Lawrie Hunter, Kochi University of Technology
http://www.core.kochi-tech.ac.jp/hunter/
The Style Dossier: Strategic Schemes for EAP Curriculum
Lawrie Hunter, Kochi University of Technology
http://www.core.kochi-tech.ac.jp/hunter/
iPED Conference, University of Coventry, September 2006
Since 2002, Japanese technology universities have been inviting foreign students for government-supported doctoral programs. These foreign students are required to publish in English, which has created a demand for new technical academic writing courses. The no-extensions time frame of the scholarship program and the high granularity of research topics and writing genres means that language instruction to the point of near-independence is not a realistic strategy in most cases. Mimicry of model papers is then a main writing strategy: in the author's program, EAP learners are required to create a 'style dossier', a collection of model sentences, paragraphs and research papers which are screened for quality by the instructor. In the 'dossier' curriculum, instruction is provided in (1) technical registers and information structures; (2) extraction of model language structures and lexical units (rather than information) from found text; (3) paraphrasing and register control; and (4) creating/maintaining rhetorical flow and cohesion.
This paper presents the rationale, structure and methodology of the ‘style dossier’ approach, and situates it structurally among two other pragmatic approaches, language acquisition to the point of near-independence and preparation for collaboration with rewriters.
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