Teaching and Learning Scholar Grant Report

For the period ending December 2011

Project Title: Enhancing Discipline-Specific Vocabulary Learning

at the University of Regina

Principal Investigator:
Simone Hengen, ESL Instructor

Co-Investigators:
A.J. Wiebe, Engineering Graduate Student and Lab Instructor
Heidi Smithson, Engineering Technical Writer and Writing Instructor
Zhao Zhou Zhang, Bachelor of Business Admin graduate
Akanksha Shrivastava, Bachelor of Business Admin graduate

Project rationale and goals:

Each semester, between 30 and 40 students graduate from the ESL Program and are
admitted to the University for their credit programs, with a high percentage enrolled in the
Faculties of Engineering and Business Admin. While some ESL students make the
paradigm shift in pedagogical focus from acquiring communicative language skills to
learning academic content successfully, others struggle in the new environment. One goal
of the project was to provide support for ESL students in the form of vocabulary lists of
key words from classes that significant numbers of ESL students take, as well as exercises
to help students learn the words.

This project required the collaboration of Graduate or upper-level student content experts
to compile vocabulary lists and create definitions that ESL students can use. A second goal
of the project was to provide the Graduate or upper level student collaborators with some
background in language learning pedagogy both for the project and for their future
interactions with ESL and International students.

During this project, the Grad Students and I modelled a cooperative interdisciplinary
process that we think will benefit current ESL students and potentially other language
learners and instructors at the University of Regina.

Project stages
The first stage was investigating teaching and learning field-specific vocabulary in an
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) context and teaching and learning in a post-
secondary context with the intent of finding congruencies and situating the vocabulary
teaching in the university context, and create a workshop for Grad and upper level students
from Engineering and Business Admin. After the workshop, the students reflected on their
teaching, did supplementary research and developed a framework to prepare materials.
Together we created vocabulary lists and basic word recognition exercises of high-
frequency words in specific classes in their discipline and then delivered the materials to a
small number of recent graduates of the ESL Program.
Project implementation and the intangible results:
Investigating what researchers have to say about teaching and learning discipline-
specific vocabulary and in a post-secondary context yielded some congruencies in
assessing the needs of and teaching adult students and reflective teaching practices,
despite the significant differences in materials and the skills vs content orientation of
the approaches.

Sharing those congruencies with the collaborators was constructive and rewarding as
the collaborators recognized that many of their students who are language learners
struggle with their academic work. The collaborators reflected on the perspective of a
language learner, some for the first time. The discussions at this stage are significant,
as the Grad students acquired sensitivity to the needs of language learners in their
classrooms as well as skills to enhance vocabulary learning, and provide more skilled
instruction to language learners in their classrooms.

The framework we built in our discussions to create the vocabulary lists was
invaluable as making the lists became a time-consuming task, requiring reflection on
various factors, such as culturally derived phrasing and idioms to avoid and creating
definitions that maintained a balance between accessible, direct prose that stated
meanings in their complexity. (See a sample of the lists below.) The ESL graduates
indicated that they would take advantage of the resource. The project collaborators
agreed that their pedagogical skills had been strengthened and that they felt more
competent in addressing the needs of language learners, particularly with their
vocabulary usage.
Appendix: Excerpt of the Vocabulary list for Engg 100: Engineering Graphics

In this class the concentration is on using manual and computer aided design software to
create drawings of objects. This also involves some problem solving in the student having
to complete certain drawings as well as being able to use geometric transformations.

Interesting Word Origin

This list contains some very unusual words that are rarely used in common English These
words have interesting word origins, which are included in the definitions, along with these
letters: (W.O.)

The List

 azimuth: An angle measured from 0 to 360 degrees. (With 0 and 360 degrees pointing
North)
o (W.O.) This word originated with Arabic words meaning “the way or the direction”
through Old French, Middle English into modern English

 bearing: Similar to azimuth, a bearing measures the direction. However it is an angle

starting at North or South and the degrees to East or West, such as North 30 degrees
West.
o (W.O) From Old English “to bear” mean to carry a difficult burden, and then
Middle English meaning to behave or carry oneself.

 bevel: a rounded edge

o (W.O.) this word comes from an Old French word meaning “open-mouthed”

 bolt: A rod (usually metal) that has a head, and a threaded body and is used to fasten
things together. It is tightened or released by turning the nut closer to the head of the
bolt.
screw nut/bolt thread
 fastens a smaller thing to  fastens two things  both bolts and screws
a larger thing by twisting together using the two have threads
into the larger thing. pieces.

 chamfer: A corner that is beveled so it is not sharp

o (W.O.) this word comes from a combination of French words chant (edge) and
fraint (broken).
 compass:
Common definition
 a device used to tell you what direction
(north/south, etc) you are headed. It has a
floating needle that points north
Engineering-specific definition
 A device used to measure exact distances, as
well as to draw perfect circles.

 constraint: (AWL) A limitation or restriction on the design

 contour: A line that indicates a profile, or elevation on a surface.

 degrees of freedom: A variable in design that the designer must specify in order to
fully constrain a profile.

 descriptive geometry: A type of visual mathematics used when one wants to find out
qualitative data about objects in 2 or 3 dimensional space.

 draft:
Common definition (including Engg 123) Engineering-specific definition
 a version of a document to design a schematic; this commonly means to do
by hand (using a ruler and pencil) but can be used to
refer to a computer drawing.

 freehand: to draw without the use of a ruler or straight-edge (Note free + hand)

 grade: a measurement of the slope where 100% is 45 degrees.

 isometric: a view that gives a somewhat 3-D view, where the same scale is given on
each of the 3 axis

 nut: A fastener for a bolt, is usually flat, in a square or hexagon with a hole in the
center that is threaded. see: bolt
screw nut/bolt thread
 fastens a smaller thing to  fastens two things  both bolts and screws
a larger thing by twisting together using the two have threads
into the larger thing. pieces.

 ore: a metal substance that is found in a large quantity underground. The Yukon Gold
Rush happened because a lot of gold ore was found in the Rocky Mountains.