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This paper addresses the problem of inadequate educational materials for the effective training of nonnative speakers in the professional English of the scientific community. The paper claims that one cause of this inadequacy is lack of proper linguistic research based on suitable linguistic research tools. The development of a major international corpus of professional English in the sciences and other fields is described as a significant resource for solving this problem, illustrated with a specific research project examining the use of we in general English from the Corpus of Professional English. Results reveal the value of well-designed dedicated corpora for addressing the specific English instructional needs of non-native speakers of English in the professions.

Teaching styles in science and engineering instruction were compared by analysing corpora of transcripts of lectures delivered in English and Japanese at leading universities in the United States and Japan, respectively. Our findings were compatible with cultural differences related to power distance and field dependence, which have been reported in the literature. Teaching styles seem to simultaneously result from the cultural context as well as reinforce it. Science and engineering instruction in the Japanese educational context tends to reflect and reinforce a personalised transmission of knowledge style, while instruction in the American context tends to match and reinforce learning styles characterised by impersonal, inductive thinking.