English for Specific Purposes Information

Compiled by Deborah Healey

Index
Online Conferencing Other pages of interest
English for Business
    Primarily for teachers
    News and journals articles
    Exercises for practice
    Other EBE
Creating Web resources
English for Science and Technology
    Primarily for teachers - lists of links
    Technical writing
    Exercises for practice
    Other EST
Recommended readings

Online conferencing and discussion

Nicenet
www.nicenet.org -- visit the TOP class from last year to see what EFL websites others have used and liked. Email Deborah for the class key.
Add your own comments in the Conferencing section about sites you are exploring now.
Search for specific professional lists at Catalist, www.lsoft.com/catalist.html, and Liszt.com

Student mailing lists: Go to sl-lists.net to sign up for a student list; there's one especially for business English

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English for Business

Primarily for teachers - links and lesson plans

EL Easton's Business English at eleaston.com/biz/bizhome.html

ESL Cafe Web Guide: Business English at www.eslcafe.com/search/Business_English/

Business Emporium - ideas and lesson plans for fun activities for EBE teachers at www.emse.fr/%7Eyukna/business/businessemporium.html

General business and management references from DePaul University at condor.depaul.edu/~nmathys/genref.html

Finance and economics websites - a relatively academic list, not particularly focused on EBE at www.mgmt.utoronto.ca/finance/links/olists.htm

Internet-based Projects for Business English by Leslie Opp-Beckman and Kay Westerfield at aei.uoregon.edu/esp/projects.html. This is an excellent collection of detailed lesson plans for classroom projects, organized by topic.

Internet-based Projects for Business English by Leslie Opp-Beckman and Kay Westerfield at aei.uoregon.edu/esp/resources.html - list of resources mentioned in the Projects area

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News and Journal Articles

Wall Street Journal Opinion page at www.opinionjournal.com/

Business Week at www.businessweek.com

ESL Business News at www.eslbusinessnews.com offers international business news podcasts read in slower English and includes a script.

Bizjournals at www.bizjournals.com has a daily email update

Find business newspapers from around the US at newslink.org/biznews.html

Jamaby at www.jamaby.com offers graded news articles on a range of subjects from general sources and Business Week, updated daily.

The Directory of Open Access Journals at www.doaj.org has several free, full-text business and economics journals.

Learners can use Voycabulary at www.voycabulary.com while they read. This lets you click on a word in the article and get a definition.

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EBE Exercises for practice

GMAT overview at the Kaplan site- and Practice GMAT at www.4tests.com/exams/examdetail.asp?eid=31

Listening exercise: The Japanese Economy at www.esl-lab.com/econ1/econrd1.htm

Business Meetings Maze at www.celt.stir.ac.uk/staff/HIGDOX/VALLANCE/Diss/TRY2.HTM

Grammar and vocabulary -- Dave's ESL Cafe at www.eslcafe.com, ITESL-J at a4esl.org

Business English Hangman at www.better-english.com/hangman/hangone.htm

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Other EBE resources

World Lecture Hall -- look for course notes and links related to your studies at web.austin.utexas.edu/wlh/

MIT materials are online at ocw.mit.edu/index.html.

Management - Systems Optimization: Models and Computation has lecture notes and readings at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-094JSpring-2004/CourseHome/

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English for Science and Technology

Primarily for teachers - links

EL Easton’s Science and Technology Links at eleaston.com/scimat.html

Science and Nature from Yahooligans - activities and non-specialist readings at yahooligans.yahoo.com/science_and_nature/

Engineering links at www.tenlinks.com/engineering/index.htm; look for more via a technical search engine, tenlinks.com

IEEE website - www.ieee.org/portal/index.jsp

Electronics information at www.techonline.com/ - articles, webcasts, and more

Natural sciences information, including readings, graphics, and some video and animation for their six focus areas: Earth Sciences; Ecological Management; Environmental Data Science and Systems; Microbial Systems Biology; Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences; and Terrestrial Ecology at http://www.esd.ornl.gov/research/research.shtml

Evaluating English for Science material - Word format and PDF format

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Science projects and simulations

Experimental Science Projects: An Introductory Level Guide - how to do a science project and description of the scientific method at www.isd77.k12.mn.us/resources/cf/SciProjIntro.html also has links to Intermediate Level Guide

Energy Quest Science Projects - instructions, links to other project sites at www.energyquest.ca.gov/projects/index.html

Fowler's Physics Applets at galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109N/more_stuff/Applets/

General physics Java applets at www.surendranath.org/Applets.html

Gravitational orbits Java applet at physics.uwstout.edu/physapplets/Northwesten/www.physics.nwu.edu/vpl/mechanics/planets.html

The Applet Collection (physics) at lectureonline.cl.msu.edu/~mmp/applist/applets.htm

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Technical writing

EFL for Engineering Without Fear - a bibliography and some links, as well as tips for teaching English for Engineering. at www.multimania.com/jcviel/tips/tips1.htm

Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students from Virginia Tech - good step-by-step guides and sample report formats at www.writing.eng.vt.edu/

Writing Exercises for Engineers and Scientists - grammar, punctuation, usage exercises from Virginia Tech, not just for English language learners at http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/exercises/

Online Technical Writing online textbook from David A. McMurrey at Austin Community College at http://www.io.com/~hcexres/tcm1603/acchtml/acctoc.html
Of particular interest

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News and Journal Articles

Technology Review from MIT at www.techreview.com

Wired at www.wired.com

NY Times at www.nytimes.com - technology section

Jamaby at www.jamaby.com offers graded news articles on a range of subjects from general sources and Scientific American, updated daily.

Chemical Engineering at www.che.com/

Mathematics journals at www.ams.org/mathweb/mi-journals.html (links with some free articles)

Computer science journals with some free articles at WorldSciNet at www.worldscinet.com/compsci.shtml and DBLP at www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/journals/

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication at www.ascusc.org/jcmc/ (free)

Science Direct at www.sciencedirect.com/ (a few free articles; most require a subscription)

Nature at www.nature.com/nature/index.html

Environmental science journals (a long list of journals, some free articles) at www.esd.ornl.gov/publications/publications.shtml

Earth science articles from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at www.ldeo.columbia.edu/

Psychology and social science journals at www.psycline.org/journals/psycline.html (searchable database with some ejournals and some free articles)

The Directory of Open Access Journals at www.doaj.org has over 450 free, full-text journals in different scientific and technology areas, with over 80,000 articles.

Electronic text archives focusing on science include

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EST Exercises for Practice

Writing Exercises for Engineers and Scientists - grammar, punctuation, usage exercises from Virginia Tech at writing.eng.vt.edu/exercises/

A Rare Solar Eclipse listening exercise at www.esl-lab.com/sun/sunrd1.htm

Grammar and vocabulary – look for relevant topics at Dave's ESL Cafe at www.eslcafe.com and ITESL-J at a4esl.org

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Other EST

Engineering dictionaries - more under Specialty Dictionaries at the top of the page at www.yourdictionary.com/diction4a.html#engineering

Discovery Channel at www.discovery.com

The Why Files: Science behind the news at whyfiles.org/index.html

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Other pages of interest

ESP Interest Section of TESOL - links to books, articles, etc. at http://www2.tesol.org/communities/espis/

EL Easton's resources for a range of areas at eleaston.com

Online journal: ESP World at www.esp-world.info

Corpora link at Linguistic Funland at www.tesol.net/annodata.html

Online corpus of American English at  http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/cgi-bin/ldc/textcorpus?doc=yes&corpus=BROWN

Bookmarks for Corpus-based Linguists at devoted.to/corpora has links to corpora, concordancers, word lists, and other tools for linguistic analysis (many free)

The ESL Independent Study Lab - links to sites organized by skill area and language ability at www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html

Tech Tips at oregonstate.edu/dept/eli/techtip.html

Voycabulary: enter a url or a text, and all the words at that url or in the text become hot-linked to a dictionary or thesaurus at www.voycabulary.com/

Copyright information from the University of Texas - a quick overview at http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/cprtindx.htm

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Creating web resources

Tutorials
Web tutorials: personalweb.about.com/od/websiteeditortutorials/

Multimedia tutorials: http://personalweb.about.com/od/addaudiotoyourwebsite/

Using Composer: oregonstate.edu/~healeyd/composer.html

Here are a few options for creating web resources. The first ones are easier than the later ones.
Save as HTML in Word - the "five-minute webpage"
This is easy, but the resulting file can be very bloated and may not work as well with older browsers.
Hot Potatoes (download) - exercises to use online or offline
web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/
Filamentality
Templates and hosting for teaching-oriented websites, including Hotlists, Scrapbooks, Hunts and Samplers at http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/
Mozilla Composer
Part of Mozilla, (www.mozilla.org) this lets you either create a new page or edit an existing page. Watch out for copyright.
WebQuest Page - use this for samples, then create your own.
edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquest.html
HotMedia - authoring tool that adds interactive video, streaming audio, 3D, animation and panoramas to Web sites and is viewable on any java-enabled browser. Free trial version available.
www.ibm.com/software/net.media
Creating a game of Snakes and Ladders - this is a javascript template with annotations (Windows only)
www.eoiweb.com/EFL/snakes_and_ladders/
Creating an action maze with Quandary - make a small maze with the free download, or buy the full version
www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.php
Audio conferencing sites - add audio chat to your site
iVisit - look for the free Lite version, or pay for the Plus version www.ivisit.com

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Recommended Readings

Bell, Steven (2001). Web-Based Utilities for Learning and Collaboration in the Classroom
This short article describes some free and low-cost software and websites with tools to enhance online learning.
Chickering, Arthur W. and Stephen C. Ehrmann (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever
This article discusses how technology can be used to help implement the "seven principles" for good practice in undergraduate education, including contact between faculty and students, cooperation among students, active learning, and prompt feedback.
Carnevale, Dan (2002). A Virtual Laboratory Simulates Physics Experiments
This short article describes virtual physics. It would be of interest to other disciplines that use lab work.
Michelich, Virginia (2002). Streaming Media to Enhance Teaching and Improve Learning
This short article describes a biology case study.
Dede, Christopher. The Role of Emerging Technologies for Knowledge Mobilization, Dissemination, and Use in Education
This longer article is based on research done for the US Department of Education. It gives a good overview of how technology can be used in ways that enhance pedagogy. It requires the use of Acrobat Reader.
Noordin, Nooreen and Arshad Abdul Samad (2005). Examining the importance of EST and ESL textbooks and materials: Objectives, content and form
This reports on a study of differences between EST and general English textbooks used in Malaysia.

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http://oregonstate.edu/~healeyd/top/esp.html
Last updated 16 August 2006 by Deborah Healey, Email D.Healey