From G's to gents..

When i read through this blog, im really interested in what jasmin has called up. you know, the part with english for a 'lady' and how an ESP course could be done focusing on that. i'd love to share with you guys something similar being done down in MTV (yesm i know.. not a solid source of information) with a show call from G's to gents. we're all aware of the variety of english nowadays. this program is some what like an on air ESP course where hip hoppers, who we know that speaks a different form of english(african american) laden with colloquial mixed up and slangs, where taught how a be, act and talk like a gentleman. of course our focus is on the language, nevetheless, it's quite an interesting fact =D

Do ESP teachers need to be content experts?

The teaching of ESP is indeed an interesting area to be studied. My personal opinion is that ESP is more interesting than general English because ESP is learnt in context. It is the nature of ESP to be associated with the contexts that the learners are going to use the language. Lets say we're teaching ESP for medical students, surely we can not run away from medical jargons and tongue twisted phrases and lexicons which we don't normally use in every day life (unless ur mom's a nurse!). OR we're teaching pilots-to-be. Maybe we'll be using phrases like 'traffic issues', 'wind shear', 'wake turbulence' and 'bird strikes'. How interesting. We get to learn so many new things!.

Imagine this. You go to work one day and your HOD tells you that you are just the right person to design an ESP course for lets say Architecture students. and it just happens that u're no big fan of buildings and designs. (Don't u feel grateful that at least we know how to do Needs Analysis?!). Anyway the point I'm going at is that do you need to know all the adjectives to describe buildings or all the terms and concepts used by architects to describe sustainable architecture? In other words, is there a need for ESP teachers to be content experts?.

Well the answer is NO (don't we all feel relieved,pheww.) Debra-Lee in an ESP Newsletter published in March 2005 said that ESP professionals do not necessarily need to be content experts to teach English to learners with specific needs. There are, however, certain qualities or criteria that these people need to have to enable them to become better ESP teachers. These are the criteria as proposed by Lee (2005);

1. Curiosity and a willingness to learn about the content subject
2. Tolerance for content ambiguity (You are not the expert and your students may not be either.)
3. The willingness to let your students be experts
4. Confidence in your ability as a language, not content, teacher
5. The willingness to ask for content help (i.e., your colleagues in the Science Department or a conversation with an in-field expert)
6. The ability to adapt content materials to meet the levels and needs of your students
7. The willingness to forgo a vocabulary-driven class
8. The ability to tie language to content (discourse analysis/concordancing)
9. The ability to share your enjoyment of language learning with your students
10. Understanding that it is your language ability that makes you a great ESP teacher
11. Flexibility

Now we know that we don't have to have a degree in architecture in order to teach ESP to future architects. And we also know now, thanks to Debra that we need to have positive attitudes towards the content subject to encourage us to want to know more about the learners. After all, our aim IS to train them to become competent English users who can function effectively in their line of work/study.

So what can we do to increase our knowledge in the content subject? These are the steps suggested by Debra;

1. Talk to your students.
2. Attend a content class.
3. Read content journals/magazines; even widely read magazines
4. Read content textbooks.
5. Talk to colleagues in the content field.
6. Surf the Web.
7. Read the ESP Journal and EAP Journal, which are great resources for discourse and corpus studies in content/university fields.
8. Read online journals, such as ESP World or The Internet TESL Journal.

Having taken the efforts to increase our knowledge in the content subject and polished our language teaching skills help us to gain more confidence in delivering ESP lessons. Now that we're armed to the teeth, we can conduct the course that we've designed for Dr. Normah's class with not much problem... hopefully :)

bus drivers?

I got an email earlier this semester from INTEC's English coordinator stating that the bus drivers of UiTM, Section 17 Campus were asking for an English course. At first I laughed real hard but then it come to my thinking, it is actually a good thing to do. Despite the fact that INTEC or UiTM lecturers do not really have all the time in the world for such course, it is for the betterment of UiTM as well. Why not have bus drivers who can speak English fluently? and of course, INTEC students comprise of non Malays and those who are not very fluent in Bahasa Malaysia. There might be cases where the bus drivers cannot communicate with them. Or else, not just the bus drivers, the drivers as a whole, might need to communicate not just with the lecturers, staffs but also the visitors who are coming to UiTM.

Just last week, I bumped into a few Japanese people here in INTEC/ UiTM Section 17 Campus. They were smiling and they greeted me, so I replied with a smile as well. I wonder where they are from, but lets say the UiTM drivers fetch them from KLIA, or their hotel where they are staying, they must be something to talk about right? With the drivers of UiTM being fluent in English, the international or we can say the highest level of foreign or second language, it is something significantly beautiful to have. While driving, they can promote UiTM and share information with the visitors and this will leave impact to the visitors as UiTM drivers are able to entertain them.

I am actually excited over the establishment of this course. I actually offered to take part either in teaching or designing the course. From what I have learned from our ESP class, I know exactly what we need to do in designing a course such as this. The needs of the learners! We need to do a need analysis to locate and identify what are the needs of this drivers. I think I am going to contribute my thoughts to the Coordinator. Via email. Now. =)

~Irda Haryani Tahir~

ESP Course Evaluation

Well, so far I have only commented on the posts made by others. So I suppose this is my turn to start one before AP Dr Normah starts giving marks for the entries..ehmm.. Anyway I personally feel that it's appropriate as this is the last stage in the course design but not necessarily means the least important one. Besides, I'm still struggling to finish this part for the termpaper.
Dudley Evans and St. John (1998) identify five key roles for the ESP practitioner:
*teacher
*course designer and materials provider
*collaborator
*researcher
*evaluator
Hence it's important for the course developer/ESP practitioner to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the course from several aspects, explicitly and implicitly. This process is also recommended to be carried out at different phases of course execution. The common ones would be the mid-course and post-course evaluations. The information gathered is supposed to help the course developer to improve any weaknesses that the learners have encountered while the strengths are also highlighted and continued. The evaluation can take in many forms ranging from formal distribution of questionnaire and interview to informal discussion and class observation. Learners are also encouraged to voice their opinion at any point during the course and it should be noted so that all this information is utilized in improving the future course. Students may express their attitude towards the subject matter, instructional methods, activities, teacher's role and so on. Evaluation of the course is a brave step for the teacher because the evaluation will also include the teacher herself/himself. Students' feedbacks on the teacher/instructor is vital so that "dia tak syok sendiri" while executing the lesson in class. As the saying goes - The best 'mirror' for a person is his/her bestfriend and the same also goes for teachers...their students are their 'mirror'. (But not many will be happy if the comments tend to be negative ones, right?)
This subject somehow made me wonder if the present PPSMI policy which is still debatable did go through an ongoing evaluation in order to ascertain its effectiveness in improving students' command of English. If the policy did get reviewed periodically since it was first introduced in 2003, I personally believe the findings should be made public and any necessary measures that have been taken should also be informed so that the policy will not be blamed for the lack of motivation to do science courses among the students esp. malays. So now it's the job of the DPM to decide within the next 14 days, whether to continue.. or not to continue.. this 'controversial' policy.

Speaking Like a Lady

I was attracted to one of the chapters in Dr. Holmes required reading reference book this semester. It was something about speaking like a lady. It got me thinking, now wouldn't that be an interesting ESP course? I had a friend once who was looking around for grooming classes around KL, and I had the time of my life laughing at her... probably because I was young and shallow and the idea of doing things the 'proper way' did not appeal to me. I asked her, "why on earth do you want to go to a grooming class?" (in not-so-polite a fashion)... and she said (in an unladylike manner) "because I want to be able to walk and talk like a lady". This was greeted with more laughter and sneers on my behalf (you have to know her to be able to laugh as hard as I did).

Back to ESP. It stands for English for specific purposes right? So would the course 'Speak Like a Lady' be an acceptable ESP course? I mean specifically the speaking aspect. I can imagine it now. A bunch of women, not only just learning how to speak English but doing it the 'ladylike' way. I can only imagine what that would be like. I suppose it would mean taking care of the pronunciations, and the tone of voice as well as the content proper for a woman. Of course it would be impossibly outdated since we are after all fighting for equal rights.

So, if such a course existed, would you go?

Traditional or Communicative Classroom?

I was reading through several articles for my Course Design project when I realised that in designing a good course, we need to look deeper into a lot of things. Designing a course does not solely mean it's about what the students need (yes, it's a factor, but not the only factor). Another point that I would like to highlight is the importance to understand the structure of the course itself, and the type of approach that we plan to use in our classroom. What is the best approach to make sure that students will listen, and will be interested in the course? Yes, needs analysis is important, but we need to explore more on how to ensure that our needs analysis doesn't go astray due to poor approach in teaching ESP.

Imagine this:

I was in my grammar class. The class began with me greeting my students. When I was in a chatty mood, I would ask them about their weekend, or the latest celebrity gossips, but most of the time, I just greeted them with a smile. I started my class with the textbook on my right and the name list on my left. I began my class by discussing (not!) – clarifying the given homework. I would call a random name and the student will answer the posed question. The activity continued until all the homework questions were answered.

I would then continue the class with a fresh topic. Again, I would open the textbook to the designated page, and read the grammar explanation from the book. I asked whether the students understood, then I started to explain. When it came to the parts of speech, I would explain with such a confident tone, but when it came to explaining the differences between the present perfect and the present perfect continuous, it began to be more painful. The worst part of teaching grammar was that some tenses can be so difficult to explain. Theoretically. Then when I was done on the explaining part, I would pose some questions and the students would take turn answering them.

I have just described a typical traditional classroom. By now you probably guessed that I had a lot of those.

I can recall coming out of classes feeling like I had run for an election candidate. When I managed to entertain the class, I always felt good as if I just won my first parliamentary seat but if it went badly, I felt like losing the election with the lowest number of votes. Always there I was, in the centre of the class, talking, being stared at, desperately thinking of something entertaining to do or say. It can be very tiring to be the one who does the talking.

My first degree was in English Language and Literature, and not TESL. To be exact, I am not a trained English teacher. I never learned any of the methodologies or theories of teaching ESP, and haven’t got any clue what kind of approaches had I been doing in my class. I was taught that way, and taught that I should teach that way too.

During my first teaching year, that was what I did. Until I realized that my students did not have the desire to communicate at all, and merely attending my class for the sake of attendance, and examination. There was no real communication and they hardly practice what they have learned in class.

Since the college had few twinning programmes with local universities, sometimes it really helped to be sent to the courses organized by them. I started attending short courses on language teaching. Even though most of the courses are short ones, they did help me to improvise my teaching approach.

This is an example of what happened in my (much-improved) grammar class. There were more role plays and simulation games in class. The students dreaded the activities in the beginning, but once they were familiar with the approach, they began to enjoy themselves in English class. I start posing some debatable questions or problems instead of expecting a direct answer. I was more interested to hear them communicate instead of being the one in the centre of attention.

(I later learned about the term ‘communicative approach’ when I enrolled for my Masters.)

According to Jeremy Harmer (2001), what matters in these activities is that students should be able to use a variety of language rather than just one language structure. In other words, such activities should attempt to replicate real communication. Hedge in her Teaching and Learning in Language Classroom also agree with the notion by stating that the ability to communicate effectively in English is now a well-established goal in English Language Teaching (ELT). Thus, I can’t agree more with both statements as I also believe that the products of our teaching should be able to accommodate what the real world has to offer. Thus, to be able to accommodate to the real world experience, I do believe that students need to practice the language used in contextual situations. Hence, I should be preparing them for effective communication instead of exams!

However, there were certain issues that need to be addressed when I tried to adapt the communicative approach in my classroom. I am not 100% sure how efficient the communicative approach when applied on different contexts and culture. Is the communicative approach really appropriate and suitable for all cultures or is it a culture bound approach?

In Malaysia for example, a tremendous number of students (and teachers) still expect the traditional teaching approach – if the teacher doesn’t put on a good show, and does something boring like making the students read, write, or do grammar exercises, the students are likely to leave the class complaining. The teachers are expected to be the one in the centre stage, not the students. To quote a (not-so-polite) student of mine, “Teachers are paid to teach the students, then why are we the ones who should do the talking?”

We cannot deny that such mentality still exists in Malaysia education culture. If we were to compare our culture to the Western culture alone, there lie huge differences that separate us from them. Peace Corp website (2006) states that Americans tend to be baffling frank with each other even if that causes disagreement. This is probably related to their individualistic culture where everybody concerns more of himself/ herself than the community at large. However, we Malaysians (and Asians in general) have this quality of face, of honor, integrity and pride. We are such a hierarchical community that we can hardly tolerate any violation against the norms of the community.

To relate this to language learning, the differences in culture do play a part in establishing communicative approach in classroom. Educators, teachers and lecturers in Malaysian community have always been respected and the students are always expected to show similar amount of respects towards their lecturers or teachers. Thus, to be communicative and outspoken in class are taboos for some. This is especially different from the Americans where their culture allows them to be openly unrestrained in classrooms.

The question now is, should we change our approach to suit our culture, or should we change the culture to suit the approach?