Poster Presentation

Active English for Police – Course
Design & Survey Results

Michael Holsworth
Kyoto Sangyo University
This paper presents a genre-based approach to a university course in Japan instructing
police officers and students who are interested in pursuing a career in law enforcement. It
will discuss how the principles of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) were used to create aunique course to teach two different groups of a specific discourse community. The PAIL
(purpose, audience, information, and language) framework was applied during the needs
assessment and course development to create a course that would achieve the goals of bothgroups of participants. A brief description of the course design and content, ESP principles
as they were applied to this course, and a survey from participants on their learning outcomesare presented.

ESP Principles

ESP in second language teaching primarily focuses on teaching language requiredby members of a specific discourse community to achieve a goal or outcome.
A general view is that, “ESP is an approach to language teaching in which alldecisions are based on the learner’s reason for learning” (Hutchinson & Waters,
1987, p. 19). Within ESP, there are many branches and pedagogical techniquesthat can be used to address the specific learning needs, more than the general needs(Basturkmen, 2010). Although the roots of ESP stem from research focused on
written material, the current situation is that most oral English communicationin the world is done by non-native English speakers, and it is evident in thedevelopment of English as the lingua franca. This realisation has refocused some
ESP research to concentrate more on speaking (Paltridge & Starfield, 2014).
With this idea in mind, the newly created course Active English for Police141

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described below is an example of how the principles of ESP help participants
achieve desired learning outcomes and develop oral English competency.
For countries where English is not an official language, police officers needto develop essential English communication skills to interact with international
visitors and residents. In Jordan, Aldohon (2014) found that by far the mostserious problem faced by police is the inability to communicate with Englishspeaking tourists. Japan faces a similar problem, and the Kyoto police force
is addressing this issue through an ESP-based course. The course is called
Active English for Police. It is taught at an intermediate level (TOEIC scoreof approximately 450-550). The course was created through a joint program
between a private university in Japan and the Kyoto police force. It is intended
to offer university students the unique opportunity to learn police genre English
with police officers and to develop the English communication skills of police
officers to address three main goals.
The first goal is to develop English skills of police officers as they deal with
the increasing volume of foreign tourists visiting Kyoto each year. For instance,
the number of visitors reached a high of 19,737,409 in 2015 ( Japan National
Tourism Organization, 2016), more than four times the figure at the turn of the
century. Based on this growth, the Japan Tourism Agency (2016) expects thenumber of tourists coming to Japan to reach 40,000,000 by the year 2020. The
second goal is to provide the Kyoto police force with the English skills required
to interact with the growing population of foreign residents within Kyoto. The
number of foreign residents in Japan rose to 2,232,189 in 2015, up 5.2 percent
from the previous year (The Ministry of Justice, 2016). The third goal is to create
original and practical materials that the police can use in class while learning andfor reference and review after they have completed the course.
The PAIL acronym (Noguchi, 1998) was used as part of the needs analysis
during the design of the course. PAIL represents purpose, audience, information,and language, and this functioned as a guide for the course development andcontent selection. The purpose of the course content was to develop police
confidence and ability to communicate with foreign tourists and foreign residents
in Kyoto. It was also intended to help prepare students by providing them with
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specific language content that would assist them in a career with the police
service. The audience for this course consisted of police officers who needed to
improve their English communication skills and students who wanted to pursue
a career with the police service. The information that was required focused on
specific topics such as giving directions, conducting home visits, completing
accident reports, and completing lost and found reports. The language included
specific vocabulary that the police would use on a regular basis, for example,
imperative and interrogative statements.

The Course

To create such a unique course, an analysis was conducted of existing texts
designed for law enforcement English and interviews with the translation
department of the Kyoto police force. According to Hüttner, Smit, andMehlmauer-Larcher (2009), small corpora can provide clear advantages to ESPfocused contexts by choosing genre-specific samples. From the textbook analysis,
a list of specific vocabulary and language content were identified. Two English
as a second language textbooks designed for law enforcement were reviewed
to create a small corpus of police genre vocabulary. The first book came fromthe Kyoto Prefectural Police headquarters and was a phrase book consisting ofcommon English with Japanese translations used by police officers (Tachibana,1991). The second textbook reviewed was Career Paths – Police published byExpress Publishing (Taylor & Dooley, 2011). Through this process of textbook
analysis and interviews, five topics were identified as critical, and should becovered within program: giving directions, lost and found, questioning people,
accidents and incidents, and home visits.
The course was conducted during the spring and fall terms of 2016. It
consisted of one 90-minute class per week for 15 weeks. It focused on providing
participants with communicative-based tasks designed to give them theopportunity to use new target language as much as possible. As mentioned
by Carver (1983), one of the key characteristics of ESP is the use of authentic
material; therefore, the worksheets and other tasks employed actual policematerial whenever possible. These included materials such as lost and found143Holsworth

forms, maps of Kyoto, and accident reports.
The course was divided into three main assignments: vocabulary quizzes,
role plays, and a group presentation. The participants completed five vocabulary
quizzes with ten items per quiz. Each quiz consisted of listening comprehension,
vocabulary meaning, and correct vocabulary usage. Next, participants presented
five role-plays that allowed them to use new vocabulary and phrases. The roleplay situations included lost and found, giving directions, home visits, accident
reports, and questioning. Each role-play was conducted in groups of two to threeand lasted three to five minutes. They were assessed based on comprehensibility,
vocabulary use, and solution to the situation. Finally, participants gave a
15-minute group presentation in English to demonstrate what they had learned
from the course. The assessment for the course was broken down as follows:
participation 30%, role plays 25%, quizzes and homework 25%, and the final
presentation 20%. This percentage allocation was to encourage participationand put sufficient emphasis on the two most practical elements of the course,
vocabulary and role-plays.

Survey & Observations

To help determine the efficacy of the course design and content, a short survey
was created and administered to 21 participants (13 police officers and 8
university students) from the spring and fall terms in 2016. All 21 participants
replied to it. Participants were given questions with a choice of Strongly Agree,
Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. The survey was designed to target two
main constructs. The first construct was that of perceived value in the course,
and the second construct was that of willingness to participate. There were also
three open-ended questions intended to identify positive and negative aspects ofthe course and to solicit general comments and feedback. See Appendix for a listof the questions asked in the survey. The results of the survey showed a positive
response overall to the course and the content (see Table 1).
Additional evidence for the success of this course thus far can be seen in
written comments by both police and student participants. For example, one
participant wrote “I especially liked role plays, because I got a chance to use
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Active English for Police, OnCUE Journal, 11(2), pages 141-148
Table 1
Active English for Police – Participant Survey Responses
Strongly Agree

Agree

DisagreeStrongly Disagree

Q1

7

14

0

0

Q2

10

11

0

0

Q3

18

3

0

0

Q4

16

5

0

0

Q5

18

3

0

0

Q6

11

10

0

0

Q7

18

3

0

0

Q8

14

7

0

0

Q9

20

1

0

0

Q10

15

5

1

0

Q11

10

11

0

0

Q12

14

7

0

0

Q13

18

3

0

0

natural English”. Another participant wrote, “The role play was good for me touse new vocabulary, practice English, and communicate with other students.”
These samples represent the vast majority of comments; however, one commentthat seemed negative mentioned that “having an equal number of university
students and police officers in the class would help balance out the classroom.”
In addition to the survey, general classroom observations made during therole-plays and other classroom activities proved insightful. First, since participants
were a mix of university students and police officers, they were hesitant to interact
and communicate due to the varied ages and social differences between the twogroups. The instructor anticipated this and designated the first three classes tobreaking the ice between the two groups via general English communicative
activities that encouraged group interaction and discussion. For example, student145

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police pair work warm-up activities, mixed small-group discussions with short ingroup presentations, and various games played as a whole group.
Another insight relates to how non-Japanese people react during police
interactions in Japan. Many non-Japanese tourists and residents are very fearfulof or distrust police in their own country and therefore are very hesitant andnervous when dealing with the police anywhere. The friendly relationshipthat exists between the police and the public in Japan is not common in othercountries. In class, both university students and police officers showed greatinterest in the difference between Japanese and non-Japanese reactions to police
interactions in Japan. The general consensus was that Japanese people are more
comfortable dealing with the police because the police are friendly and havesuch a strong community presence. In addition, when asked if they would be
comfortable interacting with a police officer in another country, most said theywould, based on their experiences in Japan.

Conclusion

In this paper, a brief description was presented of an English course designed
around the principles of ESP to meet the needs of the Kyoto police force. The
course, Active English for Police, was created to address the specific needs oftwo different groups of learners from a single discourse community. The firstgroup were university students interested in a career in law enforcement, andthe second group were police officers with the Kyoto police force who interact
regularly with foreign people in English. Results from the survey and classroom
observations demonstrated that participants enjoyed the course content. As thecourse develops over time, further refinement of content and materials should
help to ensure the future success of courses such as Active English for Police.

References

Aldohon, H. I. (2014). English for specific purposes (ESP) for Jordanian tourist
police in their workplace: Needs and problems. International Education
Studies, 7(11), 56-67. doi:10.5539/ies.v7n11p56
Basturkmen, H. (2010). Developing courses in English for specific purposes. New
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Active English for Police, OnCUE Journal, 11(2), pages 141-148

York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carver, D. (1983). Some propositions about ESP. The ESP Journal, 2(2), 131-137.
Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1987). English for specific purposes: A learningcentred approach. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Hüttner, J., Smit, U., & Mehlmauer-Larcher, B. (2009). ESP teacher education
at the interface of theory and practice: Introducing a model of mediatedcorpus-based genre analysis. System, 37(1), 99-109.
Japan National Tourism Organization. (2016). Nen betsu hōnichi gaikyakusū
shukkoku nihonjin no suii [Changes in the number of visitor arrivals andJapanese overseas travelers by year]. Retrieved from http://www.jnto.go.jp/
jpn/statistics/marketingdata_outbound.pdf
Noguchi, J. (1998). “Easifying” ESP texts for EFL science majors. In T. Orr(Ed.), The Japan Conference on English for Specific Purposes Proceedings (pp.
13-19). Fukushima, Japan: University of Aizu.
Paltridge, B., & Starfield, S. (Eds.). (2014). The handbook of English for specificpurposes. West Sussex, England: John Wiley and Sons.
Tachibana, H. (1991). Your passport to the age of internationalization. Tokyo,
Japan: Tachibana Shobo.
Taylor, J., & Dooley, J. (2011). Career paths: Police. Berkshire, England: Express
Publishing.
The Ministry of Justice. (2016). Heisei 27 nen matsu genzai ni okeru zairyū
gaikokujin ni tsuite [The number of foreign residents as at the end of2015]. Retrieved from http://www.moj.go.jp/nyuukokukanri/kouhou/
nyuukokukanri04_00057.html

Author bio

Michael Holsworth is an Associate Professor at Kyoto Sangyo University in theInstitute of General Education. Research areas include second language reading
and word recognition, and ESP via corpus linguistics. Current research includes thecreation a corpus of L2 English used by the Kyoto police. mholsworth@cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp
Received: September 30, 2017
Accepted: November 11, 2018147

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Survey Questions

APPENDIX

Likert Scale Questions (Strongly Agree – Agree – Disagree – Strongly Disagree)
1. This class was at my English level.
2. The role-plays were good for practicing new vocabulary.
3. I enjoyed coming to this class.
4. I think the final project was interesting.
5. The vocabulary list was helpful for police English.
6. I could understand the English used by the teacher.
7. The warm-up activity “Taboo” was very helpful.
8. The 5 units were good for police English.
9. The activities done in class were interesting.
10. The worksheets and handouts were helpful for me.
11. I was comfortable speaking English in front of other students.
12. I learned a lot of police English form this course.
13. I would recommend this class to a friend / co-worker.
Open Ended Questions
1. What did you like the most about this class?
2. What did you not like about this class?
3. Please write any other comments that you think will improve this class.

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