Classroom campaigns: a focus on the development of military English teaching materials and methods

Understanding and mastering military English has become an essential part in communicating efficiently within a range of professional and intercultural national and international contexts, e.g. military, law enforcement, diplomacy and negotiation, governmental (Footitt and Kelly 2012). Due to the relevance of their activities and actions, the ability of these professionals to acquire skills in and notions of military English - which are based on real and changing learning and communicative needs - quickly has led to the development and proliferation of flexible and consistently updated traditional and online courses. Such courses may be further divided into unique STANAG 6001 levels of linguistic competence but the feature that sets this teaching apart from that of other professional communities is its close connection to military culture and values (Hofstede and Minkov 2010), which create a strong bond among the members of the professional community. Furthermore, military English learning material have evolved from being focused on the most immediately identifiable levels of linguistic specificity, i.e. lexical and terminological, to encompassing all levels of language acquisition and learning (phonetics, morphology, syntax, pragmatics), textual genres and even specific structures (e.g. word collocations and phrasal verbs). The present study therefore proposes an in-depth analysis of a series of textbooks on military English, and more precisely of changes and peculiarities in the didactic focus, strategic lexical choices of material and exercises, and the manner in which language and military notions in the textbooks will enable the path of the field’s development to be traced and investigated.