Teaching particular languages

A simulation of a piece of genuine academic research was set up as a way of practising directly the skills required. The paper describes the month-long experiment, carried out by a multinational group of students on a pre-sessional study skills course. The rationale for the simulation is presented, and a description of the day-to-day progress includes examples of task sheets provided at different stages and of students' abstracts of the papers they presented. A short evaluation includes a summary of the skills that had been practised. The experiment worked better for some students than for others; comment is made on the way in which cultural differences affected students' performance. Recom- mendations for future courses are made. The simulation was felt to have reflected real-life processes in a very productive way. A review of materials over the past 20 years reveals the variety of instructional approaches taken to help L2 students develop academic listening and note- taking skills. There is a considerable amount of interest in providing pre-university ESL/EFL stu- dents with experience in encoding and decoding spoken academic discourse. The literature concerning LI notetaking shows that there is a positive correlation between note- taking and information recall (17 out of 35 studies support this view). There has been little research on L2 notetaking: the methodological approaches used in investigating LI notetaking divide into the naturalistic approach and analytic experimental methods, both of which have drawbacks. Both approaches should be drawn on in L2 notetaking research. The axioms of good notetaking were largely framed intuitively. Though written with LI note- takers in mind, they are relevant for teachers trying to develop the notetaking skills of L2 learners. Guidelines suggest that teachers: (1) show students that different styles of notetaking are appropriate to different aims and subject matter; (2) make clear the organising principle of different lectures, (3) use advance organisers or skeleton notes to make the ideational scaffolding clear, (4) teach students to recognise verbal signposts (rhetorical cues) in a lecture which makes evident the structure of the information, (5) teach students to flag changes of topics and themes, (6) point out that lecturers may use humour or asides to maintain attention, (7) allow sufficient time for notetaking, and (8) en- courage students to take notes, and then provide feedback on how they might be improved. [Possible directions for further research are suggested. ] (1988), This paper gives a brief survey of service English teaching in China and proposes reform based on the theory and practice of the ESP/EST approach. The survey describes the course materials, classroom teaching activities, and students' reactions to them under the General English approach now prevalent in China, while at the same time noting an apparent upsurge of interest in EST among Chinese learners and teachers of English. The proposal argues for a shift from General English to EST and offers solutions to such problems as the preparation of EST course materials, the training of EST teachers, and the testing of EST learners. The paper also reveals how expatriate teachers of English working in China could assist in the reform and why textbooks produced in the U.S. and Britain do not suit Chinese students of science and engineering very well.