The ESP Journal最新文献

This article is an account of a teacher-training session aimed at presenting ESP to a group of in-service of EFL trainees. The following areas are given priority: basic information on ESP; procedures for course-design; criteria for evaluating course materials; criteria for selecting or establishing classroom procedures.

The materials and the approach for each part of the presentation are described. The case-study, concerning the planning of a course for hotel personnel, is produced here in a more extended and detailed format, as it is felt that this part may offer guidelines for teachers who work under similar constraints as the ones described herein.

From a methodological standpoint, syllabus design is focused on the learning environment of a school-based ESP course rather than on specification of vocational/professional target needs alone; and classroom procedures are considered to derive from the evaluation of crucial variables pertaining to the classroom situation rather than from a priori judgement.

The ability to communicate effectively is considered critical to successful performance in numerous occupations, including nursing. Oral proficiency is necessary in some degree, for example, in interacting with medical colleagues and counseling or instructing patients.

The increasing interest in oral proficiency during the past decade has prompted the development of a limited number of measures to assess this competency. The study reported here was undertaken to provide further validation—and some guidance on the use—of one such test, the Test of Spoken English (TSE), in the evaluation of foreign nursing graduates.

The results suggest that the TSE reflects to a considerable degree the oral language competencies that practicing professionals view as important, and further that it is possible to establish professionally based standards of proficiency that meet commonly accepted principles of good testing practice.

Needs analysis prior to materials design is necessary but not sufficient. Therefore more emphasis should be put on formative evaluation and monitoring as materials are piloted. Such evaluation may reveal important information about student attitudes which can be difficult to obtain in an initial needs analysis. Feedback is especially important when materials represent an innovation, as it may act as a means of creating a sense of ownership and involvement in the materials which development theory tells us is crucial in the acceptance of innovation. This paper discusses an academic reading course for students of business and management in Tunisia. It describes student reactions to teaching materials, attempts to explain causes and shows how curriculum developers revised the materials to both the students' and teachers' satisfaction.

VESL classes require teachers to function in two roles: as ESL teachers and as workplace supervisors. This article discusses ways in which teachers can perform both functions, allowing students to be both students and workers, and addresses some of the areas to be focused on during the workplace portion. These include: supervisory style, training style, workplace conditions, and workplace communication. The author also provides suggestions for activities which are common to most entry level jobs and which offer the opportunity to reflect a variety of worksite conditions and supervisory styles.

Since 1978, increasing numbers of scholars from the People's Republic of China have been going abroad for advanced training and research. To prepare them to function in English-medium universities, institutes offering various forms of cultural orientation and language training have been set up in many locations throughout China. The training programs at some of these institutes are based on needs assessments which include the scholars' own perceptions of what they will need in order to succeed in an English-speaking environment. In this paper, we report on an investigation of perceived academic needs of two groups of scholars: students entering the Graduate School English Language Center in Beijing, and visiting scholars who have been in American universities for at least six months. The latter, initiated group attached different of imporatance to certain academic activities or skills than the former, uninitiated group. The findings have implications for curriculum planners, particularly those involved with language training in China, but also for those undertaking ESP projects elsewhere.

A VESL instructor is usually also a curriculum developer, challenged to determine the language needed for success in a particular vocation and then to apply ESL teaching techniques to meet those needs. This article discusses how best to use various sources of information, including reference books on job descriptions, vocational education materials, jobsite observations, and vocational instructors. Data is then organized into content areas (such as equipment, safety, measurement, processes, and quality control) and language requirements (such as vocabulary, situations, functions, structures, and register). Syllabus design comes from a logical analysis of the job.

This paper describes a sequence of two courses in vocational ESL for students preparing for the occupations of nursing assistant and home health worker. The first course provides students with a grounding in general medical concepts and in the special English useful to all health paraprofessionals. It prepares them to meet the entrance requirements for the vocational training course which follows. The second VESL course is more occupation specific and provides language support for the vocational course in nursing assistance or home health in which students are concurrently enrolled. The author has developed and taught the two VESL courses in close coordination with the content of the vocational course. Instructional strategies, especially in the more vocation-specific course, are designed to encourage language acquisition behavior which will allow students to assume responsibility for their own professional learning.

ESL students' difficulties in learning to read academic expository prose often stem from thier failure to perceive shifts back and forth between textual subordination and coordination. By failing to perceive the shifts, they miss notional clues that could allow them to construct a conceptual scheme of textual information. A hierarchical model for teaching advanced ESL reading is suggested as linguistically appropriate for enabling students to conceptualize the multi-dimensional relationships that constitute the structure of an academic text.