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Volume 8 Number 2, Summer 2011, Pages 1-210   


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Advanced English Conversations for World Games 2009 Textbook: Design and Evaluation

    David Goodman and Hsiao-I Hou


In preparation for the World Games 2009 in Kaohsiung City, a conversation textbook was designed by the National Kaohsiung Hospitality College instructors to be used for an English language course related to training student volunteers. This paper reports on the design principles of this conversation textbook, and also investigates a range of discourse features of the dialogues written for it. In the first part of this paper, the goals and objectives of this course and textbook design are explained. Second, the literature in ESP textbook writing is briefly reviewed, and issues related to material authenticity are discussed. In the third part, a detailed analysis of the dialogues in the textbook are reported using the following discourse features: length and turn-taking patterns, lexical density, number of false starts and repetitions, pausing, and the use of hesitation devices. Recommendations and implications for future ESP textbook designers are given as well.

Keywords: textbook design; authenticity; discourse features