Copyright © 2018 Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (4.35) (2018) 844-847 International Journal of Engineering & Technology Website: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJET Research paper The Language of Civil Engineering: Corpus-based Studies on Vocational School Textbooks in Malaysia Sivadass Thiruchelvam 1 , Ng Yu Jin 2* , Chong Seng Tong 3 , Azrul Ghazali 4 & Norhayati Bte Mat Husin 5 Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Selangor, 43000, Malaysia *Corresponding author E-mail: yujin@uniten.edu.my Abstract Engineering textbooks are specialized in nature, containing technical terminology which can be challenging to learners. For better com- prehension of engineering concepts, there is a need for bridging the language gap by focusing on the frequently used and important engi- neering vocabulary. Most English Language Teaching (ELT) teachers do not necessary possess the specialist language in the field of engineering which can be rather confusing to them. It has been reported that Malaysian engineering textbooks (syllabus) were not written based on any word lists or corpora. Hence, learners require the language needed in the field of engineering – English for Engineering Purposes (EEP). To meet this requirement, specialised engineering textbooks were studied to specify the meaningful lexical components which can facilitate learners to assimilate into their discourse community. In the field of civil engineering, there is no exception that learners too need to understand the composition of words found in their textbooks. This study shows the exact word lists and suggests what learners and teachers can do to learn the “language of civil engineering”. Keywords: Language of civil engineering; word list; terminology; vocational school; textbooks 1. Introduction Engineering students need be given exposure to actual learning materials in order to help them to be associated with their dis- course community. Specific field students are believed to lack exposure to technical and sub-technical words in their respective fields [1]. Furthermore, these students are typically exposed to commonplace English only, not the kind of English that they need to assist them perform better in tertiary institutions (technical field) or even at workplace [16]. Thus, they want to be equipped with more specialized English like Engineering English or English for Engineering Purposes. When students enroll in an engineering programme, they have to be taught the engineering language that professional engineers use daily in their workplace which is quite similar to those of the es- sential textbooks. Once they are accustomed to the engineering language, they will have a sense of belonging to the engineering discourse community [45]. Learning is most effective when stu- dents can apply what they understand parallel to the relevance of the content material as well as their capability to interpret the meaning. It is vital for instructors to have adequate facts and know-how about the types of vocabulary that will be taught to students in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or English for Specific Purposes (ESP) context, in order to amplify and en- hance students’ vocabulary knowledge in the subject matter. However, some instructors from social science backgrounds would find it hard to teach the technical phrases to college or uni- versity students as they are not experts in the subject matter [3, 47]. In Malaysia, the introduction of mathematics and sciences in Eng- lish in 2003 aimed at assisting students to cope better into their discourse community. With regards to the creation of English for Science and Technology (EST) in the Malaysian context, it was once observed that it did not provide adequate assistance to stu- dents’ comprehension of technical and semi -technical words in the respective fields. The “EST textbooks do not cover the language needs of each Science subject and the words provided in the vo- cabulary lists were insufficient to help learners cope with the complex and confusing scientific vocabulary”(p.254. [23]. Thus, in order to bridge the gap, a specialised corpus is needed to identi- fy the “anatomy” of the materials created for a specific subject matter (civil engineering materials). A corpus can be defined as an affiliation or a pool of texts often referred to as lexis. In linguistic terms, a corpus is a series of texts which can be converted into an electronic database, which means that it must be machine-readable [46]. A corpus can describe nu- merous patterns of how phrases are used. For instance, collocation is one component that can be examined [48]. Loading and distri- bution of phrases is another aspect researchers can or should focus [27]. The corpus for English in a specific discipline needs to have a series of words and it is apparent to find a small corpus repre- senting a unique part of a language [20; 24]. By scrutinizing a corpus of a particular field, educators can discover the nature of the language used in the discipline more authentically [7]. In Ma- laysia, research on the introduction of a scientific English corpus has not been extensively carried out, particularly when it comes to the corpus creation using the textbooks [21]. “To our knowledge, there is hardly any corpus-based engineering material developed in the context of Malaysia” (p.1279) [41]. Hence, it is integral to have a specialised engineering corpus in the context of Malaysia. Textbook is generally considered as ‘a misfit in the learning- teaching environment’ [27]. Many studies were carried out in the locality of English Language Teaching (ELT) material in compari- son to which it indicated that most textbooks are frequently devel- oped in an ad hoc manner. Looking from the perspective of cor- pus-based studies, these research indicated that the textbooks were developed through a manner of which it includes intuition and