English for Specific Purposes
Wrld

A preliminary description of conference abstracts

and poster presentations in Food Science

Eugenio Cianflone

ecianflone@unime.it

Degree in Gastronomic Sciences

 University of Messina - Italy

Abstract

In EFL contexts the widespread use of English as the lingua franca of scientific communication puts written and oral interactional practices at the fore-front. The implication for Language for Specific Purposes teachers is that they are asked to offer language instruction by pivoting learning activities on the genres members of a given community of practice use to interact with one another. The aim of this paper is to report some preliminary observations on specific discourse by introducing conference abstracts and poster presentations in one underrepresented field: Food Science. The two genres, described according to the guidelines issued for one national and one international Food Science conference,  show one common feature: they aim  at presenting research results in a concise and informative way to allow authors’ inclusion in conferences. Such specific peculiarity can be employed in LSP classes to guide future researchers realize how contents can be manipulated to catch conference board’s and readers’ attention.

Key-words: Community of practice; Conference abstracts; Poster presentations; Food Science.

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