Graves in Practice: Innovating the English for Laboratory Technicians Course at Masaryk University

Ladislav Václavík, Czech Republic

Ladislav Václavík is a teacher at Masaryk University Language Centre, Brno, Czech Republic, Faculty of Medicine Department. Specialising in English for laboratory technicians and English for radiology assistants, he is mainly interested in creativity, motivation and blended-learning areas. E-mail: vaclavik@med.muni.cz

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Introduction
Laboratory technician study programme
Criteria for redesigning a course
Describing context
Teacher’s beliefs
Conceptualising content
Goals and objectives of the innovated course
Needs assessment
Conclusion
References
Suggestions for further reading

Introduction

Masaryk University Language Centre provides courses of English for students of all its faculties. At the Faculty of Medicine, students from different programmes read ESP courses in, for example, optometry, nutritional studies, laboratory techniques, physiotherapy, dentistry or general medicine. English is one of the basic subjects in all programmes offered by the medical faculty and by the end of their studies all students are expected to have reached the B2 level of English. In order to further facilitate this final goal and to keep up with the latest trends in language teaching, the Language Centre applied for and received, in 2012, a three-year grant to finance the IMPACT Project which encompassed the issue of language teaching in several key activities. One of these was innovating existing courses, including the course of English for laboratory technicians. This paper will describe the ways the innovations have impacted this particular course. During the IMPACT project, the existing syllabus was to be modified, a new set of in-class worksheets was to be developed. Both the new syllabus and the worksheets reflect new goals and objectives which come hand-in-hand with a different teaching approach and teaching strategies. The aim of the present article is to outline these goals and objectives. First, the curriculum of the first and second years of the Laboratory technician study programme will be described. Then, based on theoretical works of Kathleen Graves, the individual stages of the course design process will be sketched. Finally, a summary of the main areas of improvement will be drawn.

Laboratory technician study programme

The Laboratory Technician study programme is a three-year bachelor programme taught at the Faculty of Medicine at Masaryk University. The graduate students can pursue careers in clinical or research laboratories and specialise in different areas such as microbiology or haematology. In the first-year of their studies, students read the following subjects, some of which they share with other bachelor programmes: Basics of Anatomy, Medical chemistry, First-aid, Molecular and Cell Biology, Medical Physics, Instrumental techniques and Physiology. In their second year, students study subjects such as: Histochemistry, Basics of Pharmacology, Histopathological Methods, Pathology, Clinical biochemistry, Clinical genetics, Clinical haematology and Medical microbiology. It is in this year that students usually sign up for the course of English for laboratory technicians.

Prior to 2012, the curriculum of the course of English was based on the textbook English for Laboratory Technicians by Milan Dastych, Ladislav Červený and Ivo Najman, published in 2007. The course took two terms, each term comprising 15 weeks. The curriculum was topic-based, the autumn term focusing mainly on laboratory techniques, the spring term taking a broader perspective. The topics studied in the autumn term included: Spectrophotometry (2 units), Routine Chemistry Analysers, Electrophoresis, Osmometry, Chromatography and Atomic Absorption Spectrometry. In the spring term, the topics were as follows: Acid Base and Blood Gas Analysers, Flow Cytometry, Microparticle Enzyme Immunoassay (MEIA), Medical Laboratories – particular requirements for quality and competence; safety in clinical laboratory; microbiology and Gram staining; laboratory automation; quality control in the laboratory (Dastych 2007: pp.3-4). As will be seen, the new syllabus largely maintains the original structure in that no subject is dropped, the innovation of the curriculum consisting mainly in broadening the number of topics.

In order to better understand the innovation input, the structure of the original textbook will be briefly outlined. The book consists of 15 units covering the whole academic year. Each unit presents a regular cyclic structure. Units open with a lead-in text followed by a list of vocabulary. The next section constitutes a series of sentences to be translated into English. Then, a set of definitions in English to be set into students’ mother tongue is followed by a grammar review, the unit being concluded by a set of grammar exercises. As a result, the textbook, unless reshaped or adapted by a teacher, would promote a teacher-centred approach based on translation method and rote learning; individualistic learning style was heavily biased towards accuracy-oriented closed exercises. The students risk relying passively on their teacher as a source of adequate answers and the role of the teacher might easily be limited to that of a transmitter of knowledge and editor/corrector of possible mistakes.

Criteria for redesigning a course

The first issue was to re-think the course, re-design it so that it corresponds both to the general curriculum of the study programme and to students’ needs. When designing a course, several categories have to be taken in consideration. For example, Munby (1978), in his book on communicative language course design, distinguishes nine aspects: participants, purposive domain (laboratory English, in our case), setting (time and place), interaction (student-student, students-teacher), instrumentality (language skills, both productive and receptive), dialect (standard British English), target level (B2), communicative event (what students will have to do with the language), communicative key (how communicative needs will be performed), profile (what students will have to be able to do with the language) (Munby 1978: pp.154-167). According to Kathleen Graves, whose work will serve as a guideline for the following course description, one has to consider these basic framework components (Graves 1996: p.13): needs assessment, determining goals and objectives, conceptualising content, selecting and developing materials and activities, organisation of content and activities, evaluation and consideration of resources and constraints. In her later work (Graves 2000), she further refined the course development processes framework in the following terms: assessing needs, formulating goals and objectives, developing materials, designing an assessment plan, organising the course and conceptualising content. To these, she adds defining the context and articulating beliefs claiming that there is, ‘no hierarchy in the processes and no sequence in their accomplishment’ (Graves, 2000: p.3). The course-design process is ‘essentially a reflective and responsive process of understanding [one’s] options, making choices, and taking responsibility for those choices’ (Graves, 2000: p.4). Also, and importantly, Graves claims that the course-design process is ‘a work in progress [which] means that it is not a good use of a teacher’s time to try to get each detail of each aspect of a course ‘right’ prior to actually teaching it’ (Graves, 2000: p.8). The course must necessarily be subject to modifications, once confronted with a real classroom situation. As a result, the plan of the course, once taught, will be re-planned and re-taught based on an ongoing assessment and decisions the teacher has to make during the course, making a part of larger cycle of course development (Graves, 2000: p. 10).

At the very start, the teacher should consider the context or setting, according to Munby’s terms. In defining it, she/he can consider the following categories of factors: students (number, age, gender, other languages, purpose, education, experience); physical setting (classroom: size, furniture, light, noise); nature of the course and institution (type/purpose of the course; mandatory/open enrolment, relation to current/pervious courses; prescribed curriculum or not; required tests or not; teaching resources (materials available; required text; own materials; equipment); time (how many hours total, (time span) over what span of time; how often class meets; for how long each time; day of week; time of day; where it fits in schedule of students; students’ punctuality. It is important to know the context, as its ‘givens (…) are the resources and constraints that guide our decisions (…) about content, objectives and so on.’ (Graves, 2000: p.17). The context and its definition can also be seen as part of pre-course needs assessment. (Graves, 2000: p.19).

Describing context

The group of laboratory technician students usually consists of up to 23 students, predominantly female and Czech, most of them speaking another foreign language (French German, Russian or Spanish), with various levels of English proficiency ranging from pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate. As for previous education, all students need to have passed their secondary-school leaving examinations to enrol at university. They already have some experience in laboratory techniques which constitute one of the subjects they read in the first year of their studies. As far as the physical setting is concerned, classrooms are arranged in the classic theatre style with the teacher’s desk, whiteboard and projection screen in front of the room. Disturbing noises are reduced to minimum. The classes take place in the same room the whole term. The course is conceived as an ESP course, it is mandatory and students usually enrol in their second year of studies. There is no previous university course of English. The curriculum, based on the textbook mentioned above, is prescribed. During the course and at the end of it, students write three tests: a placement test meant as an initial assessment tool; a mid-term test as a means of formative assessment; a credit test together with the oral exam; constitute the basis for the summative assessment. As for the teaching resources, materials were both available (textbook) and to be developed (worksheets). In developing the materials, the teacher can count on state-of-the-art equipment: a computer with Internet connection, a data-projector and a modern audio apparatus. All the worksheets are regularly uploaded online for the students to print and bring to the class. The last point concerning the context is time: each term comprises 15 weeks, i.e. 15 ninety-minute seminars. In the autumn term, the class meets early in the afternoon, preceding a lecture on haematology, in the spring term the class begins early in the morning followed by a lecture on clinical biochemistry.

Teacher’s beliefs

The course-designing process consists of making choices and these are made based on a teacher’s beliefs. As Graves puts it, ‘the process of designing a course is one way in which you can learn to understand and articulate your beliefs, because those beliefs provide a basis for making choices’ (Graves, 2000: p.26). Graves lists different categories of beliefs: beliefs about language, about the social context of language (sociolinguistic, sociocultural and socio-political issues), beliefs about learning and learners, beliefs about teaching. In line with Nunan (1991), the course was to be learner-centred, rather than teacher-oriented. Students should be given an opportunity to learn how to cooperate (rather than compete), they should support each other in an attempt at establishing a sharing community of mutually supportive learners. Also, teacher’s beliefs about language learning lead her/him to strive for a meaning-centred curriculum, the focus being placed both on understanding the rules and doing things with language. Understandably, language learning in this ESP course is closely related to content learning. Considering Mohan (1982) and his claim that language and content should be learned together, some of the basic notions promoted by contemporary CLIL theory were considered, namely the notion of language triptych (Coyle 2010). Moreover, learning is understood as an inductive process where learners construct their knowledge with teacher’s help, for example by scaffolding, as described by Mehisto (2008). The leading role of the teacher as a transmitter of the knowledge might, however, come in the foreground, depending on the level of students’ English. Still, teaching seems to be more of a collaborative process, the teacher assuming the roles of facilitator, counsellor, monitor and provider of learning structures rather than being the omniscient, unmistakeable informant ready to provide correct answers (Prodromou 1992: p.35). As a result, the majority of in-class activities were meant to promote students’ active approach to learning, dynamic, English-only environment where the use of Czech (or any other language) is reduced to minimum. Finally, in accordance with Sharma (2007), it is vital to bring the learning process out of class, constructing in this way an effective learning community where students as peers can communicate with each other, share experiences, do homework, additional tasks or even work on various projects. In this respect, an online group at edmodo.com was created, where students can follow posts, assignments or various uploads the teacher deems useful or necessary for them.

Conceptualising content

Considering one’s beliefs is closely related to another step of the course-design process which the teacher should deal with, namely ‘conceptualising content’ (Graves 2000: 37pp). According to Graves, this process involves:

1. Thinking about what you want your students to learn in the course, given who they are, their needs and the purpose of the course
2. Making decisions about what to include and emphasise and what to drop
3. Organising the content in a way that will help you to see the relationship among various elements so that you can make decisions about objectives, materials, sequence and evaluation

(Graves 2000: pp.37-38)

This seems to be the crucial point in the whole procedure, linked directly to the definition of both the context and the goals/objectives of each unit and of the course as such. The process of conceptualising is repetitive and tentative in the sense that whatever choices the teacher makes prior the implementation might need refurbishing, rethinking or even replacing. The conceptualising process should be considered even if there is an existing syllabus or a textbook:

‘If you are given a syllabus, either as specifications of what is to be taught or in the form of a textbook, it is still important to go through the process of conceptualising content so that on the one hand you can understand how the syllabus is constructed, and on the other hand can become aware of your own priorities with respect to your students. Such a process can give you tools to manage and adapt the syllabus as a resource rather than be governed by it.’ (Graves 2000: p.38).

The issue of conceptualising content is closely related to the problem of organising the course. Both the existing and the innovated course of English for laboratory technicians are organised by topics, but the innovated course places special emphasis on reading, listening and speaking skills. This seems the ideal combination, as Graves claims that ‘a course in which the four skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening are integrated may be organised around themes’ (Graves 2000: 127). In the following table, the original topic-based syllabus for the autumn term and the innovated one are shown:

The modifications made in the topics should reflect the general curriculum of laboratory technicians’ study plan, as new topics have been added to include other subjects: Clinical Haematology, Blood Transfusion and Clinical Biochemistry. Importantly, students should now be able to talk about their job, describe its specificities, they should be able to formulate their motivations and expectations. Also, more stress is put on assessing students as well as revising the course content.

When conceptualising content, the following categories are considered: focus on language (skills, topics, competences, situations, tasks, communicative functions); focus on learning and learners (affective goals, interpersonal skills, learning strategies); focus on social skills (sociolinguistic, sociocultural, socio-political skills) (Graves, 2000: p.43).

Focusing on language, the course maintained its original structure. As a result, the syllabus remained what Graves defines as topical (Graves, 2000: p.45). Each topic, however, has been linked to a particular language skill and competence. Moreover, the recycling rule was followed where students re-use certain knowledge in a different skill activity (students listen and then talk about an issue) or context (students listen and then role-play a situation). With other topics, students complete given tasks or even interact with each other in order to communicate.

One of the aspects of teaching to emphasise is the focus on learning with its affective, interpersonal skills and learning strategies. In Graves’ terms, ‘affective goals are concerned with the learners’ attitudes towards themselves, learning, and the target language and culture. Affective goals include developing a positive and confident attitude toward oneself as a learner, learning to take risks and to learn from one’s mistakes.’ (Graves, 2000: p.49) The formation of a positive attitude has been fostered by various teaching strategies which put the teacher in the background, foregrounding the students and the way they gather, construct and process knowledge. The teaching approach shifts towards a learner-centred class where interpersonal skills can flourish. Social skills, even if important for the overall learning process, do not play a crucial role in the curriculum in question. Still, they are worked upon in more detail during the spring term, when topics such as laboratory safety and giving first-aid are dealt with.

Goals and objectives of the innovated course

The process of conceptualising content relies on the objectives and goals of the course. These are ‘one of the hardest aspects of course design for the teachers’ (Graves 2000: 73), as they are not in close and evident relation to ‘the concretes of the classroom’ (ibid.) As mentioned in the first paragraph, the goals and objectives were to be re-constructed through the continuous process of worksheet designing, each unit adding up to the sum total of goals and objectives of the whole course. In the following, both notions of goals and objectives will be briefly defined. Next, the re-constructed goals and objectives of the innovated course will be detailed.

As Graves has it, goals are ‘a way of putting into words the main purposes and intended outcomes of [the] course’ (Graves, 2000: p.75). Objectives, on the other hand, are ‘the different points you pass through on the journey’ (ibid.) to the goal. They are ‘statements about how the goals will be achieved’ (Graves, 2000: p.76). Objectives and goals are also related as cause and effect. Usually, several objectives lead to the same goal. Sometimes, one objective can accomplish different goals. Also, goals are more general, objectives more specific. The frameworks which can help teachers define the goals of the course might be formulated on the basis of four skills: reading, speaking, listening, grammar and vocabulary. Keeping in mind Graves’ maxim that ‘goals and objectives should reflect your beliefs’ (Graves 2000: p.84), the goals of the course could be described using the so-called KASA (Knowledge Awareness Skills Attitude) framework:

Knowledge: what the students will know and understand.
Awareness: what students need to be aware of when learning a language.
Skills: reading etc
Attitude: address the affective and values-based dimension of learning

(in Graves 2000: p.83)

Considering the work of Pat Fisher (in Graves, 1996: pp.63-85), each category can be subdivided depending on language, content and strategies. Thus, as far as the language is concerned, the goals of the innovated course could run as follows:

In terms of content, the KASA framework could be as follows:

As far as strategies are concerned, the goals are the following:

Having specified the overall goals of the course, let us now consider its objectives. Saphier and Gower’s Cumulative Framework for Objectives lists five categories:

Coverage: the material that will be covered in the unit, lesson
Activity: what students will do in a unit, lesson
Involvement: how students will become engaged in what they do in the unit
Mastery: what students will be able to do as a result of the unit
Generic thinking: how students will be able to problem solve or critique in the unit

(in Graves 2000: p.92)

As objectives should be specific and concrete milestones on the way to more general goals, it is preferable to focus on one class – i.e. one topic – in detail to see its objectives. Here is a comparative outline of the objectives in both the existing and the innovated English for laboratory technician course based on a unit on spectrophotometry.

TABLE

Bringing in a new teaching approach should stimulate the learners’ creative, collaborative and critical thinking. The process of translation has been substituted by a dynamic classroom full of diverse activities engaging the learners to discover themselves, via both pedagogic and authentic materials. In this way, the process of learning can sometimes be close to a rediscovery of what the learners’ already know, as often happens during brainstorming sessions or other eliciting techniques.

This unit, as well as the others, was organised into activities so that given objectives lead to the expected goals. Graves calls this technique ‘sequencing’ and lists two main building principles which should be taken into consideration when constructing a unit plan:

1. the principle of building: A is simpler or less demanding; B is more complex – A is more controlled; B is more open-ended – A provides knowledge or skills required to do or understand B; A uses receptive skills, B uses productive skills – A uses productive skills to activate knowledge, B uses receptive skills to consolidate knowledge
2. spiralling/recycling: ‘something learned is reintroduced in connection with something else, so that it is both ‘reused’ and learned in more depth’ (Graves, 2000: p.138); using a different skill (listening/speaking); recycling something in a different context (practice/real situation); using a different learning technique (compare/dictate) (Graves, 2000: p.164)

Units can be organised either by cycles, where ‘some elements occur in a predictable sequence and, once the sequence is completed, it starts all over again’ (Graves, 2000: p.141); or by matrix, in which case ‘elements are selected from certain categories of content, but not in a predictable order’ (ibid.). Alternatively, a combination of both can be attempted. During the classes, a clear and predictable structure was followed: a short lead-in introducing the topic by a brainstorming session, discussion in pairs or simple group eliciting. This part was usually followed by a vocabulary warm-up gauging students’ knowledge. Subsequently, an activity focused on developing students’ language skills ensued: either a reading session with tasks and follow-up activities or a listening session, usually a video report. This content-oriented section devoted to vocabulary, speaking, reading or listening skills was regularly followed by grammar activities. Some grammar points were presented according to the presentation-practice-production model, others were constructed in such a way that students themselves, using inductive method of reasoning, built the respective grammar rule. A short revision session concluded each unit.

Needs assessment

According to Graves, needs assessment ‘involves finding out what the learners know and can do and what they need to learn or do so that the course can bridge the gap’ (Graves, 1996: p.12). Distinction has been made between objective and subjective needs, objective needs being derived from ‘factual information about learners, their use of language in real-life communication situations as well as their current language proficiency and language difficulties’ (Graves, 1996: p.13). Subjective needs, on the other hand, have to do with students’ personality, attitudes, expectations, learning style and strategies. In course of the first class, both these categories of students’ needs are addressed in the so-called initial needs assessment (Graves, 2000: p.110). This is effectuated by short teacher-student conferences, a group discussion and, finally, a placement test centred on proficiency in grammar, vocabulary and reading language skill. All of these take place during the first class with a view of collecting information about the students, their level of proficiency, interests, learning preferences and attitudes towards learning foreign languages. Also, the aim of the needs assessment is to find out students’ goals and expectations, communicative skills they might need in their future job and possible tasks they will have to perform in their professional life. Ideally, this needs assessment should be done as a pre-course assessment so that the course can be designed accordingly. In our case, this initial needs assessment is carried out in order to help students better realise the objectives and goals of the course. At the end of the course, students are given another assessment form in which they reflect on the structure and content of the course. Their feedback is then further implemented into the innovated syllabus.

Conclusion

The paper outlines ways in which an ESP course of English for laboratory technicians has been innovated. The modifications concerned three major areas: the syllabus, the materials and the teaching approach. As regards the syllabus, changes have been made in the topic-based curriculum so that the composition of different topics covers more closely the larger curriculum of the Laboratory technician study programme offered by the Faculty of Medicine at Masaryk University. Furthermore, course materials have undergone substantial changes: brand-new worksheets have been created and the existing textbook adapted so that it corresponds better to both the worksheets and the teaching approach. The new teaching attitude constitutes, in a certain manner, the core of the whole innovation process. The major goal in this respect has been to shift the attention from the teacher/teaching process to the learners/learning process; to introduce creative and active ways of learning where learners – profiting from both authentic and pedagogic materials – construct and discover knowledge by collaboration, induction or even by intuition. Hopefully, the innovations have brought a new impetus to the course which can, in this way, respond more adequately to the changing demands in education. By implementing productive skill activities, it enhances students’ competitiveness, improves their chances of getting a job or pursuing a successful career. It has also been a great opportunity to bring in new teaching methods and new resources, making students even more responsible for what they learn and aware of how they do things with language. Also, by creating both an in-class and an out-of-class learning community, the learning environment has been broadened, offering students ways to continue learning beyond the classroom. Last but not least, being given an opportunity to word their expectations at the start of the course and assess it at the end, students can participate actively in shaping its content and help the teacher meet their demands in a more efficient manner.

References

Coyle, Do, Hood, Philip, Marsh, David, (2010) CLIL. Content and Language Integrated Learning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Dastych, Milan, Červený, Ladislav, Najman, Ivo, (2007) English for Laboratory Technicians, Brno: Masarykova universita

Graves, Kathleen, (2000) Designing Language Courses. A guide for teachers, Boston, Heinle & Heinle Publihers

Graves, Kathleen, ed., (1996) Teachers as Course Developers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Mohan, Bernard, (1986) Language and content, Reading, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company

Munby, John, (1978) Communicative syllabus design, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Prodromou, Luke, (1992) Mixed Ability Classes, Hertfordshire, MacMillan Publishers Ltd

Suggestions for further reading

Deller, Sheelag, (2007) Teaching other subjects through English, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Ellis, Rod, (2004) Task-based learning, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Huhta, Marjatta, (2013) Needs analysis for language course design, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Jacques, David, Salmon, Gilly, (2008) Learning in groups. A Handbook for face-to-face and online environments, Abingdon, Routledge

Malamah-Thomas, Ann, (1991) Classroom interaction, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Mehisto, Peeter, (2008) Uncovering CLIL: content and language integrated learning in bilingual and multilingual education, Oxford, Macmillan

Nunan, David, (1991) The learner-centred curriculum, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Sharma, Pete, (2007) Blended learning: using technology in and beyond the language classroom, Oxford, MacMillan

Starko, Alan Jordan, (2010) Creativity in the classroom, Abingdon, Routledge

Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the CLIL: Content and Methodology for Universities course at Pilgrims website.