Ольшевская Т.Ю., МОУ Гимназия ‘AРТ-ЭТЮД’, г. Екатеринбург «English for Аrtists»
Nowadays many specialists say that the starting point before any course design can be the following: ‘Tell me what you need English for and I will tell you the English that you need’. And that is why all courses should be based on a perceived needs analysis. It can comprise target needs analysis (i.e. government, teachers and sponsors know why the learners need English) and learner needs one (i.e. what the learners need to do in order to learn). All these factors will have an important influence on students’ motivation and therefore on their effectiveness of learning.
Today there is the large growth in the English language studying: and people want to learn it not for the pleasure or prestige of knowing the language, as it was before, but because English is the key to the international currencies of technology and commerce. At present there is a new generation of learners who know specifically why they are learning a language – businessmen and –women who want to sell their products, mechanics who have to read instruction manuals, doctors who need to keep up with developments in their field and the whole range of students whose courses of study include textbooks and journals only available in English.
The general effect of all this development was to exert pressure on the language teaching profession and the study of language to tailor English courses to specific needs. The idea is very simple: if language varies from one situation of use to another, it should be possible to determine the features of specific situations and then make these features the basis of the learners’ courses.
Unfortunately, schoolbooks according to the Evaluation syllabus and mythological expediency not always contain the enough amount of information useful for teaching English for Specific Purposes.
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is now well established as an important and distinctive part of English Language Teaching all over the world. Russia is not an exception. According to the Project on Russian Education Development/Modernization till 2010, the work on the Profile system of education targeted to the specialized teaching is taken into account.
Before pointing out the main reasons of working on the elective course design ‘English for artists’ it is important to give the main picture of the gymnasium ‘ART-ETUD’. The gymnasium ‘ART-ETUD’ belongs to the Ministry of Culture of Sverdlovsk region and has three main departments: general education, music and artistic. And in 2006 it got the status as English school.
Working with junior students of the artistic department who have such core subjects as the World History of Art, Painting, Sculpture, Composition etc., we came up to the conclusion that:
The curriculum of the majority of universities and colleges comprises English as essential. From the very beginning students have problems with a big number of difficult texts in English full of specific words because of the fact that our students don’t know what to do with authentic texts comprising special vocabulary.
It is very difficult for them to keep up with developments in their field because a great number of textbooks and journals are available only in English.
They face difficulties with internships as they can’t have conversations on professional topics.
Taking into account the importance of Profile education and the facts listed above, our teaching English department made a decision to introduce a number of elective courses in English to investigate learner needs.
Our teachers of English made a survey into students’ preferences in English. The students of 9th and 10th grades were given questionnaires containing a number of elective courses to choose. According to the results, 4 courses were chosen among which was the elective course ‘English for artists’.
The general objective of our course is to enable learners to function adequately in a target situation, that is, the situation in which the learners will use the language they are learning.
The specific objectives
The students will be able to:
cope with interaction with other people in terms of their professional communication purposes, communication setting, the means of communication, functions;
enrich their knowledge of specific words;
extract relevant information from the main parts of written recourses;
learn the language in terms of their future profession.
This course is for students of 10-11th grades. It provides a core of 34 hours of teaching a year. The time taken to complete the course will depend on a number of factors such as how this course is used, the type of students using it, class size etc. However, ‘English for artists’ has been designed so that it may be used flexibly, and this course provides a wealth of additional optional classroom material. It contains 16 main topics.
Working on this course design we pay attention to the integration. The teaching is based on Presentation, Practice, Production, in other words the so called PPP paradigm. Two levels of evaluation have been brought into account while designing this course:
1. Learner assessment.
As with any language course there is a need to assess student performance at strategic points in the course. We chose three main points:
- Placement tests to determine the learners’ state of knowledge before the course starts. It helps indicate the form the course should take.
- Achievement tests in the form of Student’s Portfolio, unit tests, quizzes, interview, reports, essay-writing etc.
- Proficiency tests. These assess how students can cope with the demands of a particular situation, for example, study at a university or reading special literature. At this stage we use CV-writing, role-play, project work etc.
2. Course assessment. This kind of evaluation helps to assess whether the course objectives are being met – whether the course, in other words, is doing what it was designed to do. We try to get the feedback from our students at the beginning, after each unit and at the end of the course asking them the following questions: ‘Is the course fulfilling your needs? Is it interesting? Did you get any new information? Do you need any additional facts?’ etc. using such techniques as test results, questionnaires, discussions, interviews, informal means (comments, ‘casual’ chats etc.).
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