iatefl

Professional and Academic English

Journal of the English for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group

Courtesy of Joanna Dadelo-Madej, Krosno, Poland

Summer 2012 Autumn 2012 Issue 40

02 Editorial Prithvi Shrestha; From the ESP SIG Coordinator Mark Krzanowski 03 ESP SIG Committee 04 Transcending traditional academic boundaries: Designing and implementing a science communication course for science and engineering PhD students Mary Jane Curry 08 English first: ETTE leaves visible footprints in Nepal Laxman Gnawali 14 From VLE to PLE in English for Specific Purposes Elena Martn-Monje 19 New strategies in EAP and ESP teaching in Kazakhstan: Task-based approach application Saltanat Meiramova 25 Critical discourse analysis in ESP course design: The case of medical English Theron Muller 28 Monolingualism among multilingual scholars and its implications for EAP/ESP Ghanashyam Sharma 34 Assessment in making presentations: How it works best Elena Velikaya 39 Reports Turkey; Glasgow; Cuba; UK 44 Book Reviews Andy Gillett; Glenn Garrett; Meliha Mehmedova; Jessica Vicary and Katie Mansfield; Isora Enriquez O Farril; Joe Francis; Gillian Mckenna

Price 4.50 Free for ESP SIG members ISSN: 1754 - 6850

http://espsig.iatefl.org

www.iatefl.org

Sponsored by Garnet Education, publisher of ESP and EAP teaching materials.

www.garneteducation.com

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

EDITORIAL
Index
02 Editorial Prithvi Shrestha; From the ESP SIG Coordinator Mark Krzanowski 03 ESP SIG Committee

Welcome
Welcome
Prithvi Shrestha, The Open University, UK

It is my pleasure to introduce you to the Summer Autumn issue. The journal has reached one of its milestones in its journey, as it is the 40 th Issue. As in the previous issues, it is packed with articles covering various topics in ESP, book reviews and conference reports. This issue, as usual, demonstrates the growing diversity of ESP geographically and in terms of topics. The contributors represent four continents: Africa (Sudan), Asia (Japan, Kazakhstan, Nepal), Europe (Spain, Russia, Turkey, UK), and North America (Cuba, US), and a wide range of disciplines in higher education including engineering and science. While some articles are research-based, others report on innovative practices in local ESP contexts. We would like to encourage all our readers to submit articles to the journal. Please visit http://espsig.iatefl.org for further information (also see this issue). Finally, we are grateful to our colleagues at Garnet Education for their continuous support in publishing this journal. Words of thanks also go to colleagues from CUP and OUP for supporting us through their advertisements in this journal.

04 Transcending traditional academic boundaries: Designing and implementing a science communication course for science and engineering PhD students Mary Jane Curry 08 English first: ETTE leaves visible footprints in Nepal Laxman Gnawali From VLE to PLE in English for Specific Purposes Elena MartnMonje New strategies in EAP and ESP teaching in Kazakhstan: Task-based approach application Saltanat Meiramova Critical discourse analysis in ESP course design: The case of medical English Theron Muller Monolingualism among multilingual scholars and its implications for EAP/ESP Ghanashyam Sharma Assessment in making presentations: How it works best Elena Velikaya

From the ESP SIG Coordinator

Dear Colleagues,
It gives us great pleasure to offer our readers and members Issue 40. I am very grateful to Prithvi for exceptional and consistent perseverance with the demands of the work on the journal, including academic rigour and attention to detail. Naturally in IATEFL this effort comes over and above our regular work, but we all know how rewarding the final product is. Prithvi and I are in turn very grateful to Garnet Education for the patience and final professional publishing touches that we truly appreciate. Special thanks go to the ESP SIG Committee members and long-standing members; particularly to Aysen Guven for her report from a recent EAP Conference in Turkey, and also to Andy Gillett who has been consistently reviewing ESP and EAP titles for the journal and this issue is no exception. Words of gratitude are also offered to the EAP team in CELT (the Centre for English Learning and Teaching) at the University of Westminster who, in their team effort, have kindly provided five book reviews for this issue. I hope our readers and members enjoy Issue 40 of the journal! Mark Krzanowski
IATEFL ESP SIG Coordinator Disclaimer The ESP SIG Journal is a peer-reviewed publication. Articles submitted by prospective authors are carefully considered by our editorial team, and where appropriate, feedback and advice is provided. The Journal is not blind refereed. Copyright Notice Copyright for whole issue IATEFL 2012. Copyright for individual contributions remains vested in the authors, to whom applications for rights to reproduce should be made. Copyright for individual reports and papers for use outside IATEFL remains vested in the contributors, to whom applications for rights to reproduce should be made. Professional and Academic English should always be acknowledged as the original source of publication. IATEFL retains the right to republish any of the contributions in this issue in future IATEFL publications or to make them available in electronic form for the benefit of its members.

14

19

25

28

34

39 Reports Turkey; Glasgow; Cuba; UK 44 Book Reviews Andy Gillett; Glenn Garrett; Meliha Mehmedova; Jessica Vicary and Katie Mansfield; Isora Enriquez O Farril; Joe Francis; Gillian Mckenna

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

ESP SIG Committee

ESP SIG Coordinator:
Mark Krzanowski Acting Director of CELT (Centre for English Learning and Teaching) Principal Lecturer in ELT: Department of Modern and Applied Languages (MAL) Lecturer in English and Linguistics: Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies (ELCS) University of Westminster 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW, United Kingdom E-mail: markkski2@gmail.com or ESPsig@iatefl.org

ESP SIG Journal Editors:

Ruth Breeze Instituto de Idiomas Universidad de Navarra C/Irunlarrea s/n 31080 Pamplona, Spain Tel: +34 948 425651 Fax: +34 948 425649 E-mail: rbreeze@unav.es

Assistant Editors:

Meenakshi Raman Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Rajasthan, India E-mail: raman.mee@gmail.com Modupe Alimi University of Botswana Gabarone, Botswana E-mail: alimimm@mopipi.ub.bw

Prithvi Shrestha Department of Languages Faculty of Education and Language Studies The Open University Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK7 6AA United Kingdom Tel: +44 1908 654265 Fax: +44 1908 652187 E-mail: p.n.shrestha@open.ac.uk

ESP SIG Discussion List Moderator:

William Nash Teacher trainer and EAP Tutor, University of Sheffield E-mail: w.nash@sheffield.ac.uk Aysen Guven EAP Coordinator, Bilkent University, Turkey E-mail: caysen@bilkent.edu.tr

Membership Secretary: ESP Reporter:

ESP SIG Webmaster:

Tek Raj Joshi E-mail: joshirajtek@gmail.com

Tawanda Nhire Nelson Antonio Pedagogic University, Maputo, Mozambique E-mail: tawandanel@yahoo.com.br

ESP Representative for Angola: Leonardo Makiesse Ntemo Mack ESP Representative for Brazil: Rosinda Guerra Ramos ESP Representative for Cameroon: Martina Mbayu Nana ESP Representative for China: Cindy Chang ESP Representative for DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo): Raymond Sangabau Madiambwele ESP Representative for India: Albert PRayan ESP Representative for Japan: John Adamson ESP Representative for Mozambique: Tawanda Nhire Nelson Antonio ESP Representative for Russia: Tatiana Szelinger ESP Representative for Saudi Arabia: Majed Alqahtani ESP Representative for Southern Russia: Olga Lomakina ESP Representative for Turkey: Aysen Guven ESP Representative for Zimbabwe: Runyararo Magadzire ESP Representatives for Ethiopia: Abayneh Haile & Mehari Berihe ESP Representatives for Oman: Saleh Al-Busaidi & Saeed Al-Saadi ESP Representatives for Pakistan: Mohammed Zafar & Saba Bahareen Mansur ESP Representatives for South Africa: Bernard Nchindila ESP Representatives for West Africa: Sunday Duruoha Sotarius & Adejoke Jibowo ESP Representatives for Yemen: Abdulhameed Ashujaa & Nagm Addin Abdu
October 2012, Issue 40 3

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

Transcending traditional academic boundaries: Designing and implementing a science communication course for science and engineering PhD students
Mary Jane Curry, University of Rochester, New York. E-mail: mjcurry@warner.rochester.edu

Abstract

This article describes a genre-based communications course for science and engineering PhD students participating in a National Science Foundation cross-disciplinary training program. Designed to raise students awareness of how various professional written genres function for multiple purposes and address multiple audiences, the course is grounded in text sets compiled from the University of Rochester science and engineering professors that draw on the same research base to reach different audiences (e.g., grants, articles, press releases, public talks). Students in the course worked to analyse the linguistic and rhetorical features characterizing the various genres represented in the authentic texts. The professors contributing these texts and a university public relations specialist visited as guest speakers. Students also read a textbook on the role of science communication in society. Using the analytic tools introduced in the course, teams of students analysed a text set, then wrote individual abstracts for both disciplinary specialist and general nonspecialist audiences. This approach has the potential to be applied to text sets across disciplinary and geolinguistic contexts where instructors have access to authentic texts and, ideally, the authors of such texts. Keywords: science communication, graduate training, genre, academic writing.

funded at the University of Rochester; a private, small research university in Rochester, New York, United States. I begin by providing an overview of the program, then describe the design of the course, Communicating Science for Multiple Audiences and Purposes, and report on its implementation in the first two years of the five-year program. I conclude by discussing some of the issues that designing and teaching the course raise for teachers and researchers of advanced academic literacy.

2 The IGERT program: Distributed renewable energy: From science and technology to entrepreneurship and policy

1 Introduction

In recent decades, governments, universities and industry have increasingly recognized the need for scientists and engineers to acquire a broader perspective on how science and technology are integrated into society than they typically glean from disciplinary courses. To this end, in 1998 the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) established an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program(IGERT) that aims: to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers who will pursue careers in research and education, with the interdisciplinary backgrounds, deep knowledge in chosen disciplines, and technical, professional, and personal skills to become leaders and creative agents for change. The program is intended to catalyse a cultural change by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. (NSF IGERT project summary, 2008) In this article I report on the design and implementation of a science communications course as part of an IGERT program

As the programs title signals, the content focus of the proposed IGERT program was renewable energy, a timely topic that crosses many disciplinary borders including science, engineering, economics, psychology and education. As the University of Rochesters proposal to the NSF articulated: With the rising economic, political, and ecological costs of fossil fuels, the development of clean and renewable energy sources has emerged as a global priority. Solar energy, the most abundant and widespread renewable energy source, is viewed as one of the best hopes for our future energy needs. However, solar energy is locally intermittent and its present cost is prohibitive. To solve these problems, we propose an integrated program of research, training, and education on Distributed Renewable Energy (NSF IGERT project summary, 2008, p. 1) After explaining the technological benefits of the program, the proposal asserts that Novel educational and training programs that transform the IGERT students into entrepreneurs and leaders will be implemented (ibid., p. 1). Further, the Vision, Goals and Thematic Basis section of the proposal expresses a goal to create a multidisciplinary community where scholarly research blends with entrepreneurship and policy, academia, government and industry work synergistically, and students develop first-hand understanding of all the key aspects of the global energy problem through a multidisciplinary graduate curriculum that transcends traditional academic boundaries; and pedagogical innovations relevant to teaching in other cultures and communication across disciplines (ibid., p. 3). To meet this goal, in addition to taking disciplinary courses, IGERT students enroll in four short, two-credit courses created for the program: Energy Economics, Policy and Systems; Academic, Industrial and Government Careers; Living, Teaching and Working in Africa and Communicating Science for Multiple

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Purposes and Audiences, (the topic of this article). These required courses are credit bearing, taught by content-area specialists and scheduled in winter and spring intersessions to avoid conflicting with students disciplinary programs. the faculty members who provided text sets. The talk, which was delivered at the Rochester Museum and Science Center, provides an illustration of how a scholar successfully adapts scientific content for a non-technical (albeit well-educated) audience and, through the use of analogy, illustration and humour, makes a public presentation engaging and enjoyable. This same scientist has also appeared on public radio programs which I have not yet been able to record so I play a public radio program, Science Friday (www.npr.org), in class and ask students to analyse how the scientific content is presented for a public audience. (Interestingly, students do not appear to listen to radio regularly and many are unaware that science programs are broadcast on radio.)

3 Design of the Communicating Science course

In approaching the design of the science communication course, two broad goals guided my thinking: (1) to raise science and engineering PhD students awareness of how communication features change in response to the needs and interests of various audiences and purposes; and (2) to engage students in discussions of how scientists communicate to different public audiences plays an important role in societys understanding of and support for science, including public funding for research.

3.2 Course schedule and activities

3.1 Course components

To achieve these goals, the Communicating Science course involves students in analysing sets of authentic texts written by researchers and public relations staff at the university; interacting with researchers and staff who make guest visits to the class; listening to or watching science programs on radio and video and reading selected chapters from Practising science communication in the information age: Theorising professional practices (Holliman, Thomas, Smidt, Scanlon, & Whitelegg, 2009). This textbook covers topics ranging from trends within scientific communication (e.g., access to science, cross-disciplinary communication, peer review) as well as between scientists and larger society (access to new knowledge, ethics, patents, dissemination of knowledge, engaging with the public). My philosophy of teaching academic communication is grounded in social practice theories (Lea & Street, 1998; Lillis, 2001; Lillis & Scott, 2007) that view academic literacy as a set of social practices, enmeshed in social and political relations, rather than as only discrete individual skills. The academic literacy/literacies perspective is compatible with genre approaches (e.g., Artemeva, Logie, & St-Martin, 1999; Swales, 1990) to helping students understand how a range of authentic scientific texts functions in relation to multiple purposes and audiences. Variously, genre approaches view texts as representing a form of social action (Miller, 1984) in that they are meant to do something in a specific context, for specific reasons or purposes and with specific audiences in mind. Using an examination of the contextual reasons for the creation and dissemination of texts as a starting point allows for the application of more conventional approaches to understanding and teaching writing (such as focusing on grammar and mechanics), as these concerns are then situated in the larger social aspects of communication. The three faculty text sets included research grant proposals (and their component parts such as a non-technical summary, abstract, main sections); journal articles (including full-length research articles, letters, an overview article in a section of a journal called News and Views); conference papers and referees reviews; book chapters; scholars correspondence with journals and press releases written by university publicity staff about the research reported in faculty text sets. In addition to exploring these print genres, course texts include aural and visual texts. In class I show a videotape that I recorded of a public talk on nanotechnology given by one of

As noted, Communicating Science is a short, two-credit course. In the first year of the program the course met four hours per day for only one week (Monday to Friday), which turned out to be too intense a schedule that left students insufficient time to do the activities they needed to work on outside of class. In the second year, the course met for two hours per day over ten days, with students also attending the economics course for two hours daily. The course activities begin with students working in pairs to identify the genres represented by six extracts from texts ranging from real estate; personal advertisements; a popular science article; research grant and a journal article (adapted from Roe & den Ouden, 2003). For each extract, students hypothesize about its audience and purpose as well as the (con)textual evidence that enables them to determine the genre. A discussion of the notion of genre ensues with each team presenting evidence for how it identified an extract. Next I introduce the notion of move structures (Swales, 1990) as identified in grant proposals (Connor & Mauranen, 1999), followed the next day by analysis of the move structures of introductions to research articles. Students then watch the videotape of the professors lecture and explore press releases, referee reports for a submitted conference paper and online science as discussed in a textbook chapter (Montgomery, 2009). Interwoven into these discussions are activities on the use of register, terminology or jargon, nominalization, active and passive voice and first person pronouns across different texts. The readings on scientific controversies support class discussions of the impact of communicating about science on the publics understanding of and support for science. At the beginning of the second week students bring in their drafts of two types of abstracts for the final assignment: to write an abstract of their proposed or current research for a scientific audience and the same content reformulated for a general audience as a non-technical abstract. They engage in peer review, providing feedback on each others drafts. Then pairs of students present linguistic analyses of generic variation across text sets, again addressing questions of audience and purpose and providing (con)textual evidence for their claims. Visits from two professors who provided text sets, as well as a writer from the public relations department, offer the opportunity for students to ask questions about texts resulting from their analyses and to learn from these professional communicators. Figure 1 maps the objectives listed on the syllabus against the pedagogical approaches used in the course.

October 2012, Issue 40

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Course objectives (Students will:) Learn to identify and understand a range of types of texts (genres) produced for scientific purposes and audiences, including fellow scientists, students and the general public Pedagogical approaches Genre awareness: identifying audience(s), social contexts, purposes (to get funding, to disseminate new knowledge, to build a CV, etc.) Textbook readings and discussion, interacting with guest speakers Analysis of move structure: identifying how sentences function and cohere in developing an argument; use of citations, evidence Linguistic analysis of register (formality, use of terminology, nominalizations, assumed knowledge on the part of the reader, etc.) Synthesis of experiences in identifying genre, moves, language use Additionally, the fast-growing cells can be harvested as a biomass source for gasification or other cellulosic processes. used in cosmetics, food products and biodiesel production. To decrease the production cost in an algae-based industry, we can genetically engineer the algae to grow faster, consume fewer resources, or increase production. Biologists are constantly searching for new genes (segments of DNA) that accomplish this, creating the need for efficient ways to inject those genes into the algae cells.

Analyze the structure of these texts and how it relates to textual purpose and specific audiences (e.g., persuasion, illustration, demonstration) Do micro-analyses to understand how language constitutes these texts to achieve the goals of the writer in relation to particular purposes and audiences Gain practice in creating textual genres from the same base of scientific/technical content for multiple audiences and purposes

Figure 2: Opening lines from a students abstracts for different audiences More specifically, these versions of research abstract illustrate the students awareness of the need to define scientific terms, contextualize science in a broader context and provide examples for a non-technical audience, whereas the student clearly assesses a more advanced level of understanding for an audience of scientific peers. Differences in the length of these extracts reflect the students genre awareness, with the non-technical abstract being almost twice as long (98 words compared with 59 words).

3.4 Students responses to the course

Figure 1: Relationship between course objectives and pedagogy

3.3 Student learning in the course

In both years of the course, students (12 in the first year and five in the second year) have clearly learned content. Presentations of student team or group linguistic analyses across the genres included in the text sets demonstrated a strong grasp of the linguistic concepts I hoped to teach, as well as students facility with identifying textual and other evidence to support their analyses. The assignment to write two versions of the final abstract for different audiences demonstrates that students can competently modify texts for audiences with different levels of technical knowledge. For example, Figure 2 provides extracts from two abstracts written by one student: For a scientific audience Microalgae have become an attractive platform for developing renewable biofuels because they harness solar energy to fixate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthetic pathways. They are currently being investigated for their ability to produce hydrogen gas, lipids for biodiesel, and ethanol. For a non-technical audience Microalgae are single-celled organisms that undergo photosynthesis, meaning they convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into larger molecules such as carbohydrates, proteins and oils. From an engineering perspective, there are many potential applications of algae in industry. They are currently

As documented in both my informal course evaluations and formal institutional evaluations, students responded well to the Communicating Science course. Some students have been surprised not to encounter the traditional writing course they were expecting, but they quickly became engaged in the course activities. As students are required to take the course, I was concerned that they would not be intrinsically interested, but the vast majority participated enthusiastically in activities and assignments. In their formal course evaluations some students noted the benefit of being in an unusual environment (a communications course) and thinking about topics they dont usually discuss. Informal evaluations on the textbook chapters and other readings varied depending on the reading; students in the first year of the course also overwhelmingly felt that writing journal entries for each class was too much for a short course. In the first year some students were apprehensive about writing a research proposal because they felt their grasp on their research topic was too weak to articulate well; however, after doing the assignment they considered it valuable also for refining scientific ideas. One student noted that this assignment provided me with incentive to write now (emphasis original). Interestingly, in the second year students did not resist doing the final activity. Overall, students enjoyed the teams presentation of text set analyses, the guest speakers, and the videotape of the public science talk. They also found their peer review experience helpful in developing their ideas and how they had articulated these ideas for the specialist and non-specialist audiences. As one student noted on the informal evaluation, The peer review was very helpful in this course and helped to strengthen both my written and analytical skills. The final written project was also very helpful in learning and practicing how to write for a non-technical audience.

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

4 Issues raised in designing and implementing the course

References

Both structural and internal issues arose in designing and implementing the course. In the first year, some students had a time conflict with the first-year examinations they were scheduled to take in the late spring or with regular research laboratory meetings. Even if these students could attend class, their priorities for focusing their intellectual efforts were elsewhere. By the second year, the IGERT program director had resolved this issue with other university faculty members and most students were more focused on the course. Internal to the course design, because I was not familiar with what IGERT students would know or be interested in in terms of scientific communication, I asked them to complete a preliminary questionnaire. It asked for students thoughts about the types of communication scientists typically engage in; the kinds of professional scientific writing students had already done and in what contexts; any significant previous writing experiences; their strengths and struggles with professional scientific writing; the kinds of communications they anticipated needing to do in the future; their writing process and experiences with peer review; and what they hoped to get from the course. Many students had previously engaged in some scientific writing and very few had strongly negative feelings about writing or being required to take the course. My focus on genre rather than on the mechanics of writing provided a frame for the course from the start that grabbed students attention and engaged them in the course. Given the range of the courses aims to raise student awareness of genres of communication in science and engineering, to engage them in larger conversations about science and society and to give them practice in writing and peer reviewing authentic texts, it is perhaps not surprising that 20 hours of contact time seemed insufficient, although spreading the course over two weeks in the second year was an improvement. As I reflect on the order of presentation of various topics and scheduling guest speakers visits, I will continue to experiment in the third iteration of the course. The overall success of this course, however, suggests that is has applicability for other contexts, grounded as it is in authentic texts created by practitioners working in the fields that students intend to enter (as well as publicity staff, with whom students will likely interact in the future). By collecting similar text sets from working scholars (or practitioners) in particular fields, ESP instructors should be able to implement a similar approach to introducing students to the genres of their fields.

Artemeva, N., Logie, S., & St-Martin, J. (1999). From page to stage: How theories of genre and situated learning help introduce engineering students to discipline-specific communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 8(3), 301316. Connor, U., & Mauranen, A. (1999). Linguistic analysis of grant proposals: European Union research grants. English for Specific Purposes, 18(1), 4762. Holliman, R., Thomas, J., Smidt, S., Scanlon, E., & Whitelegg, E. (2009). Practising science communication in the information age: Theorising professional practises. Oxford: Oxford University Press/The Open University. Lea, M., & Street, B.V. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157172. Lillis, T. M. (2001). Student writing: Access, regulation and desire. London: Routledge. Lillis, T.M., & Scott, M. (2007). Defining academic literacies research: Issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(1), 532. Miller, C. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, 151167.

Montgomery, S. (2009). Science and the online world: Realities and issues for discussion. In R. Holliman, J. Thomas, S. Smidt, E. Scanlon, & E. Whitelegg (Eds.), Practising science communication in the information age: Theorising professional practises (pp. 8397). Oxford: Oxford University Press/The Open University. National Science Foundation. (2008). Program solicitation NSF 09-519 Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation. Roe, S., & den Ouden, P. H. (2003). Designs for disciplines: An introduction to academic writing. Toronto: Canada Scholars Press. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dr Mary Jane Curry is associate professor at the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester. She is co-author of Getting published in a multilingual world: Critical choices, practical strategies (forthcoming) and Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English (2010).

October 2012, Issue 40

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

English first: ETTE leaves visible footprints in Nepal

Laxman Gnawali, Associate Professor in ELT, Kathmandu University, Nepal. E-mail: lgnawali@yahoo.co.uk

Abstract

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers English language proficiency has a greater role in the effective classroom delivery than that of the teachers methodological know-how. In an attempt to establish this idea, I present a report on a teacher training project for the primary English teachers conducted in Nepal. The training modality, and the issues and problems it dealt, with are discussed before highlighting its results. I begin by setting the scene of the non-native EFL teacher education context in general, and in particular the place of English in the school curriculum in Nepal, and the teacher education for ELT in Nepal. Keywords: English language proficiency, teacher education, non-native EFL teacher, medium of instruction, teacher professional development, needs assessment.

1 The non-native EFL teacher

Non-native English teachers have greater challenges than their native counterparts (Maingay, 1986). While non-native English teachers need to develop the know-how of classroom practices, their own command of the English language must meet the requirements of the foreign language classroom. Only when these teachers are able to use English as a language during their lessons will their students get at least some exposure to the target language. This means that on beginning their professional career, these English teachers are expected to have developed three skills: communication skills in English, a set of professional skills to be mediated in a foreign language and ideas about the nature of the language and what it means to learn a language (Britten, 1988). Furthermore, they are also expected to have developed professional development skills to outgrow ideas about teaching and learning. Their proficiency in English gives them a basic skill to use in the classroom and boosts their confidence as a teacher, but most importantly, this brings the only opportunity available for learners to be exposed to English input required for learning this language. The proficiency also plays a vital role in the teachers psychology. The English language proficiency of the teacher determines how confident the teacher is in the classroom situation as Kamhi-Stein (2009, citing Murdoch, 1994 and Cullen, 1994) says, Language proficiency plays an important role in the teachers instructional practices since it may contribute to enhancing or undermining the teachers confidence, therefore, affecting the teachers instructional practices (ibid., p. 95).

2 The Nepalese context

English has a variegated status in Nepal. Though English has claimed its importance in every walk of Nepalese life, it is still a foreign language. It is required nowhere in the public official

processes and the Nepalese do not use it as a lingua franca. On the other hand, 13 per cent of the total schools in Nepal are private schools which use English as the medium of instruction (Department of Education, 2009). The public schools (known as government schools) use Nepali as the medium of instruction and have one English course in the school curriculum. The qualification of the primary school English teachers is only a tenth grade pass and this has created a problem in many ways. First, to allow only school graduates to work as teachers is not a rational decision as they are not emotionally mature enough to work with the children because they have just turned 15 themselves. Second, the English level they have is not advanced at all to work as teachers. What is more crucial is that they simply have not had enough exposure to English. Most of these English teachers come through this public system and they learn English at the age of nine or later. When they learn it, the only opportunity for them to experience English in use is in the classroom. Unfortunately, this does not happen as the medium of instruction is Nepali or any other local language the teacher speaks. Due to the lack of their exposure to English, they cannot use English for the communicative purpose even within the classroom setting. The Grade ten graduates who have very good proficiency are those who come from the private schools and unfortunately those who come this way hardly choose teaching as a profession in the public system. Though English is not used in the official system, the fact that English is given a high value by the state of Nepal is reflected in a recently implemented government policy: English from Grade I instead of Grade IV and complete revision of the school English curricula. The government made this decision in 2003 as a reaction to the private schools English medium policy. In fact, English as the medium of instruction was the sole reason the parents who could afford to send their children to private schools. Moreover, private schools topped all the national examinations. In some districts, some public schools have closed down in want of students as the local children have gone to the nearby private schools. With a view to enhancing teachers classroom performance for the changed situation, the Ministry of Education planned and implemented teacher training for all primary school English teachers and declared that 98 per cent of the 31,000 primary English teachers had been trained. (National Centre for Educational Development [NCED], 2010, p. 2). However, the performance of English teachers is far below a satisfactory standard for the same reason discussed above. Another reason why the teachers do not develop English proficiency is that teacher training programmes in Nepal have methodology as the only component and no consideration for the language proficiency. NCED runs a training programme divided into three packages (NCED, 2004):

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Basic teacher training programme first phase (330 hours delivered face to face over three months) Primary teacher training second phase (660 hours delivered through distance mode) Primary teacher training third phase (330 hours delivered face to face over three months) Looking at the number of hours and the varying delivery modes, one can assume that the programme is promising. In the face to face mode, the teachers are brought to the training centres where they get ideas on dealing with the textbooks they have to teach. They also demonstrate their teaching skills through peer teaching. In the distance mode as well, the tasks focus on the how aspect of teaching English. The NCED has also introduced Teacher Professional Development (TPD) activities for these teachers, and again the support given is only orientating of the curriculum and textbooks, reading and reflecting on the appropriate ways of lesson delivery. Improving their own command of the English language itself is completely ignored. It was at this juncture in time that the English for Teaching: Teaching for English (ETTE) project was implemented jointly by the state and non-state sectors. the needs of the teachers working throughout the country. A cadre of young language teacher trainers would be trained first who would then go to the districts to train teachers in English language. The trainers would be called SuperETTEs, coined by joining super and ETTE. The teacher training would consist of 120 hours and would be followed by support mechanisms and self-access unit resource centres. The first year activities to run in three districts as a pilot, would be replicated with necessary modifications to make it more effective in six other districts over the period of the next two years (i.e., 2009 and 2010). The British Council in Nepal would collaborate with the partners at the planning, preparation and operational level. In preparation, the project team had several rounds of meetings and developed an outline of the activities which will be discussed below.

5 The training districts

3 The ETTE project launched

The ETTE teacher support project was launched in 2008. The three-year project initiated by the British Council ran in partnership with the Nepal English Language Teachers Association (NELTA), Global Action Nepal (GAN) and the Ministry of Education (MoE). The four project partners had their own significance. The British Council was the lead agency for funding and over-all collaboration. The partnership with NELTA and GAN was to bring together the key stakeholders (i.e., teachers and those who were working for them). The partnership with the state sector was significant for the implementation of the project and internalization of the project elements into its teacher education system once the project was over. ETTE as a language and methodology project was aimed at improving access to English for learners by upgrading the skills and increasing the confidence of teachers. The project also aimed to improve the classroom performance of teachers of English who have not had much previous access to support activities and operate in remote, marginalized and under-resourced areas and increase teachers access to a variety of developmental methods and ELT materials. The project expected that the MoE would buy this project and would institutionalize its elements in its system in the way it operated during the implementation period.

As a pilot activity for the first year, there were many things to be tested and learnt. To cover the geographical diversity of Nepal, Solukhumbu (mountain region), Baglung (hill region) and Kailali (the plains in the south) were chosen for the first year. Within the districts, teachers were selected from specific Resource Centres1: 24 teachers from one centre. There were three groups in Kailali and Baglung each and two in Solukhumbu.

6 Selection of the trainers

A group of SuperETTEs were now to be recruited and trained. For this, the partners considered recruiting fresh graduates with a MEd in ELT who were not yet employed. It was thought that graduates would not look for specific perks, they could be trained for this purpose as they were fresh and numberwise and, there would be a lot of choice. Each year during the project, a new group of trainers would be trained so that by the end of the three years, there would not only be primary school teachers with increased ability to teach effectively, but they would have a good number of teacher trainers in the country who may continue to develop other teachers ability in the language and methodology. So, it was decided that those who had just completed a Masters in ELT from Nepalese Universities, and were unemployed, would be invited to apply. A team of young MEd ELT graduates were recruited as SuperETTEs (language trainers) and trained to deliver the training to primary teachers. The trainers were selected for having both good English and good theoretical knowledge of ELT and for their clear commitment to a career in ELT.

4 Contextualizing the project intent

Once the project was approved, a project visioning workshop was organized in Almaty, Kazakhstan. It was attended by the British Council project managers/officers and key partners from all implementing countries. From Nepal the partner representatives from the MoE, NELTA, and GAN attended the workshop. Though the project aims had been spelt out, there were no concrete country-specific activities detailed. The aim of the workshop was to decide what exactly a country would do under this project. When the Nepal project brainstormed together, it was unanimously decided that the project would be to help primary teachers with their language. The workshop made some other important decisions. The project would operate in a cascade model in order to meet

7 Trainers training and training preparation

The SuperETTE training course was developed and delivered by a team of tutors bringing together a wide range of training experience from across the British Council and Nepal. This training was intended to equip the trainers with practical techniques. So, the course comprised of input sessions, followed by observed teaching practice (teaching the guinea pigs) with peer and tutor feedback. The feedback was followed by group lesson planning and observation of experienced
1 A Resource Centre headed by a Resource Person supports 15 to 25 primary schools. The support includes teachers training, materials supplies and physical facilities.

October 2012, Issue 40

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG British Council teachers in action. The methodology of this trainers training followed the experiential learning approach (Kolb, 1984, as cited in Dennison & Kirk, 1990). In this approach the participants reflect on past experience or sessions thereby making sense of what works. Based upon this learning, they plan further actions. The cycle of action and reflection is the centre of this methodology. To be involved in an action is to undergo an experience (Gnawali, 2001). The most important aspect of experiential learning is based on the relationship between this action, the individual experiences and the subsequent learning that takes place (McGill & Beaty, 1992, p. 26). The idea that learning takes place as a result of experience has been highly supported in the professional literature. In the words of Rogers (1961) experience is the primary source of learning, the highest authority, the touchstone of validity (p. 23). Kolb (1984, as cited in Dennison & Kirk, 1990) says immediate personal experience gives life, texture and subjective personal meaning to abstract concepts and at the same time (p. 21) provides a concrete, publicly shared reference point for testing the implications and validity of ideas created during the learning process. This implies that learning can take place in the light of past and present experiences. Following this idea of learning from experience, the experiential approach was followed throughout the course, creating a climate for the SuperETTEs to learn from their past and immediate experiences. Past teaching learning experiences Participating in sessions DO Concrete experience Action The SuperETTEs also learnt to reflect on the methodology of the input sessions and to consider how these techniques could be transferred to the local teaching context. A big difficulty was to find suitable language teaching materials. In the end, New Headway Elementary, published by Oxford University Press, was chosen as it was widely available, easy to teach and economical! One of the biggest challenges for the SuperETTEs was to make their teaching studentcentred. Coming from a traditional learning background, they themselves taught in a very teacher-centred way but as one SuperETTE said, This course has helped us to transfer our theoretical knowledge into practical one. The way we are asked to manage the classroom in teaching practice sessions is fantastic, learning quite new techniques. (Kathmandu, 12 June, 2008) Another agreed, The teaching practice sessions make us practically sound and helps us employ theory in practice. (Kathmandu, 12 June, 2008) Finally, the SuperETTEs compiled a bank of classroom English phrases from their observations for their own use.

8 Needs assessment

Teachers apply their learning in subsequent action: observations and action research

Reflection

Grids, dialogues with peers, reflecting in the sesions with the facilitators and other participants

REVIEW Reflective observation

A needs assessment was conducted to identify those teachers who actually needed support. For this, while the SuperETTEs training was going on, the project partners, in coordination with the District Education Offices (DEOs) and local implementing partners, identified the Resource Centres (RCs). Once the DEOs and the local partners mapped the districts and selected the RCs they then met with the Resource Persons who headed the RCs. It was decided that if possible one group of 24 teachers should be taken from one RC so that the teachers would keep working together even after the training. The Resource Persons heading the respective RCs then invited the English teachers to the needs assessment session. The teachers were given a standard British Council test, pitched at Level A1 of the Common European Framework of references. The test revealed a very interesting scenario; most teachers spoke virtually no English as exemplified by the following excerpt taken from an internal circulation of the British Council Teaching Centre. Whats your name? Richard Cox asked a primary school teacher in the remote Everest region, in a school an hours walk from the district headquarters. My name is Prabhu Shrestha Do you teach English? Yes, I English teacher. How long have you been teaching English? Huh? How many years have you been teaching English? Huh? It turned out that Prabhu had been teaching English for ten years, yet could not say much more than a few greetings. This is the reality in the remoter regions of Nepal. The same report further states Further needs assessment visits in the hills and the plains highlighted the same worrying fact many primary teachers cannot speak English. As a result, their students leave school unable to communicate in

They learn about the process of enquiry, the classroom practices and themselves Figure 1: Experiential learning cycle. Adapted from Kolb (1984, as cited in Dennison & Kirk, 1990, p.4) The idea of the above four-stage cycle concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation is based on the experiential learning model propounded by Kolb (1984) Figure 1.

APPLY Active experimentation

LEARN Abstract conceptualisation

10

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG English and ultimately unable to get good jobs. The needs assessment also included questionnaires and focus groups in order to determine their perceived needs and challenges. The findings from these tools revealed that the teachers wanted content rather than methodology. Although they wanted both they stressed that until they had at least a basic knowledge of English, methodology would be of no use. Teachers told us that if they had adequate knowledge of English, they could work out ways to teach it in their circumstances. Some of the quotes from the focus group included: We have not had training on language. We have had enough methodology. We need English so we can read and teach. If I know no language, what do I teach? We can teach if we can speak. The focus group with the other stakeholders, namely School Management Committee members and head teachers, echoed the same. The following are some of the responses from those stakeholders: We need to give teachers a lot of practice in English. Language training is required. Everyone has had training but they do not use it. The transfer of training from training hall to classroom has failed. Teach English please. In a socialization meeting, School Supervisors from the DEO said they are ready to help to improve primary teachers English the best way they can. It also became apparent in discussions with DEOs and RC officers in the districts that this is because all primary schools have to have teachers of English, but there are not sufficient teachers who have the language to go around. So people who have almost no competence in the language, and who teach several other subjects, are allocated. With this situation and the commitment from the stakeholders, the project team went ahead with the implementation plan. The plan further included the teacher training, follow-up and support. activities were used to teach English to the teachers and the methodology was taught implicitly. The participants reflected on their experience of learning English and realized how it should be taught. Teachers also planned lessons and practised teaching using the My English Book that they teach at school. Teacher learning During the Training After the Training Follow-up Input Reflection Micro-teaching

Content Mentoring Figure 2: Teacher training modality Drop-outs and late arrivals are a common phenomenon but this teacher training saw a completely different attitude. Nobody was late as they were staying at the same hotel where the training was held and there were no drop-outs. The participants decided that they would not miss any classes at any cost. This following excerpt from an informal report handed in by one of the SuperETTEs who was in Baglung reveals how the teachers took the training: All the PETs, NGOs and even officers from the DEO appreciated our hard work, training styles and punctuality in training. It was effective because we delivered training based on teachers need. In the beginning I was worried about the dropouts because it was lengthy training, but I was wrong. Few PETs (primary English teachers) were old with weak eye sight and used to sit near the window to read books. They brought powerful eyeglasses to overcome this problem but continued the training. The female teachers gave up their household work to attend the training. One of the PETs didnt take part in his daughters wedding preparation. It was only a day before the wedding, he said: tomorrow is my daughters wedding, can I go home after lunch break? We couldnt let him miss such an important event of his life. The training was ended with a grand closing ceremony. The effect of the training on the teachers and the government officials is reflected well in the following excerpts from the e-bulletin of the British Council: Our classroom will be different now. We used to teach English through translation method, now we will teach English through English, and we felt that we are achieving our goals. This was what, Mrs. Huma Thapa, an ETTE project participant from Baglung district had to say after completing the course and finding the difference in her own performance. Two teachers from Kailali district said that they learnt the way English can be learnt and taught. They said that the major achievement had been the confidence in speaking without the fear of making mistakes. When they spoke to Observation and feedback (at school)

9 Teacher training

Once the trainers were ready, the British Council and the partners the MoE, GAN and NELTA communicated to the local implementation partners who would coordinate with the Resource Centres in conjunction with the DEO to work with the local partners to select participants. The teachers, selected based on their needs assessment test session, were invited to the district headquarters for the residential training. They were put in a hotel where they would get lodging and full board. This provision was different from the usual training because in such training programmes, teachers are often given a daily allowance and they stay on their own. Because the teachers want to spend less and save money, they tend to find their own accommodation with relatives or friends, or they find cheaper places to stay, this results in them not paying enough attention to their learning. Now, the teachers had no worry as they were not handling money and were given good meals. Moreover, they were put in the same hotel and were not travelling, so they had ample time for socialising and practising English after the formal sessions. The lessons and materials prepared during the trainers training were used in the teacher training sessions. The major

October 2012, Issue 40

11

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Mr. Gnawali, Vice President of, Nepal English Language Teachers Association (NELTA), they spoke in English and visibly they were not at all worried about the mistakes. Their English was not without flaws but they were expressive and fluent. Mahashram Sharma, Director General, Department of Education during the opening ceremony of training in Baglung said ETTE Training has given an opportunity for the government school teachers improving their English language. In todays global competition, English language is a must skill and ETTE training has helped the teachers to teach language in classroom and create English environment. Training like this will help our students to compete in the global context. (www. britishcouncil.org.np, 2009) 2) Teacher association membership: Thinking that the teachers would keep coming in contact with one another, they were encouraged to take membership of NELTA. In Kailai, they were given one-year membership with the project money. In Baglung, the ETTE trained teachers were invited to the NELTA office to use the resources and specific time was allocated for this. Many teachers paid for their own membership. In Solukhumbu, the teachers have decided to set up a NELTA branch. 3) Resource materials for self-learning: Though the teachers were enthused, they lacked resource materials for selflearning. So, each resource centre was given a set of readers, grammar books and ELT resource materials. The teachers from the respective RCs have developed plans on how to use them.

10 The Follow-Up

Without the proper follow-up, the effect of the training fizzles out. With this concept in mind, the follow-up was carried out through three different activities: observation and feedback, teacher association membership and the setting up of unit resource centres which I discuss below. 1) Observation and feedback: After the training the SuperETTEs were given orientation on observation and feedback and were sent to the districts. They travelled to the village school from where the teachers had come for the training. They held meetings with the head teachers, other staff members and in some cases with the school management committee members to inquire about the impact of the training. They sat with the teachers, observed their classes and gave feedback. The observation showed that the teachers were using English in the classroom and were trying their best to use a student centred approach. More than that the visit had an attitudinal change: they had never had a chance to show what they were doing; trainers had never visited their schools. One of the SuperETTEs reported as follows: In August, we went to visit the schools of our PETs. The purpose was to sell the ETTE concept to the school headmasters, parents, School Management Committee and other stakeholders. The visit was full of adventure. I was accompanied with one more SuperETTE and one resource person (RP) of that area. We walked for 18 hours with heavy luggage to reach the schools from headquarter. Every day we had to walk around 25 hours to reach the schools. It is really unforgettable experience for us. Despite of the natural obstacles (landslide, heavy rainfall, leeches on the way) that came our way, we proceeded with our selling visit. We enjoyed interacting with local people (teachers, School Management Committee, Parents, Teacher Association and students). They were interested and happy to talk about ETTE project. We received positive feedback from teachers, SMC, PTS. It was good to hear one of the head teachers who said I have attended more than 100 trainings during my 25 years teaching experience but this is the first time someone visited the schools for monitoring and supervision after training. Teachers found this training important to motivate students. There is a high demand of ETTE training in other regions and many PETs waiting for ETTE to come to their regions.

11 The lessons learnt

Once the teacher training was over the project partners met to reflect, in order to make sense of what has been achieved, again following the action reflection cycle (Figure 1). The project partners reflected along with the SuperETTEs after the first year activities were over. Upon reflection they decided that the project had been instrumental to drive home some important things. In the review meeting, the partners and the SuperETTES expressed their views which can be summed up as follows: a) The choice of language over methodology had been the right decision. Teachers really benefitted from the training. Without the language proficiency, the methodological skills are of no use. b) Partnership was the most important factor in the success of the project. The British Council was in no position to reach out to these teachers without the organisations they partnered with. Fragmented and isolated practice does not make good impact. c) Teachers learnt during off hours as well because they were with the group and were using English even for personal communication. Opportunities for using English for real purpose is a pre-condition for learning a language. English teacher trainings are best if they are residential. d) Full facilities freed the teachers from the worry. If they had been given cash, they would spend time calculating how to save. e) The choice of young MEd graduates had some benefits as well as some drawbacks. They met the expectations we had, as discussed elsewhere in the paper, but once the training was over they started asking the British Council if they would get the extension next year; if not they would look for jobs. The groups had lost some members before the end of the year. f) The government system is very useful if the officials are helpful and understand the project spirit. This was fine except that some officials expected monetary benefit for their cooperation and there was no provision in the budget as such.

12 After effects and implications

There have been several changes in the teachers lives after the training though very few have been reported. Those who got the NELTA membership have made visits to the NELTA resource centres and attended the conferences. The

12

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Kathmandu Post National English Daily reported that one of the ETTE teachers bagged a national award. Mrs Janaki Pathak was awarded with the National Education Service Award by the Government of Nepal. Janaki says ETTE has made a big difference in my life; it is very difficult to express in words. The complete report is in the Appendix. The ETTE project results have shown significant implications for English language teacher training in contexts such as those of Nepal. The synergy between significant partners can create conditions for result-oriented training. The partnership among the British Council, NELTA, GAN and the MoE brought together the resources and the network of the government system along with the experiences of the professional organizations. Likewise, an intensive training course with a focus on language development and implicit touch on the pedagogy develops teachers confidence in both the language and the teaching methodology. Courses geared to the pedagogy alone cannot bring about the intended change in the EFL contexts.

Appendix

English Builds Self-Confidence

References

The British Council (2009). E-Bulletin. Retrieved March 12, 2009, from www.britishcouncil.org.np Britten, D. (1988). Three stages in teacher training. ELT Journal, 42, 38. Dennison, B., & Kirk, R. (1990). Do Review, Learn, Apply. Oxford: Blackwell. Department of Education (2009). Flash I Report, 2066 (200910). Bhaktapur: Department of Education. Gnawali, L. (2001). Investigating classroom practices: A Proposal for In-service Teacher development for the secondary school teachers in Nepal. An unpublished Masters Dissertation, the College of St Mark and St John/ University of Exeter, UK. Kamhi-Stein, L. D. (2009). Teacher Preparation and Non-native English Speaking Educators. In, A. Burns and J. C. Richards (Eds.), The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Teacher Education (pp. 91101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maingay, P. (1986). Observation for Training, supervision or assessment? In A. Duff (Ed.), Explorations in Teacher Training (pp. 118131). Harlow: Longman. McGill, I., & L. Beaty (1992). Action Learning: A Practitioners Guide. London: Kogan Page.

JUL 08 Janaki Pathak has no hesitance in saying that learning English helps develop self-confidence, Until a few years back, I couldnt even answer simple questions in English. But things have changed now. I can phrase sentences and can speak English comfortably. English is no more a difficult language for me. I am confident about speaking in public now. An English teacher at a remote village in the Far West, Janaki attended the English for Teaching, Teaching for English (ETTE) training series in 2008 and considers this experience as a turning point in her life. ETTE has made a big difference in my life; it is very difficult to express in words. My life has changed after attending the training. I have seen personal and professional growth in myself. I feel I have become a better teacher, says Janaki. The ETTE was a three-year project initiated by the British Council with the mission of improving access to the English language for learners by upgrading skills and increasing the confidence of teachers. The project focused on marginalised teachers in both remote rural areas and disadvantaged urban areas. The objectives were to improve the teachers classroom performance in both methodology and language, by enhancing their access to materials, methods and development opportunities. A teacher of grade one, Janaki has seen great improvements in her students level of speaking English. She mentions a 3550 percent increase in students pass rate in the English subject over the years. She expresses proudly, When I am satisfied with my teaching, I will be able to transfer that to my students. My students enjoy English classes now. They are more forward and are not afraid to ask questions. They are open to learning. Before the class ends, my students request me to sing English rhymes. That is the change I have seen in my students. Janaki was also a recipient of the National Education Service Award in 2008 a prestigious recognition given by the government of Nepal for a teachers outstanding performance. From http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandupost/2012/07/08/creativity/english-builds-selfconfidence/236966.html

National Centre for Educational Development (2004). Secondary teacher training curriculum (10 months). Bhaktapur: National Centre for Educational Development. National Centre for Educational Development (2010) Teacher Professional Development: Trainers Training Manual. Bhaktapur: National Centre for Educational Development. Rogers, C. (1961). On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Laxman Gnawali is Associate Professor of ELT at Kathmandu University. He leads and facilitates degree and short-term teacher-training and trainer training programs for ELT. An author of EFL school textbooks for younger learners and special education learners in Nepal, he has also co-authored language improvement courses for English teachers. His national and international contributions include a book and articles on teacher development. His research interests include EFL teacher professional development through teacher networking.

October 2012, Issue 40

13

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

From VLE to PLE in English for Specific Purposes

Elena Martn-Monje, Universidad Nacional de Educacin a Distancia (UNED), Spain. E-mail: emartin@flog.uned.es

Abstract

This paper discusses the potential of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), seen as a natural evolution from the widely used Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). It shows the design of a course on Scientific and Technical English that makes use of various Web 2.0 tools (social bookmarking, blogs, wikis), with the premise that this software will encourage both collaborative work and autonomous language learning, while helping students create their own preferred learning path. The language teacher is seen here as a watermark: he or she has a presence in the background but lets students take responsibility for their own language learning. Keywords: autonomous learning, collaborative work, ESP, PLE, VLE.

1 Introduction

The purpose of this article is to investigate the suitability of PLEs for language learning and more specifically for ESP. It shows the design and implementation of a course on Scientific and Technical English and details the steps taken in order to help students create their own PLE, with the aim of making them successful autonomous language learners. This course combines autonomous and collaborative work and one of the main objectives of the research has been to look at the ways in which PLEs encourage collaborative work, participation and interaction. Furthermore, the author sought to explore the potential problems or benefits of a low teacher presence, conceived as a watermark, a low-key, restrained approach that stresses the pre-eminence of the language user in developing their learning. The use of VLEs is well established in foreign language teaching, with the majority of higher education institutions offering language courses through Moodle or Blackboard Learn - the most popular VLEs (Godwin-Jones, 2012). These are software tools that bring together in an integrated environment a range of resources that enable not only learners and staff to interact online but also the institution to provide learning materials and track students progress (BECTA, 2004). They follow a constructivist approach, founded on the premise that students acquire new concepts through their personal interpretation of the learning process and their own previous knowledge and beliefs (Dougiamas, 1998; Piaget, 1980; Papert, 1991, Vygotsky, 1978).

VLEs are ideal tools for e-learning (distance learning via webbased applications), since they permit students to work at their own pace, providing flexibility in the time and place allocated for study. They also allow for both individual and collaborative learning and foster interaction in the teaching group. However, with the turn of the century and the emergence of Web 2.0 applications, teaching practices are evolving rapidly and VLEs may not cater for the so-called digital natives (Prensky, 2001) that are accessing higher education these days. Godwin-Jones has rightly noted that the current generation of students is coming to campus with quite sophisticated technology skills and habits (2009, p. 3). They are completely at ease with the use of Internet in their professional and personal life and commonly find that universities employ these services in a much more old-fashioned way, with communication predominantly through email and interactions with instructors and peers through a top-down, fairly inflexible learning management system (ibid.). Here is where PLEs come into the picture. They are a natural evolution from the widely used VLEs (Attwell, 2007; Guth, 2009) and provide a more creative, adaptive learning environment, since they allow students to customise their set of resources and learning materials, blurring thus the distinction between formal and informal instruction: The idea of a Personal Learning Environment recognises that learning is ongoing and seeks to provide tools to support that learning. It also recognises the role of the individual in organising his or her own learning. [] Linked to this is an increasing recognition of the importance of informal learning. (Attwell, 2007, p. 2). PLE is in fact an umbrella term that can be applied to a wide range of tools, from e-porftolios (Buchem, Attwell & Torres, 2011; JISC, 2007; Salinas, Marn & Escandell, 2011) to web widgets (Godwin-Jones, 2009) or mobile phone apps (Underwood, Luckin & Winters, 2012). It is a relatively new concept, with varied conceptualisations, as reflected in the myriad of acronyms and terms to describe PLE, among others aPLE (adaptable PLE), mPLEs (mobile PLEs), iPLEs (institutional PLEs), PWLE (Personal Work and Learning Environment) and PRP (Personal Research Portal) (Buchem, Attwell & Torres, 2011). For the purposes of this paper, we will refer to PLEs in general and follow the definition provided by EDUCAUSE (2009, p. 1): The term personal learning environment (PLE) describes the tools, communities, and services that constitute the individual educational platforms learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals.

14

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG and learning has led to a sixth role: facilitator, or person who helps learners to get their own understanding of the context, monitoring that the collaborative work is in place (MartnMonje, 2011). We can venture that with PLEs in ESP, the new studentcentred curriculum will eventually turn that facilitator role more into a watermark, whose presence will be subtly evident in the background. That does not mean that the students will be left to their own devices, but it implies that they will take responsibility of their own learning, resorting to their teacher/ instructor for support or guidance when needed. The following sections report on an initiative carried out at the Spanish National University for Distance Learning (UNED), to investigate how PLEs can be used in ESP.

Figure 1: Comparison between VLEs and PLEs (Guth, 2008) PLEs offer several benefits when compared to VLEs (see Figure 1): (1) they are more student-centred, since students can customise their learning resources; (2) they do not need to coincide completely with the VLE provided by the educational institution; (3) they blend formal, non-formal, and informal education and more importantly (4) they enhance additional skills, such as metacognition. A typical PLE, for example incorporates blogs where students comment on what they are learning (EDUCAUSE, 2009, p.1). This metacognitive competence is essential for language learning (Cohen, 1998; Graham, 1997; Macaro, 2006) and more so in ESP, where there is not a unique method that is valid for every student in every possible situation. On the contrary, language instruction must be tailor-made in order to meet the needs of learners in these specific contexts (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987) and in this context it is essential that language users can reflect on their own learning process effectively.

3 The study

3.1 Background context

2 Personal learning environments and language teaching

One of the authors that has intensively investigated the use of PLE in language teaching and learning is Guth, who believes that they are closely linked to collaborative work and Web 2.0 tools (2008, 2009). This author also applies a socioconstructivist approach to language instruction and aims to integrate both formal and informal learning. In her view, one of the strengths of the use of PLEs in languages is that, just like VLEs, they facilitate computer-mediated communication (CMC) in different formats (synchronous or asynchronous). The main difference, though, is that this CMC is usually done in an open format with PLEs contributions can be made without having to register online. PLEs also contribute to the development of the linguistic competence, as well as other skills relevant for autonomous lifelong learning. The language teacher that makes use of PLEs must take into account all these pedagogical considerations, and those practitioners who focus on ESP should put emphasis on enhancing the specificity of these linguistic sub-domains. Teachers and practitioners of ESP are said to have five key roles (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998): teacher; course designer and materials developer; collaborator; researcher and evaluator. The author of this paper has already argued that the inclusion of constructivist theories in language teaching

This exploratory study is based on the design of the course Scientific and Technical English in the postgraduate Masters programme English for Specific Purposes at the UNED. There has been previous work in this institution to overcome the limitations of second language e-learning, making use of the latest developments in computer technology and attempting to establish a theoretical framework for second language learning that combined individual and collaborative work (Read, Brcena & Rodrigo, 2010). The initiative followed by the author of this paper tries to overcome the limitations imposed by the VLE used in all the courses offered by UNED and explore the affordances of PLEs for language teaching and learning. The course was offered in the second semester of the academic year 20112012 and covered the following areas: professional activities related to Scientific and Technical English, Engineering, Medicine and Nursing and Computer Science. The course methodology was based on a combination of individual work, included in the VLE, and collaborative work that would make use of Web 2.0 tools and try to encourage students to create their own PLE. Figure 2 shows the framework for this course: E-mails Social bookmarking (Delicious)

VLE (Individual work)

PLE (Collaborative work)

Blog

Forums

Wiki

Figure 2: Framework for the use of PLE in the course Scientific and Technical English

3.2 Methodology

The course had a total of 20 participants, but only 17 students that completed all tasks were considered for research purposes. There was a predominance of women (76%) and most of them were not digital natives, 77% of them being over 30 years old. However, their digital literacy was evident, as stated in the profiling questionnaire that they completed, since they were all fully familiarised with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and used computers both for work and leisure (Figure 3). They also acknowledged

October 2012, Issue 40

15

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG to have accessed the online course from different devices, ranging from the traditional desktops to smartphones and tablet PCs (see Figure 4 below). Social bookmarking (Delicious, www.delicious.com): This social software was used in the initial module. Students were asked to share with their course mates some of the web links they found on the Internet related to Scientific and Technical English and ESP in general. Blogs (www.anurseabroad.blogspot.com): This task was designed with the purpose of enhancing collaborative writing. It was featured in the module for Medicine and Nursing and the students had to imagine that they were nurses working together in a specific English hospital, sharing their experiences in the blog. Wikis (http://elenamartinmonje.wikispaces.com): This Web 2.0 tool was used in two different ways. One task consisted in creating a collective summary of a book on ICT that all course participants had read, and the second one was the creation of a collective glossary of terminology related to Computer Science. Second phase: The actual completion of the tasks, with social bookmarking practised in module 1, the blog was included in module 3 and the wikis were left for the final modules, 4 and 5 (The collaborative task for module 2 was a WebQuest, not susceptible of being included as part of their PLE). Third phase: Students evaluation of the course.

Figure 3: Use of ICT for work and leisure

4 Research results

Figure 4: Technological devices used to access the course The questions that the author sought to explore were the following: Do Web 2.0 tools enhance collaborative work in ESP? Does this new methodology encourage participation and collaborative work? Do students show preference for a specific social software? What are the difficulties students face when using these Web 2.0 tools? How do the students perceive this new perspective of the teacher as a watermark, taking a less prominent position in the learning environment? With that purpose, the following data-gathering procedures were used: Observation and monitoring of participation and use of the different Web 2.0 tools proposed. A student questionnaire: The students were asked to complete a questionnaire at the end of the course in which they were invited to reflect on the collaborative tasks they had to do and how the social software they used (social bookmarking, blogs and wikis) had helped them achieve their learning aims. They were also asked about their perception of teacher presence throughout the course and how each of the Web 2.0 tools had helped them construct their own PLE. Out of the 17 students who completed the full course, 12 of them filled in the questionnaire. The study was conducted in three differentiated phases: First phase: Design of the contents of the course and implementation of different Web 2.0 tools in the various modules:

The observation and monitoring of participation has made evident that this academic year has been better than the previous one, with 85% of the students completing all tasks in 20112012, whereas only 57% did it in 20102011. As for the participation in the various Web 2.0 collaborative tasks, the analysis of their participation has shown that, although timidly, they have attempted to create their own PLE, making more use of some social software than the other. When examined in detail, the data related to students contribution shows that some of them have clearly created their own PLE giving preference to some social software over the rest (see Table 1 below). Table 1: Participation in the Web 2.0 collaborative tasks Students Delicious (links) 46 14 20 22 45 19 15 11 0 0 10 12 10 12 Blog (entries & comments) 11 12 10 9 8 11 16 10 0 5 10 6 11 7 Wiki writing (lines) 20 16 7 11 11 10 13 10 0 8 10 5 0 10 Wiki glossary (words) 16 17 18 15 15 15 15 15 0 18 13 16 0 17

Student 1 Student 2 Student 3 Student 4 Student 5 Student 6 Student 7 Student 8 Student 9 Student 10 Student 11 Student 12 Student 13 Student 14

16

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Student 15 Student 16 Student 17 Teacher 22 30 15 25 11 16 0 7 6 11 9 Intro 15 15 17 Intro They were quite enthusiastic about the possibilities that Web 2.0 tools offer to communicate with their peers. One student, for instance, affirmed You can exchange ideas with others. Although I am not very talkative, it is interesting to have the opportunity to share different opinions, or another stressed the collaborative side of this PLE, stating: It is a great way to work with other classmates and learn from them.

Students 1, 5 and 16 show a clear preference for social bookmarking, with many more bookmarks in their Delicious account than the rest of the course participants. Student 16 also seems to enjoy blogging, something shared with student 7. This blog activity proved to be the most popular among students, obtaining an excellent rating in the student questionnaire. There were, however, some students for whom this call for participation was pointless (e.g., student 9, who completed all the individual work in the course but refused to participate in the collaborative part). It should also be noted that this choice made in constructing their own PLE works in two ways: both by making more use of one Web 2.0 than others and also by ignoring a certain social software (see, for instance, student 13, who did not seem to like wikis at all, although he was active with the other Web 2.0 tools). Out of the three Web 2.0 applications used (social bookmarking, blogs and wikis), the wikis were probably the ones that did not particularly enthuse any of the students. None of the wikis show an outstanding score in participation. Therefore, there is no student that can be said to have a preference for this tool as part of their PLE. As for teacher presence, it is clear that her contribution follows a student-centred approach and her own concept of watermark, providing only the introduction to the wikis and posting a few comments or entries in the blog, so as to let students create their own materials. It is only in the first activity with Delicious that the teacher presence is more evident, since it was considered that students did not know each other at that stage (it was the first collaborative task in the module) and it was the task of the ESP practitioner to facilitate their introduction to this new methodology. This approach did not have a negative effect on students, since all of them (100% of the responses) answered at the end of the course that they had felt supported by the teacher, despite her deliberate decision of not being in the foreground. From the results of the questionnaires, a series of relevant data can be highlighted. When asked about the possible difficulties each of the Web 2.0 tools posed, the majority of the students found no problems at all and thought that this social software was quite intuitive to use (see Figure 5).

5 Conclusion

This exploratory study sheds some light on the use of PLEs in ESP and how students can take the initiative and show their preferred ways of learning and collaborating with peers. It may be concluded that the Web 2.0 tools used (social bookmarking, blogs and wikis) enhance collaborative work in ESP and participation, giving students the possibility of choosing the specific tool they feel more comfortable with. This way each of the course participants has started to build his or her own PLE, probably unaware of the choice he or she was making. One of the challenges of ESP teachers that use PLEs will then be to make those choices evident for students, so that they become aware of the social software they have inadvertently gone for. These choices should also be looked into, since they are probably connected to the students own learning styles. Also, the premise that students taking these courses nowadays have quite sophisticated skills and habits and are familiar with the use of Web 2.0 tools has proved to be correct, since the majority of the participants had no difficulties in using this software and felt at ease with the proposed collaborative tasks. This suggests that ESP teachers should make an effort to include these new methodologies if they want to keep up with the digital literacies that our students clearly already have. Finally, the authors concept of teacher presence as a watermark has shown to be pertinent, allowing students to take control of their language learning and letting them explore their own preferences to constitute a personalised learning path, their own PLE in ESP. This will foster autonomous learning but without the student feeling alone at any point. It is the authors intention to investigate this concept further, considering the implications for ESP teachers and practitioners: how they can provide guidance and feedback for language learners while being in the fringes of the learning environment so that students take, once and for all, responsibility for their own learning. This is likely to lead into an inevitable blend of formal and informal language learning, which seems to be the trend in education in the 21st century.

References

Attwell, G. (2007). Personal learning environments the future of eLearning? eLearning papers 2. Retrieved August 5, 2012, from http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/ media/media11561.pdf Buchem, I., Attwell, G., & Torres, R. (2011). Understanding personal learning environments: Literature review and synthesis through the activity theory lens. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from http://journal.webscience.org/658/ British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA). (2004). What the research says about Virtual Learning Environments in teaching and learning. Retrieved August 7, 2012, from https://www.education. gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/15003.pdf

Figure 5: Problems encountered when using the different Web 2.0 tools of the course

October 2012, Issue 40

17

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Cohen, A.D. (1998). Strategies in learning and using a second language. London: Longman. Papert, S. (1991). Situating Constructionism. In I. Harel & P. Seymour (Eds.), Constructionism: Research reports and essays, 19851990 (pp. 111). Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Piaget, J. (1980). The psychogenesis of knowledge and its epistemological significance. In M. PiattelliPalmarini (Ed.), Language and learning (pp.377384). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9 (5). Retrieved August 8, 2012, from http:// www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20 Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20 -%20Part1.pdf Read, T., Brcena, E., & Rodrigo, C. (2010). Modelling ubiquity for second language learning. Int. J. Mobile Learning and Organisation, 4(2), 130149. Salinas, J., Marn, V., & Escandell, C. (2011). A case of institutional PLE: integration of VLE and e-portfolio for students. Retrieved August 8, 2012, from http://journal. webscience.org/585/

Dougiamas, M. (1998). A journey into Constructivism. Retrieved August 2, 2012, from http://dougiamas.com/writing/ constructivism.html Dudley-Evans, T., & St. John, M. (1998). Developments in ESP: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. EDUCAUSE. (2009). 7 things you should know about ... Personal learning environments. Retrieved August 9, 2012, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf Godwin-Jones, R. (2009). Emerging technologies. Personal learning environments. Language Learning & Technology, 13(2), 39. Godwin-Jones, R. (2012). Emerging technologies. Challenging hegemonies in online learning. Language Learning & Technology, 16(2), 413. Graham, S. (1997). Effective language learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Guth, S. (2008). Developing a personal learning environment for language learning using Web 2.0 tools [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved August 4, 2012, from http://www. slideshare.net/lamericaana/developing-a-personallearning-environment-for-language-learning-usingweb-20-tools-presentation Guth, S. (2009). Personal learning environments for language learning. In M. Thomas (Ed.), Handbook of research on Web 2.0 and second language learning (pp. 451471). Hershey: IGI-Global. Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1987). English for specific purposes: A learning-centred approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. JISC (2007). A report on the JISC CETIS PLE project. Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Ple/Report Macaro, E. (2006). Strategies for Language learning and for Language use: Revising the theoretical framework. The Modern Language Journal, 90(iii), 320337. Martn-Monje, E. (2011). Interactive materials, collaborative work and Web 2.0 in the context of ESP. In N. Talavn, E. Martn-Monje & F. Palazn (Eds.), Technological innovation in the teaching and processing of LSPs (pp. 101113). Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educacin a Distancia.

Underwood, J., Luckin, R., & Winters, N. (2012). Managing resource ecologies for mobile, personal and collaborative self-directed language learning. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 34, 226229. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dr Elena Martn-Monje holds a First Class Honours Degree in English Studies from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and another one in Spanish Language and Literature from UNED. Her PhD (Premio Extraordinario, UNED) focused on the benefits of using virtual environments for language teaching and learning. An experienced foreign language teacher, she has worked for over ten years in the United Kingdom and Spain, also as a teacher trainer. She is currently a lecturer at UNED, teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate courses related to English Language, including English for Professional Purposes. A member of the ATLAS research group (http://atlas.uned.es), her main fields of research are the use of ICT for language teaching, ComputerAssisted Language Learning and Mobile-Assisted Language Learning.

18

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

New strategies in EAP and ESP teaching in Kazakhstan: Task-based approach application
Saltanat Meiramova, Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, Kazakhstan. E-mail: saltanat.m@mail.ru

Abstract

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) are core disciplines for BA and MA students who are educated to be future English language schoolteachers and university lecturers in Kazakhstan. EAP and ESP teachers face new challenges, working with materials and tasks from different subject areas and developing a repertoire of teaching techniques and the rationale for their appropriate use. Against this background, my internship experience within the Bolashak International Program at the University of Glasgow allowed me an opportunity to explore more deeply the relationship between fundamental principles of learning and teaching to consider what practical approaches, methods and strategies could be appropriate to implement in higher education in Kazakhstan. This paper reports on the processes of classroom-based research that led to the development of a task-based approach to materials for teaching academic vocabulary. Keywords: English for academic purposes, English for specific purposes, Kazakhstan, Task-based approach, academic course book designing.

2 Learning academic vocabulary

1 Introduction

Following Kazakhstans signing of the Bologna Declaration on March 11, 2010, new approaches to learning and teaching are being actively promoted and the need to develop learnercentred approaches is now recognised. Further, the question of how to teach EAP and ESP through a task-based approach has been recently debated in national English teachers associations workshops, seminars and interuniversity conferences in Kazakhstan. There are few books in Kazakhstan on how to approach this field: teachers need to develop, create and adapt teaching materials and implement them in practice. Thus, these discussions are important because they inform what we pay attention to and therefore influence how we develop our literacy curriculum and practices. The key aim of this article is to show how my classroom-based research at the University of Glasgow impacts on shifting from a focus on communicative competence to developing a matrix for language teaching in the context of a task-based approach for teaching and learning in Kazakhstan, English academic vocabulary in particular. This contributes to the development of the new key criteria for teaching and learning, to the establishment of a Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) framework, to defining strategies and to designing an academic vocabulary course book with an innovative approach to teaching and learning English academically. All these have played a huge role in EAP and ESP in Kazakhstan.

Acquiring an academic vocabulary is a key aim for many students preparing for academic and scientific spheres of academic communication. The key source for academic vocabulary learning in the classroom is the reading texts in which the language occurs in context. Nation (1990) suggests that to be learnt and stored in the memory, words appear from five to sixteen times or more in academic textbooks. This is the principle we are going to pursue in designed EAP and ESP course books, along with Elliss (2003) definition of a task as a workplan that requires learners to process language pragmatically in order to achieve an outcome that can be evaluated in terms of whether the correct or appropriate propositional content has been conveyed (ibid., p. 16). Observation and reflection experience in the University of Glasgow, School of Education and Language Center makes me feel that the task-based approach is proved effective in the EAP and ESP teaching context. The main reasons for favouring task-based learning and teaching in academic context is that: 1) it is learner-centered; 2) it is learner-motivated because it is based on a great range of effective teaching skills and techniques; 3) it provides target language exposure rather than rote learning; 4) it requires classroom dynamics which allow students to be effectively involved into the socializing process in the classroom; 5) it is associated with humanistic language teaching; 6) it would be possible to teach through communication rather than for communication (Prabhu, 1987). Unfortunately, the importance of vocabulary in improving language proficiency does not receive deserved attention. Laufer (1992) states that to comprehend authentic texts the students need to have a minimum of 3000 words in their vocabulary and Hazenberg and Hulstijn (1996) claims about up to 10,000 words at university level. Goulden, Nation, & Read (1990) considers 17,200 words whereas DAnna, Zechmeister, and Hall (1991) assumes 16,785 words taken from a combination of frequency count, dictionary count and referring to a link to definition and meaning. It is possible to assume here that both the size of the lexicon and the variation among individuals would be significant. Nattinger & DeVarrico (1992) state that language is stored redundantly and refer to Bolinger (1975) that words are stored not only as individual morphemes, but also as parts of phrases, or as longer memorised chunks of speech and they are often retrieved from memory in these pre-assembled chunks. Concerning the short-term memory holding, Miller (1956) suggests a constant number of units, a view also supported by Simon (1974). However, later literature findings claim that

October 2012, Issue 40

19

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG chunks of information are composed of several items rather than single items, for example, lexical phrases. Simon (1974) considers that vocabulary size could be increased depending on how much teachers familiarize students with remembered materials, using appropriate techniques permitting them to store and recall more information. According to Schmidt (1990), students learn best when their attention is focused on the material to be learnt. Also, observation analysis makes us conclude that word knowledge includes not only its pronunciation, spelling and meaning but also its grammatical characteristics, sense relations, collocation issues and the recognition of word family (Schmitt & Zimmerman, 2002; Bauer & Nation, 1993). Schmitt & Zimmerman (2002) state that students should also know the derivative forms of the target academic words. When putting theory into practice, it can be argued that practitioners adopt a task-based model of teaching and learning because it focuses on a student, starting from where he or she is. Academic vocabulary acquisition plays an important role in building basic four skills through real and authentic text use in the classroom. In turn, this helps teachers to develop contextualised communicative skills and facilitate students to develop confidence in themselves and their motivation. Thus, our task is to introduce teaching materials in meaningful ways, bearing in mind that words exist in a complex matrix which links them to morphemes (prefixes, suffixes), other meanings (synonyms, antonyms), grammar patterns and multiword units. This matrix could be extended from the sentence to spoken and written texts in cognitive and social dimension. explore the fundamental principles of learning and teaching. Then, a framework appropriate to the teaching and learning culture of Kazakhstan has been developed, within which the target, teaching vocabulary for specific academic purposes, can be supported. Thirdly, the framework developed from this international dialogue takes account of the matrix of language teaching, namely teachers, students and materials (Richards, 1990), in order to focus on the whole picture (Baumfield, Daborn & Meiramova, 2012). Thus, the defined new key criteria for teaching and learning focus on classroom management theories, practical application, including TBLT, teaching materials and topicoriented lesson plans. Responding to students needs and interests, motivation and classroom management language is taken into account. Classroom dynamics is reflected in the three-staged TBLT framework adapted from Willis (1996), knowledge of which is important for designing a task-based lesson and all these are illustrated in Figure 1. Classroom management Theories practical application, including TBLT Teaching materials Motivation Classroom management language Classroom dynamics

Responsibility to students needs and interests Topic-oriented lesson plan

Reflection

3 The aim of the project

The main aim of the project is to prepare students for communication in academic environments. To implement this new objective, new teaching and learning activities are developed to meet students needs and expectations, along with the teaching materials, useful methods, approaches and activities used to promote successful classroom interaction. Further, a TBLT framework is developed based on the matrix of language teaching. The latter incorporates the classroom observation reflection to develop the new key criteria for teaching and learning and to define useful strategies for successful academic vocabulary acquisition. Next, the Academic Vocabulary List is compiled from standard academic vocabulary lists used in academic textbooks published in the United Kingdom. Finally, an academic vocabulary course book for EAP and ESP, with a task-based approach, is designed to teach academic vocabulary through reading, spoken and written activities through multiple exposure and using extension of pairwork from dialogues to exchange of information and opinions in the academic or scientific communication environment.

Figure 1: New key criteria for teaching and learning academic language classrooms in TBLT context The Academic Vocabulary List mentioned above is frequently used in different academic contexts. They are words that students will need when speaking, reading and writing during their course of academic study. These are not technical words, but the ones that students will meet in texts whatever subjects they study. The particular reason why this criteria have been followed is that they can reflect the contexts in which Academic English is taught and used. The focus of these new key criteria for teaching and learning is to describe the design and delivery of particular language teaching in a particular class. Below are some considerations of the main criteria regarding their functions in setting-up TBLT framework for academic vocabulary acquisition for higher education students in Kazakhstan.

4.1 Classroom management

4 Key criteria for teaching and learning and setting up the TBLT framework

The first step was to develop new key criteria for teaching and learning through systematic observation in classroom contexts in the University of Glasgow, School of Education and Language Centre. The processes have been stripped down to

Classroom management is viewed as a key aspect of teaching a successful lesson. The concerns are discussed in three subcategories: cognitively challenging lesson content; learnercentered, staging cohesion and appropriacy of activities. By cognitively challenging lesson content following Harmer (1991), context, activity and class organisation, teaching materials, aids, language, practical application of theories, including TBLT, and possible problems are considered. Learner-centered, staging cohesion provides studentsfocused classroom organisation, which engages students to work in pairs and small groups to develop skills to negotiate

20

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG in the intercultural communication and in doing so, they are encouraged to be responsible decision makers. The role of staging cohesion in classroom management is very important because it influences students authentic language cognitive perception, reflection and acquisition. In addition, it relies on well-structured topic-oriented lesson plans, which means smooth and efficient linking between different activities focused on the unified theme, topic and aims. To meet appropriacy of activities, it is important in language teaching and learning to identify the activities and teaching materials, which lead to communicative, authentic use of language as well as allowing for individualization in learning, i.e., students learning styles and preferences. Table 1: Structure of cognitively challenging lesson staging Phase 1 Classroom management Phase 2 Thinking actively/Teaching materials Phase 3 Thinking about thinking/ Classroom management language Metacognition Reflection Discussion Evaluation Example: Text A The Concept of Justice Brainstorming Describe the Concept of Justice. How do you understand it? What has the Concept of Justice achieved? Where? When? Compare and contrast the Concept of Justice in Europe with that one of your country. Explain why it is essential to all people on Earth. Developing vocabulary skills a) Read the text C paying attention to highlighted words and discuss in pairs what adjective phrases (at least 35) you would use to describe the main characteristics or features of Justice. b) Reread the text C and practice with your partner what verb phrases (at least 35) you would use to describe the functions or procedures of Justice. a) Look at the highlighted words in the article above and then complete the table below: what parts of speech is each? Why is each part of speech used? Word Word class

Cognitively challenging lesson content Thinking skills Appropriacy of activities

Challenging task-based activities Motivation and students needs Classroom dynamics Dialogue and questioning

b) Read each noun of paragraph 1 of text C. Find three more words that are linked to it. Model: aspect. different, main, various 1) concept 2) resolution 3) conflicts 4) individuals 5) sum 6) role 7) process Students could be prepared to perform the task in ways that would promote vocabulary acquisition by conveying and recycling meaning through different types of activities. On the during-task stage, Proceduralisation of Language, focuses on the form-meaning relationship, providing input through spot-the-difference, describe-and-draw, or many information-gap tasks (Ellis, 2003, p. 250). These tasks assist in language exposure, including the development of accuracy, fluency and complexity with strict time limits. Willis (1996, p. 58) considers students presenting a report detailing their own observation on how they succeed in performing a task as the natural conclusion of the task cycle. Students could be offered to perform different task-based activities. The example below illustrates how this stage was followed: Example: Text B Independence of Kazakhstan Knowledge quiz How much do you know about the Independence Day of your country? Test your knowledge and your partners knowledge. 1) Answer the questions in your own words. a) What is a special date for the citizens of Kazakhstan? What does it symbolise?

4.2 Classroom dynamics

Good classroom dynamics focus on whole class and small group interaction, interaction in pairs and individually depending on the type of activities used. These activities may include: teacher-student(s); student-student(s); group (same/ different); combination (individual; group and individual). In other words, teachers do their best to involve their students in the effective socializing process in the classroom.

4.3 Motivation

According to Guilloteaux and Drnyei (2008, p. 56) appropriate curricula and good teaching are not enough on their own to ensure students achievement students also need to have a modicum of motivation. In this context, it is important to identify certain motivational strategies, which can help to go through certain ebbs and flows (Drnyei, 2001, p.140). Motivational strategies refer to 1) instructional interventions applied by the teacher to elicit and stimulate student motivation and 2) self-regulating strategies that are used purposefully by individual students to manage the level of their own motivation (Guilloteaux & Drnyei, 2008, p. 57). The next section presents the setting-up of TBLT framework, useful strategies for academic vocabulary acquisition and the designed structure of an academic vocabulary course book.

5 Setting up the TBLT framework

The pre-task stage, Introducing a Word, focuses on activating schematic knowledge and brainstorming the topics to generate students interest, observing a model of how to perform the task and being engaged in non-task activities. Here is an example:

October 2012, Issue 40

21

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG b) What is the first fundamental legislation of the new country? Explain what kind of document it is. c) What is the Constitution? d) What kind of government do the Kazakhstani people vote for? e) How does it influence on the life of people in general? 2) Think about the correct answer in each case. a) When did Kazakhstan adopt the Constitutional Law? b) When did Kazakhstan celebrate the 10th anniversary of its independence? c) What kind of Parliament was established? d) What country has become a leading attractor of foreign investments in the CIS and Eastern Europe? How and why do you think this is? e) How many political parties and non-governmental organizations are there in the country, ensuring political plurality and social stability? f) What did Kazakhstan declare and why? g) What is a difference between foreign and domestic policy? 3) Read text B Independence of Kazakhstan and check your answers. 4) Do you know the following acronyms from text B: the UN, theEU, the EBRD, theIMF, MAGATE, the Red Cross,UNICEFandUNESCO? What do they stand for? Developing vocabulary skills 5) Look at the words in bold in the text B Independence of Kazakhstan and try to work out their meanings, then check your ideas in a dictionary. Developing Critical thinking skills Text A Notion of Government a) Could you think about and elaborate a definition of government as an institution? The following statements could help you: Institutional state structure to create order in a society. Primary task is to govern. Separation of powers checks and balances in the system. b) Think about the key functions of a government. Match the functions with their branches. What are the sub-functions if they are any? Rule making Rule execution Rule adjudication Judiciary Legislative Executive Example: Text A The Concept of Justice 1) Vocabulary building exercise: verbs (changing meaning) Short-answer quiz for paragraph 2 of text A The Concept of Justice a) The second facet of the liberal concept of justice is that a person should not be _____ or punished except for fault (intentional, reckless or negligent wrong doing, strict liability applying in exceptional circumstances). (advantage) b) But the whole of the common law relating to crimes, civil obligations and property rights is characterised by the notion that fault ______ punishment or deprivation. (lie) c) The Australian industrial relations system is fundamentally structured on notions of distributive justice and ______ policy. (define) d) It enables tribunals to vitiate contracts, to penalise certain classes and to reward others on the basis of _____ considerations, although in recent times employers have become their predictable victims. (predict) e) Consumer protection laws similarly _____ contractual rights and obligations in compensating losses incurred by consumers. (regard) f) The idea of commutative justice which has characterised the laws and customs of most civilised societies is now being progressively ______ by distributive justice. (place) 2) Read the extract from the article The Concept of Justice in Islam by Charles Le Gai Eaton (2000) and express your opinion about it to your partner. Those who enquire about the basics of Islam are usually told about the Five Pillars of the religion. These relate to faith and not practice, but at a deeper level it might be said that there are two great pillars which support the whole edifice. These are Peace and Justice. They are clearly connected since there can be no enduring peace without justice. The very word Islm comes from the same verbal root as salm meaning peace and, since the religion is based upon total submission to the will of God, Muslims believe that real peace is out of reach unless it is based upon the submission within the universal order. They believe equally that there can be no real justice except as an aspect of submission to the source of all that is just and well ordered. Although God in Himself is beyond comprehension or analysis, the Quran gives us hints as to His true nature through what is sometimes called the 99 names and one of these is al-aAdl, the Just. Another of these names is alMuqsi, the Dispenser of Justice or He who gives to each thing its due. Developing writing skills 2.1 Write an explanation of the concept of justice in Islam. Remember to: Use verbs in the present simple. Join related sentences with the same subject with and. Editing 2.2 Exchange explanations with a partner. Read and mark his/ her explanations with ?, S, G or P. Rewriting 2.3 Read the explanation again. Look at the marks on your first draft. Write the explanation again.

c) Think about the functions of the government in your country: are they similar or different? Discuss with your partner. In the post-task stage, Language Focus, students are engaged in consciousness-raising activities with repeated exposure to language from the task cycle. Consciousnessraising is guided problem solving allowing students to organize their view of language based on their own observation, analysis and conclusions about particular features of the language. They perform form-focused exercises, self-correcting, editing their transcripts or stories by noticing and memorizing new phrases and patterns from texts and the ways phrases and patterns are used. In addition, creative writing, essays and media projects are very encouraging. This stage is illustrated in the following example:

22

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG The whole picture of mutual interrelationship between teachers, students and materials is illustrated structurally in Table 2. Table 2: TBLT framework Pre-task stage Introducing a word Criteria 1) Practical application of theory 2) Classroom management 3) Classroom dynamics Activating schemata (knowledge) by visual aids by word relations by graphic organisers by definition by content and word formation 1) Teaching materials 2) Classroom management language 3) Classroom dynamics Supported meaning - Focused activities to check comprehension 1) Motivation and responsibility to students needs and interests 2) Classroom dynamics Reflection on task performance to consolidate learning Task-cycle stage Proceduralisation of language Post-task stage Language Focus The main advantages of using these learning strategies are that they support students to be self-directed, they are flexible and problem-oriented.

7 Academic vocabulary course book structure

by problem by concept solving decision questions by project by reasoning by consciousnessgap raising activities by spot the difference by describe-anddraw by reports writing and discussion by informationgap

6 Strategies to academic vocabulary teaching and learning

We have identified the five types of strategies, which, I consider, enhance any part of the learning-acquisition continuum, academic vocabulary in particular: Memory strategy -- applying images; Cognitive strategy -- creating mental linkages; Compensation strategies -- guessing intelligently by 1) using linguistic clues; 2) using other clues; Social strategies -- asking questions; -- cooperating with others; Metacognitive strategies: -- centering your learning by overviewing and linking with already known material; -- arranging and planning your learning by identifying the purpose of a language task (purposeful reading/ speaking/writing); -- evaluating your learning by self-monitoring/selfevaluating.

The purpose of the academic vocabulary course book is to consider effective ways to teach academic vocabulary and help students to translate their academic vocabulary knowledge into reading, spoken and written activities that conform to the expectations of the academic and scientific communication environment. Knowing a word suggested in this course book means that students have to recognise the words derivative forms, spelling, pronunciation, its relationships with other words, word formation and to discover its meaning from context. The principle of structuring this course book is to facilitate an academic vocabulary acquisition by taking into account the newly developed key criteria for a successful lesson, task-based approach, learning strategies and vocabulary skills underpinned in the TBLT three-stage framework. The textbook aims to demonstrate how such approaches might be implemented in the academic context of Kazakhstan. The methodology principle embedded in this course book is learning by rules or code and gaining the acquisition by practice, use and communication activities through the above-mentioned TBLT framework of interaction and inquiry demanding talking, thinking and synthesising skills. This TBLT framework considers support for learning and establishing a comfortable classroom atmosphere. Thus, Academic English Vocabulary course book is designed to develop students academic vocabulary knowledge when preparing for academic courses, EAP or ESP examinations and for interactive academic communication. It covers seven units: Education, Science, Government and Justice, Environment, Money, Social Life, Nanotechnology. These provide students with defined effective learning strategies for building vocabulary through reading academic texts. The course book contains task-based activities designed to enrich students vocabulary knowledge on specific subjects, and use academic words effectively to promote learning. In addition, it includes appendices of useful references about formal and informal academic words and expressions; units of measurement and common symbols; abbreviations and false cognates that often cause problems for understanding and learning.

8 Conclusion

The focus on new strategies of EAP and ESP teaching in Kazakhstan in the task-based context is based on practical approaches, methods and strategies that can be implemented in the EAP and ESP curriculum. On the one hand, these practical approaches, methods and strategies promote the way to create and develop new key criteria for teaching and learning and to define strategies for engaging students in interactive academic communication. At the same time, the chosen task-based approach increases students language exposure, promotes creative and thought-provoking skills by communicating effectively, hopefully raising the students motivation in the target language learning. In addition, the adapted TBLT framework shows a potential interplay between

October 2012, Issue 40

23

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG strategy and criteria and provides a clear structure for a lesson flexible for creativity and a variety of options at each stage. This framework delivers these processes that are reflected in the designed English academic vocabulary course book to demonstrate both relevant materials for teaching academic vocabulary and different types of task-based activities. I am not suggesting that all these should constitute the totality of the teaching and learning in Kazakhstan but working with Kazakh colleagues, these materials will be trialled in the classroom and evaluated. However, to make successful teaching happen it would be helpful to sustain interest in action research by a sound organization of experiential learning through systematic observation of classroom contexts, developing the matrix for an innovative approach to language teaching and inquiry reflection that taken together could maximise the positive effects of intercultural engagements on knowledge and innovation in an academic English context. Harmer, J. (1991). The practice of English language teaching. Harlow, UK: Longman. Hazenberg, S., & Hulstijn, L. (1996). Defining a minimal receptive second-language vocabulary for non-native students: An empirical investigation. Applied Linguistics, 17, 145163. Laufer, B. (1992). How much lexis is necessary for reading comprehension? In P. Arnaud & H. Bejoint (Eds.), Vocabulary and applied linguistics (pp. 126132). UK: Macmillan. Miller, G. (1956). The Magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 8197.

Nation, I.S.P. (1990). Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. Heinle & Heinle Publishers. Nattinger J.R., & DeVarrico, J.S. (1992). Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prabhu, N.S. (1987). Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Richards, J.C. (1990). The Language Teaching Matrix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11, 129158. Schmitt, N., & Zimmerman, C.B. (2002). Derivative word forms: What do learners know? TESOL Quarterly, 36, 145171. Simon, H. (1974). How big is a chunk? Science, 183, 482488. Willis, J. (1996). A Framework for Task Based Learning. Longman.

References

Bauer, L., & Nation, I.S.P. (1993). Word families.International Journal of Lexicography, 6(4), 253279. Baumfield, V., Daborn, E., & Meiramova, S. (2012). Denying the Dichotomy: Working in Partnership to Promote Innovative Language Teaching. Paper presented at the KIMEP International Research Conference 9, Almaty, Kazakhstan, April 1921, 2012. Bolinger, D. (1975). Aspects of Language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Drnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational Strategies in the Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DAnna, C.A., Zechmeister, E.B., & Hall, J.W. (1991). Toward a meaningful definition of vocabulary size. Journal of Reading Behaviour, 23, 109122. Ellis, R. (2003). Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goulden, R., Nation, P., & Read, J. (1990). How large can a receptive vocabulary be? Applied Linguistics, 11(4), 341363. Guilloteaux M., & Drnyei, Z. (2008). Motivating language learners: A classroom-oriented investigation of the effects of motivational strategies on student motivation. Tesol Quarterly, 42(1), 5577.

Saltanat Meiramova is an associate professor in TEFL at Gumilyov Eurasian National University in Astana, Kazakhstan. She has extensive experience as an Applied Linguist and EAP/ESP teacher to BA, MA and PhD students. She is a holder of JFDP scholarship in Linguistics, the USA (2010) and Bolashak scholarship in Theory and Method of Professional Education, the UK (2011). She is a member of KazTEA (2007), AILA (2010), IATEFL (2011), and NATECLA (2012). Her research interests include TEFL/TESL, EAP/ESP and Applied Linguistics issues. Her recent textbook English in Professional Activity for International Law students was published in Germany (LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2010).

24

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

Critical discourse analysis in ESP course design: The case of medical English
Theron Muller, University of Toyama, Japan. E-mail: theron@theronmuller.com

Abstract

This paper describes the planning and implementation of a sixweek short course for medical students in Japan. The purpose of the paper is to explain how the author planned and adapted the course to local circumstances, to share student reflections on the course content and to consider how the design of this course could inform other ESP practitioners in other contexts, and the field in general, regarding ESP course planning and implementation. The course employed extracts on doctorpatient discourse, highlighting issues from that literature and giving students opportunities to respond and react to the texts through projects designed to encourage critical thinking and reflection on doctor-patient interaction. Where possible, students voices are included to offer examples of the tasks they completed and their reflections on the course contents and its meaningfulness to them. Keywords: critical discourse analysis, medical English, course design, critical thinking.

2 Contextual background

This paper describes the planning and execution of a short Medical English course for fourth year medical students at a medical college in Japan, balancing the what with the how (Watson Todd, 2003, p. 148) of course implementation working within local constraints. The course itself incorporated a critical discourse analysis perspective (Fairclough, 2010) of doctor-patient dialogue from the literature as core material for discussion and reflection during classes, encouraging students to take a critical view of the doctor-patient relationship and to unpack some of the power structures inherent in such discourses. Specifically, discussion of lifeworld versus medical voice (Barry, Stevenson, Britten, Barber, & Bradley, 2001, p. 495), issues surrounding patient autonomy (Nessa & Malterud, 1998) and patient accounts of problems faced in negotiating care in the management of chronic disease (Thorne, Nyhlin, & Paterson, 2000) were incorporated. This paper starts with a brief reflection on some of the challenges facing teachers in expatriate teaching contexts, describing the planning and implementation of the course, including presenting student samples of written production and reflections on the course, and concludes with consideration of how the course may improve in the future, along with some of the implications of this account for ESP. Teaching implications are that the principles of ESP instruction as described in the literature are useful in informing ad-hoc design and implementation of specific classes and descriptions of such cases will hopefully help to enrich the picture of ESP as it is practiced and further inform theory development.

1 Introduction

The majority of ESP course description literature considers issues of design from the perspective of curriculum planning beyond a single class offering, often discussing how ESP courses can be integrated into larger institutional degree programs (for an example see Flowerdew, 2005). However, in a number of international contexts expatriate native Englishspeaking2 teachers may be hired on separate, shorter career tracks from their domestic colleagues, and thus may fall outside of the power structures involved in planning and implementation of university-wide curriculum. In these instances, such teachers may be asked to teach specific courses with little understanding or guidance regarding how those courses fit into the overall structure of the curriculum. Furthermore, the overall curriculum structure, committee structures, and the names of faculty members responsible for curricular planning and content lessons, may be opaque to these expatriate teachers as official institutional documents may be written exclusively in the local language. Nevertheless, such teachers still have a responsibility to plan and teach their lessons and to the extent possible tailor their lesson content to the needs of their students. This paper describes one such effort in one such context, where I have been hired as a native speaker of English on a contract that falls outside of the normal career track of my domestic Japanese colleagues. As the only non-Japanese faculty member at the local campus, I am also largely independent of faculty power structures and responsibilities, which are conducted and documented exclusively in Japanese. Within this context, I was responsible for teaching medical students English in two short course sessions of six classes each, one in the fall semester and the other in the spring.

2.1 Medical English II

The normal semester in Japan consists of 15 90-minute course sessions, but in the case of Medical English I and II, teaching of the courses was split between several different teachers, each responsible for teaching three (Japanese teachers) or six (native English speaking teachers) 90-minute class sessions. To my knowledge, the different teachers did not meet to discuss the contents of their classes, but instead planned their classes independently. Students on the medical course are enrolled for six years of study at the university, after which, provided they pass the national medical licensing exam, they become formal medical doctors and begin their residencies. The Medical English courses are scheduled for the students third and fourth years of study, in the fall and spring semesters,

While I am aware of the controversy surrounding native-speaker-ness in the literature (see Lillis & Curry, 2010 for an up to date discussion of some of the issues), for the purposes of this paper, Im using the term as it is used locally, with the knowledge that it is problematic, but is how positions tend to be described in Japan and elsewhere in Asia.

October 2012, Issue 40

25

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG respectively. The students enrolled in Medical English I tend to have the same instructor(s) for Medical English II, with some exceptions. Based on discussions with doctors-in-residence as a form of needs analysis, Medical English I concentrated on presentation skills, but due to a number of factors beyond my control, including institutional changes in class size, the course was not well received by students. Faced with the prospects of having to teach the same students again in Medical English II, I resolved to implement a course that better met student expectations and needs. In particular, my objective was to create a course that answered one students anonymous written comment, I want to study Medical English! Planning the course was further complicated by an extremely broad mix of English language skills among enrolled students. Of the 16 students enrolled in the class, at least three had studied abroad in English; of these, one held an undergraduate degree from a US university. The class also included two or three students who had relatively low English language proficiency and were uncomfortable speaking English. In other words, these students were more typical of Japanese students of English described in the literature (e.g., Tukahara, 2002). In such a situation, teaching only language skills would have underserved the more proficient students, and an exclusive focus on listening or speaking would have likely been too difficult for the less proficient students to follow. Thus I was interested in authentic materials which could be used for inductive learning, important aspects of ESP (Watson Todd, 2003), which were accessible to the less proficient students in the class and still relevant to the more proficient students.

2.3 From concept to execution

Having decided a concept for the course, the next step was to find appropriate content. The course started with an extended discussion of Barry, et al.s (2001) lifeworld and medical voice in doctor-patient interaction and based on student reactions to that content, moved to discussions of patient autonomy with extracts of discourse from Nessa and Malterud (1998). As a final project, students were asked to recreate dialogues between patients and health care workers based on patient accounts of critical episodes as presented in Thorne, Nyhlin, and Paterson (2000). The syllabus was process-oriented and largely emergent, as each subsequent theme was based on student responses to earlier themes in the lessons, with responsibility for the contents of each class determined by the teacher. As assessment is an institutional requirement, it was divided between critical reflective essays, completed as homework (60%), and two writing projects, completed in class or as homework where necessary (40%).

3 Critical discourse analysis in Medical English II

2.2 Responding to student expectations

When covering a topic as broad as medical English in six 90-minute sessions, the challenge was to find a theme that could resonate with students, be seen to cover the remit of medical English (which appeared to include student expectations of doctor-patient English discourse language practice), and somehow fall within my area of expertise as a non-medical specialist working in applied linguistics and teaching English as a foreign language. Reflection led me to critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010) as a potential solution, specifically commentary and analysis of discourse between doctors and patients. Using such texts would allow me to introduce doctorpatient discourse into the classroom, fulfilling the students expectations, but in a way that would hopefully, empower students by helping them to develop a critical awareness (Flowerdew, 2005, p. 136), fulfilling my own expectations that the course follows a critical pedagogy rather than an exclusive focus on language practice. Furthermore, as the texts are written as transcriptions of spoken interaction, they were largely accessible to the less proficient students while still being of interest to students with greater English proficiency. An additional aspect of the course, not discussed here, was the invitation of two healthcare professionals to give presentations during two of the six classes, intended to give additional face validity (to borrow a term from testing) to the course.

The first classes concentrated on introducing critical discourse analysis using the following questions to guide class discussion: 1) What does discourse mean? 2) What is discourse analysis? 3) Based on the above information, please describe doctor patient discourse analysis? Next a sample of patient discourse from Barry, et al. (2001) was presented and students were asked to respond as if they were the treating physician (to the patients line 134 in Figure 1). This provided an opportunity to raise students awareness of discoursal linguistic features, as one student suggested the doctor response to the patients statement of having picked up angina should be: Angina is not an acute infection, rather its a chronic illness. After teacher-student discussion of whether the patient was likely to understand all of the terms in the statement, a revised response was negotiated: Angina is not something you pick up, its something you develop over time. The next part of the class involved sharing Barry, et al.s (2001) figure (p. 495) with students (partly reproduced in Figure 1) and asking students to answer the question, Do you see any problems with the doctors reaction to Krystofs statements? 134 L P As er er as I say angina is something that is m- I picked up somewhere last year I think. Yes <uses computer> I have never had it before in my life <uses computer> ((sigh)) And what you wake up and go off to the loo are you feeling breathless then?

135 136 137 138 139

M L M M

D P D P D

Figure 1: Sample of doctor-patient discourse (from Barry, et al., 2001, p. 495) 26

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Students reflective essays, assigned as homework, help to give an indication of how successful the lesson contents were at raising their critical awareness of doctor-patient discourse. The questions for the reflective essays asked, What did you find interesting about todays class? What did you hear that was new to you? What did you hear that you already knew?. All students noted that they had been unaware of discourse analysis as a tool for analyzing speech and that the concept was an interesting one to them, which meant I was teaching content they were not already studying elsewhere, a suggestion Belcher (2006) makes. Barry, et al.s (2001) analysis of lifeworld and medical voice was presented in the next class and students were asked to transform the doctors discourse from the medical into the lifeworld. The class finished by sharing a summary of Barry, et al.s (2001) value judgements regarding the two different voice perspectives; where they assert lifeworld voice is humane and effective while medical voice is inhumane and ineffective. In her reflective essay, one student aptly summarized class reactions to this exercise: Through the activities in the class, Ive learned that it is a good thing to repeat the same words which a patient used when a doctor is responding to a patient We have to think about how a patient may feel about doctors words It was the first time for me to hear about what a doctors voice and a patients voice are. It is difficult to balance the use of system words and lifeworld words. I am learning medicine using technical terms right now. To pass all the exams, I have to input all the technical words into my head. In the future I have to explain with lifeworld words. I am sure that it is not going to be easy, but I believe I can acquire the appropriate communication skills to work with patients so that they can understand what Im saying. One student had a particularly insightful response to Barry, et al.s (2001) representation of lifeworld and medicine voices as polar opposites: I agree that discourse with the voice of medicine would end up in inhumane medical care; however, I doubt that it would end up in ineffective medical care. If the patient agrees to take the medicine as the doctor says, whether the treatment will end up successful or not is unpredictable, though I bet that the patient that had a discourse with the voice of lifeworld with the doctor would have much more compliance. The next class contents were based on students reflective essay responses to the situation presented in Barry, et al. (2001). As one student wrote, In my opinion, we cannot directly correct the misunderstanding if that would hurt his/her feelings in reference to the patients incorrect understanding of angina as a kind of infectious disease. As this was a dominant opinion, and one I felt was worth further critical examination, the next in-class activity involved examination of the psychiatric consultation described in Nessa and Malterud (1998), where there are a number of suggestions that the doctor makes which the patient refuses (and the doctor concedes) and other requests the patient makes but the doctor refuses. This class also included the first of two writing projects, asking students (in small groups) to write a diary entry from one of the interlocutor perspectives summarizing the consultation. The final classes had students discuss accounts of critical encounters that Type II diabetes patients had with health care professionals as described in Thorne, Nyhlin, and Paterson (2000) and recreate (in small groups) dialogs based on the patient accounts and/or write a hypothetical response for the health care providers after the critical incident, from a medical and/or lifeworld perspective. The choice of what dialog to write for what situation and in what voice was left to the students.

4 Implications and conclusion

Student feedback regarding the course was positive. One student suggestion for improvement was to provide handouts a week in advance to allow the weaker students to review their contents, a suggestion that is being implemented in later generations of the course. One issue under consideration is the extent to which students can be granted autonomy to decide course contents, such as conducting their own searches of the medical discourse literature to select texts for analysis. As I have found it difficult to find relevant materials from the literature to include in lessons, I doubt students would have more success, so I believe trying to increase autonomy in this way could lead to more problems. Regarding implications for ESP more generally, I have intentionally taken Canagarajahs (1996) suggestion to authentically present the local context rather than internationalize and decontextualize this discussion. However, there are some points relevant to other ESP practitioners. One is that this demand for an ad-hoc, class-level ESP design is not unique and so teachers who lack curriculum-planning power may want to consider presenting their experience of adaptive course design. Such accounts would more accurately portray ESP as it is practiced. Another issue is that finding approachable and compelling resources is challenging, so practitioners interested in similar course design may want to consider sharing what literature they feel works in their contexts. On the same note, I have been unable to secure authentic audio recordings of doctor-patient discourse, which could have added a potentially welcomed listening dimension to the course. Furthermore, ESP theorists may be interested in this attempt to balance both the how and what of course design and implementation. That practitioners have to both teach and decide what to teach is obvious, but the question in language teaching remains how to effectively facilitate acquisition. This paper represents my efforts to promote critical thinking and learning with my students.

References

Barry, C. A., Stevenson, F. A., Britten, N., Barber, N., & Bradley, C. P. (2001). Giving voice to the lifeworld. More humane, more effective medical care? A qualitative study of doctor-patient communication in general practice. Social Science & Medicine, 53, 487505. Belcher, D. B. (2006). English for specific purposes: Teaching to perceived needs and imagined futures in worlds of work, study, and everyday life. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 133156. Canagarajah, A. S. (1996). From critical research practice to critical research reporting. TESOL Quarterly, 30(2), 321331. Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (2nd Edition). Harlow: Pearson ESL.

October 2012, Issue 40

27

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Flowerdew, L. (2005). Integrating traditional and critical approaches to syllabus design: The what, the how and the why? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4, 135-147. Tukahara, N. (2002). The sociolinguistic situation of English in Japan. Revista de Sociolinguistica. Watson Todd, R. (2003). EAP or TEAP? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2, 147156.

Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context. Abingdon: Routledge.

Nessa, J., & Malterud, K. (1998). Tell me whats wrong with me: A discourse analysis approach to the concept of patient autonomy. Journal of Medical Ethics, 24, 394400. Thorne, S. E., Nyhlin, K. T., & Paterson, B. L. (2000). Attitudes toward patient expertise in chronic illness. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 37, 303311.

Theron Muller is a teacher and researcher based in Japan. He is lead editor of Innovating EFL Teaching in Asia, Palgrave Macmillan and active with JALT Publications, the Asian ESP Journal and teaches the online MASH Academic Publishing course.

Monolingualism among multilingual scholars and its implications for EAP/ESP

Ghanashyam Sharma, Stony Brook University (State University of New York). E-mail: ghanashyamsharma@gmail.com

Abstract

A great deal of current literature on language policies in English-dominated academic disciplines and professions assume that multilingual individuals are more tolerant of, and negotiate meaning across, different varieties of English. This article first shows results to the contrary from a study of how a group of non-native English speaking (NNES) engineering scholars at a public university in Southern United States viewed and treated language variation in academic writing. Then it draws attention to the need to address the intolerance toward varieties of English among teachers of English for academic and professional purposes. The focus of this article is to illustrate the paradoxical situation whereby members of an academic discipline may practically use rhetorically complex and sociolinguistically variant language forms in practice but strongly reject the same in theory. It concludes by highlighting the intractability of language standard as an educational goal from the underlying language ideology and the implications of monolingualism to the teaching of English for academic and specific purposes. Keywords: monolingualism, multilingual scholars, engineering writing, writing in the disciplines, standard English, English for technical writing.

1 Introduction

In my opinion, I think NNES engineers are even tougher than the native English speakers, because of two reasons: One is that they say, well, weve learned this, weve mastered proper English, so others should. But also I think we always want our international students to master English theyre getting a degree, a high level education, from an English speaking institution. (Professor Z, a participant of the dissertation study on which this article is based)

Traditional pedagogies of English language teaching, including the teaching of English for academic and specific purposes, generally aim at progressive movement of the student from the outside to the inside, from non-native speech and writing styles towards native-like proficiency. This expectation is most rigid and strong in academic disciplines like engineering, especially when it comes to writing (Belcher & Braine, 1994; Roberts & Cimasco, 2008; Jenkins, Kaye & Weiland, 1993; Winsor, 1996, 2003; Zhu, 2004; Leydens, 2008; Jordan & Kedrowicz, 2011; Carter, Vouk, Gannod, Burge, Anderson & Hoffman, 2011). Consequently, engineering scholars tend to believe that it is in the very nature and purpose of academic and professional writing in their discipline to be simple, clear and concise as a result; they see no room for any variation from what they believe is a universally standardized technical English. The argument behind the rejection of language variation is generally that the variation and the ambiguity and complexity that it may cause can lead to highly adverse consequences, as when a flight crew that needs crash landing instructions that are not clear and simple because they contain features of nonstandard English (Ogburn, 1947; Oriel, 1992; Barnard, 2010). The above line of argument misses some fundamental realities about language. In particular, it overlooks the fact that complexity, rhetoricity, ambiguity and sociolinguistic variations are all inherent qualities of it. While it may be necessary as well as possible to reduce these qualities to certain extents in certain contexts and genres of writing, the idea that engineering as a discipline should always use clear and simple language is an impossible and false ideal. For one thing, simplicity and clarity are relative and contextreliant issues (Barnard, 2010; Winsor, 1996, 2003). Thus, in the above case of instructions for crash landing an aircraft, the instructions will only be simple and clear to those who can understand the specific vocabulary, discourse and writing conventions of the particular genre. Similarly, in transnational

28

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG contexts,3 the attempt to oversimplify can, for instance, lead to misrepresentation and misunderstanding of any local issues in the content of the instructions wherever issues of social and cultural significance regarding the people involved are dealt with. In other words, the attempt to impose a universal standard upon language use is bound to be more problematic than useful and realistic in most situations of language use. In most communicative situations, clarity and simplicity are gained through mastery and shared understanding of content rather than by dumbing down the language itself. In fact, language variations and complexity can be used as positive resources for rich and effective communication, even in engineering (Lu, 1994). Using data from a dissertation study conducted at a large public university in the Southern United States, the rest of this article describes the paradox of monolingualism adopted and enforced by multilingual engineering scholars and students. To define the key term, monolingualism as used in this article, it constitutes the policy or practice which is based on the belief that there is a universally consistent standard variety of English that academic writing can and should use. The dissertation study was based on a year-long process of collecting a variety of data formal interviews and informal discussions with ten participants, samples of academic writing and email communication, observation of classroom teaching and oneon-one meeting with students and analyzing the data by using the grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The participants, whom I anonymize as Professor A, Student B and so forth, included five engineering professors who were NNES scholars and one of each of their graduate students who were also NNES individuals. This article uses some of the findings of the larger study in order to highlight the prevalence of monolingual beliefs and practices among multilingual teachers, the implications of which the profession of language teaching in general and the teaching of academic writing in particular should address. Specifically, the article uses the paradox of the monolingual multilinguals as a manifestation of the politics of language that prevails not only among scholars who believe that language is not our business, but also among language educators including those who are multilingual individuals part of whose business it is to recognize varieties and variation of language use among different users, contexts, genres and purposes. variation as potentially a positive resource in communication. However, as this study showed, curricular goals, institutional and professional incentives and the politics of language vis--vis English as a dominant lingua franca, all seem to override multilingual scholars view towards and treatment of the natural variation of language when it comes to academic and professional writing. The rigid monolingualism is striking in the context of the engineering discipline in US universities because NNES students exceed 60 per cent of graduate student population in American universities, and NNES faculty comprise over a quarter of the faculty population as well (IIE, 20102011; CRSR, 2010). These students and faculty are aware that their discipline is composed of a majority of NNES individuals who come from all around the world and use a wide variety of Englishes. They, nonetheless, believe that it is necessary and possible to eliminate the variations in their academic writing. The findings of this study showed the engineering professors and even some of their students used highly complex language, as well as variant expressions, and they practically negotiated meaning through the diversity of language use in spite of the monolingual rhetoric that they subscribed to. However, they are unwilling, in theory, to accept and use any variations from standard academic English as a normal and positive aspect of writing in their disciplines. Thus, their belief and demand contradicts their own use of, and negotiation of meaning through, language that does not always conform to what they believe is a universal absolute. As I will discuss below, this paradox is significant from educational and pedagogical perspectives. Studies by scholars like Flowerdew (1999), Lillis and Curry (2006, 2010) have for quite some time consistently shown that NNES scholars from outside the global geopolitical, academic, and professional centers more specifically countries, universities, or professional communities outside of the US and Europe suffer the brunt of monolingual policies enforced by their native English speaking counterparts. But when situated within monolingual institutional settings, multilingual scholars themselves seem to become the gatekeepers of the status quo. The institutional and professional incentives of the monolingual settings that they are in tend to make them favour and enforce monolingualism. That is perhaps why the participants of this study favoured the discourse of their discipline to the point of overlooking the fact that there is in reality no such thing as a universal standard of English that engineering scholars across social, cultural, national and disciplinary borders use for all scientific and technical communication. When empowered by monolingualist discourse of standard English and its global dominance in the field of science and technology, NNES members of the discipline refuse to take the reality of language use in their social lives seriously in the academic and professional context. As a result, the NNES scholars working in the American academy do not perceive the challenges that they may face in the same way that current literature describes the NNES writers from global peripheries do when they try to publish in mainstream venues in the West. In order to provide the participants with a point of reference, I showed them a handout with a table that named and described four different types of attitudes towards language difference that Horner and Lu (2007) identified among writing instructors: eradicationist, second language acquisition, accommodationist and multilingual.

2 Monolingual multilinguals

The scholarship on language variation, including the scholarship on engineering writing, has conventionally assumed that the demand for a simple, clear and universally consistent English generally comes from native English speaking (often assumed to be also monolingual) educators (Belcher & Braine, 1994; Flowerdew, 1999, 2001; Horner, 2001; Horner & Trimbur, 2002; Canagarajah, 2006a, 2009; Horner, NeCamp & Donahue, 2011). But within academic and professional settings, the same rigid monolingualism persists even among non-native English speakers, even when they are in the majority. NNES multilingual teachers are assumed to be tolerant of language variations and even to value such

Even while it may seem most sensible to universally standardize the English used in such situations (so that any pilot from anywhere in the world can read and understand the instructions quickly).

October 2012, Issue 40

29

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG To encapsulate Horner and Lus description of the views, those who hold the eradicationist view equate variations from the standard as error, consider the cause to be ignorance of the norm, use teaching to eradicate the error or variation and only value what they consider correct and standardized academic English when it comes to academic writing. The second group of writing teachers considers variation an inevitable part of second language acquisition, so they are more tolerant of the variations as interlingual phenomena; this group also believes in diagnosing and treating the idiosyncrasies of language learners, because their goal is correct writing as well. The accommodationist writing teachers, the third group, view variation as a matter of discourse clash between the language varieties involved and they are ambivalent to the idea that the dominant discourses must be favoured; as a result, the accommodationists suggest that students learn how to translate unprivileged discourse represented by their home language into the privileged discourse of the language they are learning. Finally, writing teachers who subscribe to the multilingual view are open to the possibility of codemeshing and discourse-blending that people who use multiple languages can perform in their writing; they believe that students can strategically use different codes of the languages or varieties in order to create new discourses, so they are critical of edited academic English as a false ideal that academic institutions attempt to change from a contingent to an enforced norm. When given the above choices, six out of ten participants chose the eradicationist view as best describing their own position on the issue of language difference in academic writing, especially writing in engineering. Two of them were graduate students who were, interestingly enough, anxious about their own English language proficiency. The students desire to eradicate any variations in their own writing may be, understandably, based on their desire to learn better English, but these students also strongly believed that there must be a fixed and consistent standard for engineering writing that engineering scholars around the world should use. In the case of the professors, the responses were often more nuanced. For instance, after I described the four kinds of attitudes towards language difference and asked whether the demographic diversification of engineering might make different varieties of English become more acceptable in engineering writing, Professor Z said: Well, its possible, but I have not seen evidence of that shift. Again because, [as] you said, there are gatekeepers where a published paper has to meet certain standards, and I think that how it is and how it should be. But, as we see in the above response, even Professor Z ultimately insisted that a universal English standard is necessary. In fact, he considered the gatekeeping mechanism not just how it is but how it should be. In a less critical way, another professor, Professor B also justified a universal monolingual standard, which he did on a practical basis: Yeah, Id like them to follow [the standard]I mean many of them are students here, and many of them are going to make their careers here. So, it would be better for them to stick to this standard if [their writing] is going to get published, you might as well clean it now and meet the standards that the journals expect. So I am probably in this first category than any other. While Professor B clearly appreciated the idea of tolerance and accommodation for language variation in the writing of NNES students, he had clear reasons on the contrary for wanting them to learn and use the proper standard. In his response above, here is an important word to notice: if students want to succeed here in the US, both as students now and if they want to pursue their professional careers in the US later on, it would be better for them to stick to this [meaning American] standard. He further suggested that he spends a lot of time helping students eradicate non-standard variations, which his student, Student B, confirmed with gratitude towards the professor. In essence, even Professor B went on to equate linguistic variations either as errors to be eliminated or as insignificant spelling differences between varieties of English. in our field I dont think theres that much of a difference between a European journals writing [style]-something like optimizing, they use z--stuff that editors will take care of at the end. When I reminded him that those small differences occur in two different standard varieties of English, Professor B added that they still dont matter very much because they dont really constitute significant language differences: other than that, the text is pretty standard, and the writing style is pretty standard in our field, whether you pick a European journal or an American journal. This refusal to recognize language varieties beyond spelling variations, as well as the tendency to define language and writing in terms of their most mechanical aspects (Russell, 1989; 1991), is a manifestation of an ideology that shapes the engineers view of language and writing (Winsor, 1996, 2003). This ideology is more powerful than the inevitable lessons that engineering scholars learn from their actual experiences of the variety of Englishes that they are exposed to in academic and professional communication. Four other participants, two faculty members and two students, said that they identified with the second language acquisition camp. One faculty member stated that he would like to see diversity of language and ideas promoted, but none of the participants supported the multilingual view; in fact, no one supported the accommodationist view either. Interestingly, those who supported the second language acquisition view had similar justifications for their beliefs as those who agreed with the eradicationist view, because, in the end, everyone believed that it is ultimately necessary for engineering students and scholars to use the correct and universal standard. Except for the complications and contradictions elicited by my direct question about their monolingualism at the end of the second interview and more significantly their responses to my last question in the third and last round of interview the participants language variation as well as complexity and rhetoricity was rejected by everyone. During the final round of interviews, I explicitly asked the faculty members why even as multilingual scholars they believed in and demanded a universal monolingual English standard. Their explanations were quite simple: English is a universal language of science and only standard English is appropriate for academic writing because it is most clear and precise. So, yeah, you want to gravitate towards one linguistic style, because it is simple and everybody can understand that, whoever reads your work. And English

30

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG is a universal language, I mean everybody understands and everybody is forced to gravitate towards English. Yes, of course, you can have someone from Thailand, or from South America, have their own linguistic practices. But if their work is not going to be accepted because of the fact that they have not actually presented their ideas in English The participants were not unaware about the different varieties of world Englishes and some of them even acknowledged that NNES writers bring in different writing styles as well as different varieties of English. But they still insisted that there is one universal standard of language and style in scientific writing. For example, Professor A said: Well, because we are in the science field, or applied science, one needs to know about technical writing aspects of writing. Its basically technical writing, [so] it has to be concise, accurate, straightforward. So, writing is not about, to me, its not about English Its more about the thought process. By shifting the focus from language to thought process, Professor A not only denied language variation a place in engineering writing but also downplayed the importance of language and relation to the content and logic of that writing. Thus, regardless of some variations in attitude toward language variations, the belief that only a universal standard English must and can be a global language of scientific communication was almost absolute among all the participants. prevalent among academic engineers gives pause to language educators because we too seem to somehow adopt similar attitudes in the name of teaching the English language. The ideology on which the demand for a strict and universal standard for technical communication is based is particularly problematic from a pedagogical perspective: (i) it obscures the fact that standard English is a complex repertoire of linguistic resources and that clarity and simplicity are contingent upon the nature of the content to be communicated as well as the genres and contexts of writing; (ii) it prevents the possibility of glosso-diversity or the enriching of meaning brought about by diversified language standards in NNES scholars writing; (iii) it discourages the explicit teaching of language and writing skills in engineering particularly affecting the NNES students who are in large majority in this discipline in American universities and (iv) because it perpetuates a false idea that clarity is gained by avoiding rather than mastering complexity, NNES students seem to exacerbate frustration and failure in the process of their learning the language and writing skills by internalizing that idea. As in the case of engineering professors in this study, subscribing to the myth of a simple and transparent language of academic writing, that is also universally consistent, leads teachers to largely leave their students to their own means in the attempt to learn the complex language, discourse and conventions of writing in their disciplines. The language ideology that sustains the myths seems to cause inadvertent slowing down, rather than facilitation, of the students process of learning to write and communicate effectively. Even more importantly, because the students also internalize the same beliefs, they too seem to inadvertently affect that process adversely. But even in case of language teaching, reductive views about standard English leads to excessive focus on the form of language as well on a supposedly universally standardized form for that matter rather than on the variable and complex forms of language in use. The targeted goal to which the engineering faculty want their students to reach for which my study showed that the faculty members do their best possible, using their best intellectual and pedagogical support could be relatively universal in the sense that advanced scientists can write in more standardized ways across academic systems in the world. Yet, paradoxically, the seemingly pragmatic view of the standard was also tied to the belief that this standard is nothing but simple, clear and universally consistent. What was worse, because the demand for an absolute standard was based on the view that such an entity pre-exists contexts and acts of communication, it made explicit teaching and learning of language seem unnecessary. Thus, the adverse effect of the prevailing language ideologies in engineering are manifested when real challenges with language or writing are dismissed as insignificant, or as challenges that students can pick up on their own along the way if they make sure to focus on the content of the discipline, or the logic. The students clearly considered their challenges with language as significant, suggesting that they need to learn the English language and the language of engineering better. In contrast, their teachers either insisted that language doesnt matter or they assumed that students will somehow learn it after sometime. As a result, when students struggled with the discipline-specific language and conventions of engineering writing not only at a higher level in the discipline but also in a

3 Theoretical and pedagogical implications

The phenomenon of the outsiders enforcing the rules of the insiders even more forcefully than the latter is of great theoretical interest in cultural theory. Thiongo (1986) describes this hegemonic dynamism in his aptly titled book Decolonizing the Mind: in an almost painful story that he tells about his experience from school. He describes how his teachers made the students pass a tab when students caught their peers using their home language and the tabs were collected at the end of the day by tracing the culprits back, punishing the students severely. For English teachers around the world, this story of teaching English by using often harsh punitive measures is more or less familiar. That is, even when there is no physical or psychological punishment, the enforcement of monolingualism both in the sense of promoting a single standard variety of English, as well as in the sense of prohibiting other languages or Englishes, tends to be prevalent even among language teachers. The fact the teaching and learning of standard English is seen as the very goal of teaching the language makes monolingualism a rather unquestioned phenomenon among teachers of language. One might argue that if teaching proper English is the very goal of education, what is wrong with doing just that? But as I argued at the beginning of this article, the problem with the defence of monolingualism is that this argument almost always comes pre-packaged with a simplistic definition of standard English, and of language and language use in general. Let me now highlight the pedagogical consequence of defining language narrowly in terms of one universal standard. I argue that the kind of restrictive monolingualist disposition that is

October 2012, Issue 40

31

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG different academic system, the students helplessly resorted to the syndrome described by the title of a book on international students writing: My trouble is my English (Fu, 1995)! If their instructors continue to believe that students will just pick up the required skills in language and writing, students will have to learn them without explicit instruction. In response to my question of whether Professor B has had any comments on any non-native feature of his writing, he not only said that he has not had any such comments but went on to suggest that the problem of negative comments on NNES writing is not a significant problem because students quickly learn to meet expected standards in writing as well as overcome language differences: Yeah. I have seen people who are biased that way. But yeah what I am saying is somewhat different, that people who are also good technically will also pick up the writing skills pretty soon, if they dont have it right the first time. If you make one set of corrections, they quickly understand, okay, what does it take to write better, and then they grasp it and they execute it. So if they are good in this they are going to be good in writing. They pick it up, if they have the aptitude for learning, right? As a result of this kind of belief, NNES scholars and students subscribe to the idea that clear language in technical writing is one and the same in all contexts, purposes and genres of writing in their discipline. As Turner (1999) pointed out in Academic literacy and the discourse of transparency, the assumption that clarity of understanding and transparency of language converge leads to this paradoxical belief that a simple and standardized universal English is a sufficient and desirable means for communicating highly advanced scientific research done in any material, social and cultural settings. When such a belief is internalized by students, the process of their learning of language, discourse and writing skills is slowed down and frustrating to them. The frustration and failure that international students face because of their teachers failure to recognize the importance of language and writing in the disciplines was shown by a study done by Kutz (2004). Kutz conducted a case study of a Vietnamese student named Quy who was a brilliant writer, always educated in English medium, whose writing display[ed] few traces of [his] non-native status (ibid., p. 77). Thus, whenever Quy faced difficult texts and demanding writing assignments he quickly returned to the familiar language-learning strategies that first of all defined him in negative terms, as not a native user of English. Not only his instructors but Quy himself ascribed his challenges of writing effective new genres in the new discipline to his language deficiency, which both his instructors and he believed must be overcome. In the context of teaching of language and academic or professional writing, the excessive focus on the standard form similarly leads to a reductive understanding of the standard, as well as that of language in general. While it may seem that the primary goal of language teaching and learning is to aim at the correct form, disregarding that correctness is not such a black and white issue which can affect the learning of language (and of writing and communication) in the long run.

4 Conclusion

As we saw from the responses of the engineering professors, the beliefs that a simplified standard English is a necessity for effective academic, especially scientific, communication trumps even multilingual scholars rich personal and social experiences with variability and complexity of languages. In other words, the discourses and ideologies of the disciplines and professions in which these scholars are situated shape how teachers define language and writing, apparently regardless of their language identity and sociolinguistic experiences and abilities. There are some incidental mentions of this seeming paradox of monolingual multilinguals in the literature of language and writing studies (Santos, 1988; Kobayashi, 1992; Flowerdew, 2001; Roberts & Cimasko, 2008). This dynamic seems to elude most researchers perhaps because it seems obvious that NNES scholars will be more tolerant of language difference due to their being multilingual in identity and experience. The works of scholars like Flowerdew (1999), Lillis and Curry (2006, 2010) and others have been consistently showing that NNES scholars outside the global geopolitical, academic and professional centers suffer the brunt of monolingual policies. But the monolingualism among multilingual scholars seems to be overlooked because it seems intuitive that they would be multilingual in both identity and disposition. In a discussion about language difference, Canagarajah (2006b, 2009) has optimistically suggested the possibility of different varieties of world Englishes becoming increasingly accepted. In his article Pluralization continued: The place of world Englishes in composition (2006b), he considers that possibility from a demographic perspective: At its most shocking, this [rise in the number of multilingual English users in the world] gives the audacity for the multilingual speakers of English to challenge the traditional language norms and standards of the native speaker communities (p. 589). Canagarajah does consider the issue of NNES users act of opting for standard English as an ideologically favoured action, but the argument that the increase in English speaking population will naturally lead to the challenging of monolingual norms seems to be inadequate in accounting for the political forces that shape language choices in academic and professional settings. The fact that English is a plural language that embodies multiple norms and standards (ibid.) in the world outside seems insufficient to project that a similar situation may come about within academic and professional communities. Indeed, even in the context of teaching writing within the humanities, Canagarajah was not sure how to practice what I preach (p. 613). How language educators view and treat language variations and varieties is a subject of great significance because that attitude shapes pedagogy, teachers treatment of non-native English speaking students and the language varieties and languages and the epistemologies that could enter the classroom through those languages and language varieties. The dynamic of monolingualism, especially among multilingual language educators many of whom seem to base their teaching on unrealistic views about language and language use prompts us to ask many important questions in the context of EAP and ESP. How are language learners impacted when

32

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG multilingual educators adopt a bootstrap mentality the kind of mentality that was expressed by the professor cited in the epigraph of this article about how everybody should use just one universal standard (as they too learned to use it)? How does such mentality affect their teaching and treatment of students? Besides of the question of pedagogical effectiveness, there are questions of respect of different languages and varieties that language learners bring into the language learning process. The second half of the twentieth century was marked by several intellectual movements that deeply influenced language teaching including EAP and ESP. Critical pedagogy motivated language teachers to respect students languages and language varieties as well as the local content knowledge that their languages carried. Many societies started systematically promoting diversity of culture and language. And postmodernist and postcolonial sensitivities shaped curriculum design and pedagogy. However, the goal of teaching the grammar and usage of a supposedly universal standard English persisted among language teachers, undermining the ideals of diversity and multilingualism. Looking at the more extreme cases of monolingualism like among academic engineers and scientists serves to remind us that as teachers of language and academic skills, they too more or less enforce rigid monolingual policies as part of their curricular goals. In the face of shifting power dynamic in the world, a dynamic that also involves shifting relationship of language as well as political power among the nations, the attempt to impose a single standard of English is likely to become an increasingly impractical and insensitive object of EAP and ESP. EAP and ESP teachers should certainly strive to teach their students proper use of language, but that language is no longer a monolithic code across borders. These teachers need to be aware of the paradox of trying to teach a supposedly universal standard English and understand how the notion of a universal standard can lead to misunderstanding of language in its complex and varied forms. It is obvious that monolingualism is both harmful to the process of language learning and insensitive toward the learner: while helping learners improve their English and communicate more effectively is the primary goal of language education, its an intellectual affront to devalue different varieties of English that people around the world use both inside and outside of academic and professional settings. Moreover, in the linguistically diverse world that we live in today, a multilingual disposition is also beneficial for teaching English as well as for allowing language varieties to enrich language and communication. English teachers should no longer pass the buck from treating language varieties respectfully to the practical need of teaching standard English. Monolingualist policies and practices are neither fair nor beneficial to the teaching and learning of language. Canagarajah, A. S. (2006b). The place of World Englishes in composition: Pluralization continued. College Composition and Communication, 57(4), 586619. Canagarajah, A. S. (2009). Multilingual negotiation strategies in working English. Journal of Academic Communication, 29, 1748. Carter, M., Vouk, M., Gannod, G. C., Burge, J. E., Anderson, P. V., & Hoffman, M. E. (2011). Communication genres: Integrating communication into the software engineering curriculum. 24th IEEE-CS Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEET), 2130. Congressional Research Service Report (CRSR, 2010). Foreign science and engineering presence in U.S. institutions and the labor force (A report prepared by Matthews, C. M.) Washington DC: Congressional Research Service. Flowerdew, J. (1999). Problems in writing foe scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(3), 243264. Flowerdew, J. (2001). Attitudes of journal editors to nonnative speaker contributions. TESOL Quarterly, 35(1), 121150. Fu, D. (1995).My trouble is my English: Asian students and the American dream. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Horner, B. (2001). Students right, English Only, and re-imagining the politics of language. College English, 63(6), 741758. Horner, B., & Lu, M-Z. (2007). Resisting monolinguialism in English: Reading and writing the politics of language. In Ellis, V., Fox, C., & Street, B. V. (Eds.) Rethinking English in schools: towards a new and constructive stage. Continuum studies in education (pp. 14157). London: Continuum. Horner, B., NeCamp, S., & Donahue, C. (2011). Toward a multilingual composition scholarship: From English only to a translingual norm. College Composition and Communication, 63(2), 269300. Horner, B., & Trimbur, J. (2002). English only and U.S. college composition. College Composition and Communication, 53(4), 594630. Institute of International Education (IIE). Open Door report 20102011. Retrieved January 12, 2011, from http:// www.iie.org/en/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/ Press-Center/Press-Releases/2010/2010-11-15-OpenDoors-International-Students-In-The-US Jenkins, S. J., Kaye, M., & Weiland, P. O. (1993). The role of writing in graduate engineering education: A survey of faculty beliefs and practices. English for Specific Purposes, 12(1), 5167. Jordan, J. & Kedrowicz, A. (2011). Attitudes about graduate L2 writing in engineering: Possibilities for more integrated Instruction. Across the Disciplines, 8, 4. Retrieved January 8, 2012, from http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/ell/ jordan-kedrowicz.cfm Kobayashi, T. (1992). Native and nonnative reactions to ESL compositions. TESOL Quarterly, 26, 81112.

References

Belcher, D. D., & Braine, G. (1994). Academic writing in a second language: Essays on research and pedagogy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Canagarajah, A. S. (2006a). Toward a writing pedagogy of shuttling between languages: Learning from multilingual writers. College English, 68(6), 589.

Barnard, I. (2010). The ruse of clarity.College Composition and Communication,61(3), 434451.

October 2012, Issue 40

33

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Kutz, E. (2004). From outsider to insider: Studying academic discourse communities across the curriculum. In Zamel, V., & Spack, R. (Eds.), Crossing the curriculum: Multilingual learners in college classrooms (pp. 7593). New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Leydens, J. A. (2008). Novice and insider perspectives on academic and workplace writing: Toward a continuum of rhetorical awareness. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 51(3), 242263. Lillis, T, & Curry, M. (2006). Professional academic writing by multilingual scholars. Written Communication, 23(1), 335. Lillis, T, & Curry, M. (2010). Academic Writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Routledge. Lu, M.-Z. (1994). Professing multiculturalism: The politics of style in the contact zone.College Composition and Communication,45(4), 442458. Santos, T. (1988). Professors reactions to the academic writing of nonnative-speaking students. TESOL Quarterly, 22(1), 6990. Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications. Thiongo, N. (1986).Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. London: J. Currey.

Turner, J. (1999). Academic literacy and the discourse of transparency. In Jones, C.Turner, J., & Street, B. (Eds.) Students writing in the university: cultural and epistemological issues (pp. 149160). London: John Benjamins. Winsor, D. A. (1996).Writing like an engineer: A rhetorical education. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Winsor, D. A. (2003). Writing power: Communicating in an engineering center. Albany, New York: SUNY. Zhu, W. (2004). Faculty views on the importance of writing, the nature of academic writing, and teaching and responding to writing in the disciplines. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13(1), 2948.

Ogburn, W. F. (1947). On Scientific Writing.American Journal of Sociology,52,5, 383388.

Oriel, John. (1992). Editing engineering specifications for clarity. Crossing frontiers proceedings (pp. 168173). Santa Fe: IEEE. Roberts, F., & Cimasko, T. (2008). Evaluating ESL: Making sense of university professors responses to second language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 17(3), 125143. Russell, D. (1989). Composition for the culture of professionalism: Notes on the history of technical writing instruction. Proceedings, Professional Communication Conference 1989, 3941.

Russell, D. (1991). Writing in the academic disciplines, 18701990: A curricular history. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Dr Ghanashyam Sharma is an assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at Stony Brook University campus of the State University of New York. The recipient of numerous academic awards including the 2012 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award given by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, Dr. Sharma has taught literature, linguistics and writing studies in Nepal and the United States for almost two decades. His professional interests include writing in the disciplines, the integration of academic technologies in teaching writing and scholarship in transnational rhetorical and writing studies.

Assessment in making presentations: How it works best

Elena Velikaya, National Research University-Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. E-mail: evelikaya@hse.ru

Abstract

The article reports on a study of the role of assessment and feedback in making presentations. It first gives a brief overview of the programme and course outline, then looks at the teaching methods used and theory of assessment and, finally, provides results of assessment of almost 100 presentations with one sample analysed in detail. The criteria specifically developed for the course will also be given. Keywords: assessment, feedback, oral presentations, tertiary level, EAP, course development.

1 Introduction

Oral presentations have become an increasingly important feature of higher education and developing abilities in this area can be significant for students academic success at the tertiary level. Mastering the skill of giving presentations can help students to communicate ideas and knowledge they possess and present results of their research to professionals from their field of study. It can teach them to give talks at seminars and conferences within their learning environment and to participate in different discussions in the workplace in the future. This academic skill is both relevant for studying for a Bachelor degree and Masters degree and for a future

34

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG researcher or executive. This paper aims to present the programme of the course, teaching and research methodology, as well as discussing the results obtained and suggesting improvements to the course. the second semester) with an English tutor working in close cooperation with subject teachers (Sociology teachers and teachers of Economics) to develop the skills required.

2 Course description

3 Teaching methodology

The International College of Economics and Finance (ICEF) a faculty of the National Research University-Higher School of Economics in Moscow works on a joint external programme with the University of London. In order to be admitted to the University of London, at the end of the 1st academic year students must take and pass the IELTS exam with the minimum of Band 6, which defines a student as a competent user. The focus of this English language programme is students academic skills development, which is supplemented by vocabulary and grammar development in the course of General English, business skills development in the course of Business English and basic issues and problem solving in Economics in the course of ESP. The programme is accomplished on the basis of authentic course books and supplementary materials which have been developed to optimise the teaching process. Among these are grammar tests prepared in the format of multiple choice exercises and grammar in context; a variety of tasks for speaking skills development and training materials for academic reading developed in the IELTS exam format (Velikaya, 2008, p. 268 ). The 2nd-year course in the English language programme is aimed to revise, expand and develop the academic skills outlined in the 1st-year syllabus. The purpose of it is to equip students with the skills necessary for their future studies in higher education (3rd and 4th year College and Masters programme) and career: to conduct research and formulate their own ideas, to clarify them and to be able to explain them to others. Good presentation skills are viewed in this course as an ability to organise points so that the audience will find it easy to follow the students argumentation and an ability to deliver a presentation in an interesting and engaging way, to keep the audience listening and to answer the audiences questions. At the final exam, which ICEF students take at the end of a two-year course of English, formative and summative decisions are made. This is done due to the fact that both kinds of assessment are concerned with students progress and achievements. The final exam takes place in the same physical environment, so students are equal in demonstrating their abilities and skills. Such personal attributes as age, nationality, resident status, length of residence, native language and level and type of general education (Bachman & Palmer, 2010, p. 41) are not taken into account since they are very similar to all students. Examiners also assume that students possess the same topical knowledge, being students of economics and finance. All examiners are qualified and have sufficient training for testing and generally possess teaching experience.

There can be different methods in teaching students how to organise their thoughts and structure their presentations. The ones which work in an environment of what we call language isolation are quite traditional: students are provided with necessary vocabulary which can help them to introduce ideas, exchange opinions, agree and disagree, interrupt, explain, etc. Then they practise it, creating situations in which they can solve problems and discuss issues ranging from university life to global economic issues. The method resembles task-based learning (Harmer, 2003, p. 87) with a lot of discussion in pairs or small groups while the teacher monitors from a distance. At the analysis stage in this activity students discuss specific features of the given issues and make deductions. In the end the teacher summarises students ideas and suggests topics for mini-presentations for the next lesson.

4 Assessment

2.1 Course objective

The main objective of this course is to develop students discursive skills to an advanced level to be able to communicate effectively within the academic conventions of higher education in Russia and abroad. The general input takes the form of two hours per fortnight in each group (12 hours in

Assessment is understood as the process of collecting information about something that were interested in according to procedures that are systematic and substantively grounded (Bachman, 2004, p. 67). The result of this process, usually a score, is referred to as an assessment. In reference to language assessment it means making an interpretation about some aspect of a students language ability and knowledge. Language ability in its turn can be defined as the ability to use language communicatively (Bachman, 1990, p. 81) and to create and interpret discourse. It normally implies language knowledge and strategic competence. The areas of language knowledge to be assessed will vary with the purpose of assessment. For students of ICEF the following areas in making presentations are generally considered: 1) Organisational knowledge 2) Textual knowledge 3) Language resource, register 4) Grammatical knowledge Organisational knowledge is basically understood as an ability to produce a well-structured text containing three distinct parts: introduction, main part and conclusion. Textual knowledge involves organising sentences in a text paying attention to different relationships among sentences, cohesion. Language resource includes using academic language and appropriate register. Under grammatical knowledge we usually mean accuracy, i.e., vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation. Strategic competence in reference to making presentations can be interpreted as students ability to use different strategies that provide a management function in language use (Bachman & Palmer, 2010, p. 48). As stated by these authors, it includes goal setting (which in our environment we understand as successful communication of ideas), planning or choosing one or more mental plans, how to execute the talk and appraising the extent to which the communicative goal of the talk has been successfully accomplished. A combination of both (language knowledge and strategic competence) provides students with the ability or capacity to create and interpret discourse.

October 2012, Issue 40

35

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

4.1 Criteria

The previously mentioned criteria formed a foundation for the development of criteria for ICEF students. The marking criteria specifically developed for the exam are put on the students website much in advance and they all have access to it. Table 1: The marking criteria for assessment 10 excellent presentation skills and contact with the audience, adequate text structure, sufficient language resource, appropriate register, very accurate good presentation skills, good contact with the audience, no faults in text structure, sufficient language resource, no register faults, accurate good presentation skills, practically no faults in text structure, rather good language resource, quite appropriate register, a few faults in grammar or pronunciation rather good presentation skills but there are some faults either in text structure or register, rather good language resource, occasional mistakes in grammar and pronunciation there is an attempt to make a good presentation but there are some faults in text structure, mistakes in grammar and pronunciation, rather limited language resource, not quite appropriate register an attempt to present the project work but does not cover all aspects, text structure is faulty, rather inaccurate, limited language resource and knowledge of cohesion, rather faulty register an attempt to address the audience with a project or research findings, partially relevant, limited presentation skills, limited language resource, poor knowledge of cohesion, not very accurate, faulty text structure and register poor presentation skills, not relevant, poor language resource and register, not accurate very poor presentation skills, not relevant, no idea of language resource and register, not accurate demonstrates little attempt to present project work or research findings no attempt to present project work or research findings

to answer. One of the students had misunderstood the task and delivered his presentation on behalf of a tour operator. He was not very penalised, because he had done it in a very knowledgeable way: the structure of the presentation was appropriate, the text was coherent and it was very accurate. He had some stylistic drawbacks which reduced his overall mark to a 6.

5.1 Assessment grades and analysis

In order to produce valuable results a record sheet was prepared by each of the three examiners. It gives a clear indication of what the examiner is giving marks for (the idea was borrowed from Baker & Westrup, 2000, p. 104). Table 2: A record sheet for assessment Grade Organisational knowledge Textual knowledge Language resource, register Grammatical knowledge Grade Organisational knowledge Textual knowledge Language resource, register Grammatical knowledge The general comments on the four determinants are as follows: ICEF students demonstrated the knowledge of structure and organisation. Those who obtained a 9 and a 10 produced a suitable introduction and conclusion, in the main part of the presentation good paragraphing. Those with lower grades had a rather brief introduction which lacked, for example, information about leaving time for questions, the conclusion was quite limited. The majority of students demonstrated textual knowledge: presentations made an impression of well-organised cohesive oral texts with linking devices between sentences and paragraphs. Most students presentations indicated knowledge of a wide range of professional vocabulary and functional language, and only some presentations used limited functional language. All the examiners agreed that the reduction in students performance was basically due to errors of article, prepositions and word stress. Only a few students did not indicate drawbacks in these areas of accuracy. Content in making presentations is also of importance (though it is weighed lower than language resource) (Alexander, Argent & Spencer, 2008, p. 328) because it is instrumental in delivering presentations in an interesting way. As students are in the 2nd year of their Bachelor studies, they are not expected to possess poor or average knowledge of the subject. A vast majority of students make an impression of producing a thoroughly developed research work relevant to the topic. As students are initially encouraged to choose topics from various 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5

3 2 1 0

5 Results and discussion

Assessment in the students final exam serves as an indicator of their abilities to make presentations. We admit that all students have equal access to the information about the exam procedure and equal opportunity to do this course and to prepare for the exam. The topics of students presentations varied from different issues in Economics, Banking and Mathematics to business matters. Out of 100 students who took the exam 7 obtained the highest mark (10 out of 10), 17 students obtained a 9 and 36 students an 8. The rest of the students got lower marks: from 6 to 7. No one failed or refused

36

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG fields of study, they feel very much engaged because other students achievements in different spheres of research can be of real interest to them. Keeping the audience listening is a skill which requires effort. It comes with experience and knowledge of different techniques that help the presenter to interact with the audience. They include activities that range from simple jokes to communicative tasks for the audience. As for answering the audiences questions, the main attention in the exam was given to finding ways of doing it politely or postponing the answer. While giving presentations, all presenting students stood up so that the others could see them well. All students used visual aids. Half of the students prepared PowerPoint presentations while the rest used the board and handouts which were understandable to the other students in the exam room. Almost all visual aids were designed in the way that they would help comprehension. Since the exam was held in a medium-size room, not a single student complained about not hearing well. The majority of students (those who were not very shy) kept eye contact with the other students. The examiners took into account students body language and time management. All of these were included in the presentation skills parameter, which was supplementary but important in the formation of the final mark. Good afternoon everyone! Today Id like to give a talk on the history of financial crises. As we are soon going to be examined in banking, I hope that this presentation will be quite useful. Firstly, Ill briefly outline the four main types of crises; next Ill move on to the description of the key crises that have happened during the twentieth and twenty-first century. Lastly, Ill focus on the key lessons that these crises have taught us. There are four basic types of crisis: banking crises characterised by the bank run when clients of the bank want to withdraw their deposits simultaneously, and bank cannot cope with large amounts of money demanded by the public; speculative bubbles, which emerge when asset is overpriced (he price of asset does not show its real value); international financial crises, which happen when one country is unable to return the debt to the other or there are adverse changes in the currency; and, lastly, wider economic crises, such as the one we are experiencing at the moment subprime mortgages crisis. To start with, lets look at the crisis that happened in 1866 in London with the bank Overrend and Gurney. This bank lent funds to other smaller banks in London. When it collapsed, smaller banks had no source of funds anymore and had to close down despite the fact they actually were solvent. As a result, the government of Great Britain introduced the new role for the central bank: the so-called lender-of-lastresort, which provided funds for financial institutions that were too big to fail. Next crisis I would like to mention is the crash of 1929. In order to cure the situation, the new president - Franklin Roosevelt - and his office introduced the New Deal program, which implied the increase in interest rates and increase in tariffs, so that the government ran a budget surplus. Another crash happened in 1987. It was provoked by a fall in Dow-Jones index, and aggravated by the high degree of computerisation of financial markets. The system was just selling and buying, and it was impossible to stop it rapidly; so, when it was actually stopped, the markets had already crashed. This crisis was cured with a frequently used measure the lowering of interest rates. As a result, the trading laws were tightened, especially in the US and the UK. Next crisis arose as a consequence of establishment of the hedge fund by the two Nobel Prize winners-Merton and Scholes. And now we move on to the last crisis, connected with the subprime mortgages, which began in 2007 and its consequences are experienced by us at the moment. This crisis happened due to euphoria the people had felt after a long period of economic growth: banks had decreased their requests to the quality of borrowers; as the result, the quality of loans fell, investors were engaged in the risky projects. So, when the first defaults on the junk loans began, prices of houses went down, crashing the mortgage market and other financial markets as well. Governments tried to rescue the situation by injecting large amounts of funds into economy; unfortunately, it helped only a bit. So, in conclusion let me outline the main lessons the enumerated crises have taught us: firstly, while globalisation

5.2 Feedback

We realise that the purpose of the feedback is to create a supportive teaching environment, convey and model ideas (Hyland, 2008, p. 208) for good presentation skills, analyse students results and ways to progress. In the final exam, students were awarded marks out of 10. This served a clear indicator that they had done well or not very well. For the majority of students, high grades are important because they are motivated to be either top of the list (which gives them selfesteem) or obtain a high result in the rating (which gives them a fee discount). It makes sense in terms of their motivation to make successful learners (Millward-Sadler, Casey & Tatzl, 2011, p. 9). Assessment of students performance in the final exam was implicit: during the exam the examiner made no comments or corrections. The feedback followed the exam and was done in the form of comments. After the exam the announcement of the grade was accompanied by comments which included the following points: 1) explanation of grades in the terms of strengths and weaknesses 2) correction of mistakes 3) advice on how to continue and perfect the knowledge of English in the next two years at the university (with no English classes on the timetable).

5.3 A sample presentation

We will now look at one students presentation, and analyse and assess it (the presentation was recorded at the exam) according to the suggested ways and using the listed criteria. For quite obvious reasons only some parts of the presentation are given.

October 2012, Issue 40

37

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG has increased the frequency and spread of financial crises, it did not necessarily influence their severity. Next, early intervention by central banks and government is more effective in limiting their spread than later moves, and it can help to prevent the adverse outcomes if done in time. Also, it is difficult to tell at the time whether a financial crisis will have broader economic consequences. For example, the recent crisis was predicted by many experts, however, nothing was done in order to prevent it. And, lastly, regulators often cannot keep up with the pace of financial innovation that may trigger a crisis. This brings us to the end of my presentation. Thank you for attention. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them. (Kamila Sharifullina)

6 Conclusion

5.4 Analysis and impression

In providing feedback to students ICEF teachers realise that assessment has not only a testing but also a teaching function as it is done for the good of the students. It is important because it gives a clear indication of students language knowledge and ability. As it was explained, the pattern of assessment of university students is an achievement test, a combination of formative and summative assessment employing criterion-referenced scales at the final exam. This gives students a precise understanding of what they can do and how well they do it. It is also important that they get feedback which points out their strengths and weaknesses and includes advice on how to progress. Making a presentation is a skill which can be obtained with good direction and a little effort from the student. Further research and improvements to the course could focus on the development of more reliable criteria and feedback procedures.

As already indicated, the criteria used in assessment were given to the students in advance. This is why with the implementation of the criterion-referenced approach the grade (pass or fail, from 10 to 0) depended on whether the students had met the specified criteria. This made the examiners assessment objective, precise and consistent (Alexander et al., 2008, p. 311) and had a transparent basis for grading performance (ibid., p. 312). Now let us look at this presentation in a little more depth and assess it: 1) The presentation is well-organised with a clear introduction, main part and conclusion. The introduction explains the purpose of the presentation and includes information about the main points to be developed. The main part is a little too descriptive, which can be explained by the presence of a lot of examples. It consistently develops the topic. The conclusion is well thought-out, and contains several deductions. 2) The presentation is logical, coherent, indicates good paragraphing. It also demonstrates clearly supported ideas. 3) The presentation is characterised by sufficient language resource and appropriate style with one slight error of a bit instead of a little. 4) The presentation is accurate, with a few errors of articles (e.g., the omission of the article the in paragraph 3 before the word bank; the wrong article used in paragraph 5 in the phrase the high degree) and one wrong word used (in paragraph 3 the other instead of another), which did not impede understanding and can be treated as a slip of the tongue. The overall impression of Kamilas presentation was very positive. She demonstrated excellent presentation skills using PowerPoint slides. The tempo was normal. She sounded natural because the presentation was not learnt by heart. She also possesses mastery of speaking in front of all students from the English language group, which many other students found quite challenging. So, the mark was high 10 out of 10. She was advised to continue working on her English paying attention to grammar, doing research, giving talks, reading books, trying to perfect all necessary skills which can help her to complete her Bachelor course and do well on the Masters programme.

References

Alexander, O., Argent, S., & Spencer, J. (2008). EAP Essentials. A teachers guide to principles and practice. Reading: Garnet Publishing Ltd. Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bachman, L. (2004). Statistical Analyses for Language Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bachman, L., & Palmer, A. (2010). Language Assessment in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Baker, J., & Westrup, H. (2000). The English Language Teachers Handbook. London: Continuum. Harmer, J. (2003). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.

Hyland, K. (2008). English for Academic Purposes. London and New York: Routledge. Millward-Sadler, A., Casey, A., & Tatzl, D. (2011). A study of Engineering students learning preferences: A multiple intelligences approach. Professional and Academic English. Journal of the English for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group, 37, 815. Velikaya, E. (2008). Developing students academic skills in a Russian context. In M. Krzanowski (Ed.), Current Developments in English for Academic, Specific and Occupational Purposes (pp. 267-273). Reading: Garnet Education.

Bibliography

Hughes, A. (2003). Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bell, B. (2008). Passport to Academic Presentations. Reading: Garnet Publishing Ltd.

Elena Velikaya, Doctor of Philology, is Professor in the Faculty of Economics at the National Research University-Higher School of Economics and ICEF English Coordinator, Moscow, Russia. She is involved in ESP and EAP teaching and course and materials development for Bachelors level students. Her areas of research are academic skills, assessment, teaching methodology and linguistics.

38

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

Reports Report 1
EAP in university settings: Trends and challenges
Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, 89 June, 2012

The panellists John Swales, Averil Coxhead, Kathleen Graves, Linda Jeffries, Mark Johnson, Simon Kinzley, Edward De Chazal and Douglass Bell waiting for the questions collected over the two days. The photo was taken by Ray Wiggin. 1) Bringing together EAP voices from different continents The conference hosted by Bilkent University brought together 320 EAP practitioners, researchers and authors from over 16 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, China, Spain, Denmark, Italy, the UK and the USA. The event lasted two days form 89 June 2012. It offered a broad selection of sessions, three thought provoking plenaries given by John Swales, Averil Coxhead and Kathleen Graves and a panel discussion at the end of the event which brought together the plenary speakers and other authors and researchers in EAP to explore issues further from various view points and to define future directions in EAP. 2) Main areas focused in the conference A diverse range of important issues were brought to the fore in the conference. These focused on approaches to EAP instruction, materials design, teacher education in EAP and teacher research in EAP. Amongst the main issues that were brought up in the conference were how to scaffold learners in becoming autonomous, how to approach genre within the curriculum and the role of the Academic Word List within the curriculum. Other key topics explored were: the teacher training qualifications in EAP, the tensions in EAP and where published materials place themselves within all the tensions of EAP, approaches in supporting EAP practitioners in designing and adapting materials, how to support graduate and postgraduate students to master genre and academic competencies, the need to share more of how different institutions approach all these aforementioned areas. As a constantly growing field, EAP seems to offer plenty of areas that need further exploration and exchange. 3) Reflection on the conference and projections for the future The immediate feedback on the conference was extremely positive. Participants enjoyed the thought provoking sessions and expressed their desire to meet soon again for a similar event focusing on EAP. The proceedings of the conference will soon be available.

A shot taken at the end of the conference shows the plenary speakers John Swales, Kathleen Graves, Averil Coxhead, and the conference committee viz. John ODwyer, Tijen Aksit, Semih Irfaner and Aysen Guven. The photo was taken by Ray Wiggin.

October 2012, Issue 40

39

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG 4) Concluding remarks from two participants I would like to conclude my review with two comments from two participants. The first one from one of our current ESP SIG members, Pete Westbrook, an Academic Language working at the Consultant Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. This was my first Bilkent University conference and for me it can be summed up in four words: I met Averil Coxhead!. It is truly impressive that Bilkent University managed to attract such high-profile keynote speakers to their conference, all of whom managed to combine being both entertaining and informative in their presentations. As a member of the IATEFL ESP SIG, I felt the conference was extremely well run with a wealth of highly relevant and varied presentations covering a wide range of topics from corpus linguistics to academic writing to ESP vocabulary. Equally important, it also provided excellent opportunities for networking. My only regret was forgetting my swimming trunks as the swimming pool at the very comfortable conference hotel looked incredibly inviting. Ill definitely be taking them with me for next years conference though The second one from Douglas Bell, the Head of the Centre for English Language Education at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. The title of the conference was generally very well reflected in the plenaries and various papers. In broad curricular terms, some of the issues that were explored included how EAP curricula might best be scaffolded, how curriculum design might be made more innovative and how an EAP curriculum should best incorporate critical thinking. With regard to trends and challenges, the themes included ways in which the overall academic landscape has changed, the growing relevance of corpora to EAP, the possible tensions between EGAP/ESAP, and issues around EAP-specific teacher training. All in all, the conference provided an excellent opportunity for EAP practitioners to interact with their peers and share ideas: hats off to the management and conference organisers at Bilkent for making the event such a successful and memorable experience. Hoping to see more of the IATEFL ESP SIG members in our next conferences. Aysen Guven Bilkent University, Ankara Turkey E-mail: caysen@bilkent.edu.tr

Report 2
The IATEFL Conference: Pre-Conference event
Glasgow, 19 March, 2012
The theme was: Cutting-edge developments in teacher education, materials design and assessment and testing in ESP and EAP; and many interesting speakers from all over the world discussed this topic. The ESP SIG Co-ordinator, Mark Krzanowski, opened the PCE by pointing out the importance of continual teacher training and materials design in ESP, especially as most teacher education does not focus on this area. The first speaker of the event was Tania Pattison, from Trent University Canada, who looked at the importance of providing supplementary activities for an ESAP course in Business Studies. This was followed by Elena Yastrebov, from Moscow, who presented a spiral course design based on needs analysis, leading from a profession oriented EGP course to a profession related ESP course. The first period was concluded by Semih Irfaner from Bilkent University in Turkey. This talk explored how ESP teachers can design materials to increase the motivation of students in reading and classroom participation. After a well-deserved coffee break, Helen Basturkmen University of Auckland presented the results of research she had conducted into how experienced ESP teachers develop courses. Prithvi Shrestha Open University, UK gave examples of teaching ESP and EAP in open and distance learning contexts. Following this, Andy Gillett tried

to persuade the audience that ESP teachers were the only real communicative language teachers. There were two more sessions before lunch: Larisa Zelenskaya, from Moscow, argued for bilingual ESP course books based on local needs and Rosinda de Castro Guerra Ramos from Sao Polo reported on the development of EAP learning materials which explore academic biographies.

40

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG After the usual picnic lunch, Debra S. Lee, from Georgetown University, started the afternoon with an overview of current trends in materials design and teacher training in ESP in the United States. L. Junia Ngoepe University of Limpopo, South Africa then asked to what extent ESP learning materials fit the purpose for which they have been devised? This was followed by Tatiana Ivanova (Szelinger) from St Petersburg, who provided the audience with some examples of writing materials aimed at increasing the motivation of medical students. Elena Velikaya Moscow then shared her experience of marking an extended essay assessment in an ESP classroom. Faiza Haddam Bouabdallah, from Abou Beker Belkaid University in Algeria, presented the major issues encountered by fourth year biology students. And last but not least, Saltanat Meiramova Kazakhstan looked at the new challenges faced by ESP teachers working with materials from different subject areas. This was followed by a general summary of the PCE and suggestions for a theme for 2013. Mark Krzanowski closed the PCE at 5:30 after a very interesting day that allowed teachers from a wide range of situations to find out what other people are doing in their different contexts. This is always the high point of the IATEFL conference. Andy Gillett

Report 3
ESP insights, dilemmas and future in Cuba
Havana, Cuba, 17 April, 2012
Cuba and it was held at a great venue: The Banking Training Center which is strategically located in Old Havana, not far from the Lonja del Comercio, a historical building where in 1948 many countries members of the recently founded United Nations met to define the goals and principles of the World Trade Organization. There is no previous record of Cuban ESP teachers from different institutions meeting for discussions, exposing their achievements, their problems, their wishes and their expectations about the teaching of ESP. The opening speech was by Dr Isora Enriquez OFarrill, the present Dean of the Foreign Language School at Varona Pedagogical University. Dr OFarrill is an outstanding teacher who has led the ELT from K-12 grades and the EFL Teacher training in the last decade and who has also contributed to the development of ESP teaching in her teacher-training programs and pedagogical university. After the opening speech came Mr. Krzanowski to deliver his talk on current developments of ESP in which he briefed participants on the World Current developments and challenges in ESP teaching, bringing the ideas presented in the IATEFL Conference in Glasgow this year. It was a good cascading and reproduction of what happened just a few days ago. Then, according to the program, it was the turn for ESP in Cuba in the light of current developments: Discussions and Comments. There were some mini-presentations about the way in which ESP was delivered in the different institutions, referring to the strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats facing this field. These presentations included fields such as: medicine, nursing, aviation, agronomy, computing, engineering, trade and commerce, banking, world heritage restoration, and those dealing with very specific issues such as English for Physics, Maths and other subjects in the university. Then, a number of issues were discussed. These included the efforts and methodological work carried out by the aviation sector to help pilots and air-traffic controllers reach Operational 4; the development of the on-the-job training sessions in English, in which the teachers participate together with the medical doctors in the ward rounds in the hospital; the

Just days after Easter was celebrated, a group of Cuban teachers of English who have devoted their energies, skills and knowledge to the teaching of ESP in institutes and universities met in Havana with Mark Krzanowski, a natural born charismatic teacher who has strongly committed himself to the development and welfare of English for Specific Purposes in IATEFL. This ELT meeting which might also be considered as unique, gathered no less than 25 experienced teachers of English who work in diverse and different fields of study. Many of these teachers have been teaching ESP for more than 20 years now; others have been in the profession for a decade and just a few of them have recently entered the field, but they have all suffered the constraints and shortcomings due to the lack of resources and the teaching materials needed. But this has undoubtedly had its benefits somehow. This has helped them be more resourceful, and learn to make the most out of the little they have. The Colloquium, as it was called this historical one-day event meeting, was entitled ESP insights, dilemmas and future in

October 2012, Issue 40

41

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG difficulties faced by those working in the Trade and Banking fields when training their specialists, especially when dealing with the so called soft skills; the implementation of At your pace, the Cuban-made textbook, in the first two years of the undergraduate studies at the university and the idea of introducing ESP in the last semester of the Language schools to cater for the professional skills most of the learners need. Given the shortage of time, there were other worthwhile mentioning issues which were left for discussions in the next ESP Colloquium. Among them, the advances and new development of the Cuban Yes, I Can literacy programs in English, which are being implemented in countries such as Canada, New Zealand and Australia to eradicate illiteracy rate; and the outcome of the interesting and recently delivered first ESP-oriented lessons on TV within the University for all program (a sort of Open University) led by Professor Enriquez OFarrill, together with other teachers such as Sergio Font, Martha Neufville and E Garbey Savigne. According to the participants, the outcome of this colloquium was a success. There were some positive comments, such as: well-run and coordinated, full of ideas and suggestions, updated and with the latest issues and an excellent opportunity to share and bring us all in. Finally, a wrap up which included the future of ESP in Cuba; lessons learned from comparison which resulted in an amalgam of controversial and yet-to-be defined topics; issues which still need to be more researched, and others to be tackled such as the analysis of the best time for teaching English at the universities, not in the first years of the undergraduate studies but at the time when they are more directly involved with their specialty; the need to develop an ESP teacher-training certificate and/or diploma course and to promote more collaboration and team teaching between the subject specialists and the ESP teachers. A one-day event which was unique by a thousand miles!!! Eduardo Garbey The ELT Cuban initiatives described above have been made possible owing to the original project started in 2002 by Michelle Laufer andthe University of Westminster (who are cordially thanked for the ongoing support over the years) and Eduardo Savigne Garbey from the Havana Medical School. Special thanks go to Paul Robertson, Head of Department of Modern and Applied Languages at the University of Westminster, for supporting the Cuban ELT events this year and Mark Krzanowskis seminars and talks to Cuban ESP and EAP professionals.

Report 4
Language Teaching Methodology and English for Specific Purposes
Santiago de Cuba, 24 April, 2012
April 25th has become a memorable day for the University of Medical Sciences in Santiago de Cuba, especially for the English teachers of the Institution and for some other subject teachers since a unique and transcendental event took place that day: A one-day in-service Workshop on Language Teaching Methodology and English for Specific Purposes, led and delivered by the specialist Mark Krzanowski; Director for English Language Learning and Teaching and Principal Lecturer of the Department of Modern and Applied Languages at the University of Westminster, who honored us with his presence by showing his expertise, talent and pedagogical mastery and who was able to meet our expectations and provided us with knowledge and skills about language teaching. Teachers who have been teaching students of Medicine, Dentistry, Health, Technology and Nursing as well as others from the Language School including the President of the Santiago de Cuba ALC-GELI Branch participated in the activity with enthusiasm showing their great interest and thirst of knowledge on the topics. The one-day workshop was divided into two sessions. In the morning, a general talk on Current International Developments in English Language Teaching (ELT) and Implications for the Tertiary Institutions in Cuba took place. This talk was preceded by a highly motivating activity related to the use of acronyms in the field of the teaching of English; some already known by the participants and some others which were new to them.

ALC-GELI (the Group of English Language Specialists of the Cuban Linguists Association) Following on from that issues related to Developments and Innovations in General English, in English for Academic and Specific Purposes (EAP and ESP); Developments in English for Work (E4W); teacher training; teacher education and continuous professional development; the impact of key new language learning technologies in ELT; breakthroughs in assessment and testing; current issues in International and British HE impacting on ELT in the tertiary sector and a brief discussion of major developments as exemplified by recent

42

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG publications of ELT publishers were among the main topics discussed, later enriched with the participants opinions. The afternoon session was focused on marking and assessing academic writing. Samples of academic essays already marked and applied to students at universities were provided and the class was divided into small groups; each group was given a different academic essay in order to give their assessment criteria and rationale. Once the participants discussed and got agreements, the sheets with the marks and with the tutors comments about the students work were delivered for comparisons. The content was taught pertinently and with optimal level and opportunities to analyse samples by using publications such as Teaching English for Specific Purposes: An Introduction by Jeremy Day and Mark Krzanowski; Current Developments in English for Work and the Workplace. Approaches Curricula and Materials edited by one of the aforementioned authors; Mark Krzanowski and English for Medicine in Higher Education Studies by Patrick Fitzgerald, Marie McCullag and Ros Wright. In terms of usefulness, it could be said that the workshop went beyond the participants expectations who expressed their gratitude and thanks to Mark, to the University of Westminster and to Eduardo Garbey Savigne, the Cuban Course Coordinator in the Medical University of Havana for the opportunities and professional input provided, for the academic and professional benefits they obtained during the activity and who gave the highest qualification to the event waiting eagerly for another similar opportunity. Special thanks go to Paul Robertson, Head of Department of Modern and Applied Languages at the University of Westminster, for supporting the Cuban ELT events this year and Mark Krzanowskis seminars and talks to Cuban ESP and EAP professionals. Juan Carlos Izaguirre Sanchez Associate Professor of the Medical University in Santiago de Cuba

Report 5
Progress Report: English for the Workplace DelPHE project between Ahfad University for Women (AUW)
Khartoum, Sudan, and the University of Westminster London, UK (2010to date)
the Hornby Summer School Course Director Mark Krzanowski from the University of Westminster London (UK). The DElPHE programme provides funding for partnerships between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) working on collaborative activities linked to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). DelPHE projects are fully funded academic mobility exchange projects between UK and international academics. The funding is normally provided by DfID (Department for International Development) in the UK, and is administered by the British Council offices in selected countries of the world. More information about DelPHE programmes can be found on: http://www.britishcouncil.org/delphe.htm Although English is no longer the medium of instruction in the educational system in Sudan, still it is very popular and widely used in the professional field as well as in academic institutions of higher education. This was reflected in the fact that proficiency in English is now a factor in employability and in the many private institutes for teaching English around the country. These institutions are populated by university students as well as employees in different establishments. Being involved in the field of English language teaching in Sudan through my work at Ahfad University for Women (AUW) and being President of the Association of Sudanese Teachers of English, I was concerned with the promotion of the standard of English among Sudanese students, especially our female students. After attending the British-Council funded South African Hornby Summer School in English for Work: Curricula, Materials and Methods (Cape Town, RSA, April 2009), I discussed the possibility of applying for a DelPHE project in partnership with Our proposed project involves the design of a course of English for the workplace to fill a gap in the knowledge and skills of female students and equip them with necessary language and employability skills in order to compete in the job market on one hand and to develop their career on the other hand. These graduates will also form an important asset to the development of the country. This will help Sudan to achieve MDGs 3 and 8. Luckily the project was competitive and we were able to win support for three years. However, the implementation of the project would not have been possible without the approval and support of the President of AUW and Dr Alexandra Warwick, Head, Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies (ELCS), the University of Westminster. Thus, the first year of the project started in September, 2010 under the supervision of the two coordinators: Dr Amna Mohamed Bedri from Ahfad University for Women (Khartoum, Sudan) and Mark Krzanowski (then Associate Lecturer at Westminster University, now Lecturer in English and Linguistics

October 2012, Issue 40

43

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG in ELCS, and Acting Director of the Centre for English Learning and Teaching (CELT) at the University of Westminster), according to the endorsed plan. Other partners joined the project, some from Sudanese universities like Omdurman Islamic University and Sudan International University and five partners from the workplace representing the establishments where most of the graduates of the School of Management in AUW seek employment. Students of Management Information Systems (MIS) are the case study for the project. During the first two years of the project we were able to create synergy between these partners and involve them in the different steps of its implementation. The staff of Westminster University were oriented on the nature of the project during the first visit of the coordinator at AUW to London. The visit was also useful for introducing the coordinator to the Department of English and Linguistics and its different ESP courses. The project started with the design and completion of a needs analysis instrument. Employees and senior staff in the establishments completed the three questionnaires. Staff of the MIS department ran a workshop on data analysis and contributed to interpreting the data so that it can be used in the stage of syllabus design. Another workshop was organised on designing an ESP syllabus as well as the concept of English for the workplace. Then the DelPHE team in Sudanese universities went on a visit to Westminster University and held seminars with UK partners where staff members of the English Department and students participated. Two presentations were made during these workshops and steps of the project were discussed. Team members attended ESP classes at Westminster University and two other English language institutes. Further useful and productive ELT links were forged at the University of Westminster owing to Paul Robertson (incidentally, a specialist in Arabic), Head of Department of Modern and Applied Languages, where CELT and its EFL and EAP courses are housed. The Sudanese team travelled to Glasgow to attend the IATEFL conference where I delivered a presentation on syllabus design especially the one being written within the DelPHE project. Although some universities in the Gulf countries have done substantial work in this respect facilitated by a number of British experts such as Mark Krzanowski from the University of Westminster, English for Work/for the Workplace still remains a new concept in Sudan. Partners from the workplace are looking forward to teaching it in their training centres. We consider our DelPHE project to be also making a unique contribution to the development of ESP in Sudan, and possibly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Amna Bedri

Book Reviews
The Benefits of the English Language for Individuals and Societies: Quantitative Indicators from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen
Ramaswami, Sarraf and Haydon Euromonitor International: 2012 Reviewed by: Glenn Garrett, The Centre for English Language and Teaching, University of Westminster, London

This report, carried out by the research firm Euromonitor International for the British Council, aims to provide quantitative evidence that English is a key factor in raising the economic standards of individuals and countries. It profiles each of the eight countries in turn, giving a brief but well-drawn context for the use of English as well as more specific information, covering aspects such as investment and employment. There are also interesting sections for each nation on how English affects the individual and how it is perceived by consumers. The overall findings make for engaging though at times unsurprising reading. Thus, we find Iraq and Yemen score low in terms of ease of doing business and employment while Lebanon and Jordan enjoy higher gross national incomes per

capita and higher rates of investment from English-speaking countries. There is, however, in the mass of statistics on offer here, valuable information which those interested in doing business in one of these countries will welcome. In all eight markets it is multinationals which are the primary drivers for demand in English speakers, linking as they do the local employment pool with the skills demanded by our globalised economy. Education is, of course, key and the evidence presented indicates governments in all these countries are well aware of the need for a bilingual workforce and are at different stages in developing this. Neither is the youthfulness of these countries overlooked and key data is given on the social value of speaking English and its usefulness in participating in social media.

44

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG This study will confirm what is clear to those following the development of these countries: these are growing economies in which English is playing a key role. The statistics make clear to what degree this is the case, taking into account the various histories and current contexts. One drawback, though, is that rather sweeping conclusions are sometimes made, based on what seems a skewed sampling of the populations in question. When much of the data is drawn from telephone interviews with people already working within major industries, education and recruitment, one has to ask how representative their opinions are and how completely valid the assumptions. In short, while there is valuable information here, some of the conclusions made need to be tempered by the fact that progress whether at an individual or national level may not be as inextricably linked to a knowledge of English as this report implies.

Cambridge Academic English Intermediate

Craig Thaine ISBN 978 0 52116 519 8 Cambridge University Press: 2012

Cambridge Academic English Upper Intermediate

Martin Hewings ISBN 978 052116 520 4 Cambridge University Press: 2012

Cambridge Academic English Advanced

Marin Hewings and Craig Thaine ISBN 978 0 52116 521 1 Cambridge University Press: 2012 Reviewed by: Joe Francis, University of Westminster

These days, with both universities and private education providers now offering longer pre-sessional and yearlong foundation courses, the nature of EAP course material seems to be changing. In the past EAP course material has tended to come from the tried and tested Oshima and Hogue, Bailey, Jordan, etc., and been very writing skills based. This series of books aims to put everything in one place by not only integrating all four skills but also adding in vocabulary and grammar as well as providing a visual DVD element. The three books reviewed here are intermediate, upperintermediate and advanced levels (B1C1 on CEFR) and all follow the same format of 15 units consisting of two (rather dense) themed units followed by a lecture skills unit (which uses its own dedicated DVD). The themes are a mix of the usual (The Natural World, Economy) interspersed with academic skills based themes (learning styles, being objective) and this layout seems to work well. The focus is on real academic English with authentic material and a strong focus on research ability. Authenticity is carried over to the listenings with a variety of different accents (including overseas students and non-native speaking lecturers) and the whole approach is very true of what a student would expect to find in a British university. The intermediate book takes the student through the necessary steps of researching and writing an academic essay as well as preparing for lectures, seminars and presentations and also introduces students to vital university skills such as being critical and hedging. The upper intermediate book highlights two of the main issues that material writers and publishers are faced with when producing a series of books for EAP. The first is the problem of one book suits all students: some of the topics used may hold little interest for some students. For example, one lecture

lesson dealt with the reasons boomerangs fly and was met with blank looks from my class of business/management/ fashion students. However, I can imagine the total opposite being true if the class consisted of science/maths/engineering students. The other issue is if the books can be used as standalone books and exactly how much the writer assumes the student already knows. The first page in the upper intermediate book starts with an exercise on selecting research sources for an essay, but with many students typically having an IELTS background where essays are written from opinion and imagination, the whole concept of actually using factual sources is often alien and may need to be explained. The advanced book continues in the same vein with the expected emphasis on high-level authentic material and is aimed at masters and possibly PhD students. Although an advanced student with this level of English would probably have sufficient study skills to cope with many of the topics presented here, it would be of great value cherry picking for one-off lessons for students who are still unsure about the whole academic side to English and some of the sections (for example, writing research proposals). To sum up, this is a well thought-out and very comprehensive series of books that does exactly what it says on the tin: integrate skills in an academic setting. In theory all teaching materials should be matched to their students needs and, as mentioned above, some of the topics used in the books may not be relevant to all students. However, if it is the case that you have science orientated or higher level students (these books tend to sit at the top end of their respective levels), there is little doubt that this series of books will prepare them for just about any learning situation they are likely to encounter in university study. October 2012, Issue 40 45

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

Speaking

Joan McCormack and Sebastian Watkins ISBN: 978 1 90861 441 4 Garnet Education: 2012 Reviewed by: Jessica Vicary and Katie Mansfield (University of Westminster)

Speaking is a recently updated publication from the University of Reading and ISLC, published by Garnet Education. Other books in the series include: Extended Writing & Research Skills, Reading, Writing, Listening, Vocabulary and Pronunciation. Speaking is designed for students who want to develop their speaking skills in order to succeed with academic studies. The main aim is to help students develop the speaking and presentation skills needed to participate in academic seminars and discussions. The Course Book incorporates a mixture of discussions and presentations linked to the topic of each unit. Input includes written texts and audios from authentic sources. The Course Book states that it is suitable for Upper Intermediate to Proficiency students (B2C2 in the Common European Framework). The book consists of 10 units and deals with a range of skills related to academic speaking, for example, delivering a presentation (Unit 1) and participating in a debate (Unit 8). The specific skills are exploited in conjunction with the topic of the unit. The first 5 units of the book are considered the core units as each one addresses both seminar and presentation skills.

Unit 6 then encourages learners to consolidate what they have learned and Units 710 aim to give students additional practise in the skills covered in the preceding units. Each unit includes useful language, study tips and a summary of the unit. The students are encouraged in Unit 1 to create a learner diary and write an entry at the end of each unit. Additional materials in the Course Book include a glossary of words or phrases introduced in the texts, authentic reading material and transcripts of the audio material. There is also a Teachers Book with answer keys. In addition to this, there is a study book which is intended for self study and includes a full answer key. Students and teachers alike are also provided with the link to a website where useful resources can be downloaded. Overall, this is a comprehensive course book that achieves its aims and contextualises new skills. It successfully includes essential useful phrases for academic study and gives students the opportunity to recycle what they have learnt. Although the book claims to target B2 to C2, it is questionable as to whether the C2 students would be sufficiently challenged.

Oxford EAP: Upper Intermediate

Oxford EAP: Upper Intermediate Edward de Chazal and Sam McCarter ISBN: 978 0 19400 178 6 Oxford University Press: 2012 Reviewed by: Andy Gillett, Andy Gillett Consulting Ltd

With the growing success of primary and secondary ELT around the world, the market for EAP is growing. For this reason, all the large international publishers now have a substantial EAP series in their catalogues. Oxford EAP: Upper Intermediate is a new publication from Oxford University Press. It is part of the Oxford EAP series, which will include courses at intermediate and advanced levels. Oxford EAP: Upper Intermediate is a very well-thought out and comprehensive course. Its aim is to prepare students to study effectively in English at university level, whatever their

chosen subject from pre-sessional courses to post-graduate research. The course consists of 12 units (240 pages) and deals with a wide range of subject matters, from education to communication and technology. Appendices to the Students Book include a glossary, language reference, information on citation and plagiarism, sample answers, an audio transcript and some additional practice materials. A DVD-ROM included with the course book contains extracts from video lectures as well as audio files of seminars and oral presentations. A teachers handbook which gives information on the course,

46

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG with teaching support and answer keys for the tasks, is also available. Each chapter is divided into four main skills modules: reading, writing, speaking and listening. A typical chapter starts with a discussion section to set the scene for the unit, followed by the skills modules in varying orders. Although vocabulary is developed throughout the course, each chapter has a vocabulary page, focussing on relevant vocabulary or vocabulary learning skills. As well as the academic skills and vocabulary, the chapters include materials on academic language, critical thinking and independent study. The reading modules make use of authentic materials, short extracts on a variety of topics from a range of OUP textbooks aimed at first year undergraduates, professionals or the general reader. Writing is developed well, but leads mainly to the writing of short texts. The listening materials use extracts from lectures. There is also a range of short speaking exercises, from small group discussions to group presentations. Most of the texts and activities are short and perhaps we cannot expect more than this from a large publisher trying to reach a broad audience. However, if this was the only course that students were doing, teachers would need to supplement this with longer texts and exercises to help students deal with reading of textbooks, dealing with full-length lectures and writing 2000 word reports. OUP obviously want to promote this book to as wide a market as possible and whilst this is of much interest to any EAP student, it will suit some classes better than others. It will be most useful for a long pre-sessional course 3 months leading to undergraduate study. It would also be possible to choose just one of the skills modules for say 12 classes, for a less intensive course.

English for Football

Alan Redmond and Sean Warren ISBN: 978 0 19457 974 2 Oxford University Press: 2012 Reviewed by: Andy Gillett, Andy Gillett Consulting Ltd

English for Football is a new publication from Oxford University Press. It is part of the Express Series of short, specialist English courses for different professions. Other books in the series include English for Legal Purposes and English for Human Resources. According to the back cover, English for Football is aimed at anyone who needs to communicate in English with players, coaching staff, journalists, agents and fans. It may also be useful for students interested in a career in football, or to supplement a regular general English course. As with all books in the Express Series, it is a short course that can be completed in 2530 hours, and is aimed at elementary students (A1A2). The book consists of eight chapters (96 pages) and deals with a range of topics related to the football business such as: positions, the pitch, formations, great goalkeepers and the greatest team. Appendices to the Students Book include tests, a board game, transcripts of the audio recordings, an answer key and an AZ glossary of footballing terms. A multiROM includes realistic listening extracts and interactive exercises for extra practice. Each of the eight chapters deals with a specific area of football: the club, the defender, the midfielder, the striker, the goalkeeper, the manger, etc. A typical unit begins with a starter section (kick-off) with warm-up and awarenessraising exercises. It then goes through the skills of reading and

listening, supported by a very old-fashioned language syllabus: present simple, frequency adverbs, present continuous, past tense, present perfect, comparatives and superlatives, etc. These are interspersed with useful vocabulary exercises and a section on everyday English: greetings and introductions, giving personal information, talking about likes and dislikes, making arrangements, etc. The unit finishes with a short discussion section which asks students for their opinions on various aspects of football such as a referee has a harder job than a footballer, or European defenders are the best in the world. Most of the exercises are text based, either reading or listening texts giving information about such things as teams or interviews with players, but there is a strong structural element in these texts and related exercises. Some of the texts used provide good examples of the kinds of texts a football professional might have to read or produce, for example, instructions from the coach, or an interview with a player. This may be a very interesting book for football-mad teenagers who are not interested in learning English and therefore would be most suitable to supplement a general English course being taught to such students. However, I cannot imagine football professionals discussing my favourite player or the best team in the world so I would think that most readers of this journal who need materials to teach players how to communicate with their manager, coach or agent may need to look elsewhere.

October 2012, Issue 40

47

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG

CLIL across Educational Levels

Compiled by Emma Dafouz and Michele C. Guerrini ISBN: 978 8 46680 259 8 Richmond Publishing: 2009 Reviewed by: Meliha Mehmedova, University of Westminster alumnus/MA TESOL

CLIL across Educational Levels from Richmond Publishing makes a significant contribution to exploring the vast range of CLIL programmes that are available across Europe. The authors Emma Dafouz and Michele Guerrini have compiled a collection of case studies from all educational levels in Spain that aim to provide more insight into the integration of language and content in the school curriculum as well as to encourage practitioners and researchers to share their experiences and to take ownership of CLIL practices. The book is divided into five parts. The first part outlines the background for CLIL and offers a brief historical overview of the new educational paradigm linking it to bilingual educational policies in Canada from the middle of the twentieth century. The second part of the book focuses on the implementation of CLIL in primary education. Chapter one outlines the advantages of an early start in foreign language education as well as the challenges and impediments that it often faces. In the second chapter, the contributors talk about the Comunidad Autonoma de Madrid (CAM) Bilingual Project implemented in primary schools in Spain. The final chapter in part two offers a smooth transition from the investigation of CLIL in primary to secondary education.

Part three focuses exclusively on secondary education and examines two CLIL history classes which are part of the joint project between the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia (MEC) and the British Council. The integration of both content and language aims and objectives is demonstrated through a lesson plan in chapter seven. Part four introduces the reader to CLIL at the tertiary level of education. The contributors in this section investigate teachers and students attitudes towards CLIL and highlight the need for a CLIL pedagogy that is different than the pedagogical methods used at the primary and secondary levels. Case studies demonstrating how CLIL and LSP can be incorporated at the university level are offered in the subsequent chapters. Part five offers a brief reflection on assessment within the CLIL context by outlining the Dutch quality criteria by which CLIL can be certified. Overall, this book establishes a great starting point for both teachers and researchers who are urged to reflect upon their practices and voice their thoughts and ideas. The stakeholders in CLIL are encouraged to take an active role in the development of CLIL theory and practice in order for its full potential to be utilized.

Essential Teacher Knowledge

Jeremy Harmer ISBN-10: 140 8268 043 ISBN-13: 978 1 40826 804 9 Pearson Longman: 2012 Reviewed by: Isora Enriquez OFarril, Dean of Foreign Languages at Varona Pedagogical University, Havana, Cuba

I have read and used some of the books by Jeremy Harmer, like the How to Teach series, but definitely Essential Teacher Knowledge, as claimed in its cover is A unique methodology book, but also different and attractive. The book gives plenty of good advice to English teachers and it is very easy to read and understand. One of its strengths is the wide range of issues related to the aspects of language

teaching and learning most relevant for the teachers today, such as CLIL, the use of technology and virtual environment for learning presented in 110 units. The issues tackled in the book and the inclusion of teachers from voice around the world make it obvious that its author, Jeremy Harmer, has a global understanding of the teaching profession as well as a very comprehensive understanding of

48

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG the language, the teaching learning theory and the practical classroom techniques needed for successful learning. I have found the organization of the units very useful for trainees. It presents basic ELT theory in a language accessible to both the novice and experienced teachers, combined with practical and teaching ideas, which help to contextualize our own teaching. Nonetheless, although one might understand the purpose of presenting concepts in simple language, on some occasions they are somehow rather simplistic or not precise. That is the case of zone of proximal development, described on pages 38 and 91 and later in the glossary, which could be incomplete for those not acquainted with that psychological concept to understand the contributions of such theories to foreign language learning. Suggestions of further readings on this topic could contribute to go deeper into this important aspect. The narration introduces each theme and the DVD contributes to add authenticity and credibility to the concepts presented since teachers experiences can be reflected in such situations. The Snapshots could be very useful either for classroom activities or for self-study. The cross-reference technique to offer clarification or suggest further reading is also of great value. The section entitled Revise, research, reflect calls for teachers professional development and reflection on their practice. It is stated in the cover review that Essential Teacher Knowledge is ideal preparation for TKT and other entry-level teacher qualifications or as a handbook for any ELT teacher. It appears that the book has been like a hand in a glove for the TKT tutors at my school. For example, units 65 to 79 could be studied for TKT, which cover the Module entitled Managing Learning and Teaching in TKT. All the units of this book enrich the theory provided by the TKT book. That is why we consider it is a very good supplementary material for those who want to pass TKT. I would add that it is a good source for the ELT methodology bibliography used in our Language Teacher Education Curriculum. As an English teacher and teacher trainer in Cuba I say to its author that This book is written for people around the world who teach (or are going to teach English). I just want to ask the author, if it is possible to include a Cuban voice in the next edition. Thank you Jeremy for this new gift. It is indeed a good book.

Writing Research Papers From Essay To Research Paper

Dorothy E. Zemach, Daniel Broudy and Chris Valvona ISBN: 978 0 23042 194 3 Macmillan: 2011 Reviewed by: Gillian Mckenna, University of Westminster

Writing Research Papers From Essay To Research Paper is a new publication from Macmillan, in the four-level writing series, and has been specifically designed to develop learners writing skills. Other books in the series include Writing Sentences The Basics of Writing, Writing Paragraphs From Sentence to Paragraph and Writing Essays From Paragraph to Essay. Writing Research Papers From Essay To Research Paper is designed for university-level students with the aim of guiding them through their first research paper. The book consists of 12 units and additional materials, and provides an excellent outline with which to combine learners original writing with the format of a research paper in accordance with APA guidelines. While the book does require teacher guidance (in Units 13 students complete two drafts of a persuasive or expository essay with the help of a thorough review), it is also aimed at developing learner-independence (in Units 13 students choose the essay topic and are encouraged to self-review and in Units 412 students build on the essay topic through individual research outside of class.) This book is an innovative example of an EAP publication focused strongly on a process approach, introducing both the essay and research paper in stages so as not to overwhelm learners. The writers, however, recognise that writing academically is not only a process but also a cultural experience and students are provided with the tools to analyse the reliability of sources while identifying opinion and bias. It is

interesting, and commendable, that the book has no listening component as it prefers to allow learners to strengthen their academic skills through logically guided discussions. This well-thought out approach, which aims to develop rather than shape students ideas, is complemented with one of the tasks in Unit 12 in which learners are expected to present their research (which began in Unit 4) orally. Here is a brief analysis of Unit 5, Outlining. This Unit begins with a discussion in which students are asked to speak about why [i]n academic essays and research papers [...] the most important idea is often discussed last (Zemach, Broudy and Valvona, 2011: 30). This exercise is followed by vocabulary building activities; in this case, the purpose of the exercise is to get learners to master vocabulary related to research papers. The next task is specifically aimed at familiarising learners with research paper outlines and the subsequent tasks offer detailed outline plan examples with a particular focus on the tree outline. Following this line of thought, learners are then asked to consider essay organisation. This then guides students to the point in which they actively use the concepts they have learnt by developing a detailed essay outline while considering counterarguments. It seems that the authors intention to carefully balance between process and cultural guide is achieved. Although some teacher input is required, learners are also offered the opportunity to discover, through carefully designed exercises, the reasons for academic conventions.

October 2012, Issue 40

49

Journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG Overall, this is a very interesting publication and should help learners to integrate their own writing and ideas according to APA guidelines. It should, however, be noted that the book is part of a writing series which guides learners from the basics of sentence construction right through to writing academic research papers. This is why, despite the innovative approach employed to develop learners essay and research writing, this book cannot be used in isolation and must be followed from the beginning to the end as the writers intended.

The Professionals Choice

NEW! NEW!
Endorsed by

Teaching ESP? Email eltmail@cambridge.org to order a FREE copy of Teaching English for Specic Purposes by Mark Krzanowski and Jeremy Day. Please quote ESPSIG40 with your order.

www.cambridge.org/elt/esp

50