Integrating Source Texts and Building Up Genre Awareness in ESP Classrooms: a Focus on Law Reports

DOI: 10.24833/2949–6357.2024.GEO.1  УДК: 372.881.1

Bayrta N. Arinova
Senior Lecturer, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia;
email: b.arinova@yandex.ru

Abstract
Texts as units of discourse have always been the units of study in ESP classrooms; for teaching purposes they can be viewed as linguistic objects or as vehicles of information, while in linguistics specialized texts are considered to be units of gen­res which share common characteristics. Reading source texts (legislation, case law, rulings etc.) is the staple of the legal pro­fession, par consequence, exposing law students to such texts in a legal English class prompts a lot of questions related to dis­course (context) awareness and genre-awareness. Building on the theories of language learning and ESP teaching methodolo­gies we discuss the effective treatment of texts of professional communication within legal English course. Drawing on the ex­ample of UK law reports the author outlines the principles of effective incorporation of professional texts: interaction, elabo­ration, contextualization and translation and explains what type of tasks could reflect those principles in the practice of teaching.

Keywords: ESP, legal English, source texts, professional communication, legal discourse, judicial discourse, ESP methodological framework.

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