Publication detail

Being a legal alien: Inspecting the (in)accessibility of specific professional communities to LSP teachers

Martina Vránová

English title

Being a legal alien: Inspecting the (in)accessibility of specific professional communities to LSP teachers

Type

book chapter

Language

en

Original abstract

Languages for specific purposes as a discipline has been defined by its purposes and goals as student-centered, communication-oriented, task-based and multidisciplinary. What is usually left out is the agents who initiate and carry out all these characteristics to a successful goal—the LSP teachers. In order to be effective agents of language teaching, LSP teachers have to have thorough knowledge of and familiarity with the target-language community. Nevertheless, specific professional communities are exclusive and deny or at least complicate entrance to outsiders. This paper inspects the hard times LSP teachers may have fully participating in the academic community of their university, as their academic identity is compromised by not doing strategic research and teaching a tool not content, and also the superhuman efforts they have to make to get in touch with the target community of professionals whose language they teach. LSP teachers thus resemble legal aliens whose sense of not belonging where they should complicates their roles as academics, authoritative experts, cooperators, researchers, ethnographers, and materials providers, among others.

English abstract

Languages for specific purposes as a discipline has been defined by its purposes and goals as student-centered, communication-oriented, task-based and multidisciplinary. What is usually left out is the agents who initiate and carry out all these characteristics to a successful goal—the LSP teachers. In order to be effective agents of language teaching, LSP teachers have to have thorough knowledge of and familiarity with the target-language community. Nevertheless, specific professional communities are exclusive and deny or at least complicate entrance to outsiders. This paper inspects the hard times LSP teachers may have fully participating in the academic community of their university, as their academic identity is compromised by not doing strategic research and teaching a tool not content, and also the superhuman efforts they have to make to get in touch with the target community of professionals whose language they teach. LSP teachers thus resemble legal aliens whose sense of not belonging where they should complicates their roles as academics, authoritative experts, cooperators, researchers, ethnographers, and materials providers, among others.

Keywords in English

LSP teachers’ identity; LSP teachers’ roles; LSP teacher training; specific language communities; needs analysis

Released

09.01.2023

Publisher

Vernon Press

Location

Malaga, Spain

ISBN

978-1-64889-150-2

Book

New to the LSP classroom? A selection of monographs on successful practices

Edition number

1

Pages from–to

57–76

Pages count

19

BIBTEX


@inbook{BUT182496,
  author="Martina {Vránová},
  title="Being a legal alien: Inspecting the (in)accessibility of specific professional communities to LSP teachers",
  booktitle="New to the LSP classroom? A selection of monographs on successful practices",
  year="2023",
  month="January",
  pages="57--76",
  publisher="Vernon Press",
  address="Malaga, Spain",
  isbn="978-1-64889-150-2"
}