Realia in teaching ESP for anthropology students

S. Soyoljin, Ph.D
Center for Foreign Languages, Division of Humanities,
School of Science and Arts, National University of Mongolia

Abstract: ​ESP plays significant role in understanding, interpreting and improvising

scientific, technological and specific terms and concepts. In order to teach ESP
English teachers develop their ESP courses based on the theme-based CB including
applied knowledge on the subject area. According to my experience of teaching
ESP for socio-cultural anthropologists, I aim to present the methods of
interpretation or explanation of realia in the subject area through arranged structure
of working with realia within the topic and text, which I use in my classes.

Keywords: ESP; subjects of social-cultural anthropology; realia, methodological approach

in teaching

Today English has been reinforced with the development of world economy and
technology, becoming the rudimentary knowledge and skills of communication and information
exchange for every professional, scholar, even common employer with the extensive and daily
use of the Internet in the every single sphere of industries, international business and society as
Robert Phillipson (1992) points out, "English has a dominant position in science and technology,
medicine, and computer, in research, books, trade, shipping and aviation.” [2: 6]
As a result, the university students began to have need in achieving a confident
proficiency in English by acquiring basic communication skills and understanding their major
disciplines to pursue their academic programs and future work and career promotions. Therefore,
many countries have launched developing English for Specific Purpose (ESP) courses in their
tertiary education systems since early 1960s. Mongolia is not an exception (4). Officially,
undergraduate programs of high education in Mongolia consist of 120 credit hours, including 2
credits for ESP. Currently, these 120 credits have been found not enough for undergraduate
education, so universities have to cancel ESP courses in order to fully include their major
professionally-oriented courses in their curriculum beginning from the next academic year of
2016-2017. In other words, now many Mongolian students have to give up their spare horse, or
the ESP course. In this reason, the English teachers of Mongolian universities should process out
integrated standard of ESP programs and curriculums, develop and improve their teaching
methodology with exchanging and learning new attitudes to the ESP courses.
ESP plays significant role in understanding, interpreting and improvising scientific,
technological and specific terms and concepts from English into Mongolian, when the English
language has become the information exchanging tool for almost 90 percent of all the current
knowledge, achievements and discoveries. The ESP courses not only help students to learn and
master their major subjects, but also allow researchers to present their works in English and
contribute to the global community.
From my personal experience it is considerably important for English teachers to prepare
for the course. Particularly, the professional proficiency of ESP teachers can be developed based
on theme-based CBI, which demands them not only to be the master of language, but also to
have deep understanding of the subject matter with applied knowledge on technical terms and
texts, professional situations and cases (4). Moreover, ESP syllabus design demands them to
work in cooperation with the subject matter specialists. Hence, ESP curriculum should be
developed professionally and run with specific textbooks. In this reason, I have developed some
ESP textbooks for disciplines of History, Anthropology, Journalism, and Philosophy, based on
my experience of working as an English teacher at the National University of Mongolia since
2004.
In this paper I will highlight some features of teaching ESP in anthropology class based
on the English textbook for socio-cultural anthropologists, consisting of 9 chapters, each of
which includes 1-3 texts on main area studies (6).
- Chapter 1 Anthropology (Subdisciplines)
- Chapter 2 Methods (Ethnographic Techniques)
 - Chapter 3 Culture (What is Culture?; Culture and the Individual: Agency and
Practice)
- Chapter 4 Ethnicity (Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity; Ethnic Groups, Nations, and
Nationalities; Ethnic Tolerance and Accommodation)
- Chapter 5 Making a Living (Adaptive Strategies; Foraging; Cultivation; Pastoralism)
- Chapter 6 Political Systems (What is the “Political”? Types and Trends)
- Chapter 7 Families and Marriage (Families; Descent; Marriage)
- Chapter 8 Religion (What is religion?)
- Chapter 9 Colonialism
The chapters make clear that ESP teacher should provide the students with fundamental
concepts of the scientific subject within the textbook content, and give comprehensive
interpretation of related words and notions, which mostly can be apprehended as realia,
represented as the main target of my study. As S. Vlahov and S. Florin considered “In every
language, there are words that, without in any way distinguishing themselves in the original from
the verbal co-text, nonetheless they are not easily transmissible into another language through the
usual means and demand from the translator a peculiar attitude. …Among these words, we meet
denominations of element of everyday life, of history, of culture etc. of a given people, country,
place that do not exist in other peoples, countries and places. Exactly these words have received
in translation studies the name of "realia" (5: 432).
Within the frame of the study I determined several methods of interpretation or
explanation of realia. Anthropologists should be acknowledged with numerous realia, referred to
human communities, their common and specific characteristics. Vlahov and Florin divided realia
into geographical and ethnographical (6), social and political (7). In the XXI century, when
technological and cultural issues have taken the primary place in the global civilization, we need
to be familiar with ​words (and composed expressions) of the popular language representing
denominations of objects, concepts, typical phenomena of a given geographic place, of material
life or of social-historical peculiarities of some people, nation, country, tribe, that for this reason
carry a national, local or historical color; these words do not have exact matches in other
languages as the above-mentioned professors submitted (5: 438). For this reason I suggest that
the realia can be classified into cultural (including ethnographical, behavioral, traditional,
religious) and social (including geographical, historical, economic and political) subdivisions.
Sometimes it is difficult to differ them clearly and definitely, as they have close relations and
interconnection. For example, very common word ​ovoo (stone piles, erected in the high places
such as on the top of hills, mountains and passes) in Mongolian can be related to almost all of the
above-mentioned categories as it can express top peaks in geographical meaning, administrative
boundary points in politics, and worshipping sites for cultural, religious and ethnographical point
of view.
The subject studies and field researches demand anthropologists to be familiar with
realia-terms and concepts referred to the particular community, society, or culture, which include
local behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic activities, politics, and religion. Cultural
diversity causes impressions in the unaccustomed eye of the fledgling researcher for the first
time, just bringing the researchers into cultural shock. Thereafter, becoming familiar, they fade
to the edge of consciousness as Bronislaw Malinowski called “the imponderabilia of native life
and of typical behavior” (1).
For foreigners, visiting Mongolia first time, it can be interesting and fascinating being
invited to the dinner given to the first haircut to boys and girls, feasts celebrating moving in new
ger or house, or ​ovoo worship ceremony. Then for Mongolian students it would be curious to
know about traditions of harvest festivities such as Grape Pie or Grape Stompins contests, and
Lammas day, which are popular in European and American countries, while being acknowledged
with Ramadan fasting in Muslim cultures. In this way realia existed in everyday life of different
nations and civilizations challenge the ESP teachers in interpreting them through direct
translation, transcription with interpretation, transliteration with explanation, calquing with
creative thinking, substitution with functional analogue in the received language, and other
appropriate methods of bringing the meaning of the realia into their target language.
The present study on realia in teaching English for anthropology students displays that
the most numerous realia occur in the research subject areas of culture, ethnography, economies,
political structure, family and wedding, and religion.
 Collected samples of realia in chapter Culture demonstrate different concepts on various
human acts and traditions such as distance between two talking people depends on the topic and
their ethnic origin; flags of countries symbolize their national identities and features; concept of
holiness on water, milk or blood is variable for different nations; understanding of natural
phenomena and disaster is distinguished for each community; meaning of sports is recognized
differently; women’s expectance for their future life is not similar for each country and period of
history, and etc. Moreover, the chapter includes realia in folk medical treatment, meal and
dishes, understanding of beauty, folk arts, songs, dances, traditional clothes and garments, and
rituals.
The social realia covers some concepts such as the idea of ​négritude (​ “Black identity”),
developed in French-speaking African countries of Guinea, Mali, the Ivory Coast, and Senegal.
Also, models of paternal lineage family of ​zadruga p​ opular among Western Bosnians, and
maternal lineage family structure of ​taravad of the nayar people should become the prominent
examples of realia. Moreover, some realia such as ​mana​, voodoo dolls, circumcision and many
other different rituals and traditions practiced in different parts of the world should be the parts
of the knowledge system of anthropology students.
As the result of learning ESP, the anthropology students should be acknowledged with
realistic, comprehensive, rational and sensitive interpretation of realia, which permit them to
understand the root of the realia concept, to recognize the conditional situation and cause,
developing critical, creative and integrated approaches to these items as the citizen of the
globalized world. Besides the above-mentioned translation methods for interpreting realia I
prefer to hold on the following arrangement of methodological approach in my teaching ESP:

1. Determining the content and form of the text before giving them to students to read and
work on;

2. Finding and evaluating of importance of realia in the particular text or topic;

3. Identifying the significance and interconnection of realia in learning and studying of the
topic for our students;

4. Determining how to ground and interpret realia into Mongolian language and mentality;
 In conclusion, English teachers should use different ways and methods of interpreting realia
such as direct translation, transcription, transliteration, calquing, substituting to ground the realia
into Mongolian mentality and ground, they have to build up effective methodological approach
in teaching of different professionally-related realia.

References:
1. Kottak, Conrad Phillip. (2007) Window on humanity: A Concise introduction to
anthropology/ 2​nd​ edition. Published by McGraw-Hill, 480pp.
2. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism (M). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Soyoljin, S. (2014). English for Social and Cultural Anthropology. Ulaanbaatar. Bit
Press.
4. Soyoljin, S. (2015) Problems with teaching ESP in social sciences in Mongolia.
Academia.edu. 12342156/Problems_with_teaching_ESP_in_social_sciences_in_Mongolia
5. Vlahov S., Florin S. (1969) Neperovodimoe v perevode. Realii, in Masterstvo perevoda,
n. 6, p. 432-456.
6. http://courses.logos.it/EN/3_34.html
7. http://courses.logos.it/EN/3_35.html
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realia_(translation)