Midterm Report

Instructor: Dr. Hsiu-Hui Su Presenter: Ling Ling Donna Chen Date: April 19th, 2012

   Designing an ESP Course for Chinese University Students of Business– Gao Jiajing Language for Business: Effective Needs Assessment, Syllabus Design And Materials Preparation in a Practical ESP Case Study– Nathan Edwards Designing an EGBP Course: Needs Analysis as a Key Determinant– Antonio Saldana Salazar

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Designing an ESP Course for Chinese University Students of Busines

The demand for English for Specific Purposes is expanding.

For years, the instruction has been limited to specialized lexicon and sentence structures, ignoring the learner’s personal interests.

This often leads to low motivation in English studies and poor performance in future profession.

  University English faculties need to design ESP courses that can best prepare learners for future professional communication.

This paper puts forward a sample ESP course framework and analyses the core elements of ESP course design: needs analysis; course goals and objectives; course details; material design; assessment and evaluation.

Literature Review

   Analyzing the specific needs of a particular learner group is the prelude to an ESP course design.

Chen: ESP course designer should explore and identify the learners’ potential needs.

Xenodohidis: the course development process should include needs assessment, determination of goals and objectives. To avoid de-motivation, the goals should be realistic and the objective should be appropriate to the goals.

A sample ESP course framework

  At the Guilin Institute of Technology in China, there is a compulsory undergraduate course in Business English for senior students at the Department of International Business.

Purposes: to raise their English proficiency in business settings; to prepare them for successful communication in their future profession.

Goals and objectives

   The course focuses broadly on the four basic language skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking.

To fully prepare the senior students for their future career.

To familiarize themselves with business terminology and write competently in English.

Course details

    Over two academic semesters, a duration of 30 weeks and the total length is 120 hours (2 hours/day; 2 days/week). Group sizes: between thirty and forty students. The ‘target learners’: senior undergraduates at the Department of International Business.

Materials: textbook and in-house materials and visuals.

Needs Analysis

Pre-course • Questionnaires • Interviews • Informal Discussions Mid-course • Feedback from learners’ performance and assignments • Mid-term Test Results Post-course • Final Test Results

Assessment

    Brown: Self-assessment and peer assessment result in increased motivation.

Dudley-Evans and St John: Peer assessment is greatly effective as a learning aid which is beneficial in large classes.

Graves: activities focusing on achievement, involvement and progress can be provided for assessment such as asking them to grade their efforts made in class and attitude to learning.

Students can also be requested to reflect upon how well they use the target language to fulfill tasks, and identify what they are not able to do.

Assessment

  Achievement assessment can be used to examine the extent to which learners have learned what has been taught.

The result of the assessment can inform teachers about individual learner’s achievement of the learning objectives, and provides the feedback on the effectiveness and quality of this course.

Course evaluation

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Observation

Robinson: Observing past students who are working may be an effective means in seeing to what extent the ESP course has fully prepared them for workplace needs.

After such observation, the course designer is then able to reorganize the course materials for the following year students.

Mid-course and end-of-course evaluation

   A mid-course evaluation questionnaire can be given to learners in order to fine-tune the course before it finishes.

End-of–course evaluation can be achieved through analyzing learners’ outcomes, particularly, their final examination results and performance. Learners can also be asked to review their work and keep diaries of what they think easy/hard, interesting/uninteresting.

Student feedback and teacher self evaluation

   Ask learners to evaluate the class to provide feedback to the teacher.

Informal discussion with individual students could be a more appropriate and spontaneous means for students to express what they really think about the course.

Teachers evaluate themselves by filling in a self-assessment sheet or keeping a log.

Language for business: effective needs assessment, syllabus design and materials preparation in a practical ESP case study

   This paper presents an ESP case study which took place in a specialized business context involving 3 senior German offi Frankfurt, one man and two women in their early thirties.

They were colleagues with roughly equal status in the bank.

They had studied English at the university level, and had an impressive vocabulary and store of idioms, although these were not always used appropriately or in a native-like way.

   The class took place twice a week in the morning at 10:00 h and lasted for two 45 min periods in a large meeting room at the bank.

Initially, the course was to last for three months but this was eventually extended to more than a year.

It was rare for all three students attend the class at the same time due to their extremely busy schedules.

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Details of course aims and objectives based on needs analysis

The initial course aims and objectives were determined by a personal interview which my schools director had with the employer and by the brief needs analysis the author conducted on the first day of the course. This rudimentary needs analysis consisted of a list of general questions for the students about their past learning experience and future objectives.

Aims : Improving student's spoken English used in business meetings and negotiations.

Giving presentations using different kinds of graphs and charts. Improving the skills of writing reports, reading short articles related to banking.

Listening to language used by native speakers in meetings and ``small talk''. Build both general and specialist vocabulary.

The most important overall objective was to improve the speaking-confidence.

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Description of the course syllabus, materials and teaching methodology

The author chose ready-made materials because they saved valuable time and provided the students with the language skills they required.

Peer correction is always a sensitive issue in any ESP context when the students are highly competitive.

The students were then asked to evaluate their own performance.

   Despite their busy schedule, the students expected to be given a large amount of homework in the form of articles and writing assignments. However, homework was rarely completed or done at all.

In many cases, the students use homework assignments, completed or not, as apparent physical evidence of hard work to impress their colleagues or superiors in their company.

   A video recorder would have been useful to record actual bank meetings and the authentic language generated by them. However, it was simply not possible in this particular course to gain access as an outside observer to actual bank meetings conducted in English.

Course evaluation

  Test results, discussions, interviews and informal means had been used to assess the course.

Frequent informal testing in the form of role plays, presentations, and discussions in class all demonstrated improvement in fluency and speaking confidence.

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DESIGNING AN EGBP COURSE: NEEDS ANALYSIS AS A KEY DETERMINANT

The EGBP course was arranged into six blocks (levels), starting from beginning to intermediate stage. Each level covered 30 hours (including online tasks). The course was focused on developing communicative English skills for business purposes. The main learning goal was to develop communicative skills that learners required in their job responsibilities.

Context and course participants

  The group of learners was composed by seven participants: one accountant, one bookkeeping assistant, one receptionist, one information technology specialist, two management officers, and the director of Alliance One. Their learning goals were to be able to read, understand and speak English fluently so that they could be more efficient in their job responsibilities.

  The students’ involvement and level of motivation was relatively high as the director had decided to provide them with one hour within their regular working schedule so they could take the class and still be paid as regular working time.

At the beginning of the course, the author gave my students a needs analysis questionnaire.

Methodology

 Two main instruments were used for collecting data: An interview with the company’s director and a questionnaire for each participant , which was composed of three main sections: personal and professional goals, course expectations and language experience.

  The interview held with the director of the company was planned to know in detail what the company’s expectations.

The interview consisted of ten open questions that were focused on the company’s interests, wants and needs.

  As for the participants’ survey, this was planned to gather general information regarding the participants’ profile and particular language needs. The latter was essential to collect information regarding their type of tasks or activities they would be using the English for, what their current skills and language use were, and above all, what their language needs were in a specific target situation.

  Data collection was administered through paper-based questionnaires and on a face-to face interview. This process was chosen in order to avoid short answers or lack of information on the part of interviewees, specifically in open questions.

Course planning

   The author decided to work on listening and speaking/spoken interaction as well as writing short texts (both formal and informal pieces of writing) and understanding messages.

The course included communication skills, real case studies, interactive role play, a vocabulary log which showed useful expressions learnt throughout the course. At this point, the main goal was to enhance the participants use of vocabulary applied to social contexts (formal and informal usage).

Selecting the course materials

   Materials were selected according to the findings in the participants’ needs and interests well as the company director’s goals. Authentic materials from the internet, magazines, pamphlets and other media resources that helped encourage participants to work together (e.g., collaborative work).

Materials that promoted fluency-based activities as most participants had not practiced their English skills for a long time.

  The author felt that this course suited the students’ needs and wants as well as the company’s training policies. This is because decision making was entirely based on learners’ needs analysis.

The most successful aspects were the learners’ motivation, material support, and subject participants’ cooperation.

  The use of authentic material.

The learners’ tight working schedules; sometimes they failed to complete their assignments.

Reflection

    To design a good ESP course, needs analysis, assessment and evaluation are essential parts. All the three authors agree with the importance of needs analysis before the course.

The form of needs analysis is important. The more details you explore, the better course you design.

All the authors agree the use of authentic materials is a great help to students.