EU English

The contemporary power of English makes itself felt in many fields such as politics, commerce, media, technology, academia, the internet, defence, transport, and most aspects of life. The thesis aims to confirm the dominant position of English in the context of the language policy of the EU. Moreover, the position of English as the first foreign language within the environment of the tertiary education is further explored through the survey conducted at the University of Economics in Bratislava the results of which are further compared against other European countries. The thesis contains three chapters dealing with obsahovo zodpovedajúcich napĺňaniu parciálnych cieľov práce. The text is supplemented with 8 tables, 40 graphs, 1 picture and 4 appendices to illustrate the content and provide additional information. The first chapter gives a retrospective overview of the EU language policy development, its main documents and concepts related to our topic. The second chapter defines the main aim and partial aims of the thesis, methodology, methods of research and research tools. The third chapter constitutes the central part of the thesis as it presents the findings from a research conducted in university environment, which aimed at students´ preferences towards English for Professional Purpose courses. It further compares the aspects from results in broader circle with othe EU states. The conclusion succintly summarizes the results, assesses the viability of hypotheses, provides discussion and evaluates the extent of aim attainment. In the outcome we are firm to assert, that, despite the policy of multilingvism, promoting the learning a variety of languages, the position of English in the context of language policy of the EU and as the first foreign language in Slovakia and the EU is rather dominant.

This study explores the use of phrasal verbs in English language documents of the European Union (EU) as part of a larger-scale project examining the use of English in EU texts from various aspects including lexical, lexico-grammatical and textual features. Phrasal verbs, known to represent one of the most difficult aspects of learning English, are highly productive and widely used by native speakers. The purpose of this study is to identify the most frequent phrasal verb combinations in EU documents. To this end, an EU English Corpus of approximately 200,000 running words was built using texts which are representative of the fields of activities of the EU. The analysis revealed that the top 25 phrasal verbs account for more than 60% of all phrasal verb constructions in the corpus. The results also show that in terms of the frequency of phrasal verbs, EU documents show some similarity to written academic English. The paper also illustrates some instructional activities and the pedagogical relevance of the findings.

This study investigates teaching EU English in the Hungarian higher education context. While the first part of the research focuses on Hungarian EFL learners’ language needs in terms of English language EU documents, the second part seeks to explore how needs analysis affects course design in this context. Hungary’s EU membership and the employment prospects of would-be professionals make this area of research highly relevant.
The study also fills in a gap in ELT research by investigating EU English from the ESP perspective. This research has a case study approach as it focuses on one higher education institution and applies both quantitative and qualitative research methods. A needs analysis questionnaire was administered among MA students of International Relations and two university instructors were interviewed from the same context. The results can be exploited to enhance the elaboration of high quality EU English courses, which is a must for competitive degree courses in European Studies in Hungary.

The present study aims to explore the characteristics of lexical elements in English language documents of the European Union (EU). As the EU is involved in a wide range of activities, the documents related to it exhibit features of texts written for legal, business, political and other specific purposes. The aim of this corpus-based research is to identify and describe the lexical elements whose mastery is indispensable for those who wish to work in cooperation with or inside a European institution. An EU English Corpus consisting of approximately 200,000 words was built using texts which are representative of the various fields of activities of the EU. The analysis uncovered the most frequent lexical elements and collocation patterns as well as their most common uses and senses in this particular variety of the English language. This article discusses and demonstrates the methods of analysis through the detailed presentation of three of the most frequently occurring lexical elements. The pedagogical relevance of the study is that its findings can be directly used for the development of special English language course books and supplementary materials for EU and International Relations courses.

This study extends research into the use of English as a lingua franca in the European context by investigating the most frequent word combinations in English documents issued by EU institutions. As there is little research on the use of the English language within the European Union for ESP pedagogic purposes, as part of a larger scale analysis, the aim of this study is to explore the structures and functions of lexical bundles in English EU texts, and to draw conclusions regarding their relevance for language courses on English for EU purposes. Findings suggest that the structural and functional classification of EU lexical bundles show similarities with the language of university textbooks and academic prose in general. However, written English EU discourse applies lexical bundles in higher frequencies, which suggests that a fairly large proportion of EU texts are made up of formulaic patterns. The pedagogical implications of this study highlight the importance of explicit instruction in this type of word combination in courses on English for EU purposes.


Please email me for an electronic copy of the paper. reka.jablonkai@gmail.com

Sample pages of the book can be viewed at http://www.euenglish.hu

The book is unique in a number of aspects. Firstly, it combines a syllabus based on EU content with systematic skills development involving the four core skills and featuring ‘how to boxes’, ‘small talk sections’ and ‘internet research projects’, as well. Secondly, the tasks in this book are based on authentic materials taken from a large collection of English language EU documents (EU corpora), which makes it possible for learners to learn how language is really used in English language EU documents. Thirdly, it gives an insight into the multilingual functioning of the EU and a detailed, learner-friendly English glossary with the most up-to-date standard EU terms and with references to the changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon. It is complete with Study Pages on EU terminology. Apart from the Terminology section, the international edition contains 14 units, a Grammar Reminder&Practice section, as well as an Answer Key and Audio Scripts for all listening material. It can be used for classroom coursebook or for self-study.

See more on: www.euenglish.hu. Co-authored with Anna Trebits. The book is unique in a number of aspects. Firstly, it combines a syllabus based on EU content with systematic skills development involving the four core skills and featuring ‘how to boxes’, ‘small talk sections’ and ‘internet research projects’, as well. Secondly, the tasks in this book are based on authentic materials taken from a large collection of English language EU documents (EU corpora), which makes it possible for learners to learn how language is really used in English language EU documents. Thirdly, it gives an insight into the multilingual functioning of the EU and a detailed, learner-friendly English glossary with the most up-to-date standard EU terms and with references to the changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon. It is complete with Study Pages on EU terminology. Apart from the Terminology section, the international edition contains 14 units, a Grammar Reminder&Practice section, as well as an Answer Key and Audio Scripts for all listening material. It can be used for classroom coursebook or for self-study.

This paper is a report on a corpus-based analysis of two EU-related registers. The study aims to explore the discourse of official EU texts and online EU news applying a frequency-based approach suggested by Biber and Conrad (1999). The concept developed and applied for this approach is the lexical bundle which has been found characteristic for specific registers. Based on the investigation of the most frequent 50 single-word items and the structural and functional analysis of the identified lexical bundles in official EU texts and online EU news texts, the discourse of the two EU-related registers are found to differ considerably. Discourse in official EU texts can be characterised in contrast to online EU news texts by a higher proportion of content words in the top 50 single-word lexical items, more frequent use of lexical bundles in general, very few identical lexical bundles and by a significantly different distribution of lexical bundles across structural types and functional categories. Besides the description of the two EU-related registers, pedagogical implications are also discussed.