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

kapitola v knize

en

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.

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.

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

09.01.2023

Vernon Press

Malaga, Spain

978-1-64889-150-2

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