While second language acquisition (SLA) research has grown
significantly, one research gap concerns natural SLA in contexts other
than ESL/EFL classes. One field with large numbers of ESL/EFL students
is theology, and this book addresses this area by describing an
investigation into 1) the specialized vocabulary of an introductory
course at a graduate school of theology in central Canada and 2) the
learning and use of this theological vocabulary by both native and
non-native English speaker participants. Using various data sources, the
book details how native and non-native English speakers approached and
succeeded in learning the technical vocabulary of their discipline over
one semester and provides corpus analyses of a) theology lectures as
lexical environments and b) participants' written work in this context.
This study delivers a systematic overview of issues in technical
vocabulary and discusses implications for related theory, future
research, and the learning and teaching of specialized vocabulary. The
book, with samples of word lists and student writing, will therefore be
of interest to theological students as well as ESL/EAP teachers and
applied linguistics researchers.