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Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women!s University

Graduate School of TESOL

English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

Spring 2006

Week 8 - ESP Chapter 12 & Johns (1997), pp. 363-366 &

Kasper (2000), pp. 3-25 - Answers

1. Why is evaluation seen as being so important in ESP and

how is it different than in general English instruction?

(ESP 12)

Evaluation is seen as being very important in ESP to a large

extent because it may very well be easier to evaluate in ESP

than in general English. Because everything in ESP is

centered around the specific goals and needs of students, it

is therefore somewhat easy to create evaluation, more

effective evaluation, based on those goals and needs.

Effective evaluation is a real possibility in ESP. This is in

striking contrast to general English courses were evaluationis present but we can always check on or be somewhat wary

about the effectiveness of evaluation in general English

simply because teachers will not know what to evaluate or

how to evaluate it. This is due to the glaring absence of

specific goals or needs set for the course. Tests tend to

emulate (and there is reason or believe that they actually

should, provided the class is well constructed) the things

which are done in the classroom. This observation leads tothe possibility of better testing in ESP classes because ESP

focuses on doing things in the classroom and not just being

exposed to presentation is easier and more possible to set

up evaluation which is more meaningful and which is more

closely tied, 1. to the classroom and 2. to the outside world.

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In ESP we can design tests which more closely emulate

things done in the classroom while retaining authenticity and

validity.

2. How is evaluation in ESP to be conducted? What are themain means of doing so?? (ESP 12)

According to the text there are three different types of

evaluation which are generally conducted in relation to ESP

courses. These are, placement tests, achievement tests, and

proficiency tests. Each of them is used as a different stage in

the course and as a result may be constructed, or composed

of different material and with certainly with different concerns

and goals in mind. Despite these differences they might also

contain similar formats as well as content. Rather than the

tests themselves which might be different it is the way we

interpret and user the tests which should be different.

3. What are some of the potential problems with placement

tests? (ESP 12)

Placement tests are a little bit weird because there's really

kind of the Catch-22 situation about them. The main purposeof placement tests is to try to decide whether a given

applicant should be allowed into the program or not, or (in

more complex multi-level programs) where within the

program a given applicant should be placed. In order to do

this, then, when you to try to design a placement test which

will allow us to predict whether the student will be able to

keep up with what is going on in the classroom. Basically,

we need to find out of the student has high enough level to

do what is expected of them in the course. This is done buy

having them do what we think they will need to do in the

classroom. Now, here's the problem. One of the basic tenets

of ESP is that courses need to be designed according to

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students` wants and students` needs as well as goals and

they should be a specific as possible. This means that we

really can't set the specific syllabus for the course until we

have already gathered the students and found out from them

what is they want and need. Therefore, it is going to be very

hard to create a placement test if it focuses specifically on

the goals and need to the students since we probably don't

know specifically what the goals and needs of the students

are yet. In the period when the placement test is being made

it might not be very clear what the class will actually covered

and what may be required of the students. It is therefore,

important to keep in mind that often placement tests will

need to be constructed specifically from somewhat

generalized versions of goals and needs. It might be very

hard to tie a placement test to a specific ESP course. Don't

expect too much from your placement tests. Yes, they are

necessary and certainly useful, but we can't expect them to

be completely accurate simply because we really don't know

who the students or who will be taking the test.

4. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) claim that achievement

tests are probably the most common test in ESP circles,

but do we really need to have them? (ESP 12)

As I mentioned in class I am a bit leery of achievement type

tests. It is not that I question their effectiveness or their need,

it is just that I think they're better ways of dealing with the

same problem than through formalized testing. For the most

part, achievement tests are used to determine whether the

students have learned what they should have learned in

class up to that point. A good achievement test should

provide guidance for the teacher in determining what needs

to be reviewed or redone and for the students as well to

know where they are lacking certain knowledge or skills. A

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good achievement test lets the teacher know that they can

continue with their intended program and how well they are

doing, or how well the students re doing on both a group and

an individual level. This is important stuff. The thing that

bugs me about achievement tests, however, is that they

seem too official and can be disturbing to the class both as

regards time and affect. Here in Korea we know how hyper

students can be about tests. As soon as most Korean

students hear the word test they begin to panic and worry.

This can often have a detrimental effect not only on the

achievement test itself, but also on the entire class. A better

solution would be to give what the teacher think something

as achievement tests without actually telling the students

that they are being tested or evaluated. In this way,

continuous assessment would seem to be a better way than

by getting a lot of achievement type tests in the course of a

program. The same results can be attained, but hopefully the

effect on the students will be less. Be creative in the ways

you can keep tabs on your students` progress in less

obtrusive ways.

5. Why are proficiency tests so well suited to ESP? (ESP 12)

Proficiency tests are generally seen as being very well suited

to ESP type courses. This generally comes from the fact that

proficiency tests are, too a large extent, designed around

performance in actual task situations. Because proficiency

tests, like ESP courses, are both centered around tasks they

seem to go very well together. As I mentioned in class, the

MATE exam is an example of a proficiency test that you

know about and some of you have taken. Like the MATE,

most proficiency exams are as general or specific in their

tasks as the design allows. For example, in the MATE test

which students take as an entrance exam for this TESOL

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Master's program, at least some of the tasks are created

around the content area of TESOL and students need to

perform tasks which they might need to perform in the real

world as English teachers. Looking at this example, we can

see how well adapted proficiency tests are for ESP

purposes. It must, however, be borne in mind that proficiency

exams are based on wide scales which show proficiency in a

wide variety of different levels within a particular concern.

Therefore, they can be used to test people across a wide

range of different proficiency levels effectively. They will not

necessarily tell your students whether they have passed the

course are not unless a certain level a proficiency on the test

is deemed passing. Rather, but they will tell your students

where they fit along a certain continuum of proficiency. It is

up to you to make sense of this to the students. Explain what

it means.

6. What are some of the more striking similarities and

differences between ESP and CBI? (Johns)

While there are many similarities between ESP (including

EAP) and CBI and these are interesting as away of

reviewing of what we have done to date, it is the differences

which are more interesting for us. Both are similar in that

they try to use real world sources as a way of generating

skills and behavior which can be and will be used by the

learners in the real world. In order to do this content plays an

important role in both models. Both were created as a sharp

response to what Johns calls TENOR and as such try to

have a real purpose. Despite these similarities, however,

there are a larger number of compelling differences. One of

the main differences refers to where they are used and who

they are used with. CBI is generally used in English speaking

countries at a variety of levels form young learners, grade 1,

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all the way up through university. ESP, on the other hand, is

often used where English is a foreign language or a second

language at best and primarily to adults at or above the

university level/age. Another major difference is that ESP

does not necessarily integrate all four skills, but rather either

treats one to the detriment of the others or simply does not

integrate all fours skills holistically, as is the case in CBI. The

CBI classroom is purposely set up to try to get many different

linguistic skills together and in a more holistic way. Another

difference is the specific interest of the practitioners of each.

ESP practitioners are interested in the specific vocabulary

and structures in the area they are teaching. They are

discourse analysts first and foremost and research much

more on the discourse they will be teaching as opposed to

teaching itself. CBI, is, though, all about teaching. It is

actually somewhat hard to find much written about some

hard and fast theory of CBI. Little research has been done to

date on the effects of CBI because the people who do it are

busy teaching it.

7. What are some theoretical underpinnings of CBI? (Kasper

1)

Kasper mentions three main theoretical underpinnings of

CBI. They are:

Krashen`s comprehensible input hypothesis

This one is easy. We all know the power and necessity of

comprehensible input, but in CBI it is much more important.

The content/input is the basis for everything. We cannot do

anything is the content is not understood. Thus, a lot of what

is done in a CBT classroom (the repetition, the

summarization and paraphrasing) is done to make sure that

the students do understand the content. Remember, we

can`t alter the content, which is generally quite challenging.

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Instead, we need to alter what we have the students do with

it and we have to find ways of sheltering content so as to

make it comprehensible.

Cummin`s two-tiered skill model

This model revolves around that idea that there are two tiers

in language learning. The first of these tiers is mastering the

functions necessary for communication. The second tier

involves mastering functions necessary for academia; i.e.,

cognitive functions. The CBI approach is designed to

develop the second tier. Easy. In Korea, however, we can`t

take anything for granted because there are many people

running around who skipped the first tier and jumped right

into the second, but they are not good users of the language

on any tier because, as Hamers and Blanc (2000) tell us,

development of cognitive functions is based on and related

to communicative functions.

Cognitive learning theory

This involves three stages of development. The first of these

is the cognitive stage and this involves developing anawareness of a task and its requirements which results in a

rough representation being created. The second stage is the

associative stage and this involves taking that rough

representation and making it stronger and more specifically

defined buy anchoring it to other pre-existing information in

the brain. The third and final stage is one of autonomy. In

this autonomous stage the student has fine-tuned all the

specific details of the task at hand so that she/he can clearly

distinguish from all other similar knowledge and in doing so

is able to fully control her/his performance on the task. These

stages are remarkably similar to the descriptors used in

assessing a learners proficiency in relation to a single

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feature of the TL; awareness, partial control, and full control.

8. How does content interact with the cognitive aspects of

language? (Kasper 1)

In the CBI model the content is seen as the fuel which fireslearning. This can be seen by talking a closer look at each of

levels in the model called cognitive learning theory.

Cognitive stage

In this stage the learners has some vague idea about the

existence of something, but they have no real cognitive

structure to support this knowledge. They are aware that this

thing exists and they can sometimes recognize it, but they do

not know how to use it.

Associative stage

It is at this stage that the new information, the ideas about

the thing are beginning to be associated with pre-existing

information. This allows the learner to be able to actually do

something with the knowledge, but as the knowledge is still

incomplete, they often make mistakes. Their control is

partial.

Antonymous stage

In this stage the information gas been completely integrated

into a cognitive structure and is completely useful to the

person. Once more, they are able to use the information

automatically without wavering and for a multitude of

purposes correctly.

Reading in the CBI model works by integrating new

information in old, preexisting cognitive structures. The idea

is this: in CBI, the content forms a kind of continuum. The

subject simply builds up slowly. The details might change

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slightly, but it all builds up on the same subject. This is very

important because it means that the student can go into the

reading with a pre-existing cognitive structure to use. Before

they even start to read they will have a schema (a whole

wealth of ideas and concepts already formed about the topic

because they have been learning a lot about it lately). This

schema is used to make a scaffold. A scaffold is a cognitive

grid. It is a collection of related ideas organized in a certain

fashion. As the student reads they will be able to use the

scaffold to support their understanding as they read and as

they acquire new bits of information the information is

inserted right into the scaffold in the right place (hopefully)

and then more quickly internalized.

Writing forces students to elaborate or expand upon new

information so that it is better organized and ultimately more

integrated with a potentially vast range of old information.

The idea is that to write a writer needs to take all they know

(the old information) and use that as the base for their

writing, but they also need to pepper that old information with

examples that come from new information. In this way,

writing is a very good practice for reinforcing strongly the

new information the students has just gotten in the reading

or the class.

Dual coding is presenting information in both visual

(diagrams, pictures, reading) and verbal auditory (listening,

speaking) form. The idea behind doing this is that it will make

the information more accessible to the students. This is

following the idea that different learners have different styles:auditory or visual. It is also based on the idea that repetition

is essential for comprehension, but the repetition must be

natural and meaningful. Using different codes allows the

teacher to approach and give similar information in different

and interesting ways, thus ensuring comprehension.

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9. How is CBI taught? (Kasper 1)

There are two types of courses in the interdisciplinary

collaboration model: intensive and linked courses. Both are

good in that they allow for a large amount of reinforcementand overlap from different perspectives. At the same time,

however, they are somewhat difficult to set up as well as

very time-consuming to operate and they almost always

require specially trained teachers. If there is no need for a

strong interdisciplinary collaboration, then one person alone

can run the entire class, but that person needs to know the

content as well as how to teach it.

The main advantage of the interdisciplinary model is that

students learn how to tailor their writing/speaking to a certain

purpose or a specific discipline. Think of the different content

areas, different subjects or disciplines, as simply being

different contexts. That is what they are on a basic level

different contexts. We all know that one sign of a good writer

is that they need to be able to tailor their writing to various

contexts. That is what this kind of approach seeks to do by

using concrete examples. The only problem is that all the

student might not find all the different contexts interesting

because they are concrete and have a direct representation

in the real world. A physics major might only care about

physics and will not want to write papers in biology or literary

criticism and this will result in a diminished performance.

An alternative to the collaboration model is self-contained

CBI. Since most of what we will probably be doing here in

Korea is self-contained CBI it is important that we are most

familiar with this. As the name implies, in the self-contained

model one teacher handles everything. This may be

interdisciplinary as in WAC/WID or might just revolve around

one type of content area, such as mathematics. In any case,

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the teacher needs to play the dual role of content teacher

and English teacher in the self-contained CBI classroom.

This can be hard in that it requires further study and

knowledge on the part of the teacher, but also means that

she/he is not reliant on some content expert who may or may

not be particularly cooperative.

Arranging and keeping the integration going between the

content and language sides is one big challenge. The main

challenge, though is trying to find the right balance between

content. Most CBI courses end up as a kind of tug-of-war

between these two forces and this is a good thing. The

content side is pulling for as much content as possible and

the language side is pulling for as much and as diverse a

language practice as possible. This is how it should be, but

the also needs to be some give and take and each side

should make concessions to the other. In reality, however, it

is the content which usually takes precedence, the argument

being that the student can go off and practice on their own,

or we can simply give them more home assignment for

dealing with the content.