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72Minitexts in modern educational discourse: Functions and trends
by Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko and Alexandra V. Radyuk
Antonina A. Kharkovskaya Korolev Samara National Research University aax2009@mail.ru
Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko Moscow State Institute of International Relations 1pev2009@mail.ru
Alexandra V. Radyuk Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) rad_al@bk.ru
Published in Training, Language and Culture Vol 1 Issue 1 (2017) pp. 62-76 doi: 10.29366/2017tlc.1.1.4
Recommended citation format: Kharkovskaya, A. A., Ponomarenko, E. V., & Radyuk, A. V. (2017). Minitexts in
modern educational discourse: Functions and trends. Training, Language and Culture, 1(1), 62-76. doi:
10.29366/2017tlc.1.1.4
The study uses examples from English language teaching materials to consider different types of discourse used in short listening and reading passages (called minitexts), and also in vocabulary, grammar and speaking exercises. Combining elements of the functional, descriptive, and cognitive analyses, the authors explore the evolutionary trends in educational discourse reflected in English language courses and consider a possible contradiction between traditional educational discourse in instructions and rubrics compared with the colloquial and popular style of much of the input. The authors also discuss the conceptual framework of minitexts, the social background, and identity of the participants in dialogues and reading passages. Finally, the authors conclude that the main trends in educational discourse development are connected with English 'going global', as shown by the 'denationalisation' of learning materials, discourse interference as the blending of different discourse features and the extension of conceptual frameworks.
KEYWORDS: educational discourse, mini-format text, minitext, denationalisation, national identity, mass media studies
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0)
1. INTRODUCTION
Gagnon, 2016, p. 251), while educational discourse will be referred to as the discourse of 'institutional education in schools and universities' (Dijk, 1981). This definition refers to manuals, textbooks, instructions, classroom dialogue, and other forms of communication, such as the 'communication of educational establishments with their consumers' (Zerkina et al., 2015, p. 460). Thus, for the purposes of this research the concept of discourse (including that of educational discourse) is similar to the concept
With dynamic changes observed in many spheres, contemplation of development trends in language teaching and learning (particularly with EFL -English as a Foreign Language) is vital, as education concerns everyone in a civilised society. In this respect, the phenomenon of educational discourse deserves special attention.
The study defines discourse as a corpus of 'thematically related texts' (Baumgarten &
© Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko, Alexandra V. Radyuk 2017 This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
by Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko and Alexandra V. Radyuk
of 'a type or style of language' as defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (Matthews, 2007, p. 107).
Another relevant term is that of a mini-format text, or minitext (largely representing educational discourse), which in fact differs from the generally accepted meaning of 'text' only because it contains a limited volume of words, up to 600 words, otherwise bearing typical features of all the classical standards of textuality (cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, and intertextuality) substantiated by linguists such as de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981), Quirk (1986), and others.
Making mini-format texts, the focus of linguistic investigation is useful for a number of reasons. The growing number of minitexts in contemporary educational contexts is due to convenience in view of the increased tempo of training processes and demand for brief training documents. They represent a special characteristic of linguistic education discourse aimed at stimulating student learning activity rather than knowledge transfer through voluminous and time-consuming printed matter.
The functional (i.e. semantic and pragmatic) complexity of minitexts proceeds from the need for educationists to bring together substantial information in a short space, which requires more
profound linguistic and mental proficiency than just well-developed speaking/writing skills.
Mini-format texts are also of special interest as a means of intensifying the rhetorical impact on the addressee (for instance, the recipient of education services). This is very common in the written and oral description of different objects, events and circumstances, particularly in English, and considering that American and British communicative patterns are often taken as models, the analysis of English-language materials is very helpful as a basis for examining similar trends in other languages.
In the educational domain, in the last few decades any materials can be analysed from the viewpoint of their pragmatic and rhetorical impact, beginning with the names of authentic coursebooks and the titles of their different units:
WE MEAN BUSINESS: The Ideal Secretary; Job Satisfaction; BOS is the Best (Norman & Melville, 1997).
HOW TO TEACH BUSINESS ENGLISH: Increasing Awareness; E-learning Possibilities; Using Critical Incidents (Frendo, 2009).
BUSINESS ACROSS CULTURES. EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES: Around the World: Negotiator Qualities; Styles of Persuasion;
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'As people 's perceptions change in the light of social trends and market fluctuations, so teachers, writers and linguists have to stay attuned to these changes in order to reflect contemporary lifestyle and ensure market demand '
Your Bargaining Style (English & Lynn, 1995)
The titles are designed to catch the immediate interest of users, already accustomed to a plethora of similar products of this kind in the business language and communication market. Evidently, the authors try to replicate real life business communication styles and choose topics that are relevant to students. To do so, they use language units with a special pragmatic load indicating high standards of training and achievement through words like ideal, satisfaction, the best and increasing, the extensive applied potential of the materials with words like awareness, possibilities, effective strategies, qualities, persuasion, bargaining style and stress, the educational and practical appeal of the topics studied by using company names such as BOS, and stressing their practical and international value by using phrases like across cultures and around the world.
As a rule, any discourse aiming to achieve a particular rhetorical effect uses different language
devices, lexical, grammatical, phonetic, and stylistic, that produce a synergetic effect, each mutually enhancing the other. Their overall semantic and pragmatic result is not just caused by the pure linear addition of semantic components but generates new meanings.
Mini-format texts may serve as an efficient means of achieving a desired communicative effect. However, as people's perception changes in the light of social trends and market fluctuations, teachers, writers, and linguists have to stay attuned to these changes in order to reflect contemporary lifestyle and ensure market demand.
Therefore, this study aims to identify and present some relevant markers of evolution and transformation within mini-format texts. For the purposes of this article, we focus on minitexts used for English language training, considering that English is currently the leading international language (Crystal, 2003).
At the same time, we need to examine whether the dynamic processes in educational discourse are adaptable enough not to cause structural and functional deregulation of educational discourse as a subsystem of English language and speech.
2. MATERIAL AND METHODS
The educational process in the sphere of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) training over the
by Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko and Alexandra V. Radyuk
last fifteen years differs substantially from that of the late 20th century, despite certain similarities. At the level of materials, we are no longer focusing on authentic or semi-authentic texts featuring native speakers from English speaking countries. Today, texts also include linguistic fragments featuring representatives of other ethnic-cultural communities using English as a foreign language. With English going global, teaching strategies have concentrated on how to teach 'international, generally received language, to adapt it to the needs of your society and at the same time to save its unicity' (Zerkina et al., 2015, p. 461).
The involvement of different countries' representatives in intercultural communication cannot but influence the interactive schemes of communication suggested by the authors of modern manuals intended for mastering English at different levels of proficiency (from elementary to advanced).
Another increasingly important factor in the epoch of globalisation is the importance of communication through the Internet and the World Wide Web, which has introduced its own technology and communication style, mainly in English, using algorithms and 'techno' phrases that are now in general use. The universal use of information technologies as a means of communication has placed new lexical and semantic demands on linguists, teachers, and
'Mini-format texts may serve as an efficient means of achieving a desired communicative effect '
textbook writers, requiring a review of educational standards and language training manuals which cannot ignore the spread of new communication styles and devices.
The use of information technologies in education should meet the following principles: correspondence of the aim of IT use to teaching purposes, complexity and systemacy, communicativeness and the situational factor, relevance and cognitive direction, adequacy, the use of computer aids as a learning tool, raising the level of difficulty, integrity of all learning activity forms. To illustrate modern trends in educational discourse, we propose to use the example of a modern course that use a range of socially relevant topics and introduce interesting innovations. The course is OUTCOMES, first published by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley in 2010. The linguistic illustrations in the present article are taken from the student's books in that series.
The problems discussed in the present paper predetermine the use of the following research methods: discourse functional (semantic and pragmatic) analysis, the descriptive method, and elements of cognitive analysis.
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3. STUDY AND RESULTS
The research focus upon educational texts of limited volume (minitexts) from OUTCOMES demonstrates their genre variety, on the one hand (weather reports, the data of sociological experiments, official data on the situation in the labour market, the wording of medical diagnoses and experimental stages, recommendations regulating behavioural patterns, song texts, poetic descriptions of the nature, analytical comments of mass media, etc.), and their interdiscursive character on the other, which implies the combination, or rather blending, of linguistic features typical of different discourses (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002).
The use of mini-format texts within educational discourse is quite common. However, the innovation in this case may be detected in the functional combination of linguocultural markers -language elements used as indicative signs which mark certain denotations and functions peculiar to discourse of a certain type and linguistic culture (Schiffrin, 1987).
The following example illustrates that educational discourse, when based on language from other media sources, includes fragments of mass-media, popular science, the Internet, political and other discourse types, and it is the advantage of this combination that allows us to avoid unilateral, simplified treatment of linguistic information and
permits the use of varied discourse types from different spheres of social life.
'Mongolia is known as 'the land of the horse', yet it's only very recently that the world's only truly wild horse, the takhi, has been <....> into the country. Horses have played an important role in the country's history, and even today, most Mongolian children learn to ride at the age of four or five. Indeed, the obsession with horses and horse riding is so great that the annual race for young riders is shown on national TV. Last seen in the wild in the 1960s, the takhi very nearly became extinct. However, takhi kept in zoos have been <....>. And their numbers have increased. These are now being released back in the wild, where scientists hope they will soon adapt to their new way of life' (Dellar & Walkley, 2010a, p. 79).
The fragment cited above uses a popular scientific register, supported by typical lexical markers on the one hand (obsession, extinct, released back, adapt) and the almost total absence of colloquial expressions on the other. The ethnomarker (takhi) in the text is accompanied by an explanatory note that is also a sign of popular scientific prose. The use of more or less complicated (for non-native speakers) grammatical structures, like passive constructions, is peculiar to the syntax of scientific journalism discourse (Mongolia is known; the annual race... is shown; these are now being released back). The logical sequence of the
by Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko and Alexandra V. Radyuk
information provided by the so-called 'water words' (indeed, however) and a limited volume of the educational text fragment with its specific arrangement intended for a wide range of readers, taken together, testify that the text under consideration may be regarded as a sample of popular scientific prose in English. But its inclusion in a coursebook and the manner of its presentation (in particular the task 'Insert the missing words') undoubtedly relates it to educational discourse, resulting in a sort of blended discursive phenomenon, or discourse interference, mixing different types of discourse in the same text.
Another example of interdiscursive interaction is a piece of correspondence e-mailed by an employee of a company to one of her colleagues. This miniformat text may be attributed both to Internet discourse, as it is an excerpt of correspondence via the Internet, and to domestic discourse, because it contains the characteristics of everyday conversation.
This passage represents an example of formal written language, yet it has some typical features of spoken language and it should be taken into consideration that the text under analysis is preceded by the following information: 'You are going to read an abstract from a romantic comedy called An Officer and a Gentleman by Annabella Stephens' (Dellar & Walkley, 2010b, p. 29):
Hey Sandra,
The latest news from the office: You're still not here, of course - very empty desk next to mine.
Really hope you get better soon. I'm missing having someone to chat to. Marian is still enemy number one. Awful - more later.
Today's fashion from Jilly: a huge, loose pink jersey which is big enough to camp in! Then, tight brown jeans with grey boots. Strange flower thing in the hair. "
Rick spoke today: U his first words so far this year, I think, apart from the usual sighs and nervous laughter while he does things to his computer. The words were 'coffee's rubbish'. I'm not sure whether this was a comment on the coffee I was making or general health advice. Anyway, I think you'll agree, it shows his communication skills are improving!!!
Ugly Boss: He's still useless and ugly - obviously. The hair from his nose is now about 3 cm long.
He's also angry with me ZZ - more later.
The interpretation of this mini-format text may also be offered in terms of discourse interference (or discourse blending). Comments on the jobs demonstrate the interaction of educational discourse with the discourse of fiction and, most
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importantly, the focus within the text of fiction here is on the minitext of a letter, which due to its lexical and syntactic properties may be a convincing example of online discourse interacting with the discourse of everyday communication. This assertion is supported by the following lexical, syntactic, and structural properties of the above minitext.
The vocabulary of the e-mail is presented by stylistically neutral linguistic units. No literary words or terms are used, which is characteristic of the texts belonging to everyday communication discourse.
The structural pattern of the letter resembles a plan-report drawn up in a very liberal form demonstrating once again that the style of the letter is typical of everyday communication.
The number of detected text punctuation errors (lack of commas), grammatical omission and simplification (very empty desk next to mine; Really hope you get better soon; Awful - more later, etc.) indicate a non-compliance with the usual rules for writing letters.
The application of text marked elliptical design is characteristic of oral, rather than written, communication (You're still not here, of course -very empty desk next to mine. Strange flower thing in the hair... ).
Irony is easily detected in the letter which may point to the friendly nature of communication between the interlocutors and it is also a sign of non-official correspondence.
Non-verbal text decoration - smileys and other pictures - points to the electronic origin of the letter and emphasises its affiliation with online discourse.
Learning materials of this kind are not used in classical language teaching manuals. Thus, both the above examples illustrate the evolutionary character of modern educational materials for teaching language, which is caused by the blending of different discursive types and by the impact of international varieties of discourse occurring in the globalising world. Moreover, the evolutionary development of modern English educational discourse is supported by the regular application of text units functioning as intercultural markers of effective communication containing both English and foreign language semantic elements.
Besides discursive lexical and structural features, we can also observe how concepts are actualised through educational discourse. The unique way each community conceptualises its language is inherent. Hence, each language expresses a unique picture of the world. For this reason, in training foreign language communication it is
by Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko and Alexandra V. Radyuk
important to show the variability of basic concepts forming the communicative space of modern language courses so that interlocutors of different nationalities can achieve adequate mutual understanding. This is an important aspect of successful intercultural communication.
The term 'concept' denotes 'a mental construct seen as mediating between a word and whatever it denotes or is used to refer to' (Matthews, 2007, p. 71). In other words, we may treat the notion of 'concept' as a holistic unity of ideas, images, and emotions connected with this or that word in human brains and potentially capable of stirring up some kind of response to certain situations, or, in a broader sense, to a communicative context, which involves the mental construct associated with a word.
However, specific situations usually involve some part or aspect of the concept more noticeably than others do. This leads to the need to identify specifically the type of person talking and his or her cultural background. For example, the writer in the extract above is making observations about colleagues (enemy number one - awful, useless and ugly) which are clearly uncomplimentary and maybe in the case of the ugly boss disobedient.
Learners need to know what kind of personality might write like that and whether the comments made are 'disobedient'. In more traditionalist
societies, the perception of 'obedience' might be opposite to that encountered in liberal societies, where perceived disobedience might simply be seen as irony and irreverence. Therefore, to achieve efficient interaction with target counterparts (as in teacher-student or author-reader relations) you have to take into account their conceptual sphere, or framework.
Within the OUTCOMES course, eight basic concepts are singled out, making up the nucleus of its conceptual framework. They are NATIONAL IDENTITY, MEDICINE, BUSINESS, MASS MEDIA, STUDIES, ENVIRONMENT, SHOPPING, FOOD.
Each level of the course supports conceptual continuity and reflects each concept moving from simple to a more sophisticated representation.
Take, for instance, the topic of Education. In the Elementary stage its central concept, STUDIES, is represented within the framework of simple verbal units such as Things in Class, names of subjects to learn, commonly used characteristics of the learning process and colloquial phrases (How's the course going?), initial information on a primary school in London and education in Russia.
In the Pre-Intermediate stage, the concept of STUDIES is represented by more diverse markers grouped by their semantic structures. The first group, like the previous learning level, comprises
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subject names, for example:
Listen to how each of the school subjects in the box below is pronounced. Mark the stresses in each one (Dellar & Walkley, 2010b, p. 70):
Geography, Mathematics, Sociology, Economics, Chemistry, PE, History, Physics, RE, Biology, Latin, IT
The second group contains lexical units naming objects, actions, facts and realities connected with academic life which already include some more specific and even abstract notions such as a college, a course, exams, finals, homework, a primary school, a PhD, plagiarism, a secondary school, a subject, a university, to do (a PhD), to fail (finals), to get (good grades), to graduate (from university), to leave (school), to study for, to take (a year out). For example:
I didn't study for the test. If I....... the grades I
want, I... my first-choice university! (not / get, not / get into) (Dellar & Walkley, 2010b, p. 71).
The third group is made up of common nouns and verbs representing the topic of Computers and the Internet, such as: a blog, chat rooms, an email, Messenger, a PowerPoint Presentation, software, the Web, websites, to search (for the information), to spend (time on the computer), to upload (photos
onto the Internet), to use (computers), to visit (websites). For example:
Vocabulary. Computers and the Internet A. Match the verbs with the best ending.
1. chat a. chat rooms
2. listen b. with friends on Messenger
3. visit c. a blog
4. organise d. to music
5. write e. your finances
(Dellar & Walkley, 2010b, p. 71).
Another peculiar semantic subgroup is formed by lexical units of computing that bear negative pragmatic connotations. Thus, the following verb combinations bring out the idea of the harmful influence of computers and the Internet on students' lives, studies, health and psychology, for example: to cause problems, to do harm, to make cheating easier, to provoke plagiarism, to be addicted to, to bull, to cry about loads of homework, to feel mixed about, to get complaints, to get stressed.
'The incredible growth of the Internet over recent years has caused problems for parents and teachers ... Parents can now use sophisticated controls to stop kids accessing the sites that might do them harm, whilst new software helps teachers
by Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko and Alexandra V. Radyuk
'This again confirms the trend towards the extension of modern English educational discourse boundaries'
to detect copied work immediately...' (Dellar & Walkley, 2010b, p. 72).
In addition, the Pre-lntermediate course develops critical thinking and reflective skills by raising problematic issues, as in A Web of Lies? Such texts are highly informative and stimulate serious discussion of socially relevant questions, which in itself raises students' self-esteem.
So, we can conclude that including social and cultural markers as a dynamic, evolving and open subsystem of English lexis, is not confined to a strictly academic domain but strives to encompass a wider representation of real life.
Along with the trend towards movement away from the strictly national contexts discussed earlier the phenomenon of today's linguistic varieties in educational discourse testifies to the fact that these discourse types present an open and dynamically evolving subsystem of language and speech. Minitexts function as one of the significant tools of the process.
In view of the above, the thesis that modern
English educational discourse has an open character provided by a synergetic combination of various identical national and cultural markers increases in validity. The ability of modern English educational discourse to adapt and transform conceptual clusters in the process of training (teaching and learning) is frequently accompanied by the tendency to implement the basic concepts under consideration (NATIONAL IDENTITY, SOCIETY, STUDIES, etc.) at all levels (elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate or advanced) taking into account the thematic diversity of verbal markers. This again confirms the trend towards the extension of modern English educational discourse boundaries. It should also be remarked that with the increase in complexity of each level of student's books, the tendency to focus upon denationalisation of the educational space due to the use of specific verbal and nonverbal markers is becoming more prominent.
Considering the requirements of the didactic arrangement of the training materials the topical principles according to which the units are grouped in the OUTCOMES series, as well as in other textbooks, are worth mentioning. The overwhelming list of topics includes a wide range of information about the most significant aspects of social, cultural, political, domestic and popular scientific life of people throughout the world, such as Entertainment, Sightseeing, Things You Need, Society, Sports and Interests, Accommodation,
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Nature, Law and Order, Careers and Studying, Socialising, Transport and Travel, Health and Medicine, Life Events, Banks and Money, Food, Business. The topical diversity of the subject matter - painting, music, travel, world cuisine, popular sports in different parts of the planet, rules of business and excerpts from literary works of famous poets and writers attest to the influence of globalisation on educational discourse and the need to reflect a global, not just a British or US culture.
The examples described in the previous section confirm the hypothesis of dialectical unity between seemingly non-compliant processes within educational discourse - dynamism and evolution on the one hand, and preservation of its structural and functional systemacy and succession on the other. It is important to recognise that for users in any given environment the exposure of learners to a wide range of cultural experience through minitexts amounts to a constructive transformation of educational discourse in line with current social movements and the collective consciousness (world knowledge rather than just UK or US knowledge). In this respect, innovative trends are seen as upgrading the state of educational discourse.
As has already been mentioned, topics are universal, showing no particular concentration on specific countries or cultural trends. On the
'Verbalised precedent items contribute to a more adequate interpretation of details concerning national identity and to a better understanding of linguocultural facts in general'
contrary, the authors seek to highlight the specificity of a certain concept implementation in the life of different countries. This is indirectly confirmed by the titles of the texts: Con-fusion Food, The Trans-Siberian Railway, The Camino de Santiago, Laying Down the Law, Bullfighting -Dying a Slow Death, Common Wealth Economics for a Crowded Planet, The Electoral System, Bureaucrats Back Down on Tan Ban, etc.
The educational information is presented in the format of texts for reading, tables, graphs, drawings and diagrams, a traditional way of giving information and it should be remarked that tables and charts frequently serve to reduce the amount of lexical resources needed to illustrate the grammatical rules and to give the information a more reliable and streamlined appearance.
The international character of these and other training materials is also emphasised by an extensive use of the items of information which are characterised as 'precedent' and which are usually considered to be the basic elements of the
by Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko and Alexandra V. Radyuk
manual's cognitive platform. A lot of precedent names and phenomena aim to provide additional opportunities for learners to get better acquainted with the traditions, everyday life and cultural events relevant in different countries, which contributes to successful communication. For example:
The Paul Cezanne University in Marseille. It's one of the oldest universities in France.
She won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2003.
We've been rehearsing The Rite of Spring recently for a concert.
The oldest and largest space launch site in the world is the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Elsewhere, a New York-based company called Metronaps ...
I saw an advertisement for the Voluntary Service Overseas and applied.
Verbalised precedent items contribute to a more adequate interpretation of details concerning national identity and to a better understanding of linguocultural facts in general. In view of this, the process of decoding not only British or American precedent names and phenomena but the precedent items or ethnomarkers related to other
cultures is especially important as internationalisation spreads rapidly through the English educational discourse. Here are some more examples.
Breakfast in Bulgaria includes tea or strong coffee, sesame bread and butter, cheese made from sheep's milk, honey, olives, boiled eggs and - most importantly - kiselo mlyko, a local yoghurt.
There's usually some strong local coffee as well -or perhaps some agua dulce (sweet water), which is made from sugar cane juice.
...the Aztecs ruled in what is now Mexico.
The M6 motorway between junctions 5 and 6 is completely closed for repairs.
The development of valid methodological schemes aims at penetrating the very heart (essence) of Modern English educational discourse, whose ability to focus upon the most important worldwide known events and notions is recognised by the scientific community. The attractive force of the educational discourse is particularly evident in the units from recently published English language teaching textbooks in which the topics of Internet communication or environment and medical instrumentation, national identity and human nature are discussed in a way which to some degree reinforces a
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common lexical and grammatical space. As we see from the above examples of contemporary English-language educational discourse a large number of texts are based on themes revealing the features of different countries and the cultural characteristics of their representatives.
The authors of OUTCOMES and similar courses pay special attention to the concept of national identities beyond the central Anglophone sphere of the UK and the US. The reason is rooted in the impact of globalisation, since, on the one hand, the teaching material is multinational, on the other hand, it highlights the unique characteristics of world cultures (Ladhari et al., 2015).
After analysing the content of different level coursebooks we can state that the implementation of the concept of national identity is inextricably linked not only with the national culture, but also with the state, the political system and general economic issues. In coursebooks, the photographs of real political leaders, representatives of culture and sports are widely used as illustrative material. They provide an additional means of establishing the concept of national identity, as attention is focused on actual information provided in the texts for reading and listening. This contributes to the convergence of the educational process and the surrounding reality and represents a productive and constructive trend in education (Baydak et al., 2015).
The study of the basic conceptual platform of OUTCOMES allows us to carry out a linguistic analysis of the active vocabulary units, acting as markers of basic concepts, such as:
Medicine - mental health problems, depression and schizophrenia.
Business - the corporate ladder, how to set high standards, how to check the availability of product.
Mass media - news, media, events, danger, accidents.
Studies - preschool, IT, higher education degrees, school attendance.
Environment - cities, places, travel, nature, the natural world.
As well as everyday activities, such as:
Shopping - shops, things you need, food and eating.
The information, in turn, make it possible to confirm the thematic continuity and evolution of the lexical material representing the concept, changing the level according to the stage of language proficiency, as well as by increasing the diversity of the thematic markers of the concept.
Minitexts in modern educational discourse: Functions and trends by Antonina A. Kharkovskaya, Evgeniya V. Ponomarenko and Alexandra V. Radyuk
4. CONCLUSION
Thematic diversity of nuclear concepts coupled with the continuity and interdiscursive nature of mini-format texts reflect some of the main trends in the evolution of contemporary English-language discourse in the context of globalisation and international integration. The most demonstrative functions and trends in the evolution of educational discourse are:
1. Today we observe accumulating signs of English educational discourse denationalisation through the absorption of foreign and foreigner-orientated elements, which is an inevitable consequence of English 'going global'.
2. Mini-format texts, or minitexts, are an important part of educational discourse. However, they also demonstrate typical features of the classical standards of textuality and pragmatic potential.
3. Educational discourse offers a vivid example of
'Educational discourse offers a vivid example of a universal linguistic process of the blending of different discursive types, resulting in educational discourse mixing features of other discourse types'
a universal linguistic process of the blending of different discursive types, resulting in educational discourse mixing features of other discourse types.
4. Mini-format texts in educational discourse reflect its dynamic evolution along with its structural and functional systemacy and succession. Educational discourse is being transformed in line with changing social processes and the modification of collective consciousness. Innovative trends in educational discourse development in English act as a model for all language training materials.
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