Teacher training for EST: Problems and methods

The ESP Journal,

Vol. 2, pp. 9-31, 1983 Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed In the USA.

0272-2380/83/010009 23503.00/0 Copyright © 1983 The American University

T e a c h e r T r a i n i n g for EST: Problems and Methods* J . R. E w e r

A b s t r a c t - - F o r over a decade the E S T teacher-training course at the Uni-

v e r s i t y of Chile at Santiago has been a part of the regular u n d e r g r a d u a t e p r o g r a m m e in English language for t e a c h e r - t r a i n e e s . Concentrating at first on scientific and technological English, in later y e a r s the course has also included English for vocational p u r p o s e s . T h e s t u d e n t s in the course, like m o s t potential and practising E F L / E S L teachers, have a humanities background; further, they have learned their English according to the traditional, " g e n e r a l " English s y s t e m . Accordingly, they come to the E S T teachertraining c o u r s e with five main t y p e s of problems: attitudinal, conceptual, linguistic, methodological, and organisational. A combination of theoretical and practical c l a s s e s h a s b e e n designed to o v e r c o m e t h e s e problems. By careful planning and patient teaching the course builds an entirely new, i n t e g r a t e d conceptual n e t w o r k for the s t u d e n t s . Not only the c o n t e n t of the course, but also the m e t h o d o l o g y u s e d in its p r e s e n t a t i o n can s e r v e as a frame of reference for other institutions planning preservice or inservice t e a c h e r training in EST/ESP. [Editor]

P r o b l e m s of Transferring from "General" ELT to E S T / E S P As the evidence on all sides shows, the teaching of ESP, and particularly of EST, has expanded very rapidly during the last few years. More conferences on the subject are being held and articles and books published; more students are being enrolled, and these in classes for longer periods; and lastly, more, and more adequate, specialised teaching materials are becoming available. As a result of this activity, the demand for teachers and supervisors with a knowledge of the game is rising rapidly. This is all very satisfactory. However, this bright picture of a triumphal march of progress is at present being overshadowed by a heavy cloud of unknowing: where are the skilled teachers necessary to put these courses into effective operation coming from in the first place, and where are the extra teachers demanded by this continuing expansion to be found? The effects of more adequate textbooks are largely annulled if the teachers assigned to use them are unable or unwilling to understand either the language or the concepts they contain, or if they are unaware of communicative tolerances and demand unrealistically and unnecessarily high standards from their students, or waste the all-too-short time on points * Reprinted with permission from E S T / E S P Chile Newsletter, Special Issue No. 1, June 1979. As originally printed, the article was essentially a transcript of a paper which Ewer prepared for the Second Latin American ESP Conference, Coyococ, Mexico, March 1979; this explains the style and the lack of bibliographic references. The article is reprinted here with only slight editorial changes.

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of language familiar from "general" ELT, but largely irrelevant for EST (the textbooks should not contain them, but do!), or if their attitudes to science students of eighteen to twenty years old are based on those taught in their teacher-training courses, which are relevant to schoolchildren of the ages thirteen to fourteen. Even greater harm can result from supervisors' lack of knowledge and how to apply it in organizing an EST programme, e.g., of such things as job analysis, activities analysis, language and nonlanguage requirements for different cases, matching requirements and materials, textbook analysis, evaluation in EST, etc. Five years ago I analysed in some detail the difficulties that face the traditionally trained teacher when transferring his activities from teaching aimless, inchoate and teacher-centered "general" English to the totally different student-centered system of ESP, and especially EST, where most of the effort is at present concentrated (Ewer 1975: 44-45). These difficulties can be grouped under five main headings: firstly, attitudinal (his attitude is likely to be antipathetic to science, and this can have disastrous effects on his students and on his own performance in teaching EST); secondly, conceptual (unless he has an appreciation of what science is about and how scientists work, and is willing to acquire the intelligent layman's outline knowledge of the disciplines his students are studying, he will be unable to understand the broad meaning of the language he is supposed to be teaching); thirdly, linguistic (not only will he have difficulty in coping with the specialised lexis of different disciplines and their related fields, ~ut even the comparatively small number of language items which are common to all subjects, i.e., the "core" language of science and technology, and which account for such a large percentage of the total language used in any particular subject, are likely to present him with numerous problems of meaning and function); fourthly, methodological (since the type and age of students with which he will be concerned in EST will differ markedly from those of the "general" school course for which he has been trained, as will their intellectual and emotional maturity and motivation, the ways in which he needs to apply basic classroom methods will be different, whilst certain types of training required by the students will demand other, and possibly unfamiliar approaches: his notions of what is important, his attitude towards "errors", and the ways of evaluating performance to which he is accustomed, will all need to be radically adjusted); finally, organisational (a substantial proportion of EST teachers will, as supervisors, have to cope with administrative problems for which their conventional training has entirely failed to prepare them). On the basis of such an analysis it is relatively easy to develop a specialised training course which can reduce the teachers' or teacher-trainees' difficulties to manageable inservice training proportions, and thus provide a firm basis for developing effective ESP programmes in which the supervisors know how to organise, evaluate and support the operation, and the teachers know how to carry it out. Such a course, concentrating on Scientific and Technological English at first, but nowadays including a proportion of Vocational English (EVP), has been developed at the Uni-

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versity of Chile at Santiago and for over a decade now has been part of the regular undergraduate course in English language attended by teachertrainees. Although the contents of this course have been discussed elsewhere (Ewer 1975: 45-46), a brief review of its main features is necessary before going on to describe the methodology of teaching the course, which is the subject of this article.

Main Components of EST Teacher Training at the University of Chile at Santiago To begin with, we should bear in mind the nature of the institution at which the course is given and the students for whom it caters. The institution is one of the university English Departments, which in Chile are responsible for giving the specialised training in the English language to undergraduate students who wish to get the degree of State Teacher of English and who are then eligible to take up appointments in the secondary schools and universities. Hence the course not only trains future teachers of EST (most EST teaching is done in the first and sometimes second years of the university courses), but future teacher trainers as well. Practising teachers have also, on occasion, attended the course. The objectives noted above, i.e., to help remove students' attitudinal, conceptual, linguistic, methodological and organisational difficulties, are tackled by means of two kinds of class and a series of associated activities. The first kind of class (which can be termed for convenience's sake "practical" classes) is primarily concerned with teaching the students the main elements of the language of science and technology; at the same time they necessarily include concepts of science on the one hand, and the methodology of teaching EST/ESP on the other. These formal EST language classes are supplemented by partially-directed reading assignments in the literature of science and technology, and (depending on time available) visits to laboratories or industrial firms and the showing of films on science and technology. All these activities help the student to widen his knowledge not only of the language of science but of its concepts as well; a further result is that, as familiarity with the work of science and scientists grows, so also does the student's attitude towards them become more positive. Also associated with the practical classes is a microteaching component in which the students, working in pairs, have to prepare an EST class (including the writing of teaching material) and teach it to their classmates. Previous training for this has been carried out by means of shorter assignments in which they write various types of language exercise, often on difficult points of the core language of EST, and present them to their fellow students. Again, this activity has a multiple payoff: it not only consolidates language and concepts but gives the students a chance to put their ideas on methodology into actual practice. The second type of class (which we can call the "theoretical" ones, although a great deal of practical work goes on in them) has the aim of giving the students a working knowledge of the teaching of EST as a

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complete s y s t e m of its own. A great deal of information useful to the E S T / E S P t e a c h e r and essential for the teacher/supervisor and teacher trainer is covered in these classes, including the linguistic background to E S T (varieties, registers, speech acts, core languages, etc.); how to estimate community needs for English; job analysis; matching job and activity requirements with the language needed; syllabus design; textbook analysis; materials production; methodology; attitude to errors; evaluation; and administrative and organizational aspects of EST/ESP. Essential as all this information has been shown to be, the task of getting it over effectively to trainee-teachers and practising teachers alike has been far from easy, and in the course of time we have had to make a good many changes in the ways the course as a whole, and its various components, have been taught.

General Problems Affecting the Methodology of the E S T Teacher-Training Course We might look first of all at one or two of the main problems that have emerged, as these have tended to determine a number of features of the methodology p r e s e n t l y being adopted. The first is the fact that the course has to train its students not just for one job, but for three: first as an E S T / E S P t e a c h e r per se; second as an E S T / E S P programme supervisor or coordinator; third, as an E S T / E S P teacher trainer. (The changeover from general English to ESP is so rapid nowadays that we have no means of knowing which of our students will fill which role.) This in turn has several consequences: first of all, the scope the course has to cover is, as we have seen, both extensive and unfamiliar, even to practising teachers. Since it is extensive, one has to allow plenty of time for the students to absorb all t h i s - - a t least 150 to 200 clock hours, which means several sessions a week for one or two terms. It could b e - - a n d has b e e n - - c o n c e n t r a t e d into four weeks with seven to eight hours of classes daily, but this is v e r y hard on limited staff, and students as well. The unfamiliarity of much of the material again brings serious problems of how to organise it so that the students can begin to see a meaningful pattern as quickly as possible and are not discouraged by having to stagger painfully along in a sort of perpetual mental fog, with no sense of direction or view of the surroundings. This demands the creation of a s y s t e m of rapidly interlocking reference (see "Overall Strategy" below); it also means that the instructors have to avoid trying to force the pace and must be infinitely patient and reassuring, especially in the early stages of the course. The second consequence of this three-job training is that the student has to keep four roles in mind, and learn to separate them, all the time he is in the course: first, himself as an undergraduate student; second, himself as a t e a c h e r of EST/ESP; third, himself as a person responsible for developing E S T / E S P programmes of a whole institution, and for supervising and coordinating the work of other teachers; and finally, himself as a m e m b e r of staff of a university D e p a r t m e n t of English or Education,

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with the responsibility for the special training of teachers for ESP. The instructors of the course must therefore be very careful to make it absolutely clear at all times which of the roles the students are supposed to be reacting to in the current activity. This is not nearly as schizophrenic as it sounds, and students not only learn to make these adjustments quite rapidly, but find them stimulating and illuminating. However, it is first necessary to break the students' ingrained habit of thinking of themselves only as students, and of being eternally dependent on the teachers. Thus they must be shown how to be much more self-reliant than they have been expected to be previously, and this has led to the introduction of something of a seminar-type approach for much of the course. Another problem is caused by the very deep-rooted preconceptions that both students and practising teachers bring to the course; indeed, in general these preconceptions are even stronger and more inhibitory in the teachers than in trainees. In both cases their origin lies in the traditional practices and assumptions of the general-English system to which they have been accustomed, which are often quite different, even diametrically opposed, to those of EST. To take just one point, preconceptions about the time available for teaching an EST course: since they themselves are accustomed to a system where the time allocated for teaching general English appears almost limitless, spread over eight or ten years in many cases, they subconsciously take it for granted that they will have a similar length of time for teaching an EST programme. This leads to the total lack of a sense of urgency, of realising the necessity for looking at everything in terms of discriminating, of having to make constant choices between the essential and not so essential, (and hence having to find out, and not guess, what is essential and what is not); in other words, just this single preconception makes it extremely difficult for the student to appreciate some of the fundamental features of the EST system. These often unexpressed, fixed ideas are so many in number and have such a firm hold that they demand constant attention from the instructors to avoid a great deal of frustrating and time-wasting crossing of lines. The tactics now built into the course to counter this are: firstly, the principle of cumulative repetition of points which experience has shown are likely to be misunderstood; secondly, to get the students to argue out for themselves the differences in EST/ESP with the practices or assumptions of the general-English system whenever they are encountered; and thirdly, to insist all the time on the fact that the teacher of EST is training his students to do a definite job in the real world, just as the staff of an Engineering or Medical School are training their students to build real bridges and perform surgical operations on real people. We thus already have some useful general methodological principles to apply to the course. Instructors must not force the pace, must be patient and reassuring, must be aware of inhibitory preconceptions stemming from their students' previous experience with general English, and must encourage the students themselves to argue out the differences between

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the systems. Students must be made to look up, compare and evaluate information for themselves in order to be more critical and independent, and to think and act as teachers rather than students (hence the course includes a fair amount of problem setting). And lastly, in presenting the necessarily unfamiliar background to EST, main points must be sketched in quickly and then emphasis shifted immediately to the interconnections between them so as to help the students build up rapidly a meaningful conceptual network. With this in mind, we can now look more closely at some of the methods used in the various parts of the course.

Overall Strategy We have seen that classes are of roughly two kinds: the practical ones, concerned with getting the students to learn some of the most important elements of the language of science and technology, but also including methodology, the production of materials, and attitude- and conceptforming activities; and the theoretical ones, concerned with getting the students to understand how the teaching of EST/ESP operates as an entirely different system from the one they have been accustomed to. The practical classes do not, in general, present problems of unfamiliarity or strangeness in themselves; the learning efforts involved, types of exercises, etc. are traditional and well understood, and pose no undue threat to the self-assurance of the students. Rather the contrary, in fact, since they have features which tend to increase the students' self-confidence-for example, a relaxed attitude to errors. It is the theoretical or background part of the course which causes most of the difficulties: the EST system corresponds so little with that of the English-teaching system the students are accustomed to that they not only have no appropriate background framework into which they can fit the new information they are getting, but what background they do have is extremely misleading and gives rise to the errroneous preconceptions noted earlier. We therefore have to create a meaningful pattern out of a linearly presented series of themes which are essentially new and conflictive for the student. The strategy for dealing with this is to establish these key themes--the "nerve centres" of the subject, as it were--rapidly and in outline only, with their immediate sequential connections, also in outline. For example, in Appendix 1, the diagram shows that the first "nerve centre" deals with the way language varies, and varies according to different uses. (This immediately conflicts with the preconception that language forms and their meanings are common to all uses, and therefore requires considerable demonstration before the students can really grasp the point.) This leads to a consideration of restricted languages and is illustrated by reference to the language of science and technology. This in turn paves the way for a consideration of there being different real needs for English in the community, according to the different types of user; hence, (con-

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necting backwards with what has already been established) different users will need different sorts of English. This is again illustrated by reference to EST, and connects also with the EST core-language materials the students are beginning to work with in their language-learning classes. An important point here is that the instructors must resist the tendency to go into too much detail at this stage, however interesting it might be for the teacher, and even to the students. As soon as the points have been grasped, move on, there will be time to fill in the details later when the overall picture has been outlined. Thus as the different "nerve centres" are established in sequence, the connections both with each other and with the activities being carried out in the language classes are established, and each time this is done the original themes are revised and enlarged (i. e., the principle of cumulative repetition). In this way an intelligible conceptual network for the student is built up quite rapidly and increasingly firmly, and the relevance of the theoretical classes for the practical classes, and vice versa, is continually being demonstrated. Lastly, once every three or four weeks, 45 minutes or so are devoted to a bird's-eye view of what has been done during the period under review. However, this is not just a simple revision or recapitulation, but is taken from the completely different point of view of how the activities in both the theoretical and practical classes have enabled progress to be made in the five main areas of potential difficulty already mentioned, i.e., attitude, concepts, language, methodology, and infrastructure [organization or administration]. This again keeps the aims of the course constantly before the students' eyes and, particularly at the beginning of the course, reassures them that there is method in the apparent madness.

Theoretical C l a s s e s So much for the general strategy of the course. To deal with the presentation of a particular theme in the theoretical classes, a number of tactics are brought into play. In the first place, every effort must be made to make use of what the students already know, or think they know, and this is done primarily by posing Socratic-type questions, or by putting the students into a possible situation appropriate to the subject, and asking for their reactions. This particular tactic has developed rapidly in the last few years, and has replaced a good deal of the straightforward lecturing of the earlier versions of the course. The two important points here are, firstly, to allow the students adequate time for thought and discussion among themselves (see "Group Work" below), and secondly, to be able to frame the questions in alternative forms. (Incidentally, making questions clear and unambiguous for the student is one of the main difficulties for the instructors.) On the first point (allowing sufficient time for thought and a clear formulation of the reply) we usually announce an approximate

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time (for example, "You have got three or four minutes to think about this one"). At the same time we discourage "rapid-reaction" replies: when correct, they are usually from the brightest stars of the class and if these replies are consistently accepted it tends to prevent the rest of the class from putting their minds to the problem; when, as is usual, they are incorrect, it not only wastes valuable time which could have been saved by little more thought, but erodes the students' often painfully acquired selfconfidence quite unnecessarily. Apart from making use of the students' own knowledge in this way, information is conveyed in the usual manner by means of explanations by the instructors. (It should be explained that, just as a good deal of the students' activities are done in groups of two to four, so the teaching of the theoretical, lecture-seminar type of class is done by two teachers who are together in the same room; see "Team Teaching" below.) Since in some cases these lectures may have to be quite lengthy (approximately 90 minutes), our practice is to split them up, the first part, say, being done by one instructor and the rest by the other. This adds variety to the operation, allows both instructors to experiment with different methods of presentation, etc., and allows the "passive" instructor to observe the effects on the students. It is also standard practice in lectures to stop every ten to fifteen minutes for a few minutes to allow time for the students to get down notes, discuss among themselves points about what they have just heard, and ask questions. This may sound a slow way of getting things done, but we have found that it is far more effective than the unbroken lecture, which tends to go in at one ear of the student and out at the other in an undigested stream. During these pauses the two instructors are not idle; they go round the class checking that notes are being written up correctly (a very necessary job), giving hints, and answering questions.

Handouts To supplement the class activity and the students' own notes, a fairly extensive system of explanatory handouts is used. These are listed in Appendix 2 according to the main subjects covered. It may be worth saying a few words about these handouts and the way they are used. First of all, they should be kept short: our students have so many other subjects to study that anything more than a page or two long tends to remain unread (until just before, say, a term examination, when their significance has been largely forgotten). However, the point of these handouts is to help students consolidate their knowledge as they go along, so their contents often have to be utilised in group work in class or for answering the many short tests which are part of the evaluation system of the course. Visuals (diagrams, etc.) are of course a great help in presenting or summarising main points clearly, and I do not think we make

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enough use of these at present, either on the blackboard in class or in the handouts. Contrary to the practice established in earlier versions of the course, handouts are now given out after a first treatment of the theme has been given in class, so that they confirm, correct or expand the students' own notes. As I have just indicated, unlike material given out in other subjects, which is usually filed away until the final exams, most of the handouts are used, as it were, dynamically, and have to be constantly referred to by the student when doing work in class or at home. They therefore have to be brought to all classes together with the language materials given out and the students' own notebooks. Finally, it should be noted that not all the students get all the handouts: to avoid overburdening the rest of the class, about a third of them are reserved and given out only on request by keener or more advanced students. These, then, are roughly the tactics employed in dealing with a particular theme in the theoretical classes.

Practical C l a s s e s As far as the practical language classes are concerned, these follow a straightforward pattern, except perhaps for the fact that a great deal of the activity is again done in pairs or small groups of students. Included in these activities are materials production and microteaching, both of which are carried out from the beginning of the course. For example, one of the students' first EST language-learning activities in the course is training in following a single idea through a series of additions and modifications (a psychological, rather than a language difficulty, though it also introduces the students effectively to the very important logical operators, or "modifying connectives", as we call them). This is done by means of what are termed "idea-following" exercises, which can take a number of different forms. After the students have carried out a number of these themselves (and while the instructor is giving them to the students he is also pointing out how he is doing it, that is to say, the classroom methods for presenting them), they divide into groups and with the help of the appropriate handout make up exercises of their own and try them out on the rest of the class, following the methodological steps already demonstrated. The same procedure is followed for other types of language materials and exercises. Towards the end of the second part of the course pairs of students have to prepare a complete language lesson based on the specialised lexis of a particular scientific subject with exercises covering the teaching of specialised and EST core language vocabulary and structures, and projects, and give about half-an-hour's teaching on sections chosen by the instructor. Though it means a lot of work for both students and instructors, this is

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quite a popular feature of the course, partly because it antedates the students' official teaching practice in the Department of Education and thus serves as a sort of intermediate bridge between methodological theory and the actual teaching-in-a-school that is required. At all stages of materials production and microteaching the members of the class are asked to give their comments and suggestions on their own and their fellow students' performance, so that an alert and helpfully critical attitude can be engendered.

Reading Assignments Another activity associated with the language classes is reading in science and technology. This consists of two different assignments. In the first, the "set book" assignment, the students have to read a very short book on how scientists or technologists work. To help them read profitably, they are given a sheet of questions which put into focus and interrelate important points. In spite of this, the assignment, which comes early in the course, is invariably carried out very poorly, although several modifications have been tried out in an effort to improve matters. We have come to the conclusion that the failure is due to (a) the strong inbuilt prejudice against science which our Arts-trained students still have at this stage of the course; (b) a miscalculation of the time and effort necessary to understand the books, which are deceptively short and in very simple language (no amount of prior warning seems to have any effect here); (c) poor previous reading habits; and (d) ambiguities in the texts themselves, arising as a result of the abridgements and simplifications from the original texts, which have obviously been carried out by literary-, not scientificallytrained people. The obvious solution to (d) at least, is to change the textbooks, but this is not at all simple; there seems to be a real shortage of short, clear, fairly elementary books on the work of scientists and technologists. However, all misfortunes have their positive aspects, and in this case the unexpected shock which most of the students receive has a very salutary effect on their subsequent performance, as long as the instructor's attitude is to treat it as a rather wry joke, rather than be condemnatory. (I might say here that in this sort of course the instructor's relationship with the students is probably as important as the methods used to teach them; this point is developed in more detail below.) The second assignment is the reading of unabridged "intelligent layman's" books on science and technology (mainly Penguin and Mentor editions), selected from a fairly wide range of subjects and chosen according to the students' own personal preferences. This is done later in the course and the results are evaluated by a fairly long oral interview with an instructor. The immediate objectives of these reading assignments are of course to influence the students' attitude to scientists and their work, and to enlarge their knowledge of both the concepts of science and its language. One therefore has to try and make sure that the students have as much

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help as possible in understanding what they are reading, and this is done partly through the special reference library, partly through consultations with the instructors.

Evaluation Tests are of several kinds: relatively numerous short ones (called "partials") five to ten minutes long, mainly on specific factual material; longish ones on factual material and its assessment (for example, the reading assignments); the microteaching, which is evaluated partly by the teacher, partly by the students themselves, from three points of view--the "teaching presence" of the student, his own oral English, and the material prepared for the lesson; finally, term tests of all material studied, divided into sections corresponding to the three main aspects of Language, Teaching Methods, and Background (see Appendix 3). It is worth noting that the three aspects mentioned have different mark-weightings from one semester test to the other, reflecting a difference in emphasis in the teaching. Thus in the first semester the highest mark in the three areas is that of the "Language" section and the least is the "Background"; in the second semester test, these weightings are reversed. To comment on some general features of these tests: 1. Although contrary to their previous training and experience, most students like the many short tests carried out throughout the year, since this system forces them to revise work promptly instead of postponing it till the end-of-term test, when memory has become erratic. Conversely, the information which these tests consolidate helps them to understand later work much better. 2. It is important to run over the results of the tests, even for the short partials, since it shows the instructor what has not been generally grasped, prevents cumulative misunderstandings, and reinforces the students' learning. 3. In evaluating the students' oral work in particular, the emphasis is on communicative ability rather than the avoidance of errors. 4. A very positive point is that the students are told what evaluation is for--i.e., a device to help both students and teachers, and that the teachers are as anxious as the students that they should do well; hence the teachers will do as much as possible to help the students. In other words, the attitude to tests is not teachers versus students or students versus teachers, but teachers and students versus tests! The foregoing, then, is a brief account of the shape of the course and some of the main methods and approaches developed so far for putting the contents of the two types of class across to the students. We might perhaps now consider some more general features such as the reference library and its use, group work, and team teaching; and some miscellaneous noninstitutional elements such as instructors' attitudes, motivational factors, etc.

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Reference Library First the reference library. We do not think a course of this kind can be run effectively without a library of reference books and visuals which can be consulted by students and instructors alike. Our own library has necessarily been built up very slowly, as the Department has no funds available for this sort of thing, and is largely the result of teachers' donations or of money earned by them from outside lectures, seminars, etc., plus purchases from the money provided by charging students a small amount for hiring reading-assignment books. Its contents include encyclopaedias (mainly in English and a few in Spanish), "intelligent layman's" books at different levels explaining various scientific and technological subjects, scientific and technological undergraduate and graduate textbooks, specialised dictionaries (both English and bilingual), copies of professional journals and trade magazines (mainly back numbers obtained from specialised libraries or from the commercial or cultural sections of Englishspeaking embassies), and ESP textbooks and visual aids. Students have to make a good deal of use of the library when they are preparing projects for both language and background classes, as well as for reading assignments and microteaching, and one of the first things done at the beginning of the course is to take the students along to where the material is kept and to get them familiar with it by setting them small problems to solve in teams. Elementary as all this sounds it is quite an important feature of the course, since our undergraduate students, even at the advanced stage at which the course is taken (the fourth and last year of the English-language course), have had very little training in reference work previously. As the course progresses, instructors answer fewer and fewer questions that can be answered by reference to material in the library, and students are encouraged to go out of the room during a class to make use of it. The answers found are of course checked, and one also has to insist that there is often more than one source of information on the same thing available, and that these, when found, have to be compared and evaluated. All this is much slower and more complicated for the teacher than merely pap-feeding the students with immediate answers to their questions, but it is obviously an essential step in making them more critical and selfreliant.

Group Work As was mentioned earlier, many of the student activities in both languagelearning and background classes are done in groups, and this has been a very productive feature of the course. However, group work has to be properly organized from the beginning; the mere fact of getting students into groups does not at all guarantee good work, and in fact can lead to very much the r ev er s e if care is not taken. There are several principles which we have found to be useful in achieving effective results with our

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particular sort of student. The first of these is that there should be no more than three integrants in each group, otherwise they get in each other's way and some students may therefore become bored and convert themselves into passengers. Secondly, groups should contain at least one fairly good student ("good" in the sense of quickness of reaction, general knowledge, energy and, least important of all, knowledge of English); if this is not done, all the best students tend to group together, leaving all the weak ones together too! Thirdly, the task given should be reasonably short and manageable: in general, group activities last for about twenty minutes, though they may range from, say, five minutes for discussing the answer to a Socratic question or for practising a language exercise, to an hour or more for analysing language samples or developing teaching materials. Fourthly, each group must know exactly what their job is: before setting the groups to work, members of various groups should be asked to repeat what they have to do and, where appropriate, say what materials they need to refer to or use, and outline the way they would tackle the problem. While the groups are at work, the instructors go round to each, making sure that members of any given group are not duplicating each other's work unnecessarily, and conversely, if it is a multiple task (text analysis, for example), that each member of a group knows his own particular job. The use of English for intragroup discussion (as well as for class presentation) is encouraged from the beginning. As many as possible of the groups should be allowed to present their conclusions to the rest of the class. However, enough is enough, and boredom or waste of time must be avoided. As soon as the point at issue has been satisfactorily resolved, move on, but it is important to ensure that groups whose presentations have been omitted on one occasion should have first chance on the next. The control of group-work presentations may present some problems at the beginning of the course, as speakers tend to wander from the point, use high-sounding but meaningless or ambiguous clich6s to disguise a lack of getting to grips with the problem, and give vague definitions rather than concrete examples. The instructors here must be firm but not discouraging, and must try not to intrude too much. This is of course difficult, but bit by bit a balance is struck and students soon learn to avoid the worst difficulties. Lastly, when representatives of groups have given their opinions, the instructor or one of the better-trained students can sum up the valid points made. Team Teaching In the practical classes, it is clearly important that the number of students dealt with should be as small as possible, so that each member of the class gets as much practice as possible; hence the students are divided into two groups of not more than about 20 students each for these classes, each group with a separate instructor. For the background classes, how-

22

The ESP Journal

ever, or for explanations connected with the language classes, the number of students involved is of little importance. Both groups are therefore taught together, with the two instructors present, each taking it in turn to do the "active" part of the teaching (as indicated previously) whilst the "passive" or watching instructor sits at the back of the class noting the reactions of the students and the performance of the active teacher (students soon get used to this), and often "controlling" the latter by a system of signs or facial expressions. For example, it is often difficult for the active teacher to gauge when explanations are too long, or not long enough; his partner is in a much better position to appreciate this and to give him the appropriate signals. Again, in this game we are learning all the time, and it often happens that the active teacher may omit or underemphasize a relevant point which the watching teacher can ensure is brought to the attention of the students and given its due weight. During student work in groups, both instructors go round the class checking and helping. Finally, as soon after the class as possible, the two instructors meet to exchange impressions and begin planning the following class in as much detail as possible. Team teaching in this way is also an excellent method of showing other teachers how to put such a course into operation, with the "trainee"-teacher being given very short or selective active roles to begin with, increasing in length and variety as knowledge and confidence grow.

Miscellaneous To complete this overview of methods used in teaching the course, a word should perhaps be said about what one might call some psychological aspects of the teaching methods. First of all, building up the confidence and self-reliance of the students. This is obviously important, not only for helping them to cope with the course itself, but for their future professional careers. Various ways in which this is done have already been mentioned. Some of them have to do, simply, with what is now called study methods: knowing how to use a library, how to compare, evaluate and synthesize sources, and how to present one's findings to one's classmates in public. Other essential study skills, such as speed reading and effective notetaking, are dealt with in the course from the point of view of how to teach these skills to EST students, but experience has shown that our own teacher-trainees are themselves very deficient in these areas, although as far as notetaking is concerned we have already seen that this is a lively concern of the instructors all the time. Nevertheless, there is certainly a good case to be made for spending a class or two at the beginning of the course on training the students at least to skim read, so as to enable them to cope more readily with the handouts and other reference material they will encounter during the course. All these skills increase self-confidence. Again, the more realistic and sensible standards of English set by the course are reassuring to the students, as is also the attitude of the in-

Teacher Training for EST: Problems and Methods

23

structors towards tests and examinations, discussed above. The gradual withdrawal, as the course develops, of the instructor's help in answering questions which the students can answer for themselves by consulting available sources, and the group work and problem-solving activities in general, certainly help to make the students more self-reliant at the end of the course than they were at the beginning, and at the same time better able to cooperate amongst themselves. Lastly, the attitude of the instructors in being patient in repeating explanations and willing to admit lack of knowledge or error (but making every effort to acquire the one and rectify the other) is certainly a strong factor in making the students both more self-confident and willing to make extra efforts themselves. This brings us to a final point, the attitudes and approaches of the instructors. In the first place, as we have seen, the course is both strenuous and, to begin with at least, disconcerting to the students; we have already spoken of their difficulties at some length. It is therefore essential to establish a relaxed and cheerful atmosphere from the beginning. This is not too difficult, since it must be remembered that although the course presents difficulties, it also contains a number of features that are quite highly motivating to the students--for example, the fact that the subject of the course (EST) widens job opportunities.1 Other points are that at last students can see a definite purpose to be achieved in studying this sort of English; the feeling of being in a new and rapidly developing field, of being pioneers in a sense; the fact that the subject of the course and the way it is taught are rather out of the ordinary, even iconoclastic in certain aspects (this seems to appeal to an increasing number of students!); finally, most students appreciate that it opens up important aspects of general culture which would not otherwise be available to them in the rest of their university curriculum. All these things are helpful in establishing the positive atmosphere we have mentioned. Another great help is the willingness of the instructors to treat the students as the near-future colleagues they really are. Such an attitude not only motivates the students, but makes it much easier for them to identify themselves with the teacher roles they are continually being asked to assume throughout the course. As far as attitudes of instructors are concerned, the course puts a premium on a number of qualities which it is desirable for them to try to acquire. Whilst one would be loath to attempt to arrange these in any sort of order or priority, one might well start off with patience. One must never forget the very real disadvantages the students are labouring under, especially at the beginning of the course, and instructors must be prepared to explain things (or get the students to explain them to each other) any number of times until the class as a whole have grasped the point at issue, 1 In Chilean universities, for example, EST enrollments and staff are expanding and those for the ordinary E L T c o u r s e s contracting; the private s e c t o r in EST is also expanding. O t h e r options are technical t r a n s l a t o r s and bilingual s e c r e t a r i e s . In addition, the infrastructure [administration] part of the course has been useful to s t u d e n t s who have eventually found themselves in administrative positions, w h e t h e r within the teaching profession or outside.

24

The ESP Journal

and to make allowances in all sorts of other ways. Enthusiasm for the subject (including willingness to spend personal time and money) is, as always, a great asset and is catching; it is also a great advantage if the instructor is himself i n t e r e s t e d in a science and has friends or relatives who are scientists, technologists or business managers. Persistence he will certainly need, and a willingness to put up, reasonably good humouredly, with negative criticism from colleagues as well as some of the students to begin with; ESP tends to provoke a scandalized reaction from some of the proponents of general English, who feel that their position and values are being t h r e a t e n e d to some extent. One also has to be a bit of a brigand, as it may be n e c e s s a r y to put plans into operation in the face of official o b s t r u c t i o n - - a factor which certainly has to be taken into account. Lastly, flexibility: nothing is fixed or settled in this business, and instructors have to be prepared to discard ingrained habits that do not fit new situations or new knowledge (and it is a good thing that a certain amount of r e s e a r c h into the language of ESP, needs, etc. is now beginning to appear, so that our knowledge is being extended); certainly, willingness to e x p e r i m e n t with different materials and approaches and to discard or adopt them on the basis of careful observation is essential for this kind of course. T h e s e , then, seem to be some of the requirements, though it doesn't mean to say that they can be met. What it does mean, perhaps, is that those of us concerned with teacher training or putting ESP programmes into operation should be evaluating students or prospective teachers from a point of view which differs considerably from the one traditionally adopted. In looking for E S P / E S T teachers it may well be more productive in the long run to pay more attention to w h e t h e r a given candidate p o s s e s s e s some of the desirable personality traits we have just been discussing, plus a reasonable grasp of the E S T / E S P system, than to appoint him on the basis of a "good" pronunciation and general academic record (and perhaps a command of "social" English), as is often the case at present.

Further Training On this somewhat controversial note we may conclude this review of the methods used in the E S T / E S P teacher-training course itself. We are, however, also concerned with two other kinds of teacher training, and it may be of interest to discuss these briefly. The first is what is often known as a "seminar-workshop", but which should more correctly be t e r m e d a " c o u r s e l e t " , which generally lasts from five to ten days. T h e s e are invariably r e q u e s t e d by other institutions and are viewed as a way of introducing the concepts of E S T / E S P to the staff of these institutions or even to the school and university teachers of an entire region. Though these are relatively common and popular, I am somewhat doubtful whether the value obtained is c o m m e n s u r a t e with the effort involved. In such exercises one tends to be forced into a cleft stick: if one attempts to cover the essentials (that is to say, the same general grounds as that of the

Teacher Training for EST: Problems and Methods

25

year-long teacher-training course--and this is usually what is expected), the participants are almost bound to get mental indigestion; if, on the other hand, one attempts to concentrate on a particular point (e.g., establishing community needs or syllabus design), so much background has to be left out which is not available to the general-English teacher that the participants have great difficulty in fitting what they hear and do into a meaningful framework. Again, there is the problem that there is usually no followup to these activities, so that any initial impetus communicated to the participants quickly subsides into inertia; the gap between listening and understanding, and doing, is wide enough at any time, but becomes virtually unbridgeable if understanding is uncertain and the sources of information have been removed. To help overcome this difficulty we have developed a second type of supplementary training, which we would regard as a good deal more effective than the "courselet". These are the staff attachments, whereby members of staff from other institutions come and stay with us for a time-so far, a fortnight has been the usual period--attending classes, examining materials and resources, visiting other EST institutions in the area, making useful contacts, and above all, asking questions and discussing problems continuously. These attachments have produced really good results, but are rather difficult to arrange at present. There are three problems here: first, there is no tradition of this sort of interuniversity attachments, and thus no official encouragement (we have encountered quite the reverse on occasion, in fact); second, in these times of financial stringency, it is difficult for the visiting teachers to obtain from their own authorities either the time or the money necessary to allow them to travel pehaps two or three thousand kilometres and pay for accommodation in the capital; thirdly, we ourselves may have so much work to do that we are unable to dispose of the very considerable time required to attend to the visitors. Nevertheless we are convinced that it is through these attachments, extended in frequency and duration, that real progress is to be made in the short term, with the regular undergraduate training course taking care of the long-term prospects. What we therefore have in being, and would now like to develop and refine, is a range of ESP teacher-training options, each having its own specialised role. For the long-term supply of future ESP teachers, supervisors and teacher trainers there is the undergraduate course we have been discussing at length. Then for the immediate training of practising supervisors and teachers there is the combination of, firstly, the courselet, where a broad view of the ESP system as a whole can be attempted (however unsatisfactorily); and secondly, the staff attachment system, where the working details, the nuts and bolts, as it were, can be grasped and useful permanent contacts made. Lastly, we have just begun to experiment with seminar-workshops, where attention is concentrated on one specific aspect of ESP at a time (for example, evaluation, the use of AVA, syllabus design, administration) by participants who have already got a good practical acquaintance with the ESP system as a whole.

26

The ESP Journal

Returning to the regular teacher-trainee course for one last comment: It has been e x t r e m e l y interesting to note the effect of the course (given, you will remember, in the fourth and last year of the undergraduate Englishlanguage programme) on other courses in the same programme. Over the years the course has been in action, some of our colleagues have also become at least partially persuaded that the English they teach should have a more direct connection with the sort of English that the community actually requires, and have included varying amounts of scientific, technical and commercial language in their own courses. Student p r e s s u r e (which in the early years was mainly against the course, but which is now v e r y much in support of it), is also playing its part in bringing about a relaxation of the unrealistically, unnecessarily and inhibitorily high standards of grammar and pronunciation sometimes imposed, and in focussing attention on the fact that t h e r e can be a sliding scale for acceptability according to the criterion of effectiveness of communication in different cases (that is to say, what I have previously t e r m e d "communicative tolerances"). In my opinion, all this is v e r y much to the good. Perhaps we are seeing here in miniature what may soon be taking place on a large scale. I would certainly like to hope so.

Acknowledgement--The above account of ESP teacher training at this Department would be lacking an essential dimension without reference to the continuous help and support received from my colleague Odette Boys, who has been associated with the project almost from the beginning.

REFERENCES Ewer, J. R. 1975. Teaching English for Science and Technology: The Specialised Training of T e a c h e r s and Programme Organisers. English

for Academic Study with Special Reference to Science and Technology, 43-49. ETIC Occasional Paper. London: British Council.

Editor's Note: Still other descriptions of the EST teacher-training course at the University of Chile are found in several of Ewer's publications. See the Bibliographywhich precedes this article.

Appendix 1 Themes and Activities of the Course The following diagram shows how the themes and activities of the course and the connections b e t w e e n them are built up to help students form an integrated conceptual network.

T e a c h e r Training for EST: P r o b l e m s and M e t h o d s

27

• ~,~o%~ °

~,~,~ s,~

V, ~ 6 9

e

~'

LANGUAG£ VA~I~S

.Y

\

Varieties . e langua

SPeechactsges

\\

o~ f

\

1

\

o

",

", _'~-,-:~- ~o

/

k

g O~O~Q

KEY:

1-9 a-h

~/0

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,

Theoretical classes concerned mainly with background, i.e., ESP as a system. Practical classes concerned mainly with learning the language of ESP. First-stage connection. Second-stage connection.

1. To avoid overloading the diagram, not all the second-stage connections have been shown. 2. Second-stage connections and theme expansions are made gradually and in outline at first, and may overlap with the development of first-stage connections to begin with. As the students' conceptual background fills out, however, they can be made with greater frequency and in more detail. 3. There are slightly more practical than theoretical classes, but classes of both types are interspersed and run concurrently. This facilitates prompt connection between theory and practice. 4. Short specialised handouts supplement both "background" themes and the practical language-learning activities. 5. Materials (a) include: Instructional English List, Basic Dictionary and Appendices, Index of Structures, EST Microacts, Textbooks. For a complete list see Appendix 2, Section A. 6. Exercises (f) include: Idea Following, Instructional English, Units of A Course in Basic Scientific English (Ewer and Latorre, Longman, 1969), Catenized Vocabulary Units, Speed Reading, Notetaking, etc. See Methodology and Preparation of Materials in Appendix 2, Section B.

28

The ESP Journal

Appendix 2 Language Materials and Explanatory Handouts Distributed to Students During the Course Not all of this material is obligatory; items marked with an asterisk (*) are optative supplementaries which are given out only on request. Particularly in the second term of the course, faster students may wish to do further work on their own whilst the rest of the class are consolidating basic information.

Language Materials (excluding exercise materials) Core Language of EST Basic Dictionary of EST (English-Spanish version) Main Structural Words and Phrases in EST (English-Spanish) Main Prefixes and Suffixes used in EST Main Structures used in EST List of Main Items used in Scientific and Technical Instructions List of Basic Communicative Concepts (Microacts) used in Formal Scientific Discourse Some Communicative Operations likely to occur in Vocational English* Modal Operators in Formal Scientific Discourse Microact Indicators and Predictors, Formal Scientific Discourse Samples of Different Registers of English Samples of EST Writing Samples of Vocational English Discourse (parallel English and Spanish versions) List of Typical Deficiencies in the Language taught in "General"-English Courses compared with the Core Language of EST Explanatory Handouts on the theoretical background to EST/ESP teaching

Language Varies EST Core Language Diagram

Needs for English Vary Estimating Adult Needs Questionnaire for Establishing Community Needs Job Analysis Form 'A' (Activities) Job Analysis Form 'B' (Microacts and Language)

Training Required Specifications for a Coordinated EST Programme Sample Matching of Jobs, Activities and Knowledge/Abilities Required Notes on Textbook Analysis

Teacher Training for EST: Problems and Methods

29

Syllabus Design Integrated Programming for EST Some Published Textbooks which can be used in compiling a Vocational English Programme* List of Documents and Materials of Potential Use in Vocational English Programmes available from Local University Departments Some Published Textbooks which can be used in compiling EST Programmes*

Methodology and Preparation of Materials Idea-Following Exercises Instructional English Suggestions for teaching the units of A Course in Basic Scientific

English Catenized Vocabulary Units--Description and Teaching Suggestions CVUs--The Preparation of Questions, Test Passages, and Projects* Speed Reading in EST: Materials and Procedures Hints on Preparing Questions for Speed-Reading Materials* Audio-Visual Aids in EST The Use of Films in Teaching EST* Notetaking from Oral Work in EST* Checklist of Microteaching Points Hints on Preparing Supplementary Materials

Evaluation Evaluation in EST Programmes

Administration The Organization and Administration of an EST Programme* Specialised Libraries for EST Programmes* Research in EST* Preparing the Budget for an EST Programme*

EST Teacher Training EST Teacher-Training Course--examples of how the themes and activities and their interconnections are built up (Copies of these handouts may be obtained from Odette Boys, Casilla 16095, Santiago 9, Chile.)

Appendix 3 EST First S e m e s t e r Final E x a m i n a t i o n I. Language [Total score: 36] A. Vocabulary and Structural Items 1. Name, and give the Spanish in each case: 4 pieces of equipment associated with the balance; 4 Instructional English verbs as-

30

The ESP Journal sociated with measuring; 4 Instructional English verbs associated with liquids. [Score: 12 × V2 = 6] 2.

Give the Spanish for, and use in an illustrative sentence: subsequently; provided that; irrespective of. [Score 3 × 2 = 6]

3.

Answer 3 only of the following 4 questions: a. Give the English for, and explain what the difference is between the following groups of abbreviations: ESP, EST & STTE; EFL & ESL. b. Write out the following in full: 31/403 520,268 24 + 6

3

V6.0315 × 102

c. Give the function, meaning, Spanish equivalent and wordexample of the following affixes: RE- (2 meanings); OUT(2 meanings). d. Give sentences illustrating the difference between the following: into & inside; thereafter & throughout. [Score: 3 × 4 = 12] B. Composition 4. You are a laboratory demonstrator and your students are going to do a simple distillation experiment. Give clear instructions in English to the students on how to set up the apparatus as shown in the attached diagram, naming each of the 10 pieces of equipment marked and using as much of the Instructional English vocabulary as you can. [Score: 12] II. Methodology [Total score: 2 × 10 = 20]. Answer 2 only of the following questions: 5.

Why are idea-following exercises needed in EST? Describe the different types and say how they should be presented.

.

Explain how you would teach and demonstrate any ONE of the following items of Instructional English: TAKE TO BITS; WITHDRAW; SLACKEN.

.

Using your experience as source of information, what methods can be used by the teacher to teach a Catenized Vocabulary Unit? What different parts does a CVU normally consist of, and in what sequence should these be taught? What supplementary materials and exercises can be used?

III. Background [Total score: 2 × 7 = 14]. Answer 2 only of the following questions:

Teacher Training for EST: Problems and Methods .

31

Discuss the idea of 'variety' in language, and explain what is meant by registers.

.

Name which of the background documents you have received make up the 'core language' of EST. Explain what each of these contain. What is the importance of this core language?

10.

Give short explanations for the following: 'specialised lexis'; 'modifying connectives'; 'language register'.

11.

How would you estimate real needs for EST in a given region?

12.

What is 'modular programming'? Explain how to apply it to a STTE programme.

13.

Explain how to translate English-language needs into the "language and language-related items that have to be taught.

[Examination total score: 70]