Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Graduate School of TESOL

English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

Spring 2006

Week 6 - ESP Chapters 8 and 9 & Jordan (1997) Chapter 1, pp. 1-19.- Answers

1. Is the list of syllabi presented on pages 80-83 really of list of different syllabus types? (ESP8)

This list is somewhat confusing because Hutchinson and Waters (1987) seem to operating on a somewhat different definition of syllabus than I have and maybe some of you have as well. They seem to think of a syllabus as a specific concern which goes into planning a course, not the comprehensive plan itself. Once we realize that their types of syllabi are really different concerns which we can use to make a `real` syllabus then the list is okay and it is something we can work with. In fact it sis something that we want to work with because it sheds light on many of the different things we need to be concerned with when both planning and running our class.

The Evaluational Syllabus (fixed/hard)

The Organizational Syllabus (fixed/hard)

The Materials Syllabus (changeable/soft)

The Teacher Syllabus (changeable/soft)

The Classroom Syllabus (changeable/soft)

The Learner Syllabus (general/retroactive)

It should be clear from this list and particularly from `the learner syllabus` that Hutchinson and Waters (1987) do not advocate the simple idea of making a syllabus before the class begins and then just following it. A syllabus in the ESP universe is ideally something which morphs and changes over time and based on the present and past current of the course. In this respect, different `aspects` of the syllabus will have somewhat different functions. We can say that the evaluational and organizational syllabi are initial concerns and that they are somewhat fixed. They set some long term goals and since they often come from the outside they are hard and not subject to change. Materials, classroom and teacher syllabi relate to what is actually used and/or happens in the classroom and as such need to be flexible. If in the running of the course we discover certain materials the students like or don`t like then we need to change our syllabus to reflect these new discoveries. The same can be said of our own behavior/role in the classroom and well as the different things, types of activities, we are doing in the classroom. To a large extent it is by employing the learner syllabus that we can check all the other types. Ultimately we need to be able to get fix on whether the students are learning or not and what they might actually be learning with or possibly despite the syllabus. We use the information accrued from learners to not only better plan for future syllabi, but to change our current syllabus.

So if want to think of a language course as a train traveling to distant lands then we might think of the syllabus as something more akin to the path dug for the tracks, but not the tracks themselves. As the train moves we have a basic path we have cleared of debris and straightened out but the specific tracks will always be laid down right before we ruin over them.

2. Why do we need syllabi and what role can/should they play in the classroom? (ESP8)

There are many reasons why people would say that we need to have a syllabus in the classroom. What is interesting, however, is that people constantly criticize at the same time the idea of a syllabus. A strict or detailed syllabus cause courses to often become too structured. Teachers rely on them and follow them regardless of whether what is in the syllabus works are not. They feel stuck with them as if they were joined at the hip like Siamese twins. This is okay if the syllabus is good, but there is no such thing as a perfect syllabus and teachers should know this. Still, however, we need syllabus. They provide important guidance both for the teachers and for the students. They sell out the expectations, the goals, and the steps the class will follow in order to reach those larger concerns. A class that does not have a syllabus is often directionless. This does not mean, as mentioned above, the syllabus should be treated like the word of God. All syllabus were created to be changed, carefully and with reason. Teachers can use the syllabus to guide the students and let the students know what they should be doing in the future. There can often be open discussion about the nature of the syllabus and what's in the syllabus at the beginning of the class as a way of determining whether to the syllabus is acceptable to the students are not. This is important. As we have mentioned earlier, the sharing of information is extremely important in language learning classes, particularly those with adult learners. It is only with the syllabus that information can be exchanged and that the learners can develop a feel for what's going on in their class. But change it when you need to.

Another interesting thing about syllabus is that they very clearly reflect the methodological concerns of the teacher, or at least they short. The way the syllabus is set up/organized is often a clear indicator of the methodology of the teacher will be using. Sometimes when teachers have difficulty using a particular syllabus, or a particular textbook, for textbooks are often the overt manifestations of syllabus designs, it is simply because the design of the syllabus does not really match the methodology to the teacher wants to use or is familiar with using. This is something that you need to be acutely aware of in your teaching and in your materials selection.

3. What are some of the different syllabus types? (ESP8)

On pages 85 to 88 Hutchinson and Waters give us a list of different syllabus types. This list includes the following syllabus types: topic syllabus, structural/situational syllabus, functional/notional syllabus, skills syllabus, situational syllabus, functional/task-based syllabus, discourse/skills syllabus, and skills and strategies. What these different types really are a different organizational means for designing syllabus. So for example a topic syllabus is obviously a syllabus that is based, or is organized along the concept of different topics. For example one chapter might be designed around the topic of environmental issues, while the next chapter might be designed around the topic of travel, the next food. I think we are all aware of these different types of syllabus designs. Some are, however, much more common than others. Rare, particularly in the area of general English, are the discourse/skills syllabus and the skills syllabus.

This brings to the idea that a syllabus for ESP class is necessarily going to have to have a different focus or different organizational design than a syllabus for a general English course. In particular, since skills are so highly stressed in ESP, one will often find a lot more skills based syllabus than one would find in a general English course. This is important to note both for practical reasons and also because it tells us a little bit more about the very nature of ESP as a particular type of language learning and language teaching experience.

4. Why evaluate materials? (ESP9)

The reason why teachers should evaluate materials should be clear, but such reasons are even stronger when we look at ESP. The bottom line is that it may be easier to use ready-made materials than materials we have made entirely by ourselves. Few of us have the time , energy or initiative to make all our own materials. And thankfully because there is a wide range of ready-made materials which we can use. In Korea as well we are lucky in that it is quite easy to get hold of these materials. At the same time, however, we recognize the fact that materials produced outside are never going to fit our classroom goals and students needs exactly. Thus, it may be more practical to use outside materials, but we still need to revise them. For this reason it is important to be able to analyze and evaluate materials so that we might know which parts are going to be useful for us. Essentially we need to make decisions about whether the materials are good enough to use and if they are then which elements a record to use and which ones we not going to use. Then, for the materials we will use, we need to decide how we can make the more usable for our students by changing them in some aspect(s). So evaluation is an absolutely necessary process for people who want to actually use ready-made materials. At the same time, by going and looking at many of the commercially produce materials, we also get a better idea of what and how we could create materials entirely on our own.

5. What is the most important step in evaluating materials? Why? (ESP9)

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) list four different stages for materials evaluation. I think it is possible to break these four different stages into two basic groups. The first of these groups is that of the outside of the actual materials group and these are marked with an asterix below. For this outside of the materials group we are basically thinking about our own situation, our target goals and target needs for the class as a guide. It is important to recognize that Hutchinson and Waters (1987) see the text evaluation process that is very much a top-down. We cannot use materials to define our course. We need to make sure that we actually define our course and then go out and look for materials. So when we are evaluating materials we have to have a very clear idea of many different aspects of our course. The more specific our idea the better the materials we will be able to pick and choose through the evaluation process.

This is an extremely important point and one which I think we need to take to heart. Again, because the materials are made outside from someone else who has never met and never will meet our students it seems rather foolish and really just lazy to let these materials, so designed, to determine the entire goals and needs of our course. This won`t work, especially if you don`t alter the material somewhat, which of course you can`t because you don`t know how you would want to alter them.

*Defining criteria

#Subjective analysis

#Objective analysis

*Matching

The second group, or major stage as the evaluation process itself. Here Hutchinson and Waters (1987) advocate looking both within the materials and outside them. So, we need to look at the materials subjectively, up from the point of view of ourselves and our students as we envision them using these materials in our course. We also need to look at the materials objectively and gauge them from the outside, not just from the view of our specific course but in general. By doing this we can get a balanced approach and hopefully be able to pick not only materials which might be useful for our purposes but also be able to alter materials to make them more useful for our purposes.

6. What is the most important criteria for evaluating materials? Why? (ESP9)

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) list five different criteria which we can use to evaluate materials. Rather than try to pick just one most important criteria, it might be better to simply point out the least important criteria. The determination here made between important and less important has to do with things that can be fixed quickly and easily, particularly by non-native speaking teachers of English. Looking at the criteria would seem obvious that the criterion of aims and methodology are ones which are quickly changeable. If the aims of the book are not amenable to our specific class then it is fairly easy to come up with different aims. The same can be said for methodology. If the methodology implied in the book and specific activities in the book is too teacher centered, or form centered or anything else then it is relatively easy to simply change the directions (student roles) for the activities as well as the teacher roles. The same can be said for audience, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent. If the book seems to be quite well-suited to your course except it is intended for children and you are teaching adults then it might not be too hard to change some aspects of the materials. As far as content goes, however, this is something which is hard to change. If you are going to change the content of the materials it’s probably just as easy to go off and find some different materials. In language teaching content is going to be extremely important. Especially for non-native speaking teachers, who maybe don`t feel as confident in rewriting and altering specific content, content will probably be the most important criteria. The category of which I have called other is also fixed (it is hard to haggle over the price of a book, or magically turn a book from black-and-white to color), but this is overall less important than either audience or content.

+Audience

Aims

++Content

Methodology

+Other = price - appearance - size

I would say that the content is most important thing.

7. Throughout the chapter Jordan (1997) lists and discusses different aspects of study skills. Of these study skills which do think Koreans need the most development/practice in? (J1)

There is no simple answer to question all of which study skills Korean students need the most. In considering this question we are forced to come to terms with the realization that not only ourselves but our students are all really very different. Even in an educational system like Korea which is tightly regulated by the government and therefore supposed to be similar for everybody, we find vast differences between students. Some people lack listening skills, while others lack elements of writing. My own personal beliefs from the students I have encountered is that one of the most important skills that we need to try to develop in our students is reading skill, which may seem strange since so much time is spent in Korea on reading, but the fact remains that students coming into university are simply not able to read university level textbooks or in fact any longer text in English. Of course there are also more specific academic skills like research skills. In the end we realize that most of our students would probably need to focus at least to a certain extent on all of these different areas.

8. How might these study skills vary according to age and level? (J1)

Obviously, there are some things which younger learners are not going to need to do, at least in the format presented here, but with little tweaking we could probably get them to do many of these things provided they have a achieved a minimum level of literacy. It should be clear form this list that literacy is the key and developing new skills in relation to literacy is the main point, for literacy cannot be separated form academic skills. The important thing is that we need to be not only creative (creativity can get a teacher far but can also take a teacher too far off the path), but we need to be creative with a clear understanding of the underlying skills which go into each of these generalized types of skills. If were going to produce the age at which we can start trying to focus our students attention on some of these academic skills, then the best way of doing this is to break the skills down to their basics. As we mentioned in class as far as doing academic presentations and explanation, we can start with the simple idea of a show and tell. We can start the formal writing process by simply having the students list and reorganize and relist. This does not require sentences but it does require some of the cognitive processing which they will use to later do the same thing with sentences and paragraphs in formal writing. In fact, if we went down through the list, as we did at least partially in class, we should be able to find simple things that we can do with younger learners to help prepare them for their academic future.

9. Do you think there are any skills which he fails to mention? (J1)

Of all the skills mentioned by Jordan (1997) may be the one thing that he missed was critical assessment skills. While this may not seem so much like an academic skill but rather a more cultural viewpoint, critical assessment is an extremely important part of Western academic tradition and as such students are expected to be able to do this. Once more, since it is such an important part of Western academic tradition many all of the specific skills which teachers might expect students to perform in the classroom all stem from this basic idea. It is so important that Western academics do not even think about it overtly because it is simply expected. From this point of view than it is not totally surprising that it is not on Jordan`s list. For us, though, as teachers of academic English critical assessment skills would seem to be the missing link in our students academic development, particularly related to English.