Д. ф.-м. н. Алонцева Д.Л., Колесникова Т.А.
Восточно-Казахстанский государственный технический университет, Казахстан
HOW TO TEACH ENGLISH FOR ENGINEERING
Teaching English for Engineering is a multifaceted task that embraces setting goals, developing content, applying relevant methodology, and teaching appropriate skills.
Setting goals presents certain difficulties and in every case for every specific group of students needs to be based on their needs assessment. It depends on the kind of job those people might end up in (technician, mechanic or designer). The needs of these groups are likely to be different. There are also different kinds of engineer (electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, civil engineer, etc.) that cover different fields of work and have very specialist vocabulary.
The course itself needs to have certain theoretical and practical principles underpinning it. Offord-Gray and Aldred [1] suggest a series of principles for developing an ESP writing course, which may be as well applied to courses other than writing. These principles should reflect a language learning theory and the kind of methodology that it implies as also be grounded in research into the learner needs.
They distinguish seven principles underlying course design:
· Teaching and learning materials should reflect the needs as perceived by the discourse community.
· Teaching and learning materials need to be based on a knowledge of what is regarded as effective written communication in the discourse community.
· Teaching and learning materials need to reflect the communicative purposes for which the discourse community produces written texts.
· The forms and functions that characterize the internal linguistic structure of the texts need to be made explicit in the course materials.
· The course materials need to go beyond making the language explicit but provide a means by which learners can engage in a process of reconstruction
· Teaching and learning materials need to engage the learners in a process of developing skills for evaluating their own writing and becoming independent learners in the workplace.
· The methodology and content of the teaching and learning materials need to be sensitive to learners’ previous learning experience. [1]
The above stated principles may be taken as a checklist for an ESP course developer. I f the level and content of the materials are appropriate to the needs of the learners the course will bring about effective learning.
The following may constitute the content of the course of English for Engineering: giving technical explanations, discussing technical requirements, specifying and describing properties of materials, explaining manufacturing techniques, reading and describing drawings, describing technical problems, the causes of faults, discussing regulations and standards, working with written instructions and notices, discussing causes and effects, performance, describing capabilities and limitations. These topics give freedom of variation and allow for the use of appropriate language structures. Unfortunately, there isn’t so far a perfect textbook to suit the needs of every ESP course, so a teacher ought to use multiple resources to supplement a textbook of his choice.
There may be used various approaches for teaching English for Engineering. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), although it is meant for teaching a curricular subject through the medium of a foreign language, is an efficient way to engage students in activities from the real world, such as case studies, discussions, evaluations, writing reports, minutes, labeling drawings, etc. In Kazakhstan CLIL is developing in two ways. The governmental program of attracting visiting professors and researchers from established foreign universities is aimed at professional development of the local teaching and research staff as well as placing major importance on using a foreign language for acquiring content of the courses taught to undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students. Another mechanism suggests universities language teachers working in partnership with other subject teachers to offer CLIL in various subjects. According to Pickering «The key issue is that the learner is gaining new knowledge about the ‘non-language’ subject while encountering, using and learning the foreign language» [2]. The main problem here is that CLIL teachers are mainly specialists in their own discipline rather than traditional language teachers, and they are usually fluent English speakers, bilingual or native speakers. Therefore, a CLIL teacher should have some engineering education and be proficient in English. As this approach has numerous benefits, it needs to be further developed, and teachers should be not only encouraged to employ both qualifications, but also be motivated to use language as a medium for knowledge transfer.
Among the pros of this approach are more learner exposure to the target language, diversity of methods and forms of classroom practice, and what is more, the increase of learners’ motivation and their confidence in both the language and the subject taught.
One more fantastic approach in present-day pedagogy is blended learning, which is a combination of classroom or self-directed learning with online learning. At our university we use education portal technology to deliver curriculum content, promote pedagogical innovation, change teaching practices, as well as offer opportunities for all. Students may access the course content from anywhere, download materials, watch videos, listen to audio files or use links to other internet resources. They may take online testing and be sure of unbiased grading. In ESP teaching blended learning and ICT is an invaluable tool that motivates both learners and teachers. This approach enhances information handling strategies and creativity on both parts, as the participants of the process may search, select, process, retrieve, present, communicate, create and so on.
An example of it is a course in professionally oriented foreign language (English) for students of Information Systems developed and administered by the authors. This is a two-credit core course for undergraduates, the pre-requisite of which is a six-credit course in General English, so the students have an intermediate level of English when they access the course. The course is mainly a face-to-face course supplemented by an online version placed onto the university education portal. The material is structured to fill 15 weeks of the course with reading, lexical exercises, interactive online activities, tests and videos to equip students with listening and reading skills, vocabulary and structure knowledge that provide a background for communicative exercises and speaking activities. The content of the course was discussed with the major department teachers and includes the fundamental topics such as ICT Systems, Hardware, Software, Networks and Communications, Data, Information and Databases. It is supplemented by online activities from Bitesize, the BBC’s study support service for students at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/intermediate2/computing/ and videos such as Warriors of the Net (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBWhzz_Gn10) that help students visualize difficult concepts and relate them to appropriate language.
The use of online material proved to enhance learning, engage students in meaningful activities related to their professional field, provide authentic models of the target language and access to the target culture. The platform allowed monitoring students’ activity and progress: how often they accessed the online content, what they did with the content, what grades they received for online testing, etc. The students positively evaluated their experience of blended learning. They noted the following advantages: flexibility in terms of time and place for accessing language learning opportunities; higher motivation due to change of teaching techniques; improvement of language competence and oral communication skills; opportunities to study content through different perspectives, preparing them for further studies and work.
The use of a CLIL approach brings teachers not only higher levels of job satisfaction as they acquire individual and institutional networking opportunities and professional mobility, but a number of challenges as it requires a rethink of the traditional skills and knowledge of the language teacher, classroom practices and resources.
List of References:
1. Offord-Gray C. and D. Aldred. A Principled Approach to ESP Course Design in Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics Vol. 3, No. 1, June 1998. – Р. 77-86.
2. Pickering George. CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) – Introduction. – http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/transform/teachers/specialist-areas/clil