This paper examines two kinds of questions relating to the lexical needs of professional ESP students:(1) what range of terms and words do they need help with?(2) what types of dictionary, bilingual and/or monolingual, can they make use of in solving lexical problems?The empirical data used in this study came from an in-class assignment with Spanish postgraduate students of architecture, showing that their lexical searches were less often for architectural terminology per se than for the shared terminology of science disciplines and academic discourse at large. In individual case studies, ESP students grappled with the special architectural senses of common English words, but were able to decode them with the help of both bilingual Spanish-English dictionaries and monolingual (English) dictio-naries, general and specializedwhatever their L2 proficiency level. This finding runs counter to the commonly held belief that only advanced students are able to make use of monolingual (L2) dictionaries. Working with different types of dictionary engaged the students in critical lexicography, and in synthesizing lexical material from multiple sources to satisfy their lexical needs. Such training makes for independent language learning, pre-paring students for the bilingual or multilingual workplace.
Teaching terminology is a strategic response to the European Educational Convergence guidelines, taken by the Polytechnic University of Madrid. It is vested in a new course "English Terminology for Architecture and Building Construction" offered in the "Master of Techniques and Systems of Construction". The course is interdisciplinary, integrating material from the various sciences involved in architectural practice and exploring it through the discipline of applied linguistics, as recommended by Cabré (2003). The approach is bilingualized, working with Spanish architecture professionals in the medium of English. Students are made aware of the dynamic nature of terminology through corpus-building, and given first-hand experience of terminography through compiling their own bilingualized 1 termbanks of English architectural terms. A model online termbank system (TermFinder), which is being co-developed for architecture and building construction after successful testing in other professional fields, is also discussed.
As the first step toward implementing strategies to improve mobility in urban centers, governmental authorities must assess their present situation in order to identify the most effective actions that should be included in their short and long-term plans. However, there is not a well-established methodology to carry out such an assessment. The already existing ones are subjective, incomplete, costly, and hard to implement, especially for the case of Latin American (LATAM) countries. This paper proposes a comprehensive methodology to carry out this assessment. It uses recent advances in information technologies and includes the use of web map services, telematics data, and low-cost vehicle emission tests. As an example of application, a mobility assessment was carried out for Saltillo, a medium-sized city in northeastern Mexico, which is considered a typical city in LATAM countries. Results indicate that this methodology can be replicated at a low incremental cost and that it leads towards the identification of the most sustainable (economic, environmental, and social) actions that should be implemented in these cities considering their local circumstances.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.