, science, medicine, dentistry, pharmacology, engineering, agriculture, veterinary science, and fisheries. For two faculties, science and engineering, several separate lists have been made for the disciplines they encompass. Thus, there are a total of twenty one lists. The lists have been put at the following website: <http://telemac.ilcs.hokudai.ac.jp/~chris/E3stuff/Vocab/FacultyVocab.html>, so that English language teachers with Internet access can print the lists for their students or ask their students to study from the website themselves:

Method

The lists have been compiled according to the following nine guidelines.

a) UsefulnessWord items are commonly used in the students' faculty. McCarthy (1990, pp.67-68) warns of the dangers involved in compiling word lists. For example, a high frequency of usage does not necessarily justify inclusion on a word list because any given word's frequency differs among speakers and can depend on factors like whether a word is written or spoken, or whether its present use is changing in any way. To overcome these difficulties, the word selection process was based on the browsing of wide a range of contemporary first year texts in the subject area. Out of necessity, many of the lists were made in collaboration with students, usually graduate students, and professors within each given faculty. Assisting students and professors were informed of the criteria, essentially, items b, c, d, e, and f below. An assumption was made that students and professors were aware of what words would be useful.

b) Understanding Students already have a clear understanding of the word in Japanese. This criterion is largely guesswork. Undoubtedly, some students are not aware of a few of the words.However, over a period of two academic years, the lists have been piloted on students from each faculty and items that posed problems were eliminated while others were added based on student feedback.

c) Familiarity The student is unlikely to already know most of the English word items. Many Japanese dictionaries (e.g., Shogakukan, Kenkyusha, Taishukan) enter asterisks beside words that are on Monbusho's list of English words that high school students are expected to know by the end of their final year. For the most part, the words chosen for the faculty word bank were not on the high school list. Some words that high school students are expected to have learned though, especially verbs, were included because of their importance in forming sentences. Consideration was also given to whether the average English teacher would be comfortable using the words on the list. Accordingly, overly technical words were avoided.

d) Number of words Each list contains 70-150 words. At present, the lists represent a work in progress. The reason for the wide range between the lists with the most and least items reflects the nature of both the faculty and the criteria laid out here. Specifically, a faculty like medicine is rich in words that meet both criteria b and c. On the other hand, a faculty like information engineering has relatively few words that meet the same criteria.

e) Categories Words are categorized according to content area or part of speech. This categorization helps students to study the words in sections. It also assists the teacher in designing exercises.

f) Variety Each list includes a variety of words without focusing on any particular discipline within the faculty or part of speech. Within any given faculty, there are several disciplines, for example, within law there is civil, criminal and corporate law, among others. As each faculty word list is attempting to include non-specialist terms that are familiar to students in their own language (see b above), a broad approach that covers many of the disciplines was chosen. This concurs with the notion that useful words are those which occur across a wide variety of situations (McCarthy, 1990, p.69).

g) Glosses Japanese glosses are provided for each word item. Although arguments have been made against the use of mother tongue glosses, providing the gloss is accurate, it is now recognized that there are advantages to using translations (Taylor, 1990, p.3). With such specialized vocabulary in the faculty lists, it is also likely that serious students would go ahead and make their own glosses anyway.

h) Sample sentences Sample sentences in English accompany each word item. Sentences serve as both an example of how to use the word items correctly in a sentence as well as a reminder to students that the words are meant to be used as a means of communication. The sentences are not meant to serve as definitions because all the words have been glossed in Japanese.

i. Exceptions In a series of word lists whose entries number close to 2,000 items there are bound to be exceptions to the eight criteria outlined above. In fact, the Faculty Word Bank has many entries that do not meet all the criteria. This is largely because certain disciplines, by their very nature are quite technical and sometimes may not follow criteria b, c, and d. However, the piloting of all of the lists over the past two years has eliminated many of these exceptions.

Suggestions for use in the classroom

The lists can be used in many ways. Perhaps the most obvious use is to require students to learn the words in order to increase their vocabularies. Although there are arguments both for and against such a use of word lists (Meara, 1995, p.8), the benefits appear to outweigh any disadvantages (Schmitt, 1995, p.6). For example, students are often required to read English texts and papers in third or fourth year and at the graduate level. The learning of words related to the students' specialty can serve as a head start for their future studies. Quizzes (see below) to ensure that students do study their list, administered orally, can sharpen students' listening ability.

The lists can also be used as a starting point for further materials development. For example, many of the words on the lists can be changed to different parts of speech (i.e., adjective to noun or nouns to verbs). Figure 1 takes six words from the law list to show how students can be encouraged to build this skill in a fill-in exercise. A follow-up to this exercise could require students to build sentences around all the nouns.

Figure 1. Sample Fill-in Exercise

Using the word lists to design creative activities is perhaps where the greatest potentiallies. The lists can serve as a data base which teachers use to design their own activities that encourage students to actively use their newly acquired words. The Cambridge series, A Way With Words (Redman and Ellis, 1989) is full of examples of creative vocabulary building activities. Figure 2 shows a brief example of one such creative activity using words taken from the medical list that promotes the use of specialty vocabulary as well as a targeted pattern, relative clauses.

Figure 2 . Creative-type Activity for Medical Students

Quizzes

As a quick check to ensure that students study their word lists, a listening test in which the teacher reads out definitions has the second aim of focusing on listening skills. The following sample quiz is for the law list below.

1. A legal event that decides if someone is guilty or not (trial)
2. In a British or North American court, the group of 12 people who decide if someone is guilty or not (jury)
3. All the laws of a country (constitution)
4. This happens when a company cannot pay its debts (bankruptcy)
5. If you do not like the decision of a court, you can ask for this (appeal)

Sample List

The list below is for law students. Words on this list have been categorized by content area. The length is fairly representative of the other faculty lists that can be found at the Website.

Law Faculty Word List

General Legal Terms

justice	Justice is a basic human value.
liberty	The prisoner was dreaming of liberty.
right(s)	Women are demanding equal rights.
democracy	Democracy is a popular political system.
legal	Is it legal to park my car here?
equality	Women are hoping for more equality.
privacy	There's not much privacy here.
law faculty	The law faculty is at the south of the campus.
bar exam	It's difficult to pass the bar exam.
court	Her case will be heard in court.
judge	The judge ruled the defendant was guilty.
lawyer	It's still difficult to become a lawyer.
attorney	The attorney didn't want the case.
prosecutor / prosecution	The prosecutor won the case.
defense	The defense lost the case.
judiciary	The judiciary is part of the government.
administration	This adminstration is making big changes
legislature	They make laws in the legislature.
constitution	They are trying to change the constitution.
appeal	The defence appealed the verdict.
Supreme Court	The Supreme court's decision is final.
bureaucrat	Bureaucrats are often disliked by the public.
bureaucracy	The bureaucracy often is hard to understand.
civil law (civil code)	Civil law helps people solve their arguments.
contract	The contract was worth over ¥100,000.
breach a contract	I'll sue you if you breach the contract.

Civil Procedure Law

compromise	To compromise is easier than going to court.
lawsuit	The lawsuit was worth $10,000.
file a lawsuit	They filed the lawsuit yesterday.
trial	The trial will begin next week.
ruling	The ruling was in favor of the prosecution.
judgment	The judgment seemed quite unfair.
plaintiff	The plaintiff was only 20 years old.
settlement	Both sides were happy with the settlement.
sue	They sued him for $100,000.
settle out of court	Later, they agreed to settle out of court.

Labor law

union	The union decided to go on strike.
strike	The strike lasted 3 months.

Criminal Law

break the law	If you break the law, you may go to jail.
obey the law	If you obey the law, nothing will happen.
commit a crime	You'll regret it, if you commit a crime.
suspect	The suspect wore a red coat.
confess	The suspect refused to confess.
convict (v) convict (n)	The defendant was convicted.
jail / prison	He spent 20 years in prison.
conviction / guilty verdict	The prosecution got their conviction.
acquittal / not guilty verdict	The defendant was found not guilty.
punishment	The punishment was 5 years in jail.
fine	The fine was $5,000.
life imprisonment	He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
death penalty	The murderer was given the death penalty.
arrest	The police arrested the thief.
detention	They held the suspect in detention.
bail	Bail was set at $10,000.
right to silence	Everyone has the right to silence.
witness (n)	There were no witnesses to the murder.
testify	The witness testified against the suspect.
victim	The victim was in hospital for two months.
defendant	The defendant was very rich.
misdemeanor	Crossing on a red light is a misdemeanor.
felony	Murder is a felony.

Constitutional law

human rights

Some countries have no human rights.

International Law

treaty

The new treaty guaranteed safety.

Commercial Law

corporation	Mitsubishi is a huge corporation.
board of directors	The board of directors consisted of 12 members.
bankruptcy	The company went bankrupt.
shareholder	Most shareholders sold their shares.
stock market	The stock market is really going up lately.
bond	Bonds are less risky than stocks.

Anglo-American Law

juror	There were 12 jurors in the case.
jury system	Most Americans prefer the jury system.

A special thanks goes to Christopher Glick and Mark Holst for piloting the lists and giving advice and feedback.

References

McCarthy, M. (1990). Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford.

Meara, P. (1995). The importance of an early emphasis on L2 vocabulary. The Language Teacher, 19(2), 8-10.

Redman, S. and Ellis, R. (1989). A Way With Words. Cambridge: Cambridge.

Schmitt, N. (1995). The word on words: an interview with Paul Nation. The Language Teacher,. 19(2), 5-7.

Taylor, L. (1990). Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. New York: Prentice-Hall.