Overcoming Challenges in English for Aviation Maintenance: Technical Publications Selection for the Construction of a Corpus and Its Use to Teach Language Aspects Considering Learners Needs

Abstract

Aviation English and Corpus Linguistics have been put together and focused by some investigations especially those regarding Aeronautical English (the language used between pilots and air traffic controllers in international radiotelephony communications). However, English used in aviation maintenance, specifically in written documents, has not been as much researched. This paper briefly explains the main concepts considering Aviation English and presents—based on previous researches—aircraft maintenance professionals’ needs and regulatory agencies’ requirements related to language proficiency. Afterwards, it summarizes information about the most important technical publications for aircraft maintenance and describes the compilation of the Corpus of documents related to aviation maintenance (CoDoRAM). At the end, some ways the corpus can be used to teach vocabulary and grammar in English are pointed out. Although corpus compilation and analysis have been proved to be valuable for research and instructional purposes, most of publications encompass English for academic purposes teaching context. For that reason, this is a way to inspire new projects related to English used in aviation maintenance and the use of corpora in English for specific purposes classes.