Lecture 1

Introduction to ESP course and

Getting to know each other
18 October, 2017
 COURSE DESCRIPTION
• ESP connected to psychology, psycho-linguistics, sociolinguistics and other
sciences of education which main focus concerns economics, law, politics,
engineering, medicine etc.

• The ESP course gives basic theoritical knowledge to students of Master

studies in teaching English language for specific professions and
disciplines.

• The course provides students with the historical perspectives of ESP, the
approach of the discipline to foreign language learning according to
different professional disciplines.

• Students will be given the concepts of communicative competencies in

foreign languages, the attitude of teachers while teaching a foreign
language for specific purposes etc.

• The ESP course hepls students reflect on their approach towards the
foreign language teaching and the role of teacher, urging them analyze,
improve and embace techniques which aim for the active learning in a
different context.
 Course objectives
This course aims for students to:

• Get the basic knowledge about the theory of the

foreing language.
• Get basic knowledge about ESP considering the
diachronic and synchronic perspectives in the
development of this discpline.
• Understand and compare the teaching
methodologies and techniques.
• Develop the capactities in applying these methods
and techniques at class and use them in function to
the needs and the actual state of the class.
 Expectations and results
Studnets will be able to:
• Demonstrate a high level of knowldege about different
methods and techniques in teaching English for specific
purposes. (active discussions in lectures and seminars).
• Demosntrate high level and capacities of knowledge in
discussions and debates about issues provided during
lectures about English as a foreing language and
English for Specific Purposes.
• Individually and on-group-based present assignements
about different topics (8-10 minutes presentation.)
• Ananlyze and provide ideas and opionions about the
classmates’ presentations.
• Demonstrate high abilities in course assignments
writing as asked by the lecturer.
 Content of Lecture1
1.What is ESP?
2.The origins of ESP.
3.Characteristics of ESP
4.Types of ESP
5.Some features of ESP courses
6. ESP and General English
7. Some samples of ESP courses taught at
the Tirana University.
 What is ESP ?
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is a branch of
a wider field, Language for Specific Purposes
(LSP ), which is defined as :
“…the area of inquiry and practice in the
development of language programs for
people who need a language to meet a
predictable range of communicative needs.”
( Swales, 1992)
 Continued
• English for Specific Purposes (ESP), not to be
confused with specialized English, is a sphere of
teaching English language including Business
English, Technical English, Scientific English, English
for medical professionals, English for waiters,
English for tourism, English for Art Purposes,
Aviation English etc.

• ESP can be also considered as an avatar of

language for specific purposes.
 Continued
“English for specific purposes is a term that
refers to teaching or studying English
for a particular career (like law, medicine) or for
business in general.“ International
Teacher Training Organization, 2005).

So, we can say there is a specific reason for

learning and teaching English.
 Continued
ESP is defined as “Goal-oriented language
learning” (Robinson and Coleman, 1989) i.e. a
specific goal is to be attained.
Hutchinson and Waters ( 1987) defined ESP as :
"an approach to language teaching in which all
decisions as to content and method are based on
the learner's reason for learning" .

Peter Strevens (1988) described ESP as English

language teaching which is designed to meet
specified needs of the learner.
 Continued
• ESP is “a major specialization within the
discipline of English language teaching”. (Chen
1993)
• Still, others specified ESP as the teaching of
English for academic studies, or for vocational
or professional purposes, as opposed to EGP,
(English for general knowledge and skills).
(Brunton 2009; Carver, 1983; Hyland, 2006).
 Conclusion to What is ESP
Adapted from Hutchinson & Waters, 1987

Learner-centered, second/foreign language

training
 Needs-based, involving all stakeholders
Characterized by collaboration with
workplace/content experts
Characterized by the use of appropriate,
authentic tasks & materials (specificity and
relevance)
Not synonymous with “content-based
instruction.” CBI is an approach to syllabus
design, often employed in ESP courses.
 Acronyms
EAP (English for Academic Purposes)
EOP (English for Occupational Purposes)
EMP (English for Medical Purposes)
EBP (English for Business Purposes)
EST (English for Science and Technology)

All of these are part of the ELT (English Language

Teaching) repertoire.
Whatever name it assumes, ESP is now a term connoting
promise for more effective and more useful English
language instruction (Tsou, 2009; Yogman & Kaylani,
1996) Asian ESP Journal Volume 7
 Continued
Who participates in ESP
English for Academic Purposes (EAP)
Learners: Studying to enter professions, focusing on the
language of academic performance in specific
discourse communities (and sometimes preparing for
near-future identified workplace needs).
Fields: Business, Engineering, Medicine, Information
Technology, Law, etc. English for Occupational
Purposes (EOP)
Learners: Employed in industry sectors, focusing on the
language of job performance (or preparing for
identified employment opportunities)
Fields: Industry sectors, government, Businesses etc.
 Characteristics of ESP
-ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the
learner.
- ESP makes use of the underlying methodology
and activities of the discipline it serves.
-ESP is centered on the language (grammar,
lexis, register), skills, discourse and genres
appropriate to these activities.
 Continued
 ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines.

 ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology

from that of general English.

 ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level

institution or in a professional work situation.

 ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students.

 Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language

system, but it can be used with beginners.

(Dudley-Evans, 1998).
 Types of ESP

According to when they take place

1.EAP ( English for Academic Purposes )

2. EOP ( English for Occupational Purposes)

 Some features of ESP courses

1.Organzing course

2. Selecting material

3. Types of activities with text

4. Assessment & Evaluation

 How to Organize an ESP course

(Waters, 1992)
The answer to the following questions is a crucial
aspect to get ‘language description’:

1. What topic areas will need to be covered?

2. What does the student need to learn?

3. What aspects of language will be needed and how

will they be described?
 Continued

4. The way learning is achieved, it is natural that

learning strategies vary and correspond with
learners´ groups, their age, level or reason they
study.
5. The way adults acquire language is different from
children, the group of advanced expects different
attitude from beginners and teachers determine
which aspects of ESP learning will be focused on
to meet learners´ needs and their expectations
successfully.
 Continued
’Needs analysis’
• It relates .to learner´s surrounding and
discusses the questions of ‘what’, ´who´,
´why´,´where´ and ´when´ connected with the
nature of particular target and learning
situation.
 Some ESP organizations
ESP organizations include
− TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other
Languages) ESP-IS (Interest Section )
− IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of
English as a Foreign Language)
ESP SIG (Special Interest Group)
− IATEFL BE (Business English) SIG
− Asia-Pacific LSP (Language for Specific Purposes)
and Professional Communication
Association
− (TESPA) Taiwan ESP Association
 ESP Organizations
The British Association of Lecturers in English for
Academic Purposes
http://www.baleap.org.uk
-The British Association of Applied Linguistics
http://www.baal.org.uk
-ESP Interest Section of TESOL US
http://www2.tesol.org/communities/espis/rules.ht
ml
ESP SIG TESOL Greece
http://www.tesolgreece.com/eap_esp.html
 ESP Organizations
ESP SIG of Michigan Teachers of ESOL
http://www.e-
tas.ch/etas/people/list.asp?lPTY_Id=3#SESP
Journal of ESP (Elsevier Publications)
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cw
s_home/682/description#description
Journal of EAP (Elsevier
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cw
s_home/622440/description#description
Asian ESP Journal
http://www.asian-esp-journal.com
QUESTIONS?
 ESP
Lecture 2

The origins & growth of ESP

October 25, 2017

Prof. dr. Shpresa Delija
 The origins & growth of ESP
• Dates back to the times of the Roman and Greek Empires (Dudley Evans and St. John,
2009)

• Its modern origins can be traced back to the early 1960s and are associated with J. M.
Swales’ Episodes in ESP and the book by M.A. Halliday, A. McIntosh and P. Strevens
(1964). The development of ESP has undergone three main phases:
1. The great demand for English to suit particular needs;
2. The developments in the field of linguistics (register analysis – identify grammatical
and lexical features of these registers);
3. Educational psychology

• During the early phase of ESP development, referred to as the register analysis phase
(Hutchinson, Waters, 2010), the central focus of research was English for Science and
Technology (EST) in academic settings.

• The approach operated on the principle that language varies and its distinctive varieties
depend on different users and their idiolects, as well as on language distinct uses, i.e.
registers. Thus the aim of analysis was to identify how the language system manifested
itself in different registers, e.g. in English of Electrical Engineering as opposed to English
of Biology.
 Continued
• In the 60s there was an attempt at counting
grammatical features across genres, i.e. textbooks and
journal articles, with a view to defining some general
sentence-level characteristics of EST. As observed by
Swales (1988: 59), this approach was purely descriptive
and quantitative in nature and “had little explanatory
force.”

• Despite its potential usefulness, it did not provide

guidance as to WHEN one grammatical form is more
preferable to another. Neither did it give any
information on how a particular form fits into the
structure of the text (García Mayo,1998-1999).
 From register analysis to rhetorical devices
(1972-1981)
• The early 1970s - coming of a new approach associated
with a group of influential EST researchers, such as J.
Lackstrom, L. Selinker and L.P. Trimble with their book
“Grammar and technical English” (1972).
• This book was republished and was discussed in
Swales’ Episodes (1988) and impacted a lot the further
development of ESP research and heralded the
emerging field of rhetorical or discourse analysis
(Hutchinson, Waters, 2010). With it, the concern of
research has shifted to “the relationships between EST
grammar and lexicon and the authors’ rhetorical
purposes” (Johns, 2013: 24).
 Continued
• In the late 1970s, R. Bley-Vroman (1978: 280) defined the goals of ESP rhetorical theory:
 to establish a correspondence of purpose with device,” with ‘device’ signifying linguistic means employed
by the author to achieve the desired end. Another contribution came with the publication by E. Tarone et
al. (1981), which appeared in the first issue of The ESP Journal (ESPJ) and was reprinted in Swales’
Episodes (1988).

• Swales published Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, in which Swales laid out the
methodological approach that brought together ESP and genre analysis. Swales identified two
characteristics of ESP genre analysis: its focus is on academic research in English and its use of genre
analysis for applied ends. ESP focuses on specific genres within spheres of activity, such as the medical
profession, but it also focuses on the broader concept of communicative purposes within fields of study.

• English for Specific Purposes shares some characteristics with SFL studies. Both believe that linguistic
features are connected to social context and function, and both aim to help disadvantaged students grasp
the system in which texts are created so that they can create similar texts, by teaching them the
relationship between language and social function.

• However, there are also some important differences between ESP and SFL:
 SFL scholars focus on teaching basic genre structures to primary and secondary school students,
 ESP scholars focus on teaching Professional and Academic disciplinary genres to University- and graduate-
level students.
 ESP students tend to be more bound to discursive genre subjects, within very particular contexts.
 ESP focuses on micro-level genres and contexts,
 Whereas SFL focuses on macro-level contexts. ( Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction., 1976)
 Continued
• Tarone and her colleagues did not try to
generalize about the features of scientific
language across genres. Instead, they focused
on – what they considered – one key
characteristic of a narrow range of research
articles in astrophysics, i.e. the passive voice.
 Register Analysis

Register analysis involves distinctive patterns

of occurrence of vocabulary, verb forms, noun
phrases, and tense usage.

Three categories describes the register:

＊ the research process
＊ the vocabulary of analysis
＊ the vocabulary of evaluation
(Martin,1976)
 Discourse Analysis

identify the linguistic structure of longer

samples of speech or text.
analysis of units of organization within texts
speech events
examines patterns
 Collocations & their Functions
 Hyland 2008
 Electronic Engineering
 Biology
 Business Studies
 Applied linguistics
 Function of collocations
 Research-orientated = location, procedure, quantification, description, topic

At the same time, the purpose of, a wide range of, the size of the, the currency
board system

 Text-orientated = transition, results, structure, framing

In addition to the, it was found that, in the next section, with the exception of
 How many words do learners need?
• 3000 words (Laufer, 1992)

• 10,000 words (Hazenberg and Hulstijn, 1996)

• 1000 – 2000 (Laufer, 2000)

• AWL + 2000 – is it enough?

• 98% text coverage (Nation)

 What ESP is NOT?
• ESP is NOT a matter of teaching varieties of
English
• ESP is NOT a matter of science words and
grammar for scientists
• ESP is NOT different in kind from any other
form of language teaching
 Conclusion
• Select list carefully to match aims

• Pitch the level carefully

• Balance skills and language carefully

 ESP
Lecture 3
November 1, 2017

ESP Course Design

Prof. Dr. Shpresa Delija

 What is a Course Design?

• It is the process by which the raw data about a

learning needs is interpreted to produce an
integrated series of teaching –learning
experiences.
 What is its aim?
• To lead the learners to a particular state of
knowledge. This entails the use of the
theoretical and empirical information
available to produce a syllabus.
• To develop a methodology for teaching those
materials
• To establish evaluation procedures by which
progress towards the specified goals will be
measured.
 Methods of
Analysing Needs
• Tests
• Questionnaires
• Interviews /structured interviews
• Observation
• Case studies
• Learner diaries
• Previous research
 Language Analysis…

1. Concepts of special language, register, and

genre
2. Language content in syllabus specification
3. Vocabulary
4. Form and function
5. Genre, task and discourse community: a
theory of language in context for ESP
Example of a genre and its moves
Research Article Abstract (adapted from Bhatia, 1993)
• 1. WRITER INTRODUCES PURPOSE OF STUDY: The
purpose of the study was to examine …
• 2. WRITER DESCRIBES METHODOLOGY: 50 high
school students in Kelantan participated in the study.
They were selected from …
• 3. WRITER SUMMARISES RESULTS OF STUDY: It was
discovered that …
• 4. WRITER PRESENTS CONCLUSIONS: High school
students in Kelantan, and probably in other similar
settings …
Some concepts about the ESP language
 Approaches to course design
• There are different approaches to ESP course
design.

We identify three main types:

• language-centered,
• skills-centered and
• learning-centered
 Language- centered course design

This is the simplest kind of course design process and is

probably the one most familiar to English teachers. It is
particularly prevalent in ESP. But it has a number
weaknesses:

• It starts from the learners and their needs, and thus it

might be considered a learner- centered approach. The
learner is simply used as a means of identifying the
target situation.
 Skills-centered course design

The skills-centered approach is founded on two

fundamental principle, ones theoretical, the
other pragmatic.

The skills-centered model is a reaction both to

the idea of specific registers of English as a
basis for ESP and to the practical constrains on
learning imposed by limited time and
resources.
 A learning-centered approach

The difference between the learner centered

approach and the learning centered approach.

The learner- centered approach is based on the

principle that learning is totally determined by
the learner. This has two implications.
 Planning: Course Content

• Be clear about what is most worth knowing (What do students need

to know in order to derive maximum benefit from this educational
experience?)
– Describe the content that students will be required to know
– Discuss the content that you will make available to support
individual student inquiry or projects
– Provide content that might be of interest to a student who wants
to specialize in this area

• Develop a conceptual framework (theory, theme, controversial

issue) to support major ideas and topics

• Decide what topics are appropriate to what types of student

activities and assignments
 Planning: Course materials

 Selecting proper course materials. What do

you and your students do as the course
unfolds?

 About what do you lecture or discuss, or

present as case studies? What is left up to the
students more generally?

 What are the key assignments or student

evaluations?
 Developing Course Objectives
General objectives: A course objective is a simple statement of
what you expect your students to know.
• Determining the objectives is the most important aspect of
course planning (Ask yourself, “What do students need to
know in order to derive maximum benefit from this
educational experience? What educational outcomes do I
want a graduate of this course to display?).
• Plan backwards from where you want students to end in
terms of their new knowledge, attitudes, and skills.
• List these as learning objectives (student learning outcomes)
[“by the end of the course you will be able to…”].
• Design the course in a logical and scaffolded sequence of
learning activities (reading assignments, lectures, quizzes,
technology-mediated experiences, formative assessments…)
 Developing Course Objectives
Course Objectives are based on various learning modes [the
AVK Model of Learning]:

• Hearing (Audio), as in lectures, seminars and discussion.

• Seeing (Visual), as in reading and observing.
• Doing (Kinesthetic), as in performance, practical and
laboratory work (which may involve taste and smell as well).

Each discipline and subject has its own “AVK” requirements,

but incorporating some A, V, and K learning into your
course syllabus not only makes for a more interesting class
but, pedagogically speaking, also helps to maximize the
learning potential of each student.
 Verbs that can be used to help construct concrete
objectives for your class.

analyze appreciate classify collaborate

compare compute contrast define
demonstrate direct derive designate
discuss display evaluate explain
identify infer integrate interpret
justify list name organize outline
report respond solicit state
synthesize
 Some of ESP Course Goals

• Find the differences between personal writing and

writing for academic and other audiences, and show
awareness of and aptitude with voice and style
appropriate for these audiences.
• Understand the relationship of the visual to the textual;
learn to "read" images.
• Integrate technology in a rich and meaningful way into
the research and writing process
• Encourage students to write for a "real world" audience
beyond the classroom, if possible for campus or local
publication.
 Actual Examples of Course Goal Statements
(for you to evaluate)
Principles of Psychology
The goal of this course is to provide a broad,
general introduction to psychology, which is the
scientific study of behavior and mental
processes. You should emerge from the course
with an increased awareness of the broad range
of phenomena investigated by psychologists
and with a greater ability to understand and
critique psychological research. Special
emphasis will be placed on applying
psychological principles to everyday life.
 Actual Examples of Course Goal Statements
(use as an example)

Corporate Finance Strategy and Organization

This course provides an The primary objective of this
introduction to the modern course is to help you learn
theory and practice of to diagnose management
corporate finance.
situations so that you will
be able to transfer this skill
Marketing Management to your work experience.
The goals of this course are to
introduce you to the
substantive and
procedural aspects of
marketing management,
and to sharpen your
critical thinking skills.
 Course Objectives:
The Teaching Goals Inventory (TGI)
(Teacher Training)
Purposes of the TGI:
• To help college teachers become more aware of what they want to
accomplish in individual courses
• To help faculty locate classroom assessment techniques they can adapt
and use to assess how well they are achieving their teaching and
learning goals among colleagues
• To provide a starting point for discussion of teaching and learning goals
among colleagues
See pp. 393-397 in:
Angelo, Thomas A. & K. Patricia Cross (1993). Classroom Assessment
Techniques - A Handbook for College Teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass (2nd ed.).
Online Access to list:
http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/cats/tchgoals.html
http://fm.iowa.uiowa.edu/fmi/xsl/tgi/data_entry.xsl?-db=tgi_data&-lay=Layout01&-view
 Learning Outcomes

What your students will learn within the content of a

body of knowledge

– Each course objective should lead to an

actionable learning outcome: A short
statement, formulated from the professor’s point
of view, beginning with a verb and providing
actionable outcomes:
 Student Learning Outcomes - Specific Objectives

Specific objectives: from the student’s point of view (Learning

goals and outcomes)

What the student must be able to do or achieve during or at

the end of a learning situation or section (in order to attain
the general objectives).

The objectives are linked to each of the course’s themes and

general objectives:
• Permits you to link a given subject and student
performance.
• Each objective must be linked to an action or outcome
Student Learning Outcomes - Specific Objectives
(An Example)

(Course: Using Technology in Science Education)

At the end of this course, you should be able to:
1. List and contrast current models of science teaching and learning
using technology.
2. Critique current models of teaching and learning using technology in
relation to your personal philosophy of science education.
3. Analyze curricular technology models for alignment with published
standards.
4. Identify effective assessment models for evaluating technology.
5. Discuss how pro-active strategies can establish safe classroom
environments where all students are encouraged to participate and
express their views.

http://faculty.washington.edu/jrios/TEDUC%20513/General%20Cour
se%20Information.html
 Examples of Learner Needs
Cognitive Social Affective Psychomotor

Recognize good Communicate with Attain goals Be in a

questions peers comfortable setting

Ask good questions Give and receive Nurture positive Have transportation
support attitudes

Get help from experts Experience Be open to feedback Have child care
external motivation from others

Practice problem Have time

solving Make a difference for reflection and self- Get enough sleep
assessment

Think independently Interact solving

while problem Possess well-founded
self- confidence
Have good diet/
adequate energy level

Create work products Explore and challenge Define and respond to

conventions locus of control Exercise

Process new Grow with friends Have a sense of Have access to

information belonging equipment and tools

Understand Engage in appropriate

Use learning resources Manage time and tasks motivations of others and timely
demonstrations
 Reference
http://www.usc.edu/programs/cet/resources/

http://www.usc.edu/programs/cet/resources/creating_syllabi/

http://www.usc.edu/dept/ARR/curriculum/handbook.html
 ESP

Lecture 4

Needs Analysis

November 7, 2017

Prof. dr. Shpresa Delija

 Introduction
• What are ‘Needs’?
Wants, desires, demands, expectation, motivations,
lacks, constraints, and requirements (Brindley 1984)

• What is ‘Needs Analysis’?

 Procedures for collecting information about learners’ needs.

 Needs analysis is the process of establishing the what and how
of a course; evaluation is the process of establishing the
effectiveness.
 Leads to a focused course.
 Continued
• The word ‘Needs’ also includes the students’
rights.

‘It’s school’s responsibility to take into account

the cultural, political, and personal characteristics
of students …. in order to plan activities and
objectives that are realistic and purposeful’.
(Linse, 1993)

• The word “Needs” also includes perceived and

present needs, potential and unrecognized
needs.
A current concept of needs analysis

Language
information
about target
situations

professional
Learners’
information
lacks
about learners

Personal
information
about
learners
how to
learners’
communicate
needs from
in the target
course
situation

Language
learning
needs
 When?
• Needs analysis may take place:

1. prior to

2. during

3. after a language program

Why “Needs analysis” before designing the ESP
course

1. Determine the language skills in an ESP learner needs,

2. Determine if an existing course addresses the needs

of an ESP students

3. Determine which students are most in need of

training in particular language skills.
 Continued

4. To identify a gap between what students are able to

do and what they need to be able to do after they
finish the ESP course.

6. To collect information about a particular problem

learners are experiencing.
 Samples of needs analyses conducted prior to a
language program

• Method:
Staff questionnaire:
• background information about the course the lecturer was
describing
• overview of problems experienced by ESL students
• linguistic demands of the course
• suggestions to which language skills should be focuses on
modifications made in teaching or in examinations

Students questionnaire
 Who does “Needs analysis”?
Big-scale needs analysis
• People responsible in the ministry of education
• Teachers
• Learners
• Writers
• Testing personnel
• Staff of the Institute of the Education System
Small-scale needs analysis
• Teacher
• Program coordinator in the ESP course
 The target population
• Language learners or potential language learners
• Policy makers
• Ministry of education officials
• Teachers
• Academics
• Employers
• Vocational training specialists
• Parents
• Influential individuals and pressure groups
• Academic specialists
• Community agencies
 Continued
• Subcategories of respondents

 students currently enrolled in a foreign language course

 students previously enrolled but no longer studying a

language

 students who have never studied a foreign language

 Administering the needs analysis

• Who will administer the needs analysis?

• Who will collect and analyze the results?
 academic or research assistant
 colleagues in different department
 students who piloted the questionnaire
 academic staff of the university
 secretarial support
Procedures for conducting needs analysis

• Questionnaires
• Self-ratings
• Interviews
• Meetings
• Observation
• Collecting learner language samples
• Task analysis
• Case studies
• Analysis of available information
 Design of Questionnaires

Types of questions to be considered:

• Preliminary questions
• The types of information asked for
• How the questions are worded
• The type of items in the questionnaire:

open questions, closed questions, checklist, rating scale,

ranking, inventory
 Disadvantages of Questionnaires

• The information obtained may be fairly

superficial or imprecise.

• The information will often need follow-up to

gain a fuller understanding.
 Self-ratings

• Self-ratings might be included as part of a

questionnaire. ( = evaluate learners’ activities)

• Disadvantage:
It provides only impressionistic information.
 Interviews
• Advantage:
* Allow for a more in-depth exploration of issue
* may be useful at the preliminary stage of designing
a questionnaire.
• Disadvantage:
* Take longer to administer
* Only feasible for smaller groups
 Meetings

• Advantage:
* Allows a large amount of information to be
collected in a fairly short time.
• Disadvantage:
* Information may be impressionistic and subjective
 Observation

• Take into account:

* People often do not perform well when they are
observed.
* The skill of observer.
 Collecting learner language samples

Language samples may be collected through:

• Written or oral tasks
• Simulations or role plays
• Achievement tests
• Performance tests
 Task analysis

Analyse the tasks the learners will have to

carry out in English in a future occupational or
educational setting.
 Case studies

• A single student or a selected group of students

is followed through a relevant work or
educational experience in order to determine
the characteristics of that situation.
 Analysis of available information

• Books
• Journal articles
• Reports and surveys
• Records and files
 Designing the needs analysis

Procedures for bigger-scale

• Literature survey
• Analysis of a wide range of survey questionnaires
• Contact with others
• Interviews with teachers
• Identification of participating departments
• Presentation of project proposal
• Development of a pilot student and staff questionnaires
• Review of the questionnaires
 Designing the needs analysis

• Piloting of the questionnaires

• Selection of staff and student subjects
• Developing a schedule for collecting data
• Administration of questionnaires
• Follow-up interviews
• Tabulation or responses
• Analysis of responses
• Writing up of report and recommendations
 Designing the needs analysis

Procedures for smaller-scale

• Initial questionnaire
• Follow-up individual and group interviews
• Meetings with students
• Meetings with other teachers
• Ongoing classroom observation
• Tests
 Making use of the information obtained

• Making a list consists of information collected from different

source and summarized in ranking

• More analysis and research

‘…..The primary goal of analysis is to bring meaning to the obtained
information …’ (Stufflebeam et al. 1985)

• Take different views into account:

* learners’ view
* academics’ view
* employers’ view
* teachers’ view
Making use of the information obtained

The format for reporting the findings:

• A full written document
• A short summary document
• A meeting
• A group discussion
• A newsletter
 Matching needs analysis to situation

A course outline, materials and other resources can

be in place before teaching begins.

We must distinguish between overall needs and

course needs.
Course needs :
What do you need/ want from the course?
Overall needs :
What do you need English for?
 Analysis of authentic texts
The texts can be written documents or audio and video
recordings of events such as lectures, meetings, telephone
interactions, classroom activities.

The analysis may be for TSA purposes, to determine the key

linguistic features of a communicative event or genre that is
new to us.

Authentic texts are invaluable for learning about real and

carrier content.

120
 How do we analyze the data?
First, the raw data must be converted into information. With
small amounts of quantitative data manual methods can be
employed to process the data into information.

Jones(1991) described how Principal Component

Analysis(PCA)
By using PCA, which is a type of corelational analysis that
can resolve data into underlying factors, he was able to
identify clusters of variables.

LANA(Language Needs Analysis) is another tool intended

either for individual needs analysis or as part of an audit.

Needs analysis must result in an understanding of a target

situation such that we, the ESP practitioners, could be
efficient communicators in it. 121
 The Process of Needs Analysis
We take 7 steps to do the NA
Document the problem

Investigate the problem

Plan the needs analysis

Select the techniques

Conduct the analysis

Analyze the data

Report the findings

 Needs Analysis: Procedure
Before Interaction
Existing Information:
• Socio-political factors
• Student demographics
• Shelter setting
• Classroom setting
Instruments:
• Literature review
• Existing records/reports
• Informal meetings with staff
• Observations
• Staff and teacher questionnaire
Initial Interaction
Learner Needs Inventory:
• Students’ educational and
linguistic needs
• Specific purposes for which
English will be used
Instruments:
• Observations
• Student Questionnaire
• Personal Narratives
During Instruction
Formative Student
Evaluation:
• Student work
• Student motivation and
attitudes
• Situational restraints to
student attention
• Interaction with students
and teachers and staff
Instruments:
• Observations
 Functional & Situational Syllabus
1. Greetings and 7. Phone Calls
Introductions 8. Jobs
2. Forms and Documents 9. Job Interviews
3. Personal Information 10. Medical Needs
4. Directions 11. Computer Literacy Skills
5. Events and Scheduling 12. Setting up an Email
6. Shopping Account

[Barbee, Escalona, Holdway, 2012]

 Learning Objectives: Finding a Job

Finding a Job 8.1 Use a newspaper to identify potential jobs by

identifying type of job, phone numbers, physical
addresses, and/or email addresses.
8.2 Request information about job positions by
requesting a job application form or asking for more
information.
8.3 Identify common features of a job application.
8.4 Complete a job application using personal
information by filling out a sample form from an
actual business.

[Barbee, Escalona, Holdway, 2012]

Lesson Plan
Job Applications
Lesson

“Life Skills” English

Class

90 minutes Learning Objectives

Duration
The Students Will:
Identify common features of
ESP program for adult
migrant population in job applications.
downtown Honolulu. Fill-out a job application
Beginning to low- form using personal
intermediate learners.
information.
Context
Use strategies, i.e., dictionary, context clues,
etc., to determine the meanings of unknown v
 References
•Barbee, M., Escalona, J., & Holdway,
J. (2012). Development of an ESP program for
a Micronesian population in Hawaii. In H. Ahn
& M. Vidal (Eds.)
•Bhatia, V. K. (2008). Genre Analysis, ESP and
professional practice. English for Specific
Purposes, 27(2), 161-174.
•Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in
academic and research settings. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Thank you!
 ESP

Master 2

Lecture 5
November 15, 2017

Discourse Analysis

Prof.dr. Shpresa Delija

 Definition of Discourse

Discourse – written and spoken

Speaker/ Hearer/ reader

writer
Discourse

Context
 Definitions of Discourse

• A particular unit of language (above the

sentence), or discourse in structure;

• A particular focus on language use,

discourse as function.
 Objects of discourse
1. ‘Discourse’ refers to any utterance which is meaningful. These
texts can be:

- written texts

-oral texts (‘speech’/’talk’)

- mixed written/oral texts (e.g. Internet chat)

2. Discourse does not depend on the size of a text

It might be e single sentence as well.

 WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ?

Discourse analysis study the ways sentences

and utterances (speech) go together to
make texts and interactions and how those
texts and interactions fit into our social world.

It should be noticed also that discourse

analysis is not just the study of language, but
a way of looking at language as well.
This way of looking at language is based on four main
assumptions:

1. Language is ambiguous. What things mean is never absolutely clear.

2. Language is always ‘in the world’. That is, what language means is
always a matter of where and when it is used.
3. The way we use language is inseparable from who we are and
The different social groups to which we belong.
4. Language is never used all by itself. It is always combined with other
things such as our tone of voice, facial expressions and gestures when
we speak, and the fonts, layout and graphics we use in written texts.
 Discourse is characterised as:

 produced/consumed/monitored by social actors

(producers/receivers of social practices);
shaped by social structures;
with social implications;
socially valued and regulated (production, reception
and circulation).
• Discourses are analysed in relation to social processes that form
them, and there are complex relations between discourses and
social practices:
Discourses of food Social Practice
“Healthy Food” Healthy lifestyle
Structural and functional definitions of discourse

• Structural or textual definition of discourse:

Discourse is a particular unit of language
(above the sentence).
• The discourse analysis will be concerned with
text-sentences.

• Functional definition of discourse: Discourse is

a particular focus of language use.
 Functional approach to discourse
• Roman Jakobson: language performs six
functions:
Addressor(emotive);
Context (referential)
Addressee (conative);
Contact (phatic);
Message (poetic);
Code (metalinguistic).
 Discourse as a System of functions ?

• e.g. “what’s the time?”

• Phatic function (opens a contact)
• Emotive function (conveys the need of the speaker)
• Conative function (asks something of the addressee)
• Referential function (makes reference to the world
outside the language)

• PROBLEM:
• Discourse analysis may turn into a more general and
broader analysis of language functions.
 Functional approach to discourse
• The major concern: discourse analysis can
turn out into a more general and broader
analysis of language functions. Or it will fail to
make a special place for the analysis of
relationships between utterances.
 What is Discourse Analysis?
• Language above the sentence or above the
clause.
• A continuous stretch of spoken language
larger than a sentence, often constituting a
coherent unit.
• A stretch of language perceived to be
meaningful unified, and purposive; language
in use.
• It is viewed as social practice determined by
social structures.
 Continued
• Discourse analysis not only discusses about
the language but also how it relates with
society, culture and thought.

• It describes activities in different disciplines.

 Three Approaches of Discourse Analysis

1. Speech act theory

2. Ethnography of communication

3. Pragmatics
 Speech Act Theory
• According to Austin (1962) Speech Act Theory
focuses on communicative acts, which are
performed through speech.

• It is applicable to discourse analysis because it

provides a framework which identifies the
conditions underlying the productions and the
understanding of an utterance as a particular
linguistically realized action.
 Speech Acts

Searle (1975)
– All speech acts classified as
• Assertives – suggesting, boasting, concluding, etc.
• Directives – asking, ordering, inviting, etc.
• Commissives – promising, planning, vowing, etc.
• Expressives – thanking, apologizing, deploring, etc.
• Declarations – performatives (state-changing)
 Speech act theory
• Differentiation between performatives and constatives:
adverb “hereby”
Example 2
I hereby apologize.
I hereby declare the meeting open.
• Examples of performative verbs in English:

to say to withdraw
to protest to declare
to object to plead
to apologize to vote
to deny to thank, etc.
to promise
 Speech act theory
• Types of speech acts:
Verdictives (e.g. estimating, assessing,
describing);
Exercitives (ordering, appointing, advising);
Commissives (promising, betting);
Behabitives (apologizing, congratulating,
thanking);
Expositives (arguing, insisting).
 Speech act theory
• Compare Austin’s classification with other classification of speech acts
Conclusions for DA:
• speech act theory is concerned with what people do with language or it is
concerned with the function of language.;
• a piece of discourse (what is said) is chunked/segmented into units that
have communicative functions,;
• these function are identified and labelled;
• different speech acts initiate and respond to other acts. Acts to a certain
degree specify what kind of response is expected;
• they create options for a next utterance each time they are performed;
• An utterance can perform more than one speech act at a time ;
• there is more than one option of responses for a next utterance;
• Deborah Schiffrin: ‘this flexibility has an important analytical consequence:
it means that a single sequence of utterances may actually be the outcome
of a fairly wide range of different underlying functional relations.’
 Ethnography of Communication
• Ethnography of communication is an approach
to discourse, which is based on linguistics and
anthropology.

• Ethnography of communication tries to

analyze patterns of communicative practices
and such practices are an integrated part of
what one knows and does as a member of
particular culture.
 Pragmatics
• Based primarily on the ideas of Paul Grice:
• People interact having minimal assumptions
(implicatures) about one another;
• Two types of implicatures: conventional and
conversational;
• Conventional implicatures do not require any
particular context in order to be understood (or
inferred);
• Conversational implicatures are context – dependant.
What is implied varies according to the context of an
utterance.
 Pragmatics
1. The notion of Pragmatics

2. Speaker Meaning

3. Cooperative Principle
 How is Discourse viewed?
• Discourse is viewed as a social practice.
(M. Foucault, N. Fairclough, 1998)
 Doing discourse analysis

• Scope
• Influences
• Approaches
 The scope of discourse analysis
• Discourse analysis does not exist alone. It is influenced by
other disciplines and influences them as well. It is a two-
way process.
• For this reason discourse analysis examines spoken and
written texts from all sorts of different areas (medical,
legal, advertising) and from all sorts of perspectives (race,
gender, power).
• Discourse analysis has a number of practical applications -
for example in analysing communication problems in
medicine, psychotherapy, education, in analysing written
style etc.
 Influences on discourse analysis

• sociolinguistics psycholinguistics

other non- other linguistic

linguistic Discourse Analysis
disciplines
disciplines

computational
linguistics pragmatics
 Approaches to Discourse
Deborah Schiffrin in her book “Approaches to Discourse” (1994)
points out 6 major approaches to discourse:

• the speech act approach;

• interactional sociolinguistics;

• the ethnography of communication;

• pragmatic approach;

• conversation analysis;

• variationist approach.
• How do you analyse discourse?

• Various ways. Depends on what sort of discourse you’re interested

in.

• Constituting an object vs realising a social action

• Why you might do Discourse Analysis

• - you get close to the data

- the data (eg video recordings) are of life as it’s lived
- you uncover the subtle organisation of language, the
prime medium of our social lives (and selves)
- You plug in to social practices that - at the grandest -
constitute reality and our place in it
 Other reasons why discourse analysis might
interest you

- it might be connected to your life (job, family,

friends and so on)
- it can go on your cv
- if you get interested in the subject you might want
to take it further (tesi, specialistica)

• so it’s worth starting to think about what you

are interested in (linguistically)
 What is good in discourse analysis?
Understanding how discourse works we will be able to
understand people better and communicate more effectively.

Texts and Texture

Discourse analysts analyze ‘texts’ and ‘conversations’.

Text
Text is everything that is meaningful in a particular situation; and
the basis for meaning is choice.

Texture
Texture is the quality that makes a particular set of words or
sentences a text, rather than a random collection of linguistic
items. So it is the relationship Between one set of choice and
another.
 References
• Cook, G. (1989). Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dudley-Evans, T. and St John, M, J. (1998). Developments in
English for Specific Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
• Hutchinson, T. and Waters, A. (1987). English for Specific
Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Johnstone, B. (2008). Discourse Analysis. Singapore: Blackwell
Publishing.
• McCarthy, M. (1991). Discourse Analysis for Language
Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 ESP
Master 2

Lecture 6
November 22, 2017
Genre Analysis

Prof.dr. Shpresa Delija

 Definitions:
• Miller (1984) defines genre as typification of social and rhetorical
action.

• Martin (1996), a genre is a staged, goal-oriented, purposeful activity in

which speakers engage as members of our culture. (examples of

genres such as poems, narratives, expositions, lectures,

seminars, recipes, manuals, appointment-making, service
encounters, and news broadcasts).

• Swales (1990) defines it as "a class of communicative events, the

member of which share some set of communicative purposes".
Genre Analysis as Methodology
A genre is a class of discourse, the members of
which share communicative purposes. These
purposes are recognized by the members of the
parent discourse community. These purposes
shape the structure of the discourse and
influences content and style.
(Swales, 1990)
 Genre Analysis as Methodology

Genre Analysis is an investigative procedure that

analyzes the connections between a certain
genre and its communicative purpose. (Huttner et
al. 2009)

Connection between the use of language

and purpose for which we use it.

Language does not exist in a vacuum.

 Genre Analysis as Methodology
Genre Analysis allows students to be able to place a
certain genre within the context of its language
community, investigate it, and create new examples
within that genre.

 What purpose does it serve?

 What is the macrostructure?
 What is the microstructure?
 How does the structure work to achieve the
communicative purpose of the genre?
 How does this genre compare to other genres?
 Swales about the definition of genre

In addition to purpose, exemplars of a genre exhibit

various patterns of similarity in terms of structure,
style, content and intended audience. If all high
probability expectations are realized, the exemplar
will be viewed as prototypical by the parent discourse
community.

(Swales, 1990: 58)

 Genre and text type
Genre names overlap with text types, but the
conceptualization is different.

 Text types are classified on the basis of format

and formal structure.

 Genre is recognized as a communicative event

sharing some communicative purposes.
 The difference between Genre and Text Types
Genre
• based on external, non-
linguistic, "traditional"
criteria. (Biber, 1988)
• external criteria such as
intended audience,
purpose, and activity type,
that is, it refers to a
conventional, culturally
recognized grouping of texts
based on properties .
• Assigned on the basis of
USE
Text type
• Based on the internal,
linguistic characteristics of
texts themselves. (Biber,
1988)
• lexical or grammatical
occurrence features, which
are, instead, the internal
(linguistic) criteria forming
the basis of text type
categories.
• Assigned on the basis of
FORM
 TEXT AND THEIR SOCIAL FUNCTION

What is meant by a genre?

A genre is a recognizable communicative event
characterized by a set of communicative purposes
identified and mutually understood by members of the
community in which it occurs.
Swales (2003)

What is meant by genre analysis?

It is the study of the social functions of different kinds

of texts.
 Examples of Text type & Genre
Genre Text Type
Recipe Procedure
Personal letter Anecdote
Advertisement Description
Police report Description
Student essay Exposition
Formal letter Exposition
Formal letter Problem-Solution
News item Recount
Health brochure Procedure
Student assignment Recount
Biology textbook Report
Film review Review
Hammond (1992)
 Examples of Genre

Instruction leaflet, personal letters, official

letters, public notice, story, poems, news
report, speech, debate, academic articles,
business reports etc.
 Genre analysis

Investigates the discourse which share

some common communicative purposes.

 Aims not only to describe the discourse

features but also to explain the features in
the light of communicative purposes and
the institutional culture.
 Academic Genres

Thesis and
lectures
dissertations

Books and Conference Research

monographs Presentations articles
 Academic Supporting Genres (Swales, 2011)

• Getting into Graduate School

Statements of Purpose
Personal Statements
• Finding Your Voice in the Academic Community
Communicating with Seniors
Communicating with Co-authors
Requests and Reminders
Writing Apologies
• Establishing Yourself in Graduate School
Small Grant Applications
Other Applications
Letters of Recommendation
 Continued
• Supporting the Publication Process
Manuscript Submissions
Responding to Reviewers and Editors
• Moving on to an Academic or Research Career
Curriculum Vitae
External Job Applications
Statements of Teaching Philosophy
 Genre-based ESP teaching
 To enable learners to use language functionally,
so the teaching combines language forms and
functions.

 To examine the structure of discourse, the

relationship between language forms and
discourse functions as well as linguistic features.
 Genre-based ESP teaching
• Methodology:

Human activity, whether in employment or in the

classroom can be seen as a series of tasks –
some having a communicative aspect, others
not. (Swales, 1990)
Task is central to
methodology.
 Genre Characterizations:

1) Genres are communicative events:

Most texts are not just trying to get only one thing
done. The Communicative purposes of texts are often
multiple and complex.

2) Conventions and Constraints:

These Constraints govern not just what can be
included, but also how it should be included.
 Continued

3. Creativity
That is not to say that all job application letters, or
other genres like newspaper articles and recipes, are
always exactly the same. As The directors of the often
the most successful texts are those which break the
rules, defy conventions and push the boundaries of
constraints.
4. Discourse communities:
Genres are always associated with certain groups of
people that have certain common goals and common
ways of reaching these goals.
 Genre is defined by the characteristics of ESP

Dudley - Evans (1997) have defined the following

characteristics.

 ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the

learners;
 ESP makes use of underlying methodology and
activities of the discipline it serves;
 ESP is centered on the language appropriate to
these activities in terms of grammar, lexis,
register, study skills, discourse and genre.
 Genre Analysis

 The theory of genre analysis provides us

a perspective to understand and explain
“texts in ESP” in terms of communicative
function; It is also a focused and an
effective approach to ESP teaching.
 Rubric for Analysis

• Identify the communication purpose(s)

• Identify the audiences (internal, external,

peers, up or down the hierarchy.)

• Identify the organizational pattern

– What opening information is there – headers,
titles, communication chains, dates, etc.
 Continued
• Organization
– What purpose do the sections of the document
serve for the audience?
– What is the purpose of the conclusion (to
summarize, provide information, provide
highlights, to give contact information)?
 (Continued)
• Final questions
– What are the style expectations (formal,
consultative, informal)?
– What is the medium for delivery?
– Where does there seem to be flexibility in the
genre expectations?
Patterns of discourse realization in
professional contexts
 Genre Analysis – Bhatia’s ‘four-space’
model
• Language as text
• Language as genre
• Language as professional practice
• Language as social practice
Vijay K. Bhatia 2004 Worlds of written discourse
 Three main phases of genre analysis

• Textualisation – focusing on lexico-

grammatical resources, typical/frequent froms
in specific genres
• Organisation – focusing on coherence and
cohesion and how these create a whole text
• Contextualisation – going beyond the text
itself to analyse the context and purpose of
the text
 Learning about genres
Most written genres in ESP belong to professional
domains :
• Professionals learn the ‘language’ of their
profession at the same time and as an integral
part of the ‘content’, knowledge and ‘skills’ of
their profession. (e.g. engineers learn how to
draft a structural report as they learn about the
calculations reported therein.

• How can a tranlsator acquire this knowledge for

myriad of genres?
Translating genres – genre knowledge
• When translating the translator needs to be
aware of differences in the context of use, the
‘lexicogrammatical’ choices may be different
depending on the typical/distinctive
lexicogrammatical froms of the particular
genre in that particular ‘social space’
 Register
• In linguistics, a register is a variety of a
language used for a particular purpose or in a
particular social setting.
• Language register is the level of formality with
which you speak. Different situations and
people call for different registers.
 Register
• “A register is a semantic concept. It can be
defined as a configuration of meanings that are
typically associated with a particualr situational
configuration of field, mode and tenor. But since
it is a configuration of meanings, a register must
also, of course, include the expressions, the
lexico-grammatical and phonological features,
that typically accompany or REALISE these
meanings” Halliday 1985
 Register
• Registers constrain the meanings that are likely to be
made in situational contexts in society
• Not everyone has access to all registers (people have
registerial repertoires)
• These repertoires determine the number of contexts
that people can successfully operate in;
• Defining registers defines the overall semiotic space
of a culture (this is the task of the discourse analyst)
 Register Features
• "A comprehensive linguistic analysis of a register
requires consideration of a representative
selection of linguistic features. Analyses of these
register features are necessarily quantitative,
because the associated register distinctions are
based on differences in the relative distribution
of linguistic features."
(Douglas Biber, Dimensions of Register Variation:
A Cross-Linguistic Comparison. Cambridge
University Press, 1995)
 Reference
• Bhatia, V. (1993). Analysing genre: Language use in professional
settings. London: Longman.
• Douglas Biber, Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-
Linguistic Comparison. Cambridge University Press, 1995
• Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and
research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Hopkins, A., & Dudley-Evans, T. (1988). A genre-based
investigation of the discussion sections in articles and
dissertations. English for Specific Purposes
 ESP
Master 2

Lecture 8
December 21, 2016

Instructional Approaches in
ESP

Prof.dr. Shpresa Delija

 Approaches to ESP
1. Language - Centered
2. Skills – centered
3. Learning – Centered
 Language – Centered Approach

• It is the simplest and more familiar kind to

English teachers.
• It is particularly common in ESP.
• It aims to draw as direct a connection as
possible between the analysis of the target
situation and the content of the ESP course.
• A language – centered approach says: this
nature of the target situation performance
determines ESP course.
 Weaknesses
• Is considered a learner-centered approach because it
starts from the learners and their needs BUT it is not
learner centered.
• The learner is mainly used as a means to identify the
target situation.
• Can be criticized for being a static and inflexible
procedure.
• The language – centered analysis of target situation
data is only at the surface level. It reveals very little
about the competence that underlined the
performance.
 Skills-Centered Approach

• Aims to help learners to develop skills and

strategies which continue after the ESP course
by making learners better processors of
information.

• This approach says: We must look behind

target performance to discover what
processes enable someone to perform. Those
processes will determine the ESP course.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses
Weaknesses
The Role and Design of
Instructional Materials

Lecture 9
18 January, 2017
 The Purpose of Material Design
• to stimulate and support language instruction and their design and/or adaptation
is an important element of ESP teaching practice.
• to expose learners to real language as it is used in a range of professional and/or
academic settings, they are to be closely related to students’ target needs (Hyland,
2006).
• to scaffold learners’ understandings of language use.
• to support their evolving control of different texts and engage them in thinking
about and using the language.
• to give learners a chance to get acquainted with a variety of language samples that
do not follow a rigid format, but provide the opportunity to discuss, write, analyze
and manipulate language structures and/or vocabulary.
• to examine various possible examples of a genre with a view to indentifying their
structure and understanding how meanings are expressed in them.
• to raise learners’ awareness of how texts are organized and how their
communicative intentions are attained.
• can be used as sources of ideas and content to stimulate and promote writing,
speaking or discussion as well as to support project work.
 Characteristics of good ESP materials

1. Provide a stimulus to learning -- interesting,

enjoyable, content at the right level.
2. Provide a path through the learning maze. Clear,
coherent structure, with variety.
3. Consciously reflect a view of learning and
language.
4. Stretches teachers to use different techniques.
5. Provide models of correct and appropriate
language use.
Criteria need to be considered when using
authentic materials (Karpova 1999)
1. Content: the content of authentic materials has to be appropriate for
learners’ age, interest, needs and goals.
2. Tasks: tasks must be “sequenced and differentiated” and must include
“communicative and cognitive procedures” so that the learners’
background and new knowledge can be integrated.
3. Teacher-learner relationship: the materials must be structured in a way
that a “reciprocal” interaction between the instructor and the learner
takes place.
4. Learning strategies: cognitive abilities of the learners must be improved
by paying attention to learning strategies.
5. Learning environment: the environment provided must in a way
encourage “risk taking and idea sharing”.
6. Social Values and Attitudes: authentic materials must be a reflection of
social values and attitudes.
7. Culture issue: authentic materials must further learners’ “cultural,
sociolinguistic, and paralinguistic awareness”.
Galloway (1990) recommends the following
criteria in authentic material selection
1. Topic should be accessible to learners.
2. Length of text should not be intimidating to
beginning readers.
3. Linguistic level should be slightly above the
reader’s own level unless the tasks are
closely structured to involve focused reading.
4. Clues to meaning should be abundant such
as contextual, verbal, pictorial, and linguistic.
(Cited in Haley and Austin, 2004: 160-161)
 The Form of Teaching Materials
• Printed materials
ex. books, workbooks, worksheets, readers
• Nonprint materials
ex. cassette, audio materials, videos
• Both print and nonprint sources
ex. self-access materials,
materials on the Internet
• Magazines, newspapers, TV programs
The role of materials (Cunningsworth, 1995)
• A resource for presentation materials
• A source of activities for learner practice and
communicative interaction
• A reference source for learners on grammar,
vocabulary, pronunciation, and so on
• A source of stimulation and ideas for
classroom activities
• A syllabus
• A support for less experienced teachers
 The functions of materials
• As a source of language
• As a learning support
• For motivation and stimulation
• For reference

(Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998)

Authentic versus created materials

• Authentic materials:
Teaching resources that are not specially
prepared for pedagogical purpose

• Created materials:
Text books and other specially developed
instructional resources
Advantages of authentic materials

• have a positive effect on learner motivation

• provide authentic cultural information about
the target culture
• provide exposure to real language
• relate more closely to learners’ needs
• support a more creative approach to
teaching
(Phillips & Shettlesworth, 1978; Clarke, 1989; Peacock, 1997)
 Critics of using authentic materials

• Created materials can also be motivating for

learners
• Authentic materials often contain difficult
language
• Created materials may be superior to authentic
materials because they are generally built around
a graded syllabus
• Using authentic materials is a burden for teachers
 Advantages of using commercial
textbooks
• Provide structure and a syllabus for a program
• Help standardize instruction
• Maintain quality
• Provide a variety of learning resources
• Be efficient
• Provide effective language models and input
• Train teachers
• Visually appealing
 Negative effects of commercial
textbooks

• May contain inauthentic language

• May distort content
• May not reflect students’ needs
• Can deskill teachers
• Be expensive
 Evaluating textbooks

Before evaluating a textbook, information is

needed on the following issues:
• The role of the textbook in the program
ex. Will it be used with small classes or large ones?
• The teachers in the program
ex. Are teachers free to adapt and supplement the book?
• The learners in the program
ex. What do learners typically expect in a textbook?
 Criteria for textbook evaluation
They should:
• Correspond to learners’ needs.
Match the aims and objectives of the
language learning program.
• Reflect the present or future uses
• Take account of students’ needs
• Have a clear role as a support for learning
(Cunningsworth, 1995)
A checklist for textbook evaluation
and selection ( Appendix 2)
Organized under the following categories (p. 274)
• Aims and approaches
• Design and organization
• Language content
• Skills
• Topic
• Methodology
• Teachers’ books
• Practical considerations (Cunningsworth, 1995)
Questions to ask when selecting ESP
materials

• Will the materials stimulate and motivate?

• To what extend does the material match
the stated learning objectives and your
learning objectives?
• To what extent will the materials support
the learning process?
(Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998)
 Factors involved in textbook
evaluation and selection

• Program factors
• Teacher factors
• Learner factors
• Content factors
• Pedagogical factors
 Adapting textbooks
A good provider of materials will be able to:

• Select appropriately from what is available

• Be creative with what is available
• Modify activities to suit learners’ needs
• Supplement by providing extra activities
(Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998)
 Forms of adaptation
• Modifying content
• Adding or deleting content
• Reorganizing content
• Addressing omissions
• Modifying tasks
• Extending tasks
Preparing materials for a program

Advantages: Disadvantages
‧Relevance ‧Cost
‧Develop expertise ‧Quality
‧Reputation ‧Training
‧Flexibility
The nature of materials development

The process of materials development:

1. Preparation: ex. critical analysis of texts
2. Representation: ex. examples, demonstrations
3. Selection: ex. choice from modes of teaching,
organizing, managing, and arranging
• Adapting and tailoring to student characteristics:
ex. consideration of social class, gender, age
(Shulman, 1987)
 Characteristics for good language
teaching materials (Tomlinson, 1998)

Materials should:
• achieve impact
• help learners feel at ease
• help learners to develop confidence
• be relevant and useful to students
• require and facilitate learner self-investment
• expose the learners to language in authentic use
• provide the learners with opportunities to achieve
communicative purpose
• take into account that positive effects of instruction
are usually delayed
 Characteristics for good language teaching
materials
Materials should:

• take into account that the learners have different learning

styles
• take into account that learners differ in affective attitudes
• permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction
• maximize learning potential
• not rely too much on controlled practice
• provide opportunities for outcome feedback
• Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught
• The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features
of the input
Decisions in materials design

Processes of program design and materials design:

• Developing aims
• Developing objectives
• Developing a syllabus
• Organizing the course into units
• Developing a structure for units
• Sequencing units
• Choosing input and sources
• Selecting exercise types
 Choosing input and sources
• Grammar materials
• Listening materials
• Reading materials
• Writing materials
• Speaking materials

Authentic Materials
 Selecting exercise types
An example of exercises that involve a nonlinguistic
response to the text:

• Ordering a sequence of pictures

• Comparing texts and pictures
• Matching
• Using illustrations
• Completing a document
• Mapping it out
• Using the information in a text
• Jigsaw reading (Grellet, 1981)
 Selecting exercise types
An example of exercises that involve a linguistic
response to the text:
• Reorganizing the information: recording events
• Reorganizing the information: using grids
• Comparing several texts
• Completing a document
• Question types
• Study skills: summarizing
• Study skills: note taking (Grellet, 1981)
 Managing a materials writing project
A team-based writing project involves:
• Selecting the project team
• Planning the number of stages involved
• Identifying reviewers
• Planning the writing schedule
• Piloting the materials
• Design and production
 Monitoring the use of materials
Forms of Monitoring:
• Observation
• Feedback sessions
• Written reports
• Review
• Students’ reviews
Questions?
 ESP

Master II

Lecture 10

Technology as a resource for ESP

25 January, 2017
Shpresa Delija
 Historical overview

• Technology has long played an important role in the

teaching of ESP since 1960.
• It was used to define the learners’ needs, materials
creation/adaptation, ongoing course and/or materials
evaluation, and methodology that draws on target
situations and disciplines.
• As technology entered ESP classrooms, ESP teachers
made use of interactive multimedia packages, Internet
resources, and various tools designed to create
specialized materials with a view to promoting
learners’ engagement with relevant target situations
(Arnó-Macía, 2012).
 Continued

• The relationship between information technology

(IT) and ESP remains under a strong influence of
the evolution of Computer-Assisted Language
Learning (CALL) alongside developments in
applied linguistics and language teaching (Arnó-
Macía, 2012).
• Garrett (2009: 719), emphasizes that CALL refers
to “the full integration of technology into
language learning” and it should be based on the
interrelation of such elements as pedagogy,
theory and technology.
 Continued

• Looking at its rapid development from the

perspective of underlying theories and
available technology, Warschauer (1996),
Warschauer & Healey (1998) distinguish three
distinct phases of CALL:
In the behaviorist phase
The communicative phase of CALL
 Continued

• The behaviorist phase, conceived in the 1950s

and implemented in the 1960s and 1970s. During
this period the computer was used as a vehicle
for delivering instructional materials to students
by means of different tutoring systems. The
PLATO system, for instance, provided vocabulary
drills, brief grammar explanations and drills, as
well as translation tests.
• PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic
Teaching Operations) was the first generalized
computer – assisted system (1060).
 Continued

• The communicative phase of CALL, frequently distinguished from behaviorist

CALL NOT by the kind of software used, BUT by the purpose to which a given
computer program is put (Warschauer, 1996), was based on the
communicative approach to language teaching that predominated in the 1970s
and 1980s.
• It emphasizes the use of forms rather than the forms themselves, implicit
grammar teaching, creating a natural environment for the target language use,
etc.
• that period several computer programs were developed and used to provide
skill practice in a non-drill format (which was an extension of the computer as
a tutor model), to stimulate discussion or writing.
• The computer as a stimulus model was used for communicative activities and
to empower learners to use or understand language (Warschauer, 1996).
• Third phase is about Integrative approaches to CALL which were based on two
important technological developments:
 multimedia technology allowing access to a wide variety of media (text,
graphics, sound, animation and video)
 and the Internet, a medium of global communication and a source of
innumerable authentic materials (Warschauer, 1996).
 Other concepts
• Further developments in IT and language teaching have
brought about such concepts as network-based language
teaching (NBLT).
• NBLT in contrast to CALL, is associated with self-contained,
and programmed applications such as tutorials, drills,
simulations, etc. NBLT involves human-to-human
communication and collaboration (Kern & Warschauer,
2000). It places emphasis on culture (i.e., intercultural
competence, cultural learning, cultural literacy) and social
discourses (Kern, Ware and Warschauer, 2004). Observing
mobile technology moving at a dizzying pace, one cannot
but agree that the very concept of CALL needs to be
extended to include the latest mobile devices.
 Internet
• The Internet has given rise to significant changes in language learning.
• The acronym ALIVE standing for the concepts of Authenticity, Literacy,
Interaction, Vitality, and Empowerment best captures the nature of these
developments (Warschauer, Shetzer, and Meloni, 2000). These concepts
are of particular importance to ESP learners, who aspire to join target
discourse communities.

• Internet resources provided ESP teachers and learners with a wide range
of authentic materials, as well as opportunities to actively interact with
members of these communities through e-mails, forums, blogs, etc.

• The use of various Web 2.0 applications can considerably contribute to

learners’ empowerment, and help them gain control over their learning.

• The presence of IT in our lives makes it necessary for language teaching to

consider computer-mediated communication (CMC) skills in addition to
traditional skills, such as writing and speaking (Chapelle, 2003; Garrett,
2009).
 Technology as tool for language learning

• Technology has been used in ESP pedagogy since the very

introduction of stand-alone computer into the classroom,
through the development of local-area networks (LAN),
widearea networks (WAN), the Internet and World Wide Web
to the invention of mobile technologies.

• It has made possible to access authentic texts, and analyze

them by means of software designed for such analysis.

• Technology has played an important role in ESP teaching,

being used as a tool for helping with traditional types of
language learning (Bloch, 2013) with ESP authentic materials
available in the form of newspapers, magazines, scientific
journals, news broadcasts, lectures, all of which represent
different written and oral texts.
 Continued
• The growth of open-access university courses, ESP teachers
have been able to freely exploit authentic discipline-specific
materials in the classroom and thus bring relevant language
experiences from outside the classroom.

• Some news organizations like the British Broadcasting

Company (www.bbc.co.uk) or National Public Radio
(www.npr.org) have offered open access to their programs
stored in the form of podcasts.

• Universities like Yale (http://oyc.yale.edu) and The University of

California, Berkley (http://webcast.berkley.edu) have provided
both audio and visual copies of lectures that can be used for
language practice in the classroom or by students learning on
their own.
 Continued
• The video-hosting sites, the largest and most popular of which is
YouTube, have provided a wide selection of authentic discipline-
specific materials.
• Free programs like Audacity, teachers have been able to create
their own podcasts (Kern, 2013) and encourage students to do so.
These can be stored for free online (e.g. at www.youtube.com), and
shared with an unlimited audience. Sites for storing videos are of
great importance for ESP learners.
• they expand the audience for students’ work,
• but they also make them consider how the relationships between
them and their audiences are affected by their use of language
(Bloch, 2013)

• Audacity® is free, open source, cross-platform audio software for

multi-track recording and editing
 Continued – other sites

• Concordancers and concordancing sites is Another

technology that has enabled ESP teachers to
incorporate authentic forms of language into their
lessons.
• Concordaners allow for searches of the occurrence of
particular words or structures or combination of
words, and help generate word frequency lists and key
word in context (KWIC) concordance lines.
• Concordancing sites provide examples of technical
vocabulary use and syntactic structures from authentic
texts in specific areas of discourse, and can be used in
the classroom with a view to enabling learners to
develop language awareness.
 Corpora - a large or complete collection of writings and
spoken language
• ESP teachers can develop their own corpora to meet specific
needs of their learners (Tribble, 1997).

• ESP teachers and learners can use the Corpus of Contemporary

American English (COCA) (at http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/), the
web-based interfaces, e.g. the VIEW (Variations in English Words
and Phrases) in the British National Corpus (BNC) (at
http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/), which allows the user to search for
a word or phrase or patterns including synonyms.

• Corpora can also be used to compare expert texts with learner-

produced texts to juxtapose the features used in target texts with
the characteristics of learners’ production.

• Corpora can be easily incorporated in the classroom on condition

that they are accompanied by appropriate activities (Flowerdew,
1998)
 On line communication

• Online communication constitutes part of everyday

communication in academic and professional settings.
• It has become not only a means for language learning, but also
a goal to be reached by ESP students, who have to learn to
cope with various digital genres, or cybergenres (Shepherd and
Watters, 1998 in Arnó-Macía, 2012).

• This communication can be asynchronous (“different time,

different place”), e.g. email, listserves, blogs, discussion
boards, social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook, where
users can interact using any of these modes of discourse.

• It can as well include synchronous modes of discourse (“same

time, different place”), such as chats, video conferencing, e-
learning systems or virtual learning environments, where
participants interact in the same time frame.
 Continued

• Participation in online forums, Facebook, Twitter, as

well as in other digital media, provides ESP learners
with the opportunity to engage in authentic
discursive practices related to their areas of study or
work.
• They increase students’ motivation because they
participate in authentic purposeful communication
through meaningful tasks as well as projects that
involve simulations of real-life interactions (Grosse
and Voght, 1991; Dudley-Evans and St John, 2009;
Hutchinson and Waters, 2010).
 Continued
• Technology also offers various visualization tools that can be used
in language learning (Krajka, 2015).
• One of them is Mindmap (at https://www.mindmap.com), a free
mind mapping application that enables users to store maps on
several cloud storage providers, such as Google Drive, and
collaborate in real time with other users.
• When it comes to ESP pedagogy, it can be employed to visualize
content, topics, as well as the elements of lexis. Another
interesting free online service is Tagxedo
(http://www.tagxedo.com/), which allows to turn various texts,
e.g. speeches, news articles, presentations, reviews, slogans, etc.
into visually stunning word clouds, and to display words
appropriately sized, and with the frequencies of their occurrence
highlighted within the body of text or compared texts.
 ACTIVE Learning Environment
• The word ACTIVE is an acronym for the characteristics of
technology-facilitated learning, environments that are most
beneficial to students.
• The classroom tasks should be:
• Active – tasks require cognitive behaviors that emphasize the
transformation of information into personal knowledge.
Cooperative – tasks require meaningful interaction among
students. Theme-based – tasks are flexible and
multidisciplinary based on an organizing theme.
• Integrated – tasks emphasize content area knowledge and use
technology tools to encourage learning this content in ways
that are meaningful.
• Versatile – tasks make efficient use of technology skills and
develop those that can be applied repeatedly. Evaluative –
tasks allow the assessment of the student’s ability to use the
knowledge and skills we want them to learn.
 Continued

• Video discs and CD-Roms can be used:

1. to support a course, e.g., revising basic skills or
language;
2. to enhance a course by providing extra topics for the
course;
3. as free-standing material. The CD-Rom or video disk
presents a selfcontained unit or set of units, and no
other material is provided;
4. to provide data which can be exploited for language
purposes;
5. to provide authentic material originally designed for a
purpose other than learning language.
 Activities to be used - Harris (1995)
• Interpersonal Exchanges. “Talk” among individuals, between an
individual and a group, among groups.
• Key pals: unstructured exchange among individuals or groups;
e.g., exchanges to develop cultural awareness or language skills.
• Global classrooms: study a common topic and exchange accounts
of what has been learned.
• Electronic appearances: e-mail or chat interaction with a guest,
perhaps after some preparation.
• Electronic mentoring: ongoing interaction between expert and
student on a specific topic.
• Impersonations: participants interact “in character”.
• Information Collections. Working together to collect and compile
information provided by participants. Information exchanges:
accumulation of information on some theme.
 Continued
• Electronic publishing: publication of document based on
submission by group members.
• Pooled data analysis: data collected from multiple sites are
combined for analysis.
• Problem-Solving Projects. Focus of interaction involves solving
problems.
• Information searches: solve a problem based on clues and
reference sources.
• Electronic process writing: post written works for critiques before
revision.
• Parallel problem-solving: groups at different sites solve the same
problem and then exchange and discuss methods and conclusions.
• Sequential creations: work on sequential components of an
expressive piece.
• Social action projects: groups take responsibility for solving an
authentic problem and share reports of activities and
consequences.
 Websites referred to be used
• www.bbc.co.uk
• www.npr.org
• http://oyc.yale.edu
• http://webcast.berkley.edu
• www.youtube.com
• http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
• http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/
• https://www.google.pl/intl/pl/docs/about/
• https://www.mindmup.com
• http://www.tagxedo.com/
• https://office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx?omkt=pl-PL
• www.prezi.com
• http://home.sandiego.edu/~mmagnin/simulation.html
• http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic14.htm
 ESP
Master II

Lecture 11

EVALUATION AS A PROCESS IN ESP

Shpresa Delija
25 January, 2017
 Evaluation in an ESP & General English Course

• ESP has certain evaluation requirements that

focus on specific objectives.

• ESP evaluation is divided into:

1. Evaluation of the students

2. Evaluation of the course
 Evaluation of the student

• It does not indicate where a fault lies, but it

focuses mostly on the fault.
• Sts’ performance
• Placement test
• Achievement test
• Proficiency test
 Evaluation of the course

• It assesses whether the course objectives are

meet or whether the course is doing what it was
designed to do.
• How well the course is actually fulfilling the
students’ needs.
• Revise the course
• Help to guide the design of other similar
courses.
Four main aspects of ESP course evaluation
( Alderson and Waters, 1983)

• What should be evaluated? – Learners needs as

language learners and users.
• How can ESP courses be evaluated? – Techniques:
test results, questionnaires, discussion, interview,
casual chat etc.
• Who should be involved in the evaluation? – 1.
teachers, learners, sponsors
2. a representative cross-section of views
• When and How often should evaluation take
place?
 Why evaluate materials

• Judging the fitness of ESP materials in the ESP course.

• Identifying how successful the materials used in the
classroom are.
• examining whether the materials fulfill the prescribed
course.
• Examining the extent to which materials permit
students to achieve learning objectives.
• Identifying whether the materials are suitable for a
task-based syllabus.
• Providing students with good theoretical base for
writing extra materials.
• Avoids the reduplication of materials.
 The materials evaluation process

Define Criteria
On what bases will you
judge on the materials?

Objective criteria
Subjective analysis
How does the material
What realizations do you
being evaluated realize
want in your course?
the criteria?

Matching
How far does the material
match your needs?
 ESP
Master II

Lecture 12

ASSESSMENT AND TESTING IN ESP

Shpresa Delija
1 February, 2017
 What is Assessment?
The word ‘assess’ comes from the Latin verb ‘assidere’
meaning ‘to sit with’.

In assessment one is supposed to sit with the learner.

This implies it is something we do ‘with’ and ‘for’
students and not ‘to’ students (Green, 1999).

 Assessment is a process of measuring, and

one formal method of measuring is to test.
Assessment in education is the process of
gathering, interpreting, recording, and using
information about pupils’ responses to an
educational task. (Harlen, Gipps, Broadfoot,
Nuttal,1992)
 Aims
A. Assessment Procedures

Formal tests Tutor-assessed Peer and self

assignment Assessment

B. Discuss key features

Public ESP In-house

examination tests
 Why
assess
1. Feedback ? 2. A comparable
to aid learning measure of
competency

1. Public
1. Reinforcement
examinations
2. Confidence
2. Regular
building
assessment
3. Involvement &
3. Testing within
building on
educational
strengths
www.themegallery.com institutions
 Assessment

1.Tests 2. Continuous
assessment

1. a period of
1. supervision
time
2. time limited
2. flexible &
3. without formative
reference
3. additional
4. learner is not resources
involved www.themegallery.com
Differences between tests & continuous assessment

Continuous
Tests
assessment
How long is there? Often no time limit A set time limit

When is it done? Over a period of time One block of time

Where is it done? Class, home, library Classroom / hall

Ask questions, discuss Usually in silence, own

How is it done with others work, may use
Use books dictionary

Teacher, teacher and

Who sets the tasks? Teacher or outsider
learner

Who grades the work? Teacher, learner, peers Teacher or outsider

www.themegallery.com
 Classroom assessment
Teacher assessment
 The most common procedure is the
grading of written assignments (done in
class or as homework)
 Reading & listening: everyone can be
assessed at the same time
 Pair of group work: assessment can be
spread over several occasions, because
of the time involved
 Important feedback for teachers &
learners
Grades provided limited information and
may mean little to a learner
Descriptors and comments are more
informative. www.themegallery.com
Peer & self-assessment
 Be used to supplement teacher
assessment
 Have most value as an aid to learning
Only be valued in consistency
Qualitative rather than quantitative
Constructive peer assessment can:
1.reduce the burden on the teacher
2.contribute to effective study techniques
for learners
Help learners to become more self-
directed
Purposes of Classroom tests
1 ESP Test

2 Placement Test

3 Progress Test

4
Achievement Test

5 Proficiency Test
www.themegallery.com
ESP Test Placement Test
Purposes
 To check progress/to measure  Reading test (cloze
proficiency passages)
 To determine which macro-skill  Listening test (note-taking
areas identified in the need  Quickly & sufficient
analysis reliable for group students
 How much of the assessment  Short-written exercises
will be given to, for example:
accuracy or vocabulary
Progress Test Achievement Test
 To measure mastery of  To measure mastery of a
classwork & a desirable syllabus
outcome  Longer and wider
 All students could get full perspective than Progress
marks. Test
www.themegallery.com
 Proficiency Test
 To measure how well the students will
perform in their target language tasks
and so within ESP principles
 Break down communicative events and
processes into separate micro-skills
and language items
 Identifying & separating discrete
language item
 Asses the whole rather the discrete
items.

www.themegallery.com
 Characteristics of tests

C.A.R.E. (Comparability, Acceptability,

Relevance and Economy) (Carroll, 1980)
FAIR VP (Fairness, authenticity, Impact,
Reliability, Validity and Practicality)
(Bachman & Palmer, 1996)

Backwash impact
Backwash: the test will affect what is taught and how it
is taught
Negative: multiple choice questions will be cost too
much time for teachers & learners
Positive: a good test will cause teachers to teach what
learners need in wayswww.themegallery.com
which enhance the learning process
 Similarities
2 •Assess the
3
candidates’ level
of proficiency Provide valuable
on different information for
1 skills each skills
No pass / fail •Suggest the
mark system appropriate 4
level for Compulsory
different types

Undergraduate
• IELTS: 0-9 IELTS: industrial students of No choice in the
• UETESOL: safety & engineering are questions
A,B,C,D engineering : 6 unlikely to need Different questions
• TEEP: Academic the same writing would introduce
1,2,3 courses: 7 proficiency as different criteria
business studied
students
www.themegallery.com
 Similarities
• 2 reading • rigorous • all subject
• 2 listening setting & making disciplines
• 2 writing tasks procedures offered

Wide-ranging
greater no facilities to Unknown
consistency of match the degree backgrounds
performance is of rigorous but Carrier
obtained by basic process can content is as
candidates carrying be emulated neutral and
out multiple tasks accessible as
possible
www.themegallery.com
Difference between TEEP & Other examination

TEEP was constructed on

the basis of detailed research Integrated
into the English-language &
needs of overseas university thematically linked
students as perceived by examination
both lectures & students

www.themegallery.com
 Procedure for setting tests

What is 1 Setting 4 Are we

being tested? Organized?

How well do Does

the questions everyone &
work? everything
agree?
www.themegallery.com
p.222
 ASSESSMENT:

FORMATIVE & SUMMATIVE

Practices for the Classroom

•Formative and summative assessment are
interconnected. They seldom stand alone in
construction or effect.
•The vast majority of genuine formative assessment is
informal, with interactive and timely feedback and
response.
•It is widely and empirically argued that formative
assessment has the greatest impact on learning and
achievement.
 Values and Attitudes about Assessment

1. Teachers value and believe in students.

2. Sharing learning goals with the students.
3. Involving students in self-assessment.
4. Providing feedback that helps students recognize
their next steps and how to take them.
5. Being confident that every student can improve.
6. Providing students with examples of what we
expect from them.
 Formative Assessment

• Assessment for learning

• Taken at varying intervals throughout a course to
provide information and feedback that will help
improve
– the quality of student learning
– the quality of the course itself
• “…learner-centered, teacher-directed, mutually
beneficial, formative, context-specific, ongoing,
and firmly rooted in good practice" (Angelo and
Cross, 1993).
• Provides information on what an individual
student needs
– To practice
– To have re-taught
– To learn next
 Key Elements of Formative Assessment
1. The identification by teachers & learners of learning
goals, intentions or outcomes and criteria for
achieving these.
2. Rich conversations between teachers & students that
continually build and go deeper.
3. The provision of effective, timely feedback to enable
students to advance their learning.
4. The active involvement of students in their own
learning.
5. Teachers responding to identified learning needs and
strengths by modifying their teaching approach(es).
Black & Wiliam, 1998
 Summative Assessment
• Assessment of learning
• Generally taken by students at the end of a unit or
semester to demonstrate the "sum" of what they
have or have not learned.
• Summative assessment methods are the most
traditional way of evaluating student work.
• "Good summative assessments--tests and other
graded evaluations--must be demonstrably reliable,
valid, and free of bias" (Angelo and Cross, 1993).
 Formative
•‘… often means no more than that
the assessment is carried out
frequently and is planned at the
same time as teaching.’ (Black and
Wiliam, 1999)
•‘… provides feedback which leads
to students recognizing the
(learning) gap and closing it … it is
forward looking …’ (Harlen, 1998)
•‘ … includes both feedback and
self-monitoring.’ (Sadler, 1989)
•‘… is used essentially to feed back
into the teaching and learning
process.’ (Tunstall and Gipps, 1996)
Summative
•‘…assessment (that) has increasingly
been used to sum up learning…’(Black
and Wiliam, 1999)
•‘… looks at past achievements … adds
procedures or tests to existing work ...
involves only marking and feedback
grades to student … is separated from
teaching … is carried out at intervals
when achievement has to be
summarized and reported.’ (Harlen,
1998)
 The Garden Analogy
If we think of our children as plants …

Summative assessment of the plants is the process of simply

measuring them. It might be interesting to compare and
analyze measurements but, in themselves, these do not affect
the growth of the plants.

Formative assessment, on the other hand, is the equivalent of

feeding and watering the plants appropriate to their needs -
directly affecting their growth.
 Factors Inhibiting Assessment
• A tendency for teachers to assess quantity and
presentation of work rather than quality of learning.

• Greater attention given to marking and grading,

much of it tending to lower self esteem of students,
rather than providing advice for improvement.

• A strong emphasis on comparing students with each

other, which demoralizes the less successful learners.
 Forms of Summative Assessment
• Performance Assessment
• Portfolio
• Traditional Tests
 Implications for classroom practice

• Share learning goals with students.

• Involve students in self-assessment.
• Provide feedback that helps students recognize
their next steps and how to take them.
• Be confident that every student can improve.
 K-6 Student Assessment
2005-2006
Grade Assessment Type of Timeframe Other

Level(s) Tool Assessment

*Observational End of Kindergarten Results given to
Kindergarten Survey Summative Year principals
*Guided Reading Dec./Jan, March, Results given to
K- 4 Levels Formative May/June principals
K- 6 *Writing Sample Summative April - June *
*Pre Tests Formative Throughout Year *
*Post Tests Summative Throughout Year *

*District Wide
Math Assessment To be determined To be determined To be determined

Administered to new
*Benchmarks Formative Throughout Year and/or low achieving
1st - 6th students
*Writing Prompt Summative January - March (TBD) *