English for Specific Purposes, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

¡Descarga English for Specific Purposes y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES UNIT 1: WHAT IS ESP? ESP TEACHING 1) Tool for communication (set of rules): if your priority in your ESP course is to teach your students how to communicate or make them learn vocabulary, as a teacher, you are going to “overcook” certain pronunciation mistakes that do not prevent oral communication. This, of course, when following ELF methodology, and if we are not native speakers (teachers). 2) Language needs: there are several levels of needs, so the teacher must make a “needs analysis” that includes: • Context limits: amount of hours • The course will last • The student will denote after the lessons. Space where the course takes place (size, distractions…) -in –house: courses / language training. Changing the setting is important. If the course takes place in the same work office after a workday there’ll be distractions, but if it is set in another room/ place, the learners disconnect. • Language: take into account if they are going to talk to other people, have direct contact or only write reports… • Present situation: how skilfully the student can use the language, what can they do or cannot do, what their lacks are. • Target situation: establish a goal and priorities (most important things they need to know in order to achieve that goal). • Learners: how they learn. You must adapt your material and methodology to the majority and take advantage of their abilities and peculiarities to teach them. 3) Emphasis on practical outcomes: it is very important to quantify results, establishing a number of objectives for each lesson and the whole course and covering them in order to show results. Establishing 2 or 3 objectives/ goals, doing some activities and proving at the end that you have covered those goals will prove the effectiveness of your course. 4) ESP vs. EGP (blurred lines): where does one end and the other start? In many ESP courses, some EGP material may be need, so it is important to provide some information in order to direct the student to that material, but not using course time to do that is better (make them do it as homework). If th problem persists, it may be needed to denote some classroom time to solve it. 5) Specific focus: very specific priorities to achieve specific goals. 6) Analysis of real life communication events (oral/written) ENL? ELF? EFL? What we find online is not enough, so we must resort to communities of practice (people who have similar characteristics, interests, goals in common, who need to communicate and interact because There are more people who speak English as a second language than as a Native Language. People who speak English as a foreign language are more than those who speak it as a second language. Means: • More money. • More students to teach. • There are less Native speakers than non-native speakers teaching English. UNIT 2: ANALYSING NEEDS INTRODUCTION: What are needs? Wants, desires, demands, expectations, motivations, lacks, constraints and requirements. What are “needs analysis”? We refer to language or linguistic needs. “Needs analysis” is procedures for collecting information about learner’s needs and methods that can be used to identify those needs. When was “needs analysis” introduced into teaching? It started to be introduced in the 1960s, through the ESP movement, and nowadays, this idea is becoming more popular due to CLIL (particularly in Secondary schools), but not only in terms of methodology, also in terms of research. The most important factor to take into account is that the needs analysis must include: Page 19 – process involves… THE PURPOSE OF NEEDS ANALYSIS 1. Find out what language skills a learner needs, what type of communication they will face. Identify the type of language that will take place once your student/s finish the course and take them where they need to be. 2. To help determine if an existing course addresses the needs of potential students. Make sure if a course you are already running is working. Maybe the level is too high or too low. 3. To determine which students are more in need of training particular language skills. If you will be paid well, why not giving extra material to some students with difficulties? (To do it out of the class). If the majority of your students have the same problem, you can denote some class-time to solve it. 4. To identify a change of direction that people in a reference group feel important to take. You have already created some contents that your students do not find useful or interesting. If it’s part of a large strategy, keep using it and you will eventually persuade your students, but if it’s not, you should change the direction of the course. Maybe you can: • Ask someone to observe and take notes of the sessions. • Give surveys, tests, make interviews… • Ask for your student’s opinions. 5. To identify a gap between what students are able to do and what they need to be able to do. What their skills are (where they are) What they want/need to do (where you need to take them) Be realistic with the objectives and priorities you set and the target situation the company wants to reach or has established. If you only have a few hours, you will not reach it, so set priorities and reach your objectives. BENCHMAIK – Strategy in which you invite people from other companies. Of course, you only show a few procedures, you do not want to reveal your methodology. When you are invited, you can use what you saw as a model or patron in order to find inspiration. 6. To collect information about a particular problem learners are experiencing in order to solve it and present (quantify) results at the very end. Maybe you are focusing on some skills (oral…) and you notice they are not improving, so you need to identify why (maybe the resources you are using are not good enough). • Needs also include students’ rights: identify the lacks they have, but take into account their culture, political and personal characteristics, etc. in order to plan activities and objectives that are realistic and purposeful. (Linse, 1993) • Immediate needs: • Suggestapaedia • Audio-lingual 1. Someone teaches you by translating all the time what he/she is saying. The interlanguage is the language in which you translate things. 2. It was used in the past; people could read and understand English, but could not produce anything. They used a structure as a patron in order to write, but this repetition exercise could not improve their bad communicative skills. 3. It mimics the natural way in which babies acquire language. You use your linguistic competence to produce sentences mechanically. It is a long process, but works better than the structural method. Bad writing and spelling skills remain. 4. It is the most extended method, based on teaching the language so that the student can learn certain structures or vocabulary depending on what they are going to use (the necessary skills needed for a purpose/situation). – Most popular method. 5. Someone hypnotizes you, and after that, exposes you to some videos, so that you can learn more easily. 6. Same base as the structural method; you repeat what you listen in order to create sentences, but they are not spontaneous. WHAT ARE NEEDS? 1. Linguistic deficiency/gap. 2. Something your students do not know, but are going to learn thanks to your course. • Planning an ESL curriculum involves… • Identifying students’ needs. • Enable them to examine and shape their own role in the curriculum. Curriculum Syllabus Language program What you are going to develop in each course.Your several courses • Empowering the user: by doing a “needs analysis” through a survey f. ex., you are empowering your students, because in a way you are “letting” them “select” the material they need or want to know. • Learner’s survey: your students answer some questions related to the type of knowledge they need to have (is what kind of situations they will be involved in the future). After it, you need to modify your syllabus in order to cover those needs, so in a way you are letting them “modify” it. Problem: if you have created a tailor-made course, you cannot re-use the material you have created “has” another group of students. THE USERS OF NEEDS ANALYSIS a- Large scale needs analysis: curriculum officers in the ministry of education, teachers, learners, writers, testing personnel, staff of tertiary institutions, other stakeholders (people who are affected (at stake with) by the actions you conduct, people involved). b- Small scale needs analysis: they are more common, but the results can only be analized by a teacher or program coordinator. • ESP Stakeholders: • Language learners/ Potential language learners. • Policy makers. • Teachers. • Academics • Employers. • Vocational training specialists. • Parents • Influential individuals and pressure groups / Publishing companies (CUP – Cambridge University Press) THE TARGET POPULATION We must consider 2 important items: 1. Subcategory of respondents: students who are currently enrolled in a foreign language course; previously enrolled but no longer study a language; have never studied a foreign course. 2. Important issue in determining the target population: Sampling – involves asking a portion of potential population instead of the total. ADMINISTERING THE NEEDS ANALYSIS Who will administer, collect and analyse the results? In theory, this job is performed by an assistant, colleague in different departments, students who piloted the survey, academic staff of the university, secretarial support… but… Actually, the teacher is the one in charge of creating the survey, collecting different information, comparing and analysing the results. 4. Meetings: • Advantages: They are better in terms of time They allow to collect a lot of information in a short period. People can debate their ideas. • Disadvantages: They are impressionistic (imprecise info.) Obtain very subjective information. There may be more ideas from unspoken members. They are not private, so there may be people that do not want to say some things. 5. Observation: • Advantages: You get to know the learner’s behaviour in a target situation, just by paying attention. • Disadvantages: They may not perform well if they know they are being observed. Your students may not let you access to the information you need to know. You need a specialized-training observer. It takes a lot of time to analyse results. 6. Collecting learner language samples: it consist of collecting samples (dowments, oral texts, recorded conversations…) in order to understand the type of communicative situations that your future students may face (target situation). • Advantages: You get reliable and precise material. You can get written or oral documents by simulations or role plays. You can test their abilities in different domains by achievement tests. • Disadvantages: It is difficult to collect these samples. Some companies are reluctant to give this kind of information to you. job-related • Performance tests Tests on task-related – (situations) 7. Task analysis: analyse several tasks that the learners carry out relating to their future occupational or educational setting. • Related to: • PBL: (Project / Problem Based Learning) • TBL (task Based Learning): You learn something related to the course through a task, not a final project. • It has to do with how effective your activities are: • 1st task – they must do / solve. • 2nd task/ survey – to assess if the 1st task was covered. 8. Case studies: you study the process for a specific case you need to learn, but someone else has already done it for you. Then, you apply it to your own notes or research information. This analysis of available information must be used as a last resource. • Advantages: You save a lot of time by using the information from a case that someone has already analysed. You can get some ideas or conclusions that are set. • Disadvantages: If you re-use someone else’s materials, your course will not be tailor-made. c- Some changes needed: degree of importance of needs. / Immediate or longer-term needs. / More consultation (discussion) needed. d- The goal of analysis is to bring meaning to the obtained information. e- Take various views into account: learner’s view; academics’ view; employers’ view, teachers’ view. f- The function of the result of needs analysis: 1- Provide the basis for evaluation. 2- Offer the basis for setting goals, objectives. 3- Assist with developing tests. 4- Help with the selection of proper teaching methods. 5- Provide the basis for developing a syllabus and using materials. 6- Provide other information used as part of a course. UNIT 3: SPECIALIST DISCOURSE INTRODUCTION • Discourse analysis is defined as… a) Concerned with language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence / utterance – Pragmatics. b) Concerned with the interrelationships between language and society. c) Concerned with the interactive / dialogic properties of everyday communication. • Specialist Discourse Analysis: study of language use in a specific field. • Text or discourse analysis? • Text: any kind of communication “recorded”. It can be written, oral or not-written, but it’s still a text. Text vs. document. Ex.: recorded interview. • Genre: group of texts that share certain linguistic similarities (context, questions, answers, opinions…) • Discourse: analysis of different genres. Specialist discourse analysis analysis of different genres in specific fields. Discourse analysis implies genre analysis and it implies text analysis. • Multimodality: when we communicate by using different ways of communication, combining them. Ex.: A video that shows some texts (+ voice over). To show a photo and talk about it. • Text analysis: What you do in linguistic needs analysis (written or oral texts). Interpretation is based on linguistic evidence. SPECIALIST DISCOURSE ANALYSIS • Discourse analysis = EGP • Specialist Discourse Analysis = ESP. How texts relate to contexts of situation and culture in the occupational / academic or professional field of choice. How texts are produced as a social practice in a specific field. What texts tell us about happenings, what people think, believe, etc. in a specific field. How texts represent ideology (power struggle…) How a text is delivered. TEXT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS • Text analysis is the study of formal linguistic devices that distinguish a text from random sentences. • It takes from 3 to 10 years to conduct an ethnographic study, so it takes a long time. • How? Interviews, collect data/documents, narrative accounts (people recording themselves), and what they mean to the participants. Ex: NY Public Library. • Process of an ethnographic study: 1. Organize and prepare the data. 2. Read through all the data. 3. Categorizing responses. b) Genre Analysis: • Started by professor Swales in the 1990’s, faster to conduct. • Genres are types / groups of texts from a specific field. • All texts in a particular genre have a common function(s) and often use similar linguistic features. For example: e-mails, written medical reports, negotiations, telephoning (recorded phone conversations…) • Genre label is the name a community gives to the text type they use. • A genre is basically the ways things are done by a community of practice through written or spoken discourse. • Genre analysis is designed to analyse the patterns underlying a genre (text types). c) Corpus Analysis: • A corpus is a collection of authentic written or spoken texts available electronically. Examples: VOICE – records conversations of people in a context of ELF. Ex.: merge in/at/on. MICASE: Michigan Inst. Corpus Analysis… ELFA: English as a Foreign Language for Academic (Purposes). • Used to analyse specific language features of a particular community of practice and to contrast variations from the standard across corpuses. PREZI (Campus) ESP • Target situation Analysis: understanding the context where English will be used in the learner’s professional future (tasks, activities conducted in English…) • Present Situation Analysis: what students can and cannot do in relation to the target situation. • Learner Factor Analysis: student’s motivation, student’s level, learning process, type of student… • Teaching Context Analysis: resources, time, realistic assessing what the ESP course can offer. Encouragement helps students learn faster than criticism. “Ok, I like this, but have you considered this other thing?” / “This is good, but this is not so well…”/ (you give an ex.) + “Could you give me a similar example?” • Discourse analysis: Genre Analysis & Text Analysis Ethnography, genre Analysis, Corpus Analysis. UNIT 4: DEVELOPING THE CURRICULUM SYLLABUS VS. CURRICULUM DESIGN: Syllabus: • List of units / topics you are going to follow. • Description of the content of a course of instruction and lists of what will be taught and tested. Ex.: syllabus for a speaking course. Architecture: bases of a building Technical vocabulary Word “foundation”: Academic context: year bf. academy Make-up: liquid face makeup • Semi-technical vocabulary: used in general language, but has a higher frequency of use / occurrence in the specialist discourse of professional life. Ex. Words “cover letters”, “e-mails”, “essays”, “save” Semi-technical vocabulary Words “cover letters” “e-mails”, “essays”, “save” TASK ANALYSIS • Task vs. activity: a task has to have a main purpose. Actions that students will have to perform in their professional future. • What is the main communicative purpose of the task? The answer comes from the needs analysis: what do you want your students to do after they are able to solve the task. Ex. Write emails professionally, talk to the clients… (target situation analysis) • Which of the tour skills does the task require? Speaking, writing, listening or reading. • Are the preliminary and follow-up tasks involved? The preliminary and follow-up tasks must be related to the task and help to comprehend it / revise the contents included. • What language functions can be expected to play a role in the task? Do you need your students to agree, disagree, express their opinions, summarize an idea…while doing the task? To complete your task you need to teach them to complete that function. Ex. Architecture task (purpose) describe a project prior activities vocabulary, grammar, discourse markers… • What type of learning methodology (learning you want to promote: TBL, PBL, Collaborative learning, autonomous learning) does this task involve? • Teaching methodologies: • Communicative teaching / approach (the most popular one) • Grammar-translation • Structural • Audio-lingual • Natural In some cases, we combine teaching methodologies and also learning methods. • What other skills can be developed with this task? (computer skills, negotiation skills, organizational skills…) this is known as interdisciplinary learning. Netiquette: when you learn how to behave online. • What types of texts does the task involve? Oral or written texts /communication. • Where can these texts be found? Videos in youtube /VIMEO, glossary, pdf, activities, powerpoint presentations, prezi… CHOOSING TEXTBOOKS AND TEACHING MATERIALS • Commercial textbooks: • Pluses: • Provide structure and syllabus for a program. • Help standardize instruction (material discussed in different classes is going to be very similar). • Maintain quality. • Provide a variety of learning resources (for example, listening materials are more difficult to produce, and textbooks usually include CDs, a website…). • They are efficient (a publishing company has tested the material) • They can prove effective language models and input (based on research, they reproduce real language). • They can train teachers (if unexperienced) • They are visually appealing (colours, photos…) Minuses: • May contain inauthentic language. • Adapt a textbook = creating material. • Advantages: • Relevance (you can prioritize the contents) • The more material you create, the more your experience and expertise grow. You that material very well, so you become an expert. • Also, your reputation grows (where money comes from). • It can be very flexible too, you can modify your material and adapt it to your class. • Disadvantages: • Cost (it is very time consuming, you have to take into account how long it takes to prepare it and if it is worth it or not). • Quality ( maybe you think you have created something great, but it may not work at all.) • Training (if you do not have experience, how do you know if what you are creating is good or not? Training takes time and money. Adapting textbooks: • It is the most productive option. • Self-prepared materials can be developed by adapting available textbooks. • Most teachers are not creators of teaching materials but providers of good materials. (Richards, 2001) • How do you adapt textbooks? Dudley –Evans and St. John (1998): • Select appropriately from what is available. • Be creative with what is available. • Modify activities to suit learners’ needs. Ex: “fill in the gaps with the correct form of the verb in brackets” (irreg. verbs in past tense) Add interesting vocabulary from their background, modify the sentences… You are motivating your students. You keep practising what you wanted (irreg. verbs in past tense). You are also teaching vocabulary. • Supplement by providing extra activities (extra input), but only if you are well paid. • The adaptation of textbooks may take a variety of forms: • Modifying • Adding / deleting Content • Reorganizing • Addressing omissions • Modifying • Extending