Transcript 投影片 1

ESP Midterm Report
Instructor: Dr. Hsiu-Hui Su
Presenter: Yi-Chen Alison Tsai
Date: April 24th, 2012
Journals’ Bibliography
Edwards, N. (2000). Language for business: effective needs assessment,
syllabus design and materials preparation in a practical ESP case
study. English for Specific Purposes, 19, 291-296.
Zagan-Zelter, D., & Zagan-Zelter, S. (2010). Teaching business English - a
challenge both for students and academics. Procedia Social and
Behavioral Science, 3, 245-250.
Zhang, Z. (2007). Towards an integrated approach to teaching Business
English: A Chinese experience. English for Specific Purposes, 26,
399-410.
a practical ESP case study
•Roughly equal status in the
3 German officials bank in different departments
at the
•2 women, 1 man
German Central Bank •Studied English at the
in
university level
Frankfurt
•Impressive vocabulary (not
native-like)
twice a week
10:00 am – 12:00 pm
over a year
(two 45-minute periods)
Rarely were all 3 students able to attend at the same
time  possible to give special individual attention
Course aims and objectives based on
needs analysis
course aims
objectives
Needs
analysis
• Interview with the employer
• List of general questions for the
students about their past learning
experience and future objectives
Aims of the course (based on advice of
the school director and need analysis)
• The improvement of the student’s spoken English
in business meetings and negotiation
• To include work on giving presentations using
different kinds of graphs and charts
• Improving the skills of writing reports, reading
short articles related to banking, and listening to
language used by native speakers in meetings and
“small talk”
• To continue to build both general and specialist
vocabulary
• To improve the speaking-confidence of the
students when functioning in a native-speaker
environment
(seemed) highly appropriate
High degree of face
validity
• For both the
students and
employer
High
surrender value
• The students
would be able to
immediately use
what they have
learned to perform
their jobs more
efficiently
Description of the course syllabus,
materials and teaching methodology
• A flexible course syllabus
• Multi-layered syllabus consisted of the three
complementary, closely interwoven strands of
functions, topics, and vocabulary
• Supplemented by authentic materials (ie, Times)
• Deductive presentations (begins with a general
idea to something more specific) to review
grammatical structures, but top-down for the
overall approach (breaking down a system to gain
insight)
Description of the course syllabus,
materials and teaching methodology
• Exercises (cloze tests, guessing meaning of
new vocabulary…etc.)
• Strict error correction
• Large amount of HW (those who complete
impress their colleagues or superiors)
Course evaluation
• Criteria: test results, discussions, interviews and
informal means
• Frequent informal testing (role plays,
presentations, and discussions in class)
• The course was extended to more than a year
after an initial 3-month period
• An effective and flexible ESP course design can be
driven from the teachers own practical
experiential knowledge and from the students
themselves
Journals’ Bibliography
Edwards, N. (2000). Language for business: effective needs assessment,
syllabus design and materials preparation in a practical ESP case
study. English for Specific Purposes, 19, 291-296.
Zagan-Zelter, D., & Zagan-Zelter, S. (2010). Teaching business English - a
challenge both for students and academics. Procedia Social and
Behavioral Science, 3, 245-250.
Zhang, Z. (2007). Towards an integrated approach to teaching Business
English: A Chinese experience. English for Specific Purposes, 26,
399-410.
• Business English involves a specific language corpus
and emphasis on specific types of communication in
a specific context
• More challenging to teach…
Main focus?
Specialized vocabulary?
Improving communication skills in a Businessrelated context?
How should a Business English course be designed
to fulfill the expectations and necessities of the
future businessmen?
Teaching and learning techniques?
A little bit about the authors…
• Practical experience as university assistants at
the Department of Modern Languages and
Business Communication, the Faculty of
Economics and Business Administration,
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca (one of
the oldest and most important state
universities in Romania)
The importance of
studying English in Romania
• After the fall of the communist regime in 1989,
the study of foreign languages revived in the
Romanian educational system
• A need for employees with good English skills
on the Romanian job market
• A language certificate is required in order to
get a Bachelor’s degree or apply for a Master’s
of PhD program
Business English
• Department: Faculty of Economics and
Business Administration
• Major focus: business English and
communication
• 28 hrs of practice course per semester in the
1st two years, 14 hrs of lecture and 14 hrs of
seminar per semester in the 3rd year
The syllabus and the design of a
business English course for students in economics
• Questions aroused when designing:
What should such a course contain?
What language skills should it focus on?
How much specialized vocabulary should it comprise?
Should there be a different course design for each
program of the faculty (marketing, management)?
How much knowledge of economics does an English
teacher need in order to be able to teach such a
course?
The syllabus and the design of a
business English course for students in economics
• Questions aroused when designing:
What should we actually teach, specialized
vocabulary or the use of language?
Should we expect our students to be able to use a
large range of business-related vocabulary or to be
able to use English correctly in business-related
contexts, to acquire good communication skills in
addition to the linguistic ones?
Steps to consider when designing a course in
Business English
Needs
Analysis
Assessment
of level
Syllabus
Course
objectives
Time
Learner
expectations
Evaluation
of progress
Need analysis
Assessment level
Syllabus
• Content stays
the same for
different major
• 1st year at least
level B1
• Reach B2 in the
3rd year
• Fixed on topics,
structures…
Time
The language certificate
• 28 hrs of practice
course per semester in
the 1st two years, 14 hrs
of lecture and 14 hrs of
seminar per semester in
the 3rd year
• TOEFL
• Cambridge language
certificates either in
general English (CAE,
CPE) or in business
English (BEC Vantage or
Higher)
To understand the
structure of the exam
• Brochure “The
Candidate’s Guide to
Lingua Certificate”
• Provides examples
Objectives of the course
To understand different types of oral messages in
English
To identify attitudes and opinions from a material
they listened to
To initiate and participate in conversations on
professional themes
To extract the relevant information from a text
using different reading techniques
To compose written messages adapted to the
professional environment such as letters, reports,
proposals etc.
To communicate effectively in a business
environment where the use of foreign language is
necessary
Journals’ Bibliography
Edwards, N. (2000). Language for business: effective needs assessment,
syllabus design and materials preparation in a practical ESP case
study. English for Specific Purposes, 19, 291-296.
Zagan-Zelter, D., & Zagan-Zelter, S. (2010). Teaching business English - a
challenge both for students and academics. Procedia Social and
Behavioral Science, 3, 245-250.
Zhang, Z. (2007). Towards an integrated approach to teaching Business
English: A Chinese experience. English for Specific Purposes, 26,
399-410.
A historical overview
• Early 1950’s “English Translation” program
with the goal of producing translators and
interpreters in the field of foreign trade
• 3 courses for English majors: Correspondence
for Foreign Trade, Oral English for Foreign
Trade, and Selected Readings on International
Business and Economics from Western
Newspapers and Journals
• Taught using textbooks complied
by experienced teachers
• 1980s, China opened up to the outside
• Students of Business English learnt not only
the language but also the ways of doing
business  course offerings multiplied
• 1990s: a boom in Business English teaching in
China, offerings increased significantly
• Over the last decade: persistent efforts to
upgrade the curriculum for students of
Business English in China
Understanding Business English
(Questions asked by Chinese teachers)
What constitutes Business English?
What distinguishes Business English majors from other majors who study business subjects as
well as English?
How can we define “Business”?
Do teachers have to be both language experts and subject specialists?
(How much do we need to know about business?)
In what terms do we describe the content we teach students of Business English?
How do we go about teaching Business English?
How can we fit Business English in with the national curriculum requirements for English
majors?
What does English-mediated instruction actually help learners to acquire?
What are the communicative conventions or norms to be taught to Business English learners?
2 perspectives:
ESP and Business English
• Is Business English a branch or variety of ESP?
• ESP contrasts with General English in terms of
syllabus design and material production
• Munby (1978) defines ESP as “those where
the syllabus and materials are determined in
all essentials by the prior analysis of
communication needs of learners…”
• Hutchinson and Waters (2002): “ESP must be
seen as an approach… to language learning,
which is based on learner need.”
Dudley-Evans and St. Johns define ESP by positing 2
criteria: absolute and variable characteristics
• ESP: prioritizing learner needs
• Framework for Business English
• Does not have much to offer concerning
English in use in business
• General observation: Business English is
characterized by “sense of purpose”, “social
aspects”, and “clear communications”
Language-as-discourse view and
Business English
• The teaching of Business English, McCarthy
and Carter (2004) point out that, “knowing
how language works and how people use it is
a first and indispensible step towards deciding
what shall be taught.”
• The language-as-discourse view takes into
account both language and the context in
which it operates
Language-as-discourse view and
Business English
• Action-oriented processes (sell, manage,
manufacture, deliver, confirm)
• Complicated networks of interpersonal relations
(business-business, business-customer,
departments-departments)
• Intercultural communication (different cultural
backgrounds, norms, business goals, negotiation
techniques)
• Media (technology, fax, email, telephone
conversations)
• Resources (advertising, promotion)
A working definition of
Business English
• Business English involves the teaching of the
system of strategic communication in the
social and economic domain of international
business in which participants,
adopting/adapting business conventions and
procedures, make selective use of lexicogrammatical resources of English as well as
visual and audio semiotic resources to achieve
their communicative goals via the writing
modality, speaking modality, and/or multimodality. (modality=form)
An integrated approach to
the teaching of Business English
Teaching communication rather than just language forms or skills would
have a major impact on the design of Business English curriculum in China
Teaching Business English in China is not a service industry like ESP, but a
service program for students of business administration
Three fields should be researched into: subject knowledge, business
practice and language skills
Students learn both subject knowledge and the way of handling the
knowledge in their target language
Students would develop language awareness in the sense that they know
not only the lexical, syntactic, and discoursal features of business language
but also the way these features relate to interpersonal relations and the
way they are textualized for communicative goals.