Getting Everyone´s Feet Wet in an ESP/EAP Course

Radomíra Bednářová and Jana Kubrická, Czech Republic

Radomíra Bednářová is a teacher of English for Specific Purposes and Academic Purposes at Masaryk University Language Centre, Brno, Czech Republic. In her work she is involved in teaching and materials/course design aimed at students of general medicine, midwifery, paramedicine, and both junior and senior researchers in medical and biomedical settings.

Jana Kubrická teaches English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic Purposes at Masaryk University Language Centre, Brno, Czech Republic. Her research interests include aspects of identity in language learning and plurilingualism.

Menu

Background – grounding rough lesson outline
Introduction – ESP/EAP framework
Examples – tasks and their stages
Conclusions
References

Background – grounding rough lesson outline

The text features a rough outline of a lesson combining approaches which can be applied in multiple ways, depending on the teacher´s preferences, teaching style and students´ levels. It is not a ready-made teaching material; it rather shows the variability of the presented material. The more heterogeneous the target group, the wider the scope of uses.

Introduction – ESP/EAP framework

Like any other introductory lessons, it is the university English for Specific Purposes and / or English for Academic Purposes (ESP/EAP) lessons as well that face the question of how to make an effective start. In other words, how to open a course so that one addresses relevant issues, teaches something new, engages students, and, on a good day, entertains them, too? Since there are multiple possibilities to approach the issue, we would like to add to the current collection of existing schemes the following description of one lesson/unit which (1) explores basic terminology of scientific disciplines, (2) examines students´ perceptions of the disciplines´ relevance and (3) makes them aware of their potential scientific career preferences. The unit is taught to a group of young adults of fairly balanced abilities, targeted at CEFR B1+, however, it is adjustable to lower or higher levels. The presented material aims at using a rather low amount of input to generate as much output as possible. This unit also allows for relative freedom on the teacher’s part to let the lesson evolve its own way, particularly in the discussion parts and the third stage (see below) when students create and justify their mind maps, the teacher´s role being in facilitating/monitoring/eliciting, in some ways inspired with the elements of Dogme approach in English language teaching. We draw on Dogme in its (1) materials-light approach, (2) its emphasis on the language emerging in the course of action in the lesson, which is fed back by the teacher in certain stage/stages of the lesson itself (corresponding to the teacher´s consideration and improvisation skills), (3) building on student´s life perceptions and experience (in other words, the teacher reacts to the immediate input from students) and lastly (4) in its limited in-class resources.

Examples – tasks and their stages

LESSON

Stage one: a number of general questions are presented for consideration and discussion: “Which of these subjects have you studied? Which subjects are/were you good at? What do your favourite subjects deal with? Which of the subjects do you find most relevant considering your career preferences? Which subjects would you like to study further?”

Through the vocabulary list in the table and the above core questions (suggestions), the learners generate the language to discuss their previous experience and reflect on their choices; the phraseology to express the focus of each discipline is used, e.g. “Psychology deals with…”, “The major focus of biology is on…”. The teacher may either provide one example and elicit more from the students or elicit from the very beginning without uncovering any one example or offer students the whole range of phraseology – all in all, subject to the immediate atmosphere in/language abilities of the target group. As for the students ‘own evaluation of their skills, in some contexts/cultures, it is not straightforward for individuals to praise themselves for their achievements and talents explicitly; the activity may therefore be used as an opportunity to boost such students’ confidence and show cultural differences.

Stage two: the initial task is complemented by another language-oriented question of “What is a person called who specializes in the subject? Which is the stressed syllable?” which makes students work on word formation and watch for stress patterns. The pronunciation practice can be done either for isolated items or as in-sentence pattern practice while using back chaining or front chaining technique, such as: first stage, isolated-item practice as a pair activity – students listen to each other and pronounce the individual items in two consecutive sub-activities – on the first go, using a fairly normal voice with the stress on the stressed syllables; on the second go, the aim is to pronounce the items using twice as much stress as the speakers would use in a regular speech. Teacher models and repeats with students to solidify in the final stage of the activity. In the second stage, back and front chaining in pairs in the same way as above, practicing patterns of intonation and weak versus stressed syllables within a sentence.

Stage three: upon teacher´s introductory check of the students’ awareness of mind maps, this stage involves creating a mind map of the students´ discipline/disciplines. Cards with the names of scientific disciplines and subdisciplines close to the students´ fields of study (e.g. biochemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry) are distributed to groups of three/four. Students in groups create mind maps (blank cards can be distributed as well to add missing disciplines if students feel they would add some. The language output here is aimed at (1) negotiating skills and language within the group and (2) the description of the mind map including the justification of choices to the others. In this sub-task, each group nominates a speaker who has a time limit in which he/she summarizes the group´s justification of choice, complemented by questions from the teacher and the other students. The assignment of the task can be based either on the hierarchy of the disciplines/subdisciplines, inter-relatedness of the disciplines, personal choice/preferences, linearity, perceived importance of the disciplines, it can also be presented as a verbal cloud. For example, if the group involves students of chemistry only, the teacher draws students´ attention to the varied subdisciplines of chemistry; if the group features students doing a variety of natural sciences, the cards will involve a number of natural science disciplines – again, with the selection/omission of the particular disciplines, the teacher reacts to the immediate context of the target group.

Stage four: in order to magnify the effect of the in-class work, this follow-up scenario can be useful. Students are asked to write an article for a popular science journal in which they will address a significant issue of the time, explaining why they think this particular topic should draw attention of their potential readers. The task can be further stratified:

1. advanced groups: 1. having defined the topic and explained the relevance, 2. come up with a number of key questions which will be answered by the article
2. less advanced groups: 1. having defined the topic and explained the relevance, 2. come up with a basic structure of the article

Conclusions

We have described a relatively simple and smooth lesson plan for an introductory ESP/EAP lesson whose advantages lie in virtually no need for technologies or other “special effects”. We know from experience that the lesson plan can be effective particularly in B1 and B2 classes for chemists, physicists or geographers, i.e. in sciences where interdisciplinary collaboration is an issue. This lesson can yield interesting results at various levels. Firstly, students get to know each other through a number of communicative tasks, such as presenting information in front of others or discussions in groups. The given springboard for discussion is very basic, yet at the same time it features key technical terminology, accompanied by the always useful pronunciation practice. Secondly, skills of listening, speaking and writing are practised as well as language functions of argumentation/reasoning/justification. As a result, there is enough space to satisfy the teacher´s curiosity about who the students are at the start of the course, their academic backgrounds, language skills and even personalities. We think the main highlight of the presented lesson is that in it students give expression to their “academic self” in the context of their own discipline.

References

Dudley-Evans, T. & Jo St John, M. (1998) Developments in English for Specific Purposes. Cambridge University Press.

Hewings, M., Thaine, C. & McCarthy, M. (2012) Cambridge Academic English - An Integrated Skills Course for EAP. Cambridge University Press.

Widdowson, H. (1983) Language Purpose and Language Use. Oxford University Press.

On Dogme approach

Thornbury, S. (2000) A Dogma for EFL [Website]. Retrieved from
https://esol.britishcouncil.org

ELT experiences (2013) Dogme ELT: Teaching Unplugged [Website]. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN75uheAVl0

Bertrand, J. (2004) Dogme: A Teacher´s View [Website]. Retrieved from www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/dogme-a-teachers-view

On practising pronunciation patterns

Scruton, G. (2012) Backchaining for Speaking and Presentation Practice [Website]. Retrieved from http://gordonscruton.blogspot.cz/2012/12/backchaining-for-speaking-and.html

Hewings, A. (2007) Advanced English Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge University Press.

Please check the English Language Improvement for Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the English Language Improvement for Adults course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.