ESP TEACHER EDUCATION IN THE USA

ESP in the USA  Academic ESP – English language instruction designed to provide for academic study needs within educational institutions. General study skills.  Professional ESP – Formal business atmosphere; managers, executives. High-level speaking, listening, literacy skills, business customs.  Vocational ESP – Labor end of the business spectrum – manufacturing or service industries. Focus on linguistic skills and functions needed to acquire and perform specific jobs.  Sociocultural ESP – Adult literacy, citizenship, survival English. Teach basic reading and writing skills to adult students who are NOT literate in the L1.

Approaches  Content-based language instruction (CBI) – Team teaching – language teacher + content teacher (adjunct model) Theme-based instruction

Approaches  Ethnographic approaches – Case studies Mini-ethnographies Focus on culture of a particular field to learn expectations.

What ESP Practitions Need  Effective CBI teachers must…  Let content drive curricular decisions  Increase their knowledge of the content area  Find materials and resources that generate student interest and involvement  Build intrinsic motivation and knowledge  Six T’s approach – Themes, Texts, Topics, Threads, Tasks, Transitions

Academic ESP  The EAP instructor must be able to teach the following…  Reading  Writing  Listening/speaking  Study skills  Strategies

Professional ESP  ESP practitioners must be prepared to provide instruction in the following…  Accent reduction  Effective communication in meetings  Oral presentations  Workplace idioms and vocabulary  Technical and business writing  Business customs and culture  Customer service skills  Team-building skills  Training related to TQM (total quality management)

Vocational ESP  Training programs usually teach the following job- seeking skills…  Where and how to look for a job  Deciphering want ads  Filling out job applications  Participating in interviews  Information: Fringe benefits, Safety and health, Training procedures, Further education and advancement, Job expectations and responsibilities  Language skills: Vocabulary, functions, situations, structures, register

Sociocultural ESP  Must be able to teach basic reading and writing skills to a culturally diverse population.  Need on-going staff development:  Classroom observations  Peer coaching  Curriculum/materials development  Program evaluation  Action research

MATESOL program – ???  If we are asked to teach an LSP course, what do we do?

SPANISH FOR WORKING MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS: LINGUISTIC NEEDS

Introduction  Voght and Grosse (1998) argues that foreign language education will have to “focus on the needs of the majority of our college students, who will not be educators, but businesspeople, international lawyers, medical professionals, social workers, and other professionals” (p. 9).  Unique needs of working professionals – linguistic knowledge & practicality  Typical scenario – Spanish students apply their studies to a clinical setting, but not vice versa.

Research Methodology  Qualitative case study: In-depth description of linguistic need of English-speaking health care professionals working with Spanish-speaking patients in perinatal clinics.  Observations, interviews, document analyses and member checks – 7 weeks  NUD*IST software?  Grounded theory

Participants  A sample of health care professionals (nurses, nurse midwives, and a nutritionist)  Beth – Obstetrics nurse since 1989  Gretchen – Nursing as 2 nd career  Bernice – Nurse for 30 years  Nancy – Nurse midwife  Kim - Nutritionist

Results  Communicative competence – Speaking & listening  Expand fixed scripts

Linguistic needs – 4 categories  Pronunciation – cognates  Written resources – for participants and patients (didn’t use the ones they had). Needs to be in a form they can use without interrupting work.  Grammar – how the language works, continued progress, different contexts, register, subject pronouns, verbs  Listening – most problematic, reception strategies, interactive listening

Implications  Swain – Negotiation of meaning, productive automaticity, understanding of grammar that applies to task  Development of linguistic competence – comprehensible input + comprehensible output  Needs – More input and more strategies for dealing with input  LSP course – Process-oriented approach to communication rather than learning of specific linguistic forms - communicative competence, speaking and listening strategies, work-related (skeletal) dialogues, audio/video/native speakers as role-playing patients  LSP instructor – teaches language classes in the workplace – needs analysis

Discussion  Is this good research?

Synthesis  Sale’s pitch  Needs analysis – How would you go about finding out their working professional needs? What are their needs and how would you design an LSP course to fit those needs?  Joe – Paramedic  Rebecca – Lab Tech  Melissa – Administration