English for Specific Purposes: New ways for Teaching

Lucía Sanz Valdivieso is ambitiously working on creating and developing new interoperative resources for Lexicography and Terminology: ELEXIS accompanies her on her journey to explore innovative methods for teaching English for specific purposes.

© Lucia Sanz Valdivieso, 2019

How did you learn about the ELEXIS travel grants?

I learned about the ELEXIS travel grants through professor Dr. Belén López Arroyo (University of Valladolid), who is the tutor of my project and has supervised every research project I have participated in up to date.
It was her, who advised me to apply for the travel grant with our project “Description, Creation and Exploitation of Online Lexicographic and Terminological Resources for the Teaching of English for Specific Purposes” because ELEXIS is a remarkably outstanding project and it is an honor to take part in it.
Besides, she informed me ELEXIS is contributing to the development of resources and the advancement of lexicography and is enhancing of the work of so many European researchers. Now, even our project will benefit from it thanks to professor Dr. Belén’s wonderful encouragement.

Find out more about ELEXIS visiting grants and former winning projects:

“I dealt with a corpus analysis related to specialized language,
which was used to develop a semi-automatic writing tool for Spanish natives
to be able to compose specialized texts in English.”

Which hosting institution did you apply to?

I applied to the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (Austrian Academy of Sciences) because many aspects of their work is directly related to the methodology and objectives of my project.
Their lines of research match the needs of the project both in content and perspective: they focus on dissemination and interoperability, which are key factors in the development of new lexicographic resources.
Additionally, they take part in research on training and education, which would be particularly useful for our project, since the aim is to develop a tool to be used as a resource for the teaching of English for Specific Purposes.

What is your project about?

The project, entitled “Description, Creation and Exploitation of Online Lexicographic and Terminological Resources for the Teaching of English for Specific Purposes” focuses on the area of the teaching English for Specific Purposes through the use of the currently available IT.
More specifically, the aim is to study how to create and develop new interoperative lexicographic and terminological resources (such as dictionary cloud writing) for Languages for Specific Purposes within the possibilities of currently available technology.
The goals of the project are to gain knowledge on new lexicographic resources and new methodologies in the field, which are necessary to develop the tools mentioned.
Finally, we intend to develop a model of a resource using the methods and resources approached and developed, in order to apply and exploit them.

“ELEXIS is a remarkably outstanding project and it is an honor to take part in it.”

What is your background that brought you up to this point?

I think that, besides the encouragement and help from my professors –especially my tutor– during my degree, it is my family background which has brought me here: my parents have always transmitted me the passion for being curious, studying, and learning, and my aunt, who is a researcher too at the University of Salamanca, has shown me how fulfilling the profession can be, so that is why I am here and why I want to keep working on developing a researching career.
I graduated in English Studies and I am currently enrolled in master’s degree in Education.
Next year, I intend to study a master’s degree in Advanced English Studies: Languages and Cultures in Contact and start a PhD.
Although I don’t think my researching career has even started yet, I have carried out some research thanks to a scholarship granted by the University of Valladolid for my degree’s final dissertation: It dealt with a corpus analysis related to the specialized language of olive oil tasting notes, which was used to develop a semi-automatic writing tool for Spanish native experts to be able to compose such texts in English.
I have given an oral presentation at a National Scientific Workshop entitled “Legal English in Charterparties: A Corpus-Based Analysis of the Rhetorical Structuration of the Genre”.
Besides this project and studying for my masters, I am working on an article which is under revision.
The field I have worked on and I am most attracted to is ‘English for Specific Purposes’, mainly related to tourism, gastronomy, and legal languages. 

Where does your interest in languages/lexicography come from and what keeps you motivated?

My interest in lexicography comes from a particular subject I chose at University, Linguistics III: The course focused on both lexicography and terminology, and I loved to learn about the different types of dictionaries, their structure and their components. We also conducted some terminology work and management, and I enjoyed creating a  terminological database for the subject’s final project.

Before that, I had never thought about the importance and all the work involved in the creation of dictionaries and other lexicographic resources, but it was then when I started to be more interested in lexicographic research. Because of the research I have conducted on ‘Languages for Specific Purposes’, I have progressively realized the relevance of lexis and its study. In this sense, I think both my motivation and my interest in lexicographic research come from the fact that I think lexicography is a field in which there is a lot of potential work to be done, and I am eager to see how the current and future technology could help us to manage and enhance the enrichment of this discipline and of linguistic teaching and communication.

Profile: Lucía Sanz Valdivieso
Travel Grant Call 3
Period of stay 2.12.2019 – 6.12.2019
Project title

Description, Creation and Exploitation of Online Lexicographic and Terminological Resources for the Teaching of English for Specific Purposes

Home institution

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (University of Valladolid)

#elexis_es
Hosting institution Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities
(OeAW, Austria)
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