English for Science and Technology (EST) generally refers to English used in scientific publications, papers, textbooks, technical reports and academic lectures, etc. It is used to describe the physical and natural phenomena, their processes, properties, characteristics, laws and application in productive activities. As an outcome of the rapid development of science and technology after World War Two, EST initially emerged in the 1950s. Since the 1970s, together with the shift development of science and technology as well as the popularity of the English language, “EST has developed into an important variety of modern English in many countries” , as pointed out by Qian Sanqing. Due to its main functions of statement, description, exposition, definition, classification, instruction, comparison, exemplification, inference and reasoning, EST has achieved its own language characteristics that contribute to the formal, concise, precise, impersonal and economical style of scientific documents. The paper explores the characteristics of EST through various examples at such language levels as the lexical, syntactic and rhetoric levels, aiming to arouse the awareness of such characteristics among ST workers so as to improve their use of EST for communication.

‍English for Science and Technology (EST) generally refers to English used in scientific publications, papers, textbooks, technical reports and academic lectures, etc. It is used to describe the physical and natural phenomena, their processes, properties, characteristics, laws and application in productive activities. As an outcome of the rapid development of science and technology after World War Two, EST initially emerged in the 1950s. Since the 1970s, together with the shift development of science and technology as well as the popularity of the English language, “EST has developed into an important variety of modern English in many countries” , as pointed out by Qian Sanqing. Due to its main functions of statement, description, exposition, definition, classification, instruction, comparison, exemplification, inference and reasoning, EST has achieved its own language characteristics that contribute to the formal, concise, precise, impersonal and economical style of scientific documents. The paper explores the characteristics of EST through various examples at such language levels as the lexical, syntactic and rhetoric levels, aiming to arouse the awareness of such characteristics among ST workers so as to improve their use of EST for communication.‍