I'm hoping to tempt Scott Thornbury to comment on my blog while we are sharing the guest spots of writer and teacher, hence a post about methodology in EAP. I wonder how applicable this is to other ELT contexts?
I'm currently preparing to teach a three week course to a group of German engineering students. I don't find myself wondering which methodology/method/approach I'll use. Instead I'm thinking about what I will do at the level of syllabus. The students have target genres they have to produce - an essay and an oral presentation - which form the outcomes and assessment of the course. These were specified by their sponsor so they are constraints on my course that prevent me from doing anything I want to. I'm going to help the students to achieve these outcomes with a functional syllabus, which teaches them how to define concepts, explain the causes of problems and discuss alternative solutions. In order to do this, I'm going to model the performance for them with example texts which we will analyse for useful functional language that they can then use in their own writing and speaking.
Learning to 'do' EAP in this way is a performance - like learning to play music - so perhaps I can call this the musical approach. Music has a whole range of genres: sonata, concerto, symphony, whose conventions all competent players recognise. The same is true of EAP which has a range of genres such as report, essay, research article with recognised conventions. Musicians practise scales and arpeggios to train their fingers to handle the complex runs and chords that any piece of music demands. EAP students practise functions: defining, comparing, describing process, because these also transfer to many of the genres they have to produce. Musicians put in hours of practice and a large chunk of memorising to become fluent performers of a particular piece of music. Similarly EAP students need to practise and memorise the language that will help them produce fluent writing in an essay and speaking in an oral presentation.
I'd like to stick my neck out and suggest that, unlike communicative/task based/lexical and other approaches, the musical approach is practical because it provides a framework for deciding what is essential to include in a course as well as a method for delivering it.
- Olwyn Alexander's blog
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I'm delighted to be able to rise to (compatriot) Olwyn's challenge to comment on her posting on methodology. If only to agree whole-heartedly. I like the musical analogy very much. I would like to suggest, though, that "practising functions" is a less discrete kind of practice than, say, a five-finger exercise is in music, since performing a communicative function aggregates a number of lower-level capacities, syntactical and lexical, that also have to be mastered, chunked, and combined. The function is more like a melody (sustained over a number of bars), whereas the formualic expressions, collocations etc that typically combine to realise the function are like the individual sequences of notes that need to become automated through fairly mechanical practice. Would you agree, Olwyn?
The function is more like a melody (sustained over a number of bars), whereas the formualic expressions, collocations etc that typically combine to realise the function are like the individual sequences of notes that need to become automated through fairly mechanical practice. Would you agree, Olwyn?
Yes, Scott, I'd definitely agree with this. The logical extension is that adult learners are more interested in the sustained melody than the five finger exercise (the equivalent of the 'Grammar McNuggets' you deride) and yet many courses for adults still start by collecting up a series of form-focused five finger exercises (e.g. the conditionals) as the basis for a structural syllabus. The odd function is tacked on as an afterthought. It's the equivalent of the music teacher always starting with scales and never just letting you play something you like.
Dear Olwyn
You are reading my thoughts, aren't you? As soon as I was about to write in the Forum that teacher is not an actor, but an artist as your ideas on musical approach appeared that I can't, but share. Maybe we are tuned on the same wave? Or it is typical for EAP teachers?
Fully agree with you, but I think your students will play their own music being within the framework of genres, functions and functional exponents you will train. Hope, you guess why.
Sorry to destroy the harmony of your thoughts, but where you will put skills in your concept? I mean note-making before giving a presentation and writing a report, participating in discussions etc.
Best wishes
Sorry to destroy the harmony of your thoughts, but where you will put skills in your concept? I mean note-making before giving a presentation and writing a report, participating in discussions etc.
Best wishes
Ah well... it's always the point at which the analogy breaks down that tells us the most.
In fact I've always been a bit suspect about so-called skills: note-taking, writing, discussing etc. The danger for me is that if you name these things you can separate them out and teach them individually, e.g. 'Today we are doing note-taking.' In fact, I would like to see them as activities which are necessary to achieve whatever goal has been set (either by teacher or learners), e.g. 'Today we need to find and record some information so we can use it to contribute to a seminar in order to understand the topic more deeply.'
In that case I'm sure we could identify plenty of activities that an orchestra does in order to be able to work together to produce a piece of music. We could even call them skills.
What do you think? Am I pushing the analogy too far?
Dear Olwyn
Fully agree with you. I didn't mean that so-called skills can be taught seperately in any case. What I wanted to stress that there should be some generic skills you can't avoid using your musical approach or any other. Hope, you have caught what I meant and explained it clearly by giving an example. That is what I'm practicing too. The question came from the discussion with my colleagues whether note-taking and reading for detail etc. should be included or better to say incorporated in modules/courses on giving presentations.
Besides, how the course is called? EAP or Giving presentations and Writing an essay?
As for Writing in EAP, what genres do you consider to be the most demanded? Which ones we need to focus on if there is time limit for teaching/learning academic writing?
Best wishes for the coming course.
Besides, how the course is called? EAP or Giving presentations and Writing an essay?
As for Writing in EAP, what genres do you consider to be the most demanded? Which ones we need to focus on if there is time limit for teaching/learning academic writing?
Dear Irina,
You ask great questions :-) I think the issue of naming parts of a course is really important as it tells students (and teachers) what they should be doing. No-one really seems to know waht EAP means - even when it is explained to them - but giving a presentation or writing an essay are fairly clear.
In writing I think course designers need to be very clear what will be expected of students when they think about which genres to teach. I have just been reviewing some coursework for a module called Approaches to Learning. The students have designed and administered a short questionnaire to ask other students about their use of weblogs like this one. Half the students are going to study business so this seems relevant to them but the other half are going to do science and engineering in which case it doesn't seem so relevant.
If at all possible, I try to find out from the subject lecturers what kinds of things the students will have to write and try to match these genres. Sometimes though the genres are specified in advance - like the course I'm going to teach. So then I don't get a choice.
Have you used any unusual genres in your teaching?
Last year I worked with robotics engineers who made posters highlighting the innovative research in their department for a university open day for school pupils. It was a really good way to assess whether the students had actually understood the research - they had to make it clear and interesting for the younger audience.