Conference Review

Review of the Second CUE ESP
Symposium

John Blake
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Dubhgan Hinchey
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
The second CUE ESP Symposium was held on September 7, 2013 at the Japan
Advanced Institute of Science and Technology ( JAIST). The first symposium
was hosted at the Nara Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, so it seems
fitting that the second one be hosted at its sister institute. Located in Nomi City,
JAIST is a 20-minute drive from Kanazawa, the largest city in the Hokuriku
region. The tagline of this year’s symposium was “Getting Published in English:
Opportunities and Obstacles”. All the presentations and a number of the posters
directly addressed various aspects of this topic. The symposium was attended by a
dedicated group of enthusiastic ESP practitioners with most participants comingfrom Hokuriku, but some from as far as Hokkaido and Tokyo. Surprisingly, forJapan’s wettest prefecture and one that boasts the saying “you can forget yourbento, but don’t forget your umbrella”, the day was clear, although in the evening
the skies opened. The symposium officially started with a warm welcome fromthe organizer, William Holden, a professor at JAIST.
From assignments toward publication: Brokering academic writing
John Adamson (University of Niigata Prefecture) and Theron Muller(University of Toyama) were the first to take the floor and gave a joint plenary.
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Both are associate professors and have many years of experience as reviewers andeditors. John is currently the senior associate editor of the Asian EFL Journaland chief editor of The Linguistics Journal, while Theron is lead editor ofInnovating EFL Teaching in Asia, published by Palgrave Macmillan and teaches
an online academic publishing course. The plenary explored the theory andresearch relating to the interdisciplinary nature and co-construction of research
papers. The importance of responding to advice from reviewers was emphasized,
and similarities were drawn between peer comments on essays in English for
Academic Purposes courses and the reviewer-author interplay in the publication
process. A key theme throughout this talk was on the collaborative nature ofwriting for publication. By assigning roles to students, such as author, co-author,
reviewer, column editor and editor, and creating a class journal, students could
gain hands-on experience in the publishing process. This could be one way inwhich teachers of academic writing could narrow the gap between the individual
nature of classroom writing and the actual collaborative nature of publishing.
Write like an engineer: Teaching writing in the Japanese EFL
classroom
The next session was an interactive workshop led by Atsushi Iida, an assistantprofessor at Gunma University, whose research interests include poetry writing
and scholarly publication in a second language. He addressed how genre-based
approaches can be adopted in the classroom to make connections between firstyear general English and second-year engineering English. He demonstrated
an engaging descriptive writing lesson for engineering students in which heemphasized the importance of focusing on the content (what to say) before
dealing with the form (how to say it). He showed how a general description canbe improved by incorporating specific details. His focus was on getting students
to state key details such as dimensions and materials before sorting out how tolink the terms into clauses and sentences. He demonstrated effective use of avisualizer as well as providing memorable comparative examples of vague andclear descriptions of an iPhone.

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The vocabulary and style of engineering research abstract
writing
After an impromptu and much appreciated coffee break, Matt Apple, associate
professor at Ritsumeikan University, was the next on the agenda. His researchinterests include ESP, individual differences, and second language vocabulary.
In his presentation, he shared the preliminary findings of a pilot comparative
study investigating the differences in vocabulary levels and writing styles between
abstracts written by a cohort of engineering students and those published inconference proceedings. A gap in vocabulary knowledge was identified, and thediscrepancy between students’ abstracts and IEEE abstracts was described interms of phraseology, specialist terminology, and rhetorical forms. For teachers
unfamiliar with corpus linguistics, this was a gentle introduction into thecapabilities of concordancing software (AntConc in this case) and how corpus
linguistics can inform teaching practice by enabling teachers to provide more
precise advice to their students. Attendees learned that by using the keyword list
function of AntConc on a corpus of texts, they could identify vocabulary that isparticularly common among those texts.
Editing and reviewing: Composing constructive feedback for
authors
Theron Muller took the podium again for the final presentation and gave
an interactive talk on providing constructive feedback on draft articles rather
than adopting an adversarial approach. His use of the term “pit-bull reviewer” todescribe a reviewer who tears apart a manuscript with little thought for the feelingsof the author seemed to resonate with a great number of us in the audience. Thestrategies presented should help participants draft more constructive comments
on students’ work and colleagues’ manuscripts, or when reviewing academicpapers.
Poster session
Having attended four consecutive presentations, the poster session provided
a welcome change of pace and focus. There were 14 poster presentations on avariety of topics from genre-based analysis of moves in research abstracts to the60

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English language needs of material scientists. Over light refreshments, presenters
discussed their posters and answered questions regarding their content. It waswonderful to see so many teachers concerned with appropriately supporting theirstudents’ publication process. The discussion was lively and cut short only by theannouncement of the start of the roundtable discussion.
Roundtable
After the poster presentations, everyone retired to the plenary hall where theinvited speakers were joined by the Melodie Cook, the current JALT Journal
editor, in hosting a roundtable discussion. William Holden kicked off the session
by posing a series of questions centered on the review process for academic
publications and what authors should know and can do to increase the odds ofgetting published. A great deal of time was spent discussing reviewer comments,
which to us seemed highly pertinent, as reviewers are key gatekeepers on the path
to publication.
The overall consensus seemed to be that the majority of journals do not train
their volunteer reviewers, which can lead to vast differences in tone and usefulnessof reviewer comments and suggestions. Some of the other issues discussed werelearning how to deal with rejection, how to act on the review comments, and how
to join the discourse community by getting involved in the publication process.
Conference dinner
A convoy of cars driven by volunteers left JAIST and took participants to theconference dinner held at Shirubei, a trendy fusion café bar in Katamachi, in theheart of the entertainment district in downtown Kanazawa. We enjoyed an arrayof local seafood delicacies naturally accompanied with shōchū and malted beer,
although the designated drivers dutifully limited themselves to fresh fruit juices
and ginger ale. Over dinner, business cards were exchanged, new friendships
established, and old friendships renewed. Lively discussion ensued on a varietyof current trends in higher education in Japan with participants sharing theirunique personal experiences.

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Conclusion

A key theme that resonated with participants was that conflicting reviewer
comments and the lack of an academic support network can negatively affect theability of new authors to secure their first publication. This can be ameliorated bygiving aspiring authors a better understanding of the iterative and collaborative
nature of the review process. This conference was probably most beneficial forparticipants with few publications to their name, as they could learn more about
the publication process from those with more experience. One downside of theconference was the rural location, since for those coming by train from Tokyo,
the journey would have taken around four hours, but for us the location was ideal
as it was a short stroll from our houses. We will, however, eagerly make the trek
in the opposite direction to the third CUE ESP Symposium in 2014, slated for
Waseda University, Tokyo. If you would like the opportunity to network withlike-minded professionals, establish collaborative research and partnerships, andlearn from the experience of other teachers and researchers, please check theJALT CUE SIG Web site for updates on the next symposium.

Authors’ bios

John Blake is a research lecturer at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science andTechnology. He has taught English at universities and schools for over 20 years inJapan, Thailand, Hong Kong and the UK. His main research interest is corpus
analysis of scientific research articles. johnb@jaist.ac.jp
Dubhgan Hinchey has taught English in Japan for over 10 years. He is a researchlecturer at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology where he is thewriting lab coordinator and Moodle online courseware administrator. His researchinterests include e-learning platforms, content management systems and extensive
reading. dhinchey@jaist.ac.jp
Received: November 11, 2013
Accepted: March 3, 201462