Asiatefl 2011, July 27-29, 2011, Hotel Kyoyuk Seoul, Korea

AsiaTEFL 2011, July 27-29, 2011, Hotel Kyoyuk Seoul, Korea

“Teaching English in a Changing Asia: Challenges & Directions”

Materials Writing as a Result of Curriculum Change in ESP Mass Education

By

Agustin Rebecca Lakawa

Language Centre, the Institute of Culture

Trisakti University, Jakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Compulsory ESP at Trisakti University in Jakarta is faculty based aimed at developing structural knowledge of English using language samples from the content areas. However, there is a perceived problem related to English proficiency of the students which enforce change based on the immediate needs of stakeholders i.e. tp adapt curriculum and materials. As an initial step, a two-day workshop was conducted to gather teachers’ opinion on regard to the subjects taught at every faculty. Most of the teachers were willing to adapt their syllabi and materials and further proposed the teaching of reading and writing; the teaching of writing and presentation; which was followed by the development of appropriate materials. This paper presents how the materials were design and writing, language teaching pedagogy, materials evaluation, materials editing, and the use of authentic materials. The material has been published in the form of an ESP book specifically directed to engineering students and has been used by engineering students from five departments for three semesters now. As the final step of this study, two kinds of evaluation questionnaires were administered to the students and teachers. The result of this study emphasizes that the development of approriate materials by considering students needs has a positive impact on the students willingness to continue studying ESP.

INTRODUCTION

In Indonesia, advances in commerce and industry have generated the need for ESP courses, but this situation has not ‘invoked research in ESP especially concerning the needs of various groups of learners or people who need to have a command in English (Astika, 1999). This has led to the need to further promote problems shown by the students in undergoing their tasks such as reading scientific books, taking minutes or taking part in conversation or meetings.

The teaching and learning of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) at university in Indonesia is usually compulsory and in the form of mass education. Compulsory ESP at Trisakti University (TU) in Jakarta is faculty based aimed at developing structural knowledge of English using language samples from the content areas. ESP is considered a core subject, enrolment is compulsory and the establishment of ESP courses was based on the assumpation that Indonesia-based professionals will need to be able to read and write English but will not necessarily need to speak.

However, there is a perceived problem related to English proficiency of the students which enforce change based on the immediate needs of stakeholders i.e. to adapt curriculum and materials. This paper aims at investigating the importance of materials writing in ESP practice as a result of curriculum change. Change in curriculum has created a lot of work especially in adult education within the teaching of English for Specific Purposes. It needs interdiciplinary study of adults as learners and/ or trainees of all types and in all environments (Rogers, 1966). By ‘English for Specific Purposes’ (ESP), I refer to the wide area that concentrates on all aspects of the specific-purposes teaching English and encompasses the academic (EAP) and vocational/ occupational (EOP) frameworks (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998).

The same perspective is presumed here to apply to the teaching of any language (LSP-Widdowson, 1998, p. 1). However, what I mean by the teaching of English of specific purposes refer to teaching of English to engineering students which cover the areas of architecture, civil engineering, petroleum engineering, mining engineering, industrial engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering.

It is important to remember that the ESP domain is characterised by a wide diversity-different learners, different classes, different need, different syllabi, different teachers. While it is crucial not to lose sight of this diversity, this paper adopts the ESP-as-an-approach rationale and, with that in mind, aims to:

(1)identify how thematerials were designed by considering EFL learning and its implication to materials design and writing in ESP,

(2)interpret methodological practices through language teaching pedagogy, materials evaluation, materials editing, and the use of authentic materials already adopted by ESP teachers, and

(3)present how the evaluation of materials writing affects students motivation in learning ESP.

It should be stressed that this is in no way claims to be either an orientation of all aspects pertaining to the ESP learner or a ‘complete’ coverage of all the possible links within material writings and ESP. It should be seen, as the title suggests, as to how a change in curriculum resulted in material writing in ESP and the impact it has to students and teachers’ perspective in the teaching and learning of ESP within a mass education at university.

METHODOLOGY

Needs Analysis

Needs analysis combined target situation analysis with present situation analysis (Dudley-Evan & St. John, 1998; Hutchinson & Waters, 2000). The target situation is always considered as the ideal situation in which the students can live and comprehend the language and the situation and live a meaningful live. The present situation is considered as the situation in which the learning and teaching occurs. The situational and functional demands of the target setting were determined and a curriculum designed around “learners lacks” or the gap between the curent skills of the students and the target skills of the students as engineers. In order to get the answer to the situation being quests some methods of inquiries were conducted.

The variety of procedures primarily interview and semi-stracture questionnaire was used to gather information about the objective needs and tasks and activities that the students need to perform. These represent their needs as engineers. This is the present situation of the students that has been done through the needs (Hutchinson & Waters, 2000) of the ESP students and teachers who have used the book being discussed. Data were gathered through:

1. Interview with 15 ESP teachers who have been teaching English for more than 5 years requesting information about the need to change the curriculum and material development.
2. Interview with 5 ESP teachers who have used the book to gather information about the importance of using the book to ESP students.
3. A questionnaire given to 15 ESP students who have used the book in the previous semesters requesting information about the usefulness of the book in improving their motivaion to learn ESP.

Interviews

Interview is one of the most effective modes of data gathering (McKernan, 1994; Dörnyei, 2003) in social situation as interviews are conducted in a face-to-face or personal contact situation. McKernan (1994) further devides interviews into three types in terms of content and organization, one of which is semi-structured in which interviewer has certain questions to ask but also allows the interviewee to raise issues and questions. The questionnaires were set up in the form of semi-structure interviews to the students and teachers of ESP.

macIntyre (2000) suggests that it needs careful consideration of the setting, terms of degree of comfort and privacy of the interviewee; the organization, which relates to well-prepared action prior to the interview, time management, which related to sequentially arranged time allocation for the interview, the focus which allows the interviewer to stay on track (Dörnyei, 2003).

In the study, the sample consists of ESP lectures and ESP students from the Department of Industrial Technology and Department of Petroleum Engineering at Trisakti University in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia where English is taught for Specific Purposes. The majority of participants were taking ESP to fulfill their course requirements and all of them have previously studied English at high schools. The participants have mostly spent six years at secondary education learning English that should create negative or positive attitude toward learning Englih. At tertiary education, the students in general usually spend at least two semesters in one academic year learning General English or ESP.

In this study, the data was taken to support this research. Early last year, before the commencing of semester, the researcher interviewed several ESP lecturers to gather some ideas on the needs of material change, and result of the interview to five ESP teachers talking about their opinion after using the book as a material evaluation of the book being used.

ESP students

There were fifteen students who were willing to take the time to be interviewed and talked about the previous materials as their contribution to this study. All of the ESP students said that they have been engaged in learning English not only since primary or secondary chool but also in various private English courses. In secondary school, students usually learn GE and had never been involved in ESP courses before entering university. Therefore having ESP at university was a new experience for them in learning English. Most of them did not have a clear picture about what they would do or archieve in English courses in their first three semesters at university. ESP students realized that they needed to study English because it is stated as compulsory in the curriculum. Half of the students said that what they had studied in the ESP courses so far was new in that it was closely related to their content disciplinary areas. All of the ESP students agreed that English is important and they needed to learn ESP, however, they thought that because of their previous education their level of motivation to learn more, to develop their willingness to learn more independently, to put some effort in improving their English ability and to use the English language inside and outside the classroom has not improved. Although the ESP students find that the previous courses that they had taken had not improved their comprehension of industrial/petroleum engineering texts in English, all of ESP students who took part in the interview session consider it an important subject that need to be taught despite it is stated on the curriculum.

ESP Teacher

Overall 15 ESP teachers took part in the interview sessions talking about their needs of syllabus and material change as well as their opinion regarding ESP compulsory. In general, they have been appointed as ESP teachers at the university for the periods between 7 and 20 years. Ten out of fifteen teachers are senior lecturers at the university with degrees in the English language or hold tertiary qualifications as English teachers from either Indonesia or abroad. Five out of fifteen teachers do not have educational experience in any English speaking country; however the other ten have had educational experience in Singapore, Great Britain, Australia, and United States of America or in Holland. Different teachers did respectively masters degrees in the United States of America, Great Britain, and Holland. In addition, 2 out of 15 teachers went to Singapore to do short course of study as well. All of the courses they undertook abroad were in the teaching of English as a foreign language, five of the teachers can speak more than one foreign language, third languages being Dutch, French or Arabic. All of the teachers have had English teaching experience in various different institutions or universities in Indonesia. Although all of the teachers serve as full or part time academic staff at the department, at the same time they still undertake teaching at other universities for financial reasons.

ESP class description

A typical ESP clasroom at TU is usually 100 minutes in length. The students receive 2 credits value per semester teaching. Each of the credits consists of 50 minutes of class time per week, making a total of 100 minutes contact time. An additional 5 hours of study outside the classroom is expected. However, this additional work outside of class hours has never been encouraged to be applied either from the teachers or from the department. This situation is actually happened not only in TU but also in other universities nationally given the false understanding of the sistem of credits value per semester (Saifuddin, 2006). In addition, in TU there is no monitoring or evaluation of the teaching and learning of ESP by the teachers, the departments or the faculty, this was explored during the interview session with the ESP teachers.

The application of credit value system per semester was first introduced and tried by the Department of Education and Culture of the Republic Indonesia in 1974 (Saifuddin, 2006). This was originally adapted from the credit system in higher education in the US which was developed together with the process of liberalization and democratization of education. In Indonesia the adoption of the credits system in higher education was aimed at accelerating the length of time from previously five years to four years; developing culturally based philosophy in order to encourage the self-mature, creative and innovative students (Saifuddin, 2006). It was hoped that by adopting this credit system the students would be able to improve their aptitude, attitude, and motivation in order to decide and choose their content subjects in order to prepare for their future careers (Saifuddin, 2006).

The applictaion of this credit system was spread out of the form of mandatory subjects and eclectic subjects that the students should have during their time in university based on their content disciplines. However, in practise, there are many mandatory subjects that the students should have compare to their eclectic subjects which leave no room for the development of culturally based philosophy which is reflected through the form of eclectic subjects (Saifuddin, 2006). This situation is accompanied with the inapplicability of the credits value per semester without adopting the equal allocation of class and home work time of each of the subject in university lead to the misinterpretation of the credit system per semester, the students in universities have never been involved with the improvement of culturally based philosophy subjects instead to the numbers of values of each subjects that they should enrolled.

The number of students in each classroom is usually 35-40. Some of the classrooms have very rigid seating arrangement which makes it difficult to move furniture formations. Most are set in 4 straight rows. This kind of seating makes it difficult to develop different kinds of activities as it is usually the case in the language classes. There is always a white board and the teacher can ask request OHT facilities from the office. A typical class may start with the teacher entering the classroom and addressing the students and telling them what they will do during the lesson. In general within 100 minutes the teacher always tries to use either the handbook provided or the hand outs that they have prepared beforehand. At the end of each lesson, the teacher can assign work to do at home individually or group work to be done on campus. The students most often sit silently and wait for the teachers instruct them on what to do. The students are passive and try to do what they are asked to do without many complaints or questions about the hand outs. Some students are reluctant to ask questions because they are not used to do it or they are afraid of asking questions. Some students are not care about what does happen in the classroom. For these students, the only important thing is how to pass the exam and do not really care whether they understand the materials or not.

Syllabus design

The syllabus documents needed to be redesigned completely by setting up clear and thorough objectives in relation to what is needed by the stakeholders. This is mandatory because what will be learnt passes through different stages before it reaches its destination, the learners. The syllabus document plays an important role in the compulsory ESP because it needs to be interpreted in the context of the holistic situation in which stakeholders function as Jordan (1997, p.58) states ‘needs, aims, means (the teacher, materials, equipment, facilities, time and finance), and variables or constraints (limitations of the means become constraints)’ are factor should be considered in designing a syllabus.

The following is the sample design of the course syllabus of the Reading ESP course proposed for the faculty as the basic of curriculum change and the change of materials development. This syllabus has been gone through several stages of evaluation which was supported by the development of new material in the form a book (Lakawa & Andriani, 2010). The book functions as a course material in the teaching and learning process during the semester in which the students did the exercises and tasks according to the simultaneous topics in relation to reading and writing skills.

1. Enhancing students’ basic skills in faster reading by using skills/techniques in reading various engineering and general materials.
2. Improving students’ advanced skills in reading advanced engineering and general materials.
3. Developing students’ skills in reading comprehension, reading for specific information and reading in the content related discipline materials.
4. Improving students’ individual strategies in delaing with varied passages and recognizing unfamiliar words.
5. Enhancing students’ ability in paraphrasing and summarizing sentences or paragraphs (in the content-related discipline) of the content related discipline.

1. Previewing, skimming, and scanning techniques of the written expression and structural form of the elements of English language.
2. Making inferences techniques to understand varied reading materials and a wide range of vocabulary in English.
3. Using individual strategies in dealing with varied reading passages and recognizing unfamiliar words in the subject related areas.
4. Using clues and references questions in understanding content related passages.
5. Paraphrasing the paragraphs by using correct written expression in constructing a content related paragraph.
6. Summarizing the passages by using correct written expression in constructing a content discipline passages.

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4. Jones. C. Raymond. 2007. Strategies inReading Comprehension. Reading Quest.org. Making sense in social studies.
5. Lakawa, Agustin Rebecca and Andriani, Albertine S, 2010. Reading and Writing Skills for Engineering Students in Indonesia. Penerbit Universitas Trisakti, Jakarta.
6. Mikulecky, Beatrice S & Jeffries, Linda. 2004. More Reading Power. Pearson Education, New York.
7. Spears, Deanne. 2003. Improving Reading Skills: Contemporary Readings for College Students. McGraw-Hill, New York.
8. VanderMey, R. 2007. The College Writer. Houghten.

Course material