DANIEL, EMANUEL, GEORGE,

MARIVAL
ENSINO DE LNGUA INGLESA INSTRUMENTAL
EDVAN CARDOSO
INTRODUCTI
ON
When this work was done, ESP was still a fairly new as
well as a very excitinged endeavor. It may have first
begun twinkle in the firmament in the late 1960s e.g
with the publication of Ewer and Latorres (1969) Course
in Basic Scientific English, it might be true that PUC-SP
and Federal Universities was one of the first places to
attempt to implement ESP on a wide scale, in 1978.
ESP teachers felt excited to be in at the
beginning of something new and more focused
on needs, and many conference papers e.g. in
British Council international seminars held in Latin
America, such as near Mexico City in 1979, were
exploring new ideas .
There had been extensive projects in Iran (where
many of the nucleus books were developed), and
Colombia (reading and thinking in English) and
lots of universities in Mexico were experimeting
with it; there was exciting work in Thailand too. In
this context, ESP was something of a fashionable
novelty.
Howerver, ESP teachers were apprehensive
and there was a natural worry

WHAT DO WE DO IN THE CLASSROOM IF WE CANNOT USE

THE TECHNIQUES WE WERE TRAINED TO USE?

HOW COULD CLASSES BE ORGANISED?

WHAT SORTS OF PRESENTATIONAL TECHNIQUES SHOULD

WE USE?

Such a situation really puts teachers on their mettle. Nothing

is to be taken for granted, so a number of new approaches
have to be tried out.
In this ferment of experimentation, where the project
was recommending new ways of tackling reading by
focussing on strategies, a time when the use of group
and pair work was seen as controversial, when the
use of L1 in class was anathema to most teachers at
least officially, several explorations in self-access were
undergone.
The term self-access covers a
number of individualized
approaches in teaching.

The author begins with some commom problems in the

traditional system, which are followed by a set of principles
which underpin self-access, and considerations as to how a
self-acces ESP course can be set up.
PROBLEMS
There seem to be three main classes of problems which
arise from traditional classroom teaching (lockstep as it has
been called).

THE ONES WHICH RELATE TO THE STUDENTS

PROBLEMS IN THE MATERIALS
PROBLEMS WHICH COME FROM THE
TEACHERS ROLES
 PROBLEMS WHICH RELATE TO THE
STUDENTS
Its an obvious fact that no two individuals are exactly
alike. Teachers always complain that classes are
heterogeneous, and often suggest that the solution in
to divide pupils into streamsadvanced, intermediate,
false beginners, beginners, or whatever. The entrance
or placement test is designed to do just that.
 PROBLEMS WHICH RELATE TO THE
STUDENTS
But however many heads you cut off, the
Hydra always seems to grow more. ( in the
same way ESP teachers have in the past
argued that engineering students should
study engineering texts, hoping that would
solve the subject speacialism problem, only
to discover that the eletrical engineers didnt
like the eletronic engineering texts and so
on).
The reason is simple: even if you could
guarantee to get a class of students who
were all at exactly the same level (say they
had all scored exactly 72% on your
placement test) this seeming homogeneity
would certainly conceal a number of
divergences. Check next slide.
 SPEED OF LEARNING AND IQ
KNOWLEDGE
STRATEGIES
GRAMMAR
FUNCTIONS
VOCABULARY
SKILL AT IMPLEMENTING KNOWLEDGE
ATTITUDE AND MOTIVATION

SOME STUDENTS FACTORS AFFECTING PROGRESS

It is obvious that each student will differ from her
or his classmates in at least these regars, so that
even if all students scored 72% in your placement
test they could not all score say 92% in your
achievement or progress tests as the
semesterunfolds.

I am not suggesting that streaming is a bad policy but that it

might be better to stop trying to cut off the Hydras and learn
to live with it. Could the Hydra be a chimera?
 PROBLEMS IN THE
MATERIALS

The second class of problems relates to the

materials, the teachers tools of the trade.
Teachers are generally dissatisfied with the
textbooks available to them. The methodology is
inadequate in one way or another, the approach
does not take their particular realidade into
account, the exercises are at the wrong level, etc.
 PROBLEMS IN THE
MATERIALS
A common solution is to begin to write ones own
materials. An eager star is made, colleagues are
coopted, and the great materials production machine
swings into action. Unless of course sand gets into the
works: disagreement in the team, not enough time,
no support from the administration, etc. still, new
materials do get produced, and all seems well, until
the self-same teachers begin to get frustrated with
their own materials.
Research shows that no text-topics, for example,
will please everyone, and the same is bound to
apply to exercises and exercise-types. As
Abraham Lincoln didnt quite put it: you can
please all the people some of the time, and some
of the people some of the time, but you cannot
please all the pleople all the time.
 PROBLEMS WHICH COME FROM THE
TEACHERS ROLES

The third aspect also derives from our usual

lockstep approach, in which all students are
improbably expected to do the same thing at the
same time, extracting an equivalent amount of
benefit from it. This aspect is the teachers role.
 PROBLEMS WHICH COME FROM THE
TEACHERS ROLES
All teachers know, of course, that their students are
quite different from each other. But the usual situation,
in which the teacher is a kind of showman controlling
events, by putting responsibility for the class on the
teachers shoulders, tends to creat a paradox: the
class is united in contradistinction to the techer, and at
the same time each member of the class is set in
competition with each other member of the class.
 PROBLEMS WHICH COME FROM THE
TEACHERS ROLES
In the normal teaching situation is
expected to be in charge, responsible
for the 50 minutes of class time. If
there is an awakward silence it is
presumably because the teacher has
not prepared the class properly. If
students fail the teacher will be
thought to be a poor teacher.
The teachers natural response to this role is to talk
a great deal, and then when results are disappointing
to put the blame on the size of the class, on their
colleagues poor teaching or on the secondary school
system, on student irresponsability, laziness or
stupidity, on mass education, on the textbook.
The average student is by defenition less than
excellent. Some students are bound to fail. The
paradox is epitomized by the teacher building into
multiple-choice tests distractors whose sole
purpose is to trap the unwary, in order to sort the
sheep from the goats.
In part, this rather depressing scenario is a result
of the standar role allotted to teachers and to
students.

I do not suggest that all these problems can be

abolished at a strokeby the immediate mass adoption
of self-access techniques, but instead that ways must
be sought of placing the responsability for learning
where it really belongs: on the students shoulders.
SELF-ACCESS
PRINCIPLES
STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY

PACE
HOW
WHERE
CHOICE
HOW WHEN
MUCH
WHAT
PACE
This is probably the easiest segment to put into
practice, and the one which immediately breaks
lockstep. It means allowing students freedom to go
through materials without having to wait for their
class-mates. This means that instead of having to
think of activities for the faster students to do at the
end of a class or class activity, of course, they will be
able to finish the course before the others, maybe
even only half-way through the semester. In a
university, why not?
WHERE AND
WHEN
This simply means letting students study in the
library or at home, in class-time or outside class-
time. Materials can be made available in the
library, where possible with answers provided.
WHAT AND HOW
MUCH
This principle could alternatively be called self-
routing. In the same way that the dental patient
expects to have fillings put in only in the teeth
suffering from caries, the teacher and student
must decide together what ESP problems each
student wants and needs to tackle.
WHAT AND HOW
MUCH
This principle has important implications for
teaching materials, of course. If students are no
longer automatically to go through the course
materials from beginning to end, but are instead
to choose appropriate exercises and tasks, they
will need guidance as to what to choose.
HOW
Students can also be offered freedom to choose
how to study. This means that the student who
likes to learn vocabulary out of context by heart
using translation lists can do so, with the same
freedom as the students who wants grammatical
explanations, etc.
HOW
These latter two principles simply increasing
involvement by the student in his or her own
progress, learning style, and problems. This is
what is meant by responsibility being placed on the
students shoulders. It implies a very different view
of education_surely a healthier one_but one which
students take some adapting to.
ORGANIZING
THE ESP SELF-ACCESS
COURSE
This is not a description of procedures set up at the Federal
University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), for they have been
described elsewhere. Based on experiences there, however,
it seems possible now to produce some guideliness for
those who may wish to try self-access, following all or
some of the principles in the previous section.
The potencial ingredients are:

A TEACHERS PLAN WITH LISTS OF MATERIALS NEEDED FOR

THE SEMESTER

INSTRUCTIONS FOR STUDENTS EXPLAINING IN DETAIL WAHT

THEY WILL HAVE TO DO, HOW MUCH FREEDOM THEY WILL
HAVE AND HOW THEY WILL BE EVALUATED AT THE END OF
THE COURSE

A BANK OF TEXTS

A BANK OF EACH STUDENTS WORK AND PROGRESS

REFERENCE MATERIALS (DICTIONARIES, GRAMMARS, ETC.)

TESTING MATERIALS
 COMPLEX METHOD
- Prepare materials in advance
- Mimeograph and xerox copies
Instuction booklet
Folders
Record sheets
Selecting texts and exercise
Find a place to keep all that
 SIMPLIFIED METHOD

- Give nstructions orally

- Ss select their own texts and exercises
List where to find them
- Ss borrow dictionaries and grammar
At the begging of the semester one should:
a) ensure that all Ss undertand the rationale bhind
the course
b) show them how to use reading strategies
c) ensure all Ss understand how theyll be evaluated
At the begging of the semester one should:
a) ensure that all Ss undertand the rationale bhind
the course
b) show them how to use reading strategies
c) ensure all Ss understand how theyll be evaluated
A useful weay of showing Ss what you mean by
summary, is to do it orally in the first feew sessions
several times. The advantages of this procedure are
a) it is easy to report on the main points orally
b) the activity is genuinely communicative
You may object that the first 10-15 hour are not self-access
at all since they are much alike traditional procedures. The
reason for starting like that is to give the Ss something to
negotiate about: a basis for analysing their problems and
choosing materials to help them solve them. But after this
inital stage you and they should be ready for slf-access to take
over.
 - EXPECT TO FEEL STRANGE IN YOU SELF-
ACCESS TEACHER ROLE
- EXPECT YOUR SS TO BE PERPLEXED AT THEIR
FREEDOM
- EXPECT THEM TO BEHAVE SOMEWHAT
IRRESPONSIBLY
In relation to cheating there are three points:
I) You can hardly ever catch them at it
II) If you are afraid they pay their classmates to produce the
summary for them, you could ask them to do them in
class time
III) In the end it is the cheater who loses
CONCLUSIO
N