Discipline Of Computer Science Essay

Vocabulary shift in computer sciences

Mariia Kibel 0444740

Janne Karhu 0241143

1 Introduction

English has a rich vocabulary that is inherited from many languages. Therefore there is often two or more choices to express an action of occurrence. However, language is not static but continually developing form of expression. (Zobel, 1997) Especially academic reporting, regardless of the discipline, requires usually more formal vocabulary than common spoken or written language. Also the observation that certain type of words occur more frequently in academic texts than in other texts is accepted. (Bombardó, Fuentes, Solés, Pérez, 2010; Hyland, 2009)

Scientific results, no matter how important they are, will not be understood until they are

Discipline behind this revolution, namely computer science, is relatively young discipline that has evolved rapidly from its beginning in the end of 1940s. Even if practical applications of computer sciences can be seen nowadays everywhere, in the background, huge amount of variety scientific research is conducted. The discipline itselfs is a broad including theoretical studies, experimental methods and engineering, just to mention a few. (Jennings, 2005) According to CSAB (1997), discipline of computer sciences can be defined as:

“Computer science is a discipline that involves the understanding and design of computers and computational processes. In its most general form it is concerned with the understanding of information transfer and transformation. Particular interest is placed on making processes efficient and endowing them with some form of intelligence. The discipline ranges from theoretical studies of algorithms to practical problems of implementation in terms of computational hardware and

In addition to computer sciences, technical writing takes place in any discipline or industry where complex ideas and processes need to be effectively communicated (Bombardó, Fuentes, Solés, Pérez, 2010). In science, technical writing is a style of writing used especially in scientific or mathematical disciplines in which clear and concise descriptions, explanations, or instructions are required. Technical writing uses plenty of tables, charts, and figures in order to organize and display information and usually requires professional or academic knowledge to be fully understood. Thus, the main purpose of the technician style is to inform or explain certain thing for specific audience. (Zobel, 1997)

Vocabulary in technical writing

There are many ways in which idea can be expressed in English (Zobel, 1997). Addressing writing as a skill requires breaking down writing into smaller sets of skills including grammar, cohesion, style and punctuation (UTU, 2014). Vocabulary has seen as one of the main element of a style in academic writing, especially at the word and phrase level, to master an effective style (Bombardó et al., 2010). Traditionally, English vocabulary has seen as falling in following four groups (Nation, 2001):

High frequency words covering about 80 percent of academic