Aviation English - A global perspective: analysis, teaching, assessment
Authors:   Patrícia Tosqui-Lucks,   Juliana de Castro Santana
Published: November 2022

This e-book brings together 13 chapters written by aviation English researchers and practitioners settled in six different countries, representing institutions and universities from around the globe. The idea of having this publication was conceived during the 8th GEIA Seminar, an event held online, in November 2021, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the next lines, we introduce GEIA research group, based in Brazil, followed by a brief explanation of the topics addressed in each chapter. GEIA1 is the “Aeronautical English Research Group”, accredited by Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq2 ) and maintained by ICEA3 , the Airspace Control Institute: a military organization of the Brazilian Air Force. It gathers researchers from different aviation authorities in Brazil, such as the Department of Airspace Control (DECEA)4 , ICEA and the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC5 ), and from prestigious universities spread throughout different parts of our country. This group aggregates research studies whose objective is to investigate different aspects of aeronautical English in the Brazilian context, divided into three areas of investigation: aviation language description and analysis; aeronautical English teaching and learning; aeronautical English testing and assessment. The group aims at studying topics such as: • the description of the language used in pilot-ATCO radiotelephony communications that go beyond standard phraseology in non-routine and emergency situations, as well as the analysis of the impacts of this communication as a safety component in accidents and incidents, concerning human factors; • the analysis of the content, syllabus, instructional material, and other elements of English courses/training offered to pilots and ATCOs, as well as of aviation English teacher training courses; • the description and analysis of assessment tools used to evaluate pilots’ and air traffic controllers’ language proficiency for their jobs, test development and delivery, washback effect and rater’s training; • other related topics in the interface of aviation English, such English teaching for other aviation professionals, compilation of glossaries and 1 GEIA stands for Grupo de Estudos em Inglês Aeronáutico, an acronym in Portuguese. Available at: ICEA - Subdiretoria de Ensino - GEIA - Grupo de Estudos em Inglês Aeronáutico (decea.mil. br) 2 CNPq stands for Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, an acronym in Portuguese. 3 ICEA stands for Instituto de Controle do Espaço Aéreo, an acronym in Portuguese. 4 DECEA stands for Departamento de Controle do Espaço Aéreo, an acronym in Portuguese. 5 ANAC stands for Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil, an acronym in Portuguese. INTRODUCTION other terminology tools, translation, contrastive analysis with other languages, etc. It is important to emphasize that, for us, aviation English is an umbrella term that refers to the use of the English language by any aviation-related professionals, including not only pilots and ATCOs, but also mechanics, meteorologists, flight attendants, and others. Aeronautical English, by its turn, is the language used solely by air traffic controllers and pilots while controlling international traffic, and the object of the language proficiency requirements addressed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on Doc 98356 (2010). Other researchers from the international community have adopted this distinction in order to avoid misunderstanding7 . This is why sometimes we use the term aviation English, to refer to research about aircrafct mechanicals or meteorology, for example; and sometimes we prefer the term aeronautical English to emphasize pilot-ATC communications. The results from those studies have highlighted the development and improvement of English language teaching, learning, and assessment resources targeted at Brazilian air traffic control professionals, so as to ensure they are able to use English as a tool for safety in operations. Aviation English reflections in the pandemic Since its inception, in 2013, every year GEIA promotes seminars in which group members discuss and share research results. These events are addressed to pilots, air traffic controllers, teachers, examiners, and all the community interested in teaching, learning and assessing aviation and aeronautical English. Over the past couple years, humanity has faced a huge challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic scenario, which imposed lockdowns and social isolation, forcing people all over the world to change their ways of living, studying, working and connecting to others. It has dramatically affected aviation and, as a consequence, its training and testing devices worldwide. On-site courses and exams were canceled, postponed or adapted to the online format. New ways of training and testing had to be developed, using the tools and resources available, which have also been constantly improved too, to meet these new demands. Likewise, research groups have held their meetings online, and even events had to be adapted to rely on technology to survive. This pandemic context has affected GEIA and its seminars too. In 2020, for the first time in six years we offered the seminar as a virtual event, 6 INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION ORGANIZATION/ICAO. 2010. Doc. 9835 AN/453: Manual on the implementation of ICAO language proficiency requirements. 2. ed. Montreal. 7 Fore more information about it, see Tosqui-Lucks, P., & Silva, A. L. B. de C. e. (2020). Aeronautical English: Investigating the nature of this specific language in search of new heights. The ESPecialist, 41(3). https://doi.org/10.23925/2318-7115.2020v41i3a2 the 7th GEIA Seminar8 . On one hand, we had to get used to recording and watching videos and interacting asynchronously by written messages instead of attending on site presentations. On the other hand, space, time and money were no longer constraints. So, we decided to extend the enrollment, completely free of charge, to the international community. This change came in handy for some GEIA members who were living, working and studying overseas. Besides that, some of us are also members of the International Civil Aviation English Association (ICAEA)9 , which enabled other researchers to take part in our project involving the seminar itself and the publication of an Aviation English edition of a journal. The 7th GEIA Seminar focused on the launching of a special edition of the ESPecialist, a very important scientific journal in Brazil in the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) field. That special edition comprised 18 papers written by GEIA members and guest researchers, organized in two volumes (TOSQUI-LUCKS & PRADO, 202010). The authors from ten different countries recorded videos about their papers for the 7th GEIA seminar, which had 242 attendees from 26 countries. We were delighted with the opportunity of gathering so many international participants who offered us valuable contributions, which would have been impossible otherwise. In 2021, building on the success of the 7th GEIA Seminar, we decided to promote the 8th GEIA Seminar11 completely online. The event brought together 18 lectures and presentations conducted by 25 speakers from eight different countries, as well as 404 attendees from 32 countries. That was such an accomplishment! Besides consolidating the audience we already had we were able to attract more people from other countries. After all, in spite of all its horrible outcomes, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t stopped us; on the contrary, it has strengthened our group, by motivating us to go beyond our borders and innovating the way we had been used to carrying out our events. This e-book is an offshoot of the 8th GEIA Seminar, that counts on the collaboration of GEIA and ICAEA researchers, as well as guest speakers. It brings together thirteen chapters focused on aviation language description, teaching, and assessment, written by practitioners from several institutions around the globe. One of our guests and a keynote speaker, Prof. Eric Friginal, added the excellent contribution of his graduate students from Georgia State University, in the USA, and kindly wrote the Preface. Regarding its content, this e-book has been divided into three parts, according to GEIA’s areas of research: language description and analysis; aeornautical English teaching; and assessment practices. In fact, this distinction is not to be taken in absolute terms, for most of the chapters address teaching and/or testing to some extent. It is meant to help the reader find the 8 Available at: VII Seminário do GEIA (decea.mil.br) 9 ICAEA – Supporting the use of English for aviation safety 10 Tosqui-Lucks, P., & Prado, M. C. de A. 2020. New routes in the study of Aviation and Aeronautical English. The ESPecialist, 41(3); 41(4). https://doi.org/10.23925/2318-7115.2020v41i3a1 11 Avialable at: VIII Seminário do GEIA (decea.mil.br) topics that would be of their most interest, but we can assure that all chapters present high quality insights, are pleasant to read and thought provoking. The first part of the book “Aviation English Language Description and Analysis” is composed of four chapters. The first one, “Replacing phraseology and plain language with technical vocabulary to inform language training in aviation”, by Jennifer Drayton, examines the Tower Aviation Radiotelephony Technical Vocabulary List (TARTVL) which provides a technical vocabulary lens for lexical analysis of radiotelephony transmissions. The analysis shows that standard phraseology and plain language are situational constructs. A matrix of language used in radiotelephony communication is presented and identifies standard, non-standard and relational language. Both: the matrix and the TARTVL are useful for language training to reduce variation in language use, especially in multilingual workplaces. Such training relies on the skills and knowledge of content and language instructors to provide practices that help reduce miscommunication in the workplace, therefore, contributing to safety in aviation. The second chapter, called “Terminology of Aeronautical Meteorology Codes: a systematization by using corpus”, by Rafaela Rigaud Peixoto, offers a contribution to avoid misunderstandings regarding the criticality level of meteorological situations being communicated during air traffic operations. Her work is based on terminology and corpora theoretical foundations, and it aims at discussing definitions and translation to Portuguese of expressions and terms contained in Table 4678, concerning the main meteorology codes, as prescribed by the World Meteorological Organization (2011). The study by Aline Pacheco, “Reported speech in Aviation English: an analysis through two specific corpora”, addresses the use of Reported Speech in aeronautical communications by analyzing the occurrences of this structure in two specialized corpora – CORPAC, the Corpus of Pilot and ATC Communications and RTPEC, the Radiotelephony and Plain English Corpus. The main findings reveal the most used reporting verbs and suggest that around 50% of the indirect reported clauses in aviation maintain the original tense. It seems to be evidence that pilots and ATCOs choose to report no changes in the scenario, when relaying information in a similar proportion to choosing to backshift. Such findings are quite important for aeronautical English teaching and learning, especially when developing resources and materials that depict real communication features and work-related activities. Malila Prado and Adriana Mendes Porcellato’s chapter, entitled “When I land - if I ever land”: exploring if-clauses in Aeronautical English”, closes the first part of the book. The authors investigate if-clauses in a corpus of radio communications in abnormal situations in order to identify the functions they perform in plain aviation English and how they can affect aeronautical English teaching and assessment. A corpus-based analysis revealed that 60% of if occurrences in the corpus were employed in requests and orders, 22% in indirect questions, and only 18% expressed conditionality such as “When I touch down / if I ever touch down / do I just kill the throttle or what?” For each of these three functions, they examined the structures in which if was used and compared them with traditionally taught conditional structures, without losing sight of aeronautical English pedagogical materials and resources from a real language use perspective. The second part of the book presents four chapters with more empahasis on “Aviation English Teaching”. The study called “A corpus-driven approach to Aviation English in pilot flight training”, by Andrew Schneider, covers 53 hours of transcribed audio and video recordings of one-on-one, instructional communication in Aviation English between flight instructors and student pilots. Authentic linguistic data were collected in three key contexts of flight training operations: oral instructional activities, Flight Training Devices, and in-air flight. This paper shares the results of a quantitative, exploratory multi-dimensional analysis (MDA) comparing preliminary Corpus of Flight Training (CFT) data to other spoken and written registers of English. Preliminary findings suggest a strong overlap of flight training activities with the English registers related to involved persuasion and information interaction. These results can help improve target language usage for Aviation English assessments and inform curricula for ab initio pilots. The second chapter, by Neil Bullock – “From the microphone to the classroom - ensuring that real-life communication is an integral part of teaching English to pilots and air traffic controllers” - highlights the need for teachers to carefully consider and identify students’ real-life communicative needs when teaching English to pilots and ATCOs. It advocates for a more inclusive approach to understanding and using the broad range of communicative skills that both sets of students need for effective and efficient communication. This research offers tips and guidance to teachers by integrating real-life and scripted examples of communication in the classroom based on that used in real-life operational communication. The author concludes that a greater critical awareness of students’ real-life professional communication can actually help in curriculum planning, material development and classroom practice. The following chapter, “Games, corpus and medals – challenging and innovating experiences in Aeronautical English hybrid learning”, by Patrícia Tosqui-Lucks, Juliana Santana and Patrícia Palhares Tupinambá de Sá, presents and describes an innovative training program developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, combining the hybrid mode and gamification. The authors discuss the conception, elaboration and implementation processes of five trainings, designed for Brazilian Air Traffic Controllers, and based on the ICAO Rating Scale (Pronunciation; Structure; Vocabulary; Comprehension; Fluency-and-Interaction). The synchronous part of the training was developed to offer a better understanding of the rating scale descriptors, whereas the elaboration of the game-like activities for the second part was data-driven. The data were composed of frequent mistakes compiled in corpora with authentic oral productions. The gamification of aeronautical English for Specific Purposes has shown to be an engaging and more appealing environment for proficiency level elevation. In the last chapter of the second part – “Microlearning on the fly: Aviation English via Instagram”, the authors - the language expert Natalia Guerreiro and the air traffic controllers Stephanie Faria, Thalita Diniz and Thiago Silva - go over the creation of an aeronautical English online learning initiative called ‘An eye on you’, regularly displayed on the Instagram profile @ an.eye.on.you. The Brazilian Air Force organization responsible for approach and tower controls in the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro has increased the use of online education modes during the COVID-19 pandemic context to explore aeronautical English microlearning opportunities. The lessons learned from the experience of making Instagram posts and managing continuous online learning are thoroughly presented. The third part of the book gathers five chapters more focused on “Aviation English Testing”. The First one, entitled “Test preparation issues in the aeronautical context in Brazil”, by Ana Lígia Barbosa de Carvalho e Silva and Natalia de Andrade Raymundo aims at discussing the potential positive and negative aspects of Aeronautical English test preparation for ATCOs and civil pilots on both teachers and students, in the Brazilian scenario. The discussion is based on the premise that test preparation can play a positive role if learning-oriented and leading to meaningful test scores. The study pointed out that safety is the main aim of aeronautical English Training rather than simply passing a test. The chapter called “Creating a rubric for placement tests for Aviation English programs”, by Ashleigh Cox and Mehrnoush Karimi addresses the need for assessment tools that are designed to be placement tests for programs training English learners who are not yet at operational level 4. In order to do so, a speaking placement test rubric was developed using qualitative case study data. Recordings of four aviation students learning English as a second language were analyzed. Their ability to carry out pilot-ATCO dialogues, as well as their mistakes and miscommunication repairs were observed in light of communicative ability, aviation safety, and the ICAO proficiency descriptors. Based on these observations, the authors present some exploratory findings, implications for pedagogy and assessment, and some directions for placing aviation students into different levels of ESL classes. The study by Angela Garcia, entitled “The listening construct: theories and implications to the assessment of pilots and ATCOs”, discusses the main theories that have informed the definition of the listening construct in language testing, as well as some implications for the testing of pilots’ listening comprehension, as required by the ICAO policy. Some characteristics of the listening construct on a theoretical level and features of the language used by pilots and ATCOs that are useful for listening test developers are also presented. “The assessment of English in aeronautical radiotelephony communications: a mixed methods study”, written by Ana Lúcia Tavares Monteiro, reports on a multiphase mixed methods study that investigated the proficiency construct (awareness, knowledge, skills, and attitudes) in pilot-ATCO intercultural RT, following Fulcher and Davidson’s (2007) test development framework. The communicative demands of intercultural RT communications and how they are specified within a construct framework and operationalized as test tasks were explored. The author’s findings emphasize the importance of a broader view of professional communicative competence for intercultural RT communication and for the test development process. The last chapter of the book, “The ICAO scale and language testing for ab initio cadets: is there a fit?”, by Maria Treadway, proposes a language assessment aligned with the ICAO rating scale and contextualized to the specific needs of NNES ab initio pilots entering English-medium flight training. The methods used to investigate the reliability of the ICAO scale within a training context and for a diagnostic testing purpose are examined, as well as the procedures undertaken to articulate and define threshold levels of performance within the target languase use domain. Findings suggest that the ICAO scale is not enough to distinguish levels of linguistic readiness among ab initio pilots, nor does it adequately reflect the knowledge, skills and abilities valued by subject matter experts (SMEs) within this domain, suggesting that a specific scale may be needed. Last but not least, in the end of the book we reproduce an interview given by the GEIA Leader, Prof Patricia Tosqui-Lucks, to Natalia Guerreiro, responsible for the Aeronautical English Section of the Regional Center of Airspace Control Southeast (CRCEA-SE), in Sao Paulo. The interview was broadcast live for the Instagram site An Eye On You12, in November 2021, right after the 8th GEIA Seminar. The studies collected in this e-book offer us enriching and enlightening discussions that support and promote a better understanding of some key features underlying aviation English language, teaching and assessment practices. We are very pleased to make part of this work. It goes without saying the importance of this e-book for the aviation English field and community. This international publication, besides collecting the studies and work experiences of renowned researches, has also contributed to strengthen the enriching partnership between GEIA members and other researchers. The fact of having been published as an e-book will certainly benefit its circulation and the spreading awareness of aviation English challenges, updates and findings. One of our goals is to spread the news, by making this ESP e-book free for download by as many people and institutions as possible worldwide. Those who place great weight on aeronautical English teaching and assessment practices are aware of the interwoven relation among operational issues, communication and safety. That’s why we believe 12 See more about it in the chapter “Microlearning on the fly: Aviation English via Instagram”. the discussions and analysis carried out throughout this book are so relevant and should reach international communities and organizations in all parts of the globe. Enjoy your reading! Patrícia Tosqui-Lucks Juliana de Castro Santana