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A made-to-measure ESP course for banking staff
ESP Journal, Vol. 2, pp. 161-171, 1983 PergamonPress Ltd. Printed in the USA.
0272-2380/83$3.00 + .00 Copyright© 1983The AmericanUniversity
The
A M a d e - t o - M e a s u r e ESP C o u r s e for B a n k i n g S t a f f G e o f f r e y Land Abstract--Tl~s article describes the planning, writing, and putting into operation of an intensive course for personnel destined for work in the foreign department of a large commercial bank. A detailed account is given of the compilation of the integrated grading test that is used at the beginning of the course to split up the students into homogeneous groups, and of the closely written course, which is programmed day by day down to the last detail. The writer points out how this course differs in its objectives and its priorities from the conventional language course, and gives some figures to show what progress is made during it.
British banking means, to all intents and purposes, the Big Four--Barclays, Lloyds, the National Westminster, and the Midland. The banking scene in Italy is far more complex, with countless small and private organisations offering banking services in their own immediate neighbourhood, which may be as small as the confines of just one large village. Italian banking is more complex not only in its organisation but also in the range of operations carried out by the individual branches and the level of competence required of its staff. But in Italy, too, there are a number of great commercial banks with a nationwide network. One of the most important of these, the Credito Italiano, has more than 400 branches all over Italy. It also has overseas branches in London and the United States, and representative offices in South America and the Far East as well as in other European countries. With a staff of more than 17,000, the Credito Italiano has always followed a conscientious policy of staff training, and in 1976 it opened its own staff training college in a magnificent 18th century villa, lovingly and lavishly restored, standing in an 80-acre park to the northeast of Milan. Three-month courses are run there for new employees from all parts of the country before they start work in the bank, and there is also a wide range of other fuUtime courses concerned with different aspects of the bank's activities. ("Fulltime" in this context means from 8:25 to 5:10 every day, five days a week, the normal working timetable for bank staff.) Among these is a course that prepares personnel for work in the foreign department of the bank, the department that deals with the various operations that make possible the day-to-day business of the export and import of goods and services. After this course had been running for some time, it was decided to add instruction in English to the technical skills already taught, as a great many of the documents involved in international trade call for a working knowledge of that language, and the bank was anxious that the communications sent out in English should be accurately and correctly written. This wish to have a staff capable of producing accurate and clear English, and of understanding English instructions coming from all over the world (many of which are anything but
161
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accurate and clear) is not merely fastidiousness, as very often the understanding of certain instructions on a document written in English may be of vital importance for the successful finalisation of very big business indeed. Several problems were encountered at this initial stage. In the first place, it was quite clear that the people arriving to take part in the course would not be at the same level of English. Some would have had several years of English at school, but this in itself does not mean very much as so much depends upon the individual school, the individual teacher and the individual pupil. Some would be complete beginners, having attended schools where they studied French or German and not English. Then there was the fact that the technical course was already in existence and formed the basis upon which the new technical English course was to be constructed. As the bank's main interest in promoting this new venture was to make sure that all its personnel in the foreign department knew exactly what they were doing in English and were capable of functioning in that language, the content of the English course would have to be governed by the content of the technical course, and not only the content but also the chronological order in which those various items appeared in the technical course--quite often totally different from the logical order in which linguistic items would normally be taught. Another difficulty, at least for the planner of the English course, was the fact that various circumstances make it quite impossible for any homework to be given to these people, and they cannot be expected to do any preparation or study in their own time. So the course had to be completely self-sufficient in the sense that everything had to be completed in the classroom and within the class timetable. So in sitting down to plan and then to write this course we had to take all these points into consideration. The somewhat unorthodox nature of our final product was imposed upon us by the various circumstances in which the course was created and the particular working conditions of the students. Obviously, our first concern was to keep firmly in mind the bank's objective in running this course--to ensure that staff employed in the foreign departments are able to follow and produce all the English used in the day-to-day work of this particular sector. In the course as it had been run hitherto, a purely technical instruction course, the students had been grouped together to give the greatest possible variety in regional mix. Italians are notoriously clannish as far as their hometowns are concerned, and people are inclined to think of themselves as Milanese, or Genovese, or Neapolitan rather than "Italian". So it was clearly advisable to have each group of fifteen students made up of people coming from different parts of the country, and, particularly, to mix up those coming from the south with those from the north. Furthermore, in a predominantly masculine world like the Italian banking sector, what few women there were (no more than three per cent of the student population) could be "shared round," so to speak, and not be put together in the same group. This kind of grouping worked admirably for the students of the original technical course, as their technical preparation is more or less on a par, and
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in any case all the instruction was, of course, given in their native language. But it clearly would not do for a course of English, where homogeneous groups are essential. For a variety of reasons, it is not possible for us to know the real standard of English of the students before they arrive. Even if it were possible to ask them to fill in a questionnaire in advance about their previous English studies it would be of very little practical use. The one and only certain means of evaluation is the grading test which all the candidates take on the morning of their arrival at the centre to begin their course. This is then marked, the results listed, and the students arranged in groups of fifteen, according to the mark reached. This work is completed by the middle of the afternoon. They keep in these groups for the entire course, for the technical sessions as well as for the English periods. Our first task was to devise some means of grading 120 people into homogeneous groups efficiently in four or five hours, and so personal interviews were obviously out of the question. The instrument we use (which we prefer not to call a "test" as there is no question of competition, nor of any sort of evaluation other than achieving homogeneous grouping) is called English Language Level Assessment--the initials of which give us the title ELLA, which is also, incidentally, the Italian for "she." It is based on the preselecfion test which forms part of the Stages of Attainment Scale brought out a few years ago by the English Language Teaching Development Unit of Oxford University Press (ELTDU and SKF, n.d.). We had to change the context and lexical content of quite a lot of this, as the original version had been prepared for a large industrial concern in Sweden, where the skills called for and the language involved were very different. But as ELTDU had composed their original version according to the tenets of the Council of Europe and the famous "Threshold Level" (see van Ek and Alexander 1980) we stuck very carefully to the guidelines as far as the structures were concerned. In the compilation of our ELLA we asked for the collaboration of ELTDU, and they vetted our final version to make sure that we had not let our standards fall or rise. Three different versions of ELLA were written so that there is no danger of leakage, and the progress of each group can be gauged by submitting one version of the test at the beginning of the course and another at the end. ELLA is divided into three parts. The first one is called Reading and Writing and is nothing more or less than reading comprehension and basic structural production; the student is required to understand what he reads and to fill in the spaces with appropriate words or phrases. The skills called for here are structural and not lexical. Twelve marks are given for this section in each stage. Use of English, the following section, consists of three questions at each stage, and tests the student's knowledge of formulae that are more usually used in everyday informal conversation. This section only carries three marks in contrast with the previous section's 12; this reflects the needs of the student for following the course and also the needs of the bank. The third section is called Listening Comprehension; the students listen to various recorded conversations, and have to complete certain relevant sentences in their workbook. This section carries five marks at each stage. There are six stages, A to F, which means a total of 120 marks. (ELTDU set the Threshold Level mark at 36.)
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When the corrected workbooks have been put in "order of merit," from zero to the highest mark scored (those with zero including the students who declare that they have never studied English at all and who do not attempt the test), they are then divided into sets of fifteen. We thus have groups of students that are as homogeneous as possible. Whereas at the lower range it is not difficult to reach absolute homogeneity, there is a greater divergence in the highest group, where we may fend as wide a range as 60 to 85, but divergences are more easily coped with at this level. In the event of our having the odd student so advanced as to be far beyond anything that we offer in the course as planned, we have a library of specialised language material which we can give out for self-study, and there is a collection of recorded material for use in the language laboratory, library mode. It was realised at an early stage in the planning of this venture that it would not be possible to provide just one course that would be suitable for students at so widely differing levels. Neither would it be possible to provide six different courses, one for each of the stages of preparation identified by ELLA. It was decided therefore to compromise by providing two courses, Course A and Course B. The groups of students who fail to reach 36 marks on the first day, and who are therefore below Threshold Level, follow Course A; those who are already at Threshold Level or above follow Course B. These two courses are written with the middle of each section in mind, so that the teacher can "teach up" or "teach down" to suit the individual needs of the group of people sitting in front of him. Also during the planning stage of the course, the following objectives were established: Course A (i) To teach the basic fundamentals of the English language. (ii) To prepare the students to understand all the items of English that they meet during the technical course. (iii) To ensure that the students are capable of writing such items as may be expected of them in the normal course of their work. Course B To develop the students' capacity to cope with different linguistic situations within the boundaries of their work context (apart from the objectives given for Course A, which they are, in theory at least, already able to meet). It is clear then that the content of the two courses is the same, that is to say, the words and phrases that are used in the various forms and documents that the students have to understand and use in their technical course and thereafter in their work in the branches. A comprehensive list was compiled of all the English items, both lexical and phrasal, that are encountered during the technical course day by day. From a study of these, the English teaching staff drew up a plan of the various linguistic elements that would have to be taught to make these items meaningful. It was then decided that, as the ratio of English language teaching is one period to every three technical periods, every English "lesson" should (a) prepare the student for the structures that he is going to meet in the three following technical
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periods, and (b) revise and consolidate the individual lexical items and set phrases that he has already met in the previous three technical periods. For example, when the phrase IN CASE OF NON-PAYMENTADVISEBY TELEX GIVINGREASONSoccurs in the technical part of the course, the students must already be familiar with the structural elements of the phrase, which might be prepared by considering the sentence IN CASEOF RAINTRAVELBY TRAINBRINGING UMBRELLA. The individual lexical items--NON-PAYMENT, ADVISE, TELEX, TO
GIVE, REASON--are first "discovered" in the technical period, but in a language framework which is already familiar. If these words are new, they are then reconsidered in the following English period. As it was realised that an English course consisting of only this material would leave some very unfortunate and unforgivable gaps, the basic material was to be supplemented in as logical a manner as possible with a standard English course. But here, too, the needs of the bank would be reflected, and they are exactly the reverse of the normal order of precedence in the majority of English courses. The first need is understanding of the written word, the second is production of written messages, and third but very much third-is the ability to speak and to understand the spoken word. This reflects a working reality which is ignored by most textbook writers, who give undue emphasis to face-to-face encounters. A vast and unnumbered quantity of students of the English language throughout the world will most probably never have a face-to-face encounter in English, but they have an urgent need to understand and write business English.
UNITA' DIDATrlCA
WILL YOU DO ] ME A FAVOUR;'
N 411
L23A
MATERIALEDIDATTICO ~ENTE DI~ENTE
TEMPO
Ao--TI
- Vo~bulary
PARCEL KIND new POSTAGE FILE
total
Ireca
l~icle
ptioI amount remittlmce -- Set Pt~rmm Draft I t .......... from Ihipment of goods Total p~lml/cartonl/gr¢ll weight/net weight. Goods m t by Number lind kinds of p41d~l~l. Shipp+ng m~ks. . . . . . . . . . .
* Reflexive pronoum • Co~lm*'t*on of adjecti~s
LL 12 B for v ~ b . & Im phrlms;
Figure 1.
LL 12B
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i~)IDATTICA JNITA'
METO~LOGIA OIOAnlCA
DISCENT~
M A T E R I A L E OlOATTICO
~ENTE
Explain, discuss and ask for translation Check recall items orally by giving the Italian word and asking for the English
0.10
•
Reflexive pronouns
Show transparency LL 17 A
LL 17 A
Straightforward translation with careful attention to pronunciation, 0.25
• Comparison of a d j e c t i ~
Suggestion: show two pencils, one longer than
the other, Say:
"The red pencil is longer than the blue pencil", etc.
Write on board aftw the point h~s been understood aurally. Take one or two other examples of objects - or people - in room. Show transparency LL 18 A
LL 1B A
Explain carefully translate new words discus= - question,
Figure 2.
As for the actual compilation of the course, it was soon realised that all the written material, as well as most of the recorded items, would have to be produced by us, as there was nothing at all suitable on the market. There were a number of books dealing with British banking, but nothing at all dealing with the English elements in Italian banking, which is a very different matter. So we had to start from scratch and write a course. All the technical courses at the training centre are set out in the form of a kind of daybook, called the "scaletta" which gives the instructor step-by-step the various procedures he has to teach. We created the same kind of thing for our English courses. In the scaletta, the teacher finds all the items he has to teach in any one particular period, the time he is to devote to each one, and all the exercises that he must give the class during the time at his disposal, and others that he may use if he has sufficient time and if he thinks the material suitable for his particular group. Figures 1 and 2 show two pages of the scaletta, covering one fifty-minute teaching period near the beginning of Course A. The box in the top left hand corner contains the "survival phrase" of the day, WILLYOU DO ME A FAVOUR? These survival phrases, which do not fit comfortably into the general scheme of any integrated structured course, are essential everyday expressions and are distributed at the rate of one per lesson during the entire course, this being taken as an easily digestible rate. The teacher can introduce the survival phrase at any point during the lesson and in any way he chooses. The page is divided into five columns:
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167
TEMPI (times) This shows the approximate time the teacher should spend on each part of the lesson. He is not expected to follow this schedule slavishly with stopwatch in hand but to keep an eye on it to make sure that everything stipulated in the contents section is adequately covered. CONTENUTI (contents) This is under three headings. Vocabulary and Set Phrases are those items that the student has met during the preceding technical sessions. The lexical items in the Vocabulary are to be treated singularly, whereas the Set Phrases are to be learned as formulae. The Structures are those that are to be taught during the period to prepare the student to recognise and understand them when he comes across them in the following technical session. For example, Reflexive Pronouns appear here because in the next technical period he will come across the expression "Please reimburse yourselves on . . . . " METODOLOGIA DIDATTICA (teaching methodology) This is simply general guidance on how to use the material. MATERIALE DIDATTICO (teaching material) This is divided into two colunlns. The first (DOCENTE)shows the material needed by the teacher, while the second (DISCENTE) lists the material to be distributed to the class. Figure 3 shows the same lesson for level B, the students already above Threshold Level. No times are laid down here and the teacher has to "teach up" to match the level of the class. He has a supplementary exercise to use if he thinks fit, or if he has time.
DIDATT~CA UNITA' N
Lt~23B
48
MATERIALEDdDATTICO ~ENTE Df~ENTE AsA
V o c ~ u l a ' y and Set Phra=~
Show LL 12 B; the
vocabulaPt and set phra~e~ in Eng(ish only. Ask for translation. (see attached sheet) (10 minutes}
LL12B
ShOW LL 17 A. Attention to pronunciation and spelling, List common verbs that a r e reflexive in Italian but not in English.
LL17A
WASH. WAKE.WORRY, DRESS, BOAST, etc. Exploit acl lib. Compe¢iton of Idj(mti¥• Quick cevisi~, using LL 18 A. Play Tape L 4 8, using pause button after each comment, to elicit statements of comperi son, Sup~ementary Exercise
Figure 3.
L 23 B
LL~8A tape L 4 B
SUPP. EX. L23 E
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The teaching material used during the course is as follows: 1. Written exercises (EL). These are used in the classroom to back up and practice what has just been taught. 2. Overhead projector transparencies (LL). Some of these are simply typed, while others feature drawings produced by the visual aids unit. 3. Flash cards (FC). Particularly for Course A. These, too are produced by the visual aids unit, following our detailed instructions. 4. Wall charts for vocabulary work in the classroom. 5. Tapes. Prerecorded tapes to be used in the classroom to illustrate some particular language point. 6. Lab drills for use in the language laboratory. Most of these were written by us and recorded in our own recording studios. Great care was taken to contextualise the drills wherever possible into a relevant and recognisable working background connected with the course. 7. Films. To be seen after appropriate preparation, in the classroom, in the form of videocassettes. We use films from several BBC series and from other sources. We hope to be making films of our own in the future (in fact, work is going on at present on a series of animated cartoons dealing with very basic linguistic points), as there is nothing ideally suitable on the market for adult beginners in a banking context. The scaletta system ensures that every teacher teaches exactly the same lesson as far as the content is concerned, and although the structure of the scaletta looks very rigid, it does, in fact, give ample opportunity for each member of the staff to approach the items in his own personal way. It also ensures that each group of students covers exactly the same ground, and thus makes it possible for the teachers to be "rotated" so that no class has the same teacher for two consecutive lessons, and each teacher spends the same amount of time with each class. There is no book apart from the scaletta, so it is up to the teacher to explain and teach in his own way, using the ample material available. The English teachers at the centre are all "mother tongue" and, for the moment, all British, although ideally we would like to have voices from other parts of the world to train our students to cope with American English, not to mention Australian, South African, and other accents that might cause difficulty, It would be too much to hope for experienced EFL teachers who are also experienced in the work of the foreign department of the bank. In fact, our teaching staff come from a variety of backgrounds and the one thing they have in common is a total ignorance on arrival of the working of the foreign department or even of the bank as a whole--and, therefore, of the implications of this course of which our English teaching forms an integral part. A special telescoped version of the technical course is run for the benefit of new teachers so that when they are ready to go into the classroom for the first time at the end of their training period they understand what is going on in the course. Naturally, we do not train them to teach the technical material, any more than the technical staff are trained to teach the English language. But the English teacher must understand the context of the phrases he is explaining just as much as the
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169
technical instructor must understand the meaning of the English phrases he comes across in his part of the course. The first wave of students was admitted in February 1979 and was of an experimental nature. All the material had been carefully researched and prepared, but we had not had the opportunity to try it out on real live students in a classroom situation, and we realised that various modifications would be necessary. In fact, during this first course, we had a meeting every few days during which the various lessons were discussed and notes were kept as to which were too long, which were too short, which were too difficult, which were too easy, which "worked" and which did not, and so on. And this first wave consisted of only 45 students, selected so that there was one group of complete beginners, one rather more advanced (though still an A group), and one advanced group who followed the B course. At the end of the four months we gave them another version of the grading test they had done on the first day to measure what progress had been made. We were pleased to see that on the final showing only one student of the 45 was still below Threshold Level and there was an averge improvement of about 30 marks. Exactly three years later, as this article is being written at the beginning of 1982, more truly representative figures for the sorts of results we have been achieving can be taken from the course that began in January. Only 75 students were to do the full four-month course with the English element, as because of administrative reasons it was expedient for 45 of the total intake of 120 to do a version of the old three-month course (without English) and return to work in their branches as soon as possible. The grading test, ELLA, was given to everyone the first day. The top 45 (who would have formed B groups) were then given a course with no English at all; as far as their work in the bank is concerned this did not matter greatly as their knowledge of the language was already such as to be sufficient for job needs. The remaining 75 scored from 0-27 in the grading test, all well below Threshold Level. The five groups were made up as follows:
1
(0)
None of the students had ever studied English at all.
2
(0-12)
Five complete beginners, the other ten ranging from 7 to 12.
3
(13-20)
4
(20-23)
5
(24-27) At the end of the course, a similar grading test gave the following result: (31-61)
Only one student still below Threshold Level.
(31-52)
Only one student still below Threshold Level.
(38-58)
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4
(40-60)
5
(44-78)
It will be noticed that in the homogeneous groups formed at the beginning of the course, progress rates varied considerably, and the most dramatic rise was made in the lowest group, the complete beginners, where one student reached a total of 61 at the end of the course. I believe that this course is unique, and although it breaks many of the golden rules of EFL teaching, such "sins" can be readily justified: (a)
(b) (c)
As far as Course A is concerned, a greater part of the teaching is done in Italian. This obviously saves time and things can be explained much more easily. And as far as the technical language items are concerned (the Set Phrases of the scaletta), the explanation of these very often has to be only of a one-to-one translation nature, as the structures involved are far beyond the students' capabilities at this stage. The old bogey of "homework" is dead and buried; the students are not expected to do any work on their English outside the classroom. They do not begin by learning to speak and to understand what is said to them. This comes at a later stage and is given less emphasis. They learn what is important for their work in the bank.
I think that we have achieved something worthwhile in that we have evolved a course which teaches, within the confines of the company, the sort of English that the company requires its staff to know. This is what I understand by inservice training, but is what rarely happens as far as English teaching is concerned. It seems that only too often the firm farms out its personnel to outside commercial language schools, who give a smattering of general English but do not--indeed, cannot--give the students the kind of specialised English that they need for their job even if a needs analysis is made. We are teaching the employees of the Credito Italiano the sort of English that they need for the effective day-to-day working of the bank--a special kind of English for a special purpose. That was our original mandate. REFERENCES
ELTDU (English Language Teaching Development Unit) and SKF (Aktiebolaget Svenska Kullagerfabriken). n.d. Stages of Attainment Scale and Test Battery: General Information. Bicester: English Language Teaching Development Unit. van Ek, J. A. and L. G. Mexander. 1980. Threshold Level English. Oxford: Pergamon Press Ltd. Geoffrey L a n d is in charge of the English language teaching programme at the Centro Formazione Professionale of the Credito Italiano. He has been engaged in EFL teaching for more than 25 years, during which time he has
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171
taught for Eurocentres, the Inner London Education Authority, and the British Council. His publications include What’s in the News? and What the Papers Say (Long-man 1975 and 1981), Picture Stories for Composition(Evans 1981), Test Pa#ers for Reading Compvehensim (Oxford University Press 1975), and a text for Italian secondary schools called Trends (Principato 1981). His main research interest is the use of authentic visual material in EFL teaching.
0272-2380/83$3.00 + .00 Copyright© 1983The AmericanUniversity
The
A M a d e - t o - M e a s u r e ESP C o u r s e for B a n k i n g S t a f f G e o f f r e y Land Abstract--Tl~s article describes the planning, writing, and putting into operation of an intensive course for personnel destined for work in the foreign department of a large commercial bank. A detailed account is given of the compilation of the integrated grading test that is used at the beginning of the course to split up the students into homogeneous groups, and of the closely written course, which is programmed day by day down to the last detail. The writer points out how this course differs in its objectives and its priorities from the conventional language course, and gives some figures to show what progress is made during it.
British banking means, to all intents and purposes, the Big Four--Barclays, Lloyds, the National Westminster, and the Midland. The banking scene in Italy is far more complex, with countless small and private organisations offering banking services in their own immediate neighbourhood, which may be as small as the confines of just one large village. Italian banking is more complex not only in its organisation but also in the range of operations carried out by the individual branches and the level of competence required of its staff. But in Italy, too, there are a number of great commercial banks with a nationwide network. One of the most important of these, the Credito Italiano, has more than 400 branches all over Italy. It also has overseas branches in London and the United States, and representative offices in South America and the Far East as well as in other European countries. With a staff of more than 17,000, the Credito Italiano has always followed a conscientious policy of staff training, and in 1976 it opened its own staff training college in a magnificent 18th century villa, lovingly and lavishly restored, standing in an 80-acre park to the northeast of Milan. Three-month courses are run there for new employees from all parts of the country before they start work in the bank, and there is also a wide range of other fuUtime courses concerned with different aspects of the bank's activities. ("Fulltime" in this context means from 8:25 to 5:10 every day, five days a week, the normal working timetable for bank staff.) Among these is a course that prepares personnel for work in the foreign department of the bank, the department that deals with the various operations that make possible the day-to-day business of the export and import of goods and services. After this course had been running for some time, it was decided to add instruction in English to the technical skills already taught, as a great many of the documents involved in international trade call for a working knowledge of that language, and the bank was anxious that the communications sent out in English should be accurately and correctly written. This wish to have a staff capable of producing accurate and clear English, and of understanding English instructions coming from all over the world (many of which are anything but
161
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The ESP Journal
accurate and clear) is not merely fastidiousness, as very often the understanding of certain instructions on a document written in English may be of vital importance for the successful finalisation of very big business indeed. Several problems were encountered at this initial stage. In the first place, it was quite clear that the people arriving to take part in the course would not be at the same level of English. Some would have had several years of English at school, but this in itself does not mean very much as so much depends upon the individual school, the individual teacher and the individual pupil. Some would be complete beginners, having attended schools where they studied French or German and not English. Then there was the fact that the technical course was already in existence and formed the basis upon which the new technical English course was to be constructed. As the bank's main interest in promoting this new venture was to make sure that all its personnel in the foreign department knew exactly what they were doing in English and were capable of functioning in that language, the content of the English course would have to be governed by the content of the technical course, and not only the content but also the chronological order in which those various items appeared in the technical course--quite often totally different from the logical order in which linguistic items would normally be taught. Another difficulty, at least for the planner of the English course, was the fact that various circumstances make it quite impossible for any homework to be given to these people, and they cannot be expected to do any preparation or study in their own time. So the course had to be completely self-sufficient in the sense that everything had to be completed in the classroom and within the class timetable. So in sitting down to plan and then to write this course we had to take all these points into consideration. The somewhat unorthodox nature of our final product was imposed upon us by the various circumstances in which the course was created and the particular working conditions of the students. Obviously, our first concern was to keep firmly in mind the bank's objective in running this course--to ensure that staff employed in the foreign departments are able to follow and produce all the English used in the day-to-day work of this particular sector. In the course as it had been run hitherto, a purely technical instruction course, the students had been grouped together to give the greatest possible variety in regional mix. Italians are notoriously clannish as far as their hometowns are concerned, and people are inclined to think of themselves as Milanese, or Genovese, or Neapolitan rather than "Italian". So it was clearly advisable to have each group of fifteen students made up of people coming from different parts of the country, and, particularly, to mix up those coming from the south with those from the north. Furthermore, in a predominantly masculine world like the Italian banking sector, what few women there were (no more than three per cent of the student population) could be "shared round," so to speak, and not be put together in the same group. This kind of grouping worked admirably for the students of the original technical course, as their technical preparation is more or less on a par, and
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in any case all the instruction was, of course, given in their native language. But it clearly would not do for a course of English, where homogeneous groups are essential. For a variety of reasons, it is not possible for us to know the real standard of English of the students before they arrive. Even if it were possible to ask them to fill in a questionnaire in advance about their previous English studies it would be of very little practical use. The one and only certain means of evaluation is the grading test which all the candidates take on the morning of their arrival at the centre to begin their course. This is then marked, the results listed, and the students arranged in groups of fifteen, according to the mark reached. This work is completed by the middle of the afternoon. They keep in these groups for the entire course, for the technical sessions as well as for the English periods. Our first task was to devise some means of grading 120 people into homogeneous groups efficiently in four or five hours, and so personal interviews were obviously out of the question. The instrument we use (which we prefer not to call a "test" as there is no question of competition, nor of any sort of evaluation other than achieving homogeneous grouping) is called English Language Level Assessment--the initials of which give us the title ELLA, which is also, incidentally, the Italian for "she." It is based on the preselecfion test which forms part of the Stages of Attainment Scale brought out a few years ago by the English Language Teaching Development Unit of Oxford University Press (ELTDU and SKF, n.d.). We had to change the context and lexical content of quite a lot of this, as the original version had been prepared for a large industrial concern in Sweden, where the skills called for and the language involved were very different. But as ELTDU had composed their original version according to the tenets of the Council of Europe and the famous "Threshold Level" (see van Ek and Alexander 1980) we stuck very carefully to the guidelines as far as the structures were concerned. In the compilation of our ELLA we asked for the collaboration of ELTDU, and they vetted our final version to make sure that we had not let our standards fall or rise. Three different versions of ELLA were written so that there is no danger of leakage, and the progress of each group can be gauged by submitting one version of the test at the beginning of the course and another at the end. ELLA is divided into three parts. The first one is called Reading and Writing and is nothing more or less than reading comprehension and basic structural production; the student is required to understand what he reads and to fill in the spaces with appropriate words or phrases. The skills called for here are structural and not lexical. Twelve marks are given for this section in each stage. Use of English, the following section, consists of three questions at each stage, and tests the student's knowledge of formulae that are more usually used in everyday informal conversation. This section only carries three marks in contrast with the previous section's 12; this reflects the needs of the student for following the course and also the needs of the bank. The third section is called Listening Comprehension; the students listen to various recorded conversations, and have to complete certain relevant sentences in their workbook. This section carries five marks at each stage. There are six stages, A to F, which means a total of 120 marks. (ELTDU set the Threshold Level mark at 36.)
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When the corrected workbooks have been put in "order of merit," from zero to the highest mark scored (those with zero including the students who declare that they have never studied English at all and who do not attempt the test), they are then divided into sets of fifteen. We thus have groups of students that are as homogeneous as possible. Whereas at the lower range it is not difficult to reach absolute homogeneity, there is a greater divergence in the highest group, where we may fend as wide a range as 60 to 85, but divergences are more easily coped with at this level. In the event of our having the odd student so advanced as to be far beyond anything that we offer in the course as planned, we have a library of specialised language material which we can give out for self-study, and there is a collection of recorded material for use in the language laboratory, library mode. It was realised at an early stage in the planning of this venture that it would not be possible to provide just one course that would be suitable for students at so widely differing levels. Neither would it be possible to provide six different courses, one for each of the stages of preparation identified by ELLA. It was decided therefore to compromise by providing two courses, Course A and Course B. The groups of students who fail to reach 36 marks on the first day, and who are therefore below Threshold Level, follow Course A; those who are already at Threshold Level or above follow Course B. These two courses are written with the middle of each section in mind, so that the teacher can "teach up" or "teach down" to suit the individual needs of the group of people sitting in front of him. Also during the planning stage of the course, the following objectives were established: Course A (i) To teach the basic fundamentals of the English language. (ii) To prepare the students to understand all the items of English that they meet during the technical course. (iii) To ensure that the students are capable of writing such items as may be expected of them in the normal course of their work. Course B To develop the students' capacity to cope with different linguistic situations within the boundaries of their work context (apart from the objectives given for Course A, which they are, in theory at least, already able to meet). It is clear then that the content of the two courses is the same, that is to say, the words and phrases that are used in the various forms and documents that the students have to understand and use in their technical course and thereafter in their work in the branches. A comprehensive list was compiled of all the English items, both lexical and phrasal, that are encountered during the technical course day by day. From a study of these, the English teaching staff drew up a plan of the various linguistic elements that would have to be taught to make these items meaningful. It was then decided that, as the ratio of English language teaching is one period to every three technical periods, every English "lesson" should (a) prepare the student for the structures that he is going to meet in the three following technical
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periods, and (b) revise and consolidate the individual lexical items and set phrases that he has already met in the previous three technical periods. For example, when the phrase IN CASE OF NON-PAYMENTADVISEBY TELEX GIVINGREASONSoccurs in the technical part of the course, the students must already be familiar with the structural elements of the phrase, which might be prepared by considering the sentence IN CASEOF RAINTRAVELBY TRAINBRINGING UMBRELLA. The individual lexical items--NON-PAYMENT, ADVISE, TELEX, TO
GIVE, REASON--are first "discovered" in the technical period, but in a language framework which is already familiar. If these words are new, they are then reconsidered in the following English period. As it was realised that an English course consisting of only this material would leave some very unfortunate and unforgivable gaps, the basic material was to be supplemented in as logical a manner as possible with a standard English course. But here, too, the needs of the bank would be reflected, and they are exactly the reverse of the normal order of precedence in the majority of English courses. The first need is understanding of the written word, the second is production of written messages, and third but very much third-is the ability to speak and to understand the spoken word. This reflects a working reality which is ignored by most textbook writers, who give undue emphasis to face-to-face encounters. A vast and unnumbered quantity of students of the English language throughout the world will most probably never have a face-to-face encounter in English, but they have an urgent need to understand and write business English.
UNITA' DIDATrlCA
WILL YOU DO ] ME A FAVOUR;'
N 411
L23A
MATERIALEDIDATTICO ~ENTE DI~ENTE
TEMPO
Ao--TI
- Vo~bulary
PARCEL KIND new POSTAGE FILE
total
Ireca
l~icle
ptioI amount remittlmce -- Set Pt~rmm Draft I t .......... from Ihipment of goods Total p~lml/cartonl/gr¢ll weight/net weight. Goods m t by Number lind kinds of p41d~l~l. Shipp+ng m~ks. . . . . . . . . . .
* Reflexive pronoum • Co~lm*'t*on of adjecti~s
LL 12 B for v ~ b . & Im phrlms;
Figure 1.
LL 12B
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i~)IDATTICA JNITA'
METO~LOGIA OIOAnlCA
DISCENT~
M A T E R I A L E OlOATTICO
~ENTE
Explain, discuss and ask for translation Check recall items orally by giving the Italian word and asking for the English
0.10
•
Reflexive pronouns
Show transparency LL 17 A
LL 17 A
Straightforward translation with careful attention to pronunciation, 0.25
• Comparison of a d j e c t i ~
Suggestion: show two pencils, one longer than
the other, Say:
"The red pencil is longer than the blue pencil", etc.
Write on board aftw the point h~s been understood aurally. Take one or two other examples of objects - or people - in room. Show transparency LL 18 A
LL 1B A
Explain carefully translate new words discus= - question,
Figure 2.
As for the actual compilation of the course, it was soon realised that all the written material, as well as most of the recorded items, would have to be produced by us, as there was nothing at all suitable on the market. There were a number of books dealing with British banking, but nothing at all dealing with the English elements in Italian banking, which is a very different matter. So we had to start from scratch and write a course. All the technical courses at the training centre are set out in the form of a kind of daybook, called the "scaletta" which gives the instructor step-by-step the various procedures he has to teach. We created the same kind of thing for our English courses. In the scaletta, the teacher finds all the items he has to teach in any one particular period, the time he is to devote to each one, and all the exercises that he must give the class during the time at his disposal, and others that he may use if he has sufficient time and if he thinks the material suitable for his particular group. Figures 1 and 2 show two pages of the scaletta, covering one fifty-minute teaching period near the beginning of Course A. The box in the top left hand corner contains the "survival phrase" of the day, WILLYOU DO ME A FAVOUR? These survival phrases, which do not fit comfortably into the general scheme of any integrated structured course, are essential everyday expressions and are distributed at the rate of one per lesson during the entire course, this being taken as an easily digestible rate. The teacher can introduce the survival phrase at any point during the lesson and in any way he chooses. The page is divided into five columns:
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167
TEMPI (times) This shows the approximate time the teacher should spend on each part of the lesson. He is not expected to follow this schedule slavishly with stopwatch in hand but to keep an eye on it to make sure that everything stipulated in the contents section is adequately covered. CONTENUTI (contents) This is under three headings. Vocabulary and Set Phrases are those items that the student has met during the preceding technical sessions. The lexical items in the Vocabulary are to be treated singularly, whereas the Set Phrases are to be learned as formulae. The Structures are those that are to be taught during the period to prepare the student to recognise and understand them when he comes across them in the following technical session. For example, Reflexive Pronouns appear here because in the next technical period he will come across the expression "Please reimburse yourselves on . . . . " METODOLOGIA DIDATTICA (teaching methodology) This is simply general guidance on how to use the material. MATERIALE DIDATTICO (teaching material) This is divided into two colunlns. The first (DOCENTE)shows the material needed by the teacher, while the second (DISCENTE) lists the material to be distributed to the class. Figure 3 shows the same lesson for level B, the students already above Threshold Level. No times are laid down here and the teacher has to "teach up" to match the level of the class. He has a supplementary exercise to use if he thinks fit, or if he has time.
DIDATT~CA UNITA' N
Lt~23B
48
MATERIALEDdDATTICO ~ENTE Df~ENTE AsA
V o c ~ u l a ' y and Set Phra=~
Show LL 12 B; the
vocabulaPt and set phra~e~ in Eng(ish only. Ask for translation. (see attached sheet) (10 minutes}
LL12B
ShOW LL 17 A. Attention to pronunciation and spelling, List common verbs that a r e reflexive in Italian but not in English.
LL17A
WASH. WAKE.WORRY, DRESS, BOAST, etc. Exploit acl lib. Compe¢iton of Idj(mti¥• Quick cevisi~, using LL 18 A. Play Tape L 4 8, using pause button after each comment, to elicit statements of comperi son, Sup~ementary Exercise
Figure 3.
L 23 B
LL~8A tape L 4 B
SUPP. EX. L23 E
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The teaching material used during the course is as follows: 1. Written exercises (EL). These are used in the classroom to back up and practice what has just been taught. 2. Overhead projector transparencies (LL). Some of these are simply typed, while others feature drawings produced by the visual aids unit. 3. Flash cards (FC). Particularly for Course A. These, too are produced by the visual aids unit, following our detailed instructions. 4. Wall charts for vocabulary work in the classroom. 5. Tapes. Prerecorded tapes to be used in the classroom to illustrate some particular language point. 6. Lab drills for use in the language laboratory. Most of these were written by us and recorded in our own recording studios. Great care was taken to contextualise the drills wherever possible into a relevant and recognisable working background connected with the course. 7. Films. To be seen after appropriate preparation, in the classroom, in the form of videocassettes. We use films from several BBC series and from other sources. We hope to be making films of our own in the future (in fact, work is going on at present on a series of animated cartoons dealing with very basic linguistic points), as there is nothing ideally suitable on the market for adult beginners in a banking context. The scaletta system ensures that every teacher teaches exactly the same lesson as far as the content is concerned, and although the structure of the scaletta looks very rigid, it does, in fact, give ample opportunity for each member of the staff to approach the items in his own personal way. It also ensures that each group of students covers exactly the same ground, and thus makes it possible for the teachers to be "rotated" so that no class has the same teacher for two consecutive lessons, and each teacher spends the same amount of time with each class. There is no book apart from the scaletta, so it is up to the teacher to explain and teach in his own way, using the ample material available. The English teachers at the centre are all "mother tongue" and, for the moment, all British, although ideally we would like to have voices from other parts of the world to train our students to cope with American English, not to mention Australian, South African, and other accents that might cause difficulty, It would be too much to hope for experienced EFL teachers who are also experienced in the work of the foreign department of the bank. In fact, our teaching staff come from a variety of backgrounds and the one thing they have in common is a total ignorance on arrival of the working of the foreign department or even of the bank as a whole--and, therefore, of the implications of this course of which our English teaching forms an integral part. A special telescoped version of the technical course is run for the benefit of new teachers so that when they are ready to go into the classroom for the first time at the end of their training period they understand what is going on in the course. Naturally, we do not train them to teach the technical material, any more than the technical staff are trained to teach the English language. But the English teacher must understand the context of the phrases he is explaining just as much as the
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169
technical instructor must understand the meaning of the English phrases he comes across in his part of the course. The first wave of students was admitted in February 1979 and was of an experimental nature. All the material had been carefully researched and prepared, but we had not had the opportunity to try it out on real live students in a classroom situation, and we realised that various modifications would be necessary. In fact, during this first course, we had a meeting every few days during which the various lessons were discussed and notes were kept as to which were too long, which were too short, which were too difficult, which were too easy, which "worked" and which did not, and so on. And this first wave consisted of only 45 students, selected so that there was one group of complete beginners, one rather more advanced (though still an A group), and one advanced group who followed the B course. At the end of the four months we gave them another version of the grading test they had done on the first day to measure what progress had been made. We were pleased to see that on the final showing only one student of the 45 was still below Threshold Level and there was an averge improvement of about 30 marks. Exactly three years later, as this article is being written at the beginning of 1982, more truly representative figures for the sorts of results we have been achieving can be taken from the course that began in January. Only 75 students were to do the full four-month course with the English element, as because of administrative reasons it was expedient for 45 of the total intake of 120 to do a version of the old three-month course (without English) and return to work in their branches as soon as possible. The grading test, ELLA, was given to everyone the first day. The top 45 (who would have formed B groups) were then given a course with no English at all; as far as their work in the bank is concerned this did not matter greatly as their knowledge of the language was already such as to be sufficient for job needs. The remaining 75 scored from 0-27 in the grading test, all well below Threshold Level. The five groups were made up as follows:
1
(0)
None of the students had ever studied English at all.
2
(0-12)
Five complete beginners, the other ten ranging from 7 to 12.
3
(13-20)
4
(20-23)
5
(24-27) At the end of the course, a similar grading test gave the following result: (31-61)
Only one student still below Threshold Level.
(31-52)
Only one student still below Threshold Level.
(38-58)
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4
(40-60)
5
(44-78)
It will be noticed that in the homogeneous groups formed at the beginning of the course, progress rates varied considerably, and the most dramatic rise was made in the lowest group, the complete beginners, where one student reached a total of 61 at the end of the course. I believe that this course is unique, and although it breaks many of the golden rules of EFL teaching, such "sins" can be readily justified: (a)
(b) (c)
As far as Course A is concerned, a greater part of the teaching is done in Italian. This obviously saves time and things can be explained much more easily. And as far as the technical language items are concerned (the Set Phrases of the scaletta), the explanation of these very often has to be only of a one-to-one translation nature, as the structures involved are far beyond the students' capabilities at this stage. The old bogey of "homework" is dead and buried; the students are not expected to do any work on their English outside the classroom. They do not begin by learning to speak and to understand what is said to them. This comes at a later stage and is given less emphasis. They learn what is important for their work in the bank.
I think that we have achieved something worthwhile in that we have evolved a course which teaches, within the confines of the company, the sort of English that the company requires its staff to know. This is what I understand by inservice training, but is what rarely happens as far as English teaching is concerned. It seems that only too often the firm farms out its personnel to outside commercial language schools, who give a smattering of general English but do not--indeed, cannot--give the students the kind of specialised English that they need for their job even if a needs analysis is made. We are teaching the employees of the Credito Italiano the sort of English that they need for the effective day-to-day working of the bank--a special kind of English for a special purpose. That was our original mandate. REFERENCES
ELTDU (English Language Teaching Development Unit) and SKF (Aktiebolaget Svenska Kullagerfabriken). n.d. Stages of Attainment Scale and Test Battery: General Information. Bicester: English Language Teaching Development Unit. van Ek, J. A. and L. G. Mexander. 1980. Threshold Level English. Oxford: Pergamon Press Ltd. Geoffrey L a n d is in charge of the English language teaching programme at the Centro Formazione Professionale of the Credito Italiano. He has been engaged in EFL teaching for more than 25 years, during which time he has
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taught for Eurocentres, the Inner London Education Authority, and the British Council. His publications include What’s in the News? and What the Papers Say (Long-man 1975 and 1981), Picture Stories for Composition(Evans 1981), Test Pa#ers for Reading Compvehensim (Oxford University Press 1975), and a text for Italian secondary schools called Trends (Principato 1981). His main research interest is the use of authentic visual material in EFL teaching.