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Topic, text and vocabulary selection for the unit structure in ESP agriculture course book
Tskhvitava Tamar, PhD candidate in education, International Black Sea University, Georgia, Faculty of Education and Humanities, Program in Education Science
E-mail: t.tskvitava@agruni.edu.ge
Topic, text and vocabulary selection for the unit structure in ESP agriculture course book
Abstract: The main objective of English departments at universities in Georgia is to ensure that ESP courses impart the key communicative skills that are most useful to graduates in their chosen careers. Competencies need to be categorized into the areas of performance skills, technical knowledge, laboratory management skills, and dispositions. Possessing a Vet-Clinic and Georgian Culinary Academy equipped with updated contemporary technologies Georgian Agricultural University has various different study and funding opportunities for students and since they have a great chance to be exposed to real life language in the context, they need to know the basics of ESP along with General English. The article introduces the results and challenges we faced after introducing the set of compiled units for ESP agriculture course book particularly designed for the students of Georgian Agricultural University having used all available methods for developing all language skills, some of which are matching pairs, sorting exercises, pictorial schemata, problem solving tasks, values clarification, discussion, role-play, including oral presentations and writing summaries. Promoting autonomous learning we advocate for learners’ initiated activities like learners acting as “teachers” in organizing and checking class activities, learners creating their own materials like posters, flashcards, games or role-plays, learners giving a choice of activities for different pairs/groups, etc.
Keywords: ESP; agriculture; course book; general, academic and technical vocabulary word lists; topic and text selection for unit structure.
Introduction: All the students need a good English Language command, with the specific aims of getting to know specialized vocabulary and being able to use the language in the prospective profession or study, by becoming prepared for some common situations such as going for an interview, conducting professional correspondence or making presentations. Students should also be proficient enough to do research for their thesis which means that they should be able to find, read and evaluate English Language sources. Research on technical vocabulary has shown a significant underestimation of the role played by technical vocabulary in specialized texts and a lack of information about how technical vocabulary relates to other types of vocabulary [1]. It also implies that difficulties which ESP students encounter in their reading comprehension arise not so much from lack of technical vocabulary knowledge but from lack of general knowledge [2, 103-116].
Main Text: When teachers start developing their ESP materials they should follow the four
basic precepts in ESP materials development. They are: suitability for the proficiency level, relevance to learners’ needs, creativity in tasks/activities and discursive strategies, and stimulation of the target speech acts [3, 107-108].
Developing appropriate materials takes lots of time and effort, but the end product is usually something that meets the specific needs of our students better than commercial materials. We - teachers should be as flexible as possible in this stage ofwork and be prepared to adjust and make slight changes in the course while teaching, so that our course can address students’ interests and needs best [4].
If you select reading passages from subject area texts or articles, you will have to develop your own reading comprehension activities to accompany them. The type of questions you ask depends, first, on whether the students are reading intensively or extensively. Questions for intensive reading first ask about concrete information and general ideas. In both types of reading, questions should be asked about the author’s
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Section 1. Higher Education
point ofview or the student’s own opinion ofwhat was said. In extensive reading, check only comprehension of important points in the story, not minor details.
Following are some types of comprehension questions:
1) Questions which refer to persons, identification of place, etc. Example: What are some American products that are recognized for their high quality? (Answer: commercial aircraft, tractors, sheets, plastics, chemicals, machine tools).
2) Finding sentences or words that are redundant (that express the same meaning). Example: Find three words in paragraph five that have the same meaning as the word “company”. (Answer: pacesetters, industries, makers).
3) Making a list of words which belong to the same category. Example: Find several words in the article which are used to describe high quality. (Answer: long-wearing, stronger, purer, flawless, etc.).
4) Questions which ask what is being referred to in the text when a reference is make to some other part ofthe text. Example: What does “the word” in the first sentence of paragraph six refer to? (Answer: quality).
5) Find and underline the sentence or sentences which express the main idea of the passage. (Answer: The first sentence of paragraphs two and three).
6) Outlining. Initially, you can prepare a skeleton outline for the students to fill in. Eventually, they can prepare their own. The outline should be designed to reveal discourse organization features; that is, how the author has organized the material. Focus on transitions and other words used to structure the material. The outline should reveal the intent of the writer, and what and where new information is introduced.
What students need is to develop an ability to notice chunks of different kinds. So, one of the central activities in ESP teaching is to encourage them to identify language items in authentic materials. Another important point is that language units should be learned in context. Lexical items can be, in theory, learned de-contextualized, but it does not ensure mastery of the item. Contextualized learning is preferable, because learning vocabulary is not a simple memorization of lexical phrases. They must be integrated into the learner’s linguistic resources so that they are spontaneously available when needed. Vocabulary usage is not the same as its knowledge.
And it is a teacher’s job to activate these items in a classroom. This means that learners must process this newly acquired vocabulary. Therefore, a logical follow-up is a multi-step procedure: 1) checking comprehension of authentic passages; 2) providing more practice; 3) revision and 4) consolidation. Traditional “fill in the blanks” way is effective for checking comprehension as it encourages learners to consider the context of the sentence to work out a probable missing word [5]. At the same time, students are being exposed to the typical linguistic environment for an item. They perceive other words that can co-occur with the target word and grammatical context in which the item can occur. Oral practice for processing target vocabulary is advisable. Such activities as “students’ projects” or designing tasks for other groups has proved beneficial.
The difficulty that emerges when the lexical approach for teaching reading comprehension and writing summaries is applied is stemmed from students’ limited general vocabulary.
Since there are so many things to learn about each piece of vocabulary (meaning, spoken/writ-ten forms, collocations, connotations, grammatical behavior, etc.) it is important that we as teachers only introduce a little at a time, starting with the most frequent, useful, and learnable vocabulary, and returning later to more difficult vocabulary and less frequent uses of previously learned items. We need to repeat vocabulary often, because students must work with a word or phrase many times before acquisition takes place, and we must offer variety to keep the exercises fresh and to cater to different learning styles. Finally, we need to help students understand that learning is a gradual process that takes place in small, manageable increments over time, and to encourage them to seek additional information on their own, personalizing the learning experience and tailoring it to their own specific needs.
The more learners pay attention to the meaning of the language they hear or read, the more they are successful. In ESP English should be presented in authentic contexts to make the learners acquainted with the particular ways in which the language is used in functions that they will need to perform in their fields of specialty or jobs. Knowledge of the subject area enables the students to identify a real
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Topic, text and vocabulary selection for the unit structure in ESP agriculture course book
context for the vocabulary and structures of the ESP classroom [6]. In such way, the learners can take advantage of what they already know about the subject matter to learn English. An ESP program is therefore built on an assessment of purposes and needs and the functions for which English is required.
ESP concentrates more on language in context than on teaching grammar and language structures. The ESP focal point is that English is not taught as a subject separated from the students’ real world (or wishes); instead, it is integrated into a subject matter area important to the learners. In fact, as a general rule, while in ESL all four language skills; listening, reading, speaking, and writing, are stressed equally, in ESP it is a needs analysis that determines which language skills are most needed by the students, and the syllabus is designed accordingly [7].
ESP assesses needs and integrates motivation, subject matter and content for the teaching of relevant skills. However, there is something to be said for having students use context clues to determine the meanings of new words themselves, but it can also be problematic. — If students guess a word’s meaning incorrectly, then later, after you’ve given them the correct meaning and sent them home, they may forget which meaning was correct. This happens because students go through a specific thought process to infer a word’s meaning. It’s a process that makes logical sense to them, and when something makes logical sense, it is very difficult to convince
the brain that it’s wrong. — Using context clues is a great reading skill, but ifyou’re teaching vocabulary, it’s best to focus on vocabulary and save the reading skills for another time.
Course evaluation is important in ESP pedagogy because it gathers the evidence to understand the effectiveness of the course in terms of the skill enhancement of learners. It is the last, but not the least important stage for teachers because it helps to improve and promote the effectiveness of their course. Our evaluation was done in two different ways: implicitly and explicitly. Implicit evaluation took place during the semester. Students gave us clues on their progress by completing various online tests and exercises and participating during the classes. Through numerous online exercises and tests sources and areas of difficulties were diagnosed. Explicit evaluation took place at the end of the course when students were asked to express their attitudes towards the course and fill in the online questionnaire. The obtained results gave us insight into the effectiveness of the course.
Conclusion: The results obtained from the evaluation help us diagnose areas and sources of difficulties, give insight into our performance, determine the extent to which the objectives of the course are being achieved and help realize the effectiveness of the course design. For a teacher the development of an ESP course should never be considered as a completed task, but as an on-going process.
References:
1. Chung T. M. Identifying technical vocabulary. Unpublished Ph.D thesis. - Victoria University Wellington, 2003.
2. Chung T. M., Nation P. Technical vocabulary in specialized texts.//Reading in a foreign language. -2003. - 15 (2): 103-116.
3. Hutchinson T. & Waters A. English for Specific Purposes. - Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989. - Р. 107-108.
4. McCarthy M.J. Touchstone: From Corpus to Course Book Cambridge. - Cambridge University Press, 2004.
5. Fiorito L. English for specific purposes. Retrieved May, 2009.//[Electronic resource]. - Available from: http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/teachingenglish- for-specific-purposes.
6. Blachowicz C. L. & Fisher P. Integrated vocabulary instruction. Learning Point Associates. Retrieved May, 2009.// [Electronic resource]. - Available from: http://www.learninggpt.org
7. August D. & Shanahan T. (Eds.). Executive summary. In Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. - Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006.
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