Distinguishing

Academic &
General English
“ “The quality of our
thoughts is bordered on
all sides by our facility
with language. "

– J. Michael Straczynski
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English
as the Lingua
Franca.
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 English for Academic & Professional Purposes
✦ focus on the language skills where the “rules” and
strategies of academic skills are different from the
general language skills. It is a kind of English
teaching that relates to the learner’s immediate
purposes.

✦ “refers mainly to the academic needs of students

and of future professionals who would seek a
career in the academic environment” and “the
actual needs of (future) professionals at work”.

The course English for Academic and Professional

Purposes aims to teach the students to communicate
effectively in diverse academic and professional
situations.
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Types of English
Academic English vs General
English
Statement #1 Statement #2

• ...and the lions • Lions, also known

they, um, live in as "kings of the
the deserts of jungle" inhabit the
Africa and have to large, arid deserts
walk long ways to of Africa. due to
find food. there's the sweltering
not much water temperatures and
either. they're hot a minimal water
lot. supply, they often
have to traverse
long distances to
find prey to hunt
and water to drink.

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 TYPES OF ENGLISH
Academic English General English
is the form of English is the form of English
language used in the language one uses mainly for
academic and professional communicating with other
setting. The grammatical rules English speakers. It is
and sociocultural considered general and
considerations are taken into informal for this can be
context. Formal education is acquired and learned without
needed in order to acquire going to class.
and learn the language.

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 TYPES OF ENGLISH
General English
o Uses hedges (sort of, kind of)
o Uses personal pronouns (I, me, mine)
o Uses simple connectors (but, also, and)
o Uses slang (stuff, guys)
o Relies more on basic discourse
structures, such as narratives
o More extensive use of listening and
speaking
Academic English
o Does not use hedges
o Avoids personal pronoun
o Uses sophisticated transition words
(moreover)
o Uses academic words
o Specific linguistic functions are more
important (persuading, hypothesizing)
o Relatively decontextualized and cognitively
demanding
o Requires greater mastery of range of
linguistic forms
Academic English concerns itself
with the “proper” way of speaking
and writing, and places heavier
emphasis on grammar.
Considered a tougher standard to
meet, academic English relates
more to those seeking
opportunities in higher education.
General, or social English
connects to the everyday use of
English and appeals to those who
are not looking to work in the
academic field.
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 Academic Language (Academic English)
✦ Language used in academic settings and for academic purposes to help students
acquire and use knowledge (Anstrom, et al., 2010)
✦ Words and syntactic structures that students are likely to encounter in textbooks
and tests, but not in everyday, spoken English (Strategic Education Research
Partnership, 2010)
✦ The language used in learning of academic subject matter in a formal schooling
context; aspects of language strongly associated with literacy and academic
achievement, including specific academic terms or technical language and speech
registers related to each field of study (TESOL, 2003)
✦ Language that students must comprehend to access the
concepts associated with a particular discipline (mathematics,
science, social studies) and use to demonstrate their
understanding of those concepts (Anstrom, et al., 2010)
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 Components of
Academic Language

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 Understanding Phonetic
Features
✦ refers to the knowledge of the:
✧ sound-symbol relationship,
✧ stress intonation and sound
patterns
✧ patterns from words borrowed
from other language.

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Sound-Symbol Relationship
✦ The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) has a set of symbols
by which the important sounds in English can be represented.
There is a symbol for every sound and no more than one
symbol for any given sound.

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Stress Intonation & Sound Patterns
✦ One of the most important features of the English language is
stress. Another word for stress is accent. The stressed syllable of a
word is said with more emphasis, with a louder voice, with a higher
pitch, and with a longer pause or duration. Stress also indicates the
difference of usage.

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Stress Intonation & Sound Patterns
✦ Intonation gives a sentence several meanings depending on the
emphasis placed by the speaker.

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Stress Intonation & Sound Patterns
✦ Someone else is flying.

✦ It is not true he is flying.

✦ He is not flying; he’ll do

something else.
✦ Wrong direction to fly
into.
✦ Not the actual destination

✦ He’ll fly another day.

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Patterns from Loanwords
✦ A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word adopted from
one language and incorporated into another language without
translation. As such, pronunciation of the word will be the same as
how it is pronounced in the language.

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 Lexical Knowledge
✦ refers to the knowledge of the:
✧ forms & meanings of words
✧ affixation of academic words
(prefix & suffix)
✧ parts of speech of academic
words
✧ grammar usage

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✦ Jargons are specialized set of terms (vocabulary) and language that
is used in a specific context and setting (field). People who are not
part of the group may not be able to understand the jargon used, as
the words are either obscure terms or have different definitions
than the regular usage of the word.

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✦ A basic word to which affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are added is
called a root word because it forms the basis of a new word. The
root word is also a word in its own right. Adding affixes to root
words create a new word with a new meaning and function

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✦ Having knowledge on the different affixes and their meanings
would help greatly in understanding the meaning of the newly
formed word.

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✦ Word categories are also good strategy to improve lexical
knowledge. This pertains to group of words related to content-area,
theme, unit, or section.

People Places Action

Teacher School Study

Profession Professor University Teach

Supervisor Department Promote

Buddhist Temple Belive

Religion Christian Church Worship

Muslim Mosque Pray

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✦ Another important thing to remember about lexicon is ensuring
that the words used in the academic setting are those that are
politically correct and socially accepted. Gender-free nouns and
euphemisms would greatly help in this regard.

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 Grammatical Competence
✦ refers to the knowledge on:
✧ grammatical features (morphological and
syntactic) associated with argumentative
composition, procedural description,
analysis, and definition
✧ grammatical co-occurrence (collocations)
✧ restrictions governing words
✧ the grammatical metaphor
✧ more complex rules of punctuation

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 Sociolinguistic Competence
✦ refers to the knowledge on requires
knowledge of the language functions.
These functions include general ones
of ordinary English such as
apologizing, complaining, and
making requests as well as ones that
are common to academic fields.
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 Discourse Component
✦ refers to the knowledge on discourse
features used in specific academic
genres. These discourse features
help English language learners
develop their theses and provide
smooth transition between ideas.

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Summary:

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