Colloquium Practice

Семинар "Needs analysis approaches for ESP and ESAP course design"

25 мая в 18:30 состоится семинар "Needs analysis approaches for ESP and ESAP course design"

Спикеры: Светлана Викторовна Боголепова, Алексей Валентинович Бакулев, Константин Игоревич Хомутский, Татьяна Григорьевна Шихалкина

Adults successfully learn foreign languages if they feel this knowledge can be applied in real-life situations. Currently, university courses do not always take this into account. Still a University is the link between the studies and the professional world. Academia should guide and be guided by the students’ language needs and equip them with necessary tools for life.

This is what both teachers and learners need to consider when working with language acquisition at the University. While courses designers need to comprehend how these needs determine the content of university language courses, namely various kinds of ESP courses.

However, not only language items necessary for this particular audience or field are to be detected for an ESP course, the whole range of needs analysis will finally bring to the mastery of the course content.

Why and what else needs to be counted and analysed you will learn at our seminar, where you will hear about two cases and approaches to designing ESP and ESAP courses.

The seminar has two parts.

Part 1 of the seminar (35 minutes) is devoted to presentation of the course “Advanced English for Humanities” which will focus on accomplishing the above mentioned task within the academic, institutional paradigm.

Abstract: English for Specific Purposes courses are designed in the paradigm "tell me what you need English for, and I will tell you the English that you need” (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987, p. 8). Therefore, EAP courses are based on needs analysis. English for Specific Academic Purposes courses take into account students’ professional and academic needs. In the talk we will go through the stages of ESP and ESAP courses, look at the possible formats of needs analysis, discuss how course materials are designed according to the needs revealed, and show how the materials can be evaluated. The course “Advanced English for Humanities” and the data collected while the course was being designed will provide illustrations for each stage. We will also demonstrate how the design and validation of assessment materials can be integrated in ESAP course design.

Plan:

1. The essence of ESP and ESAP 

2. Course design in ESP 

3. Needs analysis ESP

4. Subjective, objective and institutional needs: the case of “Advanced English for Humanities”

5. Contextual and pedagogical realisation in ESAP (with illustrations from “Advanced English for Humanities”)

6. Evaluation of course materials

7. Assessment design and validation

Part 2 of the seminar (35 minutes) will tell about the preparatory stages for outlining an ESP course and Professional Profiles as another needs analysis approach.

Abstract: The first thing that comes to your mind when you come across the term ‘English for Specific Purposes’ (ESP) is domain-specific vocabulary. However, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Needs analysis is another cornerstone of ESP course design, which has been evolving over the time. The modern approach to needs analysis is based on the principles of Language and Communication for Professional Purposes (LCPP), which helps to understand what the professional requires in order to perform his/her duties successfully via the analysis of the context of situational communication. This approach has become the base for the Common European Framework of Reference for Professional Purposes, which was transformed into CEF Professional Profiles by Huhta (2013). Consisting of six parts (from A to F) CEF Professional Profile represents a grid, which makes it easier to gain an overview of the communication situations at the workplace. In the talk we will explore the content of Professional Profiles, discuss the methodology, used to obtain data for a certain Professional Profile, and the application of CEF Profession Profile in ESP course design.

Plan:

1.     What is CEF Professional Profile?

2.     Six Parts of CEF Professional Profile

3.     Examples of CEF Professional Profiles

4.     How to integrate Professional Profile into the course?

5.     Creating your own Professional Profile

Q&A session (20 minutes for questions)

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Семинар "Are you open to opposing viewpoints? Tips for improving critical thinking in English classroom using conflictology"

29 апреля состоялся семинар "Are you open to opposing viewpoints? Tips for improving critical thinking in English classroom using conflictology".

Спикеры: Алина Будникова, Рэд Бушетара 

At the seminar you will learn how the Intercultural conflict management theory models could be implemented within English language teaching. The models could be indispensable for the analysis of conflicting views and arguments on a certain problem. Namely, the model can promote students’ skill of substantiating their stand, perceive and comprehend other party’s reasoning. Hence, critical thinking is being thoroughly mastered.

At the seminar you will:

• Learn about “Circle of Conflict”, the tool for conflicting situations sources analysis.
• Learn how to use the tool for preparing the students for a more productive development of such language skills as writing, speaking and reading based on Case Study technique.
• Learn how to improve the quality of the students' essays of “Discuss both views and give your opinion” type and make debates and discussions more sensible and multifaceted.
• Practise creating conflict cases aligned with students’ academic and professional interests.
• Discuss other ways of Intercultural conflict management within Foreign Languages teaching.

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