1

Semi-Technical Vocabulary Issues in ESP: An OCHA Approach and Study Tools

Hajime Terauchi, Judy Noguchi, Gregory Poole

Abstract
This paper will discuss issues related to the teaching of semi-technical vocabulary, present tools and
techniques for analyzing such terms, and offer examples of how the analyses can aid applications in
English for Specific Purposes (ESP). As an example, we will use legal vocabulary from a corpus of US
Constitutional Cases from the United States which was analyzed for word meanings, grammatical
features, collocational patterns and frequently occurring specific discoursal features. The theoretical
foundations of this research lie in applied linguistics and corpus linguistics, which are currently being
used to prepare general English-Japanese dictionaries. Law dictionaries offer definitions of legal
technical words and their historical backgrounds, but unfortunately lack examples of how these legal
words should be used in context. Furthermore, there are no explanations as to how words with general
senses are used with legal senses in legal documents.

This can be a problem for non-native English-speaking law students, leading to difficulties in
comprehending cases written in English because they frequently cannot fully understand the meaning of
semi-technical legal words. The highly technical terms, on the other hand, tend to be easier to master.
Here we present an approach to identifying differences in the usage of words in general and specific
contexts as well as to find collocations common to field-specific corpora. This work lays the basis for
developing effective teaching materials, and the model developed can be applicable to other fields of
language for specific/special purposes.

1 Introduction
1.1 Background and rationale
Rationale
The point of departure for this project is the belief that in order to improve post-secondary English
language teaching in Japan, university language programs must adopt English for Specific Purposes
(ESP) methods. For ESP curricula to be successful at the university level, however, it is important for
there to be a smooth transition from the English for General Purposes (EGP) curricula that exists at the
secondary level in Japan. In this paper we present an example of the further research into ESP that is
needed to develop effective teaching methods and materials for university English language teaching.
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Our example of ESP methods that we present focuses on English language teaching for law majors and
other students studying legal English. In this research we focus on the development and implementation
based on ESP methodology of a legal English dictionary. Almost all university students use general
English-Japanese dictionaries. However, although law dictionaries in Japan offer definitions of legal
technical words and their historical background, they lack examples of how these words are used in
context. In addition, there are no explanations as to how general words are used in a legal sense in a legal
document.

US Constitutional Cases
In the development of a legal dictionary for Japanese students and practitioners of law, we used a corpus
of legal English based on actual US Constitutional Cases (USCC). The corpus was constructed from the
entire set of 14,531 U.S. Constitutional Cases issued by the Federal Supreme Court through August 2000.
This set of court cases is perhaps the largest of such corpus of legal English in the world and includes144,
588 word types and 83,442,416 word tokens. Lexical analysis of USCC is essential to the compilation of
an ESP law dictionary. This analysis demonstrates that words used in US Constitutional Cases differ from
ordinary English in terms of both frequency and meanings.

Project purpose
The purpose of the development of these ESP reference materials is to aid in the teaching and learning of
legal English at the university level and more generally for all learners. In order to accomplish this goal
we set out to first create a database of previous research and select general words which are used in a
legal sense in a legal context, then to search for such general words among USCC while identifying
typical semantic, syntactic and collocational features in USCC, and finally using this information derived
from the corpus, to draft an “ESP Law Dictionary” for Japanese students and make it available on-line.

1.2 Brief Description of Japanese law

Edo period
ESP methodology is partly founded on the belief that language educators must understand fully the
context of both the L1 and the specialized subject matter. In this light, we begin with an explanation of
very brief history of law in Japan. During the Edo period, for over two hundred years trade in Japan was
confined to the island of Deshima in Nagasaki harbor where only the Netherlands and China were
permitted by the Shogunate to exchange goods and knowledge with Japan. “The Japanese by 1639 had so
successfully closed their doors to the outside world that subsequently Japan all but dropped out of the
consciousness of Europeans” (Reischauer and Craig, 1978:116). However, with the general expansion of
Western influences in Asia in the 19th century, including the 1842 defeat of China by the British, the
Tokugawa Shogunate decided to consider a change in their isolationist policy with the arrival on Japanese
 3

shores in 1853 of Commodore Perry of the United States Navy. In 1858, Japan signed commercial treaties
with Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Russia and the United States of America.

Meiji law
In the next few decades, the Meiji Government (1868-1912) introduced imperial rule. In order to both
centralise and consolidate the political power of Emperor Meiji as well as to signal to other countries that
Japan had become a modernised state with an up-to-date legal system, the new government realized that
the formulation of a systematised legal system was urgently needed to replace the existing feudal laws. To
accomplish this, Japanese leaders were willing to adopt Western political and legal concepts. The French
and Prussian codes of law became models. The first Minister of Justice in Japan, Shimpei Eto, issued
orders to: “Translate those (the French Civil Code) codes as quickly as you can and do not worry too
much about any errors you may make” (Noda, 1976:43). The reason for the adoption of the French Code
was that “Japan chose the legislation of France as its guide because the Common Law system appeared
too complicated, whereas France had the five Napoleonic codes. Moreover the French codes had already
been the inspiration for many countries that were modernizing their societies” Noda (1976:43). The
Prussian Code was also relied on heavily in drafting the Japanese legal system because it seemed more
suitable in the Japanese context since it allowed the Emperor, like the Kaiser, to be free from
parliamentary control.

Post-WWII law
The end of World War II saw considerable reforms of the Japanese legal system. The Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) recommended five major reforms in 1945:
1) Introduction of equality of the sexes (under law)
2) Encouragement of trade unions
3) Liberalisation and democratisation of education
4) Liberation from autocratic rule
5) Democratisation of the economy

Importantly, “The Law on the Maintenance of Public Security” was abolished and political prisoners were
released. It was proclaimed that Shintoism was to be separated from the State” Oda (1992:32). There were
six basic characteristics of the new Japanese Constitution:
1) The system of pre-war elites was abolished;
2) the Cabinet was constructed on the British model;
3) both houses of the Diet became fully elective;
4) the judiciary was made independent;
5) governors of prefectures became elected positions;
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6) human rights were guaranteed to all.

The American influence of this new Constitution was multi-faceted and affected the Japanese legal code
in many areas: administrative law, three major labour laws, anti-monopoly law, and economic law. Even
so, “Major codes such as the Criminal Code, Code of Civil Procedure and the Commercial Code were
retained without any significant amendment. In other words, a significant portion of Japanese law is still
influenced by the Prussian Code” Oda (1992:33). In this way Japanese law code became a unique blend
of elements of both civil law as well as common law. “Japan freely adopted ideas and habits from foreign
civilizations. The ideas took root in Japanese soil and once removed (from) their native cultural
surroundings, they have developed and been transformed into something quite different from the original”
Noda (1976:5).

The main sources of law in Japan include the Constitution (kempo), acts of the Diet (horitsu), orders,
mandates, fiats, statutory instruments (meirei), local ordinances (jorei), treaties (joyaku), rules of court
(saibanho kisoku), customs (kanshu), judicial precedents (hanrei), and scholarly opinions (gakusetsu).

1.3 ESP, genre analysis and corpus linguistic approaches

Having outlined the background of law in Japan, this next section will consider the theoretical bases for
the project: English for specific purposes (ESP), classroom research on second language teaching and
learning, and corpus linguistics. ESP has been an actively developing area in applied linguistics and
language teaching over the past 40 or so years. Much of the initial work dealt with superficial structural
elements but from the late 1980’s, the field was extended into the social perspectives of the discourse
communities using this special type of language. The seminal work in genre analysis by John Swales was
a significant turning point that led to a wealth of research on the pragmatic elements of frequently used
texts.

A definition of ESP
ESP has been defined in many ways, but the definition of Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) has
subsumed most of the ideas of prior ones. They state that there are absolute and variable characteristics.
The absolute characteristics are that ESP (1) “is designed to meet specific needs of the learner,” (2)
“makes use of underlying methodology and activities of disciplines it serves,” and (3) “is centred on the
language (grammar, lexis, register), skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these activities.” The
variable characteristics are that ESP (1) “may be related to or designed for specific disciplines,” (2) “may
use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of general English,” (3) “is likely to
be designed for adult learners,” and (4) “is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students.”
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Genres
ESP focuses on teaching particular types of texts referred to as “genres.” “Genre” is another term that has
been used in many ways by those working in applied linguistics. For this work, we have adopted the
definition of Swales (1985, 1990) which has been well synthesized by Bhatia in Analysing Genres
(1993:13):

“‘Genre’ is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of

communicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the
professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs. Most often it is
highly structured and conventionalized with constraints on allowable contributions in
terms of their intent, positioning, form and functional value. These constraints,
however, are often exploited by the expert members of the discourse community to
achieve private intentions within the framework of socially recognized purpose(s).”

Swales further developed this concept in Other Floors, Other Voices: A Textography of a Small
University Building (1998), stating that “the discourse community owns the genre.” This viewpoint
indicates the importance of considering not only the texts themselves but also of considering the
discourse community using these texts.

Classroom research on language education

As this project is aimed at improving language education in specialized fields, current classroom research
in language learning and teaching is considered in conjunction with an overall ESP approach. Work in
second language acquisition has revealed that “some linguistic features do not ultimately develop to target
like levels” if left to only experiential and meaning-based experiences.” Doughty and Williams (1998)

Long and Robinson (1998:23) state that “focus on form often consists of an occasional shift of attention
to linguistic code features—by the teacher and/or one or more students—triggered by perceived problems
with comprehension or production.” In 2002, Long presented a lecture on “Focus on form in classroom
SLA” at the Kansai University Institute of Foreign Language Education and Research and proposed a
task-based syllabus for this:

Identify target tasks via task-based needs analysis.

Classify the target task types.
Derive pedagogic tasks.
Sequence to form a task-based syllabus.
Implement syllabus with appropriate methodology/pedagogy.
 6

Assess with task-based criterion-referenced performance.

Interestingly, he did not refer at all to ESP. When asked about this after the lecture, he stated that ESP
was about “texts” alone. Unfortunately, this is a frequent misunderstanding about ESP but the procedure
he proposed for building a syllabus shows that research in classroom learning supports the validity of the
ESP approach of needs analyses to identify target tasks.

ESP tasks
Swales (1990:76) describes “task” as “one of a set of differentiated, sequenceable goal-directed activities
drawing upon a range of cognitive and communicative procedures relatable to the acquisition of pre-genre
and genre skills appropriate to a foreseen or emerging sociorhetorical situation.” For teaching, Noguchi
(2001:39) has expressed “genre” as “a type of recurring communicative event of specific substance, form
and purpose in a focused global discourse community which is recognized by the communicator (writer,
in the case of the texts used), who is a member of the community, and others in the community but may or
may not be aimed at a receiver (audience, or the reader) in the same community.” This separation of the
elements of a genre text is particularly useful for teaching ESP in a foreign language environment.

An OCHA approach
To encourage learner autonomy, an OCHA approach is suggested to have the learners observe the form
features, classify what they observe, hypothesize about their usage and apply what they have considered
(Noguchi 2003). What students are asked to observe are the rhetorical, grammatical, lexical, technical
and phonological features of a text. For the rhetorical observation, genre analysis is particularly useful.
Hunston (2002: 2) states that “linguists have always used the word corpus to describe a collection of
naturally occurring examples of language, consisting of anything from a few sentences to a set of written
texts or tape recordings, which have been collected for linguistic study.” Thus, a corpus for ESP can be a
minicorpus of texts for a particular genre to examine the grammatical and lexical features using
concordance software and other corpus tools. For the technical elements, style manuals and instructions
to authors are helpful. For the phonological, dictionaries and online dictionaries with sound can be
referred to.

Corpus linguistics for ESP

Here let us examine an example of how corpus linguistics can be used for learning about the language of
law. As mentioned above, help with the lexicogrammar is necessary for ESP and, in Japanese tertiary
institutions, features that are particularly problematic are the following:
Subtechnical vocabulary nuances
Usage of prepositions
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Usage of articles
Singular/plural (In the case of Japanese, which does not clearly distinguish between
singular and plural, this can be a particularly obstinate problem.)

In ESP, the technical terms usually do not pose too serious a problem because there is usually a one-to-
one equivalence of terms in both the learner’s native language and English. However, the subtechnical
vocabulary can be problematic because it includes terms which have many possible meanings (Herbert
1965; Katsuragi 1998; Noguchi 1999, 2001). This has long been known in ESP:

“it is not single words which are always difficult, but phrases, so that common combinations
of words should be taught, not just the individual vocabulary items of discipline.” (Fanning
1977, mentioned in Robinson 1980)

Disambiguation using corpus linguistics

Let us examine a specific example in which there are many synonyms that need to be disambiguated:
alien　甲国に移住しながら乙国に政治的忠誠を誓う人

foreigner　他国[《米》他州]からの来訪者または居住者

stranger　他国[地方]から来てまだ土地の人や週間などになじんでない人

immigrant　定住するために他国に来た人 (opp. emigrant)

emigre (フランス・ロシアの)亡命者[Not in corpus]

→extrinsic.　　Ant. citizen, subject, national

The dictionary meanings are not very helpful for a second-language learner and can, in fact, be confusing.
alien

ADJECTIVE:1. Owing political allegiance to another country or government; foreign: alien

residents. 2. Belonging to, characteristic of, or constituting another and very different place, society, or

person; strange. See synonyms at foreign. 3. Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature: emotions

alien to her temperament.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright ©

2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. http://www.bartleby.com/61/16/F0251600.html

alien

NOUN:1. An unnaturalized foreign resident of a country. Also called noncitizen. 2. A person

from another and very different family, people, or place. 3. A person who is not included in a group; an

outsider. 4. A creature from outer space: science fiction about an invasion of aliens. 5. Ecology An

organism, especially a plant or animal, that occurs in or is naturalized in a region to which it is not native.
 8

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright ©

2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. http://www.bartleby.com/61/16/F0251600.html

foreign/foreigner

ADJECTIVE:1. Owing political allegiance to another country or government; foreign: alien

residents. 2. Belonging to, characteristic of, or constituting another and very different place, society, or

person; strange. See synonyms at foreign. 3. Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature: emotions

alien to her temperament.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright ©

2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. http://www.bartleby.com/61/16/F0251600.html

foreign/foreigner
NOUN:1. An unnaturalized foreign resident of a country. Also called noncitizen. 2. A person

from another and very different family, people, or place. 3. A person who is not included in a group; an

outsider. 4. A creature from outer space: science fiction about an invasion of aliens. 5. Ecology An

organism, especially a plant or animal, that occurs in or is naturalized in a region to which it is not native.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright ©

2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. http://www.bartleby.com/61/16/F0251600.html

immigrant

NOUN:1. A person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another. 2. A plant or

animal that establishes itself in an area where it previously did not exist. ADJECTIVE:Of or relating to

immigrants or the act of immigrating.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright ©

2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. http://www.bartleby.com/61/16/F0251600.html

stranger

NOUN:1. One who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance. 2. A foreigner, newcomer, or

outsider. 3. One who is unaccustomed to or unacquainted with something specified; a novice: a stranger to

our language; no stranger to hardship. 4. A visitor or guest. 5. Law One that is neither privy nor party to a

title, act, or contract.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright ©

2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. http://www.bartleby.com/61/16/F0251600.html

Examination of the 900 US constitutional cases being considered in this study reveals that all of these
terms are used. In order to help disambiguate their nuances and uses, we suggest that referring to the
 9

corpus for authentic examples can be very useful and revealing. The learners can be guided toward
noticing frequent collocates and encouraged to classify the observations that they make from the data
such as presented below.

foreign 712 examples

alien(s) 303 “
immigrant(s) 85 “
stranger(s) 21 “

foreign commerce 55 samples, 18 texts

oreign affairs power, violates the Foreign Commerce Clause, and is preempted by the

representing companies engaged in foreign commerce; 34 of its members were on the M

oreign affairs power, violated the Foreign Commerce Clause, and was preempted by the

d similar concerns in our cases on foreign commerce and foreign relations. See, e.g.,

pped, or received in interstate or foreign commerce from the person or presence of

aks with one voice when regulating foreign commerce; (ii) preserving import revenues

ate, basins, pond, habitat, salt, foreign commerce, substantially affect, occasiona

usceptible to use in interstate or foreign commerce. The "other waters" provision of

pite connections to interstate or foreign commerce that are less significant than t

of wheat moving in interstate and foreign commerce in order to avoid surpluses and

e precise line between interstate/foreign commerce and purely intrastate commerce w

of foreign 76 examples, 23 texts

e acquiescence of foreign nations. See A

om the actions of foreign distributors

ial activities of foreign sovereigns und

administration of foreign policy. - -

tive advantage of foreign insurers. View

the annexation of foreign territory; or

er in the area of foreign relations is

the assistance of foreign governments in

n and citizens of foreign lands will no

'; the conduct of foreign affairs--a rea

y consequences of foreign prosecution th

elated context of foreign state sovereig

contingencies of foreign law or foreig

 10

"real danger" of foreign prosecution).

the disclosure of foreign-policy objecti

enforceability of foreign arbitration cl

for exemption of foreign government emp

the exercise" of foreign jurisdiction i

n expenditures of foreign currency. Base

gnizing a fear of foreign prosecution, t

d to the field of foreign affairs, an a

reign immunity of foreign governments ha

the importer of foreign publications.

for the income of foreign insurers, whic

hat the influx of foreign infectious di

e legislatures of foreign democracies:

ial likelihood of foreign prosecution ca

female parents of foreign-born, out-of-w

under policies of foreign insurers issue

the positions of foreign governments an

he possibility of foreign prosecution as

cate questions of foreign relations." IN

the reactions of foreign powers and th

protests, risk of foreign retaliation, a

exempt shares of foreign corporations t

ce, statements of foreign powers necess

tax the stock of foreign corporations t

g the strength of foreign insurers [*

s are a subset of foreign forum selectio

ere suggestion of foreign government's o

but the threat of foreign prosecution is

foreign nations 20 examples, 10 texts

n by allowing private parties and foreign nations to challenge state procu

es and citizens of other States or foreign nations. As we have explained:

ed fear of criminal prosecution by foreign nations including Lithuania and

e conduct by the United States and foreign nations could develop to a point

duct between the United States and foreign nations could not develop to a p

usly and with the acquiescence of foreign nations. <=44> WATERS ﾁ˜23
 11

n and convenience of commerce with foreign nations and among the several s

lly asserted, in its dealings with foreign nations, that the waters of Ste

s done so with the acquiescence of foreign nations. See Alabama and Missis

on is at least as plausible: These foreign nations believed nonenforcement

e power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several

ubstantially affect commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several S

foreign prosecution 33 examples, 1 text

er of law, that every threat of a foreign prosecution is a reasonable threat.

ons where the danger of an actual foreign prosecution was substantial.

matter what, not [*698] every foreign prosecution may measure up so harshl

likely gain to the witness fearing foreign prosecution is thus uncertain, the
when a witness legitimately fears foreign prosecution, then what reason could States has assumed an interest in

foreign prosecution, as demonstrated by

for looking to the possibility of foreign prosecution as a premise for claiming

where a substantial likelihood of foreign prosecution can be shown, [**2245]

velop to a point at which fear of foreign prosecution could be recognized under

ns on which a reasonable fear of foreign prosecution could be shown, as by

domestically but the threat of foreign prosecution is substantial Cf.

a "real and substantial" risk of foreign prosecution, it was unnecessary to

on to the likely consequences of foreign prosecution that a witness would

d, none of which involve fear of foreign prosecution), there is no reason to

ld be made for recognizing fear of foreign prosecution under the Self-Incriminati

r serious consequences if fear of foreign prosecution were recognized as sufficie

has a significant stake in the foreign prosecution at issue here. Congress

ion. We hold that concern with foreign prosecution is beyond the scope of

This observation of examples can also be helpful for learning about grammatical features such as the use
of prepositions and articles as well as the selection and usage of singular and plural nouns. Here are
examples to illustrate these features.

alien to 16 examples, 7 texts

withholding only bars deporting an alien to a particular country or countries,

or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the

ed out that federal courts are not alien to a bistate entity Congress partici

Government. Federal courts are not alien to such an entity, for they are ordai
 12

ide, democratic vote -- so utterly alien to our constitutional system, the Cou

sing from any action to remove an alien to judicial review of a final order--

ies, a grant of asylum permits an alien to remain in the United States and to

pen an investigation or subject an alien to surveillance [***57] belong to t

ral shall not deport or return any alien to a country if the Attorney General

a) makes it a crime for a deported alien to return to the United States withou

that the Government believes the alien to be a member of an organization tha

stigation, which could subject the alien to eventual deportation, into the al

alien who 16 examples, 5 texts

s." Pangilinan, supra, at 885. "An alien who seeks political rights as a me
n 2 years to be imposed against an alien who admits to having unlawfully re

on term of up to 2 years--where an alien who, after being deported pursuan

because "it is not uncommon for an alien who has committed [**1243] a c

ess simply meant to "describe" an alien who, in the words of the 1988 stat

s an exception], in the case of an alien who is in exclusion or deportation

of ﾁ˜ 1252 is inapplicable to "an alien who is in exclusion or deportation

326 defines a crime. It forbids an alien who once [***6] was deported to

ubsection (b) of this section, any alien who [has been deported and thereaf

on to withholding for a dangerous alien who has been convicted of a "parti

ndictment concerning a particular alien who receives an increased sentence

case at hand involved a resident alien who obtained admission to the Unit

Article usage: evidence

900 texts 5150 instances
324 instances, the * evidence

(no “the”) adjective + evidence at sentence start

Circumstantial evidence of the prudent

tivity. Cogent evidence regarding thei

District Court evidence that the appli

obtained DNA evidence established th

DECISION: Drug evidence seized after a

n4 Empirical evidence on the privile

 13

arby. Forensic evidence indicated that

arby. Forensic evidence indicated that

Further evidence of the rule th

etition. Given evidence in the record

murder. Having evidence that petitione

Hearsay evidence is inadmissibl

on. Mitigating evidence unrelated to

"Mitigation evidence is not evidenc

t 226-227 ("No evidence has ever shown

. Ct. 2462. No evidence has ever shown

˜ 9010. n6 No evidence whatsoever sug

der. Objective evidence -- the dischar

88). Relevant evidence may, for examp

Respondents' evidence does not demon

the + (adjective) + evidence

the historical evidence

the evidence

the new evidence

of_the new evidence

light_of_the new evidence

the suppressed evidence

the additional evidence

the mitigating evidence

the undisclosed evidence

in_light_of_the new evidence

of_the historical evidence

the only evidence

the physical evidence

of_the evidence

the record evidence

of_the suppressed evidence

the available evidence

the mitigation evidence

in_the_light_of_the new evidence

 14

Preposition + evidence
585 evidence_of 49 evidence_against

519 of_evidence 47 evidence_as

286 of_the_evidence 46 evidence_on

245 evidence_in 44 evidence_for

191 evidence_to 41 evidence_to_support

100 evidence_of_the 41 the_evidence_of

89 evidence_in_the 40 into_evidence

89 rules_of_evidence 35 no_evidence_of

70 preponderance_of_the_evidence 34 of_evidence_of

69 as_evidence 33 evidence_in_the_record

69 sufficiency_of_the_evidence 32 evidence_from
59 evidence_at 31 evidence_before

59 evidence_or 30 evidence_tending_to

58 evidence_of_a 30 of_evidence_and

55 by_clear_and_convincing_evidence 28 by_evidence

Summary
In sum, ESP is based on consideration of how communication is done among members of a discourse
community. ESP learners are potential or even novice community participants who should be empowered
with knowledge of the principles of professional communication and useful self-access tools. The genre
analysis and corpus linguistics examples described above should be conducive to autonomous and
continual learning by adult, mature learners with professional or occupational needs. An OCHA
discovery learning approach should be particularly useful for continuing education that can address
evolving needs with adaptive strategies.

2 Teaching and reference tools

2.1 Development of teaching strategies
Rationale
As discussed above in section 1.3, in the classroom practice of SLA theory there is now a concern with
form, as the recent focus on designing a task-based syllabus indicates (Swales 1990, Long & Robinson
1998, Noguchi 2001, 2003). As one step in the process of developing such an ESP syllabus, we present
first an example of pedagogical strategy that focuses students’ awareness on the lexical and syntactical
features of selected authentic texts culled from the U.S. legal corpus. Next, utilizing this strategy, we
present two possible examples of “pedagogic tasks” (Long 2002) that might be used in the classroom.
Since our view is that pedagogic method should follow ESP theory, the strategy and tasks we introduce
 15

here utilize Noguchi’s (2003) “OCHA” approach to observing, classifying, hypothesizing, and then
applying language knowledge to these texts and genres. Also, since this project is theoretically grounded
in corpus linguistics and uses a written corpus to better understand language use in legal contexts, the
teaching tasks we have chosen emphasize the grammatical and lexical elements of the texts in question.

Language Choice
As Terauchi (2004, p.24) has demonstrated elsewhere, learners of languages for specific academic
purposes can be restricted by reference tools that may overemphasize the specialized meanings of the
language of texts specific to their subject area. At the expense of this focus on technical language, non-
technical and semi-technical usage may be overlooked. This oversight is apparent in dictionaries and
learning aids designed for the specialists. We feel this gap exists because authors do not have a full
understanding of the genre analysis essential to ESP theory. There are few reference or pedagogical
projects that are truly collaborative in nature where subject area professionals join forces with LSP expert
(see, eg., Terauchi, et al. 2004). Of course this is not a limitation of reference materials alone. Also, in
both the second language and specialized subject classrooms, teaching methodologies may be excellent at
guiding students in approaching the analysis of technical language in specialized texts but often with the
result that students ignore the frequent general meanings glossed in these same texts. The result can be
errors of language choice, as Terauchi (2001, p. 181-3) found with, for example, “trial” and “try” in his
examination of lexis in legal texts.

To overcome this limitation in both LSP reference materials and classroom pedagogy, here we introduce a
strategy that integrates an innovative, corpus-based legal dictionary with a teaching strategy that helps in
making correct language choices. First, using the sentence-level syntax of the genre text as a key to
interpreting “the recurring communicative event” (Noguchi 2001), the following steps are introduced to
learners as an aid to help them narrow down semantic choices and arrive at meanings. After teaching
students these steps they are encouraged to apply this same OCHA approach autonomously in self-study.

Strategic Steps:
1) Observe the form features, in this case lexical. Identify key words in the sentence that aid in
clarification.
2) Classify these features. Is a particular key word a noun or verb?
3) Hypothesize about the usage. For example, if it is a verb, a) what preposition follows the verb, and
what is the object of the preposition? (e.g., ‘charged with power’, ‘charged with murder’), or b) what
is the subject and object of the verb? And c) What is the direct object (auxiliaries, complements,
modifiers, etc) that is acted on by the verb? If it is a noun, a) What is the verb that acts on the noun?
B) What is the pronoun referent?
 16

4) Applying what they have considered, students are then encouraged to explain how they arrived at
their hypotheses and solutions. This practice is a valuable tool to reinforce learning strategies, as well
as a way for students to document the development and invention of their own new strategies.

Examples of Lexical Usage

Next, we have chosen the word token “charge” for the basis of developing two pedagogical tasks for use
in practicing the above strategy. First, we present below five examples of usage found in the corpus of
USCC we compiled. The word token itself as well as the usage has been highlighted.

Usage One:
That even if Easton is to be regarded as master, at the time when the repairs and supplies were furnished,
the fact that they were so furnished, with his knowledge and consent and under his superintendence, is
sufficient to charge the barque with the usual maritime lien, notwithstanding that Leach may have ordered
or directed them.1

Usage Two:
And the charge of taking the vessel to the Pacific, and illegally detaining her there for his own benefit and
advantage, was never heard of until payment for the repairs and supplies furnished to their barque was
made by the libellants.2

Usage Three:
The items ought to have been inserted in the other account, signed by him at the same time, which
contains the charges for which he was personally liable; and his admission of that account would have
been quite sufficient to verify these items.3
1
14003
WILLIAM THOMAS, SOUTHWORTH BARNES, NATHANIEL RUSSELL, AND OTHERS, OWNERS OF THE
BARQUE LAURA, APPELLANTS, v. JAMES W. OSBORN.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
60 U.S. 22; 1856 U.S. LEXIS 416; 15 L. Ed. 534; 19 HOW 22
DECEMBER, 1856, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]
THIS was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Maryland.
2
14003
WILLIAM THOMAS, SOUTHWORTH BARNES, NATHANIEL RUSSELL, AND OTHERS, OWNERS OF THE
BARQUE LAURA, APPELLANTS, v. JAMES W. OSBORN.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
60 U.S. 22; 1856 U.S. LEXIS 416; 15 L. Ed. 534; 19 HOW 22
DECEMBER, 1856, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]
This was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Maryland.
3
14003
WILLIAM THOMAS, SOUTHWORTH BARNES, NATHANIEL RUSSELL, AND OTHERS, OWNERS OF THE
BARQUE LAURA, APPELLANTS, v. JAMES W. OSBORN.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
60 U.S. 22; 1856 U.S. LEXIS 416; 15 L. Ed. 534; 19 HOW 22
DECEMBER, 1856, Term
 17

Usage Four:
The court refused so to instruct the jury, but charged them: "That the court of admiralty could not proceed
against the vessel while she remained in the custody of an independent and competent jurisdiction; that
the presence of the marshal on the ship did not prove his custody, for the sheriff's officer was there before
him; that the marshal did not dispossess the sheriff, but prudently retired himself, and informed the court
in his return that the vessel was in the custody of the sheriff; that if the sheriff first took possession of the
vessel, and maintained it until[**22] she was sold to the plaintiffs, they had the better title; and that the
fact of the continuing possession of the sheriff was for the jury."4

Usage Five:
The laws of the State charge the master with the custody of the slave, and provide for the[**232]
maintenance and security of their relation.5

Pedagogic Tasks
Next, using the OCHA strategy described in Section 1.3 as a guideline for the series of four syntagmatic
steps described above, we have derived the following two examples of tasks for classroom use:

Task One (usage matching 1)

Directions: For each of the five examples above decide whether the usage of “charge” in the sentence is a
general (‘G’) or legal (‘L’) definition.

Task Two (usage matching 2)

Directions: Match each of the uses of “charge” in Task One with the gloss below which is closest in
meaning.

PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]

THIS was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Maryland.
4
JAMES L. AND SAMUEL L. TAYLOR, ADMINISTRATORS OF ROBERTTAYLOR, DECEASED, PLAINTIFFS IN
ERROR, v. NATHAN T. CARRYL, WHO SURVIVED WILLIAM J. WARD.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
61 U.S. 583; 1857 U.S. LEXIS 490; 15 L. Ed. 1028; 20 HOW 583
DECEMBER, 1857, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]This case was brought up from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, by a writ of error
issued under the twenty-fifth section of the judiciary act.
5
14009
DRED SCOTT, PLAINTIFF IN ERROR, v. JOHN F. A. SANDFORD.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
60 U.S. 393; 1856 U.S. LEXIS 472; 15 L. Ed. 691; 19 HOW 393
DECEMBER, 1856, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]
This case was brought up, by writ of error, from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of
Missouri.
 18

A) An obligation or indebtedness to be paid; a cost; an expense occurred.

B) A formal accusation of the commission of a crime.
C) To instruct a jury about the law.
D) To issue a lien or encumbrance upon property or land.
E) To impose a duty or responsibility on.

Discussion
In actual classroom application the strategy and tasks presented above worked well, with university
students quickly grasping the OCHA approach and strategic steps for completing the tasks. The legal and
common glosses of the word token were noticed and there was a certain confidence among students in
applying this approach on their own when tackling texts outside the classroom. That being said, there
were definite limitations that need to be considered for more effective implication of this strategy. One
challenge was the fact that there was no Japanese translation built into either the strategy or the tasks
themselves. This proved to be a stumbling block. We intend to include Japanese glosses in future
applications. Also, although clarification of the word token was accomplished with little fanfare, we
focused students’ attention almost entirely on the specific instances of language use ignoring the larger
contextual clues in the USCC themselves. There is much to be said for providing students with the
individual cases in their entirety, as well as time to read and discuss them, in order to flesh out the
“sociorhetorical situation” (Swales, 1990:76) and genre—that is, understanding the communicative event
along with its community of “communicators” and “receivers” (Noguchi, 2001:39).

2.2 Development of reference tool

In conclusion, we would like to outline briefly a system for electronically searching and translating U.S.
Constitutional Cases that helps to address these aforementioned pedagogical challenges of Japanese
glosses and contextual clues. This tool has the following main features:
1) Choice of searching for either individual words or entire phrases within the text of the USCC.
2) Access to terms is supported in a variety of ways including:
a) Identification of common Japanese and English translations as well as usage (ALC-English-Japanese
dictionary),
b) Display of specialized usage of legal terms (Dictionary of British and American Legal English),
c) Identification of actual usage in text of U.S. Constitutional Cases through a display of example
sentences) (complete set of USCC),
d) Identification of frequency of usage of terms within text of the USCC through a display of example
sentences (corpus of example phrases)
3) Results of a search in one set of data can be linked to the next search in a different data set (search
refinement).
 19

Figure 1 below outlines diagrammatically this reference tool, an electronic “ESP Law Dictionary for
Japanese Students.” Eventually this will be available in a handy online format as well, and expanded to
include additional specialized subjects other than the language of law.

FIGURE 1

Overview of Functions of
The Precedent Searching & Translation System
….holding the button down …. system automatic
processing
Login
Login ….manual operation, data download

Main Functions Enter

Enter the
the
(button down) search
search string
string

Search
Search of
of U.S.
U.S. Search
Search of
of
Dictionary
Dictionary Phrase
Phrase Bulk
Bulk Phrase
Phrase
Constitutional
Constitutional Phrase
Phrase update
update
Search
Search Search
Search Download
Download
Cases
Cases history
history

Bulk
Bulk Data
Data
Download
Download
From
From
Display
Display the
the results
results Display
Display the
the results
results Display
Display the
the results
results AntConc Display
Display the
the results
results
AntConc
of
of ALC-
ALC -English-
English-
ALC-English- of
of complete
complete set
set of
of of
of the
the search
search of
of function of
of the
the search
search of
of
function
Japanese
Japanese U.S.
U.S. Constitutional
Constitutional phrase
phrase stored
stored in
in Phrase
Phrase update
update
Dictionary
Dictionary Search
Search Cases
Cases Search
Search DB
DB (Word
(Word Cluster)
Cluster) history
history

Display
Display the
the results
results of
of
Dictionary
Dictionary of
of British
British Store
Store phrase
phrase in
in
and American
and American
5/31/2006 DB
DB (Word
(Word Cluster)
Cluster) 3
Legal
Legal English
English Search
Search

Conclusion
This paper discussed issues related to the teaching of semi-technical vocabulary, presented tools and
techniques for analyzing such terms, and offered examples of how the analyses can aid applications in
ESP. We used legal vocabulary from a corpus of US Constitutional Cases from the United States which
we analyzed for word meanings, grammatical features, collocational patterns and frequently occurring
specific discoursal features. After discussing in some detail the theoretical foundations of this research,
we explained how law dictionaries often lack examples of how legal words should be used in context and
how words with general senses are used with legal senses in legal documents. We proposed the
development of a pedagogic approach and accompanying reference tool to better identify for students the
differences in the usage of words in general and specific contexts as well as to help them find collocations
common to field-specific corpora. To this end we are currently preparing an electronic reference tool for
law students that will help to address the issues we have raised. This work lays the basis for developing
effective teaching and reference materials that are founded upon principles from the fields of corpus
linguistics and language for specific purposes. Because of the theoretical underpinnings of our model, we
 20

fully expect a similar one can be applied fruitfully to other fields of language for specific/special
purposes.

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